The Dark Gateway: A Novel of Horror. John Burke
intend to encourage it. At present she had enough trouble with Simon. Though Simon, she thought wryly, was not what you’d call ardent.
Frank turned to her every now and then, trying to include her in his audience, and she nodded and smiled politely. He wanted to see her full-face, she knew. As he reached the end of his story—it was much better than the one Denis had told, which, like so many war reminiscences, had meaning only for those who were actually present when the incident occurred—she turned and watched him, frankly appraising him.
He had a fresh, open face with a flattened nose that just escaped ugliness. His hair and eyes were dark brown—thoughtful, warmly appreciative eyes. He returned her gaze as he talked, without embarrassment. There was no trace of the local accent in his voice. When he had finished, Nora said:
“Do you belong in this part of the world?”
“My mother and father came here from Kent the year before the war. My mother was Welsh, but I was born in Kent. Someday I’ll go back there.” She noticed that he said, “I’ll go back there,” not merely, “I think I’ll go back there.”
“You like it better than here?”
“There’s something about it: it’s in my blood.”
“Like malaria,” said Denis boisterously. “He gets regular attacks of it, too—his homesickness, I mean.”
“Places are like that,” said Mr. Jonathan abruptly, breaking in so unexpectedly that even Mr. Morris, stirring his tea in his usual way, the spoon going unceasingly round and round as though he could not halt it, looked up. “They get hold of you,” said Jonathan. “Even across generations, you know. Something grips you…ancestral memories. I’ve met some people in my time—I belong to a society that—ah—brings together many such people.” He cleared his throat impressively. “People who could tell you things that would surprise you. Take the case of my own family now—”
“Mr. Jonathan was telling us,” Mrs. Morris said to her husband from down the table, her lilting Welsh voice coming like a song after the visitor’s moist tones, “that his family owned this farm once—before the Mountjoys, that is. Of course, we didn’t know much about all those who came before the Mountjoys. Funny, isn’t it, how things happen? More tea, Mr. Jonathan?”
“Thank you, no. Yes, we belong here. There are, of course, many branches of the original family, who were not all called Jonathan. They had another name in the old days, our family, and they were very important.” He favoured them with a sinister smile. “Fortunes change; families change; those who were once in power are superseded. But not forever. No, there are some old dynasties that cannot be trampled down for all time. The world needs those on whom it once relied. Rebirth: the world needs rebirth.”
There was an embarrassed silence. “Here’s queer goings-on for you,” said Mrs. Morris silently along the table to her daughter.
“The Mountjoys hadn’t been here long,” said Mr. Morris remotely. He supped his tea. “Nice people. A pity for her when he passed over.”
His irrelevance was welcome. His habit of starting to talk at random had averted many family disputes in the past. He was a man who liked peace in his household. “Funny ideas about the place, they had. The old woman—”
“She was younger than I am,” said his wife eagerly, “and you, for that matter.”
“Mrs. Mountjoy,” Mr. Morris went on imperturbably, “couldn’t abide the house. She couldn’t understand why the old man had wanted to start farming here at all. Said it was too lonely. She was English.” Perhaps he was being scornful; it was hard to say.
“She told me how glad she was to be going when the old man died,” his wife confirmed. “Eerie, she said it was—but what would there be about this house, now? It suits us all right.”
She looked proudly around the table. The Morris family had made a success of the farm; even during the war, with Denis away, they had carried on.
“A place like this,” she said in defiance of some unknown critic, “needs a family, and a family that’s not afraid of hard work, mind.”
“It does,” said Mr. Morris.
Husband and wife did not look at one another, but for a moment the bond between them was almost a tangible thing. Frank glanced at Nora with an understanding, appreciative smile.
“And the books?” said Mr. Jonathan. “Were the books brought here by the Mountjoys?”
Mr. Morris shrugged. “Couldn’t say.”
“I’m sure they weren’t,” said Denis. “Wasn’t there some tale about the family that had lived here before? There was the tragic death of the eldest son, or something, and then the parents died, and a lot of stuff was left…or something.”
“Most probable,” said Jonathan knowledgeably. “That is how these things happened. Libraries split up by unforeseen accidents—documents scattered…all the threads to be picked up. Years of searching, wandering.…” He subsided into a vague muttering.
Mr. Morris pushed back his chair, got up, and went to the door. He opened it and peered out.
“Coming down heavy,” he said without surprise. “Like to keep on.”
Mr. Jonathan coughed. “Awkward getting about. Deeper all the time. Perhaps our young friend here—Mr.—er…do you think you’ll be able to reach your home without difficulty?”
There seemed to be a hint in this that Frank ought to be leaving. They stared at him. Denis twitched his eyebrows aggressively, and a flush dabbed upwards from his cheeks towards his sandy hair. He said, sharply: “What about you, sir? When are you planning to go back?”
Mr. Jonathan looked blank. “Back?” he pondered, and then looked amused. “Back?” he repeated. “Well, now. Monday morning, I suppose.”
There was an indefinable arrogance in his manner that jarred on those who were accustomed to the generally harmonious, uncomplicated nature of the small talk in this kitchen. He had struck a foreign note that left them uneasy.
“Very bad weather to be out,” said Mr. Jonathan, as though issuing a command to Frank. “I don’t know how you people find your way about this countryside in the dark, especially when it snows like this. Wonderful instinct you must have.”
“We manage all right,” said Denis.
His father, looking down at his plate and wiping a crumb from the corner of his mouth, said: “It’s the men way up in the hills who feel it most. We’re not far from the village, and this is a sheltered spot, below the castle, like. But up there, when the wind blows drifts over the roads—and them not being much as roads to start with—then it’s hard to get anywhere, and the cold gets at the sheep, and…oh, now,” and he wagged his head, “there’s bitter it is up there. We haven’t anything we’d complain of.” He drew his chair up to the fire.
Mr. Jonathan was last to leave the table, twisting himself around the corner as though pivoted on his stomach. There was a moment of indecision, when everyone was standing up and chairs were pulled out at awkward, irrelevant angles. Jonathan looked fleetingly at Frank, then sullenly at his shoes. Denis said: “Well, when we can get the place tidy.…”
Mrs. Morris pounced suddenly on the table. She and Nora removed the crockery and carried it through into the scullery, where a small lamp burned above the sink. Frank made a move to help, but there was something so brisk and methodical about the way they carried tottering plates and saucers, and finally removed the tablecloth with a practised twitch of the hand, that made him feel clumsy and helpless.
“This won’t be much of a weekend for you, Mr. Jonathan,” said Denis, not without a touch of malice.
Jonathan seemed to have recovered his good humour. He smiled enigmatically. “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see what turns up. We’ll see.”
They