The Wine-Dark Sea Page 7

  Before long they were over the ridge at the top of the valley. The prospect ahead entirely confirmed the sentiments of the man at the Guest House. The scene could hardly have been bleaker or less inviting. But as it was much cooler, and the way for the first time in several hours comfortably downhill, they marched forward with once-more tightened belts, keeping strictly in step, blown forward by a rising wind. The recurring tension between them was now dissipated by efficient exertion under physically pleasant conditions; by the renewed sense of objective. They conversed steadily and amiably, the distraction winging their feet. Margaret felt the contrast between the optimism apparently implicit in the weather when they had set out, and the doom implicit in it now; but she felt it not unagreeably, drew from it a pleasing sense of tragedy and fitness. That was how she felt until well after it had actually begun to rain.

  The first slow drops flung on the back of her knees and neck by the following wind were sweetly sensuous. She could have thrown herself upon the grass and let the rain slowly engulf her entire skin until there was no dry inch. Then she said, ‘We mustn’t get rheumatic fever in these sweaty clothes.’

  Mimi had stopped and unslung her rucksack. Mimi’s rucksack was the heavier because its contents included a robust stormproof raincoat; Margaret’s the less heavy because she possessed only a light town mackintosh. Mimi encased herself, adjusted her rucksack beneath the shoulder straps of the raincoat, tied a sou’wester tightly beneath her chin, and strode forward, strapped and buttoned up to the ears, as if cyclones were all in a day’s work. After a quarter of an hour, Margaret felt rain beginning to trickle down her body from the loose neck of her mackintosh, to infiltrate through the fabric in expanding blots, and to be finding its way most disagreeably into the interior of the attached hood. After half an hour she was saturated.

  By that time they had reached the far end of the tunnel and stood looking down into a deep, narrow cutting which descended the valley as far as the gusts of rain permitted them to see. Being blasted through rock, the cutting had unscalably steep sides.

  ‘That’s that,’ said Margaret a little shakily. ‘We’ll have to stick to the Quiet Valley.’

  ‘It looks all right the other side,’ said Mimi, ‘if. only we could get over.’ Despite her warm garb, she, too seemed wan and shivery. On their side of the railway, and beyond the road that had brought them, was a sea of soaking knee-high heather; but across the cutting the ground rose in a fairly gentle slope, merely tufted with vegetation.

  ‘There’s no sign of a bridge.’

  ‘I could use a cup of tea. Do you know it’s twenty-five past six?’

  As they stood uncertain, the sound of an ascending train reached them against the wind, which, blowing strongly from the opposite direction, kept the smoke within the walls of the cutting. So high was the adverse gale that it was only a minute between their first hearing the slowly climbing train and its coming level with them. Steam roared from the exhaust. The fireman was stoking demoniacally. As the engine passed to windward of the two women far above, and the noise from the exhaust crashed upon their senses, the driver suddenly looked up and waved with an apparent gaiety inappropriate to the horrible weather. Then he reached for the whistle lever and, as the train entered the tunnel, for forty seconds doubled the already unbearable uproar. It was a long tunnel.

  The train was not of a kind Margaret was used to (she knew little of railways); it was composed neither of passenger coaches nor of small clattering trucks, but of long windowless vans, giving no hint of their contents. A nimbus of warm oily air enveloped her, almost immediately to be blown away, leaving her again shivering.

  Mimi had not waved back.

  They resumed their way. Margaret’s rucksack, though it weighed like the old man of the sea, kept a large stretch of her back almost dry.

  ‘Do the drivers always wave first?’ asked Margaret for something to say.

  ‘Of course. If you were to wave first, they probably wouldn’t notice you. There’s something wrong with girls who wave first anyway.’

  ‘I wonder what’s wrong with Miss Roper?’

  ‘We’ll be seeing.’

  ‘I suppose so. She doesn’t sound much of a night’s prospect.’

  ‘How far’s Pudsley?’

  ‘Eight miles.’

  ‘Very well then.’

  Previously it had been Mimi who had seemed so strongly to dislike the valley. It was odd that, as it appeared, she should envisage so calmly the slightly sinister Miss Roper. Odd but practical. Margaret divined that her own consistency of thought and feeling might not tend the more to well-being than Mimi’s weathercock moods.

  ‘Where exactly does Miss Roper hang out, do you suppose?’ enquired Mimi. ‘That’s the first point.’

  The only visible work of man, other than the rough road, was the long gash that marked the railway cutting to their left.

  ‘The map hasn’t proved too accurate,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Hadn’t we better look all the same? I’m really thinking of you, dear. You must be like a wet rag. Of you and a cup of tea.’

  The wind was very much more than it had so far at any time been, but they could find no anchoring stones. Walls had long since ceased to line the road, and there appeared to be no stones larger than pebbles. While they were poking under clumps of heather, a train descended, whistling continuously.

  In the end they had to give up. The paper map, on being partly opened, immediately rent across. The downpour would have converted it into discoloured pulp in a few moments. They were both so tired and hungry, and Margaret, by general temperament the more determined, so wet, that they had no heart in the struggle. Mimi stuffed the already sodden lump back into Margaret’s rucksack.

  ‘We’d better get on with it, even if we have to traipse all the way to Pudsley,’ she said, re-tying a shoelace and then tightening her raincoat collar strap. ‘Else we’ll have you in hospital.’ She marched forward intrepid.

  But in the end, the road, which had long been deteriorating unnoticed, ended in a gate, beyond which was simply a rough field. They had reached a level low enough for primitive cultivation once to have been possible. Soaked and wretched though she was, Margaret looked back to the ridge, and saw that the distance to it was very much less than she had supposed. They leaned on the gate and stared ahead. Stone walls had reappeared, cutting up the land into monotonously similar untended plots. There were still no trees. The railway had now left the cutting and could presumably be crossed; but the women did not make the attempt, as visible before them through the flying deluge was a black house. It stood about six fields away: no joke to reach.

  ‘Why’s it so black?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘Pudsley. Those chimneys you’re so fond of.’

  ‘The prevailing wind’s in the other direction. It’s behind us.’

  ‘Wish I had my climbing boots,’ said Mimi, as they waded into the long grass. ‘Or Wellingtons.’ The grass soaked the double hem of Margaret’s mackintosh, which she found a new torture. Two trains passed each other, grinding up and charging down. Both appeared to be normal passenger trains, long and packed. Every single window was closed. This produced an odd effect, as of objects in a bottle; until one realised that it was, of course, a consequence of the weather.

  By the time they had stumbled across the soaking fields, and surmounted the high craggy walls between, it was almost completely dark. The house was a square, gaol-like stone box, three storeys high, built about 1860, and standing among large but unluxuriant cypresses. the first trees below the valley ridge. The blackness of the building was no effect of the light, but the consequence of inlaid soot.

  ‘It’s right on top of the railway,’ cried Mimi. Struggling through the murk, they had not noticed that.

  There was a huge front door, grim with grime.

  ‘What a hope!’ said Mimi, as she hauled on the bell handle.

  ‘It’s a curious bell,’ said Margaret, examining the mechanism and valiant to the soa
king, shivering end. ‘It’s like the handles you see in signal boxes.’

  The door was opened by a figure illumined only by an oil lamp standing on a wall bracket behind.

  ‘What is it?’ The not uneducated voice had a curious throat undertone.

  ‘My friend and I are on a walking tour,’ said Margaret, who, as the initiator of the farmhouses project, always took charge on these occasions. ‘We got badly lost on the moors. We hoped to reach Pudsley,’ she continued, seeing that this was no farmhouse, open to a direct self-invitation. ‘But what with getting lost and the rain, we’re in rather a mess. Particularly me. I wonder if you could possibly help us? I know it’s outrageous, but we are in distress.’

  ‘Of course,’ said another voice from the background. ‘Come in and get warm. Come in quickly and Beech will shut the door.’ This slight inverted echo of the words of the man at the Guest House stirred unpleasing associations in Margaret’s brain.

  The weak light disclosed Beech to be a tall muscular figure in a servant’s black suit. The face, beneath a mass of black hair, cut like a musician’s, seemed smooth and pale. The second speaker was a handsome well-built man, possibly in the late forties, and also wearing a black suit and tie, which suggested mourning. He regarded the odd figures of the two women without any suggestion of the unusual, as they lowered their dripping rucksacks to the tiled floor, unfastened their outer clothes running with water, and stood before him, two dim khaki figures, in shirts and shorts. Margaret felt not only ghastly wet but as if she were naked.

  ‘Let me introduce myself,’ said the master of the house. ‘I am Wendley Roper. I shall expect you both to dine with me and stay the night. Tomorrow will put an entirely different face on things.’ A slight lordliness of manner, by no means unattractive to Margaret, suggested that he mingled little with modern men.

  Margaret introduced Mimi and herself; then said, ‘We heard higher up the valley that a Miss Roper lived here.’

  ‘My aunt. She died very recently. You see.’ He indicated his clothes.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Margaret conventionally.

  ‘It was deeply distressing. I refer to the manner of her death.’ He offered the shivering women no details, but continued, ‘Now Beech will take you to your room. The Rafters Room, Beech. I fear I have no other available, as the whole first floor and much else is taken up by my grandfather’s collection. I trust you will have no objection to occupying the same room? It is a primitive one, I regret to say. There is only one bed at present, but I shall have another moved up.’

  They assured him they had no objection.

  ‘What about clothes? My aunt’s would scarcely serve.’ Then, unexpectedly, he added, ‘And Beech is too big and tall for either of you.’

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ said Margaret. ‘Our rucksacks are watertight and we’ve both got a change.’

  ‘Good,’ said Wendley Roper seriously. ‘Beech will conduct you, and dinner will be served when you’ve changed. There’ll be some hot water sent up.’

  ‘You are being most extraordinarily kind to us,’ said Margaret.

  ‘We should take the chances life brings us,’ said Wendley Roper.

  Beech lit a second oil lamp which had been standing on a large tallboy, and, with the women carrying their rucksacks, imperfectly illuminated the way upstairs. On the first-floor landing there were several large doors, such as admit to the bedrooms of a railway hotel, but no furniture was to be seen anywhere, nor were the staircase or either landing carpeted. At the top of the house Beech admitted them to a room the door of which required unlocking. He did not stand aside to let them enter first, but went straight in and drew heavy curtains before the windows, having set down the light on the floor. The women joined him. This time there was a heavy brown carpet, but the primitiveness of the room was indisputable. Beyond the carpet and matching curtains, the furnishings consisted solely of a bedstead. It was a naked iron bedstead, crude and ugly.

  ‘I’ll bring you hot water, as Mr Roper said. Then a basin and towels and some chairs and so forth.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Margaret. Beech retired, closing the door.

  ‘Wonder if the door locks?’ Mimi crossed the room. ‘Not it. The key’s on Beech’s chain. I don’t fancy Beech.’

  ‘Can’t be helped.’ Margaret had already discarded her clothes, and was drying her body on a small towel removed from her rucksack.

  ‘I’m not wet through, like you, but God it’s cold for the time of year.’ Mimi’s alternative outfit consisted of a dark grey polo-necked sweater and a pair of lighter flannel trousers. Soon she had donned it, first putting on a brassière and knickers to mark renewed contact with society. ‘Bit of a pigsty, isn’t it?’ she continued. ‘But I suppose we must give thanks.’

  ‘I rather liked our host. At least he didn’t shilly-shally about taking us in.’ Margaret was towelling systematically.

  ‘Got a nice voice too.’ Mimi decided that she would be warmer with her sweater inside her trousers, and made the alteration. ‘Unlike Beech. Beech talks like plum jam. Where, by the way, are the rafters?’

  The room, which was much longer than it was wide, and contained windows only in each end wall, a great distance apart, was ceiled with orthodox, though cracked and dirty, plaster.

  ‘I expect they’re just above us.’

  ‘Up there?’ Mimi indicated a trap-door in a corner of the ceiling.

  Margaret had not previously noticed it. But before she could speak, the room was filled with a sudden rumbling crescendo, which made the massive floorboards vibrate and the light bed leap up and down upon them. Even the big black stones of the walls seemed slightly to jostle.

  ‘The trains!’

  Dashing to a window, Mimi dragged back the curtains, and lifting the sash, waved, her mood suddenly one of excitement, as the uproar swept down towards Pudsley.

  Then she cried, ‘Margaret! The window’s barred.’

  But Margaret’s attention was elsewhere. During the din the door had opened, and Beech, a large old-fashioned can steaming in one hand, a large old-fashioned wash-basin dangling from the other, was in the room, and she absurdly naked.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he was saying. ‘I don’t think you heard me knock.’

  ‘Get out,’ said Mimi, flaming, her soul fired by an immemorial tabu.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ intervened Margaret, grasping the small wet towel.

  ‘I’ll fetch you some towels.’

  He was gone again. He seemed totally undisturbed.

  ‘He couldn’t help it,’ said Margaret. ‘It was the train.’

  Mimi lowered the window and re-drew the thick curtains. ‘I’ve an idea,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! What? About Beech?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. I’m going to wait at the door.’

  Soon Beech returned with two large and welcome bath towels and a huge, improbable new cake of expensive scented soap. Margaret had filled the rose-encircled basin with glorious hot water; but before washing, Mimi stood by the door to receive two simple wooden bedroom chairs, a large wooden towel-horse and a capacious chamber-pot, before Beech descended to assist with dinner. ‘I’ll set you up another bed and bring along some bedding later,’ he said, as his tall shape descended the tenebrous stair, now lit at intervals by oil lamps flickering on brackets.

  Mimi rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and immersed her rather fat arms to the elbows. Margaret was drawing on a girdle. Her spare clothes consisted in another shirt, similar to the one the rain had soaked, but stiff and unworn, a cream-coloured linen skirt of fashionable length, and a tie which matched the skirt. She also had two pairs of expensive stockings, and a spare pair of shoes of lighter weight than Mimi’s. Soon she was dressed, had knotted her tie, and was easing the stockings up what she felt must be starkly weather-roughed legs. She felt wonderfully dry, warm, and well. Her underclothes felt delightful. She felt that, after all, things might have turned out worse.

  While Margar
et was dressing, Mimi had been scrubbing her hands and forearms, then submitting her short hair to a vigorous, protracted grooming with a small bristly hairbrush. She was to busy to speak. She concentrated upon her simple toilet with an absorption Margaret would not have brought to dressing for her first dinner in evening clothes with a man.

  With one stocking attached to its suspender, the other blurring her ankle, Margaret leaned back comfortably and asked, ‘What was your idea?’

  Mimi returned brush and comb to her rucksack. ‘I think it’s obvious. Old Ma Roper was mad.’

  Margaret’s warm world waned a little. ‘You mean the window bars? This might have been a nursery.’

  ‘Not only. You remember what he said? “The manner of her death was deeply distressing.” And that’s not all.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? Her waving to the trains?’

  ‘I don’t think that means she was mad. She might merely have been lonely.’

  ‘Long time to be lonely. Let’s go down if you’re ready.’

  Beech was waiting for them in the gloomy hall. ‘This way, please.’

  He opened a huge door and they entered the dining room.

  Very large plates, dishes, and cutlery covered the far end of a heavy-looking wooden table, at the head of which sat their host, with a place laid on either side of him. The room was lit by two sizzling oil lamps, vast and of antiquated pattern, which hung from heavy circular plaster mouldings in the discoloured ceiling. The marble and iron fireplace was in massive keeping with the almost immovable waiting-room chairs. On the dark-green lincrusta of the walls engravings hung behind glass so dirty that in the weak green light it was difficult to make out the subjects. A plain round clock clicked like a revolving turnstile from above the fireplace. As the women appeared, it jerked from 2:26 to 2:27. By habit Mimi looked at her watch. The time was just after eight o’clock.

  ‘Immediately you entered the house, the rain stopped,’ said Wendley Roper by way of greeting.

  ‘Then we’d better be on our way after dinner,’ said Mimi.