The Haunted Storm Read online

  Her next task was to get herself home. This involved making a train journey of an hour or so, and then waiting for a bus; and the bus, when it came, took twenty-five minutes or half an hour to travel the six miles between the town and the village she lived in, and by that time she would be half dead, she thought, or more than that: completely dead, and her body would walk into the house and climb the stairs and get into bed, and close its eyes on the emptiness forever.

  But for the moment her eyes were open. She looked half-hopefully down each street as she came to it, feeling the usual silly fears: suppose she met him coming round a corner? Suppose he, too, were to get on the train, and come up to her in the corridor with a knowing smile? Better to ignore the fears, to pretend that she was in disguise – and so, indeed, she was, she thought.

  A clock outside a jeweller’s shop told her the time, and she realised that she had three-quarters of an hour to wait for a train. As she passed a coffee bar the smell of food reminded her of how hungry she was: she stood and stared inside for a moment, thinking how clean it looked, how bright and warm and comfortable. In every way it was ideal: and all she had to do to be allowed to sit in there for a while was pay for some food and a cup of coffee, perhaps, and she had money in her purse.

  She sat at a table with her back to the street and ate greedily. The place was nearly empty: there were only a boy and a girl in the corner and a man on his own reading a newspaper. She felt more sure of herself now,. The red plastic of the seat was more than comfortable; it was as soft as mist. The colour reminded her of a dress she had had as a small girl.

  She thought of taking off her raincoat and hanging it on the coat-rack by the door that led into the kitchen. But she thought that it would not get dry, and would be uncomfortable to put on again, so she merely undid the buttons and let it hang open. The neck and shoulders of her pullover were wet too.

  She bought some cigarettes and smoked one in the waiting-room on the station. The stove in there was heated by coke. The top of it was so hot that when she touched the tip of the cigarette to it to light it, for she had forgotten to buy any matches, she thought her hand was burning, and expected to see flames running all over it.

  The ticket collector was in the booking office, and she could not find anyone to show her ticket to. But as she gave up waiting and went through the gate on to the platform, he came out and clipped her ticket. It was soaking wet and he tore the edge a little.

  The train came in on time and stood at the platform for a minute or so. The carriages had a corridor running down the middle of them, with the seats on each side of it in groups of four round a table. There were perhaps ten or fifteen people in each carriage. Elizabeth sat on the left-hand side facing the engine.

  The railway line ran along the coast for about ten miles before turning inland. It had stopped raining now and patches of starry sky showed between the racing clouds. The moon seemed to strain against the wind to hold still. Elizabeth leaned back and watched it, resting her cheek on her hand.

  She felt at ease, fed and warm. The heating-pipes under the seat would soon dry her coat out. She was balanced.

  A small group of fishermen’s huts in the distance was lit brightly and surprisingly by the moon. There was no-one near them, and perhaps they were totally empty. Later on she saw a barn in a field, standing away from the rest of the farm buildings. It was dark and enclosed, but she felt that at any moment someone might light a lantern and go out to it, and perhaps even put a paraffin stove in there to warm it up.

  She could see a light flashing at regular intervals far out at sea. It was a lightship, and it was anchored near a wide stretch of shoals and treacherous sandbanks. The railway line ran along a high embankment of stones set a little way back from the beach. When the tide was in and a high wind was blowing off the sea the side of the train was soaked with spray that dashed against the windows. The tide was going out now, and the wind was dropping.

  If she were rich, she would lay this panorama in front of her lover, for him to sleep in and dream. But which lover? Now she no longer knew who her lover was; and for the moment she craved for nothing. She herself could go to sleep, if she chose to. And because she craved for nothing, she was not unhappy when the train turned away from the coast and went inland.

  It was travelling fast. Telegraph posts flashed by invisibly like tokens of regret. If she regretted anything it was not having let him speak. There would have been so much for him to say to her! And she would nod dumbly, entranced, and beg him to kiss her again.

  Two women on the other side of the carriage were talking, about the cousin of one of them, and her baby. He was called Peter and his father was a plumber. Elizabeth listened to them for a while. They talked quietly, slitting side by side without moving.

  Just before it left the coast the train passed a wide estuary with a long low island in it where thousands of water-birds had their nests. In countless trees inland owls would be stirring and haunting the air with their cries.

  There was no fear in the world at the moment, and no darkness. Darkness was caused by distance, for all things shone with their own light, and if she could not see them, it was only because they were too far away and not because it was dark. She had seen his face well enough, hadn’t she? It was the same with fear. Things had their own benedictions and reassurances. It was only when you couldn’t see them that you began to be afraid. He had blessed her with his hand and faithfully observed her commands; he had reassured her by the intent silence in his eyes. How they had stared! It was almost as if he’d been afraid. No, no; he had not been afraid.

  Far off in the woods a vixen called to her cubs to warn them that a human being was nearby; her savage and uncertain-sounding cry, between a bark and a moan, echoed time and time again between the trees.

  Elizabeth smiled to herself with relief. But it was strange, all the same, that none of the men to whom she had confessed had done exactly what she wanted. Most of them tried to speak. She might so easily have been murdered by any of them. She must have been lying in fragments, separated, disconnected, for the past months; or asleep.

  For some distance the railway ran parallel to a road. It was not a main road, but it was straight and had a good surface. She imagined him in a car, a large, expensive, comfortable car, driving swiftly along the road beside the train, looking up at her fixedly, with his hands on the wheel; the expression on his face was bewildered at first, then stern, and finally, unwillingly, happy. And if the train stopped somewhere she would get into the car with him, and listen to him as he talked.

  She got off the bus and stood, a little dazed, beside the main road that led through the village as the bus drove away. The village was empty at this time of night; the pubs would be doing business, but there was no-one in the streets or in the village hall. It was not a Sunday or a feast day and her father would not be in the church; it was far too late for evensong now anyway. She could see lights in many of the windows, so people were alive; they were probably watching television, most of them, or talking, or playing games. In the window of the grocer’s shop on the other side of the road a neon light glowed, illuminating the interior of the shop.

  The road was wet. The street-light fixed to an iron bracket in the wall behind her shone distinctly green, but the colours of the tar on the road and the bricks of the wall and even the paint were all reduced not to shades of green but to shades of grey, though with a metallic hint of green in them. It was clear colour, and one that showed up the textures of things with great force and clarity, tempting her to peer closely at them, to examine, to make comparisons, or just to look for a moment, clearly.

  There was a swirl of petrol on the wet road in front of her, and she crouched down to look at it. Even the rainbow purples and reds and blues were subordinated to the monochrome luminosity of the streetlamp, and revealed themselves in minutely differing curves and stripes of texture, some of them glassy-smooth and others almost completely matt. It set her teeth a little on edge to look at
it, and she stood up again and glanced away down the street.

  A car went past, braking as it came to a curve that led round past the garage, and its lights flared brightly in the air and on the wet surface of the road, making a sudden red smear of brilliance on things, so that the palms of her hands felt hot.

  The road seemed endless, although she could see hardly a hundred yards of it from where she stood. What she could see, the surface of things, was just like the road: it was either too open or too enclosed, and she could not tell which.

  She leant back against the wall and closed her eyes, and felt the air blow around her face. Perhaps what she could not see would be more welcoming. What lay around the village? Fields, to be sure, and on one side, as she had told him, the moor, that came down behind the church and the rectory. The moor was wide, at least, and never deceived her. Fields lay darkly side by side and she could fly above them silently. There were barns that contained hay, and barns that were empty but for tractors, farm machinery, perhaps an old car… the thought of them made her shiver. How did this appalling dilemma get into the world, that made things either near or far away, either calm or frenzied, either hot or cold, either soothing or anguishing? There was no escape from it. It was embedded in the depths of her like a long splinter of glass, pinning her to nature.

  The surface of the road was like a giant slash of ink across a sheet of dirty paper that was smeared with grease and tiny grains of dust. She knew without letting her eyes dwell tin it that it was less attractive than clean concrete, and she knew equally well that the garage down the road had a forecourt which was bounded by a wall of concrete slabs. Furthermore, it contained and exhibited a large number of glossy surfaces of paint and enamel, and these would be even more cool and refreshing to her eyes than concrete.

  She began to walk slowly down the road, her hands in her coat pockets. Until she got to the garage her only link with wholesomeness was the gusty air, which made her shiver; but she did not bother to tighten her coat around her or to button the neck, because she was striving to suppress the loathing that rose in her throat for the clutching night. She fixed her eyes on the bright neon light in the little building in the forecourt of the garage and resisted the impulses of all the other surfaces she was aware of, which flew up in her imagination and drove themselves against her like snow.

  She came to it and rested her hands on the cold roughness of the concrete. The garage was deserted, as she had hoped. At the back of it was a large corrugated iron building where they repaired cars; the little glass-sided hut in the forecourt, with the neon light on inside it, was where they sold accessories and kept the till. In front of it stood three petrol pumps. There was a circular sign about three and a half feet high which swivelled on a metal frame and stood in the entrance, saying “Closed”. Her eyes took it all in gratefully. She looked first of all at the wall. Her hands lay side by side about three inches apart on a rough grey shelf which formed the top of the wall. It was perfectly flat. She had seen insects crawling on stone walls at night, lapped in a mellow air of peace, and wished she could throw off her alien body and join them. Now her hands, with their flawless surface, were tortured and inert, like victims of passion: but a passion that was not hers. that she had never felt, that she had never imagined or dreamed of… it had passed over her without even a shadow and fastened the mouth of its attention on these hands of hers, biting and twisting them unrecognizably and leaving them torn and shapeless, but still the same shape as before, unchanged.

  The circular sign was caught in a gust of wind and swung round creaking. She looked up sharply and found her heart moving out towards it, as helpless in the sweeping air as the metal was.

  Then she really began to ache with sorrow for the stranger on the beach; because he had gone for ever, and because she didn’t even know his name. Memory was false, and God and the world were false, but if she knew his name she could say it to herself and think of him… he had obeyed her too faithfully, and it was her fault and not his. How had the God of the world brought her to this?

  She visualised as strongly as she could the rest of the village, on a sudden impulse, and spread it out around her like a cloak. She did this in order to fix herself there, because she was coming to pieces again after the momentary wholeness of the train journey. She concentrated as hard as she could, gripping the wall tightly with her invisibly tortured hands, and tried to see in her mind’s eye the entire darkened expanse of the village. Most of it lay behind her; hut that made no difference. The road, on her right, curved to the left ahead of her and led downhill a little way past the builder’s yard and out of the village. A few yards ahead on the right the road was joined by the other road through the village; the two of them formed the two sides of a triangle which was completed by a shorter road joining the two. The road directly behind her led through the village, past the village hall and the recreation ground, and out to the villages of Holy Ditton and Eastley. The road that joined it ahead of her was the main road to Silminster, and along it on the left were the church and the rectory, as well as the primary school and another garage. In the centre of the triangle there was a pond, a war memorial, a square of grass, a bus shelter, and a number of shops and houses.

  Elizabeth pictured it all dimly, but it was not enough to make her feel safe. There was more yet that needed to be done, just as a beginning; as for completing the work, that might take a lifetime… now why, oh, why had she run away? Coward that she was! She might have finished it all with one blow. No, no, not kill herself; all that she meant was, release him from his promise; but then she’d have had to surrender herself altogether. Though wasn’t that what she wanted? Coward that she was!

  She heard a number of men leaving the pub near the bus shelter. One or two of them were walking down towards her, talking loudly. She grew afraid they would see her. Before she had time to move they did, and one of them pointed to her. They knew who she was. They spoke to each other, and laughed. They came past the garage staring at her and she recognised one of them. Then they went on down the road and shouted something, calling her names, and they both laughed loudly. It paralysed her.

  She went back into the shadows beside the main garage building, and a lump came to her throat. The long grass wet her legs; nettles stung her. Light from a distant street lamp shone dimly on the corrugated iron, and she thought of lying down, covered with the long grass, so that she would be forgotten. Behind the garage was a field in which a rusty harrow lay abandoned, covered with grass. She wondered if he would know what it meant to lie down on wet grass and wish for oblivion. If only he had forced her to listen to him…

  Two miles away in the darkness the well lay in the wood, with the ivy dragged suddenly from its stone coping by the hands of her father. There was a quality of rape implicit in the very existence of things, and nothing was safe from it, nothing.

  Her mother opened the door of the sitting-room and looked out.

  “Oh! It’s you, dear,” she said. “Where on earth have you been? Oh, look at you, you’re soaking wet; come and hang your coat in front of the fire.”

  “It’s all right, mummy; don’t fuss,” said Elizabeth.

  She stood in the hall, looking and feeling a little uncertain. After a second she began to take off her raincoat. She handed it to her mother, but stayed where she was, looking downwards, puzzled.

  “What is it, dear? What’s the matter?” said Mrs. Cole.

  “Come in, come along, there’s a dreadful draught out here. Come and get warm; you’re frozen.”

  She took Elizabeth’s hand and tugged it gently, and Elizabeth followed her into the sitting room. Her mother shut the door behind them.

  Chapter 3

  She had not been wrong when she had said to Matthew that she discerned morality in his eyes. Matthew had known immediately what she meant, for it – what she called morality – was the one consistent force in the universe. Instinctively, he referred everything to absolutes; he always had done. It was a nervous reaction
to things – a sort of shying away from the crude elementary criss-cross patchwork of motives that governed human life “under the moon” – and when he thought about it, he put it down to the fact of his Spanish ancestry, without, however, taking that idea really seriously. His father was only half Spanish, and his mother entirely English, but to think of himself as a Spaniard in England gave depth and body to his more instinctive sense of being a stranger in the world.

  He was his parents’ second son. They had had a daughter, five years older than Matthew, but she had died when he was four. His elder brother he hardly knew at all, because when he was nineteen and Matthew was eleven their father, for some secret reason that Matthew was too young to guess at, had thrown him out of the house and had for bidden him ever to come back. He was never mentioned again.

  Matthew, therefore, had grown up with the sense of being the last of a race, a survivor. Sometimes this feeling weighed heavily on him and made him resent his inheritance, but he was glad at other times of the identity it gave him.

  His teachers at school had thought him intelligent, but lazy and vague; but his friends at university had been surprised occasionally by the intensity with which he used to regard problems they had answered for themselves years before: that of the existence of God, for instance, which Matthew would be prepared to debate for hours on end with anyone at all. At length he arrived at a temporary solution which enabled him to live without actually being compelled to talk to everyone about it, while carrying the debate further on inside his own heart. He came to regard God as an ironical ghost whose existence was in no doubt, but who had little or no effective power; and good and evil – though their shadow fell inexorably over every dilemma which con fronted him, however petty or absurd it may have been – the distinction between them was muddied now and obscure; he no longer knew, if he ever had done, precisely which of them was which – but he knew, as well or better than he knew his own name, that they held the power of life and death over his soul.