The Haunted Storm (16 page)

There were other things, too. Once the two of them were in the rectory kitchen, and Elizabeth was looking for some tea. “I think we must have run out,” she said, “unless mummy’s bought some more today and put it somewhere else… I’ll go and ask her.”

“No, stay there,” said Matthew without thinking. “I’ll fetch her; sit down.”

He closed his eyes, wondering briefly how he knew he could, but the certainty was so strong that he felt like laughing at the idea of doubt. He concentrated on the image of Mrs. Cole, and within a minute she had come into the kitchen.

“Hello, dear… hello, Matthew,” she said. “I was just going to make some tea.”

What Matthew wondered at afterwards was the force with which he managed to concentrate. It felt as if he himself were being concentrated by something else. And this kind of thing happened on a number of occasions, bewildering him as well as making him feel quite irrationally pleased. The annoying thing was that he had very little control over it.

And there was another aspect of it which frankly frightened him, and which he did not mention even to Elizabeth. It was this: that all these odd powers which descended into him and then left him were part of a general sensation of opening-out, of feeling barriers crumble, of remembering. His memory itself began slowly to clear, and absolutely insignificant details of what, for instance, he wore at his sixth birthday party, or a meal he had eaten at Oxford, would float unheralded into his consciousness: sharp, clear as daylight, and accompanied each by its own particular fragrance, its personal scent, of emotion. Like flakes of snow they fell, brushed him softly for an instant, and melted; and this he did not mind, although he didn’t think it meant anything in particular; but occasionally there would come an image which, while it was clearly a memory and had the emotional force of a memory, he could not place at all. He simply couldn’t remember it. It tantalised him: and it frightened him because they were usually ac companied by a feeling of intense fear, or bitter aching tension; and, once, he saw again that picture he’d described to Canon Cole of the little girl dead in the woods.

So gradually he came, though he dismissed the thought time and time again, and tried to laugh at it, and tried to ignore it, came to think again about what he’d said so carelessly the other night about committing a murder and then forgetting it.

The only person he thought he might be able to tell about it was Harry Locke. Without actually mentioning his own fears in the matter, he managed to ask the old man one evening, as they sat by the fire in Harry’s sitting-room, what murder meant in terms of his God, and how he thought God would regard the murderer.

“Poor fellow,” said Harry instantly; “oh, I feel sorry for him, you know, as much as I do for the girl’s family. They can comfort each other, but he can’t go to anyone. The police’ll catch him in the end, and he’ll be persecuted in the prison they send him to; they’ll have to keep the other men away from him. No, God wouldn’t judge him harshly.”

“But only if he couldn’t help it. Yes, I’m sure you’re right, uncle Harry; but what if he did it cold-bloodedly? If he deliberately set out to do evil? Or even if he just didn’t know it was evil?”

“If he didn’t know, then we can’t understand it, and we should feel all the more compassion. There’s no question, Matthew, no question of a man doing evil if he knows what it is – if he truly knows all about it. We can’t condemn anyone at all, I’m certain of it. Compassion is everywhere, we all share it, and we all share guilt. There’s no getting away from it. It’s like light.”

“I can’t understand it, though. I can’t connect what you’re saying with what I feel… when you say compassion is everywhere, what do you mean? Do you mean people’s compassion? Because they’re not compassionate; most of them are indifferent, or hostile – oh, yes, it’s true. Most people would be glad to hang that murderer, if they could.”

“No, I mean the compassion of Christ. It’s overwhelming. It’s all around us, it’s greater and stronger than anything… It’s a love of everything that exists. Nothing’s shut out from it.”

“But whose –” Matthew began, but broke off and said no more. He had been going to say “whose is it, who feels it?” But he remembered that Harry had already given him the answer: Christ. And it was useless to complain, as he had been on the point of doing, that Christ was not here, not in people’s hearts, that Christ might never have existed. The fact that He didn’t depend on people or on their faith could only be a good thing, according to Matthew’s morality; but if it had not been for this hidden and tormenting doubt about the murder, and the consequent doubts it raised about how far his morality extended both out into the world and inside into his soul, he would not have begun to think of Christ in terms of compassion.

No, something was changing deeply inside him, and it saddened and sickened him when he thought of the directions he could end up facing. And then came another of those events, like the murder, which the world so casually seemed to throw up like a volcano in his path.

It happened on a Thursday in Silminster. It was Elizabeth’s half-day, and they arranged to meet for lunch in the pub opposite the shop she worked in. He had not been there before, and arrived a few minutes early. He was a little surprised. When she’d told him it was a second-hand bookshop he had pictured a dusty, run-down place like a junk shop, but this was a proper antiquarian bookseller’s. The window display was bright and attractive, with old books on natural history open to show engravings and etchings of birds and flowers. It made Matthew feel gloomy and apprehensive, in case she was going to behave appropriately and make arty chatter about books; but when she came out at one o’clock he was relieved, and astonished again at his failure to imagine her properly. She was calm, intent, and beautifully fluid in all her movements: but why did this amaze him? He had always known she was; why had he forgotten it?

He kissed her, and said, “I’ve just discovered I’ve got no memory, or no imagination. I’d forgotten entirely what you looked like.”

“It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “I’ve probably changed completely since this morning. I don’t know what I look like either. But what’s wrong?”

He had been trying to smile, and not succeeding, and so he gave up. In fact, he realised, he was feeling bitterly depressed, and that brought another question up; had he been feeling depressed all morning without realising it? It was quite possible.

He shrugged in answer to her question, and said nothing. They went into the pub and Matthew bought their drinks and sandwiches. When they sat down he discovered, shamefully, that he was tongue-tied, and couldn’t look her in the face; the intimacy which had grown around them seemed totally to have vanished, leaving them strangers. He felt drained of all exhilaration, drained of his will; and to break the silence he eventually said, “I wish they’d catch this murderer.”

“Why?” she said. She sounded calm and placid.

“Because it’s – I don’t know, because it’s untidy. Because there’s a loose end. Because I’ve got the soul of a policeman, I expect.”

“I expect they will before long,” she said.

“Yes, probably. Let’s go up on the moors this afternoon. I must do something or I’ll suffocate. No, I’m sorry, I mustn’t say things like that. It’s whining. I’ll go by myself, love.”

He sipped his beer.

“Oh, Matthew of course I’ll come with you if you want me to! It’s not as if I never complained to you.”

“I don’t judge you, though; I can’t judge you. But I can condemn myself, and be as harsh as I can – I must. So I call it whining. I ought to find a gun and play Russian roulette; that’d wake me up. It’s weakness, that’s all. When we met, that day in the road, I was exalted, transfigured: where is it now? Where’s it gone? You see, I’m being honest. I could easily say that it was still there, that I loved you more than ever, that it was deeper and truer – oh, you know all the phrases. But quite suddenly there’s nothing there – no, don’t misunderstand me, Liz. Suddenly I’m sunk – that’s all it is – it’s quite arbitrary, this depression, it comes and goes like the weather. It means no more than rain does. I shouldn’t have come to see you today, I should have telephoned and made an excuse and stayed in the village and worked. Concentrated hard on something.”

“We don’t have to make excuses, Matthew! You needn’t have had to say why, if you’d done that… But why did you call me Liz? You never have before.”

“Because it’s shorter, I suppose. Don’t you like it?”

“Yes, but no-one ever called me Liz until
he
did, my lover, I mean. He’s the only other one.”

“And what was his name, anyway? That’s something you’ve never told me.”

“I don’t know… no, I won’t tell you, because he’s dead, he doesn’t need a name. No, of course I don’t mean dead, I mean lost; buried. He doesn’t need to be named. It might bring him to life.”

“And what would you do then? What would you do if he came back?”

“Well, he won’t come back, will he, if we don’t resurrect him? I shouldn’t have mentioned him in the first place.”

“No, but if he did. He appeared in the beginning without being resurrected or evoked. And he disappeared just as abruptly, from what you told me. You’ve got no control over him at all, it seems. So what would you do, if he came back?”

“All right. I don’t know. Everything I’ve done since, I’ve done assuming he never would. And if you challenge me like that, I can only tell the truth, can’t I? I can only say that I don’t know, that I have no idea what I’d do, or what’d happen.”

Matthew said nothing. Idiotically, he’d been hurt by what she’d said. But what else had he expected? And he had no right to feel jealous. Maybe the oddness of their relationship was putting an unfair strain on both of them. Maybe there was nothing at all in either of them that was any stronger or greater than the rest of humanity. Such thoughts were perfidy, but they were wickedly easy to think. And there was not a thing he could do about it… Depression, was it? It was sin, and guilt.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth – since it was she, at that moment, who was the stronger – determined to do something, and made a move.

“Come on, Matthew,” she said gently. “Let’s get out, let’s go for a walk. I won’t say anything at all. I love you.” He swallowed the rest of his beer and followed her out of the pub. They walked slowly along in the sunshine. The streets were crowded.

“We could go and look at the cathedral,” said Elizabeth after a while. “If you want to.”

“I don’t mind,” he answered. “At least, perhaps I do, but I don’t know about it if I do. I’ll have to – d’you see, Liz, I’ll have to feed on this emotion or whatever it is, this depression, while it’s here. There’s no sense in ignoring it. I’ll have to take everything into account. Love, when I feel it, and triumph, and guilt, and fear: everything. Only at the moment it’s nothing I feel, except maybe disgust. I’m not even sure of that. Oh, curse it… Either it negates this sun, this warmth, you see, or else the weather negates me; but there’s no meaning in either of them, that’s the result. And the fact that I’m here strolling calmly along takes the meaning out of what I’ve just said, anyway. There’s no use, there’s no use in it. Words… they’re diseased. They’re like scales on the skin of a leper. We ought to be forbidden the use of them. We ought to plunge in a bath of acid and have them stripped away and then stumble out into the world again raw, and touch it and hear it and look at it and see it harsh and dazzling, uncompromising, without this inane conventional compulsive mouthing… I say we, but of course I mean myself. So I’ll make a start; I’ll shut up. I won’t speak for a while, Liz, I’ll acid-bath myself.”

She nodded, and smiled. And immediately he wanted to speak again, to tell her how extraordinary the situation between them was – as if she didn’t know, he thought. He held his tongue, though, and said not a word as they went through the Market square, walking slowly hand in hand, making room for others to pass, idling, looking at the sky. An aeroplane, so high up that it was quite invisible, was making a white vapour trail across the brilliant blue, thin and clear and sharp where it left the plane and ragged and woolly further back where it thinned out, torn about by the great winds. Matthew felt a desperate, passionate longing to be – no matter how – up there in the pure, thin, cold, blue air, a part of the mighty streaming winds that swept in total silence from continent to continent and from ocean to ocean. Total silence; for there were no obstructions, no trees or houses or men, no mountains, to break the flow of it and make it howl and shriek; it was utter movement, utter power, utter silence, utter cold. He must be descended from birds, he thought, not from apes like other men. They went to their gross love for strength, most of them, or to their idiot fellows; and some men, solitaries, went to the earth; but he had to go to the air like a bird. And he was as unsolid as air, as changeable; and fickle, and inhuman. “I know nothing of human things,” he said under his breath, but whether in sorrow or pride he did not know. At least the air was the home of storms. And storms were a picture of the absolute, the sublime. There was bound to be a storm somewhere in the world at that moment. Maybe there was only one storm, which travelled the world like the wandering Jew or the flying Dutchman… Romantic pictures; they were unreal, dreams out of depression, and therefore contemptible. Face it: face it, face the world, it’s always worse. Face your own guilt, and what are you guilty of? Weakness. Face your own animal weakness, and kill it ruthlessly. Look at it, this depression, engage it: it makes your knees weak, so you can hardly walk; then you look ridiculous. There is a weight in your chest, it feels like a rough hand around your heart; then it would be better if you died, and no longer felt it. You feel impelled to cling to Elizabeth tightly and shut your eyes and beg her to take care of you; then you are only a child, and if you act like a child she will have to act like a mother, and there’ll be a taint of that in your relation from now on, she will always be mother in some degree, and you will always be more or less child. It’s everywhere, this depression, it’s like fear, like gas. Then stop breathing: stop being afraid. Your responsibility is absolute. If it wins, then you’ve lost.