The Giant Stumbles

by John Lymington

  “Not much good being scared, Leila,” he said. “Just got to wait and—face it, I suppose.”

  “How can you face it?” She looked up at him, eye: wide and bright.

  “I can’t. I’m just spending the time worrying about things I understand.”

  She pressed herself against him, took his head in her hands and kissed him sensuously. For a moment, he stayed unresponsive, then hugged her to him.

  “How long I’ve wanted this,” she said. “Years and years. It always seemed so impossible.”

  “It’s impossible still,” he said very quietly.

  “No,” she said urgently. “It doesn’t matter any more. Like Benstead said. He knew, but he was frightened to wait. I’m not frightened any more. Kiss me, Nigel darling. Kiss me.”

  It was then that Hal came up the soft carpeted hallway and opened the door. She stood there a second, then turned and walked away, leaving the door ajar. No one had heard her.

  She went slowly along to the open main door and saw Joe and Amanda running hand in hand on the grass, heading for the beach. She turned in sudden panic and ran through the curved corridor to the children’s rooms. She flung open one door after another, found no one there, then ran back to the main door again, and down the steps to the grass.

  She stared out to the barge by the jetty, and for a moment her heart stopped, then raced on as she saw the children there. She covered her face with her hands and tried to stop the simmering madness in her brain.

  Everything had not gone. The children were still there. She felt a sudden crazy impulse to gather them up, and take them off in the car far, far away from anything she had known. For a moment the solution seemed so desperately easy.

  Furtive, her heart beating like a hammer, she went along the grass to the end of the jetty, its heavy wood eaten and gouged with the weather, making the nightmare faces of old, watching men.

  She closed her eyes to get rid of this mad thinking, and then looked along the jetty. The children had seen her and were jumping off the barge on to the jetty, racing each other to reach her. They started to shout, but she held a finger to her lips in desperate pantomime. They ran up, John flinging his arms round her legs and turning is happy round face up to hers.

  “Quickly! No, don’t make any noise—be quiet as mice,” she said, with the air of a conspirator. “Come along with me.”

  “Where are we going, Mummy?” John’s voice was a squeaky whisper.

  “A surprise,” she said, her low voice trembling.

  “What’s the matter, Mummy?” Harry asked with sudden shrewdness.

  “Nothing, dear. It’s going to be a terrific surprise, so don’t ask any questions.”

  She held their hands as all three hurried over the grass beside the house and headed for the garage. Hal felt suddenly that she was racing somewhere ahead of danger, flying right out of the nightmare which had followed her these last days, and escaping all terror and hurt.

  The children scrambled into the Jaguar.

  “Where are we going, Mummy?” Harry said, in sudden alarm. “What about my beasties?”

  “They’ll be all right till we get back,” she promised. “Now, don’t make a sound. I won’t be a minute.”

  It was a panic excursion, grabbing clothes, pyjamas, sandals, stuffing them into a hold-all and then grabbing up a box of jam tarts as she came out through the kitchen.

  There was no sound in the house then but the heavy, ragged beating of her own heart and she ran on tiptoe over the soft carpet to the door and out into the hot sun.

  Her heart screamed inside her with the starting of the engine in case anyone should hear it.

  “Where are we going for a ride to?” John asked, bright and excited.

  “To Nowhere,” she said, hardly able to speak for the terrible feeling that she was choking.

  “It’s a wonderful place where nobody matters.”

  The car swung out into the lane, rolling from the speed of it’s going.

  V

  They came to the foot of the cliff and Amanda sat down on a dry rock.

  “Your mother doesn’t like me.” she said, conclusively.

  “Don’t be silly!” Joe said, in sudden alarm.

  “She does.”

  “She doesn’t,” said Amanda.

  “I can tell. But it’s alright. I don’t like her either.”

  “Mandy!”

  “Oh, don’t fuss!” Amanda said impatiently “I’m not going to marry her, am I?”

  Her coldness frighten him.

  “You’ll get to like her, Mandy. Some people you just don’t get on with to start with. That’s all it is.”

  “I like your father,” said Amanda, with a sly look.

  “He really is something.”

  Joe was surprised and relieved. He smiled.

  “Well, that’s on the way. I like your people.”

  “Oh.” She wrinkled her nose. “They don’t count. Do you know, they’re so old-fashioned they’ve just got no idea. Your father isn’t like that.” She smiled at the sea. She was on the point of telling him what she had seen through the lounge windows when they had gone, but something made her keep it to herself, as if she had something to prize.

  “No, Dad’s pretty up to date,” Joe said proudly.

  “I’ll say!” Amanda smiled again.

  Joe sat on the hot sand beside her and took her hand. She laughed down at him.

  “It’s funny being engaged,” she said.

  “Do you like it ?” He sounded anxious.

  “Yes. It’s sort of something special.”

  “What did your people say when you told them?”

  “I told them if they didn’t like it they could lump it,” she said. “I’m not going to put myself….” She stopped abruptly, staring.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

  “The sand over there. It moved just as if there was somebody underneath it trying to get out.”

  “Good lord!” He stared where she pointed but saw nothing save the dry sand of the unwashed beach leading to the foot of the cliff.

  “It sort of fluttered all over,” she said, and grabbed his hand very tightly. “It’s sort of scary. I don’t like it!” She jumped to her feet and he scrambled up in desperate haste to comfort her.

  “I didn’t see it,” he said, apologetically. “But let’s look.”

  They went hand-in-hand to the dry sand patch, and close to it he stopped and pulled her to a halt.

  “You know, before it was dented all over, where people have walked on it,” he said, in a flat, excited tone. “Now it’s quite smooth.”

  “Just as if it had been shaken,” she said and cuddled her arm tightly against his. “It’s queer.”

  “There’s a lot of queer things happening,” he said, thrilling with the strangeness of it. “Shoals of dead fish. All over the beach. And the house fuses keep blowing out and the cars won’t start. All kinds of things.”

  “You’re making it up,” she said quickly. “Stop it!” She turned away from him still holding his hand. “Let’s go away.”

  They went on for some way along the deserted part of the beach, going quickly to get away from the magic sand. The faster they went, the faster they wanted to go. In the end they started to run and began to laugh, and it broke into a game. At last they stumbled and went headlong, rolling in the warm sand, and came together at the end. His doubts of her went in the happiness of the moment.

  VI

  At four, Television Science Correspondent Alan Danes recorded his weekly programme on film, saying:

  “It looks as though we are in for a period of severe electrical storms. Reports from weather stations have shown sudden and uncharted storms breaking out in unusual circumstances, in some cases spectacular. On the south coast there have been cases of fish being electrocuted, so heavily charged did the atmosphere momentarily become.

  “At present it seems fairly certain that this is due to sunspot activity, though that activity
is not—or has not been forecast as being—especially sharp just now. Interference with radio is heavy during the storms and electrical circuits and power failures will probably occur where transformers are struck by lightning. Weather men are watching all these developments . .

  The programme was due to be put out on Saturday under the general title, ‘Plotting the Course of the Weather’. The item on the electrical storms was a thirty-second part of the talk.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  He turned his back on her suddenly. She stayed there, watching him, her eyes glowing, her cheeks flushed.

  “There’s a big temptation to take the Benstead line —that is, his first line, not his second,” Nigel spoke gruffly.

  “Benstead knew,” she said. “So do I.”

  “Yes. Yet still I feel the chains of my life upon me,” he said. “Dramatic. Can’t think of words. Don’t want the right ones. Just say anything. I’m in a heap. This has been happening like something under the sand. You can’t love two women, Leila.”

  He turned back and looked at her.

  “No, Nigel?” It was a question.

  “No, Leila. It doesn’t work.”

  “But things aren’t going to work—any more. Nigel, I do love you so. It’s been a long, long time . . She turned abruptly, walked out of the windows and away across the veranda to the beach.

  He stood there, staring at the ground, his hand to his forehead.

  “Hell,” he muttered. “I do too, Leila.”

  She was a long way off by then.

  Harvey came in at the windows, as most people did in that informal house. He had seen Nigel standing there smoking, and he came in, a big, loose man, bland and unhurried.

  “I’ve been thinking a hell of a lot, Nigel,” he said.

  Nigel seemed surprised.

  “Yeah? Sorry. I was miles off. Suppose I was thinking, too.” He grinned, but it was uneasy, unhappy.

  “Been thinking all night,” Harvey went on, taking out his pipe and pouch. “Can’t imagine just why I’ve swallowed it, but for all these storms and oddities going on.

  “What a lovely small word—oddities,” said Nigel. “But I’m glad you’re thinking, Harvey, because I’ve stopped.”

  “Tired?”

  Nigel shrugged. “Don’t know. More empty than tired.”

  “Of course, you’re the one man in the world who really knows,” Harvey said. “It must be an appalling feeling.”

  “It’s difficult to know why it happened to be me,” Nigel said. “Such a wonderful coincidence.”

  “It had to be somebody. Perhaps you were chosen.”

  Nigel looked into the doctor’s keen, steady eye.

  “Good lord !” the scientist said. “You’re not suggesting I’ve been shown the light, are you? I don’t think anybody could rate me as God’s pal. I’ve been too rough a lot for Him to choose. What’s more, I’ve never believed in Him.”

  “That isn’t true, if you think, Nigel,” the doctor said.

  “Just look right inside to what you do believe, and you’ll see.”

  Nigel laughed shortly. “Coward’s way. Persuading yourself when you feel you’ve had it and need somebody bigger.”

  Harvey lit his pipe.

  “I was thinking. There must be ways of escaping this. What about the air?”

  “The air is only a skin, a liquid skin,” Nigel said. “If this pause is of any duration, it will tend to fly off, just like anything else.”

  “The sea?”

  Nigel shrugged. “The only thing I would say of the sea is that whatever happens to everything else, the sea will win. It’ll settle again. Maybe swamp everything else, but it will remain because there’s so much more water than there is of anything else.”

  “Of course.” Harvey smoked slowly. “What are you doing about it, Nigel?”

  Nigel sighed. “I was going to move heaven and earth to get it known, but now I’m not so sure it would do am good. Besides, nobody wants to spread it about.” Hi looked at Harvey and his eyes gleamed. “It’s bad for business!” he added bitterly.

  “People are afraid, that’s all,” Harvey said. “Of course they are. This will be the end of life for most of them, if it happens. They’ll stick to that ‘if’ till the last trump. They’ve got to. They have nothing else to stick to. There may have been a time when they would have got strength from faith, but that time is not now. They’ve got nothing to hang on to but ‘if’. And that’s why they don’t like your prophecy.”

  “It isn’t a prophecy, Harvey, it’s a mathematical calculation that cannot be wrong.”

  ‘Put it how you like.”

  There was a silence, as if one were formulating a dangerous question and the other waiting for it.

  ‘What do you think I ought to do?” Nigel said.

  Harvey shrugged.

  ‘Damned if I know. I don’t say that I fully believe s, because I don’t want to, just like everybody else, t even if I knew with all my soul I don’t know what would be best to do. I think I would try and get in touch with high-up government circles and see what they had say.”

  “They’d laugh.”

  “It would be your job to see they didn’t.”

  “Easily said.” Nigel went to the windows thinking, you may be right,” he went on. “It’s worth trying.” “There are a few days left,” Harvey said. “Go up in the morning. With your reputation you should get in.” “Where? To whom?”

  Harvey thought a while. “I should say the Defence Minister. He handles all angles of national defence. He wuld be the most active man to get hold of—looking at from the jobs he controls.”

  Nigel nodded. “Yes, maybe I’ve…”

  He stopped and looked down. Harvey stared a moment, then bent and put his hand to the carpet. He twisted his neck and looked up to find Nigel staring at him with the guilt of a man whose secret has been discovered.

  “Trembling,” said Harvey, his voice slow with fascination. “Vibrating like a motor of some kind.”

  The vibration died away. Harvey remained squatting on his heels, looking up. Nigel nodded slowly.

  “Yes, it’s happened before. It’s just one more of the Queer Things.”

  ‘Does it take part in your prophecy?” Harvey said, rising.

  “I didn’t reckon on any of these things,” Nigel said. They are just happening as symptoms. I didn’t imagine small details. Just the big one.”

  “Sort of earthquake, is it?”

  “No. I think it’s the result of some electrical disturbance, not a physical one. You see, nearly everything that’s happening now is electrical—a gradual changing in the magnetic fields—but what exactly it is, I don’t know. I think there will be a good deal more before…” He turned away as if he did not want to name it.

  “You’ll go up tomorrow, then?” Harvey said, returning to the point.

  Nigel hesitated. “All right.”

  “I think it’s the best thing,” Harvey said. ‘You might be able to tap other sources of information. There might even be a way out.”

  “There is,” said Nigel. “Benstead took it.”

  Harvey’s eyes grew sharp. He knew about Benstead. He had been called to the man on the railway line.

  II

  The shooting brake came out of the side lane very suddenly. Hal swerved in to the hedge and braked hard, so that John hit his head on the dash and gave an angry yell. The Jaguar stopped in rising dust, only a yard from the long brake slewed across the lane, blocking it.

  Two men got out, while Hal sat there, fuming.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she called through the window.

  “Sorry, madam,” the Top Man said. “We sort of lost our way.”

  “Well, will you please get out of mine ?”

  The Top Man stopped and looked at her, his slow expression half apologetic, half amused. Very slightly, he shook his head. Hal’s eyes widened, and her anger, on top of all her other emotions, bubbled up from
sheer helplessness.

  “How dare you!” she cried. “Move that thing at once!”

  “I’m sorry, madam. I can’t,” the Top Man said. “Then I will!”

  Hal pushed down the accelerator and the drive took up. She hit the brake in the front wing and shoved it several yards along the road, crunching on the hard, dusty surface. But the brake won. The Jaguar stopped, one wheel in the ditch, the wing in the hedge.

  “No good, madam,” the Top Man said, coming up from behind and opening her door. “You’d much better go back.”

  Suddenly her anger turned into the quake of fear. “Who are you?” she said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” the Top Man said.

  She glanced from him to the thin, silent man waiting at the back of the car.

  ‘You’re deliberately trying to stop me,” Hal said.

  She caught the man’s look as he watched the children, and then pushed his hat back on his head as if uncomfortable with the heat. Quite suddenly she knew what the look meant. It was as if some bright flash of understanding seared her mind.

  The children. Of course. The children.

  She said no more, shoved the drive lever up into reverse and accelerated back. The hedge tore, and the car lurched as it dragged its wheel from the ditch. She went backwards along the lane, going fast while the children stared, fascinated, at the two men straddling the lane, growing smaller and smaller through the windscreen.

  As she strained to look backwards Hal had one idea in her whole being. She must get back to Nigel. Everything but that need went from her mind.

  At the house she got out and told the children to play on Elly. She had to make promises to soothe their disappointment at not going somewhere surprising, but they had been oddly frightened by the encounter in the lane and did not protest as much as usual.