Writer's Life (8 page)

"I take it you received the Cunninghams?" he enquired.

I nodded. "Yesterday. I've read them already. I was... impressed. They show a mature handling of character and situation-" I was aware that I was gabbling, running off at the mouth. "A maturity surprising for a novelist's first books..."
"Quite. Exactly my feelings, too. I thought you might appreciate them. Isn't it wonderful to happen upon like souls in the appreciation of the noble art?"

I smiled and gulped my tea.

He noticed my glance towards the Vaughan Edwards' collection. "A gift," he said, and an icy hand played a rapid arpeggio down my spine. "I thought you might appreciate the volume."
I thanked him with a whispered, "... most kind." And took refuge behind my cup.

How had he known I would come here, I wanted to shout: for that matter, how did he know that this of all Vaughan Edwards' books was the one I had yet to read?

I felt as though I were participating in a dream over which I had no control, and from which I might at any second awake in fright.

"I was at Edgecoombe Hall just the other day," Melthem was saying.

I nodded, at a loss quite how to respond. I sat rooted to my seat, my posture rigid, staring at him as he said, "Would you care to meet me tomorrow at the Hall, between eleven and noon?"

I found myself assenting with a gesture.

"Splendid. There is so much to explain, and it would help if we were in the Hall where it all originally happened, don't you think?"

"Cunningham-Price, Edwards...?" It was barely a whisper, a feeble attempt to articulate the many questions crowding my mind.

"Tomorrow, Mr Ellis."

He reached out a papery hand, and when I looked into his sapphire-blue eyes it came to me that I was in the presence of someone who had experienced more than it was humanly possible to experience, and still survive.

The feeling was gone almost as soon as it arrived. I found myself shaking his hand. I rose from the chair and gestured farewell.

"Oh, Mr Ellis..." He called out as I made for the door. He held the volume of short stories towards me. I murmured an apology and took the book.

As I reached the door, he said, "Tomorrow, between eleven and noon, Mr Ellis. I'll see you at Edgecoombe Hall."

In a daze I hurried down the stairs and let myself out through the side door. The fresh air seemed to waken me, as if from the dream I had been so convinced I had fallen into. I made my way to the car, regretting now that I had not remained to question him—but at the same time not wishing in the slightest to return.

I made three-point turn and accelerated up the road towards Whitby. As I came to the rise above the hamlet, I glanced back at the imposing grey pile of Hapsley House. I slowed the car and stopped, turning in my seat and staring.

Melthem had returned to the garden overlooking the sea, and once again he was pushing the laughing, golden-haired girl on the swing.

Sweating, I turned my back on Hapsley house and drove away.

~

Do I love him? What is love? Do I trust him? If trust is giving your fate to another, and knowing that you will not be harmed, then I trust him. But do I love him? After The Bastard, how can I bring myself to love anyone? So why, then, do I trust him?

From the diary of Mina Pratt.

~

I arrived home at six. Mina was still at work. I was relieved to have the house to myself. I would have found it hard to find rational answers to her questions; indeed, I found it hard myself to answer the many questions posed by the events of that afternoon.

I built the fire, taking my time with wadded newspapers, sticks of wood, coal and fire-lighters. I have always found the act of making a fire comforting, therapeutic. With the fire blazing, I sat on the sofa and considered eating—but I had no appetite.

I fetched
Improbable Visions
from my jacket where it hung in the hall, and returned to the front room. I resumed the sofa and began reading: the act seemed appropriate.

Mina returned at eight. The sound of the front door opening brought me back to reality. I was aware of my heartbeat, and the fact that I was not looking forward to facing her.

She appeared in the doorway and paused, gripping a bulky carrier bag of groceries. She stared at me. "What happened, Daniel?"

I could not bring myself to reply. She disappeared into the kitchen, and I heard the sound of her unpacking the shopping and storing it away in cupboards. It struck me as the typical, practical thing that Mina would do at a time like this.

She emerged five minutes later, again halting in the doorway as if wary of approaching me. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"

I found my voice at last. "I met him," I said.

She nodded. "The editor?"

I could not bring myself to look at her. Instead I regarded the leaping flames. I licked my lips.

"Edwards," I said. "Or Cunningham-Price, or whatever he calls himself."

The flames danced. Mina said nothing. The silence stretched painfully. I tore my eyes away from the fire and looked at her.

She was staring at me, and slowly shaking her head. She said, "He told you he was Edwards?"

"No, not in so many words-"

"Then just what did he say?" I could hear the exasperation in her tone.

"It was strange, Mina. The meeting seemed unreal, like a dream. I wanted to ask so much, but I found myself unable to form the questions. He told me very little."

"Then how on earth did you know he was Edwards?" she almost cried.

I shook my head. "A feeling, an intuition. He was so old. At first I thought he was about sixty, seventy. Then... I don't know. When he spoke, when I looked into his eyes, I realised he was ancient."

Mina moved to the armchair before the fire. She pulled her feet onto the cushion and hugged her shins, staring at the flames.

She glanced at me. "Did you ask him why he sent the books?"

I shook my head. "I think he wanted to communicate with me... tell someone about himself, after all those years."

"But you said he told you next to nothing!"

My mouth ran dry. I considered my words. "I think he wants to explain, tell someone who might be sympathetic. He said he liked my books, sympathised with their sentiments-"

"Wants to explain?" she asked, a note of what might have been apprehension in her voice. "You're meeting him again?"

I nodded. "He wants to meet me at Edgecoombe Hall tomorrow. He said that there's much to explain."

"And you're going?"

I let the silence stretch, become almost unbearably tense, before it snapped and she asked, "Well?"

I looked up at her, held her gaze. "I've got to go, Mina. I want to find out."

She gave a quick, bitter, shake of her head and stared at the flames.

"Mina, something strange and wonderful happened at the Hall all those years ago... All my life I've been hoping that there was more to... to
this
... than what is apparent. We're so programmed by our limited perceptions and this reality's conditioning. There's more to existence than what is apparent to the senses. There has to be. If this is all there is, then I'd despair..."

She turned her head and stared at me, and I was shocked to see something almost like hatred in her eyes. "You're a fool, Daniel. You're a bloody fool! Can't you be satisfied with what there is? Why all this searching?"

"I don't know."

"Isn't what you've got enough?" She said this with her eyes down-cast, unable to look at me.

I almost replied, then, cheaply, that if she would give me all her love, then that might be enough—but I held my tongue. "It isn't about what I've got," I said. "It's about what's possible."

"Listen to me, the editor is a con man—he's planning something."

"He knew I was coming," I interrupted, indicating the collection. "He had this for me, the only Vaughan Edwards I haven't read. He knew that."

"Impossible!"

"Another coincidence?" I sneered.

A silence developed, and the fire hissed and cracked. At last Mina said, "Are you going?" in a small voice.

"What do you think? I've got to go. I must find out what's happening."

Suddenly, surprising me, Mina stood and moved to the door. "I'm meeting Liz at nine," she said. "We're going for a drink. You can fix your own dinner, can't you?"

The mention of such banalities angered me, but she had hurried from the doorway and was climbing the stairs before I could reply.

I sat in silence, staring at the glowing coals.

She came down thirty minutes later, dressed in her short black coat, the collar turned up around her windswept-effect hair. She looked wonderful, and a part of me wanted to take her in my arms and apologise and tell her that I would not be going to Highdale in the morning.

I remained seated.

"Daniel," she said, and I could tell that she had been giving the words great thought, "I won't be back tonight. I'm staying over at Liz's."

I nodded. "Have a good time."

She did not move from the door. "So you're going up there, then?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

"I wish you wouldn't, Daniel," she said, and made to leave.

I stopped her with, "What do you fear, Mina?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Do you care about what might happen to me, or fear I might discover something that might shatter your safe, limited little world view?"

She stared at me, slowly shaking her head. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about-"

"It's the latter, isn't it? You don't want your safe, cosy existence shattered by the knowledge that there's more to life than merely this..." I gestured about me... "this physical existence. I've never met anyone as closed-minded as you."

She could only stare at me, tears filming her eyes. "That's not fair. I do care..."

I could not help myself. "You've got a damned strange way of showing it, then. I know you've told me, again and again, that you don't love me... but what about affection?"

"Daniel..."

"Is it simply that you don't trust me, after all the love and affection I've shown you? Is that it? You know, never once in the year we've been together have you shown any spontaneous sign of intimacy. It's always me who has to make the first move. Do you know how galling that is? Do you ever stop to wonder what it's like to love someone, and not to have the slightest clue as to what the hell they feel about you in return?"

She was crying now, leaning against the door-frame and sobbing.

I twisted the knife. "I sometimes wonder why the hell you bother staying with me!"

Shocked and angered, she looked up and stared at me, and I knew I had gone too far then, and would regret it. "If that's how you feel..." she wept.

She hurried into the hall.

"What?" I called after her.

I heard the front door open. Then, suddenly, she was back, framed in the doorway, staring at me. "You bastard," she said. "Don't expect me to be here when you get back."

And, before I could reply, she was gone.

THREE

As a child I read a lot, lost myself in adventures and quests along with characters more real than anyone I had ever met in real life. Books were my refuge, a bolt-hole to other, better worlds than this one, an escape.

Perhaps they served much the same function now, though on a more sophisticated level: now I might lose myself in a book to escape the exigencies of this life, but at the same time fiction was a way of understanding others, of realising that one's own psychological viewpoint was not the only one. By engaging with the diversity and variation of thought and character to be found in literature, I was making my own life richer and more rewarding.

Vaughan Edwards' books had fulfilled both the above criteria; they had offered me a brief escape from this reality, and a means of understanding another person's unique world view. For me, the bizarre, other-worldly tales they told functioned as a grand metaphor for something very strange.

And I wanted to experience that strange reality for myself.

I awoke late the following morning in a bed cold without Mina. I forced myself to drink a cup of coffee, and at ten set off for Highdale.

As I drove, I considered Mina's declaration that she would not be at home when I returned. I decided that later, when I had met Vaughan Edwards—or whoever he might be—I would seek out Mina, and apologise. I could always tell her that I had acceded to her wishes, and not gone to the Hall.

But lies breed a subsequent duplicity, the need to follow up the original untruth with a series of others. I had never lied to Mina, and I did not want to begin now: what I was doing meant something to me—even though I was filled with apprehension at the same time—and I knew that it would devolve to me, upon my return, to attempt to explain this to Mina, somehow make her understand. If she were to share my life, then she must also share my mind. Relationships are founded on mutual understanding, and how could our partnership work if she failed to comprehend what the mystery of Vaughan Edwards and Edgecoombe Hall meant to me?

I arrived at Highdale just as cloud cover occluded the sun and a squall of heavy rain began. I drove past the Hall and into the village, glad of the excuse to delay the inevitable encounter: I had brought back the books I had borrowed from the White Lion on my last visit.

It was just after eleven when I pushed into the snug and returned the novels to their shelf. I was tempted to delay the rendezvous still further by ordering a drink, but resisted the urge. The sooner I learned the truth of Edgecoombe Hall, I reasoned, the sooner I could return to Mina.

I left the pub and drove slowly up the hill. The rain was torrential now, making ineffectual the laboured swipes of the windscreen-wipers. I slowed to a walking pace, hunching over the wheel so as to make out the road ahead.

I came to the ivied gateposts and turned, feeling as I did so the oppressive weight of something very much like fear settle over me. It was not, I told myself, too late to turn back. I could retreat now and be back home inside the hour, and I would be able to tell Mina that I had not set eyes on Edgecoombe Hall that day.

Even as I considered this option, I knew that I would not take it. I had set out with the express intention of meeting with Vaughan Edwards, if such was who he was, and I could not at this late stage deny myself the opportunity of discovering the truth.

By the time I emerged from the tunnel of shrubbery, the rain had abated, and the sun appeared from behind the clouds. Edgecoombe Hall stood before me, presenting an even more inimical façade for being so theatrically bathed in sudden sunlight.

I braked the car and remained inside for long minutes, aware that I was gripping the steering wheel as the survivor of a shipwreck might cling to flotsam. My pulse hammered at my temple, and sweat soaked my shirt.

I climbed from the car and approached the Hall, unsure now the time had come whether to knock on the main door or try the side entrance.

There was no sign of another vehicle: perhaps, I told myself, he had not yet arrived.

As I stood, momentarily paralysed by indecision, I heard a familiar sound from within the building.

The high joyous trill of a young girl's uninhibited laughter issued from the dour precincts of the Hall, a sound as golden as the sunlight without.

I attempted to peer through those windows not obscured by ivy, but what little I could make out of the interior was lost in shadow.

Then the great timber front door opened, and instantly the girl's laughter ceased.

He stood upon the top step, smiling down at me—and again I received the impression of great age and amiability.

"Mr Ellis, Daniel—splendid that you could make it."

His face was thin, his hair gun-metal grey, and though there was about him a suggestion of infirmity—in the slight stoop of his frame, as opposed to his ramrod posture of yesterday—yet he seemed to glow with a lustrous vitality.

I found myself saying, quite unrehearsed, "Who are you?"

He smiled, not at all put out by the question. "Daniel, I think you know that by now, don't you?" It was almost a laugh.

I cleared my throat, began, "You... are you-?" I halted, unable, for some reason, to bring myself to say the name.

He came to my assistance. "I am Edward Vaughan Cunningham-Price, to give me my somewhat long-winded title."

I opened my mouth to speak, but remained inarticulate.

He smiled. "Would you care to come inside?"

I stood rooted to the spot, quite unable to move.

At last I said, "What happened in '96, and before that, in the Great War?"

He considered my question. "In '96 it was necessary for me to move on, and likewise before that in 1916-"

"How," I said, hearing my words as if from a great distance, "... how old are you?"

He nodded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable question. "I am one hundred and seventy-eight, Daniel."

He peered into the sky; a cloud scudded across the sun, suddenly darkening the Hall. "I think rain is on the way. You'll catch your death if you remain out there. Do come in."

He stood back and gestured with an outstretched hand for me to enter. He was the epitome of genial hospitality, and for some reason it came to me that, despite everything, I could trust him.

I mounted the steps one by one. At the top I paused, facing him. "How is that possible?" I murmured.

He laid a hand on my arm. "Daniel, that is what I came here to explain. Please, this way..."

He turned and walked into the Hall. I followed him across the chessboard tiles, down a long corridor towards the back of the house. From time to time he made comments over his shoulder about the weather, and asked me if the drive up had been pleasant, as if such mundane smalltalk might put me at ease.

A part of me expected to see the laughing girl dancing in delight somewhere in the Hall. And yet, at the very same time, some intuitive part of my consciousness knew that she would not appear.

We passed though a double glass door, and for a second I thought that we were stepping outside: then I found myself in a vast conservatory, quite denuded of vegetation.

I looked around, bemused. I had expected to be shown something—I have no idea what—but the great glassed-in area was empty.

Cunningham-Price moved to the centre of the floor and stooped, lifting the ring of a trap-door to reveal a flight of steps descending into darkness. He took three steps down, then turned and smiled at me to follow.

"Where... where are we going?"

"The cellar, Daniel."

I recalled what the builder, Giles, had told me weeks ago. "The cellar? He—you... you had the cellar bricked up after the explosion."

"All but this entrance," he explained.

"What happened?" I asked. "The explosion—what was it?"

He paused, regarding me. "I was writing in my study at the time. It was late, midnight if I recall. The explosion shook the very foundations of the Hall. I made my way into the cellar, through the entrance in the scullery. I..." He paused, his vision misting over as he recalled the events of over one century ago. "I beheld a remarkable sight, Daniel."

I heard myself whisper, "What?"

"It was the arrival here of something unique in the history of humankind," he said, and continued down the steps.

My heart hammering, God help me, I followed.

We came to the foot of the steps. A naked bulb gave a feeble light, illuminating a short corridor, at the end of which was a door. Cunningham-Price paused before it, took a key from his pocket and turned it in the lock.

He looked at me over his shoulder. "I would advise you to shield your eyes," he counselled.

Puzzled, and not a little apprehensive, I did so, peering out beneath my hand as he turned the handle and eased open the door.

An effulgent glow, like the most concentrated lapis lazuli, sprang through the widening gap and dazzled me. I think I cried out in sudden shock and made to cover my eyes more securely. When I peered again, Cunningham-Price was a pitch black silhouette against the pulsing illumination as he stepped into the chamber.

Trembling with fright, I followed. As I crossed the threshold I heard, for the first time, a constant dull hum, as of some kind of dynamo, so low as to be almost subliminal.

I stepped inside and, as my vision grew accustomed to the glare, removed my hand from my eyes and peered across the chamber.

How to describe what I saw, then?

It seemed to me that, embedded in the far wall, was a great orb of dazzling blue-white light—like a swollen will-o'-the-wisp. It was as bright as the sun seen with the naked eye, and seemed to be spinning, constantly throwing off crazed filaments of crackling electricity; these filaments enwebbed the chamber, flowing around the walls and totally encapsulating us as we stood there in mute awe. Only then, belatedly, did I realise that the chamber was not a cellar room as such, but more like a cave, a great cavern excavated perhaps by the force of the explosion all those years ago.

"What..." I managed at last, "what is it?"

In lieu of a reply, he said, "When I heard the explosion I came down here forthwith—don't ask me how I knew its location. It was as if I were drawn here. I made my way cautiously down the stairs, afraid but at the same time unable to resist the impulse to investigate. Then suddenly I came upon this light occupying the space where my wine cellar had once been..."

He stopped there, a sad light in his eyes, as if the thought of what had happened then was too much. "I... I have no idea how long I was down here. It seemed like hours, but later it came to me that only a matter of minutes had elapsed."

He paused again, and I waited. I stared into the pulsating will-'o-the-wisp like someone hypnotised, then tore my gaze away and looked at him.

"And then?" I prompted.

"And then," he went on, "they communicated with me."

I stared at him, at once wanting to disbelieve his bizarre story and yet, because of the very evidence of my eyes, unable to do so.

"They?" I echoed.

"Or perhaps I should say 'she'," he said. "At least, that was the form they took to approach me. You see," he went on, "I was writing a novel at the time, about a soldier's love for a young girl... And they reached into my mind, and took this image of the child, and used it." He paused there, on the verge of tears, his face drawn as he recalled the events of more than a century ago.

Seconds elapsed. A dizzy nausea gripped me. My conscious mind was exhorting me to run, to get out and never return, and yet at the same time another part of me, that part forever fascinated with the lure of the arcane, wanted nothing more than to hear the conclusion to his story.

He faced the light, tears now streaming down his cheeks. "She came to me from the light, a fair innocent child emanating such an aura of purity that I was overcome. She explained that she was from elsewhere, that her kind had opened a channel from her realm to this world, and that they wished to study us..."
I said, "Aliens? Beings from another dimension?"

He shook his head. "Neither description quite fits the reality," he said. "She tried to make clear to me the nature of their realm, but my human mind, conditioned only to accept this world, could not begin to comprehend the place from whence she came. It was not from outer space, or from another dimension, or an alternate world—it was from a place that existed beyond matter as we understand it. Her universe was one of energy without physical form, and she herself consisted of pure energy. She, or it, or whatever, was bemused by the discovery of this world, and wanted to understand."

He wept. "The girl... It was as if she had the power to demand from me all the love, all the compassionate desire, I had ever felt for anyone. I stood before this ethereal creature and I was besotted. I could but accede to her desire..."

Something surged within me, a sudden, terrifying panic.

"What?" I began. "What did she want?"

He forced his gaze away from the effulgence as if with great effort, and faced me, sobbing uncontrollably now and shaking his head.

As I stared at him, something in his lean, aquiline face altered. The lineaments of age seemed to dissolve, become suffused with a golden glow. I stepped backwards in alarm as the form of a young girl—the very girl I had beheld in the garden at Throxton—took shape within the old man and then stepped out, smiling at me.

Something hit me then, the full force of this creature's irresistible allure, and I cried out in rapture.

Behind her, Cunningham-Price, divested of energy, slumped suddenly, and in that second he seemed to age a hundred years.

I backed away, came up against the cavern wall.

The girl regarded me, smiling with angelic sweetness. It was hard to believe that she was a mere manifestation of pure energy, a being from another dimension; she seemed to possess, in her radiant form, the essence of all womanly pulchritude and sensuality.

"I wanted to dwell within the being of Cunningham-Price," she said. "He was a writer, and I was intrigued by his visions; more, by his heightened emotions. I had never before experienced such feelings, such emotion. I wanted to inhabit him."