The Girl in a Swing

by Richard Adams

across the floor on my hands and knees and dragged myself

  ,ili] up on the bed beside her. Her bare arms felt unnaturally

  l hot and I realized that I was shivering.

  'You mean - there isn't - there never was a child in the

  garden?'

  Yet as I spoke I felt that we were being watched between

  the curtains from outside, and thought I should go mad with

  fear.

  She replied listlessly, 'Perhaps; perhaps not. Ich bin nicht

  sicher. But don't go outside.'

  A humming mist seemed to cover my ears and eyes. I

  shook her in frenzy and cried,

  'But Mrs Taswell heard it too! She heard it! She heard it!'

  'She didn't see it, though,' said Kathe, in the same resigned,

  empty tone. 'Are all the windows shut downstairs?'

  'Would it make any difference if they were? Would it,

  Kathe?'

  'I don't know. But we'll go down together.'

  Only after she had opened the bedroom door and was

  already out on the landing could I force myself to totter

  after her and to stumble down the stairs. There were windows

  open in the kitchen and the drawing-room. We shut

  them and then drew every curtain in the house.

  To me, our progress seemed to take place in a kind of

  waking trance where, as in a dream, all was figmental and

  what might happen was no longer governed or restricted by

  any physical laws. The garden had vanished. There was

  nothing tangible outside the house - there was nothing but

  the darkness stretching away into infinity. External reality

  did not exist and only my flickering consciousness, as we

  moved on from room to room, shed, like a candle, a dim

  circle of perception upon what merely appeared to be around

  us. All I thought I saw was projected from within myself, and

  what we left behind ceased to exist on the instant. I dreaded

  not to find, beyond each door, the room which had always

  been there, and at each step expected to hear or see some

  terrible thing which I myself had brought into being, as a

  dreamer creates his own nightmare. The stairs, the windows,

  the furniture wavered before my eyes. I groped and scrabbled

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  at the walls for switches I had always known. I could not

  recall into which rooms we had already been. And all the

  while I knew that there could be no escape, for the fear, like

  an icy spring, was welling up from a source within myself,

  drowning all that had once been harmless and domestic.

  When at last we returned upstairs I took off my coat and

  shoes and huddled myself in the bed beside Kathe, silently

  repeating again and again, 'God have mercy! 0 God, have

  mercy!'

  At first I covered my head with the bedclothes, but soon

  threw them back, the better to listen: for to listen, though

  a torment, was more bearable than not to know whether

  there might be anything to hear. I dared not desist from

  listening, and to listen was to be afraid. The effort of listening

  was like running, faster and faster, until, exhausted by

  listening, I once more thrust my head beneath the blankets.

  Kathe said, 'Alan, let's sit up. It will be - less bad so,' and

  we got out of bed and sat facing each other, she at the

  dressing-table and I in the armchair. She was trembling,

  but more composed than I.

  After a time - I say 'time', but perhaps the greatest

  horror of that place was that the word had no meaning;

  time did not pass there, and all that night it never once

  occurred to me to look at my watch - it was borne in upon

  me that what we were doing was waiting. My mind seemed

  like cloudy water slowly clearing, while I myself remained

  outside it, watching to see what would be revealed as the

  stirred silt sank. I was expecting a visual image - some

  memory, perhaps, or the semblance of something I would

  thereupon feel compelled to do. Yet what at last came looming

  out of that swirling, inward storm were two abstract

  ideas, more stark and menacing than any that could have

  presented themselves in imagic form - the ideas of Approach

  and of Culmination. 'Come, for all things are now ready.' I

  think I knew, then, what had been appointed to happen,

  though not how it would: but there is no saying, in words,

  what I knew. The Kraken was awake and moving, and more

  dreadful than any tale of it ever told.

  I had closed my eyes, and when I felt my hand clasped

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  by another cried out in terror before realizing that it was

  Kathe's.

  'Alan,' she said, 'listen to me. You should go away. Don't

  stay here. Take the car and go away. That will be - allowed.'

  'You want me to take you away?' My mind, flotsam tossing

  back and forth above the black depth below, could not educe

  from her words their exact meaning.

  'I told you, mein Lieber, it doesn't matter where I go.

  But you should go. Go outside, go away.'

  'I - I won't do that, Kathe. I'll -' My thoughts, groping

  towards speech, were shattered and dispersed by a sudden,

  vivid recollection of the sound of the weeping. I realized,

  now, when I had heard the voice - that same voice - before:

  on the telephone to Denmark, three days earlier. I understood

  also that earlier that evening, when Mrs Taswell and I

  had gone into the garden, I had already known this.

  '- I'll stay and - attend you.' And as I said this I saw myself,

  in my mind's eye, pacing behind her, halting beside her;

  receiving from her her trinkets, her jewels and last messages;

  bending forward to arrange her hair and kneeling to clasp

  her hand as she too knelt down to place her head 'What's

  that noise?' asked Kathe suddenly. 'Can you hear

  it, Alan -or only I?'

  I listened. It was like forcing oneself to use an injured arm

  to perform yet again the act that has injured it. For a few

  moments I could hear nothing. Then I became aware of a

  soft but growing, multifoliate flow of sound - rustlings,

  tappings, creakings - all about the house. A sash window

  began to shake and chatter and outside, in the yard, something

  fell with a sharp, slapping noise. Whimpering, I pressed

  my hands over my ears.

  Kathe was beside me, shaking my shoulder. 'Alan! It's the

  wind! The wind, Alan, outside!'

  A high wind had begun to blow. I could recognize the

  sound, now, rushing over the walls and gutters of the house,

  rattling the dustbins in the yard, creaking the branches

  of the trees, the wistaria tapping and scraping against the

  panes of the room beyond.

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  'It'll blow away-' I cried, putting my arm round her shoulders.

  'Kathe, it'll blow away-'

  She only shook her head.

  'Yes, yes! In a sack - dump them in the sea-' I was

  babbling. 'In the Roary Water - the millstones, Kathe, the

  millstones -'

  'The uttermost farthing,' she answered quietly, and smiled,

  'A very far thing - it was - but not any more.'

  Her dignity and self-possession were like dark, inanima
te

  masses - crags on a headland, pines on a bleak moor. They

  were present not by her will, but because they could no more

  depart from her, now, than she could have discarded her eyes

  or her limbs. Looking at her, my head cleared. I stood up and

  took her in my arms.

  'Were you waiting for this, Kathe?'

  She paused. 'Yes, I think so.'

  'I wish you'd told me. You never told me.'

  'There would have been no point. There was nothing you

  could have done.'

  T used to think that - that things were separate from one

  another; each one itself and not another thing. I know better

  now.'

  I went across to the window, drew back the curtain and

  looked out. Thin clouds were blowing very fast across a

  setting half-moon. The garden and the distant field were

  dappled in scurrying, swiftly-changing moonlight. Everything

  was in commotion and turmoil, hedges and trees thrashing,

  the tall border-clumps of leopard's bane, monkshood and

  delphinium leaning all one way, two or three of them broken

  and dragged half out of the ground. The conical shadow of

  the cypress swayed across the lawn and back like a great,

  pointing finger. A shed door banged and banged, then shut to

  with a slam.

  Suddenly I noticed something moving through the laurels

  at the front of the long bank. In the gloom I could not see

  what it was, but it was big - not a cat, not a hare - and

  conspicuous; that is to say, its movement among the shadows

  was conspicuous because, unlike that of everything else,

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  independent of the wind. The laurels, faintly glossy in the

  moonlight, were shaken into a kind of turbulence as it pushed

  its way beneath them like a big fish moving under water. As

  it reached the far end of the bank the moonlight was once

  more obscured by cloud. Peering, I could just make it out as

  it emerged and raced across the few yards of open ground

  to the wilderness. It was a black Alsatian dog.

  I felt no return of the terror that had filled me before

  standing up and embracing Kathe, for this, I now understood,

  was a real dog, while that beside the Gibbet had been

  an illusion. 'I am becoming used to this place,' I thought.

  'Indeed, it has always lain within me. Once, when I pretended

  that it did not, I was mad, believing myself to be

  sane.'

  I formed the intention of going out into the garden, and

  would have done so if it had not meant leaving Kathe. For

  me to leave Kathe was no part of what was appointed. I

  went back to her chair, sat on the floor beside it and leant

  my head against her knee.

  'Hullo, Desland,' I said. 'You feel all right, don't you?

  There's nothing to get upset about, you know."

  'Was sagst du?'

  'Nothing. Mrs Cook was a pretty girl, but nothing so beautiful

  as you. Kathe, do you remember the shark at Cedar

  Key?'

  'I remember. That was the day I said we'd go home to start

  our real life.'

  Much later, I sensed that the wind had fallen. I went to

  the window but then, suddenly afraid once more in the

  stillness, knelt below the sill, peering between the curtains.

  The moon had set and it was pitch dark. Garden, field and

  downs - all were lost in thick darkness. Only the shapes of

  the trees, when my eyes had become accustomed to the

  blackness, showed against a sky in which, try as I would, I

  could perceive no trace of dawn.

  The crying, when it recommenced, seemed to come from

  very far away, as though from among the invisible stars. But

  I did not imagine it, for I could hear Kathe sobbing in the

  room behind me. It was faint, and as it were residual, like

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  the embers of a fire or the last drainings from an emptied

  pool; and before long it died away.

  'It must be morning soon,' I said.

  'What is soon?' Holding her hands in front of her, palms

  forward, she smiled down at me, where I knelt on the floor,

  between her steady fingers. 'Poor Alan! You should try to

  pass the time. The wind's dropped - it won't be long now.

  You should be prepared, like me.' She gave a little laugh.

  'Why don't you read the Bible? That wouldn't be out of place

  - not out of this place.'

  'Yes. Yes, I'll get it. Where is it, can you remember?'

  'On the bookshelf in Flick's room.'

  I got up and went out once more on the landing, where

  the light still burned as it had all night. I half-expected

  to find the dog crouched at the head of the stairs, but the

  landing was empty and I went along to Flick's room, opened

  the door and switched on the light.

  The green tortoise was lying in its place against the back

  of the armchair. It was in shadow, but its shape and markings

  were plain enough and I, staring back at its bead eyes,

  realized how dull and imperceptive I had been ever to have

  mistaken it for a cushion. Familiar it seemed now; yes and

  complicit too, for had we not each our appointed role in

  what was to take place? It was not the sight of the tortoise,

  therefore, which overcame me where I stood, but the palpable

  grief and misery flowing from it into the room, filling

  it like a bitter pool. The curtains were moving slowly, like

  huge fronds of seaweed, and from where I was, in the doorway,

  I could not distinguish the books on the shelves, because

  of a refraction flattening them into a distorted, sloping

  plane. Nor, I now realized, could one breathe here, for the

  room was flooded with grief as sands by an incoming tide.

  Choking, I felt myself sink and pitch forward, just as I had

  fallen in Cook's drawing-room. My hand remained clutching

  the door-handle, but when my arm was at full stretch

  it was pulled away by the weight of my body. My head

  struck the floor and I became unconscious.

  When I came to myself Kathe was kneeling beside me,

  shaking my shoulder.

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  'Alan! Alan, listen and tell me what you can hear! Listen,

  Alan!'

  I realized that she was beyond sympathy for me - nor did

  I care. Something more immediate was impelling her - something

  new and urgent. Dazed and in pain, I sat up, leaning

  against the frame of the door. The room was clear, the tortoise

  was a cushion, the books were rows of plainly-lettered

  spines side by side upon their shelves.

  Somewhere there was a distant noise - not the wind, not

  the weeping - a familiar, accustomed noise; downstairs, in

  the house. My forehead was bruised and I saw that somehow

  or other I had cut the back of my hand. I desperately

  wanted to void my bowels.

  'Alan, tell me! Can you hear it, or not?'

  The telephone was ringing in the hall. I sat listening and

  staring down at the floor. The sound, as it seemed to me,

  was the pressure in my loins, unrelenting, a mounting torment

  that must be relieved at all costs.

  'Yes,' I said, 'I can hear it. Wait!'

&nbs
p; I struggled up, and as I did so she caught me by the wrist.

  'Don't answer it, Alan! Don't go down!'

  'I'm not going down.'

  I lurched across the landing to the lavatory, dragged at my

  clothes and sat there, leaving the door unclosed as I poured

  out a stinking flux that seemed to tear me apart. The sweat

  ran down my body and I felt ready to faint again with

  nausea and the churning in my bowels which, as often as I

  was able to ease it, returned as agonizingly as before. Kathe

  knelt beside me, holding my hands, caring nothing for the

  foul reek. At last I was able to gasp out, 'Are you going to

  answer it?'

  She flushed the bowl and through the sound of the pouring

  water cried in my ear,

  'I forbid you to go down!'

  'But it might be - it might be -'

  'Who? Who might it be? What?'

  So we remained where we were, huddling together in our

  squalid misery, while the telephone rang on and on. The

  shrill, repetitive sound became like a hammer beating us

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  down, destroying the last shreds of dignity to which each,

  for the sake of the pther, had tried to cling. I remember

  Kathe moaning, 'Make it stop! O God, make it stop!'; while

  I knew that my hand, clasped in hers, was conferring no

  solace but rather entreating, abjectly, some least grain of

  reassurance which she was powerless to give.

  Incredible though it seems, I must have slept - a kind of

  collapse, I suppose, from sheer exhaustion. I remember waking

  to the sensation of Kathe's body against my own, the

  scent of her flesh and an illusion of clambering slowly upward,

  cramped and cold, from the crevice where I had been

  hunched asleep. My sight grew clear and then my hearing.

  The telephone had stopped and to its sound had succeeded

  another, gentle and sweet. Outside the window a blackbird

  was letting fall the first slow notes of morning.

  'It's light,' I said.

  We looked at each other. What relief I was capable of

  feeling was like that of a castaway. I was alive and I was not

  mad.

  Kathe's face was dark-ringed, pallid, streaked with sweat

  and tears. I took her hand in my hands and pressed it to my

  shoulder.

  'Whatever's yours is mine, Kathe. I promise. I won't leave

  you.'

  'Will you - will you do anything I ask, Alan?'

  'Whatever you want. It's for you to say.'

  'Then take me away from here.'

  'Now?'

  'Yes, now.'

  So I got up, and stripped and washed myself, and drew

  the curtains. The morning was dark, closely overcast and

  threatening rain. The wind had broken a great ash bough,

  which lay spread across the grass, its leaves already hanging

  lustreless, the split wood white and stark against the trunk

  of the tree. It seemed easy to go about ordinary things easy

  to do merely what was necessary. I ran a bath for

  Kathe, shaved and dressed, got out two suit-cases and filled

  one with my pyjamas, sponge-bag and so on.

  'Will you have breakfast, Kathe?'

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  'Yes. Anything - whatever there is. What time is it?'

  'Not quite five.'

  'Alan. One thing.'

  'Yes?'

  'We won't talk about it - last night. Not at all - nothing.'

  I nodded, laid my hand for a moment on her shoulder

  where she sat in the bath, and went downstairs to the kitchen.

  The shop - the visit to Bristol - when or whether we

  should return - these things would take care of themselves.

  'I have to attend,' I kept repeating. 'I have to attend.'

  It was twenty to six when I got out the car, put the suitcases

  in the boot and helped Kathe into her coat, for the

  morning, under the low, grey clouds, was bleak and chilly.

  She was searching in her bag and did not look back as I

  began to drive away, bumping over sticks and debris littering

  the drive. Just before we got to the gate she said, 'Stop one

  moment, Alan, please.'

  I drew up. 'Something you've forgotten?'

  Tm sorry. There's a tube of codeine tablets - Veganin - I

  thought it was in this bag. I'd like to have it, please. My head

  is aching. Can you go back and get it for me, or shall I come

  with you?'

  'Where is it?'

  'Upstairs, in the top drawer of the dressing-table. There

  are two other handbags there. It will be in one of them.'

  I went back to the house. Crossing the hall a sudden

  anguish overcame me and I fell on my knees, praying, '0

  God, help me! Good Jesus Christ, help me! Only give me

  strength!' Yet as I went on up the stairs I felt no comfort in

  my heart.

  The dressing-table was full of her scarves, handkerchiefs