Free Gethsemane Hall by David Annandale Page B

those are the stories. Go on. What else do you know about the Hall?”
    Corderman jumped in. “Some people believe the spirit of Saint Rose looks out for whoever stays there. More likely, she created a conduit to a higher plane, and that’s what people are experiencing. Either way, it’s the most transcendent residence in Britain.”
    “Is that a fact? My, my, how reassuring.”
    “I don’t understand your sarcasm,” Pertwee said.
    “That’s because you haven’t lived here. You cannot, because we who know it best do not, understand the house.”
    “Maybe you need to be an outsider. How many Parisians visit the Eiffel Tower? I have made a study of such places as Gethsemane Hall, you know.”
    “I don’t doubt it. But if you’d been thorough, then I doubt you’d be here. You would either dismiss the stories you’ve heard as fanciful and not bother with the place, or you would draw the correct conclusions and stay far away.”
    “That makes no sense. All the tales about Gethsemane Hall are positive ones. Except the most recent. That’s why we can’t let it colour the world’s perception of the house.”
    “How reliable are those other stories? No, don’t answer. I’ll tell you. They’re worthless. I have done some research, too, over the years. I wanted to understand this thing that was pulling at me. Do you know, every person who has ever written about what a wonderful oasis of peace and tranquillity and salvation and I don’t know what other rubbish the house is, has never actually resided there?”
    “But Edward Hardsmith’s The Lights of Gethsemane Hall —”
    “A fraud. I have seen the correspondence from the Gray family to their solicitors. Hardsmith was a fabulist. He never visited the Hall.”
    “But the details he gives of the town. Even allowing for the passage of a hundred and fifty years, they’re extremely accurate.”
    “He stayed here. In town. That is far from being a guest of the Grays. The family itself has never spoken of the house, and their tenancy here has not been joyful. Take a good look at the sources that speak glowingly of the Hall. They are all based on hearsay, or on the experiences of those who visited Roseminster and felt the pull.” Bellingham gave her a smile grim with knowledge. “One feels drawn to a place one is convinced is holy. The conclusion one arrives at is obvious.”
    “And what makes it wrong?” Pertwee demanded.
    “Live here for a while, young lady. Not for a week or a month, but a year.” His voice was fading, turning into the dry whispers of old pages rubbed together. “Then you’ll know.” He touched his forehead again and walked away. Pertwee thought he seemed to be leaning against a strong tide.

chapter seven
    the first night home
    It was as if he were chasing the jitters down.
    He spent the day settling in. He went through the house, opening the windows to banish the stale air. He made lists of the supplies he would need to pick up tomorrow. He avoided one room. He killed the evening with the news and a bottle of Chardonnay, but he did not set foot in the room. He did wonder why he was delaying until nightfall. The answer he gave himself was that he was waiting for maximum silliness before he brought out the big guns of rationality. Prove it , he told himself. Fine , he responded. He took his pyjamas out of the master bedroom and tossed them onto the floor in front of the shut door. There , he said. That’s where I’m sleeping tonight .
    And now it was time to sleep. He went to confront the bedroom from his childhood and his dream (he called it that now, downgrading the experience from hallucination, whistling in the dark with semantics). The room was on the first floor, in the northeast corner of the Hall, the most remote of a suite. There were two entrances to it: from the west, through two other rooms; and from the south, through a bedroom that connected to the Old Chapel. During the visits here, his parents had taken the