The Haunt by A. L. Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

kind.’
    ‘I was going anyway.’
    ‘I think James has fallen in love with you.’ Owen laughed. She said, ‘It’s not to be wondered at. He needs a man in his life.’
    When he stopped the car at her gate she said, ‘You don’t want him though, do you?’
    ‘On the contrary, I’ve become quite attached to him.’
    ‘Is it your wife?’
    ‘Elissa?’
    ‘Is she why you closed the gap in the fence?’
    ‘I did it because my garden’s no place for a child, there are too many thistles and stinging nettles.’
    She opened the car door. ‘I’m obliged for the lift.’
    *
    ‘I know you don’t like the smell of beer, it makes you sick and you’re always hoping there’s another reason: I know the reason,’ said Antony Wallington to his wife, Pam. ‘You didn’t have to come on this holiday.’
    ‘Neither of us has to do anything. It’s our creed.’
    ‘What will you have to drink?’
    ‘A very small, very dry sherry.’
    ‘A very small, very dry sherry,’ he said to the barmaid. ‘And a pint of bitter.’
    She looked askance at him as she pulled his beer. ‘We don’t serve very small sherries. And just dry, not very dry.’
    ‘Just dry will do.’
    Where does compulsion start, he was thinking. With Pam it had started as a gut reaction. He would have been happy if he hadn’t come across some half-finished baby clothes. Too shaken to confront her with the discovery, he had watchedlike a hawk. But a hawk watches for its dinner; he was watching for his lifestyle.
    When she didn’t change shape and didn’t finish the baby clothes, he realised he was in a situation which could persist as long as their generative powers lasted. He had always thought they shared the same fears and expectations. They had muddled along in ignorance and bliss. Now he saw what could be coming to them, and she wanting it to come, knitting for it. The very idea of birth was abhorrent. A clumsy, squalid, risky business. Pollenation had it beat every time. He wanted none of it for Pam – or himself.
    As he set the sherry before her, she said, ‘Why is this pub called the “Dolly Pentreath”? Did she die of drink?’
    ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’re here on holiday in a lovely place, the Cornish riviera, we’re supposed to enjoy ourselves.’
    ‘It’s me, isn’t it? It must be me not enjoying this lovely place.’
    ‘Is it because you’re pregnant?’ She looked up, startled. ‘Because if you are—’
    ‘I’m not, of course I’m not! It’s nothing to do with that—’
    ‘It’s got to be doing with something.’
    ‘I hoped it didn’t show.’
    ‘By God, Pam, you’d better tell me the truth.’
    ‘I’ve told you the truth. Why on earth should you think otherwise?’
    ‘Because you’re making baby clothes.’
    She stared, the penny dropped, light dawned and she laughed. ‘Those! They’re dolls’ clothes!’
    ‘Where’s the doll?’
    ‘My landlady – she used to be my landlady – her little girl was always dragging her doll around stark naked. I couldn’t bear to see it. I promised to make it an outfit so it would look like a real baby and she’d get the idea and be gentle with it.’
    He said, ‘You’re really sticky, you know that?’
    She sighed. ‘This lovely place worries me. The loveliness doesn’t go deep.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘Don’t be angry, please Nanty. Sometimes I don’t even think about it. Yesterday I was lying on the beach watching the gulls hovering and soaring and I thought this will put me right. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.’
    Exasperated, he sank half his pint in one swallow. ‘Gulls are what it takes to put you right?’
    ‘Then I saw a huge great face, up on the cliff, leering at me.’
    ‘Oh come on, if you’re on the beach and there’s a man on the cliff you wouldn’t be able to see him leer.’
    ‘There wasn’t a man, only a face, hundreds of feet of face in the rock, like those American presidents.’
    ‘You dreamed