Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

During the journey he kept ogling her, and once or twice I noticed her looking at him in a very sly way. Then he asked if she would like to borrow his newspaper. Of course she did. Soon they were chatting away like old friends and completely ignoring me. I felt so mortified. We weren’t alone in the carriage, either — there was a very nice elderly couple as well. I couldn’t say anything in front of everyone so the only thing I could do was stay calm and stare out of the window and hope my agitation wasn’t obvious to everyone .

Fortunately, when we changed on to the branch line to Mavering, we were by ourselves again. Joseph was suddenly all courtesy and consideration. I said I’d noticed him making eyes at that girl and he denied it all and grew quite angry. I decided to let it go. Like all men, Joseph has something of the brute in him. He has his animal instincts. One can hardly blame him for that. So he was easy prey for a designing girl. It occurred to me that there was a simple solution to the problem. All I needed was a little courage .

I waited until we had nearly finished at the farm — where Joseph could hardly have been more attentive to my little wants and needs. I said, as we were standing in what will be my drawing room, that I hadn’t forgotten what I had said the other day after our visit to my brother John’s. We were already married in spirit, I reminded him, and it was high time we were married in the other way. He seized me in a great bear hug and covered my face in kisses. I could hardly breathe .

He pointed out that everyone in Rawling already knew us as Mr and Mrs Serridge, so here would be the perfect place, and of course it would signify the beginning of our new life together, etc., etc. Obviously we couldn’t stay at the farm, because nothing was ready, but he had noticed the village inn was a most respectable-looking establishment and a sign in the window there said that there were rooms to let. I was beginning to have second thoughts so I said there were things I needed to purchase, which was true. He swept away my objections, and later that afternoon we took a taxi into Saffron Walden so we could buy what we needed for the night .

And then — and then — it all went horribly wrong. We dined at the inn — on dreadful, fatty mutton — and Joseph ordered a bottle of Burgundy, most of which he drank himself. We retired to bed early. It was not even nine o’clock. I’m sure the landlady suspected something .

I cannot bear even to think of what happened next, let alone describe it. It was horrible. Dirty. Painful. Disgusting. We didn’t even change into our nightclothes. He pushed me on the bed and ATTACKED me .

The whole business can’t have taken much more than a minute though it seemed to me that every second lasted an hour. I felt I was being smothered, though that was the least of my troubles. I had not expected him to be so rough. I had not expected it to hurt so much. Is this what it all means, what it all comes down to?

At least, I thought while he was doing it to me, he will never leave me now. He will be mine for ever. When he had finished, however, there were no signs of tenderness. He just patted my shoulder and said I was a good girl. Then he got out of bed, pulled on his trousers and walked up and down smoking a cigarette. I turned away and pretended to sleep. After a while, I actually heard him relieve himself in the pot. Then he whispered loudly to me that he was going down for a nightcap. I didn’t reply .

So here I am, writing by the dying fire. I don’t want to see anybody so I won’t ring for more coals. They are still talking downstairs, and I think he’s laughing at something. Laughing. I know it’s a sin, dear Jesus, but sometimes I wish I were dead .

When you finish reading this entry, you want to forget it at once and for ever. But instead you read it again. And again. That’s what hell means, perhaps, being compelled not just to live but to relive.

Rory might have ignored the smell for another day if it hadn’t been for the letter, which was from the editor of a small-circulation trade magazine specializing in hosiery. Through the medium of his secretary, the editor regretted to inform Rory that the post of junior feature writer had just been filled by another candidate so his, Rory’s, presence at an interview that afternoon would not after all be required. The editor regretted any inconvenience caused and wished Rory every success in his career.

Rory flung the letter in the waste-paper basket. Thursday now stretched in front of him, unattractively empty. He hadn’t had much hope of being offered the job, but at least going for an interview for it would have given him something to do other than combing the Situations Vacant in the library.

Since he had nothing better to do, he decided to investigate the smell. This had been puzzling him for the last thirty-six hours, during which time it had been growing steadily stronger and more unpleasant. It did not take him long to trace it to a tin of Argentinian corned beef, opened at the weekend, half-eaten and subsequently forgotten in the cupboard of the chiffonier under the window. He wrapped the tin in yesterday’s newspaper and stuffed it in the enamelled bucket used for kitchen rubbish. Leaving his windows wide open, he carried the bucket downstairs and into the little yard at the back of the house.

The sun never shone on this small rectangle of cracked and blackened flagstones, and probably never would. The yard smelled, and so did the contents of the dustbins that lined the walls. Tall buildings reared up on every side, and the inhabitants of all of them left their rubbish here. A narrow passageway running between number seven and the house next door provided shared access to the square.

Rory opened the nearest of the bins. It was three-quarters full — plenty of room for the contents of the bucket. He was about to upend the pail into the dustbin when a name caught his eye.

He looked into the bin. Narton . The name was on a newspaper wrapped around some rubbish. At least a third of the bundle was saturated with moisture, and the paper was dark and disintegrating, revealing wet tea leaves, fragments of tobacco, a cigar butt. When he tried to pick up the newspaper, the bundle fell apart completely. Fragments of newspaper came away in his hand. Rubbish spilled out. He glimpsed something underneath that made him cry out, something white and nightmarish.

Sanity took hold again. Yes, it was a skull, with the rakish horns of a goat. Rory lifted it gingerly from the bin. The horns were bleached and fissured like driftwood. Between them was a V-shaped ridge of bone, bisected vertically with an indentation like a frown. Much of the nose had collapsed, leaving a prow of sharp white spikes sheltering rolls of finer bone, perforated like lace. The eye sockets were vacant, seeing nothing, wanting nothing. He let the skull drop from his hand and back onto its bed of rubbish.

He pulled the remains of the newspaper from the dustbin. Narton’s name had caught his eye in a stop-press item at the bottom of a page.

RAWLING MAN DIES

On Monday evening, police were called to a house in Rawling following an unexpected fatality. The dead man is believed to be Herbert Narton, the house’s owner.

Rory unfolded what was left of the newspaper on the flagstones. The masthead was still intact: The Mavering Advertiser amp; Weekly Herald . Serridge must have brought it back after his last visit to Rawling.

He sat back on his heels and whistled. Narton dead? It didn’t seem possible. The poor devil had seemed well enough on Saturday in that tea shop near the British Museum. He tore out the stop-press item and dumped the rest of the newspaper in the bin.