House of Bells Read online

  ‘We don’t usually come this way,’ she said, quite needlessly, ‘but everyone should experience this once, at least. It’s rather special.’

  It was. Overhead, the clear sky was wild with stars, the Milky Way hurled across the valley from wall to high fell wall. They never saw stars like that in London.

  It was an effort, almost, to drag her gaze downward: to where firelight flickered and blazed, where it reflected itself in still water. She had seen that lake earlier, when Tom walked her by its margin as they came out of the wood. From up here it was long and dark and striking, a bottom to the valley and a mirror to the sky, sewn almost into the landscape like mirrors embroidered into fabric, like Indian cotton . . .

  She might have looked more at the lake and the steps that led down to it, the way the gardens were terraced on either side of the steps; but it was dark and the gardens had been let run mad, and they were not what she was here for, by any measure.

  That firelight: that, she thought, was why Mary had brought her this way.

  Fire draws the eye. Even when it’s not designed that way, set like a jewel in black velvet against mirror-glass.

  She was fairly sure that something here was deliberate. Even if not exactly designed for her benefit – who was she, after all, a stray girl sucked in at random, not even interrogated yet? – but on general principles, for impressive purposes, they couldn’t have done this better.

  From the light spilling out behind her, she could see her shadow hand in hand with Mary’s, stretching out across a broad flat terrace. Beyond that, beyond the boundary of the balustrade were rising sparks, distant, firework night come too soon, an allotment bonfire, memories of Grace’s grandfather and spilling peas from the pod, her clumsy little fingers too eager for the sweet green freshness in her mouth.

  Hand in hand, responding to the enticement of Mary’s tug, they walked across the terrace. Sharp gravel underfoot, almost painful on her soft soles, only there was moss enough to soften the bite of it, and yes, there was a pleasure in that cool sensual touch, even the touch of teeth in it.

  Over to the balustrade, and now she could look down over ranks of overgrown terraces, dry fountains, dead hedging: really it was all shadow, grades of shadow, all the way down to that flat reflective lake-water at the foot and the sparking fire beyond. She’d been to enough movies that she could read that monochrome landscape, even while her eyes were drawn beyond it, to the bright guttering leap of the flames.

  They’d built their bonfire on the further side of the lake, where there was a broad grassy bank between the wood and the water. Figures moved in silhouette, between the flames and her; music drifted up, as promised. She heard flute, and thought of Tom.

  Then there were the steps down, taken slowly as though they were in procession, as though all this rout were for their benefit after all, a masque for them. Between wild shrubberies and beds of roses desperate for deadheading, alien in starlight; past those dry fountains, dead at the head; down and down, to the level of the water.

  Sparks flew, rising, falling in reflection. There were voices now, among the music; voices singing, and voices calling, and voices simply talking the way people do around a fire. Indistinguishable at this distance, comforting at any distance: even for Grace, whose childhood had been absolutely not distinguished by Girl Guides and school camps and songs in smoky rounds. Even she knew how this worked, though her own early bonfires had been scrappy affairs, urchins burning scrap and rags in bomb-site rubble, putting off the hour of going home.

  Georgie would know this better. Georgie could lift her chin, like a needle finding north; Georgie could lead the way suddenly, shyness burned away by the promise of flames in darkness, which would never show the flame of a blush on rosy English skin.

  Georgie could tell secrets under the hiss and crackle of a camp fire that would be so much harder in the pale revelatory light of morning.

  Besides, no one here was going to be ringing any bells.

  Around the squared-off corners of the lake, then, and here already were scatters of people, sitting on the grass in couples and threesomes and larger groups, keeping back from the fire’s heat. That was good sense, the evening was warm enough already; but nothing on this journey made any sense, and she wasn’t about to start being sensible now.

  She left Mary behind, then, hearing her name called and called again:

  ‘Mother Mary! Come and sit with us!’

  ‘No, here! Sit here, see, plenty of room . . .’

  She went on alone, picking her way between one half-circle and another, closed to strangers but open to the fire’s light. That was how it seemed, at least, coming from behind, a stranger, all those backs. Not that they were turned against her, she understood that; but it could seem that way. It did seem that way.

  It didn’t matter. She wasn’t about to join any half-formed circle anyway – not where that would mean sitting with her own back turned to the fire. That wasn’t what people did; it wasn’t what she was here for.

  Be who you are.

  She was Georgie Hale, and she followed rules except in extremis, when things went very wrong. The rules of the house and the rules of her kind, no different. So she came to the circle of firelight and found a spot where she could sit alone – there was room enough, because the heat and the glare this close were really too much on a summer’s evening, but never mind – and she settled down with her legs hitched to one side and her back nicely straight, feeling the fire on her skin, losing herself in the smoke and the noise and the music. Be who you are, which was lost and alone and here.

  She could do that, all of that, oh yes.

  The fire was . . . immense. Not really like the massive civic structures of Bonfire Night celebrations, but that was the closest she could think of: when she and her pack of friends had watched for days in the park while men built up a pyramid of old furniture and doors and boughs from fallen trees. When she and her friends and all the local children else had sneaked up after dark, despite dire warnings, and left their own contributions buried as deep as they could reach into the stacked timbers, or as deep as they dared burrow: broken toys, dolls with missing limbs, long-loved teddy bears given up in a spirit of loud bravado and breathless secret heartache.

  Here they didn’t build their fire so high, anywhere near; they didn’t let off bangers and rockets and Catherine wheels. The fire itself was the point: a summoning and a gathering place, and perhaps an offering too. For Mary, it would surely be an offering. Somewhere in her pantheon must be a god who yearned for flame. Perhaps she too hid little sacrifices among the piled wood before the fire was lit, invisible and potent.

  What was there to be seen was achingly nostalgic, as fires ought to be: fallen branches dragged from the woods, broken furniture fetched from the house, all manner of worked timber that might have been anything before it was sawn and split and chopped into handy lengths. Some had been built into the fire before they lit it; more was stacked up beyond the fall of random sparks, to be tossed on when wanted or else saved for another night.

  She sat and watched the play of flame and shadow, feeling the skin of her face tighten in the heat, not caring. Not really listening to the breathy flute, only aware of it as one more element in the night; not joining in when people sang. This wasn’t the kind of music Grace knew, nor Georgie either.

  She barely noticed when the music stopped. A minute later, though, she was immediately, intimately aware when another body dropped to the ground beside her. Not in her light, not close enough to touch except with purpose, but even so. In her space, deliberately so.

  She turned to look, and of course it was Tom. Be who you are: he couldn’t see her alone and not come to change that.

  He laid his flute at his feet and said, ‘How was the captain?’

  ‘Fine. He let me in.’

  ‘Of course he let you in. What, did you think he’d turn you away? That’s not how we do things here. Everybody’s welcome.’

  I thought he’d see s
traight through me. Aloud, she said, ‘He didn’t even ask why I wanted to come.’

  ‘Did you? Want to, I mean?’

  ‘I – no. No, actually. Not to say want.’

  ‘No. People mostly don’t. We come because we have to, or because we need to; because we haven’t anywhere else to go, or because there isn’t anywhere else that offers whatever it is we’re looking for. There are communes all over, of course, in England and everywhere; or you can go to India or Thailand or Japan, find something more authentic. Find somewhere warmer. California.’

  ‘It’s warm enough,’ she said, almost a protest, almost defensive already.

  ‘Tonight it is. You wait till winter. We had three feet of snow in January, and there’s nowhere in the house to build a fire like this.’

  Of course not. The house had fireplaces and hearths and chimneys, but this wasn’t the kind of fire you could contain or channel or control. Fire wants to be free.

  Even without music, someone was still dancing to the hidden rhythms in the flame. A girl, all long skirts and long hair, dreamily swaying and spinning, making shadows almost solid in the night. She had a lit joint in her hand, but she wasn’t smoking it: waving it, rather, like a sparkler, writing letters in light, weaving patterns of smoke and movement that existed only for the little moment of their making.

  Like the fire, she was something to watch, to save them looking at each other.

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure I’ll stay till winter.’ I hope not. ‘I hadn’t thought . . .’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t think. Just be here, let it happen. Stay a day, stay a week. Stay a month, a year, a lifetime. I think Cookie’s been here a lifetime, since before the house was anything like this. Since it was a house, I think. Stay until you have a reason to move on. That’s what it’s for. How it works.’

  ‘Yes.’ That ought to be true. Really, she hoped it was. Then there’d be nothing to discover, nothing to report back to Tony. No story. His missing journalist would just be one of these men, hiding behind the flares and paisley and the facial hair, sending no news to London because there were more important things to be doing: a life to be lived, true discovery, rules to follow. Being who he was.

  ‘So why did you come, Georgie? If you didn’t really want to?’

  I really didn’t want to. That isn’t quite the same. Aloud, she said, ‘I didn’t, I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t stay. Where I was. Not at home. Not after . . .’

  It was funny, she’d practised this: out loud before she left, and then endlessly in her head on the long journey here, again and again, around and around like a stuck record playing the same line over and over. She’d practised it until it was second nature, pure Georgie . . . and even so. The words caught like barbs in her throat. Every one of them wanted to make her bleed.

  ‘What happened, Georgie?’

  ‘My baby died.’ Vaguely, she was aware of someone else sitting down the other side of her. She didn’t think that was a coincidence, just bad timing. It didn’t matter. She didn’t even turn her head. Something collapsed deep in the heart of the fire, and there was a whoosh of sparks lifting high into the air; she watched that happen, and went on talking. ‘I had a baby, and he died. Inside me. He was born dead, and they took him away. They wouldn’t let me see him, it was . . . He was mine, and I wasn’t let have him.’ Not by the world or her parents or the hospital or God. There would have been an adoption, if there hadn’t been a death.

  It was all true, and none of it was anything close to the truth: not for Georgie, not for Grace.

  Still, it ought to be enough. ‘I couldn’t stay,’ she said. ‘I needed . . . not to be there any more. Or anywhere like there, anywhere I knew. Anywhere people knew me. So . . .’

  ‘So you came here.’ A match flared, a fresh tiny point of fire, enough to drag her eyes around.

  That was Webb, sitting on her other side, firing up another joint.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why so? Don’t get me wrong, you’re very welcome – and besides, there isn’t a test; we don’t turn anyone away, I’m just curious – but as Tom says, there are communes all over, and I don’t think you’re local, are you? I think you’ve come a long way, to come to us.’

  She thought he knew full well how far she’d come. It was far indeed, in more than miles, and she thought he knew that too.

  There might not be a test, but she thought there was an interview. She thought this was it. She thought there was a process: Leonard told the newcomer about the house, about his dream, what they had come to; and Webb interrogated them to find out why they’d come. Or got someone else to start his interrogating for him, while he listened in and chimed in when he chose to. Like a bell.

  She said, ‘I’m from London.’ Never tell a lie, where the truth will do it for you – a lesson Georgie could learn from Grace and be grateful. ‘Someone was talking about this place at a party –’ still true! – ‘and, I don’t know. You’re never quite so much a stranger, are you, when you come on a recommendation?’

  She might have been quoting Georgie’s mother. She could imagine having a mother who would say such things, often enough to be quotable.

  ‘There aren’t any strangers here, sweetheart.’ That was Tom. ‘Only friends we haven’t met yet.’

  He really did sound like he was quoting someone, but he really didn’t need to. It might as well have been his own heart speaking, simple and shallow and bright as a stream in sunlight.

  ‘Can you remember who gave you the recommendation?’ That was Webb again, coming back to what mattered. What mattered to him, apparently. He was neither simple nor shallow, and she thought he might be dangerous. To her, maybe.

  She said, ‘No, of course not. It was a party. I didn’t know them then, when I was tiddly; I wouldn’t know them sober. I hardly remembered what they’d said. Only that there was this place, and it was cool, it was somewhere a person could come; and it was a long way away and that was good, that was better than good. That was what I wanted.’ Too far to go home, she wanted that to sound like. You can’t get there from here. Bridges on fire, all the way.

  ‘Well,’ Webb said. ‘You’re very welcome.’ Which didn’t at all sound like it did when Tom said it. From Webb it sounded like a visa, a stamp in a passport, officially approved.

  She thought she’d rather settle for Tom’s welcome, even if it didn’t carry the same authority. It was less complicated, more heartfelt. More honest.

  The opposite of her, so many ways.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her wrist was aching suddenly, quite sharply, in its sling: not the dull ache of torn flesh mending, as it should be.

  She almost didn’t want it to, but her other hand reached to touch. The bandage felt damp beneath her fingers. When she looked, there was a stain against the white.

  Despite herself, she listened out for bells.

  And heard a soft and constant jingling under the voices and the fire’s sounds, like a belled cat at run across a lawn, its every movement a betrayal to the birds, tin-tin-tin.

  No, like a dozen belled cats, a herd of them all moving together, with purpose. Just one would be lost here, however carefully she listened. One hair-fine cut on her wrist she wouldn’t even feel, but this was like razors, light and slender and relentless.

  She’d pulled her arm out of the sling without even thinking about it; she cradled her aching wrist in her palm, and rocked a little against the pain, and tried to understand.

  No one was herding cats. There were no bells on collars. Maybe the jingling was all in her head. In her wrist. Maybe her wrist was just bleeding a little because that’s what cuts do, and she was hearing bells because she was listening for them, because of what lay buried in her poor broken head, her poor broken baby in his churchyard bed.

  But her eyes watched the girl as she danced around the fire, danced to no music – and the tin-tin-tin that she heard seemed to dance itself in time with the girl as she turned and twisted, all slim and sinuou
s within the swaying reaching shadows of her hair and skirt.

  There was something woven into her hair, lengths of it among the loose dark flying mass: something that flashed fire every now and then when it caught the light, here and here and here again.

  She watched and puzzled over that, distracted, bleeding. Trying to distract herself.

  Oh – that Indian fabric, with the tiny mirrors embroidered on. The girl must have ribbons of it plaited into narrow braids – and, oh. Yes. Something at the end of each braid, a little weight, shimmering silver. A little bell.

  Her skirt flashed too, that same mirrored cotton; and a fringe around the hem that was not enough to muffle the bells sewn there too, which jingled as she swayed.

  It wasn’t fair. Grace wasn’t much inclined to feel sorry for herself, but Georgie could. Georgie could hug her poor sore wrist and huddle up and want to stick her fingers in her ears like a child, to shut out that cursed jingling, as if that would make anything better.

  Tom was saying something to her, or trying to. She wasn’t listening. She couldn’t hear anything, except tin-tin-tin.

  She couldn’t see anything except the girl dancing out her destruction, cutting deeper with every step. Stamp stamp, jingle jingle, and the deep throbbing in her wrist like a backbeat, in time with her heart, pumping blood to the rhythm of the dancing girl.

  Until she went too close to the fire, the girl did, swirling and swaying with her eyes shut, not to see the damage she was doing.

  She went too close, leaning into that wall of heat as if it would hold her up; and a hand, two hands, reached out from the fierce heart of it, as if to push her away.

  Hands of flame, and not pushing, no.

  Clawing at her.

  People weren’t looking, until it was too late; but Georgie was looking, staring numbly. Georgie saw.