Prospero’s Children. Jan Siegel
get a good look at her, of course, and she didn’t have all that hair—I think she had a kind of bob, just about shoulder-length—but I could swear it was t’ same woman. Heard her, I did, chattering away to t’ Captain, sweet as sugar. She didn’t notice me, mind: she’s t’ sort who sees them as interest her and doesn’t bother to look at t’ rest of us. I’d have bet five pounds it was your Miss Redmond.’ She gave a brisk shake, as if throwing off a cobweb. ‘Must be my fancy. Still, you take care. Third house from end of t’ village if you need me.’
‘Thanks,’ said Fern, smiling, making light of the matter. But the smile vanished with Mrs Wicklow and she went to check on the pie with a sombre face.
Dinner was a polite meal. Alison kept the conversation going by discussing her ideas for the house. ‘I think we could do something really exciting with that barn,’ she said, having duly admired the Seawitch and her current residence. ‘Your father’s very keen to have my advice. Hell be calling from the States in a day or two: I’m going to ask him if I can make a start. I have a friend in the building trade who specialises in these sort of commissions. I thought I’d get him up here to give us an estimate. Of course, we must take care of that wonderful boat. It should be all right outside for the time being, if we cover it in tarpaulins. After all, it is supposed to be summer, even if it hasn’t reached Yorkshire yet.’
‘We like the Yorkshire summer,’ Will said. ‘It’s bracing.’
Fern sucked in her cheeks to suppress a smile. Will had never been noted for appreciating a bracing climate. ‘We only need to tidy the place up before putting it on the market,’ she pointed out. ‘Daddy doesn’t want to spend any money on it.’
‘It would be a good investment,’ Alison insisted. ‘Convert the barn and you can sell two properties instead of one. I’ll discuss it with Robin when he calls.’
The inference was unmistakable: Fern was a child, it was none of her business, financial matters were beyond the zone of her responsibility. The hairs bristled on her nape; her small face set in lines that might have been etched in steel. But for the moment there was little she could do: final authority rested officially with her father, and while he was in America it would be difficult for her to counteract Alison’s influence. She had a suspicion the telephone would not lend itself to an assertion of filial control. She was conscious of a frustration that bordered on panic, but she fought it down.
‘Delicious pie,’ Alison said, pushing the pastry to the side of her plate.
They went to bed early. Inevitably, Fern lay sleepless for an hour or more before drifting into an uneasy doze. Suppressed anxieties surfaced as garbled dreams: she was at a private view in New York trying to reach her father who was on the far side of the room, but a huge crowd of people impeded her, and her father saw her, and waved and smiled as if there was nothing wrong at all. He was talking to a woman who had to be Alison Redmond, but when she turned round it was a stranger, and Alison was right next to Fern, wearing a dress that rippled like water, and her hair rippled as she moved, so you could not tell where the hair ended and the dress began. ‘Come,’ she said, laying a long-fingered hand on Fern’s shoulder, and there was Javier Holt, standing beside the etching of the Lost City, and the door was open, and the streets unravelled below her, and the drums were beating in the temple, and she knew she must not cross the threshold, but she couldn’t remember why. She awoke from a jumble of colour and incident more vivid than life, but recollection faded even as she tried to hold onto it, and there was only her heart’s pounding and a disproportionate sense of loss. The night-noises that were growing familiar came to her ears: the endless sough of the wind; sudden and startling, the screech of a bird. She was floating back towards sleep when the snuffling began.
Despite the fear that seemed to invade the very air around her she felt a flicker of indignation. She cultivated it, gritting her teeth, smothering cowardice, not forgetting but rejecting Ragginbone’s advice. This was her place, her home, if only temporarily, and no intruder, canine or feline, mongrel or monster, had the right to terrorise her here. She had not formed any specific plan for driving it off but she was determined at least to see it, to face it down, to prove to herself once and for all that it was merely a stray dog, half savage maybe but solid, flesh and blood and smell, and no bodiless hunter from a dimension of shadows. She sat up, picking up the torch which she now kept beside her bed. She thought she had closed the window but it had to be open: the snuffling sounded so loud and near. And then she froze. The noise wasn’t coming from under her window. It was outside her door.
She sat absolutely still, all resolution forgotten. It can’t come in, Ragginbone had said, but it was in. In the house, in the passage; she could hear it scraping at the floorboards, rucking the worn drugget. Her thought stopped, her limbs seemed to petrify, but she could not control the violence of her pulse: it must be audible even through the barrier of the walls. The door was not locked: something which had no hand to grasp rattled at the knob. For a few seconds, Fern ceased to breathe.
It moved on. She heard the gentle pad-pad of stealthy paws, receding down the corridor, the guttural hiss of hoarse panting. When the sounds had died away she sat for what seemed like hours, waiting and listening. The thudding of her pulse did not abate. Gradually, the tension in the air around her appeared to diminish: the house settled into a nervous quietude. Fern got out of bed so cautiously the duvet barely rustled, feeling her way to the door without switching on the torch. It took an effort of courage that made her sweat to turn the handle and peer into the passageway. Her vision was well-adjusted to the darkness and for an instant she thought she saw something, not a black animal shape with glowing orbs but something much smaller, furtive, skulking in a corner by the end window, shrinking into invisibility even as she caught its eye. Her heart leaped into her mouth—but whatever it was, it had gone. The corridor was empty. She could sense its emptiness. She groped her way along the wall to Will’s room and entered without knocking.
‘Who is it?’ He was awake.
‘Me. Shush.’ She closed the door carefully, switched on the torch. ‘I don’t want to make too much light. Move your legs: I’ll sit on the bed.’
‘Did you hear it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was inside. How could it be inside? Did we leave a door open?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Fern said. They were talking in whispers and the torch was on the table; little light reached their faces. She found she was holding his hand for mutual reassurance, something He would never have allowed if he could see it. ‘It can’t come in unless invited. That’s the ancient law.’
‘What law? How do you know?’
‘Never mind. I just do.’
‘Laws can be broken.’ Will sounded sceptical.
‘Maybe.’ Ragginbone, after all, had not been sure. ‘Maybe not.’ She glanced upwards towards Alison’s room; Will saw the whites of her eyes gleam, followed her gaze.
‘You think she—?’
‘It’s too much of a coincidence. The day she arrives, it comes inside. She invited it in. She must have done.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘There’s more,’ she persisted, adhering to her train of thought. ‘There was something in the corridor when I came out of my room—something else, I mean. It was quite small and it vanished very quickly but there was definitely something there.’
‘It’s too much,’ Will said. ‘Alison Redmond and the Sniffer and the Seawitch and the chest and the rock that isn’t there and the missing treasure…and now this. Whatever it was. It’s too much. I can’t cope. Do you think…do you think we should try to tell Dad?’ She knew from the note in his voice even more than his words that he was struggling not to betray the level of his terror. Despite her own fears, she was comforted to feel herself the stronger. If she could only be strong enough.
‘Pointless,’ she said. ‘For one thing, there’s a limit to