The Room Beyond (20 page)

She raised a handkerchief to her eyes.

‘Dear dear Mrs Hubbard. Please don’t take this the wrong way, it’s
awfully difficult to explain... I come from a frugal family you see, we always
mucked in with the work. It’s quite natural for me to scrub baths and so on. And
we have no children, just me and Mr Whitestone rattling around this big place.’

‘But I do worry about you so.’

‘No really, you needn’t. Let me help you with your coat and take
some of that almond cake home with you. Here you go! No time to lose before it
gets too dark and cold.’

‘Thank you Mrs Whitestone.’

‘No, thank you. And why don’t you take Minerva home with you, look
she’s trailing your feet already.’

‘It’s the cake she’s after. Come on Puss.’

The pounding came only fifteen minutes after Mrs Hubbard had gone.

‘Tristan!’

He flopped forwards through the door, just teetering on his feet and
a long crimson stain in the shape of a ‘V’ covered his chin and the front of
his shirt.

‘What on earth’s happened to you this time? Have you been attacked?’

His top lip arched up into a scowl, a red cavern appearing where his
two front teeth should have been.

‘Good grief, they’ve knocked your teeth clean out! Was it a brawl? Are
you alright?’

‘Shhhhhut up woman.’

She sidestepped his lunge and he went flying across the hallway,
belly-down. A rainbow of blood glistened up from the floor.

‘Come on, let’s take you to the sofa.’

It was barely any effort at all now to drag him into the drawing room.
She’d mastered the technique of hoisting him up under the arms and pulling him
along like a sack of potatoes. She’d have to add another sheet to the sofa
first though, what with all the blood and goodness knows what else by the end
of the night.

And then the sobbing began, the hardest thing of all to bear. It
turned him into a little crumpled up ghost of a person. Not menacing at all,
just hideously pathetic.

‘What are you crying about tonight?’

‘I’m so lonely.’

The words whistled and gurgled between the gap in his teeth.

‘We’re all lonely.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘I’m not sure whom you’re talking about. Clementine or Lucinda? Or
some other woman I don’t even know about yet?’

‘They all leave me!’

‘Because you persecute them dear.’

‘You wicked old hag!’

He punched forward with his fist but her hand struck neatly against
his jaw before he reached her, the sound of the blow striking through the air
like a whip.

‘Aaaagh!’

‘Now enough of that. You know better than to hit me if I’m to
tolerate this behaviour.’

He hugged his knees into himself, rocking back and forth; an
innocent child peering out at her with bewildered blue eyes.

‘What have you been drinking all day?’

‘Rum.’

‘Have you eaten anything?’

He shook his head.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘I can’t feel my legs but there are daggers in my mouth. I’m so
lonely.’

‘Yes, I know. Will you sleep?’

‘No. Lonely. Lonely.’

‘Please, just STOP repeating yourself! I can’t bear it anymore. Don’t
you think of anyone else? Does it not occur to you that I am lonely too? That
I’ve been lonely every day of our life together? I thought the world of you
when we met. I saw you as my saviour. I would have done anything for you! And
this is how you repay me. This is my marriage: sweeping up your blood and
vomit, clearing up your mess. Lonely? Let me teach you about loneliness!’

‘Stop bawling witch!’

‘Oh a new name for your list! Only I seem to be the witch who is
keeping you alive at the moment, in spite of all your best efforts!’

‘Perhaps I want to die!’

‘Is that so? Then let me help you along the way. Do you recognize
this bottle? You should do, you’ve done enough damage with it yourself after
all. Lie back, taste what’s inside. Just three drops can kill a rat, or so I’ve
been told. How big a rat are you then?’

His eyes grew like saucers, but he didn’t fight back. On the
contrary, he seemed to be opening his mouth a little, beckoning the poison in.

... Be brave with it
. Is that what
Walter had meant? One... two... the drops slipped onto his tongue like little
luminous pearls. He didn’t flinch at all, just stared straight back at her in a
blue haze.

Three...

Enough to kill a rat now.

‘I’ve done this before you know my darling husband. I killed someone
once, by accident. That’s when my life ended.’

Four.

Her hand was shaking; a grey blurry cloud swept in front of her,
eliminating everything apart from two blue circles. Mad eyes. Evil eyes. The
bottle screamed in her hand. She hurled it into the fire and in a moment Mr
Eden’s letter followed it, scorching and crackling in the flames.

‘You’re staining me as well,’ she murmured as the flames died down. ‘You’re
turning me into something evil like you. How could you be so cruel?’

But there was no response. His eyes were closed now and thankfully
she could just hear the murmur of his breath.

‘Miranda, it’s been a long time.’

‘Yes. How is Switzerland?’

‘Cold. May I introduce Dr Blythe. He’s come down from Scotland
especially to see my son.’

Dr Blythe was an average looking individual, although having to
hover in James Whitestone’s aura perhaps made him look even more average than
he would have done otherwise. He was of an average height, average build and
had light brown receding hair of an almost identical shade to his tweed suit.

‘Thank you for coming doctor, you seem to be highly recommended.’

‘I’m very pleased to hear that, I only hope that I can offer some
sort of assistance.’

‘Oh I doubt it, but we ought to try I suppose. What a charming
accent, are you from Edinburgh?’

‘Ah no, the Highlands.’

‘Oh how beautiful! What a lovely long way from here. Would you like
to see my husband right now? He’s in his bed. I’m afraid I’ve had to tie his
hands to the bedstead for the purpose of this visit to stop him from running
away or attacking anyone.’

Mr Whitestone emitted a deep strangulated cough, the corners of his
mouth crumpling up as if he’d just bitten into a rotten piece of meat. Tristan
really did look a lot like him. She’d forgotten how much over the past few
years. Although James Whitestone seemed taller, stockier than his son, or was
that just because Tristan had withered up so dramatically over the past weeks? Nevertheless,
he was a handsome man still for his age. Rather a dashing figure in his foreign
looking suit.

‘Um, may I have a quick word with my daughter-in-law in private? We
have a few details to catch up on,’ he said, turning to the doctor.

‘Yes of course.’

Even the sound of the doctor’s departing footsteps and the way he
politely urged the door shut behind him seemed moderate and considered.

‘Are you quite well my dear?’ James Whitestone asked her in a quiet
voice. His eyes were staring fixedly at the mantelpiece rather than at her face.

‘That’s an awfully difficult question to answer, considering.’

‘This house,’ he seemed to shudder. ‘What on earth made you buy it?’

‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Marguerite Avenue is
highly sought after, what could possibly be wrong with it?’

‘I... I don’t know. It seems very dark; I almost walked right past
it outside. Blythe had to direct me in. Odd. But anyway, moving on... you are
fully aware that my son and I have never been close.’

‘Yes.’

‘And that by handing the London side of the company over to him and
moving away I was attempting to wipe the slate clean, give him a fresh start to
prove himself for once.’

‘Is that how you see it? You weren’t just simply washing your hands
of him?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You were aware of his history at the time, I presume? His
misadventures in India? It’s alright, I know about it now. I’m not the same
naïve little child who walked down the aisle.’

‘I...’

He gaped at her with such a stunned expression that she might as
well have hit him in the face.

‘Was he always like this? I mean when did you first discover your
son’s true nature?’

He shrugged, brushed a bead of sweat away from his forehead. She’d
been so in awe of him in their former brief meetings, but now she could feel
the fear in him: in the way he stepped from one foot to the other and looked
impossibly large and suddenly rather uncomfortable in his foreign suit.

‘He was always an awkward boy,’ he muttered. ‘Slippery. Used to get
up to all sorts of odd things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh I don’t know... hankering after the maids, going into the woods.
He liked to catch animals, string them up before killing them and so on.’

In one lucid moment Lucinda Eden’s face came back to her, drawn and
wretched, half dead against the pillow.

‘If I had such a son,’ she said. ‘I think I would have thought twice
about allowing him to marry any woman.’

‘Now look here young Miss. I will not take such impertinence from
you. How dare you speak like that to the man who’s given you everything you’ve
got!’

‘No, you look here. I would sacrifice every stick of furniture in
this house for a man who was capable of treating me decently. Would you like to
see him now, your son? Dr Blythe!’

The doctor was already waiting for her at the foot of the stairs
when she reached the hallway.

‘He’s just up here. I’m afraid he has difficulty speaking as he lost
some teeth in a brawl several days ago and the wounds have since become
infected. I fear that the infection has spread around his mouth in a rather
horrifying way.’

‘Have you sought medical help?’

‘Oh yes. It was a disaster; the man ran screaming from the room when
Tristan attacked him. Perhaps you could help... now do excuse me, I have to
lock him in you see.’

The key to his room hung on a chain around her neck and her fingers
fiddled the clasp in her hairline.

‘That does it. Now do come in, as I said I’ve tied him down.’

Tristan’s body lay still and straight on the bed. His eyes appeared
to be half closed: two glassy sickles of blueness skulking beneath his lids. His
feet poked out, bare and marble-white beneath the nightgown she’d forced on him.
They were so slim and bony and the veins in them wound up over his ankles like
bobbly worms.

James Whitestone slipped in through the doorway after them.

‘Tristan, open your eyes dear. A man has come to see you, to help
you. His name is Dr Blythe.’

Not a flicker. Not one ripple of a sinew, tightening of a muscle.

‘Mr Whitestone, I have come all the way from Scotland to see you. Now,
I believe you to be awake at the moment. Is that true?’

Not a sound. He barely seemed alive, his body so long and stiff,
drawn out like a piece of string on the brink of snapping.

‘Enough of this, wake up son!’

A floorboard creaked and the father pushed himself past the doctor
towards the bed. ‘You’re being downright insolent lying there like that.’

Tristan’s eyes snapped open.

‘I really don’t think this is appropriate Sir...’ implored the
doctor.

‘Of course it’s appropriate. He’s acting like an infant! I give him
everything and look at the sod, look at him!’

Tristan blinked at her, the hurt in his face as brutal as broken
shards of glass. And then his mouth gaped open, strings of puss and
blood-stained spittle connecting his two jaws, criss-crossing the cavern inside.

‘OUT! Ouuuuuuut!’

The shriek didn’t sound like his voice at all. It didn’t even sound
remotely human; just a mass of fear and hatred and despair all mixed up
together.

The two men jumped away from the bedside, grasping at each other’s
shoulders. For all his experience Dr Blythe looked quite ashen.

‘Ge...t out!!’

‘Stop him screaming Miranda. Stop my son from screaming.’

James Whitestone was clutching at his throat as if he was being
strangled, his back pressed up against the wall.

‘I’m afraid I can’t. You’ll have to leave.’

Tristan’s screams were turning into high-pitched gurgles. His feet
and head thrashed against the bed as a pinkish froth collected in the corners
of his mouth.

‘Then I will. This is quite, quite repugnant.’ And Tristan’s father
scrambled along the walls to the door, Dr Blythe following a few paces behind
him with a sort of hesitant shuffle.