What Lies Beneath

Chapter 41

Jamie Cadence’s Journal, Concluding Pages

Over the last seven days, writing this, I’ve sought to put a barricade between myself and the inevitable ending to my story. I’ve poured out my emotions and my fears and confessed my sins (most of them), to this journal, all the time pushing away what I know is ahead. There was even that brief space when I thought I might escape, but I know now that the wall at the back of the half-concealed cupboard won’t provide a way out. There’s little more to write now. I’ve squeezed every drop out of the memories while writing this journal and there’s little more to say. And already I can hear the sounds beyond my window. I know what they mean. Oh God, I know only too well…

But before I lay down my pen for what I think will be the last time (and there’s a splendidly dramatic line to write!), there are perhaps a few loose ends I should tie up.

After that venal little slut Brenda Ford succeeded in screwing money out of Serena – including the deeds to a tiny cottage in Bramley – it was agreed that we had to create what would effectively be a prison for Saul.

‘As much,’ said Colm, ‘to protect people from him as to prevent him being taken away to some grim institution.’

‘Or worse,’ put in Martlet.

‘You think he’d be regarded as responsible for his actions?’ said Colm, surprised.

‘I think it’s a risk we don’t want to take,’ said Martlet drily.

The Cadences may cheat a bit, but they do have social consciences where the rest of the populace is concerned (except for me. I never had a social conscience or anything approaching it). But they agreed that Saul had to be strictly confined, and they looked to me, as always, to deal with the practicalities.

I surprised myself over that, because I rather enjoyed it. I had never thought of myself as very practical, but it was interesting to draw up the plans and arrange for workmen to come down from London, and turn the lodge into a virtual prison house.

There was a big bedroom on the first floor and it was not difficult to create a small bathroom opening directly off it. Bars were fitted to both windows – thick strong iron staves, driven deep into the fabric of the walls at top and bottom. The windows overlooked the main drive leading up to the manor. In fact, one window had a direct view through the trees of the main entrance. Anyone going up to the manor would probably see the bars at the lodge’s upstairs windows, but it was a risk that had to be taken. And not many people did come to the manor by then.

While the workmen were there, I got them to build shelves on each side of the fireplace, and I stocked the shelves with books. I bought a second, more up-to-date gramophone, and later, when such things were more easily obtainable, I added a wireless. Saul liked music and by then it was a necessary part of life for me. It drove the darkness back – not every time and not always completely, but it was a powerful defence.

I believe Colm told the various workmen a mixed version of the truth – that an elderly member of the family was given to wandering off and it was necessary to create a degree of security. For safety’s sake, he said, there needed to be bars and locks. Very sad, but there it was.

He was believed, of course; no one who ever met Colm would have suspected him of any kind of deceit. And it wasn’t so long since the aristocracy hid away their mad relatives, rather than consign them to some bleak asylum.

After the work was finished and the workmen had left Priors Bramley, I managed to fix two stout bolts: one to the outside of the door of Saul’s room and another to the main outside door. It meant both doors could easily be secured from outside. I think I did a very good job there.

Serena insisted the lodge should be as comfortable as possible. There were certain standards one should not lose, she said. I looked at her, and I saw how the disease had marked her and how she walked so slowly and painfully around her dim rooms, and for the first time I was aware of an unwilling admiration. I wrote that she had my promise that Saul should be comfortable in his prison.

And so he was, for the next ten years. He really was, I can say that honestly.

Food was sent down from the manor, and either Hetty or Dora – both of them ageing considerably by that time – came each day to cook and clean.

The strange thing is that Saul and I found a degree of companionship during those years. We had our books and our music, and we listened to the wireless in the evenings. There were plays and concerts and discussions. I even taught him to play chess, although he was very slow and I nearly always won. But he thought it a grand, grown-up thing to do and he was fascinated by the carved ivory chessmen, which had been his grandfather’s and which were kept in a carved wooden box from Florence.

At times when I thought he was sufficiently sedated we walked in the grounds of the manor, but the walks were as slow as the chess games; the constant sedatives had given him a kind of shambling gait. Or perhaps it wasn’t the sedatives, perhaps it was simply that the syphilis was getting hold of his bones by then. If I said I felt guilty about that I would be lying. I didn’t feel guilty. I still wanted Cadences and all that went with it as much as ever, and I wasn’t going to let this half-demented creature cheat me, not now, not when it was within touching distance.

We weren’t entirely isolated. Serena sometimes got Flagg to drive her down to the lodge, where she sat in her son’s room and sipped a glass of sherry or a cup of tea. Flagg was far too old to drive by then, but in a place like Priors Bramley no one noticed or probably even cared. Saul sat quietly and obediently in his chair on those occasions, watching Serena speak, occasionally mouthing the words she said, like a child learning to talk. Later, of course, Serena was too infirm to move very much and she stopped coming. Martlet and Colm still came, though, and once Martlet brought down a colleague for a new opinion on Saul’s condition. That only confirmed what we already knew.

In the main, Saul’s life had not altered so very much from when he lived at the manor. Or had it? There were times when he would look at me very pensively, not saying anything, just looking, as if he was trying to see into my mind.

It was Serena who suggested there should be a good stock of provisions inside the lodge. Colm had died the previous year – Flagg found him at his desk, apparently bent over his books but in fact stone dead – and her own health was deteriorating fast. I think she was becoming aware of the frailty, even the mortality, of all humans.

‘Supposing,’ she said, seated very stiff and upright in her shadowy room in the manor, ‘something were to happen to you, Jamie? I don’t mean anything dreadful, but what if you were taken ill, or you fell while out walking and broke an ankle, and Saul was locked in that room, unable to reach anyone.’

The words, ‘And you couldn’t call for help or use a phone,’ hung on the air between us.

It was a reasonable concern. Serena, for all her faults, wasn’t without intelligence or, indeed, a degree of imagination. Flagg and Mrs Flagg had retired by then, Hetty had left to live with an elderly sister, and there was only the faithful, and somewhat younger, Dora to look after Serena. Dora came to the lodge just twice a week by that time, bringing stews and pies that could be reheated, and bread, which she bought in the village, together with butter, cheese, eggs and milk. She cleaned the rooms while she was there and took washing back to the manor. I used to walk up to the manor to dine or have lunch with Serena two or three times a week.

So we called workmen out again, and a big walk-in store cupboard was made off Saul’s room. The shelves were stocked with a variety of tinned food; rationing had recently been withdrawn and most food could be bought easily by then. There were tins of meat and fruit; sardines and herring in tomato sauce, and soup squares. Condensed milk, lunch biscuits and packets of dried egg. And large canisters of tea and sugar, and bottled coffee. I had a couple of cases of wine and several bottles of brandy as well. Saul never drank that, of course – or, if he did, it was at my subtle invitation, when Martlet or one of the others was expected and could see him in a slurred-speech, blurred-eye condition.

Perhaps the lingering memory of the siege in the fort at Edirne, and of Gil going out with the soldiers to shoot the rats, was still with me, because when I saw the shelves of food, I felt surprisingly comfortable and secure.

Did I say I never expected Brenda Ford’s child to impinge on my life? That statement is another of the ironies about my life.

In fact I never saw the girl until that sultry autumn evening when Brenda brought her to the manor – I think either to complain that the money wasn’t reaching her, or perhaps to ask for more. I never knew which.

I didn’t see exactly what happened that evening. I was in Colm’s library; I had walked up to the manor to see if he had had any books on late eighteenth-century music. I had put a gramophone record on – I remember it was my beloved Deserted Village overture – and left the doors open while I searched. Serena never minded my doing that, even though the old gramophone at the manor was a bit unreliable and scratchy. Once or twice she even said the music soothed her.

But even from the library I heard Brenda shrieking that night, saying something about needing money. Then I heard Serena’s furious voice, although I didn’t hear exactly what she said. But even though she was so fragile you could have snapped her bones in two with your hand, she still had that indomitable spirit. Without it I doubt she’d have lived as long as she did, for the disease that had killed my mother and old Julius had ravaged her very severely. Even so, she was not prepared to be browbeaten by anybody – and she did not like or trust Brenda Ford.

I left them to it. I couldn’t risk confronting Brenda, even after so many years. I stayed in the library until I heard her go, then I went downstairs. I remember how I went into the drawing room, not realizing what had happened at first, just seeing her seated in her usual place. I remember, as well, how the gramophone had been restarted. I thought Serena had done that; it wasn’t until afterwards I understood it must have been Brenda Ford, trying to put everything back as it had been, trying to cover up what she had done.

I never thought Brenda deliberately killed Serena. I don’t think she was capable of killing. Whatever had happened had been an accident. I was just taking in the fact of her death when the child came back. She didn’t immediately see me, but I saw her. My daughter. You’d have expected me to feel some rush of emotion, some recognition, but I didn’t. I studied her dispassionately, seeing that she was very like Brenda and hardly like me at all. She was staring at Serena with horror and it was only when I reached out to switch off the gramophone that she realized I was there. She stared at me, then ran out almost at once, and even though she couldn’t possibly have seen me in any detail in that dark room, I always had the feeling she never forgot me.

Whatever the truth behind Serena’s death, as far as I was concerned it was another thing to lay at Saul’s door. I didn’t have to think twice. I locked the room with Serena’s body seated in its chair like a stiff-legged, staring-eyed doll, and got Dora to telephone Martlet. He came that same evening, arriving just before midnight in a hired car.

He said, ‘Was it Saul who did it?’ and I nodded. Even though Cadences was no longer the beckoning prize it once had been, I still instinctively added this new and useful crime to Saul’s account. Because I didn’t know what the future might hold. I still had that tiny unquenchable hope that one day Cadences might be rich again, and the deceit and the lies might still be worth it. They might even be worth the agony I suffered in that Turkish courtyard, with the stench of blood and fear tainting the air.

‘Ah, well,’ said Martlet sadly, and wrote the death certificate out there and then.

That was when Cadence Manor was closed for good. Dora went back to her family’s home somewhere in the north and Martlet returned to London. I don’t think he had any patients by then; I think the creation of the National Health Service had altered the practice of medicine radically, and he was too old to bother.

It meant Saul and I were on our own and I had to address myself to the practicalities of living. It was unthinkable that I should ever go openly into Priors Bramley, or, indeed, anywhere else. After thought, I wrote and posted an order for provisions to be delivered every two weeks from a big neighbouring town. Anonymous, you see? The account would be settled through the bank each quarter and the order was to be exactly the same each time. The carrier was to leave it at the gates where it would be collected. What they thought of such an arrangement I have no idea. Probably they assumed some eccentric remnant of the family still lived in the decaying old manor. I didn’t much care what they thought.

And for the next four or five months everything was perfectly all right. Life went along quietly and peacefully – until that spring afternoon when I found a local newspaper someone had left in St Anselm’s church. Blazoned across it were the headlines:

Beneath that again was a sub-heading which said, ‘Geranos is a compound, believed to contain sulphur mustard.’

I stood in the old church, reading the newspaper article, and panic seized me.

The article described the evacuation of the village. They actually used the word ‘evacuation’, which must have been dreadfully reminiscent of the war for many people. There was information about how a new road had been planned and then postponed, and details of compensation paid, compulsory purchase orders and rehousing. Several of the older inhabitants had resisted being moved, but had finally yielded and gone to live in one of the neighbouring villages. I hardly took that in, because one single fact was burning deep into my brain.

It was the date of the paper. This was old news. People had known about it for two months, but I, in my island of isolation within the grounds of the manor, had known nothing, heard nothing.

The date when the Geranos would be dropped was given. It was in eight days’ time. There was a lot of technical information about the composition of Geranos, and a lot of false-sounding reassurance as to how it was not harmful, but that the village was to be sealed off as a precaution.

I took little notice of these empty reassurances, because I knew – I knew – what sulphur mustard did to people. I had heard the screams of the soldiers in Edirne. And in one week, Priors Bramley was to be drenched in the stuff.

I had eight days to get out of the lodge and find somewhere to live.

I risked walking a little way along the village street, ready to bolt for the concealment of the church, but I saw no one. Eerily and disturbingly, this had become the deserted village of Goldsmith’s poem, but it was not the tyrannical hand of Enclosure that had emptied the village; it was the governmental one of planning and experimentation.

I returned to the lodge because I had nowhere else to go. Once inside, I shut the doors and sat down in the little sitting room, which I had made into my own retreat. My books were there and my gramophone. All the things I had amassed over the past ten years, all the things that were precious to me. Not a single one was of any help now. I had absolutely no idea what to do, or who to ask for help. The lodge had no phone, and even if it had I could not have used it. All my communication with the outside world had been through Serena or Colm or the servants. Since Serena died and the remaining servants left, if I needed to contact someone I simply wrote a letter and posted it in the pillar box in the lane by St Anselm’s.

Vague ideas of trying to get to the old London house went through my mind, but the house had been rented to some government department during the war, and had stood empty since. And there was another difficulty: it was forty years since I had travelled with Crispian and Gil to Greece and Turkey; since then I had set foot outside the manor’s gates only to go as far as the church. I, who had plotted and schemed to control a once-thriving international private bank, had now developed a cottage mentality akin to Saul’s and I was afraid of the world beyond the gates.

I can understand now that when they cleared the village they thought they had cleared all the dwellings. Cadence Manor was empty – it had been empty since Serena’s death the previous autumn – and I presume, although I can’t know for sure, that some sort of compensation had been paid for it. But I don’t know who got it. I don’t know to whom any letters about the evacuation of the village would have been sent. Certainly not to the manor, nor, of course, to the lodge, which would be assumed empty. The only person who knew Saul and I were here was old Martlet, miles away in London.

But somehow I would have to find the courage to go out of Priors Bramley and find someone to whom I could explain about Saul and me, living at the lodge. The prospect sent the fear scudding across my skin, but it would have to be faced. I would write it down, explain I was disabled from a long-ago accident and unable to speak. Then I would ask for help in getting the two of us clear of the village.

I sat by myself for a long time, working all this out. It was only when I realized it was dark that I came back to a sense of awareness of the world. Saul would be waiting for his supper. He couldn’t tell the time, but he knew when we ate.

I put together a meal and carried the tray up to him. He was waiting for me, but he was not at the table by the window as he usually was at mealtimes. He was standing behind the door. I didn’t know that, though, and I drew back the bolt, turned the key and went into the room as usual. He leaped out, lifting one hand high over his head and, too late, I saw he was holding the carved wooden box that contained the chessmen. With a cry of triumph, he brought it smashing down on my head. I dodged instinctively, the tray of food crashing to the ground, but I wasn’t quick enough and the blow fell on the side of my head. Pain, shot with jagged crimson lights, exploded in my skull, and through it I was aware of Saul laughing. A child’s laughter. The laughter of a child who has tricked a grown-up and is delighted with itself. He was never really much more than a child, you see. There was no viciousness in him. I’d like anyone reading this to know that.

As I tumbled into unconsciousness, I was distantly aware that the laughter had been replaced by a different sound. The sound of the door closing, the key turning in the lock and the bolt being shot across. And Saul’s scampering feet going down the stairs and outside.

I tried the door at once. Of course I did. I shook it and rattled it hard, and banged at the door knob for all I was worth. But the lock on the outside was a very hefty affair indeed – I had made sure of that. And the bolt was the one I had fastened on myself, a thick stout shaft with steel plates holding it in place.

At first I thought Saul was teasing me. I thought he would be sure to come back. He had never been in the outside world on his own and after he got over the first glee of being free he would be bewildered. He would come running back to the safe familiarity of this house.

So I ran cold water in his little bathroom and bathed my head where the blow had fallen. It ached abominably, but that would have to be ignored for the moment. I went to the bigger of the two windows and looked through the bars. Below was the shrubbery and beyond it were the overgrown gardens of the manor and the drive. I could see the front of the manor – I could even see the crumbling pillars flanking the main entrance. But of Saul there was no sign.

I pulled up a chair and sat by the window, watching, waiting for him to come back. It was half-past four, and on an early spring evening it was starting to grow dark. He would come back when darkness started to descend, of course he would.

But he did not.

The night I spent can probably be partly imagined. Not more than partly, though, because I shouldn’t think there are many people who suddenly find themselves locked away by a madman, facing the prospect of contamination from a substance containing sulphur mustard.

Sulphur mustard. The words sent my mind back across the years, to when I had lain in the infirmary in Edirne and heard the screams of the soldiers. I had never seen them, those poor wretches, but I had seen the nurses shuddering and sickened from tending them.

I ate the remains of the food I had prepared for Saul – I even rinsed the plates in the tiny bathroom. Then I lay on his bed, and tried to sleep. He would be back in the morning, hungry and bewildered and contrite.

But he was not.

The day dragged on. I spent most of it at the window, watching for Saul – watching for anyone. At intervals I returned to attacking the door, trying to work the bolt or the lock loose. All to no avail.

It was midday when I discovered the electricity supply had failed. I suppose it had been disconnected – in fact it was surprising it hadn’t failed sooner. It added to my sense of isolation, but looked at sensibly it did not really make much difference to the situation. I had oil lamps and candles that could be used when it got dark.

Towards evening, I considered what I could do if Saul did not return. Surely someone would walk through the village one last time, to make sure no one was here? Could I attract their attention? How? The only sounds I had been able to make for over thirty years were unformed grunts, so ugly I was careful never to utter them. But I might be able to throw something out of the window.

The bars at the window were thick iron, spaced at two-inch intervals and set well away from the glass panes. I couldn’t reach the glass with my hands, but if I had something sufficiently long I could jab it between the bars and smash out the glass, a shard at a time. I surveyed the room, and chose a large photograph frame, solid silver, enclosing a faded portrait photo of Serena and Julius. It was thin enough to slot between the bars and the silver should be hard enough to shatter the glass. I removed the photograph and laid the frame on the narrow sill, ready. Then I wrote a careful note, saying I was trapped inside the lodge and please to come inside and up the stairs to unbolt the door. I wrapped it around a small book, which would go in between the bars. Then I placed it on the window ledge, ready. The instant I saw or heard anyone outside, I would smash the glass and throw the book and note out. All I had to do was wait.

Seven days. That’s how long I’ve waited now.

My condemned cell has been relatively comfortable. As condemned cells go. The store of food has lasted – I have Serena to thank for that.

At intervals I’ve tried to break out. I’ve hammered against the walls for hours on end, hoping to chip out plaster, and I’ve tried to prise up floorboards, to see if I can get into the rooms beneath. None of it has been any good. Perhaps if there had been implements in this room – hammers or chisels or saws – I might have managed it, but there’s nothing.

At first I thought the supply of drinking water might be a problem, and I wondered if I was fated to die from thirst. Be honest, reader, if you had to choose between dying from thirst and dying from having your lungs and your bones burned by chemicals, which would you pick?

But the taps in the bathroom still ran water, and presently I remembered that when the bathroom was created in this room, the workmen put a large water tank in the roof. I have no idea of its capacity, but I remember seeing it manoeuvred into the loft space with considerable difficulty. It must be about three feet cubed, certainly sufficient to hold several dozen gallons. When the tap is turned on, water comes from that storage tank, which is then automatically topped up from the mains. I had to assume the mains had been turned off, but the stored water remained in the tank. I thought as long as I was sparing with it, it would last the week.

I’ve been sparing. I’ve drawn a bucket each day, and drunk only as much as I felt was necessary. I’ve barely washed. Oh God, it’s been so reminiscent of Edirne and the siege… except that in Edirne we knew there was more than a fighting chance that we would get out and get back to England.

I’ve stood at the window for long hours, watching and hoping someone would appear. But the village is silent and deserted. It really is Goldsmith’s ravaged landscape gloomed with sorrows, the matted woods where bats cling…

Several times I’ve glimpsed Saul through the trees, walking along the village street. Each time I’ve willed him to come back up to the lodge, but he hasn’t. There’s still time, of course…

I suppose he’s sleeping in one of the abandoned houses – that he’s found food there. He’ll be seeing it as a grand, grown-up adventure. I’m seeing it differently. To me he’s the pitiful solitary inhabitant Goldsmith depicted in his fictional village, Auburn. The houseless one, scraping food from the poisoned fields. What does that make me? The sad historian of the pensive plain, I suppose.

Yesterday I had a brief moment of hope when I remembered the grocery delivery and I stood at the window for hours, ready to smash the glass and throw out the note. But no one came, and I have to assume the delivery people knew about the Geranos experiment and since they had been paid up to date, they assumed the delivery would no longer be required.

Now it’s the seventh day. There’s a dreadful biblical ring to that, isn’t there? It’s deathly still everywhere, as if the village is waiting for its fate.

A little while ago – just after eleven o’clock – three children came running into the drive, and my heart leaped with hope. I snatched up the silver frame and began smashing it against the larger of the two windows. They must surely hear and look round.

But they did not. They were running quite fast. There were two girls and a boy – I could see that although I couldn’t see their faces. They ran along the drive, occasionally glancing over their shoulders, and hesitated at the entrance of the manor. I had broken a small piece of window away by that time, and I was managing to knock out several more splinters of glass. But it was far more difficult than I had expected; the iron bars got in the way and I constantly banged my knuckles against them. My nails were torn and bleeding from the glass, but nails and knuckles heal. Bones and flesh burned by sulphur mustard do not. I continued the task.

Very faintly I heard one of the children cry out, and the three of them went into the manor. I stared in an agony of apprehension, willing them to come out again, wanting them to come back down the drive. It was then that another figure came loping along the drive, a slightly shuffling, shambling gait that I knew. Saul. Saul was going after the children. And the children, it was safe to assume, were frightened of him and had bolted into hiding in the manor.

They might as well have stood on open ground and called to him to come and get them. Saul had grown up in that house; he knew every corner, every stair, every alcove and chimney of it. He would find them. I didn’t think he wanted to harm them, but they wouldn’t know that. They would only see the lurching walk, the face misshapen and scarred, and they would be terrified. Too terrified, certainly, to notice the puny attempts of a prisoner in the lodge.

As I stood there, the attempts to break the window abandoned, I heard the church clock chiming from St Anselm’s. Midday. As the last chime died away there came a sound from above: a soft purring as if some huge invisible animal was approaching. The plane, with its terrible cargo, was heading towards Priors Bramley.

I don’t know – and I never will – what took place in the manor between those children and Saul. I do know that after a short time there was a vivid flash of colour from the side of the house as the children ran helter-skelter towards the old garden wall. They vanished from my sight, but it didn’t take much intelligence to guess they had climbed over the crumbling wall into the lane, and gone across Mordwich Bank.

Of Saul there was no sign. I never saw him again. I never saw anyone again.

And so now my story is told.

The plane has flown away and beyond the windows a misty golden dust is billowing everywhere. Where it touches, it leaves an amber glaze. I know it for what it is, of course. I know what it will do to me. What I don’t know is how long it will take me to die.

The ticking clock that has marked the passing hours over the last week shows that it’s seven o’clock. Normally I would be preparing a meal now, drinking a glass of wine. But half an hour ago my skin began to prickle and burn, and when I looked in the mirror I saw blisters forming on my neck and along my hands and arms.