The Tryst (19 page)

‘There was a large shell-hole nearby, so I crawled in there so as to be safe from the sniper fire. My water was all gone and I had a raging thirst, so I was glad to see that a puddle of rainwater had formed at the bottom of the hole. I was about to drink when I noticed what I thought for a moment was my own reflection looking back at me. It was a corpse. He must have crawled into the hole for shelter the previous day and then drowned when the rain came on. I sat there all that day, alone in the shell-hole, staring at that dead man guarding the water that he didn’t need and I couldn’t drink, and listening to the shells exploding all around. I asked myself why he had died and I was still alive. There seemed to be no reason to it. Every time a shell went off, the water rippled, blurring his features. I expected to be blown to shreds every moment, or cut apart by shrapnel. But it didn’t happen, and when night fell I tried once more to make my way back to our lines. By then I was almost mad with thirst, and I must have gone badly astray, for the next morning I found myself lying out in the open less than fifty yards from the enemy trenches. I could hear them calling to each other in their foreign lingo. Once in a while they loosed off a few shots when they thought they saw movement. They’d shoot at the corpses too, just for fun. The dead had begun to swell up and change colour by now, and I was afraid that the enemy would know I was alive by that. To keep my mind steady, I concentrated on watching this scrap of khaki cloth I could see, snagged on the barbed wire. It must have been part of the uniform of one of our lads who’d made it that far. All day long I watched it flapping about in the wind like some bird caught in a snare and struggling to free itself. As soon as it grew dark I set off again. Luckily it was a clear night this time, and by keeping an eye on the stars I was able to keep moving towards our lines. At daybreak I saw figures moving nearby. I didn’t know if they were living creatures or ghosts, still less whether they were from our side, but I called out as loudly as I could and they came running. It was a British stretcher-party on the lookout for casualties from the previous day’s action.’

The old man picked up the brass-handled poker, opened the stove and stirred the coals for some time. Steve glanced surreptitiously at the clock, which showed ten to six.

‘Well, we’d better finish,’ the old man sighed at last. ‘There’s not much left to tell, though it’s the hardest part. The stretcher-bearers set me down among the other dead and wounded, and I was so exhausted that I fell asleep, lying there on the duckboards. That was nearly the end of me, for I woke with my face underwater and such a weight on my back that I thought for a moment I must drown like a rat in our own trenches. But somehow I managed to twist myself free. A pile of the dead had fallen on top of me, as though they resented me outliving them. Later on, when I was carried back through the trench system to the rear, I saw what became of the corpses, and then I understood why we’d been set to dig those great pits before the battle. The officers had told us that the enemy would all be dead and we could just stroll across to their lines. I realized now that that was just a story, or why dig mass graves in readiness? After that I was moved from one dressing station and casualty station to another. What kept me going, despite the pain of my wounds, was the thought that now I’d be sent back home to England, having done my duty. But I was wrong. It seemed that I’d got off too lightly. To get a ticket home you needed to be more badly hurt. As soon as I was up and about again, I received orders to rejoin my unit, or rather a unit with the same name and number, for the one I’d served with had been wiped out almost to a man. The new troops were all fresh recruits who avoided me as though I had some disease. They knew well enough what had happened to us, although the officers tried to keep it secret. Twenty thousand men killed in a single day, and twice that number left mangled for life. We’d gone innocent to the slaughter, but these men knew what awaited them. I was a living reminder of that, and they wanted nothing to do with me. At that particular moment there was a lull in the fighting, so I had a lot of time to myself. My thoughts turned increasingly to home. How safe and tranquil it all seemed! I thought for the first time that I’d been happy there. I often used to think about the night I’d watched from the roof of the Hall, moving through the moonlit landscape in my thoughts. I realized that I’d been seeing it all for the last time, and that was why I’d felt so sad, because it was a leave-taking. That led me on to think about Maurice’s death, and the story Aubrey Deville had told about this. And suddenly, in a flash, I saw the truth!’

He glared fiercely, challengingly, at the boy.

‘Now then, you’re very clever, but I wonder if you’re clever enough to guess what the clue was that everyone had missed all along until I stumbled on it? A clue so blatant and obvious it was staring us all in the face all the time and yet we ignored it? Can you, eh?’

Steve shook his head. He hadn’t been expecting this. The old man grinned from ear to ear with satisfaction.

‘His name!’ he crowed. ‘Aubrey Deville.
Deville!
Take away the last two letters and what does it spell?’

The clock whirred like a slow-flying insect and struck six times.

‘D,E,V,I,L!’ the old man shouted. ‘It was
he
who lured Maurice Jeffries to his death that night, by means of black magic! And when he followed him to the trysting-house, it was not to try and save Maurice from his fate. On the contrary, he went to gloat over his creature’s act of self-destruction! Don’t you see!’

Steve nodded without conviction. It sounded like the old man had been watching that video where women are walking down a street at night and these two yellow eyes glow at them out of the darkness and they burst into flame, all their clothes burning off first so you can get a good look before the skin starts crisping up. ‘Pass the ketchup, darling!’ Dave had yelled gleefully. And in the end it was this man they knew, only he was really the devil, and the women had it coming to them because they were nothing but slags. Steve wondered where the old man kept his video player and TV. Upstairs, perhaps. There might be all sorts of things hidden upstairs.

‘About a week later,’ Matthews went on, ‘I was on lookout duty when I saw a figure walking towards me along the trench. I was surprised at this, for in that direction the trench ran out into no-man’s-land and had been abandoned. The man didn’t respond to my challenge, so I unhooded my lantern and shone it in his face. To my horror, I saw that it was none other than Deville himself, who I’d supposed was dead. He did not speak or return my salute, but simply walked past me along the trench without a glance. As soon as our watch was relieved, I told the others what had happened. The man who held the position next to mine gave me a curious look. “You must be mistaken,” he said. “No one passed by me.” The sergeant got to hear about this, and next day I was called to the lieutenant’s quarters. “I have had inquiries made,” he told me. “Lieutenant Aubrey Deville of the 8th Lincolns was killed in action over a month ago, the same day that you received your wound.” He went on to caution me strongly against saying anything else that might disturb the other men or I would find myself in serious trouble. That was all very well, but two nights later the figure appeared again. At first I could make out nothing but the bulk of it, darker than the night itself, it seemed. When I shone my lantern on it and saw who it was, I guessed that Deville had come back to haunt me and lure me to my death as he had poor Maurice. I fired a shot into the air to raise the alarm, but when the others came running the figure had vanished and my story was coldly received. The next morning I was sent to see the medical officer. He said I was suffering from shell-shock and should be excused lookout duty, but the lieutenant was having none of that. “Every man under my command has to pull his weight,” says he. “I’ve no time for malingering.” That was the cruellest cut of all! No one believed me, just as no one had believed Maurice Jeffries. They all thought I was pretending to have gone off my head so as to get sent home. After that all was quiet again for several nights. This is the way he likes to strike, coming on you when you least expect it. Then one day news came that a fresh attack was being planned for the following morning. We spent the night in the front-line trenches. About three in the morning Deville appeared again. He came straight at me this time, those eyes of his looking through me and an evil grin on his lips. I seized my rifle and warned him off, and when he took no notice I fired. As ill luck would have it, the shot struck one of the other men in the trench. He wasn’t badly hurt, but not even the lieutenant wanted me around after that, of course. I was packed off back to England, where they shut me up in a hospital for mental cases in a big house in the country. It was not so very different from the Hall, and the remarkable thing was that from the moment I entered that place Deville never troubled me again. Not that it was a holiday in other respects! They treated us cruelly, burning us with electric current and cigarettes. It was like medicine, they said, to shock us out of our shock, but I reckoned it was a test, to see who wanted bad enough to stay. Well, I did, for I knew I was safe from Deville as long as I stayed there.

‘At long last the fighting stopped. Shortly afterwards, my mother was carried off by the influenza that came along to sweep up the war’s leavings. I was let out of hospital to attend the funeral, and I had half a mind to slip away afterwards. But just as they were lowering the coffin into the ground, I looked up and there he stood, as plain as anything, on the other side of that awful pit, grinning at me. I pointed him out to the others, calling him a murderer to his face. But of course they thought I was having one of my fits again, and packed me off back to the hospital. I went gladly enough, for my dreams of freedom had all turned sour. I knew that I would never be safe from him anywhere but in the hospital. Remember that, lad, if ever you have need. Get into hospital, whatever it costs you, for there and only there will you be safe from him. I would still be there myself if they hadn’t put me out in the end. There was another war coming by then, and they needed the space I dare say. Luckily for me, I had a place to go. When my mother left service, she had gone to live with her maiden sister in this very house, and when the sister died in her turn she willed me the house and everything in it, having no family herself. I’ve lived here ever since, never seeing anyone nor hardly setting foot outside the door. For if ever I do step out, he’s sure to be lying in wait for me.’

A silence fell. The old man looked at the boy and shrugged. He looked dull and diminished. Steve stood up, taking his orange sling.

‘I got to be going.’

‘Will you come again, now you know the danger?’ Matthews asked him anxiously.

‘What you mean?’

‘Why, you’ve seen him yourself! You said you saw him watching the house, following you home. If he knows you’re helping me then he’ll try and destroy you too.’

Steve shook his head awkwardly.

‘It isn’t the same person.’

Matthews snorted indignantly.

‘How do you know?’

‘All those blokes, they were older than you, right? The one I seen is only about twenty, twenty-five.’

The old man stared at the boy in silence.

‘Why, you don’t think he’s
alive
, do you?’ he exclaimed.

11

Steve walked home slowly, pushing against a strengthening wind which was breaking up the cloud cover. Well, he would have told it differently, that was all he could say. He’d have had hidden treasure, a big chest stuffed with gold and jewels which the old man had taken from the place in the country after the brothers got killed and kept in a room somewhere at the top of the house, where no one ever went. Hazchem would have been the son of Maurice and the woman on the lawn, so the treasure belonged to him, or at least he reckoned it did, which was why he kept watching Matthews’s house. That sounded much more likely than all the stuff about ghosts and devils. The boy’s doubts about Ernest Matthews had been proved too right. Houses under the sea and rich people living in cemeteries had turned out to be the least of it, in the end. Matthews’s fear itself was fake. The danger and mystery which had haunted these streets for weeks, lending drama to Steve’s life, stood revealed as nothing more than the pathetic delusions of an old man who’d lost his mind somewhere along the way.

Even decorating a garage door and a pillar-box with EAT SHIT DIE BOX didn’t help. It wasn’t until Steve reached Trenchant Road that he forgot all about his disappointment and the old man. It was at once obvious that something out of the ordinary had happened: the corrugated iron fence that surrounded the house had been torn down and the garden churned into a slurry of mud in the midst of which lay piles of wooden hoarding and bundles of barbed wire. At the side of the house nearest the corner stood a large skip covered with a tarpaulin, and a yellow bulldozer. There was no one about. Whoever had done all this had gone away again, for the moment. The boy walked round the corner, then doubled back across the end of the ruined wilderness, thankful that it was starting to get dark by now. He paused in a patch of undergrowth which the bulldozer had missed, crouching down and sniffing the dense rank odour of the nettles, listening intently. All was quiet. He scurried over the open ground, skidding on the slippery gashes of bare clay, to the back door. He wriggled past the plywood screen, inside the house.