Isabel's Skin Read online

  We drove for an hour or more before turning north and climbing into a dripping, saturated landscape. The country parishes of the west had been suffering the torments of a seemingly endless wet season, and as liver rot had decimated the sheep flocks, now foot-and-mouth disease was added to the farmers’ woes. Here and there we saw a scowling man standing beside his emaciated, shivering cattle, but mostly the fields were empty, the barns echoing, the houses unloved and desperate. The cart rattled through the ruts and puddles, the horse panted, the driver cursed, the lanes narrowed, the hedges grew taller and the sky lower. As we climbed one hill and then another and dropped into a wooded valley, the sodden land seemed to open its arms to me, then slowly closed them. It folded and held me, bubbled in my ear, and my throat constricted. The valley was crowded with trees and a swollen stream followed the road. Clouds of sluggish insects swirled over the verges, and when the road began to climb again, the trees thinned out and a pair of buzzards appeared, drifting in circles over the fields and woods. I heard their cries over the hooves and the rattle of the wheels, and turned to watch them climb and fade into the watery horizon.

  I had a map of the route to Buff-Orpington’s house, but by the time we reached the hamlet of Appley we were lost. This place was no more than a couple of farms, a cluster of ruined houses and a public house. We stopped, and while the driver grumbled about the time and went to draw a bucket of water for the horse, I stepped down to stretch my legs. I stood under a tree and took a deep breath and thought, for a moment, that the peace was solid, like I could cut a piece of it and put it in my pocket.

  I looked at the map, and as I was tracing our route from the main road and trying to establish where I had taken a wrong turn, the landlady came out, looked me up and down and opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She was big and florid, with soiled bandages around her ankles and watery grey eyes. An old dog followed her and sniffed my shoes. I said, “Good afternoon” – and after a long pause she said, “So, you’s lost then?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I am.”

  She gave me the ghost of a smile. “Where you heading to?” Her accent was hard and thick, like stones were rattling in her mouth.

  I pointed on the map. “Belmont Hall. Ashbrittle.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Belmont…” She let the word hang in the air. “Belmont. Poor Lord Malcolm. He were a fine gentleman.” She tipped her head and waited for me to give a reason for wanting to visit the dead man’s house, but I said nothing. She huffed and puffed and her dog wheezed.

  “I think we took a wrong turn back there,” and I pointed the way we had come.

  “Yes,” she said, “you did. You should have been going straight on.”

  “I thought so,” I said.

  “It’s easy,” she said, “to get lost in these parts. Too easy for strangers. Especially if you’re going to Ashbrittle.” She flashed me a look that snagged itself between pity and threat, and her dog gave a half-hearted bark. “Where you coming from?”

  “London.”

  “From London? You come from London?”

  “Yes, madam, I have.”

  “That’s a busy town.”

  “It is.”

  “Too busy for me.” She shook her head.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Busy, smelly, filthy. I wouldn’t be going there if you paid me.”

  “I see,” I said, and I was going to ask her if she had anything polite to say about the great city, but did not bother. She had a dangerous glint in her eyes, so I said “Maybe I’ll have a drink” instead.

  “A drink?” she said, and she managed a half-laugh.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She gave me another of her smiles and said, “We’re closed.”

  “Closed?” I could see a couple of people inside, drinking and looking at the floor. I took out my watch and checked the time. It was half-past seven.

  “Yes,” she said, “closed.” And when I looked at her I knew there was no point arguing. Her eyes had turned to pinholes and her dog managed a snarl before turning around and staggering back to the pub.

  “That’s a great shame.” I waited for her to laugh, but all she did was shake her head and give me a pitiful stare.

  I returned to my driver. As I approached, he reached up, took down my bag, put it on the ground and said, “This is as far as I go.” He looked at the sky. It was threatening rain. “I have to be home before nightfall.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  “But it’s only two more miles.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it’s only two more miles, you can walk.”

  “Walk?”

  “Yes,” said the driver, and now he pulled himself up to his full height, and I decided it was probably not wise to continue the argument. I reached into my jacket, took out my wallet and paid him the agreed sum, but withheld the extra I had promised. For a moment, I thought the argument was about to recommence, but he simply turned, climbed into his seat, whipped the horse and drove back the way we had come. Then I was left alone with the scowling landlady at my back, a puddled road ahead and the thick, heavy scents of the closing summer evening all around.

  I had no choice, so I started to walk. I was not dressed for it – my city suit was hot, my bag was heavy, my shoes were unsuitable and the road soon became little more than a track – but I remembered something my father had once said: “The way may be strewn with difficulties, but your reward will be in the Lord.” And as I trudged, I put myself in mind of the more unfortunate members of our society, men and women and children who have no choice but to tramp the highways and byways with nothing but hope and prayer. I had work and doubt – which, I supposed, was enough, and certainly more than whatever was possessed by the urchin who jumped out of the hedge opposite a tumbled-down smithy and chose to walk with me.

  “You travelling?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Where you headin’?”

  “Ashbrittle. Belmont Hall.”

  “Ashbrittle?” he said, and he whistled through his teeth, as though I was a brave man to be visiting such a place.

  “You know it?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, “but I don’t go there. Wouldn’t go there. Not like it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s bad things there.”

  “Bad things? What do you mean?”

  He shook his head, looked at his black, calloused feet and hitched up his trousers. “Ma says there’s bad things in Ashbrittle. Crawling things. Evil, she says.”

  “Evil? What sort of evil?”

  “The screaming kind,” he said. “Ma says you can hear her in the night time. Sometimes in the day too.”

  “Her?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “A lady?”

  The urchin looked this way and that, and a sudden frightened look crept into his eyes. He nodded. “I don’t think she’s a lady.”

  “Then who is she?”

  “Might be a witch, might be a devil. I don’t know. Don’t care to, either.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “Oh no, not me. But my brother, he saw her.”

  “Did he?”

  The boy nodded. “Oh yes. Saw her at her window. Said he’d never seen anything so frightening, and if Roger says he was frightened, he’s not lying. My brother, he’s a believer, and said, well, said she’s bound to be bad. Bound to be walking with the devil. She had eyes like coals.”

  “And are you bad?” I said.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes Ma says I’m worse than bad, but I don’t know what that would be. But I couldn’t be as bad as she…”

  “Well,” I said, as I crossed a bridge over a river, “all boys are worse than bad sometimes,” but I don’t think he heard me, because he wouldn’t follow me over the bridge.

  “Can’t go any further,” he said. “Got to go this way,” and he pointed
up the river bank.

  “Why’s that?” I said.

  “Cos,” he said, and he shrugged, and before I had the opportunity to question him further, he had hopped into the hedge and, with a whoop, disappeared into the fields.

  I suppose – given how events unfolded – I should have listened carefully to the urchin. I should not have crossed that bridge and walked the final mile and a half. I should have turned around and returned to London, and I would have avoided the pain and death. I would not have got caught up in the horrors that waited for me, I would have remained the pleased top-floor man with a morning newspaper and simple, regular habits. But I was not a man who listened to gossip, rumour or threat, or the mild imaginings of hedge boys. Even when I was a child, even though I had a fill of the usual young terrors of the young, I refused to be frightened into a corner. My father used to tell me how God was always watching, taking note of my behaviour, logging it in a ledger that would be read at Judgement Day. And the severity of my sins would match the pain of the pins God’s angels would use to pierce my flesh. Nonsense, I thought. If God was all-knowing, why would he need a ledger? He would remember. And if God loved the world, why did he allow a man to play as a small God with a beautiful woman like Isabel Carter? How could this happen? But stop. I am allowing a rush of anger to spill over the edge of this story. And I am getting ahead of myself.

  Ashbrittle looked exhausted, almost dead, a stranded place. It stood at the top of a hill, and as I crossed its threshold, my first thought was one of dismay. For here the full force of the country parishes’ desperation was displayed. The houses and cottages were in a ruinous and parlous state. Their roofs were holed and their walls unpainted, and the few crops in the kitchen gardens were in an advanced state of rot. Thin, ragged children stood in listless groups to watch me pass, until their mothers rushed from their hovels to pull them indoors. A group of labourers stood by the lychgate, their faces fierce and hollow, rusted tools stacked beside them. A broken cart was standing by a tumbled-down wall, an emaciated horse beside it. A pyre was burning somewhere, and as clots of filthy, evil-smelling smoke drifted over the village, I was forced to hold my handkerchief to my face and take deep, retching breaths.

  I nodded to the men as I passed, and as two of them spat in my direction, I walked to the wall that ran around the churchyard, sat down and surveyed my map. Belmont Hall was marked with a cross at the end of a drive beyond the church, and as I was orientating myself, a man with a hoe poked his head over a garden wall, looked at the sky and said, “When’s him going to stop?”

  I said, “I’m sorry?”

  “The rain. It’s been too long.” He had a huge head and red hair. His nose was twice the size it should have been and pitted like a walnut. He said, “You come to see the yew?”

  “Yes I have. Amongst other things.” I’d read about the famous Ashbrittle yew. It was ancient, and some claimed it was a thousand years old when Christ was born.

  “Other things?”

  The man squinted at me, so I gave him an explanation, and although I did not say anything about rare books, I did say I had an appointment at Belmont House.

  “Belmont?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll be expected,” said the man.

  “I think I am.”

  The man nodded. “We never saw much of Lord Malcolm, but he were a gentleman, that’s right. Rode an old nag. You’d think a man like that would ride something better, but no. Not at all. Took a tumble a year or two back. They said it were all over the papers.”

  “Was it?”

  “They said so.” The man shook his head. “After that, we saw even less of him. Used to see the housekeeper.”

  “Is that Miss Watson?”

  “Yes. She were devoted.”

  “Was she?” I said, and I looked at my watch. “I know she’s expecting me. I’m late.”

  “You’s late?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then good luck.” He laughed. “You’ll need it.”

  “Why?”

  “She worshipped Lord Malcolm. He could do no wrong, and anyone who said otherwise got their knuckles rapped. Oh, and you’d better like cats.”

  “Cats?”

  “Yes,” said the man, and he narrowed his eyes. “You like cats?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll be all right.” He ran his hands through his hair, pointed and said, “Go round the corner before the crossroads and follow your nose. You can’t miss the place.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But mind you don’t go anywhere but the house.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  “You would be if you do,” he said, and then he turned his back on me, and went back to his work. I considered this riddle and wondered about the wisdom of asking another question, but I did not bother. I carried on down the road, around the church boundary towards my destination.

  Belmont Hall stood at the end of its own drive, a large grey house with a castellated roof, ivy on the walls and tall mullioned windows. The drive skirted an orchard of apple trees, where a dozen ragged chickens scratched around their coop. Beyond this, a gate led into empty fields that climbed towards a wood. Standing and listening as I did, the sound was of sucking and bubbling, the ground trying in vain to soak up the pools of standing water that covered the land.

  The front door was arched like a church door, with a polished knob and a heavy knocker made from the cast head of a lion. It was a knocker that dared you to use it, but I did not have to. Miss Watson had heard my approach and was waiting for me. A small woman with grey hair tied in a bun, she wore a chequered apron and had bright, darty eyes. She was a foot shorter than me, but had learnt the small person’s trick of daring you to say what you were thinking and then nodding, because she knew exactly what you were thinking anyway. She nodded and was joined on the step by two cats, one black, one ginger. They were big and fit, and started sniffing my shoes before she yelled, “Slipper! Thomas! Come back!” and then said, “Mr Morris?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good evening.” Her lips were thin and her voice was clipped and clean. She spoke every word precisely, as if she was in constant danger of losing their meaning. “Welcome to Belmont.” She took out a small pocket watch and squinted at it. “I was expecting you over an hour ago.”

  “I’m sorry. I got lost.”

  “Lost? The map was not clear enough?”

  “No, the map was excellent. My driver abandoned me at Appley, and…”

  “Your driver abandoned you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s a disgrace. I’ve never heard anything like it. Did he explain why he did such a thing?”

  “He wanted to return to Taunton before nightfall, and…” but before I had the chance to finish what I was going to say, she had disappeared inside and the cats had disappeared with her.

  I followed and found myself standing next to a tall Chinese jar in a long, dark hallway. I know nothing about porcelain, but I know perfection when I see it, and this jar was old and perfect. It was covered in stylized orange birds and blue trees and small men carrying fishing rods. I almost touched it, but then I stopped myself and walked on.

  The house was cool, and the smell of freshly baked cake hung in the air. I could hear running water and pots and pans being moved around. I followed the sounds and found Miss Watson in the kitchen. “I baked,” she said, “and will put the kettle on in an hour.” She gave me another of her glittery stares, wiped her hands on the corner of her apron, said, “Meanwhile, I’ll show you to your room,” and bustled past me, back down the hall and up the stairs to the landing.

  She moved quickly. I followed. She left the smell of flour and violets in her wake. We walked down a long wood-panelled corridor, past closed doors and dark oil paintings to a room at the side of the house. “This is the guest room,” she said. “I made the bed up and you can use the desk, but please” – she wagged a finger at me – “never open the windows.�
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  “Why not?”

  “It’s a house rule. His Lordship never opened the windows. He didn’t want moths eating his books.”

  “Moths?”

  “Yes. He used to worry about them all the time.”

  “But moths don’t eat books.”

  “The moths in these parts eat anything,” she said, and her eyes shone, and then she turned and was gone, and I was left to stare out at the sodden fields and the sinking sun, and the chickens as they scratched and pecked through the muddied orchard below my window.

  After I had drunk a cup of tea and eaten one of Miss Watson’s cakes, I asked to see the library. She shook her head and told me I would have to wait until she had finished dusting. “Since his Lordship died,” she said, “God rest his soul,” and she crossed herself, “I’ve had to do everything. I don’t think the family want anything to do with the place.” I remembered the obituaries; he’d been widowed as a young man, and his only son had taken up with a bad lot. Now the new Lord Buff-Orpington was domiciled in London, by all accounts living a life of some debauchery. Sadness drifted into Miss Watson’s eyes, coloured her face and twisted her lips into a bow. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her nose. I could not bear the thought of being so close to the library, but I knew arguing would be pointless, so I took a deep breath and said I would go for a stroll instead.

  “Keep to the footpaths,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “And close the gates behind you.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And whatever you do…” she said.

  “Yes, Miss Watson?”

  “Whatever you do, don’t… don’t go…” she said.

  “Don’t go where?” I said.

  “There,” she said, and she pointed outside, beyond the orchard and the chickens. “There. It’s too… too…” but then she stopped herself and turned away, and her cats turned with her. Their tails were up and their fur was fine, and they knew exactly where to go. I opened my mouth as if to push her further, maybe even to insist she tell me what was on her mind, but it was too late. She and her cats had disappeared and I was left alone.