The Haunted Storm (27 page)

*

He said nothing, but followed her blindly, numbed. Nothing was solved; nothing was clear.

The first stars of the night were out, glittering softly in the broad velvety sky.

He felt hungry and tired. Overcome by some strong emotion, he put his head on Elizabeth’s shoulder and held her tightly.

They said goodnight and parted in the village. There was one thing left to try, but not much time; he was growing impatient, he’d had enough.

Chapter 11

The telephone rang. It was ten past nine in the evening, and he’d just helped Harry to bed.

It was Elizabeth. She sounded excited.

“Matthew, it’s the well – it’s tonight! “

“What’? Oh Christ; tonight – when?”

“It’s an eclipse of the moon, daddy said. He told me yesterday, and I saw on the calendar just now that there’s an eclipse tonight at sixteen minutes past midnight.”

Matthew said nothing; he was thinking furiously.

“Matthew?”

“Yes, all right. I’m worried about Uncle Harry. He’s very weak; I was going to call the doctor in the morning.”

“Oh, golly…”

“I don’t know if I ought to go. Listen. I’ll call at the rectory for you… if I’m not there in half an hour I’m not going to go.”

“I’ll come and see you, in that case –”

“All right. Half an hour.”

He put the receiver down.

It was nearly three weeks after their walk on the moors. He had spent the whole time looking after the old man, with a possessive, almost fierce tenderness. He cherished him like a baby; but inside him the desire to settle the business, to get at the mystery, burnt and burnt like a furnace in his heart. It purified him; and now at last there was the chance of it, and Harry was ill…

He ran up the stairs and knocked at the old man’s door.

“Come in,” said Harry.

The light was out; Harry struggled to sit up. “What’s the matter? Was the telephone for me?”

“No, for me. Look, Uncle Harry – no, lie down, it’s all right.”

He sat on the bed beside him.

“Uncle Harry, would you be all right if I went out? I might be a few hours. I don’t really know when I’d be back…”

“Of course I will. Don’t you worry about that, you go out.”

A thousand things to say came to Matthew’s lips. He wanted to sit there in the darkness and pour it out, to confess and be blessed, and to ask for forgiveness, above all. He struggled with the words, and gave up; there was a lump in his throat. Finally he leant over and kissed Harry gently on the forehead.

“Sleep well,” he said. “I wish I could tell you… you’re always so kind, and I’m a fool, a blundering fool… but I love you, Uncle Harry, I love you utterly. Sleep well. I’ll look in to see you’re all right.”

“Thank you, Matthew.”

He had the idea that Harry wanted to say more too, but was too tired and weak; so he kissed him again and went out.

He stood irresolutely on the landing, looking back at the bedroom door and then across at his own, and then out of the window at the rain and the dusk. There were so many cross-currents of emotion and desire: everywhere he looked there was conflict. But the square pane of the landing window, and the rain and the grey evening light outside, acted on him like a magnet, and his whole body itched to be outside.

He’d have to change. He went into his bedroom and put on a thick shirt and a dark pullover, a pair of levis, and plimsolls on his feet. There was no sense in taking a coat. It had been raining for weeks, and his coat was wet through already. The ground was soaked, and he had no boots, but he’d discovered that plimsolls were the best thing to wear in rain. They got wet immediately, and didn’t bother him after that.

He shut the window tightly and went downstairs, checked that all the lights were off in the rest of the house, and took the torch from the hall table. It was a heavy rubber-covered one; he hoped it was as waterproof as it looked.

He went out of the front door and looked at the trees across the road. The dusk seemed to be thicker there, and the rain among the leaves looked like another element altogether, darker than water, heavier than air, and more wild and volatile than earth. There was a vibrant, harsh melancholy in it which played immediately on his soul, making him dizzy and tense with longing… it was the poetic spirit in the world; it was holding him up.

A thought came swiftly into his head and made him shudder. It would work though, it would work…He knelt down in the road and looked closely at the grass bank until he found what he wanted. A broken piece of fencing with a sharp, jagged splinter at one end of it. He hoped the rain hadn’t softened it too much. He rolled his sleeve up and, holding the stick like a dagger, slashed at his forearm once, twice, and the skin broke: again, harder, and the blood ran out freely. He looked closely at the wound. It was rough and ugly, and he felt faint and sick for a moment with the pain. He threw the stick away, and rolled his sleeve down. That would teach him.

A wave of utter contempt passed over him. To think that he was weak enough to need that sort of elementary reminder! The back of his hand was already covered in blood. He stuffed it deep into his pocket, and set off.

As he walked along he realised why tonight there was a feeling of wildness in the atmosphere, a feeling that had been missing from the deadly, soaking sadness of the weeks of rain: tonight a wind was blowing, gusty and fierce, lashing the water into the trees and into his face and hair. Before he came to the fork in the road by the Red Lion he was wet through. The pain in his arm was dragging at his attention the whole time. He’d have to wipe the blood off his hand, he supposed, before he went into the Rectory. But there was no need to go in at all. She’d better be ready. Though why was she coming at all? It wasn’t a woman’s journey, was it? No, no, but she knew the way and he didn’t. So perhaps she’d better come.

He rang the .bell and stood back out of the light that came through the door as she opened it.

“Ready?” he said.

She nodded. She was wearing a raincoat and trousers. The coat was damp; it clung to her shoulders and made them look thin and childlike. He had to suppress an urge to put his arms round her and kiss her and tell her that it didn’t matter after all, that they’d stay inside in the warm… this was a struggle against everything. And ranged against him were all his own instincts.

He said nothing; what else had he wounded his arm for? The pain was settling down now to a deep throbbing ache.

“Have you got your watch?” he asked as she shut the .door

“Yes – what’s the matter? What’s the matter with your arm?”

“Nothing. Is it waterproof?”

She looked blank for a moment. “Oh – the watch – yes.”

“Come on then, let’s get on – I don’t want to stop.”

He strode out of the drive and down the road. After a few yards he stopped uncertainly.

“I don’t – I wish – Liz, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to! Just tell me the way.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m as strong as you are, and I want to come. I’m afraid of losing you, Matthew; do you realise that?”

“Don’t say things like that, or I’ll lose my temper. No, no, I won’t. Let’s get back to the very beginning, on the beach – there was an air of truth about that, and nothing’s had it since, you see, that’s what I’m after tonight. And if you don’t play along, I’ll ditch you without hesitating, Liz, I mean it.”

“All right. I don’t quite understand – all right.”

They went quickly through the village, and down the road that led towards Ditton.

The going was heavy, the rain unceasing. Large stretches of the road were under two or three inches of water. Elizabeth trudged along beside him, saying nothing, and trying to keep up. He marched swiftly, forcing the pace, and felt after a couple of miles that he was being callous and unfeeling: she hadn’t complained once, though he wouldn’t have minded if she had. It was nearly completely dark, but above the thick pall of clouds the moon was full, and lightened the sky to some degree, so that they could see the outline of the road ahead.

The desire and the longing that raced through his blood stream raced equally through the wind and the streaming darkness. And there was something else, too, a more obscure sense like a heart-beat, that surged distantly both inside him and outside; what it was, he did not know, but it may have been destiny, or a sense of death, or sexual passion; it felt like all three.

They stopped occasionally to let Elizabeth ease the pain of a stitch in her side, or get her breath, and then they pressed onwards, doggedly. They walked without speaking for nearly two hours. It had taken longer than he thought to get to Ditton; the water on the road had held them up, slowing their steps. It was a quarter past eleven, by her watch, when they got to the centre of the village.

“How far is it from here?” he said.

“Another twenty minutes, I should think,” she replied. Her voice was weak and strained; they looked, both of them, exhausted and worn out. His contempt flared up again – like magnesium, causing everything in the world to stand out harsh and white and throw dark shadows. Maybe it was the very deepest instinct he had; it felt like it, now.

They were soaked to the skin; their clothes clung to them heavily. The water streamed off their hair, and the wind, which seemed to have freshened during their walk, was chilly and cutting. They looked at each other.

“Well?” he said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think at all. I’ll go on; I’m not going to stop. Are
you
going to stop?”

“Of course not. But what do you think about it, eh? What’s it leading to?”

“Don’t speak like that. You sound stupid.”

“There are veins of stupidity under that, girl, that I haven’t even scratched the surface of. There’s always further to go, always…”

“Shut up, Matthew! Shut up! Don’t keep talking, talking, talking! D’you think you’ll change anything? D’you think it’s a clever little exercise, the world, for you to get so many marks for solving? Oh, the
waste
of it… and it’s cold, and wet, and getting late. Don’t say another word. I don’t love this act of yours; you and your brother – you’re not men, either of you, you’re something else altogether – oh, it sickens me what you do with your strength. Just
get on
, that’s all…”

She stood still, her voice coming intensely at him out of the darkness. He felt overwhelmed. The world was in flood, flooding at him, and all the emotion in the universe was streaming against him; his knees gave for a moment, and then he caught his balance again. He laughed.

“What’s the time?” he asked.

She held her wrist out…It was twenty to twelve. They were just halfway between the village and the woods. Matthew breathed in deeply, and they set off again.

A quarter of a mile further on they came to a fork in the road. The main road continued to the right; the road to the left was much narrower and darker, overshadowed by trees, and this was the way they took. A little way along it there was a high wall on their right, and set back into it the entrance to a drive, overgrown and decayed. It was in complete darkness, and he had to switch on the torch.

“The drive goes up to the house,” she said. “We take a path through the woods that leads to the lake. Matthew –”

He stopped; something in her tone pulled at his heart, and he hesitated, and then flung his arms around her and kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth, like an unhappy child. He could not help it; the longing was too long for him. After a minute it subsided again.

He let her go and swung the torch around to light the way. Directly inside the gate there was a car parked. It was the Canon’s Volkswagen.

“Did you know he was going to be here?” he whispered angrily. His voice had dropped automatically.

“No – yes – I suppose I did; yes, he went out earlier on, had the spade and things, I remember noticing; I should have said.”

“So he’s after it too. He better not get in the way. I’ve got a feeling – but no, never mind.”

He turned away and marched up the drive. His arm was aching from shoulder to wrist, and he had the idea it was swollen; the sleeve felt tight. He pushed it to the back of his mind, and looked around them.

The drive was pitted with holes, and all of them shone black in the torchlight, gleaming with water. It was covered in weeds, and the trees on either side of it seemed to lean forwards over it. Their leaves dropped thickly with rain, and a constant muffled rustling filled the air, as if the wood were alive with ghosts. Elizabeth kept close beside him, nervous at the darkness outside the light of the torch. As they went farther up, he found himself getting tense and claustrophobic, and fought against it. The world was too wild for that sort of silly reaction…

Up the drive for a hundred yards – two hundred yards – it was hard to tell. Then there was a gap in the trees on the right. Elizabeth said “That’s it. It’s along there.”

“Does this go straight there?”

“No, it goes to the lake, and then there’s another path all the way round, but –oh Matthew,” she caught his arm, and made him gasp with pain.

“What’s the matter with your arm?”

“Nothing, nothing. What is it?”

“I’ve got a better idea – if we just go straight to the lake and find the boat we can go across much faster, and the path’s all overgrown anyway; l probably wouldn’t find the way through.”

“Well, all right. I don’t care how the hell we get there, as long as we do. What’s the time?”

Her watch said ten to midnight.

“Sure you can find the boat?”

She nodded, and they turned off into the trees. He couldn’t think clearly; the questions were crowding at him now like Odysseus’ ghosts in Hades, straining wordlessly for the blood in the ditch, the false life that would let them speak… The blood was his own doubt. Let them gibber; he could hold them off for a while yet.

The undergrowth was thick, and the ground underfoot soggy and yielding. They said nothing, but concentrated on forcing a way through the clutching brambles and the mud. After a minute or so he went in front and she held the torch from behind, and he tore at the twigs and smaller branches that got in the way, cracking them savagely and leaving them hanging broken. They were losing time, he thought, and cursed under his breath. He wasn’t thinking at all; all his energy was occupied in battering at the physical world holding him back, and fighting his tiredness, and ignoring the pain in his arm. He stumbled over roots, and scratched his hands on his face, and plunged knee-deep into a sodden depression of mud and dead leaves, and struggled out again.