meal my father was half-drunk, half-enraged; my mother was pale and silent, and Clive Borden (presumably also more than a little drunk) was talking endlessly about his misfortunes. Mrs Stimpson ushered the three of us out into the room next door, our sitting room.
Nicky, for some reason, began to cry. He said he wanted to go home, and when Rosalie and I tried to calm him down he struck out at us, kicking and punching.
We'd seen my father in this sort of mood before.
'I'm frightened,' I said to Rosalie.
'I am too,' she said.
We listened at the double door connecting the two rooms. We heard raised voices, then long silences. My father was pacing about, clicking his shoes impatiently on the polished parquet floor.
There was one part of the house to which we children were never allowed to go. Access to it was by way of an unprepossessing brown-painted door, set into the triangular section of wall beneath the back staircase. This door was invariably locked, and until the day of Clive Borden's visit I never saw anyone in the household, family or servants, go through it.
Rosalie had told me there was a haunted place behind it. She made up horrifying images, some of them described, some of them left vague for me to visualize for myself. She told me of the mutilated victims imprisoned below, of tragic lost souls in search of peace, of clutching hands and claws that lay in wait for our arms and ankles in the darkness a few inches beyond the door, of shifting and rattling and scratching attempts to escape, of muttered plans for horrid vengeance on those of us who lived in the daylight above. Rosalie had three years’ advantage, and she knew what would scare me.
I was constantly frightened as a child. Our house is no place for the nervous. In winter, on still nights, its isolation sets a silence around the walls. You hear small, unexplained noises; animals, birds, frozen in their hidden places, moving suddenly for warmth; trees and leafless shrubs brushing against each other in the wind; noises on the far side of the valley are amplified and distorted by the funnel shape of the valley floor; people from the village walk along the road that runs by the edge of our grounds. At other times, the wind comes down the valley from the north, blustering after its passage across the moors, howling because of the rocks and broken pastures all over the valley floor, whistling through the ornate woodwork around the eaves and shingles of the house. And the whole place is old, filled with memories of other people's lives, scarred with the remains of their deaths. It is no place for an imaginative child.
Indoors, the gloomy corridors and stairwells, the hidden alcoves and recesses, the dark wall-hangings and sombre ancient portraits, all gave a sense of oppressive threat. The rooms in which we lived were brightly lit and filled with modern furniture, but much of our immediate domestic hinterland was a lowering reminder of dead forefathers, ancient tragedies, silent evenings. I learned to hurry through some parts of the house, fixing my stare dead ahead so as not to be distracted by anything from this macabre past that could harm me. The downstairs corridor beside the rear stairs, where the brown-painted door was found, was one such area of the house. Sometimes I would inadvertently see the door moving slightly to and fro in its frame, as if pressure were being applied from behind. It must have been caused by draughts, but if ever I saw that door in motion I invariably imagined some large and silent being, standing behind it, trying it quietly to see if it could at last be opened.
All through my childhood, both before and after the day that Clive Borden came to visit, I passed the door on the far side of the corridor, never looked at it unless I did so by mistake. I never paused to listen for movement behind it. I always hastened past, trying to ignore it out of my life.
The three of us, Rosalie, myself and the Borden boy Nicky, had been made to wait in the sitting room, next to the dining room where the adults still conducted their incomprehensible conflict. Both of these rooms led out into the corridor where the brown door was situated.
Voices were raised again. Someone passed the connecting door. I heard my mother's voice and she sounded upset.
Then Stimpson walked briskly across the sitting room and slipped through the connecting door into the dining room. He opened and closed it deftly, but we had a glimpse of the three adults beyond; they were still in their positions at the table, but were standing. I briefly saw my mother's face, and it seemed distorted by grief and anger. The door closed quickly before we could follow Stimpson into the room, and he must have taken up position on the other side, to prevent us pushing through.
We heard my father speaking, issuing an order. That tone of voice always meant trouble would follow. Clive Borden said something, and my father replied angrily, in a sufficiently loud voice for us to hear every word.
'You will, Mr Borden!' he said, and in his agitation his voice broke briefly into falsetto. 'Now you will! You damned well will!'
We heard the dining-room door to the corridor being opened. Borden said something again, still indistinctly.
Then Rosalie whispered against my ear, 'I think Daddy is going to
We both sucked in our breath, and I clung to Rosalie in panic. Nicky, infected with our fear, let out a wail. I too started making a yowling noise so that I could not hear what the adults were doing.
Rosalie hissed at me, '
'I don't want the door opened!' I cried.
Then, tall and sudden, Clive Borden burst into the sitting room from the corridor and found the three of us cowering there. How our little scene must have seemed to him I cannot imagine, but somehow he too had become tainted with the terror that the door symbolized. He stepped forward and down, bracing himself on a bended knee, then scooped Nicky into his arms.
I heard him mutter something to the boy, but it was not a reassuring sound. I was too wrapped up in my own fears to pay attention. It could have been anything. Behind him, across the corridor, beneath the stairs, I saw the open rectangle where the brown door had been. A light was on in the area behind and I could see two steps leading down, then a half-turn with more steps below.
I watched Nicky as he was carried out of the room. His father was holding him high, so that he could wrap his arms around his father's neck, facing back. His father reached up and placed a protective hand on the boy's head as he ducked through the doorway and went down the steps.
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Rosalie and I had been left alone, and we were faced with a choice of terrors. One was to remain alone in the familiar surroundings of our living room, the other was to follow the adults down the steps. I was holding on to my older sister, both of my arms wrapped around her leg. There was no sign of Mrs Stimpson.
'Are you going with them?' Rosalie said.
'No! You go! You look and tell me what they're doing!'
'I'm going up to the nursery,' she said.
'Don't leave me!' I cried. 'I don't want to be here on my own. Don't go!'
'You can come with me.'
'No. What are they going to do to Nicky?'
But Rosalie was extricating herself from me, slapping her hand roughly against my shoulder and pushing me away from her. Her face had gone white, and her eyes were half-closed. She was shaking.
'You can do what you like!' she said, and although I tried to grab hold of her again she eluded me and ran out of the room. She went along the dreaded corridor, past the open doorway, then turned on the stone flags at the bottom of the staircase and rushed upstairs. At the time I thought she was being contemptuous of my fear, but from an adult perspective I suspect she had frightened herself more than me.
Whatever the reason I found myself truly alone, but because Rosalie had forced it on me the next decision was easier. A sense of calm swept over me, paralysing my imagination. It was only another form of fear, but it enabled me to move. I knew I could not stay alone where I was, and I knew I did not have the strength to follow Rosalie up those distant stairs. There remained only one place to go. I crossed the short distance to the open brown door and looked down the steps.
There were two lightbulbs in the ceiling illuminating the way down, but at the bottom, where there was another doorway leading to the side, much brighter light was spilling across the steps. The staircase looked bare
