House of Bells Page 3

  She was doing her job here, thinking it and thinking it. Being Georgie Hale; being Grace Harley being Georgie Hale. Ready for anything. Dreading everything. Feeling the long cord of her life thus far stretching behind her, stretching and stretching as she tugged it tighter and tighter, as she moved further and further away. Maybe she could cut it, cut loose and start again. Maybe she should. Everything that mattered to her was back there, and it was all dreadful.

  Maybe it would snap of its own accord, if she just got far enough away. If no one knew her, if she really could live as Georgie Hale.

  Maybe it would snap her back, like elastic. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to stand life in the deep country, so very far from the bright lights. But then Tony would be disappointed and everything would be just that little bit worse.

  Really, there was no telling. Only this: the past at her back in vicious, painful clarity; nothing but fog ahead; and this moment of stillness, sitting and watching the countryside unreel beyond the window. Farmland went to moorland, slowly yielding place. Cattle went to sheep, hedges to rough stone walls, fields to broad open rocky heights. No wonder no one recognized her. She barely recognized herself, in this alien landscape.

  Maybe she could shrug Tony away, with all that he implied. All of London, all her life just gone: that could all go with him. Then she’d just be Georgie.

  She might like that.

  Really, it wasn’t so bad, chuntering into the unknown this way. New name, new life. Nothing to carry with her, nothing worth keeping. Nothing to look back on, except Tony—

  Who held the purse strings, maybe, but not the strings of her soul. Money’s not an issue.

  Maybe she could find a way to make that true.

  One station after another, and at last this one was hers. Grace Harley had boarded a train at King’s Cross; an unknown, uncertain creature had changed at Leeds; Georgie Hale stepped down on to the dusty platform of a country station that Grace Harley had not heard of a week earlier, where she could surely never be expected to appear.

  Nobody, of course, was expecting Georgie. You didn’t wire ahead to a commune, if that’s what this place was. You followed a rumour, or your need led you, or the yogi drew you, or the spirit brought you. She didn’t really know; she’d never been a commune sort of girl.

  Never till now.

  She was fairly sure of this much, though, that you didn’t announce your arrival and expect to be met. Oddly, Tony had almost lost his nerve when she said yes. He’d offered to run her up in his two-seater and drop her off at the door, more or less: ‘Just to be sure you arrive safely. Not literally at the door, I’ll be discreet, but—’

  She shouldn’t have laughed at him, probably, when she was so dependent on his kindness; but honestly. ‘Tony, love, you’re about as discreet as . . . as . . . as I am!’ She had been trying to be, but it didn’t come easily, after so long the opposite. She’d need to try harder. She knew that. ‘And that car of yours is worse. How many pink E-types are there, anyway? Just the one, I’m guessing, made specially for you. And what, you think no one’s going to notice . . .?’

  ‘Robbo’s Mini, then. We could use that.’ Robbo was his flatmate, his manager, his ally: his fag, the public schoolboys said. That seemed to mean things she didn’t quite understand. So did factotum and major-domo, at least when Tony’s father used the words, with that nasty little wrinkle to his lip.

  ‘Still no, Tony. You’re not getting this. People talk. In the country, they talk about strangers; what else is there? It’s not like London, where everybody’s a stranger and there’s so much going on.’ She didn’t know much about the country, but she did know this. ‘E-type or Mini, somebody’s going to see it. And if they see the car, they’ll see us. And talk about us, and that’s the last thing you want. You let me go my own way, the way you said. The way Georgie would go.’

  And so he had, and so here she was: stranded, abandoned, footloose and regretting everything. Regretting the train above all, as she heard it strain and creak at her back, carriage wheels clanking and banging over points as it pulled away. She did miss steam engines – there was no romance to the modern diesels – but either way, it really was better to be travelling, hopefully or otherwise. She’d left all hope behind her – and not in London – but even so. She’d rather still be sitting in her cramped corner than standing here. She’d enjoyed it, almost, the helplessness of being taken, nothing to do but sit and wait and watch the world unreel.

  Now she had to walk, find her way, go to work.

  She went out on to the station forecourt, case in hand. It felt strangely light, but she was Georgie Hale; she didn’t own much, and most of what she had she’d left behind her.

  If that was true of Grace Harley too . . .? Well, never mind. She was Georgie Hale now, pro tem. A temporary pro.

  Grace had been a different kind of pro, sleek and greedy. A little desperate. Perhaps a lot desperate, but never mind. Grace was like everything else: left behind. Pro tem.

  She liked that phrase. There was shelter in it, both ways. Everything had changed, but not even change was permanent. She had choices; she was moving on.

  She walked out of the forecourt, past a waiting taxi. The driver was a young man; she could feel his eyes on her as she passed. Looking for a fare, or else just looking, the way young men do. Grace Harley would have stopped without thought, without question; taking a cab was as natural to her as breathing. Or it used to be. Not recently, but still. Here, where she didn’t know the ground and couldn’t walk? Grace Harley would take a cab.

  Georgie Hale wouldn’t even think of it. She couldn’t afford to. A young man might turn her head, but not when he was touting for custom. She’d blush, he’d misunderstand, that way trouble lay. Young men were always trouble. It’s why she was here, with all her life left behind her.

  The road behind the station ran one way into town, the other up the valley. Unsure, she turned towards civilization, what passed for it around here. At least she should find someone who could help her with directions. And it would add credence to the story: a girl fresh off the train and ignorant, not briefed, not spying, no.

  Only she’d barely gone fifty yards towards the town before she was crowded to the roadside, almost into the wall, by a car coming in the opposite direction. There was no pavement but also no traffic, plenty of room for both of them, it should have passed her with a margin of comfort on either side. The reason it didn’t was the long ladders lashed rather haphazardly to the roof rack; they’d either been strapped on at an angle or else they’d shifted in transit, so that rather than pointing fore and aft they slewed diagonally across the car and across the road both sides, a throat-height threat to anyone not fast enough to dodge.

  Rather than stopping to make them safe, the driver was forging forward intently, while their passenger leaned out of the side window yelling a warning that sounded almost like a scold, as though it were Georgie’s own fault that she was having to duck aside to avoid decapitation.

  The car was a Morris Traveller estate, what her father would have called a shooting brake, what Tony liked to call half-timbered; its vintage might be uncertain, but its paintwork had most certainly not come from any Morris garage. The doors – on this side, at least: Georgie wasn’t at all willing to swear to the other – were purple, while the bonnet was orange and the body between was a green unknown to Cowley. The wooden frame and its panelling had been decked out like proper half-timbering, in black and white. Another day she might have laughed at that. Today she was more inclined to cut loose with the vocabulary that a childhood in suburban Essex had bequeathed to her, in the cut-glass accent that she’d so painfully acquired.

  No, wait – that was Grace’s story, not her own now. Georgie’s accent came to her by nature, and her language was as shyly decorous as Grace’s could be foul. All she did was glower, then, at the frizzy-haired person hanging from the window as the car careered by. Once they were safely past, she worked out – almost on her fingers – that
it had been a male person yelling; the driver she really wasn’t sure about at all.

  Also, there were sigils painted in white on the car doors. They were probably supposed to mean something, but neither Grace (secondary modern, left school at fourteen to work in a haberdasher’s and dream of discovery and fame) nor Georgie (grammar school, A levels, only didn’t go to university because her dad was old-fashioned and didn’t approve of college for girls) could decipher them in the brief seconds they were visible.

  The car swerved dangerously around a corner and was gone. She stood still until she was sure; and then changed her mind abruptly, and went back into the station yard and straight up to the taxi.

  On the driver’s side, walking in the road, determinedly not looking like a passenger.

  The driver had lost hope of any fare until the next train came in, and had unfolded a newspaper to read while he was waiting. He glanced up, a little startled, as her shadow fell across his page. For a moment, he looked hopeful; but she shook her head quickly, and then tapped on the glass as he turned away.

  When he wound the window down, she said, ‘I’m sorry, can you just help me out here? I’m trying to find my way to Hope’s Harbour, and I think I just saw some people who might belong there –’ hippy drop-outs in a crazy car – ‘and—’

  ‘Hope’s Harbour?’ he repeated doubtfully.

  ‘Um, that’s all I know to call it. It’s a commune, I think, but . . .’

  ‘You must mean D’Espérance.’ Now he sounded firm and certain. ‘It’s over in the next valley. Just follow the road, where it rises; go over the top and you can’t miss the place. Big house, big grounds. But – well, it’s a long haul on foot,’ he said, with an eye to the main chance, though actually she thought his hesitation had started with some other motive, some variation on you don’t want to go there, they’re all weird there, ‘and you with a case to carry . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’ll manage, thanks,’ she said, determinedly in character. Never mind her sinking heart. Or let him see her sinking heart – that would be in character too.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said, measuring her obvious poverty against her obvious exhaustion, ‘I can’t run you there myself, because I need to wait now for the five twenty –’ as you’re obviously not a paying fare – ‘but if you go to the Golden Lion in town and ask for Mr Cook in the public bar, he’s safe to be there this time of an evening, and he’ll take you out when he’s ready to go. He’s the janitor, see.’

  It seemed odd that a commune should have a janitor. Still, if there was the chance of a ride and someone to talk to, a way to avoid that solitary walk, she’d take it. She thanked the cab driver as prettily as she knew how, which made him blush beetroot-red; and then she followed the road down to the cobbled market square.

  There as promised was the Golden Lion, a typical country hotel, white frontage with small old-looking windows and a black door that stood ajar. It reminded her of a hundred Sunday jaunts in one car or another, with one crowd or another, or a single man. Or a married man . . .

  No. She wasn’t going to think like that. She was Georgie Hale, and she didn’t do that kind of thing.

  She probably didn’t go into pubs much at all. Certainly not on her own: that was so loose it was almost fast. Still. Nice country hotel, she could do this much.

  Over the threshold, and a narrow passage faced her: off-sales to the left, public bar to the right, another door ahead. She turned right. Through the door, and a bell jangled above her head, startling her into stillness. After a moment, she decided that it made sense in a hotel, where it wouldn’t in a pub. The staff might be anywhere, and would certainly want to know that someone had just stepped into the bar.

  Never mind that she hated bells, with their old cold summoning clamour. It wasn’t hung there for her.

  Nor for these other people, who were lifting their heads and turning in their seats at the sound of it. That was another reason to hate the thing – that it drew all eyes to her – but she wasn’t really here to hide, however much she wanted it to seem so. Hiding in plain sight, full exposure, that was the trick of it . . .

  So she dropped her head like a shy girl, but still took note of the middle-aged couple taking tea and scones in the window, the three witches in the corner with their shopping bags heaped about them, the solitary man at the untenanted bar smoking a roll-your-own and nursing a pint of mild as he read the evening paper.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss: if you’re not a resident I’m afraid I can’t serve you, not till six thirty, unless you were wanting a cup of tea. That’s the law. Or is it a room you’re after?’

  The landlord had surprised her, coming in at her back, jangling that damn bell again. Surprised a gasp out of her, too: which irritated her mightily, but was probably all to the good in the long run. He’d seen her first and then her case, and was trying to work her out. He was a big man, burly but kind-seeming; it’d do no harm to have him think she was frightened of him, a little.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘not a room, no. A cup of tea would be lovely.’ Especially as Grace would never think of it, at this time of an evening; she was cocktails all the way. ‘But I’m really looking for Mr Cook. I was told I might find him here . . .?’

  ‘Cookie? Aye, he’s right there.’ His head jerked towards the lone man at the bar, while his eyes reassessed her again. She deliberately didn’t look like a candidate for any commune, but likely she wasn’t the first to turn up in civvies and reappear in tie-dye and beads. Or whatever the uniform was. The car had been there too suddenly and gone too fast: bright colours and long hair, that was all the impression that she’d kept.

  She nodded her thanks, doubted that she’d get that cup of tea now, and went to the bar.

  ‘Mr Cook?’

  He looked around from his paper and cocked his head at her. An elderly man, grey-haired under his country cap, dressed in worn tweeds that looked too good for him: hand-me-downs, perhaps, from a landowner older yet. She might have tagged him as a gamekeeper or a tenant farmer, rather than any kind of janitor. Still, the right man in the right place. And his eyes were bird-bright, curious, expectant. Unsurprised.

  ‘A young man at the taxi rank said that you might be able to run me out to . . . to . . .’ What had he called it again? She didn’t want to say ‘Hope’s Harbour’ to another local, if they used another name. That was too much like taking sides, and possibly the wrong side. She might need these people later, one way or another. And Georgie would be eager not to repeat a mistake. She’d come so far, she was so much in need; she’d be desperate, almost, not to stumble now.

  ‘To D’Espérance?’

  That was it. She nodded with a weary enthusiasm that she was rather proud of, if only because it was entirely the way she actually felt. She really had come far and was very tired, and only wanted to get there.

  ‘Yes, I can take you there. Give me ten minutes,’ he said, with a nod towards his drink.

  ‘Oh, thank you! And of course, yes, all the time you need. Don’t hurry on my account. I’ll just . . .’

  She’d just drop into a chair, slide her case beneath the table, and sit. Just sit: as she had been all the day, almost, but it was suddenly needful. Relief, she supposed, more than rest. She was almost there. The last contact made, first hurdles jumped. Better, she’d found someone to take her in. She didn’t need to go alone. That was priceless.

  And here was her cup of tea, a pot of tea with a scone besides, all unexpected; and when she took her purse out to pay for it – Georgie’s purse, which had been Grace’s purse when Grace was a teenager, long long ago: a first clumsy reach for style, almost before style was there to be reached for – the landlord wouldn’t take her money.

  ‘You keep that,’ he said, ‘for when you need it more.’ Which was perhaps meant to say when you want to leave that place and go home like a sensible girl, but she thought the truth of it lay somewhere else, between the landlord and the janitor. If they had so much as glanced at each other she hadn’t ca
ught it, but even so: the older man’s stillness at the bar was as telling as the other’s rough, awkward refusal of the coins she had fumbled for. And she couldn’t have a drink but he could, although he was no resident either. Something lay between the two men, some history that made her almost incidental.

  She still had her gloves on, she realized. Of course she did; they were instinct, in London. They should go. She needed to show willing to the commune.

  She’d take them off when she got there, perhaps. Make a point of it. That would work.

  She waited, then, gloved hands in her lap, suddenly too sick to eat a scone. Grace Harley had no nerves, that was widely known and commented on: but Georgie Hale? Sick to her stomach, poor Georgie, any time she had to face the unknown. She’d make it through, she always did – but she never had to diet, and she often had to chuck up privately beforehand.

  Not this time. She drank tea, and didn’t excuse herself to the ladies’ even to check her make-up. Grace would have done that without even thinking about it; Georgie didn’t even think about it. At last Mr Cook drained his glass and folded his paper, stood up and glanced around for her and said, ‘If you’re ready, then?’

  It was strange: he looked like one thing, was apparently something else, and sounded like a third thing altogether. His voice was educated, refined almost, in defiance of his dress and his position. She might have tagged him for a teacher or a college lecturer, by the way he sounded.