The Self-Enchanted (6 page)

C
hristopher’s house stood out on its cliff like stages of lunar madness. It was the night of the first storm, not of winter, but of that week before winter which is the last warning to all creatures to dig themselves in. The storm moved down from the high passes, electric with fury, and it left a heavy magnificence of snow on the bent evergreens as it passed, a beautiful surface of terror on the ground.

Curt stood at the window of the Nesbitt place and watched the storm, as the house appeared and disappeared in the mists, riding it out. Only the outer works of the house remained to be finished. His work was almost done.

He did not like the valley any more. It eluded him. There was something wrong with it. At night he seemed to suffocate, and things were happening he did not understand. Most of the workers had gone away now. But Christopher was back, and he was worse than ever. There had been more scenes at the house.

When Curt got up to the site he found Christopher already there, looking at the departing snow clouds. He did not look as though he had slept for days, and his face was bruised. He seemed almost frightened. Curt tried to square up to whatever he might have to say.

“We’ve got to get it finished,” said Christopher, and his fingers twitched nervously.

“I fail to see the hurry.”

“You’re not hired to see anything. Either get it
finished
or get out. And get this muck cleared up,” he said, waving at the debris along the causeway. Then he walked away.

Three days later he was back. Curt was supervising the finishers, heard voices, and glanced out his window. He saw Christopher and Sally.

Christopher’s face was drawn into a deliberate mask and he moved as though he were not sure what he was doing. Sally also looked worn out and somehow scared. In the cold air she shivered, hugging her arms over her breasts, and her laughter was thin, nervous and abruptly choked off. The two of them came inside.

“Well,” said Christopher, “now you’re in Barocco’s house.” He didn’t say it very kindly. “That should please you. You were dying to see it.”

“You don’t have to talk that way,” she said.

“I talk the way I please,” said Christopher. Sally looked at him speculatively and went on into another room. Christopher hurried after her, as though afraid to leave her alone. In the living-room they slid the glass panels apart and stepped out on to the balcony.

The living-room was on the west side of the house, and the floor had been cantilevered out from the pylons, forming a suspended terrace about six feet wide, sloping slightly to the edge. The effect was of sliding out into space itself. Christopher went to the railing and looked down. The nature of the rock fault had made it advisable to set the house back from the edge of the cliff, so that
from the balcony a spiral concrete stair led down to the rock, which was supposed to be terraced.

Christopher stood silhouetted against the mountains, his coat flapping, his hair hissing round his head, and glared across the valley at the steep blue sides of the mountains. Forcing himself to do so, for heights made him dizzy, Curt came to the rail and looked down. Fifteen feet below him he saw Sam Carson sitting on a rock, eating a sandwich. Christopher saw him, too, and a curious expression, half-malice, half-anger, came into his eyes.

“Hey,” he called. “Carson. What the hell are you doing?”

Sam stopped eating his sandwich and looked carefully up. “I’m eating my lunch,” he said.

“Put it away. Why aren’t you working?”

Sam deliberately bit into his sandwich and munched slowly.

“Eat your blasted lunch in the lunch hour,” snapped Christopher.

“I felt like eating it now.”

It had been the design of the house that, though the edge of the cliff could not support the weight of the house, a terrace was to be built there, bounded by a
retaining
wall along the brink, spaced with stone seats. There was no sign of the wall.

“What about the wall?” bawled Christopher.

“I’m not going to build any wall,” said Carson, getting up and looking at Christopher defiantly. Hearing her father’s voice, Sally came forward to the rail and glanced down. Old Man Carson looked up at his daughter angrily. “You come down here,” he said. He obviously did not like to have to look up at his daughter. Sally moved
automatically
to the stair, but Christopher caught her arm.

“Stay where you are,” he said.

“You leave my daughter alone,” called Carson.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead with your daughter,” snapped Christopher. “What do you mean, you aren’t building the wall?”

“I mean what I say. It ain’t safe.”

Curt coughed. “It’s right on the fault,” he explained. “I thought it better to let it go.”

Christopher turned on him. “You did, did you?” he said. “And what makes you think you can make a
decision
without consulting me? I want that wall built.”

“Not on my responsibility,” snapped Curt. “If it’s built, it will be on your personal order.”

Christopher stared at Curt, and then, with a sudden decision, and an almost malicious expression, he again leaned over the rail. Sally had not stirred. She was still gazing down at her father. “What’s the matter, Carson,” demanded Christopher. “Are you yellow?”

Carson looked up at him, his face suffused with purple that made the coarse veins stand out. He glanced at his daughter, and then at Christopher, and seemed to make up his mind.

“Double pay,” he said, and his voice was scornful.

“Any pay you choose.”

“Okay,” said Carson. Again he looked at his daughter. “In advance.”

“Half in advance.”

“Fair enough,” said Carson. He stared again at his daughter, and then at Christopher, and turned away and slowly began to finish his sandwich. Christopher came away from the railing with a shrug. “Well?” he demanded.

“He’ll be killed,” said Curt.

“I doubt it. You couldn’t kill that bastard if you tried. And we’ll watch.”

“I shan’t,” said Sally.

“Oh, yes, you will. You will because you hate him,” said Christopher and left the terrace.

Sally stared after him and then looked at Curt. “How dangerous is it?” she asked.

“Very.”

“He’s been like a madman since he came back,” she said unexpectedly. “He wants him to die. What’s
happening
?” She began to sob. “And so do I,” she said. “And so do I.”

Curt shifted uneasily, his small eyes looking harder because tears frightened him. “You could talk your father out of it.”

She shook her head. “Not Dad. He’s too proud.”

“That’s no reason why Christopher should corner him.”

Sally looked up. “That is it, isn’t it?” she said gravely. “That’s what he works on: your pride. I think it’s
because
he hasn’t any of his own.” She shivered. “It’s awful not to have any pride.”

“Do you really want him so much?”

She could not answer that. “I don’t know,” she said, and Curt was tempted to believe her.

*

So it went on for five days, and on the sixth day it was the same. It was too nerve-racking for Curt to endure. It was a game the meaning of which he could not understand.

On the first day Sally had appeared at noon and ate lunch with her father. She lingered below, but came
upstairs
later. On the second day she sat down beside
Christopher
,
on the balcony above. On the third day she did not go down to Carson at all, and Christopher seemed satisfied.

On the sixth, as on every other of the days,
Christopher
sat on the terrace of the house, in a deck chair that could not have been too comfortable, hunched slightly forward, watching, but saying nothing. Fifteen feet
below
, sometimes in sight, but sometimes not, Carson glumly worked on his wall. The sweat rolled down his forehead in huge yellow drops. He took off his shirt, and his skin, flabby with age, glistened angrily in the long cool light.

Little by little the wall began to grow. One seat was already finished.

“Do you like sitting up here?” asked Christopher.

And did she, Curt wondered. She sat forward in her chair, anxious, with an apologetic glance downward at the old man. Christopher bathed in the sun, with his shirt off, soaking up sunlight like a cat, his eyes sleepy with the heat of it. Despite himself, Curt was drawn to the balcony. He knew that in the struggle between the old man and the younger, it was the old man who would lose. But he still did not know which of them would win, or how.

The sound of hammering had stopped. The last stroke had been false. Even Sally sat forward tensely. Only Christopher, who lay full length in the sun, did not move. The old man halted. Christopher roused himself, looked down, but said nothing. He bit his lip.

Carson looked up at his daughter. “What have you got to say now?” he demanded.

There was an endless moment of silence, and then, with
a grinding noise, the rock gave way. It gave slowly at first, the crack appearing south of the pylons as the rock
fractured
off, and Carson heard it. He gave a grunt and looked behind him quickly, like someone in a speeded-up film. Christopher caught his eye and flinched. Curt heard Sally suck in her breath. Then the rock slid off smoothly, flaking from the cliff in one slab, and Carson fell out into space and vanished. He did not even scream, but after a while they heard the crash of the rock, as it hit bottom.

Sally ran into the house. They heard the rock smash as though miles away, and echo, the powdered stone of it settling in the air. They heard the breaking of trees, and almost endlessly later, the delayed crack of a branch, in the roar of the shattered stone hitting the valley floor.

Christopher let out his breath, still staring at the place where a moment before Carson had been. There was nothing to say. Then he gave a sharp, explosive laugh, and Curt saw his eyes. Their expression was one of relief. Behind them they heard a car start up. Sally had gone.

Christopher went into the house and sat on a keg of nails, his head in his hands. Curt found him there.

“You’ve got to help me,” Christopher said. “I can’t face her alone.”

To Curt it smelled of a propitiatory death, but he agreed. It was evening, though, before he could persuade Christopher to leave the house. They drove down to the Carson farm, with Christopher huddled up in one corner of the pick-up. The trees of the valley had never seemed more savage or more dark. The farm was lit up, but
nobody
answered their knock. Curt opened the kitchen door. There was a big fire going in the stove and Sally sat by the kitchen table. She looked up, but said nothing.

Christopher prowled round the room. “Okay,” he said. ‘I’ll do anything you want.”

“I don’t want anything.” Curt noticed that Sally did not take her eyes off Christopher for a moment.

“You’ve got to let me do something.”

“I don’t want anything.”

She was not grieving for Carson, Curt thought. Carson must have made her life unbearable. It was something else that she saw in Christopher that frightened her. Curt had the feeling that it was all part of a rehearsed plan between the two of them that had somehow gone wrong.

“That’s very impractical,” said Christopher after a while.

“Perhaps.”

“Let him do what he can,” said Curt.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what he wants.” They were both
speaking
as though Christopher was not there; both realized
it at the same time and stopped speaking. It was Sally who went on. “Did you see the body?” she asked. “I don’t want your help. But come to the funeral, if you’re not afraid to.”

“I don’t belong there.”

“I want you there,” she said, and her voice had authority. Christopher moved out of the shadows of the stove, where he had been standing watching the room. “Very well,” he said.

She did not answer. She merely nodded and smiled, the last thing Curt had expected her to do. He felt the same tenseness in the room that he had felt on the balcony for
the last six days. Christopher looked at her and then left the house. And so it was arranged.

*

Because the undertaker had to come fifty miles, the funeral was not held until three days later. During those three days Christopher did not leave the house.

The villagers made the most of it. There was a steady stream of them to the farmhouse. It went on right up until the funeral, which was to be held during the
afternoon
. Curt was glad his work was almost over. He wanted no more of it. The attitude of the workmen had grown more difficult than ever. Carson’s death had turned him into a martyr, and so the valley people, who hated all intruders, now hated them more than ever. He would be glad to wash his hands of the whole mess.

He did not want to attend the funeral. In a way he dreaded it
.
But there was nothing else for him to do. He drove down from the site to pick up Christopher, and found him dressed in sports clothes under a black topcoat with a velvet collar. It was a costume that made him look more Italian than ever. The wrong sort of Italian.

“Couldn’t you wear something less conspicuous?” he asked angrily.

“Isn’t that the idea?” asked Christopher in return. “Besides, what could they possibly do to me?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t find it
pleasant.”

“Do you think I do?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wrong. I hate funerals.” Christopher looked mock sad. “Do they really hate me?” he asked after a while. He looked out the car window. “That makes it more interesting.”

But as they turned up the road to the Carsons’ place he was less sure. “What in God’s name do I say?” he
demanded
. And he hesitated before getting out of the car.

Curt shrugged. Inside the hostility of the valley people struck them like a blow. Even Christopher seemed taken aback by it. As they entered Sally came forward. “He’s in the living-room,” she said. She was wearing a grey dress and her mouth was firm. “You’d better go in and take a look.”