Worms Page 5

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Almost six months to the day after my wife was cremated I came to live at Marsh Cottage. It had not been an easy time and when I first stood in the large downstairs room of the completed house and looked across the marsh I felt as if I had returned from a long journey.

  An official examination of the sluice had shown that owing to erosion caused by the forces of nature – spring tides, storms and floods – the whole structure of the sluice gate, which had been constructed hurriedly during the war at the same time as the blockhouse, was in danger of collapse. The concrete blocks could have tumbled at any time, it was said. My unfortunate wife had perished by the million-to-one chance that decreed that she should be passing when the first one fell. The sluice gate was dismantled and rebuilt and others in the neighbourhood examined and fortified; there was even talk of an action for damages against the Ministry of Defence but nothing came of this. The coroner was sympathetic and the inquest a formality.

  The funeral service and cremation were more arduous, but fortunately neither my wife nor I had accumulated many relations and only a few of those attended the last rites which were held in Romford. The legal arrangements were more complex. If any lingering suspicion existed about the manner of my wife’s death, I did not wish to inflame them by pressing for a speedy probate of her will. I had to let the law take its course which it did at a pace sufficiently slow as to make sight or sound of the word solicitor anathema to me. All the time that I was waiting for the will to be read, I remembered my wife’s mocking words when she followed me across the marsh, her statement that I would never get my hands on her inheritance. Was it possible that she had actually changed her will without telling me? I knew that she had made one because we had both done so in the early days of our marriage, leaving everything to each other. I thought that there was a copy of her will at the bank but I made no inquiries about it for fear of raising suspicions. Better to wait and worry.

  Eventually I received a letter suggesting a date for me to call at the solicitor’s office. It was above a furniture shop, I recall, up a dark flight of stairs between scuffed walls. I heard the sound of a typewriter and went into an outer office where a girl typed between piled in-trays. A middle-aged man and a youth looked at me curiously as if they knew who I was and wanted to read every detail that my face had to offer. I was shown into a very small room and vaguely recognized the face of the man behind the desk. He had handled the purchase of our flat – or rather my flat. He made no effort to shake hands but gestured to a chair and began what I imagined must be a prepared speech about how he sympathized with my loss and apologized for the delay in ‘sorting things out’. This was apparently due to tardiness on the part of others.

  I half listened to him and raised my eyes to the wall behind his chair where a painting hung in a heavy black frame. It was a strange painting to find in a solicitor’s office, being in the manner of Hieronymus Bosch, the fifteenth-century Dutch mystic. It might even have been a reproduction of one of his own paintings for all I know. The subject was clearly hell because devils with grotesque sharp-featured faces and forked tails were engaged in the torture and humiliation of creatures part animal and part human. Flames rose about the twisted, mis-shapen monsters that were being crushed, broken on racks or torn apart with giant pincers. It was a terrifying scene, yet at the same time almost hypnotic in its ability to draw and absorb the eye. One detail in particular caught my attention – a figure lying in the forefront of the painting. Something about its position immediately reminded me of my wife when she was lying near the sluice gate. The slightly bloated body, the tilt of the head, the blank-eyed expression of despair, the half-open mouth . . . I controlled a shiver and returned my gaze to the solicitor, who was untying a piece of string around a buff folder. ‘As you are probably aware, your wife benefited from a will made by her spinster aunt.’

  I nodded. ‘Poor woman,’ I said. ‘She never had a chance to reap any pleasure from it.’ I watched his face carefully in case his expression told me otherwise.

  ‘This of course forms part of her estate which she leaves entirely to you. There are no other bequests.’

  ‘Oh.’ I hoped that the exclamation did not betray the relief that I felt. I caught the solicitor’s probing eye and turned away. Against my will I found myself looking at the painting again. In some subtle way, it seemed to have changed. There was now something emerging from the mouth of the figure in the foreground. It trailed down like a piece of curling string.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I did not reply to the solicitor’s question but continued to stare at the painting. He turned round. ‘Awful thing, isn’t it? A legacy from my predecessor. I keep meaning to take it down and find something more cheerful.’ He turned back to his file and produced a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles from a leather case. It must be my imagination but now another black, waving line had sprouted from the corpse . . . And another. I felt as if a cold hand had been placed on my shoulder, and a shiver ran down my spine – I must be seeing things, I was experiencing some kind of nervous breakdown. I rose to my feet.

  ‘I’d like a glass of water, please,’ I said, my voice hoarse.

  ‘Of course, of course.’ The solicitor rose to his feet. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was thinking about my wife. All this brings it back.’

  ‘I quite understand.’ He went to the door and called for a glass of water.

  When he came back I was sitting in a chair with my back to the painting. The last time that I had looked at it, the corpse had been covered in worms rising into the air like sprouting seeds. I was convinced I was going mad, especially since this was not the first time that my imagination had started playing tricks. I was living a series of waking nightmares, all of them having one thing in common. The worms seemed to be everywhere – in my thoughts and in my life – and more and more bringing my wife back to me. There was no escape from her; it was as if I had been placed in the same coffin with her and forced to watch the process of putrefaction. But she had been cremated; the coffin had been burnt, and I deliberately reminded myself of the moment when it rolled into the furnace and the panel slid shut. Suddenly I remembered the effigies in Blanely church and the design on the side of the tombs, the worms reaching up like flames – ‘the worms of hell’ the vicar had called them. It was a frightening recollection, as if everything had been preordained and I was a pawn in some strange manifestation of the supernatural. I had set out to free myself and yet I seemed trapped.

  My hand brushed against the proffered glass of water and then guided it shakily to my lips. The solicitor’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘You must start leading your own life now,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m certain your wife would have wanted it that way.’

  The most difficult thing, of course, had been to preserve a hold on Marsh Cottage – the proposed name had become a reality in my mind. After the death of my wife I could hardly have arrived on Mrs Valentine’s doorstep breathless with news of the impending purchase. However, if I had done nothing she would surely have thought that my wife’s death had ruled out all possibility of a sale. I therefore had to find some means of preserving my interest and her obligation without behaving in a suspicious fashion. At first I thought of telephoning her and then I decided that a personal approach would be much more effective. My short acquaintance with Mrs Valentine had persuaded me that she would be more easily manoeuvred when face to face with me rather than talking over the phone.

  In the end I rang her up and then went to see her just before leaving for London. Word of mouth had quickly brought her news of what had happened, and she blurted out some conventional condolences, then readily agreed when I asked if I might call on her.

  It was a grey overcast day, I recall, and the bushes were still glistening from a recent shower as I drove up to the house. It suddenly loomed out of the shrubbery and a man who was trimming the grass verges looked t
owards me. With a start I realized that it was the man who had been digging for worms on the beach, the one who had looked on when my wife’s body was recovered. He was about fifty, with a weather-beaten face and a malign, insolent expression. I remembered Mrs Valentine saying that she had a man in a couple of hours each week and assumed that it was him. He turned back to his work and I stopped the car outside the main house. Mrs Valentine quickly appeared at the doorway and I noticed she was wearing a grey silk dress with a wool cardigan and double row of pearls. Her hair freshly done.

  ‘Poor Mr Hildebrand,’ she exclaimed as I stepped from the car. ‘I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I heard the terrible news. You have all my sympathy.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Valentine,’ I said. ‘I have no wish to trespass on too much of your time. There is just one thing that I wanted to say to you—’

  She held up a restraining hand. “You don’t have to say anything,’ she assured me. ‘I quite understand. Obviously this accident has changed all your plans for the future. You need feel no obligation to proceed with our agreement.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘I want to explain to you that what has happened has not changed my desire to live here – quite the reverse. In this way I will always be near my poor wife. It was so ironic that feeling about the area as she did she should have perished in that way.’

  Mrs Valentine involuntarily extended both her hands and grasped mine. ‘I know your feelings exactly,’ she said. ‘It is the memory of a loved one that binds me to this place. I congratulate you for so quickly coming to terms with your true sentiments. I was so confused after my husband’s death.’ I wondered for an instant if there was some oblique criticism in her words but a glance into her wide, unflinching eyes told me that they were spoken without malice. ‘Have you perhaps got time for a cup of tea before your journey?’

  ‘You are very kind,’ I said. ‘I just hope you understand that I will be unable to put plans in motion for the immediate purchase of the building. I will be completely absorbed with all the matters pertaining to my wife’s death.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Your refinement of spirit does you credit. I have already spoken to the estate agent and made him aware of my wishes.’ Her face clouded. ‘You were right in thinking that he would have an opinion to express upon the matter.’ I spread my arms wide preparatory to speaking but no words were necessary: she touched me gently on the arm and stepped to one side. ‘But all that is over. Now, please join me in a cup of tea.’ She turned towards the lawn. ‘You are aware of the time, Wilson?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll just finish this border.’ The lawn trimmers started to clip again and the sound reminded me that they had remained silent during my exchange of words with Mrs Valentine. Wilson had presumably been listening to every word that passed between us. His eyes caught mine and again I had the impression of a knowing glance and a slight shake of the head; his expression said ‘You’re a sly one and no mistake.’ I thought back to the argument with my wife when I had brought her to see the house and she refused to get out of the car. The side gate to the house had been open and now that I recalled it there had been a compost heap against the wall; was it possible that Wilson had been working in the garden on that day and heard what had passed between me and my wife? My blood ran cold. He would be aware that my wife was no lover of the region and that the sentiments she had expressed cast a questionable light on the declaration I had just made to Mrs Valentine. I felt uneasy as I passed through the doorway into the tall, dark hall. Wilson would be a man who needed careful watching.

  So many books and articles have been written on the problems of restoring old buildings that I feel I may forgo a long description here. Suffice it to say that it was not easy to find a local builder prepared to take on the job and, when I eventually found one, it was even more difficult to make him stick at it. Time and money ebbed away and there were occasions when I feared that the repairs would never be finished. Of course, during the majority of the time I was working in London and I had to rely on telephone calls to the builders and Mrs Valentine to tell me what was happening. Often the reports would be quite different from each other and I knew that Mrs Valentine was acting as a kind of genteel on-site foreman, cajoling and hectoring on my behalf.

  The day fixed for my retirement arrived and the house was still not ready. The electrical work had not been completed, nor had the water been connected. Matters were further complicated by the fact that I had sold my flat and the new owners had stipulated that they should move in on a date that coincided with my retirement. There seemed to be nothing for it but to camp in the unfinished house. It might be a blessing in disguise as I was convinced that I would be better able to control the builders if I was on the spot.

  One duty remained before the closure of what I had come to consider as my ‘old’ life: my actual retirement from the quantity surveyor’s office where I had worked for almost thirty years. It may seem strange but in the course of that time I had never become particularly close friends with anybody on the staff, nor had I derived a great deal of satisfaction from my work; such promotion as I had known had merely been a case of stepping into dead men’s shoes. When I heard that there was going to be a presentation I was almost annoyed; such occasions are usually an embarrassment to all concerned and I knew that in my case it would be even more of a formality than most. The thought of the gift that I would receive exercised a little of my curiosity and I hoped that it would be something useful rather than decorative.

  In the event I was surprised to receive a set of encyclo­pedias. Apparently, so the managing director informed me, I had earned the reputation of someone whose opinion was always sought when there was an argument to be settled in the office, and he told the small group of us, awkwardly clutching sherry glasses, that in my retirement I would now have the time and the means to become even better informed. I muttered the obligatory word of thanks and a insincere invitation to my old colleagues to come and see me whenever – unlikely event – they were passing my new abode and thankfully took my leave wishing, I must confess, that I had been given a less cumbersome present. I did not even bother to open the encyclopedias.

  A telephone call had alerted Mrs Valentine to my arrival and I travelled down in the Morris, leading the removal van that was carrying the items of furniture I had decided to salvage from the flat. I would have preferred to abandon all of it and start afresh, but with my limited means this was not possible. My wife and I had long ago decided to sleep in separate beds, so I sold hers. Other objects which bore the stamp of her personality were also taken to the auctioneers’ saleroom, including a dressing-table before which she had spent hours sighing at her reflection and brushing her hair. She had been proud of her hair, sometimes combing it over her shoulders before going to bed, at other times braiding it into long serpentine pigtails which she would then coil onto her head. With the dressing-table went the armchair that she always sat in, and her favourite painting which hung facing the front door of the flat. It depicted wild white stallions galloping through a shallow sea with a violet sunset in the background. Quite what chord it struck in my wife I never truly understood – no doubt it satisfied some secret escapist desire that she hardly dared confess even to herself. I found the stallions with their overemphasized manes and tails, snorting nostrils and threshing hooves vulgar in the extreme. Not to see them posturing before me every time I came home would be an indescribable relief. An ugly cake stand of which she was very proud, a small table on which I was never allowed to place anything in case it scratched the French polish, and a high-backed Victorian chair that she was continually telling me was Chippendale: they all went.

  Of course, there was hardly any money to be made out of these sales but I wanted as far as possible to separate myself from anything that forcibly reminded me of my wife’s suffocating and over-riding presence. In that case, you may ask, why go and live in the locale where I had murdered her? Because with that act I associated freedom and
not repression. Because Blanely was where I had liberated myself after thirty years of a marriage too quickly made and too frequently repented. Also, and most important, because this lonely marshland region called to me in a way that I will never be able to describe adequately. Like an alcoholic drawn to the bottle I found myself attracted by the very thought of those desolate wastes sweeping down to the dunes and the sea, the ceaseless wind and its counterpoint melody with the sea, the ever-changing snowy mountains in the sky, the stark loneliness that struck a chord with my own spirit. It was this that had set me free – and almost at a stroke. It was like suddenly falling in love or finding that one possessed a musical skill. Because it had happened so quickly it was all the more overwhelming, exciting and – ultimately – terrifying.

  I had intended to lead the van round the road that skirted Marsh House but it had been raining for several days and the driver was frightened of getting his vehicle bogged down, so I went ahead to warn Mrs Valentine whilst he manoeuvred through the overhanging trees at the entrance to the drive. I found her weeding one of the paths, a trowel in her hands and a wooden trug nearby. She brushed some wisps of hair from her eyes and seemed slightly disconcerted to see me. I think, like most women, she would have liked to have tidied herself up before my arrival.