Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

Kate had asked Benny also to come to London and stay a while. But Benny refused and could not be persuaded. What about Croydon? Someone would feed the animal, certainly. But how cruel to abandon him so soon after his dear mistress had also unaccountably vanished. Plus there was the threat of burglars. An unoccupied house was an open invitation to the criminal element. Thieves could break in and steal Carey’s lovely things.

And so, when Kate and Polly drove away, Benny was left at the tall iron gate calling, “Goodbye,” and fluttering her handkerchief. Squinting and blinking through her pebbly glasses she waved and waved until the dark blue car was out of sight. Then hesitated, feeling suddenly bereft.

She noticed Judith coming out of her back door and called, “Cooeee!”

When Judith nodded back Benny started to make her way across the lane for a few words, putting off the moment when she had to go back indoors. But by the time she had reached the opposite fence Judith had disappeared so Benny had little choice but to retrace her steps. Once back inside she drifted into the vast, shabby kitchen and stood in the centre vaguely looking round.

For the first time that she could ever remember she was quite by herself in Appleby House. A terrible quietness seemed to have crept inside. Now, instead of feeling comfortably familiar, it felt strangely cold and full of nothing to do.

Benny began to feel nervous. The building was very large and, it seemed to her, very detached. On its far right was the fifteenth-century church of St. Anselm’s, separated from the house by a large graveyard. Roughly half of the three-acre apple orchard curved around the other side. The remainder stretched right away behind the walled garden at the back. In fact you could truthfully say, and Benny murmured as much to herself aloud, that the place was pretty well cut off. Of course there was a telephone, but not in every room. And what if someone did break in and she couldn’t get to it in time?

Benny stood motionless, listening. Gradually she became aware that the surrounding silence, with which she had previously always been at ease, was not really silence at all. For instance, there were the rooks in the elm trees flanking the church walk, an unmusical background to all her waking hours. She heard them now as if for the first time. Carey had told her that a gathering would be called “a parliament of rooks.” Considering the ugly sounds they made, forever scrawking and scraping, it seemed entirely appropriate.

Benny recalled once, after she had put some flowers on a grave, stepping back on to a dead one. It had given softly beneath her foot, a splodge of stiff feathers, dark red gluey stuff and heaving white worms. Benny had broken into a cold sweat of repulsion. She felt it again now: a creeping, nauseous chill.

A cup of tea was the thing. Though she was careful – unnecessarily now, for Carey was no longer ill upstairs – each of Benny’s movements seemed to give rise to an astonishing amount of noise. Water gushed from the heavy brass tap, china cup and saucer clattered against each other in her hand. Then the elderly fridge, tall, dirty cream with a rusting chrome handle, suddenly rumbaed into vibrating life. Shudder and shake it went. Shudder and shake.

Benny sat down at the kitchen table. She put the radio on, then immediately switched it off, realising that if anyone did approach the house, she would not be able to hear them. Above her a wooden airer, winched up to the ceiling and draped with towels, creaked slightly. Now that was odd, thought Benny, tipping back her head and staring upwards fearfully. Why on earth should it be moving? There were no windows open. No draught. Yet it definitely was. Almost swaying actually…

Carey had said once that Benny would be lost without something to worry about. Certainly Benny could never remember a time when she had not been struggling to keep her head above a positive ocean of free-floating anxiety. The words “what if?” ruled her life. She could not help investing the most harmless, innocent situations with lurking terror. And any fleeting moment of happiness would immediately be tarnished by a deep apprehension as to what the next might reveal.

No one, Benny least of all, could understand why this was so. According to the psychology textbooks, she should be as carefree as a bird. A wanted child, she had been lovingly if unimaginatively brought up by stolid, kindly parents. Shy, in-curious and outwardly placid, she went to school and did her homework, played tennis sometimes – though she always preferred reading to games – and made a few humdrum friends in a humdrum sort of way.

As a teenager she had occasionally gone to local dances where her earnest, bumpy moon face and thin straggles of mousy hair (after a severe attack of ringworm it had never grown properly again) attracted little attention. She was hardly ever asked to dance and, in any case, always left well before the end to make sure of getting home safely. Even so, the fear was always with her. Always. What if …?

Once she had got off the school bus, convinced her home was on fire. She tried to walk normally down the road but was unable to stop breaking into a run. She raced along, heart thumping, satchel banging into the small of her back, weeping frightened tears. She saw the great orange crackling framework of the house, sagging and swaying on the point of collapse. Firemen, shouting urgently, ran across the pavement, dragging hoses, and vanished into billowing smoke. A woman was screaming. So vivid was this hellish premonition that, hurtling round the corner of Laburnum Crescent, Benny stopped dead, blinking in disbelief at the serene row of unscorched semis dreaming away in the afternoon sun.

A sudden shriek. Lost in recollection Benny shrieked as well, springing up, her chair falling backwards. But it was only the kettle. She righted the chair and went to make her drink, glad there was no one present to witness such foolishness. She could get another kettle now. A nice silent one that you could plug in. Carey had insisted on the whistler since Benny had let an older kettle boil so dry the bottom had fallen out.

Sitting down and sipping Earl Grey, Benny made an effort to think about supper. Mallory, who had foreseen a slide into sorrowful inertia once his aunt’s companion found herself alone, had urged her to eat properly. And Kate had stocked up at the supermarket before leaving so there was plenty of stuff in the freezer. And a nice, fresh lemon sole for tonight.

Benny had almost calmed down when she heard the click of the gate. She sat up sharply, alert and straight-backed. Who could it be? Not the postman on a Sunday. Footsteps rang out on the old brick path. So, no attempt at concealment. That was encouraging. Benny hurried over to the window and scrambled up to sit on the edge of the old stone sink. She twisted round, leaned sideways and pressed her plump, cushiony cheek hard against the glass lozenges. At this angle, with one eye closed and the other squinting, it was just possible to make out, through the openwork trellis of the porch, who the visitor might be.

It was a friend. Probably her closest and dearest friend now that Carey had gone. Comforted, a little excited even, Benny hurried to open the door.

The village of Forbes Abbot had long ago given up trying to agree on what exactly went on between dippy old Miss Frayle and the outwardly respectable Dennis Brinkley. Frankly unable to imagine any sort of sexual liaison, it was at a loss to understand what else they could possibly be up to. So it simply labelled the dry and dusty duo “a likely pair” and let them get on with it. This the couple did with dignified reticence, hardly even aware they were the subject of speculation: Benny because it would never have occurred to her that she was clever or attractive enough to be talked about; Dennis because he always assumed his complete lack of interest in the lives of his neighbours would naturally be reciprocated.