The Haunted Storm Page 23

  He thought seriously that they weren’t going to get to the well in time. It couldn’t have been more than seven or eight yards away, but it might have been seven or eight miles for all the progress they were making. He felt sick and bitter with frustration, and a rush of senseless anger overcame him. He tore savagely at the tough brambles and shook the bushes from side to side like a madman, grunting and moaning under his breath.

  He had a sense of complete unreality for a moment then; it was just as if he’d left his body, forced out of it by the pressure of anger, and was watching himself coldly from a distance.

  He saw a low-hanging branch in front, and his attention focussed on it. It was like two separate planes swimming together and coalescing: and then he had an idea, and seized the branch and drew himself up. He swung forward as far as he could, pushing his feet out in front, and then let go and pitched forward on to his face. A stiff bush received the weight of his body; the branches were brittle and the leaves smooth and cool; it felt like elder. He fought his way upright again and struggled out of it, and his feet found a patch of clear ground, covered in leaves and mud but free of roots and brambles. He turned around and looked for Elizabeth.

  The gleam of the torch was stationary.

  “Liz! Are you all right?”

  “I can’t go any further, Matthew; I’m sorry, I can’t – I can’t move. I’m exhausted.”

  “I’m nearly there, Liz. It’s clearer here – can you just get over that patch in front?”

  “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry. Don’t wait; I’ll stand here and hold the torch.”

  He hesitated. He didn’t like it, but there was no choice in the matter.

  “All right… I’ll go on then… stay there.”

  He turned back. The light of the torch was obstructed and broken by the thick vegetation. He could only see one corner of the well from where he stood; the rest was tangled shadows. The silence, apart from the drip of water off the leaves, was profound.

  No sense in waiting… He pushed forward again. It was so much easier here that he thought the Canon must have cleared the ground. He smelt ash, too, charred wood and dead fires, under the persistent moist bitterness of leaves, and supposed that he had burnt some of it away.

  He felt his way through the branches, stumbling in his haste. The torch was too far behind him, and more of a distraction than a use, but it gave Elizabeth something to do.

  He heard something move on the other side of the well, and froze. The torch wavered; shadows swung this way and that, and he saw nothing… The noise stopped abruptly.

  It was only nine or ten feet away. Whoever or whatever it was was hidden. He moved straight towards it, his heart in his mouth. In a few strides he was at the well.

  Standing on the other side of it was Canon Cole, a spade in his hand.

  Matthew stood still. Whether Elizabeth could see her father, he didn’t know. The torch was steady.

  The two of them watched each other for a moment. The Canon’s expression was hard to read; he was in the grip of a powerful emotion, but what it was, Matthew couldn’t tell.

  “Who’s that?” the Canon asked him suddenly, jerking his hand towards the torch. His voice, beautiful still, was taut; an edge of panic showed under it.

  “Elizabeth,” said Matthew.

  “Her as well, eh… You two get everywhere, don’t you. Where is he now?”

  “Who?”

  “The other one, your brother, if he is your brother… you turn up like lice, you two, under every stone in the world. Where is he, I said?”

  “How the hell should I know? I didn’t know he was here.”

  Elizabeth called out: “Matthew, what is it?”

  “Stay there, Liz. Your father’s here; I think he’s gone mad.”

  He said it to provoke the priest, and succeeded. Such a spasm of irritation was shaking him that he would gladly have grappled with the man hand to hand and forced him to the ground.

  As soon as he’d spoken, the Canon smashed the spade down on the coping of the well. It clanged loudly, and a chip of stone was dislodged and fell into the water below.

  “l don’t know what you’ve come here for, but you’d better clear off – now. I’m warning you, don’t interfere. I won’t stand for it.”

  “You’re not in your right mind, are you, Canon.” Matthew’s voice was shaking. “I don’t blame you; I’m not either, and I’m in no mood to be told to clear off. If you want to fight me, come and do so, but if you don’t, let me get at the well. Stand back out of the way, and put that spade down.”

  The priest looked fixedly at him; Matthew thought he saw the man’s eyes expand and glow in the darkness. Whatever was possessing him had gone beyond emotion; something more elemental than that was at work.

  It entered Matthew too, and shook him violently. The two of them, their wills locked like bulls’ horns, faced each other silently.

  Then the Canon swung the spade at him. The movement was swift and powerful, but he had to brace himself to take the weight of it, and Matthew saw what was coming and ducked. The well was only four feet wide: the spade whistled over his head. Elizabeth cried out in fear.

  Matthew straightened up swiftly and put his foot on the slippery stonework to leap over. His flesh would burn up and die with its own intensity if he didn’t get his hands on the Canon straight away.

  The priest was off balance, and Matthew cannoned into him and knocked him over. They struggled like tigers. The Canon was lean and wiry and mad with fury, but Matthew was younger and madder, and had fallen on top of him. He got his hands around the other’s throat and shook him like a rat for a moment; but then the priest somehow got his nails into the wound in Matthew’s arm and tore violently at it.

  Matthew felt his head swim with the pain, and his grip slackened and he fell dizzily sideways. Immediately the Canon twisted over on top of him and battered at his face. Dimly Matthew heard Elizabeth shouting and struggling through the bushes…

  He brought his knee up sharply up behind the priest and knocked him off balance; but he recovered immediately. Matthew seized his wrists, and they swayed to and fro until Matthew twisted sideways and pulled the other down with him.

  They wrestled savagely in the darkness. They were completely silent, apart from the thud of blows and their breath as they gasped for air. Elizabeth, fighting her way through the undergrowth, made more noise than either of them. The light of the torch flashed this way and that as she tried simultaneously to follow what was happening and see her way forward.

  The priest got his hand under Matthew’s chin and pushed sharply backwards. Matthew’s neck tensed and he felt a sickening tug at the muscles of his throat, and went limp for a second, trying to breathe. Canon Cole sensed his advantage and shoved with all his might, suddenly, on Matthew’s chest, and Matthew fell backwards.

  His head crashed against the well – where the well should be, but it was softer, somehow, and yielded a little. He was more surprised than stunned by it, and managed to turn aside as the Canon came for him.

  He seized a wrist, and dragged the priest violently sideways, pulling him round and off balance, and drove his fists into the man’s face. He heard Elizabeth cry out, and stopped for a moment; the Canon was shaking his head dizzily, but then he came at him again, pinning his arms to his sides. The two of them stood swaying. Matthew strove to get his arms free, and after a moment or so managed to turn sideways and thrust one arm upwards, getting it round the priest’s neck and hauling him down.

  Elizabeth got free of the bushes and rushed towards them, crying at them to stop. He didn’t hear her.

  “Oh, you may as well,” came a voice from behind him.

  Alan’s!

  He let go, and swung round, dazed. His brother was sitting on the edge of the well, rubbing his leg. That’s what I hit, he thought stupidly… Alan looked at the pair of them contemptuously.

  Elizabeth stood there, on the verge of tears, the torch trembling in her hand. The priest was
holding his waist, panting hoarsely. Matthew looked from one to the other of them; he could hardly tell which was which. All his rage was gone, and all that filled the vacuum it left was a huge, dull sense of enigma and mystery.

  “I thought I’d have to do that, earlier on,” Alan said to him. “I’d have made a better job of it.”

  “What are you doing here’?” said Elizabeth.

  “What’s anyone doing here but wasting time? D’you think you’ll get to the truth of it by squalling like a school boy?” he said to the priest.

  Canon Cole would have sprung at him if first Matthew and then Elizabeth hadn’t got in the way. He looked at her sadly.

  “Elizabeth,” he muttered; “my darling, my darling, you shouldn’t have been here… it isn’t a woman’s place…”

  “To hell with you and your sexuality!” She spat the words out, shaking Matthew with the force of it. “Why aren’t you beyond sex? They are! But you – you’re stuck in it like a fly! Get out of it before it kills you, before it kills all of us.”

  Tears started to her eyes, and she turned her back abruptly. The Canon said nothing, but put his hand to his head as if it hurt him.

  Matthew turned to Alan.

  “What are you doing here, anyway? No, that doesn’t matter, I suppose; Liz, what’s the time?”

  “That doesn’t matter either,” said Alan. “Truth is truth. Ask it, go on, if you know how to. If you want to. A few minutes won’t make any difference. It won’t make any difference what you ask, either. Truth is only truth, isn’t it, Canon?”

  “Then it won’t make any difference if I ask or not,” said Matthew. “Or maybe it will… but if it’s only a game, at least I can see that it is. He –” he jerked his thumb at the priest, who looked up suspiciously – “he can’t; he’s stuck in it. Just like a fly. Liz – is out of it. She’s not playing. And you – what about you, eh?”

  “Too many metaphors. Speak plainly, Matthew. If you don’t want to ask, does that mean you don’t want to know?”

  “What do you think?”

  “All right, then. Would you risk your life to find it?”

  “I think I’d give it, freely… Yes, of course I would. Do you think I’d back out? I couldn’t, could I? All right then, what’s the risk?”

  “Down there… can you swim?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “Not that it matters very much. What do you think Canon? Shall we send him down?”

  The priest came forward a step.

  “Why ask me? It seems to me you’ve got the whole thing sewn up between you. It doesn’t matter who goes down, does it. But since you ask – all right. I don’t mind. But hadn’t it better wait? Till morning, at least?”

  “No!” cried Matthew. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s waited for long enough, and so have I. I’m sick to my soul of it. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  “No, no, no!” Elizabeth cried. “You’re no better than children, all three of you. You’re all playing games, like it or not but that’s the truth – all this talk about the well, about going down there and risking your stupid lives and can you swim – do you think you’ll find anything down there but cold water? And do you think that’ll make any difference? You’re playing like children, and it makes me weep… oh, the waste of it! The sheer stupid bloody waste of time and strength and will and everything you have, everything you glory in, everything you could be and would be if you didn’t shut your eyes and then clamp your hands across them and agree that the first rule in the game was ‘pretend to be blind’. What in God’s name have you got eyes for, or brains or sense? Can’t you look at the facts instead of calling them contemptible and agreeing to ignore them?”

  She stopped, and pushed her hair out of her eyes, and looked at them all in turn.

  “Well, if you can’t, I’m going to tell you now what the truth of this little game of fighting and exploring is. And then you won’t be able to say you didn’t know, you cowards… My father’s afraid of the world. He likes to think it’s stronger than he is, and that gives him the feeling that he needn’t try all that hard to deal with it, because it’s bound to win in the end, and no-one will blame him for failing, in that case. But that degrades him just a bit too much and he has to have another system to balance it, like an insurance broker, just in case by some freak he does win. So he invents one, and says that he’s really and truly a piece of the true God lost in the world and trying to get back home, and that nothing in the world is worth having because it’s all alien to him. And the truth of that, as I said, is that he’s afraid of it. That’s the fundamental thing about him, not his knowledge or his system…

  “You, Alan: you hate it as much as he does, and you used to impress me more than he did because I thought there was something more intelligent behind it than just fear – oh, God knows, I had the same feelings myself: that’s why I know what you’re all talking about – but you’re wrong, you’re hopelessly wrong! Because Alan, you try and lock the world out, and you can’t because you’re as much the world as a tree is. You try and make yourself greater than the world: well, good, as long as you do it in the right way. I don’t mean the moral way or the convenient way, I mean the way that gets results. And the only result of all your efforts is that you become a freak like the world’s most highly developed man… all will and nothing, nothing, to turn it to! Your only aim is to get this shoddy little party of yours into Parliament, and that’s only a cheating cowardly aim, a deliberately shocking aim, a graffiti-on-the-wall clever-clever Dada aim; and so the fundamental thing about you is that all your will’s just a cover-up, it’s a blind, and underneath it, Alan, you’re passive: you’ve got no will at all, because you’ve got no vision!”

  “That’s not true!” Matthew shouted – she whirled around to face him.

  “And now the truth about you,” she said; her anger was so intense that involuntarily he took a step backwards. “And that is that you’ve got everyone’s vision except your own. My father’s, your uncle’s, what passes for Alan’s – they all possess you, they all come on you like soldiers sacking a town, they find you and rape you like a girl and you’re dazed by it, you’re stunned, but underneath, it fascinates you and hypnotises you, doesn’t it, the speed and the brutality and the change of it… they’re so powerful and so swift, these visions that rape you, aren’t they? And don’t they go to adventurous places when they leave, and wouldn’t you like to go with them! But this one’s handsome, and that one’s gentle and kind, and a third one’s strong and gay, and you can’t make up your mind which one to leave with… One day it’s will, the next day it’s knowledge, the next day it’s morality or love or sublimity that you talk about; whenever you say something I can tell who it was you saw last… And that’s the deadliest truth about you, Matthew Cortez, which is that you live a life of words and heady thoughts and dreams about what might be and what could be and what would be if, and what do you do? Nothing, nothing, nothing, and you’re life’s slipping out of your fingers already because you’re not a boy any more and by the time tonight’s up you’d better have found something, Matthew, you’d better have started doing something, or else it’ll be too late ever to begin.”

  Her shoulders were drooping, and the torch in her hand pointed to the ground. No-one said a word, and then she straightened up and went on:

  “And now you’ve found something that you all think is worth doing something about, do you come together and discuss it rationally and examine it? No, no, you fight over it like dogs; and you don’t even know what it is, apart from being a well, but a well’s not enough, is it, it’s got to be something else, a symbol or a Holy Grail or something else that’s not real – anything, anything, to save you from seeing the miserable truth of it, anything as long as it’s not real – not real – anything as long as your eyes are still safely shut and your hands are still safely over them and your feet are still safely rooted in the mud and you’re pitiable, contemptible; and what is it that’s causing all
the fuss? What’s this futile thing? It’s a well, that’s all. lt’s a hole in the ground.”

  She was nearly in tears, and too exhausted to stand up any longer. She moved to the well and sat on the edge with her back to Alan. Matthew was shaken with the truth of what she’d said; it stung him like a viper, and he remembered that intuition of his on the lake, that she was the well, that truth came out of her. Was that it, then?

  No; there were more sides to it than that, and he knew there were, and knew hers wasn’t the only truth. He looked at Canon Cole, who stood a little way off, shivering, and at Alan, who looked back at him steadily.

  “That was a good speech,” said Alan, and then turned to her. “I’m sorry to spoil it. But nothing that you said matters, Elizabeth. You’ve got it wrong. Metaphors again… you people revel in them. Games, was it? Very well, we’re playing a game; and if you wake up in the world with half a dozen cards in your hand, and you learn that the only way out of it is to win with them, do you not sit down and play as well as you can? We’re playing seriously because our aim is to leave the game altogether, and you can’t leave if you lose. And we shut our eyes because with your eyes shut you can concentrate, Elizabeth, and think more clearly about what cards to play… It’s your own metaphor. And then the well, as you call it. It’s not a well, in fact; your father knows what it is. He’s crazier than I am. Let him tell you.”

  She looked up wearily at her father. Matthew saw him stir uncomfortably, and come forward a step. When he spoke, his voice was abstracted and subdued.

  “It’s not a well, darling. It’s – I think it’s the entrance to a temple; umm – in Roman times they used to build temples to Mithra underground, you know; I admit I was misled… it looks very like a well… but whether it’s – caved in, or what, I don’t know, and it was partly to find out that I came tonight. I – I was upset. Matthew – I do apologise. I hope you’ll… forgive me…I – I lost control of myself.”

  Matthew impulsively wanted to embrace the man and beg his forgiveness, too. He held back, because the truth of her description of him still rankled: this was just the latest feeling to sweep him up… but he smiled at the Canon, as warmly as he could, and then turned back to Alan.