Judith shivered, imagining herself shut away from the world, summer and winter, in a self-imposed incarceration in this lonely valley.
Only once, and that on first reaching it, did she duck her head and venture into the dank interior. There had presumably never been a doorway as such, but through the centuries some stones had collapsed and left an opening with a precarious lintel of two heavier blocks mortared together. The floor was covered with rubble, dried leaves, and lumps of fallen stone.
Judith was glad to escape into the open air; glad to walk with David along the sweeter-smelling rides through the woods and out over expanses of parkland. One afternoon they saw Sir Mortimer in the distance and waved, but he affected not to notice and cantered away beyond the trees. Freed from the necessity of playing the host, he was now going about his own business with as casual an attitude towards his daughter-in-law as towards his wife.
Lady Brobury’s narrow face was wrenched by disdain every time he set out; and when he returned she would often stand close to him, like some suspicious teetotaller trying to smell a husband’s breath, and then turn away without a word. But they did not quarrel, any more than they showed warmth or shared a joke, an intimate memory, or affectionate smile. Nothing Lady Brobury said struck Sir Mortimer as worthy of notice. He interrupted her when he had something of his own to say; and when she chattered more swiftly as if at all costs to seize his attention, he blandly ignored her.
Perhaps indifference was the normal, even preferable state after years of marriage?
Judith refused to believe it. She was too much in love with her husband: more, much more in love than before they were wed.
Yet, ready as she was to share David’s pleasure in Ladygrove, there were certain constraints beginning to trouble her in the house, in their bedroom.
Those first nights after their wedding had been a breathtaking revelation. When he had courted her, her body had ached for his, but she had not fully understood the ache or its assuagement. At the instant of pain and ecstasy when his flesh first entered hers, she laughed first at the shock of it—laughed so that she would not have to cry—and then with exultation. When it was over she sank into a smug melancholy, sorrowing for women who were afraid, women who could not love, women who would never allow themselves to know this. And later, as the warmth came again and became raging heat again, she laughed again and did not care whether it was seemly or unseemly that she should let her husband know the intensity of her delight.
In Ladygrove, in the still of the rural night, it was different. Her candid passion froze. Because his parents were under the same roof, perhaps awake, perhaps talking about them? It was absurd. Yet for Judith there was, under this roof, something out of true: out of tune. When David’s left arm crept round her shoulders and his right hand moved over her, she stiffened. His hand slowed, hesitated.
‘What is it, my love?’
‘Nothing.’ she said. And because she loved him, she made herself respond in a pretence that lovingly became almost real—real enough for him to be lovingly deceived.
But she was glad they did not have to live here permanently.
They came again; and again; rode to the village and rode over the hill to another village, on the railway line, and along the river valley and through the Brobury woods and pastures.
They came for Christmas.
It was bitterly cold and there had been snow a fortnight before, but now it had gone and there was a bleak stillness over the countryside. Log fires burned in the hall and dining room of Ladygrove Manor; the carter brought a fresh consignment of coal from the station; breath puffed in feathery gasps as David and Judith returned from a brisk walk to the invitation of firelight flickering through the tall windows of the terrace.
Two nights after Christmas, warmed with wine and the desire in his gaze across the room, she lured him to bed early and drew him on her, wordless but wanton, so that he and not she was the one who cried out, and she clutched him and abandoned herself to him and what he was planting in her.
For she was suddenly, senselessly, utterly sure that on this night she must have conceived.
He slept. She turned over three or four times, tucking her chin under the sheet and blankets, feeling the cold on the tip of her nose, then burying her head, choking, and pulling herself out again. When at last she was comfortable, she was barely asleep, and did not really believe herself to be asleep when the dream began.
She was walking towards the maze as she had done several times before. For some reason there was a darkness of shifting mist all about the grove, but the maze itself shone out as green and clear as ever in that inner glade. She went through the entrance as confidently as ever.
Then she was halted. The way ahead was barred by a hedge, which she did not remember. It could not have been there before. Turning to the left, she was confronted by another barrier. To the right stretched a short avenue whose farther end must turn along another path, though she had no recollection of it. She took three steps along the avenue, and found another opening on her left: another cul-de-sac. At its end sat a carved stone statue, which she was positive had not been there on previous visits.
She ought to turn back and find her way out of the maze, back to the house and back to bed.
One part of Judith’s mind told her she was already in bed. She must force herself to wake up and break the dream. She pushed her arms outwards so that her fingers could brush against the smoothness of the sheet, and so that on one side she could touch David’s hunched, warm hip.
Both hands scraped through leaves and twigs in the hedges to either side.
The statue was as high as the hedge: a swollen woman of stone with a tiny head but vast, pendulous breasts, hips thrusting grossly out, and between the legs a voluptuously wide gash. The face was expressionless, with blind slits for eyes and a thin slit of a mouth.
All at once she knew, without daring to look, that other faces were leering out of the yew to left and right, grimacing and urging her forward.
And the stone statue ahead was no longer stone. The lips parted plump and slack. A stunted arm reached out for her, its solid hand opening into greedy claws. The heavy breasts swayed.
‘What do you want?’ Judith had to shout repudiation into the nightmare. But always in nightmare it is impossible to speak. ‘Why me—what do you want from me?’ She heard the strangled plea in her own head, but the creature neither heard nor understood. Instead, it slid from its slimy plinth and lurched to meet her. The claw would tear into her, tear life from her, squash it into that dripping maw.
She gagged on a scream; and woke up.
David’s arms were around her, he was holding her steady while she tried to thrash her way free. ‘What’s the matter? What is it, my dear—my dearest? Judith…where are you?’
She was sobbing helplessly.
‘A dream,’ he soothed. ‘You must have had an awful dream.’
‘Yes. No. I mean…it was real.’
‘This is real.’ He stroked her hair and slid his hand between her shoulder blades, stroking rhythmically until her breathing slowed and she let herself sink back on the pillow. ‘What sort of dream—what was it about?’
‘I don’t know.’ A fleeting horror dwindled
