‘I’m flattered,’ Othman replied in an acid tone. Owen flicked a wary glance at him.
‘Do you like us?’ Lily asked him shyly. She did not look up at him, but Othman could see her colour had deepened around the face. Her little ears had gone scarlet. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
‘I think you know the answer to that,’ he said.
Owen jumped up and helped himself to more wine. Othman could almost smell the boy’s anxiety. He, more than innocent Lily, sensed the potential simmering in the room. Othman observed Owen’s taut back. His reserve must be broken down.
‘I think you two have many secrets,’ Othman said. ‘I want you to know you can trust me. I am intrigued by unusual people. I suppose I’m quite unusual myself. Like calls to like, as they say.’
‘You think we’re like you?’ Lily said. She sounded surprised.
Othman reached out to stroke her hair. ‘Absolutely.’
‘We do have secrets,’ Lily admitted, then paused, looking across at her brother. Owen appeared hypnotised by Othman’s hand caressing his sister’s hair.
‘Owen and I are very close,’ Lily said in slow, earnest voice. ‘We always have been.’
Aha, Othman thought. I should have realised. He got out of his chair and sat down on the rug next to Lily. There was a quivering desire emanating from her, unformed and unchannelled. ‘You mustn’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘It’s perfectly natural.’
Owen sat down again, opposite them. His eyes looked wild, but not altogether with anger. Othman realised, with some satisfaction, that Owen was actually quite drunk, a fact he was attempting to conceal. ‘It is clear to me that you are made for each other,’ Othman said, with a smile. He looked directly into Owen’s eyes. ‘Please don’t be afraid of me. I have no intention of abusing you.’ Still maintaining eye contact with Owen, he gently pulled Lily against his side and held out his other arm to Owen. ‘Come to me. Let us embrace as friends. There is nothing to fear.’
Owen did not move.
‘Please, O!’ Lily pleaded.
Reluctantly, Owen came to Othman’s other side, but his body was stiff and unyielding as Othman put his free arm around it.
‘Don’t you know that the love of siblings is sacred in some places in the world?’ Othman said.
Lily giggled nervously, a sound which tailed off into silence.
‘Look at me, Lily.’ Othman willed her face to turn up to him. He could see she was anxious, uncertain, but recognised within her eyes a hunger for him. ‘I can teach you,’ Othman said.
‘Can you?’ Lily’s voice was husky.
Othman became aware of Owen’s mounting unease on his other side. The boy would have to be attended to first. He nodded at Lily, smiling. ‘Oh, yes. I can teach both of you.’ He paused. ‘Owen, look at me.’
Owen’s eyes, when he turned his face, were guarded. He had no hunger, particularly, but a certain curiosity. Othman could see ideas and desires swimming unseen beneath the surface of Owen’s conscious mind. These would have to be brought out.
Gently, he spoke to the twins, his voice instilling a sense of languor. He conjured images with words, took them on a journey through their minds to a place where the sun shone on the sandy reaches of an infinite beach and waves burned silver against the shore. In this place, anything was possible.
He could feel both of them relaxing against him. The words he spoke gradually changed, until they made no sense at all, just a string of sounds that were compelling and hypnotic.
Owen’s head lolled against Othman’s shoulder. Sensing the moment had come, Othman gently withdrew his arms from the twins. He steadied Lily with one hand, leaving her kneeling beside him, her head bowed. Then, he turned to Owen.
The boy’s eyes were almost closed. Othman took him in his arms, felt the brief jerk of alarm. ‘Do not fear,’ he murmured, and covered Owen’ lips with his own. Owen’s taste was faintly familiar and a name whispered through Othman’s brain. Taziel... For the most fleeting of moments, a screaming face rose before his mind’s eye. Othman banished it firmly, and the face flew shrieking into a void. This was no time for harsh memories. Othman sensed that, had he wanted to, he could have Owen now, but it was not the time. The kiss was enough: deep, pervading, the first offering of the greatest passion.
Othman’s jaw was aching when he released Owen and turned to his sister. Lily was, surprisingly, a little more resistant. She clutched his arms painfully, her lips unyielding beneath his own. This was because she desired him more, Othman thought, and was afraid of the strength of it. Still, she relented, as he’d known she would; she became heavy and fluid against him. He moved his hands over her body, squeezed her breasts. His own desire screamed for release, yet he curbed it, beat it down. Not yet.
Drawing away from the girl, he reached out for Owen and pulled the two of them together, guiding their faces into a kiss. ‘Love one another,’ he said. ‘From such things comes strength.’
Lily uttered a soft moan, drawing her brother back into her arms. They fell onto the rug, apparently now oblivious of Othman’s presence. He sat up, leaned against the chair, wiping his mouth. His mind was buzzing; he felt slightly faint. The twins were joined through him. He was part of their love-making. In their hearts, they did not embrace each other, but him. Sitting there beside them, he could feel through his own fingers the explorations they made of each other’s bodies. They made love without finesse, untutored and inexperienced. Othman finished the wine, watching, while they struggled together on the rug before the fire. This was the first step.
The night was clear, and the call of the moon lured Barbara Eager into the forest. She’d parked the Land Rover at the side of the road, and had let the dogs out of the back for their run. Despite the luminous sky, the arms of the trees looked forbidding and enclosed. The scents of the woodland, and the fields beyond, were overwhelming, as if the landscape was being squeezed of its essence by the night. Barbara could feel a story-poem brewing within her, which was perhaps why she had unconsciously chosen to bring the dogs to Herman’s Wood, instead of taking them for a quick run through the village. It had been an odd night at The White House — a strange, excited, almost hostile atmosphere had seemed to smoke at the edges of the lounge bar. Voices had been sharp, the oldster regulars almost carping in their demands for their usual drinks. They’d been like a flock of chickens with a fox prowling round the edge of their run. The chicken wire was too flimsy to keep the threat at bay, so they moved restlessly back and forth in the dry dirt, afraid yet expectant. Was there pleasure to be found in the jaws of the fox? That would make a good first line, she thought, and repeated it over and over in her head so as not to forget it.
The dogs had run off among the trees; she could hear them snuffling about, although their dark red coats were invisible in the gloom. ‘Amber, Lester!’ she called, as she ventured onto one of the well worn, fern brushed pathways. The wood always unnerved Barbara whenever she ventured amongst its trees alone, yet it was a feeling she quite enjoyed. It brought back a flavour of youth. She heard one of the dogs bark — it sounded like Amber. Moonlight came down sparingly onto the track before her. The shadows of the ferns were monstrous, almost prehistoric. She wondered how long this wood had been there, how much human experience the sentinel trees had absorbed. This was a poet’s place, she decided.
The walk took her around the right edge of the wood, where the spreading fields were never far from sight. She passed a place where a lone folly reared dark from the grass, a massive stone arch, sheep huddled beneath its shadow. All this land, of course, belonged to the Murkasters: a shadowy, aristocratic family who had lived in the manor house, Long Eden, and who had abandoned their seat nearly twenty years ago. Barbara was interested in local history, but had never managed to find that much out about the Murkasters. At least nothing too fascinating. There were few family scandals on record. All she had found out was that the Murkasters had locked up the house, sold most of its interior effects and left the
area. Why? She began to imagine what private scandals might have precipitated the move. Skeletons in the closet? Mad relatives locked in attics, who had escaped and run amok on a murder spree? She smiled to herself. Although, from an imaginative point of view, the ideas were attractive, they were untenable. Any spectacular events would have been recorded in the press, and Barbara had already scoured the microfiches of local papers, held in the library at Patterham.
The baroque towers of Long Eden could now be seen through a thin fringe of trees as the path nudged the right boundary of the wood. Most of the house itself was obscured by the gardens. Barbara was facing the left side of the building and was on a level with its grounds. From the hill where she’d met Lily on Friday morning, the front of the house looked smaller. Perhaps that was something to do with perspective.
Barbara had to climb over a makeshift horse jump of fallen boughs that local riders must have erected. She wished she could get inside Long Eden and soak up the atmosphere. Who held the keys to the place now? Surely there must be a local caretaker?
The dogs had disappeared up the path, although she could still hear their barked exchanges and the sound of cracking twigs. The track now snaked upwards and to the left, veering away from the fields and the view of Long Eden. It led through a widely spaced grove of aspens, which in daylight remained in perpetual green shadow, despite the wide gaps between the trees. Barbara especially disliked this area. If anything, it seemed less sinister at night because you could see less of it. She crested the hill and descended it, turning left at the bottom onto a wider valley track, where pines grew on the opposite rise. She imagined galloping horses coming along the path at full tilt. Ghost horses? To dispel a sudden, greater unease, she whistled for the dogs, but shrank from calling their names in the immensity of the wood.
The path wound to the right, and gently downwards, leading her inexorably into the heart of the forest. Perhaps she had come too far. It was easy to feel safe in Little Moor, distant as it was from city crime and city dementia, but it was perhaps foolish to be out here alone, with her dogs gambolling away from her. All it needed was one lunatic to be on the prowl, and Barbara Eager might be no more. Oh, for the innocence or the true safety of a childhood in the ‘Forties, when women did not have to think about such things. She knew that if she followed this path, it would take her past the High Place, and then directly to the edge of the wood where her vehicle was parked, but it was quite a long walk. Still, she balked at retracing her steps through the aspens. Again, she whistled to the dogs, but the demons of the night had got into them. They wanted none of her discipline. The High Place loomed into view through the trees; its mound looked manmade, rising up above all the other, gentler slopes. Amber and Lester came bounding out of the bracken to leap around their mistress’s legs for a few moments. Barbara grabbed hold of their collars and uttered a few low, chastising words. She wished she had brought their leads with them, so she could have kept them by her side as she completed their exercise. Straightening up, she began to drag them along the path. They thought it was a game, wriggling and struggling against her hold, tails wagging furiously. Then Barbara noticed the light.
It was a pulsing, yellow-white glow illuminating the thick trunks of the trees on the summit of the High Place. Someone was up there. Barbara experienced a horrifying chill. It could be youths, yobbos. Something worse, perhaps. A lone madman searching the night, waiting for a solitary female to cross his path. Don’t be ridiculous! she told herself firmly and made to scurry past, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed by whoever, or whatever, occupied the High Place. As she drew nearer, she thought she could hear women’s voices, soft singing, or chanting. Could it be local witches on the hill? Barbara was afraid of such things, even though her romantic soul championed the idea of female sorcery. Perhaps she should go back before she was noticed. The dogs seemed to be intrigued by whatever was happening above them. They had begun to whine and strain more forcefully against Barbara’s hold, twisting her fingers in their collars. Finally, she could not hold them, and in breaking away from her, they pushed her into the bracken, leapt over her like deer, and raced up through the undergrowth, giving tongue like hounds. Barbara heard screaming, undeniably female and human in origin. Her dogs had never attacked anybody before. They were generally far too soppy. Oblivious of any previous reticence, she charged up the hill, her palms smarting from breaking her fall. She saw a number of slight figures, dressed in floating white, bobbing back and forth among the trees, Amber and Lester in playful pursuit, barking hysterically. Girls, they were only girls! Impotently, Barbara called out the dogs’ names, but of course they ignored her. She emerged from the bracken. Candles in covered glass bowls were arranged about the central hollow. It certainly seemed as if she had disturbed some kind of pagan ceremony. The female figures were all flitting about, uttering strange low cries. They did not seem to see Barbara and soon she found herself in the midst of them, in a tangle of wafting veils. Who were these girls? They did not seem to be Little Moor residents. Barbara attempted to speak to them, but they all ignored her and their high-pitched wailing drowned out her voice. She wanted them all to stop gadding about so that she could regain control of her animals. The dogs did not seem to be inflicting harm. They clearly thought the chasing was a game, but it was clear the girls were terrified. Eventually, Barbara managed to grab hold of a girl’s arm. ‘Stop running about!’ she said. ‘It’s just encouraging them.’ For a moment, she looked into the shocked, elfin face of a beautiful young woman, whose head and shoulders were wreathed in a floating mist of fair hair. She seemed horrified to discover an outsider was present, but did not speak. Barbara began to apologise and explain about the dogs, when a hideous transformation made her push the girl away in disgust and horror. The woman was not young at all, but an ancient female, clad in floating muslin, one drooping dug exposed, where the cloth fell away. The toothless mouth was open in surprise, the bagged eyes staring. Barbara’s hands flew to her mouth. With an abysmal howl, the woman ran away, down the slope, between the trees. The other women, at first still running about like chickens, suddenly condensed into a tight group and followed the first woman down the hill. They must have gathered up their candlelights as they fled, because Barbara found herself in relative darkness. Thankfully, Amber and Lester had elected to stay with her on the High Place rather than follow the fleeing females. Crones, Barbara thought. They were crones. There was no sign of them now. All was silent. Not even the sound of a single twig breaking. Frightened, Barbara hauled the dogs off the hill and virtually ran all the way back to the Land Rover, terrified the crones would suddenly manifest in front of her on the path, and exact a revenge for the disruption of their ritual. Had they been real? Barbara had never seen a ghost and didn’t know whether she believed in them or not. Yet the woman she’d grabbed hold of had felt real enough. The illusion, though, of youth: that had been weird. Was it just because she’d expected to see younger people?
When Barbara got back to The White House, flushed and breathless, she headed straight to the bar and poured herself a large brandy. Only once she’d finished it, and poured herself another did she notice someone was sitting in the corner of the room. She uttered a shocked cry and backed against the optics, causing glasses on the shelf behind her to shake dangerously.
‘Barbara, it’s me.’ The voice was amused. Peverel Othman.
‘Oh, you gave me a turn!’ Barbara said. ‘What are you doing here?’ She’d thought, at first, he’d been sitting in darkness, but one of the low-wattage lamps was burning behind him.
‘Barney said it was all right for me to sit here and read the paper. I prefer the atmosphere in here to that of the residents’ lounge. I hope you don’t mind.’
Barbara came out from behind the bar. ‘No, no. I’m just a bit jumpy. I’ve seen the strangest thing in the woods tonight.’
Othman laughed. ‘Oh really! Are you going to tell me about it, or is it too disgusting?’
Barbara also laughed, though les
s freely. ‘Come into the back,’ she said. ‘I’ll make us a coffee and tell you about it.’
‘Thanks.’
Once she had installed Othman at her kitchen table and put the kettle on, Barbara became conscious of his presence on a physical level. She’d been fired up by her experience in the woods, and had needed company. Now she was aware she was alone with a man who, on two occasions, had made suggestive remarks to her. How would he interpret her invitation now? She had ambivalent feelings about it. As she made cheese sandwiches, precisely cutting the bread, Barbara babbled about what she’d seen at the High Place. Othman listened without commenting, his eyes watching her steadily. She flicked the occasional glance at him. God, he was unbelievably attractive. Just the look in his eyes made her feel slightly faint. She didn’t normally go for the long-haired look. She liked a man to be neat and trim, exact in his mannerisms, military types. Othman was lounging and lazy, the precise opposite. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, shoving a plate of sandwiches in front of her guest and sitting down opposite him.
Othman was smiling widely, his eyes sleepy. ‘Sounds like you surprised the local coven!’ he said, and bit into the sandwich.
‘I’ve not been aware of one before,’ Barbara said, ‘and I often walk through those woods at night.’
Othman shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was the right time for you to see it. Perhaps they’re recruiting!’
‘I’m not sure how to take that remark!’ Barbara said. ‘I’ve already told you they were hags. Do I qualify, then?’
Othman shook his head. ‘No offence meant. You know you’re a very attractive woman.’
Barbara felt a panic begin. She wanted to take this further, yet was nervous of doing so. She laughed. ‘You certainly know how to flatter, Mr Othman!’ She jumped up and forcefully depressed the plunger of the cafetiere. Suddenly the action seemed too erotic for words. She looked at Othman and he was smirking at her. She wanted to say something cool and sophisticated like ‘Are you making a pass at me?’ but shrank from doing so, in case he wasn’t. What would a handsome creature like Peverel Othman see in her? He could have his pick of any nubile young thing. Was he interested in older women for their freak value? Or was he simply playing with her feelings, imagining her (rightly perhaps) to be a frustrated, middle-aged wife, who could do with a bit of excitement?