“Milly!” they mocked: “Milly Barnes! What a name to choose!” and as she ran faster, trying to outdistance them, she seemed to hear their laughter, rollicking in the dark air that raced away behind her.
They had given themselves away, though! She knew now what they were after. They were after her new self, her new identity.
How could they be so unfair? She had worked so hard on this new self, with such skill and with such determination. Out of the jumbled-up remains of a broken, terror-stricken criminal, she had succeeded in piecing together a perfectly respectable Milly Barnes, a re-conditioned, good-as-new model, capable of earning its own living, even of making friends for itself.
“Milly Barnes! Milly Barnes! You’re not Milly Barnes, there’s no such person!”
She had not outdistanced them after all! They were back … they were all around her! They were siezing on her … laying hands on her new self … confiscating it, as if she had been smuggling it through the customs! “It’s mine!” she kept crying, “I’ve got a right …!” but all she could hear was their maddening laughter … and now here were their hands, tweaking at her, pulling her back, weighing her down, until her legs could carry her no longer, and she sank to the ground.
She knew, really, what it was she had done, and why They had been sent to fetch her. She wasn’t supposed to be here at all. She was a reincarnated soul without a passport … somehow, she had slipped illegally between the frontiers of life and death, dodging the regulations, jumping the queue, getting herself re-born before her time.
And now they were pulling her back, dragging her down to the place where she belonged. “You’re not getting away with that, my girl!” she heard them say, amazingly clear and loud against the noisy thudding of her heart. “Re-birth isn’t that simple—whatever made you think it was? And so now it’s right back to the beginning for you, Milly Barnes, with it all to do again—and properly, this time….!”
*
Milly opened her eyes. She found herself staring ahead into a sky so black and so full of stars that at first she thought she had died, and was floating free of the earth’s atmosphere, heading out into space.
But then, after a few seconds, she became aware of a pressure against the back of her skull and against her shoulder-blades. She was lying on the hard ground, flat on her back, staring up into the incredible night sky, completely cloudless, and scoured by the cold into this unimaginable brilliance.
What time was it? How far had she come? Painfully—she must have bruised her shoulder in falling—she raised her head, and far away over the black sea she saw the crescent moon sinking, and knew that it could not be very late—not later then nine, anyway.
How long did that give Gilbert to track her down? Say she had fled from Mrs Day’s at about six—what would he have done first, when he found her gone? He would have glided down in the lift again, he would have sought out the caretaker. “She went that way,” he would have been told. “Towards the Avenue…. No, I’m sorry, sir, there was nothing I could do, she was going like a mad thing. I tried…. I called out to her….”
And then what would Gilbert do? She saw him pacing stiffly across the dark town, the strange, predatory look sharpening his features, until he seemed to be sniffing the night air, to left and right, like a beast of prey. And people would help him, of course they would—a white-haired old man in such a state of anxiety and concern. “Yes, she went in that direction,” they would say, pointing: and “Yes, we wondered if she was all right, but we didn’t like…. Oh, not at all, only too glad to be of help….” and on he would come, on, on, sniffing this way, sniffing that way, until at last all the muddled directions, all the well-meant advice, all his own strange, supra-normal perceptions, would begin to focus in a certain definite direction … would converge, at last, on this spot where she was lying.
She must move! She must hide! She must do something! Milly staggered to her feet, and on limbs stiff and almost numb with exhaustion, she tried to begin running again. But in which direction? She had a mad feeling now that Gilbert was everywhere. Ahead, crouched in the dry winter grass. Behind, padding soft as a shadow through the outskirts of the town. Up in the Downs he would be lurking, too, his white hair like tufts of sheep’s wool, just visible through the dry, crackling gorse and winter furze: and down there at the sea’s edge also she would find him, looming up behind the breakwater like one more rotting timber, his terrible silvery eyes shining in the light of the moon.
Nowhere to turn…. No way to run, and yet run she must, for fear had possession of her limbs and would not let her be.
She came at last to the beach, at the point where the parade petered out into a slippery concrete ramp. She scrambled over the damp stone, and landed, with a scrunch of pebbles, on the shingle beneath.
The noise was terrible. For several minutes Milly crouched, absolutely still, under the shadow of the ramp, waiting to see if she had given herself away.
No sound. Nothing: and at last she ventured from her hiding-place, tiptoeing painfully over the stones, until at last she reached the limits of the shingle belt, and felt her feet sinking into soft, powdery sand.
The tide was far out, and as Milly moved towards the distant line of foam at the water’s edge, she had a strange sense that she was no longer moving at random; she was walking towards a rendezvous, to keep an appointment fixed long, long ago. And it was no good turning round and walking the other way, for if she did the rendezvous would be there, as well.
The soft sand had become firm under her feet, then wet, and wetter still, until now, as she approached the curving scallops of foam that defined the limits of the almost waveless water, marking it off from the glistening expanse of sand, she felt her feet sinking in once more, squelching at every step. She could feel the water soaking in above the soles of her shoes.
Far off to the right—a hundred yards or more—she could just make out the breakwater, gaunt and jagged against the starlit water. The treacherous light of the moon seemed to be playing games with the black timbers, they stirred and wavered in front of her tired eyes … one of the taller, narrower ones almost seemed to be detaching itself from the main body—lurching with a strange, lollopping gait out across the sand.
The Voices. Was it in moments of great and unendurable fear that they came to you? They were not mocking her this time, they were not even calling her “Milly” any more—“Milly Barnes” was just a bad joke that had come to an end.
“Candida!” she heard them call, faint and far away: and then, nearer and clearer, “Candida! Candida!”
The syllables of her old name, her real name, beat upon her out of the past, their rhythm rang like the hooves of a galloping horse alongside the quiet sea.
She put her hands to her ears, she tried to black out the sound of the past thundering towards her; she stared, with dilated pupils, across the faintly-gleaming stretches of sand which spread away into the darkness as far as she could see.
Was she going mad? The black upright timber had moved nearer … this was no trick of moonlight …! it had detached itself from the breakwater, it was rocking towards her across the glimmering sand. In a few moments it would be near enough for her to glimpse the white hair, flying wild under the moon.
“Candida!” the voice came again, “Candida? What in heaven’s name …?”
She did not believe it. Even after she had recognised the voice beyond all possibility of doubt; had recognised the swing of his shoulders, too, as he ran—she still did not believe it.
All the same, it was necessary to say something.
“Hullo,” she said, in a small voice. “Hullo, Julian!”
CHAPTER XXIV
GILBERT WAS DEAD. At first, that was all she could take in of Julian’s tirade, as he sat beside her on the breakwater in the light of the dying moon, berating her for her folly, just as he always used to do.
Gilbert was dead, had been dead for nearly a month now. This was the third time Julian had repeated the information,
and yet still she kept asking the same inane questions, seeking confirmation by repetition. What about the Mr Soames who had called at Mrs Mumford’s? Gilbert’s brother, naturally. Surely she knew he had a brother? The poor devil was nearly out of his mind with the worry and strain of dealing with his late brother’s affairs single-handed (he was quite a lot older even than Gilbert had been), and with the complications arising from the fact that he wasn’t legally the nearest relative. She was—and she had chosen to disappear! To go swanning off on a seaside holiday under a false name, leaving everyone in this mess! Did she, by any chance, realise just exactly how much trouble and expense she had caused? Lawyers—Bank managers—ground landlords—they’d all been going crazy trying to get in touch with her … and now, to crown everything, he, Julian, had been compelled to fly over from Boston, at vast inconvenience, to help sort it all out!
Gilbert was dead. The words drummed through her brain, deadening the sound of Julian’s scolding. He was dead, and no one, now, would ever know that she had murdered him.
For there had been no inquest—no awkward questions. The harassed, overworked young doctor had scribbled a certificate of Natural Causes (Gilbert was an old man, after all: what more likely than that he should suffer a stroke or a heart-attack?). And as to the door, locked and bolted on the outside, there was no mention of this at all in Julian’s story; and so it must be presumed that, somehow, no one had noticed it.
It would be Mrs Roach who had undone the bolts, for it was she (Julian had explained) who had found the body. She must have undone them without comprehension, her slow mind not taking in their significance. No doubt Gilbert’s habit of locking and bolting everything was so familiar to her that it no longer made any impact: she must have failed to put two-and-two together and to realise that, on this occasion, it could not have been he, himself, who had fastened the door. And afterwards—naturally enough—the shock of finding him dead in his chair would have put the matter right out of her mind.
Dead in his chair. In his great leather chair, with the green-shaded lamp at his elbow. Strange to think of him sitting there, just as he had always sat, at peace for the very first time.
Far out across the black water the moon was setting. Staring out along the jagged silver track, Candida thought about her responsibility for Gilbert’s death, just as she had tried to think about it once before, when she was still Milly.
She had murdered him: that, she had already faced. What she had to face now was the knowledge that she was not going to be punished for it. No one, now, would ever know what she had done. No blame would ever attach to her, no penalty would ever be exacted.
Fixing her eyes on the magical silver track, that led from the infinite right to her very feet, Candida waited, as she had once waited when she was Milly, for the first pangs of the terrible, haunting guilt that would be with her to the end of her days. Guilt that would gnaw secretly at the dark roots of her being, giving her no rest. Guilt on this sort of scale must be waiting somewhere for her, somewhere under the glittering vastness of the sky?
All she could feel was an unutterable thankfulness that Gilbert was dead. Dead like the dinosaurs, and Shakespeare, and the kings of Babylon. Dead as she would one day be, and Julian, and the glistening ribbons of seaweed that today slapped so proudly against the timbers under the winter moon. Are we to ask of each and all of these deaths, Whose fault was it?—However did it happen? Under the shadow of the millennia, such questions dry upon our lips; they become a blasphemy against the benign cycle of birth and death, against the miracle of evolution under the turning circle of the stars. Even the humming of a gnat contains more of truth and wisdom.
She could feel no guilt at Gilbert’s death: only a confused sense of participation. But his life—Ah, that was another matter! Whatever small wrong she might have done him by killing him paled into insignificance by the side of the wrong she had done by marrying him.
That was the wickedness. There, if anywhere, lay the lifelong guilt. She had married not merely without love—plenty of women have done that—but without the faintest desire for anything he could provide at all. She had not even married him for his money, or for the security he could offer—for even these motives can leave a man with some shred of self-respect, some shred of pride at having provided his woman with at least something that she needs.
No, she had left no shred of anything for Gilbert. She had not married him for anything he had, or was. She hadn’t married him as a person at all, but as a thing, a handy weapon, a stick with which to beat her former husband.
Well, and did a man like Gilbert deserve anything better? He was a crafty and bitter old man, even before he went mad. All his life he had quarrelled with everybody, distrusted everybody, destroyed every relationship that had ever come his way. What had he ever done, or been, that he could expect anybody to marry him for love?
She had never thought before of how it must have seemed to him. After a bitter, lonely life of enmities and hatred, now here, suddenly, is a woman who mysteriously seems to like him! Who actually seeks his company! Nobody has ever sought his company before—and good riddance, damn them! —but here, at last is someone who does! A woman, too … Not unattractive … not much over forty…. Can it be—can it possibly be—that something new and magical may yet be going to happen to Gilbert Soames, in this last decade of his life? Can it be that here, at last, is the woman who will break down his frozen inhibitions, soften his bitter, vindictive spirit …?
No. Well, naturally not. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen. His new wife left his inhibitions exactly where she found them—and was thankful to do so. She shrank from his fumbling touch. Instead of love she gave him fear … instead of friendship, defensive withdrawal. Just as everyone had always done…. She was one of Them after all …!
Candida understood about Them now, as she had never done while Gilbert was alive. For now she, too, had known what it was to hear the faint, menacing whisper of their approaching battalions, had felt, once or twice, the first tentative touch of their icy hands. She had known what it was to hear Them down every harmless telephone … to see Them in every careless gesture.
It was because she had been on the run, of course, in fear of her life: for it is fear that brings Them flocking. They can smell it afar off, like vultures hungry for blood.
What fear was it, then, that had brought Them flocking around Gilbert, flapping and screeching, confounding his judgement and finally blotting out his sight? Fear of something he had once done? Some enemy he had once made, long, long ago? Perhaps, if she had been a quite different sort of a wife, he might have confided to her his dark story, or such of it as he still remembered, during the silent, deathly evenings. Now, no one would ever know.
*
It wasn’t her fault! It wasn’t she who had driven him mad: he was already far gone on the course of which she saw the terrible climax, long before she met him. Once she realised what a state he was in, she had done what she could. She had done her best, in the face of the awful odds.
Naturally, she couldn’t have been expected to do for him the things which a woman who actually loved him would have done: to have put her warm arms round his stiff, wary body: to have answered his cold, formal kisses with warm, spontaneous ones: to have said, sometimes, “Don’t be such an old silly!” or “You know that that’s nonsense!” when his bizarre delusions first began peeping through.
Did he, in the beginning, imagine that Candida was going to love him like that? Did he daydream, like a foolish adolescent, of a real flesh-and-blood relationship, utterly beyond the capacity of his warped and frozen soul?
What right had he to dream such an impossible dream? Or to go to pieces when Candida couldn’t make it come true? No one could! Probably no one could even have given him ordinary friendship, or even companionship, so hollowed out was he by the long years of bitterness and suspicion.
All right, so they couldn’t. Then they shouldn’t have married him. To marry someone in the clear
knowledge that nothing can be given, nothing received—that was the wickedness: and no wickedness on his side would ever cancel it out, or justify it. On that August day, in the Brixton registry office, she had committed a crime against Gilbert far worse than the crime of murdering him—and yet one for which the Law provides no penalty at all. Strange.
Suddenly, Candida felt herself Milly again: buoyant, carefree: impervious to remorse because she had only just been born. Candida felt in her own bones Milly’s toughness, her zest for survival, her hard-won capacity for cutting-off from her former self and living each moment as if nothing had ever happened before.
The Voices had been wrong. They had been talking platitudes, as Voices so commonly do. “You can’t run away from yourself” had been the theme of their discourse: but the truth is that you can. She had. She had become Milly, and as Milly she had acquired an entire new repertoire of strengths and skills—not least of which, she now realised, was the recapturing of some of the special qualities of childhood: above all the child’s untramelled eagerness to explore the next minute, the next hour, as though it was a voyage round the world. All these new skills and aptitudes, so painfully acquired by Milly, were now at Candida’s command, to use exactly as she wished. If she chose, now, to by-pass guilt and remorse, and to concentrate on getting on with the rest of her life, she could easily do so. Milly had provided her with the techniques.
And in fact, when it came to the point, it hardly seemed a matter of techniques at all: it seemed the most natural thing in the world simply to put it all behind her, as Milly would have done.
Cautiously at first, and then with increasing boldness, Candida made herself face the things she had done. Without self-deception or self-justification she contemplated the full extent of her folly and wickedness in marrying Gilbert, and thereafter escorting him blindly to his death.
Still she felt nothing that could be identified as guilt. All she could feel was a vague and not unpleasing sense of her own superiority to the blinkered, self-centred bitch she had once been.
Appointment with Yesterday Page 20
