The Dark and What It Said Read online

  They made port the next day.

  When Barrinji was dry-docked and pumped out, a body was exhumed from the forward compartments. Lieutenant Dixson was not surprised to hear that it was the body of his lanky, thin-face acquaintance from training. He didn’t ask if it’d been found grasping a hammer or some such. He didn’t want to know.

  In fact he didn’t want to know anything more about Barrinji, glad he was to be shot of her. Yet it was as if the ugly little ship held him in some horrible fascination, because he soon found himself following her fortunes, sometimes through official reports and signals, sometimes through wardroom talk with visiting officers from other ships. From these sources Dixson pieced together a picture of a vessel possessed of extraordinary luck and regarded with a vague uneasiness by all who served in her.

  There was the story of the submarine torpedo which ran beneath Barrinji and hit the coastal freighter she’d been escorting.

  There was the story of the crewman who was constantly taking photographs of Barrinji’s wake.

  There was the story of the re-fitting dock gang who refused to work aboard Barrinji after dark.

  There was the story of the native islanders who, when Barrinji anchored in their bay, were reluctant to paddle out to sell their fresh fruit the way they did with other visiting warships. “She sings and weeps much sad,” they said.

  Despite the odds and hazards, Barrinji steamed through the war, convoying, sweeping, patrolling in some of the most dangerous forward areas, always returning untouched by the enemy while others around her died.

  ***

  On a cold, rainy day in 1961, Captain Dixson, now retired, saw Barrinji for the last time. She was partly dismantled and tethered to a buoy in a harbour backwater, waiting to be towed to the breaker’s yard. Dixson stood on the shore beneath the trees and looked at her a long time.

  Her mast was gone, as was the searchlight platform, the anti-aircraft guns, the depth charge throwers, the clutter of gear on the quarterdeck. Many of the bridge windows were broken, setting him to wonder on what her interior looked like now. And what were those men doing assembling on her foredeck? Some of them, half naked, looked like seamen and some of them wore officers’ caps and all of them were transparent.

  In front of them, by the cable winch, stood the lanky, thin-face lieutenant dressed in tropical kit. He was glaring forward with his hands clenched to fists at his sides.

  The rain increased a moment, misting the ship from view. When he could see her again Dixson also looked towards the bows.

  The woman was ugly. Very ugly. A hag with scraggly, stringy hair, hands like vulture claws, a face in profile which made Dixson glad he could not see it at close quarters. Her single grey covering was ragged and spotted with red. She stood at the very stem, braced against the jack-staff, staring back at the men like a cornered animal. And though there was nothing Dixson could hear save for the beat of the rain in the water, he could see she was screaming. Screaming like the damned.

  The Outsider

  When the Earl of Woodthorpe cut down a gum tree in his Manor grounds and air-freighted it out to Australia, most people assumed his mind had thrown a rod. I knew otherwise.

  I'd always thought of doing the rounds of the haunts of England, so when the Antarctic winds of June hit town I decided to do more than just think about it. Stowing my bike in cold storage I packed a few necessities like The Gazetteer of British Ghosts, Poltergeists Over England, Haunted Britain and such like items -- along with a few clothes -- before grabbing the first big silver bird heading north into Summer.

  I landed on my feet in London by finding a rent-a-bike place that had me powering up the A 40 motorway toward Buckinghamshire on a 750 Norton that afternoon. Over the following week I toured sites of supernatural interest: hotels, cottages, stately homes, wishing wells. My camera clicked like a mad cicada, though never once getting a phantom in the view finder.

  Undeterred, I continued my tour, and somewhere between Devon and Dorset I ran into the Earl of Woodthorpe -- at about 90 kilometres per hour.

  It was seven o'clock on a straight road. The sun was low in the west, and suddenly there was this long, silver car pulling out from a gateway to my right. No time for brakes, to throttle back, to even have an articulate thought. The car's bumper smacked my front wheel. The world twisted into a blur as the Norton and I went sprawling.

  Shock's a crazy place.

  Somewhere in its shattered time sense a middle aged woman said, "I'll fetch a blanket,” as I lay bundled on a couch, shivering. “I...I swear, I didn't see him, My Lord," said a younger man's voice as I lay face down on the road

  The smell of leather upholstery.

  The sound of tyres.

  The feeling of movement.

  And somewhere in all of this the woman kept fluttering about, sounding apologetic, feeding me broth.

  "Best call Dr Rutherford, Mrs Winton," said a tall bloke with an aristocratic look.

  “No, just let me rest,” I heard myself say. Nothing was broken or missing; and I hate fuss, especially when I'm dying, or think I am.

  I remembered being partly ushered, partly led, partly helped along corridors lined with paintings, and up an oak staircase as a clock somewhere chimed the hour.

  ***

  I woke up in a bed the likes of which I'd only seen in period costume movies. The room, with its panelled walls, ornate ceiling and heavy furniture of another time, had a beautiful view over the morning. Whoever owned this place had a backyard that wouldn't stop. It was all lawns and trees and hedgerows, stone outbuildings, ponds, paths, hillocks and dips.

  A knock on the door. A voice I'd heard before said, "Breakfast, Mr Pine."

  Having already dressed, I opened the door to allow the broth pusher of the night before -- Mrs Winton -- to enter with a clatter of cup, saucer and tray, and with the welcome smell of bacon and eggs.

  "Good morning," I said.

  "Good morning, sir. How have you mended?"

  "I'll survive. Look, er... sorry if I asked this last night, but, ah, exactly where am I?"

  "Woodthorpe Manor, sir. The country estate of the Seventeenth Earl of Woodthorpe." She placed the tray on the table by the window with practised neatness. "I hope you like orange juice.

  “Yes. Thank you. Is His Earlship about at the moment?"

  "His Lordship," Mrs Winton replied without emphasis, "left for the Continent last night. He asked me to pass on his most sincere apologies -- once again -- and to assure you that all expenses in respect of your motorcycle will be met."

  I fumbled a chair out from the window table, feeling awkward under her eyes. "Where's the bike now?"

  "Keenen, the head gardener, has taken it to the village garage: Scudamore's. They'll have it mended in a couple of days, sir." She hesitated, then added. "Until then you may stay here as His Lordship's guest."

  I was going to say "That's nice of him," but instead I said, "Are my bags here?"

  "Still downstairs, sir. I'm afraid the one containing your books burst in the accident."

  "Hey?"

  "Nothing to worry about, sir. Duncan, His Lordship's chauffeur, picked them all up.

  "Good old Duncan," I muttered.

  I started in on my eggs, but barely had the yoke running when I felt her eyes again. I looked up and Mrs Winton cleared her throat.

  "Pardon me for asking, sir, but are you Australian?"

  "Guilty. What gave me away? My accent or the jars of Vegemite in my other bag?"

  Mrs Winton said nothing, only stood there as if wanting to say more but not knowing how to start. I already felt out of place here, and this wasn't helping. I tapped the cosy on the teapot. "Sit down and pour yourself a cuppa. I won't tell His Earlship."

  I was half surprised when she did take the seat opposite, and totally surprised when she said, "Are you a psychical researcher?"

  I stared at her for a good five seconds, then remembered she'd seen my books. "Well, I have done what I like to call 'ghost hunting'
in the past, but...”

  "Is that why you've come to England?"

  She said it as if I'd come to extradite some fugitive antipodean apparition. I said, "Not exactly. I'm just doing the spooky tour of England, the places I've only read about: Borley, Cloud's Hill, Raynham Hall, 50 Berkeley Square. You know, places like that. I am interested in the supernatural, but... no, no more ghost hunting. I've found out the hard way that the occult is too unpleasant at close quarters."

  "But it must be a real experience to hunt a ghost."

  "It is. That is if that's what you call trying to shove a cranky water elemental into a crystal geode, or facing up to a demon with all your runes round the wrong way, or nearly being strangled by a book illustration. No, no more ghost hunting for me, Mrs Winton. Not even if you threatened me with money. From now on I'm strictly a tourist."

  "Oh "

  "You sound disappointed. Do you have a ghost in the house?" I got ready to run in case she said yes.

  "There are no ghosts under His Lordship's roof, sir, and that's the plain and simple truth. It may make us look a bit out of step, what with every Manor and Lodge hereabouts sporting a haunted bedroom or a ghost's gallery, some of which I dare say are trumped up for the tourist pound. Not that I'm a scoffer, sir. I've been in service since I was a lass, and know a lot more than most about the quality homes; and I can tell you, sir, that some of the best have things walking in them that aren't right things, if you follow my meaning. Now, if you'll excuse me, sir, I best be about my duties. Even with the family away there's still a lot to be done."

  Mrs Winton left me then to my own memories of things that walked that weren't right things. It really spoilt my breakfast.

  ***

  I got lost trying to find the front door.

  There was a North Wing and a South Wing, an East Front and a West Front. There were wide corridors of thick carpet and polished oak panelling, and a long gallery of ancestral portraits that glared after me as I tiptoed past.

  Once through the massive columns of the East Front I struck out on the first path I found, letting it take me where it would.

  At first it wound its way through the trees scattered about the south-east lawn, at one point passing a scraggly palm looking decidedly unimpressed by the English climate. On the side of a hillock was a square of trees that looked very familiar. I'm no treeologist, but these looked like fair dinkum Australian gums -- the smooth, light grey/dark grey-spotted bark, the eucalyptus tang of the leaves, the little plaque saying 'Australian Gum'.

  The path sloped, then forked further along. The left hand path led me to a lawn surrounding a marble structure I could only think of as a summer house with delusions of grandeur: open-sided, circular and gleaming white, its steps splaying out from three openings in its half walls, mock-Grecian columns, scrolled and fluted, supporting a domed roof.

  Chiselled over one of the openings was THE SECOND PAVILION, below that ANNO DOMINI 1827. There were stone seats running along the inside wall and a circular slab raised at its centre. Nothing I didn't expect... except, there was this arrow scratched into the stonework between two of the columns. It was pointing to nothing but the tops of distant trees somewhere in the lower part of the grounds. I started walking in that direction. I had no idea what I might be walking to, but it gave me time to think.

  Here I was in the proverbial English country garden. To my left were outbuildings I took to be stables or garages, and the glittering glass of a greenhouse where the Earl probably grew his prize winning marrows. To my right were ponds and grass and trees, what amounted to a private wood. Private. The word made me pause, to wonder, not exactly for the first time -- What was I doing here?

  Of course the Earl felt responsible for the accident and all, but...

  I put myself in his place. A grand, ancient home crammed with paintings, silverware, jewellery, antiques, history; and into this he allows not only a stranger but a 'colonial' of dubious social standing. Wouldn't it have been safer, as far as the Earl was concerned, to simply put me up at the nearest hotel until the bike was fixed?

  Something wasn't quite kosher here. In fact the more I thought on it the more that uncomfortable out-of-place feeling increased.

  ***

  It was a maze.

  I somehow knew this even before I reached the ivy-crept stone wall. Possibly it was the wrought iron gate and the roofless walls I could see beyond it. The gate looked like it hadn't been opened in years, and in fact there were rust marks showing it'd been chained shut until very recently. But when I pushed the gate it opened with a shiver and a screech, so I edged in.

  The walls were all weather stained and mossy, in some places even cracked and pitted. It was cold. Quiet, too. So quiet that I found myself stepping softly to lessen the echo of my footsteps in the stone paved alleys.

  Every now and then I stopped to scrape dirt into piles against the walls as markers. The alley I followed had began to fork and twist fantastically, and the prospect of getting lost had become real, perhaps even dangerous.

  Sometimes the path crossed another, making me wonder if I wasn't going round and round and round. Further in the alleys widened occasionally into little gardens, all dead from long neglect, oblongs of dust and empty flower beds. And every time I found one I found more of the same coldness and a sense of sadness that the sun, sitting on the east-facing walls, couldn't burn away. All I could see of the world was the sky holding one small cloud. It was just enough to show me that I was spiralling in towards the centre. So I pushed on, now noticing a slight downwardness as I passed other oblong boxes of once-was gardens and the craters of dry pools with dry ruts leading in and out.

  Small statues stood guard at random places, and there was even the occasional stone bench. It was while passing one of these that I thought I heard slow footsteps in the next alley. I stood up on the bench, but the wall was still too high. So I yelled, "Hello! Is anybody there?" For a long time I listened for an answer, hearing nothing, yet sure there was someone or something behind that wall. The silence grew, and I was wishing now I hadn't called out. Then a wind leapt up with an almost human cry, stinging my face and hands with dirt. Something winked across the sun and was gone, leaving silence again, and an odd impression of dry heat and vast distances that passed just as quickly as it'd come.

  The alley was still, and for a long time I sat on the bench, wondering if it mightn't be wiser to search my way out. No, I'd come too far to turn back just because a bird had startled me. And the wind? A freak gust. So I told myself, and so I continued on.

  ***

  The alleys were still cold but had less shadow in them by the time I saw tree tops looming over the walls ahead. Not long after that I hit a path running beside a curving wall that these trees grew behind. I guessed they were the trees I'd seen from "The Second Pavilion". But this curving wall, this inner circle was beyond guessing. Following it round I came to a gate.

  This was not like the one at the entrance. This inner gate was big, solid and sported a padlock perhaps a century old or more. It was as good as any Keep Out sign. Above the gate was a piece of stonework that had the look of being tacked on as an afterthought. On it was carved Retine Quod Aqua Coercetur.

  It was all Greek to me, or rather Latin, though the third word was obviously water. I noted them down on a parking ticket I'd got in Oxfordshire, then set off following the rest of the wall. It took me a few minutes to get back to the gate. I'd found only that one gate in my circuit of the wall, though at one point I thought I heard something like tinkling bells coming from somewhere inside the circle.

  By now I was beginning to feel hungry and more than a little thirsty. Great Britain isn't known for its deaths by dehydration, so, not wanting to start a trend, I tried to recall the paths that had led me in.

  There was no pattern to the maze, no every-third-gap-on-the-left-continues-the-path sort of thing. I just had to do my best in following memory and my little markers of heaped up dirt. Between them I wound up in more dea
d ends than there are in any two cemeteries. But I persevered, and what with finding dirty marks that I hoped were my earlier footprints, I eventually worked my way out.

  ***

  There was a small truck in the drive by the steps of the East Front. There was an oil stain and a piece of mirror among the plant cuttings and soil in its tray. Keenen the gardener, I presumed, had returned from taking the Norton to the garage.

  I slunk in through the great marble columns, half expecting to be turfed out by some snotty-nosed butler. I was coming down bad with doses of class consciousness and culture shock, an easy frame of mind to fall into with these imposing surroundings. So, gathering all my nerve, I pushed open the door and strode in as if I owned the place. Truth to tell, I felt less like "Lord Ernie" than "Ernie Pine, lower class interloper," and I couldn't help looking around to make sure no one saw me.

  There was no one in sight, but muffled voices, raised as if in argument, were coming from behind the grand staircase.

  A grey-haired man wearing a bib-and-brace stood in the doorway of what I supposed was the housekeeper's under-the-stairs office. He was almost back to me, and as I approached I recognized Mrs Winton's voice coming from within.

  "But he's a gift."

  "But he ain't black," said the man. "And any road, if His Lordship --"

  "Who ain't black?" I asked.

  The man turned sharply, and for several seconds just stared at me as though I'd committed some unforgivable social blunder. Mrs Winton leaned out through the door and smiled.

  "Mr Pine, we were beginning to wonder if you'd lost yourself in the maze. You wouldn't be the first."

  "Aye, not the first," echoed the old man, looking away. I muttered something about it being formidable, though there were other adjectives that came to mind more readily -- weird, for instance. I was introduced to the grey-haired man, the Manor's head gardener, Keenen ("Keenen, sir, just Keenen") .