Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

‘This is the only film we have left. It was the first of the cruelty plays that my uncle learned. A very old play. I often think it fitting this tribute survived. The other films are damaged and will no longer play. The Face at the Window and The Dead Witness were the last to go.’

‘Learned?’

‘Yes! Do you know nothing of our great dramatic history? Barnaby Pettigrew and Wesley Spettyl toured this play for years. At Stourbridge Fair, Worcester Theatre, Coventry. Even Covent Garden and Bartholomew Fair. It was always a sensation. It was their duty that Henry Strader was not forgotten.’

‘Who?’

‘You know, my uncle even believed the Master of Revels’ head was carved by the great Billy Purvis, head-carver and puppet-maker. And the Master of Revels was ready when my dear uncle reminded him of his calling!’

‘Sorry, who was Henry Strader?’

Edith sucked in her breath as if scandalized. ‘The greatest of them all. The first known Martyr. Did you learn nothing at school? Were you even now paying attention? You have just watched the account of his terrible end. The very title of this play is ’ Tis Pity Henry Strader was Broken Upon the Wheel. Murdered for his art in Smithfield. The Smooth Field, my dear. In London, in… in sixteen-something. I forget. Executed for sedition, for witchcraft. He was then torn apart in the street by a mob. It was the first history lesson my mother taught me in this very room.’

‘Afraid I’m unaware of him.’

‘What an appalling education you must have received. Are you telling me you know nothing of Strader’s great march on London?’

‘Sorry, I—’

‘The lame flocked to Strader, dear. And followed his troupe from Stourbridge Fair to London. Some even called it the second Children’s Crusade, but it was perceived to be a rebellion. Strader’s following became so great, so unruly, he was murdered for his vision by the authorities. His killers made his troupe watch. Can you imagine it? He was the first of the known Martyrs of Rod and String. A local hero no less! Born near here. Parts of his remains were said to be holy, and were even returned to this part of the world after his execution. I was schooled in this black history right here.’

Again Catherine was confused and mystified by what Edith was referring to, or the timescale involved in what she appeared to be suggesting was a theatrical legacy continued by her uncle. And not one she had ever heard of.

Edith was wasting her time and Catherine felt another flare of annoyance. The puppets were unsellable. They were an unpleasant curiosity that she could dine out on for years, if she could bear to remember them, but they were nothing else. Edith’s history lesson was almost certainly pure fantasy. This and the nursery had nothing to do with her valuation and the first day of her visit was nearly over.

‘My uncle saved an entire English tradition, my dear. Outlawed for being in league with one devil or another, by fools. Ha! Did you know that Tiberius suppressed them, and that Claudius banished them too? This troupe have known dangerous times. Their entire history has been one of persecution. I mean,’ she lowered her voice as if in fear, ‘you saw what happened to poor Henry Strader at the Smooth Field for resurrecting the tradition. For daring to contradict the Church and government. He was the first martyr my uncle could even find a name for, my dear. But there were others. After him, for certain. And before him, too, you can be sure of that, though he never traced them.’

Edith sat back in her chair, smiled, and showed her yellow teeth, as if delighted at the opportunity to correct her guest’s woeful ignorance. ‘You know, in the summer when I was a girl, we had theatre on the lawn. My uncle staged those plays of Henry Strader that were remembered. The Martyr wrote nothing down. It was too dangerous. And much was lost. But in his own time he was more popular than Shakespeare. I saw The Magician’s Fate and The Beauteous Sacrifice before I was ten. Now, how many little girls do you know who can say that?’

Unhindered by a voice from behind her back, or the peal of Edith’s little bell, Catherine passed through the garden gate. She tried to walk casually, though an attempt to move soundlessly made her movements furtive. She experienced a deep discomfort at leaving the building without asking, but then was aghast at herself for assuming that she needed permission to leave to make a phone call.

After the screening of the film, Edith had been wheeled to her room to sleep before dinner, and Maude had retreated to her fiefdom on the ground floor to prepare the evening meal. Both rooms were situated at the rear of the property, and she realized this was her best chance to leave the building unobserved. Her request to begin work on the inventory had been treated to an embarrassing silence before Maude escorted her to her bedroom without a word. Was she then to wait there all afternoon until dinner?

She needed a phone signal and urgently wanted to share her experiences with Leonard, and get his advice on what to make of it all, and what to do. But she now worried that as soon as she got behind the wheel of her car, leaving the Red House even for half an hour would make a return to the building difficult. Unbearable would be an exaggeration, but not a great one.

As she walked away, she desperately tried not to look back at the house. If someone was watching from a window, her glance might be an admission of wrongdoing, of not keeping her hosts abreast of her movements.

The nape of her neck cooled as if a cloud had passed across the sun, or the shadow of the house had lengthened to keep pace with her scurrying down the lane. The house’s scrutiny began to feel like a tangible pressure, as if there was now a disapproving face at every window behind her. She was struck with an instinct to cringe, and could not prevent a surreptitious peek at the house just to make sure that no one was, in fact, observing her. But the peek became a double-take, in which she was forced to stop and face the building.

In a solitary glance, she had been shocked by a mistaken impression of a sudden change in the Red House’s character. For a moment, in her moving vision, the overgrown garden had climbed even higher up the dark walls of the house’s front. The bricks of the building had appeared unkempt, blackened with age or even dereliction.

The illusion was caused by the way the nearby trees cast their shadows over the first storey, abetted by her sight briefly dimming under the canopy of a small fir tree crowding the garden wall. The house was now restored to its former hideous magnificence.

Catherine reached her car and got inside quickly. Turned the engine over and put the car into first gear. As she drove away as slowly and as stealthily as she could manage she hoped the occupants of the Red House wouldn’t hear the sound of the engine.

She slipped her car through the tunnel of hawthorn, but struggled to see the lane as shadows rolled over the bonnet and across the windscreen in a strobe effect. Emerging from the natural tunnel, strong sunlight blinded her and she was forced to brake. She fumbled with sunglasses and the sun visor.

In the rear-view mirror the black claws of the roof finials were skeletal against the sky.

Once she was moving again, the idea of escaping Edith’s unpredictable moods, at least for a while, allowed the tension of the day to seep from her shoulders and neck. There would be no friendship or even familiarity between them. Hoping for such was tiring and destined for repeat disappointments. Just an evening meal to get through and then she could sleep. If she could photograph every item for sale the following day, she wondered if she might even complete the valuation offsite, at home.