The Vanishment (2 page)

I busied myself downstairs, seeing to the kitchen, putting supplies away in cupboards, fixing a simple meal from the canned food we had brought to see us through the first days. Sarah was upstairs in the large bedroom, the one we had named our own. It had an attached bathroom and a spacious double bed whose sheets had indeed turned out to be more than a little damp. We wondered when someone had last slept there. The other bedrooms were silent and empty, each with its bed and wardrobe and chest of drawers.

Sarah came down just as I was ready to spoon out our supper. She seemed withdrawn, pensive.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Don't you like it? I agree it's a bit bleak, but I'm sure it will seem a lot friendlier in the morning when the sun's shining and we've got it properly warmed up."

She looked at me almost despondently, I thought. I noticed that she had not moved from the kitchen doorway. She seemed not to have heard me.

"I don't like it here," she said. "There's a bad feeling. Something feels wrong. As though something happened here. Something bad."

I stared at her. Sarah was not given to flights of the imagination; that was my province.

"Nonsense," I said. I felt a bit annoyed, that a shadow had come over everything so quickly. 'You can't mean that."

"I do," she said. 'That's what I do mean." She was keeping her voice low, as though afraid someone might overhear.

"Come and have your supper," I urged, wanting her to stop. I had felt a shiver run down my own spine. But she remained where she was, my wife, in that old kitchen doorway.

'You haven't listened," she said. 'I can feel it. I felt it upstairs just now. There's something terrible here. In this house."

I took her out to the garden. The storm had passed away completely now, and the sky had filled with stars. Such clarity. A large moon had appeared midway to the horizon. We walked down to the cliff edge. I brought the thick rug from the backseat of the car and laid it down on grass made silver by the moonlight.

We sat together, facing the sea. Now that she was outside, Sarah seemed to relax. I said nothing about her unexpected fear. She had been under a lot of strain during the past year, and I had almost expected something like this. We can get by from day to day when work forces us to keep things bottled up. But once the lid is unscrewed a little, all those pent-up feelings start coming to the surface. It had happened on holiday before.

"Thank you," she said after a while.

"What for?"

"For bringing me here. It's so peaceful."

"You're feeling better?"

"Yes, better already."

She leaned against me.

"It's so warm," she said. "Like being in Spain or Italy."

"There are palm trees not far from here," I told her. "Let's skip work tomorrow. We'll drive down to the Roseland Peninsula and pretend we're in Italy."

Straightening, she removed her sweater in a single motion.

"We can do anything we like here," she said. "Anything at all."

"What if somebody's watching?" I laughed.

"Who could be watching?"

"I don't know. There might be a poacher in the woods. Or a fishing boat down there somewhere. With fishermen."

"With binoculars!'

She laughed out loud, the first real laughter I had heard from her in a long time.

"Why don't we give the buggers something to look at, then?' I leaned across and removed her bra. Moments later we were in each other's arms, kissing with a passion I had almost forgotten was possible. As though here, in this darkness above the sea, all inhibitions had been lost. Her body was silver and soft and delightfully warm. The smell of crushed grass mingled with her perfume and the scent of the sea intoxicating me.

We fell asleep afterward, naked in the warm air. Much later, waking, we were cold, but it was enough to put on our clothes again. The moon set and the tide moved in and out again. Somewhere in the woods, a night bird called. We slept again, like children out of school. When we woke, we were surrounded by sunlight, on a high cliff above a blue sea that seemed to have no end.

I went back to the house to get breakfast. We ate outside, throwing pieces of bread to the sea gulls that came dashing in to the shore. I could not remember when I had last seen Sarah so happy.

It was a long drive to the Roseland Peninsula, but my impulse to take Sarah there had been right. Crossing the River Fal on the St. Harry ferry, she got out of the car and stood at the front, watching mesmerized as the high green bank came drifting toward us. The morning's happiness was still on her, and I began to think the change would prove permanent at last.

The peninsula is a slice of paradise pinched between the Carrick Roads and the wider waters of the English Channel. It is an enclosed world of high woodlands, sheltered creeks, and sleepy villages. At its heart lies St. Just-in-Roseland, a thirteenth- and fifteenth-century church set in the most beautiful of churchyards above a quiet tidal inlet. It was there I drove the moment we left the ferry.

For the next three hours we walked hand in hand among graves and flowers, shaded by tall, semitropical trees, along paths dappled with ferns. Set down in the middle of such lush vegetation, the little stone church looked out of place, a very English building in what seemed a foreign field. But the names on the lichen-covered graves and the inscriptions on the little stones that flanked the paths could not have been more English.

We sat beneath a tall Lebanon cedar, watching the sun shift on the deep water of the creek. I had brought sandwiches and coffee for lunch. Sometimes the voices of other visitors would drift across to us, then the silence would close in again. A chaffinch flew past and landed softly on the branch of a tall myrtle. There were birds everywhere. The air was full of birdsong and the buzzing of bees. Butterflies danced in pools of sunlight.

"How wonderful if I could be buried here/ whispered Sarah. She was leaning back against my chest with her eyes closed. I ran a slow finger back and forth across her lips. 'So much nicer than . ..' She shivered. "Well, wherever it is I'll wind up."

"I thought you were going to be cremated. And put in the jar with Brian." Brian had been our cat. He had died two years before and Sarah had kept his ashes in a biscuit tin on the mantelpiece. She said we were all to be mingled one day and sprinkled on Hampstead Heath.

"Well, we could be sprinkled here, I suppose."

"I'm not sure they'd take very kindly to having a cat on their roses."

"They needn't know."

"A heathen, then. You might contaminate the place."

"It was just a thought. I almost envy them all." She glanced up the hill at the old graves. "Being part of this. Sleeping here."

There was nothing morbid in her tone. Just a subdued awe to find that death could be turned into such a gentle thing. I knew what she was thinking, though. She was thinking about Catherine, our daughter, about her small flower-covered grave in London. It seemed so long ago now. So long ago, so sudden, so unnecessary.

I stopped thinking about it. If Sarah could find comfort here, so could I. It was only a matter of making room.

We finished our lunch and took another slow walk, returning at last to the creek, where we sat by the water's edge. Sarah talked about returning here to paint. I had brought my camera. We took photographs of each other. I have them still. We are happy in them, smiling, content with life.

We spent the late afternoon in Falmouth and had dinner there. It was late when we finally got back. We were greeted by the sound of the sea and the silent, shadowed shape of Petherick House against the night sky. We were ready for our first night inside.

I did what I could to keep Sarah's spirits high. I found wood in an outhouse and succeeded in lighting a fire in our drab bedroom. The flames made the room almost cheerful, and the warmth was welcome, driving away as it did some of that unseasonal cold and damp. It seemed hard to believe that we had spent the day in such glorious summer weather.

"I want to go home," Sarah said when she came upstairs, before we undressed for bed.

"Home? But I thought you'd got over that."

"I thought so as well. But I can't stay here. Truly I can't."

"What's wrong with it? Really. Other than this . . . feeling?"

"I don't know. Don't you see, that's the problem? I feel this way, and I know I shouldn't, and it unsettles me."

"Well, it may not be so bad in the morning. You're tired. It's been a long day. We can go back to Roseland anytime you want."

"Perhaps," she said, but I could see she was not convinced. Her hair was dark, the color of polished wood, and she let it fall over her shoulders like a shawl. I reached out my hand and touched it. It was soft.

Several times that night I woke and found Sarah awake in the bed beside me, first on her back, then on her side, now upright.

"Can't you sleep?"

She took her time answering. In the interval, I could hear the sea rolling outside.

"No," she said. "I keep thinking. I can't stop thinking about it."

"It?"

"The house. About this house. I think about one room, then the next, until I've been through them all. And then I start again, all over, from the beginning."

"You should try sheep instead."

"It isn't funny, Peter. Something happened here. In one of these rooms."

After that, I did not sleep either. Dawn found us still in bed, wide-awake, like children on Christmas morning. The fire had died out.

Sometimes, there are more dreams than I can bear. Sometimes, the night is thick with them, so thick I wake choking and am taken down again in wave after wave of breathlessness. In time, I recover wakefulness and pull myself upright in bed, for I know I cannot sleep again. Or, rather, that I will not. I prefer not to, I know what I will encounter if I do. You can hear things in dreams, see things, touch things—things best left alone, things best forgotten.

* * *

There was bright sun all that day again. We breakfasted early to the sound of birds. The central heating had begun to make an impact on the rooms, taking the chill off the air. Throughout the meal I steered what little conversation there was on to neutral topics—places I thought we should put on our itinerary, the prospects for good weather, whether or not we should go shopping for fresh food that afternoon. Tired of my own voice, I switched on the radio. A deejay was babbling mindlessly on Radio One, but his cheery voice and the undemanding music he played were exactly what we needed.

After breakfast, we went straight out to the garden. Sarah's mood lifted almost at once, returning to what it had been the day before. It was already warm outside, and sunlight had woven itself into everything. At the rear of the house, a daisy-speckled lawn ran gently down to the cliff, at whose foot the sea lay, breathing dangerously. A scattering of jagged rocks guarded the cliff face against the waves, as though dropped there on purpose.

We stood at the edge together, holding hands, watching the tide come in. The house stood behind us, not quite forgotten, but pushed aside for a while. The rug still lay where we had left it. An army of sea gulls dipped and soared around us, lifting from the wrinkled surface of the waves, turning and vanishing into the blue sky. I drew back from the edge, made nervous by the beating of the sea against those black, glistening rocks. Sarah followed me without a word.

I found two folding chairs and set them on the lawn, a white table between. On the table I placed a jug of fruit juice and ice, with glasses. Sarah said nothing more about leaving, or about her feelings of the night before, and I did not prompt her.

We took lunch on the lawn: tuna and corned-beef sandwiches washed down with hot coffee. Afterward, Sarah stretched out on a recliner and fell asleep, exhausted by the night's vigil. Curiously, I did not feel tired, but invigorated, woken up by the sun and the sea breeze. I was like someone who has spent years in solitary confinement, who has not felt the sun on his face or smelled fresh air for almost as long as he can remember. I brought a pen and paper from the car and made a start on a story I had been mulling over on the way down.

I surprised myself. By the time I put the pen down, it was midafternoon and I had written half a dozen pages. I reread them and was pleased to find the results better than I had expected. The best thing I had written in ages. The real thing for once.

At that moment Sarah woke up screaming.

The sound ripped me from my reading. She was sitting bolt upright on the recliner, eyes open, staring, hands thrust out as though to ward off an unseen attacker. I knocked back my chair as I stood and rushed to her side.

"Sarah, what is it? Are you all right?"

She looked at me for a moment as though she did not recognize me, then took three or four deep breaths and lowered her hands to the base of the recliner, pressing hard against it for balance. I reached out for her, touching her gently, though I sensed on her part a reluctance to be touched.

"It was a dream," she said. "I had a dream."

At that moment she looked around toward the house. I saw her shiver as she did so. By ill chance, a cloud chose that instant to cross the sun, sending a streak of dark shadow across the lawn and down onto the rear of the building.

"We have to go," she said. "We have to leave."

"Leave?" I retorted, as though stung. "We can't leave. There's no question of leaving."

"You don't understand. It's what I said. The house— "

'There’s nothing wrong with the house, Sarah. This place is all we expected. Sunny, quiet, restful. I've done more work this afternoon than I've sometimes done in an entire month in London. Better work, too. At this rate I'll have the book half finished by the time we go home."

"No, Peter, we have to go now. Before something happens."

"Happens? Nothing's going to happen. You're just frightening yourself for nothing. You can paint if you like, go for walks, get a boat—whatever you like. But I'm staying here to write. Every day if I can."

"Then I'll go home alone."