by Ruth Rendell
Stephen remained still. The man took the cigarette from between his lips, but instead of dropping it and treading it out, pinched it in his fingers and put the end into his pocket.
He began to walk down the avenue, between the bars of shadow. Stephen drew in his breath in a hiss. He went forward to meet the advancing figure, the godlike, bearded, golden figure, who was coming towards him down the aisle of a druids’ cathedral.
The voice rang out like a bell. ‘Stephen!’
It was part of the ritual, the magic, that this man in the pale loose aran, this man who was taller than Ian Stringer, taller even than Dadda, should know his name and address him by it. But Stephen himself couldn’t speak. He simply stared and walked.
‘I thought it was you. I reckon I still know your walk after all these years.’ A long brown hand went up to the mass of disguising beard, the curly hair. ‘You don’t know me, do you, under all this? Peter. Peter Naulls.’
19
They sat on the Altar, watching the sun go down. It lay like a crimson ball on the horizon but only after it had sunk did the sky turn red, as red as the heart of a fire. Peter lit a cigarette, pushed the wooden matchstick deep into the earth.
‘I used to dream about Vangmoor while I was on my travels,’ he said. ‘It gets you that way if you’ve been brought up here. I’ve been all round the world, walking mostly, going on buses, getting lifts, but the longer I was away the more I got to thinking about the moor and — well, missing it.’
‘How long were you away?’ Stephen asked.
‘Years. I lived in Kathmandu, in the place they call Freak Street, for two years. I was a freak, I was all spaced out, I can tell you. There was a doctor there, he reckoned I’d die if I went on the way I was, so I came home. I’ve even got a job.’
‘Here?’ Stephen hazarded.
‘In London. Hospital porter. Christ, Stephen, I sometimes wish I’d been bred up to a trade like you. What use is an English degree?’
Stephen looked at him in wonder. ‘When did you come back from — Kathmandu?’
‘Christmas, it must have been.’
‘They’ve taken your picture away at Uncle Leonard’s. Last time I was there it was gone.’
‘Like I’m dead to them? You didn’t think I stayed with them when I came up here, did you?’
‘You could stay with me,’ Stephen said.
‘You’re married, aren’t you?’
Stephen shook his head vehemently. ‘I’d like you to stay with me. I’ve got a big empty house, all those empty rooms. Whenever you want to come up to the moor you can always stay with me.’
It was a sidelong glance Peter gave him, one eyebrow raised. ‘I’ve got a place to stay.’
‘With me it wouldn’t cost you anything. You could come and go as you liked, you’d be free.’
Peter didn’t really answer that. He said, ‘There’s a girl I know in Loomlade, we’ve known each other since we were kids. It’s her I come up to see.’ He got up. ‘Let’s go. It’ll be dark soon and I’ve got a long walk ahead of me.’
‘But we’ll meet again, won’t we?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
They walked along the avenue together. Stephen asked when Peter was going back. Sunday, not till Sunday. He wanted to ask about the girl, he wanted to ask if she had long fair hair, but he didn’t quite dare so he asked her name instead.
‘Stella. Stella Crane. Her dad keeps the electrical shop. You and me, when we were kids, we went in there once and bought a torch battery. Remember?’
Did he remember! Stephen’s heart was full. He began to laugh with joy. He had to stand still and hold his sides, he was laughing so much.
‘What’s so funny?’ Peter was looking at him oddly again, looking him up and down.
‘I’m so happy,’ Stephen gasped. ‘Lord, I’m so happy it just makes me laugh, I don’t know why. It’s so terrific to see you, it’s amazing. It’s what I needed, d’you understand me?’
‘I don’t know that I do.’ Peter closed the gate, stood at the point where the path divided, one branch descending the fell to Chesney, the other curving away over Foinmen’s Plain. He said rather awkwardly, ‘It’s been good seeing you, Stephen.’
‘Ring me before you go back? Say you will. I’m in the book.’
‘Sure. Sure, I will, Stephen.’
‘We mustn’t lose sight of each other again.’ Stephen put out his hand. He didn’t know quite why he had done this, whether he expected Peter to shake it or hold it, and perhaps it was as well Peter didn’t seem to see that outstretched hand in the gathering dusk. For a moment, though, it seemed to him that he had put out his hand in order to hold onto Peter and stop him going away. ‘Good night,’ he said, and wistfully, repeating himself, ‘We’ll meet again?’
Walking away, Peter laughed. His voice came very clear in the windless twilight. ‘You know where to find me. Good night.’ He looked back once and gave Stephen a wave. Stephen watched him until he was out of sight, and that was for a long time, for the Plain stretched more or less fiat to the east of Ringer’s Foin and in the dusk Peter’s white sweater showed up as a moving glimmer.
They hadn’t mentioned the mine or Apsley Sough. That was because they hadn’t needed to, Stephen thought, or because what it meant to both of them was too deep for words at this their first meeting. Besides, Peter had referred to it. He couldn’t have done so more delicately and subtly than by speaking of the day they had bought that torch battery in Crane’s shop, the very day, Stephen remembered and knew Peter remembered too, when they had found the entrance to the mine. Perhaps Peter had been wise in refusing to come and stay in his house. Houses only trammelled people like them. It was up here in the open that such as they must meet. Probably Peter would phone him tomorrow. He would phone and then they would go to the mine together.
With nightfall the rain began again. It was a slow steady fine rain. Stephen went up to his bedroom, remembering that ‘first thing’ in the morning the police were due to search the house. On the foot of his bed, on the turned-back covers, was Harriet Crozier’s handbag.
Slowly he emptied everything out of it onto the sheet. Every object was quite small, the largest item being Harriet’s notebook and that was no more than six inches by four. Stephen reflected. He couldn’t burn the things, there were no fireplaces in the house. Nor would he dare put the things in his dustbin. Lyn had probably asked her mother to send the rest of her clothes on to her but as yet Mrs Newman hadn’t put in an appearance to do this and a great many of Lyn’s possessions remained in the house. Stephen hesitated for a moment longer and then he put the empty handbag with Lyn’s three handbags, the lipstick and eye liner in the drawer with Lyn’s make-up, and the coins with the loose change in his own trouser pocket. Why not carry the rest of the things on him tomorrow? They would search the house but they wouldn’t search him.
He slept soundly but he was awake early and up by seven. The police’s ‘first thing’ was 8.30 and Stephen thought Troth seemed impressed by the sight of him standing at the sink washing up his breakfast dishes. A guilty man wouldn’t be washing up when the police came to search his house for evidence to convict him of murder. From time to time, though not in the presence of Troth and the others, he patted his pockets and nearly giggled when he felt there Harriet Crozier’s purse and notebook and cheque book and credit card.
But after an hour or two he felt so triumphantly certain they hadn’t found anything and weren’t going to find anything — after all, what was there to find? — that when he watched them poking about with his clothes and crawling about the floors it made him start giggling. Troth, picking at a pustule with the fingernail of his little finger, asked him where his wife was and Stephen said he didn’t know, she had left him.
Troth’s wedge face sharpened and his eyes came even closer together. It was all Stephen could do to suppress his amusement. He could see the way Troth’s mind was working, the conclusion he was fast jumping to.
‘I don’
t know where she is,’ Stephen said, ‘but my mother-in-law does. You’ve only got to go across the road and ask.’
The look on Troth’s face, guarded disappointment, was such as to make Stephen let out a roar of laughter. It was very satisfying that Troth didn’t seem to despise him any more. He looked as if he were scared of him or at least wary. They finished with the house by half past twelve and more or less put things back where they had found them. Troth said nothing about wanting to see him again or to expect a visit later in the day. He went into the Newmans’ house but he was only there ten minutes.
Rain was still falling lightly. It had been raining all night and all the morning. The house felt defiled as a house is said to feel after burglars have been in it, but Stephen didn’t feel like rearranging everything or getting the vacuum cleaner out again. He went into his study and composed an advertisement for insertion in the Echo, offering his car for sale. He put the advertisement into an envelope and a stamp on the envelope but he didn’t like to go down to the post with it in case Peter phoned. Peter was bound to phone today or tomorrow because on Sunday he had to go back to that hospital porter’s job of his.
What was he, Stephen, going to do about a job for himself? On the other hand, did he have to have one? The little bit his articles for the ‘Voice of Vangmoor’ brought in would be enough to buy his food, and without a wife, a car, without even perhaps a house …? A new life was beginning for him and the prospect of it filled him with excitement. He wrote For Sale, £1,200 on a piece of card, added o.n.o. for ‘or near offer’ and stuck the card in the rear window of his car with Scotch tape. There was just a chance of selling it that way before next week’s Echo came out.
In spite of the rain, it was warm and he longed to be out on the moor. But he went back into the house and had some lunch and thought about the police finding blonde hairs all over his clothes and in his bed and in the car and reluctantly having to admit they were Lyn’s hairs. He thought about Troth calling up some telephone number Mrs Newman would have given him. The idea of Troth expecting the person who answered to say he or she had never heard of Lyn, but in fact being answered by Lyn herself, made Stephen laugh again. He roared with laughter, shaking his head at the stupidity of the police.
In the afternoon the rain let up and when the sun came out everything outside began steaming. Stephen opened the french windows. Who would do the garden now Lyn was gone? A house and garden, he thought, were liabilities, more trouble than they were worth. If the phone didn’t go by seven he would walk or take the car to Loomlade and find Peter at Crane’s shop. He sat by the french windows, eating dry roasted peanuts and drinking tea. The phone rang at half past four. He answered it in his pleasantest voice, giving the number and then, ‘This is Stephen Whalby speaking.’
His caller was Dadda.
Stephen didn’t say any more. He put the receiver down. Of course he didn’t want the phone disconnected before Peter could phone but they could cut it off as soon after that as they liked. It was a nuisance.
He was getting his supper, breaking eggs for an omelette, when the front door bell rang. His first thought was that it was the police back again but when he looked out of the window he saw no police car in the street, no vehicle at all. At once he knew who it must be. Very likely Stella Crane had no phone and for some reason he couldn’t use the one in the shop. Going out into the hall to open the front door to Peter was the happiest moment he had known since the day he had sat in Rip’s Cavern and eaten the biscuit and felt safe. His heart fluttered with excitement. He opened the door, smiling.
The man who stood outside, a middle-aged man who resembled Peter Naulls only in that he too had a beard, Stephen recognized to his disappointment as Professor Irving J. Schuyler.
‘Mr Whalby?’
Stephen nodded.
‘I hope you’ll excuse my taking the liberty of coming here.’ His voice was rich and cultured with a strong transatlantic lilt. ‘You can maybe imagine what I want to talk to you about.’
His immediate thought was of the book he had put into Schuyler’s car. He wasn’t afraid. After all, it was to him the professor had come, not to the police. Mrs Newman was watching from a downstairs window. Stephen moistened his lips. ‘Please come in.’
‘This is very good of you.’ The professor stepped into the hall. He was wearing a tee-shirt and his Dr Scholl sandals. He brought his hands from behind his back where they had been clasped together and Stephen saw that he was carrying what was certainly the book in a large brown envelope. ‘What a really charming village Chesney is. It’s meant a great deal to me visiting with Mr and Mrs Southworth and really getting acquainted with the domain of Alfred Osborn Tace. Vangmoor — a most beautiful wilderness, is it not? So precisely as Tace has described it for us under the apt alias of Bleakland.’
‘Do sit down,’ Stephen said.
Schuyler looked approvingly round the room. The prospect of Big Allen seen in the distance above the garden fence brought a smile to his lips that was almost arch. He raised his hand to it as to an old friend spotted on the other side of the street.
‘Lest you think we American academics lead lives of leisure, Mr Whalby, I should tell you I’ve been taking six months’ sabbatical. A month here, a month at Haworth, a little trip to the Lakes, and then back here to my kindly hosts. It’s been quite a summer.’
Stephen watched the book being slipped out of its envelope. His cheeks felt hot. Schuyler laid the book in his lap and looked at it meditatively. ‘Well, Mr Whalby, maybe I should come to the point and not take up more of your time than is strictly necessary. I don’t know if you’re aware that I interest myself a good deal in Alfred Osborn Tace. I teach him to my students and I’ve written one or two little works on him and his works.’ He lifted up the book and wagged it. ‘Viz,’ he said facetiously, ‘this one. My latest, Muse of Fire. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know I had a copy of it with me in Chesney, but by a piece of luck this one was in my car. We academics have a well-deserved reputation for absent-mindedness, you may say.’
The relief was great. Whatever the professor had come about, it wasn’t to expose a vital clue in the mystery of Harriet Crozier’s death.
‘I happened to read your article in the Three Towns Echo with which my hostess kindly provided me this morning. An interesting little piece, if I may say so. Now I expect you’ll understand to what all this preamble is tending.’
Stephen nodded. ‘Good Lord, yes. You mean about Tace being my grandfather?’
‘Yes, indeed, Mr Whalby. Frankly, I’m fascinated. Though Mr Fowler wouldn’t care for me to say so, I’m intrigued.’ Schuyler began to talk of his knowledge of Tace, his researches into every aspect of the novelist’s life. Without making too much of it, he must consider himself one of the world’s leading authorities on Tace’s life and works, and yet…
‘The descent,’ said Stephen, ‘was, I’m afraid, on the wrong side of the blanket.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Oh, Lord. I mean my mother was actually, well, illegitimate.’
‘What a most interesting expression,’ Schuyler said. He seemed very much struck. ‘The wrong side of the blanket. Yes, one sees how it must have originated. I must look it up in my host’s copy of Brewer’s. But, Mr Whalby, your mother being a natural daughter of Tace’s, what an astonishing thing this is. I must confess to being astounded. One thinks of Tace’s strict morality, you know, that almost prudish rectitude of his. I confess to a certain dismay in finding my hero — shall we say blemished by hypocrisy? No longer quite immaculate. Though still sans peur, no longer sans reproche. May I inquire the date of your mother’s birth?’
‘May 1925,’ said Stephen. ‘May, the twenty-fifth.’
‘Well, more and more fascinating. The previous summer and autumn, of course, were those spent by your grandfather carrying out the famous lecture tour of the United States. I maybe have to check on my dates here …’ The professor opened the book and leafed through chapter eleven. ‘Ah,
yes. The tour, as I should have been able to recollect without aid, began in the June of 1924 and concluded in some triumph for Tace through November. Your grandmother was perhaps an American lady? Or was she a companion Tace took with him — in great secrecy, I must say — on his travels?’
Stephen was silent. He took the book out of Schuyler’s hands and read the dates. The print danced a little before his eyes. It was a matter of the greatest interest to Tace scholars, Schuyler was saying. If at some not too distant date he could trouble Stephen for chapter and verse, for a history of his grandmother, for any memoir of his own he could provide. They must discuss the whole subject. Any life of Tace, in view of this disclosure, would necessarily require amendment …
Stephen said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to excuse me now. I have to go out.’
‘Of course.’ Schuyler jumped up. He was all apology, all consideration. ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is. Let me leave the book with you. We shall meet again. You can’t imagine how excited I feel at the new prospects this discovery opens out, Mr Whalby.’
Stephen saw him out and closed the door. The sight of the book back again on the chestnut leaf table started him laughing, though he wasn’t amused. He didn’t know why he should laugh so hysterically when, in the space of ten minutes, a major motive for his continued existence had collapsed.
After a while he sat down on the settee and tried to read the relevant part of chapter eleven. He found it impossible to take it in. Somehow he didn’t think he would ever read much again. Reading had had something to do with being Tace’s grandson, not the descendant of Arthur Naulls. He felt thirsty and when he went into the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water he stared almost without comprehension at the bowl of broken eggs, the whisk, the slices of bread on a plate. Had he been going to eat something? Eating seemed as remote and bizarre an exercise as reading.
