Fear Read online

  ‘We’ll have a talk tomorrow about finding a school for you, Monica,’ he said. ‘Run off to bed, now. Good night, my dear.’

  He hesitated, then touched her forehead with his lips. She ran from him, nearly as shy as Everton himself, tossing back her long hair, but from the door she gave him the strangest little brimming glance, and there was that in her eyes which he had never seen before.

  Late that night Everton entered the great empty room which Monica had named the schoolroom. A flag of moonlight from the window lay across the floor, and it was empty to the gaze. But the deep shadows hid little shy presences of which some unnamed and undeveloped sense in the man was acutely aware.

  ‘Children!’ he whispered. ‘Children!’

  He closed his eyes and stretched out his hands. Still they were shy and held aloof, but he fancied that they came a little nearer.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he whispered. ‘I’m only a very lonely man. Be near me after Monica is gone.’

  He paused, waiting. Then as he turned away he was aware of little caressing hands upon his arm. He looked around at once, but the time had not yet come for him to see. He saw only the barred window, the shadows on either wall and the flag of moonlight.

  Ringing the Changes

  by Robert Aickman

  He had never been among those many who deeply dislike church bells, but the ringing that evening at Holihaven changed his view. Bells could certainly get on one’s nerves, he felt, although he had only just arrived in the town.

  He had been too well aware of the perils attendant upon marrying a girl twenty-four years younger than himself to add to them by a conventional honeymoon. The strange force of Phrynne’s love had borne both of them away from their previous selves: in him a formerly haphazard and easy-going approach to life had been replaced by much deep planning to wall in happiness; and she, though once thought cold and choosy, would now agree to anything as long as she was with him. He had said that if they were to marry in June, it would be at the cost of not being able to honeymoon until October. Had they been courting longer, he had explained, gravely smiling, special arrangements could have been made; but, as it was, business claimed him. This, indeed, was true; because his business position was less influential than he had led Phrynne to believe. Finally, it would have been impossible for them to have courted longer, because they had courted from the day they met, which was less than six weeks before the day they married.

  ‘ “A village”,’ he had quoted as they entered the branch line train at the junction (itself sufficiently remote), ‘ “from which (it was said) persons of sufficient longevity might hope to reach Liverpool Street.” ’ By now he was able to make jokes about age, although perhaps he did so rather too often.

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Bertrand Russell.’

  She had looked at him with her big eyes in her tiny face.

  ‘Really.’ He had smiled confirmation.

  ‘I’m not arguing.’ She had still been looking at him. The romantic gas light in the charming period compartment had left him uncertain whether she was smiling back or not. He had given himself the benefit of the doubt, and kissed her.

  The guard had blown his whistle and they rumbled into the darkness. The branch line swung so sharply away from the main line that Phrynne had been almost toppled from her seat.

  ‘Why do we go so slowly when it’s so flat?’

  ‘Because the engineer laid the line up and down the hills and valleys such as they are, instead of cutting through and embanking over them.’ He liked being able to inform her.

  ‘How do you know? Gerald! You said you hadn’t been to Holihaven before.’

  ‘It applies to most of the railways in East Anglia.’

  ‘So that even though it’s flatter, it’s slower?’

  ‘Time matters less.’

  ‘I should have hated going to a place where time mattered or that you’d been to before. You’d have had nothing to remember me by.’

  He hadn’t been quite sure that her words exactly expressed her thought, but the thought had lightened his heart.

  Holihaven station could hardly have been built in the days of the town’s magnificence, for they were in the Middle Ages; but it still implied grander functions than came its way now. The platforms were long enough for visiting London expresses, which had since gone elsewhere; and the architecture of the waiting-rooms would have been not insufficient for occasional use by Foreign Royalty. Oil lamps on perches like those occupied by macaws lighted the uniformed staff, who numbered two, and, together with every other native of Holihaven, looked like storm-habituated mariners.

  The station-master and porter, as Gerald took them to be, watched him approach down the platform, with a heavy suitcase in each hand and Phrynne walking deliciously by his side. He saw one of them address a remark to the other, but neither offered to help. Gerald had to put down the cases in order to give up their tickets. The other passengers had already disappeared.

  ‘Where’s the Bell?’

  Gerald had found the hotel in a reference book. It was the only one the book allotted in Holihaven. But as Gerald spoke, and before the ticket collector could answer, the sudden deep note of an actual bell rang through the darkness. Phrynne caught hold of Gerald’s sleeve.

  Ignoring Gerald, the station-master, if such he was, turned to his colleague. ‘They’re starting early.’

  ‘Every reason to be in good time,’ said the other man. The station-master nodded, and put Gerald’s tickets indifferently in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Can you please tell me how I get to the Bell Hotel?’

  The station-master’s attention returned to him. ‘Have you a room booked?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Tonight?’ The station-master looked inappropriately suspicious.

  ‘Of course.’

  Again the station-master looked at the other man.

  ‘It’s them Pascoes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gerald. ‘That’s the name. Pascoe.’

  ‘We don’t use the Bell,’ explained the station-master. ‘But you’ll find it in Wrack Street.’ He gesticulated vaguely and unhelpfully. ‘Straight ahead. Down Station Road. Then down Wrack Street. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  As soon as they entered the town, the big bell began to boom regularly.

  ‘What narrow streets!’ said Phrynne.

  ‘They follow the lines of the medieval city. Before the river silted up, Holihaven was one of the most important seaports in Great Britain.’

  ‘Where’s everybody got to?’

  Although it was only six o’clock, the place certainly seemed deserted.

  ‘Where’s the hotel got to?’ rejoined Gerald.

  ‘Poor Gerald! Let me help.’ She laid her hand beside his on the handle of the suitcase nearest to her, but as she was about fifteen inches shorter than he, she could be of little assistance. They must already have gone more than a quarter of a mile. ‘Do you think we’re in the right street?’

  ‘Most unlikely, I should say. But there’s no one to ask.’

  ‘Must be early closing day.’

  The single deep notes of the bell were now coming more frequently.

  ‘Why are they ringing that bell? Is it a funeral?’

  ‘Bit late for a funeral.’

  She looked at him a little anxiously.

  ‘Anyway it’s not cold.’

  ‘Considering we’re on the east coast it’s quite astonishingly warm.’

  ‘Not that I care.’

  ‘I hope that bell isn’t going to ring all night.’

  She pulled on the suitcase. His arms were in any case almost parting from his body. ‘Look! We’ve passed it.’

  They stopped, and he looked back. ‘How could we have done that?’

  ‘Well, we have.’

  She was right. He could see a big ornamental bell hanging from a bracket attached to a house about a hundred yards behind them.

  They