The Possessors

by John Christopher

  the surgeon. He sat at Mandy Hamilton’s right hand. He seemed slight in comparison with his statuesque wife, but was fractionally taller than she was. He had a lean, mobile, somewhat delicate face. He was about Deeping’s age, but his manner was younger, volatile. He used his hands when he talked; they were finer, more delicate, than one would have expected a surgeon’s hands to be. But a plastic surgeon, Douglas remembered; not the same need for brute strength, presumably. He was intelligent, extrovert, a man with charm, who knew how to use it.

  The meal, which apparently had been cooked by Mandy Hamilton herself, was served by the little French Swiss girl, Marie, who, with the elderly Peter, constituted the domestic staff. It was wholesome, without being outstanding: a thick vegetable soup, followed by a pot roast, and a blueberry pie with ice cream. Mandy had been something of a surprise. He had not expected someone so distinctly British as Hamilton to have an American wife. She was a few years younger than he was, a woman who had been good-looking but whose features had coarsened. Her voice, though, was low, warm, pleasantly accented.

  Coffee was served in the salon, a large room, pine-paneled like the rest, well supplied with easy chairs. The doors to the veranda were closed, the curtains drawn against the night. There was a baby grand piano in one corner, a radio in the other. There was also a television aerial plug but, Douglas was pleased to notice, no television set. He waited until the others had taken what were presumably their usual seats, and found himself a chair on the outskirts of the group. Hamilton, who had been out seeing to something, came back soon after Marie had brought the coffee in, and sat by him.

  “Grub to your liking?” he asked.

  “Very much so.”

  The confirmation was taken for granted. Hamilton nodded.

  “Best cook I’ve ever met. She’s wasted here. What do you feel like doing this evening?”

  “Nothing in particular.”

  “Not much in the way of night-spottery in these parts, of course, but there is a place in the village where you can drink and dance. What they call dancing nowadays. Reason I mention it is, I don’t generally go down myself, but the old bus is at the disposal of guests who want to.”

  Douglas remembered the drive up, and that in daylight.

  “I don’t think so. Thanks all the same.”

  “The Graingers will be going down, and Diana with them. I didn’t know whether you want to make up a four.” He had a moment of extreme resentment. He could scarcely refuse to provide an escort for the girl, and he felt that Hamilton, knowing this, was forcing the issue unwarrantably. There was a limit, surely, to treating one’s guests as members of the family. He said, with some stiffness, “In that case, of course, I’ll be delighted.”

  “Only if you were keen yourself,” Hamilton said. “If you did go, I doubt if you’d see the girl for more than ten minutes after you got down to the village. She’s gathered in at least two local boy friends already.”

  Hamilton was grinning. Douglas said, with relief, “Then I’ll …”

  “Forget it. Now, if you’re staying up here … Jane prefers a quiet read. The Deepings play bridge, and Mandy and I have been making up a four with them. She’d be glad to drop out if you feel like playing—all sorts of things that need doing, you know.”

  “I think I would prefer to read, too. Tonight, anyway.”

  “Fair enough,” Hamilton said cheerfully. “Want anything with that coffee?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a brandy.”

  “Coming up.”

  When the Graingers and Diana had gone, a table was set up for bridge. Douglas was conscious of being left with Jane Winchmore. He had brought a book down, but could hardly start reading until she was similarly occupied. She probably felt the same way. They found themselves talking, a little awkwardly.

  She had lived, it appeared, in Oxfordshire until her husband died, and had since sold the place and been living in hotels. Her sister had talked her into this holiday. Diana had favored St Moritz, and they had compromised on Nidenhaut. She had been recommended to the Hamiltons by friends of a friend.

  “I saw their advertisement,” Douglas said, “in one of the weeklies. I wanted a break, but I’m not very good at being abroad, so the idea of an English place appealed.”

  “Yes.” There was a pause, awkwardness returning. “What do you do at home, Mr. Poole?”

  “I’m a solicitor,” he told her. “We have a practice in Winchester. Poole, Stephens and Willoughby, but the placing is misleading. The first Poole was my uncle.”

  “And you like the law?”

  “I suppose so. I haven’t given myself much chance to think about it. I joined the firm direct from school, and I’ve been with it ever since.” He hesitated. “I’m contented, I would say.”

  The answer, he reflected, was true enough. He had liked his work, and his work had been a refuge. Until lately, at least. And the fact that it did not help him as much as it had once done was no indictment of his occupation. It would have been the same with any.

  Shortly afterward she excused herself, pleading tiredness, and he was able to settle down with his book. A pleasant woman, he thought, and a sensible one, not least in bringing a graceful end to a pointless conversation. Though her excuse might well be valid: she did look tired. He hoped, with detached sympathy, that she would sleep well, that she was not a fellow victim of the long empty hours of night.

  When he awoke, he glanced at his watch, and saw by the luminous dial that it was a little before three. He was wide awake and knew, from past experience, that hours of wakefulness lay ahead. He snapped on the bedside light. The room was all around him, different in its details, but the same lonely cell he had left behind. The oil painting of the Matterhorn, seen for the first time the previous afternoon, was already agonizingly familiar.

  It was warm, stuffy almost, with the windows closed and the radiator full on. He put on his dressing gown, opened the French windows, and stepped out onto the small balcony. There was no wind, but it was sharply, bitterly cold. The moon was absent from the sky, but starlight glimmered brightly on the snow. He almost thought he could see the slopes of the mountains on the other side of the valley, but that was probably a trick of vision. Far down and to the right, he did see something, a cluster of lights. A village, probably, but where? On the shore of the lake, perhaps. He would identify it in the morning.

  It was too cold to stay out; he went in, closing the windows behind him. His bookmark, he saw with some concern, was not far from the end of the book. He had a couple of others with him, but he had better be careful until he knew what sort of reading supply there was locally. He had thought of bringing more books, but the idea had seemed a weakness, like taking one’s umbrella when one has been assured the day will be fine. And most desperately wants to believe it.

  He got back into bed, and picked up the book from the bedside table.

  It was about six when he drifted off to sleep. He awoke muzzily when tea was brought to him at eight o’clock, and woke again at quarter past nine to find it cold and milk-scummed beside him. Breakfast, he remembered, was served until nine thirty, except by arrangement. He did not feel much like eating, but he was anxious to conform to the domestic arrangements, particularly when the staff was so small. He washed quickly, combed his hair, and went down in his. dressing gown. Jane Winchmore was the only person at the dining table.

  He said, “Good morning. I said I would see you at breakfast, but it’s been a close-run thing.”

  She smiled. “The others are all out doing healthy invigorating things in the snow. I’m afraid I’m lazy. And I’ve got into the habit of dawdling over meals.”

  Mandy Hamilton came in, and asked him if he would have porridge, corn flakes, or fruit juice, and if bacon and eggs would do to follow. He realized suddenly that he was hungry, very hungry, and asked for porridge.

  Jane Winchmore brought out a cigarette. “Do you mind? I can go into the salon.”

  “No, please stay.” He felt for hi
s lighter, and tapped the empty pocket of his dressing gown. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you a light.”

  “It’s all right. I have one.”

  She lit it clumsily; he had an impression that she had not been smoking for very long.

  He said, “Do the Hamiltons have any kind of library, do you know? I doubt if I’ve brought enough books with me.”

  “Over there.”

  She pointed through the connecting door to the salon. There was quite a large bookcase against one wall. He had been sitting opposite it the night before, but by some quirk it had failed to register.

  He laughed. “I must be going blind.”

  She said, “A mixed bag, of course. But if you run short, I’ve got a few in my room. Only novels, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t despise novels. Though I prefer biographies.”

  “Yes,” she said, considering, “I would have thought you might.”

  She excused herself when his bacon and eggs arrived. He had a large meal, finishing off with several pieces of toast and marmalade, and went up to dress and shave with a pleasant sense of fullness. When he came down again, he met Hamilton at the foot of the stairs, in ski kit, with a weird balaclava-type hat, his face glowing from physical exertion.

  “You’ve made it, then!” he said. “Good boy. Had your breakfast?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Jolly good. Then we’ll get cracking.”

  Hamilton fitted him up, and took him outside. He said, “Don’t want to waste a morning like this.” It was perfect, in fact, without even the scattered clouds of the previous day. Blue and white, both dazzling in their brightness, and the smudged green of fields very far below. “The glass isn’t too promising.”

  “Bad weather on the way? It looks settled.”

  Hamilton shrugged. “We could do with a bit more snow. It’s thinner this year than I’ve known it.”

  He gave Douglas some elementary tuition, and left him to get on with things, coming back from time to time to point out his mistakes and offer cheer. The cheer was badly needed; in the afternoon he was still trying baby runs down the small saucerlike depression just in front of the house, and still falling over half the time. After an hour of this second stint he gave it up, had a bath and changed, and settled down on the veranda to sun-bathe and watch the others.

  Hamilton had taken the Graingers and Diana down to the village that morning, from where they could get onto one of the pistes provided with a ski lift. The Deepings and Jane had preferred to make their falls in relative seclusion, near the chalet, but they were still, he saw, a great deal better than he was. And the Deeping children were coming on well. They were boys of eight and ten, Andy and Stephen, the former small, quick, deft and talkative, the older boy quieter and more withdrawn in manner, physically bigger beyond what one would have expected from the two-year difference, dark and coarse-grained where the other was finely blond. At one point, following an argument, Douglas saw the younger boy trip his brother, and they fell scuffling in the snow. The fact that Ruth Deeping, having missed the beginning of the incident, rounded immediately on the elder, confirmed an impression he had formed that she was biased in favor of her second son. As one who had himself been an unfavored son against a favored daughter, Douglas sympathized with Stephen.

  Over tea, he found himself trapped by Leonard Deeping, who asked him interminable questions about his work, where he lived, and so on, and did not seem at all troubled by the shortness of Douglas’s replies. His voice was slow, carefully articulated, the consciously solid accent of the blunt reliable northerner. When he tired of quizzing Douglas, he turned to himself, apparently an even more engrossing subject. He was handling the London end of a Lancashire textile firm, but Douglas had a feeling that there might be more to it than that. At any rate, he was open about the fact that he had done very well over the past few years. He was thinking of retiring early; somewhere with a low tax rate. He thought of the Isle of Man, being from that part of the world, but his wife would prefer something warmer. Jersey, perhaps. Douglas let it wash over him, and stared across the valley at the distant snowy peaks. Cloud was building up around them, white and fluffy still, but very thick. The bad weather Hamilton had said was forecast, presumably.

  Helping himself to a buttered scone, Deeping said, “They look after you all right, George and Mandy. It’s a waste of money, I reckon, to go to one of those big places, especially with kids. You’re paying for lounges and writing rooms and orchestras, and ail sorts of stuff you don’t use. No sense in throwing money away.”

  “No.”

  “Like schooling. I could well have afforded to pay for both lads, but they ought to get scholarships to a decent Grammar. With coaching, they ought—I don’t mind paying for that. And Ruth wouldn’t stand for them being away at school.”

  She was sitting at the far end of the veranda. The two boys were beside her, but Andy nearer to her, leaning against her legs.

  Deeping said, “The Graingers have got a couple, too, you know. Boy and a girl. At boarding schools.” He shook his head. “No, I can’t see Ruth standing for it.”

  “Isn’t it term time for your boys?” Douglas asked.

  Deeping grinned and winked. “Educational tour. Well, isn’t it? I know their headmaster. We should have come out in the Christmas holidays, but there was a spot of business on that couldn’t wait. And it paid for the holiday, I might say.”

  “Good for you,” Douglas said politely, and Deeping accepted the tribute with a nod.

  Hamilton took the Minibus down to pick up the party from the village just before six. But that time, clouds had gathered on this side of the valley, and a bitterly cold wind had risen. The landscape turned grim and forbidding in the deepening twilight. But it was cheerful inside, with the curtains drawn and logs burning on the open fire in the salon. Deeping was there, but quiet, poring over the City page of the Daily Telegraph which Hamilton had brought up on his earlier trip. Jane Winchmore, like himself, was reading a book. Ruth Deeping was supervising baths for the children. Douglas felt pleasantly tired and at ease. With any luck, he thought, he would sleep well that night.

  The others returning from Nidenhaut brought the news that snow had begun to fall. Grainger went up to the fire, rubbing his hands. “Warm in here, at least.” He straightened up, and looked at Douglas, smiling. “What sort of a day have you had?”

  “Rise and fall. Equally balanced, but plenty of them.”

  He grinned. “Yes, it’s a bad stage. Very damaging to the ego. Nothing like alcohol as balm for the spiritual bruises. Don’t I hear George opening things up next door?” He glanced at his wife. “How about it, sweetheart?”

  She shook her head slowly; not from any reluctance, Douglas felt, but because all her physical motions were slow and graceful. She said, “I’m going up to bathe and change.”

  “Diana, Jane? Time for a quick one.”

  The younger woman looked as though she would not have minded being persuaded, but her sister refused for both of them and carried her off. Grainger shrugged at Douglas.

  “Well, that leaves us.” He paid no attention to Deeping, who was still immersed in the Closing Prices. “I trust I can talk you into it.”

  In the next room, Hamilton was behind the bar and had already set himself up a large whisky and soda. Pouring drinks for the others, he said, “Taking the bus down tonight, Selby?”

  The curtains were not drawn here. Grainger glanced out of the window; snow was falling thickly and whirling about in the wind. He lifted his drink.

  “Cheers. Not unless that lot clears up pretty smartly.”

  “You’ll be lucky,” Hamilton told him. “Have a look at the glass. It’s setting in dirty.”

  “Have to be the dicepot, in that case.” Grainger yawned. “I can forgo the dancing very well. I’ve had as much exercise as I want today.”

  By the time supper was over, the wind was howling around the chalet, and Hamilton reported that snow was beginning to drift aga
inst the front door. There could be no question of going down to Nidenhaut; while the storm lasted, they were isolated here. The thought was not an unpleasant one. They were warm and sheltered, well supplied with food and drink. The noise, of the wind only emphasized their comfort.

  The Deepings suggested bridge again, and Mandy Hamilton and Jane made up the four. Douglas was cajoled by Grainger into playing Liar Dice, a game he had not encountered before. He had intended to withdraw at a fairly early hour and go to bed, but his tentative attempt, when the bridge school ended at half past ten, was firmly overruled by Grainger.

  “Can’t break things up at this stage, Douglas. Not after winning the last kitty.”

  They stopped playing a little before one, and then only through Elizabeth Grainger’s insistence. In his room, Douglas reflected that he had enjoyed the evening, had drunk a lot of whisky but not, he thought, too much, and was entirely ready for bed. Fatigue returned, an engulfing wave. He pulled off his clothes, and draped them not very tidily across the chair. The wind screamed outside and from time to time rattled at his windows; but ineffectually, feebly almost. It was not going to keep him awake. He put on his pajamas, climbed into bed, and fell asleep almost right away.

  It was not the wind that woke him, either. He was conscious of being awake for some time before he was aware of the steady, deeper roar of the gale outside. He looked at his watch. Half past four. Six hours back it would only be half past ten. Nothing like bedtime for the wife of a British Board of Trade official in New York. What would she be doing? Dancing? The theater? Dining late? And with whom—Robert, or some unknown? An American. Perhaps a Latin American. She had said once, in a joke, that South American men fascinated her. But the jokes, along with everything else, had gone bitter with keeping. Smiling, perhaps, her eyes closing slightly. He turned over restlessly in the bed. The barriers were down again, the past in spate.

  2

  After she had washed, and brushed her hair, and cleaned her teeth, Mandy Hamilton knelt beside the bed and said her prayers. It was the one religious observance that remained. The nearest church in which she could worship with any meaning was at Montreux, and the journey down there, difficult enough under any circumstances, was out of the question when they had guests in the house.