Crooked Wreath

by Christianna Brand

  Bella, Peta, Claire, Ellen, Philip … “But, Cockie,” cried Edward, “who is this? Who did this? Who thought this all out? Who do you mean?”

  Almost in a whisper, Cockrill said: “I mean you!”

  Far above their heads, what had been a low, grumbling drone grew to a roar: a steel wire whanged and split asunder with a stinging crack; and, one-winged after its impact with the balloon cable, a flying bomb came hurtling through the summer sky.

  12

  THE NOISE of the bomb burst fanned hotly against their recoiling nerves. It was as though with a great thick stick, an invisible giant struck at the very softness of the brain behind the frontal bone; all the flesh shuddered from the impact of the sound, from the thrusting suck and eddy of the blasted air. The spirit screamed to the mind to fight its way to the surface of the engulfing dark; the mind struggling against more merciful nothingness, feebly implored obedience of limbs held captive by horror; wide eyes open upon the upbrush of devastation, sent no message to the unasking brain. Like a ship destroyed at sea, the great house seemed to rise piecemeal into the air, settling down slowly, low in the water, a huddle of tangled wreckage afloat on the wide green lawns. And as the dust cleared and the wave of the blast that had tumbled them backwards, withdrew, leaving them spent and gasping, Ellen cried out: “My baby!” She staggered a few steps forward and fell fainting to the ground.

  Edward did not know that he was running towards the house, that they were all running towards the crumbling house, that he was outstripping them, was rushing, two steps at a time, up the rise of terraces, into the hall and up the crumbling stairs. As he gained the first-floor landing, the structure of the staircase gave way; a beam crashing past him glanced off his shoulder; he caught at his arm, unconsciously, with his other hand, and, holding it, looked down into the hall below. Philip and Stephen stood, warding off the falling masonry with their arms, staring up at him helplessly; on either side of them the new parts of the house were already a mere mass of lath and plaster and slowly settling dust; but the sturdy Georgian brick stood proudly, defying till the last possible moment an enemy of which its builders had not dreamed. He leaned against the carved wooden banister and screamed out over the din: “I’ll get her! Go outside! Go out under the balcony window … I’ll try and get her down to you …”

  It was terrible to leave the comforting support of the strong oak to which he clung; but he dragged himself away and, still holding his arm, began to stagger through the falling bricks and beams, towards the baby’s room. In a world where everything else was giving way, the door had jammed; he beat against it wildly with his uninjured arm–and behind him a little red tongue of flame savoured the wooden banister of the fallen staircase and, caught by a gust of draught, licked up suddenly into a leaping flame.

  With the door the inner wall collapsed and fell about his head. Stunned and blinded, he stumbled across the overturned bedroom furniture to the cot. Antonia was not there, but his heart turned sick with relief as, somewhere in the corner, he heard her lusty howling. He groped his way through the dust-filled air towards the sound. He tried to call out, to reassure, to comfort her, but no words would come; he put his hand to his throat and found blood there. Blood was trickling down from a small wound in the side of his head, but he felt no pain; he found Antonia and picked her up.

  The baby was heavy on his single useful arm, and turned and twisted in an abandonment of terror, but she did not seem to be injured. It was terrible to be able to find no words, no sound, to soothe her. He dragged himself towards the balcony window. Through the gaping roof and tottering outside wall, fantastically, unimaginably, sunshine was pouring in through the veils of thickly falling dust. The roar of the fire behind him lent a panicky strength to his failing legs.

  Philip and Stephen had torn down the heavy linen curtains from the drawing-room, and were trying to fashion a cradle from them, for him to drop the baby into, from the balcony; but the blast had slashed them to shreds and they were useless. Edward stood swaying on the edge of the little balcony, clinging to the stone balustrade. Philip screamed out at him: “Stand back! Don’t lean against it! It’s giving way … Drop the baby, try to throw her to us; but be careful, the balcony’s giving way …”

  He leaned over perilously, letting the child slither through the grasp of his one hand, dropping a few feet into the safety of their outstretched arms; and, thrusting himself backwards and away from the balustrade, he fell back into the room as the stonework broke and crumbled and toppled with a crash to the terrace below. With it went the outside wall, and he was alone in a prison of falling stone, with the red fire raging outside the open door.

  For a moment it was almost peaceful, shut in alone there with his task accomplished. The baby was safe–the baby who had danced for Grandfather on the terrace, a thousand aeons ago; the baby who had sat, crowned with buttercups and daisies, on the green grass of the lawn; the baby who, only yesterday, had greeted her mother in a white silk smock with forget-me-nots round her neck; the baby was safe and he, poor dotty Edward, had given his life to save her … There was nothing more now to do; for a moment he, who of late had known so much evil and terror and pain, who surely could never know happiness again–for a moment, he was happy.

  But the time for surrender had not come; surrender to death might be preferable to struggling on, since life held so little of joy; but not to this death, not to a death creeping upon one in a cloak of curling, suffocating smoke, slashed with bright flame; not to a death in choking and agony. He staggered once more to his leaden feet and, with heavy reluctance, drove his dragging legs towards the door.

  The heat of the flames beat him back; but in the moment that he stood there, he had glimpsed a small opening in the conflagration; if he could get through, could creep out onto the landing, he might perhaps manage to drop down into the hall; might even find masonry so broken and heaped that he could clamber down over it. He did not think that his aching head could stand the jar of another fall. “I must keep my mind clear,” he thought. “Whatever happens, I must try to keep my mind clear.” Catching up a tatter of linen from one of the beds, he mopped at his bleeding wounds, and, holding the bloody cloth across his mouth and nose, fought his way out through the heat and smoke, brushing himself against the walls of the corridor to crush the small sparks that caught at his tattered clothes. The smoke caught at his aching throat, the hot breath of the fire smote at his eyeballs; breathless and sobbing, he thrust his way through hell, and was out once more into a tiny haven of calm and peace, sheltered by a corner of roofing from falling stone, safe for a moment from immediate threat of the flames.

  Outside, in the incongruous, unbelievable sunshine, Bella and Ellen wept over Antonia’s safety, watching, faint and dizzy, the slow destruction of the burning house: and, cut off from him by the mountainous toppling of the outside walls, Claire and Peta and the three men tore with frenzied hands at the piled brick and concrete of Edward’s tomb. Inside, crouched in his corner, Edward fought against the desperate longing for surrender; surrender to oncoming death, even to the agony that must precede the peace. Peace! Peace and rest! No more struggling, no more fighting, no more fear … Surrender, unconsciousness, death. Surrender …

  Only the spirit now had courage to go on. His head ached, his eyes were blinded by the pain and the heat and the smoke and the dust-clotted blood; from his temple to his shoulder, pain tore at him now, with terrible hands; blood poured down his arm and across his breast, and through the torn flesh a bone gleamed whitely for a moment and was engulfed again in a fresh clot of blood. “I can’t go on,” he thought. “I’m dying. Nobody can live with wounds like this.” His knees gave way beneath him and for a moment blackness poured in upon him like fluid velvet, softly lapping him into eternal rest. “I can’t go on. I needn’t struggle any more. I’m dying. Let me die in peace …” But the failing spirit drove on the rebellious flesh to one effort more; he stumbled to his feet once more and began perilously to climb down the shifting
masonry into the hall, and there in the shattered cavern whose marbled beauty had been Serafita’s pride, he crept as near as was possible to the great front door; and like a dog locked out, he lay panting and sobbing, and could try no more. “Let me die; what do I care? Why should I want to go on? Only to be caught and imprisoned and at last done to death because I killed my grandfather, because I’m mad, or not mad–God knows!–and a murderer. Why should I change one imprisonment, and one death, for another imprisonment and another death?” He crouched up against the plaster-strewn rubble, shielding his eyes with his one good arm from the sight of the oncoming flames. “I’ll die. I’ll just give myself up to death, poor mad Edward, dead and done with it all …”

  Over the doorway, the delicate woodwork and glass were shattered to a thousand splinters; but in a sea of fallen stones, the arch stood firm. Philip and Stephen and Cockrill struggled frantically to clear a way through. “But we don’t even know what we shall find on the other side. We don’t even know that he’s been able to get downstairs …”

  Claire, the lightest and smallest, climbed up the slope of the stones to the height of the transom. “I believe if I could get some of this stuff away, I might see in …” Her little hands clawed at the stones and plaster. “Yes! Yes, I can make a hole right through. I can see into the hall …” She paused for a moment, peering in, with a face of horror. “My God, the fire! It’s awful, inside. It’s all up the stairs and on the top landing–not down in the hall …” And then, scraping feverishly like a terrier at the small aperture, she thrust through her head and called, “Edward! Edward!” and wriggled her shoulders after her head and called again. After a moment she pulled herself back. “I can see him. He’s down in the hall. He’s hurt. I’m going through,” and she plunged back into the aperture again, gave a thrust and a wriggle and, headforemost, disappeared. The transom reshifted, resettled–and the gap was gone. But almost as she dropped down beside him, they saw a gleam of sunlight as Philip’s hands tore a way through. “Quick, Edward, be ready; as soon as the hole’s big enough, I’ll help you up.”

  He crouched on the rubble looking up at her, his hand at his throat. “Oh, Claire–why did you come? The fire will get here before they can get you out. You’ll be killed. Oh, why did you come …?”

  “I’ll help you up, Edward. I’ll get you out.”

  At least the speech had come back to his lacerated throat. “Claire, of course I can’t get out and leave you here …” He gasped and choked, swaying against a boulder. “When they get through again–I’ll lift you with my good arm–my right arm’s hurt–and they must haul you out. After that …” He looked up at the ill-balanced heap of masonry above their heads. “One more move, Claire, and the whole thing will come down. One person scrambling through …”

  Above them the hands scraped and tunnelled. They faced each other in the stifling, flame-licked dark. “Edward–for God’s sake, there isn’t time to argue. When Philip gets through to haul you up–you’re to go! For heaven’s sake, don’t waste time with this fantastic argument. You’re hurt. I’ll help you out, and you’re to go!”

  The gap above them imperceptibly increased. It was true that there would be no time to argue. “Look, Claire–I don’t think more than one of us can get out. I think it’ll collapse. If there’s only one of us to be saved–it mustn’t be me. Why should I live? I’ll be sent to prison, or to a lunatic asylum, or hanged. Why should I be saved just for that? I don’t want to be saved, I don’t want to; I only want you to get out and be saved, and leave me here to die.” He looked round desperately. “Oh, why can’t I die now and put an end to this; what can I do, just to die and be finished with, so that you won’t have to save me …” To their right the roofless ruin that once had been the drawing-room gaped dimly through the flames; Serafita’s portrait, spared by some freak of incalculable blast to hang, though crookedly, on the in-bulging wall, simpered down at them in the light of the fire, with its painted, artificial smile. “I must do something; I must make an effort; I must drive Claire into saving herself …” He staggered to his feet and before she could stop him, had stumbled forward at a little blundering run down the sloping heap of the rubble, and through the smoke and flames and out of her sight. In a brief flare-up of fire, she saw him lying on the floor beneath the portrait, arms outstretched.

  Philip, with Stephen and Cockrill, scraped and battered at the place where the transom had been. “It won’t hold much longer. The whole thing’s giving way … But there’s nothing else to do, it’s the only hope of getting to them now …” Cockrill, small and agile as a monkey, worked at the top of the heap, delicately balancing on the rubble, peering into the hole. “The whole place is filled with the smoke and flame … I can’t see … Yes, she’s–she’s just below me here …” His small brown hands worked frantically, digging a widening gap, trying to steady the tottering wall above. Stephen was the first to put the terrible truth into words. “It’s no use. We might get one of them out, but then the whole thing will collapse … One person pushing through will bring the whole lot down …” He did not pause in his work, but his voice was sick with the horror of the thought. “We can get only one of them out.”

  “Yes,” said Philip, “it’s true.” He did not hesitate. He called up to Cockrill: “Can you call through to Claire? Never mind if she doesn’t answer, she may hear you anyway … Tell her to be ready. Tell her she must leave Edward. Tell her only one of them can get out.”

  Peta stood weeping below them on the broken terrace. “Oh, Philip, you can’t–you can’t! She mustn’t just leave him to die!”

  “It’s Claire or Edward,” said Philip. “If the wall doesn’t fall, I’ll go down and get him. Go on, Cockrill, call down to her!”

  Cockrill spared a word for the sobbing Peta. “He’s right, my child. If only one can be saved, and one’s a murderer, then the murderer must be abandoned …” He leaned through the gap and called down into the smoky blackness below. Claire’s voice, faint and high-pitched, answered him, and, as the gap suddenly widened beneath the strain of the infalling masonry, he leaned forward, groping, clutching wildly at the upraised hands below. Stephen and Philip, taken unawares, could only grasp at his legs and his body, dragging him backwards as the wall toppled in. From the house there came one terrible scream, piercing through the rumble of stones–and then silence. Bruised and battered, Cockrill was hurled to the terrace below and, picking himself up, staggered away from the falling rubble and down the broken steps, and laid his unconscious burden on the lawn. Stephen and Philip stumbled after him, wiping the blinding sweat and grime from their eyes, and stood in a silent circle, staring down. At last, in a whisper, Philip said: “You said–you told us–we should leave the murderer!”

  “So we have,” said Cockrill, and, kneeling beside Edward, began tenderly to examine his wounds.

  13

  AND SO Swanswater burned. There was the clang of a fire-engine bell in the distance and soon skidding wheels churned up the gravel of the drive; there were curt orders, the hiss of river water driven high from heaving hoses, and in the late afternoon light the flames glowed red on the helmets of toiling men. A rescue squad began methodical preparations for the removal of Claire’s body from the ruins of the hall; and down on the lawn, Philip pushed Cockrill aside and took into his expert hands the tending of Edward’s wounds. He said briefly: “He’s not very bad. They’re ugly, but they’re all superficial; he can be stitched up and the arm set, and he’ll be all right. Don’t cry, Bella, he’ll be quite all right.” An ambulance drove in past the iron gates and a little way along the drive. Philip glanced at it. “Tell them to wait a few minutes; there’s no urgency about Edward, and we shall want it just in case Claire … In case …”

  The baby slept, exhausted, wrapped in a rug on the grass. Cockrill, Stephen, Bella, Peta and Ellen, were silent, looking down at the unconscious boy on the stretcher. Cockrill said, almost grimly: “My dear Philip–there’s no ‘in case.’”

  Phili
p, his task completed, stood up. He turned away his head. He said: “Well, never mind; let them wait.”

  Ellen went over to him. “Philip–don’t mind so terribly. You think it was your fault, but it wasn’t. If it hadn’t been you–it would have been someone else …” She looked at the others. “Tell Philip–put him out of this awful agony … It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Bella. “It is true, Philip. Claire–well, she dramatized herself so much. And she was unhappy; she wanted to be loved–she knew that she was beautiful, and clever, and yet people didn’t love her; and she couldn’t understand why … I think myself, it was because she never had been loved. From her childhood she’d lived here with your grandfather, and Peta had always been the darling, the petted one. It wasn’t your fault, Peta, dear; don’t reproach yourself; but you were the heiress, you were the child of the favourite, and Richard didn’t really need Claire or want her; he didn’t really love her. When she was old enough to be conscious of the need to be loved, well she–she tried too hard … And it was more than that. She was a failure at her job. Just as she was beautiful and it didn’t make her any more loved, so she was clever, but it didn’t make her a success. I think there again, she tried too hard. She couldn’t be content with doing an inferior job well, she wanted to be ‘literary’ … Anyway, she knew that when the war ended, her ‘career’ would be over; she’d be a failure; a failure as a journalist because she hadn’t got a job and a failure as a woman because she hadn’t–hadn’t got a man. Nothing in her life was satisfying and secure. And then, when this need was most urgently upon her, suddenly something flared up between her and Philip; he was unhappy and restless and she felt that she needed him; for the first time in her life, I believe, she felt that she was ‘needed’–it’s what all women want, I think, underneath; to be necessary to somebody or something …” Bella broke off and looked about her. “I’m not putting this very well. I’m not very clever.”