12 At Simmel Acres Farm (1929)

ELEANOR SCOTT

I must explain first that I didn’t know Markham very well. We lived on the same stair at Comyn (I don’t think I’ll give the real name of our college), but he was one of those large, vigorous people who live for Rugger and rowing, and I am no good at games on account of my short sight. I want to lay some stress on my sight, because it may account for other things. I don’t believe it does, but it may. I hope it may.

It happened late in the Hilary term of our second year that Markham got rather badly damaged in a Rugger match. It was some injury to the back, not very serious, but it meant that he had to lie up for some weeks; and as we were of the same year and on the same stair, it also happened that I used to go in and see him a good deal; so when he asked me to come down to the Cotswolds with him for part of the vac I rather jumped at it. I haven’t many friends of my own — I am dull and priggish — and I expect he didn’t want any of his own hefty pals about while he was so badly out of it. So, odd as we were as a pair, we fitted in rather well.

He chose the place — said his family used to come from those parts, and he had a liking for the country. It was a farmhouse, standing alone in wide, prosperous fields. We went there by car, on account of Markham’s back, and I shall never, even now, look back on that evening with anything but pleasure. It was the twentieth of March, I remember, and there was a kind of green bloom on the bare fields and a purple bloom on the bare woods that lay on the hill behind the farm. The house itself was like a dozen others in that country — long and low, built of the yellow Cotswold stone, with a beautifully pitched roof and mullioned windows. The stone barns grouped about it showed the same beauty of perfect proportion. The whole thing was as simple and direct as the country it stood in.

I said something of this to Markham, but he hardly answered. He seemed fidgety and uneasy; I thought he was probably in pain, or overtired with the journey. Anyhow, he only growled, rather shortly, that it was all rot, one farm was like another, and he hoped they’d give us decent meals. But he threw a queer, almost suspicious glance round as he was being helped in. I dismissed it as of no importance.

In the morning he was more cheerful. It was a lovely day, soft as April, with a tender blue sky that showed up the bursting leaf-buds. It was not a day to be in, ill or well; so I consulted Mrs Stokes as to the possibility of getting Markham out. She had a sofa long and broad enough for him, and was perfectly willing that I should take it out; but when I asked her about a suitable spot to establish him in she rather hesitated.

‘Haven’t you a small garden or patch of grass somewhere near the house?’ I asked.

She looked quite troubled and confused.

‘Well, of course,’ she said at last, ‘there’s the plot in there,’ and she jerked her head at a high stone wall with a wooden door in it at one end of the yard; ‘but I don’t think your friend would like it, sir,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Nobody’s been there for years, and it’s likely all choked wi’ nettles and rubbish.’

I was surprised to hear this. The farm was so well-ordered and the fields so clean that it seemed odd that a piece of ground so near the dwelling-house should be neglected.

‘May I look at it?’ I asked: and again I couldn’t help seeing that she went for the key of the door with considerable reluctance.

While she was gone I studied the outside of this yard. It ran on to one end of the farmhouse, as if it had once been the flower-garden of some bygone farmer’s wife; but instead of coming right up to the house wall, a high wall of its own cut it off from the house. This seemed absurd and ridiculously inconvenient, since of course it meant that the rooms on that side of the house could have no windows, whereas they might have looked out pleasantly on to a garden. The high wall ran round three sides of the little plot and at the fourth end, opposite the house, I could see the pointed end of a stone barn.

I’m sorry if I’m tedious, but I must explain this still more. This fourth wall was apparently the end of a ruined barn which had at one time, before the garden was made, run straight on to the house. You could tell this because a bit of the roof remained, projecting over the plot of grass like a penthouse roof. I had never seen traces of a large stone barn built straight on to a farmhouse before, and I was interested. I supposed that rats had made it inconvenient to have a barn on to the house, and that it had been destroyed and a garden made on its floor space; though why later farmers had abandoned the garden I could not imagine — still less why they had erected that wall between the grass plot and the house.

Mrs Stokes returned with the key. She still looked ‘put about’, as country people say, and I apologised for putting her to the trouble of opening the place.

‘Oh, it isn’t any trouble, sir,’ she said, as she fitted the key into the big lock. ‘Only — well, I’ll tell you the truth, sir,’ she burst out suddenly, standing upright and facing me. ‘They do say as this place isn’t — chancy. It’s not the farm, it’s just this one place. That’s why they’ve walled it off. I don’t know nothing myself,’ she added hastily. ‘I come from Dorset myself, and I’ve never heard nor seen a thing. But my husband’s people, they’ve farmed this land for centuries, so they say, and there’s not one of ’em as’ll go anigh this plot.’

‘Is there a story about it?’ I asked. I am very keen on folklore and legends, and thought there might be something here.

‘N — no,’ she answered, rather reluctantly. And then, ‘But if I was you, sir, I’d keep out o’ Simmel Acres Plot.’

‘Well, let’s look at it, anyway,’ I said; and with no more words we opened the door — the lock shrieked dismally, I remember — and went in.

It was by no means as bad as Mrs Stokes had painted it. The grass was long and rank, but the nettles had confined themselves to the shelter of the high stone walls. But the thing that drew my attention was the old gabled end of the barn. It was perhaps sixteen feet high, rounded off in a curiously rough and archaic form of arch. The roof, as I have said, projected in a kind of rugged penthouse, about two feet deep, and about halfway up the wall there was a niche with a stone bust of a man.

It was a very odd piece of work, worn by time and exposure, but quite complete enough for me. The top part of the head was the most disfigured; I could see some kind of fillet or crown, and some clumsy, conventional indications of hair. The blank eye-sockets were rather large, oddly rounded at the corners, and had in consequence an expression of ruthlessness. The nose was too worn to be in any way remarkable; but the mouth had the most subtle expression — at once cynical, suffering, cruel, undaunted and callous. The chin was square, but weak; the neck powerful, in a conventional manner. It was altogether a remarkable thing — almost savage in its clumsiness and crudity, and yet conveying a singular impression of truth to an original.

At first I thought it was a piece of decadent Roman sculpture; then I dismissed that as absurd. How could a Roman bust be in a barn in the Cotswolds? It might have been an eighteenth-century copy, but I didn’t think so; it was too crude, too strong, too — I must use the word again — too archaic. Besides, when the eighteenth century copied Roman busts they were put in little pseudo-classical temples, not in niches in barns.

This was not quite all. Below the bust was a small semi-circular basin, floored with smooth pebbles, through which welled up water so clear as to be almost invisible — exactly like the Holy Wishing Wells one finds occasionally, decorated with pins and rags and other tributes to the presiding deity. But here there were no offerings.

The loveliness of the morning was even more apparent in the little enclosure. The soft sky gained colour from the grey walls, the grass smelt fresh and wet, the water mirrored the tiny white clouds. It was exactly the place for an invalid, I thought, restful, open and quiet. I told Mrs Stokes my decision, and she protested no more. Together we brought the sofa out into the plot; and Markham and I settled down there for the morning.

We had set the sofa against the farmhouse wall, at the end of the little plot away from the old barn-end with its bubbling spring. When he was established I went into the house for some books and notes — I had a lot of work to do that vac — and it was some minutes before I came out again. When I did, I noticed that Markham was not lying, as he should have been, flat on his back; he had rolled over on to his side and was staring with a frowning, puzzled look at the bust above the well.

‘Hullo,’ I said, ‘oughtn’t you to be on your back?’

He paid no attention. Indeed, I don’t think he heard me. He was muttering something, like a man trying to remember a half-forgotten phrase.

‘Damn it all, how did it go?’ he broke out suddenly. ‘Et te simulacrum … Et te … Damn it! What was it?’

‘What was what?’ I asked, putting my books down on the table.

He looked round at me, and his face cleared a little.

‘I — something came into my head — a sentence or something … I can’t remember. I read it once — or heard it — when I was a kid … Some old book that belonged to some bloomin’ ancestor. Dashed if I can remember … Et te simulacrum … Curse it! How did it go?’

‘What about it?’ I asked.

Again he made no answer — just lay, frowning a little and muttering. At last he said, ‘What is it written under that head over there?’

‘Under the bust? Nothing.’

‘There is,’ he insisted. ‘What is it?’

Just to satisfy him I went and looked. He was quite right — there were words there.

‘There is something,’ I said, ‘but I can’t read it. I can only see bits of words here and there — nothing consecutive. Simul, I think that is —‘

‘Simulacrum, et te — requiro …’ muttered Markham.

I was very much surprised — for several reasons. First I was surprised that he should be interested at all; then that he should be quoting, however scrappily, a Latin sentence; and last that he could see that there was an inscription, let alone read the words. Kneeling on the ground before it, I could only just make out the defaced letters; and he was twenty yards away, lying flat.

‘Can you read it right over there?’ I called in astonishment.

‘No — is it written there?’ he cried back, wriggling round eagerly. ‘Read it out, Norton — I can’t remember how it goes.’

‘I can’t make out more than a word or two,’ I said. ‘And I don’t know all the words — must be late Latin, I think. Simul — or perhaps you’re right, simulacrum — something about water — and I think that’s lunae — and — no, I can’t read it.’

Markham seemed dissatisfied.

‘There’s more of it than that,’ he insisted.

‘Yes, there is,’ I agreed, ‘but it’s so worn. But, I say, how did you know what it was? How did you know it was there?’

He looked puzzled.

‘Damned if I know,’ he began. He spoke slowly, like a man groping for words, or for ideas. ‘I just knew … We come from these parts, you know … used to have a big place in the eighteenth century, or something. Rather rips, I believe we were — Hellfire Club and all that tosh …’

He suddenly broke off. He made a quick gesture, like that of a man who remembers. His face cleared and his eyes shone. His lips moved a little as if he had caught the words he had been seeking.

‘Got it?’ I asked. I was rather thrilled; it was, I thought, a very interesting example of an inherited memory — something long forgotten and now recalled by equally forgotten associations.

He made no reply, so I asked again — ‘Remembered it?’

He looked up at me, grinning, and wouldn’t answer. It was a queer look, half ashamed, half malicious, wholly triumphant. Every now and then throughout the morning I caught him moving his lips as if he were repeating something he was anxious not to forget — like an amateur actor learning his part — and there was an odd, excited air about him like that of a small boy with a mischievous secret. He looked as if he were up to something recklessly silly, like an extra mad ‘Cupper’ rag. Of course I knew he couldn’t be really, but I felt uneasy somehow. He’d always had the reputation for such daredevil games, and though he was tied to his couch he might be all the more restless, planning any monkey tricks. And he had a mocking light in his eye that irritated me badly. I know I’m not his type, but open mockery was a bit more than I could stick. I decided I’d leave him to himself in the afternoon and clear out for a good walk on my own.

He seemed quite pleased when I mentioned this. All he said was, just as I looked in to the little enclosure to say I was starting, ‘Right. I say, you might just give me a drink before you go, will you? Some of that spring by the wall there.’

I said I’d go in and get him a drink; the spring looked good enough, but you never know, especially near a farmyard. But that wouldn’t do him at all. He wanted the water from that well and nothing else. And when I said I wouldn’t get it for him, he actually moved as if to get up and get it for himself.

Well, he wasn’t a kid. He knew the risks of drinking the stuff as well as I did; so, still protesting, I scooped up about a spoonful of the water for him.

‘I want to drink the old lad’s health,’ he said, half apologetically, when I handed it to him; and he held the glass up as if he really were drinking a health, and muttered some more nonsense about ‘libatio aquae’. It was too low for me to hear, and anyhow I was fed up with his nonsense. He still had the daring, wild expression I’d noticed in the morning, and he grinned at me in an absolutely impish way. I cleared out, annoyed and just a trifle uneasy.

I enjoyed my walk. Markham had ruffled me, and it was a real relief to be by myself for a bit. We hadn’t anything in common, really. I’m a plodder by nature, and I had no sympathy with his wild outbursts of spirits and the mad enterprises that he alternated with training of a rigorous kind. Even since his illness, when we had seen a good deal of each other, I had never understood him much. I’d been surprised, for instance, to hear him quote Latin simply because I had taken it for granted that he was the ordinary beefy, brainless type; but I realised now that I had not the smallest reason, really, to think so. I knew nothing, quite literally nothing, of his mind. I began thinking of his queer behaviour that morning — his puzzled face, his relief at remembering some half-forgotten tag of dog-Latin seen in an old book, the dancing mockery of his eyes, that absurd business of the ‘libation’. I began to wonder how long our companionship would last, and I thought that probably it would not be very long. There, at least, I was right.

I got in about six, perhaps a little earlier. I know dusk had not yet fallen; but the warmth was gone from the air, and the shadows were chill. I went out to the little grass plot at once to see if Markham had been moved in yet. I thought it might be risky for him after his illness to be lying out so late when April was not yet in.

He was still there, lying flat and rigid under the grey rug on the couch; and the dim colour of the rug and the stillness of his pose gave me quite a shock. He didn’t look alive at all; he looked like a figure carved in grey stone on a tomb. It was the merest momentary impression, but for the instant it seemed to me as if even his face were — fixed. And there was something else about it …

Then he opened his eyes and looked at me with the dazed sort of look a man has when he wakes suddenly — puzzled, rather appealing — you know what I mean, rather childlike somehow. And I suddenly had the oddest sort of guilty feeling, as if I’d been thinking something treacherous — planning some evil to him — I can’t explain, it was all so vague, mixed up with that swiftly-lost impression of his set, still face and figure, like a debased statue on an evil tomb.

We had a door between our rooms in the farm. At first I used to leave it ajar, in case Markham should wake and want some small attention; but that night I closed it. I can’t explain why, for I’d quite lost the irritation I’d felt earlier in the day; instead I had a queer sort of feeling, equally irrational, of pity, almost of grief; and yet I shut the door with a feeling of half-shamed relief such as one feels when one leaves a mourner one can’t help.

I woke quite suddenly. Perhaps it was the big, bright moon, nearly full for Easter, that awakened me; but I had the impression that it was a voice. I sat up and listened. I thought I could hear it again — a voice (or was it two voices?) speaking quick and quiet in the next room.

‘Want anything, Markham?’ I called; and my voice sounded odd — anxious, and a little unsteady.

There was immediate and deathly silence — the kind of silence that follows on a furtive sound. I strained my ears to listen. I remember now how the flood of strong moonlight washed my room, and the look of the queer, sharp shadows that edged it. I could hear my own heart beating in the dead silence.

Nothing — not a whisper, not a rustle. Only that strained, aching, unnatural void, so different from real quiet, that you hear when you listen intently.

I waited a little, more uneasy than I liked to admit. I had, half unconsciously, in my mind the vision of Markham as I had seen him that afternoon, grey and rigid, with a set, altered, familiar, dreadful face …

I twisted my legs round over the edge of my bed. The room had that half-familiar, half-magic look you get in full moonlight — solid and yet ethereal, real and still dreamlike … I felt as if minutes passed in that dead, unnatural silence. It took more effort than I should have imagined possible to break through it.

‘Markham!’ I said again; and, though I pitched my voice low, it sounded horribly loud. It cracked upwards unexpectedly; and I knew then — and not till then — that I was — terrified.

No sound. Only the echo of that breaking, frightened, stranger’s voice that had come from my own dry throat.

I got up and opened the door between our rooms.

The window, uncurtained, let the moonlight stream in. The shadows were massive, hard-edged, like odd shapes cut in a solid substance. I could see the bed, a patchwork of black and white, cut by the shadows of things in the room. One shadow was humped, rounded — I thought it moved, and spun round to see what threw it. There was nothing. When I turned back it had gone. Perhaps it had never been there …

The pillow was, as it were, cut off from the whiteness of the bed by the straight, solid shadow of the curtain hanging beside the window. I could just see dimly in the blackness the blacker blot made by Markham’s head. He lay as motionless as stone …

I stood there in the chequered black and white. I don’t think I thought at all. I just stood there, resisting with all my strength a wave of sheer panic that swept over me. It was as if in that silent room I stood on the verge of something too evil, too fearful, to understand. I could see nothing, hear nothing, but I felt evil, malignant, appalling, in the very air. And then quite silently the curtain at the window waved in some mysterious breath of night air — lifted for a second, and fell as silently. But in that single instant I had seen …

Markham’s head lay as if carved in stone on the pillow; the eyes were blankly lidded, the features altered — something twisted in the roughened hair, like a fillet — he smiled a little, an enigmatic, cruel and anguished smile … Markham, yet not Markham …

I forget what happened. A black wave seemed to engulf me. I heard the rush of it in my ears — I couldn’t breathe for it … Then I was standing in my own room, backing up to the open window, deadly cold, seeing that dreadful face. And then panic seized me — not for myself, but for Markham. What had happened? He was helpless … I must go back — must help him — I couldn’t let It …

If there had been some sound it wouldn’t have been so bad. A groan, a cry for help, even a whisper would have been more — more human. I should have known then that Markham really was there …

I lit a candle. It took me, I knew, a very long time, I fumbled so. But at last I had a warm, friendly light instead of the mocking fantasy of moonlight. I went back.

The room looked just as usual. Markham lay, his brows a little drawn down, his mouth a little open, as if he were puzzled or expostulating — but it was Markham. There was no doubt of that. I felt a warm gush of sheer relief as I saw his familiar face. Oddly enough, I didn’t, even then, feel at all ashamed of my terror. There had been something wrong, something appalling, ghastly, in that room. It was gone now, but it had been there …

I went back to bed, but I did not sleep again. I listened, achingly, for a sound that never came.

I felt oddly embarrassed at the idea of meeting Markham in the morning. It was as if I had unwittingly surprised him in some secret, shameful and intimate. And I noticed that he, too, when we met, seemed unwilling to meet my eye. We were both conscious of something — some bond of knowledge that was at the same time a bar. And I think we both wondered what the other knew.

After a pretence of a meal I tried, feebly enough, to get something out of him.

‘I don’t think you’d better go out to-day,’ I said, looking at him straight.

He changed colour at once.

‘What d’you mean?’ he asked, almost defiantly.

‘I mean,’ I said — carefully, because I wasn’t myself sure of my own meaning — ‘that I think Mrs Stokes is right. That enclosure isn’t — healthy.’

He laughed, rather a mirthless, sneering sound.

‘Too late to think of that now,’ he said; and as our eyes met I saw a difference — his face looked strange, yet familiar, with its cynical, suffering mouth and expressionless eyes.

‘Markham!’ I cried, dropping all pretence. ‘Markham — what is it? What have you done? Can’t we …?’

My voice died away.

He had said nothing. His whole face was set, rigid in that blank, cynical, anguished look. It was as if stricken to stone before my eyes. We sat, the spring sun on us, facing each other in horror and despair.

I said no more. I knew he was right — it was too late to avoid the enclosure, with its well and terrible bust. I stayed with Markham all that day, pretending to read as he lay motionless and silent in the air and sunshine of that haunted plot called Simmel Acre. I was tense the whole time, listening with strained ears, stealing furtive glances now at Markham’s set face, now at the marred bust above the clear water of the spring. But nothing happened, except that once I thought I saw on the grass near the couch a crouching shadow … It was not there when I looked sharply up. I had imagined it, perhaps.

But as evening drew on I felt we could not leave it like that. We must do something.

‘Markham,’ I said, as firmly as I could, ‘I think I’d better sleep in your room to-night.’

He said nothing. He only turned his head a little and looked at me.

‘You were restless last night,’ I said feebly. ‘You might need me.’

‘Restless?’ he half whispered, mockery in his tone.

I remembered that rigid form and terrible set face.

‘You might need me,’ I repeated.

‘No. It’s decent of you, Norton — but — no. I — I’d rather you didn’t — I mean — I’m better alone.’

I don’t know what made me say it.

‘Where did you get the words from?’ I asked.

He stared at me as if he would read my thoughts.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispered; and his whole face was suddenly transfigured with sheer appalling panic. ‘Norton — Norton,’ he babbled, clutching at me, ‘if I knew! If only I knew! I might find others — to undo it — Norton, can’t you think? Where can I find out? What was the book?’

I was immensely relieved. It was far less dreadful put into words.

‘I’ll find out,’ I said boldly. ‘There’ll be books — people must know … I’ll ask old Henderson, he’s always working at these things, rites and old magic and things. He’ll know, Markham, sure to. I’ll go over to Oxford first thing to-morrow …’

‘No! No! To-night, Norton, it must be to-night. The moon’s full to-night. You must, you simply must. You don’t know — I — I can’t …’

He was nearly beside himself.

‘I will,’ I promised. ‘I’ll go now. I’ll be in Oxford before eight. I’ll find Henderson. It’ll be all right, Markham, he’s sure to know. It’ll be all right …’

I shall never forget that mad journey to Oxford. I cycled, as there was no quicker way to go; and it took me two hours, panting up hills, sweating as if I were on an errand of life and death. It was, I knew, even more serious than that … And I had no clue — nothing but that Markham’s family had once been connected with the village — that some ancestor had worshipped with the Hellfire Club … that there had been a book … Would it, could it be the faintest use? Could old Henderson — could anyone, pedant or priest, help us?

It seemed hours and hours before I got into the long roads of conventional houses that lie like a web about Oxford. The clocks were striking nine as I reached Carfax.

Henderson was away. Of course he was, in the vac. I stood stunned as the porter carefully explained it to me — I think he thought I was drunk. I could not take it in. Our last chance! … The porter saw that it was something serious.

‘Something urgent was it, sir?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes,’ I whispered. My lips were almost too dry to speak.

‘Well, sir — seein’ as it’s urgent … Mr ’Enderson ’as a little ’ouse out near Kingston Bagpuize. ’E don’t like visitors there, not in vacation, but seein’ as it’s urgent … It ain’t on the ’phone, but if you’d care to run out …’

I was down the steps before he finished. He shouted the name of the house after me as I raced off. The moon, moving majestically and remorselessly up the sky, filled me with desperation. I should never, never be in time …

I don’t know what I said to Henderson. I thought I should never make him understand. I don’t know why he listened — why he didn’t write me down as mad, or drunk. But, thank God, he didn’t; he made me sit down and drink something — I don’t know what, I couldn’t taste it, and my hands were shaking so that I couldn’t drink without spilling the stuff — while he listened and nodded and consulted old books. He moved with the slowness of a very old man, taking down one book after another, consulting manuscripts, reading passages, while the minutes ticked away and the night crept on … I can see him now, so old and bent, with his careful gestures clear in the steady lamplight, and the smell of old books in the air …

The clocks were striking eleven as we rushed, in a hired car, out of the dim Oxford streets and struck up the glimmering white road to Simmel Acres Farm. I don’t think we said a word. I know I sat with every muscle taut, straining with impatience, wild hope alternating with despair as I watched the moon rise higher and higher in the clear sky. We should never do it!

The moon was almost at the zenith when at last we reached the farm. I could not stand when I got out — old Henderson had to put his hand under my arm to keep me from falling.

I was making for the door, but he stopped me.

‘No,’ he said, ‘the enclosure — the well. We must go there.’

He was muttering to himself, like a man saying prayers, but I knew that he was not praying to any Christian God.

The outer door was shut, but the key was in the lock, and we opened it easily.

The little yard looked quite empty. The royal moonlight flooded the young grass and the trees with leaves just unfolding. Only at the end the penthouse of stone threw a dark, menacing shadow. Beneath it came the tiny tinkle of water in the stone-edged spring. And, half in the shadow, half in the moonlight, I saw Markham lying — Markham, with a white, set face turned up to the moon. And his face was that of the sneering bust above him.