Dolly
ALSO BY SUSAN HILL
GHOST STORIES
The Woman in Black
The Man in the Picture
The Small Hand
The Mist in the Mirror
NOVELS
Strange Meeting
I’m the King of the Castle
In the Springtime of the Year
Air and Angels
The Beacon
A Kind Man
SHORT STORY COLLECTION
The Boy who taught the Beekeeper to Read
NON-FICTION
Howards End is on the Landing
Family
The Magic Apple Tree
Dolly
A Ghost Story
SUSAN HILL
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
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Copyright © Susan Hill, 2012
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eISBN 978 1 84765 783 1
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Iyot Lock
An autumn night and the fens stretch for miles, open and still. It is dark, until the full moon slides from behind a cloud and over the huddle of grey stone which is Iyot Lock. The hamlet straddles a cross roads between flat field and flat field, with its squat church on the east side, hard by Iyot House and the graveyard in between. On the west side, a straggle of cottages leads to Iyot Farm, whose flat fields bleed into the flat fens with no apparent boundary.
It is rare for a night here to be so still. The wind from the sea keens and whistles, though that sea is some miles away. Birds cry their eerie cries.
And then, a slight, thin movement of the air, from inland. It skims over the low dykes and watery ditches, rattles the dry reeds and rushes, rustles the grasses along the roadside.
It strengthens to a low wind and the wind weaves through the few trees in the churchyard and taps the branches of the creeper against the windows of Iyot House.
Nobody hears, for the house is empty and surely the sleepers in the churchyard are not disturbed.
The grasses whisper, the wind moves among the gravestones. And somewhere just about here, by the low wall, another sound, not like the grass but like paper rustling. But there is no paper.
The creeper scrapes the windowpanes. The moon slips out, silvering the glass.
The wind prowls around Iyot Lock, shifting the branches, stirring the grasses, swaying faintly, and from somewhere nearby, hidden or even buried, the sound of rustling.
PART ONE
1
It was a November afternoon when I returned to Iyot Lock and saw that nothing had changed. It was as I recalled it from forty years earlier, the sky as vast, the fen as flat, the river as dark and secretly flowing as it had been in my mind and memory. There had sometimes been sunshine, the river had gleamed and glinted, the larks had soared and sung on a June day, but this was how I knew it best, this landscape of dun and steel, with the sky falling in on my head and the wind keening and the ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps haunting my childhood nights.
I drove over Hoggett’s bridge, seeing the water flow sluggishly beneath, and across the flat straight road, past the old lock keeper’s cottage, abandoned now, but then the home of the lock keeper with a wen on his nose and one glass eye, who looked after his sluices and his eel traps in sullen silence. I used to steer clear of Mr Norry, of whom I was mortally, superstitiously afraid. But the blackened wood and brick cottage was empty and the roof fallen in. As I went by, a great bird with ragged wings rose out of it and flapped away, low over the water.
I could see far ahead to where the fen met the sky and the tower of Iyot Church, and then the house itself shimmered into view, hazy at first in the veils of rain, then larger, clearer, darker. The only trees for miles were the trees around the churchyard and those close to Iyot House, shading it from sight of the road, though few people, now as ever, were likely to pass by.
I parked beside the church wall and got out. The rain was a fine drizzle lying like cobwebs on my hair and the shoulders of my coat. Mine was the only car, so unless she had parked at the house, I was the first to arrive. That did not surprise me.
I pushed open the heavy greened wood of the gate and walked up the path to the church door. Crumpled chicken wire had been used to cover the arch and keep out birds, but it had loosened and old twigs and bits of blackened straw poked through where they had still managed to nest. I lifted the iron handle, twisted it and the door creaked open. The cold inside the porch made me catch my breath. Beyond the inner door, inside the church itself, it was more intense still and smelled of damp stone and mould. It seemed to be the cold of centuries and to seep into my bones as I stood there.
I did not remember anything about the church, though I was sure I must have been there on Sundays, with my aunt — I had a folk memory of the hard polished pews against my bony little backside and legs, for I had been a thin child. It was dull and pale, with uninteresting memorial tablets and clear glass windows that let the silvery daylight in onto the grey floor. Even the Lion and Unicorn, the only touch of colour in the church, painted in red and faded gold and blue on a wooden panel, and which might have taken the attention of a small boy, was quite unfamiliar. Perhaps my memories had been of another church altogether.
I wandered about, half expecting to hear the door open and see her standing there, but no one came and my footsteps were solitary on the stone floor.
The lights did not come on when I clicked the switch and the church was dim in the sullen November afternoon. I made my way out again, but as I stood looking out at the path and the graveyard, I had a strange and quite urgent sense that I ought to do something, that I was needed, that I was the one person who could rescue – rescue what? Who? I could not remember when I had had such an anxious feeling and as I walked out, it became stronger, almost as if someone were tugging at my sleeve and begging me to help them. But there was no one. The churchyard was empty and it felt desolate in the gathering dusk, with the brooding sky overhead, though it was only just after three o’clock.
I shook myself, to be rid of the inexplicable feeling and walked briskly to the car and drove the short distance to the house, the back and chimneys of which were hard to the road. There were the wooden gates, which I remembered well. If I opened them I could swing into the yard and park behind the scullery and outhouses, but the gate was locked and seemingly barred on the inside, so I returned to the lay-by beside the church and set out to walk back along the deserted lane to Iyot House. I glanced down the road but there was no sight of a car, even far away, no moving dot in the distance.
And then, it was as if something were tugging at my sleeve, though I felt nothing. I was being urged to return to the churchyard and I could not disobey, whatever was asking me to go there needed something – needed me? What did it want me to do and why? Where exactly was I to go?
I turned again, feeling co
nsiderably annoyed but unable to resist, and the moment I set off I sensed that this was right, and that who or whatever wanted me there was relieved and pleased with me. We all like to please by doing the thing we are being asked, in spite of our misgivings, and so I retraced my steps briskly the hundred yards to the lych gate. That was not quite far enough. I must go through and into the churchyard. By now the dark was gathering fast and I could barely see my way, but there were still streaks of light in the sky to the west and it was not a large area. I moved slowly among the gravestones. It was almost as if I were playing the old childhood game of Hide and Seek, one in which the inner sense was saying ‘Cold’ ‘Cold’ ‘Warm’ ‘Very Warm’.
It was as I neared three gravestones that were set against the low wall at the back that the sense of urgency became very strong. I went to each one. All were ancient, moss and lichen-covered and the names and dates were no longer visible. Even as I got near to the first I felt a peculiar electric shock of heat, followed immediately by a sense of release. This was it. I was there. But where? Wherever I was meant to be? Then by whom, and why?
I stood still. The wind was keening, the darkness shrinking in to swallow me. I was not exactly afraid but I was uneasy and bewildered. And then I heard it. It seemed to be coming from the ground in front of a gravestone. I squatted down and listened. The moan of the wind was blocked out by the wall there, and it was very still. At first I could not make it out but after a few moments, I thought it sounded as if something was rustling, a dry sound, like that made by the wind in the reed beds, but softer and fainter. It came from under the grass, under the earth. A rustling, as if someone were …
No, I could not tell. I stayed for some minutes and the rustling came again and again, and each time it made me feel as one feels when a name one has forgotten is almost, almost on the tip of the tongue. I knew the sound, I knew what was making it, I knew why … but it hovered just out of reach, like the elusive name. I knew and then did not know, I remembered – but then it was gone. I waited for a few more minutes. Nothing else happened, I heard nothing else and not least because by this time I was thoroughly chilled. The east wind was whistling across the fen even more strongly and I left the churchyard and returned to Iyot House.
It was in pitch darkness and the wind had got up even more in that short time and was dashing the trees against the walls and rattling the ivy. Stupidly I had not brought a torch and had to edge my way through the gate and up the narrow path between thickly overgrown shrubs to the front door. I had the key ready and to my surprise the lock was smooth and opened at a turn. I felt about for a switch – there was none in the porch but once inside the hall I found the panel of them to my left. The hall, staircase and narrow passageway were lit, though the bulbs were quite dim. But at once, the past came rushing towards me as I not only saw but smelled the inside of the house where I had once been a small boy on occasional and always strange visits. The pictures on the wall, one of a half-draped woman by a rock pool, another of sheep in the snow, and two portraits whose eyes pierced me and then seemed to follow me, as they always had, reminded me of the past, the feel of the polished floor beneath the rug at my feet, the great brass dinner gong, the once-polished and gleaming banister, now filmed and dull, reminded me, and the silent grandfather clock, the frieze of brown carnations running along the wallpaper, the dark velveteen curtain hanging on a rod across the drawing room door, all these things reminded me … As I looked round I was eight years old again and in Iyot House for the first time, anxious, wary, full of half-fears, jumping at my own shadow as it glided beside me up the stairs.
But I was not afraid of anything there that late afternoon, merely affected by the atmosphere of sadness and emptiness. Iyot House had never been full of light and fun but it was not a gloomy house either and people who had lived there had looked after me as best they knew, and even loved me – though perhaps I had little sense of it as a boy. I had been afraid of shadows and darkness, of sudden sounds, of spiders and bats but I had never believed Iyot House had any ghosts or malign forces hanging about within its walls, at least not until …
I stopped with one foot on the stairs … until what? It was teasing me again, that sense of something just out of reach, almost remembered but then fluttering off just as I grasped it.
Until something had happened? Or was it to do with someone?
It was no good. I could not remember, it had danced away, to tantalise me yet again.
I went round the house, putting on the lights as I did so, and each room came alive at the touch of the switch, bedrooms, dressing rooms, bathrooms, their furniture and curtains and carpets exactly as I had known them, faded now and dusty, with the smell of all rooms into which fresh air had not come through an opened window, for years. I did not feel anything much, not sadness or fondness, just a certain muted nostalgia.
And then I climbed the last steep, short flight of stairs to the attics and at once I felt an odd fluttering sensation in my chest, as though I were reaching somewhere important, where I might at last be able to recall the incident that was nudging at my memory.
This was familiar. This had been my territory. These small rooms with their tiny, iron-latched windows, the narrow single bed, the bare floorboards, had been where I slept, dreamed, thought, played … and where I had first encountered Leonora.
I made my way to the room that had been mine. It was the same, and yet quite different, because though the furniture was as I recalled, there were, of course, none of my clothes, toys, games or books, nothing that had made it personal to me, brought it alive. It also seemed far smaller than I had remembered – but, of course, I am a man of six feet two and I was a small boy when I had been here last. I sat on the bed. The mattress was the same, soft but with the springs beneath poking through here and there. I felt them again, digging into my thinly fleshed young back. The wicker chair was almost too small for me to sit in, the window seat narrow and hard. I remembered the wallpaper with its frieze of beige roses, the iron fireplace with the scrolled canopy, the tall cupboard set deep into the wall.
The cupboard. It was something about the cupboard; something in it or that had happened beside it?
I did not want to open it, and though I felt foolish, my hand hovered on the latch for several seconds, and my heart started to beat fast. I did not remember anything except that my mounting distress meant the game was over, I was ‘hot’.
I did open it, of course. It was empty, the shelves dusty. It went some way back and as I took a couple of deep breaths and felt calmer, I reached up and ran my hand along the shelves. Nothing. There was nothing there at all, nothing until I reached the top shelf, so far from me when I was a boy that I had to stand on the stool to reach it, but now easily accessible. Still nothing.
I shook myself, and was about to close the cupboard door when I heard it – a very soft rustling, as if someone were stirring their hand about in crisp tissue paper, perhaps as they unpacked a parcel. It stopped. I opened the door wide again. The rustling was a little louder. I got the old stool, stood on it and felt the top shelf of the cupboard to the very back, where my hand touched the wall. Nothing. It was totally and completely empty.
Nevertheless, there was the sound again, and although it was no louder, it seemed more urgent and agitated.
I lost my nerve, closed the cupboard and fled, running down the stairs to the hall. When I stopped and got my breath back, I listened. The wind was whistling down the chimney and lifting the rug on the floor, but I could no longer hear even the faintest sound of paper rustling.
I went into the sitting room, thinking to wait for her there but it had such a damp and chill, and the fireplace was full of rubble, so I retreated, switched out the lights and locked the front door. The wind seemed to pare the skin off my face as I turned into the lane and I hastened to get into the car. I would drive back to the market town and my small, warm, comfortable hotel. It was obvious that she was not going to come to Iyot House – perhaps she had never intende
d it.
But I knew that even if she did come, she would not remember anything. We blot out bad things from our minds and especially when they have been bad things we ourselves have done, in childhood perhaps most of all.
A chill mist was smothering the fen and veils of it writhed in front of the headlights as I drove away. I would be glad to get to the Lion at Cold Eeyle, and a good malt whisky by the fire, even more glad to have the whole thing done with at the solicitor’s the next morning. Would Leonora turn up there? I had no doubt that she would. The prospect of inheriting something was just what would bring her up here, as nothing else had ever done – I knew she had not visited Aunt Kestrel in forty years, but then she had lived abroad for the most part, following her mother’s example in marrying several times. I did not know if she had any children but I doubted it. The Lion was snug and welcoming, after an unpleasant ten-mile drive through the swirling fog. My room was at the top of the house, down some winding corridors. I spruced up and returned to the bar, a whisky and the log fire.
I ate a good dinner and went to bed early. The place was quiet and when I had got my key, the receptionist said that I was the only person staying. The meeting at the solicitor’s was at ten, in his Cold Eeyle office.
I thought about Aunt Kestrel that night, after I had read a dozen pages and put out the light. I had barely known her, wished I had talked to her more about the family and the past she could have told me so much about. She had housed a stiff, shy small boy and a wayward girl when she had no knowledge of children, what they wanted or needed. She could have refused but she had not, feeling strongly, as her generation did, about family ties and family duty. Of course, it had never occurred to me as a boy that she was probably lonely, widowed young, childless, and living in that bleak and isolated house with only the moaning wind, the fogs and rain for company, other than sour Mrs Mullen.