The Collected Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell Part 20

The thighs clamped about him in a last convulsion, stiff as rigor mortis.

The Pattern (1976).

Di seemed glad when he went outside. She was sitting on the settee, legs shoved beneath her, eyes squeezed tight, looking for the end of her novel. She acknowledged the sound of the door with a short nod, pinching her mouth as if he'd been distracting her. He controlled his resentment; he'd often felt the same way about her, while painting.

He stood outside the cottage, gazing at the spread of green. Scattered b.u.t.tercups crystallised the yellow tinge of the gra.s.s. At the centre of the field a darker green rushed up a thick tree, branching, multiplying; towards the edges of the field, bushes were foaming explosions, blue-green, red-edged green. Distant trees displayed an almost transparent papery spray of green. Beyond them lay curves of hills, toothed with tiny pines and a couple of random towers, all silver as mist. As Tony gazed, sunlight spilled from behind clouds to the sound of a huge soft wind in the trees. The light filled the greens, intensifying them; they blazed.

Yes, he'd be able to paint here. For a while he had feared he wouldn't. He'd imagined Di struggling to find her final chapter, himself straining to paint, the two of them chafing against each other in the little cottage. But good Lord, this was only their second day here. They weren't giving themselves time. He began to pace, looking for the vantage-point of his painting.

There were patterns and harmonies everywhere. You only had to find them, find the angle from which they were clear to you. He had seen that one day, while painting the microcosm of patterns in a patch of verdure. Now he painted nothing but glimpses of harmony, those moments when distant echoes of colour or movement made sense of a whole landscape; he painted only the harmonies, abstracted. Often he felt they were glimpses of a total pattern that included him, Di, his painting, her writing, life, the world: his being there and seeing was part of the pattern. Though it was impossible to perceive the total pattern, the sense was there. Perhaps that sense was the purpose of all real art.

Suddenly he halted. A May wind was pa.s.sing through the landscape. It unfurled through the tree in the field; in a few moments the trees beyond the field responded. It rippled through the gra.s.s, and the lazy grounded swaying echoed the leisurely unfolding of the clouds. All at once he saw how the clouds elaborated the shapes of the trees and bushes, subtracting colour, lazily changing their shapes as they drifted across the sky.

He had it now. The wind pa.s.sed, but it didn't matter. He could paint what he'd seen; he would see it again when the breeze returned. He was already mixing colours in his mind, feeling enjoyment begin: n.o.body could ever ma.s.s-produce the colours he saw. He turned towards the cottage, to tip-toe upstairs for his canvas and the rest without disturbing Di.

Behind him someone screamed.

In the distance, across the field. One scream: the hills echoed curtly. Tony had to grab an upright of the cottage porch to steady himself. Everything snapped sharp, the cottage garden, the uneven stone wall, the overgrown path beyond the wall, the fence and the wide empty flower-sprinkled field. There was n.o.body in sight. The echoes of the cry had stopped at once, except in Tony's head. The violence of the cry reverberated there. Of what emotion' Terror, outrage, disbelief, agony' All of them'

The door slammed open behind him. Di emerged, blinking red-eyed, like an angrily aroused sleeper. 'What's wrong?' she demanded nervously. 'Was that you?'

'I don't know what it was. Over there somewhere.'

He was determined to be calm. The cry had unnerved him; he didn't want her nervousness to reach him too ' he ignored it. 'It might have been someone with their foot in a trap,' he said. 'I'll see if I can see.'

He backed the car off the end of the path, onto the road. Di watched him over the stone wall, rather anxiously. He didn't really expect to find the source of the cry; probably its cause was past now. He was driving away from Di's edginess, to give her a chance to calm down. He couldn't paint while he was aware of her nervousness.

He drove. Beside the road the field stretched placidly, easing the scream from his mind. Perhaps someone had just stumbled, had cried out with the shock. The landscape looked too peaceful for anything worse. But for a while he tried to remember the sound, some odd quality about it that nagged at him. It hadn't sounded quite like a cry; it had sounded as if ' It was gone.

He drove past the far side of the field beyond the cottage. A path ran through the trees along the border; Ploughman's Path, a sign said. He parked and ventured up the path a few hundred yards. Patches of light flowed over the undergrowth, blurring and floating together, parting and dimming. The trees were full of the intricate trills and chirrups of birds. Tony called out a few times: 'Anyone there' Anybody hurt?' But the leaves hushed him.

He drove further uphill, towards the main road. He would return widely around the cottage, so that Di would could be alone for a while. Sunlight and shadow glided softly over the Cotswold hills. Trees spread above the road, their trunks lagged with ivy. Distant foliage was a bank of green folds, elaborate as coral.

On the main road he found a pub, the Farmer's Rest. That would be good in the evenings. The London agent hadn't mentioned that; he'd said only that the cottage was isolated, peaceful. He'd shown them photographs, and though Tony had thought the man had never been near the cottage, Di had loved it at once. Perhaps it was what her book needed.

He glimpsed the cottage through a gap in the hills. Its mellow Cotswold stone seemed concentrated, a small warm amber block beyond the tiny tree-pinned field, a mile below. The green of the field looked simple now, among the fields where sheep and cattle strolled sporadically. He was sorry he'd come so far from it. He drove towards the turn-off that would take him behind the cottage and eventually back to its road.

Di ran to the garden wall as he drove onto the path. 'Where were you?' she said. 'I was worried.'

Oh Christ, he thought, defeated. 'Just looking. I didn't find anything. Well, I found a pub on the main road.'

She tutted at him, smiling wryly: just like him, she meant. 'Are you going to paint?'

She couldn't have made any progress on her book; she would find it even more difficult now. 'I don't think so,' he said.

'Can't you work either' Oh, let's forget it for today. Let's walk to the pub and get absolutely p.i.s.sed.'

At least the return journey would be downhill, he thought, walking. A soft wind tugged at them whenever they pa.s.sed gaps; green light and shadow swarmed among branches. The local beer was good, he found. Even Di liked it, though she wasn't fond of beer. Among the Toby jugs and bracketed rifles, farmers discussed dwindling profits, the delivery of calves, the trapping of foxes, the swollen inflamed eyes of myxomatosis. Tony considered asking one of them about the scream, but now they were all intent on the dartboard; they were a team, practising sombrely for a match. 'I know there's an ending that's right for the book,' Di said. 'It's just finding it.'

When they returned to the cottage, amber clouds floated above the sunset. The horizon was the colour of the stone. The field lay quiet and chill. Di gazed at the cottage, her hands light on the wall. After a while he thought of asking why, but her feelings might be too delicate, too elusive. She would tell him if she could.

They made love beneath the low dark beams. Afterwards he lay in her on their quilt, gazing out at the dimming field. The tree was heavy with gathering darkness; a sheep bleated sleepily. Tony felt peaceful, in harmony. But Di was moving beneath him. 'Don't squash,' she said. As she lay beside him he felt her going into herself, looking for her story. At the moment she didn't dare risk the lure of peace.

When he awoke the room was gloomy. Di lay face upturned, mouth slackly open. Outside the ground hissed with rain beneath a low grey sky; the walls of the room streamed with the shadows of water.

He felt dismally oppressed. He had hoped to paint today. Now he imagined himself and Di hemmed in by the rain, struggling with their baulks beneath the low beams, wandering irritably about the small rooms, among the fat mock-leather furniture and stray electric fires. He knew Di hoped this book would make her more than just another children's novelist, but it couldn't while he was in the way.

Suddenly he glimpsed the landscape. All the field glowed sultry green. He saw how the dark sky and even the dark framing room were necessary to call forth the sullen glow. Perhaps he could paint that glimpse. After a while he kissed Di awake. She'd wanted to be woken early.

After breakfast she rereadThe Song of the Trees. She turned over the last page of the penultimate chapter and stared at the blank table beneath. At last she pushed herself away from the table and began to pace shortly. Tony tried to keep out of her way. When his own work was frustrated she seemed merely an irritation; he was sure she must feel the same of him. 'I'm going out for a walk,' she called, opening the front door. He didn't offer to walk with her. He knew she was searching for her conclusion.

When the rain ceased he carried his painting materials outside. For a moment he wished he had music. But they couldn't have transported the stereo system, and their radio was decrepit. As he left the cottage glanced back at Di's flowers, ma.s.sed minutely in vases.

The grey sky hung down, trapping light in ragged flourishes of white cloud. Distant trees were smudges of mist; the greens of the field merged into a dark glow. On the near side of the fence the path unfurled innumerable leaves, oppressive in their dark intricacy, heavy with raindrops. Even the raindrops were relentlessly green. Metallic chimes and chirrs of birds surrounded him, as did a thick rich smell of earth.

Only the wall of the garden held back the green. The heavy jagged stones were a response to the landscape. He could paint that, the rough texture of stone, the amber stone spattered with darker ruggedness, opposing the overpoweringly lush green. But it wasn't what he'd hoped to paint, and it didn't seem likely to make him much money.

Di liked his paintings. At his first exhibition she'd sought him out to tell him so; that was how they'd met. Her first book was just beginning to earn royalties, she had been working on her second. Before they were married he'd begun to ill.u.s.trate her work.

If exhibiting wasn't too lucrative, ill.u.s.trating books was less so. He knew Di felt uneasy as the breadwinner; sometimes he felt frustrated that he couldn't earn them more ' the inevitable castration anxiety. That was another reason why she wanted The Song of the Trees to sell well: to promote his work. She wanted his ill.u.s.trations to be as important as the writing.

He liked what there was of the book. He felt his paintings could complement the prose; they'd discussed ways of setting out the pages. The story was about the last dryads of a forest, trapped among the remaining trees by a fire that had sprung from someone's cigarette. As they watched picnickers sitting on blackened stumps amid the ash, breaking branches from the surviving trees, leaving litter and matches among them, the dryads realised they must escape before the next fire. Though it was unheard of, they managed to relinquish the cool green peace of the trees and pa.s.s through the clinging dead ash to the greenery beyond. They coursed through the greenery, seeking welcoming trees. But the book was full of their tribulations: a huge grim oak-dryad who drove them away from the saplings he protected; willow dryads who let them go deep into their forest, but only because they would distract the dark thick-voiced spirit of a swamp; glittering birch-dryads, too cold and aloof to bear; morose hawthorns, whose flowers farted at the dryads, in case they were animals come to chew the leaves.

He could tell Di loved writing the book ' perhaps too much so, for she'd thought it would produce its own ending. But she had been balked for weeks. She wanted to write an ending that satisfied her totally, she was determined not to fake anything. He knew she hoped the book might appeal to adults too. 'Maybe it needs peace,' she'd said at last, and that had brought them to the cottage. Maybe she was right. This was only their third day, she had plenty of time.

As he mused the sluggish sky parted. Sunlight spilled over an edge of cloud. At once the greens that had merged into green emerged again, separating: a dozen greens, two dozen. Dots of flowers brightened over the field, colours filled the raindrops piercingly. He saw the patterns at once; almost a mandala. The clouds were whiter now, fragmented by blue; the sky was rolling open from the horizon. He began to mix colours. Surely the dryads must have pa.s.sed through such a landscape.

The patterns were emerging on his canvas when, beyond the field, someone screamed.

It wasn't Di. He was sure it wasn't a woman's voice. It was the voice he'd heard yesterday, but more outraged still; it sounded as if it were trying to utter something too dreadful for language. The hills swallowed its echoes at once, long before his heart stopped pounding loudly.

As he tried to breathe in calm, he realised what was odd about the scream. It had sounded almost as much like an echo as its reiteration in the hills: louder, but somehow lacking a source. It reminded him ' yes, of the echo that sometimes precedes a loud sound-source on a record.

Just an acoustic effect. But that hardly explained the scream itself. Someone playing a joke' Someone trying to frighten the intruders at the cottage' The local simpleton' An animal in a trap, perhaps, for his memory of the scream contained little that sounded human. Someone was watching him.

He turned sharply. Beyond the nearby path, at the far side of the road, stood a clump of trees. The watcher was hiding among them; Tony could sense him there ' he'd almost glimpsed him skulking hurriedly behind the trunks. He felt instinctively that the lurker was a man.

Was it the man who'd screamed' No, he hadn't had time to make his way round the edge of the field. Perhaps he had been drawn by the scream. Or perhaps he'd come to spy on the strangers. Tony stared at the trees, waiting for the man to betray his presence, but couldn't stare long; the trunks were vibrating restlessly, incessantly ' heat-haze, of course, though it looked somehow odder. Oh, let the man spy if he wanted to. Maybe he'd venture closer to look at Tony's work, as people did. But when Tony rested from his next burst of painting, he could tell the man had gone.

Soon he saw Di hurrying anxiously down the road. Of course, she must have heard the scream. 'I'm all right, love,' he called.

'It was the same, wasn't it' Did you see what it was?'

'No. Maybe it's children. Playing a joke.'

She wasn't rea.s.sured so easily. 'It sounded like a man,' she said. She gazed at his painting. 'That is good,' she said, and wandered into the cottage without mentioning her book. He knew she wasn't going in to write.

The scream had worried her more than she'd let him see. Her anxiety lingered even now she knew he was unharmed. Something else to hinder her book, he thought irritably. He couldn't paint now, but at least he knew what remained to be painted.

He sat at the kitchen table while she cooked a shepherd's pie in the range. Inertia hung oppressively about them. 'Do you want to go to the pub later?' he said.

'Maybe. I'll see.'

He gazed ahead at the field in the window, the cooling tree; branches swayed a little behind the gla.s.s. In the kitchen something trembled ' heat over the electric stove. Di was reaching for the teapot with one hand, lifting the kettle with the other; the steaming spout tilted above her bare leg. Tony stood up, mouth opening ' but she'd put the kettle down. 'It's all right,' he answered her frown, as he scooped up spilled sugar from the table.

She stood at the range. 'Maybe the pub might help us to relax,' he said.

'I don't want to relax! That's no use!' She turned too quickly, and overbalanced towards the range. Her bare arm was going to rest on the metal that quivered with heat. She pushed herself back from the wall, barely in time. 'You see what I mean?' she demanded.

'What's the matter' Clumsiness isn't like you.'

'Stop watching me, then. You make me nervous.'

'Hey, you can't just blame me.' How would she have felt if she had been spied on earlier' There was more wrong with her than her book and her irrationally lingering worry about him, he was sure. Sometimes she had what seemed to be psychic glimpses. 'Is it the cottage that's wrong?' he said.

'No, I like the cottage.'

'The area, then' The field?'

She came to the table, to saw bread with a carving-knife; the cottage lacked a bread-knife. 'I like it here. It's probably just me,' she said, musing about something.

The kettle sizzled, parched. 'b.l.o.o.d.y clean simplicity,' she said. She disliked electric stoves. She moved the kettle to a cold ring and turned back. The point of the carving-knife thrust over the edge of the table. Her turn would impale her thigh on the blade.

Tony s.n.a.t.c.hed the knife back. The blade and the wood of the table seemed to vibrate for a moment. He must have jarred the table. Di was staring rather abstractedly at the knife. 'That's three,' he said. 'You'll be all right now.'

During dinner she was abstracted. Once she said, 'I really like this cottage, you know. I really do.' He didn't try to reach her. After dinner he said, 'Look, I'm sorry if I've been distracting you,' but she shook her head, hardly listening. They didn't seem to be perceiving each other very well.

He was was.h.i.+ng up when she said 'My G.o.d.' He glanced anxiously at her. She was staring up at the beams. 'Of course. Of course,' she said, reaching for her notebook. She pushed it away at once and hurried upstairs. Almost immediately he heard her begin typing.

He tried to paint, until darkness began to mix with his colours. He stood gazing as twilight collected in the field. The typewriter chattered. He felt rather unnecessary, out of place. He must buy some books in Camside tomorrow. He felt restless, a little resentful. 'I'm going down to the pub for a while,' he called. The typewriter's bell rang, rang again.

The pub was surrounded by jeeps, sports cars, floridly painted vans. Crowds of young people pressed close to the tables, on stools, on the floor; they shouted over each other, laughed, rolled cigarettes. One was pa.s.sing round a sketch-book, but Tony didn't feel confident enough to introduce himself. A few of the older people doggedly practised darts, the rest surrounded Tony at the bar. He chatted about the weather and the countryside, listened to prices of grain. He hoped he'd have a chance to ask about the scream.

He was slowing in the middle of his second pint when the barman said, 'One of the new ones, aren't you?'

'Yes, that's right.' On an impulse he said loudly enough for the people around him to hear: 'We're in the cottage across the field from Ploughman's Path.'

The man didn't move hurriedly to serve someone else. n.o.body gasped, n.o.body backed away from Tony. Well, that was encouraging. 'Are you liking it' the barman said.

'Very much. There's just one odd thing.' Now was his chance. ' We keep hearing someone screaming across the field.'

Even then the room didn't fall silent. But it was as if he'd broken a taboo; people withdrew slightly from him, some of them seemed resentful. Three women suddenly excused themselves from different groups at the bar, as if he were threatening to become offensive. 'It'll be an animal caught in a trap,' the barman said.

'I suppose so.' He could see the man didn't believe it either.

The barman was staring at him. 'Weren't you with a girl yesterday?'

'She's back at the cottage.'

Everyone nearby looked at Tony. When he glanced at them, they looked away. 'You want to be sure she's safe,' the barman muttered, and hurried to fill flourished gla.s.ses. Tony gulped down his beer, cursing his imagination, and almost ran to the car.

Above the skimming patch of lit tarmac moths ignited; a rabbit froze, then leapt. Discovered trees rushed out of the dark, to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back at once by the night. The light bleached the leaves, the rus.h.i.+ng tunnels of boles seemed subterraneously pale. The wide night was still. He could hear nothing but the hum of the car. Above the hills hung enormous dim clouds, grey as rocks.

He could see Di as he hurried up the path. Her head was silhouetted on the curtain; it leaned at an angle against the back of the settee. He fumbled high in the porch for the hidden key. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was loosely open. Her typescript lay at her feet.

She was blinking, smiling at him. He could see both needed effort; her eyes were red, she looked depressed ' she always did when she'd finished a book. 'See what you think of it,' she said, handing him the pages. Beneath her attempt at a professional's impersonality he thought she was offering the chapter to him as shyly as a young girl.

Emerging defeated from a patch of woodland, the dryads saw a cottage across a field. It stood in the still light, peaceful as the evening. They could feel the peace filling its timbers: not a green peace but a warmth, stillness, stability. As they drew nearer they saw an old couple within. The couple had worked hard for their peace; now they'd achieved it here. Tony knew they were himself and Di. One by one the dryads pa.s.sed gratefully into the dark wood of the beams, the doors.

He felt oddly embarra.s.sed. When he managed to look at her he could only say, 'Yes, it's good. You've done it.'

'Good,' she said. 'I'm glad.' She was smiling peacefully now.

As they climbed the stairs she said, 'If we have children they'll be able to help me too. They can criticise.'

She hoped the book would let them afford children. 'Yes, they will,' he said.

The scream woke him. For a moment he thought he'd dreamed it, or had cried out in his sleep. But the last echo was caught in the hills. Faint as it was, he could feel its intolerable horror, its despair.

He lay blinking at the sunlight. The white-painted walls shone. Di hadn't woken; he was glad. The scream throbbed in his brain. Today he must find out what it was.

After breakfast he told Di he was going into Camside. She was still depressed after completing the book; she looked drained. She didn't offer to accompany him. She stood at the garden wall, watching him blindly, dazzled by the sun. 'Be careful driving,' she called.

The clump of trees opposite the end of the path was quivering. Was somebody hiding behind the trunks' Tony frowned at her. 'Do you feel ?' but he didn't want to alarm her unnecessarily ?' anything' Anything odd?'

'What sort of thing?' But he was wondering whether to tell her when she said, 'I like this place. Don't spoil it.'

He went back to her. 'What will you do while I'm out?'

'Just stay in the cottage. I want to read through the book. Why are you whispering?' He smiled at her, shaking his head. The sense of someone watching had faded, though the tree-trunks still quivered.

Plushy white-and-silver layers of cloud sailed across the blue sky. He drove the fifteen miles to Camside, a slow roller-coaster ride between green quilts spread easily over the hills. Turned earth displayed each shoot on the nearer fields, trees met over the roads and parted again.

Camside was wholly the colours of rusty sand; similar stone framed the wide gla.s.s of the library. Mullioned windows multiplied reflections. Gardens and walls were thick with flowers. A small river coursed beneath a bridge; in the water, sunlight darted incessantly among pebbles. He parked outside a pub, The Wheatsheaf, and walked back. Next to the library stood an odd squat building of the amber stone, a square block full of small windows whose open cas.e.m.e.nts were like griddles filled with panes; over its door a new plastic sign said Camside Observer. The newspaper's files might be useful. He went in.

A girl sat behind a low white Swedish desk; the crimson bell of her desk-lamp clanged silently against the white walls, the amber windowsills. 'Can I help you?'

'I hope so. I'm doing some research into an area near here. Ploughman's Path. Have you heard of it?'

'Oh, I don't know.' She was glancing away, looking for help to a middle-aged man who had halted in a doorway behind her desk. 'Mr. Poole?' she called.