The presence
He knew it was following him. He couldn’t see or hear anything but he had a very powerful feeling that it was there, always behind him, following.
It had started at the end of September in the Autumnal woods. He had been out for a walk with Ruly, not far from home, when he first felt a presence. He should have been able to see a shadow or hear some scuffling in the dry leaves but there was nothing. This didn’t make it better, he still knew it was there. What was it? What did it want. Was it going to hurt him? He asked Alice about it when he got home. Had she seen any strangers in the village or heard anyone around the cottage? He had to be careful, he didn’t want to spook Alice, she had enough to deal with already. He just implied that someone in the village had seen a prowler. He was surprised that Ruly hadn’t made a fuss, she was usually the first to detect and intruder or anyone coming to the door a long time before either Alice or himself were aware of anyone. Alice knew nothing.
At first it was only in the woods but, as November approached, it came closer, nearer to home. It watched as he dug in the garden. It was outside the window when he worked in the kitchen. Then it was behind him when he sat at the desk in the study, sorting out the domestic paperwork. Then it followed them up the stairs to their bedroom. There was no sanctuary now, it was everywhere, all around them, suffocating in its all pervading presence. Alice could now feel it as well. They never discussed it but it was always there.
He made a pot of tea and prepared a tray, as Alice preferred it, he was happy with a tea bag in a mug. He took the tray into the small lounge where the fire was crackling in the hearth. It wasn’t really necessary for its heat but it gave a cheerful glow to the room and made it feel cosy, lived in and welcoming, a warm, soft, curved place of refuge from the cold, dark, hard edged world outside. He waited a couple of minutes to allow the tea to brew and then started on their daily tea ceremony. First a dash of semi skim from the Delftware jug, then tea from the pot through a silver strainer and finally a couple of sugar lumps presented to the cups with EPNS tongs – why did it taste better with lump sugar? The teapot , cups and saucers were Burleigh ware, part of a wedding gift from Alice’s parents. A vigorous stir was then required followed by a couple of dings of the apostle spoon on the side of the cup before being clattered into the saucer.
. ‘How was your day?’ he said.
‘It was OK but that idiot Brian messed things up again so that we had to redo the payroll run on the computer. That took an hour and made us late starting on the post so it wasn’t ready when Guy the postman arrived so we had to scurry around to get that finished as its not fair to hold Guy up, even though he doesn’t complain and is always cheerful…’ Alice chattered on with her familiar litany of the day’s minor disasters in the general admin office of the company where she had worked for eleven years. He liked listening to her stories of the daily adventures and the lives of her colleagues, poor Brian always seemed to get most of the blame. He enjoyed this time of day, remaking their relationship daily over a shared pot of tea after being apart, concentrating on their different priorities through the day.
He had lost his job with the same company two years ago when that big export contract had been cancelled. He had worked in production so when there was a quick reduction of ten per cent in the overall work force, he was one of the first to go. His compromise agreement was generous enough to see them through until he could get fixed up with another job, or so he thought at the time, but with the reduction in exports and the downturn at home, jobs became harder to find. He slowly moved into the role of looking after the house and garden, while Alice managed to negotiate a few more hours and they had settled into a comfortable routine which neither of them would now like to change.
He had dug up all of their quarter acre garden and now kept them supplied with most of their vegetable needs during the year. He sold and bartered the surplus in the village. They got by but it was more difficult now without Mr Vincent’s lodging money coming in every month. Mr Vincent, they never called him anything but that, had come to live in their two spare rooms. They had reported his absence to the police when he went missing that day. The detective sergeant asked lots of questions and searched his rooms and his decrepit van, still parked outside the cottage, but nothing came of it. Henry, that was his name, seemed to have no family so there was no pressure on the police to find him. The detective spread the enquiries around the village and the surrounding area but no one had seen him, no one had any information so the case was slowly wound down as others came in and took priority. It was eventually put up on the unsolved, too difficult shelf. He was never found, Vincent van Gone, they called him in the village.
It was about this time that he started digging up the garden, growing the vegetables that soon became the talk of the village and were in great demand, except at the annual flower show where they started scooping up the prizes – to the annoyance of the local experts.
Their tea ceremony was disturbed today by the presence they both felt, intruding into their settled lives. Even Ruly was feeling it now, she kept clicking across to the bay where she put her paws on the window seat cushions for a long stare into the darkness before coming back to her usual place on a soft mat beside Alice’s chair, looking up for a reassuring pat.
Eventually they could pretend no longer, they had to acknowledge the presence. They talked, what could be done?
Perhaps they would have to dig up the ground under the new compost heap again?
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