The House on the Fen Read online

  Harriet stood there out in the cold, on her own doorstep, staring at the wooden door in front of her, listening, rigid with shock. The wind had dropped, and in the ear-ringing silence of the countryside, she could hear, or thought she could hear, the water running in the kitchen as he filled the percolator, the click as he plugged it in to the mains and switched on.

  Then, suddenly a pig squealed from Cooper’s farm, away across the fields behind the house, and the sound brought movement back to her and she lifted her hand to knock again, to make him let her in, make him explain who the woman wearing her, Harriet’s, housecoat was, why had he called this stranger by Harriet’s name—?

  But almost without her volition, her hand dropped, and she turned away, moved heavily down the path and out into the road, to walk along it.

  She might have walked on for miles, unthinking, but a small animal moved in the patch of brushwood by the gate that led to Cooper’s five-acres, made her jump in sudden terror, made her aware of the weakness of her legs, the way her whole body was shaking.

  She leaned against the gate, letting her head fall forward, as a wave of giddiness swept over her, and then looked up, staring at the sky through the scrubby branches of the hawthorn that grew beside the gate, bent sideways against the prevailing sea winds. She stared up at the thin clouds scudding raggedly over the now almost completely dark sky, at faint pricks of starlight winking and disappearing, reappearing and going again, and let her body relax, so that the shaking stopped, the giddiness went, leaving her feeling quiet and at peace for the first time since she had awaked from her heavy sleep, so long ago. So long ago? She peered at her watch. A quarter to seven. Just one hour ago.

  She turned then, to lean against the gate, looking across the black grass at the distant light from Cooper’s farmhouse.

  “Think, Harriet,” she murmured, aloud. “Think.”

  You live in that house with your husband, Jeffrey Darnell. You dislike him intensely, even hate him sometimes, but you live there with him and have lived there for the past five years. You want to leave him, leave that house, never see either of them again, but you’ve never had the guts to do it. You’re young enough to start a new life, at twenty-three, quite young enough, but you’ve never had the guts to do it.

  And now you can.

  There in that house is another woman who was called by your husband by your name, who called him “darling” with an easy familiarity you never had. She looks like you—

  My God, but she looks like you, a tiny voice in her mind said. She had your shape. Narrow sloping shoulders, long legs under that clinging blue housecoat. It wasn’t just that she was wearing your housecoat— she really could have been you. Perhaps she really is Harriet Darnell, and you are somebody else, somebody quite different. You’re imagining it all. In a minute, you’ll wake up and you’ll be someone quite different— Linda Joel, maybe—.

  She looked down at her hands in the darkness, where they were clutching the top rail of the gate, at the long tapering fingers, and a giggle rose in her. Not Linda Joel. She’s got fat hands, fat hands with long red nails, and dimples on her knuckles, hands that match her sofa-cushion body and yellow hair. You aren’t Linda Joel, you’re Harriet Darnell, with black hair, and green eyes, and a thin face, and a thin long body —but Harriet Darnell is at the house, with her husband— my husband— with Jeffrey, hateful, horrible Jeffrey.

  “And she can have him!” she said aloud, into the darkness. “She can be Harriet Darnell if she wants to be—.”

  She hugged herself then, partly for warmth, partly to regain that awareness of her physical self she had felt on the journey back from the station.

  I’ll go. I’ll go away, and leave them both there, and no one will be able to stop me, not him, not anyone, and I’ll be me, whoever I am— I’ll be free for the very first time since Barbie died and I married him. I’ll be free.

  She thrust her hands into her coat pockets, and turned away from the gate, turning toward the village and the station. I’ll get the seven forty-five to London, she thought.

  Her hands in her pockets brought her up sharp, then. Go to London? What with? She pulled the little change purse out, the one around which her fingers had curled and, peering into it, managed to count the contents. Almost two pounds, that was all. Not enough to buy a ticket— and even if it were, where would she go when she got to London, with no money for a hotel room?

  I’ll take the car, she thought then. There’s plenty of petrol in it— Andersen always fills it up after a service.

  She made no attempt to be quiet as she got back to the house and moved toward the car in the driveway. She felt so dreamlike that somehow it seemed that, as in a dream, there could be no sound, no one could hear her.

  But though the car was there, the ignition key was gone. She had not heard anyone come out of the house, from her place by the gate in the lane, but someone clearly had come and taken away the key so that she couldn’t use the car.

  But it didn’t matter, not in the least, she thought, elation lifting her. I’ll walk to the station, and Joe Potter will let me get on the train if I tell him some tale or other— and once I’m away, really away from all this, then I’ll worry about what to do and how to pay for a ticket at the other end.

  All that matters now, she thought, letting the garden gate creak closed behind her, walking swiftly along the silent lane toward the station, all that matters is that I’m free. I don’t know why, or how, or what’s going on, but I’m free.

  As she walked, she whistled between her teeth, keeping time with the sound of her own footsteps.

  Chapter Two

  It was almost too easy. She covered the two miles to the station in just under half an hour, and though the London train was due in less than fifteen minutes, there was no sign of Joe Potter. She simply walked onto the up platform, and stood against a hoarding at the far end, so that she disappeared into the darkness. Later, she heard Joe come into the station, but made no move to explain why she wanted to travel without a ticket.

  Her plan, such as it was, had taken shape. Tickets were collected on the train, well before it ran into Liverpool Street Station. If she could be out of sight when the collector came round, there would be no problem. She giggled softly. All set for a new life of crime, that’s me, starting with fiddling British Railways.

  When the train came in, she waited tensely while the half dozen passengers got off and hurried away up the platform toward Joe at the barrier, and then she moved swiftly across the patches of light thrown from the train windows and slipped aboard. She was the only passenger, she thought, but as she pulled the carriage door behind her as quietly as she could, she seemed to see a blur of movement at the top end of the platform, as though someone else had also climbed aboard. But there was no slam of a door. She must have imagined it.

  She sat huddled in a corner of the carriage, on the corridor side, her body half turned away from the window, pretending to be asleep, hoping she looked as though she had been on the train all the time. She heard Joe’s footsteps pass, as he want along to talk for a moment to the driver, heard the shrill whistle after a pause, and sat rigid as the train moved off, not daring to move in case Joe noticed her as the carriage passed him. He couldn’t have done, for he would have shouted, probably, knowing full well she had no ticket.

  The train gathered speed, rattling over the points, settling down to a regular swaying that made her sleepy, cold and anxious though she was. But she dare not sleep, even though there were two long hours of travelling ahead of her.

  Fifteen minutes out of Thaxham-on-the-Fen she got to her feet, and moving carefully, slid open the door. There was no one in the dim light of the swaying corridor, just the noise of the train, an occasional distant light from the drowned black landscape moving across her reflection in the window. She pulled her collar up, thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and, trying to move normally, walked along the corridor toward the lavatory at the end. She let her eyes slide
sideways as she passed each compartment, but only two of them were occupied, one by a man with his feet up on the opposite seat, his head back as he slept, the other by a young couple, their arms round each other, kissing in a long slow embrace that made her want to giggle again. They looked for all the world like a cinema poster, she thought.

  She locked herself into the stuffy paper-towel-littered lavatory and leaned against the door, breathing deeply. She was safe now. She just had to stay here until the train reached Liverpool Street.

  She dropped the wooden lid down over the lavatory pan, and perched there awkwardly, fixing her heels against the floor so the swaying of the train wouldn’t send her falling, and tried to relax. Not the most comfortable way to travel, or the most salubrious either, but safe— and very cheap.

  And so she sat, reading and rereading the little notice on the wall in time to the rattle of the train. “Do-no-tuse-the-lavatory-when-the-train-is-standing-at-a-station, do-not-use—.”

  There was one bad moment when someone tried the door but then she heard footsteps move away, heard the door of the lavatory on the other side of the couplings between her carriage and the next, and relaxed again. Thank God the train was so empty tonight. There would be no irate passengers seeking for the guard because one lavatory was permanently occupied.

  She heard the ticket collector move along the corridor, heard him call, “Tickets please— all your tickets, if you please—” and with her tongue held between her teeth, gently slid the bolt back so that the indicator outside read “Vacant,” and then crammed herself awkwardly behind the door between it and the lavatory.

  The ticket man came nearer and, as he passed the lavatory, pushed the door open slightly, still calling his monotonous, “Tickets please—your tickets—” but he went on, satisfied that the lavatory was unoccupied. She breathed again as his footsteps diminished in sound and he went onto the next carriage. And then she bolted the door again.

  She wondered for a moment if it would be safe now to go back to a compartment, but decided not to, miserably uncomfortable though she was. It was just as well, because the ticket collector came back after a while, going back towards the guard’s compartment and his cup of tea. Even after that, she stayed where she was. Take no chances.

  And at Liverpool Street no one looked at her as she moved along the platform, passed the wide barrier where a man was punching tickets of passengers who were to travel on the next train going out, but ignoring arriving passengers. She had made it, had arrived in London with her small store of money intact. She felt elated, delighted with her success of her stratagem, and this carried her across the crowded station toward the exit.

  And it was then that she stopped, panicky, standing still so that self-absorbed passengers moved around her, as water moves round a rock in the bed of a stream. What the hell did she do now? She had made no plans at all, beyond getting to London, away from Thaxham-on-the-Fen. She tried to think calmly. The little money she had wouldn’t last long. She had no idea how much a hotel would cost, even for one night, and she had a hazy idea that hotels refused guests without luggage, anyway. Now what?

  There was a refreshment room, and she went in, getting a cup of thick brown tea from the bored woman behind the counter before sitting at one of the grubby tables, wrinkling her nose a little at the smell of the place, at the handful of solitary people sprawled at other tables, absorbed in themselves, uncaring about who she was, or why she was there or what she was to do.

  As she drank the tea, grateful for its warmth despite its thick unpleasant taste, she thought. And then remembered with a sudden rush of relief.

  What had her name been, that girl who had been her friend at school, so long ago? Six years, wasn’t it? Yes. Six Years, just before she had left school, before she had met Jeffrey, and Barbie had gotten so ill, had begged her to marry this sensible safe man— Harriet shook her head, pushing those memories away, and concentrated.

  She had lived in London, in a flat, with her parents, had taken Harriet there several times. A nice friendly girl, plump and cheerful, with plump and cheerful parents. Sandra—no, Shirley Lucas, Flat Seventeen, Prince George’s Mansions, SW3. Just off the King’s Road, in Chelsea.

  Harriet would go there, explain to Shirley somehow, ask her to put her up, just for a night or two, until she could get a job and room of her own somewhere, start her new life.

  It wasn’t until she was in the underground train, on her way to Sloane Square, that she had the chance to think again, properly. She had remembered which was the nearest station to the Lucas flat, had found that despite her five years of living in the country, she still remembered how to find her way on the tube, for she had lived with Barbie in Fulham, all that long time ago.

  Shirley is probably married by now, the small voice in her mind murmured. She’s twenty-three now, like you. And she was pretty, liked boys, had a steady boyfriend even then, didn’t she? The two of them had been almost the only guests at Harriet’s quiet wedding at the registry office. They had written to each other at first, desultorily, but then Shirley had stopped answering Harriet’s letters. She must be married by now, must have moved away.

  Her parents will be there, anyway, she told herself firmly. And they were as friendly as Shirley, wouldn’t turn her away. They must be there.

  There were crowds on the platform at Sloane Square, noisy young people, in gay college scarves, shattering and laughing, and as she pushed her way through them, she suddenly felt sick with envy. She wasn’t that much older than they were, but she felt so old as she looked at them, so very old.

  Memory helped her again. Almost without thinking, she turned in the right direction as she left the station and began to walk quickly past the lighted shop windows, the people on the pavements, trying not to think about what she would do if the Lucases weren’t at home or wouldn’t help her. They must be there, and they will understand. They must and they will.

  The flats looked just as she remembered them, the black and white cracked tiles on the floor of the entrance hall, the elaborately wrought iron gates of the tiny lift, the stone stairs curling round the lift-shaft, the smell of cats and disinfectant, the greenish light over the entrance door.

  There was a board just inside the door with names on it in little slots, and bells beside each one. She stopped and bent to look at it.

  Flat fifteen, Levy. Flat sixteen, Anstey. Flat seventeen, Besterman. Flat eighteen, Jensen. Flat nineteen—

  She started again. It must be wrong. Flat seventeen, Besterman, the grubby card read. A very grubby card, that looked as though it had been there a very long time. Perhaps she had forgotten the right number? Feverishly, she ran her finger down the whole list, read each of the twenty-four cards on it, but no Lucas seemed to live at Prince George’s Mansions, no name remotely like Lucas.

  “Did yer want somethin’?”

  She whirled, alarmed, to see an elderly man in a dirty blue uniform with a thick yellow muffler wound around his thin neck, and watery eyes in a St. Bernard’s dog face, all jowls and mournfulness.

  “’Oo was yer wantin’?” he said, wheezing a little.

  “Er—Lucas— the Lucases—” she said, her voice sounding a little cracked in her own ears. “I thought they lived in flat seventeen.”

  He shook his head, drearily, shifting the can he was holding from one hand to the other. A faint smell of soup came from it, and thin tendrils of steam moved from its spout, and she felt a sudden gripe of hunger. She had eaten no lunch, she remembered, so tense has she been about Jeffrey’s return, had had nothing but cups of tea since breakfast time, and she felt giddy as she realised it.

  “No—” the old man said. “No one of that name ’ere.”

  “There must be.” Her voice became shrill. “There must be— this is Prince George’s mansions—isn’t it?”

  “Yers—” he said, and peered suspiciously at her. “It is. And there’s no one of the name of Lucas lives ’ere, nor ’as this past three year. Three year I bin w
orking ’ere, and there’s bin no Lucases ’ere not ever. So I’ll be thankin’ yer to to be on yer way, so’s I can get on. I got me supper to ’ave, and I wants to lock up first— goodnight to yer—.”

  “There must be!” she said helplessly, and put her hand out, as though to grasp him, to shake the truth out of him.

  “’Ere!” he backed away, alarmed. “’Ang about a bit, will yer? I’m tellin’ yer as there’s no people ’ere named Lucas, and I wants yer out of the place, right now. Responsible I am, for this ’ere building, and any suspicious characters as I see I got to turn out, so you be on yer way, so you ’ear me? Get aht of it—.”

  “I can’t,” she said, and tear began to rise in her throat, thickening her voice, and in her misery, she moved toward him again, and he slid sideways, hobbling toward the door to the street.

  “Get aht of it,” he said shrilly. “Get on with yer— I’ll blow me whistle if you don’t, I’m warning yer— there’s a copper on his beat as comes by around now, and I’ll get ’im to yer if yer don’t get aht of it—.”

  He was fumbling awkwardly in his pocket, his face as full of fear as of menace, and she stared at him hopelessly, tears at last spilled over and her body began to shake.

  And then the big glass-paneled door swung open, letting in a blast of cold damp air, and the old man turned toward it.

  A man came in, a tall man in a suede coat with a sheepskin collar pulled up around his ears. He was fair, with dark gold hair that glinted in the light, a square handsome face, and very blue eyes that had wrinkles at their corners.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and his voice was deep and friendly. “Would you mind if I came in here to light my pipe? The wind out there keeps blowing my matches out, and I’ve only a few left— and a man with a pipeful of tobacco and no matches is in a very—.”

  “’Ere mister—” The old man hobbled over to him, eagerly. “’Ere, tell this ruddy bint to get goin’ will yer? Comes in ’ere pretending to look for people as don’t live ’ere nor never ’ave, and won’t go, and probably got a couple of fellers out there just waitin’ to come an’ cosh me soon’s she’s ’ad a good look round— you get ’er out of it, will yer, mister?”