She raised her right hand to the edge of the invisible curtain, and with her left pointed behind her to the seething flood which the curtain hushed. Unmistakably it was a monition, or at least a caution.
Aylwin-Scott shook his head in vigorous negation, and with his own arms and hands made towards her a gesture of mock-supplication. Often he had known it to prevail with females, at least in the momentary situation; until its use with them had become almost unconscious.
The woman appeared to relax a little, and, lowering her hand, took a few steps to the side. She was still watching him closely, and, he fancied, not smiling at all.
“Be friends,” he said, dropping his arms and attempting no further gesture.
She spoke. But it was not in any tongue that Aylwin-Scott could identify. He took it to be Norman-French. Sensibly, he had been prepared for that from his first entrance into the Bower. One trouble was that he hardly excelled even at contemporary French, notwithstanding the fact that, when the time came, he would be living in France for years, and trying to make a proper livelihood there.
All he could distinguish was the one name, “Eleanor”. Of course it was natural that he should be taken for some kind of spy or other hostile invader. It might well seem almost incredible to her that a man could attain to the centre of the Bower without aid; suspect aid, almost certainly; and proffered by the Queen’s minions.
He could think only to shake his head once more, and to essay a reassuring smile.
Again she spoke. This time he understood no single word. It was accepted, he knew, that Norman-French was as unlike Larousse French as Chaucer’s English was unlike that of a university sociologist, or Ancient Greek unlike the guttural babble of the jaded Piraeus.
For the moment, he could devise no further response,
She looked puzzled, then opened wide her mouth and pointed inside it interrogatively with her forefinger.
One smiling negative movement of his head would suffice, he hoped, to indicate that dumb he was not; a condition to which she was probably well accustomed. But he suspected that further words from him would increase her alarm. He might well be taken for a warlock. She must know much about warlocks too. A warlock would have no difficulty with the intricacies of the Bower.
He then recollected: she herself had been widely assumed to be a witch. Indeed, that had always been the official explanation of her and of all her mixed achievement. Good women en masse had even vacated a small nunnery because of its proximity to her recondite abode.
For what might pass as a long time, the two of them gazed at one another. The only sound was the slow drip which Aylwin-Scott knew was of blood. The pugs seemed to replenish themselves quite soundlessly, though unflaggingly. The birds had fallen silent again and were watching, waiting, withdrawing.
Then, on an instant, she drew a jewelled cross from the top of her dress. Presumably it had been hanging from a chain round her neck, though the chain was so fine that Aylwin-Scott could not see it. So much for the witchcraft hypothesis. It had vanished as soon as thought of, when one had found oneself alone with the nominated lady.
She pressed the cross to her lips tenderly, kissing it again and again. The splendid stones glinted in the watery sun. She carefully rebestowed the holy object within her bosom. Her touching feminine movements when doing this filled Aylwin-Scott with desire for her.
He could not but smile a little. She was so sweet, he felt. Almost all women have at moments that melting sweetness, he thought. It promised an illusion of total reconciliation; momentarily even with the universe.
She stepped, not this time crabwise, but actually towards him and with her right hand slightly advanced. He saw that the hand was adorned with strange rings. He would have preferred it bare, white, and girlish.
Now that she was closer to him, he could see that her eyes were blue pools to drown in. He could not have moved a muscle even if he had wished.
He could see that her feet were bare. The lawn was as green taffeta. To him its texture might have been a faint squirming embarrassment, had he been unshod. But the sight, the sound, and even the feel of her white feet advancing delicately across that faintly tinkling green would be with him for all his days. No terror, no lassitude, no deception would ever erase it.
It had been hard to decide how loud or soft was the unceasing knell. It was equally unclear how slowly or swiftly the woman was coming towards him. Her hair was golden. Aylwin-Scott had seen such hair painted on the walls of churches.
It seemed to him that within an instant she would be in touching distance. Even her lips were mulberry-coloured: either of their nature, or stained with the fruit; but perhaps by magic. The bone-structure of her face and head seemed as beneficent as that of the Virgin Mother.
Before the consummation of their proximity, a single, mutually joyous touch, all that is ever necessary, a shadow fell. Despite the damp weakness of the sun, the shadow was black and huge.
The woman silently retreated.
At Aylwin-Scott’s left hand had appeared a tall man, proportionately broad and more than proportionately muscular, from constant wielding of the axe, the bow, and the heavy lance or shaft. His beard and eyes were black, but Aylwin-Scott could see perfectly well that the beard had been crudely dyed. The hair on the man’s head was too sparse to dye, and very short. He wore a single black garment, which left bare his arms and lower legs; very informal.
“Idling still?” enquired the man, in plain corrosive English. “Still idling, Michael?”
The voice of the world was achieving its final and crystallized oracle.
“This is the woman I love,” said Aylwin-Scott, quietly but firmly; exactly as he had always intended and long planned.
“What difference do you suggest that makes?”
“That at last I am free.”
“You perfect fool. For how long? Try to wake up.”
“We shall start completely anew. In some other land. Any land but this.”
“There’s no we. I’m concerned only about you, Michael.”
“We shall live together and we shall die together.”
“Words, Michael. There’s not a thing you can do.”
“With her help, I mean to try.”
Aylwin-Scott glanced at the woman, who now crouched at a distance: abject before the man and king. He could see a thick grey snake weaving slowly through her wondrous, fair hair. He realized that the pure and speaking perfume of the roses had strangely evaporated; that the heavy honeysuckle was in command once more. He looked back at the tall and burly man.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you, Michael.” The man’s tone was entirely grim and serious; desperate, even.
“Just leave me alone,” Aylwin-Scott responded half-jauntily. “That’s all I ask of you.”
“Everyone will do that soon enough, Michael. Before long, you’ll find out. When it’s too late, of course. When you’re done for finally.”
Aylwin-Scott recollected the figure that had come shambling between his young and ardent self and the pretty page.
“That’s not yet. Not now.”
“Everything’s now, Michael. Haven’t you grasped even that?”
“Then the sweetness is now, too. You forget that.”
The man went striding away towards the place where the woman had drawn the invisible curtain. He seemed merely to ignore the woman, which was what Aylwin-Scott would have expected of him, and which many chaps said was what women really liked; but, when he himself looked at her, obviously for the last time, as is everything, he realized that she had vanished, fled, or merely hidden. Quite probably she would re-emerge, seductive as a dream, when her majestic master had rid her Bower of an intruder, and had clapped his huge hands, hard as if they had been tanned by tanners, flattening every line and fold of the weakness he abhorred.
Also for the last time, as everything is, Aylwin-Scott glanced round the flowered and tended enclosure, the centre and heart of the Bower. Behind his back, there h
ad been a new development. From the high, trim hedges had emerged fanged things which stood everywhere on guard; though the pretty, decorated pugs cropped on, regardless or inured. Flambeaux burned without and within the simple pavilion, though daylight remained, nor had excuse to depart for hours. It was a miracle that the small structure did not burn to ashes as he watched.
When Aylwin-Scott once more turned, he realized that more of the same guardians now edged that end of the pleasance also.
The mighty man, almost grotesque within his unrestrictive garment, was not going to draw back the invisible curtain himself. He had summoned a hideous buffoon for the task: shapeless, hairless, eyeless, almost noseless, for ever loveless.
The comical little entity had much labour with the heavy drapery. He gasped and grunted as he dragged, all the time stumbling across his own misshapen extremities. To Aylwin-Scott it mattered little, because as soon as the servitor had succeeded in moving the curtain at all, the din and crash of the immense cascade pounded through his being: and this time the cascade was visible as well as audible, sparkling as well as speaking, blinding as well as deafening. Possibly this explained why the presumed servant of the fall lacked organs of apprehension. And of course the first thing to be drowned was the tender plopping of the blood.
The mighty man urged Aylwin-Scott’s advance with the single sweeping gesture of one who has defaulters slain upon the instant, and often upon every instant. Those lethal guardians of the place that had stood in an arc before Aylwin-Scott, were now arrayed in phalanxes to either side. He had not seen them stir, and, indeed, had no idea what locomotion they possessed.
The far greater number that had surrounded the larger area to his rear had similarly massed behind him. He knew this perfectly well, though, as ever, he did not look back. To them no doubt was allotted the task of compelling him into the flood, should the need for compulsion arise. Perhaps intrusion, even into the Bower’s heart, truly occurred quite often.
Alone in the world, as are all men, Aylwin-Scott walked straight into the thunderous cascade. A third party, had one been conceivable, might have deemed his conduct heroic.
For moments the noise was as overwhelming as sudden death; and then Aylwin-Scott was not merely without the Bower, but right in the centre of the unkempt field, looking down on Paul Tent, who was asleep on his back, and with his mouth open, as if he were already a pensioner.
The shadow Aylwin-Scott had seen in his vision of Tent had instantly flitted. Aylwin-Scott’s senses were fatigued, so that he hardly glimpsed its going.
After moments had passed, Aylwin-Scott gave Tent a slight kick.
“Hullo, Michael. Did you discover anything?”
“A perfectly bloody tangle. Nothing definite anywhere.”
“Hardly to be expected after all this time.” Tent sat himself up. He stared at Aylwin-Scott. “I say, Michael. You are all right?”
“The whole place stinks of honeysuckle. I never want to smell honeysuckle again.” However, Aylwin-Scott then considered for a moment. “Well, not for some time.”
At that, Tent glanced quite sharply. “So,” he said, summing up everything. “So there it is.”
Then he sprang to his feet, “I suppose we’d better wend.”
“I suppose,” agreed Aylwin-Scott. “You go first.”
Life is so simple really. All our difficulties are in the mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Aickman was born in 1914 in London. Aickman is remembered today for two very different accomplishments: as the co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association he played an instrumental role in preserving and restoring England’s canal system, and as an author and editor he established himself as one of the most important figures in the history of weird fiction.
His earliest stories were published in We Are for the Dark (1951), a volume that featured three tales by Aickman and three by Elizabeth Jane Howard. His first solo collection would not come until Dark Entries (1964), a volume that would be followed over the next twenty-one years by six more original collections of tales that rank among the finest and most influential in the genre. Aickman was also the author of two volumes of autobiography, including the fascinating The Attempted Rescue (1966), as well as the novel The Late Breakfasters (1964). A novella, The Model, was published posthumously in 1987. Aickman also edited eight volumes of the Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories series between 1964 and 1972.
Aickman was a recipient of the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award, though in his lifetime he did not receive all the recognition he was due, particularly in the United States, where most of his works were never published. Since his death in 1981, however, his reputation has continued to grow, and in recent years he has been praised by Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, S. T. Joshi, Peter Straub, among many others.
The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Page 47