The Little Stranger

  I found Caroline still sleeping, but as I drew near her she woke with a start, putting down her legs and half rising. Her cheek was marked, like creased linen, where it had rested against the chair.

  She said, still partly in her dream, ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s half past six. I’ve brought you some soup, look.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her expression cleared. She rubbed her face. ‘I really don’t think I can eat.’

  But I put the tray across the arms of her chair, effectively pinning her behind it. Laying a napkin in her lap, I said, ‘Just try a little, will you? I’m afraid of you growing ill.’

  ‘I don’t want it, truly.’

  ‘Come on. Or you’ll hurt Betty’s feelings. You’ll hurt mine, too … Good girl.’

  For she had picked up her spoon and begun half-heartedly to stir the soup. I brought across a footstool and sat at her side, putting my chin on my fist and solemnly watching her, and she started to eat, very slowly, one small mouthful at a time. She did it quite without relish, plainly forcing the morsels of meat and vegetable down, but when she had finished she looked better, with colour in her cheeks. Her head, she said, was aching less; she felt only so desperately weary. I moved aside the tray and took her hand, but she drew it from me, putting it instead across her mouth while she yawned and yawned, her eyes watering.

  Then she wiped her face and sat forward in the chair, moving closer to the fire.

  ‘God,’ she said, gazing into the flames. ‘Today has been just like a horrible dream. But it wasn’t a dream, was it? My mother’s dead. Dead, and buried, and now she’ll be dead and buried for ever. I can’t believe it. It seems to me that she must be just upstairs—just upstairs, resting. And when I was dozing, before, I could nearly imagine that Roddie was out there, in his room, and that Gyp was here, beside my chair …’ She raised her eyes to me, bewildered. ‘How did it happen, any of it?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’

  ‘I heard a woman say, today, that this house must be cursed.’

  ‘Who said that? Who was she?’

  ‘I didn’t know her. A newcomer, I think. It was in the churchyard. I heard her say it to somebody else. She looked at me as if I were cursed, too. As if I were Dracula’s daughter …’ She yawned again. ‘Oh, why am I so tired? All I want to do is sleep.’

  ‘Well, that’s probably about the best thing you can do. I only wish you didn’t have to do it here, all on your own.’

  She rubbed her eyes. ‘You sound like Aunt Cissie. Betty will look after me.’

  ‘Betty’s exhausted, too. Let me put you into your bed.’ Then, seeing something in her expression, I added, ‘Not like that! What kind of a brute do you take me for? You’re forgetting I’m a doctor. I see young women into their beds all the time.’

  ‘But I’m not your patient, am I? You must go home.’

  ‘I don’t like to leave you.’

  ‘I’m Dracula’s daughter, remember? I’ll be all right.’

  She got to her feet. She almost swayed as she did it, and I caught hold of her shoulders to steady her, then stroked the brown hair away from her forehead and cupped her face with my hands. She closed her eyes. As they often did when she was tired, her eyelids looked nude, moist, swollen. I kissed them, lightly. Her arms hung loose as a jointed doll’s. She opened her eyes and said, more firmly than before, ‘You must go home. But, thank you. For everything you’ve done. You’ve been so good to us today.’ She checked herself. ‘So good to me, I mean …’

  I found my coat and hat, and took her hand, and we went out to the hall. It was chill there, and I saw her shiver. I didn’t want to keep her standing in the cold, but when we had kissed and moved apart and her hand was tugging away from mine, I glanced over her shoulder to the staircase, thinking of the dark, empty rooms above; and the sight of her moving off alone like that, after the day she had had, was dreadful.

  I tightened my grip on her fingers and pulled her back.

  ‘Caroline,’ I said.

  She came slackly, protesting. ‘Please. I’m so tired.’

  I drew her close, and spoke quietly, into her ear. ‘Tell me just one thing. When may we be married?’

  Her face moved against mine. ‘I must go to bed.’

  ‘When, Caroline?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘I want to be here with you.’

  ‘I know. I know you do.’

  ‘I’ve been patient, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes. But not right away. Not so soon after Mother—’

  ‘No, no … But, perhaps, in a month?’

  She shook her head. ‘We can talk tomorrow.’

  ‘A month will be just long enough, I think. I mean, for sorting out the licence, things like that. But I shall need to plan, you see. If we could just settle on a date.’

  ‘There are so many things still to discuss.’

  ‘Not the important things, surely. Can we say a month? Or at most, six weeks? Six weeks from today?’

  She hesitated, struggling with weariness. Then, ‘Yes,’ she said, pulling away. ‘Yes, if you like. Only let me go to bed! I’m so, so tired.’

  It seems an odd thing to say, given all the terrible things that had happened, but I remember the period following the funeral as one of the brightest of my life. I left the house bursting with plans; the very next day I went into Leamington to put in the application for the wedding licence, and a few days later the date was fixed: Thursday, the twenty-seventh of May. As if in anticipation of the event, over the next couple of weeks the weather grew finer, and the days visibly lengthened; the leafless trees and flowerless landscape seemed suddenly tense with colour and life. The Hall had stayed shuttered since the morning of Mrs Ayres’s death, and in contrast with the stir of the season and the clear blue skies the gloom and the hush began to feel oppressive. I asked Caroline’s permission to open up the house, and on the last day of April I went through all the ground-floor rooms, carefully drawing back the shutters. Some had been closed for months: they groaned on their hinges, the dust clouding, the paint-work crackling and flaking. But the sounds, to me, were those of a creature gratefully surfacing from a long slumber, and the wooden floors creaked almost luxuriously as the warm day met them, like cats extending themselves in the sun.

  I wanted to see Caroline herself returning to life like that. I wanted gently to kindle and rouse her. For now that the first phase of grief had passed, her spirits had sunk a little; with no more letters to write, and no funeral arrangements absorbing her, she grew aimless, and listless. I’d had to resume my surgeries and rounds, which meant leaving her alone for long stretches of time; with Mrs Bazeley gone, there were many chores she might have seen to, but Betty told me that she did nothing with her days but sit, or gaze blankly from the windows, sighing, yawning, smoking cigarettes, biting her nails. She seemed unable to plan for the wedding, or for any of the changes that would follow; she took no interest in the estate, the garden, the farm. She had lost, even, her ability to read: the books bored and frustrated her, she said; the words seemed to glance against her brain as if it were made of glass …

  Remembering Seeley’s words at the funeral—‘get her away, a fresh start’—I started to think about our honeymoon. I imagined all the good it would do her to be taken out of the county—right out, to a completely different landscape, to mountains, or beaches and cliffs. For a time I considered Scotland; then I thought, perhaps the Lakes. Then, quite by chance, one of my private patients mentioned Cornwall to me, describing an hotel he had recently stayed at in one of the coves: a wonderful place, he said it was, quiet, romantic, picturesque … It seemed like fate. Without saying anything to Caroline, I found out the hotel’s address, made enquiries, and reserved a room for a week, for ‘Dr and Mrs Faraday’. The wedding-night itself I thought we could spend on the sleeper train out of London; it had a silly sort of glamour to it I suspected Caroline would like. And in the many lonely hours when I was separated from her, I thought of
ten of the journey: the narrow British Railways bunk, the sliver of moonlight at the blind, the guard going delicately past the door; the gentle jog and rumble of the train on the shining track.

  Meanwhile the wedding itself crept nearer, and I tried to encourage her to plan for the ceremony.

  ‘I’d like to have David Graham, you know, as my best man,’ I told her, as we strolled in the park one Sunday afternoon in early May. ‘He’s been a good friend to me. Anne must come too, of course. And you had better choose your bridesmaid, Caroline.’

  We were walking through bluebells. Almost overnight, the rough ground at Hundreds had been transformed with them, through acre after acre. She stooped to pick one, and rolled the stem of it between her fingers, frowning down at the flowers as they whirled.

  ‘A bridesmaid,’ she repeated dully, as we moved on. ‘Must I, though?’

  I laughed. ‘You must have a bridesmaid, darling! Someone to hold your bouquet.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought. There’s no one I quite like to ask.’

  ‘There must be someone. What about that friend of yours, from the hospital dance? Brenda, was it?’

  She blinked. ‘Brenda? Oh, no. I shouldn’t like—No.’

  ‘Then how about Helen Desmond, as—what d’you call it? Matron of honour? She’d be touched, I think.’

  She had begun to pick apart the blue flowers, clumsily separating the petals with her bitten-down nails.

  ‘I suppose she would.’

  ‘All right. I’ll call in, shall I, and mention it to her?’

  She frowned again. ‘You needn’t do that. I can speak to her myself. ’

  ‘I don’t want you to be bothered with all the little details.’

  ‘A bride is supposed to be bothered with them, isn’t she?’

  ‘Not a bride,’ I said, ‘who’s been through all the things that you have.’ I put my arm through hers. ‘I want to make this easy for you, darling.’

  ‘Easy for me?’ she said, resisting the pull of my hand. ‘Or—?’ She didn’t finish.

  I stopped, and stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Her head was still lowered; she was still working at the petals. She said, without looking up, ‘All I mean is, must things really move so quickly?’

  ‘Well, what have we to wait for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose … I just wish people wouldn’t keep going on about it to me. Yesterday, Paget’s man congratulated me, when he brought the meat! Betty can talk of nothing else.’

  I smiled. ‘What harm can it do? People are pleased.’

  ‘Are they? More likely they’re laughing. People always do, when a spinster marries. I expect they think it’s funny that I’m … coming off the shelf. As if I’ve been brought from the back of the display, had the dust blown off me.’

  I said, ‘Is that what you think I’ve done? Blown the dust off you?’

  She threw away the mangled flower and said, tiredly and almost crossly, ‘Oh, I don’t know what you’ve done.’

  Catching hold of her hands, I drew her round to face me.

  ‘I happen,’ I said, ‘to have fallen in love with you! If people want to laugh at that, they must have a bloody silly sense of humour.’

  I had never spoken to her in quite those terms before, and for a second she looked startled. Then she closed her eyes, and turned her head from me. The sun caught her hair; I saw a thread of grey in the brown.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘You’re always so good, aren’t you? And I’m always so beastly. It’s hard, that’s all. So much has changed. But in other ways, nothing seems to be changing at all.’

  I put my arms around her and pulled her close. ‘We can make all the changes we want, once Hundreds is our own.’

  Her cheek was resting on my shoulder, but I could tell from the intentness of her pose that she had opened her eyes and was gazing back across the park at the house.

  She said, ‘We’ve never talked about how it will be. I’ll be a doctor’s wife.’

  I said, ‘You’ll be marvellous at it. You’ll see.’

  She drew back, to look at me. ‘But how will it work, with you, with Hundreds? You keep talking about the estate as though you’ll have time and money to fix it. How will it work?’

  I gazed into her face, wanting only to reassure her, but the truth is, I didn’t quite know how it would work. I had recently told Graham about my plan to move into the Hall after the wedding, and he had seemed taken aback. He had been supposing, he said, that Caroline would give Hundreds up, that she and I would live at Gill’s, or find a nicer house together. I told him in the end that ‘nothing was settled’, that Caroline and I were still ‘playing with ideas’.

  I said something similar now.

  ‘Things will sort themselves out. You’ll see. It will all become clear to us. I promise.’

  She looked frustrated, but didn’t answer. She let me pull her back into my arms, but again I could feel her gazing tensely at the Hall. And after a moment she broke the embrace, and moved away from me in silence.

  Perhaps a man with more experience of women would have acted differently; I don’t know. I imagined that things would come right once we were married. I pinned a great deal on that one day. Caroline herself, however, continued to speak of the wedding, when she spoke of it at all, with a disconcerting vagueness. She failed to contact Helen Desmond: I had to do that for her after all. Helen was delighted, but the lively questions she asked me about our plans made me realise all the preparations that were still to be made, and when I spoke to Caroline next I saw with a shock that she had given no thought to them—no thought, even, to what she would wear to be married in. I said she must let Helen advise her; she answered that she ‘didn’t want to be fussed’. I offered to take her into Leamington—as I’d once planned, anyway, to do—and buy her a new set of clothes; she said I ‘mustn’t waste my money’, that she would ‘put something together from the things she had upstairs’. I pictured her unbecoming gowns and hats, and inwardly rather shuddered. So I spoke to Betty, secretly, and asked her to bring me a sample of Caroline’s dresses, and, picking out what we thought was the best of them, I took it quietly off to Leamington one day, to a ladies’ tailors, and asked the shop-girl if I might have a costume made up in a matching size.

  I told her the dress was for a lady who was soon to be married but was currently unwell. The girl called over a couple of colleagues and the three of them had a very excited time, producing pattern-books, unrolling bolts of cloth, sifting through buttons. I could tell they had formed a picture of the bride as a sort of romantic invalid. ‘Will the lady be able to walk?’ they asked me delicately, and, ‘Will her hands bear gloves?’ I thought of Caroline’s thick strong legs, her well-shaped, work-spoiled fingers … We settled on a plain, slim-belted dress, in some light, fawn material I hoped would suit her brown hair and hazel eyes; and for her head and hands I ordered simple sprays of pale silk flowers. The whole ensemble cost just over eleven pounds, and took all my clothing coupons. Once I’d started to spend, however, I found a queasy sort of pleasure in keeping going. A few doors down from the ladies’ outfitters was Leamington’s best jeweller. I went in, and asked to see their selection of wedding-rings. They didn’t have many, and most were utility rings: nine-carat, light and brassy, looking to me like something from Woolworth’s. From a more expensive tray I picked out a simple gold band, slender but heavy, at fifteen guineas. My first motor car had cost me less. I wrote the cheque with a nervous flourish, trying to give the impression that I dispensed such sums every day.

  I had to leave the ring at the jeweller’s, to be slightly expanded to what I had calculated as Caroline’s size. So I drove home with nothing to show for the money I had spent, my bravado failing with every mile, my knuckles paling on the steering-wheel as I thought over what I’d done. I passed the next few days in the grip of a bachelor’s panic, going wildly through my accounts, asking myself how the hell I meant to support a wife anyway; worrying aga
in about the Health Service. In despair I went to see Graham—who laughed at me and gave me a whisky, and finally managed to calm me down.

  A few days later I returned to Leamington to collect the ring and the gown. The ring was weightier than I had remembered, which reassured me no end; it sat snugly in a ruffled silk mount, inside an expensive-looking little shagreen box. The gown and flowers came in boxes, too, which also cheered me up. The dress was exactly what I’d wanted: pure, crisp, unfussy, and seeming to shine with newness.

  The shop-girls hoped the lady was better. They grew quite emotional about it, wishing her ‘good luck, and good health, and a long and happy marriage’.

  This was on a Tuesday, two weeks and two days before the wedding itself. That night I worked at the hospital, with the ring in my pocket and the gown in its box in the boot of my car. The next day I was frustratingly busy, with no chance to call in at the Hall. But on the Thursday afternoon I did get out there—letting myself into the padlocked park with my own key as usual, then going, whistling, along the drive, with my car window lowered, for the day was glorious. I put the boxes under my arm and went quietly into the house by the garden way. At the turn of the basement stairs I called softly down.

  ‘Betty! Are you there?’

  She emerged from the kitchen and stood blinking up at me.

  I said, ‘Where’s Miss Caroline? The little parlour?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, Doctor. She’s been in there all day.’

  I lifted the boxes. ‘What do you think I’ve got in here?’

  She peered, puzzled. ‘I don’t know.’ Then her face changed. ‘Things for Miss Caroline’s wedding!’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Oh! Can I see?’

  ‘Not yet. Maybe later. Bring us some tea in half an hour. Miss Caroline might show you then.’