He cowered down among the dead lilies, his hands steepled, trembling, before his face, as if in some kind of religious obeisance.
Maradissa laughed. ‘Why are you frightened? Don’t be absurd. Explain yourself!’
He seemed to find his courage then, and made to scrabble backwards through the leafage. Maradissa grabbed his arm, and it was as if his flesh turned to fluid in her hold. He did not resist her, but hung there limply, leaning against her legs. Maradissa pushed him away. ‘Get off my premises. You’ll lose your job for this!’ She expected him to give her an appealing glance, say something. Instead, he lay there in the crackling foliage, beautiful and vulnerable. She saw, in his eyes, his feelings. How long had he watched her before he’d gathered the courage to stay after hours? He’d been reprimanded, but now risked dismissal, if not prosecution. What was he waiting for? What did he want from her?
Maradissa paused. It seemed that time condensed into a single moment, of which she was queen. She was conscious of her long limbs clad in shiny fabric, the slavering, fanged maw of her sex.
She straddled his fallen body, the heels of her boots digging into the soft soil. He lay still, waiting, his hair spread out over the crackling leaves. She imagined tearing the thin fabric of his shirt away, exposing his breast, like an empty canvas awaiting the marks of her nails.
Maradissa laughed uneasily, took a step to the side, stood over him. She felt dizzy. Time to go. She must dismiss him, go back to the house, call Leony, report the trespass. Evalie was expecting her and life must go on - it must!
The boy curled onto his side, still looking up at her with strange beseechment. He made no sound.
Maradissa extended one foot, placed it upon his face, so that her heel pressed against his trembling mouth. He reached up with grimed fingers, and the scent of leaf-mould was released, primal, almost anaesthetic.
He took hold of her foot, licked the leather. ‘Kiss booties night night,’ he said. And her heel drove into the soft flesh of his mouth.
An Old Passion
Well, of course she threw a garden party as soon as the place was decent. She had to show it off, and who can blame her? I went with Cathy, because Ted wouldn’t go with me. ‘She was unbearable when she was only slightly rich,’ he said. ‘Now, we’re talking about torture, an afternoon in Hell.’
‘I’m sure it won’t be that bad,’ I said, but privately I agreed with him. I’m not sure what made me go, really. I knew my skin would be crawling with annoyance by the end of the afternoon, but I suppose I was just curious. My friend had acquired a stately home. She was living in it. I had to go and see.
Helen had gone to school with Cathy and I, and because we all still lived in the area around the village where we’d grown up, we’d kept in touch. Cathy and I had married the sons of farmers, as our parents had expected, while Helen had gone off to college and run wild for a while. She had come back to the village now and again throughout her teens and early twenties, adopting every city fad that was going, showing off to us, her provincial sisters, stuck out in the sticks. I don’t think we ever really liked her. You can’t actually like a person like Helen, so familiar yet so distant, but we were always curious, always entertained.
Something went wrong when she hit quarter century, although she never confided in us about it. She came home, skulked dramatically round the village for a few weeks in dark glasses, looked tragic and wore wide hats like a film star. Then it was forgotten, whatever it was, and she was her usual bragging self again. Still, she stuck around after that, wheedled her way in with the new money, who drank in the pubs on the edge of the village.
While Cathy and I met our husbands and duly began to produce families, Helen secured jobs from her new friends, drove around in a new car, bought a cottage, did it up (quite well, too), and kept on partying. Sometimes, she’d visit us and gently scorn what she called our ‘giving in to tradition’. Of course I envied her, who wouldn’t. She was graceful and wild and witty, and had fun.
‘Where did we go wrong?’ Cathy asked one day, after a morning get together, as we watched the dust of Helen’s car disappearing down Cathy’s driveway. ‘God, I hate her, the bitch! Where did we go wrong?’
Then we laughed together, went back inside, and had another gin. Our lives weren’t that bad, really.
Helen was thirty-two when she met Roland Marchant. He was the one she’d been waiting for, the son of an industrialist, busy being propelled up the ladder of affluence by Daddy, oozing wealth and smarm. Helen met him at some do or another she’d gone to with friends and, with an unerring huntress’ sense for a prime kill, set her sights and brought the prey down. Shall we say it was a short engagement? City bred, he was interested in village life, in country life, and I suspect it was more at his insistence than Helen’s that she brought him visiting. He thought the farms were quaint and wanted to try driving a tractor. Ted, and Cathy’s husband, Rupert, were strained but polite. Fortunately, the tractor lark never got beyond the evening of Scotch and Roland’s loud voice. Well, no one reminded him about it.
‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ Cathy said. ‘A rich boor who’s pompous and condescending, or a rich boor who’s devoted to being everybody’s best buddy.’
Still, we accepted the antique brandies, and such like, and were always coolly friendly.
Deermount House came on the market because the Pargeters couldn’t keep the place up. Sons and daughter had moved away and had no interest in the family pile; the roof was caving in. Roland fought off developers, hoteliers, theme park entrepreneurs, conference centre planners and outbid the lot. He acquired Deermount House lock, stock and barrel. The Pargeters took very little away with them, other than an unspeakably large stash and a sense of financial relief. Roland and Helen would live there. They would be neighbours. Oh, wonderful.
When Helen came to tell me the news, I couldn’t stop myself saying, ‘Isn’t it a bit big for just you and Roland?’
Helen laughed. ‘Don’t be absurd, Anna! It’s a fucking mansion. How can a mansion be “too big”? You simply have to live bigger.’
I could almost hear her knuckles cracking at the prospect.
The garden party recreated some idyllic post war age as Helen imagined it. It was all bunting and vicars with megaphones, that sort of thing. The gardens were a mess, actually, utterly run to seed, but Roland had had the lawns rotor scythed, so it didn’t look too bad. The first thing Cathy and I noticed about the house was the new roof. It looked rather peculiar, so clean and regular, atop the sagging facade of the house. Rather like an old woman wearing a teenager’s hat. We presumed the rest of the building would soon succumb to cosmetic surgery, its wrinkles nipped and tucked, so that it matched the roof.
It appeared that everyone from the village and surrounding farms had come to be nosy. Children shrieked, piped band music stuttered, vicars cajoled. The river, caressed by ancient willows, oozed slowly through the gardens, like an ancient snake that knew its own territory. There were swans, of course. Summer as it had once been, perhaps.
Then Helen came gliding up the lawns towards us from the river, backlit by gleaming water. She looked divine in a flowered sundress, required large hat, silken blonde hair and ready red smile. ‘Darlings! So glad you came!’ she screamed.
God, it was embarrassing. Yes, we were jealous.
‘You must see the house!’ Helen insisted, and we had to follow her inside.
Once there, the spirit of the place claimed us and envy and irritation gave way to awe.
‘Helen, you’ve done wonders!’ Cathy exclaimed, craning her neck to try and take in the appallingly massive vista of the stuccoed ceiling in the main hall.
‘Oh, it wasn’t me,’ Helen said, almost apologetically. ‘Roland got designers in, architects, the lot. I just sat around waiting for them to finish. Didn’t have a word in it.’
Did she mind about that? I wondered, mentally filing the thought to repeat to Cathy later.
‘But you simply have to see my
new man,’ Helen said, her eyes shining.
Cathy and I exchanged a glance, and Cathy shrugged. New man? Our minds were open.
Helen led us upstairs to a long, well lit gallery that overlooked the gardens. ‘All the paintings have been restored,’ she told us. ‘I found him only a few days ago. He’s divine.’ She had paused before a painting, gesturing at it with some reverence.
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
‘Rufus Aston,’ Helen said grandly. We were clearly supposed to know who that was.
‘A Pargeter ancestor?’ Cathy suggested.
‘Oh no!’ Helen answered. ‘He was a poet. Haven’t you heard of him?’
No, we hadn’t. Had anyone? He was beautiful, I suppose, although the chins of long dead people always seem too weak for my taste. Perhaps that is the fault of long dead painters rather than their models. The poet’s hair was a resplendent red, his eyes dark and limpid, the mouth a little too generous, although not that wide. I estimated, with my untutored eye, he had lived in the nineteenth century. Helen confirmed this. ‘Yes, I’ve been researching.’
‘Did he live here?’ Cathy asked, politely. I dared not look at her for fear of grinning.
‘No,’ Helen explained, ‘but he stayed here quite often over a period of several years. Best of all, he died here!’
Best of all?
‘Oh,’ said Cathy and I together.
‘Isn’t it romantic?’ Helen enthused. ‘I’m reading up about him like mad, though it’s hard to find things out.’
Well, Rufus Aston was obviously the latest fad. Helen’s enthusiasm would be poured into him, and continue to do so, until it overflowed and her attention surged elsewhere.
We didn’t see much of her for a few weeks after the garden party. We were busy with the harvest, and Helen, presumably, with renovating Deermount House and its grounds. Roland had asked Ted about buying horses, hiring grooms. Cathy’s aunt, Mags, had been taken on as a cook. From her came the gossip. She felt that Roland and Helen were not like real people. They never seemed to argue, and spoke to one another as if they were acting in a play about domestic bliss. Such sunshine, such idyll. Is it any surprise, then, that they were threatened by thunderstorms? The weather always has to change.
Helen came calling three weeks after the garden party. She sat at my kitchen table, while I washed the breakfast things at the sink. I thought she seemed a little on edge, which was unusual for her. ‘Everything all right?’ I enquired.
Helen scowled at my youngest, who was hanging on to my skirts and attempting to disrupt our conversation. She, of course, would never want children.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine. I’m a bit exhausted, naturally. The job’s never ending! Still, Rolly and I wouldn’t have missed taking the place for the world. We love it.’ She lit a cigarette. Her nails were immaculate. I doubted she ever applied hand to paint stripper herself. ‘Do you know, I think I must be luckiest woman alive.’
I winced, and smiled at her in what I hoped was a convincing fashion.
‘Roland is buying me a mare,’ she said.
I took a few moments to consider the wonder of a woman who had married the most incredibly rich man and was actually in love with him. It seemed that way. Her eyes went moist when she mentioned his name.
‘You were never much into riding,’ I said.
‘I have the time now.’ Helen leaned down and produced a bottle of gin from her large bag. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Anna, come and sit down. Leave the washing-up. Have a drink.’
I obeyed her, instinctively sensing she wanted to talk. I even shooed the boy out into the garden. ‘Well?’ I said, sipping gin.
Helen laughed. ‘Well, what?’ She leaned back in her chair, struck a pose with the cigarette.
‘What is it you want to say?’
Helen leaned forward and squeezed my arm where it lay on the table. ‘Oh darling, you country women are just so intuitive!’
That was the sort of remark I was used to putting up with. I declined to respond.
‘The thing is, I’ve discovered some magic, some real magic.’
‘Oh? Witchcraft in the old grounds, then?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ She adopted an earnest expression, lowered her voice. ‘I think Rufus is trying to contact me.’
‘Rufus?’ I had forgotten about the poet, and imagined this must be an old flame.
‘Don’t you remember the painting I showed you?
‘Oh yes.’ I paused. ‘Hel, are we talking ghosts, here?’
‘Nothing so banal,’ she answered. ‘A ghost is just a picture, a memory. Rufus is stronger than that. I’m sure I’ve seen him.’
‘Oh Helen! Where?’ I am not a sceptic, but not for one moment could I imagine a worldly woman like Helen being in tune with something spiritual.
‘In the gardens,’ she replied. ‘Anna, I couldn’t tell anyone else about this. Rolly would think I’d gone mad and start to worry, and Cathy would just laugh.’
‘You’d better tell me about it,’ I said.
I was, as usual, curious. Helen was always interesting. She had caught sight of a man, whom she now presumed to be Rufus Aston, in one of the more tangled corners of the gardens. Every morning, she walked her new Labrador puppies in the grounds, and it was always then that she saw him. Never at night, never at dusk, but in clear morning sunlight. He would be standing amid the shoulder high grasses, as still as a stone, but with an air of absolute alertness. ‘He doesn’t look like a ghost, he’s completely solid,’ she said. ‘And he watches me. The thing is, it doesn’t scare me.’
‘Are you sure it’s not just some young man who’s taken a shine to you?’ I asked. ‘Why do you think it’s Rufus?’
‘Because it looks like him, silly. The clothes, the hair, the face. It’s him.’ She took a drink, swallowed. ‘I know it is. But what does he want from me?’ Only then did her brow cloud, but it wasn’t with fear.
We talked about further research. Even I became a little infected with her enthusiasm. Helen didn’t know where the poet was buried, or even how he died. Only that his last moments had been spent at Deermount House, although whether he had expired within the walls or out in the grounds: she didn’t know. I believed her utterly. There was no question of it.
‘Perhaps I should hold a séance,’ she said.
I frowned. ‘Oh, I don’t think... I think that’s asking for trouble. No, don’t do that.’
‘I trust your instincts, darling,’ she said, standing up. ‘Well, I must be off. Keep the gin. I’ll let you know what I find out.’
I tell Cathy everything, but I didn’t tell her about Helen’s visit. Probably because I believed Helen and, as she had correctly pointed out, Cathy would laugh about it. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Ted, who would genuinely have been interested. Perhaps I should have done.
We held a Halloween party for the children at Cathy and Rupert’s. While the kids screamed round us in garish costumes, Cathy and I sipped port in the flickering light of pumpkin lamps. Our men had sloped off down the pub. I felt warm, at one with myself. The pagan new year.
‘Have you seen much of Helen?’ Cathy asked.
‘No,’ I answered. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since the morning she’d told me about her apparition. ‘You?’
‘Nothing. Mags thinks she’s out of sorts. Perhaps we should visit.’
‘Out of sorts? What’s wrong with her?’ Just for a moment, my blissful mood froze.
‘Oh, nothing serious, I don’t think. Mags says she’s distracted. Apparently, she’s got a new set of friends, though where she dredged them up from, heaven knows. Mags thinks they’re weird. The place is crawling with them. They’re ghost hunters, or something like that. Helen actually held a séance up there, you know.’
‘No! Cath, why didn’t you tell me?’
Cathy looked surprised at my outburst. ‘I only found out today. Why? What do you know?’
‘As much as you do. Remember the painting she showed us, the
new man?’
‘You think she’s trying to call his ghost up?’ Cathy, predictably, cackled.
‘It could be dangerous, Cath. I think Helen’s fragile, for all her panache. Deermount House is such a big old place, and she’s rattling round in it, on her own with dear Rolly, who’s about as sensitive as a plank. Perhaps she’s becoming too imaginative. You know how easily impressed she is. What if these new friends of hers are a bit, well, shady?’
‘Yeah, you’re right. Shall we call on the off chance tomorrow?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, but keep a zip on it, Cath. Don’t ridicule her.’
Cathy gave me a studying look. ‘Why is it we care about her, Annie? What keeps us there for her?’
I shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Old bonds, I suppose.’
‘She shuts us out when she’s having crises though. Remember when she first came back?’
‘I remember. As I said, I think she’s fragile. And, for all her ways, she’s always been generous.’
‘Yes, generous.’ Cathy took a slug of port. ‘I hope I don’t want something awful to happen to her.’
‘Course you don’t,’ I said.
Halloween, Samhain, the pagan new year, the time when the veil is thin between the worlds. If we should have visited Helen, perhaps it should have been the night before, the time when the dead come back to commune with the living. We were unprepared for the maelstrom of energy that greeted us at Deermount House.
Helen came like a hurricane into the drawing room where her housekeeper had installed us. She seemed almost hysterically delighted to see us. She hugged us, and her skin felt feverish, hot, against our own. ‘My dears, my dears!’ she said.
‘Hi,’ Cathy said. ‘We wondered how you were. Haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘I’m fine,’ Helen answered. ‘Brilliantly fine.’ She looked at me and a secretive cast came into her expression. Forget the offer of tea, or anything stronger: she launched straight into her new obsession. ‘Anna, I’ve been continuing with my research.’