Chapter 6
It isn’t dark yet, and the sun is settling into the remnants of a stormy sky. Ollie decides to stretch his legs and drives away from the village. The road turns into a track as it drops down to the bay. No one is about on the stony beach, and he parks and walks up towards the Clavell Tower. He thinks back over the story he has heard. When he came down it was just to please his grandmother, an old woman who was short of company and who had dreamed up this excuse to persuade him to visit. It hadn’t really occurred to him that there was a real story, a real reason for coming down. But he realises, as if perhaps he has known all along, that she is scared of something. Something that she couldn’t speak to his father about. But he doesn’t feel he is nearer finding out what it is.
The Clavell Tower is on a low cliff overlooking the bay, throwing a shadow across the headland. As he approaches he notices that there is someone standing between the Tower and the cliff. Not a walker, a woman in a dress. He can’t see her clearly, she appears to be standing just looking out to sea. She turns to look at him, and then walks back to the Tower. There’s a fence around it, and you can see the precarious position it used to occupy.
He reaches the viewpoint by the cliff. It is bleak and windy, and the sea is black in the bay and unfriendly. The woman has gone; perhaps she is staying in the Tower, although there are no lights on. From here he looks back towards the Manor, less than a mile inland from here, and not quite visible. The portrait comes into his mind. He has a feeling that this is the clue to everything, the mis-matched not-quite-family scene. Was it painted as a celebration, or to try to hold together a fracturing group? Had the magic of the artist brought them together, or pushed them further apart? Was the girl Cathy really oblivious to the currents flowing around her? He walks slowly back to the car in the growing gloom. Half way down the slope he catches a noise in the wind, and looks back towards the Tower. He can just make out the woman he saw earlier there again, near the Tower, walking towards him. He hesitates for a second, and then carries on back towards the bay at the bottom of the hill.
Returning to the Manor in the car the road is empty. His headlights have come on and they pick up the turns in the road, but nothing else. He passes Cathy’s cottage and turns right in the village. A podcast is playing through the car’s speakers and comes to an end. He reaches forward to turn off the sound system, and as he does so he has a sudden sense that there is someone else in the car with him. His hand returns to the wheel and he holds his breath, listening. It feels as if there is someone sitting beside him in the passenger seat. He catches a glimpse out of his left vision as he rounds a corner in the road. His hands tighten on the wheel and he feels his pulse quicken as adrenaline is released into his body. As soon as the road is straight he looks across, but there is no one there. He slows the car and shakes his head to clear his sight. There is a clear sound of someone else’s breathing, a movement next to him, a rustle of clothing, a faint smell of perfume. Breaking out in a sweat he brakes hard, stops the car and turns to look. The dashboard lights create a glow inside the car and there is no one there, the passenger seat empty, no one in the back seat.
He sits for a long minute, trying to calm his breathing, looking ahead into the darkness. Gradually the feeling goes, there is no one there. He presses the switch to lower his window to let in the sounds and smells of the night, and to clear the air, and he starts up the car again and drives off. Immediately the feeling of another person being there is back, more strongly now. He feels a small hand resting lightly high on his leg, warm and close through his jeans, stroking his thigh. His panic returns. He brakes hard, eyes shut, and skids onto the grass verge, opens the door and escapes across to the other side of the road, the door slamming shut behind him. He is stumbling, panting, sweating. Doubled up, looking at the ground. And then he turns to look back at the car. For several minutes he stands, fixed to the spot. He hears and then sees another car coming towards him, headlights flashing by and then gone. Silence, just his breath, and a rustle in the trees about him. He looks again at the car and starts to cross the road. He can’t get back into it, he can’t go near it. The Manor is only half a mile away, so he locks the car with the electronic key and walks back to the hotel, occasionally looking back.
The bar is open when he reaches the hotel, but is empty, too early for pre-dinner drinks. Ollie finds a table by the window and sits, trying to clear his head, trying to make sense of what happened. There was someone, a woman, in the car. He heard, felt, smelled her; she touched him. He can still feel her hand, bold, unwanted on his thigh. Did he doze off at the wheel and dream it? An echo of a broken night’s sleep? It was as real as if she were sitting here now. But there was no one there. Is someone haunting him? He has never really thought about ghosts, other than to dismiss them as implausible. Could it have been a ghost? Can you feel a ghost? Can a ghost touch you?
One of the hotel staff, a blond girl about Ollie’s age, comes over. “Good evening sir. Can I get you anything?”
“Yes, I’ll have a pint of lager please”. He looks over to the bar but doesn’t recognise the brands on display. “What do you have on draft? Something local?
“Purbeck Gold is popular, a local craft beer, quite hoppy.”
“That’s fine. And some dry roast. Thanks.”
She pours the beer and brings it over, the nuts in a small bowl. He asks her, “how long has this place been open now?”
“About three years I think, but I wasn’t here from the beginning, I joined last year.”
“It seems busy.”
“Yes, it generally is. It’s a nice old building, and the restaurant is always full.”
Ollie looks about the room. He remembers this as being the old dining room, but it works well as a bar. A wall has been knocked out to create a larger room, with sofas and comfortable chairs around low tables. He recognises a couple of the pictures on the wall, but not the stag’s head that now dominates one side of the room.
“Do you know who lived here before?” he asks.
“No, I think an old couple may have lived here. The place was run down and needed a lot of work, and the building was extended.” She gestures to a fine portrait of a man in naval uniform. “That is William Harding, his family owned the place and I think he lived here after the war. The manager knows more than I do, he was here when the place opened.”
Ollie recognises the face from the photograph in the cottage, but in this picture William is older, sadder.
“There was a story I heard about some scandal that happened years ago. An affair, someone killed themselves, or something.”
Ollie smiles. “There are always stories about these old places. Any ghosts?”
She smiles and shakes her head. “Sorry I can’t help. What about you? Are you from near here?”
“I used to come down as a child, but not for a while. My grandmother lives in the village. Perhaps you could show me some of the sights?”
She smiles again, just as the bell from the next room rings. “I’m sorry, another time. Do you have a table booked for dinner?”
“No, can I have a sandwich in here?”
“That’s fine, we serve snacks here and in the lounge. Just ask the barman, he will be along shortly and will let you know what we have.”
Back in his room later Ollie looks at the picture on the wall. Again his eye is caught by Alice. She is looking over his shoulder but her expression, which he first thought made her look uncomfortable, looks more sinister, as if she knows something unpleasant. He switches on the TV and gets a beer out of the fridge. But he keeps remembering the incident the night before, and the hand on his leg earlier, and he feels her presence in the room. He looks at the other faces. Apart from Cathy they all know something that they will not share. And Victoria and Harry are looking at him, as if he is the cause of their distress. The TV screen darkens as the film playing switches to a night scene, and the light in the room changes. As it does the faces in the picture grow larger, paler, more dominant, mocking him. The room in the background of the picture is darker, blurred. He tries to focus on Cathy in the foreground, but her figure diminishes as the others grow.
He stands up, knocking over his drink. The distraction of mopping it up, grabbing a towel, does nothing to stop the brooding presence on the wall; which is stronger when he is not looking at it. He looks back and the feeling recedes slightly, and then comes on him much more strongly, and there is a strong smell of oil paint, as if a force is coming out of the canvas, overwhelming, forcing him to grip the side of the chair he is standing by. As if in a single movement he walks to the wall, picks the picture off its hook and takes it to the wardrobe, pushing it to the back, the canvas facing the wood away from him, and shuts the door, too firmly, making the wardrobe shake. He counts slowly to ten, and then twenty, slowing down his breathing. His heartbeat gradually returns to normal, and he sits back down, his head in his hands. As he does the sound on the TV seems to increase, as if it is coming back into focus, and he looks at the screen, still breathing slowly, unable to focus on the screen. He is shattered, as if he has just come off the rugby pitch, cold, empty, with no energy in his limbs.
That night he is asleep almost as soon as he lies down, but an hour later is wide awake. He hears creaking sounds around him, the sound of an old building resting. He sleeps again, but has strange disjointed dreams that keep him on the edge of sleep and wakefulness. There is a recurring scene with a woman in a car. The woman has no face, no shape. There is no substance to the scene but a sense of terror, a feeling that there is something that he needs to do. Then the person in the car is a man in uniform. He sees the Tower in front of him, much larger than in life, gaunt and in silhouette against the grey sky. He needs to reach it, but his legs are heavy. He has to make a call on his phone, but can’t open a screen with the numbers on it, there are just patterns where his contacts should be. At one point in the night he gets up and walks round the room, opens the curtains and the window to look out into the damp darkness. But when he gets back into bed the dream is still there. Only late in the night does he fall into a deep sleep.