Dark Entries Page 16

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  Although when he first came to Fleet Ariel had spoken enthusiastically of the joys of tramping the Island, Carfax, when he almost immediately afterwards became fully aware of the mystery of the view, had, he now realised, unconsciously resolved that to leave the demesne might be unwise – inimical, he increasingly felt, to his intense but rather precarious happiness. He had never done so; nor had Ariel again made the suggestion. When, therefore, that evening after dinner, she proposed a walk down to the sea, he was concerned.

  ‘Are we not afraid?’

  ‘The Island loves us.’

  ‘Your Island seems different from mine.’

  ‘Perhaps that is because we have never made its acquaintance together.’

  They walked down the lawns which edged the yellow drive; through the gates; and along a faint rough track to the cliffs, hand in hand and quite silent. It was now summer. The air seemed warm and cool at the same time, as can only be on small islands. There was no wind and the unpolluted sea lapped and rattled its fetters and spoke in words just unintelligible. They stood on the very cliff edge. Carfax interrupted the silence and the sea with a quotation from ‘Dover Beach’:

  ‘Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! For the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarums of struggle and flight

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.’

  She put her arms round him and kissed him. The kiss remained always with him, an agony in the mind: for then the two of them at last met and recognised one another. Later he supposed that this was indeed a moment’s perfect happiness for him; but at the time the thought did not occur. Everything but the sea was dark and quiet and timeless. Thought and feeling had stopped and they were immortal. The moment was immortal.

  They returned after a while to the house, hand in hand and quite silent. And as their love had begun a little before a quotation, so it ended a little after one: for during the night Carfax, by chance or otherwise, awoke from the deep happy sleep into which, retiring unusually early, they had both fallen after their walk, to find himself alone.

  He sought, cried out, and listened. All seemed still in the dark house as he opened the door of Ariel’s bedroom and cried: ‘Ariel! Ariel!’ The volume and precision of the echo rising round those light syllables startled him: and briefly directed his attention away from another mystery that seemed now to be besieging his mind. He groped at once for a light and a key to this new strange impression following Ariel’s disappearance. Then, very distant and not loud, he heard several knocks as upon a door. He heard what seemed to be the front door of the house opening and closing and then, he thought, or thought he thought, quick hushed footsteps on the lovely crisp gravel of the drive: but all these experiences through an odd filter of distortion, distance, and unreality, as in some half-waking dreams. He plunged about the mysteriously planned, difficult house, seeking a window which overlooked the drive. All the while he cried: ‘Ariel! Ariel!’ The other sounds had ceased now; with a finality somehow suggestive of time rather than distance, or of the two mingled, as when a half-dream is lost at full waking. In the end he realised what else was wrong. He was in a different house. He knew at once what house it was; and went to his former bedroom, the unexpectedly conventional room with the red-blue wallpaper and the brass bed, rather French and ornate, in which he had never slept.

  As he opened the door, light poured in through the window and a breeze blew out his candle. Looking out at the view for the last time, Carfax saw spread before him on all sides a large town. Skysigns were still flashing and flickering; many of the houses still had lights in the windows, even at that late or early hour. A vague miscellany of noises reached Carfax’s ear, for months unaccustomed to the urban pandemonium or garland of sound: a forgotten but unmistakable odour of humanity drifted in on the midnight air. From that smell Fleet had seemed unchallengeably free. As it reached his senses, Carfax knew that he was once more in bondage, irrevocably. A wild, bitter misery at his utter loss descended upon him and clung like the shroud about a man who has been hanged. Never afterwards would he for one waking moment be free from the desperate devouring damned memory of the beautiful creature he had known. He would dream he was with her still or again; and wake to resume his life among strangers. He was past tears, past hope, past appetite, past all but bitter despair at his unequalled loss. He was alone and all the foolish, bad, unlovely world were strangers.

  The house was empty and derelict. His possessions proved, when he had closed the window and relighted the candle, to be ranged about the shattered room. He packed and left and walked into the noisy town, still thronged with drunken holidaymakers. He noticed by the gate an estate agent’s bill with SOLD affixed diagonally across it in red letters.

  Doubtless the house was to be pulled down to make room for villas; or perhaps was to become a private hotel or private school or private asylum. Fleet had at some time been rebuilt on a new site, as Ariel had said: perhaps by some rebellious second son who, inheriting unexpectedly, had seized the chance ruthlessly to make effective his long-standing distaste for the old hidden spot, a spot so hidden that the house seemed almost unborn into time; to that son, no doubt, it seemed unadventurous, unprogressive. Doubtless research at the public library would clear this matter up. But Carfax omitted to go to the public library.

  He took the last bus into the capital. He was one of three or four standing passengers, and, seeing the suitcase he held, a boy rose and offered his seat. Looking for the fare Carfax drew from his pocket a little paper spill which he remembered having found among the pages of Beddoes, where presumably some reader had used it as a bookmark. Sick at heart, he paid his fare, and unrolled the spill. On the inside was written in Ariel’s bewitching hand, all freedom and grace, a silly little doggerel verse:

  There’s nothing in Why

  The question is How?

  Whatever you learnt

  From the golden bough.

  It was to be supposed that Sir James Frazer’s book was in the writer’s mind; but there were no capitals. Carfax sank into a motionless misery.

  It was only when he entered his room in the big hotel where he spent the rest of the night that the significance struck him of the boy’s action on the bus. Before him in the wardrobe mirror as he entered stood an old man, and a few simple tests sufficed to prove the old man to be himself.

  He had not slumbered away the years, like Rip Van Winkle in his mountains; but in three months or so he had grown very old.

  Next day he took the first boat back to England. Among the huge uniform mass of visitors pushing and thronging the quay now that it was summer, he thought for one moment, as, crowded in on the boat’s deck, he glanced up from his unending stupor of misery, that he detected a familiar figure, unusually huge and formidable, standing out one instant in the milling swarm; but recently he had many times caught himself in the act of fancying absurd resemblances, making quite false identifications.

  Bind Your Hair

  No one seemed able to fathom Clarinda Hartley. She had a small but fastidious flat near Church Street, Kensington; and a responsible job in a large noncommittal commercial organisation. No one who knew her now had ever known her in any other residence or any other job. She entertained a little, never more nor less over the years; went out not infrequently with men; and for her holidays simply disappeared, returning with brief references to foreign parts. No one seemed to know her really well; and in the course of time there came to be wide differences of opinion about her age, and recurrent speculation about her emotional life. The latter topic was not made less urgent by a certain distinction in her appearance, and also in her manner. She was very tall (a great handicap, of course, in the op
inion of many) and well-shaped; she had very fair, very fine, very abundant hair, to which plainly she gave much attention; her face had interesting planes (for those who could appreciate them), but also soft curves, which went with her hair. She had a memorable voice: high-pitched, but gentle. She was, in fact, thirty-two. Everyone was greatly surprised when she announced her engagement to Dudley Carstairs.

  Or rather it was Carstairs who announced it. He could not keep it to himself as long as there was anyone within earshot who was ignorant of it; and well might he be elated, because his capture followed a campaign of several years’ continuance, and supported by few sweeping advantages. He worked in the same office as Clarinda, and in a not unsatisfactory position for his thirty years; and was in every way a thoroughly presentable person: but even in the office there were a number of others like him, and it would have seemed possible that Clarinda could have further extended her range of choice by going outside.

  The weekend after the engagement Dudley arranged for her to spend with him and his parents in Northamptonshire. Mr Carstairs, Senior, had held an important position on the administrative side of the Northampton boot and shoe industry; and when he retired upon a fair pension had settled in a small but comfortable house in one of the remote parts of a county where the remote parts are surprisingly many and extensive. Mr Carstairs had been a pioneer in this particular, because others similarly placed had tended upon retirement to emigrate to the Sussex coast or the New Forest; but his initiative, as often happens in such cases, had been imitated, until the little village in which he had settled was now largely populated by retired industrial executives and portions of their families.

  Clarinda would have been grateful for more time in which to adjust herself to Dudley in the capacity of accepted lover; but Dudley somehow did not seem to see himself in that capacity, and to be reluctant in any way to defer Clarinda’s full involvement with her new family position. Clarinda, having said yes to what was believed to be the major question, smiled slightly and said yes to the minor.

  Mr Carstairs, Senior, met them at Roade station.

  ‘Hullo, Dad.’ The two men gazed at one another’s shoes, not wanting to embrace and hesitating to shake hands. Mr Carstairs was smiling, benignly expectant. Plainly he was one who considered that life had treated him well. Almost, one believed, he was ready to accept his son’s choice of a bride as, for him, joy’s crown of joy.

  ‘Dad. This is Clarinda.’

  ‘I say, my boy . . .’

  Outside the station was a grey Standard, in which Mr Carstairs drove them many miles to the west. Already the sun was sinking. Soon after they arrived they had settled down, with Mrs Carstairs and Dudley’s sister Elizabeth, to crumpets in the long winter dusk. Elizabeth had a secretarial position in Leamington, and bicycled there and back every day. All of them were charmed with Clarinda. She exceeded their highest, and perhaps not very confident, hopes.

  Clarinda responded to their happy approval of her, and smiled at Dudley’s extreme pleasure at being home. An iced cake had been baked for her specially, and she wondered whether these particular gilt-edged cups were in daily use. They neither asked her questions nor talked mainly about themselves: they all made a warm-hearted, not unskilful effort to make her feel completely one with them from the outset. She and Elizabeth discovered a common interest in the theatre (shared only in a lesser degree by Dudley).

  ‘But Leamington’s so stuffy that no one’s ever made a theatre pay there.’

  ‘Not since the war,’ said Mr Carstairs in affectionate qualification.

  ‘Not since the first war,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Is Leamington the nearest town?’ asked Clarinda.

  ‘It’s the nearest as the crow flies, or as Elizabeth cycles,’ said Dudley, ‘but it’s not the quickest when you’re coming from London. Narrow lanes all the way.’

  ‘Fortunately we’ve got our own friends by now in the village,’ said Mrs Carstairs. ‘I’ve asked some of them in for drinks, so that you can meet them at once.’

  And indeed, almost immediately the bell rang, and the first of the visitors was upon them. Mr Carstairs went round the room putting on lights and drawing the curtains. Every now and then he gave some jocular direction to Dudley, who was complementarily engaged. A domestic servant of some kind, referred to by Mrs Carstairs as ‘our local woman’, had removed the remains of tea; and by the time Elizabeth had borne in a tray of drinks, three more visitors had added themselves to the first two.

  ‘Can I help?’ Clarinda had said.

  ‘No,’ the Carstairs family had replied. ‘Certainly not. Not yet.’

  Altogether there were eleven visitors, only two of whom were under forty. All eleven of them Clarinda liked very much less than she liked the Carstairs family. Then just as several of them were showing signs of departure, a twelfth arrived; who made a considerable change. A woman of medium height and in early middle age, she had a lined and sallow face, but an alert expression and large, deeply set black eyes. She had untidy, shoulder-length black hair which tended to separate itself into distinct compact strands. Her only make-up appeared to be an exceptionally vivid lipstick, abundantly applied to her large square mouth. She entered in a luxuriant fur coat, but at once cast it off, so that it lay on the floor, and appeared in a black corduroy skirt and a black silk blouse, cut low, and with long tight sleeves. On her feet were heel-less golden slippers.

  ‘I’ve been so busy.’ She seized both of Mrs Carstairs’s hands. Her voice was very deep and melodious, but marred by a certain hoarseness, or uncertainty of timbre. ‘Where is she?’

  Mrs Carstairs was smiling amiably as ever; but all conversation in the room had stopped.

  ‘Do go on talking.’ The newcomer addressed the party at random. She had now observed Clarinda. ‘Introduce me,’ she said to Mrs Carstairs, as if her hostess were being a little slow with her duties. ‘Or am I too late?’ Her sudden quick smile was possibly artificial but certainly bewitching. For a second, various men in the room missed the thread of their resumed conversations.

  ‘Of course you’re not too late,’ said Mrs Carstairs. Then she made the introduction. ‘Clarinda Hartley. Mrs Pagani.’

  ‘Nothing whatever to do with the restaurant,’ said Mrs Pagani.

  ‘How do you do?’ said Clarinda.

  Mrs Pagani had a firm and even but somewhat bony handshake. She was wearing several large rings, with heavy stones in them, and round her neck a big fat locket on a thick golden chain.

  By now Mrs Carstairs had brought Mrs Pagani a drink. ‘Here’s to the future,’ said Mrs Pagani, looking into Clarinda’s eyes, and as soon as Mrs Carstairs had turned away, drained the glass.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clarinda.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Mrs Pagani, as if the house were hers.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Clarinda, falling in with the illusion.

  Mrs Pagani stretched out an arm (Clarinda noticed that her arms, in their tight black sleeves, were uncommonly long) and pulled up a chair, upon which she sat. Clarinda noticed also that when she was seated, her hips too looked bony and obtrusive. Altogether Mrs Pagani gave an impression of unusual physical power, only partly concealed by her conventional clothes. It was as if suddenly she might arise and tear down the house.

  ‘You cannot imagine,’ said Mrs Pagani, ‘how much it means to me to have someone new in the village, especially someone more or less my own age. Or perhaps you can?’

  ‘But I’m not going to live here,’ said Clarinda, clutching hold of the main point.

  ‘Well, of course not. But there’ll be frequent week-ends. Whatever else may be said for or against Dudley, he’s devoted to his home.’

  Clarinda nodded thoughtfully. She was aware that everyone’s eyes were upon them, and realised that Mrs Pagani had so far acknowledged the presence of none of the other guests, well though she must presumably know them.

  ‘Who would want to know any of these people?’ enquired Mrs Pagani in a husky, telepathic un
dertone.

  One trouble was that Clarinda rather agreed with her.

  ‘Why do you live here?’

  ‘I can’t live in towns. And in the country people are the same wherever you go. Most people, I mean. You don’t live in the country for the local society.’

  Clarinda failed to ask why you did live in the country.

  Elizabeth came up with more drinks.

  ‘Hullo, Elizabeth,’ said Mrs Pagani.

  For some reason Elizabeth went very red.

  ‘Hullo, Mrs Pagani.’ She left two drinks with them, and hurried away on her errand of hospitality. Mrs Pagani’s eyes followed her for a few seconds. Then she turned back to Clarinda, and said: ‘We two will be seeing a lot of one another.’

  Again Clarinda could only nod.

  ‘I needn’t tell you that you’re not what I expected. Do you know where I live?’

  Clarinda, still silent, shook her head.

  ‘Have you been round the village yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not seen the church?’

  ‘It was getting dark when I arrived.’

  ‘I live in the churchyard.’ Mrs Pagani suddenly shouted with laughter. ‘It always surprises people.’ She placed her long bony left hand on Clarinda’s knee. ‘There used to be a chapel in the churchyard, with a room over it. This is a thinly populated district, and they brought the corpses from the farmhouses and cottages, often a long slow journey, and left the coffin in the chapel waiting for the funeral the next day. And the mourners passed the night upstairs, watching and, of course, drinking. When all this became unnecessary, the chapel fell into ruin. The parish council was glad to sell it to me. The vicar’s a hundred and one anyway. I restored it and I live in it. The ground had to be specially deconsecrated for me.’ Mrs Pagani removed her hand and picked up her glass. ‘Come and see me.’ For the second time she toasted Clarinda. ‘I call it the Charnel House. Not quite correct, of course: a charnel house is where the dead lie after the funeral. But I thought the name rather suited me.’ Suddenly her attention was distracted. Without moving her eyes, she inclined her head slightly sideways. ‘Just look at Mr Appleby. Used to be managing director of an important company. Appleby’s Arterial Bootlaces.’