Barbara Erskine 3-Book Collection: Lady of Hay, Time’s Legacy, Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine
round. She could still hear him. Hear the intake of breath between each scream, thin pathetic yells as he grew more desperate. She pressed her hands against her ears, feeling her own eyes fill with hot tears, rocking backwards and forwards in misery as she tried to block out the sound. At last she could bear it no longer. Hurling herself out of bed, she ran to the door and dragged it open, closing it behind her with a slam. Then she ran to the kitchen. With the two doors closed she could no longer hear his anguished cries. Her hands shaking, she filled the kettle, banging it against the taps in her agitation. The Scotch was in the living room. To reach it she would have to open the kitchen door. She stood with her hand on the handle for a moment, then taking a deep breath she opened it. There was silence outside in the hallway. She ran to the living room, grabbed the bottle, then she hesitated, looking at the phone. Any time, Sam had said. Ring any time …
She knelt and drew it towards her, then she stopped. The flat was completely silent, save for the sound of the kettle whining quietly in the kitchen. She could not ask Sam to come to her in the middle of the night a second time, because of another nightmare.
She made herself some tea, took a slug of Scotch and the last three Mogadon, then she lay down on the sofa in the living room and pulled a rug around her shoulders in spite of the hot night. There was no way she was going back into her bedroom until morning.
Tim was in his studio, staring at a copy of the photo of Jo and Nick. He had blown it up until it was almost four feet across, and had pinned it to a display board. A spotlight picked out their faces with a cold hard neutrality which removed personality, leaving only features and technique behind.
Thoughtfully he moved across the darkened studio to the tape deck and flipped a switch, flooding the huge, empty room with the reedy piping of Gheorghe Zamfire, then he returned to the photograph, standing before it, arms folded, on the very edge of the brilliant pool of light, the only focus in the huge vaulted darkness of the studio.
Beside him on the table lay a small piece of glass. As he tapped the powder onto it and methodically rolled up a piece of paper his eyes were already dreamy. He sniffed, deeply and slowly, then he walked back to the picture.
It was some time later that, with a felt pen, working with infinite care, the tip of his tongue protruding between his teeth, he began to draw a veil and wimple over Jo’s long, softly curling hair.
Jo worked late into Tuesday night, typing up the notes of her interview with Rose Elliot. The draft of the article was going well and she was pleased with her results. Absently she reached out for the cigarette packet, then she drew back. The same three cigarettes had been there since the end of June and it was now the eleventh of July. She tossed the packet to the back of the table, typed another paragraph and then got up to make coffee. In the hall she caught herself listening for sounds from the bedroom, but none came. The flat was silent.
She worked for another two hours, then she switched on the TV and stretched out on the sofa to watch the late film. She spent a second night there.
It was about ten o’clock next morning that a knock came at the flat door. She opened it to find Sheila Chandler, one of her upstairs neighbours, standing on the landing. She was a prim-looking woman in her late fifties, the intense unreal blackness of her iron-waved hair set off by a startling pink sleeveless chiffon dress. Jo barely knew her.
She gave Jo an embarrassed smile. ‘I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Clifford,’ she said. ‘I know you’re busy. We can hear you typing. It’s just that I thought I must look in and see if there is anything I can do to help.’
Jo smiled vaguely. ‘Help?’ she said.
‘With the baby. I’ve had four of my own and I know how it can be if you get one that cries all night. Staying with you, is it?’ The woman was staring past Jo into the flat.
Jo swallowed hard. ‘He … you heard him?’ She clutched at the door.
‘Oh, I’m not complaining!’ Sheila Chandler said, hastily. ‘It’s just that on these hot nights, with all the windows open, the noise drifts up the well between the buildings. You know how it is, and my Harry, he’s not sleeping too soundly these days …’
Jo took a grip on herself. ‘There’s no baby here,’ she said slowly. ‘The noise must be coming from somewhere else.’
The woman stared. ‘But it was here. I came down – last night, about eleven, and I listened outside your door. I nearly knocked then. Look, my dear, I’m not making any judgement. I don’t care whose baby it is or how it got there, it’s just, well, perhaps you could close the window or something. Have you tried gripe water?’
Jo took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Chandler –’ at last she had remembered the woman’s name ‘– but whatever you think there is no baby!’
There is no baby.
She repeated the words to herself as she closed the door. Last night at eleven she had sat here, in silence, listening, and there had been no sound …
She went straight to the phone and rang Sam, then she walked through into the bedroom and looked round. The windows were wide open. The room was tidy – and empty. The only sound was the distant roar of traffic drifting between the houses from the Cromwell Road.
Sam arrived at ten to twelve. He kissed Jo on the cheek and presented her with a bottle of Liebfraumilch.
She had put on some make-up to try to hide the dark rings under her eyes and was wearing her peacock-blue silk dress. Her hair was tied back severely with a black velvet ribbon. He looked her up and down critically and then smiled. ‘How are you feeling, Jo?’ The make-up did not fool him, no more than had her cheerful voice and breezy invitation. She had sounded near to breaking point.
‘I’m fine. My tits are back to normal, thank God!’ She managed a shaky smile. ‘Let’s open that bottle. I’ve drunk all the Scotch. Sam – I think I’m going mad.’
Sam raised an eyebrow as he rummaged in the drawer for a corkscrew. She found it for him. ‘It’s the baby. I’ve heard him again.’
‘I see.’ Sam was concentrating on the bottle. ‘Last night?’
‘No. The night before. But Sam, the woman upstairs has heard him too. She came down to complain.’ Her hands were shaking slightly as she reached two wine glasses from the cupboard.
He took them from her, his hands covering hers for a moment. ‘Calm down, Jo. If the woman upstairs has heard it there has to be a logical explanation. There must be a baby in one of the other flats and you’ve both heard it.’
‘No.’ Jo shook her head. ‘It was William.’
‘Jo –’
‘The noise was in this flat, Sam. She said so. Last night. She stood on the landing outside my door and listened but I didn’t hear him –’
Sam pressed a glass of wine into her hand. ‘May I wander round?’ He strode down the passage into the bedroom and stood looking round, before he went to the window and, throwing up the lower sash, leaned out. Then, slowly and thoroughly he explored the whole flat.
Jo waited on the balcony, sipping her wine, staring across into the trees in the square. It was five minutes before Sam joined her.
‘I admit it is a puzzle,’ he said at last. ‘But I’m not convinced there isn’t a baby – a real baby – somewhere in the building, or perhaps next door.’ He had brought the bottle with him and topped up her glass. ‘Unless – I suppose there is a faint possibility that somehow psychokinetic energy is being created, presumably by you – to project the sound of a child crying, but no, I don’t think so. It is so unlikely as to be impossible. I suggest you put it out of your mind.’
‘I can’t,’ Jo cried. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like hearing little Will cry, knowing he’s hungry, wanting to hold him? Wondering why, if I can’t feed him, someone else doesn’t? Someone who is there, in the past with him!’
‘Jo, I did warn you,’