by A. L. Barker
“That place. I shall die in a big empty place.”
“You don’t go out enough. You’re like a plant –” he was going to say “pot bound”, but it didn’t sound nice. “He’s done this to you,” he couldn’t bring himself to utter Tomelty’s name either. “You’re deprived of life.”
*
He had no key to Thorne. As Emmy said, it was unnecessary because she or Bertha would always be there to let him in. So he had been obliged to borrow Bertha’s key, without mentioning it, of course. He planned that when he and Marise left the house he would drop the key into some corner where Bertha would find it sooner or later. She often mislaid it so it wouldn’t seem curious.
But the nearer they drew to the house the uneasier he felt. At best the episode could only be a waste of the scant precious time they had together, at worst it would damage him, and if it didn’t go according to plan would lay him in ruins.
There wasn’t even a plan in the proper sense, simply an assumption that Bertha and Emmy would be out of the house. If they weren’t, if for any of fifty reasons they had stayed at home… It didn’t bear thinking about and thinking certainly didn’t help.
“It’s big.” When they came to the beginning of the track and Thorne was in sight Marise was surprised. “I didn’t think it was a big house.”
“There used to be a dairy and a farm kitchen. The dairy’s been made into a garage and the kitchen is used for storage. There’s not really all that much living space.” Emmy took the living space for her private battle, the estuary would not have been too big for Emmy. He knew that he would know if she was in the house as soon as he opened the door.
“Why don’t you stay here? It’s nicer than Lilliput, that place is fit to drop.”
The car was missing from the garage and he saw grounds for optimism. Of course Bertha might have gone to Chelmsford leaving Emmy at home and it would be neither materially worse for Bertha’s not being here.
“Are we expected?” wondered Marise.
It was so quiet, as they walked across the grass she heard the stalks brushing her shoes. Naturally he would choose a lonely place.
“What a lot of flowers,” she said disapprovingly, looking at Emmy’s garden.
When Ralph opened the front door he confronted the very material difference of Emmy’s not being at Thorne. The place hung together, exhausted.
Now that Marise found herself where she had wanted to be she saw at once that the house was not as she had wanted. Things rarely came up to her expectation: she was happiest with expectations, could have a wonderful time, any time, expecting. She might, she supposed, come to want what this house was – if she could make up her mind what it was.
Ralph closed the door, resisting the impulse to carry in a parcel which the postman had left in the porch. A little thing like that could give them away.
“There’s no-one at home. Come and sit down, you must be tired.”
Marise hadn’t expected that they would be alone at Thorne. She had expected to see the women and talk to them. She expected them to tell her illuminating things.
“They’ve gone to Chelmsford shopping.”
She had expected to pity them. They were to be pitied, she thought, looking at Emmy’s Benares brass.
“Did you know they wouldn’t be here?”
“It makes matters easier anyway.”
What matters? It might become utterly illuminating being here alone with him, miles from anywhere, beyond help. With a prickling of her shoulders and thighs she watched him opening doors and looking into rooms. He was making absolutely sure that they were alone.
“What are you going to do?”
He turned and looked at her for a long moment, he was thinking what he could do, she supposed, thinking what he had done last time.
“We’ll have a drink.”
From the window she saw that the trees and hedges stood closely round the house and the sky was slotted between, not enough sky to have any colour, less sky, even, than she could see from her window at Lilliput Lodge.
“Is there anyone next door?”
“Next door’s a mile or more away.”
No-one would hear her scream, if she screamed. That would depend on him, perhaps he had brought her here to scream, perhaps he fancied a little screaming.
“I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Indeed she did not, thought Ralph, she couldn’t imagine anything so alien as Thorne, the living couldn’t imagine partly-living.
“I come at week-ends and keep a razor and pyjamas here – and slippers, we don’t wear our slippers downstairs. You see, it isn’t my house to do as I like in.”
“In hotels you put on your shoes to have breakfast.”
“In hotels you pay to do as you like.”
“What are these?” She had seen the array of elephant whips and Khyber knives and Caucasian daggers. They were arranged in a circle on the wall above a stuffed oryx head.
“They’re relics of a fondness for killing.”
“There you are!”
“No, you are not. It wasn’t my fondness and they aren’t my relics.”
She stroked the oryx, pushing her fingers into the dead fur of its nose. Her back expressed non-hearing, it was the duck’s back and he was water running off it. She did not hear Ralph Shilling, she heard John Brown, she saw John Brown in the Colonel’s hunting trophies, she would see him all over the house, she would have seen him in Emmy, she would even have seen him in Bertha.
“Did you expect to find Miss Fran’s head stuffed and hanging on the wall?”
“That’s not nice.”
“It’s nonsense. All of it’s nonsense.” He poured a shot of Emmy’s whisky. When he turned round Marise was taking off her coat.
“I want to see everything.”
“A guided tour of John Brown’s body’s place? Would you like a drink first?”
“Don’t you think about anything but heads and bodies?”
She said she wanted to see upstairs, where he slept with Bertha. She didn’t put it like that but he did: thinking of the double bed there was no other way of putting it. He couldn’t look anywhere in that room without seeing it. The bed – not putting too fine a point on – was the big white sign of his one and only fusion with Thorne.
Unwillingly, he took her upstairs. He didn’t wish to see her in his and Bertha’s room, it would be all wrong. And then, even as they went in, he was struck by the notion that if it became even more wrong, if he were to see her actually in that bed, in Bertha’s bed, it could tip over into being absolutely right.
“It’s small for two people.”
“Is it?”
“Isn’t there a bigger room?”
“On the other side of the house. That’s where Emmy sleeps.”
“She must be mean.”
“She isn’t. She thinks if there’s a stream this side it might be bad for her health.”
“Why?”
“Well, if she thinks so, I suppose it is. There’s power in thought.” He looked at her steadily. “Isn’t there?”
“If she thinks there’s a stream and there isn’t really – there’s isn’t really.” Marise went to the bed and prodded the pillow. “Hasn’t she ever looked?”
“She’s thinking of underground streams. There might be, I suppose, running into the estuary.”
“She’ll have to dig to find out, won’t she?”
“She wants me to get a water-diviner.”
“With a twig? To walk round with a twig? Can I come and watch?” She sat down on the bed. “It’s comfortable, I think I’ll lie here and rest.”
She did, she lay back on the pillow, the scanty skirt of her dress peeling up round her thighs, and she looked at him gravely.
“Tell me about your Emmy.”
He could hardly believe his eyes. Seeing her there was so wrong and so right, in Bertha’s place in Bertha’s bed was wrong. Then he forgot Bertha, for the Tightness of Marise was supreme. He knelt be
side the bed and reached out for her.
Marise knew the gesture. She took a practical interest in sex as the means of getting her softer options and she kept a temperate eye on the reactions she aroused – the eye any mechanic with pressure to maintain might keep on a gauge. She had learned how to take evasive action and when it didn’t succeed in evading, how to keep herself for herself.
She rolled away across the bed and stood up on the other side. The eiderdown filled out as her body left it, Ralph was left with his arms in the pink satin billows.
Marise picked up a framed photograph of Ralph and Bertha on their wedding-day. “Is Emmy in love with you?”
“Emmy wouldn’t let herself get into love with anyone. She likes to keep tidy.”
He got up off his knees and brushed his trousers and Marise said, “So do you.”
He wondered if he should tell her that he was in love with her. But he didn’t think she knew the meaning of the words if she could use them in connection with Emmy. Although she didn’t, of course, know Emmy.
Marise put down the photograph. “Why didn’t Bertha carry a bouquet for her wedding?”
“She carried a prayer book.”
Marise sat at the dressing-table. She took the lid off Bertha’s powder-bowl and smelt the powder and tried some on her face. It was too tawny and looked like mustard on her. She examined each item in turn with an interest that vexed him. Picking up Bertha’s hair-brush she gazed into the bristles. “I hope she’s not grey.”
He ought to get the situation in hand, he was allowing things to happen, prejudicial things, and since when had he been able to risk prejudice?
Marise imagined herself sitting at this mirror every day. It would be an enormous relief, like the cessation of life-long tooth-ache.
“I wish I could stay here,” she said, meaning from the moment on, so that her hairs were in the hair-brush and the furniture was hers in all the rooms and had never been anyone else’s and no-one had sat on the chairs and slept in the beds before her, nor would after her, so long as she lived.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
The absurdity of what was happening, the sheer nonsense of it, made him hot. “For two good reasons – Emmy and Bertha.”
“Get rid of them.”
“What?”
“There must be a kind way, you like to be kind, don’t you?”
He watched her curl a strand of her hair in one of Bertha’s curlers. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll simply go away and take you with me.”
“I want to stay here.”
“We’ll find somewhere by the sea, the real sea – or in the country if you don’t like the open space. I promise I won’t put you through that again. We’ll go as soon as I can make arrangements – it will only take me a day or two –”
“Talk, talk, talk!” She cried into the mirror, “Nothing happens any more. It’s all happened to other people!”
“No!” He put his hands on her shoulder blades and struck her rather than pulled her into his arms. She turned her face aside and stood, dangling stiffly, her chin in her shoulder, and between his fury and tenderness and fear of doing the wrong thing or not doing anything at all he was ready to break her neck to get to her lips. “This must happen –”
“I don’t believe you’re John Brown.” She spoke out of his fingers. “Nobody does. You’re as like him as a tenpenny rabbit.”
He had believed that he would brush the dew off for a moment, an exclusive, recurring moment, recurring only to him, and had bitterly longed to do it.
“Then why did you pretend –” the less to accuse her he amended that to – “Why did you let me think it was important to you to believe it?”
“I tried to help you.” His hand felt like the flat of a knife pressing between her shoulders. “Jack did it for a laugh, but I did it to help.”
She was so close that her neck curved out of his own chest. With his finger tips he stroked the moist skin of her cheek and pressed the flesh into the bone.
“You wouldn’t help yourself,” she said, “you left everything to me. I’ve had enough, I shan’t try any more.” She wanted to move away because she had had enough of that too. He was pulling at her as if he meant to pull her to pieces. She put her hands on his chest. “You’re hurting –” He was worse than Jack, she saw that he wouldn’t laugh or cry and it caused her a stab of uncalled-for alarm.
She began to fight him. They struggled in desperation, he was unaware of the damage she did to him but she was mutilated by every hurt and plundered by the restraint of his hands. She tried to slip through them like a child in a tantrum. Her head fell back and her dress rode up. He dropped with her to the floor, chest to chest, and pinned her down with his weight.
It was a shock to him afterwards to realise how he had refused to hear the roar of the car along the track. He wondered what sort of madness it was, fallen angel’s or risen beast’s, that could ignore Bertha’s first gear like a tractor going up a mountain. Some saving instinct brought him to earth when the engine stopped. He got to his feet and stood over Marise, straddled her as she lay.
“Help me.” There was her torn and twisted dress – put that right, he meant, but didn’t think it could be. If she was willing and able to hide what had been done to her, she couldn’t hide what had been done to her clothes. He raised her and pushed her into a chair. “Do something, please –”
But going down the stairs he wondered what he was worrying about. It must be force of habit because what Bertha and Emmy thought was of no consequence now and never would be again. Damn them, he thought without rancour, agreeably even, it was such a free feeling.
Then something, the good-plus atmosphere of the place, extinguished it. He had better be prudent, not over-concerned nor throwing anything away, not yet.
He brushed himself down and paused to check in the mirror. What they might notice about him was his freedom, that was glaringly obvious. He stood smoothing his hair as Bertha opened the door. He had the brave feeling of being about to upset his own applecart.
They exclaimed at sight of him. Bertha was startled and said “Oh!” and Emmy uttered her cry which could be of pleasure or pain. They were both so familiar – like the start of the National Anthem. They could never surprise him again.
Bertha put down her shopping-bag and came to him. “Is something wrong? Ralph dear, whatever’s the matter?”
“What are you doing here?”
He did not miss the suspicion in Emmy’s voice.
“Aren’t you well, dear?”
Bertha was eager, always looking for trouble to take on.
“How did you get in?”
He smiled. So Emmy suspected him of forcing a lock. “With Bertha’s key.”
“You had it? I thought I’d lost it.”
“Why did you get in?”
“Oh Ralph, you didn’t come all this way just to bring back my key?”
“No.”
“Then why?” said Emmy. “On a Tuesday?”
“Why not? On Tuesday or any other day?”
“One would expect you to be working in your office on Tuesday.”
“I took time off.” They were mystified: Bertha preparing reasons for him, Emmy preparing to explode them. “You’re back early from Chelmsford,” he said.
“Emmy was tired, she couldn’t even stop to have lunch. Now we can all have it together.” Bertha told Emmy, “That will be nice,” and it irritated Ralph, it always did, having her try to make a treat of him.
He said coolly, “I don’t imagine you can cater for two extra, we’ll get something at the Plough.”
“Two extra?”
“I have someone with me.”
Emmy glanced towards the stairs and there was Marise coming down. Emmy’s face seemed to collapse, the carefully erected eyebrows and the powder put on like fur and her boldly painted mouth suddenly lost coherence, as if something essential had been whipped away.
Marise had combed her ha
ir and put on the pony-coat. She was solemn and looked at Emmy.
“Ralph, you didn’t tell us we had company!”
“Who is this?” said Emmy.
“This young lady is a professional diviner,” said Ralph. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I’m sure there’ll be enough for four –”
Emmy caught at Bertha’s arm. “A water-diviner? Is that what she is?”
“My name is Marise Tomelty,” Marise said firmly. “How do you do?” She held out her hand. Bertha took it, Emmy did not move.
“You must excuse us, we had no idea my husband was bringing you, and my sister has been unwell, we had to come back from town because the shops tired her, and it’s a good thing we did. They serve such stodgy food at the Plough and when you’ve come all this way you must have a nice lunch.”
“We can’t stay,” said Ralph. “We’re catching the two-fifteen back. I’ll ring for a taxi.”
“She’s got a headache,” Marise said of Emmy, and drew her finger across her own forehead at the hair line. “From outside in.”
“How do you know?”
“She looks as if she’s trying to see through eggwhite. I take two aspirins and lie down when I have a head like that.”
Emmy was holding on to Bertha, leaning on her, Ralph noticed, and she was no light weight, Emmy was considerable in every way.
“Dear, you should be resting.” Bertha tried to lead her to a chair but it was Emmy who obliged Bertha, as her prop, to move with her towards Marise.
“What did you find?”
“She found nothing,” said Ralph.
Emmy ignored him. “Where did you try? Which part of the house? What happened?”
“She tried everywhere and nothing happened. There’s no water under this house.”
“There,” said Bertha, with loving comfort, “isn’t that what I’ve said all along? Perhaps now that Ralph’s set your mind at rest we’ll ask Dr Chinn to look at you –”
“Is it true?” Emmy said to Marise.
“Would you like a dowser’s deposition?” said Ralph. “A signed guarantee that she found no water?”
“But I did.”
Marise’s coat had fallen open and as she pulled it round her Ralph saw the tear down the front of her dress, he hoped he was the only one who saw it.
