Arnold heard Stan leave early the next morning and got up slowly while he enjoyed the birdsong he could hear from the garden. He kept the window in the bathroom open so he could continue listening while he bathed, and then took a stroll outside to admire the wealth of produce that had appeared since he'd been there the first time a month before. There were runner beans hanging heavily from the neatly constructed cane wigwams, and he recognised spinach, peas, broccoli, and several large fat marrows peaking out from under their leaves on the ground. It really was a magnificent plot and Arnold couldn´t compare it to any vegetable garden he'd ever seen before.
Wandering back up the stairs to his flat he made his egg and soldiers to eat in the living room with some coffee. Afterwards, he decided it was time to explore the village and headed out to cycle along every road in Colerne to get his bearings. He found a newsagent and, feeling a bit out of touch, bought a Telegraph to catch up on the world. When he got back, he noticed a deckchair propped up against the garden shed, so he pulled it out and settled down to read the paper. After about an hour he heard a car approaching and Stan pulled up in the driveway.
Arnold got up and walked towards the car saying:
'I hope you don't mind, Stan. I borrowed your deckchair to sit out in the sun for a while?'
'You make yourself at home, Arnold. I've just popped back for a cuppa before heading up to Gatwick to pick someone up. If I can get on the motorway before two, I shall miss the crush on the M25. Can I make you one?'
Stan got another deckchair from the shed and they settled down to enjoy the afternoon sunshine.
'The garden looks wonderful, Stan. I don't think I've ever seen such a bounteous plot anywhere.'
'Well,' said Stan 'The secret is in the treatment you gives it. You can't have too much fertiliser, I says. Come the autumn when they're all done with their growing like, I give 'em a good dressing, just like the farmers do on the fields. Then, in the spring I give it another dose, and that seems to do the trick.'
It all seemed obvious to Arnold now he'd explained.
'I was thinking' Arnold began, 'I could help if you like. You know, with any digging, or fertilising, or anything that needs to be done. I don't know much about gardening, but I can pick things up quickly. Anyway, I just thought I'd offer.'
Stan fell silent and Arnold thought for a second or two that he'd taken offence at his suggestion. Then without looking at him Stan said,
'That's very kind of you, Arnold. And I do appreciates your offer. But the vegetables is my thing, and always has been, and I can manage very well on me own. Also it gives me some time to myself out here, so´s I can think about things... But, thank you, all the same.'
And on saying these words he slowly turned his eyes towards Arnold and gave him a reassuring smile. Arnold nodded in an understanding way, it was another thing he had learnt to do well at St. Tobias's.
September progressed and autumn made its impression on the landscape. The curling smoke of bonfires became a more common feature and the air took on a mushroomy flavour as the days got shorter. Lucy left to go back to Durham in the middle of the month, and Arnold was able to stay with Hermione at her house whenever he wished. But he was careful not to impose on her and something at the back of his mind still looked disapprovingly down on their liaison. He got used to spending Sunday mornings in her bed, drenched in her essence, and he stopped feeling guilty at not attending some church service somewhere. It was as if God's presence inside him was being substituted with something else, some fullness of being. He seemed to be noticing signs of life all around him and within himself, and it wasn't an unpleasant sensation.
Perhaps part of the reason for this was to do with Colerne, which was more rural than Corsham. There were no street lamps close by the house, so when the sun had gone it really was dark outside. The only lights were the security lamps that came on automatically whenever Stan's car pulled up in the driveway. He became acutely aware of when the sun set and when it came up in the mornings, and took to neglecting to pull his curtains across his bedroom windows. In Corsham he would have had trouble sleeping like that but here it was not an issue.
Stan worked long hours and was forever driving up and down to Stansted, Gatwick or Heathrow to pick people up or drop them off. This provided the bulk of his business and he was willing to leave at all hours to meet the unsociable schedules of the charter flights. Their fish and chip dinners became a regular feature over the weeks and gradually Arnold discovered more and more about Nancy, the absent wife. Neither she nor Stan had any surviving relatives anywhere, which Arnold was surprised to discover, as he'd assumed that when she'd left she had gone to join some existing part of her family in the North. Stan could furnish no clues regarding why she'd left and seemed at a loss to explain, but Arnold was careful not to press him for more information than he was willing to volunteer. He didn't want to risk making Stan morose and wished to spare him any more pain than he'd already felt.
Another aspect of life in Colerne Arnold became aware of was the remarkable stillness of the night. He started to look forward to retiring to his bed so he could lay there in the darkness and really appreciate it as a luxury. Rarely a police siren or an ambulance would invade the space and apart from Stan's comings and goings that was it for noise. Arnold came to recognise the sound of Stan's car and could tell it apart from Hermione's. As far as birds went, the odd owl was all that he heard. The pigeons didn't start up until sunrise and even they tended to be quiet if there was an owl close by.
One night, about two months after his arrival, he thought he heard some faint knocking on his front door. He thought this was strange, but nevertheless got up and went to the door to open it. There was nobody outside so he went back to bed. About fifteen minutes later he thought he heard it again and repeated the exercise of going to open the door, only to find nothing. He went back to sleep and forgot all about it until a few nights later when it happened again. After the second false alarm at the door he sat next to it in the dark and waited for it to return. He must have fallen asleep because he was awakened by it for the third time. He opened the door as quickly as he could only to be confronted by the still of the night. He considered telling Stan, but decided against it for the time being.
The following week his alarm clock, which was set for 8am, went off in the middle of the night and he awoke with a start. He checked to see if he'd made a mistake setting the time, but he hadn't.
He lay in bed unable to get back to sleep, confused by what had occurred. Just then, he thought he could hear someone moving across the room past the bed. He switched on the bedside lamp but the room was empty. The rest of that night he slept fitfully and tried to make sense of the increasing catalogue of strange nocturnal happenings. The next week was uneventful and the clocks went forward in late October meaning it was dark soon after four in the afternoon. Arnold began to wonder what he would experience next.
One night in bed early in November, he was trying to remember the last time he'd eaten fish and chips before arriving in Colerne, when he distinctly thought someone was trying to get into the bed with him. It reminded him of the first time he'd been in bed with Hermione, and for a brief second in the darkness he actually believed she was there with him, before the ridiculousness of the thought dawned upon him. He groped around the bed to reassure himself he was indeed alone, and had to get up and walk around for a while to steady his nerves. He'd heard of such things as poltergeists but never thought he would experience one himself, especially being a man of God.
The next day when he was sitting in his half-lit lounge reading in the mid-afternoon, the torch he used on twilight walks came on by itself and shone its beam across the room. He got up and went over to inspect it. What made it even more curious was that the on/off button needed a good deal of pressure to operate it, meaning it wasn't being temperamental. This was the first strange thing to happen within the hours of daylight, which made him more nervous than ever, and he thought perhaps there could be a link between all these events. He was over at Hermione's the following weekend and gave her a full description of the happenings and, of course, she immediately had an idea for an explanation.
'It sounds to me as if it could be something unresolved to do with the house and its history. I've heard of similar things before, especially in old buildings. Why don't you ask Stan if he knows who lived there before him? It looks like it could be a couple of hundred years old, and there's a chance a tragedy or something unpleasant took place at some stage. It's worth a try. Poor Arnold, it has upset you, hasn't it?'
Arnold thought it a good idea and decided to discuss it with Stan at the next appropriate moment.
That Sunday in bed he remembered sitting in a car a long time before, eating fish and chips with his father. It all came flooding back to him, how his father would take him to Whitstable in the winter and they would buy fish and chips, and sit and eat them in the car as it was too cold or wet to be outside. There was something melancholic about seaside towns off-season, with just the locals wandering around getting on with their lives. Arnold had looked forward to these trips. It was time he could spend alone with his father and his mother would rarely join them. He realised now that she deliberately hadn't been invited, or had avoided joining them, as his father had been at work all week and he'd hardly seen Arnold. Sometimes, if they were brave enough, they would go for a long walk through the pebbles and struggle hard to move forward against the bracing wind. They would finish eating and his father would turn to him and say,
'Shall we venture out, Arnold? I'm game if you are.'
He was pleased he'd remembered this and decided to tell Stan.
Their fish and chip ritual nearly always took place on a Monday or a Tuesday, as these were the most likely evenings for Stan not to be booked for an airport trip. So, on cue, he arrived back that Monday at about seven o'clock and gave the familiar triple beep on the car horn to let Arnold know supper had arrived. Arnold gathered up his jar of mayonnaise from his fridge and trotted down the stairs to let himself in through Stan's side door.
Arnold's job was to lay the table while Stan transferred the food onto warm plates from the oven. Stan had tried Arnold's mayonnaise on his chips but had gone back to his salad cream, saying it was what he was used to. They tucked into their food and didn't speak as they ate. When they had their teas in front of them they began to talk. This time Arnold started off by telling Stan his memory of fish and chips in Whitstable with his father all those years before.
'How about that, then?' Stan said, 'Fancy that, and you's never had 'em once from then till now? Arnold, you have led a sheltered life, if you don't mind me saying so! Blimey, that must be some forty year ago, I bet!'
And then he was off, chatting about what he could remember of his own childhood down in the New Forest, where there were wild horses and gypsy camps in the remoter parts. From what Arnold could gather, he was from a large family with plenty of brothers and sisters to lark about with during the weekends and the school holidays. They would hunt and trap wild animals, like squirrels and rabbits, and trade them to the gypsies - who would eat that sort of thing apparently - for rides on their horses and homemade cakes. It sounded like another world to Arnold, who'd made do with growing up in Crouch End in North London.
'That New Forest is a remarkable place when you're growing up, Arnold. We lived right on the edge of it, outside Wimborne, and we was always in there having fun. Mind you, playing hide and seek, it wasn't a good idea to get lost in there, like. Especially when it gets dark. I remember a couple of times it happened to me and I was petrified trying to find my way out, near enough pitch black it was.'
At this moment Arnold thought he could see an opportunity to bring up the strange things he'd been experiencing upstairs:
'Funny you should talk about that, Stan. I wanted to tell you, I've been hearing things upstairs...at night'
'Really? What sorts of things?'
'Well, someone knocking on my front door for one thing, quite late. And when I go to answer it there's no one there. And that's not all, I'm afraid.'
'What else?'
'Well, sometimes, when I'm in bed, it feels like someone else is in the room. Even felt like they were in the bed with me once. It was most unsettling, I can tell you. Then there's my torch, you know the one I go walking with? Well, that came on, by itself, just last week.'
Stan's face went white and his jaw dropped. He was having trouble putting his cup down in the saucer and Arnold could hear the china shaking in his hands.
'Oh dear. I am sorry, Arnold,' Stan said. 'What do you think it could mean?'
Stan was finding it difficult to get the words out.
'I've no idea,' Arnold continued. 'I just wondered if you knew anything about the history of the house? As I've heard, people who believe in such things have found explanations in past events. You know, things tragic or unpleasant that have happened in the place a long time before. I suppose I should keep an open mind about such things, even though I am a man of God - or was.'
But it was clear Stan's mind was elsewhere. He got up and wandered slowly away from the table towards the door to his sitting room.
'Sorry, Arnold. Feel I've got to go and lie down. Just for a while. Please excuse me.'
Arnold heard Stan go to his bedroom and close the door behind him. He waited in the kitchen for a few minutes then cleared away and washed up the supper things. It was all rather distressing. He had no idea why what he'd told Stan should upset him so much. It was all very curious. He decided the best thing he could do was to go back upstairs, and he left some money on the kitchen table to pay for the fish and chips - as it was his turn - and quietly closed the door on his way out.
He busied himself tidying up and did some domestic chores as he couldn't focus his mind on reading anything, and it filled the time left in the evening before going to bed. After about an hour he made himself a cup of cocoa and had just sat down to browse through his Bible when there was a faint knock at his door. His immediate thought was that the unexplained knocking had returned and he pretended to ignore it. Then he heard it again, but this time it was louder so he got up and went to answer it. Stan was outside.
'Arnold... Sorry to disturb you...Can I come in for a moment? I need to talk to you...to tell you something.'
Arnold opened the door and as Stan passed by he could smell the strong and distinct odour of whiskey. Arnold sensed a feeling he hadn't had since the days of St. Tobias's, when he'd had to give audience to poor souls with troubled minds. Stan sat down in one of the armchairs and Arnold took the seat opposite and waited for him to speak.
'Arnold, I've gone and done a terrible, terrible thing. And I have to tell someone about it. I don't know where to start really...where it starts...'
'I told you about how Nancy and me lived here on our own; we never had no cause for complaints. I did my cabbing and she looked after the house, as is usual with people like us. The trouble is over the years; we cut ourselves off from everyone around us, like. Without really intending to. You probably realised by now we had no young 'uns to look after. Not for the want of trying, but it just never happened. Well, by then it was too late for us to be going off and looking for new partners. We'd grown into each other, as happens too. So we just accepted the fact we was to be just the two of us and that was that. She always did a grand job around the house and I was out all hours, as I am, up and down to the motorway, but gradually dissatisfaction grew in her...with me, like. She'd go through whole days when she wouldn't talk to me, and I'd say: 'For God's sake, woman, say summat, will you?' and then she'd burst into tears and I'd try to touch her, and she'd shy away from me and not let me go near her. Sorry, Arnold, to go and use His name like that. Anyways, life went along like this for many a year and the only thing I had to keep me going was the garden, and the vegetables. I admit at times I got to talking to 'em as they were growing, like children, for want of conversation with Nancy, and I got a feeling they responded by growing better, but you'll think I'm mad for saying that.'
'Then about six or seven year ago Nancy found her tongue, and she used it on me without any rest. It was as if all those years she'd stored up this hatred for me and then all of it came out. She'd surprise me suddenly by bringing up summat from years before, summat that had completely gone out of my head, like. How I'd said summat that'd upset her, and how much I'd hurt her by saying it and she'd never forgive me for it. My life became a living hell on earth, Arnold. I thought at times of searching for help in the church, but I'd be on the point of going when I'd decide against it, as I've never been that good at expressing myself, as you can probably tell. And it made me feel uncomfortable to think of talking about these personal things to a stranger, even if it was someone like yourself, they'd still be someone I didn't know from Adam.
Well, as time went on, I grew to hating her for all that she was throwing at me from inside of her mind. I didn't think it was fair, for her to be so cruel and unkind like that. And I started to think about ways I could get rid of her. I've never been an aggressive person, Arnold, and I've never wished bad on anyone in my life. What I believe is, what goes around comes around, always have done. But she got me thinking that way, no two ways about it. I couldn't see no other way that I could carry on living, dreading coming home after work for fear of her laying into me. I've never been a drinking man. Never normally kept it in the house, so I wasn't going to end up down at The Six Bells at night instead of coming home. Although I do admit that I had a few swigs of whiskey before I came up here, like, otherwise I would never be telling you all of this. Knew I had a bottle in a cupboard from years ago. Where was I? Oh, Arnold. What must you be thinking about me?'
At this point he lay back in his armchair, silent and exhausted by the effort of recalling these unpleasant memories. Arnold had been gripping his cocoa the whole time Stan had been speaking and took a sip to see how cold it was and if it was still drinkable. A film of dried milk had formed on the surface and as he drew his mouth back from the lip of the cup the film stuck to his lips and hung down for a second or two, suspended in the air before falling onto his cardigan front. He got up and went to the kitchen to dampen a kitchen cloth at the sink and dab the stain from his front. He got most of it off but then thought it wasn't a good idea to leave Stan. He went back into the lounge and Stan was still motionless in his armchair with his eyes closed. Arnold went up and gently shook his shoulder, saying,
'Stan. Stan? Are you alright?'
Stan's eyes opened and he relaxed when he saw Arnold standing there next to him. He sat up and Arnold went back to his chair. And Stan began again.
'Then, one autumn, I was working in the garden and I started finding mushrooms growing all around the hawthorns and conifers. Over the years I've come to know the different types you get around here and I knows which are the ones you can eat and those you can't. Well, these ones in the garden were the bad kind. Amanita is the name. More common than you'd think, they be. They get mistaken for the good 'uns sometimes and people die by mistake. It made sense to me that my garden was providing me with summat I could use for Nancy. That garden has been me only friend over the years... Until you come along, Arnold. So I collected a good few of them and mixed them in with some I bought from the shops, and she cooked them up one day for breakfast. I pushed mine around the plate while we was eating, and she wolfed the lot down and then wanted mine if I was leaving 'em! Nothing happened for a good two or three hours and it was a quiet Sunday for me, so I was going to be spending the morning in the garden anyways. I went outside to do some digging and the like, then about eleven I heard a banging and lots of noise from the kitchen and went in to take a look. I know it was about that time 'cos I heard the clock on the church up the road chiming. The kitchen was in a state, she'd been working in there, cooking Sunday lunch and there were pots and pans all over the place, as she'd gone down trying to hold on to summat, and she was a big woman, was Nancy. I took a close look at her, and got a hand mirror to hold up in front of her face, like, to see if she were still breathing. I'd seen it done on the telly, but there was no steam from her, so she'd gone. I just hoped that she hadn't had too much pain in the going; I wouldn't have wanted that for her. No.'
Arnold was having trouble believing he was hearing this correctly, and for a moment thought he may just be having a bad dream, so he pinched himself a couple of times to make sure he was awake. Then he realised he had to make sure he didn't lose Stan's coherence, before he found out what had happened next. After all, he reasoned, there's no dead person without a body to show for it.
'So what did you do, Stan?'
'Well, I covered her up with a blanket there on the kitchen floor where she was, then I found myself heading out into the garden, where I'd been digging, and carried on with what I was doing. I dug and dug, not knowing what else to do, and a few hours later I was standing in a big hole, pretty deep it was. By now it must have been close to four o'clock and the light was going, so I went back into the kitchen with me wheelbarrow and brought her out into the garden and put her in the hole. Then all I could think of was to put all the earth back on top of her, and spread the rest out around the vegetables. I just managed to finish before the last of the light went, then I started to feel tired. Exhausted, I was.'
He paused, and Arnold prompted him to continue.
'And then what?'
'I went upstairs and lay down on our bed and went to sleep. When I woke up it was the next day and what had happened seemed like it was all a dream. I looked out the window and the garden looked the same as it's always done, the only difference was Nancy was gone. I gathered up all her things, there and then, and took them down and lit a bonfire that morning, as I didn't want anything around to remind me of her or what I'd done. Later that day, it was a Monday, I got a phone call from someone asking me to do a pick up from Stansted, out of the blue, I'd been recommended like, and I just said 'yes' without even thinking about it. And I'd never done Stansted before then.'
After a while Arnold realised he was staring into space, not focusing on anything, just trying to digest what Stan had told him. Stan seemed in a trance and the two of them sat there in their chairs in silence. Then an owl could be heard outside somewhere, and Arnold heard some stirring from the other chair. Stan raised himself and got down on his knees in front of Arnold with his hands clasped together as if in prayer:
'Oh, Arnold. What you been hearing and seeing upstairs... It's her, isn't it? Nancy. She's come back to haunt us, hasn't she? Your bedroom, that's our old bedroom, see, so it makes sense, don't it? She wanted you to know what I done to her and it's terrible, I know that now. The worst thing I ever done in my whole life. What should I do? Is it too late for me? Just tell me what to do!'
And with that he broke down in a slobbering mass of tears and Arnold found himself leaning over and taking Stan's shoulders to comfort him. Stan was still trying to speak through his sobbing and Arnold likened him to a child that needs human warmth and a steadying hand. Slowly Stan calmed down, and Arnold helped him to his feet and led him down the stairs outside, then in through the back door. He was silent now, and just like he would have done with a distraught child, Arnold led him to his bedroom and helped him get undressed and into bed. With a soothing voice he told him to try to sleep. He switched off the lights and quietly went back up to his flat.
He looked at the time and saw it was past one o'clock. He sat down in the same chair as before and stared in front of him at the empty chair from which Stan had delivered his confession. Without realising what he was doing, he picked up his stone cold cup of cocoa and started to drink it down in big gulps. He wasn't concentrating on what it tasted like; his mind was far too busy dealing with the position he now found himself in. Stan had opened up his heart and was relying on him to come up with a solution. After serving God for most of his life he'd finally found himself in a position rather like God. Whatever he decided to do, or recommended Stan to do, would change both their lives entirely. Was Stan so guilty of sinning? He was full of regret and was obviously suffering terribly with the enormity of what he'd done. Perhaps there was credence in what Hermione had told him, that places hold their own identities and people's past lives spent within them. This was an enormous responsibility and Arnold felt uncomfortable with it. He didn't think Stan was in need of psychiatric help; he'd been driven to what he'd done by the inhumane way Nancy had treated him. What did the French call it? A crime passionel, he thought. In France, Stan would probably have nothing to fear from the authorities. But here in Wiltshire there would be no such understanding. Arnold decided he was too exhausted to think about it rationally any longer and after he'd washed up his cocoa cup and brushed his teeth he went to bed.