Strange Stories Read online

  ‘We haven’t seen anybody,’ said Stephen. ‘I never do see anyone.’

  The girl looked puzzled.

  Stephen realized that the way he had put it, the statement that he never saw anyone, might have been tactless. ‘When I go for my long walks alone,’ he added.

  ‘Not only then,’ said the girl.

  Stephen’s heart turned over slightly.

  ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘I daresay you are very right.’

  The kites were still flapping like torn pieces of charred pasteboard in the high air, though in the lower part of it.

  ‘You haven’t even looked to the bottom of the pool yet,’ said the girl.

  ‘I suppose not.’ Stephen fell on his knees, as the girl had done at the milestone or waymark, and gazed downwards through the pellucid near-nothingness beneath the shifting golden rods. There were a few polished stones round the sides, but little else that he could see, and nothing that seemed of significance. How should there be, of course? Unless the girl had put it there, as Stephen realized might have been possible.

  Stephen looked up. ‘It’s a splendid pool,’ he said.

  But now his eye caught something else; something other than the girl and the pool. On the edge of the rising ground behind the girl stood a small stone house. It was something else that Stephen had not previously noticed. Indeed, he had been reasonably sure that there had been nothing and no one, not so much as a hint of mankind, not for a quite long way, a quite long time.

  ‘Is that where one of the people lives?’ he asked, and in his turn pointed. ‘Or perhaps more than one? ’

  ‘It’s empty,’ said the girl.

  ‘Should we go and look?’

  ‘If you like,’ said the girl. Stephen quite saw that his expressed response to the glorious little spring had been inadequate. He had lost the trick of feeling, years and years ago.

  ‘It’s a splendid pool,’ he said again, a little self-consciously.

  Despite what the girl had said, Stephen had thought that to reach the house above them, they would have to scramble through the high heather. But he realized at once that there was a path, which was one further thing he had not previously noticed.

  The girl went before, weaving backwards and forwards up the hillside. Following her, with his thoughts more free to wander, as the exertion made talking difficult, Stephen suddenly apprehended that the need to return for Harriet’s teatime had for a season passed completely from his mind.

  Apprehending it now, he did not even look at his watch. Apart from anything else, the struggle upwards was too intense for even the smallest distraction or secondary effort. The best thing might be for his watch simply to stop.

  They were at the summit, with a wider horizon, but still Stephen could see no other structure than the one before him, though this time he gazed around with a certain care. From here, the pool below them seemed to catch the full sun all over its surface. It gleamed among the heathered rocks like a vast luminous sea anemone among weeds.

  Stephen could see at once that the house appeared basically habitable. He had expected jagged holes in the walls, broken panes in the windows, less than half a roof, ubiquitous litter.

  The door simply stood open, but it was a door, not a mere gap; a door in faded green, like the girl’s trousers. Inside, the floorboards were present and there was even a certain amount of simple furniture, though, as an estate agent would at once have pointed out with apologies, no curtains and no carpets.

  ‘Nell. Somebody lives here already,’ Stephen said sharply, before they had even gone upstairs.

  ‘Already?’ queried the girl.

  Stephen made the necessary correction. ‘Someone lives here.’

  ‘No,’ said the girl. ‘No one. Not for centuries.’

  Of course that was particularly absurd and childish. Much of this furniture, Stephen thought, was of the kind offered by the furnishing department of a good Co-op. Stephen had sometimes come upon such articles on visits paid in the course of his work. He had to admit, however, that he had little idea when such houses as this actually were built at these odd spots on the moors. Possibly as long ago as in the seventeenth century? Possibly only sixty or eighty years ago?

  Possibly—?

  They went upstairs. There were two very low rooms, hardly as much as half lighted from one small and dirty window in each. One room was totally unfurnished. The sole content of the other was a double bed which absorbed much of the cubic capacity available. It was a quite handsome country object, with a carved head and foot. It even offered a seemingly intact mattress, badly in need of a wash.

  ‘Someone must be living here,’ said Stephen. ‘At least sometimes. Perhaps the owners come here for the weekend. Or perhaps they’re just moving in.’

  As soon as he spoke, it occurred to him that the evidence was equally consistent with their moving out, but he did not continue.

  ‘Lots of the houses are like this,’ said the girl. ‘No one lives in them.’

  Stephen wondered vaguely whether the clear air or some factor of that kind might preserve things as if they were still in use. It was a familiar enough notion, though, in his case, somewhat unspecific. It would be simpler to disbelieve the girl, who was young and without experience, though perfectly eager, at least when others were eager. They returned downstairs.

  ‘Shall we see some more houses?’ asked the girl.

  ‘I don’t think I have the time.’

  ‘You said you had a fortnight. I know what a fortnight is.’

  ‘Yes.’ He simply could not tell her that he had to report for Harriet’s astringent teatime; nor, even now, was that in the forefront of his mind. The truth was that whereas hitherto he had been trying to paddle in deep waters, he was now floundering in them.

  The girl had a suggestion. ‘Why not live here for a fortnight?’

  ‘I am committed to staying with my brother. He’s not very fit. I should worry about him if I broke my word.’ He realized that he was speaking to her in a more adult way than before. It had really begun with her speaking similarly to him.

  ‘Does your worrying about him do him any good? ’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Does your worrying about everything do you any good? ’ ‘None whatever, Nell. None at all.’

  He turned aside and looked out of the window; the parlour window might not be too grand a term, for all its need of cleaning.

  He addressed her firmly. ‘Would you give me a hand with all the things that need to be done? Even for a tenancy of a fortnight?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘We should have to do a lot of shopping.’

  The girl, standing behind him, remained silent. It was an unusual non-response.

  ‘I should have to cook on a primus stove,’ said Stephen. ‘I wonder if we can buy one? I used to be quite good with them.’ Rapture was beginning.

  The girl said nothing.

  ‘We might need new locks on the doors.’

  The girl spoke. ‘There is only one door.’

  ‘So there is,’ said Stephen. ‘In towns, houses have two, a front door and a back door. When trouble comes in at one, you can do a bolt through the other.’

  ‘People don’t need a lock,’ said the girl. ‘Why should they?’ He turned away from the filthy window and gazed straight at her. ‘Suppose I was to fall in love with you? ’ he said.

  ‘Then you would not have to go back after a fortnight.’

  It could hardly have been a straighter reply.

  He put one arm round her shoulders, one hand on her breast, so that the note he had written her lay between them. He remembered that the first letter written to a woman is always a love letter. ‘Would you promise to visit me every day?’

  ‘I might be unable to do that.’

  ‘I don’t want to seem unkind, but you did say that your father could manage.’

  ‘If he discovers, he will keep me at home and send my sister out instead. He has powers. He’s ver
y frightening.’

  Stephen relaxed his hold a little. He had been all along well aware how sadly impracticable was the entire idea.

  For example: he could hardly even drive up to this place with supplies; even had his car not been in the course of an opportune overhaul in London, a very complete overhaul after all this anxious time. And that was only one thing; one among very many.

  ‘Well, what’s the answer?’ Stephen said, smiling at her in the wrong way, longing for her in a very different way.

  ‘I can’t come and go the whole time,’ said the girl.

  ‘I see,’ said Stephen.

  He who had missed so many opportunities, always for excellent reasons, and for one excellent reason in particular, clearly saw that this might be his last opportunity, and almost certainly was.

  ‘How should we live?’ he asked. ‘I mean how should we eat and manage? ’

  ‘As the birds do,’ said the girl.

  Stephen did not inquire of her how she came to know Shakespeare, as people put it. He might ask her that later. In the meantime, he could see that the flat, floating birds he had taken to be kites, were indeed drifting past the dirty window, and round and round the house, as it seemed. Of course his questions had been mere routine in any case. He could well have killed himself if she had made a merely routine response.

  ‘Let’s see,’ he said. He gently took her hand. He kissed her softly on the lips. He returned with her upstairs.

  It would perhaps have been more suitable if he had been leading the party, but that might be a trifle. Even the damp discolouration of the mattress might be a trifle. Harriet’s teatime could not, in truth, be forced from the mind, but it was provisionally overruled. One learned the trick in the course of one’s work, or one would break altogether.

  ***

  There were of course only the bed and the mattress; no sheets or blankets; no Spanish or Kashmiri rugs; no entangling silkiness, no singing save that of the moor. Elizabeth had never wished to make love like that. She had liked to turn on the record player, almost always Brahms or Schumann (the Rhenish Symphony was her particular favourite), and to ascend slowly into a deep fully made bed. But the matter had not seriously arisen for years. Stephen had often wondered why not.

  Nell was lying on her front. Seemingly expectant and resistant at the same time, she clung like a clam. Her body was as brown as a pale chestnut, but it was a strong and well-made body. Her short hair was wavy rather than curly. Stephen was ravished by the line of it on her strong neck. He was ravished by her relaxed shoulder blade. He was ravished by her perfect waist and thighs. He was ravished by her youth and youthful smell.

  ‘Please turn over,’ he said, after tugging at her intermittently, and not very effectively.

  Fortunately, he was not too displeased by his own appearance. The hair on his body was bleaching and fading, but otherwise he could, quite sincerely, see little difference from when he had been twenty-four, and had married Elizabeth. He knew, however, that at these times sincerity is not enough; nor objectivity either. When are they?

  ‘Please,’ he said softly in Nell’s ear. Her ears were a slightly unusual shape, and the most beautiful he had ever beheld, or beheld so intently.

  He put his hand lightly on her neck. ‘Please,’ he said.

  She wriggled over in a single swift movement, like a light stab from an invisible knife. He saw that her eyes were neither closed nor open, neither looking at him, nor looking at anything but him.

  On the skin between her right shoulder and her right breast was a curious, brownish, greyish, bluish, irregular mark or patch, which had been hidden by her shirt, though Stephen could not quite see how. It was more demanding of attention than it might have been, partly because of its position, and partly, where Stephen was concerned, because of something vaguely else. In any case, it would mean that the poor girl could not reposefully wear a low-cut dress, should the need arise. Though it was by no means a birthmark in the usual sense, Nell had probably been lying on her front through chagrin about it. Upon Stephen, however, the effect was to make him love her more deeply; perhaps love her for the first time. He did not want her or her body to be quite perfect. In a real person, it would be almost vulgar. At this point, Harriet and Harriet’s teatime came more prominently into view for a few seconds.

  Nell might say something about the mark sooner or later. He would never take an initiative.

  At the moment, she said nothing at all. He simply could not make out whether she was watching him or not. Her mouth was long and generous; but had not her whole proceeding been generous in a marvellous degree? He could not even make out whether she was taut or relaxed. No small mystery was Nell after years and years of a perfect, but always slow-moving, relationship with Elizabeth!

  He kissed her intimately. When she made no particular response, not even a grunt, he began to caress her, more or less as he had caressed his wife. He took care not to touch the peculiar blemish, or even to enter its area. There was no need to do so. It occurred to Stephen that the mark might be the consequence of an injury; and so might in due course disappear, or largely so. In the end that happened even to many of the strangest human markings. One day, as the nannies used to say.

  Suddenly she made a wild plunge at him that took away his breath. The surprise was directly physical, but moral also. He had found it a little difficult to assess Nell’s likely age, and inquiry was out of the question; but he had supposed it probable that she was a virgin, and had quite deliberately resolved to accept the implication. Or so he had believed of himself.

  Now she was behaving as a maenad.

  As an oread, rather; Stephen thought at a later hour. For surely these moors were mountains, often above the thousand-foot contour; boundless uplands peopled solely by unwedded nymphs and their monstrous progenitors? Stephen had received a proper education at a proper place: in Stephen’s first days, one had not made the grade, Stephen’s grade, otherwise. Stephen’s parents had undertaken sacrifices so immense that no one had fully recovered from them.

  The last vestige of initiative had passed from Stephen like a limb. And yet, he fancied, it was not because Nell was what Elizabeth would have called unfeminine, but merely because she was young, and perhaps because she lived without contamination, merging into the aspect and mutability of remote places. So, at least, he could only suppose.

  Soon he ceased to suppose anything. He knew bliss unequalled, unprecedented, assuredly unimagined. Moreover, the wonder lasted for longer than he would have conceived of as possible. That particularly struck him.

  Nell’s flawed body was celestial. Nell herself was more wonderful than the dream of death. Nell could not possibly exist.

  He was fondling her and feeling a trifle cold; much as Elizabeth would have felt. Not that it mattered in the very least. Nell was no maenad or oread. She was a half-frightened child, sweetly soft, responsive to his every thought, sometimes before he had fully given birth to it. She was a waif, a foundling. And it was he who had found her. And only yesterday.

  ‘Tell me about your sister,’ said Stephen. He realized that it was growing dark as well as chilly.

  ‘She’s not like me. You wouldn’t like her.’

  Stephen knew that ordinary, normal girls always responded much like that.

  He smiled at Nell. ‘But what is she like?’

  ‘She’s made quite differently. You wouldn’t care for her.’

  ‘Has she a name?’

  ‘Of a sort.’

  ‘What do you and your father call her?’

  ‘We call her different things at different times. You’re cold.’ So she was human, after all, Stephen thought.

  She herself had very little to put on. Two fairly light garments, a pair of stout socks, her solid shoes.

  They went downstairs.

  ‘Would you care to borrow my sweater?’ asked Stephen. ‘Until tomorrow?’

  She made no reply, but simply stared at him through the dusk in the downstairs room, the
living place, the parlour, the salon.

  ‘Take it,’ said Stephen. It was a heavy garment. Elizabeth had spent nearly four months knitting it continuously, while slowly recovering from her very first disintegration. It was in thick complex stitches and meant to last for ever. When staying with Harewood, Stephen wore it constantly.

  Nell took the sweater but did not put it on. She was still staring at him. At such a moment her grey-green eyes were almost luminous.

  ‘We’ll meet again tomorrow,’ said Stephen firmly. ‘We’ll settle down here tomorrow. I must say something to my brother and sister-in-law, and I don’t care what happens after that. Not now. At least I do care. I care very much. As you well know.’

  ‘It’s risky,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, because it was necessary to evade all discussion. ‘Yes, but it can’t be helped. You come as early as you can, and I’ll arrive with some provisions for us. We really need some blankets too, and some candles. I’ll see if I can borrow a Land-Rover from one of the farms.’ He trusted that his confidence and his firm, practical actions would override all doubts.

  ‘I may be stopped,’ she said. ‘My father can’t read books but he can read minds. He does it all the time.’

  ‘You must run away from him,’ said Stephen firmly. ‘We’ll stay here for a little, and then you can come back to London with me.’

  She made no comment on that, but simply repeated, ‘My father can read my mind. I only have to be in the same room with him. He’s frightening.’

  Her attitude to her father seemed to have changed considerably. It was the experience of love, Stephen supposed; first love.

  ‘Obviously, you must try to be in a different room as much as possible. It’s only for one more night. We’ve known each other now for two days.’

  ‘There’s only one room.’

  Stephen had known that such would be her rejoinder.

  He well knew also that his behaviour might seem unromantic and even cold-hearted. But the compulsion upon him could not be plainer: if he did not return to the rectory tonight, Harriet, weakly aided by Harewood, would have the police after him; dogs would be scurrying across the moors, as if after Hercules, and perhaps searchlights sweeping also. Nothing could more fatally upset any hope of a quiet and enduring compact with such a one as Nell. He was bound for a rough scene with Harriet and Harewood as it was. It being now long past teatime, he would be lucky if Harriet had not taken action before he could reappear. Speed was vital and, furthermore, little of the situation could be explained with any candour to Nell. First, she would simply not understand what he said (even though within her range she was shrewd enough, often shrewder than he). Second, in so far as she did understand, she would panic and vanish. And he had no means of tracking her down at all. She was as shy about her abode as about the mark on her body; though doubtless with as little reason, or so Stephen hoped. He recognized that parting from her at all might be as unwise as it would be painful, but it was the lesser peril. He could not take her to London tonight, or to anywhere, because there was no accessible transport. Not nowadays. He could not take her to the rectory, where Harriet might make Harewood lay an anathema upon her. They could not stay in the moorland house without food or warmth.