(1990) Sweet Heart (22 page)

‘But you didn’t tell me what it was.’

The teacher-knows-best smile was fainter, had lost some of its confidence. ‘I don’t know what it is. I haven’t come across this particular situation before. I don’t know anyone who has. I’m going to do some research, to see if there is anything to compare, some other case history.’

‘I thought you were meant to be an expert,’ she said, more acidly than she intended.

He looked at her and blinked slowly, seriously. The smile was gone. ‘In man’s understanding of the supernatural, Charley, we are all amateurs.’

She walked along the station platform among the throng of commuters returning home from work, from London mostly, the smart and the shabby, the eager and the despondent, home to
her indoors
, to
she-who-must-be-obeyed
, to
the little woman, the little man
, home to noisy kids and empty dark houses, home to the loved, the hated, the infirm, the dying, the dead.

And the reborn.

If you kept coming back, you didn’t die. You merely changed. You got reconstituted. Recycled. Even your knowledge, your experiences, got recycled.

She filed through the ticket barrier then walked, her shoes clattering on the concrete of the steps, down into the tunnel. The train moved off, rumbling above them. Did everyone else around her, all the hurrying people, have past lives? Had they come back many times too, back to this life each time they died, the way they came back to this station night after night?

If? If it was there? What then?

The thought spurred her to walk faster, to run up the steps the far side, out into the blustering wind of the clouded grey evening, almost to sprint across the car park to the little Citroën with its two-tone paintwork.

Her hands still hurt, but she barely noticed as she climbed in, started the engine and switched on the radio out of habit. There was a roar of laughter. Frank Muir
was telling a story. Not now, she could not cope with humour now. She pushed in a tape. Rachmaninov, solemn, sombre, old, too old. She felt the violin string as if it were sliding down her own tight nerves and she punched the tape out and drifted into her thoughts again.

She drove out of Haywards Heath on to the country road, pressing the accelerator to the floor, wishing the car would go faster, almost willing it to go faster. To get home.

To find out.

The car lurched as she came into a bend too fast, the tyres squealing, saw a car coming the other way, the driver looking at her alarmed, thought for a moment she was going to hit it but somehow the Citroën hung on. Then the bend went the other way and she swung the wheel, foot stabbing at the brake, cut the corner and narrowly missed a cyclist who swerved, fist waving in the air. Christ, slow down. She gripped the wheel, felt her face steaming.

The sky was blackening as she pulled up in front of the barn. It looked like a storm was on the way.

She climbed out of the car and closed the door, crossed the bridge over the mill race and ran up the banked slope on the far side and into the woods, following the route she had taken in the regression. A gust of wind rattled the branches and spots of rain were coming down.

She trod through some bracken on to the mossy earth and looked up at the trees, the tall, thin hornbeam trees growing crookedly out of the wild undergrowth. Their branches were tangled, some of them supporting uprooted trees from past storms which lay across them like spars, lay where they would stay until they rotted, until they went back into the earth. Biodegradable. As humans were.

In the regression it had been dark, but she knew the way. There was a small indent in the ground, a ditch in front of a thick bramble bush that was covered in rotting blackberries. She went a few yards to the left and through a heavy undergrowth of bracken. A bird jumped in the branches of the trees above, chirping like a dripping tap. A distant dog barked. A tractor droned. The woods were darkening around her, melting the trees, closing in on her.

She was panting and shaking, covered in a clammy sweat. She did not want to be here any more, wanted to turn, run to the house and close the door on the night, close the door on the bramble bush that seemed to be drawing her in, that seemed to be growing as she looked at it, spreading around her ankles, rising up her legs. Switches were clicking inside her, changing the speed of her blood, re-routing it, churning it, pumping it over blocks of ice, sucking out the heat, refrigerating it.

She crawled underneath the bush, pushing up the branches, the thorns catching at her clothes, then something caught her eye. At first she thought it was a rotting strip of wood, or a flat root.

A stone. Might be a stone. Hoped it was a stone. It seemed to rise out of the brambles at her, bringing the bush with it. She scrabbled towards it on her hands and knees, oblivious to the stinging pain of the brambles, and she gripped the handle, gripped it as if it was the lever that would move the world, then backed out and stood up, pulling branches up with her, letting them rip through her clothes, through the skin of her arms.

She turned it over in her hands, touching the cold, rusted metal. A knife with a bone handle black with age and weathering, and a long serrated blade eaten with rust.

The knife she had carried in her regression. The knife with which she had killed the mastiff.

She felt pain in her finger, as if she had been stung, and looked down. A thin line of blood began to appear from the tip of her index finger down to the first joint. She dropped the knife, jammed her finger in her mouth and sucked hard. The cut had gone right down to the bone.

It seemed as if the thousand eyes of the falling night were watching her. The wind tugged at her hair, her thoughts tugged at her mind.

She bound the cut with her handkerchief, her mind racing, trying to find an answer that was better than the one she had.

She had killed a dog. With this knife. In another life.

She pulled herself free of the brambles, her linen dress ruined, and stumbled down through the woods towards the lake. An explanation. There had to be an explanation. Something.

A drop of water struck her cheek, then another. She reached the bank, heard the lap of a wave, saw the lake black and sloppy under the rising wind. She stared down at the knife, frightened it might cut her again, a deeper cut than her finger.

She made sure there were no anglers, then threw it as hard as she could out into the lake. Far enough and deep enough so she could not wade out in her sleep and get it back. It rolled over in the air, barely visible, then fell into the water with a plop like a rising trout. Gone. It no longer existed.

It had never existed.

She went towards the house, squeezing her finger through her handkerchief, thinking, hoping, trying to convince herself that maybe she’d cut it on a thorn; not a knife. You didn’t find knives under bushes. No one
ever
left a knife under a bush.

She took her handbag out of the Citroën and stared at the barn wall where the mastiff had been chained in
her regression. She walked over, her feet dragging through the gravel, and scanned the wall. In the falling darkness it blended in with the bricks and she took a moment to spot it. She went closer, put out her hand and touched the hoop. It had almost rusted away; a chunk flaked off and crumbled into dust in her fingers.

Mad. Going mad. I have lived previous lives.

I killed a dog.

It was raining harder, but she hardly noticed as she stood gazing at the barn; the barn with its bats and spiders and the old car which it had held, like a secret. And which in turn had held its own secret. The chewing gum.

She looked down, just in case, although she knew she would never find it because it was not there, had never been there; it had been her imagination, like everything else. That was all.

She unlocked the door of the house and stepped into the tiny dark hallway, switched on the light and closed the door behind her.

The wind had stopped howling, the mill race was silent. It felt as if time had stopped.

‘Ben! Hello, boy!’ she called out. ‘Ben?’ She walked down the passageway, into the kitchen. Silence. ‘Ben?’ The red light of the answering machine winked frenetically out of the gloom. Rain spattered against the windows.

She jerked open the boiler room door, saw the dim blue flame of the boiler ‘Ben?’ She switched on the light.

He was cowering against the far wall, whimpering, his hair standing up along his back as if it had been brushed the wrong way.

She ran over, knelt beside him and put her arm around him. ‘Boy? What’s the matter?’ He was shaking and a puddle of urine lay beside him. ‘It’s OK, boy, it’s OK.’ She stroked his head and rubbed his chest.

The boiler sparked into life and she jumped. The flame roared, the air hissed, the sound of metal vibrated. ‘What is it? Aren’t you well? Why are you shut in here? Was it one of the workmen? Let’s get you supper.’

She went into the kitchen, took his meat out of the fridge and put it with some biscuits in his bowl by the basket. He stayed cowering in the boiler room, watching her, then slowly, warily, came out. The answering machine continued its winking. The windows shook, a volley of rain struck the glass. The drying-rack swayed in the wind, its pulleys creaking, its rails casting shadows like prison bars.

She cleaned up Ben’s puddle and patted him again. He began to eat. She pressed the message play button on the answering machine, heard it rewind and went over to the sink and washed her hands carefully. She rinsed her finger under the cold tap, worried about the rust on the knife, trying to remember when she’d last had a tetanus jab. Her hands looked awful, felt awful; every time she moved a finger the skin parted on a wound, layers of it pulling apart.

The answering machine finished its rewind and began to play. There was a bleep, then a hiss, then a message-end bleep, and another hiss. She frowned. The bleep again. Another hiss. Silence. Hiss. The shuffle of the tape in the machine. Another bleep. Wind shook the house, shook the shadowy bars of the drying rack across the table. Ben looked up at her, then down at his food. He was still trembling.

Bleep. Hiss. The tape shuffled. The wind hosed the rain against the house. Bleep. Hiss. Again, as if someone demented was phoning, someone who refused to speak, who just listened, listened.

Tom. Was it Tom, phoning then hanging up, not having the courage to speak? She turned the volume up,
listened to see if she could hear any background sounds, an office, other people talking, to see if she could tell where the caller was.

Ben’s ears pricked and he let out a deep rumbling growl. All she could see in the window was her own reflection against the blackness. There was a final long bleep, the messages-end one. A cold draught of air blew through the old tired glass. The house was vulnerable, easy to break into, easy if someone wanted to —

She picked up the phone, listened to the hum of the dial tone and felt reassured, but she wished they had curtains, blinds, anything. Someone could be out there, looking in, watching. Ben half-heartedly chewed a chunk of meat.

She took the cassettes of today’s session, which Ernest Gibbon had given her, out of her handbag and put them on the kitchen table. At least Tom wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t be able to get angry about her spending money.

There was antiseptic and dressings under the sink; she anointed the knife cut and bound it with Elastoplast. Ben shot into the hallway and started barking. The doorknocker rapped, flat dull thuds. She hurried down the passageway. Through the stained glass panel in the front door she could see a short figure in yellow. ‘Yes?’ she called out. ‘Who is it?’

‘Viola Letters,’ shouted a muffled voice.

Charley opened the door, holding Ben’s collar. The plump diminutive figure of her neighbour was parcelled in sopping yellow oilskins, sou’wester, red Wellington boots and held a large rubber torch. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of a lifeboat.

‘I say, frightfully sorry to bother you on a night like this,’ she barked in her foghorn voice. ‘You haven’t by any chance seen Nelson, have you?’

There was a spray of rain, and Charley smelled the
alcohol fumes on the old woman’s breath. ‘Nelson? Your cat? No, I haven’t I’m afraid.’ She stepped back. ‘Please, come in.’

‘Don’t want to make your hallway wet.’

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Well, if you —’ She strode forwards. ‘Rage, roar, spout — always reminds me of King Lear this sort of a night,’ she barked. ‘Damned bloody cat. Been gone over a day now, not back for his food. Never usually wanders very far — can’t see much having the one eye.’ Ben trotted up to her with his chewed rubber Neil Kinnock head in his mouth. She patted him. ‘Thank you, chappie. Dreadful bloody man, Kinnock, but very kind of you.’

‘What can I get you?’

‘Rather feel I’m barging in.’ Viola Letters squinted at her and began tugging the knot of her sou’wester.

‘No, not at all. I’m not doing anything. Whisky? Gin? We’ve got most things.’

‘Went to Evensong on Sunday,’ the old woman said, following Charley into the kitchen. ‘Have you met that vicar chap? Damned good mind to write to the bishop about him. He’s off his trolley. Either that or he was sloshed. Gin and tonic, dear, no ice.’ She tugged off her wet overclothes and Charley hung them on the rail on the Aga.

‘He was rabbiting on about organic farming; said that if Christ came back today he wouldn’t be a priest, he’d be an organic farmer. Said it was better to have the odd maggot you could see, and pluck it out, than to eat a ton of invisible chemicals. Some analogy to casting out the moneylenders. Beyond me.’

Charley poured a large dollop of gin. ‘I’m afraid we don’t go to church.’ She unscrewed the tonic cap; there was a hiss.

‘Can’t blame you, the way it’s going. Quite mad.
Barmy.’ She took the glass. ‘Cheers!’

Charley poured herself a glass of white wine. ‘Cheers,’ she replied and sat down.

Viola Letters looked around. ‘You’ve done a lot of work here,’ she commented.

‘It needs a lot more.’