THIRTY-TWO

Even when in sight of the Red House’s chimneys, the dreary and abandoned spirit of the village still discoloured her thoughts. Turned them into an old photograph, dour and brown with age, corrupted by blemishes.

Maybe this great house, this mausoleum that honoured loss and madness, had drawn all the colour, light and life out of the village. Bled its vitality up the lane years ago, to this dreadful edifice. Itself erected on ground verdant with meadows, briars, thorns, and tough grasses, as if the land was also returned to some former time that no hedgerow or wall could restrain. All around the Red House was forgotten, untended, and left to grow wild, while the building remained perfectly preserved.

Catherine patted down her damp and clinging dress. The cloudburst had been short, but ferocious enough to soak her to her underwear. She hurried through the hawthorn tunnel and returned to sunlight to continue drying out.

The front door was open as she had left it, the house silent, the grounds wet and sparkling as they dried. She checked her watch. Edith would be sleeping. Maude in her scullery, washing the dishes from the luncheon she’d missed.

But before she went inside, she wanted to inspect the garden to discover what it was the bee-keeper had been doing beneath her window. She desperately wanted something to start making sense around here, and had a savage impulse to smack her own face until reason returned and stayed put.

Guests still had rights and she was done with being kept in the dark, and distracted, manipulated. Mike, Tara, Edith, Maude, they were all taking and taking and taking something from her. Even if they were not present, their bullying influences were. Here, at best, she was being humoured, but also deceived. She’d tried to loosen the noose, but the village thwarted her.

It was irrational to think this.

Why did she allow people to affect her so much?

Beside the porch she found vestiges of a path made from greening flagstones that hugged the foundations of the building. Catherine followed the path, often untangling the hem of her skirt from the prickly things with rhubarb-red stalks that intruded upon the narrow space between the house’s walls and the garden’s overrun borders.

Her progress along the side of the house was enclosed by shadow, and slow, and impeded by great rose stems that adhered to the bricks like tropical vines. She grazed her bare legs, cut the back of one hand. The abrasions stung and her skin itched.

When she rounded the rear corner of the house she was presented with a view of the snarled orchard and lawns grown to the top of her thighs. The flies were also waiting, fat and lazy, corpulent with easy nourishment. But noisy and angry in their defence of some boundary she had unwittingly crossed. They circled, bumped her arms and face. She flailed her hands and thought of going in search of the back door. But the idea of Maude’s scorn kept her outside.

Discomfort combined with a fear of being observed from the back of the house, which reared behind her like a dark mountain of dull windows, a hideous thing that watched her with an amused contempt.

Not shod or dressed for the trespass, she made an ungainly zigzag through the garden. As if wading through seawater, she raised her feet high to stride through the grasses entwined with bright weeds. By the time she rounded the rotted arbour and reached the lichen-encrusted fruit trees, her dress was begrimed beyond salvation. Through the trees there was more of the deep grass, and so slippery close to the earth she could not see.

Two stone statues, suffocated by a concealing strata of dead brambles and living ivy, presented themselves like unrelieved guardians. One of the stone pieces had been entirely overwhelmed by the garden. The second statue showed part of a faun’s grimacing face. What had they once protected? Most likely the abandoned greenhouse. Beyond the cloudy sea-green panes of glass, that made the structure resemble a neglected aquarium, shadowy growths like ungroomed heads were supported by overburdened necks. Between the heads spiteful fingers at the end of skeletal limbs were poised to claw. Much of the roof was smashed and vegetation tufted out of the gaps, yearning for the sky.

Beside the derelict greenhouse four dilapidated wooden cabinets hummed with energy. The hives. They had once been painted white but were now mostly green and at a tilt.

Beyond the row of hives was an iron gate in the ivy-smothered walls. It led to the meadow. And from the gate to the hives was a worn path that continued past the hives to the far side of the garden.

Catherine paused to scratch at her stinging legs. Maybe Edith had not been lying and some local still dutifully attended to the ruined hives. Maybe Maude had a secret friendship, because she could not imagine Maude having anything else. Perhaps Edith, in her spite and arbitrary use of authority, had forbidden the trysts. It would account for the hostility between mistress and housekeeper. DON’T NEVER COME BACK: a warning about Edith’s cruelty?

Her presence close to the hives had been detected and instigated a boisterous activity. The hum inside became an angry buzz. Catherine panicked and lunged to where the grass was worn into the makeshift path. If the threatened bees were riled she would make faster progress back to the house along that route.

But she stopped and coughed when she found herself enshrouded by an awful stench of decomposition. Then recoiled at the suggestion that a carcass lay hidden in the long grass. Something had come here to die.

Fast as she could, over unseen impediments and through slapping weeds, she stumbled past the hives, holding her breath. Level with the cabinet at the end of the row, she realized the stench originated not from the grass, but from the hives. The same hives that were active not with bees, but flies.

Busy like atoms once they were airborne, the flies emerged from the rear of the mouldering cabinets, rose into the air and moved in the direction of the house.

Catherine raced along the path of trodden grass, rounded the orchard and hurried up to the house. She could see a plain wooden door, the back door, beside the small window of Mason’s workshop. The door must open onto the utility corridor.

When the terrible smell of micturition subsided, so did her shock. The hives must be filled with kitchen waste. She must have smelled pheasant carcasses and meaty scraps incubating within old beehives. Out here, there wouldn’t be a waste collection and they had no means of visiting a tip.

But with so many flies breeding and hatching within the fetid confines of the rotten hives, why was such a practice continued so close to where they lived? And who was the man in white? What would he want with the old hives? She thought of the dark interiors alive with oily maggots and her stomach tried to turn itself inside out. Witnessing violence would not have sickened her more. The flies, the decay, the Red House was an assault against decency. She should leave now. She must leave now. Get her things quickly and go.

The decision to leave quelled her anxiety, as if a valve had suddenly opened to release a huge pressure, and its venting was close to bliss. All here was unhealthy, toxic. Was damaged and infectious. It was a bad place. Some places just were. She’d long suspected it. Here was confirmation. The Red House had corrupted then killed the village. The house and village had expired and should be buried, but clung on. And they’d seeped into her like a poison.

Around her mind her thoughts buzzed incessantly and altered direction as quickly as the flies that pursued her through the wretched garden. Until an awareness of a scrutiny hit her. She looked up as if someone had just barked her name.

Stood rigid, she caught sight of a small white face. At a window amongst so many dark panes within arches like eyebrows raised in disapproval.

Edith in a black wig? No, it had looked like a child.

The face retreated quickly, or was yanked away, but had lingered long enough to give the impression of being masked, or made of cloth. Soft and pressed into the glass, the features had appeared flat, the mouth black and open in surprise. Thick dark curls of hair spilling from a lacy hat made the figure look like a child, a girl. So it had been a doll? The face had been behind a second-storey window, next to the big bay window at the conclusion of the second-floor corridor. So the face had been at the window of her room. Someone had held a doll against the window of her room.

Maude? But why?

Maude had seen her trespassing in the garden. And knew she had seen the flies, and where and how they dispensed with organic kitchen waste. Maybe.

The fright left her exhausted, and she was shivering. They were trying to frighten and disorient her and drive her mad. As mad as they both were. They were unreasonable, they were unhinged, they were sinister people. Leonard had warned her, but not seriously enough.

The back door was unlocked. She slipped off her sodden trainers and passed into the passageway, its floor coated with a plain cloth. At the passage’s far end she saw the ruby glow of the hallway. Between there and the back door the corridor remained in shadow.

The first doorway on the right-hand side led into Mason’s workshop. Her camera might still be inside the room. She would retrieve it, then her bags and laptop from her room and leave without saying goodbye. And she would go home to her flat, her sanctuary.

Around her the chemical stink cloyed. In her mind the flies buzzed, and she could still taste the taint of the hives. In her imagination, dim straggle-haired figures stood up, over and over again, behind dirty windows at the back of damp rooms.

No more.

The door to Mason’s workshop was open, perhaps airing after she’d been ill. She could see the jars of chemicals and formulas, the cruel hooks and tools, the workbench and horrible galvanized tub. And there was her camera where she had left it. All was as she remembered that morning save one thing. This other thing had not been present earlier.

She approached and walked around the object. Using what of her available mind was not taken over with anxiety, she tried to work out what it was.

The shape was adult-sized and carved from a block of wood. Balsa wood turned by hand into the torso of a female figure. It had a crude bust and narrowed at the waist. At mid-thigh level, the form had been levelled off and mounted on a black iron stand that descended to a three-toed base. Cloth arms connected to a metal and canvas harness were attached to the shoulders of the carving. At the end of the arms, heavy ceramic hands with chipped fingers hung inert. She thought of them clapping, and shuddered.

Had it been positioned here to confront her, for some unfathomable reason? Another unpleasant barrier to inhibit her? Catherine moved away from the ugly effigy and picked up her camera.

A tiny scream of wheels moved through the corridor outside the workshop. It gave her a start. She turned to confront the doorway into which Edith was wheeled.

The elderly woman’s skinny hands were gloved and clutched the handrests either in rage, or with a determination not to be spilled from the chair. She looked awful, drained and haggard. A waterproof cape was draped over a heavy tweed skirt dwarfing her frail body. What was visible of the outfit reminded Catherine of what female motorists wore before the war, the first war.

The ghastly white face was again overburdened by the terrible cottage-loaf wig. And Maude’s face seemed peculiarly ape-like as it glared beneath the mannish haircut, out of the darkness behind Edith.

Edith studied Catherine with her cloudy, disapproving eyes. ‘Did you see all you wanted to see?’

‘I came back for my camera.’

‘What were you thinking? We’ve been out there. We couldn’t find you.’

‘There was no need. I just wanted some air.’ The idea of the two horrid figures, one pushing the other through the rain, searching for her, made her want to scream.

‘One should never leave this house so unprepared. Maude will draw you a bath. And then we will proceed with the fitting. Your clothes are ruined and it is about time you wore something suitable. The pageant is the highlight of our local calendar, and no guest of the Red House will be tolerated looking like that. Follow me.’

The information or order, or whatever it was, came quickly. The will behind the voice was indomitable, but brittle and close to rage. She was trapped again, coerced by muscular social currents she was unable to evade and was unequal to. Edith’s horrid white face and voice filled her head. It did not seem possible to resist the woman or deny her anything.

‘If it’s all the same—’

‘Maude will bathe you on the second floor.’

‘I need to get back.’

‘Back! Back where?’

Catherine swallowed the constriction that always occupied her throat before those glaring red-rimmed eyes. ‘I need . . . I’d like to go home now.’

Edith grinned with what looked like a bored delight at her resistance. ‘You’ll catch your death. You’re shivering.’

‘I’m all right. I’ll—’

‘Out of the question. We don’t have much time to get you ready. I’m far too old to go through this again, and I do not have the time for your stubbornness. Everyone will be so disappointed with your lack of enthusiasm.’

‘Everyone? I’ve been to the village. It’s empty.’

‘Empty?’ Edith turned her frowning face to Maude. ‘What does she mean?’

Maude stared at Catherine in disapproval tinged with pity.

‘Our local traditions take a great deal of time to prepare. And you are expected. It would be selfish, heartless, to disappoint us all. Don’t you think?’

‘Ma’am, please. I’ve been here two days and I still haven’t begun the valuation. There are other things I—’

‘There will be time enough to admire our things. After the pageant. Now come along, dear. I am not accustomed to repeating myself.’