‘Oh’ said Marianne. ‘It would be funny if we’d been going to the same place, wouldn’t it? When we’ve both been ill at the same time and both had you to teach us and all that’
‘Yes, it would’ Miss Chesterfield said, and there the subject dropped. Miss Chesterfield said good-bye, and gave Marianne, as a parting present, a book. (It was Rolf Boldre-wood’s Robbery Under Arms, and Marianne found it wildly exciting.) Marianne, in her turn, gave Miss Chesterfield a small cushion with a bright cover made of patchwork, which she had been working at hard for the last few weeks.
‘It’s lovely, Marianne’ said Miss Chesterfield warmly. ‘Thank you very much indeed. I shall keep it on the chair I generally sit in and think of you whenever it supports my exhausted head.’
‘And thank you for the book’ Marianne said, ‘it looks marvellous. All about horses and bushrangers and people shooting each other. Thanks frightfully, it’s terribly good of you.’
Altogether the farewell took place in a friendly and generous atmosphere. And the next day Marianne and her family were to go to the sea.
That night, at last, she dreamed.
She stood outside the tower, just as weeks, months, years ago, she had stood outside the house. Everything was as usual - the wind-flecked sky, the bright, glittering sea, the dark land behind. The seagulls floated and swung above her, and the sun was warm on her back and arms as she went up to the tower, swung the door open, and went in.
It was cool and dark inside the lower room compared to the sparkle outside. Marianne climbed to the upper room in search of Mark, and then on up to the battlements, but in vain. He was not there.
‘He must be somewhere outside’ she thought, and she went out again into the sunshine and walked round the tower and called again. But no one replied. Mark had gone.
‘He’s left me all alone’ Marianne thought, half-frightened and very angry. ‘Directly I gave him my pencil he went and got himself out of this place and left me behind. I didn’t leave him behind when he couldn’t walk properly, but he’s gone off in his beastly helicopter and left me without any way of getting out. He hasn’t even left me the pencil.’
She said this without at all knowing whether he had or not: now she went over to the table to make sure. There, placed so that she should see it directly she turned her eyes towards it, was the drawing block. On the top sheet was a neat, workmanlike drawing of the tower; every window was placed with mathematical precision, every battlement proportioned right. Outside it, on the top of the cliff stood a little figure which Marianne recognized for herself. Up in the air hovered a small but very efficient-looking helicopter with a rope ladder dangling from it.
At the bottom of the page were some lines of writing.
The helicopter has been hovering around all day. I don’t want to go till you come, hut as they seem to be waiting for me, I think perhaps I’d better. Don’t worry I will make them come back and fetch you as soon as I can. Won’t it be terrific to get to the sea at last? Thanks awfully for the pencil, it seems to have done the trick.
Mark.
The pencil was nowhere to be seen.
Marianne put down the picture, and relief flooded her. He had not deserted her, he had waited for her, he had not wanted to go without her, he would come back and fetch her. The tower was no longer lonely or unfriendly or frightening. Nor was it any longer a place of refuge. It was a place of departure.
She went out again into the sunshine. She could hear the hum of drowsy bees, searching for honey, the wailing cry of the seagulls, and, at the cliff’s foot, the lapping of small lacy waves. Here, in the dream, it was a golden afternoon; the sea and the land were at peace with each other; even the dark country behind the hills was wrapped in a soft grey haze which was gentle, not frightening, at one with the beauty of the day.
Everything seemed to be resting; content; waiting.
Mark would come: he would take her to the sea. Marianne lay down on the short, sweet-smelling turf. She would wait, too.
Table of Contents
Marianne’s Birthday
The First Dream
The Person in the House
Miss Chesterfield
Inside
The Row
Mark
Mark in Danger
Marianne and Mark
The Pencil
Them
The Tower
The Light
The Bicycle
The Voices
The Escape
The End of the Road
In the Tower
The Empty Tower
Marianne Dreams Page 17
