Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

Maude removed the serving platters as if the meeting was adjourned and nothing Catherine could say would be of any consequence.

‘Thank you, Maude. The food was wonderful.’ Maude didn’t look at her to acknowledge the compliment. Edith’s eyes closed again.

‘Earlier, I saw someone in the garden.’

Maude dropped a steel serving spoon upon the trolley. The sound electrified the darkness.

Edith raised her head. ‘Perhaps you were mistaken.’

Their attention felt like an exciting luxury. ‘No. There was a man in white. He was definitely in the garden.’

What followed between the two women was quick, but not quick enough to evade her notice. Despite the void and coldness between them, Edith and Maude exchanged a glance. One of fearful acknowledgement rather than surprise.

‘I think he was a bee-keeper. He was trying to get my attention.’

Maude turned and continued to busy herself with the dishes, her back to her employer. And it was Edith’s turn to stare at the back of Maude’s head with loathing. ‘A friend of Maude’s who used to tend the honeybees. But who is forbidden to enter the garden.’ The housekeeper retreated across the dining room, the serving trolley rattling before her.

Edith cramped her face into an expression of disgust. ‘I don’t feel at all well. Her soup never agrees with me. She puts something in it. Will you take me to my room? I wish to retire. Maude will undress me.’

‘Of course.’ Catherine stood up, buoyant with guilty relief that she had diverted the hostility away from herself and on to Maude. ‘If I may, I’d like to start early tomorrow, with the dolls if that’s OK.’

Edith ignored her and had already dipped her head to rest.

Only once Edith was propped up amongst the pillows, still fully dressed, did Catherine relax her shoulders and straighten her spine. Moving the unresponsive figure up to the second floor and through the house had taken all of her concentration and strength.

Once she had mastered the stairlift, she found the building so poorly lit she felt she was in danger of wheeling the woman into crevasses of darkness. And only as Catherine turned to leave, giving the wall of dolls at the foot of Edith’s bed a look of longing, did Edith speak.

She circled Catherine’s wrist with her hard fingers which felt terribly cold through the silk of her gloves. The sudden contact made Catherine start, and turn in time to glimpse the hand retreat like a crab to Edith’s lap. ‘I would offer you the library, or the games room. But I am poor company this evening. It would be better to go to your room.’

‘Yes. Of course. I have a good—’

‘And to stay there.’ Edith closed her old eyes, as if she had turned herself off again. And fell soundlessly asleep.

Night engulfed the Red House.

There was no light emitting from the shuttered house, no street lamps or light pollution from neighbouring buildings. The absence beyond the open window in her room was vast, total. Even with the overhead light switched off, the surrounding garden walls and trees and far-off meadows had disappeared. And there appeared to be too many stars in the sky, an incalculable scatter of iridescent debris. She’d thought her feelings of unfamiliarity and vulnerability could not get any worse, but they did. They now stretched into the kind of cosmic perspective she’d forgotten was possible.

Looking up at the sky, a force stronger than gravity enclosed her in a claustrophobic acknowledgement that she stood as a speck upon a speck, in a never-ending cold space she could not understand. A sudden terror fused with awe gripped her mind, until she could not tell fear apart from wonder.

Where did fear end and wonder begin?

If she had not been inside the house she suspected she would be swept upwards, or extinguished by a brief awareness that she was trapped on a planet that didn’t matter to anything up there. Extinction seemed to be a better option than awareness.

She felt like a child again. An inexplicable regression. Would other people feel the same way here? Would they cope and handle themselves and know what to do and say, or would they wait fretting and alone in a forgotten corner?

Her first day had done nothing to distract her from the agitation and misery of Mike either, that kept rearing up in sudden waves of memory and pain. And she’d needed a great deal more than an unproductive day that had left her confused, anxious and unsettled, to keep her mind occupied. She also found herself increasingly desperate for a respite from bearing witness to any more of M. H. Mason’s grotesque dementia. She didn’t think she could stand it a moment longer. The Master of Revels’ face, and the ten white occupied beds of the nursery, had stubbornly superimposed themselves over any other recollection she had of the Red House’s immaculate treasures.

Catherine retreated from the window to the glow of the bedside lamp.

Midnight. She had been sent to her room before nine. The last three hours without a phone signal, Wi-Fi and her inability to concentrate her skittish thoughts on a book, had felt like three times that length of time trapped by the darkness. She was an exhibit in a museum no longer visited because nothing existed outside of the museum.

Her host’s presence lingered around her as a kind of impending disapproval. The arrested time, the deranged artefacts, the expectant silence, and the tragic history, had all insinuated themselves inside her. She could feel their presence as though a dull brownish light had been introduced into her mind.

Funereal scents of rose water, lavender, wood polish, and chemicals might be all she would ever smell again. All investing her with uncertainties and fears and a reticence she had not known since the emotional landscape of her childhood. And she did not welcome a return to that time.

The dangerous turning of her mind against itself was almost tangible. Some instinct tried again to convince her that she was no longer here to work. Her hosts had already forgotten the true purpose of her visit. She was here because of an unfortunate set of circumstances that had compelled Edith to take her in, like an evacuee or unwanted child during the school holidays. And now her presence had left everybody clueless as to how to amuse her or tolerate her outbursts. She transmitted tension like static. She could go crazy.

Go crazier.

Catherine clutched her face and wished she had something to drink. Why hadn’t she brought vodka with her? Because it’s not allowed.

She closed her eyes and engaged in the old breathing exercises. Cleared her mind. Focussed on one point in the reddy flickering darkness behind her eyelids.

Today was a write-off. But no more ghastly films or beds filled with bestial puppets tomorrow. Exactly what was intended for auction had to be established, catalogued and photographed. She would have to be firm.

The quick regrouping of her wits derailed at the sight of the camera on the writing table. Like an ex-smoker near a casually discarded packet of cigarettes, she was scared to be alone with it. There were pictures of Mike on there. A trip to Hay-on-Wye and the Worcester Beacon in Malvern taken within the last few weeks. Her throat thickened, her jaw felt too heavy. She remembered so vividly his expression of delight when he opened his door to find her on the other side of it, and she began blinking back tears.

How? How?

How had this happened so quickly?

And now she was here.

But what makes sense when you have no control?

Catherine reclined against the pillows on the bed and thumbed her way through the album on the memory card she had yet to transfer to her PC. Maybe she wanted to be in pain.