Nightmare

by Lynn Brock

  Within a week his vision was accomplished fact. No conveyance had yet been signed, but Whalley had agreed to pay ninety-six pounds for two acres of land, paid a deposit of fifty pounds, and obtained immediate possession. The living-hut and the garage and the fencing had been erected by a Dunpool firm. A gate had replaced the gap in the hedge. Arrangements had been made as to water-supply, delivery of letters, and meat and groceries from the village shops. A hundred and twenty-five pounds had been spent—the chestnut fencing had proved an expensive item—and a further liability of forty-six pounds—not including lawyers’ fees—contracted. But everything had gone smoothly; everyone had been obliging and helpful—there had been every encouragement to spend money.

  The piece of land which they had bought lay some ten miles south of Rockwood, on one slope of a high, densely-wooded ridge, which had once formed part of the Ducey estate but had been sold towards the end of the war to various small speculators hopeful of large profits from the sale of the timber. The war had ended unexpectedly—the woods had remained, save for some small gashes, uncut. Through them wound, for two miles, along the ridge’s crest, a narrow deeply-rutted track, formerly used by the wood-cutters’ carts. One end of this debouched into a secluded by-road; the other came to an abrupt stop at the little cottage from which the Whalleys had arranged to procure water, a quarter of a mile beyond their new gate. For centuries the ridge had been a mere preserve of game, aloof from the fertile valleys which it divided, and this silent remoteness still made of it a wilderness. A bare inch of soil covered the limestone. Nothing but the pines, the gorse, and the brambles had ever found a living there; the fields of the lowland farms had never crept up the steep, stony slopes. Save for the cottage, there was no habitation nearer the Whalleys’ huts than the straggling houses of the little village, a mile below them and hidden by the woods from their view.

  The sub-letting of the flat had been entrusted to a house-agent. They shut its hall-door silently behind them one afternoon and drove off in the two-seater, followed by a small lorry laden with their personal belongings. Just before they left, Whalley went round the flat, looking into each room from its door. No housework had been done during that hurried week. Every room was thick with dust, disordered by the hasty packing, stripped of things that had always belonged to it. He shut each door reluctantly; all the rooms ought to have been done thoroughly—left in apple-pie order for the eyes of a possible tenant. But there was no time, and all that was done with. There would be no rooms to do out at Camphill.

  Bogey-Bogey made a last trial of the closed doors. They puzzled him. He whimpered and had to be carried out. Elsa kissed her hand, ‘Good-bye, little flat. Coming back.’ As they went down the outside staircase, the gramophone began to blare exultantly.

  But when the last houses of the suburb had fallen behind and they were driving through the undulating, fertile countryside to southward of the city, their spirits rose. The heavy rain of the night and morning had left behind a delicious, soothing freshness. The sun-bathed fields and placid farms seemed set in an everlasting security into which they themselves were being received. The Prossips and their malice faded into childish absurdity. They were able to laugh over Uncle Richard’s amorous playfulnesses. All the difficulties and anxieties which had threatened them for the past two years dwindled—receded—were left behind. They were making a new start. They had escaped.

  Three miles out from Rockwood one of the aged tyres of the car punctured. Whalley gave the driver of the lorry explicit instructions as to the remainder of his somewhat complicated route and, when he had driven off, began to unfasten the two-seater’s spare wheel. The tyre of the spare wheel was deflated. Investigation revealed that the rubber of its valve had perished. There was no valve-rubber in the dilapidated repair-outfit. The two-seater bumped forward slowly until, two miles further on, it reached a little roadside garage whose proprietor appeared to have never seen a punctured tyre before. Whalley kept looking at his watch. When at length they started off again in pursuit of the lorry, they were an hour and a half behind it.

  Two miles further on they left the main road, twisted for another mile along deserted by-roads, and turned then into the narrow, darkling track which was their avenue. The by-road had not dried. The track was a bog. The two-seater crawled on, skidding perilously, until, at length, it reached the new gate. No lorry was in view, but a small car stood near the gate, over which a burly, unshaven elderly man was leaning, rubbing his nose with the bowl of his pipe contemplatively. When he turned, the Whalleys recognised him as Mr Denman, the Dunpool builder from whom they had bought their two acres.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said curtly, when Whalley had alighted. ‘I see you’ve put up a gate here, and put up two huts as well, eh? And fencing.’

  His air, unexpectedly, was hostile. Whalley’s reply was guarded.

  ‘Yes, Mr Denman. You have no objection, I hope? It was agreed that I should have immediate possession.’

  ‘Possession?’ smiled Mr Denman. ‘Possession, yes. But it wasn’t agreed that any structure should be erected on this land, was it, until I conveyed the land to you and it was yours?’

  ‘Well, I took it for granted—’

  ‘Took it for granted? You’ve been taking a lot for granted, Mr Whalley, what I can see of it.’ Mr Denman turned to the gate and pointed. ‘Look here. Look at that fencing you’ve put up there. Who gave you permission to put that fencing up on my property? Possession or no possession, you have no right to put up anything on my property until the land has been marked off by a surveyor and the conveyance has been signed. That fencing and them huts and this gate’s got to come down—that’s what it comes to. And the sooner they come down the better.’

  It was impossible to mollify him or to elicit the real reason of this change of front. During the negotiations of the week he had been civil and friendly, had seemed even anxious to sell the piece of land, and had raised no difficulty whatever regarding its immediate occupation. Now he was an enemy, bitterly suspicious, surly to the verge of abusiveness. He didn’t want to sell the land, although, Whalley divined, he was getting an exorbitant price for it. He was sorry that he had agreed to immediate possession. He had thought he was dealing with a gentleman. The best thing would be for him to return the deposit and call the deal off.

  He pointed again to the line of chestnut fencing which had offended him.

  ‘Look at that fence,’ he said. ‘Where does it start from? Where does it go to? That’s what I want to know.’

  Vainly Whalley explained that he had, personally, measured his plot off with a chain and that, in actual fact, his fencing contained something less than the agreed-upon two acres. Mr Denman scoffed. ‘You measured it—?’ He went off saying that he would see his solicitors about it, and left the Whalleys to look at one another ruefully.

  They opened the gate and drove the car on to the scrubby grass inside. After a few yards it slewed violently and came to a standstill. Whalley opened the throttle until the engine roared menacingly. The back wheels spun round. He got out—got in—the engine roared—the back wheels buried themselves to their hubs. After a quarter of an hour of vain pushing and heaving, the Whalleys took two battered suitcases from the dickey and carried them up to the living-hut. The door of the hut refused for a long time to open; the rain had swollen the badly-seasoned wood. Inside there was a smell of damp earth and cresote. A snail was climbing one wall. The flooring was still muddy with the boot-marks of the workmen. They set down their suitcases and went out into the sunshine again. Whalley examined the door of the hut.

  ‘I must get that right. And we shall have to make some sort of drive for the car. Stone it. We shall want a wheelbarrow and a sledge.’

  There was no alternative but to await the now doubtful arrival of the lorry, and they made a tour of their little demesne, Whalley planning improvements as they went. At the top of the steep slope, by the huts, some young beeches and ashes and pines had survived Mr Denman’s clearing operations of
fourteen years before. But the greater part of their two acres was bare, burnt scrub, pocked with pine-stumps and strewn with loose stone. At the end remote from the huts was a jungle of gigantic thorn-bushes. All this would have to be tidied up, the stumps taken out, the loose stone collected and broken down for the construction of the drive, the thorn-bushes cut down. They found a large number of bottles, broken thermos flasks, fragments of crockery, and rusty tins. Evidently the place had been extensively used by picnickers; it would be necessary to put up notice boards. They came on a headless rabbit. ‘Stoat,’ said Whalley, and they turned and went back toward the huts.

  But the view out over the valley to the silver river and the mountains beyond was even lovelier than they had believed it. They sat in the car and smoked cigarettes and looked at it until, at seven o’clock, hunger drove them down to the cottage in search of tea and eggs. But there was no one at the cottage. They returned to the car and sat there until the woods disappeared and the stars grew chilly. Then they wrapped themselves in rugs and lay down on the floor of the hut. Before they fell asleep they heard a rabbit squealing lamentably.

  However, the lorry arrived early next morning and by midday the hut had been transformed to cheerful, if somewhat crowded, comfort, its door eased, the car safely garaged, and the course of the projected drive marked out. The Clapenham butcher had undertaken to supply liver, but not to deliver it. Whalley descended to the village by a sheer, tortuous path through the woods. The return journey took him half an hour. At half-past two he began to collect loose stones and carry them up the slope.

  The day was sultry, perspiration streamed from his face. Elsa remonstrated, but nothing would induce him to stop. The drive must be made at once—if it rained, the car would be unusable. Each time that he went back down the slope empty-handed he looked at his watch.

  After tea he hurried off down the slope again.

  It rained that night. No gutters had been fitted to the huts; no one had thought of gutters. They lay awake listening to the never-ending patter and splash. ‘We must get gutters,’ Whalley said. ‘And butts to catch the rain-water in.’ Next morning he went down to the village and telephoned for their immediate delivery.

  They arrived on the following day. The men were in a hurry to get off—paid, they said, only to deliver the stuff. When they had gone Whalley discovered that both butts, owing to their height, would have to be sunk some four feet, and set to work upon this task at once. It was a tremendous business. An inch below the turf was solid rock, which had to be broken out, piece by piece, with a pick and a crowbar. As the narrow hole deepened the movements of the tools became more and more circumscribed. It took him five days to get the two butts into position.

  The butts and the gutters had cost him another eight pounds. But when they got things into some sort of order, he would set to work on the novel. Money did not seem to matter at all out there, under the sky all day long, with the wind blowing one’s thoughts away …

  The days flew by. There was always something to do—he was always rushed for time. There was the water to get from the cottage—two trips of half a mile each. Three times a week he went into Rockwood for supplies; that took up the whole morning. There were interviews with his solicitor about Mr Denman, who still refused to sign the conveyance and insisted that that fence began nowhere and went nowhere. It took a whole day to stone three yards of the drive thoroughly—lay the stones—break them down—pound them in—level them neatly. Of course he had to take a breather every few minutes. And the sledge was a bit too heavy for him. Still, it took a deuce of a time …

  It was a long hot walk to the village and back. The Clapenham butcher, finding that his new customer did not call for liver regularly, ceased to keep it for him regularly. Elsa grew uneasy and bribed an elderly drunkard from the village to bring it up each morning. Invariably he arrived an hour late and disorganised the remainder of Whalley’s day.

  She, too, was busy all day long, and, on the whole, happy, except when she thought of the flat and its deserted rooms. No prospective tenant had yet applied for an order to view, the house-agent reported. She could not always help hoping that none would. No one else would understand her things …

  By-and-by she would make a little garden—wire it in, on account of the rabbits—grow roses for the hut. And by-and-by they must have daffodils in the grass—perhaps by the spring after next.

  Bogey-Bogey, too, was happy, though, because of the adders, he was not permitted to escape from sight. However, there were always the rabbits that were not there, and the dog that had passed the gate three weeks ago …

  The days flew. Whalley began work at five o’clock. They had been out there a whole month and practically nothing had been done. The thorns had still to be cut down, the pine-stumps uprooted, the ashes thinned. The drive had to have a second coating of stone—the first had sunk in. Paths would have to be stoned round the huts; in wet weather the place was a quagmire. The huts would want another coat of creosote. Elsa’s garden must be fenced and dug. Those gaps in the hedge must be wired. But by the middle of August everything ought to be pretty shipshape. Two months would finish the novel, once one could settle down to it, knowing there was no job to be done.

  They never saw a newspaper. At first, friends of Elsa’s drove out to inspect the encampment; but Whalley disliked being caught in his old working-clothes, and Elsa ceased to encourage visitors. They heard no news. The world trembled around them. Elsa went on cooking liver, and Whalley went on breaking stones.

  Mr Denman had been worried about things for a long time back. The caving-in of the building boom had left him with a lot of land and empty houses on his hands. There was a lump in his throat which his doctor thought ought to come out. His wife had been nagging at him to buy a new car. And he had had a good deal of trouble with his men since the Labour Government had come into office. One day, towards the end of August, after eating a hearty dinner, he went up on to the roof of his own house and jumped off it, head first. Curiously enough, the last thing he did before eating his last dinner was to sign the conveyance of the Whalleys’ piece of land. Whalley paid the balance of forty-six pounds to the executors. He had now a little over nine hundred pounds.

  CHAPTER V

  1

  TOWARDS the end of August Mr Knayle began to sing in his bath and hum as he moved about his flat. He had no voice and no ear and he had never learnt the whole of any one tune in his life. His humming began to get on Hopgood’s nerves. In the morning Hopgood sometimes glanced at the bathroom door with one eyebrow cocked, as he passed, and muttered, ‘My God …’

  Mr Knayle had begun to find it quite difficult not to worry about things. He continued to scoff amiably at the gloomy predictions of his friends and had cultivated for their benefit a brisk brightness of air and voice which was at times a little aggressive. But things certainly did look queer. Snowden’s speech about the Budget—the May Report—Germany on the verge of another crash—France crowing, America draining our gold away—the Socialists threatening all sorts of insanities—three million unemployed—trade at a standstill—a nigger in a loin-cloth kicking us out of India. The Morning Post was no longer a pleasant, comfortable accompaniment to eggs and bacon. Mr Knayle read it with puckered brow and sometimes forgot about his eggs and bacon altogether. There was no doubt about it, everything was in an appalling mess. No one seemed to be able to do anything about it; everyone seemed to be trying their hardest to make the mess worse. Mr Knayle gulped down his chilled coffee and hummed a little tune of his own, took the Morning Post into the sitting-room to re-read the money article. He sat now with his back to the sitting-room windows; he had not looked out through them for weeks.

  Then there was the noise of the traffic. All day long the cars and the ’buses and the char-a-bancs and the motor-cycles swished and banged and hooted past the front-garden gates. Mr Knayle grew very tired of them. The traffic in Downview Road increased every summer. He regretted acutely that he had agreed to renew the tena
ncy of his flat, although the reason why he had done so remained part of that moment of rapturous wonder. Next year the noise would be perfectly unbearable. He would have to leave.

  He had grown very tired of the Downs, too. All day long they were covered with family parties from the east end of the city, who littered them with papers, bottles, abandoned food, orange peel, and empty cigarette-packets. Swarms of children shrieked and shouted. Bands of young hooligans slogged cricket-balls and threw stones, bawling indecencies, easing themselves publicly. After dusk every bush and every dip in the ground held a prostrate couple; the Downs became a brothel. Sinister, mad-eyed creatures prowled, watching. Save in the early morning, Mr Knayle never walked on the Downs now. Even then they were strewn with paper and haunted by prowlers questing in the hollows and under the bushes. This year no attempt had been made to collect the litter. The mounted police, who had formerly patrolled with vigilant regularity, were now seldom seen and, when seen, saw nothing. Seats were smashed, branches of trees broken off. Mr Knayle had seen one day a respectable elderly man tear a whole newspaper into flitters and scatter the pieces deliberately along one of the paths. No one had seemed surprised. He was concerned by all this; things had got curiously lax. Formerly the Downs had been a peaceful, orderly pleasaunce; their complete surrender to the proletariat perturbed him. The proletariat were, in the main, quite good, decent people, but he preferred them in their own place. Lately, it seemed to him, they had been allowed to get out of it. And, unfortunately, it looked now as if they were never going to be put back into it. There were too many of them. In twenty—perhaps ten—years there would be only one place, and they would have it. They knew it. Mr Knayle had seen the eyes of the picnickers on the Downs looking at him curiously—expectantly—with amusement. And one afternoon four young louts, walking abreast along one of the paths, had elbowed him off it, and, when he had looked at them in reproof, had made obscene noises at him. This had upset him a good deal.