Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘Oh … shit!’ Marcus held the toaster upside down and a million dry crumbs came out on the stone worktop. At the sight of the blackened heap, Maiden erupted into dry coughs and stumbled to his feet to run himself a glass of water. Marcus brushed the debris to the floor and carried the toast to the table on the end of a fork.

‘That’s it.’ He sat down. ‘That is fucking it . ‘

Malcolm, the dog, ambled over, checked out the ancient crumbs, sniffed and turned away. Maiden drank the water slowly.

‘Had a piece for the magazine yesterday.’ Marcus unwrapped a pack of hard, chilled butter. ‘Woman in Norfolk claims actual fairies have been performing scenes from A Midsummer-Night’s Dream in her bloody greenhouse. Been a subscriber since 1962. What do I do with that ?’

‘Offer her the editorship?’

Marcus stared at him. ‘You may be right. I’ll bury Mrs Willis today, full honours, be as nice as I can to the relatives, if any turn up. And then-’

‘She have any children?’

‘Niece in Hay. Another in Allensmore. One of them, I can’t remember which, thinks she might make it to the funeral.’

‘But if Mrs Willis was Annie Davies …’

‘Then there’ll be a few cousins and second cousins in the village. But did they know? And if they did, will they admit it? Old prejudices die hard, places like this. I’ll bury her, and then that’s it.’

‘What is?’

‘Get out. Piss off. Surrender The Phenomenologist to the mad biddies. Put this place on the market. Must be some appeal in a castle, even if the house is disintegrating.’

Maiden filled the kettle, set it down on the stove. ‘Maybe Falconer would buy it.’

‘Thank you, Maiden. Over my dead, fucking body. Rather flog it as an outward-bound centre for your ten-year-old car-thieves.’

Marcus was suddenly sunk into profound misery, bloodhound eyes blurring behind his glasses.

‘Went into the bloody Healing Room late last night. Core of the house for the past year. All those bottles and jars, with Mrs Willis around, they were full of mystery. Potions and elixirs. All drawing energy from her . Full of a sort of condensed life-force. And at the same time you’d feel this overwhelming peace and calm in there. Now it’s just old bottles full of dead and rotting gunge. Have to put them all in bin bags, take them to the tip.’

‘I’ll do it, if you like.’

Marcus shook his head, splattering butter on a fragment of brittle toast. ‘If there’s a message in those bottles, Maiden, it’s for me. I look at my life … I mean is that fucking it ? Standing in a desert, surrounded by graves. Celia. Little Sally. Mrs Willis. Possibility of seeing them again’s about all there is to look forward to, you get to my age.’

‘You’re sixty ,’ Maiden protested.

‘Unless, of course, your own version of the Other Side is the truth of it,’ Marcus said. ‘In which case we’re all stuffed, aren’t we?’

There was the sound of tyres on the forecourt. Marcus dropped his burnt toast.

Maiden saw someone getting out of a very old but beautifully polished black Morris Minor. ‘Woman. Late middle-age, mauvy hair? Tweed skirt, kind of mohair sweater with white woolly lambs on the front. Gold earrings, necklaces, bangles.’

‘Sounds hellish,’ Marcus said. ‘If we keep quiet maybe it’ll go away.’

‘Might be one of Mrs Willis’s nieces.’

It certainly wasn’t a policeman, so Maiden made for the front door and dragged it open before the woman had time to knock. It was a strange moment. She just stood there looking at him for several seconds. She was as tall as he was. She had the small, glittering eyes of a bird of prey.

‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘You’re not Marcus Bacton, are you, lovely?’

A long, flat-topped hill. Like a bed, with a pillow of trees at one end. Grayle headed toward the trees, as directed by Amy Jenkins, the landlady. Remembering what Ersula had written about the curious magic of this place.

She came to a plain farm gate and it was open. Walked through, and suddenly — like … wow — there was, below her, this unbelievably beautiful, rambling, mellow stone house spread out like a sleeping lion. The kind of country house they tried to clone in Beverly Hills and failed because the result was just too movie-set perfect. High walls suggested gardens with fishpools and stuff.

Typically — because the house was irrelevant to what went on there — Ersula had never referred to it, except as ‘the center’. It looked more of a home than an educational establishment, which explained why Ersula and the others had had apartments over the stables, and why folks on the courses needed accommodation in the village. Couldn’t be more than five or six bedrooms in the house itself.

And just one car parked in front, a rebuilt VW beetle, pink. A squirrel scampered past, otherwise no sign of life.

Clouds were gathering, and it looked like more than a gesture. She should’ve come in the car, but walking a couple of miles gave you a handle on a place. Fall was setting in, the first dead leaves curling together on the brown gravel as she tried — because there were no other options — the huge, solid, iron-studded door.

Tugging a bell pull on a black chain, she stepped back in alarm when it responded with this deep, churchy tolling, way back into the house. And Grayle thought, in a kind of terror, Suppose the door opens and it’s Ersula. Ersula in a bathrobe, hair mussed and smelling of recent sex ?

But there was no Ersula. No answer at all. And no use in ringing again, there was no way anyone in the house would have failed to hear.

Grayle was curious. Emboldened by the likelihood of there being no-one here at all, she wandered around the side of the house to peer over the stone wall. It was too high, around nine feet. But it had a door in it. A smaller replica of the front door, going to a Gothic point. There was a ring handle; she turned it.

Waited, holding her breath. Nobody came out with a shotgun or two snarling mastiffs on a chain. She pushed her head through the opening. ‘Hullo?’

Expecting a stately Elizabethan knot-garden or something of that order, but it was just a gravelled yard with two white Portakabins. This noise coming out of one. A slow, cavernous noise, like a giant flute deep underground.

She stood and listened a while. There was an artificial quality to it. She padded across the yard. The Portakabin windows had Venetian blinds. One was open; you could just about see inside. She saw two tall speakers, computer monitors, a tape deck with a green pilot light. Whole setup looked like a recording studio, maybe for making those ambient, New Age tapes — whales talking to one another kind of stuff.

‘Yes?’ From close behind her.

‘ OhmyGod . ‘ Grayle spun.

Found herself facing one of those people you just knew weren’t going to be helpful. She was about Grayle’s own age, good-looking and so sure of it she could wear an old wax jacket and baggy cords, harness her abundant hair in a rubber band.

‘What are you doing here?’ Authoritative voice, very English, well bred; kind of voice that spurned Hugh Grant until the last reel.

‘I …’

‘No, don’t tell me,’ the woman said with a flick of a wrist. ‘You’re a bloody journalist, aren’t you?’

‘Well, uh, as it happens, yeah, but-’

‘God almighty . Don’t you people ever get the message? All visits by journalists, interviews, etcetera, etcetera, are absolutely strictly by appointment only . So I suggest you go back to your office and attempt to make one. I mean, would that be so terribly difficult for you?’