These two aspects had fallen unexpectedly into harmony over the past few years, during the Great War; all Europe might have been in roiling, smoking turmoil, but Violet had been curiously at peace.
Not that she was any great pacifist. She'd have quite liked to have been at the Front. To be tested. But the only women's work there was nursing, and she was the first to admit she didn't have the patience for it. Not then.
But staying at home had been a revelation. Elements of what she was had come together in an unexpected way. Serving in the women's land army, raising the crops, feeding the troops: fulfilment in a healthy, practical way, but also wonderfully symbolic. With all the young, strong men away in the forces, England – the essential England, of holy hills and fertile meadows – was at last in the care of women. The girls of the land army had taken on the traditional role of Mother Goddess.
It had changed her. She still found Freud stimulating and exciting and the logic of his methodology unassailable, as far as it went. But there were areas of experience which psychoanalysis could not unveil. And she had lifted up the hem of the curtain and seen wonders.
However, to become truly initiated into the Mysteries, one needed the guidance of human beings who had been there before. And some of them could be… well, pretty unsavoury types in other respects. The sacred quest for enlightenment, it appeared, would often bring out the very worst in people.
One had to go jolly carefully, keeping one's eyes open and, quite frankly, one's legs together.
'Go on then… hold it.'
Vapour is rising from a small candle on the block of stone between them.
'No… please… this is not right!'
'You're wrong. It's absolutely right. Now. For me. For us, Violet…'
It lies in a black cloth between his hands.
'Grasp it.'
'No!'
'Clasp it to your breast.' He extends his arms, the cloth and what lies in it.
'Please… Its black, it's evil… I don't… She's starting to sob.
'But it's what you want, my dear. It's what you've always wanted. This is 1919 and you're a free and enlightened woman… a trained psychoanalyst. Primitive superstition can't touch you now.' Standing between her and the way out, he adds lazily, 'And take off your clothes, why don't you?'
And so Violet was in a fairly hellish state when she flung her soiled body on the bed, making its springs howl. In retrospect she might have been better off rampaging through the grounds, taking it out on the last of the weeds.
The bed had a light green eiderdown, and the wallpaper was salmon pink. Colours of summer. A pleasant room on a sullen autumn afternoon. But it didn't calm her down today. The effects of such abuse did not just quietly fade.
There was an essential conflict here. One could adopt the Christian attitude, turn the other cheek and walk away: very well, I tried to help you… I counselled you, taught you how to control your nightmares from the War… and you took advantage of me. Nevertheless, not my place to be judgemental. As a psychologist.
Ha. Hardly good enough was it? Violet sighed, lay back and let her eyelids fall. The pillows were soft and cool. The back of her head felt heavy, like a bag of potatoes. She let her arms flop by her sides. The anger, still burning somewhere below her abdomen, was at odds, though not uncomfortably so, with the supine state of her body. She was, surprisingly, reaching a state of relaxation. But then, she was getting rather good at that.
Of course…
Violet smiled.
…one could simply allow oneself to go absolutely and utterly berserk.
She began a simple visualisation, letting loose her thoughts, to roam the wildest of terrain, those places of high cliffs and crashing waves, black and writhing trees against a thundery sky. As her body lay on its bed, on a sallow, sunless afternoon in the mellow, autumnal Vale of Avalon, her thoughts stalked the wintry wasteland of cruel Northern myths. In search of a suitably savage instrument of revenge. Oh yes.
She was starting to enjoy her anger and felt no guilt about this. Daylight dripped on to her eyelids like syrup. And in the cushiony hinterland of sleep, in those moments when the senses mingle and then dissolve, when fragments of whispered words are sometimes heard and strange responses sought- Violet's rage fermented pleasurably into the darkest of wines.
'Good dog.'
Its fur was harsh as a new hairbrush. It brushed her left arm, raising goose bumps
It lay there quite still, as relaxed as Violet had been, but with a kind of' coiled and eager tension about it. She could feel it's back alongside her, its spine against her cotton shift. It was lean, but it was heavy. And it was beginning to breathe.
She didn't really question its presence at first. It was simply there. She raised her left hand to pat it. Then the hand suddenly seized up.
So cold.
And Violet was aware that the room had gone dark.
Not dark as if she'd simply fallen asleep and the afternoon had slid away into evening. Dark as in a draining of the light, of the life-force vibrating behind colours. The most horribly negative kind of darkness.
She opened her eyes fully. It made no difference. The wallpaper was a deepening grey and the fogged light inside the window frame thick and stodgy, like a rubber mat. The eiderdown beneath her was as hard and ungiving as a cobbled street.
The fear had come upon her slowly and was all the worse for that. It chilled her insides like a cold-water enema. A rank odour soured the room. The air seemed noxious with evil, almost-visible specks of it above her like a cloud of black midges.
Drawing a breath made her body lurch against the creature lying motionless beside her in the gloom.
And motionless it stayed, for a moment.
Violet knew what she had to do. She lay as still as she could, gathering breath and her nerve.
Then she put out her left hand. Out and down. Until her fingers found the eiderdown, hard as worn stone. There was an almost liquid frigidity around her hand, over the wrist, almost to the elbow, like frogspawn in a half- frozen pond.
It was very hard to turn her head, as though her neck was in a vice, everything she held holy crying out to her not to look.
But look she did. She managed to turn her head just an inch, enough to focus on her left shoulder and follow her arm down and down to where the wrist… vanished.
Somewhere through the greyness she could detect a dim image of her fingers on the eiderdown, while the beast's gaseous body swirled around the flesh of her arm.
As Violet began to pant with fear, it turned its grey head, and the only white light in the room was in its long, predator's teeth and the only colour in the room was the still, cold yellow of its eyes.
I am yours.
Part One
There is such magic in the first glimpse of that strange hill that none who have the eye of vision can look upon it unmoved.
