The Vanishment (3 page)

I took my hand away from her, the hand with which I had been stroking her shoulders.

"Fine," I said. "Do that." I hesitated, knowing that what I said next would be crucial, a watershed perhaps. "But don't expect me to come after you. Not now, not later. Do you understand?"

She understood. Whatever the dream had done to her, my words went deeper. I was offering her a choice, a bastard choice. She could let her fears get the better of her, slip away to London, escape whatever it was she dreaded here, but it would be the beginning of the end of our marriage. Or she could decide to save the marriage by staying here and fighting it. It was a cruel choice, and I am not proud of having forced it on her. Not in view of what happened later. But I had no way of knowing. Not then.

She said nothing. All her energies were reserved for the struggle going on inside her. Partly, it was a struggle with the house; partly, one with me. I won, or at least I was given the appearance of winning. Sarah got up and walked down to the lawn's edge, where she sat for a long time, watching the sea. A boat went slowly past, a red smudge against the waves.

That night I worked late in the study, making rapid progress with my story. It would be finished by the next day if all went well.

Sarah was in the drawing room, painting. She had brought daylight bulbs and set up lamps alongside her easel. I was under strict orders not to enter the room while she was working. My scrutiny made her nervous, she said. I was happy to comply.

I stopped work at eleven. Sarah was already in the kitchen, preparing hot drinks. She seemed more relaxed. On reflection, I understood in part her sense of unease concerning the house. It was, after all, far from the most cheerful of dwellings, even in this, its modern phase. How it might have been fifty or one hundred years ago, I shuddered to imagine. And in the winter it must be bleak enough, its rooms permanently chilled, touched with damp.

There were three stories. Downstairs consisted of the rooms I have mentioned, and there was also a toilet. The next floor had four bedrooms, including our own, and two bathrooms; the remaining three bedrooms were on the upper story, with two smaller bathrooms. Old carpet, old wallpaper everywhere: the house had not been redecorated since the 1950s or earlier. Our bedroom looked out onto the garden at the back, and to the sea beyond. The bed creaked. A tap in the bathroom dripped.

We went to bed around midnight. I was tired at last, yet buoyed up by my achievements of the day.

"How did your painting go?" I asked as we settled into bed.

"Well. Very well. As you say, this is a good place to work. Things get done."

"I'm pleased. But today wasn't much of a success, was it? I thought things were going well yesterday."

She was silent for a while.

"You've got some work done. It's what you wanted."

"Nevertheless."

I stroked her cheek. The sheets were still a little damp, but Sarah's body beside me was warm, even hot. My hand stroked her flank, and I felt her go rigid briefly, then relax. I continued stroking, and she sighed audibly. The sheet slipped down below her breasts, and I leaned over, kissing her. She did not try to stop me.

It was not like that last time, on the lawn. Sarah kept her eyes shut from start to finish. Outside, she had been free of all inhibition; here, it was as if we were being watched or overheard.

Afterward, we listened to the sea. I imagined it in the darkness, always moving. Not melodic as before, but out of tune and sinister.

Sarah held my hand.

"I've been here before," she said.

The words were almost a whisper. I asked her what she meant. But she did not answer. She let go of my hand and turned on her side and switched off the light.

When I woke later that night, she was sitting upright again. I did not ask what she was doing. I knew. In her mind, she was making her way from room to room, all through the silent house.

Day followed day, night succeeded night, and the weather did not change, did not even falter. Each day Sarah took her easel down to the cliff edge, where she painted endlessly, sometimes from early morning to late afternoon, without flagging. The finished products of her labor were stored under sheets in one of the second-floor bedrooms. She promised to reveal them only when we were back in London. It would be a surprise, she said, part of my homecoming.

I wrote as I had never written before. Each morning I typed up the work of the previous day, refining and editing it, and each afternoon, after a brief rest outside in the garden, I would take up my pen again and write ten, eleven, twelve pages without so much as a pause. I worked in the study for the most part, seated in front of a French window that gave onto the garden. Old, discarded ideas were taken out and dusted off; in the peace and quiet of those golden days, they quickly came back to life. I felt as though I had become a magician, as though all I touched was in a matter of moments gold. I had never written so well or so easily, and every day I woke anxiously, fearing that the facility might have left me as readily as it had come, only to find it waiting there in the study, quietly, without fail.

In the soft evenings, Sarah and I would drive in to Tredannack, to the Green Dragon pub. The landlord recognized me and made us welcome. I soon learned that he was not a local, but a Plymouth man, a former sailor who had retired early and come to Tredannack with a young wife, to indulge a long-postponed dream of life as a country innkeeper.

There were a few outsiders like ourselves, summer folk who rented cottages in the village or parked their caravans nearby. They came from Birmingham and Manchester, sunless northern towns, and we found them a dull bunch on the whole. Back home, they sold cars or insurance or double glazing, and their conversation was limited to house prices, the crime rate, and the tribulations of the Royal Family, of whom they spoke with the familiarity of close friends.

From long experience, I knew better than to let myself be drawn into the subject of my own work. I said what I always say, that I was a civil servant— something I had indeed been at one time—and mentioned a dull department on the third floor of an office in Brentford. No one inquired further. I was a pencil pusher, one of the innumerable faceless minions to whom their forms and reports were passed.

By the third evening, we had decided to progress to the locals, only to find ourselves met by a blank wall. They were not overtly rude—not at first—but they made it wholly clear that they wanted nothing to do with us. Now at one table, now at another, we were snubbed again and again, and in the end we stopped trying and settled for our own company. I thought at first it was no more than the usual and forgivable resistance of residents to contact with seasonal visitors. But from time to time I would catch sight of one of our friends from the north playing darts with a team of local lads or ordering a round for one or another circle of Tredannack worthies. If there was a ban, it started and ended with us.

There was no alternative to the Green Dragon. It was all the pub and all the nightlife in the whole of Tredannack, and for what it was worth, we felt ourselves entitled to some company in the evenings. It kept Sarah away from the house for one thing, and I was grateful for that. And the beer was good, a heady local brew that made a fitting end to a hard day's writing. I had started to look forward to it.

So we sat it out for two more nights. From time to time we would notice eyes straying in our direction, then away again. We had not become invisible, then. New arrivals entering the lounge would glance around, spying out their friends; without fail, their eyes would rest on us for a moment or two, warily, before moving on.

Late on the second evening of cold shoulders and odd looks—our fifth at the pub—I went up to the bar to fetch fresh drinks for us both: another pint of Polyphant's Old Cornish Regular for myself, a Tanqueray gin for Sarah. The landlord served me as usual, but I thought he, too, glanced at me oddly. I could hold back no longer.

"What is it, Ted?" I asked. "People have been treating us like lepers for the past two nights. Don't tell me we've got BO."

He set the brimming pint glass on the bar and turned to fetch a tumbler for Sarah's gin.

"They're odd buggers round here," he said, keeping his voice low. "I'd pay no heed to them if I were you."

"But I can't help paying heed. They give us queer glances, they make it clear we're pariahs of some sort."

"You're from outside. I had a hard enough time of it myself when I first came here."

"Don't give me that," I said. "Look at them. They're happy enough to pass the time of day with that riffraff from the caravans. Don't tell me they've got a special phobia of Londoners."

He filled the gin glass with tonic.

"Ice?"

"Yes, please."

He spooned some in and added a wedge of lemon. I passed a five-pound note across the bar and he gave me my change.

"It's not you," he said. "It's the house you're staying in. Some local thing. I can't get to the bottom of it. People clam up if you mention it."

"What about the house?" I was sure he knew more than he said. "What's wrong with it?"

But I knew myself, of course I did. Sarah had told me already.

He shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "Really I don't. Just forget I said anything." I did not believe him, but I saw there was no point in pressing. He had lived in Tredannack too long, had become a local himself. And he had to stay on here long after Sarah and I would have gone. I left him to his beer pumps and took my drinks back to our table.

Sarah was not there. I looked around, but she was nowhere in sight. I guessed she had gone to the toilet, so I sat down to wait for her.

She did not reappear until I was over halfway through my pint. Most of the ice in her glass had melted. I saw her come through the lounge door, followed closely by a local woman, of whom all I knew was that her name was Margaret.

"Where have you been?" I asked. She looked pale and a little seedy. One glaring thought came into my head, but I pushed it out again quickly. Sarah hadn't taken tranquilizers in years, wasn't likely to start again in a place like Tredannack.

"Let's get out of here, Peter. I've had enough for one evening."

I could sense the strain in her voice.

"What's wrong? Don't you want your gin? I'll get a fresh one if you like."

"I've had enough to drink. Come on, let's go. I'll drive if you aren't up to it."

“No, I'm okay."

I picked up my beret and put it on. It was a recent affectation, and I clung to it tenaciously. Before leaving, I gulped down the rest of my pint. I would miss it when it was time to go home.

Outside, the weather had changed. There was a chill in the air. A sense of impending rain, perhaps a storm. Something charged and angry in the atmosphere. I could feel it. Something was coming. I shivered as I got into the car.

Sarah turned to me and blurted out what was troubling her.

"Peter, we can't stay in the house."

"Oh, God. Not that again."

"No, not that, not like before. This is different. Margaret Trebarvah told me why the locals won't have anything to do with us. It's not us at all—"

"It's the house. I know. Ted Bickleigh told me much the same thing."

"Did he tell you why?"

"No. It's some great local secret."

"Margaret told me a little. I think she knows more, but she can't tell or won't. What she did say was enough, though. I was right about the house. Something terrible did happen there. Margaret didn't know the details, or she wouldn't tell me, but she knows that someone was murdered there and that they refuse to leave, refuse to believe they're dead."

"So that's all it comes to in the end," I said. "A common or garden ghost. How very sad."

"Don't make fun of it, Peter. Even if you can't feel it yourself, you know I sensed it the moment we arrived. There's one room. One room where all the evil in the house is concentrated. Haven't you even felt it a little?"

I ignored her question.

"And if there is a ghost?" I snorted. "We haven't seen or heard anything. It seems willing to leave us alone. Let's leave it like that."

"You don't understand, do you, Peter? It doesn't leave us alone. It's always there. It watches us when we sleep. Sometimes when I wake up, I know it's there. Watching. Waiting. I don't know what for."

I started the car.

"This is ridiculous, Sarah. You're letting a hysterical woman frighten you. Maybe these people have their reasons for scaring visitors off, God knows. But I'm damned if I'll let them do it to me."

Sarah fell silent. She knew better than to argue when I was in that mood, knew that anything she might say would fall on deaf ears or, worse, provoke me to a rage. I am not always even-tempered when I drink, and that night I had downed enough Old Cornish Regular to awaken a few demons. I drove back faster than was safe, with my lights on full beam, skimming hedgerows, and several times I came close to planting us in a ditch.

The house was waiting for us, quiet beneath a growing moon. Sarah came in behind me, more reluctant than ever. The black mood was leaving me, exorcised by the drive. I apologized for my outburst in the car, but Sarah only nodded and said nothing; she knew how little it would take to set me off a second time. It felt chilly, almost as cold as on that first night. I got the central heating on full again and lit the Aga stove in the kitchen. Sarah stayed with me. I made sandwiches and cocoa, and we ate in silence. As though we were listening.

Much later, in bed, I sat up reading. Beside me, Sarah had fallen into an uneasy sleep. From time to time she stirred, twice she cried out gently. I touched her arm, soothing her. She meant a great deal to me. Not everything, nobody means that much; but the thought of separation terrified me. I regretted my impatience. I bent and kissed her, hoping she might sense my contrition in her dreams. Tonight I could not sleep myself. A wind had risen and was pushing hard across the sea. There was a tremendous sense of change in the air, as though nature was in flux. I returned to my book, but I could not concentrate. Rain had started to fall. I could hear it hissing against the windows, not loud, but insistent nonetheless. It sounded desolate, a rain of long distances, of empty places.