The Haunted Storm (17 page)

He was addressing himself like this, half thinking, half whispering, when suddenly there came to him a startlingly clear message from the heart, as it seemed, of his morality itself. It was simply this: that responsibility was absolute, but depression and madness were not; for depression and madness came from the feeble human heart and were not conditions of life; and that consequently, it was a moral duty not to give in under any circumstances, even the most anguishing; it was a clear moral imperative not to go mad.

Reject it. Become hard and unconcerned with your own suffering. He looked up and laughed aloud. One or two passers-by looked at him curiously and went their ways. Elizabeth turned slowly to face him, and her eyes were full of a distant lost rapture: she was so deep in thought that she moved languidly and dreamily and hardly heard him. A couple of sparrows hopped on to the pavement from beneath one of the market stalls.

“Silly bastards,” he said aloud, affectionately.

He breathed in deeply, and yawned. Air, it was good… Damn, but that depression’s good too, it’s all good. It leaves you lightheaded and confused, but there’s nothing wrong with that for a short while. And then back to work.

The Cathedral lay in the northern part of the city, up a slight hill from the market place and behind a district of old houses. It was not far from the railway junction, and the goods yard could be seen quite easily from the cathedral close.

They wandered into the precincts of the cathedral, staring idly about them like tourists, and then just as idly wandered out again. Matthew was saying to her that there was really no point in going there unless they wanted to pray, because a cathedral was probably designed as a microphone to pick up prayers; but that there was no point in their praying at all, yet. And she dissented, without putting much effort into it, saying that if it was beautiful then it might as well be seen, whatever it was. Wrangling harmlessly on the topic of aesthetics, they found themselves before long near the rail way station.

The street they were in was shabby and dirty, and led up to a narrow bridge over a canal. There were warehouses along one side of it, and a pawnbroker’s and a motor-cycle shop and a place that sold army surplus goods, and, set a little way back from the pavement behind a low wall and a thin hedge, there was a large Nissen hut with a notice board saying “Darby and Joan Club Bingo.” The sun shone warmly, and the air was cool, tasting of spring. Both of them were quite happy now, each absorbed in himself and not really conscious of the other. The people who passed by were only ghosts, but harmless and even genial ghosts, healthy and solid.

And then there fell a curious silence over the whole street, almost a subjective silence, though the causes were objective enough: there were no cars there for the moment, the man from the motor-cycle shop had just cut the engine of a bike he was demonstrating, no-one happened to be talking.

Matthew and Elizabeth both found themselves looking at a man who was walking along the other side of the street towards the bridge. He held their eyes like a magnet. He existed more intensely than the other people in the street, that was all. He made them look pale and shadowy, he burned like the sun; and the two of them felt their attention, fluttering and feeble, drawn to him like a moth to a naked flame.

His appearance was quite ordinary: at least it seemed so, but when Matthew looked closely, he saw that the man was very shabbily dressed, and extremely dirty. He was aged about thirty or thirty-five. His hair was blond, and he wore it long and greased and swept-back. He was wearing a shirt that was done up at the neck without a tie, and loose brown trousers, and dirty black shoes and an open raincoat. His hands were in his pockets, and he sauntered along slowly, almost lazily, but people took care to get out of his way.

He did not look to either side of him, but stared straight ahead. He was too far away, and in profile, but they got an idea of his expression. Matthew later on could only explain it by using the word “aura”; and just as some people have around them a cold, repellent, vampirizing atmosphere that is almost palpable, this man had the quality, which Matthew could feel from right across the street, of attracting and hypnotising anyone of weaker will. Elizabeth’s words on the beach – “absolute – still – iron” – came involuntarily to his mind, and he stared open-mouthed at the stranger. What the man’s purpose might be of course he had no idea, but that he had some invincible purpose was as plain and stark as the sun.

Then he turned – he stopped swiftly and glanced across at them, but his eyes did not seem to focus: he looked straight through them. Matthew saw his face clearly for a second. His brow was fixed in a frown. His nose was firm, high-arched, almost hooked. His lips were thick but com pressed, and his chin stubborn. Two deep lines led from his nose to the corners of his mouth. Just for a moment, Matthew had the urge to shout something out: to warn him of something, to challenge him, he did not know which; but to measure himself against him, certainly; to fight him, not out of enmity but out of respect and recognition. It would simply be the appropriate greeting.

After a moment he turned back and walked on, taking no more notice of them. He reached the bridge, crossed it, and disappeared. Two or three cars passed, the man from the motor cycle shop kicked the bike into action again, and the life of the street came back to normal.

Elizabeth’s hand was gripping Matthew’s tightly; her nails were digging painfully into his palm, and he shook it loose and stared at her. She was gazing after him helplessly, gnawing her under lip.

“Liz! Liz! What the hell are you doing? What is it?”

She turned, and a little laugh escaped her, and she eyed Matthew with something like arrogance.

“Can’t you guess? You’re a fool if you can’t; no, of course, you can guess. That’s him, of course, my lover, resurrected. You couldn’t help but know. Everything pointed to it, all day long it’s been pointing to it; didn’t you guess then, either? Oh God, Matthew, now it is all shattered –” her voice shook, and she uttered a strange obscure sound from her throat, between a laugh and a sob. Matthew was dumbfounded.

“Where’s he gone? Is that where he lives?” he demanded after a second, pointing down across the bridge.

She nodded, and then she shook her head violently – “No – I don’t know – of course not. He’s obviously not living here any more. He must have come back for a day.”

“Tell me his address. And tell me his name now, too, there’s no point in holding it back.”

“No. I’ve forgotten it –”

“Don’t be bloody silly. As if I couldn’t find out – your father would tell me – and I can probably guess it, if I tried. I can do things, too. I’ve got power over things – come here.”

He seized her arm and pulled her roughly a few yards back to where the Bingo Club stood. She protested, looking back towards the bridge, but he insisted and dragged her back, half-stumbling. He came to a halt and putting his hand on her shoulder forced her to look at the hedge, and then coldly and deliberately shook it: that is to say, without touching it physically, and without knowing how to affect it by the power of his will alone, he nevertheless consciously allowed some hidden part of his mind to reach out and grasp the central stem of that part of the hedge and shake it furiously. For a matter of a few seconds, his dominion over it was complete, and the thin and tattered hedge rustled and shivered as if a wild beast were caught in it. And then his mind slipped suddenly, and he lost it. A couple of passers-by had stopped and were staring at them; he ignored them and turned back to Elizabeth. She was looking helplessly now at the hedge, now at him, and glancing back every few seconds towards the bridge.

“I’ve got power over it, d’you see? I am as strong as he is, if it’s strength you covet – is it strength? is it purpose? what is it you covet in him?” He was speaking fast, in a low voice, gripping her tightly by the shoulder and shaking her slightly. He felt close to panic. “Tell me, Elizabeth: what does it mean to you that you’ve seen him again? Is he greater than I am? Is that it?”

He suddenly checked his flow of questions. They were all meaningless. All he was doing by asking them, he realised, was to try and change what had just taken place. It was a physical event, and an emotional event, and he was trying to make it susceptible to words and hence intellectual; and naturally, he was failing. What was worse, he was being petty about it.

She shook her head, trying to concentrate on what Matthew had said. But she couldn’t get the other out of her mind – how could she? The sight of him, just the sight of him alone across a street, had been so compelling that she could do nothing to erase it. She looked at Matthew, just in time to see his expression change completely and become introspective, thoughtful, and even – surely not! – even amused.

God! But they
were
alike, the pair of them… she was torn, now, torn apart, and her own will was paralysed.

Then Matthew blinked, and looked at her again and smiled briefly, and let go of her shoulder.

“No, go if you want to – do you want to go and look for him?” he said.

“Well, yes – no – I thought you didn’t want me to. I thought you were jealous. Oh, God, I don’t know what I want to do now.”

“Go on, go and find him then. I’ll see you later. I’ve got to sort it out; I was being stupid about it. Go on, or you’ll miss him.”

She turned and went a few paces towards the bridge, and then stopped and ran back; but she said nothing. He kissed her, and then turned around himself and walked away.

He didn’t feel the least regret, and his jealousy had entirely disappeared. What he felt now was, in the main, a disgust with himself. Always words! When something happened, all he did was to jabber questions at it. Nor were they meaningful questions arising out of curiosity but a mindless automatic drivel of words, all designed to reduce it, to keep it at bay. To hell with it.

As he walked along, frowning, he realised that he was hungry; and he went into a cafe and ordered an egg and chips and a cup of tea. That was meaningful. He was hungry; he was going to eat. He thought of his attempt to impress her by shaking the hedge: of all the silly things! Well, he was foolish, but that wasn’t important.

So, what
was
important? What was the meaning of seeing her lover? Apart from the undeniable power of his physical presence, what was there about him that mattered?

Questions. He banged the table-top angrily.

Questions, and bloody stupidity. There was only one thing about Elizabeth’s lover that was important, and that was the silliest of all. And he’d guessed it from the beginning. Canon Cole had guessed it, Elizabeth had guessed it, and that was why she hadn’t wanted to speak his name. It was Alan, of course, it was his own brother.

Chapter 8

Matthew didn’t see her for the next few days. He did his best to keep Alan out of his mind. It was too much to take in at once; he cursed his weakness, and kept going.

On Saturday, the Parrishes’ other son Robert came home, and in the evening Matthew, tired and more than a little sick of himself, went across to the farm to say hello to him.

Robert Parrish was not unlike Matthew in some ways. Even physically they resembled each other a little; Robert had the same build as Matthew, the same hasty nervous movements, and his hair was black. No one would have taken them for brothers, though, for Robert had the Parrish stolidity in his face. His natural expression was one of gentle worry; and he wore glasses, too, which accentuated it.

They were still sitting round the supper table, talking, when Matthew knocked on the kitchen door and went in. Robert looked around and jumped up enthusiastically, and clapped him on the back.

“Hello, Matthew, you idiot! Are you still sweeping floors?” he said.

Matthew grinned sheepishly at the rest of the family. Peter was looking a bit more cheerful, and smiled back at him. “Come and sit down,” said Mr. Parrish. “Have you had your tea? D’you want a cup?”

“Thanks,” said Matthew, and pulled up another chair.

Mrs. Parrish poured out some tea. “There you are, dear,” she said. “What do you mean, Bob, sweeping floors?”

“That’s what he was doing last time I saw him,” said Robert, “sweeping floors in a hospital, wasn’t it, Matthew?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Parrish; “what you get up to, all sorts of things it is. You mind, Bob, you never know where you’ll end up, my lad.”

“It was only for a month,” said Matthew. “I’m working on the farm now.”

“Some of the time he is,” said Mr. Parrish. “You want to be careful, Bob, Matthew’s got his eye on you. He’s going to be a tax inspector, he told me.”

“Get away,” said Robert.

“No, it’s true,” said Matthew. “I thought of being a policeman, but I’d be able to keep a better check on you as a tax inspector. Where are you working now, anyway?”

“Bedford. It’s my second term now. Long holidays, you see! That’s the thing! Why don’t you go into teaching, Matthew?”

“I don’t know anything,” said Matthew. “What could I teach?”

“What did they teach you at Oxford?” said Peter.

“Nothing at all.”

“Get away with you!” said Mrs. Parrish. “Don’t talk rubbish.”

“Well, they taught me rubbish, then. I’ve forgotten it all now, anyway.”

“You’d get paid more than I do, as a teacher,” said Robert. “You ought to, you know.”

“No; I couldn’t. I don’t know how anyone teaches. I’m too dishonest. I’d tell them all lies and steal the dinner money. How old are they, anyway, your pupils?”

“Primary school. Juniors. No, you stick to sweeping floors, perhaps you’re right. There’s more money in that. But how long are you here for?”

“A couple of months… I don’t know. Whenever I go somewhere, I’m too lazy to move, and I want to stay for ever. Prison would suit me fine.”

“No, you’re only teasing,” said Peter. “He doesn’t mean half what he says, Bob. Your mates at Oxford, now – what are they doing? What sort of jobs do they do?”

“I don’t know,” said Matthew, and laughed. “No! Honestly! I haven’t a clue. I’ve lost touch with all of them. No!” he shrugged. “I’m so amazed that other people know what they’re doing that I haven’t got time to find something to do myself.”