The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories Part 11

Rupert and I sit and drink wine at a small table just inside one of the Market Square cafes. It is too cold to sit outside.

'What's been happening to you?' he asks.

'I left Garder yesterday. I couldn't stand it any longer.'

'You were right to leave,' Rupert says decisively. He is on my side. But then he won't have forgotten the way Garder spoke to him several years ago, when he came up to Rupert and me as we walked along the street, having met when we both got off the same bus at the corner. Garder said: 'I'll thank you to leave my wife alone in future. I know your sort. And Delia's the sort of b.i.t.c.h who makes eyes at every man she meets.' Rupert had been too astonished to speak. Garder had hustled me back to that house.

Now Rupert asks: 'Why did you choose Bruges?' 'Because I was a happy child here.'

'And how shall you live?'

'By writing.'

'You were a writer before your marriage, weren't you?'

'Yes.'

'Why did you give it up?'

'Garder was jealous of it. If ever he found me writing, he'd fly into a rage, as if he'd found me in the arms of another man. But I can start again now that I'm free. Oh -'

A man comes toward the cafe. He pauses in the doorway. Only his silhouette can be seen, short, stocky, with powerful shoulders. His face is in shadow.

'Delia, what's the matter?'

All I can do is stare at the man. He enters now and sits at a table. And it isn't Garder at all.

'What's the matter?' Rupert repeats.

'Nothing. I thought that man was Garder. It isn't.'

'You mustn't let him haunt you.'

'No, I mustn't.'

But as we walk back across the Square to the hotel, a broad-shouldered man pa.s.ses us and, for a second, I think it is Garder. I say so to Rupert, who exclaims: 'That man? But he isn't even like Garder! You must come back to earth, Delia.'

I am afraid.

The following day, Sunday, is the tourists' day in Bruges. They arrive in huge coaches which crov/d the cobbled streets. They cram into the cafes and eat ice-creams. They buy dolls dressed in Bruges lace. They go for rides in the horse-drawn broughams.

They are mostly Belgian, from the surrounding towns and villages, but there are also French, English, Italian, American and j.a.panese visitors. The Market Square, its market section now turned into a huge car park, becomes a nightmare of traffic. Yet many people sit happily at the tables outside the cafes, breathe in the dust and petrol fumes and watch the traffic go by. Presumably the residents, unless they are cashing in on the tourists, go into hiding. And the Belfry bells continue to play their little tunes every quarter just as if the world far below had not gone crazy.

I decide to join those superior bells by climbing the Belfry tower. It is over four hundred steps up and most of the tourists are obviously far too fat to attempt the climb, so I am solitary as I branch off from the crowds in the Square, buy a ticket for the tower and begin to climb.

At first the steps of the spiral staircase are wide and there is a bannister to hold on to. Then, as one climbs higher, they become narrower and the only hand-support is a thick, greasy rope wound round the central pillar. The atmosphere is dank. The air is rather dark. When one looks ahead one sees only the next few spiral stairs, and behind only the few stairs just trodden. The effect is claustrophobic. My heart begins to beat suffocatingly fast. I wish I hadn't come. I feel trapped. Yet I've climbed so far now that it would be worse to go back than go on. I am dreading the journey down. Going up is easier.

Suppose I met someone coming down. One of us would have to go back up or down. At intervals there are small landings where one person could squeeze past another, but this would not be possible on the stairs. Suppose I met Garder on these stairs! The thought fills me with such terror that momentarily I can't go on. I lean against the stone wall and try to breathe normally. Now why on earth should Garder be on the Belfry stairs at Bruges?

Because he is everywhere, that's why.

At last I reach the top. Bruges stretches out below, an elaborate carpet of red roofs, green trees, silver ca.n.a.ls. The people are so tiny that one feels arrogant as airmen or G.o.ds who are forever looking down. In my quest for a sense of proportion I could not have come to a better place than this. The wind is clear and cool.The sun shines. Life is worth living and just to be alive is enough. Who cares about success and failure, hope and disillusionment, love and hate? These are human inventions to while away the emotional living-time. All that really matters is to breathe deeply the cool, clear air, to feel the sun on bare arms, to feast the eyes on a beautiful scene.

Only the living may have these pleasures, and so there is no such thing as a fate worse than death. That is why those who truly hate, kill. For to take away a person's life is the only way you can really reach and hurt him. The only way. Any other sort of revenge is trivial by comparison. The only way Garder could really get his own back on me would be by killing me, and that he cannot do. So I have nothing to fear from him.

But if he knew where I was he would be aiming to kill me now. If Garder were up here with me now, he would put his arm round my shoulders, then give me a hard push over the parapet. Down and down I'd fall, crashing at last among the parked cars below. If I stand here long enough, and look down long enough, I can almost believe that Garder is standing just behind me - that his arm is across my shoulders - that he is pushing me - harder - harder - A huge booming noise, like the crack of doom, makes the Belfry shudder and sends me staggering back from the parapet. The big bell is chiming the hour.

I think it saved my life.

Down the stairs again, down and down, round and round, dizzy with going down and round, feet-muscles hurting with the unaccustomed nature of the movement, down and down and down - and at last the big grey entrance hall, cool and empty but for the souvenir shop and ticket window. I step out into the open air again, among the people. But the open air has changed since I began to come down. The sky has filled with clouds. The air has grown strangely still. This stillness seems to quell traffic noises and people's voices.

I make my way down the Street of the Blind Donkey again, but instead of turning left to the Green Quay, turn right, along the Dijver, cut through the cobbled streets, past the Beguin-age, and so to the Lac d'Amour, which I remember from my childhood as a place of perfect beauty and peace.

Stillness hangs like an invisible cloud over the Lac d'Amour. The quietness is tangible-seeming. The air is difficult to breathe. Limbs feel heavy. Nerves are tense. I sit on a bench under the trees and wait for something to happen. I feel half-strangled.

Everything grows darker. The many mingled greens about me grow a shade denser, richer, and the water of the lake turns grey-brown. Darker still and darker. No one else is about. This is the end of the world and I am the only person left on it, the last and only witness. Wind shifts the leaves on the trees, just a little. Stillness again. And then, suddenly, sheet lightning fills the sky. Everything is white lit. As a child I was told that lightning is the glance of G.o.d, and He never stops to do more than glance because his gaze would burn us right up. Now the light goes out. Thunder cracks. Rain falls, heavily, rushingly, and so closely that to my short-sighted eyes, which cannot see the separate drops, it looks like mist.

It is through this rain-mist that he comes. He comes closer and closer. I am too frightened to run away. I simply cover my face with my hands so that I shall not see what happens. And after I have sat there for a long time in deliberate dark, I take my hands from my eyes, and find that the storm is over, the sun is shining again, and there is no sign of Garder anywhere.

So this time he let me off. But now I know for certain that he is here.

That evening, at the same cafe in the square, Rupert says: 'Where were you during the storm this afternoon?'

'By the Lac d'Amour. I saw Garder.'

'You mean he's followed you? What did he say?'

'Nothing. He went away again.'

'That doesn't sound like Garder.'

'It was Garder.'

'You must have dreamed it, Delia.'

'No.'

'When you say he went away again - what exactly happened?'

'I didn't see. I hid my eyes.'

'Delia, I don't think you're well.'

'You think I'm round the bend? I'm not. When I was living with Garder, I was afraid of going mad, but as soon as I escaped from him that desperate feeling evaporated. I felt calm and clear-minded. He was driving me out of my mind, but I got away in time.'

A girl comes into the cafe and sits at a table behind Rupert. She is about thirteen, slender and big-eyed, wearing a white blouse and dark skirt. She stays very still and does not order anything to eat or drink. I feel as if I have seen her before and presume she is one of Rupert's party.

'Do you let your charges come out alone at night, Rupert?'

'Not after ten. They're supposed to go to bed then, although in fact they stay chattering in each other's rooms till all hours.'

'What about the girl there?'

He looks round, but the table is empty now.

'Maybe she recognised the back of my head and fled,' he says. 'What was she like?'

'Thin, dark, big black eyes.'

'You must pick her out for me at breakfast tomorrow/ 'I shall do no such thing.'

But next morning at breakfast I do look among the schoolchildren for the girl I saw in the cafe, but cannot find her.

Rupert comes to my table. 'Well, which is the culprit?'

'She's not there.'

He laughs. 'Whose side are you on?'

'The children's, always.'

'Come back with us all instead of staying here, Delia.*

'I can't.'

'My wife and I would help you. We'd protect you from Garder if necessary.'

'No one can protect me from Garder.'

'But the hotel will be empty when we've gone.'

'It was like that before your party came.'

'All those echoing corridors and empty rooms,' he says, then returns to his party. A few minutes later he is involved in the turmoil of departure and a coach bears them all the way to Ostend, from where they will go home by water.

Home. Where is home?

In the afternoon, I see the girl again. So she wasn't one of Rupert's party after all. She is sitting on the parapet of the Green Quay. She is obviously so happy within herself, so caught up by the magic of the place, that I can't bear to break the spell by saying anything trivial to make her acquaintance. So I pa.s.s by, over the difficult cobblestones, and sit on the parapet much farther along.

Later I go to the Beguinage, where the houses of the Benedictine nuns surround an area of gra.s.s and trees. Once a man called Beguine started a religious order here. Nuns have prayed here for seven centuries and something of their serenity has seeped into the atmosphere.

A high wall encloses this little town within a town. The only entrance is through an arched doorway at the foot of a bridge across one of the ca.n.a.ls.

Once through the gate, one seems to feel the quietness falling through the air. No sound comes from the houses. One would think they were unoccupied. And such silence is curiously anti-life - no child cries, no dog barks, no voice is raised in impatience, and there is no laughter. Distantly I see one black-robed, white-coiffed figure walking along a path. She goes into the church. And she might have been any nun in any century. This place breathes timelessness. It is a place where paths of time surely cross.

Suddenly I see the girl again. She is sitting on the gra.s.s, leaning against the trunk of a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her. As I pa.s.s her, I smile and say: 'h.e.l.lo.'

'h.e.l.lo.'

'I've seen you several times before.'

'Have you?'

'At first I thought you were with the school party at my hotel.'

'No, I'm here with my parents. They let me come out alone if I want to.'

'Do you like this place?'

'Yes. I'll come back one day.'

'How do you know?'

'I'm sure of it.' She adds: 'I wouldn't mind being a nun.'

' "Wouldn't mind" isn't enough. You must have a vocation.'

'That means you have to feel called, doesn't it? Well, I do feel sort of called to this place. I shall come back. Maybe not to be a nun. Maybe just for a refuge.'

And I feel as if I have had this conversation before.

A voice calls: 'Madame - Madame -' A woman is standing outside one of the houses and beckons me. Thinking she is in distress, I hurry across, to find only that the house is open to visitors and she wants to show me round. Deciding to take the young girl with me, and pay the small fee for both of us, I turn to where she was sitting. But she isn't there any more. I must have frightened her away. And I recall now that I myself was scared away from this place years ago when a middle-aged woman began to make conversation with me, and I felt there was something odd about her, so fled the moment her back was turned. I remember she was wearing a black dress and had dark hair with a white streak in it. She was very thin and her eyes were strange. I had sensed that she was slightly mad, yet had felt an affinity with her...

'This way, Madame.' The woman urges me into the beguine's house. I wander through the kitchen with its big range, then out into a cloister, a beautiful little enclosure with a well in the middle of the richly green lawn, and a covered corridor leading to the bedroom. I try to walk into the bedroom where once a nun slept, but Garder stands in the doorway and prevents me. At least, I think it is Garder, before I have had time to pull myself together and know that it can't be. Then I realise it is only a strange shadow cast by a pillar supporting the roof of the covered way. All the same, I don't go into the bedroom. I just stand in the doorway and look. Then I turn so icily cold in that doorway that I hurry back to the kitchen, the front door, the trees and gra.s.s outside.

I am cold with sweat and shaking with nameless terror.

There is a small bar near the Chapel of the Holy Blood. Bright window-boxes beckon. The inside seems dark because of the brightness in the street. To fill in time before dinner, I go in for a gla.s.s of wine. There are few customers and what with the dimness and my bad sight, they are no more than shapes to me. I sit in the window seat and look over the window-box flowers at the people pa.s.sing by.

Then something makes me turn my head. Accustomed to the poor light now, I see the customers' shapes more clearly. One of them, sitting only three tables away from me looks like Garder - the broad shoulders, the square jaw, the dome of a brow. He is staring at me. I leave my wine unfinished and hurry out.

Yet it is foolish to run away from him. Now that he knows I am here, he can in fact walk up to me and claim me any time. Why doesn't he? Why this cat-and-mouse game? Is he trying to break me down so that I will one day walk up to him and say: 'You win. Take me back to that house.'

But I will never do that. He can go on following me until I die of exhaustion, but I will not go back.

Is he following me now? I'm not sure. There are so many people in the Market Square at this time of evening, and the slanting rays of the sun make the pavements a bewilderment of long shadows.

Back at the hotel, I collect my key from the rack which is full of the keys of unoccupied rooms and go upstairs. I remember what Rupert said about echoing corridors and empty rooms. My room is right at the end of an echoing corridor.

If Garder came, no one would hear me cry out.

So far I have managed to quell overpowering fear. But now it comes down upon me, like a kidnapper's cloak flung over my head, blinding my eyes, stealing my voice, catching my breath. I sit on the edge of my bed, paralysed with this fear. I know that my flight is a mockery, that I have been living in a dream, trying to make the dream so vivid that it would be more real than reality.

Outside, the Belfry bells play gay little tunes before the big bell booms seven times. Dinner time.

Suppose, when I go down to dinner, to that big dining-room with the red velvet curtains and hothouse greenery and dazzling chandeliers, Garder sits waiting at my table....

Yes. He is there. He rises as I come.