Free Dolly by Susan Hill Page A

and that a large car was parked there. Leonora was ahead of me.
    The house felt cold and bleak, and smelled more strongly of dust and emptiness than I had remembered from the previous day. I went inside and called out. At first, there was no reply, but as I went up the stairs, calling again, I heard Leonora’s voice.
    She was in the attics, standing at the window of her old room, looking down.
    ‘How weird,’ she said. ‘It’s smaller and dingier than I remember and it reeks of unhappiness.’
    ‘Not mine,’ I said, ‘I was never unhappy here though I was sometimes bored and sometimes lonely. But I thought you and I had quite a happy time that summer.’
    She shook her head, not so much in disagreement as if she were puzzled.
    ‘Did you understand that nonsense about a doll?’ She spoke dismissively.
    ‘Anyhow, why should I care tuppence about it, whatever she meant? The old woman was obviously demented. But now, I suggest the only thing to be done here is for you to sell the house and divide the money between us. God knows, I wouldn’t want to come back again and I doubt if you do.’
    But I had stopped listening to her. We were in myold attic room now and I had seen the cupboard in the wall again. And I remembered I had first hidden the doll there. I stood transfixed, a small boy lying in the bed and hearing the rustle of the tissue paper. I was looking again inside the white cardboard box and seeing the smashed china head and the blue, sightless yet staring eyes, and feeling sorry for the doll even though, like my cousin, I did not care for it very much. I had been frightened too, for what doll could cry, let alone move so that its tissue covering rustled?
    She had gone back down the stairs and I could hear her snapping up one of the blinds in Aunt Kestrel’s sitting room.
    ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I know where it is.’
    ‘What are you babbling about now?’
    But I was out and down the path to the gate. I called back to her over my shoulder. ‘I’m going to get it for you.’
    I was not in control of myself. I felt pushed on by the urge to find out if I was right, get the doll and give it back to Leonora, as if I could never rest again until I did. It seemed to be the doll that was urging me, demanding to be rescued and returned to its owner,but I knew now that it, or perhaps, the memory of it, had possessed me for all those years. I felt partly that I wanted to be rid of all trace of it, partly responsible because only I knew where it was and could rescue it. I did not pause to consider how sane this all was, or that I was behaving bizarrely, a man in his forties who had never before been under the influence of something I could only fear was other than human.

16
    Edward? Where are you? What in God’s name are you doing?’
    ‘Here. Over here.’
    Dusk was rapidly gathering now, the sky still light on the horizon, but the land darkening. I had reached the churchyard and was clambering over the hassocks of thick grass and the prone gravestones, to reach the low stone wall. I could hear Leonora calling after me and then her footsteps coming down the path but I did not wait. I knew what I must do and she was no longer any part of it. I was acting alone and under the urging of something quite other.
    I found what I thought was the nearest gravestone and then, to my surprise, the patch of soil thatno grass had managed to invade. There were pine needles and a few small fir cones. It was hard and bone dry there and I had nothing with which to dig but my own bare hands. But I knelt down and started to scrabble away at the surface.
    Leonora appeared beside me, breathing hard, as if she had been running, but more out of fear than exertion I knew.
    ‘Edward?’
    ‘I have to do this. I have to do it.’
    ‘Do what? Dig a hole? Find something down there?’
    ‘Both.’ I sat back on my heels. ‘But it’s hopeless; I can make no impression at all. I need a spade.’ And I remembered the feel of the small tin