The House On Nazareth Hill Read online

  ‘Let’s not presume to see too far into the future. I’m simply asking you to put these mad, these foolish ideas out of your head. Concentrate on getting to university so you can make something of yourself.’

  ‘I’m something now. I’m more than that, I’m someone, and you make me feel I’m not.’

  ‘I really think that’s a shade unfair. You’ve a good deal more freedom than I had at your age. My father used to say more always wants more, and I’m starting to see what he meant.’

  ‘More of what?’ Amy demanded, and her need to feel released found words. ‘It can’t be more if you already said I could, can it?’

  ‘I’d require to know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You said I could have gone to Spain if there’d been a place.’

  ‘That’s so, but to speak the truth—’

  ‘There is. Someone’s had to drop out.’

  ‘Well, never mind. We’ll go somewhere next summer to make it up to you, the father and his daughter who’ll be so grown up he won’t recognise her. If you’ve set your heart on going abroad I may even consider that if you do a few more of the things I ask.’

  ‘Dad, I’ve said I’ll go on the school trip.’

  ‘What possessed you to undertake such a thing?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I’m sure the very most I said was to come home and tell me if there was a place.’

  ‘Well, there is, and I have. I had to say I wanted it so they’d keep it till I told you. I have to confirm on Monday. Please, dad.’

  ‘I may as well give you the answer now. I’m afraid it has to be no.’

  Amy felt as if the hall had narrowed. ‘Why?’

  ‘The way you say that is sufficient reason.’

  ‘I can’t help sounding how I feel.’

  ‘I pray you’ll try. Your mother would have wanted it, I fancy.’

  ‘Stop saying that,’ Amy cried, and controlled herself before he made her sound even more childish. ‘She’d have kept her promise if she’d said I could go, and she’d have wanted you to.’

  ‘Very cunning, Amy. Try applying your cleverness to some worthwhile purpose before it becomes warped.’

  It was as though whichever way Amy turned to escape her trapped emotions he was already there waiting. ‘You haven’t said why I can’t go.’

  ‘I don’t want you straying so far without me at your age. As you keep reminding me, you wouldn’t even be sixteen.’

  ‘I’d be with the school.’

  ‘With the teachers whose idea it was to take children to Spain, which I fear doesn’t say much for their judgment. I made it my business to learn about the country after you brought it up. I hadn’t realised they tolerated drugs there. I thought the Spaniards were supposed to be Godfearing folk.’

  ‘Some religions use drugs. Some books even say Christ—’

  ‘No more talk like that, thank you. Don’t be so wrongheaded. I’m glad the libraries are cutting down on books if they’re that kind. And I hope the drugs situation wasn’t any part of why you were so anxious to visit Spain. You’re far too close to that sort of wickedness as it is. Concerning which—’

  ‘I can’t talk any more now.’ That was imminently true; her lips were beginning to stiffen with her struggle not to release her feelings. ‘I’m meeting Rob.’

  ‘If he cares for you he’ll wait, won’t he? I’m not asking you to talk but to listen. You heard what Mr Shrift said about the shop you frequent. Your mind is precious, Amy. It’s your soul, and I can’t imagine anything more evil than interfering with it.’

  ‘Then don’t. I want to go now. I’m late.’

  Her father raised his eyes heavenwards, revealing tears on their lower lids, but she was more aware that he hadn’t shifted from his post in front of the door. ‘May I enquire what is so much more important than talking to your father?’

  ‘You heard. You were listening. You always do.’

  ‘Why are you so obsessed with a book all of a sudden?’

  ‘I want to see what it says about here.’

  ‘Not much, I’ll warrant, if it’s nothing but a story. If you’re going to devote so much effort to a book it’s a shame it isn’t schoolwork. Why should we care what our home used to be? It’s what is made of it that counts.’

  Having been sapped of words. Amy stared at him. Her eyes had begun to smart before he said ‘How long do you propose to be?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Where are you planning to go after the market?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Will you be home for dinner?’

  ‘Don’t know. Shouldn’t think so.’

  He gazed sadly at her, and she met his gaze with the smouldering lumps of frustration her eyes felt like. Abruptly he shook his head and glanced aside. ‘Lord help us, child, you’ve an evil eye sometimes,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t be out all night or anything approaching it. I’m certain that your room needs cleaning.’

  The moment he stepped forward, Amy dodged past him and snatched the door open. The sight outside was no relief: it was more of the same—it even had small round dead solitary eyes to watch her. She slammed the door and ran down the corridor, which might have been absorbing what light there was rather than exuding it from its hidden source. On the stairs she felt as though the dimness and the way the carpet hushed her footfalls were dragging at her with their very lack of substance, leaving her nothing to fight. The confrontation with her father was reason enough for her to storm away, and the empty gates beyond the glass doors had never looked so much like freedom.

  She stepped off the threshold with a clash of gravel. The air was as refreshing as an iced drink after the stagnant heat of the corridors. She was enjoying the touch of a wintry breeze and the whisper of the oak tree when she heard a clang from the marketplace. She must have been detained in Nazarill for longer than she’d realised; they were dismantling the market stalls.

  As she sprinted out of the shadow of Nazarill the gravel threw diluted sunlight in her face, causing her to blink as if she’d just emerged from a windowless cell. She dashed between the gateposts and across Nazareth Row, and was in Little Hope Way before all her vision returned to her. In the midst of the clangorous dismantlement at the end of the stub of the street, many of the stallholders were continuing to advertise their wares: Christmas cards, decorations, wrapping paper, cheap imported toys, a one-word shout for each species of goods. All Amy’s attention was for the stall close to Hedz Not Fedz, which sold Hardly Owned books and was the nearest Partington had to a bookshop. The trestle table was half bare, and the bald though bearded owner was loading a carton of hardcovers into the rear of his van. But Rob was at the stall, and told him ‘Here’s someone who wants you.’

  The bookseller gave Rob’s earring and long eyelashes a doubtful glance before turning to confront Amy with much the same expression. ‘What are you after, girlie? I’ve packed up the romances.’

  ‘I packed them up years ago.’

  He swung a box of horror paperbacks, all their spines black, into the vehicle. ‘Wuh,’ he said in token of his effort. ‘If it’s best sellers you want you’ll have to climb in the back.’

  ‘Not those either. I’m looking for something old.’

  ‘Will I do, even if I’m not as pretty as your friend the pirate?’

  ‘I don’t think my dad would approve.’

  ‘I reckon he has to be broadminded.’ The bookseller grinned at himself and returned to his job. ‘How old?’

  ‘I thought you might know. It’s a book called Nazarill.’

  ‘Woogh.’ At first it seemed he was reacting to the name, but this carton must have been heavier than its predecessor. ‘That’s about the place up there on the hill.’

  ‘I knew it had to be. Is that all you know about it?’

  ‘The place? Started out as a monastery from what I’ve heard tell.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Amy said, although for an instant she felt as if she had, an
d more if she could only grasp it. ‘How about after that?’

  ‘How nasty do you like your history?’ The bookseller hefted a carton in which Bibles and books on the occult were squashed together. ‘What’s your interest, can I ask?’

  ‘I live there.’

  This time he uttered no sound as he loaded the van, and was slower in straightening up. ‘You’ll have heard it was a hospital.’

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘After they pulled down the monastery, that would have been. They weren’t so enlightened in them days. What they called a hospital would put you off your food, how they treated people.’

  ‘Not so different from some of the hospitals now,’ said Rob.

  ‘Doesn’t say much, does he?’ The bookseller heaved the last carton to himself and dumped it in the van. ‘Wugh,’ he said, and rubbed his beaded pate, then closed his hand around his beard. ‘This book you’re after, it won’t be about any of that. Poor man’s Dickens is my impression, about when your place was offices.’

  ‘Do you know where I could find it anyway?’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye out if you want. Wherever I am I go rummaging for books.’ He seemed engaged by her seriousness. ‘It shouldn’t cost you much if I can get it,’ he said.

  ‘About how much?’

  ‘Less than a chain for your wrist.’

  ‘I can live with that. I’ll keep coming back then, shall I?’

  ‘Any time you want to light up my life,’ the bookseller said, and folding up the table, slid it into the van. ‘I’m here every week bar Christmas. What do they call you?’

  ‘Amy Priestley.’

  ‘More by name than nature, is it? Not much wrong with that.’ He emitted a final expansive grunt as he slammed the rear doors of the van. ‘I’ll put it by for you if I snaffle it,’ he said.

  As the scraped vehicle piebald with imperfectly matched paint chugged away through the car park Amy said ‘I wish you hadn’t interrupted when you did.’

  ‘If I hadn’t when I did I wouldn’t have when I didn’t, would I?’ Rob said, and to give her no chance to sort that out ‘I didn’t know you went for older men.’

  ‘Apart from you, you mean.’

  ‘Brat.’

  ‘Cradle-snatcher.’ Amy watched the van’s exhaust fade, then turned on him. ‘I mean it, Rob. I wish you’d just let him talk. I think he was going to tell me some more about Nazarill.’

  ‘What would it change if he had?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? I’d like to find out the kind of place I’m living in, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t look at me.’

  ‘Maybe you’d know if you ever came in.’

  ‘I get the feeling your dad wouldn’t like me invading his haven.’

  ‘He’ll have to if we want him to. He’s having to get used to me.’

  ‘Traumatic,’ Rob commented, and looked away as the framework of a clothes stall collapsed with a sound like the shutting of a huge gate. Did he think she was demanding too much of a commitment of him? She took his cold hand and folded his long fingers around hers to make him feel wanted without needing to talk, just as Martie stepped out of Hedz Not Fedz and ventured along Market Approach. ‘Amy?’ she called.

  Her broad pouchy face was less placid than usual, perhaps because the chimes of her door had brought Shaun Pickles out of a half-demolished aisle of the market. Amy ignored him and pulled Rob with her into Market Approach. ‘What’s happening, Martie?’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you.’ Martie widened her eyes before narrowing them as though to adjust the spaces between the lines of her frown. ‘Did you know your father meant to…’

  Amy clenched her hands, and made them relax when Rob winced at her grip. ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘Try not to be angry with me. I can’t very well go against him, you not being sixteen yet.’ Martie shook her head so hard that Amy imagined she saw her cropped hair move. ‘He says you aren’t to come in my shop any more,’ Martie said.

  6 - In the dark room

  ‘Anything more for you, Mr Metcalf? Anything at all.’

  ‘Thanks a heap, Nico, thanks from a heap. I couldn’t, really. You’ve outdone yourself.’ Dominic dealt the mound of his stomach a tender pat, and then his gaze strayed to the dish that was being placed before the nearest diner. ‘Dear me, that does look tempting.’

  ‘A portion of Garides Skordates for Mr Metcalf, Melina, and some more bread for the sauce.’

  Dominic reached to empty the bottle of Othello into his glass, only to have the owner of the restaurant do so. ‘Some more red, Mr Metcalf? Everything on the house.’

  ‘I shouldn’t, you know. Well, maybe just one. Food without wine is like food without company, only half the pleasure.’

  Nico pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘It’s always a pleasure to feed anyone who enjoys it so much.’

  ‘I didn’t mean a whole bottle,’ Dominic murmured after him. He’d made his token protest, even if it went unheard. By the time Nico’s wife brought the plateful of king prawns in garlic and wine sauce and a basket of bread, Dominic had drained his glass and refilled it from the second bottle of Othello. Several further dishes which looked irresistible had arrived at nearby tables, and he seemed to need only to glance at these to impel one of his hosts to bring him a sample: a kebab, a stuffed pepper, a barbecued lamb chop, pork with coriander… All this helped him see off the bottle, and then there was syrupy baclava for dessert, and coffee brewed on a bed of hot sand, and Metaxa. When he’d finished inhaling the sharp aroma of grapes he found his lips with the snifter of brandy. ‘To your hospitality,’ he declared for at least the second time that night.

  Melina and Nico picked up their glasses of ouzo that were standing on the bar. ‘Without you we aren’t here,’ Melina said.

  Dominic supposed that was as true as her grammar was quaint. When very eventually he left, having shaken hands twice with Nico and exchanged hugs with Melina, he had to make way for a party enticed in by the work he’d done on his hosts’ behalf. Much of the window was occupied by his photographs, of three tables laden with the entire menu—even he hadn’t been able to eat it all—and of the staff of the bank that held the restaurant’s accounts celebrating someone’s promotion: clerks dancing on the longest table and displaying as much thigh as they would on a beach, an assistant manager jigging so vigorously he had to hold onto his spectacles with the hand that wasn’t around his partner’s shoulder, the manager’s eyes gleaming as she smashed yet another plate. Since the photographs had been exhibited the restaurant’s takings had doubled, and Dominic was happy to accept some credit for it, despite suspecting that he’d simply corrected a misconception that a place called Nico’s had to be Italian. Tonight it was so popular that both sides of the road on the outskirts of Sheffield were full of parked cars nosing one another’s rumps, and it took Dominic some minutes to manoeuvre his Toyota out of the trap which had been built around it. He had to get home, he kept telling himself as frustration extended the unpleasant pounding of his heart to his sweaty hands, to develop the photographs he’d taken in front of Nazarill. If he didn’t tonight he wouldn’t have time before Christmas, what with the seasonal increase in his work.

  The Toyota’s front bumper inched itself clear of a smugly immobile Jaguar at last, and Dominic trod hard on the accelerator, then slowed the car as the sight of windows flickering with rainbow trees reminded him he was in a residential street. He sped up once the houses grew fewer and larger, and soon there were only trees beside the road, their branches decorated with dead bulbs left behind by a fog. Now and then a bulb fell to shatter in the headlights on the tarmac, and Dominic had drifted into watching for the next to fall when several revellers staggered out of an unexpected pub. Singing ‘God rest ye Jerry mentalmen,’ they reeled straight in front of the car, and only a swerve which almost put the Toyota in the ditch of the unfenced road saved them. Dominic had to stop and press his forehead against the windscreen, his swea
t fogging the glass, before he trusted himself to drive on. ‘Crazy. Shouldn’t be let out,’ he mumbled, and tuned the radio until he found a programme of carols to soothe him. At last he drove towards the motorway, braking at every curve of the deserted road.

  Apart from the occasional midnight lorry, he had the motorway to himself. Once he reached a stretch he knew went on for miles, he allowed his speed to build up. He was shaking his head at the spectacle of a white saloon approaching fast behind him—he was exceeding the limit himself, but the other driver’s speed was insane—when its roof began to flash like a multicoloured Christmas light, and he saw it was a police car. As he braked too hard it raced past him and down a slip road. The siren howled away into the dark, and a radio choir announced a silent night, which struck Dominic as an especially bad joke, since he was anything but calm and bright. He had to force himself to increase speed, so as not to appear as suspect as he felt, all the way to the Partington exit.

  Five minutes off the motorway an orange glow became visible beyond the rocky slopes, as though there was a fire above the town. When the Toyota reached the top of a long curve of road he saw the chains of light which were the streets trailing down from Nazarill. The light drew him like a fire, even if he couldn’t feel it. As he turned uphill at the Scales & Bible it made all the ground-floor windows of his building appear dimly lit to greet him. He couldn’t quite persuade himself that wasn’t the case until he came to Nazareth Row and saw that the whole of the ground floor, and indeed the rest of Nazarill, was unlit.

  Some animal, no doubt a cat, dodged away from the limit of his headlights as they swung between the gateposts. The radio began to sing ‘It came upon a midnight clear’, but had pronounced only those words when the tuning strayed awry, substituting a shrill mutter for the rest of the carol. Whatever the voices were chanting was in a language foreign to him, and he switched off the radio as the gateposts crept together in his mirror. The animal became part of the dark beneath the tree as Nazarill lit up its facade, and Dominic drove through the glare to the parking area.