The Observations (31 page)

There you go. Railways all over the place so there were and Nora could have met her fate on any one of them. I have to admit to being a little relieved. I was just about to lift the map and put it back on the wall when something made me glance up. Perhaps I had sensed or heard movement outside, I don’t know. But there at the study window, though horribly distorted by condensation and darkness, was the unmistakable shape of a face, close to the glass and staring straight in at me.

All this happened in seconds. I do believe I screamed and jumped to my feet, in the process knocking over a candle, which was instantly snuffed out. My first impulse was to hide from view. How I negotiated the desk I can’t remember, I may well have vaulted it since I all but fell from the room. Once I was stood in the hall I felt a little more safe because out there the only window glass was etched and impossible to see through. In the darkness, I fumbled my way to the front door. Both bolts were still fastened and I knew the kitchen door was also secure for I was after bolting it behind me when I came in. I retreated a few paces and stood there, trembling and panting, every fibre of my being alert.

At first I could hear nothing. The lamp in the study spilled a faint glimmer into the hallway and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I peered around for a potential weapon but all I could make out was an old gamp in the umbrella stand. Then I remembered Noras knife in my pocket. I had been carrying it around with me ever since I’d found it in her box.

I took it out, unfolded the blade and extended it in front of me, my ears, eyes and mind alike strained by dread. After a moment, I detected the crunch of gravel, someone was approaching from around the side of the house. They reached the portico and climbed the steps. Then silence fell. I waited for something to happen, for the handle to turn or for hammering blows to ring out. Instead, a pair of glinting eyes appeared in the postage slit. Someone was staring directly at me! I shrank back into the shadows. And then the intruder spoke my name.

“Bessy? Fwhere are you? Bessy! Hit’s me.”

Jesus Murphy, Hector! I could have knocked the bark off him. Given how alarmed I was you will forgive me that I neglected my manners and discharged in the direction of the posting slit an explosion of oaths like so much cannon fire, I’ll skip the worst and come to my closing remarks. “You scut what the flip are you doing staring in at the flipping windows!”

“Now chust a minute!” says Hector from the other side of the door, he sounded most offended. “I fwhas not staring hin, not a tall, not a tall.”

I tellt him I doubted his word and mentioned an impolite act in which I suggested he’d been engaged whilst looking through the window. Hector protested this allegation most hotly. Something about We careful way he pronounced his words made me realise that he was in his altitudes. I invited him to depart without delay.

Listen now,“ he says. ”I seen the light on hin the rhoom and I looked in—I did—but I swear I was chust habout to tap on the glass fwhen you saw me and then you chumped up and started screaming like a lunatic. I honly came to see hif you fwhanted to come and haf a dance with me? Fwhee are haffing a ceilidh.“

Shaken though I was I had little desire to present myself at the bothies with Hector for I could not bear the thought that Muriel and the rest would think he and I were courting or anything like it and I suspected that Hector would do all he could to convey that very impression, false though it was.

“Hy am a ferry good dancer,” he says and as further enticement he averted his face from the door and belched.

“That’s kind of you for inviting me,” I says. “But no thank you.”

“Ach, go on! Don’t fwhorry. None of us fwhill feel you up or nothing.”

I tellt him he was a smooth talker and that he knew how to tempt a girl but that I was too tired for dancing. Then I crouched down beside the posting slit.

“Listen d’you remember a girl used to work here, Nora was her name?”

His face appeared in the slot, the drink had filled him up it was brimming out his eyes, they were silvered like mercury. The fumes would have knocked you down.

He says, in a low voice, “Fwhill you be fwhanting me to come in for company?”

“No!” I says. That put his wick at a peep. Without reply, he stood up abruptly and stumbled away down the steps. I peered after him. “Wait!” I shouted and he turned round, swaying. “Which line was it Nora died on?” I asked him.

He pointed vaguely over the roof of the house. “The fwun hup there.”

“Past the top field?”

“That’s de fwun,” he says.

“Oh,” I says, deflated. “Well—was she deaf or blind or something?

“Fwhat?” he says. “No! There fwas nothing wrong fwith her.”

“So what happened to her then?”

Hector shrugged. “She used to be doing your chob. Then one night she fwalked in front hof a train.” He paused, then—“Fwhoosh!” he went, smashing his hands thegether and rubbing them against each other until Nora was just smithereens that he shook from his fingertips. “Now, hif you fwhill forgif me I haf lost good drinking time.” He made a low bow. “Farewell Scary-bunnet,” he says.

Then he staggered away across the gravel and was gone.

I got to my feet and wandered across the hall in a dwam. Well then fair enough she
had
died on that line. But that didn’t mean to say it was the fault of missus for having sent her on a walk. The stupid girl could have stepped in front of a train at any time. In fact, hadn’t Hector said it happened “one night‘? And now I thought about it, according to missus had it not happened after a hooley? If that was the case (which surely it was since missus was no liar) then it certainly followed that Nora was not engaged in any experiment at the time of her death and that missus had nought to do with it.

Besides. It suddenly occurred to me (of course!) that Nora must have returned from the walk experiment alive—otherwise how would she have wrote in her journal and then later cut out the pages? It did cross my mind that perhaps it wasn’t Nora herself had done so but I dismissed this notion almost as soon as I’d thought of it for as far as I could see there was no earthly reason why anyone else would deface her journal.

But what was it Nora had wrote that she wanted to hide? I would have loved to find that out so I would, especially if it showed her in a bad light.

I wandered awhile from room to room and then went upstairs, wishing that the shadows thrown by my lamp did not jerk and shudder so. It was like an icehouse in missus chamber because after airing the room I had forgot to close the window. I pulled it shut then noticed that the
The Observations
still lay on the floor where I had thrown them.

A thought occurred. And the thought was this. That I hadn’t checked on what missus had wrote about
me
of late. I opened the book just to take a peek and was sore disappointed to see that she had added not a single word about me since her husbands return. The entries ended with her remarks about withdrawing her affections, as had upset me before. I flicked through the rest and found nothing but blank pages. That is, until the very last leaf where the following phrases appeared scrawled in large and jagged letters.

IT IS HER

I KNOW IT IS HER

SHE HAS COME BACK

MAY GOD FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I HAVE DONE

At first glance I just about died, it looked as though the words were wrote in blood. But on closer inspection I came to the conclusion that missus had used a brown ink instead of her usual violet (at least I hoped that was the case). Even so, the hairs at the back of my neck were up on their hind legs. Jesus Murphy! It seemed certain that missus had wrote this about Nora at some point (though when exactly she had done so was impossible to tell).

Here she was again, begging forgiveness. The more I thought about it the more it seemed likely that she was under the same misapprehension that had (briefly) bothered me, in other words she thought that Nora had died whilst carrying out her instructions. Would that not explain why she blamed herself and felt so guilty? And why in the graveyard she’d sounded as though she were trying to convince herself (as well as me) that Noras death was an accident?

If only I could persuade her otherwise. Poor dear missus! She was such an angel.

I shoved the book back in the desk just the way I had found it, open at the page about Nora. Of a sudden I realised I was banjaxed. It would do no harm, I thought, just to have a little lie down on the bed. I whipped off the coat and bonnet and laid them on a chair. Then I slid off my boots and climbed between the sheets. It was not done out of disrespect, I just wanted to warm up a little and to rest. The lamp was shining in my eyes and so I extinguished the flame.

I only meant to lie there for a minute before going to my own room but I must have fell asleep for next thing I knew it was some time later and I was waking up (or at least I
thought
I was waking up), convinced that somebody was standing over me. My head was filled with a strange buzzing sensation and my teeth felt like they were vibrating in my skull. I had not yet opened my eyes, nonetheless I knew that somebody was there, standing right beside the bed. And even without looking I knew that the person was my mother. I could picture her, she was stood there with a lantern in her hand, glaring down at me with a great leer on her face and I knew that she had come to get me and kill me.

And then all at once it came to me—of course, it was only a dream! What a relief! In order to make my mother go away all I had to do was to wake myself up and look directly at her and then she would disappear.

And so that is what I did (at least, that is what I
thought
I did). I convinced myself that I woke up and turned to face her. But when I opened my eyes, standing over me was not my mother at all but a girl, a girl I had never seen before, and yet I knew her instantly to be Nora. She was dressed in nightclothes, her hair loose about her shoulders. It was
she
that held the lantern, and
she
that leered straight down at me. I got such a fright I am surprised my heart did not leap out my chest. The most striking thing about her was her eyes, her wild staring eyes. She was insane, you could tell by just looking at her. And although I believed myself to be awake,
I could not make her disappear.
I stared at her and kept on staring but she just glared back at me with this dreadful look on her face. I was convinced that she wanted to murder me and that if what she held in her hand had been a knife instead of a lantern she would have plunged it straight into my heart.

Fear pinned me to the mattress. I don’t know how long I lay there in a cold sweat. Perhaps it was minutes, perhaps only seconds. What I do know is that, eventually, after what seemed like the course of ages, I was able to move my hand and drag the bedclothes up over my head.

Nora did not seem to notice, she simply kept staring down at me as before. I managed to pull the covers all the way over my head without attracting her attention. Strange to say, but this felt like it would protect me from the Spectre at the bedside. For I quite believed she was a Spectre. She was there and not there. She saw me and yet she didn’t see me. She and I were in the same place and yet I had the sense that somehow we were separated by time. I was there now, but she was there in the past.

And if that was the case who was it she thought was lying beneath her in the bed? Was it me she was looking at with that murderous intent on her phiz? Or was it missus?

PART FOUR

15

An Apparition

Eventually it felt like I fell into a stupor and I awoke some time later only to realise that it was morning. With great trepidation I poked my head out from beneath the covers. The room was empty. I slid out the bed and got down on my knees to examine the spot where Nora had stood. Not a mark not a speck, just the fibres of the rug smooth and undisturbed almost as though they had never been walked upon. Nothing to suggest that anyone had been there though as far as I knew ghosts left no trace. But was it a ghost or was it a dream? I hadn’t a baldy.

As the day proceeded and I went about my work, I tried to forget about what had happened but the house felt desperate spooky to me and so in the afternoon I went outside to clear up the vegetable garden. As I worked, pulling weeds and raking leaves, I kept on picturing Nora, looming over the missus bed. To kill her? But why would she want revenge on missus? What had missus done to her? Once again the railway line came to mind. I imagined missus, sneaking up behind Nora, her hands outstretched, ready to push—but no. It was all daft. I did not, could not believe that missus would harm Nora. About 3 o’clock I decided to go in for a cup of tea to warm me up. Due to lack of sleep I was in a bit of a dwam so I was, barely aware of putting one foot in front of the other. I could have passed bodily through the back door for all the notice I took of it as I lifted the latch and stepped inside. It was only when I entered the kitchen itself that I was brought sharply to my senses by the unexpected sight of a figure in the room.

A woman in a dark cloak rushing towards me. Jesus Murphy my heart all but stopped. But it was only missus. Missus! Back a day early. She grabbed my hand, apparently too excited to notice my shock at seeing her. Her eyes were shining.

“Come and see!” she says, and began to drag me towards the table.

I tried to remember whether I had locked the drawer of her desk and put everything back in place. Was her bed made? And what had I done with the blasted key? And why were they back early? Meanwhile missus had opened a box that sat on the table and took out a number of cards in shades of black and grey.

“Look Bessy look!” she says. “What do you think?”

She laid out several likenesses of her and master James. One photograph showed them stood in front of a rustic backcloth of trees with a potted fern at their feet, which gave the impression that they had paused for a moment in a woodland glade. Master James rested his elbow on a fence and stared into the distance while missus, in a strange and unnatural pose, had placed both hands on his shoulder as though she needed to lean on him for support. There was a small dog in the foreground propped up on his back legs all frisky like he was leaping. But if you looked closely you could see that the poor bucker was stuffed and mounted on a pole. On another card master James sat in a chair with his hat on, one big boot outstretched, a great long whip dangling between his legs. Then there was a picture of missus stood alone at a table, which bore a vase of flowers. She held a straw bonnet in her hand and it was all so artfully done you could have sworn that it was summer and that she had just wandered in from the garden.