(1990) Sweet Heart (33 page)

His eyes probed Charley’s. ‘Surveys don’t reveal leys; not many surveyors believe in or are aware of ley lines. I know someone who is quite into these things, who might —’ His voice tailed away.

‘I thought you were the expert.’

‘I know a bit about leys, but not —’

‘Not what?’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s a — what you’d call a sensitive.’

‘What do you mean, a sensitive?’

‘Well, he’s like me, really, only where I tend to take the scientific view he takes a more paranormal view, I suppose.’

She frowned. He was being evasive and it made her feel uneasy. ‘I’m not with you.’

He lifted a strand of hair off her forehead and kissed her. ‘I think someone who knows about these things should have a look. And I don’t think you should stay here on your own.’

‘I have to,’ she said.

‘You can stay at my house. I’m sure I could get him to come round within a day or two.’

‘Your sensitive?’

‘Yes.’

A feeling of doom slid across like a storm cloud. Tom. Viola. Gibbon. Peregrine, the terrier. Hugh’s semen trickled down her thigh. Betrayal. It had felt good a few minutes ago. So good.

‘What would he do, this sensitive?’

‘He’d be able to tell you.’

She bit at the hard skin below her thumb nail and
looked at the dressing table. The dressing table with the heart-shaped locket in the tin at the back of the top right-hand drawer. ‘Tell me what?’

‘Tell you what’s going on in this house,’ he said. ‘Whether you have a presence here.’

Charley parked in the pay-and-display below the castle walls, and walked up the High Street. She stopped at a signpost which indicated every municipal building except the one she wanted.

A man in a well-cut suit was striding briskly towards her, swinging his umbrella which was still tightly rolled in spite of the drizzle, and she asked him.

‘County Records Office?’ he said, swivelling on his metal-capped heels and pointing helpfully. ‘Up to the top and round to the right, as far as you can go. The Maltings — got a blue door.’

She walked under a flint archway into quietness and climbed up a steep cobbled hill, past several well-preserved Sussex flint and red brick Georgian buildings, with the castle high up above. She was trying to think clearly, to sort out her thoughts, frightened, suddenly. Frightened to go on. In case …

In case she found —?

The drizzle was worsening. Part of her wanted to go back to the car park, forget about the records office. Another part walked on, head bowed against the rain.

Ahead was a low flint malthouse with a high roof and a blue door. A brass sign read ‘East Sussex County Council. Records Office’.

Inside was a small entrance hall that smelled of furniture polish and damp umbrellas. The walls were lined with pockets of leaflets and a cheery-looking girl sat at the reception desk in front of a floor-to-ceiling rack of leather volumes marked ‘Deaths 1745–1803’.

‘Where would I find burial records for All Saint’s Church, Elmwood?’

‘Room C. Straight ahead at the top of the stairs.’

Room C occupied most of the roof space of the building. It was a long attic with small dormer windows and bright flourescent lighting. To her right was a low counter, to the left were metal racks of index files and a row of microfiche booths; the rest of the room was filled with flat tables and metal-framed chairs.

It was only half past nine, and Charley was surprised at the number of people already there. It bustled with an air of quiet urgency. People were scrolling through microfiches, leafing through binders of old newspapers, unfurling yellowing architects’ plans, scribbling notes. At the far end, a group of students were clustered around a woman who was talking intently in a hushed voice.

Charley dug her hands into her raincoat pockets, went up to the counter and waited until one of the clerks looked up from her index cards. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

‘I want to see the records on someone buried in All Saints’ Church in Elmwood.’

‘The burial register? Have you filled out a form?’ She held a small pad up.

Charley shook her head.

‘You need a seat number.’ She pointed at an empty chair. ‘That one’ll do. Tell me the number on that.’

Charley walked across and came back. ‘Eleven.’

The woman handed her the form. ‘Fill that in, and
your name and address. Do you have a registration number?’

‘No. Do I need one?’

‘Are you doing regular research — or is this a one-off?’

‘A one-off.’ Charley took a pen out of her handbag.

‘You’re only allowed to use pencil here,’ the woman said. ‘I can sell you one for twelve pence if you haven’t got one.’

Charley paid for a pencil.

‘Is it a particular year you want to look up?’

‘Nineteen fifty-three.’

‘Write “Elmwood Burial Register, nineteen fifty-three” then go to your place and someone will bring it to you.’

Charley sat at the table opposite a smart businesslike woman in her late twenties who was scanning through a thick leather-bound volume and jotting down notes on a shorthand pad. Next to her a couple in their forties were poring over a set of house plans.

She wondered how long it would take. She needed to leave by twelve fifteen to make sure she caught a train in time for her appointment with Dr Ross.

A woman reached over and placed a cream leather-bound volume on the table in front of her and moved on silently. It had a gold embossed coat of arms, a typed white tag at the bottom and the wording, also in embossed lettering, ‘Register of Burials’.

She stared at it. Forget it, she thought. Take it back. Leave it alone.

She opened it, turned the thick pages carefully, heard them fall with a slight crackling sound. The columns were spread across the width of both pages, the headings printed, the entries beneath neatly handwritten in fountain pen, the style of writing and the colour of ink changing every few pages. There were
several church names she recognised, Nutley, Fletching, Danehill, and some she had not heard of. 1951 … 1952 … 1953. She stopped, glanced at the headings. ‘Name’. ‘Date of death’. ‘Place or Parish where death occurred’. ‘Place of burial’. Her eyes ran down the names. And found it.

‘Barbara Jarrett. August 12th. Cuckfield Hospital. All Saints’, Elmwood.’

That was all. She leafed on through a few more pages, but they were the same.

She read it again, disappointment seeping through her, then went back to the counter. The clerk looked up. ‘Was that helpful?’

Charley nodded, not wanting to offend her. ‘Thank you. I really want to find out a bit more about someone who is buried in Elmwood. She’s in the register, but it doesn’t say much.’

‘What is it you want to know, exactly?’

‘I — I — want to know who she was, see if I can find out a bit about her.’

‘Do you know her date of birth?’

‘No.’

‘It’s not on the gravestone?’

‘No.’

‘If you had that, you could go through the baptisms register, which would give you the names of her mother and father and when she was born. And you could go on from there and look up the electoral register and get their address.’

‘I’ve no idea when she was born.’

‘None at all?’

‘All I know is the date of death.’

‘There’s probably someone in the village who might be able to help you, someone who might remember her. Have you tried that? Pubs are often a good source. Or some of the old shopkeepers.’

Viola Letters’s face burned in her mind. The old man in the pub, Arthur Morrison, closing his front door.

‘Of course, the announcements in the local paper might give you something,’ the clerk said. ‘You could check the deaths column. Do you know how she died?’

‘No.’

‘If it was in some sort of accident, it might well have been reported — that might give you her address and family.’

The woman’s words resonated in her head.
Some sort of accident
. Her last regression. The burning stable, the fight. The ambulance. The room spun. Charley steadied herself against the counter; she felt a pounding in her chest. The entry on the burial register: Place or Parish where death occurred.

Cuckfield Hospital.

Hospital
.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ she heard the clerk saying.

‘Sorry,’ Charley whispered. Hospital. Calm down. Nothing. Millions of people die in hospital.

‘The
Sussex Express
,’ said the woman. ‘That was the local paper deaths would have been reported in then.’

Charley returned to her chair and waited, tried to relax, but her adrenalin was pumping now. The businesslike woman opposite gave her an irritated look; Charley wondered if the thump of her heartbeat was distracting her. It was loud. Like drums.

‘There we are. It’s heavy.’ The clerk laid a massive volume down in front of her on top of the burials register.

Charley lifted the leather binder. A smell of old dried paper rose up from the yellowing newspapers inside.

‘SUSSEX EXPRESS & COUNTY HERALD. Friday 2 January 1953.’

An ad in the top right corner read, ‘Bobby’s Plastic Macs — With Attached Hoods’ and beneath were the headlines, ‘KNIGHTHOOD FOR LEWES MAN!’

There were several columns full of the New Year honours list, then the rest of the news on the front page was local: a car accident. The success of a charity New Year’s Eve ball. She glanced through, fascinated for a moment; the newspaper was so old-fashioned, its layout messy, its advertisements bland, its stories almost all local; there was something cosy about it. She turned several chunks of pages at a time, working through the months. It was a weekly paper. Local news always made the major headline, national or international had smaller prominence.

‘CUCKFIELD WAR HERO WEDS.’

‘Stalin Dead!’

‘COUNTY COUNCIL DECISION ON BYPASS!’

‘Rebel Fidel Castro Jailed!’

Friday 7 August.

‘FIVE DEAD IN BOLNEY SMASH.’

She turned through the pages of news, advertisements, sports.

‘Bobby’s Beach Towels In Gay Colours!’

Then Friday 14 August.

The headlines said: ‘NEWLYWED DEAD IN BLAZE HORROR.’

It took a moment for it to sink in. For her to realise she was not imagining it. She tried to read it again, but the print had blurred. She squeezed her eyes, but that made it worse. Then she realised it was blurred because she was holding it in her shaking hands, and she put it down on the table.

Beneath the headline was a black and white photograph of an unrecognisable burned-out building. The
caption read: ‘Remains of the stables.’

Inset beside was a smaller photograph of Elmwood Mill, taken from the side, showing the house and the watermill, with the caption, ‘The historic mill house property.’

Then she read the story.

The charred and mutilated body of local man, Richard Morrison, 32, was recovered from the burned-out remains of the stables at his home in Elmwood village yesterday evening, after a frenzied knife attack by a woman believed to have been his former fiancée.

The woman identified by police as Miss Barbara Jarrett, 19, of London, died in labour as a result of wounds she herself received in the attack in Cuckfield Hospital. Doctors saved the life of her premature baby girl.

Mr Morrison’s bride of less than two months, society couturier Nancy Delvine, 35, who was also savagely attacked was last night in a critical condition in the burns unit of East Grinstead Hospital where the police are waiting to question her.

The attack happened at Mr and Mrs Morrison’s remote mill house home where less than two months ago they had hosted a glittering wedding reception at which some of the most famous names in British fashion, including royal couturiers Mr Hardy Amies and Mr Norman Hartnell, were present.

Mr Morrison, who ran his own livery business in Danehill, and was the only son of Elmwood farm labourer Arthur Morrison and his wife Maud, of Saddlers Cottages, Crampton Farm, married Miss Delvine after a whirlwind romance. They met only a few months ago, when Miss Delvine rented the idyllic Elmwood Mill for the summer.

Neighbour, widow Mrs Viola Letters, stated that she
had seen the heavily pregnant Miss Jarrett walking to the mill several times in recent weeks and that she seemed to be in an anxious and distressed state. Miss Jarrett, whose address was a hostel for unmarried mothers in London, came formerly from Fletching and was the only child of Hurstgate Park gamekeeper Bob Jarrett who was decorated with the DSO in the war. Mr Jarrett and his wife were too distressed to comment yesterday. (
Continued page 5, column 2
.)

Charley tried to turn the pages, but her fingers were trembling so much she could not grip them. She turned too far, flipped back, heard a page tear.

Then she saw the photographs.

The top one was a wedding photograph, a couple leaving Elmwood church, the bride in white, the groom togged in morning dress. The coarse grin on the man’s tough face, the cold arrogant smile on the woman’s. It was them. The two people she had seen in her regressions.

There were larger photographs of each of them beneath. The man sitting on a horse, the woman in finery, her black hair slanted over her eyes. The woman who had set the dog on her, the woman Dick Morrison had been making love to in the stable, who had come into the bedroom and shot at her and stabbed her with the shard of mirrored glass.

Then her eyes were drawn down to another photograph, smaller, less distinct. She stared in numbed silence.

‘Barbara Jarrett. Jilted?’

A girl gazed out at her. A girl in her late teens. Pretty.

The heat seemed to go out of Charley’s body. Prickles raked her skin.

The hair was different, long, curled, fifties style. But
that was all. That was the only difference.

It was as if she were looking at an old photograph of herself.

Tony Ross was looking as fit and perky as ever as he squeezed himself behind his tiny desk. ‘So, Charley, how are you feeling?’

‘Very strange.’

‘Oh?’ He raised his eyebrows. His eyes were twinkling and she wondered for a moment if he was drunk; except she could not imagine him getting drunk. ‘I have the results of the tests, the blood and urine samples I took.’