The Little Stranger

  I said in amazement, ‘What?’

  ‘Well, if this book is right, then someone’s at the root of it. And suppose it’s my brother, doing it all? Suppose he wants to come back to us? You know how unhappy he could get, how frustrated. That ghost of Betty’s: it might have been him, the whole time.’

  I said, ‘It might have been Betty herself! Have you thought of that? You’ve only had trouble, haven’t you, since she’s been in the house?’

  She made a gesture of impatience, dismissing the idea.

  ‘You might as well say we’ve only had trouble since you’ve been in it! You aren’t listening to me. The noises, the bells—they’re all signals, aren’t they? Even the scribbles on the walls. The voice in the speaking-tube yesterday—according to Mother it was faint, only really a breath. Maybe she only supposed it was Susan’s, because that’s what she wanted to hear. Maybe it was really Rod’s.’

  ‘But there was no voice!’ I said. ‘There couldn’t have been. As for the bells—we’ve been over this. The faulty wires—’

  ‘But here, in this book—’

  I put my hands over hers, with the book between us. I said, ‘Caroline, please. This is nonsense. You know it is. It’s a fairy tale! For God’s sake. I had a patient once who tried to hit his wife over the head with a hammer. He said she wasn’t really his wife at all; another woman had “swallowed her up”, and he had to smash open the false wife’s head to let the real one out! No doubt this book would back him up. A nice case of spirit-possession. Instead we got the man into hospital and gave him a bromide, and in a week he was sane again. How would the book account for that? They’re giving your brother bromides, too. He’s been a very ill young man. But to suggest that he might be haunting Hundreds like some sort of spook—’

  I saw a flicker of doubt in her expression. But she said stubbornly, ‘If you use words like that, then it’s bound to sound foolish. But you don’t live here. You don’t know. Last night it all made sense to me. Listen.’

  She opened the book again, and found another passage that seemed to her to demonstrate her point. After that she found another. I looked at her face, which was really flushed now, the blood beating almost hectically across it. I looked at her jerky, intent gaze. And I hardly knew her. I took hold of her hand. She didn’t notice, she was still reading aloud from the book. I moved my fingers to her wrist, trying to feel for her pulse. I caught the rapid tick-tick of it.

  She became aware of my purposeful grip. She pulled away from me, almost in horror. ‘What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it!’

  ‘Caroline,’ I said.

  ‘You’re treating me like you treated my mother! Like you treated Rod! Is that all you can do?’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake,’ I cried, my weariness and frustration catching up with me, ‘I’m a doctor! What do you expect? You stand there, reading me that nonsense—You aren’t some superstitious country girl. Look around you! Look what you’ve got! This house is falling down around your ears! Your brother brought the estate to the brink of ruin and blamed it all on an infection. Now you’re finishing off the job—blaming spooks and poltergeists! I can’t listen to any more of it! It’s making me sick!’

  I turned away, almost shaking, startled by the force of my own words. I heard her set aside the book, and with an effort I calmed myself down. I put my hand across my eyes and said, ‘Forgive me, Caroline. I didn’t mean any of that.’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m glad you said it. You’re right. Even about Roddie. I shouldn’t have shown you. It isn’t your problem.’

  I turned back to her, the anger flaring up again. ‘Of course it’s my problem! We’re going to be married, aren’t we? Though God knows when … Oh, don’t look at me like that.’ I caught hold of her hands. ‘I can’t bear to see you upset! But I can’t bear to see you misled, either. You’re just giving yourself more things to worry about. There are enough already, aren’t there? Real things, I mean, in the real world, that we can do something about?’

  Again I saw doubt in her eyes. Again she said, ‘But last night it seemed to make such sense! Everything seemed to fall into place. I thought about Roddie so much, I could almost feel him here.’

  ‘A few days ago,’ I answered, ‘listening at that damn speaking-tube, I convinced myself I could almost hear my mother!’

  She frowned. ‘You did?’

  I lifted her hands, and kissed them. ‘This house,’ I said, ‘is making us all crazy; but not in the way you think. Things have got … out of control here. But we can fix that, you and I. Meanwhile—well, it’s perfectly understandable that you’re worried about Rod. Let’s—let’s go and see him, if that will help.’

  Her head had been lowered, but at my words she looked up, and for the first time in weeks I saw a little leap of brightness in her eyes. That gave me a different sort of pang. I wished the brightness were for me. She said, ‘You mean it?’

  ‘Of course I do. I don’t advise it. I don’t think, for Rod’s sake, that we should. But that’s a different matter. It’s you I’m thinking of now. It’s always you I’m thinking of, Caroline. You must know that.’

  And, as it had once before, the last of my anger shifted, somehow transformed itself into desire. I drew her to me. She resisted for a moment, then her arms came around me, slender and hard.

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured, tiredly. ‘Yes, I do.’

  We drove to the clinic the following Sunday, leaving Mrs Ayres sleeping at home with Betty to watch her. The day was dry, but dark; the journey, inevitably, was a rather tense one. I had called ahead to arrange our visit, but, ‘Suppose he won’t see us?’ Caroline asked me, a dozen times along the way. And, ‘Suppose he’s worse? Suppose he doesn’t even recognise us?’

  ‘Then at least we’ll know,’ I answered. ‘That will be something, won’t it?’

  At last she fell silent, biting her nails. When I drew up in the courtyard she kept still for a moment, reluctant to get out. We went in through the clinic door and she gripped my arm, in real panic.

  But then a nurse took us through to the day-room and we saw Roderick sitting waiting for us, alone, at one of the tables; and she left my side and went quickly over to him, laughing with nervousness and relief.

  ‘Rod! Is it you? I hardly knew you! You look like a sea-captain!’

  He had put on weight. His hair was shorter than when we had last seen it, and he’d grown a ruddy-coloured beard. The beard was uneven, because of his burns. His face, behind it, seemed to me to have lost its youth, to have settled in hard, humourless lines. He didn’t return his sister’s smiles. He let her lean to kiss his cheek and put her arms around him, but then he sat on the other side of the table—putting his hands on the table’s surface, I noticed, in a deliberate kind of way, as if liking the solidity of it.

  I took the chair beside Caroline’s. ‘It’s good to see you, Rod.’

  ‘It’s wonderful to see you!’ said Caroline, laughing again. ‘How are you?’

  He moved his tongue against his teeth, his mouth dry. He looked wary, suspicious. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘You’re fat as anything. They must be feeding you well, at least! Are they? Is the food OK?’

  He frowned. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And are you pleased to see us?’

  He didn’t answer that. Instead, he glanced over at the window. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘We came in Dr Faraday’s car.’

  He moved his tongue again. ‘The little Ruby.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  He looked at me, still wary. ‘They only told me this morning that you were coming.’

  Caroline said, ‘We only decided to, this week.’

  ‘Isn’t Mother with you?’

  I saw her hesitate. I spoke instead.

  ‘I’m sorry to say your mother has a touch of bronchitis, Rod. Just a touch. She’ll be all right soon.’

  ‘She sends her love,’ said Caroline, brightly. ‘She was … very sorry not to com
e.’

  ‘They only told me this morning,’ he said again. ‘They’re like that, here. They keep things secret so as not to frighten us. They don’t want us to lose our heads, you see. It’s just like the RAF, really.’

  He shifted his hands. I saw then that they were shaking. Keeping them flat upon the table must have helped to still them.

  I think Caroline saw the tremor, too. She put her own hands over his. ‘We just wanted to see you, Rod,’ she said. ‘We haven’t seen you for months. We wanted to be sure that you’re … all right.’

  He frowned down at her fingers, and for a moment we were silent. Then she exclaimed, again, over his beard, his extra weight. She asked after his daily routines, and he told us, in an uninvolved kind of way, how he passed his time now: the hours he spent in the ‘craft room’, making clay models; the meals, the spells of recreation, of singing, occasional gardening. He spoke lucidly enough, but with his features never breaking out of their stiff new mirthless lines, and his manner still very cautious. Then Caroline’s questions became more hesitant—Was he really all right? Would he say if he wasn’t? Was there anything he wanted? Did he think very often of home?—and he began to look at us both with cold suspicion.

  ‘Doesn’t Dr Warren tell you how I am?’

  ‘Yes. He writes to us every week. But we wanted to see you. I had an idea—’

  ‘What idea?’ he said quickly.

  ‘That you might be … unhappy.’

  The tremor in his hands became more violent, and his mouth set tight. He sat stiffly for a moment, then jerked away from the table and folded his arms.

  ‘I won’t go back,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ asked Caroline, bewildered. His sudden movement had made her start.

  ‘If that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘We just wanted to see you.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here? To take me back?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t. At least, I hoped—’

  ‘It isn’t fair, if that’s why you’ve come. You can’t bring a chap to a place like this, and let him get used to it—let him get used to having no ties—and then send him back into that sort of danger.’

  ‘Roddie, please!’ said Caroline. ‘I wish you’d come home. I wish it more than anything. I wish you’d come home with Dr Faraday and me right now. But if you’d rather stay here, if you’re happier here—’

  ‘It isn’t a question of where I’m happier!’ he said, with great contempt. ‘It’s a question of where it’s safer for me to be. Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Roddie—’

  ‘You want to put me in charge again? Is that it? When any fool could see that if you give me something, I’ll—I’ll hurt it?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ I said, seeing Caroline shaken by his words. ‘Hundreds is being well looked after now. Caroline is looking after it, and I’m helping. You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t care to do. We’d do it for you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s clever,’ he said, as if talking, sneeringly, to a stranger. ‘That’s bloody good. You mean to trick me back like that. You just want to use me—to use me, and blame me. Well, I won’t go back! I won’t be blamed! Do you hear me?’

  ‘Please,’ said Caroline. ‘Stop talking like this! No one wants to take you back. I had the idea, that’s all, that you were unhappy. That you wanted to see me. I’m sorry. I—I made a mistake.’

  ‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you an idiot?’

  She flinched. ‘I just made a mistake.’

  ‘Rod,’ I began. But a nurse had been sitting near us all this time, discreetly overseeing the visit, and now, having registered the change in him, she came over.

  ‘What’s all this?’ she asked him mildly. ‘You’re not upsetting your sister, surely?’

  ‘I won’t talk to bloody fools!’ he said, looking rigidly away, his arms still folded.

  ‘And I won’t have language,’ said the nurse, folding her own arms. ‘Now, will you apologise? No?’ She tapped her foot. ‘We’re waiting …’

  Rod said nothing. She shook her head, and, with her face turned to him but her eyes on Caroline and me, she said, in over-clear nursery tones, ‘Roderick’s a mystery to the clinic, Miss Ayres, Dr Faraday. When he’s in temper he’s the nicest chap, and all we nurses love him. But when he’s out of it—’ She shook her head again, and drew in her breath, and tutted.

  Caroline said, ‘It’s all right. He needn’t apologise if he doesn’t want to. I—I don’t want to make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.’

  She gazed at her brother, then reached across the table again and spoke quietly and humbly. ‘We miss you, Roddie, that’s all. Mother and I, we miss you so much. We think about you all the time. Hundreds is horrible without you. I just thought you might be … thinking of us, too. I see now that you’re doing fine. I’m—I’m so glad.’

  Rod remained stubbornly silent. But his features tightened, and his breathing grew laboured, as if he were keeping in check some tremendous emotion. The nurse moved closer to us and spoke more confidentially.

  ‘I’d let him alone now, if I were you. I should hate for you to see him in one of his rages.’

  We had spent less than ten minutes with him. Caroline rose, reluctantly—unable to believe that her brother would let us go without a word or look. But he didn’t turn, and at last we had to leave him. She went on ahead to the car while I spoke briefly with Dr Warren, and when I joined her, her eyes were red, but dry: she had been crying and had blotted the tears.

  I took her hand. ‘That was grim. I’m sorry.’

  But she spoke tonelessly. ‘No. We shouldn’t have come. I should have listened to you, before. I’ve been stupid, thinking we’d find something here. There’s nothing, is there? Nothing. It’s all just how you said.’

  We began the long trip back to Hundreds. I put my arm around her whenever the driving would allow. She kept her hands open in her lap, and her head moved slackly against my shoulder with the motion of the car—as if, disappointed, bewildered, she had lost all resistance and life.

  None of this, of course, was particularly inspiring to romance; and our affair, for the moment, rather languished. Between the frustrations of that, and my anxiety about her and about Hundreds generally, I began to feel burdened and fretful, sleeping poorly, with muddled dreams. I thought several times of confiding in Graham and Anne. But it was many weeks since I had spent any proper time with them; I had the impression they were slightly hurt by my neglect, and I didn’t like to go creeping back to them now in a spirit of failure. At last even my work started to suffer. On one of my evenings at the hospital I found myself assisting on some routine piece of minor surgery, and I did the job so badly, the physician in charge laughed at me and finished it off himself.

  It happened to be Seeley. We stood together afterwards, washing our hands, and I apologised for my distraction. He answered with his usual affability.

  ‘Not at all. You look done up! I know the feeling. Too many night calls, I suppose? This bad weather doesn’t help.’

  I said, ‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’

  I turned away from him, but felt his eyes still on me. We went through to the common-room to retrieve our outdoor things, and as I lifted down my jacket from its hook it somehow slithered through my fingers, spilling the contents of its pockets to the floor. I swore, and bent to gather them up, and when I rose I found that Seeley was watching me again.

  ‘You’re in a bad way,’ he said, smiling. He lowered his voice. ‘What’s the problem? Patient troubles, or your own?—Forgive my asking.’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s patient business, I suppose. But then again mine too, in a way.’

  I very nearly said more—badly wanting to get the thing off my chest, but thinking back to that unpleasant little moment at the January dance. Perhaps Seeley was also recalling it, and wanted to make up for his behaviour, or perhaps he
could simply see from my manner how really troubled I was. He said, ‘Look, I’m all finished here now, and I assume you are, too? How about coming back with me for a drink? Believe it or not, I’ve managed to put my hands on a bottle of Scotch. Gift from a grateful lady patient. Can I tempt you?’

  ‘To your house?’ I said, in some surprise.

  ‘Why not? Come on. You’ll be doing my liver a favour by taking a glass or two, for otherwise I’ll only drink the whole damn bottle myself.’

  It seemed months, suddenly, since I had done anything as ordinary as sitting down in another man’s home with a glass of liquor, so I said I would. We wrapped ourselves up against the cold and headed out to our cars—he, in his slightly flamboyant way, in a thick brown coat and a pair of fur driving-mittens, which made him look something like a genial bear; I, more modestly, in my overcoat and muffler. I set off first, but he soon overtook me in his Packard, speeding recklessly along the frosty country lanes. When, twenty-five minutes later, I drew up at the gate of his house, he was already inside, already setting out the bottle and glasses and making up the fire.

  His house was a rambling Edwardian place, full of bright, untidy rooms. He had married quite late in life, and he and his young wife, Christine, had four good-looking children. As I let myself in through the unlocked front door, two of the children were in the process of chasing each other up and down the staircase. Another was beating a tennis-ball against the drawing-room door.

  ‘God damn you blasted kids!’ Seeley bellowed, from the doorway of his study. He waved me into the room beyond him, apologising for the chaos. But he had an air, too, of being secretly pleased by it, and proud of it—as people often were, I’d noticed, when complaining of their large, noisy families to bachelors like me.

  That thought put a distance between us. He and I had worked together as amiable rivals for nearly twenty years, but we had never exactly been friends. As he uncorked the bottle, I looked at my watch and said, ‘You’d better make it a small one. I’ve a heap of prescriptions to do up tonight.’