The Possessors

by John Christopher

  “The relief doesn’t have much chance to operate at present. It probably will, eventually. As to future—well, no, not by normal standards. But one gets used to a way of life, or half-life.”

  He was drawing the contrast with what he saw as her own normal happy marriage—with what, she reminded herself, she had seen as such. Keeping away from that, she said, “It all happened suddenly—her husband being transferred to New York?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Suddenly to me, of course. But when I look back … there are things that make sense. I think she probably had several months’ warning.”

  “I suppose she thought it was better for you that it should happen in the way it did. And was right.”

  He said wryly, “On the premise that when I knew I would make another strenuous effort to get her to come away with me, yes. And that she had made up her mind about it. She only had a couple of hours to contend with after she told me.”

  “Try not to be bitter.” She paused. “It’s rather silly saying that, isn’t it? But for your own sake …”

  “Yes, I know. I don’t think that is my main reaction. The loss—a certain numbness.” He looked up. “I’m being pretty selfish, aren’t I?”

  “Selfish?”

  “Talking about loss. After all, I know she’s alive. The finality is not such a terrible one. And you can talk yourself round it. I do. Whereas with you …”

  The new log she had put on the fire caught, and burned brightly. Resin glistened in the leaping yellow of flame. Jane said, “I was fond of my husband. I thought I would miss him.”

  She saw him look at her, and look away. It was his turn to be embarrassed. She wondered what could have made her say that, and felt a flush of acute shame, as though she had paraded her naked body for him to see. There was an impulse to get up and go away, but she controlled it. She was waiting for Douglas to say something, make some comment, knowing that anything he said would only make things worse.

  But he said nothing and, looking again, she saw that his eyes had come back to her. And that she could bear them. She knew also that she could not leave it like that.

  “I married young,” she said. “And not knowing much about it. I was very shy in my teens. Harry—my husband —I admired him tremendously. He was fifteen years older than I was, already settled. A horticulturist—tomatoes, lettuce, flowers, some peppers and aubergines. He worked hard, and was good at it. I had a comfortable life.”

  She paused for a moment before going on. “I met someone when we had been married a year and a half. We got to know each other, found we had much the same tastes and interests. And there was physical attraction. Eventually, he told me he loved me, and I thought I loved him.”

  “Only thought?”

  “Very seriously thought. He wanted me to go away with him. He was sure Harry would be willing to give me a divorce, and I think he was right about that. His own wife would have been only too glad to divorce him. They had one child, a daughter, away at school. Harry and I were childless. It all seemed quite simple.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything went right. I stopped seeing him, and got on with the business of being a faithful wife. Hard going at first, but smugness is a great help. It would probably have been a good deal harder if I had gone to bed with him. But I have very respectable parents, and I never wanted to rebel against them. Bourgeois standards, I’m afraid.”

  He said, “You make it sound easy.”

  “You mean, there couldn’t have been anything very strong there to begin with? Perhaps not. It seemed strong to me. I lost weight—couldn’t sleep—in the end had a minor physical collapse and went home to mother. Harry was very good, very patient. For a time, I thought he might have known something—you know, like the husband in Brief Encounter—but I’m pretty sure he didn’t. He couldn’t imagine there being anything wrong with our marriage; and that was comforting, too. I stayed with my parents a couple of months, and then they packed me off back to him. And I made more good resolutions, and kept them this time. Life settled down. I slept at night, put the weight back I had lost.” She smiled. “To the point of having to diet a little, in fact.”

  “And no regrets?”

  “I think regrets need fairly constant attention to survive. I made sure I didn’t look at mine.”

  “It sounds like a new morality tale. I’m not being nasty.”

  “I know. No happy ending, though.”

  “When your husband died . ..”

  “It was a shock, of course. Bronchitis, which turned to pneumonia, and the drugs didn’t work in his case. For a time, one doesn’t realize what has happened. Eventually I came out of that stage. I found I accepted his death quite easily. What I couldn’t accept was the pointlessness of my own life. Nothing seemed worth doing. Nothing does.”

  “How long had it been since—”

  “Martin? A couple of lifetimes. Eight years.”

  “You’d lost touch?”

  “Oh, yes. His marriage broke up, he remarried, and went to live in Canada. But that wasn’t important. I’d killed that long ago. The point was that nothing was important. All the effort and misery was a waste. And there was nothing to put in its place, and no prospect of there ever being anything. Does this sound like nonsense?”

  “No.”

  She looked at her hands. “I’m amazed at myself—telling you all this.”

  “I started it.”

  “Yes. Do you feel any better?”

  He thought about that. “No.”

  She laughed. “Nor do I!”

  But at least she felt grateful to him, for listening, for not saying the wrong things. And to feel this small degree of indebtedness, to another human being, was presumably better than nothing. She had a wave of tiredness, and a desire for solitude.

  “I think I’ll go up,” she said, “and take my bath. I’ll see you at supper, Douglas.”

  9

  Mandy worried about Stephen, and about George.

  It was a terrible thing for the boy to have the familiar reassuring figures of his parents replaced by bogeymen he must guard himself against—much much worse than it would have been to lose them entirely. She wanted to fuss him, in an attempt, admittedly inadequate, to make up for it, but, of course, during the day she just did not have the time. The scatter-brained side of Marie’s nature had come increasingly into evidence during the past few days, and after Peter’s disappearance she was almost useless. She had to be told the same thing over and over again, and then was as likely as not to drift away from whatever she was doing halfway through. It meant watching her all the time.

  She had thought that she might take care of the boy after supper, while Marie was clearing up, but by that time Elizabeth had established herself as being in charge of him. This was reasonable; she had had the time to devote to him during the day. And she was good with him, and he seemed to like her. It was just that she belonged to that class of Englishwoman that Mandy found depressing. The Graingers, like the Deepings, had two children, a boy and a girl, but theirs were away at boarding school and had been, she guessed, from the age of seven. She had shown no anxiety—as Ruth would certainly have done in her place—over the fact that the avalanche had put her out of touch with them. When they came home for the holidays she would greet them with a bright welcoming smile, and a careful eye for clothes that needed mending or renewing. She would be calm and kind with them, a friendly stranger.

  There was no doubt that as an approach it had something to commend it. Her calmness communicated to the boy, and made him calm also. Convenient for the rest of them, bottled up here with who-knew-what outside, but wrong, she was sure—truly wrong. He was only ten, after all. There should have been storms—tears and helplessness —and someone to soothe him, and make things just a little bit better.

  Marie left the kitchen to get the rest of the things from the dining room, and there was time—not much, but enough, and without snatching or gulping—to get herself a drink f
rom the bottle behind the jar of vanilla sugar. It was nearly empty, she saw. Enough for tonight, but she would have to get some more in the morning. She contemplated herself for a moment with melancholy and sad disgust. What, in any case, could she have given the boy? What could she give anyone? Even George …

  She could see that the strain was beginning to tell on George; the small tic, unnoticed probably by the others, that pulled from time to time at his left eye was a sign of that. And he was drinking more—not ostentatiously, as he usually did, but with a quiet compulsiveness. And as he drank, he became morose. When Jane, after supper, sought to press the suggestion that the women should stand guard at night as well as the men, he rejected the idea with a sharpness that was almost vicious. He said coldly, “No. And we won’t discuss it any more. I’ll decide who goes on watch, and when.”

  She was relieved that no one challenged him. In this mood, had one of the men done so, there might have been violence. She had seen George hit a man, without warning, simply for smiling at something he had said. And yet he was not by nature a violent man—no one knew that better than she did. Not even, normally, in drink. But drink and this mood together were the danger.

  In the end, it was fixed that the three men should stand guard on the basis of two hours on duty followed by four hours off. Douglas was given the first period from ten o’clock until midnight, and George was to follow him. Selby would have the middle watch, from two to four, but was not required to do any more that night.

  They arranged the details of this, and Selby said, “Just after ten o’clock now. You’re on, Douglas. And I think I will go up to bed and get what sleep I can before George comes looking for me. Don’t forget to leave the whisky out, George.”

  There was a general move to follow him. Mandy herself felt tired; the day had been exhausting in more ways than one. She lingered, though, until only George and Douglas were left. She said to George, “Are you coming up?”

  He stared at her. “Later.” She did not move, and he said irritably, “I’ve said I’ll come later. Go on up.”

  She did not like leaving him, but there was no choice. She went up to Marie, in the attic, and saw that she was all right, and then to her own bedroom. The boy had been there the night before, but tonight Elizabeth had had his cot moved into her room. She undressed slowly, and said her prayers slowly, praying in addition for Stephen, and for the Deepings and Andy, and old Peter. One got used to things—to the fact of their being out there in the mist and snow. She shivered and, sitting on the edge of the bed, poured herself the last drink of the day, and saw that this bottle, too, was nearly empty. The lamp by her bed flickered. The oil was getting low. Something must happen soon—the mist disperse, the road from Nidenhaut be cleared. All the bewilderment and tension and danger would be over, and things would be as they had been before. She found she was beginning to cry, the tears coursing down her hot cheeks, and she put the light out, and climbed into bed.

  Fut she did not sleep. She was worried still about George, and found herself listening for the sound of him coming up to bed. The occasional creakings of the house came into focus; she had long been accustomed to them as a background, but each, now, might be his footstep on the stairs or the landing. Might be, but was not.

  She thought of another old and creaking house, more than thirty years away. That summer, with all the cousins staying … Solemnity among the grownups, and lectures on extravagance. The terrible news about Uncle Lee, told to her by Cooper first, as he always told her things first, and the realization that that was why the Mulway cousins were staying, and staying so long—that they were orphans, and poor. “Dad’s taken a beating in the stock market, too,” Cooper had explained, “but nothing like the one Uncle Lee took. They don’t know about it, Mandy— they’ve been told he’s ill. So we must be nice to them, but we mustn’t let them know, get suspicious even. You see that?”

  She had seen that. “Are you going to tell Clyde?” she had asked. Cooper had shaken his head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure he could keep it a secret.” A warm feeling: Clyde was a year older than she was, but she was the one Cooper trusted, always had done. Though Clyde was nice, too, even if he talked too much and laughed too much.

  And the cousins were nice: Hilda, her own age, Catharine, a few months younger than Cooper, but so shy and innocent, and Charlie, who was only six. It had been a wonderful summer altogether—such fun and, despite the stock market and what had happened to Uncle Lee, so full of happiness. There probably were squabbles from time to time—there had to be with Cooper and Clyde both around—but she could not remember them. Only bright mornings going down to the sea, golden afternoons in the long grass of the orchard … and on the few wet days, the house creaking to six pairs of feet. Sardines and hide-and-seek, and that game that Cooper had thought up with all the complicated rules—something like chess, something like cops-and-robbers—playing it through all the rooms and corridors of the house. In all her life, she had never known such a feeling of belonging as she did that summer, a sense of giving and sharing and loving.

  And all gone, dispersed, faded like an old photograph to the point where it doesn’t mean anything any more. Cooper killed somewhere over Berlin. Clyde dying in the hospital in North Africa. Catharine in that other hospital, in Vermont, and unlikely to come out even though she might live* another thirty years. Hilda just through with her third divorce and remarried. And little Charlie the broker, making the money his father lost, desperate and successful and twenty pounds overweight, with three overweight children and an underweight wife. And herself, of course.

  A board creaked again, and again there was silence after it. She looked at her watch, squinting at the tiny luminous fingers. Past eleven. He would not be coming up now before two. She might as well go to sleep.

  And sleep still evaded her. She drifted back, in reverie, to that good time and, though wakeful, was happy. The time on the boat … the time on the beach … the picnic among the sand dunes … even old Caesar dying, because there had been the time of burying him, and crying, and yet feeling that it was right for him to die, an old dog, and be buried in the orchard, with the wooden cross the boys had made, and the inscription Cooper had written: “Caesar—aged Twelve—mostly a Bulldog.”

  It was ten minutes after twelve when she looked at her watch again. Douglas would have gone to bed. She got out, felt for her slippers, and found her wrap hanging from the door. She did not bother to light the lamp, but made her way blindly to the landing. The glow of light from below directed her to the stairs. It was dark, but she could manage, using the banister to guide her. She made as little noise as possible so as not to disturb the others. There was a lamp lit in the hall, and light came from the half-open door to the bar. She pushed it right open, and went in.

  George was looking out of the window; the curtains had been drawn back. He turned around quickly, hearing her. His eyes were cold, his mouth working, and she thought he was going to be angry with her.

  She said, “I just…”

  She did not know what to say. He stared at her for a moment, then said, “I didn’t know it was you, Mandy.” His voice was mild, and she saw his face relax. “Couldn’t you sleep, lovey?”

  “Not very well.”

  “You don’t want to let this business get you down.” He came across the room, and put his arm around her waist. “Don’t forget you’re the girl we all depend on. Anyway, now that you’re down, we’ll have a drink.”

  He had drunk a great deal. His voice was just faintly slurred which was unusual for him. She said, “I’m not sure that I should.”

  He released her, and went behind the bar.

  “What will it be? Brandy? Gin?”

  “Just a little gin, then.” She watched him pour it, and another whisky for himself. “I’m drinking too much, George.”

  “We all are,” he said. “We all are. Perhaps we ought to get out of this business. What do you think? Remember that chap who wanted me to do crop-spraying? I migh
t take him up on that. Parsons? I’ve got his address somewhere. Operating from Bournemouth, wasn’t he? We could get a cottage in the New Forest … beautiful country. And drink beer. No one can drink too much beer. What do you think about that, Mandy?”

  “It might be fun.”

  “I could do it all right. Piece of cake, after a Lancaster. And a useful job—you know what I mean? Dig for Victory—two blades of grass growing where one grew before—that sort of thing.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “You could do it.”

  “And a bit of spraying in foreign parts, so we don’t get too bloody insular. That’s the trouble with the English—too bloody insular. A few months in South America, maybe. You would come along with me, of course. I’m not going anywhere without you, Mandy. You know that.”

  She said, “Do you need me, George?”

  “Need you?” He stared at her. “Of course I need you. You know I do. Don’t you?”

  Not now, she thought of saying—not here, in the small hours, being lonely, and drunk, and confused and miserable. There is a different kind of needing, a belonging. As it was with Cooper and me, and even Clyde, and the cousins. And you don’t need me like that; it’s a long time since anyone did.

  She smiled, and said, “Yes, I know.” He was still looking at her. “One says silly things in the middle of the night.”

  His gaze left her, and went into the distance. “Get out to the Far East, perhaps. It’s pretty big stuff in those parts. I’ve always wanted to see India. Flew us out there in forty-five, and back the same week. One of those bloody silly things they used to do.”

  He was happy, talking. In the five years since there really had been Parsons—a small excitable man with bulging eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles, and what he himself kept on referring to as “vision”—this theme had cropped up at intervals, when George was tired, depressed, overworked. He had been flattered even then by the notion that he could, well into his forties, go back to flying. As the years passed, the idea had taken on an elaborate, dreamlike quality. She listened, and nodded, and drank the gin he had poured her. It was something that he could live in the future still, even a dream future.