by Roy Lewis
‘Please, Mike—’
‘There’s no ‘please Mike’ about it! Either I’m coming in or you’re coming out! It might end up with my settling on your doorstep for the night. The landlady might enjoy that.’
‘Mike, I’m not well,’ Cathy said, almost in tears. ‘I just don’t feel like going out, and things have been so difficult at the office—’
‘I don’t see why that should affect our relationship.’
‘Mike—’
‘Which is it? In, out, or my bawling on your step?’
Cathy took a deep breath, Mike was standing there, broadly, his head thrust forward in a decisive, stubborn attitude and she knew that this was one argument that she wasn’t going to win. Perhaps it would be better this way, perhaps she could make a clean break tonight, a break that would snap his affection, wound his pride, force him to leave her alone. She had to hurt him . . . perhaps it was the best way. If she had the resolve to do it. She blinked back her tears.
‘Come in for a moment. I’ll just clean up a little and get my coat and we’ll go out.’
‘That’s better.’ Somewhat mollified, he stumped in behind her. She closed the door carefully. She said no more but left him immediately and went to the bathroom. When she returned he was sitting on the settee, thumbing through a magazine, another one discarded on the floor at his feet. She received the impression that he was seeing little on the printed page. He rose as she entered.
‘Ready?’
She nodded. He made no attempt to help her with her coat but remained standing by the door with shoulders hunched until she joined him. Wordlessly they left the house and walked across to his car. The street was as silent as her flat; just one engine, further down the road, coughed into life as she slid into the passenger seat of Mike’s car.
He drove silently. He took her down through the town and out to the bypass that circled to the north side of Insterley. They were on the top of the hill, looking across Kenton Wood; and Canthorpe twinkled below them, the jewelled lights of the town centre shining red and green and yellow in the surrounding darkness. She thought for a moment that he was going to pull in at the top of the hill, near one of the firebreaks, but he didn’t. He drove on till they reached the Bear Inn and then turned the car to the far end of the rear car park. It was dark there and there were no other vehicles near them. Mike swung towards her.
‘Now then, what’s it all about?’
She wasn’t ready; prevarication was necessary. ‘I think I would like a drink.’ He glared at her stonily, then thumped open his door.
She got out unaided and followed him into the inn. He demanded two whiskies, in a loud voice, and she took a seat near the fire. There was one other couple in the lounge, and they were on the point of leaving. By the time Mike brought the two glasses across they had gone.
Some of the whisky spilled as he placed the glasses carelessly on the table.
‘I’ll repeat the question. What the hell is it all about? What’s got into you? Why are you avoiding me?’
Cathy sipped at the whisky. He’d been right in getting her this. . .she was going to need it, to hold her nerve. When she looked up at him her eyes were calm.
‘You’re right, Mike. I have been avoiding you.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s quite simple. Can’t you guess?’
He looked at her and laughed in disbelief, but there was no humour in the sound. ‘Don’t be so bloody puerile! You trying to tell me you’ve met someone else?’
‘That sounds either uncomplimentary to me, or egotistical of you, but yes, I have met someone else.’
‘And decided that I’m not the great love in your life? In just a couple of days? Credit me with some sense, Cathy, for God’s sake!’
‘Sense or not, it’s the truth.’
Her tone was reserved, and her eyes were steady. For one brief moment she thought that he almost believed her and then the angry light in his eyes died, and something warmer, more protective took its place. Her heart sank.
‘I can’t accept that, Cathy. I know you, better than you think. I know you don’t give your love lightly, and that when you do give it there’s a permanency about it that would prevent the sort of attitude that you’re now trying to tell me you’ve adopted. It’s something else. Something’s happened to upset you, and for some reason you’re taking it out on me.’
‘Nothing has happened.’
‘I know different. You’re anxious, and you’re worried and . . . yes, you’re scared too, about something. What’s it all about, Cathy?’
‘I—’
Perhaps it was the earnest tone in his voice, or the pleading, loving look in his eyes, but in that moment she almost told him. But she remembered the words in the letter, and she remembered Lendon, and she thought that in spite of everything . . . she couldn’t speak, it was better to break with Mike, they could never exist together with this shadow between them, and she clutched at her whisky glass in desperation and downed the drink.
‘Cathy!’
Mike caught at her arm. His lips were compressed and deep in his grey eyes there was a flickering hardness that she hadn’t seen before. It was a watchfulness, an animal wariness that touched her skin coldly. She felt his fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arm.
‘Cathy, what’s happened? Something at the office, that’s it, isn’t it? Something has happened at the office!’
‘Nothing has happened. Nothing. This. . .this has just been a mistake, that’s all. I want to break it off. I don’t want to see you again. I’m no longer certain about my feelings for you, and I don’t want to go on. Let’s just leave it at that. Let’s part friends, and leave it at that, Mike. Please.’
‘The office,’ he muttered, almost to himself. The eyes flickered at her, calculating. She stood up.
‘This was a mistake. I want to go home, Mike.’ He rose, to stand glaring at her.
‘Lendon,’ he said thickly. ‘That bloody Lendon. What have you found out, Cathy?’
‘Nothing. It’s as I said, damn you! I just want to finish it. Why do men have to be so blasted vain? I tell you I just don’t love you anymore, and I want to go home!’
‘Of course!’ There was a naked viciousness in his voice now. ‘Lendon. Now he’s dead, the police will have been going through everything. And in that office you’ll have seen his files. You’ll have read all about it!’
Her heart was beating at a terrifying pace, and she swung away from him to walk towards the door. He called her name, caught her at the door, held it closed against her to prevent her leaving.
‘All right, so now you’ve read Lendon’s files! I can’t see that it should affect us, Cathy! What’s it got to do with us? Why must it affect us in this way?’
She pushed him aside, dragged the door open from his restraining hand, and ran out into the car park.
‘I don’t understand you!’ he shouted.
She walked quickly past his car and he ran after her, grabbing at her arm, again. His face was blank, featureless in the darkness. He was a stranger.
‘For God’s sake, Cathy, we can’t leave it like this! Why on earth should my quarrel with Lendon break us up in this way?’
She tore herself away from his fierce grip and half ran out of the car park to the road. There were three cars stationed in the front park and one across the other side of the road, on the grass verging on Kenton Wood, but there seemed to be no one around to hear Mike shout again.
‘I suppose you’re going to damn well walk home, now! Cathy! What the hell’s got into you?’
She ran on. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, but she ran on and crossed the road, scrambling through the long grass at the verge and into the firebreak leading down through the woods. It would take her over the hill dipping down to where the road that ran into Canthorpe lay, about three-quarters of a mile below. She could get a bus there, for it was early, nearer eight than nine. Mike called her name again, just once, but she ran on. She went down ov
er the first slope and the lights of the inn vanished, and then there was only the darkness and the silence of the trees to take the harsh rasping of her breath.
At the foot of the short slope Cathy stopped, standing in the darkness of the firebreak, and the sobbing started, part harsh breathing, part crying. She let it go on for almost a minute, before she was able to tell herself to stop, pull herself together.
‘Cathy!’
Mike’s voice, from the top of the hill. Cathy shook her head, and began to walk on again determinedly. It was better this way. If she stayed with him, if he comforted her, caressed her, she would collapse, her resolve would break, she’d tell him she’d found the letter and he would discover that she knew everything. And then it would be impossible . . . everything would be impossible. He would have a decision to make, and she would be burdening him with that decision.
It was better that she left him now, cut free. He need never know that she had guessed what happened the night Charles Lendon died. He need never tell her why it happened, or how. This way was better. She could walk on, and leave him and . . . Cathy slowed, then stopped. It wasn’t the firebreak. Ahead of her was the blank wall of trees, solid and thick, barring her progress. She wasn’t on the firebreak at all; it was simply an entry which now ran, narrowing, round to the left. She realized too that the ground was rutted with tractor marks. This track was used for dragging out logs after thinning. She glanced back up the slope, to the hazy skyline, then looked down ahead of her again.
If she followed this track to the left it would almost inevitably come to a logging clearing, and then a firebreak which she could take down the hill. It made little difference. She couldn’t get lost. It was just a matter of going down the hill, and then she would inevitably reach the main road. It was just a bit longer this way, that was all. She strode out confidently.
She followed the track to the left and it was just the width of a tractor and a few feet more. The night was dark. There was no moon, and the trees were tall, peaked against pale, cloud-drifted stars. Her breath stained the darkness whitely, and the cold breeze running up the hill came soughing through the lifting branches. She moved quietly down the pathway, stumbling occasionally, conscious of the cold darkness, but there was no reason why she should feel frightened. Yet the scuttling sound in the undergrowth to her right, as a small furry body thrust its way through the bushes, brought a sudden fear leaping to her throat and she stood stock still, listening. The scuttling noise faded and died. And she was suddenly aware that Mike had followed her.
It was a curious feeling. She knew Mike. She loved him. But he was now scrambling down the track behind her, and the knowledge razored against her nerves. All at once she could think only of the letter in the folder, not of Mike’s warm mouth; she could remember only the malice in his face as he spoke of Lendon, not the caressing touch of his hands; she could recall only the new hardness she had seen tonight in his eyes, the quick nervousness of the trapped animal, and the memory of his tenderness was banished.
He was following her down the track, but it was a different Mike from the man she had known, or thought she knew. He was the man who had hated Lendon, he was the man who knew she had seen Lendon’s files, he was the man who-
She couldn’t bring herself to say it, even to herself. But the scrambling noise on the track around the bend made her heart jump.
Mike was following her. And he was no longer calling her name.
If she made her way along this pathway she would reach a clearing, she would reach the firebreak, she would get down to the main road. But how far ahead was the firebreak? It would be quicker, surely, to go straight through the woods.
Quicker. And perhaps better. Mike would walk on, stick to the track, assume she was ahead.
She struck off to the right, down the hill. The direct route, a half-mile to the main road. It was the best way. But she realized after a moment it was also the noisiest. The bushes crashed under her feet and there was the crackling of breaking twigs, loud in the darkness. Cathy stopped, and stood still. She listened, and her heart thundered.
She was some fifteen yards in from the track that she had been following, and she strained eyes and ears to fix Mike’s presence, but there was only the darkness. Mike had stopped moving too . . . he was back on the track somewhere, not far behind her, but like her he must have stopped, to listen. As the implication of his conduct came to her, the quickness of her pulse matched her fear. Mike wasn’t following her openly, he wasn’t coming after her quickly, calling her name as he had done on the road. He had called her name just once at the end . . . had it been for the benefit of people leaving the inn? But thereafter he had come down the road quietly, stealthily.
Stealth. It was an ugly word. A twig cracked like a pistol shot in the silence, and Cathy turned quickly, plunging more deeply into the woods, hastening down the slope towards the road below. And as she forced her way through the trees she was suddenly aware of a background, almost an echo to the noise of her own progress: the sound of another person forcing his way roughly through the trees.
Her lips moved soundlessly as she ran . . . crazy, crazy, crazy! This was Mike she was running from, Mike, the man she wanted to marry! He had come down to make her see sense, return with him to the car, allow him to drive her home sensibly, carefully, quietly, lovingly. But she was running, and his eyes would be angry as he ran after her, cold and hard and angry at the fuss she was making. Over nothing. Was it nothing? He knew she had seen Lendon’s files — he knew that — something caught at her breath, and she gasped. Tears began to course down her face and her body was trembling. Trees loomed up waving dark arms at her and she struggled on. She had given up all thought of concealment now as she plunged straight down the slope, and each crashing footstep beat out the words to her — Mike, Mike, Mike!
Mike also had given up all attempt at stealth. She could hear him blundering after her, tearing his way through the trees. She looked back twice but saw nothing in the darkness except the tall pines, but Mike’s presence filled the darkness and it was an angry presence, a malignant presence, so that it was terror that now caught at Cathy’s throat, unreasoning, as she scrambled down a bank and ploughed her way through soggy dead leaves.
For a quick moment she stopped. She glanced around her, and her native wit overrode her fear. She was in a gully; the bank behind her was matched by another bank in front. She ran a few yards down the gully and her progress was swift, and almost silent. The squelching of the wet leaves was as nothing to the noisy crashing in the woods behind her. She paddled on for another twenty yards or so and then turned, clambered up the bank. Quietly, carefully, she eased her way in among the trees again and the stars were shut out once more. She braced herself, leant against a tree some little distance in and waited. She stood there, absolutely still, her cold hands cupped against her face, her elbows squeezed against her breasts, quelling the pounding of her heart.
The crashing behind her slowed. Suddenly, it stopped.
Mike had reached the top of the bank. Silence flowed in through the wood. Far below her there came the drone of a lorry, winding along the main road and coughing against the hill. A distant dog barked, a light sound, lifted on the night air, sharp, yet tenuous and drifting.
A dark shadow leapt up before her eyes.
He had crossed the ditch; he was standing on the bank, black, formless, listening in a half-crouched position. For one agonized moment she almost called his name, eager for the comforting warmth of his arms, but the crouching menace of his stance choked off her words and she clapped her hands over her mouth, shielded the silvering of her breath against the air. Her lips moved under her cold fingers, framing Mike’s name, but the man who stood there, urgent, listening, was a Mike she had never known, a new Mike . . . but a Mike that Charles Lendon must have known. Cathy’s knees trembled, and she almost sank to the ground.
Then the shadow was gone. She heard a splash, and realized that Mike had guessed what she hoped he would gu
ess, that she had taken the quiet route, down through the sodden leaves. She heard a crunching sound as he stepped on a frozen patch at the edge of the ditch, and then there was only the silence again.
She waited for perhaps two minutes in that freezing silence and then with consummate care she moved deeper under the trees, and down the slope. There was no sound behind her; perhaps Mike was now out of earshot. With the thought her pace began to quicken and she moved more smoothly. She was among a patch of conifer and the pine needles under her feet were soft and gentle, and the way was clearer with no bushes to bar her way. But the darkness was intense and she moved with hands outstretched before her, almost feeling her way among the trees.
It was almost five minutes before she realized that Mike was behind her again. Once more she stood still and listened, her hand fluttering nervously to her mouth, and she heard him blundering into a tree, and cursing. For a panic-stricken moment she thought she would dodge him again, hide among the dark trees, stay behind as he struggled past, but at the terrifying thought of such a cat and mouse pursuit her nerve broke and she took to flight. She moved hastily through the pines and felt the slope dipping sharply beneath her feet. She heard a car below, and it was not far away. The road must be near; few yards farther and she caught the flash of headlights. But the faint illumination did something else: it outlined her, moving among the straight pines, and she heard a subdued grunt. Mike had seen her.
Cathy threw caution to the wind. She plunged forward, scraped her knee against a tree, and then she was out of the pines and the going was rougher as dead frozen fern and wild rose-bushes dragged at her legs, and the scrub alder and larch tore at her clothes. She heard Mike’s heavy body thrusting through the bushes behind her, not fifty yards away, and she ran on, gasping feverishly, a pain rising in her chest, her heart thumping against her ribs. Mike! Mike! Mike!
When the branch caught at her arm she almost fainted. It dragged her to a stop abruptly, and she found difficulty in retaining her balance. The twigs were entwined in her dress and coat; she pulled frantically at them and they crackled frostily and broke but she was still held and behind her there was the crashing of Mike’s progress, the rasping of his angry breath. The sounds of his pursuit were suddenly animal, and unfocused. She lost their direction. They seemed almost to come from two directions behind her as though his anger had spread out like wings in the forest to engulf her. She tore at the restraining branch, glanced back to see the dark form rise up fifteen yards away and screamed, dragging despairingly at the branch as it gave way.
