But all I can think of is that he will soon be here. Stephen. He’s dead, of course. He can’t come into this house. But what if he does? Will I see him? Will he see me? Is he the romantic war hero I thought him, a dashing spy, dying for his King and country? Or is he a villain, under sentence of death for some squalid crime, perpetually dodging those soldiers? And who is it that he calls to in this house? Could it be Leonora? Was she here, and is she part of Stephen’s story in some way? That thought brings a horrid, illogical jab of jealousy.
‘I’ve left the iron gate open to make it easier,’ Father said to me before we sat down to supper. He said it quietly, but he said it eagerly, like a child wanting to give pleasure, and I hated him for not understanding how much he was frightening me, and how incredibly stupid he was to believe in his mad idea.
A moment ago the little clock over the mantel chimed, breaking softly into the silence, and I jumped. And it’s as if the chiming released a trigger, because something is starting to happen. A moment ago I heard the faint screech of the iron gate. The hinges always screech like that if someone pushes them right back against the stone wall. If I turn my head a little I can see into the night garden – I can see the outlines of the trees, grey and black in this light – and I can see the wrought-iron gate and the walled garden beyond it. Is Stephen there?
If I stand close to the window I can hear soft rustlings and murmurings. And now there’s the soft light crunch of footsteps on the gravel path that circles most of the house. Stephen. He’s coming nearer, and I can see him now. A young man, wearing a long, dark overcoat. It’s called a greatcoat, I think. It’s what soldiers wore in that war – the Great War – Stephen’s war. I see him in the way you see a piece of film projected on to a screen. Not quite transparent, but nearly so.
‘Let me in … You must let me in …’
The words are faint and broken because the wind is snatching at them. I’ve wiped the mist from the glass so I can see better, and I’ve set the lamp on the desk so the light shines across the gardens.
He’s coming towards the window … I cannot write any more …
It’s almost midnight, and I’m in my bedroom. I know I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve recorded something of what happened earlier.
As Stephen approached the house, I could hear him sobbing quietly. With the sounds came a feeling of what I can only describe as impending doom. Written down, that looks impossibly dramatic, but it’s what I felt.
‘Let me in … For the love of God, let me in … Niemeyer’s butchers are already in the grounds …’
There was a space of time – it might have been two minutes or two hours for all I know – when I didn’t think I had the courage to do what Father wanted. But those pleading words, that harsh, desperate sobbing was too much for me. If I walked out of the room now, Stephen would come to this house every night like this, begging to be let in.
‘Niemeyer’s butchers are in the grounds …’
I leaned forward and opened the window.
At first I thought nothing was going to happen. There was a faint spattering of rain on my hands, and then, with heart-snatching suddenness, it was as if the massing darknesses and the furtive whisperings whirled their tangled skeins up and spun them into a tattered sphere that swooped straight at me. It was like being smacked across the eyes, and as I gasped and stepped back, a cold wind blew into my face. The sobbing was nearer, and there was such fear and such despair in that sobbing, as if someone was drowning in the dark, all alone …
And then he was there, framed in the window, barely two feet away from me. He was young and pale, there was a tiny scar on one cheekbone, and he was looking into the warm, lamplit room with such longing that it tore into my heart.
I said, in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, ‘Come into the house. You’ll be safe here.’
A hand came out, and even through my fear I saw the fingertips were raw and bleeding, the nails torn almost to the quick in places. The pity of it scalded through me, but I put out my own hand and he took it eagerly, his poor torn fingers closing around mine. They were cold, so dreadfully cold, and he clutched at my hand as if I was the only thing in existence that could save him … There are moments in life that stamp themselves for ever on some inner level of the mind – moments that will never really fade. For me, that moment has always been when Stephen Gilmore took my hand.
And then two things happened practically simultaneously. The door of the library opened, and my father stood there. The shadowy outline in the window and the feel of those torn, cold fingers holding mine both vanished.
He hadn’t been real, of course, I knew that, but it was as if something had been wrenched out of my body. A sense of aching desolation and loss swept over me, and I turned furiously to my father. ‘Why did you come in?’ I said, with an angry sob. ‘He was here.’ I pointed, stupidly, fruitlessly, to the window. ‘You came in and he went away,’ I said, and sat down abruptly in a chair, because I felt as if something had sucked all the bones out of my body.
‘No. Luisa, look there.’ My father pointed to the floor, and I saw faint damp footprints leading across the sitting-room floor and out to the hall. In a voice from which all the breath seemed to have been taken, he said, ‘He didn’t go away. He’s here in the house.’
Sixteen
So they let him in, thought Michael, leaning his head back against the chair for a moment. They both believed they had let Stephen in, and Booth Gilmore believed he could save him from the German soldiers – Niemeyer’s butchers.
In broad daylight, with people around and normality everywhere, he would probably have found this no more than rather sad – an indication of the introspection of a solitary young girl and a man with an obsession. Marooned in Fosse House with its whispering darknesses and darting shadows – with his own encounter with Stephen Gilmore still vividly in his mind – he found it chilling.