by Sheila Burns
Common sense urged Lorna to refuse, but somehow she could not put that common sense into words. She glanced across at Michael, but at this moment he was having a word with Brown about a telephone call that he had put through to the north, and there was some argument. He had not followed the conversation.
‘I ‒ I am tired,’ she said weakly. With doubt, knowing that she shrank from something that she did not understand.
Roger was looking at her. About him at this moment there was dejection, a rather tragic despair, nothing of the villain but much of the man who was ill, and utterly wretched with it. Nothing of that other man who she half believed he could be.
‘Please come?’ he said.
The shrilling of the hall telephone meant that Michael’s call had suddenly come through. ‘Excuse me,’ he muttered and rose. Brown went ahead of him, hurrying to open the door for him. Lorna saw him like some decrepit black beetle on spindly wobbly legs.
The door shut and three of them were alone on the terrace. Mrs. Liskeard, herself and Roger. Mrs. Liskeard was not noticing what was going on, she was disturbed about the delay in the transit of the flowers. The bouquet must be despatched, and tonight. Lorna knew that Roger was deeply unhappy because all day he had been feeling wretchedly ill again. He watched her with sad dark eyes. She herself had multitudinous doubts, aware that she stood on a threshold, yet unaware of what lay beyond it.
‘All right then, if we get back before it is dark,’ she said.
‘We’ll get back all right.’ Roger stood up.
‘Wait for the coffee, dears,’ said Mrs. Liskeard.
He said, ‘No,’ and then, ‘Lorna wants to be back before the night falls.’
Before the night falls, she thought, and then, How desperate that sounds! ‘Yes,’ she said, and then going into a laborious explanation, ‘There’s thunder hanging about, and I always hate it. Please let’s forgo the coffee, and get over there now. There’s just about time.’
Brown brought them the flowers as they went down the steps to the waiting car. Michael was still on the telephone, for apparently something had gone wrong with the appointment. The flowers were exquisite, Lorna had never seen such a lovely bunch before. Syringa with the leaves stripped clean of the branches, so that there could be nothing dark, or depressing, or heavy; white lupins, some of the small white lilies which grew so profusely at Wiseways; white roses, too.
‘How lovely they are!’
Brown took instant pleasure. ‘Yes, Nurse, they are, aren’t they? Mrs. Strong’ll be so pleased, she’s very fond of flowers.’
So the servants knew all about Enid’s news and Lorna might have guessed it, if only she had given it a second thought. One could never keep anything from them, and she smiled to herself as she laid the bouquet at the back of the car, putting them down gently, and their perfume filled the air.
‘This mustn’t take too long,’ she said yet again, as she got in beside Roger.
‘Of course not.’ They started quickly up the avenue and out through the lodge gates into the road beyond. The sun had already set, but the summer night would be brilliant for some time yet. Roger murmured, ‘My aunt would have had another attack from sheer worry if we hadn’t brought the flowers along tonight. She wanted Enid to have them,’ then a little sharply, ‘The funny thing is that although I like Lionel enormously, I have never really cared for Enid.’
‘I thought that the first time we met. Then we had a bit of a row, and I changed. Now I think she’s fine.’
‘I’ll never think that, but it takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it?’ He rushed the car on, remembering her concern to be back before the darkness came.
The Strongs’ car was still standing in the drive before their house, and some of the luggage had not yet been brought in. Lionel himself came to the door, and saw the two of them standing there.
‘What heavenly flowers! What are you doing here?’
Roger grinned. ‘My aunt was in a bit of a tizzy; these were to have come over this afternoon, I imagine, and got left, and when she heard you’d returned unexpectedly early, there was a panic! Lorna and I brought them right over.’
‘Come in, Enid is dying to see you.’
‘It’s getting dark,’ Lorna reminded him.
‘It won’t be really dark for a little while yet.’ Lionel had hold of her hand, and drew her into the hyper-modern dining-room where they had been having something of a picnic meal. One of Enid’s statues stood in the corner, much too big for the room, and overpowering. The statue was of a big clumsy clown leering at life, and at this moment it struck Lorna that it was exactly what was happening to her. Life had become too big for her. She was not leering at it, she was afraid of it.
‘We mustn’t be long,’ she said.
Enid held out welcoming arms. Her face was tired, she had not bothered to make it up again, and she looked thoroughly exhausted, but happy with it. ‘How lovely of you, all white too! Wedding or funeral or christening, and this is a wedding and a christening in one.’ She buried her face rapturously in them.
‘Aunt wanted you to have them. She was quite upset when she found you were already home and the flowers had been left behind,’ Roger explained yet again.
‘What a dear she is! She shouldn’t have worried. We are so happy, even though I am tired out, I am so happy. Bring out the drinks, Lionel, and we’ll have a toast to the baby.’
I shall never get away from here, thought Lorna, and at this moment she felt an almost uncanny terror behind her. There will be no escape.
They sat down.
There was infinite pleasure in Enid’s face as she sprawled on the highly modern sofa with its thin little legs and covered with lime green. Emotion had put a new look into Enid’s eyes, the unbelievable pleasure of a longing which when she had already abandoned all thoughts of it being fulfilled, now quite suddenly was with her. She lay back amongst the podgy little cushions ‒ like iron-holders, Lorna thought, for she did not like modern furnishings ‒ and she smiled into her glass.
‘Your Michael Bland knew what he was saying,’ she said.
‘He always does.’
They sat on too long, of course. Somehow Lorna had guessed that this must happen from the moment when they had come into the room and had settled down. Twilight comes too swiftly, and when they went out to the waiting car, the shadows were in the shrubberies and the distance was blurred and lost.
‘We’ll have to be very quick, Roger,’ she said.
‘We’ll rush it. At night anyway the roads are clear.’ He hurried the adieux (he was obviously trying to help her), and then sped the car out of the drive gates into the road. He travelled fast, faster than she liked.
‘Roger, it’s awfully dark already and you are going far too fast. It’s dangerous.’
‘You don’t know anything about this car; it’s used to travelling fast.’
‘My father has the same model, and I often drive it for him.’
‘All right. If you don’t like the way I take her, and know how she works, you drive her yourself.’ He slowed down.
‘That’s silly, Roger.’
‘It isn’t silly at all,’ and his voice sounded sulky. He stopped the car and got out. ‘Here you are! You drive her back. I can’t.’
‘All right,’ and now she was angry. She had some difficulty in starting, for there was a small difference in the clutch to which she had to get used. Roger laughed, and he laughed unpleasantly.
‘Not so clever as you thought?’
‘Oh come off it, Roger! It’s just that it isn’t quite the same in Dad’s car. We’re off now.’
The dark was increasing rapidly. The shadows lay across the road, and the ditches were inky black. Above them the stars were quite brilliant, and it was about an hour to moonrise. Roger had gone quiet, quite probably it was the sulks, he was that sort of man, and if he did sulk, she did not care, for after all she was at the wheel now.
That was when she felt the strange but well remembe
red feeling of something heavy and round, and desperately hard pressed against her ribs. Was she living the past again? Or had it recurred? A gun, she told herself, choking a moan in her throat, the same gun! And he had said he hated guns!
‘Drive on!’ said Roger through his teeth.
She was back to the start of this, right back with a stranger, only this time the stranger had a name, this time he would not let her escape with her life. How had she been such a fool? How had she allowed night to come on, and enclose them?
‘You always knew it was me,’ he told her.
‘Yes, I did.’ Lies were not going to be any use to her. There was nothing she could say or do. She drove mechanically praying that she would not faint. Illusion was dead, torn down between them, and now there could be no more play-acting, only stark reality.
‘I’m going to shoot you,’ he said.
‘And then?’
‘Before you die, I am going to take you for myself. I want you. I have always wanted you, and you know it.’
‘Yes, Roger, I know that.’ Her own coolness surprised her, she would never have believed that she could be so calm.
He gave an extraordinary little laugh, which made a strange sound in his throat, almost a moan. ‘Drive into the side of the road, by the copse there. Do what I tell you,’ and the gun pressed harder. She was beginning to bruise and it hurt a great deal. Never mind, she told herself, it won’t last for long.
A copse, of all things! It was the last thing that she wanted and he had timed this well for his own purpose. On the moorland with the stars she had felt safer, but the shade of the trees was alarming. They dropped into the road dip, a copse on the left was thick, she knew that, and the verge before it was wide and would give good parking room. The next command told her what to do.
‘Run her on to the grass.’
She had some nerve left! ‘No, Roger. Not here.’ Somehow she could not bear it to be here. The thought of dying in the black shadow of the trees was hateful.
‘I’ll shoot you if you delay. What have I to lose? Life means nothing to me, it never will.’
She drove on to the verge. She stopped the engine, loathing the sudden silence that came. The gun still rammed her hard, death jabbed at her ribs.
She said, ‘Roger, don’t be so foolish. Think of your aunt, you love her, don’t you?’
‘Love her? Why should I? She stands between me and a big legacy. Once my uncle stood where she stands, but he did not stay there long. He died.’
Acting on impulse she asked the question that appalled her. ‘You helped him?’
‘Clever girl! You’ve got it in one!’
‘Are you ‒ are you helping your aunt?’
He turned to look at her, and now she could see that the dark eyes were most horribly rimmed with white, his mouth gaped as he laughed. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
She had been crazy not to recognise the full extent of his madness. Until now, she had treated it lightly, she had put him into the wrong class and he was far worse than she had ever imagined. She said gently, ‘Roger, let me help you?’
‘Back into the mental home? I don’t think! Back to insulin injections and to the electric shock? No, I’m not taking that way out. I’ve tried it once, never again.’
‘I’ll help you another way.’
For a single moment he faltered. He swung round to that moment when he was not sure of weeping or shrieking. In that moment of doubt, of agony, she snatched the gun from him. She knocked it from his hand, he was entirely unprepared, and it fell with a thud on to the floor. He let out an oath and groped.
With her foot she raked it closer to her own side, and now he was furious. That was when the headlights of an approaching car suddenly came over the hill and painted the whole roadway bright yellow.
‘There’s another car coming, Roger.’
He muttered something, she did not understand what it was, not even if it were a groan, or words. It’s Michael! she thought, Michael come to meet us, Michael who may be killed. I have got to keep my head.
‘The car’s stopping, Roger.’
He must instantly have recognised what was happening, for he gave the desperate gasp of a man who sees death just ahead of him; the criminal who steps towards the noose, men beside him. The criminal approaching the cliff edge knowing that there can be no return.
He grabbed again for the gun.
If he got it anything might happen, and she tried to kick it aside. He saw what she was doing, and as he reached, she pushed his hand away. The car stopped beside them, and now it was possible to bear, but he got the gun. Quite suddenly, desperately close to her, she heard the hideous explosion. She smelt the strong smell of burning, and of gunpowder, and choked. As she slipped into unconsciousness she thought that she had been hit. This is death, she told herself, this is the end …
When Lorna came to she was in Michael’s car.
He had his arms round her, his face was nuzzling her neck, and she smelt and could taste the sharp scent of brandy.
‘You’re all right, Lorna, you’re quite all right. You weren’t hurt, it was just the shock.’
‘What happened?’ Trembling from the horror of it, she tried to put together the last bits and pieces she could remember, but she failed. She was dead. She must be dead, and she was dreaming again what had happened.
‘It was Roger?’ she gasped.
‘For him it is all over. It’s the better way.’
‘You mean …?’
‘I think he grabbed the gun and it went off in his hand. He got it full blast.’
‘Oh, Michael!’
‘How you missed it, I can’t imagine. It was the biggest fluke a girl ever had.’ He paused. ‘Now we are going home. I’ve got to get right out of this, and away. Whilst you lay here unconscious I stopped a chap on a motor bike and sent him along to the phone box for the police. We have to wait for them and then go on. Anywhere, but away.’
‘Michael, I feel so cold.’
‘Shock,’ he said, ‘you know it’s shock, that’s the way life goes,’ and he pulled a rug out of the back of the car and wrapped it round her. Even then she did not warm. She saw the car approaching fast over the prow of the hill.’
‘I can’t wait too long, Michael.’
‘I do know.’
Everything faded and went patchy, came back and went again, in a hideous confused blur of nothingness. There were people with them, strangers, the police taking down notes, and she saw them coming in and out of bouts of unconsciousness.
After what seemed to be the unending time of eternity, she was travelling home beside Michael. Thank God, beside Michael! Heartbreak Surgeon, she was thinking, Heartbreak Surgeon, why did they call him that?
He said, ‘We have got to be careful with Mrs. Liskeard, and you must pull yourself together to help her, dearest.’
‘I am trying.’
‘This is probably the best thing that could have been, I am sure of that. A nice chap goes mad, and for some time I had been suspicious about his desire for his aunt’s money. I heard some details of his uncle’s death, and was getting anxious about his real relations with his aunt.’
‘What do you mean? Roger loved her.’
‘Yes, he loved her in one way, but he was two men. The Hyde wanted her possessions, and the Jekyll loved her. It was, however, inevitable that the Hyde would win. Poor man! He lived for adventure, and perhaps the greatest adventure of them all is death.’
‘Oh, Michael!’
‘After this we walk together,’ he said very tenderly and pressed her hand.
She did not deny him.
They went down the avenue, beautiful in the moonlight, and now she was unafraid; she had become calm, for nothing mattered save their two selves. The ghost of Frances Ford was laid, and the horror of Roger Liskeard was gone. The man beside her was no longer the Heartbreak Surgeon but the life partner, the man who loved her, and if death had been the great adventure for Roger, love was the great adve
nture for the two of them.
They went up the steps, and in at the door of Wiseways with the warm and tender light streaming out towards them. They had returned to security.
THE END
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