Prospero’s Children

Fern jumped. Her hand dropped; the cloth slipped back into place. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said with exquisite politeness. ‘I wasn’t aware the pictures were private.’

For a second, she thought Alison was discomfited; then both curtness and awkwardness melted away and a thin veil of warmth slid over her face, leaving it as before. ‘The paintings are old,’ she explained, ‘and very fragile. If you touch the paint you could damage them. I’m keeping them for restoration work: my own personal project. As a matter of fact, I think that whole scene has been applied on top of something else. The layers have to be removed very carefully. As you saw, I’ve only just started.’ The area that looks like mould, Fern thought, only half satisfied. ‘A lot of stolen masterpieces get painted over to make them easier to hide or transport. I keep hoping I’m going to come across something special.’

She carried the pictures upstairs herself. They had installed her, by common consensus, on the top floor—‘Out of the way,’ said Will—in a room that felt chill and gloomy from long vacancy. Alison, however, professed herself delighted with the crooked ceiling, the balding velvet of cushion and curtain, the smoky mirror above the mantle. ‘I trust you won’t think me obsessive,’ she said, ‘but if I might just have the key? I have this thing about privacy. My own space is vital to me—I can’t help it, it’s just how I am. I grew up sharing with three sisters: I expect that’s how it started.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Fern blandly. ‘We only have the house keys. Great-Cousin Ned seems to have put all the others in a safe place.’

‘We’ve looked everywhere,’ Will added. ‘At least, Fern has.’

Watching Alison, Fern was convinced there was another flicker in her expression, a momentary freezing-over. ‘I’d be obliged,’ she said, ‘if you didn’t come into my room when I’m not here. I’m sure you understand.’

Do I? thought Fern.

She and Will went back downstairs, leaving Alison to unpack.

‘She’s very nice,’ said Will, ‘if you like niceness. It’s hard to tell how sincere she is. She seems to be working at it—but if she’s keen on Dad she would, wouldn’t she?’

‘The niceness is all on the surface,’ declared Fern. ‘All sparkle, no substance. It’s called charm.’

‘Like tinsel,’ said Will, ‘on a shoddy Christmas tree. I don’t think I trust her. I haven’t quite made up my mind.’

‘I have,’ said his sister. ‘You don’t.’

In the hall, Mrs Wicklow was putting on her coat. ‘I’ll be off now,’ she said. ‘There’s a pie in t’ oven. I daresay Madam won’t eat it, she’s too skinny to eat pie: probably lives off brown rice and that muesli. Still, I know you two appreciate my cooking.’

‘We do,’ Will concurred warmly.

‘Queer thing about her,’ she added, glancing up in the direction of Alison’s room. ‘Odd fancies you do get sometimes.’

‘What fancy?’ asked Fern.

‘Miss Redmond comes from London: that’s what you said?’

Fern nodded. ‘She works in an art gallery in the West End.’

‘There was a young woman over from Guisborough, three…four months before t’ Captain died. Happen I mentioned it. Something to do with antiques. I didn’t 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 what you can say over the phone. For another, what would we tell him? That we heard some unknown creature sniffing inside the house and we can’t find the keys to the treasure chest and we think his girlfriend could be a witch? He’d probably assume we were both on drugs—or raving. And even if he did come home, there’s nothing he can do. Alison’s a lot smarter than he is. We’ll have to handle it ourselves.’

Will’s soft gasp might have been sudden laughter. ‘You’ve dealt with all Daddy’s girlfriends to date,’ he said.

‘This might be a bit more difficult,’ Fern admitted.

There was a short pause. She reached for the torch but did not move from the bed. ‘I think you ought to stay here for the rest of tonight,’ Will said with an air of selfless chivalry which deceived neither of them. ‘We’ll be safer together.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Move over.’

The bed was large but they curled up, back to back, each warmed by the other’s nearness, falling swiftly and unexpectedly into sleep.

III

Fern got up early the following morning and returned to her own room. Instinct warned her that it would be preferable if Alison did not suspect they were on their guard. However, although it was barely seven she was no longer sleepy, and she dressed and went out into the garden, her footsteps leading her inevitably towards the back gate and the path up the hill. The sun had not yet risen far above the eastern horizon and the shadow of the house lay long and black across the grass, but the slope beyond glittered with dew. There was no sign of the Watcher; he seemed to have been gone so long she had almost ceased to believe in their meeting. As she climbed higher emptiness stretched in every direction. A few sheep grazed across the valley; cloud-shadows mottled the upland moors; a lone bird soared, its whistling call like the music of some unearthly piper, summoning errant spirits back to their hollow hills before the gates closed on the mortal day. The Day—the Day to Man! thought Fern, remembering her Kipling. The wind that touched her cheek felt totally clean and free, a wind that knew neither bonds nor boundaries, which might have blown straight from some virgin height, over grass and gorse, rock and river, to be breathed only by her. The skyline above was unbroken, except where she saw the twin tufts of a wild plant poking upwards like the cocked ears of a couched animal. Below, the valley opened out, a river-delved cleft in the rolling plateau, still cupping the last shades of retreating darkness, winding down towards the coast and the distant blue glimmer of the sea.

She was nearly at the brow of the hill when the animal rose up in front of her. One moment there was only turf and that telltale glimpse of ear-tufts, and then the grass shivered into fur and the creature was on its feet, pink tongue lolling between ragged teeth, amber eyes fixed unblinking on her face. It was a dog: it must be a dog. It had a pointed vulpine muzzle with a ruff around its neck not quite long enough for a mane and a lean body built for running. Its coat was matted and dew-draggled, white-streaked, grey-flecked, shaded with brown, stippled with black. It might have been part sheep-dog, part Alsatian, part vixen, part wolf. But Fern reminded herself that there had been no wolves in Britain since the Middle Ages. She knew immediately that it was female, though she could not have said how. Its unwavering stare was filled with latent meaning.

Hesitantly, half afraid for herself, half nervous of inducing fear, Fern held out her hand. The animal sniffed, then licked. The wicked incisors were less than an inch from her fingers, yet she felt curiously at ease. ‘Did he send you here?’ she asked softly. ‘Do you come from Ragginbone? Are you a Watcher too?’ And then, as an afterthought: ‘Are you on guard?’

The yellow eyes returned her questioning gaze with a steady intensity.

‘It was inside the house last night,’ Fern went on, progressing from the preliminary introduction to a tentative pat, then to stroking the thick ruff. The fur was damped into rats’ tails as if the dog—she was definitely a dog—had been outside a long time. ‘I don’t know what kind of creature it is: it moves like a hound, only it’s too big for any species of hound I know. Ragginbone recognised it. He said it couldn’t come in without being invited, but it did, and I think…I think Alison must have let it in. She arrived yesterday, and that’s the first time it’s been inside the house.’

The dog accepted Fern’s caresses with a quiver of uncertainty, a dignified restraint. Fern received the impression—she could not say how—that she was, not alarmed, but slightly unnerved, an aloof outcast unaccustomed to such demonstrations. This is ridiculous, Fern told herself. First I talk to a rock, now it’s a dog. ‘I don’t suppose you really understand,’ she said aloud. ‘There’s probably a natural explanation for everything that’s happened. My imagination’s running away with me. Only why now? That’s what’s so confusing. I’m too old for fairytales and anyhow, when I was a child I never let my fantasy take over. After my mother died, when I saw my father cry and I knew she was really gone, I was afraid all the time. I used to lie in bed at night seeing a demon in every shadow. I told myself over and over: there’s nothing there. There are no demons, no dragons, no witches, no elves, no Santa Claus. There are no vampires in Transylvania, no kingdoms in wardrobes, no lands behind the sun. A shadow is only a shadow. I made myself grow up, and put away childish things. I thought the adult world was a prosaic sort of place where everything was clear-cut, everything was tangible; but it isn’t, it isn’t. I don’t know who I am any more. I’m not sure about anyone. Who are you? Are you a dog? Are you a wolf?’ The yellow stare held her; a rough tongue rasped her palm.

‘Cancel that question,’ said Fern. ‘There are no wolves in England now. I have to go. Take care.’ A strange thing to say to a dog, but then, Fern reflected uncomfortably, the entire one-sided conversation was strange. She hurried down the path almost as if she were running away.

At the gate, she glanced round to find the dog at her heels. ‘You can’t come in,’ she said, wondering why the words disturbed her, tapping at something in the back of her mind. Her companion, undeterred, slipped through the gate behind her before she could close it. Reaching the back door, Fern turned with more determination. ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, but the dog stood a little way off, making no attempt to cross the threshold. Fern noted that she did not bark, or wag her tail, or do any of the things that dogs normally do. She simply stood there, waiting. ‘Would you like some water?’ Fern said, relenting. And: ‘Come on then.’ The animal slid past her in a movement too swift to follow, lying down beside the kitchen stove with her chin on her paws. And in the same instant something clicked in Fern’s head and she knew what she had done. For good or evil, she had invited the outcast in.

Later, when Fern had had her morning bath, she found the kitchen unoccupied and the back door ajar. The latch was old-fashioned, the kind that an intelligent animal might be able to lift with its nose. On the outside, however, there was an iron ring which required the grip of a hand. Fern, in a deviation from her usual policy, resolved to see that the door was left slightly open at all times.

It was a difficult day. Fern did not feel she could continue her search for the key with Alison in the vicinity, so she and Will escaped to the vicarage, where Maggie Dinsdale made them sandwiches and Gus drove them up onto the moors for a picnic. Back at Dale House, they found Alison in the barn with a measuring tape. She and Gus shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, thus disappointing Will, who confided in an aside to his sister that if she had been a witch she would surely not have been so friendly with a vicar. ‘Don’t be idiotic,’ Fern responded. ‘Next you’ll expect her to wear a pointed hat.’

Supper was happily brief: Alison retired straight afterwards claiming she wanted to work on her picture. Will, going up to her room later with the excuse of an offer of coffee, reported that she had brought her own television. That settles it, ‘he concluded.’ I don’t like her. Why can’t she share it with us? That isn’t just selfishness, it’s…it’s sadism. We must have a TV. Speak to Daddy about it.’

‘Mm.’

‘Do you know, when I opened the door she switched it off, as if she couldn’t bear me to see it even for a couple of minutes? I think she’s got a video too. I wish we had a video.’

‘Maybe she was watching something she considered unsuitable for little boys,’ Fern suggested unkindly.

They fell back on Mah Jongg and a plate of Mrs Wicklow’s biscuits, becoming so engrossed that it was almost midnight when Fern glanced at the clock. ‘Are you going to sleep in my room again?’ Will asked, not looking at his sister, his voice carefully devoid of any wistfulness.

‘I don’t think it’s necessary,’ Fern said. ‘Put something against your door, though—something heavy. You can bang on the wall if you really need me. I feel it’s important to…well, act nonchalant. As if we haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Then either she’ll think we’re unobservant, which means she’ll be underestimating us, or she’ll be as baffled as we are. She’s behaving as if there’s nothing going on; so can we.’

‘Do you suppose Mrs Wicklow was right,’ Will said abruptly, ‘when she said she’d seen Alison before?’

‘Yes,’ said Fern. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Can you put a short wig over long hair?’

‘I think so. Actresses do it sometimes. I’m sure they do.’

This ought to be very exciting, ‘Will remarked.’ I just wish I wasn’t scared. Are you scared?’

‘Shitless,’ said Fern coolly, going over to the back door. The vulgarism was unusual for her and Will grinned.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Leaving the door open.’

‘What? If that creature comes—’

‘Our prowling visitor,’ she pointed out, ‘can already get in: we know that. I want to be sure—’ She hesitated, changed her tack. ‘I’m like Mrs Wicklow. I want to let in the air.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘And don’t use that kind of language.’

‘But you said—’

‘I’m sixteen,’ said Fern haughtily. ‘I’m allowed.’

They went upstairs still squabbling, falling silent, by mutual consent, at the foot of the second flight. Fern mounted a few steps, but there was no sound from Alison’s room. The low wattage lighting favoured by Great-Cousin Ned did not reach far, and the upper landing was swathed in shadow. She could see Alison’s door but it was firmly closed and she hoped the sense of oppression which seemed to emanate from it was the result of pure fancy and overstrained nerves. She stole quietly back to her brother and the two of them went to their respective beds.

For all his apprehension, Will fell asleep quickly; but Fern sat up, reading by torchlight so no betraying gleam could be seen under the door, her senses on alert, half fearful, half in a sort of desperate expectancy. More than an hour passed while she tried in vain to concentrate on the story, unable to restrain herself from regular glances at her travelling clock: the luminous hands seemed to snail around the dial, spinning out the minutes, dragging her down into slumber. A brief shower battered on the window, until a rush of wind swept it away. When the snuffling finally started, she had almost given up. Her body jerked upright on a reflex, snatching her cheek from the pillow; her breath was caught in her throat; her eyes dilated, though there was nothing to be seen. She switched off the torch and retrieved the book, which was slipping floorwards. In the corridor outside she heard the sniffing moving closer, hesitating at Will’s door, progressing on to hers. There was the familiar ragged panting, the not-quite-noiseless footfalls, the sudden scrabble of claws on wood. And then silence. A new silence, invading the passageway, tangible as a presence. The snuffling and the clawing had ceased, the panting changed into a low snarl, a soft, dark noise on the edge of hearing, rising slowly to a growl, a sound neither feline nor canine but somewhere in between. Fern thought she had never in her life heard anything so totally evil. Then came a sudden rush, the skidding of paws on bare board, the swish of bunching drugget, a clamour of snapping, worrying, grumbling, an ugly yowl. Heavy bodies seemed to be struggling and writhing; a crash told of an overturned table, a shattered vase. Yet throughout Fern was convinced it was the intruder who made most of the noise: the challenger was mute, with no voice to cry defiance or pain. She heard a scurrying as of something bent on escape: one set of paws fled towards the stairs, chasing or being chased, and then quiet supervened. Out in the garden there was a howl of baffled rage, maybe of fear; but it died away, and only the wind returned, droning among the chimneys, and under the eaves. Fern had grown used to the wind; they had become friends. She lay down, smiling faintly, heedless of the damage she envisaged outside her door. A name came into her mind, clear and certain as a call: Lougarry.