Touched
Authors: Joanna Briscoe
Contents
A chilling, deeply creepy Hammer novella by Joanna Briscoe, author of the acclaimed, bestselling novel,
Sleep With Me
.
Rowena Crale and her family have moved from London.
They now live in a small English village in a cottage which seems to be resisting all attempts at renovation.
Walls ooze damp, stains come through layers of wallpaper, celings sag.
And strange noises â voices â emanate from empty rooms.
As Rowena struggles with the upheaval of builders while trying to be a dutiful wife and a good mother to her young children, her life starts to disintegrate.
And then, one by one, her daughters go missing ...
Joanna Briscoe is the author of
Mothers and Other Lovers
,
Skin
and the highly acclaimed
Sleep With Me
which was published in ten countries and adapted for ITV drama by Andrew Davies.
She spent her very early years in âthe village of the damned', Letchmore Heath in Hertfordshire, the location for the celebrated 1960 film based on John Wyndham's novel
The Midwich Cuckoos
â and the inspiration, too, for this Hammer novella.
Mothers & Other Lovers
Skin
Sleep With Me
You
Joanna Briscoe
For Theodore
with appreciation and much love
With many thanks to Laura Astin, Jennifer Bates, Tim Bates, Laura Bishop, Carol Briscoe, Michele Camarda, Mary Chamberlain, Gabrielle Dalton, Helen Healy, Catherine Heaney, Charlotte Mendelson, Clementine Mendelson, Elaine O'Dwyer, Kate Saunders, Louisa Saunders, Joseph Schwartz, Richard Skinner, Gillian Stern and Alison Wilkinson; and especially to Jonny Geller, Selina Walker and all at Curtis Brown and Arrow.
I HAVE SEEN
Pollard again. I'm sure I have; or was it an illusion?
I am certain it was Pollard's face, on a man slowly turning his head in a cul-de-sac six streets away. That face many years on, ballooned and pouched as an ageing radish, but with the blue-grey eyes that gazed at our childhoods. How can a face be recognised in a moment after the passing of so many decades?
I have never stopped thinking about all that Crowsley Beck brought on us, all that my sweet mother went through after we had moved there. Arthur Pollard was a big part of that. I have been looking for him all this time, even while I was scared he would find me. I think it was Pollard. I vomited shortly after I arrived home.
1963
1
THE VILLAGE GREEN
of Crowsley Beck: you never did see such a sparkling run of grass. Only the flagpole socket where the children laid traps of twigs for strolling adults interrupted the green with a slot of air.
There they were, village children marching together, boys with shorts and shining hair, girls in kilts, plaits and pleats, crossing the grass past the ducks towards the war memorial, the elm leaves laughing light. The brother and sister from the big house at the end of the village; the boys from next to the post office; and four of the Crale children.
The Crale children: Rosemary and Jennifer Crale the twins, the boy Bob, and baby Caroline. They walked over the green on this their first Sunday in the village, bright bright against the grass. The twins: ruddy Rosemary with her hair band and red cable knit; Jennifer the angel face with her yellow plaits, her blue eyes in a bed of lashes; and their little brother in his shirt and Sunday tie. The baby slept in her perambulator like a good girl. A low-flying plane darkened the green, birds chorused, and this was surely the prettiest village in all of England. It was so exactly how a village should be that crews from the studios at Elstree came to film there.
The other Crale child straggled behind. This was Evangeline, who was dressed as a Victorian and had rain for hair. She loitered, then dipped into the river, her lacy petticoats muddied, her pinafore greyed; she guttered in the others' shining, blanked out by their shadows. Where the other Crales were clean with health and Jennifer was doll-beautiful, Evangeline was a grubby, transparent girl, dragging her feet and slipping away. Her face was scrawny, with eyes set too far apart. On her head bristled a dirty nylon ribbon of daisies.
The checked frocks and short skirts stamped across the green, pushing the baby, ignoring Evangeline, and sometimes she was hardly there, though villagers stared and stared at her that first weekend. Then she appeared among the swans, drab and pale in the gnat-shade. She seemed to be talking to someone, but it was uncertain who.
âWell, hell
o
,' said Gregory Dangerfield to the children's mother, Rowena Crale, who stood outside her new house, number 3 The Farings, looking up at the roof with her hand on her brow like a visor, as she had seen models do.
Her legs were on display as she stood balanced in high heels on the rubble while her builder weighed into the walls, despite the objections of the South Herts Historical Association and the Crowsley Beck Preservation Society.
She turned, slowly, the glare making the man prickle in front of her eyes. She was nervous about meeting the villagers, wondering whether she looked too urban, too smart.
âHello?' she said with slight enquiry. She had a neatly cut profile, her hair twisted into a high bun.
âGregory Dangerfield,' he said, extending his hand. He was dressed in a suit for church, but his tie was loose in the heat. âI live over there.'
âPleased to meet you,' she said, taking his hand after a moment's hesitation, then blushing.
âAnd you're knocking the two houses together?'
âOh. Yes. Growing family.' She smiled, appeasingly, and glanced up at the house, its many-paned windows framed by pleasant arches, its faded red brick faintly undulating with age.
The builder, who was behind schedule and working at the weekends, carried a hod out of the front door, and Gregory nodded at him. âTerrible noise,' he said.
âApologies, Mr Dangerfield,' said the builder.
âNo, no, I'm not complaining. Something doesn't want to give in there.'
The builder said nothing, sweat beading over his face.
âIt doesn't,' he said.
âCan I take a look?' said Gregory, peering into the gloom through the open door that made the dust-swirling cottage appear like a carcass, steaming in the sun.
âOh. Yes,' said Rowena, and she pressed her hands, which felt damp, to her skirt.
âMy word, this must be a stubborn blighter,' said Gregory, tipping his head in the direction of the builder. âI've heard you working on it all week.'
âYou's telling me,' said the builder, and in the shade, his sweat rose. A hole was knocked into the plaster and brick of the wall between the two cottages, with another attempt abandoned higher up. âIt doesn't want to come.'
âLet me have a go,' said Gregory Dangerfield, and he folded his jacket on a chair, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and swung a mallet at the plaster. The wall protested, groaning like a heifer. âI've barely made a mark!' he said. âCome on, man. Put some back into it.'
He picked up a chisel, swung his arms, muscles honed on two dozen summers of gully fielding, and sank the chisel into the dividing wall. It screamed, and a chunk of plaster fell off.
A new smell met the sweat, like cat urine, or tomcat spray, seeping from stains.
âGood Lord,' said Gregory. There was a settling groaning of plaster. More damp oozed, a metallic smell overlaying the cat odour.
âIt can't be done,' said the builder, shaking his head.
âI've never heard you say such a thing, Pollard,' said Gregory, and took another swing. âOf course it can.'
The mallet bounced with a ring off the wall, which groaned in a higher pitch. Clumps of horsehair and strands of longer tail or mane clung to rusty stains, a glimpse of brick.
âGosh,' said Rowena, standing a few feet back in the shade and feeling faint suddenly. âThat wall is bulging now.'
It seemed to have become subtly swollen and shiny, as though pregnant. Like her own stomach, she thought, which had still not settled to its former shape after yet another baby. It was a trick of the light. It receded.
âNo, Mrs Crale. It's not shifting,' said Pollard the builder.
âIt's an illusion caused by the heat,' said Gregory, turning to her, and she caught his gaze. His dark brown eyes seemed to wander momentarily over her body. His hair, of the same brown, was clean-cut, soldier-short at the neck, yet there was something boyish, almost playful, to its slight spring over his brow. âAnd you've moved in already?'
âWe've had to,' said Rowena, her voice a little unsteady. âIn here and into the other cottage. It's round the corner. It'll be an L-shaped house I suppose, eventually. Is that what's making this so difficult? The corner?'
âNo,' said Pollard.
âLet me have a look,' said Gregory at the same time.
He walked out of the front door that gave on to the lane beside the green and let himself in through the gate to number 2 The Farings, where a series of lodgers had lived until recently, and turned to the walls and roof. A tiny path led through a choke of shrubbery to a glimpse of a small vegetable garden and fields beyond. Behind the shrubbery, running the length of the cottages and their gardens, was his own property, the lawn leading to what was known locally as âthe Big House'.
The builder went to his tool bag, and Rowena stood alone. The dusty air seemed unsettled in the contrast between glare and shade, and she instinctively wanted the men to come back, or to go outside herself. There was an impression she couldn't pin down, that the house was already inhabited. Moving in there didn't feel like a fresh beginning; but she knew the house was overlaid with memories of all the years her mother-in-law had lived there.
âThe cottages are similar but not identical â they may have been built at different times. It may have been an external wall originally,' said Gregory, with a vague show of authority that Rowena sensed was designed to calm a flustered woman. âPollard will get through it.'
âI do hope so. We're all squashed in. I'm not sure it's going to be â very big even when this is finished. My husband imagined this would have all been completed a fortnight ago.'
âThe old woman who lived on this sideâ'
âMy mother-in-law,' murmured Rowena.
âAh. Makes sense now. And I'm glad to be rid of those lodgers on the other side. Did your mother-in-law keep pets?'
âNot for a long time.'
The damp in the wall seemed to be spreading now it was released. Gregory pressed his finger to it, smelled it. âCat,' he said. âDistinctively.'
âBut how?'
âWho knows? A herd of kittens nesting in some boarded-up fireplace there? There's certainly a stable's worth of horsehair. Your wall perhaps doubles as a livestock pen. Mrs . . .?'
âOh, I'm sorry. Crale. Rowena Crale. My husband is Douglas. He will be here after church.'
