Strange Recompense

by Catherine Airlie

  “The future,” Anna said in a stifled whisper. “At least you can hope for that.”

  Swiftly Ruth came close, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “And you,” she said, tears welling suddenly behind her eyes. “There will be something for you, too, Anna—some recompense for all this!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOEL MELFORD’S “second offensive” brought no better result than his first effort, but he did not appear to be in any way dismayed by the fact. Rather, his determination seemed to strengthen with each new rebuff.

  “We’ve tried everything,” he said, pacing his consulting room floor while Dennis Tranby glanced through the morning papers without paying a great deal of attention to what he read. “We’ve had very little help from the police, either,” he went on. “There’s been no missing person bearing any resemblance to Anna, but one would have thought that her people would have tried to trace her by this time.”

  “Or her husband.”

  “Yes.” Noel was silent for a while, striding the length of the room and back, head down, brows drawn in deepest thought. “That’s what makes me hang on to the idea of an accident.”

  “But she couldn’t just have got up and walked off—walked for miles, I mean,” Dennis objected. “I’ll admit that she seemed to have been on her feet for some considerable time before Ruth met her but we’ve scoured a radius of fifty miles and more without coming across a reported accident. There’s not even the report of a car being brought into a local garage damaged or anything like that,” he added.

  “Cars!” Noel exclaimed. “We seem to be thinking exclusively in terms of the car. Couldn’t there have been some other way? The coast, for instance. She could have walked inland from the coast for several miles before she struck the main road.”

  “And with all this rain about we’re not going to find a great deal of evidence, supposing there has been something on the cliffs,” Dennis mused. “There’s been a lot of erosion, too, round about Llangarth Bay and over that way. A whole section of the cliff crumbled away there recently and the road has been closed.”

  “Could that have been it?” Noel halted in his tracks, gazing at his friend across the room with something like excitement in his eyes. “We’ve got to try everything, Dennis. These past few days I’ve felt that Anna has become increasingly sensitive about her inability to remember even the roads about Glynmareth, and she’s shied away from me on more than one occasion, almost as if she might be afraid of what was to come. I can’t account for it. I only know it makes things decidedly more difficult,” he concluded.

  “You wouldn’t rather pass the case on to Tim Wedderburn when he comes back next week?” Tranby asked watching him through a haze of cigarette smoke.

  Noel shook his head.

  “I don’t think so, old man,” he said. “I feel that this is my cup of tea now.”

  “Well, then, what’s our next line?” Dennis asked. “I’m in this with you, of course.”

  “Thanks, Dennis,” Noel stopped to lay an affectionate hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’m not particularly keen on drugs, as you know, so I suppose the alternative is hypnotism.”

  “Shall we see what your coastal theory brings before we go that far?” Tranby asked.

  “That might be an idea.” Noel hesitated, conscious of tension as he had been increasingly aware of it in his association with Anna for some days now. “Do you honestly think hypnotism might yield something?”

  “We can but try,” Dennis said lightly. “If it doesn’t, it is only another effort to go into the bag marked ‘failures’.”

  “I—won’t be any use, of course,” Noel said, almost as if he had not heard that last remark. “I don’t think I would get results in this instance.”

  “You want me to take over?” Dennis hid his surprise with an effort. “I’m willing, of course, if you think it will help.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Noel said, not explaining why he would not attempt the experiment himself. “And meanwhile I’ll arrange the trip to the coast. I think it would come off best disguised as something else, by the way—made to look like an ordinary outing. One of Ruth’s picnics would be the drill, I think, and I should like you to be there, Dennis. Two minds are always better than one on this kind of job.”

  Especially when one’s mind is so entirely biased! Tranby thought as he said good-bye, but he still maintained faith in his friend’s ability to effect a complete cure.

  What the final revelation would mean to Noel he could not guess, but even at this early stage in their investigation he was convinced that his friend was more than a little in love with his patient. Their afternoon together at Llangareth Bay convinced him of the fact beyond the slightest shadow of doubt.

  It was a wonderful day, full of bright sunshine, with the Berwyn Mountains etched clearly against a cloudless sky to the west and Cader Idris rising above them, three thousand feet of light and shade standing supremely remote with the fertile valleys at its feet.

  “We really should have gone to Lake Bala on a day like this,” Ruth said, knowing nothing of their reason for choosing the coast. “You would love it up there among the hills, Anna, but Noel seems determined to make it Llangareth. The sea has always held a tremendous attraction for him, and he swims like a fish. I’ve packed a swim suit for you, by the way, if you want to go in,” she added. “It’s one I grew out of years ago, but it should just be about right for you. You’re much slimmer than I am.”

  There was no envy in Ruth, Anna thought, none of the bitterness that spoiled Sara Enman. She was the most straightforward and honest person imaginable, willing to go out of her way to make others happy, but blunt, too, when she came up against the need for expressing her feelings in straight-from-the-shoulder terms.

  “We could have done without Sara today, couldn’t we?” Dennis observed as he joined the preoccupied Ruth downstairs while Anna ran up for her coat and handbag, one she had bought with her second week’s wages. “I see she’s managed to butt in.”

  “It was too difficult,” Ruth told him with a frown. “Just you try fobbing Sara off with an excuse when she’s made up her mind to do anything! Wild horses wouldn’t move her, and I suppose we have taken her everywhere with us in the past!”

  “She’s gone everywhere with you in the past, you mean,” he corrected. “How long before you see just what the Saras of this world are really like, Ruth? They’d take advantage of their own grandmother if it was going to further the desire of the moment, believe me!”

  “You’re much too hard on Sara,” Ruth protested, “possibly because you have never really liked her. We all have our faults, and Sara just can’t help organizing everyone!”

  “It wasn’t exactly her organizing abilities I was thinking about,” Dennis returned dryly. “Her reorganizing propensities would be nearer the mark!”

  “No wonder you two can never agree!” Ruth laughed, strapping the picnic hamper for him to carry out to the car. “Why is Noel so keen to go to the coast, by the way? He was positively emphatic about Llangareth when I suggested Lake Bala as an alternative.”

  “He probably thought it would be cooler at the bay,” Dennis prevaricated. “Besides, we haven’t had our first swim of the season yet, which is disgustingly late for Noel, at least!”

  “That was Sara’s main reason for wanting to come,” Ruth said. “She’s a powerful swimmer, isn’t she?”

  “Powerful in a good many ways,” he murmured, picking up crumbs from the breadboard. “Almost overpowering, in fact!”

  Ruth rapped his knuckles with the back of the breadknife.

  “If I had known you were all that hungry I could have made you a meal before you started!” she laughed, whereupon he swung her round to face him, his hands on her arms, holding her prisoner.

  “Ruth, haven’t I waited long enough?” he demanded passionately. “Haven’t you any other answer for me than that eternal ‘No’?”

  She relaxed against him for a moment, looking
younger than her years and curiously vulnerable as he kissed her.

  “Not yet, Dennis,” she said, pushing him gently away. “Perhaps not ever. I’ve told you so often that you should look for, someone else!”

  “That’s no answer,” he told her sternly. “Noel is old enough to look after himself and he would be very upset if he knew your reason for not marrying.”

  “I made a promise,” she said. “How can I do other than keep it?”

  “Those promises!” he said savagely. “They’ve spoiled more lives than enough! I can never, understand why a woman binds her daughter to look after her son till some other woman comes along to marry him!”

  Ruth silenced him with a look.

  “Noel would be the last person to accept a sacrifice,” she said, “but I did promise my mother to wait.”

  “Then you do realize that you are giving more than you need give,” he said grimly. “That’s always something!”

  She put a hand on his arm.

  “Please try to understand, Dennis,” she pleaded.

  “About your loyalty and faithfulness?’ He smiled ruefully. “I guess that’s why I’ve waited so long, Ruthey! I believe I understand you better even than Noel does.”

  “Yes, I think you do.” Ruth turned from him with a brief smile. “That is why I am able to ask you to go on understanding for a little while longer, my dear.”

  They went in Noel’s car because it was bigger than Tranby’s and would hold them all comfortably, and Sara managed to install herself in front with Noel while Anna sat behind between Ruth and Doctor Tranby.

  Soon Anna had forgotten everything but the beauty of the road over which they travelled. Hills surrounded them on three sides, the high mountains of Snowdonia wreathed in sunlight with the lesser hills chequered in light and shade as the cloud shadows sailed across them. The breath of the sea was in the wind, and presently the sea itself came into view, the great stretch of Cardigan Bay glittering as if a million diamonds had been tossed down upon it from the cliffs above.

  Anna drew a deeply appreciative breath, and then she was thinking that she had seen all this before. The color receded from her cheeks as she sought to remember, and it seemed that wind and rain had been driven down against those cliffs when she had last been there. It had turned the bay into a slate-grey maelstrom of tossing water and running tide and she had turned from it and run as if she were being pursued.

  Conscious of Dennis Tranby watching her, she did her best not to show her sudden distress, but she was glad when they reached a little, secret bay that was their destination and she could get out and help Ruth with the baskets.

  “What are we going to do first?” Ruth demanded. “Bathe or just laze about for a while?”

  “That sea’s far too good to stay out of for a minute longer than is absolutely necessary!” her brother declared. “How do you feel about it, Anna?” he asked. “Are you fond of the sea? Do you swim?”

  “Yes.” There had been not the slightest hesitation about her reply, but when she came to look at the sea again she found herself shrinking from the thought of diving into that vast expanse of water, of swimming far out and drowning in it, perhaps! “I’m not sure if I am a strong swimmer,” she added uncertainly, “but I can try.”

  “You needn’t worry about not being rescued,” Tranby assured her, noting the firm determination in her tone at the end of that difficult little speech. “We’re all fairly capable in that respect, especially Noel!”

  Sara stood up, saying nothing, but she was the first to reappear from behind the group of rocks which the girls had claimed as a changing room, conscious of her figure’s perfection in the brief black suit which was such a splendid foil for her fair coloring.

  Ruth emerged with her towelling wrap hugged round her.

  “One feels so pale and anaemic at the beginning of the season!” she complained. “I really must find time to sunbathe. I freckle so badly, though, that I sometimes wonder which is worse!”

  Anna, in the bright scarlet suit she had borrowed, stood leaning against the rocks looking out to sea. She felt cold and terribly distressed for some unknown reason, yet the sun was shining down more brightly than before and the sand was warm under her bare feet. It was as if a cold hand had been placed over her heart so that outside warmth could no longer reach it.

  She thrust the thought aside, thinking that she must not spoil Ruth’s party in this way. The men were already wading into the water, and she looked round the glittering semi-circle of the bay, conscious of its beauty for the first time. The yellow curve of sand lay like a sickle between two jutting promontories, flat grey rocks stepping down to the sea and looking warmly inviting in the sunshine.

  Anna waded into the water until it was over her knees, feeling it keenly cold against her skin as it rose higher, and then, holding her breath, she plunged down through an oncoming wave. With a gasp she emerged again, the invigorating thrill of it tingling through her veins as she struck out for deeper water.

  She swam with a growing sense of confidence, putting distance between herself and the shore now, the water washing soothingly against her chin, alone in a blue world of sky and sea with no sound in her ears but the lift of waves and the occasional call of a gull high above her head. She turned on to her back with her face up to the sun, floating leisurely with thought just escaping her. It was a glorious day, and she was in a magic world of her own, with far-off sounds lulled by the whispering of waves and nothing but the sea beneath her.

  A sudden, overwhelming consciousness of great depths pierced into her mind and fear was clutching at her heart almost in the next second, a fear out of the past reducing her to inexplicable panic. The surge of water in her ears became a roar, the roar of rain and the angry pounding of waves against a rock-bound coast. The mad desire in her to cry for help—for Noel’s help—was only silenced by instinctive action as she turned to strike out for the shore and safety, heedless of direction or of anything save that panic desire to feel solid earth under her feet. She had come much farther than she had thought; her strength began to flag long before she had reached the shallower water where the bay shelved to the sea bed, and she could feel her limbs beginning to ache with a strange, numb pain until they appeared to be dragging her down.

  Strong as her will to live undoubtedly was, she could feel that first hopeless flagging of the spirit which sees only a vast expanse of water stretching away to infinity on every side, and something whispered treacherously that she would never make the shore.

  “I must! I must!” Her lips formed the words, but the dead weight of her limbs would not lift. The quick, decisive strokes slowed almost to nothing and then she heard Noel’s voice from somewhere behind her.

  “All right now, Anna! Turn on your back and leave the rest to me.”

  She could not believe that she was safe, that Noel was really there, but she obeyed him instinctively, and in two long powerful strokes he had pulled ahead of her and was towing her slowly towards the rocks.

  Even when they reached them she knew that their ordeal was far from over. There was a strong current running round the headland and it swept them steadily northwards. If they were carried beyond that point there was no knowing what might happen, she thought, and this was all her fault...

  With an amazing effort she began to exert her numbed limbs, helping to fight the current, but they were carried helplessly away twice before a stupendous struggle on Noel’s part placed them beyond the flowing tide and they were in calm water at last.

  The buffeting they had undergone had taken its toll of her strength, yet she was aware that something less easy to define had awakened most of the terror in her heart. It was the same fear that had precipitated her into that mad dash for safety, that crashing, rumbling roar of an angry sea and a relentless wind tangled up with memory trying to break through the barrier erected in her subconscious mind. It was the past pounding on the door of the present, the years that had gone demanding their share of the future an
d her own allegiance.

  The swift temptation to let things go, to drift forever in this calm sea beyond the fury of the waves, assailed her for a moment, but she made the final effort and clambered on to the rocks without support, to collapse almost immediately at Noel Melford’s feet.

  “Anna—!” He knelt down, taking her wet, limp body in his arms and began to massage life into her numbed limbs. “We’ve made it, my dear! There’s nothing to fear now.”

  “No.” She could just see his dark head, the hair plastered against his brow, and the slope of his strong shoulders gleaming in the sun. “I’m all right. You—must think me an everlasting fool, but I was suddenly afraid out there—not afraid of the sea but of something the sea had done. It’s so difficult to explain—”

  “Don’t try now,” he said briefly, the old gentleness back in his voice. “All that matters is that you are safe.”

  For a second his arms tightened about her and all time hung suspended in that brief embrace until Sara’s voice reached them from the water below.

  “Are you all right, Noel?” She was gasping with the effort she had made against wind and tide. “Oh! thank God you’re safe—” She hoisted herself on to the rocks beside them, her slim shoulders gleaming wetly in the sun, and Noel bent to help her.