Ancient Images Part 15

She had to stand all the way to Marble Arch, faces looming over both her shoulders. She ran across the lobby at Metropolitan, into a lift that was closing. She poked the b.u.t.ton to hold the doors open, but n.o.body was following her after all. As she walked into the editing room she was greeted by cheers, and Lezli gave her a hug. Footage of a train crash was just coming in, so much of it that it took her ------------------------------------236 and Lezli all their time to have it in shape for the one o'clock news. Sandy had almost forgotten how much she enjoyed the challenge of editing.

She had lunch with Lezli in the pub around the corner, and heard about Lezli's new boyfriend, who was playing Doctor Seward in the new stage musical of Dracula. Dracula. Eventually Sandy remembered something that had slipped her mind. "Were you trying to get in touch with me while I was away? Eventually Sandy remembered something that had slipped her mind. "Were you trying to get in touch with me while I was away?

"No, why?"

"Toby said someone from Metro was." It might have been Boswell, wanting to tell her about her sick leave--and then she realized who she hadn't contacted. "Of course, Piers Falconer."

After lunch she found him in his office. His onscreen frown of concern appeared on his bland face as he saw her. "I tried to let you know about your cat food," he said.

"I've been running about so much I forgot to call you back."

"I wanted to put your mind at rest. I had the food you gave me tested, and it came out clean."

"I don't understand," Sandy said.

"No poison, nothing that shouldn't have been there. Whatever made your cats run away, it didn't come out of that tin."

She wondered why he should expect that to ease her mind: presumably because she needn't blame herself for having fed them the cause. Might the food have contained some additive against which they'd reacted? Why hadn't the allergy shown up before? She put the problem out of her mind in order to concentrate on editing, but it returned to bother her as she walked to the hospital. It made her feel pursued by something she couldn't quite define or didn't want to.

Roger was able to hold her hand, indeed anxious to demonstrate his grip. When his father, who looked better for ------------------------------------237 a night's sleep, made to leave them alone, Sandy insisted that he stay and left early herself, so as to ponder issues she didn't want to trouble Roger with while he was hospitalized. She ought to look into the history of Redfield, though she wasn't sure what she would prefer to find: a pattern, or none? She ought to find out whether the circ.u.mstances of Giles Spence's death had been reported anywhere in detail. The question of what could have sent the cats fleeing made her rooms feel colder and lonelier and more like a series of hiding places than she liked. "Get well soon, Roger," she wished, and repeated it inside her head as she lay waiting for sleep.

Near dawn she drifted awake. She rolled sleepily onto her back and let her arms stretch out on either side of her, inviting the soft weight of the cats to land on the bed. "Come on if you're coming," she murmured blurrily, and then she wakened enough to remember that they never would. No doubt her conversation with Piers Falconer had brought them prowling into her dreams--but she still felt as if something was roaming beyond the foot of the bed and about to leap onto the quilt.

She shoved herself back and up, the headboard sc.r.a.ping her shoulders, and tugged the light cord. Only the room sprang at her, jerked by the light. She couldn't tell if there was a stale smell in the room; perhaps it was the taste of panic in her mouth. It had gone by the time she returned to bed, having searched the rooms to prove they were deserted.

She showered, and ate breakfast as the sun came up. She found she couldn't eat much; the bread tasted so flat she checked that it was the loaf she'd bought yesterday, not one left over from before her travels in search for the film. At least she had plenty of time for a stroll through the wood.

The sunlight hadn't reached the paths yet; it was cold and dim beneath the trees. The activity on both sides of the paths, the shadows dodging between the trunks and through the undergrowth, must be of birds, but she wished they would identify themselves by singing. ------------------------------------238 Commuters ran after her down to the Highgate platform. She managed to find a seat on the train, where faces nodded above her. At Metropolitan the lift opened on the way to her floor, though there was n.o.body in sight beyond the doors. She worked all day in the editing room to keep herself occupied, and made do with a sandwich for lunch. That bread tasted stale too. Now and then she was left alone in the room, and kept thinking that someone had come in behind her to watch. Once she thought a dog had managed to stray upstairs.

She had a drink with Lezli after work to help herself relax, then she walked to visit Roger. They had lowered his leg and unbandaged his head and arms, and he was sitting up. "They're showing me the door tomorrow," he said.

She felt brighter and clearer at once. "You're that much better?"

"Better than whoever needs this bed, I guess. And it's cheaper for your health service to lend me crutches."

"Are you going to be able to write?"

"I would if I had anything ready," he said, wriggling his fingers to show they didn't make him flinch. "Maybe I can hobble into the British Museum and get some use out of my reader's card while I'm waiting for the ideas to come back, if there's any research you need me to do."

"The history of Redfield and any report of Giles Spence's death."

"Sure, why not? No need to look as if you're asking me to break my other leg. I want to get something definite as much as you do."

"And when you're more mobile we'll go looking for Spence's film, shall we?"

"You bet. While I've been lying here it occurred to me that the Redfields may not have sewn up the American rights. If they can't stop me showing it over there you can blame me for resurrecting it if you like."

"So you're planning on going back to America." ------------------------------------239 "Not for a while," he said, and squeezed her hand, holding on as they saw his father approaching. The conversation became more general, but his grasp stayed with her, even when she left the hospital. It felt like a companion in the spa.r.s.ely populated streets and in the Underground, where someone unseen was pacing, heels clicking clawlike. It felt like a promise that she wouldn't be spending many more nights by herself.

She walked home around the outside of the wood, eating fish and chips out of a copy of the Daily Daily Friend: Friend: no danger of putting on weight today. She must phone a few friends to let them know she was back in town and to introduce Roger. She let herself into the house and tramped upstairs. She switched on the lights in her flat and made herself a drink of Horlicks, sipped and then downed it as she watched the end of a comedy show on television. She undressed, washed, brushed her teeth. By the time she'd finished brushing her hair she felt pleasantly tired. She wandered into the bedroom and switched on the bedside lamp, and went to the window. She grasped the curtains and was about to draw them when a movement in the wood made her look down. Her body jerked, almost dragging the curtains off the rail. Propped against the railings at the end of the garden, its vague blotchy greenish face upturned toward her window, was a scarecrow. ------------------------------------240 no danger of putting on weight today. She must phone a few friends to let them know she was back in town and to introduce Roger. She let herself into the house and tramped upstairs. She switched on the lights in her flat and made herself a drink of Horlicks, sipped and then downed it as she watched the end of a comedy show on television. She undressed, washed, brushed her teeth. By the time she'd finished brushing her hair she felt pleasantly tired. She wandered into the bedroom and switched on the bedside lamp, and went to the window. She grasped the curtains and was about to draw them when a movement in the wood made her look down. Her body jerked, almost dragging the curtains off the rail. Propped against the railings at the end of the garden, its vague blotchy greenish face upturned toward her window, was a scarecrow. ------------------------------------240 She felt as if she might stand there until the sun came up, stand there afraid to loosen her grip on the curtains and step back, afraid to let the scrawny figure at the railings out of her sight for even a moment, afraid to think why. All she seemed able to think was that scarecrows didn't have hands, and so the scarecrow couldn't be holding on to the railings with whatever was at the ends of its arms, however it looked. If she switched on the main light in her bedroom it would illuminate the edge of the wood where the figure was. The light from the bedside lamp stopped at the window and obscured more down there than it showed, but the little she could see was keeping her at the window, unable to run to the light cord.

The figure at the end of the garden was rocking slightly back and forth under the swaying trees as though it was preparing to leap. Something like hair streamed back from its overgrown face. Perhaps the figure was dancing in the wind as if celebrating Sandy's helplessness, and wasn't part of its bunched face moving, writhing? She was struggling to open her hands, willing them to shove her away from the window and let her reach the cord, when the phone rang.

She cried out, flung the curtains away from her, sprawled across the bed. The phone was on the bedside table. She seized the cordless receiver and pressed it to her cheek. "h.e.l.lo?" she gasped.

"Miss Allan."

It was a man's voice, one she felt she ought to know. In ------------------------------------241 diving for the phone she'd knocked the light cord out of reach. She grabbed at it as it swung back, missed, caught it at last and tugged. "Yes, of course it is," she said wildly. "Who'm I speaking to?"

"We spoke recently, you may recall."

He sounded offended that she hadn't recognized him. For a moment she thought he was Lord Redfield, and found that her instincts were framing a plea to him: "Call it off." That was several kinds of irrational, she thought, pushing herself away from the bed: it wasn't Redfield, and even if it had been, how did she imagine he could help? "Spoke about what?" she demanded.

"About my father," the voice said, and paused before adding resentfully, "My father, Norman Ross."

"Norman Ross, oh yes." He'd been the a.s.sistant editor on Spence's film, the first of the names from Graham's notebook she had succeeded in contacting, except that she had spoken to his irritable son then too. These thoughts seemed distant, for she had reached the window and was peering down, peering harder. There was no scarecrow at the railings, nothing at all. "You wouldn't let me talk to him," she said, hardly aware of speaking.

"I told you why at the time. I didn't want him troubled more than he already was."

Whatever she'd seen at the railings, it couldn't be on its way into the house. It must have been a large stray dog, she told herself. It had looked as much like that as like a scarecrow, not that she had been able to see it at all clearly. No wonder she was seeing things when she needed to catch up on her sleep, but she had to concentrate on the phone call. "I'll be able to talk to your father now, will I?" she said.

"I'm very much afraid not. He died several days ago."

"Oh dear," she said, feeling inadequate and also bitter that she had been denied the interview. She was still peering down into- the wood, where she could see no movements that might not be of trees or undergrowth. "My condo ------------------------------------242 lences," she said, wondering why the son had bothered to phone her at all.

"I won't apologize for standing in your way. My father's nerves were bad enough. You may as well know it was those and his heart and his imagination that killed him."

"I'm sorry to hear it, but why are you telling me?"

"I'm trying to suggest that I may have been wrong to prevent you from obtaining what seems to have obsessed both of you. Perhaps if I hadn't, my father might still be alive. Shortly before he died he asked me to contact you, and so I have."

Sandy scanned the wood once more, then backed away from the spectacle of so much dark restlessness to sit on the bed. "I'm sorry, I'm not clear why."

"Because he had the film you're so anxious to find."

She closed her eyes and took a breath. "Had?"

"In his strongbox at the bank. You understand I had no reason to suspect this."

She clenched her fist and punched the mattress hard. "And where is it now?"

"Why, still at the bank. Under the circ.u.mstances I hope you will collect it as speedily as possible."

"Forgive me, I've forgotten whereabouts you are."

"Near Lincoln."

"I remember." Not too far from Redfield, she thought, and suppressed the thought that it wasn't as far as she would have liked. "Let me write down the details," she said, and when she had: "I may not be able to get off work until the weekend. Will Sat.u.r.day be all right?"

"Presumably it will have to be if you can't make it sooner. The bank closes at twelve."

"I'll be early." She hoped she wasn't about to sound impolite; he clearly still resented having to talk to her. "Do you mind if I ask whether anyone else knows you have the film?"

"I haven't got it. The bank has. I want nothing to do ------------------------------------243 with it, I a.s.sure you," he said, and even more peevishly, "My father asked that only you should be informed, and I've respected his wish, obviously."

"I'm very grateful. I'll look forward to seeing you on Sat.u.r.day."

"Yes," he said with an attempt at warmth, and left it at that. When he'd rung off, Sandy gazed at the phone in delight at his message, and threw herself back on the bed, her arms and legs splayed wide. She wished Roger were already home so that she could tell him the news. She lay for a while, relaxing, then strolled to the curtains and drew them tight. She was feeling so pleased with herself that she didn't even bother to glance down into the dark. ------------------------------------244 She slept dreamlessly, and wakened when the curtains began to glow. She stumbled to them, pulled them apart and looked down. Long shadows of branches were dancing slowly and haphazardly in the undergrowth, but the railings were deserted. She had known they would be, she needn't even have bothered to look. Having looked made her feel spied upon, until she ignored the impression. n.o.body except Norman Ross's son and possibly his family could be aware that she knew where the film was, and they wouldn't be telling anyone.

Before she left for work she called the hospital and asked for Roger. "Can he hop to the phone?"

He was there unexpectedly quickly. "I was just heaving myself up and down the ward to try out my extra legs. I'm being let loose in an hour or so."

"Don't fall over yourself, but here's another reason to get well. It's a secret between us, all right? I know where to find the film."

"You're sure? Gee, that's-- Hold on, I'm dropping this."

She heard a clatter as he attempted to hang on to the receiver while keeping himself propped on his crutches. Eventually he said, "I guess you could hear how bowled over I was. That's great news. Don't tell me over the phone where it is, but you're sure it's safe?"

His warning annoyed her, because it revived her sense ------------------------------------245 of being overheard. "Absolutely. It's locked away in a bank."

"Will you be able to get to it today?"

"It's not that close, and I can't take the day off," she said, smiling at his boyish eagerness. "It'll have to stay locked up until the weekend."

"If I weren't in this state I'd pick it up for you." He sounded furious with himself. "Maybe I'll be fit to travel with you."

"Fine, if you are. So where will you be today?"

"I'll take my leg where the rest of the mummies are, and use my reader's card. If you want to meet me in the lobby when you finish work we could load me into a cab and go for dinner."

She edited deftly and satisfyingly all day, with a token break for lunch, and didn't once look behind her. She wanted to be sure of finishing work on time, so as not to leave him standing in the lobby of the museum. But someone had provided him with a folding chair, on which he sat just inside the entrance, his plastered leg stretched out like a primitive version of a visitors' book, awaiting signatures. "You look as if you've donated yourself to the museum," she said.

"I wouldn't be the first, if the company I had today was anything to go by. I'll swear the librarians must go around after hours and dust some of them off."

"You had a quiet day then at least."

"Quiet? If a mime had gone in there the readers would have started shushing him. This leg didn't meet with much approval, I can tell you. I opened a book too loud and I thought I was going to be marched out, the stares I got."

He was levering himself to his feet. "Seems like there are different rules for the staff," he said. "Some guy who works in the museum kept wandering back and forth where I couldn't see him properly. He must have been something to do with masks, he kept going past with one-in front of his ------------------------------------246 face. I guess you get used to him. He didn't seem to bother anyone but me."

"Let's get you out of here and then you can thump along as much as you like," Sandy said, and helped him down the steps outside. "Would you rather we went to a restaurant or back to your place? I'd take you to mine, except we'd never maneuver you up the stairs."

"Let's go to mine so I don't trip up any waiters, and I'll buy us a takeout. Just you and me," he said. "My father went back home."

She propped Roger by the gates of the museum while she hailed a taxi, and helped him flounder onto the seat. "So did you find out much today?" she said as the taxi sped off.

"Nothing too important, and nothing too pleasant."

She had to be content with that, for the taxi driver began a monologue about broken limbs, injuries in sports, horses injured during races, horses injured by hunt saboteurs, people meddling with traditions they didn't understand, trying to destroy everything English ... The taxi reached Roger's at last, and Sandy went ahead with the key and switched on the lights so that he could make straight for the sofa and sit like a victim of gout. He phoned through their order for dinner while she poured wine and then sat next to him. "Let's hear the gory details, then," she said.

"There are more of those than you may like, particularly when we're about to eat. I don't know if you even need to hear them."

"You might let me decide."

"Okay," he said reluctantly. "The librarian did find a report of Spence's death. He crashed into a tree at the edge of Redfield and must have gone through his windshield. According to the paper he crawled maybe a mile toward Redfield before he died."

Spence would have been heading for the Ear of Wheat, for help. He would have bled across a mile of Redfield land. ------------------------------------247 His wounds must have resembled those suggested by the inscriptions in the Redfield graveyard. She managed not to shudder. "Well, I can cope with that. What else?"

"Nothing to confirm what you were saying about Redfield."

"What are you saying I was saying?"

"Why, that the place needed some kind of regular bloodshed, weren't you?"

She didn't think she had said that, but it had undoubtedly been at the back of her mind. "I've heard of people acting on that kind of belief," she said.

"Me too. You're thinking of the Aztecs and their cereal G.o.ds, are you? And in India some tribes reared people just to be sacrificed to the fields, until the British stopped them. And way back in Ireland they used to sacrifice children to make the land fertile, and not too long ago the p.a.w.nee Indians would sacrifice a girl to Morning Star for the good of the fields, but I'd rather not go into that before dinner. Let's just say I read about various rituals like those today, and one thing they had in common was they were supposed to be practiced every year. There wasn't one that happened only every fifty years."

"But you're talking about rituals that were consciously practiced," Sandy said, and trailed off: what other kind did she imagine had been repeated so often at Redfield? "Suppose there were a ritual that was forgotten over the centuries but still subconsciously remembered, and somehow that lessened its frequency," she said, just as fingers tapped on the window behind her.

She smelled the food before she parted the curtains. The figure she glimpsed heading for the front door was delivering the takeout meal, of course. She opened the door and took the carton piled with foil containers, and he came after her, since Roger was announcing loudly that he would pay but couldn't stand up. When she saw him out she ------------------------------------248 thought for a moment that a companion or a pet was waiting for him, but it must have been his shadow that dodged into the gloom between the shrubs.

She served herself and Roger, and discovered that she was ravenous. It must only be bread that didn't taste so satisfying since she had come back from Redfield. Roger was obviously enjoying food that didn't savor of the hospital, and they let conversation lapse for a while. Eventually she said, "So did you have time to read up on Redfield?"

"Plenty of time, but not much to read. You'd almost think it was being kept out of the history books--in fact, the librarian seemed kind of outraged that it wasn't in something called the Victoria County History. There's hardly even any references to the battle that gave the place its name." He dabbed at his mouth with a paper handkerchief and reached in his pocket. "I did copy something about that part of the country. There's no reason to suppose it was Redfield, I only wrote it down because it sounded like the kind of thing you were looking for. I'll read it to you, you'd take all night deciphering my scrawl. I didn't like to ask the librarian to photocopy it after he'd brought me so many books."

He leafed through his notebook and squinted at a page. "I should have noted where I got this from. Some translation from Latin, some kind of study of the Roman invasion. It talks about how civilized the folk in Kent were supposed to be, then it goes on: 'Of the indigenous tribes, the most savage were reputed to be the northerners. The Britons themselves ill.u.s.trated this by telling of a tribe which farmed a fertile tract of land to the north of Lincoln. Each year a human victim would be hunted through the fields and cut countless times in order that his blood (so it was believed) would strengthen the crops. This tribe was eventually slaughtered by a tribe that envied the fertility of their soil. Not satisfied with killing every man, woman, and child, the victorious northerners exhumed all the dead of that district. Having dismembered the corpses, they made a pyre of them, ------------------------------------249 so high that the smoke was seen for many miles. This they did, it was reputed, so that their dead alone would feed the land ...' What's wrong?"

"That's Redfield."

"You can't be certain of that, Sandy."

"I am am certain. That's exactly what the first Redfields did to the people they took the land from." certain. That's exactly what the first Redfields did to the people they took the land from."

"Huh. Well." He seemed to feel responsible for having taken her aback. "Maybe they wanted to show this tribe what it felt like to have it done to them, even if it was generations later."

"Maybe," she said doubtfully. "Except what does it mean about their dead feeding the land?"

"Becoming part of it, I guess. Fertilizing it, if you like. h.e.l.l, I don't know. That's what it said in English, anyway. I can't read Latin."

"I shouldn't think that would make any difference," she said, but she could tell he still felt inadequate. She cleared away the empty containers and washed the plates. "In your condition I'm sure I wouldn't have done half so well," she told him, and snuggled against him on the sofa, walked her fingers down his stomach until he winced. "Still painful where it hurts most?"

"Afraid so."

"Let me know when I can take a hand in the healing process."

"Sure, I'll tell you as soon as I'm ready for a physical."