The Diary Of Pamela D. (22 page)

There was a brief instant as they both went
over the railing when they seemed to hang suspended in midair for
an eternity, as though time itself had become a paradoxical
membrane that was stretched to the limit, of frantic motion and
long, ponderous seconds that seemed to last centuries-

And then . . . she was staring up at the
evening sky as though aware for the first time how beautiful it
really was . . . the rain appeared as a million glittering motes of
light that fell to earth like tears shed by an anguished and
bereaved God over His ruined and belovèd Creation . . .

Her reverie was broken by a babel of voices,
the approach of running feet, and suddenly her vision was filled
with Theo’s aghast features.

‘Oh
God
! She’s still alive! Someone call
999! Pamela? Look at me. No, Pamela, don’t do this!’

As though looking straight through him, she
could see a bright light. It was as if everything around her was
losing substance, as though the light itself were in truth the only
thing that was real. She began to feel herself rising towards
it-

‘I’ve called one. There’s an ambulance on
it’s way, Theo . . . oh, God! No! Don’t try to move her-’

‘Pamela, listen to me.
Listen to me, please! Look at me! I can’t lose you now. Oh, dear
God, you
can’t
die!’

Pamela saw Theo’s tears as though they were
echoes of falling stars, reflecting the piercing rays of light that
emanated from the unbearably bright object before her.

‘I love you. Do you hear me?
We’re going to get you to a hospital, and they’re going to fix you
up, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together . . .
please . . . Oh, God, No! . . . I’m begging you . . . don’t do
this!
NO
!’

The last thing she was aware of as the light
took her was echoes of that cry that felt as though it were torn
from Theo’s very soul, a cry as lorn and bereaved as a lone kestrel
on the open sea.

epilogue

‘
What happened then, gran?’ The
fifteen-year-old girl was laying on the rug in front of the fire,
her eyes wide. ‘She didn’t actually die, did she?’

Her grandmother stopped rocking in her chair
a moment and gave the girl a humorously disparaging look over her
glasses. ‘If my grandmother had died, then a long line of Dewhurst
women, including yourself, would never have been born, and you
wouldn’t be here to listen to this tale, nor I to tell it.’

‘So what
did
happen?’

‘If I am to be allowed to continue without
any further interruption, then perhaps I’ll tell you.

‘Now, then, where were we? Oh, yes, Pamela
has fallen off the balcony. Well, everyone thought she was going to
die, and she was rushed to hospital. Everyone went. In fact, they
left in such a hurry that the doors either were left standing open
or unlocked. But nobody cared about that. All they cared about was
whether poor Pamela was going to make it or not.

‘There were tears aplenty, let me tell you,
and prayers from lips that hadn’t prayed in years, and from people
who really didn’t believe in such things, but prayed all the same
because there was nothing else they could have done.

‘The news wasn’t good, of course. The doctors
didn’t hold out any hope, and told them she wouldn’t last till
morning. But by daybreak she was still clinging to life, and all
her friends gathered together and kept vigil.

‘Theo was a gaunt wreck, let me tell you. He
was a strong man in every sense, stronger than most. But he stayed
by Pamela’s side every minute of every day, eschewing sleep and
food, believing that his will alone was all that was keeping her
alive from one moment to the next. He believed that if he faltered
even once that she would quietly slip away.

‘Even then, the doctors told him that she was
clinically dead, that it was only a matter of time before her heart
finally stopped beating of its own accord, like an old clock that
winds down for the very last time until it finally stops, for
ever.

‘But Pamela’s life was a succession of minor
miracles, and against all odds, she began to rally. After three
days, the doctors finally got it through their heads that she
wasn’t going down without a good fight. And fight she did. Her back
and neck were broken. They mended. She suffered massive internal
injuries. But the bleeding slowed to a trickle, and then stopped
altogether. And the swelling of her brain finally eased off, and
she was not left a vegetable, as they believed she already was.
They thought at the least that she was going to be paralysed. But
she wasn’t.

‘She and Theo were married the following
year, of course. Her best friend Tessa had married Thomas eleven
months before because Pamela was in hospital for such a long time.
And within a few years Dewhurst Manor was once again full of life
and children and hope.’

‘But whatever happened to Albert Askrigg?’
her granddaughter said. ‘Nobody ever talks about what became of
him.’

‘No? Well, that doesn’t surprise me. He was a
very evil man who did unspeakable things, the sort of things nice
people don’t talk about and prefer to forget.

‘But since you asked me, I’ll tell you what
little there is to know.

‘Albert Askrigg fell off the balcony even as
Pamela did. But when everyone went outside, he was gone. He had got
up and run off-’

‘
What
? Anybody who fell that far and
landed on the cobbles should have died, or at least have been
seriously injured like great-great grandma!’

‘Oh, he was injured all right,’ her
grandmother said. ‘We know that because he was seen limping towards
the moor, leaving a trail of blood all the way, one arm twisted at
a macabre angle. The police were hot on his trail soon after, and
not just with a few constables crashing through the woods, but with
the help of more than five-hundred volunteers, all of whom were
keen on getting their hands on Mr. Albert Askrigg.

‘But they never found hide nor hair of him.
Whether he crawled into some secret hiding-place and died, whether
he managed to get away and flee to foreign parts, or whether the
moor itself swallowed him up . . . we will never know, I’m
afraid.

‘But Pamela, my grandmother
. . . ’ The old lady chuckled to herself. ‘A good many people
thought she had gone a bit dotty where Albert Askrigg was
concerned. She believed, with all her heart and soul to her dying
day, that Albert Askrigg was some kind of demon that had sprung up
out of the moor, that he
was
the moor, in a sense. She believed, too, that Theo
himself was a similar spirit.’

She sighed, sadly. ‘After granddad Theo died,
she used to take me out to the moor near Haworth, and say, “This is
where your grandfather truly lies. And here, too, lies Albert
Askrigg, two aspects of the wild moor, forever at odds with each
other, yet forever in balance. Oh, it may not seem that way in the
middle of winter, when the moor becomes an empty, bleak,
inhospitable and dangerous gallows-feld, or in the middle of summer
when it is full of life, beauty and colour. But the two taken as a
whole are both as necessary to life as sun, water and air.”

‘Of course, I well knew that my grandfather
was no ghost or spirit, for I had known him all my life until he
died as a very old man. It was, I suppose, grandmother’s way of
dealing with the trauma she suffered at Albert Askrigg’s hands.
However . . . believe what you will. No one has ever answered the
question of how Albert Askrigg knew what was going on in this
house. As Pamela was to find out for herself, once she’d fully
recovered, there are no secret passageways or rooms or anything
else in this old house, and never have been.’

The old lady took a long look around the
sitting-room and sighed once more. ‘I well remember my grandmother
and grandfather sitting in this very room, reminiscing about days
gone by and the full and happy life they’d had together.

‘But these things go in
cycles, as they say. Their children, my parents, almost managed to
squander the entire Dewhurst fortune.
They
hadn’t had to work for it, and
they became a spoiled leisure-class, who thought life consisted of
spending money, and frivolous entertainment. There was almost
nothing left of the family fortune by the time I came into the
picture. But my grandmother was a shrewd woman, and took me under
her wing. And by the time I was nineteen, like her, two generations
before me, I was practically running the show.

‘Then, I grew up and got married, and along
came another generation of spoiled leisure-class kids; your
parents, not to put too fine a point on it. Just like my parents,
they gave you a hard world to grow up in, what with their divorce
and fighting over you kids and sending you away to those dreadful
boarding schools. I have a very good idea how unhappy you were, and
what happened there. It’s a good thing for all of us that your
parents will be left with nothing more than an allowance.

‘But now, my dear, it’s all up to you to save
the Dewhurst legacy one more.’ She smiled, a wise, thoughtful
smile, full of memory.

‘In fact, I want you to have something. It
has been in my possession for many years, now, and I think it’s
about time it finally changed hands.’

She handed the girl the diary she had been
reading from, a small book bound in red leather that was at once
very much worn and carefully preserved.

Awed, the girl took it. ‘Gran, I can’t accept
this from you! Not ever! I’m never going to be the sort of person
who can take on that kind of responsibility. Besides, this book has
always been your greatest treasure.’

Her grandmother’s knowing
smile put the lie to her uncertainty, and caused her to feel the
first stirrings of the woman she knew she would one day become.
‘You
can
take it,
my dear. You will and you must, for you
are
the sort of person who can take on
that sort of responsibility. Us Dewhurst women have been doing so
for generations. Besides, let’s face facts, my girl, I’m not going
to be around for very much longer.

‘But not to worry about that just yet. No,
the Dewhurst legacy will last just as long as we can keep producing
women like Pamela. My grandmother is still here somewhere, you know
. . . in this little book and in your spirit and in mine.

‘It’s true, this little book
has meant a lot to me over the years. But
you’re
my greatest treasure; you
always have been. And as for what the future may bring . .
.

‘You’re young yet, child. You have all the
time in the world.’

Here ends The Diary of Pamela D.