Now the voices began.
Diana. “Selby! Let me out, Selby. Please, please!”
Ruth, Marie in her broken English, farther off children’s voices, pleading, begging for help. And Elizabeth. Selby turned away, in nausea and pain.
“We’d better get out now,” he said.
They could see, as they passed the open door, that the other side of the salon was already a furnace. Smoke, pouring into the hall, caught at their throats, choking. By the time George had opened the front doors, Selby was finding some difficulty in breathing. They went out, and the night air pierced the lungs with its sharpness and coldness.
Selby had remembered to get their coats and boots from the hall while George was opening the doors. He handed George’s to him, and they put their coats on. Neither would risk yet the temporary defenselessness that putting the boots on would involve. They stood only a few yards from the door of the house and watched the flames, leaping first behind the bar window, billowing across the hall, rising at last, like a ghastly coronet, over the roof of the house.
George said, “I shouldn’t have bothered with that shot. You were quite right. The answer was to slam the door on them.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
George shook his head. “It might have done.”
Now the flames were everywhere in front of them, and the air roaring with their unappeasable fury. Heat beat out at them, and they moved back.
“I saw one of them coming up the stairs,” George said. He stared at the fountain of fire. “It was Mandy.”
17
The cold hemmed them in, an exhalation from the darkness of the night, from the crisp, cruel snow underfoot. Its crust broke beneath their feet, so that each step forward was an effort, eventually an agony. They went on for a very long time, not talking so as to conserve energy, side by side but a foot or two apart. The moon still hung behind the high bars of cloud, throwing barely enough light for them to see their way. The shoulder of the mountain, toward which they were heading, was visible only as a darker sector of the sky.
She said at last, “I’ve got to rest. For a while, at least.”
“No. You must keep moving. You must.”
Selby or George would have been peremptory, but even in her coldness and tiredness she was aware of something else in his voice. A concern, a pleading. It touched her as brusqueness, at this stage, could not have done. She forced her body forward. There was no knowing what had become, or might become, of George and Selby. All that was certain was that two of them remained, that neither must desert the other.
He began to talk to her, his voice at times laboring on his breath. He was doing this, she realized, to help to keep her going. He talked chiefly about his family: he had two married sisters, a brother who was a Regular Army officer, at present stationed in Germany. He made them sound like nice people, and he spoke of them as though she would meet them one day. Her mind touched on the implications of that, but quickly returned to its main preoccupation with fatigue, coldness.
She said, “I can’t… I must rest.”
She stood still, shivering, feeling her body swaying toward the ground. He came to her, and caught hold of her. His arms were around her and she relaxed against him. She thought bemusedly that he was stronger than she would have guessed, to be able to support her like this. And his warmth was a comfort. How long a time it was since she had been aware, as she was now, of the goodness of the human body.
After a time, she summoned her will power and said she could go on. They went on as before, but the shoulder of the mountain was much nearer, blotting out a wider arc of sky, looming over them on their left. They were forced farther downhill and came to the point where the ground, on their other side, dropped sharply away. Soon after, they reached the heap of snow and rubble that marked the avalanche, and could go no farther.
She leaned against a wall of snow, and he put his arms around her as he had done before. She opened the old raincoat George had given her and pulled him inside, closer to her. Is it desolation, she wondered, that makes people into lovers: the pressure of coldness and fear and loneliness? But there was more to it than that. An understanding, at least, an admission. She had been afraid, and lonely, and cold of heart, and had not known it. And a reaching out. They rested against each other, and comforted each other.
He got her to walk about, and then they rested, embracing, and stood up and walked again. Time passed in this alternation; slowly, but it passed. They were resting when he said, “What’s that?”
“What?”
“Look.”
She turned, and saw the glow in the sky. The side of the mountain prevented their seeing exactly what it was, but there was a redness up there, a brightness against which the line of rock stood out.
“The house,” she said.
Not needing to discuss it, they retraced their steps. The glow grew stronger, and at last they could see it plainly, see the distant blazing pyre which still had the outlines of the chalet. She thought of Diana, and was glad of her earlier grief. She could feel no sorrow now.
They walked, and rested, and walked, while the slow hours of night went past. The flaming beacon on the hillside subsided into embers that, at last, went out. There was only shadowy moonlight again, a dim dark world in which, utterly weary and bitterly cold, they were aware of themselves and of each other. Nothing else. The voice that called them across the chill wastes was at first unreal, a cry in a dream. But it persisted, and grew stronger.
“Jane! Douglas! Where are you?”
George’s voice. It was Douglas who answered. He called, “We’re here. Over here.”
“Right. I think I’ve got a bearing. But keep on shouting.” Douglas was calling, “Here … this way …” She caught his arm.
“Are you sure … ?”
“It’s George,” he said.
His breath warmed her cheek. “Is it?” she said. “Is it?” He stared at her. She could see his face more clearly.
Dawn was sifting into the sky behind them. He said, “My God. I’m not sure. Shall we try to get away?”
“You can. I’m too tired.”
He took her in his arms. “Then there’s no point.”
The figures came toward them across the snow, and she recognized Selby beside George. Just the two of them. It was all right, then. Unless this was another trap, to get them to show themselves, to keep them from hiding. But she no longer cared, except for Douglas. She thought confusedly that if she went toward .them and they attacked her, he might be able to get away. She stumbled forward, trying to run, but he came after her. And the figure that might be Selby, only a few yards away, had stopped and was doing something. She stopped herself, and felt Douglas catch hold of her.
Selby stripped off his heavy coat, and came to her with it.
“Here,” he said. “You’d better have a turn with this.” She began to laugh and cry in relief. “You’re not …”
“What?” He took her meaning. “Possessed? You thought they might have got us, too? No. You saw the fire?” Douglas said, “Yes, we saw it. But we couldn’t be sure.” George had taken his coat off, and was putting it on Douglas. He said, “I won’t offer my boots, unless one of you happens to take size twelve.”
“Is it really all finished?” Douglas asked. “All?”
Selby said, “Yes.” He hesitated. “We thought we’d better come for you now, before help arrived. It might be difficult explaining why you two had pushed off on a night like this.”
“Explaining?” Douglas said. “You mean …”
George said, “We’ve been working this one out. We four were playing dice after the others had gone to bed. In the dining room. The fire started at the other end of the house—a cigarette end in the bar, perhaps—and had reached the stairs before we could do anything.”
Jane said, “You don’t think they would believe the truth?”
“Do you?”
She shook her head. “I suppose not.”
“A holiday tragedy,” Selby said. His voice was dry, spent. “We believe what we are conditioned to believe. And now I think we’d better be getting back. Those who survive don’t generally stray far from the ashes.”
They were waiting just below the ruins of the house when they heard the sound of the helicopter’s engine. The sun had not yet risen here, but the sky was very bright in the east. Noise was magnified suddenly as the helicopter rose up over the spur. They waved their arms, and saw it dip toward them.
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Landmarks
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The Possessors Page 23
