‘We’ll have to look round, won’t we?’ said Fran, and heard with irritation that her voice sounded a bit uncertain. ‘Properly, I mean?’
‘I’m afraid so. But there’s a light switch just inside the door and it’ll be a whole lot better if we can see what we’re doing. Wait now till I find it—’
There was a click, and a solitary light flared overhead. ‘That’s better,’ said Liam. ‘Francesca, shall you stay here by the door, while Sallis and I explore?’
‘I’ll explore with you.’ Just as Fran had not liked the silent twilight outside, she was not liking this vast place with the huge dust-sheeted shapes under which anything might be crouching, and she was not liking, either, the sense that eyes were watching from the pools of thick darkness beyond the single pallid light. Perfectly ridiculous, of course. And yet…
And yet, walking between and around the mounds of stored furniture and scenery was an eerie experience. Fran could not rid herself of the feeling that they were brushing against sealed-away sections of Ashwood’s history, or tiptoeing past invisible doors behind which might lie all the make-believe worlds that had been spun here. Worlds where cities were made of canvas and plywood – where walls flew apart and where people flew into love and into tempers. Over there was an elaborate chaise-longue that might have graced Cleopatra’s barge, or a Turkish seraglio, or Elizabeth Barratt’s sickroom. And the remnant of stonework propped against it was clearly only plasterboard and paint, but once it might have formed a battlement on a Norman castle, or a wishing-well, or a raven-infested midnight tower…
Or, said a small voice Fran had not known she possessed, the lid of Alraune’s grave, wherever that might be…
And of all thoughts to have, this was surely the most outrageously ridiculous of them all, although if you could not spin a few ghostly fantasies in a place such as this – a place where people had sacked cities and seduced lovers and killed enemies all on the same afternoon! – then where could you spin them? Yes, but it was disturbing the way her mind had thrown up that reference to Alraune…
(‘A ghost-child.’ Trixie had said. ‘That’s what most people believe now…’ she had said. ‘Alraune’s name was surrounded with myths and moonshine but I’m convinced that once there was a real child…’)
Once there was a real child…Francesca pulled her mind back to the present. Liam was moving ahead, shining the torch into the corners, occasionally making a comment about, Jesus God, would you look at the state of this place, but Michael was silent and Fran had the impression that he was disliking this very strongly indeed. She felt guilty at having more or less dragged him into the whole situation, because none of it was his concern.
Whoever had covered up the old furniture and the tag-ends of scenery had not done so very thoroughly or very neatly. Here and there bits of a table or a chair showed under the edges of the dust-sheets, or a spray of marlin-spikes or a fake tree lay untidily across the floor. Perhaps, when Ashwood was silent and dark, the abandoned film props crawled out to reassemble in the groupings they had known when Ashwood was alive and filled with people and lights and life. Like the ghost stories where toys came to life and moved around a nursery while the children were sleeping. Perhaps the entrance of Francesca and the two men had taken the props by surprise so that they had not had enough time to scuttle back under cover.
Fran shivered and wrapped her scarf more securely around her shoulders, tucking a fold across her mouth, because the stench in here was making her feel slightly sick. Damp, Michael had said. Or cats.