The Uninvited Guests (22 page)

He had sunk as low as he could sink – or she had, and he had told of it. Not one of them in the room could look at the other. When Charlotte finally rose to her feet she was unobserved, as every head was bowed.

Her voice, answering him, was dull, and something in her tone laid to rest any doubts, any desperate hopes, her family might have had as to the veracity of his accusations. It was the voice of a woman who had seen all he had spoken of, and more; it was the voice of Charlotte Thompson of Bloomsbury, speaking with the graceless courage of the degraded.

‘No, Charlie, not usually,’ she said, and left them.

One by one they left the table. The room emptied. At every opening of the door, the singing grew louder. Snatches of cheerful ditties accompanied the diners from the sordid table. Mocked by the lively strains of ‘K-K-K-Katy’, they all withdrew: Ernest, with his arm around his sister; Florence to her wrecked and plundered kitchen; Clovis – who could not meet even his sister’s eye, let alone the others’ – to lay low in some hidden corner of the house.

At last, Emerald and Charlie Traversham-Beechers were the only two left.

He was unconcerned. He pushed through the scraps for morsels and sucked his fingers. Emerald regarded him steadily.

‘You shamed us all,’ she said.

‘You shamed yourselves,’ was his smiling answer.

That was true enough.

‘How did you know where to find us?’

‘I didn’t at first. But in my position a great many things are revealed.’

‘What
is
your position?’

He met her brave glance and despite herself she wavered; his pupils were black chips, inhuman, from which her fragile soul shrank. She stood up, afraid as she was to turn her back to him, and left the room.

5

ABANDON

Charlie Traversham-Beechers did not have long on this earth. To come upon Sterne so suddenly and violently, with the screeching, bloody crush of a locomotive engine slamming into a siding, had, of course, been no plan of his. In life, he had not known anything of the house at all, only that Charlotte had disappeared from London with Horace Torrington more than twenty years before, love and reform fluttering about her like confetti. He had seen her once or twice since. Those meetings were imprinted on his memory, as well as his greedy, vain efforts to prolong the association; he had once bundled her into a cab outside Whiteleys department store under threat of blackmail for an afternoon of bonbons and impish coercion. In his dank mind she was the light that might save him. The rest of his lonely, dissolute life he had missed her. Her portraits haunted his walls. Every drink he drank was to her, for her and in the hope of forgetting her.

Coincidence is a frail concept, no more satisfying an explanation of this world’s workings than the weightier Fate, but in some alchemic combination of desire and violence, a tiny fragile thread in the vast and complex universal weave was broken when Charlie Traversham-Beechers happened to lose his life in a train crash on the branch line near Whorley. Charlie’s proximity to Sterne and the intensity of his feelings for Charlotte – a significant material bond of which he was as yet unaware – as well as the abrupt manner of his death, left his own self dangling, temporarily. It was a circumstance, he had realised with the new found clarity of his position, in which he might remain amongst a crowd of other unfortunates, more or less corporeally, for some little time, and have vengeance upon his life-long love and hate, Charlotte Thompson. Having achieved this most comprehensively he was now left to himself. The guests and family scattered and Traversham-Beechers, the rat on the sinking ship, clung to the wreckage for a while, before seeping about the halls to see what new mischief he might get up to. He examined the house like a dog sniffing a gutter.

Forty or fifty bodies, even if –
particularly
if – they have been well fed and watered, will have needs beyond the capacity of a windowless study and a sparsely decorated morning room. The passengers were finding that the difficulty of reinhabiting flesh was its frequent flushing; efficient but foul. They were increasingly inconvenienced. There were two china pots, which had contained plants, that were put to low but necessary use, as well as the coal scuttle, now brimming.

Despite this squalor, their mood was jubilant. The songs that had begun in sated delight while the family were at their dinner grew louder and bawdier as they sloshed about their temporary home.

It does seem so naughty, oh my!

Men are so rough, they’ll splash me and duck me!

They sang and:

Come on, out, out!

And their spirits rose higher along with their songs and chants, until, at last, they burst out of their two despoiled and tiny rooms. Both doors banged violently against the walls as if snatched by a high wind.

It is hard to say which was more powerful, the stench flooding from the room to the hall, or the rush of fresh and pleasing air that caressed their poor collapsing faces. The surge of oxygen filled them with fresh vitality and their well-fed singing grew louder as they issued forth into the larger house.

The howling gale had subsided somewhat, but the rain had only thickened, driving onto the sodden ground.

It was into this rain that Patience Sutton stared from the window of her brother’s room, to which they had withdrawn, having left the humiliations of the dining room, to comfort one another. There was no sign at all of any of their hosts, only the rowdy rough songs and shouts, ringing now through every part of the house, circulating through the corners and cornices, along with the drumming of the downpour.

Come, come, come and make eyes at me
,

Down at the old Bull and Bush…

Ernest stood with his back against the door, as much for security as comfort, although he did not care to admit it. He observed his sister at the window.

‘This is desperate,’ she said.

‘Yes. It’s …’ he searched his heart as well as he could, ‘… profoundly shocking.’

Shocked though he was, by Traversham-Beechers’ unmasking of Mrs Swift, he did not think less of Emerald for her mother’s weakness, or even for the vicious mood that had infected the dinner table – all could be put down to the restless, anarchic workings of the night. But he found he could not dismiss the jibe of ‘odd’; it stuck like a fishhook in the flesh of his feelings.

‘Em didn’t mean what she said, Ernest,’ said Patience, reading his thoughts.

‘No matter. I am odd, I should think.’

‘You aren’t. Any more than I’m Insignificant.’ Patience rubbed her nose. ‘Oh look,’ she said, ‘there’s Mr Buchanan.’

He came to the window to see. Sure enough, John Buchanan was running through the rain on the drive below them towards his car, with his jacket over his head. As they watched, he wrenched the door open and flung himself inside. After an amount of rummaging, he backed out again with the starting handle and stumbled through the deluge to the front of the car. A number of vigorous cranks did not appear to start the engine. He ran back, hauled the door open and apparently fiddled about with the starter. Returning to the front of the car he cranked the handle once more.

‘I don’t think it’s working,’ said Patience.

‘I’ll go down,’ said Ernest. ‘But Patience, keep the door locked. I’ve an idea those passengers have somehow found a bottle or two of something. It sounds as if they’re – abroad.’

‘Abroad?’

‘They’re so loud.’

‘Yes, poor things. Don’t worry, I shall.’ And with that, he exited, not leaving until he heard her turning the key in the solid lock.

He went along the upper corridor of the house without seeing a soul, although a peculiar odour hung in the air – one that, mystifyingly, he associated with formaldehyde.

As he turned the corner of the main stairs he found a good number of the travellers standing about, and others walking quite resolutely towards him. Their expressions were differing but they shared a common look of dazed distraction on their slack faces. They didn’t notice him at first. Some were singing –

Her father killed rats and she sold sprats
,

All round, and over the water –

Others swayed along to the faltering rhythm, or busily stared about themselves at the paintings and doorways of Sterne, emitting murmurs.

Ernest was unsure whether to confront them. On catching sight of him, though, some swung to face him and one cried belligerently, ‘Here, mister! How long will it be?’

‘Will you put us up?’

Ernest kept his head down, muttering things about ‘you’d better speak to your hosts’, as he went by. It struck him that he must urgently detain John Buchanan; that his driving away now would leave them significantly worse off in the event of some sort of disturbance.

‘Excuse me; I’m so sorry,’ he said, as he hurried between them, guiltily noting their extreme pallor, and that many of them, contrary to his earlier observation, were limping.

Reaching the hall, he glanced back up at the dozen on the stairs, only to bump into another poor creature on the way to the front door. It was an old woman with one eye, who glared at him lopsidedly, demanding, ‘Where’s beds?’

‘Excuse me,’ Ernest said again, and fairly scampered out, hoping, locked door or no, that they wouldn’t go trying to get into any of the bedrooms.

The rain hit him like a bucket of river water. He ran in darkness, instantly drenched, towards the Rolls-Royce.

Reaching John, he shouted over the sound of the rain, already wet through.

‘John!’

John turned, both men battered by the downpour.

‘Blasted thing won’t start!’ He was very agitated indeed. ‘Here – get in!’

They took shelter in the vehicle.

‘I think you ought to come inside,’ began Ernest.

‘Damn it!’ exclaimed John over the loud pelting of rain on the roof. The car was leaking, too – water running down the gleaming maple in the dark.

‘You won’t get the lamps lit in this,’ Ernest said sensibly.

‘Damn it!’ cried John again. ‘I’ll not stay under that roof!’

Ernest could see John needed to get something off his chest, so he waited, fretting about the creatures in the house, with the water dripping down his face.

‘Whore! Harlot! Whore!’ said John furiously. Then, ‘Daughter of a whore! I’m damned if I’ll have anything to do with her – I’m damned – I—’ And he broke off, distressed.

‘Ah,’ said Ernest, ‘Emerald.’

‘She can’t imagine I’ll marry her now.’

‘The man is a cad and a villain.’

John ignored him.

‘I should have listened to my dad; he knew they weren’t right up here.’ In his outrage John had returned to the locution of his childhood.

‘Oh,’ said Ernest. ‘Please come inside. The passengers—’ But John was in no mood to listen.

‘Here! Pull the choke – like this! Help me!’ And with that, he jumped out again, and Ernest watched him furiously crank the obstinately unresponsive engine for some moments, before he got back into the car, steaming up the glass with the heat of his rage.

‘Did you pull the choke?’ he shouted accusingly.

‘No,’ said Ernest.

‘
What!
’ Ernest thought he might strike him.

‘It’s too dark. The spark plugs will be saturated. Let’s go in.’

‘
In!
’ shouted John.

‘Would you desert them?’

‘I’m not sleeping in that house.’ His voice was hard.

‘Then you shouldn’t have left your car out in the rain,’ said Ernest, becoming exasperated. ‘With all these people in the house, it would be a great deal better if we could all get along with one another.’

‘It’s none of my affair!’

‘John, be reasonable. The groom and his boy are still not back. There are ladies—’

‘Ha!’

‘There are
ladies
inside and … if something should happen—’

‘What might happen?’ John was, at last, paying attention.

‘We’re utterly outnumbered.’

‘I see. Come on then.’

And with that, they returned to the house.

Smudge had been very frightened indeed by the scene she had glimpsed in the dining room. She wished nothing more than to take the pony Lady back to the stables, but the rough songs of the passengers were loud enough to reach even her remote bedroom and she did not dare venture out.

She was extremely troubled, too, by the pony herself, whose restlessly scattered droppings had made Smudge’s room frankly unpleasant. Like the passengers, she was finding that using rooms in ways for which they were not intended resulted in discomfort, filth and smells. If she opened the window, the wild rain came in; if it was closed, the air was rank. She tried to distract herself with plaiting the pony’s mane and tail, and later, lying on the floor playing tiddlywinks, as the storm continued to rage outside, but she could not look forward to the rest of the night cooped up with anything other than dread.

In the hall, John and Ernest peeled off their dripping jackets. Ernest could no longer see the group on the stairs, and the one-eyed crone had disappeared but, oddly, the singing and talking were even louder than before, disembodied in the emptiness, and the smell of decay still hung in the air. Ernest wondered if perhaps one of their number had an unclean and suppurating wound, knowing such things to give off a stench, but this was more like the smell of many wounds.

John listened. He was a man with a workforce; he knew a mob when he heard it.

‘They seem in good spirits now,’ he said, ‘but I see what you mean. We could be in for a bit of a nasty jar.’