Child's Play

Chapter 10

It was half past eight when Lexie turned up at Troy House to find the nurse waiting impatiently in the hall.

‘You said eight o’clock,’ she said accusingly.

‘Sorry,’ said Lexie. ‘Is she all right?’

‘Yes, fine. I’ll be back in the morning.’

Lexie closed but didn’t lock the door behind her and then went up the stairs. As she moved silently into Miss Keech’s room, the sick woman’s voice called, ‘Lexie? Is that you?’

‘Yes, Miss Keech,’ said Lexie, approaching the bed, dimly lit by a small table lamp.

‘Has that woman gone?’

‘The nurse? Yes?’

‘Calls herself a nurse, does she? She couldn’t nurse a head cold.’

Miss Keech spoke vigorously, but it was not a reassuring vigour. Her cheeks were hectic and there was a glimmer of perspiration along her upper lip. Most striking of all, the veneer of pedantic correctness was being eroded from her speech and the rhythms and accents of her village childhood were reasserting themselves.

Lexie said, ‘I think mebbe you ought to get some sleep now.’

‘Sleep? I’ll soon have more sleep than I know what to do with. I hate sleep! Old people’s sleep is full of dreams, Lexie. Like a child’s. Except that if a child’s dreams are bad, she wakes and cries a little, maybe, then shakes them off in the joy of being alive; and if they’re good she wakes and bears their joy around with her all the livelong day. But when you’re old, the bad is what stays with you, and all the good does is remind you of what is lost beyond all hope of retrieval. Sit and talk with me, Lexie.’

It was an undeniable plea.

Lexie sat on the hard upright chair at the bedside and said, ‘All right. I’ll sit with you for a while.’

‘That’s good of you,’ said Miss Keech, half sneering. ‘I know you don’t like my company much. Why is that, Lexie? I asked you last night and you wouldn’t answer. Why don’t you like me?’

Lexie said, ‘You don’t want to talk about things like that, Miss Keech.’

‘You mean you don’t!’ exclaimed the old woman. ‘Come on! I’ve a right to know!’

‘All right,’ said Lexie calmly. ‘If you must. To start with, Dad used to say things about you. When you’re little, you take notice of what your mam and dad say. If they say Conservative’s grand and Labour’s bad, that’s what you think. If they say black’s white and white’s black, that’s what you think.’

‘What kind of things did he say?’

‘He said that you were stuck-up without cause. That it were bad enough putting up with Aunt Gwen’s airs and graces but at least she had the brass to support them. Whereas you were just a jumped-up skivvy from a family of nobodies and ne’er-do-wells.’

Miss Keech nodded vigorously.

‘Yes, yes. He were quite right, of course. Farm labourers up the Dale, that was my family; four brothers all older than me, and our dad, always the last to be hired, always the first to be fired, those were the Keeches right enough. Yes. And I came here at thirteen and I was a skivvy, that’s true. And I could hardly read or write and I had an accent so broad, it made your dad sound like the Prince of Wales!’

This was a new Miss Keech to Lexie and she watched and listened with growing concern. Age, she felt, should be immutable. Being young was problematical enough without the fixed stars shifting in their crystal sphere. Unless she was careful, the old Keech, the Wicked Witch of the West, with her sharp nose and black clothes, was going to assume a human form, though whether she’d like the new any more than the old was doubtful.

Miss Keech was still talking.

‘But you didn’t depend on your father for your views forever, Lexie. You’re far too independent for that. Yet you still went on disliking me.’

‘Not really. It became a habit. I only saw you once a month usually. You were always the same. So there was no reason for me to change. You were the adult. You should have done the changing then.’

‘I tried to be friendly,’ Keech protested. ‘I wanted you children to call me Auntie Ella, remember? But you wouldn’t.’

‘You should’ve refused to answer to anything else,’ said Lexie.

‘Like you when you stopped being Alexandra? Oh, there was a difference, Lexie. All that would have happened with me was you’d not have spoken to me at all. I’d no illusions, Lexie, allow me that at least.’

‘Miss Keech, I think you ought to rest …’

‘No! Pour me a glass of my tonic, there’s a love.’

Lexie looked doubtfully at the bottle. It was almost empty.

She said, ‘Does the doctor say …’

‘Damn the doctor!’

Lexie shrugged and filled a glass. The old woman drank it greedily.

‘That’s better. You’re a good girl, Lexie. Strange but good. Did you go home last night?’

‘No. I stayed here.’

‘Here? You didn’t let him touch you, did you? He’s a nice boy, Rod, but they’re all the same when it’s dark. All grey in the dark, aren’t they?’

This seemed to amuse her disproportionately and she laughed till she coughed, and had to finish her wine. This seemed to quieten her, and she closed her eyes, and after a while looked to have fallen asleep. But when Lexie rose quietly to go, a thin hand reached out and seized her wrist.

‘Don’t leave me, not in the dark, there are devils in the dark.’

With a suddenness that made Lexie startle, she sat bolt upright.

‘That’s what nearly killed the old girl, you know. A devil in the dark. That’s what she used to say, remember?’

This she cried out loudly, and then settled back against her pillow and said, ‘Stay with me, stay with me.’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘No, you’ll go soon as I close my eyes! I know you will …’

Her face became cunning and she said slyly, ‘I’ll tell you something if you’ll stay.’

‘I said I’ll stay, Miss Keech. Try to rest.’

The woman’s mood changed direction once more.

‘You’re a good girl, I’ve always known it. You won’t leave me alone, I’ve been alone too much, I’ve lived alone …’

‘No. You’ve lived with Great Aunt Gwen …’

‘That was like being alone!’ she cried. ‘A loonie and a ghost, they’re no company! But I won’t die alone, I won’t, I won’t!’

Lexie was growing increasingly alarmed. In an effort to divert the old woman she said, ‘You were going to tell me something interesting.’

For a second there was blankness, then the sly smile returned.

‘Interesting? No; more than interesting. Something strange and terrible and sad … oh Lexie …’

She trembled on the edge of tears, then went very still as if in the effort of containing them.

‘Come close, Lexie,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want her to hear …Come close …’

It was more than an hour before one of the silences which punctuated the sick woman’s ramblings stretched far enough for Lexie to relax her strained hearing and bring her mind to bear on what she had heard.

Downstairs the phone rang.

At the first note, Miss Keech sat upright.

Oh, damn! thought Lexie.

She opened her mouth to offer reassurance, but before she could speak, the woman said briskly, ‘Of course, you and Jane may play down there as much as you like, Lexie. And of course you may have the key to the door. But remember what I told you, Lexie.’

She smiled; a curve of the lips as jolly as a sickle moon on a stormy night. Then her eyes focused at a point near the door with an intensity which made Lexie want to turn and look too. The old woman shook her head as though in denial, then her eyes closed and she sank back down into her pillow.

The phone was still ringing.

Swiftly Lexie descended into the hall and picked up the receiver.

‘Lexie, it’s Rod.’

‘Hello.’

‘Everything all right?’

She hesitated enough before replying to be noticeable by a man less absorbed in his own cares.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘And how are you? You still sound worried.’

‘I should be. Pascoe was here before the play tonight, rabbiting on about Pontelli. It didn’t do my performance much good, I tell you. Has he tried to see you at all?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Good. I just thought he might try something clever like saying I’d caved in, so I thought I’d better ring to say I’ve stuck to the story. Anyway, enough of selfish me. How’s Keechie?’

‘She’s been a bit incoherent, almost non-stop rambling. Mainly about Gwen and black devils. All kinds of odd stuff. She kept on getting to a certain point, then breaking off. I got the impression that …’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, I’ll tell you when I see you. Will you be long?’

At last her unease got through to Lomas.

He said, ‘Look, I’ve got to hang on for the curtain-calls. After my showing tonight, I daren’t get Chung’s back up! But I won’t wait for that bloody bus. I’ll grab a taxi again and blow the expense.’

‘It’ll cost a fortune.’

‘Worth it. Lexie, I think I love you.’

‘Yes,’ said Lexie quietly and put down the receiver.

She stood in the hall for a while. This was the first declaration of love any man had made to her, but it did not occupy her mind for long. There would be another time to contemplate that in. Meanwhile there were other kinds of love to ponder here and now.

Above, nothing stirred.

She went through into the kitchen. Its new brightness was a comfort and she told herself she had come through here to make herself a coffee and sit quietly and wait for Rod.

Something moved behind her and she spun round to see the door slowly opening. Before she could cry out, she saw what it was, and a muted sob of relief, like a soft cough in a concert hall, was all she released as Bob, the big black labrador, paddled into the room.

But the stimulus was enough. Fear had never frozen her but always spurred her to action. It was a version she guessed of her father’s bloody-minded stubbornness in the face of opposition. Now she went to the keyboard on the wall above the refrigerator. The key she wanted wasn’t there. With a sigh, she went back upstairs into Miss Keech’s room and gently removed the bunch of keys from the dressing-table top. The woman did not move or open her eyes, but Lexie had a sense of mocking observation.

Downstairs again, she checked the keys. They duplicated those on the keyboard in the kitchen with a single exception. Both copies of the key Lexie was looking for were on Miss Keech’s personal ring.

As she descended into the cellar, she recalled that Sunday afternoon more than ten years earlier when she had come with simulated boldness down these same steps, determined to disperse the aura of horror Miss Keech had wantonly conjured up in this place. She knew now of course what she had not known then, that truth is not always triumphant over dark imaginings, that an idea, however outrageous, can often be stronger than a fact, however firm. Jane had never played in the cellar again and even her own penetration of the empty inner chamber had not restored the old innocence to the outer room.

The dumped furniture looked much the same. She let her mind drift into the pleasant margins of nostalgia for a moment. That sofa had been an elfin ship; that tallboy had been a tyrant’s tower … But rapidly she steered herself back from such weakening distractions.

Against the door of the small wine cellar stood an old linen chest. Packed full of God knew what, it felt heavy and immovable to the thrust of her skinny arms. But when she looked more closely, she discovered some pieces of wood wedged underneath and once she removed these, the chest slid easily aside on silent castors.

And now the door.

The key slipped into the keyhole with no difficulty. Deftly she turned it in the oiled wards and pushed the door open with a quiet ease more sinister far than any Gothic screeching. The light from the main cellar seemed to trickle in like water, slowly filling the inner chamber so that there was no sudden shock, only a gradual awareness of horror, the more intense because her mind further delayed it with the assurance that what she saw must exist only in her fevered imaginings.

The wineracks had been pulled together to form a bier (Lomas’s bitter bier, her mind punned desperately in another effort to distance the horror) and on it lay, head turned towards her so that absent eyes seemed to watch her entrance from empty sockets, a body.

Fear urged her backwards to escape it; fear of fear urged her forwards to examine it. For once in her short life she was uncertain which impulse would win. Then both died and in the same instant were reincarnated, as she heard behind her careful footsteps descending the cellar stairs.