The Little Stranger

  I said, ‘There have been three young children living here. There could be scribbles on every wall … It’s possible too,’ I added, as I thought it over, ‘that your mother knew—I mean, as a sort of forgotten memory—where that second and third patch of handwriting were. The uncovering of the first one might have put the idea in her head. And then, once the creaking started, she might unconsciously have guided the search.’

  ‘She couldn’t have made those knocks! I felt them!’

  ‘That, I must admit, I can’t explain—except to suppose that your first idea was right: that it was mice or beetles or some other creature, the sound of it getting magnified somehow by the hollowness of the walls. As for the trapped bird—’ I lowered my voice. ‘Well, I expect it’s already crossed your mind that your mother might have imagined that whole incident?’

  ‘Yes, it has,’ she answered, speaking quietly, too. ‘She hadn’t been sleeping. But then again, according to her it was the bird that was keeping her awake. And Betty also heard the sound, don’t forget.’

  I said, ‘I think Betty, in the middle of the night, would hear just about any sound suggested to her. These things have a circularity to them. Something woke your mother, I don’t doubt that, but then her very sleeplessness may have kept her awake—or kept her dreaming she was awake—and after that, her mind was vulnerable in some way—’

  ‘I think it’s vulnerable now,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. She seems … changed.’

  I said, ‘Changed, how?’

  But I think a note of weariness was creeping into my tone, for it seemed to me that she and I had had this conversation, or others very like it, several times before. She turned away from me, clearly disappointed, and said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m imagining things, I expect.’

  She wouldn’t say any more. I watched her, with a disappointment of my own. I said I would go up and see her mother, and I took my bag and climbed the stairs.

  I did it with a slight sense of foreboding, expecting from Caroline’s manner to find Mrs Ayres looking really ill, perhaps back in her bed. But when I knocked on her door I heard her call out brightly for me to enter; I went in and found the room with its curtains almost closed, but, in stark contrast with the little parlour, with two or three lamps lit and a good fire in the grate. The smell was of camphor, maiden-auntish: the dressing-room door was wide open and the bed was heaped with gowns and furs, and with the loose silk bags, like deflated bladders, in which the furs had been stored. Mrs Ayres looked up from them as I went in, seeming perfectly happy to see me. She and Betty, she told me, were looking through some of her old clothes.

  She didn’t ask after my trip, nor did she show any consciousness of the fact that I had just been downstairs, alone with her daughter. She moved forward to take my hand, then led me back towards the bed, nodding to the tangle of gowns upon it.

  ‘I felt so guilty,’ she said, ‘with the war on, hanging on to all this. I gave away what I could, but some of these, oh, I just couldn’t see them go, to be hacked about and so on, made into blankets for refugees and goodness knows what. Now I’m awfully glad I kept them. Do you think it very wicked of me?’

  I smiled, pleased to see her looking so well, so like her old self. Her hair still startled me by its greyness, but she had dressed it with extra care, though in a curiously pre-war style, rather looped about the ears. Her lips had a genteel touch of lipstick, her fingernails were a polished pink, and the skin of her heart-shaped face seemed almost unlined.

  I turned to the heap of old-fashioned silks. ‘It’s certainly difficult to imagine these being handed round in a refugee camp.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Far better to keep them here, where they’ll be appreciated.’ She picked up a flimsy satin gown with a flapperish droop to its shoulders and skirt. She held it up to show Betty, who was just emerging from the dressing-room with a shoe-box in her hand. ‘What do you say to this one, Betty?’

  The girl caught my eye, and I gave her a nod. ‘Hello, Betty. All right?’

  ‘Hello, sir.’ Her face was pink; she seemed excited. She was clearly trying to hold the excitement in, but as she looked at the dress her plump little mouth broke into a smile. ‘It’s lovely, madam!’

  ‘Things were made to last, in those days. And such colours! One simply doesn’t see them now. And what have you there?’

  ‘Slippers, madam! Gold uns!’

  ‘Let me look.’ Mrs Ayres took the box, and put back the lid and then the paper inside it. ‘Ah, now these cost the devil. And they pinched like the devil, too, as I remember. I only wore them once.’ She held them up. Then she said, as if on impulse: ‘You try them, Betty.’

  ‘Oh, madam.’ Betty blushed, glancing self-consciously at me. ‘Shall I?’

  ‘Yes, go on. Show the doctor and me.’

  So the girl unlaced her stout black shoes and shyly slipped on the gold leather slippers; then, encouraged by Mrs Ayres, she walked from the dressing-room door to the fireplace, and back again, like a mannequin. She burst out laughing as she did it, raising a hand to cover up her crooked teeth. Mrs Ayres laughed too, and when Betty stumbled because the slippers were too big, she stuffed the toes of them with stockings to make them fit. She spent several minutes doing that, and then she dressed the girl with gloves and a stole, and had her stand, and walk, and turn, lightly applauding as she did it.

  I thought again of the patient I had put off in order to come out here. But after another minute or two Mrs Ayres seemed suddenly to tire. ‘There,’ she said to Betty, sighing, looking over the cluttered bed. ‘You had better tidy these things away, or I shall have nowhere to sleep tonight.’

  ‘You’re sleeping well, though?’ I asked, as she and I moved over to the fire. And then, seeing Betty disappearing into the dressing-room with an armful of furs, I said quietly, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but Caroline told me about your … discovery, last week. I gather it quite unsettled you.’

  She was bending forward to pick up a cushion. She said, ‘It did, rather. Wasn’t that foolish of me?’

  ‘Not foolish at all.’

  ‘After so much time,’ she murmured, sitting back, lifting her face, and surprising me with her expression, which showed no trace of worry or anguish but, on the contrary, was almost serene. ‘I didn’t suppose there was any trace of her left, you see.’ She placed her hand above her heart. ‘Except in here. She has always been real to me, in here. More real, sometimes, than anything else …’

  She kept her hand upon her breast, lightly smoothing the fabric of her gown. Her look had grown vague—but then, a certain amount of vagueness was habitual with her, and part of her charm. Nothing about her behaviour struck me as odd, or made me anxious; I thought she seemed pretty healthy and content. I spent about fifteen minutes with her, then headed back downstairs.

  Caroline was where I had left her, standing limply at the hearth. The fire was low in the grate, the light was dimmer than ever, and again I was conscious of the great contrast between the cheerlessness of this room and the cosiness of her mother’s. And again the sight of her, with her housemaid’s hands, unreasonably annoyed me.

  ‘Well?’ she asked me, looking up.

  I said, ‘I think you’re worrying about nothing.’

  ‘What’s my mother doing?’

  ‘She’s been going through some old clothes, with Betty.’

  ‘Yes. That’s all she wants to do now, things like that. Yesterday she brought out those photographs again, the ones that were spoiled—you remember?’

  I spread my hands. ‘She’s entitled to look at photographs, isn’t she? Can you blame her for wanting to think about the past, when her present is so joyless?’

  ‘It isn’t just that.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘It’s something in her manner. She isn’t just thinking about the past. It’s as though, when she looks at you, she isn’t really seeing you at all. She’s seeing something el
se … And she tires so easily. She isn’t at all old, you know, but she takes a rest now, like an old lady, nearly every afternoon. She never mentions Roderick. She’s not interested in Dr Warren’s reports. She doesn’t want to see anybody … Oh, I can’t explain it.’

  I said, ‘She’s had a jolt. Coming across those scribbles, being reminded again of your sister. It’s bound to have shaken her up.’

  I realised, as I said the words, that she and I had never spoken about Susan, the lost little girl. The same thing must have occurred to her: she stood in silence, raising her dirty fingers to her mouth and starting to pick and pull at her lip. And when she spoke again, her voice had changed.

  She said, ‘It’s queer to hear you say “your sister” like that. It doesn’t sound right. Mother never mentioned her, you see, when Rod and I were children. I knew nothing about her for years and years. Then one day I came across a book with “Sukey Ayres” written in it, and asked Mother who she was. She reacted so oddly, I was frightened. That’s when Daddy told me all about it. He called it “awfully bad luck”. But I don’t remember being sorry for him or for Mother. I just remember being cross, because everyone had always told me I was the eldest child, and I thought it wasn’t fair if I hadn’t been really. ’ She gazed down at the fire, her forehead creasing. ‘I seem to have been cross all the time, somehow, when I was a girl. I was horrid to Roddie; I was horrid to the maids. You’re supposed to grow out of horridness, aren’t you? I don’t think I ever grew out of mine. Sometimes I think it’s still inside me, like something nasty I swallowed, that got stuck …’

  She did, at that moment, look rather like a moody child, with her dirty hands, and a couple of locks of unbrushed brown hair beginning to droop across her face. Like other bad-tempered children, however, she also looked desperately sad. I made a half-movement towards her. She lifted her head as I did it, and must have caught my hesitation.

  And at once, the air of childishness fell away. She said, in a hard, society tone, ‘I haven’t asked after your trip to London, have I? How did it go?’

  I said, ‘Thank you. It went well.’

  ‘You spoke at the conference?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Did people like what you said?’

  ‘Very much. In fact—’ I hesitated again. ‘Well, there’s been some talk of my going back down there. Going down there to work, I mean.’

  Her gaze changed, seemed to quicken. ‘There has? Do you mean to do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I should have to think about it. About what I was … giving up.’

  ‘And that’s why you’ve been keeping away from us? You haven’t wanted the distraction? I saw your car in the park on Saturday. I thought you might be going to call in. Then, when you didn’t, I guessed that something must have happened; that something must have changed. That’s why I called you up today, because I couldn’t count on your coming out here in the ordinary way. The way you used to, I mean.’ She tucked back the drooping hair. ‘Did you ever mean to visit us again?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘But you have been keeping away. Haven’t you?’

  She tilted up her chin as she asked this. That was all she did. But, like stubborn milk finally yielding to the motion of the churn, the anger shifted inside me and became something else, something quite different. My heart began to beat faster. I said, after a moment, ‘I’ve been a little afraid, I think.’

  ‘Afraid of what? Of me?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Of my mother?’

  I took a breath. ‘Listen, Caroline. That time in the car—’

  ‘Oh, then.’ She turned her head. ‘I behaved like a fool.’

  ‘I was the fool. I’m sorry.’

  ‘And now everything’s changed and wrong.—No, please don’t.’

  For she looked so unhappy I had gone across and started to embrace her; and though she stood rigid and resisting for a moment or two, when she realised I meant to do nothing more than put my arms around her, she slightly relaxed. The last time I had held her like this had been to dance with her; she had been in heels, her eyes and mouth on a level with mine. Now her shoes were flat ones and she was an inch or two shorter: I moved my chin, and the stubble of it caught at her hair. She bent her head, her cool dry brow sliding into the hollow beneath my ear … And then somehow she was standing full against me, I felt the push and yield of her breasts, the pressure of her hips and heavy thighs. I moved my hands across her back and drew her to me more tightly still. ‘Don’t,’ she said again; she said it pretty weakly, though.

  And the surge of my feelings astonished me. A few moments before, I had looked at her and felt nothing but exasperation and annoyance. Now I said her name, speaking breathily into her hair, moving my cheek roughly against her head.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Caroline!’ I said. ‘God, I’ve missed you like hell!’ I wiped my mouth, unsteadily. ‘Look at me! Look what a bloody idiot you’ve made of me!’

  She began to pull away. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I gripped her harder. ‘Don’t be sorry. For God’s sake!’

  She said miserably, ‘I’ve missed you, too. Whenever you go away, something happens here. Why is that? This house, and my mother—’ She closed her eyes, put her hand to her forehead as if against a bad headache. ‘This house makes one think things.’

  ‘This house is too much for you.’

  ‘I’ve been almost afraid.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. I shouldn’t have left you, to be cooped up here on your own.’

  ‘I wish—I wish I could get away. I can’t, with Mother.’

  ‘Don’t think about your mother. Don’t think about going away. You don’t need to go away.’

  And neither did I, I thought. For everything seemed clear to me suddenly, there, with Caroline in my arms. My plans—the consultant—the London hospital—all of it, all of it melted away. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ I said. ‘Everything we need is right here. Think about that, Caroline. Think about me. About us.’

  ‘No. Someone might come—’

  I had started to nudge at her mouth with mine. But now we swayed, and, in swaying, moved our feet to find our balance; and somehow separated. She took a step out of my reach, putting up one of her filthy hands. Her hair was untidier than ever from the rub of my cheek; her lips were parted, faintly damp. She looked like a woman who’d just been kissed and who, to be honest, wanted to be kissed again. But when I moved towards her she took a second step back, and I saw then that her desire had another quality mixed up with it—innocence, or something stronger; reluctance, a touch even of fear. So I didn’t try to embrace her again. I didn’t trust myself to do it without frightening her away. Instead I caught hold of one of her hands, and lifted it, and touched the dirty knuckles to my lips. And as I gazed at her fingers, rubbing my thumb over the blackened nails, I said, with a tremor of desire and daring, ‘Look what you’ve done to yourself. You perfect child! There’ll be no more of this sort of thing, you know, once we are married.’

  She said nothing. I was briefly aware of the house, as still and as silent around us as if it were holding its breath. Then she slightly bowed her head again—and at that, with a rush of triumph, I did pull her to me, to kiss not her mouth, but her throat, her cheeks and hair. She gave a burst of nervous laughter.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, half playful, half serious; almost struggling. ‘Wait. Oh, wait!’

  TEN

  I think now of the three or four weeks that followed as Caroline’s and my courtship; though the truth is, what passed between us was never so settled, nor so uncomplicated, as really to deserve that name. For one thing I was still very busy, and could rarely get to see her for more than hurried snatches of time. For another, she turned out to be surprisingly squeamish about exposing this definite shift in our relationship to her mother. I was impatient to get things moving, have some sort of announcement made. She felt her mother ‘wasn’t well enough yet’; that the news would simply ??
?make her worry’. She would tell her, she assured me, ‘when the moment was right’. That moment seemed terribly slow in arriving, however, and as often as not when I called in at the Hall in those weeks, I’d end up sitting with the two women in the little parlour, taking tea and drily chatting—just as if nothing had really changed.

  But, of course, everything had changed, and from my point of view those visits were sometimes rather hard to bear. I thought of Caroline constantly now. Looking into her strong, angular face, I couldn’t believe that I had ever found it plain. Meeting her eye across the teacups I felt like a man made of tinder, flaring up at the simple friction of her gaze against mine. Sometimes when I had said my goodbye she would walk with me to my car; we’d go in silence through the house, passing room after shadowy room, and I’d think of leading her into one of those wasted chambers and pulling her into my arms. Now and then I chanced it; but she was never at ease. She’d stand against me with her head averted, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. I’d feel the softening and warming of her limbs against mine—but slowly, slowly, as if they begrudged even their own slight yielding. And if ever, frustrated, I pressed further, the result was disaster. Her soft limbs would harden, her hands come up across her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d say—just as she had on that chilling occasion in my car. ‘I’m sorry. It isn’t fair of me, I know. I just need a little time.’

  So I learned not to ask too much of her. My great fear now was of pushing her away. I had the sense that, overburdened as she was with Hundreds business, our engagement was simply one complication too many: I supposed she was waiting until things at the Hall improved before allowing herself to plan for the time beyond.

  And at that point, real improvement seemed close at hand. Work on the council houses was progressing; the extending of water and electricity out to the park was underway; things at the farm, apparently, were looking up, and Makins was pleased with all the changes. Mrs Ayres, too, despite Caroline’s doubts about her, still seemed healthier and happier than she had in months. Every time I called at the house I found her carefully dressed, with touches of rouge and powder on her face; as usual, in fact, she was far better turned out than her daughter, who, despite the change in our relationship, continued to wear her shapeless old sweaters and skirts, her rough wool hats and stout shoes. But since the weather remained wintry, I felt I could forgive her that. Once the season turned, I planned to take her into Leamington and quietly kit her out with some decent dresses. I thought often, and longingly, of the summer days to come: the Hall with its doors and windows thrown open, Caroline in short sleeves and loose-necked blouses, her long limbs brown, her dusty feet bare … My own cheerless house felt as dim as a stage-set to me now. At night I would lie in my bed, weary but wakeful, thinking of Caroline lying in hers. My mind would go softly across the darkened miles between us, to slip like a poacher through the Hundreds gate and along the overgrown drive, to nudge open the swollen front door, to inch across the chequered marble; and then to go creeping, creeping towards her, up the still and silent stairs.