CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Presence

 

 

‘I HAVE SOMETHING new for you,’ said Jordi, dropping to his haunches and pulling out a red leather book from beneath his desk. As usual, the Gaucia library was cool and deserted, but for a stack of rainbow-coloured plastic toys and playbooks where the local children’s group had met. ‘I had a look in the annexe for you and found this. I think it was published by Senor Condemaine’s cousin, the one who inherited your house.’ He slid the slim softcover volume across the desk to me.

I found myself looking at a monograph published by Marcos Condemaine in 1926. It looked as if it had never been opened. Inside were elevations of the house and a small photograph of its telescope system. I could see from just a glance that it wasn’t a telescope at all, just something that roughly conformed to the shape and size of one.

‘Could I take this away with me?’ I asked.

‘Please, be my guest, it’s not even registered in the library index. I don’t think anyone ever got around to filing it. Take it for as long as you wish. Hell, keep it, it probably came from Hyperion House in the first place. You’re the only one it would mean anything to.’

‘I wonder why the cousin inherited.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Elena Condemaine had three children. Surely one of them should have inherited the house when they came of age.’

‘Perhaps they were moved away when their mother was committed.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ I turned to the back section of the monograph. ‘There’s a piece missing, look.’ I held up the folder for him to see. Part of the binding was bare. The pages that had occupied it had either fallen out or had been ripped out. The previous page was headed: The Birth of the Hyperion Society.

‘Jordi, do me a favour and keep an eye out for some pages on the Hyperion Society, would you?’

‘Sure, I’ll have another look,’ Jordi promised. ‘The missing bit’s probably dropped down the back of the shelves.’

I walked through the town square and found Celestia in her usual position, poring over the faded pages of old newspapers with a large red wine beside her on the sun-dappled table, a cigarillo balanced lightly between her fingers. There was a wonderful smelling of frying prawns coming from one of the nearby houses.

‘My dear, you’re almost a stranger these days,’ she complained. ‘Do come and sit. You missed the meeting about arrangements for the fiesta. The ladies were terribly disappointed.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I’ve been busy with the house. It takes up a lot of my time.’

She peered at me suspiciously. ‘Are you quite all right? You look rather worn out today.’

‘I haven’t been sleeping very well.’ I accepted a glass of wine and took a sip. ‘But I’m getting on with things. I went to see Jordi. He’s been finding me documents about the house for my project.’ I showed Celestia the folder. Today the café tables were being served by a chaotic, rather plain young girl called Lola. As she was clearing the next table she peered between our shoulders at the pictures of Hyperion House.

‘Ay, es malo,’ she said, shaking her head with a grimace. ‘You are the one from London, yes?’

‘I come from London, yes,’ I told the waitress, who looked vaguely horrified.

‘London where they all run around going buzz buzz, like bees?’

‘Yes but we live here now,’ I explained. ‘You know this place?’ I showed the waitress a picture of the house.

Lola squinted at the picture – she was supposed to wear glasses but apparently made more tips when she left them off. ‘Si, I know this from my grandmother,’ she said, tapping the picture with a crimson nail. ‘Very bad things there.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake don’t take any notice of her,’ Celestia warned. ‘She thinks there are bad things everywhere. Crossing herself and knocking out the Hail Marys every five minutes, this one. Somebody backed their truck into Maria Gonzales’ shop the other day, bashing a hole right through to the organic jams. Lola was down there in a trice sprinkling holy water all over the place, weren’t you love?’

‘No entiendo,’ said Lola.

‘Yes, she doesn’t entiendo when it suits her,’ said Celestia drily.

‘Why does she think the house is bad?’ I asked, waiting while Celestia translated in loud, terrible Spanish and listened to the answer.

‘She says dead people live there. What she means is that the house is over fifty years old and therefore must be haunted. I’m afraid she’s a bit simple.’ She mouthed this last word at me rather than saying it aloud. ‘Don’t let her bother you.’

‘Maybe she’s right,’ I said without thinking. ‘Several times I’ve gone up to my bedroom and found a small crucifix under my pillow. I put it back on the wall, and a few days later it reappears in the bed. And there have been – events. Things I can’t explain.’

‘Really? How mysterious! Don’t tell me you believe in haunted houses.’

‘No, of course not. But sometimes I’m sure I can feel the presence of the old owners.’

‘I suppose that’s bound to happen a little – after all, you’re living amongst all their old furniture. Can’t you refurbish and make the place your own?’

‘Mateo likes the way it looks,’ I told her, ‘and to be honest I do too. But sometimes I feel as if they’re there in the other part of the house, just beyond the edge of my sight. I see – things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Movement. Shadows – I don’t know. You know how you can sense someone’s presence in a room even when you can’t see them.’

‘For Heaven’s sake don’t tell Maria, she’ll be getting the priests out to exorcise the place.’

I checked my watch. ‘Speaking of which, I have to get back in a minute,’ I said. ‘I got a lift into town with Rosita and her priest. He must think God has higher plans for her, because he picks her up whenever she asks him. She should have finished by now.’

‘Oh, just as it was getting interesting. You are happy up there, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, very much so. It’s a bit cut off, and I do miss the city. I Skype my friends in London and they’re all jealous of me. They complain about the lousy weather and their long working hours and say I’m so lucky. But on some days I wish I could change places with them, just for an hour or so. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘Don’t be silly, you mustn’t let things get on top of you. You really have to learn to drive, you know. Then at least you’ll be able to go down to the coast occasionally.’

‘I know, and I haven’t learned to speak much Spanish, either, but I’ll get around to doing both soon, I promise.’

‘Good, then you’ll be able to drive into Gaucia and keep the ex-pats from sending me mad,’ Celestia said. ‘They come around to my living room to watch the highlights of the cricket, because I’m the only one with an illegal Sky box, but last time, just as everyone sat themselves around the television – poof – the signal vanished. And this one –’ she jerked her thumb back at Lola, ‘– said the Devil had taken the picture away. It turned out that the man who once robbed my house had chosen that particular moment to swipe my satellite dish, so we all got drunk on Manzanilla and Sprite instead. Then I went next door and took it back. He’s a rogue but I do rather love him.’

When I returned to the house, Rosita went off to start preparing the evening menu, and Bobbie went to the atrium with Julieta to write an essay about flowers. Mateo was working in one of the top floor rooms, where he kept the company’s accounts. After every trip he needed to log his expenses and update the order files. Everything in the house was calm and orderly, structured around meal-times and lessons and sunsets, just as it should be. But I had started to feel like an imposter, lying to my husband and pretending all was well when it patently was not.

I skirted the patch of path where I had seen Mateo lying, the shiny black bodies of insects standing out against the amber sand. Heading to the reading room, where I’d left my laptop, I took out Marcos Condemaine’s monograph and studied the telescope system. I managed to find some diagrams online of telescopes made in the same era, and compared them to the photograph. There was no doubt about it; whatever Francesco Condemaine had built in the atrium, it wasn’t a telescope. It looked more like a projection system, or an instrument designed for drawing something down, but there was no precedent that I could think of for such an object.

An idea was forming in my head. It seemed to me that if you put a drawing table underneath the device, you could project and trace whole constellations, but for what purpose?

For some reason I was unable to explain, it felt linked to what I thought I had seen in the servants’ quarters. I needed to go back in there.

A couple of days earlier Rosita had found where I’d hidden the keys and had silently returned them to the cigar box in the kitchen, but I had every right to take them, and did so openly, reminding her that I needed to make plans of the entire house, not just the main part in which we lived. By now I knew which doors the keys opened just by looking at them, and had full access to the other side, but the far back part was still too dark for me to venture into comfortably. I knew that apart from the four main rooms there was another toilet there, and a connecting passage to the servants’ sleeping quarters under the eaves. It was an attic space that could hardly be counted as a room, but I would have to go and measure it if I wanted to provide the book with complete blueprints. I also knew that it involved going through the room where I had seen someone moving. Finally I decided that my curiosity was stronger than my fear, and I’d do it.

My opportunity came the following morning, when Mateo and Bobbie announced that they were going to go with Rosita on a shopping trip to Estepona. She was making monkfish in ground almonds with an onion and saffron sauce, and complained that the grocery store in Gaucia always overcharged her for their spices. I begged off, complaining of a headache. Mateo offered to stay with me, but I insisted he went along with them.

I hated the idea of lying to him, but I needed to understand whether it was me or the house, so that I could fix what was going wrong. What I had was too precious to lose without a fight. As soon as the BMW was out of sight, I walked toward the drawing room with the key to the connecting door pressed hotly in my pocket. It was the perfect time to go into the other side, if I could keep my nerve. I needed to look again, to prove to myself that there was nothing out of the normal, that it was just my mind playing tricks.

Standing before the door, I inserted the key into the lock, turned and pushed. The stripe of sunlight fell across the polished boards, lighting the dustballs that scudded away from my feet. I stepped inside, took a rolled TV guide from my pocket and wedged it under the door so that it couldn’t shut behind me.

Fighting the urge to run away from the penumbral corners of the room, I slowly advanced inside.