The Diary Of Pamela D. (20 page)

‘There’s little bits and
pieces from my childhood, from the orphanages, from foster care and
group homes and living on the streets . . . there’s old Father
Mugford and the Catholic Mission, and the old lady I used to work
for at the
Skylark Motor
Inn
, my old apartment . . .

‘Before I came here, that
was my
life
. Now it
doesn’t seem real anymore. You know, when I first got here, I was
afraid that this was all a dream, that one day I was going to wake
up and find myself back in my old apartment, about to be evicted.
But just this last while, it feels like it’s exactly the other way
around, as though my life
before
was the dream, and
this
is the reality. I don’t know. Am
I making any sense?’

‘Did you know the end of your nose twitches
when you talk? No wonder Theo fell in love with you. You’re his
little bunny rabbit.

‘Of
course
I know exactly what you’re
talking about! How do you think it is for
me
now that I’m here?’

‘Tom must
love
the way your nostrils
flare,’ Pamela jibed.

‘They do not!’

‘You want me to get a mirror and show
you?’

‘No!’

‘I’ve got one right here.’

‘Get lost! I’ll take your word for it. Here,
hurry up and try this dress on before I decide to steal it.’

That evening, as the household and guests sat
down to supper in the seldom-used banquet room, Pamela felt as
though her belly was fully of butterflies. Theo and she would not
be sleeping together tonight. She would instead be sleeping with
Tessa, safe from temptation. ‘We made it this far,’ Theo had told
her. ‘Let’s not fall down at the last moment.’

He was right, of course. The temptation had
almost become too much to bear. But she knew she wasn’t going to
get a wink of sleep- Tessa was almost as keyed up as she was. Oh,
tomorrow looked like it was going to be a long day. She was
probably going to fall asleep on her wedding night!

‘What’s the big rush?’ she told herself.
‘We’ll have out entire lives ahead of us.’

The banquet room, Pamela realized, was
actually the main dining room, judging by the way the kitchen
opened into it. She had wondered for a long time what lay in this
part of the house- when facing the mansion from the rear, the
kitchen lay on the far right, the banquet room extending to the
left to a point just past the middle. Beyond were more rooms she
had never explored, that had been under lock and key (so she had
been told) for almost two decades. But the present occupants of the
house weren’t exactly wealthy leisure-class who spent all their
time pursuing various diversions. At one time, Mrs. Dewhurst had
told her, there had been a gun room full of weapons and trophies (a
euphemism for endangered species that had been shot dead to appease
some ancient relative’s blood-lust), a room full of priceless art
objects that had been pillaged from various “primitive” cultures,
and other rooms which were filled with relics of the old colonial
days.

Now, the rooms lay empty, and Pamela had the
growing feeling that they were somehow expectant, awaiting the day
when fresh life would be breathed into them, when the laughter of
children would displace the self-righteous ghosts of another era,
when the light of a new day would chase the dark shadows of corrupt
brooding away for good- corrupt because such brooding was the
remorse of a former slave-owner for the “good-old-days.” And like
the old mansion, Pamela felt at last that her time of waiting was
almost over.

It was a fun evening, the best she could ever
remember. After supper, a huge, old upright piano, very much out of
tune but still possessed of a good tone, was prevailed upon by a
succession of would-be entertainers who, accompanied by a fairly
good violinist, led them in song after song, and had them dancing
to old-fashioned polkas, waltzes, two-steps and a dozen other kinds
of dance that Pamela soon lost track of.

To her surprise and pleased awe, Theo turned
out to be an excellent dancer. She herself knew little about polkas
or the fast-paced Viennese waltz, but with Theo leading it seemed
she was soon flying effortlessly, flushed with pleasure and
exertion.

She wanted more than anything to remain at
his side, having his company all to herself, but this was not to
be. A host of relatives and introductions got in the way, though
pleasantly, and many of the women wanted a chance to dance with
Theo. Pamela had equal opportunity to meet with his male relatives,
of course, and there wasn’t a one of them who didn’t seem a decent,
fun-loving sort.

Mrs. Dewhurst, she noticed, spent the entire
evening dancing and speaking with the Chief Inspector and a few of
their mutual friends, who sat off to one corner. Tessa sat out most
of the time, she and Tom consumed with one another, a fact that
made Pamela feel as good as anything else that happened that
magical night.

Sometime during the festivities there was a
brilliant flash of light from outside, followed by a deafening peal
of thunder. Soon it began to rain, and what began with the patter
of hail became a succession of cloudbursts, which eventually evened
out into an unremitting downpour. Soon after, a succession of CID
people began coming in through the staff dining room door to get
out of the rain.

That seemed to signal the end of the
festivities, and so the party began to disperse. Pamela looked
around for Theo, but he was nowhere to be found. She noticed that
the Chief Inspector seemed concerned about something, and was
leaving. Wanting to know what was going on, she caught up with
him.

‘What is it?’

‘Oh . . . don’t like this
weather much,’ he said evasively. ‘Can’t see a damned thing. Our
agents keep losing each
other in this
muck.’

‘Have you seen Theo?’ she asked him.

‘He’s about,’ he rejoined in his “You’re just
a woman, and a young one to boot, so don’t ask me” tone of
voice.

‘Pamela,’ came Mrs. Dewhurst’s voice, in her
“Leave the men alone to do their job” tone of voice, ‘isn’t it time
you and Tessa thought about going to bed? Tom left a few minutes
ago, as did a good many of the guests, and it’s getting late.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ she replied, trying to sound
contrite, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll go to bed now like a
good little girl.’

‘Oh, stop that! You know I
can’t stand obsequious behaviour. Besides, it doesn’t suit you in
the least! Now go, run along. We can’t have the bride trying to
face the day yawning, with dark circles under her eyes. Or the
groom either. Robert, where
has
my son got himself to?’

When Mrs. Dewhurst received the same
non-answer Pamela had got, she and Pamela shared a look. ‘I suppose
I shall have to take my own advice,’ she said to Pamela. ‘Men!’ She
rolled her eyes in mock-exasperation.

‘All the same,’ Pamela told
her, ‘it worries
me
that
they’re
worried about something. I don’t know why, but I find that’s
worse than their
male
chauvinism
,’ she finished loudly, evoking a
laugh from Mrs. Dewhurst.

‘Shush, my dear, you mustn’t
let them know we’re on to them, or it will spoil all the fun! Come,
have a glass of wine or two with me. You’re too tensed up to sleep,
I can tell. Lord knows I could use a nightcap myself. I haven’t had
this much excitement since . . . since . . . oh, my, it has
been
far
too
long!’

They went to the downstairs sitting-room.
Pamela moved to get the wine but Mrs. Dewhurst headed her off.

‘Don’t you
dare
deprive me of the
pleasure of serving my future daughter-in-law!’ She took a long,
fond look at Pamela before pouring them both a very generous glass
of wine. ‘You’ve changed so much since you first came here,’ she
said when they were seated. ‘I never dared hope that you would one
day fulfill my wildest dream.’

‘What, that I would marry Theo?’ Pamela
asked, thinking she knew what Mrs. Dewhurst meant.

Smiling wryly, slowly shaking her head, her
eyes full of the knowledge of some unspoken mystery, Mrs. Dewhurst
said, ‘I didn’t plan that.’

‘What? But I thought . . . ?
Why
did
you bring
me here, then?’

‘If you must know . . . ’ Mrs. Dewhurst
stopped herself briefly, watching Pamela’s reaction very carefully,
as though she had waited a long time to make this admission, but
still wasn’t entirely sure about how or whether she should make
it.

Pamela swallowed, wondering what was
coming.

‘I
had
planned to adopt you,’ she said
into Pamela’s chagrined silence. ‘That was my original intent. It’s
a good thing I didn’t, or things would have ended up a real mess
all round.’

It had been weeks since
Pamela had had reason to cry, but she wept now as she never had
before, kneeling before Mrs. Dewhurst and burying her face in the
woman’s lap. ‘Oh, Pamela, my dear, sweet little girl,’ she said
quietly through her own tears, ‘I loved you from the first moment I
saw you, standing on the kerb like an abandoned little waif, afraid
to soil the upholstery of my car. I had been so lonely myself, and
I was long past daring to hope that anything could ever break up
the ice that sealed Theo’s heart from the rest of the world. For
years we had been living in this house like a pair of strangers-
believe it or not, Dewhurst Mansion was
not
a happy home; not until you came
along, with your innocence and your magic, and the half-starved
love in you that was so desperate to get out . . .’

So
that’s
what Theo had meant when Mrs.
Dewhurst had threatened to disown him. She had really
meant
it, and he very
probably really
had
hated the little usurper who threatened his complacency, if
not his inheritance.

‘Only a miracle,’ she thought to herself over
and over, ‘only a miracle could have brought the two of us
together.’

After composing herself and sharing some
wine, Pamela suddenly felt as though she could sleep after all. She
said her goodnights and went upstairs to join Tessa. When she got
to the bedroom door, she noticed that Tessa had gone to bed, that
the light was off. Opening the door as silently as possible,
shutting it and moving towards the bed, she got undressed in the
dark to avoid waking her friend. The air was cold and damp-
someone, probably Tessa, had left a window open. Outside, the sound
of the incessant downpour was very loud, like a dirge.

Pamela sighed to herself, feeling more
relaxed and content than ever. Oh, she would sleep well tonight!
Her mind was as tired as her body, and it still reeled as though
she were still dancing in Theo’s arms, and a hundred images of the
day’s activities flickered in the background of her thoughts, right
alongside myriad images of what was to come tomorrow.

Pamela crawled into bed, disturbing Tessa
only briefly. Her friend made a few sleep noises and was soon
silent once more. Pamela got comfortable, the hiss of the rain
causing her to begin that delicious, tired fall into blessed
sleep.

But for some reason sleep eluded her. She
felt as though she had forgotten something. But what? ‘To close the
window, silly,’ she told herself, too comfortable to get out of bed
and do anything about it. Once again she tried to plunge herself
into a deep, untroubled sleep.

She succeeded this time, but it wasn’t the
sort of sleep she was expecting. It felt as though she had wakened
during a dream to a room that felt the same as the one she was
already in. There was something unmistakable and familiar about the
dream, but it had never before been like this- never so real, so
immediate.

And then, she remembered. It was the dream
she used to have before she had ever come to Yorkshire, the dream
in which-

She awoke with a start, even as a brilliant
flash of lightning illuminated the terrifying figure standing
silhouetted in the doorway of the balcony, illuminated through the
curtains like a magic-lantern show. She gave an incoherent cry of
terror, pulling Tessa with her, away from the menace of the man she
had mistakenly assumed in her dream was Theo.

Muzzy-headed with sleep, Tessa began to come
to life in her arms. And as another brilliant flash illuminated the
black shadow that stepped through the curtain, the two girls
screamed and shrank away from the demon in man’s form named Albert
Askrigg.

-10-

Thrusting Tessa behind her, Pamela reached
back blindly with her hand until she found the light switch and
opened it. The sudden glare seemed to diminish Albert’s presence,
as though removal of the dark subdued part of the essential nature
of his being. Regardless, he still dwarfed the two girls in
stature. He held a long knife in his left hand and his mien was at
once every bit as unreasoning and malevolent as Pamela
remembered.

‘Go,’ Pamela hissed to Tessa, ‘get out of
here. It’s me he wants. Don’t argue with me! Just do it!’

There was an unnatural stillness in Albert’s
stance as he appraised Pamela speculatively and allowed her friend
to leave. There was no longer any sign of the slow-witted,
uneducated Albert whom everyone thought of as a simple but likable
lout. Everything about him was different, his dialect, his bearing,
the cold intent in his eyes . . . even the timbre of his voice.