Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

she seen that bloody massacre before, in his office? Was that what Sam had wanted to tell her? She rubbed her hands on the front of her bathrobe and looked at them hard. Then, taking a deep breath, she went over and picked up the tape recorder, setting it on the low coffee table. Kneeling on the carpet she pressed the ‘rewind’ button and listened to the whine of the spinning tape. She did not wait for the whole reel. Halfway through she stopped it. Somewhere in the flat there must be some cigarettes. Nick might have left some lying about – perhaps if she went to look.

      But she did not move. Outside she could hear the highpitched giggle of a child playing in the garden square, and in the distance the constant hum of the traffic in Gloucester Road. They were twentieth-century sounds. Whatever had happened this afternoon had no more relevance than a dream, or a TV movie watched on a wet Saturday afternoon with the curtains drawn against the rain. So why was she afraid to hear the tape?

      She pressed the ‘play’ button and closed her eyes as Carl Bennet’s voice filled the room, made thin and tinny by the small machine.

      ‘– and now, tell me about your dress. What colour is it?’

      Then came her own voice, mumbling, a little hesitant. ‘My best surcoat, for the feast. It is scarlet – samite – trimmed with gold thread and, below, its gown of green and silver, and I shall wear my pelisson lined with squirrel fur if Nell can find it. My boxes are not all unpacked.’ Her voice had dropped until it was so quiet it could hardly be heard.

      ‘And now you are going down to the great hall. Are you not afraid your husband will be angry?’ Bennet asked.

      There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the hiss of the tape.

      ‘A little,’ she replied at last. ‘But he will do nothing. He will not want people to think his wife does not obey him and he will not dare touch me because of the child.’

      ‘Are you going downstairs now? Describe it to me.’ Bennet sounded as if he was talking to a child of five, his voice patient and clearly enunciated.

      ‘The stairs are dark and cold. There ought to be a light. The wind must have blown it out. But I can hear them laughing now below in the hall.’ She was speaking in a strangely disjointed fashion.

      I sound drunk, Jo realised suddenly and smiled grimly as she listened.

      The voice went on, describing the scene, pausing now and then for what seemed interminable silences before resuming unprompted. Closing her eyes, Jo found she could see it all so clearly. A nerve began to leap in her throat. She did not have to hear what came next, to listen again to the screams and the agonising crash of metal. She drew up her knees and hugged them as her voice began to speak more quickly.

      ‘William is reading the letter now and the prince is listening to him. But he is angry. He is interrupting. They are going to quarrel. William is looking down at him and putting down the parchment. He is raising his dagger. He is going to … Oh no, no NO!’ Her voice rose into a shriek.

      Jo found she was shaking. She wanted to press her hands against her ears to cut out the sound of the anguished screaming on the tape, but she forced herself to go on listening as a second voice broke in. It was Sarah and she sounded frightened. ‘For God’s sake, Carl, bring her out of it! What are you waiting for?’

      ‘Listen to me, Jo. Listen!’ Bennet tried to cut in, his patient quiet voice taut. ‘Lady Matilda, can you hear me?’ He was shouting now. ‘Listen to me. I am going to count to three. And you are going to wake up. Listen to me …’

      But her own voice, or the voice of that other woman speaking through her, ran on and on, sweeping his aside, not hearing his attempts to interrupt. Jo was breathing heavily, a pulse drumming in her forehead. She could hear all three of them now. Sarah sobbing, ‘Carl, stop her, stop her,’ Bennet repeating her name over and over again – both names – and above them her own hysterical voice running on out of control, describing the bloodshed and terror she was watching.

      Then abruptly there was silence, save for the sound of panting, she was not sure whose. Jo heard a sharp rattle as something was knocked over, and Bennet’s voice very close now to the microphone. ‘Let me touch her face. Quickly! Perhaps with my fingers, like so. Matilda? Can you hear me? I want you to hear me. I am going to count to three and then you will wake up. One, two, three.’

      There was a long silence, then Sarah cried, ‘You’ve lost her, Carl. For God’s sake, you’ve lost her.’

      Bennet was talking softly, reassuringly again, but Jo could hear the undertones of fear in his voice. ‘Matilda, can you hear me? I want you to answer me. Matilda? You must listen. You are Jo Clifford and soon you will wake up back in my consulting room in London. Can you hear me, my dear? I want you to forget about Matilda.’

      There was a long silence, then Sarah whispered, very near the microphone. ‘What do we do?’

      Bennet sounded exhausted. ‘There is nothing we can do. Let her sleep. She will wake by herself in the end.’

      Jo started with shock. She distinctly remembered hearing him say that. His voice had reached her, lying half awake in the shadowy bedchamber at Abergavenny, but she – or Matilda – had pulled back, rejecting his call, and she had fallen once more into unconsciousness. She shivered at the memory.

      The sharp clink of glass on glass came over the machine and she found herself once more giving a rueful smile. So he had to have a drink at that point, as, locked in silence where he could not follow her, she had woken in the past and begun her search of the deserted windswept castle.

      For several minutes more the tape ran quiet, then Sarah’s voice rang out excitedly, ‘Carl, I think she’s waking up. Her eyelids are flickering.’

      ‘Jo? Jo?’ Bennet was back by the microphone in a second.

      Jo heard her own voice moaning softly, then at last came a husky, ‘There’s someone there. Who is it?’

      ‘We’re reaching her now.’ Bennet’s murmur was full of relief. ‘Jo? Can you hear me? Matilda? My lady?’ There was a hiss on the tape and Jo strained forward to hear what followed. But there was nothing more. With a sharp click it switched itself off, the reel finished.

      She leaned back against the legs of the chair. She was trembling all over and her hands were slippery with sweat. She rubbed them on her bathrobe. Strange that she had expected to hear it all again – the sound effects, the screams, the grunts, the clash of swords. But of course to the onlooker, as to the microphone, it was all reported, like hearing someone else’s commentary on what they could see down a telescope. Only to her was it completely real. The others had been merely eavesdroppers on her dream.

      Slowly she put her head in her hands and was aware suddenly that there were tears on her cheeks.

      At his office in Berkeley Street Nick was sitting with his feet on his desk, staring into space, when Jim Greerson walked in.

      ‘Come on, Nick, old son. I’m packing it in for the day. Time for a jar?’ He sat down on the edge of Nick’s desk, a stout, red-faced balding young man, his face alive with sympathy. ‘Is it the fair sex again? You look a bit frayed!’

      Nick laughed ruefully. ‘I’ve been trying to reach Jo on the phone. About this.’ He picked up a folded newspaper and threw it down on the desk in front of Jim. ‘It must have hurt her so much.’

      Jim glanced down. ‘I saw it. Pretty bitchy, that new bird of yours. Poor Jo. I always liked her.’

      Nick glanced at him sharply. Then he stood up.

      ‘I think I’ll look in on her on the way back. Just to make sure she’s OK. I’ll have that drink tomorrow.’

      ‘I thought she told you to get out of her life, Nick.’

      Nick grinned, picking up his jacket. ‘She did. Repeatedly.’

      He swung out of the office and ran down the stairs to the street. The skies had cleared after the storm, but the gutters still ran with rain