Now you realize it was more complicated than you had thought. It wasn’t just that Philippa Penhow wanted Joe Serridge. It wasn’t just that she wanted a man, any man. It was also that she was terrified of staying where she was with all the aging women, of growing older and dying at the Rushmere Hotel.
The first time Lydia encountered Marcus Langstone, he had been with his family, but she had only the vaguest recollection of his parents and his older brother. Marcus she remembered very clearly because of what he had done.
She had been five years old, which meant he had been eleven, almost twelve, and his brother practically grown-up. It must have been quite soon after Lord Cassington had taken the lease on Monkshill Park. Lydia remembered how big everything had seemed that first summer, not just the house but the gardens and the park. To a five-year-old, it was a place without limits, more like an entire country than a home.
The Langstones arrived in the afternoon. Lydia did not meet them until teatime. Nurse scrubbed her face and hands and brushed her hair so hard it hurt. She was introduced to the visitors and sat by her mother. Adult conversation crashed and roared above her head. She drank her milk, ate her bread and butter and wanted to escape. She avoided looking at anyone so there was less chance of their noticing her. Once or twice, though, she glanced up and caught Marcus looking at her. He was a tall, handsome boy, with blond hair and regular features. He reminded her of a picture of the young Hereward the Wake which Lydia had seen in the Book of Epic Heroes in the nursery bookcase. She thought him very handsome.
Her mother said to her, “I’m sure Marcus would like to see the gardens and the park. Why don’t you show him round, darling?”
The prospect of being alone with a strange boy filled her with fear. There was nothing to be done about it, however, and a few minutes later the two of them were walking along the path that led from the house toward the monument and the lake. On their right was the high, sun-warmed wall of the kitchen gardens, pierced at intervals by doors. They walked in silence, with Marcus in the lead. At the far end, where the wall ended, there was a belt of trees. Marcus stopped, so suddenly that Lydia almost cannoned into him. Hands on hips, he stared down at her.
“What’s that?”
He nodded at a small shed that leaned against the outer wall of the kitchen garden at right angles to the main path. It was almost completely shrouded in trees.
“I don’t know,” Lydia said.
Marcus thrust his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to find out.”
He swaggered into the trees without looking back to see if she was following. She padded after him, feeling that, as his hostess, she had a duty to look after him. There were nettles here and they reached her bare legs. She ran into a spider’s web hanging from a branch of a tree and screamed. Marcus glanced back.
“Don’t be such a baby,” he said, and carried on.
At the end of the path, the tiled roof of the shed sagged and rippled. It was muddy underfoot, and the air felt damp, which was strange because it was a sunny afternoon. In memory, at least, it seemed to Lydia that the little spinney tucked against the north wall of the kitchen gardens had its own climate, its own atmosphere.
Marcus kicked over a fragment of rotten plank lying across the path. Woodlice scurried frantically. There were gray, slimy things, too. Lydia assumed they were leaves, or roots, or even a special sort of stone. Marcus picked up a twig and prodded one of them. To Lydia’s horror, the shiny object slowly curled itself around the tip of the stick. The thing was alive. Lydia opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out.
“Slugs,” Marcus said, and trod on it. “Do you know what they like to eat?”
She stared wide-eyed at him and shook her head.
“Human flesh,” he whispered. “Children for choice. The younger the better, because they taste nicer.”
Lydia screamed. She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t move. Her mind had no room for anything except a terrifying image of her own naked body covered with those gray, shiny things, browsing on her, nibbling at her, just as the sheep and the Highland cattle browsed and nibbled at the grass of the park. One of the slugs was moving toward her, and another, and soon they would be climbing up her legs and-
Marcus snatched her up, lifting her under the armpits. In an instant she was high in the air and her face was level with his. He held her for a moment at arm’s length.
“They’ll eat me,” she whispered. “The slugs will eat me.”
He stared at her, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Then he hefted her over his shoulder as if she were a sack of potatoes and walked toward the shed. He kicked open the door. Lydia could see down the back of his Norfolk jacket and the line of his long legs to his boots. It was such a long way to the ground. She was safe up here. The slugs couldn’t get her.
Marcus lifted her from his shoulders. She shrieked with joy and fear as her head turned through 180 degrees. He set her down on a broad and dusty shelf fixed to the brick wall at the back of the shed. There was a sieve on one side of her and a pile of flowerpots on the other. In the gloom below, Lydia made out the outlines of the machines the gardeners used for mowing the grass. There were wheelbarrows, too, and rusting machinery whose purpose she did not know.
“Don’t move,” Marcus told her. His face was level with her chest now. “I won’t be a moment.”
She couldn’t have moved even if she had wanted to. She was far too high above the floor. If she jumped off, she knew she’d break every bone in her body, and probably kill herself, and get her dress filthy as well so that Nurse would smack her too.
Marcus returned, his body almost filling the low doorway. He held out his hands to her, the fingers curled into fists.
“Look,” he said gently.
Lydia stared at his big handsome face. He was smiling at her. He turned his hands over and uncurled the fingers. On each palm was a glistening slug. They looked even larger than the others, and they were moving.
“I can feel their mouths,” he said. “I think they’re hungry.”
She began to cry.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.” One by one, he flicked the slugs onto the caked mud floor of the shed. He wiped his palms on his trousers and showed them, pink and empty, to her. “I’m going to make sure you’re all right,” he said as gently as before. “I’ll look after you.”
His kindness made her cry even harder.
“We have to make sure that none of them climbed up you while we weren’t looking.”
At the time, the logic of this had seemed impeccable. She screwed her eyes shut. She felt his hands on her legs. He gripped her knees and held them apart. She whimpered as he pushed up her skirt.
“We have to look very carefully,” he said in a voice that was suddenly hoarse, and almost a whisper. “They like it especially here, you see, that’s where they really like to eat. So we’d better see if they’ve got underneath.”
It was sheer bad luck that Malcolm Fimberry chose that moment to open the door. Lydia was standing on the doorstep, a latchkey in her hand, and in another moment she might have escaped from Marcus. Her husband was standing there, bareheaded in the rain, and he looked all wrong in Bleeding Heart Square, like an elephant at the North Pole or a racehorse pulling a plough. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this situation and he didn’t know what to do.