Sarah Rayne - What Lies Beneath

‘Ah, well,’ said Martlet sadly, and wrote the death certificate out there and then.

That was when Cadence Manor was closed for good. Dora went back to her family’s home somewhere in the north and Martlet returned to London. I don’t think he had any patients by then; I think the creation of the National Health Service had altered the practice of medicine radically, and he was too old to bother.

It meant Saul and I were on our own and I had to address myself to the practicalities of living. It was unthinkable that I should ever go openly into Priors Bramley, or, indeed, anywhere else. After thought, I wrote and posted an order for provisions to be delivered every two weeks from a big neighbouring town. Anonymous, you see? The account would be settled through the bank each quarter and the order was to be exactly the same each time. The carrier was to leave it at the gates where it would be collected. What they thought of such an arrangement I have no idea. Probably they assumed some eccentric remnant of the family still lived in the decaying old manor. I didn’t much care what they thought.

And for the next four or five months everything was perfectly all right. Life went along quietly and peacefully – until that spring afternoon when I found a local newspaper someone had left in St Anselm’s church. Blazoned across it were the headlines:

Beneath that again was a sub-heading which said, ‘Geranos is a compound, believed to contain sulphur mustard.’

I stood in the old church, reading the newspaper article, and panic seized me.

The article described the evacuation of the village. They actually used the word ‘evacuation’, which must have been dreadfully reminiscent of the war for many people. There was information about how a new road had been planned and then postponed, and details of compensation paid, compulsory purchase orders and rehousing. Several of the older inhabitants had resisted being moved, but had finally yielded and gone to live in one of the neighbouring villages. I hardly took that in, because one single fact was burning deep into my brain.

It was the date of the paper. This was old news. People had known about it for two months, but I, in my island of isolation within the grounds of the manor, had known nothing, heard nothing.

The date when the Geranos would be dropped was given. It was in eight days’ time. There was a lot of technical information about the composition of Geranos, and a lot of false-sounding reassurance as to how it was not harmful, but that the village was to be sealed off as a precaution.

I took little notice of these empty reassurances, because I knew – I knew – what sulphur mustard did to people. I had heard the screams of the soldiers in Edirne. And in one week, Priors Bramley was to be drenched in the stuff.

I had eight days to get out of the lodge and find somewhere to live.

I risked walking a little way along the village street, ready to bolt for the concealment of the church, but I saw no one. Eerily and disturbingly, this had become the deserted village of Goldsmith’s poem, but it was not the tyrannical hand of Enclosure that had emptied the village; it was the governmental one of planning and experimentation.

I returned to the lodge because I had nowhere else to go. Once inside, I shut the doors and sat down in the little sitting room, which I had made into my own retreat. My books were there and my gramophone. All the things I had amassed over the past ten years, all the things that were precious to me. Not a single one was of any help now. I had absolutely no idea what to do, or who to ask for help. The lodge had no phone, and even if it had I could not have used it. All my communication with the outside world had been through Serena or Colm or the servants. Since Serena died and the remaining servants left, if I needed to contact someone I simply wrote a letter and posted it in the pillar box in the lane by St Anselm’s.

Vague ideas of trying to get to the old London house went through my mind, but the house had been rented to some government department during the war, and had stood empty since. And there was another difficulty: it was forty years since I had travelled with Crispian and Gil to Greece and Turkey; since then I had set foot outside the manor’s gates only to go as far as the church. I, who had plotted and schemed to control a once-thriving international private bank, had now developed a cottage mentality akin to Saul’s and I was afraid of the world beyond the gates.

I can understand now that when they cleared the village they thought they had cleared all the dwellings. Cadence Manor was empty – it had been empty since Serena’s death the previous autumn – and I presume, although I can’t know for sure, that some sort of compensation had been paid for it. But I don’t know who got it. I don’t know to whom any letters about the evacuation of the village would have been sent. Certainly not to the manor, nor, of course, to the lodge, which would be assumed empty. The only person who knew Saul and I were here was old Martlet, miles away in London.

But somehow I would have to find the courage to go out of Priors Bramley and find someone to whom I could explain about Saul and me, living at the lodge. The prospect sent the fear scudding across my skin, but it would have to be faced. I would write it down, explain I was disabled from a long-ago accident and unable to speak. Then I would ask for help in getting the two of us clear of the village.

I sat by myself for a long time, working all this out. It was only when I realized it was dark that I came back to a sense of awareness of the world. Saul would be waiting for his supper. He couldn’t tell the time, but he knew when we ate.

I put together a meal and carried the tray up to him. He was waiting for me, but he was not at the table by the window as he usually was at mealtimes. He was standing behind the door. I didn’t know that, though, and I drew back the bolt, turned the key and went into the room as usual. He leaped out, lifting one hand high over his head and, too late, I saw he was holding the carved wooden box that contained the chessmen. With a cry of triumph, he brought it smashing down on my head. I dodged instinctively, the tray of food crashing to the ground, but I wasn’t quick enough and the blow fell on the side of my head. Pain, shot with jagged crimson lights, exploded in my skull, and through it I was aware of Saul laughing. A child’s laughter. The laughter of a child who has tricked a grown-up and is delighted with itself. He was never really much more than a child, you see. There was no viciousness in him. I’d like anyone reading this to know that.

As I tumbled into unconsciousness, I was distantly aware that the laughter had been replaced by a different sound. The sound of the door closing, the key turning in the lock and the bolt being shot across. And Saul’s scampering feet going down the stairs and outside.

I tried the door at once. Of course I did. I shook it and rattled it hard, and banged at the door knob for all I was worth. But the lock on the outside was a very hefty affair indeed – I had made sure of that. And the bolt was the one I had fastened on myself, a thick stout shaft with steel plates holding it in place.

At first I thought Saul was teasing me. I thought he would be sure to come back. He had never been in the outside world on his own and after he got over the first glee of being free he would be bewildered. He would come running back to the safe familiarity of this house.