‘I’m afraid the road is atrocious almost all the way.’
To Griselda this seemed to be true.
After a considerable period of compressed jolting silence, while Griselda tried to think of something to say, Esemplarita took up the conversation. ‘I believe you don’t know Hugo very well?’
‘No. He’s really a friend of a friend of mine.’
‘I know. Your friend gave Hugo a good account of you.’
‘When?’ Griselda’s heart was beating among the beating of the horse’s hooves.
‘Some time ago. As you know, we’re not in touch with her at the moment. But I wanted to speak of something else. You have heard, of course, that Hugo’s life – and the lives of all of us – differ from the lives people lead nowadays?’
‘I was told a little – by the friend we have in common. A very little. I have noticed – some small differences. I know almost nothing.’
‘The Castle is, so to speak, enchanted. Your friend gave Hugo to understand that you might like to know about it; to see for yourself.’
‘She was kind.’
‘The opportunity is mutual. We want suitable people to visit us.’
‘I see.’
‘There are very few suitable people.’
‘Can you define?’
The carriage had plunged across what Griselda took to be a series of deep diagonal ruts frozen to the unyieldingness of stone, before her companion answered ‘It cannot truly be defined. You will soon begin to see. There is only one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Your friend commended you for your acceptance of what life can offer. Your lack of surprise. You understand that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lack of surprise is taken for granted at the Castle. That is what I wanted to say.’
‘I see . . . I love your scent.’
‘Thank you.’ Then she added kindly ‘That is the sort of thing not to be surprised about.’
For some time they compared tastes in books and music. Then the carriage stopped.
‘The Castle gates,’ said Esemplarita.
Griselda could hear the clanking and grinding as the lodge-keeper opened them. Remarks were exchanged in Brythonic between him and the driver. Then the carriage proceeded on a much better surface. Griselda could hear the gates closing behind her.
The distance up the drive seemed very long. Griselda and her companion turned to the subject of edible fungi: how to find and prepare them, and which of them to eschew. Esemplarita explained that she had known nothing of these matters until she came to live at the Castle, but that now they had fungi with almost every meal.
In the end Griselda felt the carriage following a huge arc, as if going round the edge of an immense circus ring. Then it stopped again and the driver was opening the door.
Griselda realized that the Castle was not, as she had supposed, mediaeval, but Gothic revival at the earliest. The long front before her was decked with three tiers of lighted windows. Clearly Sir Hugo was entertaining largely.
When the coachman had rung the ornate bell, the door was opened by a footman. Griselda entered, followed by Esemplarita. The coachman was getting down Griselda’s bag to give to the footman.
The big Gothic revival hall was hung with paintings, and lighted with hundreds, possibly thousands, of candles, in complex candelabra descending from the ceiling, and storied brackets climbing the walls. There was an immense carpet, predominantly dark green: and involved painted furniture. At one end of the hall was a fire which really filled the huge grate and soaked all the air with warmth. Round the fire was a group of men and women. They sat or lay on painted chairs and couches and on the predominantly dark green floor. Griselda thought at first that they were in fancy dress. Then she turned and saw that Esemplarita was dressed like them. She remembered that she must not be surprised.
Instead she smiled. She felt as one returned to life She was relieved of care and accessible to joy.
Esemplarita went round introducing her. Several of the names were known to Griselda. If she was not surprised, neither, it was clear, were they.
Then she heard herself greeted. She stood with her back to the the blaze, a huge portrait of Jeanne de Naples above her head, and saw her host standing at the foot of the wide staircase. He wore a dressing gown in mulberry silk and leaned on the baluster. Behind him stood a figure Griselda recognized. It was Vaisseau.
‘Are you pleased?’
‘It is beautiful.’
‘It is doomed of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘You are smiling.’
‘I am happy.’
The men and women round the fire had kept quite silent during this colloquy. Now a tall woman came to her and said ‘Would you like to change? There’s no need if you’d rather not. But if you’d like to, I could help.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Griselda. ‘I’d like to.’
Envoi
Before many days Griselda found that happiness unfitted her for the modern world; and, though the master of the Castle, as she knew, often travelled, as on occasion did most of the others, decided to give her half of the shop to Lena, who, despite the warmest of invitations, persisted in her attitude that Wales was a waste of oracles and oratorios.
Griselda was happy, though cognizant that sooner or later the spell would be broken by public opinion and Order in Council; but whenever there was mention of Hero and Leander, about whom one of the others was writing a poetic drama, and indeed whenever her thoughts were idle, she knew that if only Louise were there, then indeed would she be whole.
About the Author
Robert Fordyce Aickman was born in 1914 in London. He was married to Edith Ray Gregorson from 1941 to 1957. In 1946 the couple, along with Tom and Angela Rolt, set up the Inland Waterways Association to preserve the canals of Britain. It was in 1951 that Aickman, in collaboration with Elizabeth Jane Howard, published his first ghost stories in a volume entitled We Are for the Dark. Aickman went on to publish seven more volumes of ‘strange stories’ as well as two novels and two volumes of autobiography. He also edited the first eight volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories. He died in February 1981.