On the Blue Train

Home > Other > On the Blue Train > Page 21
On the Blue Train Page 21

by Kristel Thornell


  She said, ‘I promise.’ And continued, ‘I think I’ll tell you now about the night I ran away from home. I’ll make my deposition to you.’ She smiled a little. ‘I might fall asleep after, if you stay here by me.’ She took the hand that had been touching her, making a mesh of their fingers. ‘Is this where the naughty cat scratched you?’ She stroked the dainty bulge of the scar on his palm, and then released his hand. ‘I’ll always prefer a dog. They adore you completely.’

  Harry brought the chair over, to sit by her. It was good to be there and to listen to her voice. At last, she went quiet.

  He kept telling himself he was awake.

  He and Teresa were in two trains bound in opposite directions, which slowed as they passed one another, so that he was able to make out clearly, heart-wrenchingly, her dear lost face.

  Daylight. The sentinel had slept. He woke as if receiving an electric shock. Twitching like the fish discovering a hook has tethered him by a taut line to doom. He recalled waking in this way often after Valeria’s death, only then it had seemed to occur while he was scarcely at the lip of sleep. This sleep had been prolonged. The last vivid dream had involved bits of houses, some reworking of his parents’ farm, funny staircases abutting closet-like rooms that had never quite existed.

  He was folded in two and sore. He sat up. The bed was empty. He stretched, observing the play of sensitivities created by the contorted night. An odd irrational energy, too. His yearning for her.

  He got to his feet and looked about. His magnum opus had disappeared from the writing desk. He reassured himself that a doubtful, denuded feeling was common before a journey.

  26

  FIRST DAY Berkshire

  Archie had not come home. She had waited until late and he had not come home. He had chosen to be with the girl. After promising to try again, after giving it all lengthy consideration, he wanted a different woman, a girl, and a different home.

  Agatha left the house, with her wedding ring in it, with the child in it, and drove away.

  Her only plan was to find some stillness and give herself over to it. She knew that she was warped: all of her limp, sunken, molested, infirm. Logic had derailed and sleep no longer answered exhaustion. But for the first time in weeks, it seemed possible that the flustered fluttering of her heart might have been fading a little, that sinister prelude to an ear infection receding. She sat in her snub-nosed Morris Cowley by the Silent Pool, the beefy darkness of the countryside drawing at her motorcar. It was a magnetic pull, a centripetal gathering in.

  Almost supernaturally, energy and purpose returned, and she got out to look at the lakes she’d never before stopped to visit.

  It was dark, the moon flimsy. There was an odour of slack water, strangely familiar. Sweetish, verging on moribund, but too vegetable to be quite distasteful.

  She passed the smaller of the two pools, making for the larger. They were enclosed by box trees and leaf-covered pathways. On one of these, as her vision honed itself against the night, she was startled by the exposed roots of a yew, like a thick mad plotting of entangled ideas.

  She retreated to the edge of the Silent Pool. Water as composed as glass. Was it the perfect immobility that caused this singular quietude? That bit of nature had a depth, a stature unusual in those parts, and it had attracted the folklore about Prince John and the woodcutter’s daughter. It was said that the maiden, who had been bathing there, drowned when he forced her into deep water, and that her ghost made midnight appearances. It could have been around that hour now.

  But no sign of the maiden. Alongside or fused with the turbid smell, which was growing in some manner syrupy, she fancied she distinguished that of pondweed and even saw splotches of this in places on the surface, verdant, lush.

  A gap, as if she’d been overtaken by a short formless sleep. It was a confounding sensation and for an instant she wondered what murky forest she was stranded in. Where? Why? How had she lost her way? What had her sins been? The surface of the small pond, scarcely lit by the attenuated moon, was so unmoving it resembled an impeccable sheet of pearl silk. A pellucid eye, without an iris, blank but not unseeing. She stared long and deeply into it.

  She was submerged in vastness, in fright. She recoiled and stumbled.

  She half ran back towards the Morris. Where was she, and how had she strayed?

  By not loving her husband as he’d required? By dulling, sullying herself with grief for Mummy? And so she must undertake a journey of expiation. What a trial, hellish, and now! When she’d comfortably assumed herself as safe in marriage as a beloved pet in a snug domestic haven. Cast out at thirty-six, possibly the halfway point of her life, from all that was normal and kind.

  But it wouldn’t make sense to get back into the motorcar, because she didn’t know where to go. She wasn’t prepared for being confined in there once more. She needed to linger in the open air. She wasn’t cold on that lenient winter night in her fur coat—the sort of coat in which you could take on all weather. How bad could things be in such a coat?

  She gravitated back towards the larger pool. Stars, bright and timeless. Not a breath of wind, the air becalmed. Her terror appeared to be abating. It was curious, but on a dim arboreal path she was taken by an imperious desire to lie down in that box-tree bower. Were she to sleep, though, would she encounter the Gun Man? She had no choice. If she couldn’t rest a little, she might collapse. She sat and then stretched out, her head by the base of a tree, the coat like a silky languorous animal she was entwined with. She was also entwined with the possibility of death.

  That nacreous eye, watching over her. If she chose to, she could stare into it again, drift towards the magnet of a watery end. The end would come about by her own hand. In her own hand she would write a carnal full stop.

  Getting anything to happen meant proposing something. Knowing it could be so. Then deciding, making it so. Why was this decision so chilling? Like giving in to a terrifyingly powerful desire, or its opposite. The desire for nothing.

  But she did not desire nothing. She woke in the box-tree bower, not paining anywhere or cold, aside from her feet. She had not dreamed of the Gun Man. As peculiar as it was to find herself there, it was also natural, like taking up a piece of familiar piano music midstream. She was stiff and her bones slightly creaky as she stood, but she felt fitter than before. Less bruised, less diaphanous. Rather at home in the night, her heart more resolved. She didn’t start when some small creature shifted by her. A bird uttered a sliding note or two. Could it be a nightingale? Her wristwatch held up to her face appeared to tell her that, extraordinarily, it was twenty-five minutes past five. Hours of sleep and she was unspeakably grateful for the reprieve, for some respite, finally.

  Saturday.

  She was aware of the anchored peace of the still waters, of their open, silken invitation. Yes—but.

  But no.

  No, not now.

  Now—no.

  She had lost everything. However, there was still a lot that she desired badly, and what took root in her mind was getting to some higher ground with a view. Had Mummy’s spirit come to guide her? God? She couldn’t detect the presence of God, but as she got into the Morris this wasn’t too pressing a concern.

  She drove cool-headedly, expertly, back up towards Newlands Corner. She’d turn in for that vantage point over the North Downs. Motoring by night had become as smooth as cream.

  No one about as she arrived at Newlands Corner and parked.

  The dark she emerged into had a live quality. She stood gazing over the drop of the Downs, recalling the restless blackness that had been the sea beyond the suite at the Grand Hotel, Torquay, where she had spent her first night as a wife. Beginning the journey of married life.

  And so many years later, considering the slanting land that appeared more and more solid, the sky above it higher, softer and less material, she could not have said if she was continuing a journey or, having terminated one, was commencing another.

  There was a surge in
the air, a light gust of earthy freshness. The flicker of something: eagerness, if not joy. Wobbly inspiration. She’d never entirely believed in this country as country, though she had to recognise that it possessed something. She’d brought Peter here recently for a walk—let him not be fretting—and they’d rambled down that pathway. It passed a small quarry.

  She began to follow their footsteps, making her way down to the quarry cautiously in her silly shoes, not the best for the occasion, yet how could she have known what to dress for? At last, the chalk pit was before her. Peter had nosed in those bushes at the edge of it, bemused.

  This just might do to bring her husband back to her. To show him the vast romance in her that she could scarcely believe he failed to see. You were stifled by not being ambitious, by fixating on whether something owed more to fancy than common sense. It could be the outlandish schemes that had a chance of saving you.

  Odd, chalky luminescence.

  From the quarry, uphill, alas, back to the Morris. She wasn’t moaning.

  But the motorcar wouldn’t start. It must.

  It was ten minutes after six and the morning had acquired a quivery tension, although the begrudging winter sunrise was a distance off yet. She climbed out and got busy with the crank. No good. Hot and awkward work in a fur coat, furthermore. She doffed the coat and laid it like a child’s body in the motorcar. A breeze demonstrated that she was sweating. Her throat was dry, too. She’d have welcomed a glass of water, and what she’d have done for a gallon of milky tea. Another impassioned effort with the crank and—just as despair might have poisoned things—a man’s voice.

  ‘Are you having trouble with your car, ma’am? Can I help?’

  The freeze, and shudder, of shock.

  A man on a bicycle. Not aggressive-seeming. Stout, athletic. Young, quiet sort of face. Farm worker, most likely. Her heart growing more reasonable, she understood that his arrival was fortuitous.

  ‘Oh, would you start it for me?’ Bizarre to be speaking, as if she had stopped doing so years ago. She smiled, aiming for neighbourly, run-of-the-mill. ‘I’d be so grateful.’

  It was twenty minutes after six. He had it going in a jiffy, and was readjusting his cap and mounting his bicycle once more.

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’ She felt an imprudent emotion—people could be so simply good. He was possibly envisioning a wild scenario. Lone woman out in the dark and so on. Ha.

  She gave him as sober a farewell as she could manage, got into the motor again, and drove off, because she couldn’t have him observing her. No sooner had she gone a few minutes towards Guilford than she about-faced and returned to Newlands Corner. Arriving, she was careful to make sure she had no company. Not a soul.

  Her senses were fantastically alert, each move having to be true and efficient. The motor seemed very loud and the headlamps to blaze inordinately. She drove gingerly down the path that passed the quarry. It was a little bumpy and this made her short of breath. The headlamps caught the quarry’s white glow, and then the Morris was facing that smouldering bareness. She stopped.

  Brakes off and the gear in neutral, she got out. Took her handbag that had all her money in it, as she wasn’t remotely lured by the thought of privation. Her shoes slipped, found traction. She staggered a little, recovered herself. Her shoulders and back leaning into the Morris’s heft, she pushed, gave everything she had. Something not worrying occurred in a muscle or a conjoining of them in the vicinity of her right shoulder. She felt both very light, liable to be blown away by the breeze, and awfully strong. The exultation of writing one’s own fate! The car went the last extra distance, reaching and lodging in the bushes that had engrossed Peter. She waited. It stayed there, perfect magnificent beast, on the brink. Amazing how revitalising physical exertion was when it came to the forefront of your attention.

  Twenty to seven. Almost time to sit back and regard with satisfaction what she’d done, seeing that it was good. She admired her own temerity. She’d worked hard and the results were pleasing, on first impressions. Resting on the seventh day would be nice. She took a certain pride in the details. The headlamps still burning. The items left behind: dressing-case, old driving licence (identifying documents striking her in present circumstances as in some way quaint), coat. She was warm and an abandoned coat was more affecting, insinuating fragility. While she wasn’t, in fact, overly delicate, was she? That sleep had been nothing short of magic. How little one needed, after all.

  So:

  What kind of hypothesis would be formed? Well, the Morris had gone out of control, because she was so tired and distraught, et cetera, and she’d had an accident. Knocked her head? After which she’d got out of the motorcar and—disoriented, not knowing quite who she was even . . . yes, suffering from amnesia, she’d wandered off across the Downs without her coat, into the night. Where anything might have occurred. Or someone had done away with her hours before, about the time she was lying down by the Silent Pool, and then done this to her poor Morris to make it appear that there’d been an accident. Something like that. They wouldn’t find a body, of course. But by then the necessary initial impression would have been created. She wouldn’t leave him to suffer long, just enough to wake him up. She’d send a letter soon, maybe today, to her brother-in-law, who valued her and had a sense of justice, letting him know where she’d be, once she’d decided. And she would write to her husband again. It wouldn’t take him long to come for her, half raving with worry and remorse and remembered love. Something like that. Go from there.

  One last look behind to see that she’d done all she needed to do. A fond goodbye to her Morris, not an adieu—though life showed you that beauty belonged to you only in the loosest manner. Agatha couldn’t tell whether her puzzle was lacking, or pretty ingenious. You never could. She must believe her intuition was a faithful compass and she was operating in complete secrecy. She would not let herself be distracted by the oddly luminous chalk quarry. Would she be sick? No, she thought not. Now she must go down, down the hill. She needed the weighted flow, the ease of a descent.

  It was somehow medieval to be setting out on foot, marching between those dewy fields. The box trees on either side of the pathway made her feel protected. Coatless she still wasn’t cold. The morning was exceedingly mild, tepid even, and the odour of earth and foliage was alluring, if less fulsome than it would have been in spring. Onwards, down, down. Everything had been so stuck and rotten, but at last she was in transit. Had the sky taken on the faintest, whey-tinged phosphorescence? On the path before her were patches of moss, and a thistle flower abruptly filled her hand. When the sun hit them, these would be purple flares.

  The first houses, and she turned right at the end of what she learned was Water Lane, sucking refreshment from the words. She knew how to get to Chilworth station from here, through Albury. It wasn’t too far. What a shocking relief it would be to have London swallow her for a little, to drink tea in the buffet at Waterloo, while settling on her next destination. To board a train that would travel through the quiet rapture of sunrise. Her mind in that moment was limpid: she’d had to push through a wall—and enter a place with more give.

  27

  TWELFTH DAY

  The presentiment of a fateful incident had intensified. Half awake, Teresa observed softened darkness: the sun hadn’t risen yet but would soon. She remembered dreaming of the desert, of lands bare and inhospitable while also in some occult fashion attractive, luscious. She understood where she was. Her first instinct was to locate Harry, and she had only to turn her head to the left to do this. He was very near. He had slumped so far forward on his chair that his head rested on the bed by her chest. She could have pushed her fingers into his silvered sable hair. But she knew—as Mummy had known certain things by reading the currents in a room—that their aventure, if such a curious, fragile thing could be labelled so, was drawing to its close. A course was set. Too late for Edinburgh. Let alone Nice. It had always been too late for Nice.

  The nig
htmare she’d run from, and her true name, were returning. She opened her mouth to the cotton of his pillow, breathing its faintest perfumes, sweet skin and breath, a faded smokiness. The fleeting well-being this inundated her with was nearly worse than what she’d fled. Then she’d been a worn-out, unloved sleepwalker in godforsaken Berkshire. Now she was refreshed and susceptible to tenderness. Devastating not to touch him.

  As she forced herself to rise, a part of her remained low and safe in the bed beside which her secret lover slept. The female figure getting to her feet, pausing, a hand by his face, was gauzy. A spectre.

  Her eyes fell on the writing desk and she recalled the pages waiting there in the shadows. Writers dreaded this sort of business, but with his manuscript it would be different, no imposition. In fact, having a piece of him with her would help her to leave the room. A final hesitation. Feeling danger approach, the last minutes of anonymity ticking sickeningly over, she went.

  In her own room, she admonished herself, Be calm. Normal behaviour was the ticket. She managed to dress, and go downstairs. She took some newspapers from the hallstand and proceeded into the dining room for an early breakfast. No Jackmans, good. She buttressed herself with poached eggs, pork sausages and black pudding, handling the Daily Mail gently.

 

‹ Prev