That wall, that gate, the side of the church there at the left, the outline of one pointed window along the side of the dark wall … it was Grantchester church, the photograph taken just alongside the gate which led into the churchyard.
A fleeting memory crossed her mind again (a girl dancing alongside an open grave … the sound of digging … mud … metal … wood), then faded. The article was short and simple; the information therein minimal, but disturbing.
GRANTCHESTER VANDALS WRECK CEMETERY
Vandals broke into the grounds of Grantchester churchyard late last night, causing damage to the church, which was disfigured by graffiti, and to some of the graves.
Police are investigating the damage, which is reported to be ‘quite extensive’, but are not prepared to give details at present.
The Revd Martin Holmes (45), present vicar of Grantchester, describes the vandalism as ‘a petty and cruel attack on our community’, and lays the blame on ‘student pranksters’. He has denied the allegations of witnesses that the churchyard has been used in the past by practitioners of black magic.
Alice re-read the article, the half-memory growing stronger and stronger. The dream? Had it been a dream? She remembered the sound of metal against wood, metal against stone. She remembered hiding in shadows, crossing the field of green wheat. Remembered mud on her shoes … She lifted her head, saw her trainers on the doormat, caked to the laces with graveyard mud …
And remembered everything.
One
SOMETIMES I WONDER how much of my life has been dreams, or the dreams of dreams. Maybe I will wake to the teeth of my fantasy in my throat, or maybe I will simply float away on a river of ether like Wynken, Blynken and Nod. My nice young doctor came again today and frowned over my veins. He, too, has teeth which bring dreams. I asked him to stop the dreams, but he just smiled. For a minute, I thought he was Rosemary.
Ah yes. Rosemary. We never go far from her, do we? Still, I’ve written my story now; I don’t flatter myself that she doesn’t know about it, but I think I’ve hit on a way to keep her at bay for a while. Don’t you know? Yes, I thought you did. That should keep me safe, don’t you think? Because she’ll be coming soon, I know that. Coming to bring me back, like Elaine and the others. But I’ll not go to her. No. Better the dark. Better the dark.
One more glass of whisky against the dreams.
What did I write last night? I meant to tell you about Robert, and of how he was ensnared, but instead I find that in a whole evening I wrote nothing but my dreams, as if I did not have enough of them already, as if I needed to multiply the madnesses which assail me in every part of my life. I go to Grantchester still, you know; they let me go, because they think it does me good. Not to see her (I see her every night), but to make sure that she is still there. If she came back, I would know it. I know I would. But she is powerless to hurt. She is laid to rest at last. But sometimes I see her, feel her, deep in the dark earth, moving. Maybe she sucks life from her shroud, like the witches of old. But I have faith. Faith is the answer. I tell myself that when she comes to me: I look the other way and pray.
All I need is Faith.
Maybe it was Faith which saved me then; I know that I was infatuated by her, bewitched by her every movement. Do not blame me; I was a fool, but she was so lovely! She was a prism, a sunbeam, a dancing bolt of lightning. I remember that first meal I spent with her; the sunlight like needfire in her hair, motes of light and dust circling her face like an aura. I was shy at first: staring tongue-tied at her over my untouched supper, she eating delicately, cat-like in little, precise bites, her teeth leaving tiny, even indentations in the piece of bread by her plate, the small sounds of her spoon against Mrs Brown’s best china plate magnified, like an eye through a lens, in the troubled air. I did not think to speak; I think I stared, foolishly smiling, unaware that she too was watching me from beneath her demure eyelashes, that she was seeing everything through the veil of her mockery. Nothing escaped her. Not Robert. Not I.
I’m sure she spoke first; over a dish of fruit, piled high. Apples, peaches, oranges … some parts of Cambridge had stayed almost untouched by the rationing; I think Mrs Brown prided herself on the way she supplied her ‘young men’ with the kind of food they would have found difficult to find even in the best restaurants. I reached for the dish to offer it to Rosemary just as she reached for it herself … my hand slipped clumsily and brushed hers. I drew it away, blushing with a muttered apology. Her hand was cool, like a child’s.
‘Oh, excuse me, miss …’ I stammered.
Rosemary gave me a shy smile.
‘You don’t even know my name, do you?’ she said.
My confusion increased. I mumbled something totally unintelligible.
‘It’s Rosemary,’ she said. ‘For remembrance, you know.’
‘It’s a beautiful name,’ I said foolishly.
‘And yours?’ she said. ‘I know I can’t even begin to thank you for what you did, but at least tell me your name.’ Her smile lit up the room again with its brightness. ‘Maybe it should be Lancelot,’ she said, with a touch of mockery. ‘Or maybe Galahad.’
I was not an accomplished flirt; in fact, I was uniformly dull. I shook my head.
‘No, Holmes. Daniel Holmes.’ I wrestled with my shyness again for a moment. ‘I’m so glad. I mean …’
‘Rosemary. Please call me Rosemary.’
‘Rosem … rose …’ I gave a nervous laugh.
‘And I am feeling better,’ she continued. ‘Thanks to you, Daniel. How brave you must be, to tackle the complete unknown like that, to leap in the river after me … And you don’t know me at all, do you? I could be anyone. Anything.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said, braver now. ‘You’re marvellous, like a poem—’
Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say;
Barefooted came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
‘A poet!’ cried Rosemary, clapping her hands.
‘No, no,’ I blushed. ‘That was Tennyson.’
She smiled, more sadly now, it seemed to me. She turned her face away into the sunlight, a rogue sunbeam lighting up the transparency of one of her irises into a crescent of brightness.
‘I can hardly believe it now,’ she said softly. ‘That I wanted to die, I mean. But it’s only a reprieve, you know. One day there will be no Daniel Holmes to save me and make me feel whole again; there will only be the river, waiting its time. Soon, I’ll have to leave, and you’ll forget me.’
‘Forget you?’ I gasped.
‘Nothing lasts for ever,’ said Rosemary. ‘I had friends, Daniel. I thought they were good friends. But now, I’m alone, and there is a coldness inside me which can never be melted. You called me the beggar maid; perhaps I am that, for ever on the fringes of things, for ever alone.’
‘But—’
‘I have a face,’ said Rosemary. ‘Was that what you were going to say? A beautiful face? I wish I didn’t!’ She closed her eyes; the tragic mouth thinned, her fists clenched in her lap. I longed to touch her, to comfort her, but I did not dare, so inviolate was her air of tragedy. I will never forget what she made me feel, that passionate rush of pity and love. I felt the tears spring to my eyes: I make no apologies. She was a superb actress.
‘My parents were poor,’ she said. ‘I don’t blame them for that, or for wanting me to use my face to help them. They didn’t understand. They thought that it would be easy, with my face, to find the kind of husband who could look after me and them, there are lots of nice young men in Cambridge, they said.’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said. ‘None of it matters, Rosemary!’
‘I want to tell you,’ she insisted. ‘I want you to know, even if it means you despise me afterwards. I want you to try and understand. I found a job in a pub.’ She shuddered. ‘It was hot, and noisy; sometimes I worked very late, and I was afraid to walk home at night. I lived in a little fl
at in the town centre; it was too far to go back to my parents’ house in Peterborough every day. My landlady was suspicious of me – jealous, perhaps, of my face. Sometimes, men would follow me home. I never let them in!’
She stared at me, her lavender eyes intense and passionate.
‘Understand, Daniel, I never did!’
I nodded. You would have believed her too.
‘Then, one day, I met, well, even now, I dare not tell you his name. It doesn’t matter; it may not even have been his name. He said he was a professor at one of the colleges. He was handsome, intelligent and, I thought, kind. As soon as he saw me, he said he fell in love with me, told me that it was wrong for me to be working in that place, said that all he wanted was to look after me. I was suspicious at first, but he seemed sincere. He broke down my defences with kindness and consideration, led me to think that he wanted to marry me. He never said so, but …’ Here, she broke off, and passed her hands over her eyes.
‘Weeks passed. He was kind. He held my hand when we walked in the park, he took me to the theatre. One day he took me to London in his car … but never to his house. I didn’t mind. I knew that if he married me, his family would be shocked. I waited, patiently, blinded by my happiness. Then, one day, I saw him as I was carrying some shopping home from the market. I saw him and called his name in the street. He turned around … and I saw that he had a lady on his arm.’
She stopped, her eyes brimming, and impulsively, I took her hand.
‘I heard the young lady say: “Who is that woman?”
‘He turned away without a word, and he said … God, I can still hear it now! “Nobody, darling.”’
‘Nobody! That’s who I am, despite my pretty face. Not good enough to earn the respect of a good man. The beggar maid! You couldn’t have put it better, Daniel. My dear Daniel.’
I tried to comfort her, but she went on.
‘No! I want you to hear the whole. I suppose I knew then that all hope was gone, but I couldn’t bear it to be ended like that. I watched for him on every street; waited in vain for him to call and explain everything … I think I was still desperate enough to want to believe any lie, just as long as it could be like it was before … but he never came. I could not bear to work in the pub again; so I did sewing work for my landlady … earning just enough to keep myself alive. That woman was glad, I know it. She knew that something had happened … you cannot begin to believe the scornful words she heaped upon me … hints … comments … but I was afraid to leave. I was afraid that no one else would agree to house a single woman on her own. I drank … alone in my room at night… I drank gin, like the lowest of sluts. I hated it, but it would appease the loneliness and the despair a little. Then, one day, I saw him again, coming out of the theatre with some friends. I was afraid to speak to him, I was shabby, maybe I had been drinking, I can’t remember. I followed him home. I waited at the door until the friends had left, I don’t know how long. A long time, I think. Then I knocked.
‘He didn’t come to the door straightaway; I was beginning to be afraid that he would not come at all … then I saw him, through the glass of the door. He opened it … looked at me for a moment. His eyes were cold.
‘“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know you.” And he closed the door on me. I waited there for a long time, cold … despairing, until I saw the dawn beginning to rise. I had been there all night. I never understood why he had changed so much, and not knowing was worse than anything else. When I came back to my flat, my things were waiting for me on the doorstep, neatly packed into a bag and a suitcase. I am sure it must have given her pleasure to do that … to handle and gloat over all my possessions … to write that little note I found pinned to the door. What it said, I don’t think I could tell even you, Daniel; though I was innocent, it shamed me to the core, made me dirty. And so, I went to the river. And somewhere, there must have been a little pity left in the world, because you came. You came.’
And then, she did cry – long, hitching, tearing sobs which bruised my heart – her face in her hands, like a little girl. I put my arm around her, mumbled sorry, sincere, adolescent words of comfort to her … felt that jerk of the heart which I never felt before or since as I held her; that moment of epiphany when she looked up at me and smiled.
No, I could never have blamed Robert, even if he had not been my friend, for taking her from me. Rosemary was the wedge which drove friend from friend, drove the honest man to crime, the good man to murder. In his place, no doubt I would have done the same, and sometimes my blood runs cold to think how easily our roles could have reversed. It could have been me, there in Grantchester churchyard. Maybe it will be yet.
PART TWO
The Blessed Damozel
Two
THE REVEREND HOLMES was a small, thin, rather insignificant-looking man, the lovely stained-glass window of the nave behind him bleeding all colour from his oddly childish features; but the pale eyes behind the magnifying lenses of wire-framed glasses were shrewd and bright with humour. His eyebrows were thick and very dark, giving him an earnest, rather faraway look, and at the moment they were drawn together in a frown which managed only to convey bewilderment. His voice was that of a much older man, or a man who is so much involved in his own little circle of events that the comings and goings of the world simply pass him by, and he spoke slowly, with much hesitation, his voice the cultured, gentle, slightly bleating voice of the country priest.
‘Ahh … Well,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I can’t really say any more about it than, ahh, you know. Just a prank, albeit a nasty one, just one of those student tricks. Though I fail to see any humour at all in the, ahh, digging up of graves and the vandalizing of a church. I’d rather see it as a prank, my dear.’
‘But what happened?’ insisted Alice, trying to curb her impatience.
‘No one knows,’ said the Reverend. ‘Just another of those incidents … rather nasty, though, and a bit of a shock for me, actually.’
He lowered his voice and turned to her conspiratorially. ‘I think it’s … ahh … a personal dig against me ahh … no pun intended, you know,’ he said.
Alice looked suitably interested, though privately she was beginning to think that she must have been crazy to look up this man in the first place. What she thought she remembered had never happened; what she had seen in the paper had been a coincidence, nothing more.
Martin Holmes beckoned her closer.
‘One of the graves which was tampered with, I knew. It was my uncle’s.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’re an old family, miss, er?’
‘Alice Farrell.’
‘Ahh … yes. An old family, as I was saying; Cambridgeshire born and bred, though I have not actually lived here very long myself. It could be that, ahh, rancour still exists, old grudges, you know the kind of thing.’
Alice glanced at her watch. The Reverend Holmes did not notice, but continued his halting, gentle narrative with the air of a man who has found a captive audience.
‘I … ahh … can’t say I was a, ahh, a popular choice as vicar of this parish. There were, let us say, ahh, factions, who found me unsuitable. There was a bit of an upset in the family long ago, ahh, insanity, you know, that sort of thing. I suppose they remembered it still. Long memories, Cambridgeshire folk. Maybe some of the young ones thought it was funny to dig up the grave of my poor Uncle Dan to tease me with it.’
Alice looked sympathetic.
‘Mad as a hatter, poor chap,’ said Martin Holmes with a shake of his head. ‘Died in some kind of a home … hanged himself, so I’ve been told. Not that I knew him at all … ahh … can’t remember him too well. Uncle Dan kept himself to himself. Remember seeing him once, with my father, when I was a boy … he tried to give me a shilling, but Father wouldn’t let him. Father told me afterwards that he talked endless nonsense about devils … and monsters. Monsters!’ he repeated, and laughed.
Alice looked at her watch.
‘Well …’ she said, ‘If there’s n
othing else …’
‘Nothing else?’ said the Reverend. ‘No … except that they were fooled, of course. Poor old Uncle Dan.’
‘Fooled?’
‘Well, he’s not there, of course,’ said the Reverend Holmes simply. ‘Whoever dug him up didn’t find a thing. There’s nothing in that coffin except a box and a few oddments.’
Catching sight of Alice’s astonished face (she now had no desire to go away), he turned an apologetic smile towards her.
‘I said he was mad as a hatter,’ he said.
‘Well, where is he?’
The Reverend laughed again, very softly.
‘He’s here,’ he said, ‘right here in the church. They ahh … cremated him, you know, then they put him in the east wall, behind a plaque. It was all in his will, you know, and, ahh, my father felt obliged to carry out his last wishes, even though he was so peculiar.’ He paused again. ‘Funny,’ he mused, ‘it looks as if he may have been right in hiding away.’
‘Why?’ (I can’t believe I’m hearing all this, thought Alice desperately, can’t believe I’m still here listening to all this …)
‘Because that’s what he was afraid of all that time,’ explained the priest, patiently. ‘Being dug up.’ He shrugged. ‘Kept on spouting a lot of … ahh … nonsense about … being dug up, don’t you know, and ahh … used in some kind of, ahh … Though why it happened now, after all these years, beats me. Poor old fellow.’ He turned to Alice.