Return to Night: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  He had stopped the car at a five-barred gate. Beyond it was a farmyard. She saw him knock at a green door in a gray house, pause a minute or so in chat, and reappear.

  “I’ve brought you one of the Vicar’s leaflets,” he remarked. “Mrs. Mott insisted. Don’t read it now. It’s frightfully informative and bright.”

  The lane had degenerated into a track, with a glutinous surface which sucked at the wheels. They bumped and slithered across a couple of fields, and fetched up under the sheer flank of a hill, whose base was stripped and broken as if by the erosion of water. Here and there a thin crust of turf clung to the rock, and it was in the middle of one such surface that the outer arch of the cave, evidently the recent handiwork of man, had been cut away. Within it, a lintel and posts of rough timber enclosed a still rougher door, fastened with a padlock and chain. Julian unlocked it, and swung it back; the hinges, rusty with late disuse and rain, moved with a heavy groan. The sun was declining, and the long blue shadow of the hillside, speaking already of dusk, seemed to make still deeper the blackness within. Peering, Hilary saw that after a few yards the mud-caked rock of the floor disappeared, abruptly, into nothing. She experienced, suddenly, a powerful disinclination to go on.

  “It looks a bit like the mouth of Tartarus, doesn’t it?” said Julian contentedly, “till you get a light. It isn’t really very deep; at least, the first part isn’t. Look.”

  He reached up to the inner side of the lintel, and a switch clicked. The void ahead became defined in a yellow, melancholic glimmer, rising from the depths. She saw a rickety-looking ladder spanning a ten-foot drop. The cavity was steep, narrow, and evil-looking like the mouth of an oubliette. At its foot, the walls were visible on every side save one, where a boulder partly concealed a fissure in the rock.

  “I’ll go first, shall I,” he said, “to steady the ladder? It’s inclined to wobble.” He eased his long limbs down it with effortless grace, and stood waiting for her at the bottom.

  Hilary, annoyed by the consciousness that people do not appear at their best in foreshortened views from the bases of ladders, found that she disliked the cave more strongly than ever, but felt also that to let this appear would be not only unkind, but faintly old-maidish. Craning down to look for footholds, she was relieved to see that her escort, though keeping the ladder firmly braced, had modestly averted his eyes. When he turned to hand her down, he looked so full of quiet anticipation that not for anything would she have let him see how much the place oppressed her. They were out of sight of the sky, and only a little reflected light gave a cold blue-grayness to the small patch of roof overhead. There was a chill, wet smell; the smell of limestone. Somewhere out of sight water was dripping, not musically but with a dull smothered thud.

  “Through there,” said Julian.

  She flattened herself, and edged through the crack behind the boulder. In this still more confined space, a stifling sense of imprisonment pressed on her like a physical weight. Because it was irrational, and she did not approve of irrational fears, she went on with a new determination. A dry little voice in her head, clinical and detached, remarked, Quite a number of people have subacute claustrophobia. It was odd, she said to herself, never to have diagnosed her own case before, but really quite interesting.

  “Is it as narrow as this all the way?” she asked, turning her head to look for him. He was close behind her, backed to the rock. The question seemed to amuse him; he returned a proprietary smile.

  “Go on round the next bend, and you’ll see.”

  She rounded a sharp buttress, and realized that the light was coming, now, not from behind but before. The crack widened. She came out into the cave.

  It was, she had to admit, an impressive transformation scene. The place must have been twenty feet high, and not much less across. Here and there, along its irregular sides, the lime deposits of millenniums had dripped their characteristic fantasies; petrified cascades, pointed fringes like the beards of dragons, strong rods and thin waisted stems of water-polished stone. Curiosity, and the relief of wider space, pushed into the background the discomfort of her nerves. She went forward, realizing that what she could see was only an unknown fraction of the whole; for the string of electric bulbs stapled into the roof disappeared downward, and evidently continued round a bend.

  Do you like it?” said Julian close behind her. He spoke in the half-whisper that people use in an empty church.

  “It’s amazing.” She answered in the same voice. “I’d no idea there was anything here on this scale.”

  “It’s rather off the track. There are so many showier ones, nearer the big towns. I like this better, myself.”

  He looked past her, down the broken perspective of shadow and dim light. His eyes seemed to have deepened and darkened, and in his face was a curious look of remoteness and of rest.

  “The lower half is the best,” he said, moving forward. “Mind how you go, it’s uneven here and there.”

  Just beyond the bend, the floor sloped sharply, and the arch was divided by a thick pillar of rock. Passing this, she saw beyond her the dark sheen of water. More than half the wide oval of this inner chamber was a pool. Cold and unmoving as its containing stone, it stretched from a saucer shallowness, where the dull light easily found bottom, into impenetrable depth against the rocky wall. It set her mind seeking a phrase: “the dark backward and abysm of time.” It would not have astonished her if from the farther depths a blunt saurian head had reared itself to blink at them with white eyes. She said something of the kind to Julian, who laughed softly.

  “You never know. This is only the front hall. There’s another cave, with an opening under the water line. A few years ago, in a big drought, some men saw the mouth showing, and managed to get through. They found something bigger than this, and their impression was that there was more, under more water, beyond. Nobody can say how far it goes.”

  She felt a little shiver move over her body. “That’s rather frightening, isn’t it?”

  “Why?” He was smiling. “It’s rather fun, I think. When you were little, didn’t you ever play at caves?”

  “No. Do most people?”

  “Oh, I should think nearly everyone. What else would one do about the tiger under the bed?”

  “Mine was a tent. And campfires round it.”

  “You must have been one of those frail creatures with a night light.”

  “I’m afraid I was.”

  “I suppose it’s race memory, or something. Geologically speaking, it’s only yesterday that the tiger was real. And so was the cave—this one, among others. People lived here. It’s in the Vicar’s leaflet.”

  “I don’t think I should do well as a troglodyte.”

  “Don’t you?” he said; and looked into her eyes with the same strange withdrawn smile he had turned on the dark recessions of the rock.

  She felt indefinably disturbed by a change in him which, also, eluded definition; and tried, for the sake of reassurance, to dispel with bathetic brightness a mood which was beginning to tinge her own. “One imagines a squat creature with matted hair and a prognathous jaw.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Her attempt had not brought conviction even to herself; she had not been able to raise her voice from the subtone with which they had all along been honoring the genius of the place. On him it had clearly had no effect at all.

  “You haven’t sat in the Chair yet. That’s very important.”

  There was a flat square rock near the water’s edge, with a fall of stalactites behind it; a sunken plane in its center gave it the rough likeness of a throne. He motioned her toward it, with a quiet ceremoniousness. An unknown apprehension and reluctance stirred her, mixed with another force which was not reluctance nor apprehension, but less to be trusted than either. She had an impulse to laugh, to say something unforgivably trite and crude which would make him flinch, and slam against her the door of this secret world whose darkling welcome was more disquieting than the water with its d
rowned labyrinth below. But she moved forward instead, and, smiling to keep herself in countenance, sat down in the bed of the stone, leaning forward a little from the sharpness of the ribbed limestone, her hands on the rocky arms.

  He took a step or two toward her, then stood still, looking at her from a yard or two away. The intentness of his face frightened her. Till now, he had kept intact a surface, at least, of commonplace. She tried, for self-protection, to reflect how absurd a picture she must make in her modern clothes, her parchment-colored woolen dress and the dark blue coat hanging unsleeved from her shoulders, against this setting for a mermaid or a titaness. But her sense of humor failed her; she could feel nothing but a certainty of power to which her soul had not assented; which wisdom, or fear, warned her to evade.

  It was the place, she thought, the absolute exclusion of familiar light and living, the stillness: she understood, for the first time in her life, what the phrase “a stony silence” meant. It must be her own strong reaction to the cave, a compound of formless dread, and pride in quelling it, and overgentleness for his mood, which was adding force to this illusion. She must break it now; they must escape to the safe clichés of daylight, the red sports car, the Vicar’s leaflet which explained everything it was useful, or good, to know.

  All this went so swiftly through her mind that the pause had scarcely had time to become significant. She saw in his eyes that convention, the fear of ridicule (perhaps only of his own) still partly held him; but so unsurely that a look from her, a gesture, accepting the dream, would loose him from them altogether. She saw that a bald denial would be destructive cruelty already; he had betrayed himself too far.

  Without moving from where she sat, she said gently, “The light will soon be going, up above. Don’t you think we should leave soon?”

  “I suppose so.” It had happened as she had meant; without violence, reality was strengthening its hold on him again. But when she made to rise, he motioned her back into her seat.

  “Just a minute. There’s something you must see before you go. I nearly forgot.”

  He moved to the column of rock that divided the inner from the outer cave, and touched something she could not see. The place was filled with what seemed, by contrast with the yellow beading of sparse light, a dazzling color-filled effulgence. There must have been three or four floodlamps concealed, with their reflectors, in jutties and coigns of the stone. The deposits on the walls leaped into vivid ivories and rusts and greens; the water of the pool was a profound, hyaline blue. She exclaimed in admiration.

  “A bit obvious; but not bad theater, I admit.” He had raised his voice to an almost normal pitch; an echo, hitherto unheard, caught it and played inhumanly with it in the vault above.

  “It looks like a decor for Swan Lake.” She felt safe and confident again.

  “I’ve never used it before. But I remembered, from my first conducted tour. I felt you ought to have the entire—”

  Darkness, deep, dazzling, absolute, and suddener far than the most sudden death, annihilated the scene. His voice, as if it too had been a visible thing, stopped in mid-syllable. There was a pause; the half-incredulous pause that happens in any human company when electricity fails. Then Julian said, in the protesting bewilderment which someone always displays at such a moment, “Damn. I suppose I can’t possibly have blown a fuse.”

  He had spoken aloud again; sounding in the hollow of invisibility, the echo repeated him with an effect grown suddenly devilish and malign.

  “You must have.” She lowered her own voice, out of its reach.

  “There were two switches—Oh, Lord. I suppose I should have turned off the other lighting first. God, what a fool. I might have known the wiring wouldn’t carry both.”

  “Try the switches again.”

  “I have. They’re both dead.”

  Slowly, like a wild beast whose cage has been opened and which looks out at first with hesitation before it springs, there advanced on Hilary the image all this time thrust back, the huge imponderable mass of the hill piled, earth and rock and boulder, three hundred feet above her head. She imagined the unseen roof slowly bowing, the first thin fissure widening, the thunderous, obliterating descent of a million tons. Her fingers clenched themselves on the rock. One must have control—

  “I really am most frightfully sorry.”

  If this nether darkness had fallen on his own room at home, he could scarcely have shown less sense of insecurity and awe. He was begging her pardon for another contretemps, nothing more. While he spoke, the infection of his confidence thrust back her advancing horror. It was chiefly to make him speak again that she said, “Have you got a light?”

  “Let’s hope so.” His voice was nearer; she could hear a soft jingling as he searched his pockets. The sound was traveling past her, receding.

  “I’m here.” She rose to her feet, to go and find him.

  “I know. Stay where you are.” He was nearer again. “I shouldn’t walk about; you might get your feet wet.”

  She had forgotten the pool. Its ancient and wicked secrecy, the undiscovered bourn behind it, added themselves to her nightmare. A water drop splashed into it; she imagined the ripple of something rising from the submerged inner cave.

  “Where are you?” The echo, lying in wait, pounced on the last word. “Ou, ou,” it chuckled; a gloating sound.

  “Here.”

  The scrape of his shoe sounded beside her. So great was the comfort of having him within reach, that she could hardly keep herself from gripping him. Lest he should pass, she said, “I’m still where you left me.”

  “Good.” She heard, closer, a soft brushing against the stone. “Oh, yes, here you are.” His hand passed over her shoulder. His touch was light and impersonal; he was checking his orientation. She longed to keep him, but was ashamed. The picture of the cracking roof grew again in her mind.

  “Did you find any matches?”

  “I’m horribly afraid they’re in my topcoat in the car. How about that lighter of yours?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s in my bag.” She felt for the place where she had put it down, and fumbled through it, cursing inwardly her habits of accumulation. At last she found the thing, and not till then remembered, with an inward sinking, that yesterday she had been thinking that it needed to be refilled. The flint sparked brilliantly, a dazzle revealing nothing; at the third attempt, the wick brought forth a tiny bud of flame, sufficient scarcely to define her own encircling hand. It went out. Nothing would revive it.

  “Why didn’t I think? I ought to have had something ready to catch from it, a letter or something. We could have got most of the way, with that.”

  “You talk as though we couldn’t get out without it.” She could hear a smile in his voice. “I must seem pretty dim, I know, but I’m not as dim as that. I know this place like the back of my hand. It would have been quicker with a light, that’s all. Come along. Just hang on to me.”

  His hands felt for hers, and held them. Before she could rise he said, softly, “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just feel a little strange.”

  “I expect so.” He stood there, without moving.

  “I suppose it’s simply the dark that makes one feel shut-in.”

  He said, with tranquillity, “When we’re tired of being shut in, the door’s open. We’ve only got to get there.”

  “I know. It’s foolish of me.”

  “No, not foolish. I felt strange too, the first time I came here. Sit quiet a moment, and get used to it.” She felt that he had lowered himself to some projection of the stone beside her knees. “It feels natural, presently. I know; I’ve been here in the dark before.”

  He was still holding her hands. She was aware of something felt too briefly for certainty at earlier times; the physical sympathy which is not foreseen; which has power to subdue to itself the antagonisms of the mind, and, sometimes, almost of the spirit. She wanted to say, “We must start now,” and get to her feet; but the thought
of the journey ahead, groping and stumbling, was hateful to her, and in their stillness her fear was comforted. She said, to say something, “Did the lights fail then, too?”

  “No,” he said. “I could see better without them. I can now.” He spoke without emphasis, very quietly.

  She found herself saying, “I sometimes feel afraid that the roof will fall.”

  She heard him draw in his breath, softly and guardedly. He said, “We should be here forever.”

  “Don’t. You frighten me.” But she had felt no fear, or not the fear of which she had spoken. He said gently, almost humorously, “Do I?” She felt his hands tighten over hers.

  “We must go,” she said.

  “Yes.” But he did not move. She tried to brace her will to withdraw her hands. As if to forestall her, he began to talk again. “It’s nothing to mind about. Everyone has moments about the dark. All the best people; you’re in good company. Even Shakespeare had.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know, don’t you?” He laughed briefly, as people do for their peace of mind. He dropped her hands; she felt that he was leaning against the rock beside her.

  “Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

  Her vague emotions focused into a sharp anxiety. He had given the lines an edge of delicate mockery; but she remembered too much not to be deeply disquieted for him. It infringed all his taboos. He was doing violence to himself, she thought, to comfort and divert her. It would recoil on him. She said, lightly, to release him, “Must I die so soon?”