by Sara Craven
‘I think so,’ she said. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she put the empty tumbler down beside her. She stood up, clutching the key. ‘Thank’ thank you, Logan.’
‘I’m sorry you chose this particular place to run to,’ he said. ‘You’d have run away again by now, wouldn’t you, if it wasn’t for the snow.’ .
‘Probably,’ she agreed.
‘That instinct which led you to run away from me on our wedding night was probably a right one too.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Go to bed, Briony, and if you still say your prayers, ask for a quick thaw, preferably beginning at midnight.’
She murmured something incoherent and fled.
She lay awake in the darkness for a long time, listening for his step on the stairs, her eyes fixed on the unlocked door. Eventually in the distance she heard the sound of the typewriter like a chattering tongue, and she turned on to her face and lay like a stone with her hands pressed over her ears.
It snowed again in the night, and when she went downstairs the following morning Logan greeted her with the news that there was no electricity. According to a local radio broadcast, the snow had brought some power lines down, he said, and the supply had been cut off to a number of villages.
‘Apparently the drifts are making it difficult for the electricians to get through and repair them,’ he added laconically. ‘I take it there’s some alternative arrangement for cooking?’
‘There’s a camping stove, yes,’ Briony admitted. ‘Aunt Hes and I used to use it for picnics. I’m not sure how much bottled gas there’ll be, though.’
‘Hm,’ Logan gave a slight shrug. ‘Then we’ll have to ration the use of it very strictly. We’d better look out some candles as well.’
‘Then you don’t think the power will be on again by tonight?’
‘I’d say it was doubtful in the extreme. Apparently even the snow-ploughs are having problems in places.’
He gave her a quick glance. ‘For God’s sake, Briony, don’t look so panic-stricken I We’ll survive. I didn’t spend a couple of months of my life dodging Ben Yusef’s thugs to come home and freeze to death in an English blizzard.’
‘No, of course not.’ she said in a stifled voice. She turned away. ‘I―I’ll go and look for the stove.’
There was a small dry cellar beneath the cottage, approached by a door underneath the stairs. A torch was kept on a ledge just inside the door, and Briony switched this on before making her way down the stone steps.
The cellar was as neat as a pin, and it took only a few moments to locate the articles she needed-the stove, an extra cylinder of gas, and a box of candles, but Briony found herself delaying her return to the living room.
There was no way she could admit to Logan that her panic had been caused not by the possible privations they might suffer because of the weather, but through dread of the emotional tension they were living in. It made no sense, she knew that, particularly as Logan had given her his assurance that she had nothing to fear from him.
She didn’t doubt him either. But she knew, as he did not, that it was herself she had to fear. That last night in the cold bedroom she had lain awake for hours and ached for him. A small, bitter laugh escaped her lips as she recognised the enormity of the admission.
A slight feeling of compunction invaded her mind at the thought of Christopher whom she had used as a safeguard.
She knew now that she would never marry him, no matter what became of her, and that the most she had ever felt for him was affection, and no deeper emotion.
She wondered detachedly if it was possible that she might never feel any deeper emotion for any man other than Logan. If this were true, then it was a bleak prospect for the rest of her life.
There would be other Christophers, she supposed vaguely. Suitable young men brought by her father to have dinner at the house, who would ask her to go out with them at his none-too-subtle prompting.
But her father would be disappointed about Christopher.
He had been pretty well everything Sir Charles demanded in a son-in-law, she thought-presentable, successful, ambitious for more success, and a fervent admirer of the group Chairman. She had heard her father say on a number of occasions, ‘I can always rely on Christopher.’ She had relied on Christopher too. He had been kind and not too demanding in those dark weeks after Logan’s death had been reported―a time when Briony had felt she was living two separate lives. On the surface she was calm, dealing coolly with the few embarrassed condolences which had come her way. But underneath, a very different
Briony had cried out in anguish for everything she had lost. She would wake in the night, with tears on her face, remembering Logan’s last visit to her when he had asked her to tell him that she loved him, and she, encircled by her hurt pride, had sent him away.
Yes, Christopher had been kind, and discreetly attentive, and in a dazed way, behind the cool mask she had presented to the world, she had been grateful to him, and her gratitude might in time have pushed her almost inadvertently into marriage. Numbed and empty as she had felt, with gentle pressure from both Christopher and her father to contend with, how could she have resist .
And then Logan had returned, and the whole world had turned upside down.
‘Briony !’ His voice from the top of the cellar steps brought her tinglingly back to reality. ‘Are you all right? What are you doing?’
‘1―1 had to search for the stove,’ she lied, and began to clamber back up the steps.
‘Give those things to me,’ he said impatiently. ‘Why didn’t you call me―tell me what you where up to.’ His hand reached out and brushed her hair in a long, lingering movement. She felt herself flinching away involuntarily, and he stiffened.
‘You have a cobweb in your hair, he said coldly. Go and look in the mirror if you don’t believe me.’
She wanted to cry out that it wasn’t a case of not believing. That it was just that his slightest touch had the power to set her physically alight, and she could not allow that to happen again, because if it did she would be completely lost.
Besides, she told herself as she walked back into the living room, it wasn’t really what Logan wanted either. His desire for her might have been reawakened because of the circumstances in which they found themselves, but he had other commitments as she knew to her bitter cost.
It was a difficult day, and a long one. Logan checked the stores meticulously, and said there was enough food to keep them going for at least another two weeks, if they were careful. His lips twisted slightly at the sight of the solitary spare gas cylinder, but he merely said it would do until the power lines were repaired again.
But if they’re having problems as it is, Briony found herself thinking. And if it goes on snowing .
Later Logan went out and dug out a path to the front gate, and just beyond. Briony had offered to help, but he had refused her assistance so curtly that she had not cared to press the matter.
They ate their supper by firelight in order to economise on candles. Briony wondered whether she should suggest another game of chess, but in the shadows cast by the flickering flames Logan’s face looked so bitter and remote that she did not dare mention it. After sitting in uncomfortable silence for a while, she said mendaciously that she was tired and intended to have an early night.
The air in the bedroom felt icy and even the hot water bottle she had filled for herself did little to dispel the chill of the sheets. She wondered if Logan intended to spend half the night typing again, but she could hear no sound at all from the ground floor, and presently, to her own surprise, she drifted into sleep.
She awoke with a start and sat up, wondering what had disturbed her. A sound? She strained her ears and heard it again-a moaning sound, rising to a choking cry. Her first thought was that Logan was ill. She was out of bed in a flash, huddling into her housecoat and g with shaking hands to relight the candle on her bedside table. Then she went across the landing and into his room. .
As she went in, he turned on t
o his back, muttering something, but Briony saw that his eyes were closed. The sheets and blankets on his bed were tumbled and pushed to one side as if he had been tossing and turning for most of the night.
Then she heard him moan again, and the sound sent a shiver cringing down the length of her spine. She put the candle down and bent over him, shaking his bare shoulder insistently.
‘Logan wake up! You’re having a bad dream.’ It seemed an age before he opened his eyes, and when he did, he stared at her for a moment as if he did not know who she was.
Then he said, ‘God―so that’s all it was.’ and sat up slowly. He noticed her instantly averted gaze, and his mouth twisted slightly as he pulled the crumpled sheet across his body.
He said, ‘I do have these dreams occasionally, but I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
She said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She stole a glance at him and saw he was frowning. ‘Would it help to talk about the dream?’
He shook his head, and reached for the packet of cigarettes on the table beside the bed .
‘I’ve been promised that they wont last, he said drily. ‘But then, what does?’
‘Do you dream that you’re back in Azabia―still running away?’ she asked.
‘No.’ He lit the cigarette and drew on it deeply. ‘I’m back in Azabia, but I’m running nowhere. I’m back in that stinking hole of a jail with the rest of Ben Yusef’s “political prisoners”.’
She tried to cast her mind back―to remember the order of events. The news of the revolt in Azabia, the deposing and execution of the Sheik, and the arrest of hundreds of his supporters had been shocking enough, but then Ben Yusef had ordered all Westerners, especially foreign correspondents, out of his country, saying that he could not guarantee their safety. It had soon become apparent that this was a euphemism for open aggression, and most of the British papers had recalled their correspondents with some speed when they saw the way things were going, But Logan had not returned. He had stayed on, apparently in hiding, to continue to send reports through a short-wave transmitter belonging to a dissident faction which looked on Ben Yusef as a worse choice of leader than the late unlamented Sheik.
She asked, ‘When were you captured―how long did you spend in jail?’
He shrugged. ‘Six weeks―two months. You begin to lose track of time in these places.’ His face hardened. ‘They intend you to, of course. There were twelve of us crammed into one cell, with a bucket in the corner. We were given food once a day, if you could call it food, and water, which the guards had spat in, twice.’ He saw her face and smiled slightly. ‘You shouldn’t have asked me, if you didn’t want to hear the details, Briony,’
‘But I do want to hear,’ she protested, sitting down on the edge of the bed and wrapping the folds of her housecoat more closely round her. She had to try and stop her teeth from chattering too noticeably as well, she thought.
‘Is that what you dream about―being locked up?’
‘Yes.’ he said. ‘I suppose I must suffer slightly from claustrophobia, although I never realised it until then. But there again, I’d never been shut up in a confined space for weeks on end. And then they started coming for the others. They were all Azabians, except me, and considered as hostile to the new regime. They used to be taken off for so-called interrogation.’ He drew deeply on the cigarette again. ‘And then they would be brought back,’ he said.
She watched him in silence, and eventually he began to speak again.
‘I think the worst of it was that I didn't know, he said. ‘Every day when they came for them, you’d swear they were picking at random, and the thought was always there in my mind―tomorrow It might be me. And you can’t know, of course, until it happens how you’re going to stand up to that sort of thing―or even if you are.’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t be sure. In the meantime I had to sit against the wall and see every day what they were doing to the others.’
‘Oh, Logan!’ she whispered.
He looked at her steadily. ‘That’s what I dream, ’ he said. ‘I dream that they’re coming for me.’ His mouth twisted and he stubbed out his cigarette with a sudden violent movement. ‘Not very courageous, is it? But I‘ve been trained all my life to be an observer of the action, I’ve never found myself actually, taking part before. It certainly stripped away any illusions I might have had about myself.’
He gave a faint shrug. ‘So now you know,’ he said. He gave her a closer look and said with a soft groan, ‘Oh, God, Briony―no !’
She was crying. She could not help herself, and one slow tear after another trickled down her face. She heard Logan cursing under his breath, then his arms were round her, and her wet face was cradled against his chest.
Logan’s laconic recounting of his constant nightmare was the trigger for her grief, but as she wept in his arms, her tears dissolved away much of the tension which had possessed her all day, and with it went the bitterness, and the resentment-the hurt which had sustained her, and left her defenceless. His body was warm and under her cheek she could feel the beat of his heart. She turned her head slightly and pressed her lips against his bare skin.
For an instant she felt him grow rigid, and his arms tightened around her to the point of fierceness.
Then he said, ‘Go back to your own room, Briony. I don’t need your pity or that sort of comfort.’ For a moment she was motionless, then with a little shuddering sigh she got to her feet, straightening the folds of her housecoat, and pushing her tumbled hair back from her tear-stained face. She picked up her candle and walked to the door. She thought she heard him say her name, but it might have been her imagination, and anyway she could not ask him. All she could do was retreat with as much dignity as she had left, because in the morning she would have to face him again.
Her only consolation was that he had read her offering of herself as pity, and not as the hunger for him that she knew it to be. And at least she had not been betrayed into telling him that she loved him.
She blew out the candle and lay staring into the darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE was still no electricity the next day, or the day after. In spite of the inconvenience of having to prepare meals on the tiny stove, carefully ekeing out the supply of gas, Briony could almost be glad that the actual physical details of life were becoming a problem. At least it gave her something to think about.
The batteries on Logan’s radio had given out as well, so there were no news transmissions or weather forecasts.
In many ways, she thought, staring out of the kitchen window on to the endless whiteness of the fell. It was like being in limbo.
Logan shut himself into the parlour first thing each morning and worked steadily throughout the day. Briony ventured once over a meal to ask him how It was going, and he returned abruptly that it seemed to be going well.
She found it hard to keep herself occupied in between meal-getting. She would soon be reduced to the Reverend Mr. Gleason, and his attempts to convert the Amazon Indians, she thought with a grimace.
Or she could clean the living room properly. It needed doing, she decided. She could shake out the mats and brush the floor at least.
She was sweeping near the dresser when she suddenly remembered her wedding ring. She knelt down gingerly and peered into the narrow space under the dresser, but she could see nothing. After a minute she went and fetched the torch from the cellar and knelt down again, trying awkwardly to send the beam of light where she wanted it.
Šhe nearly jumped out of her skin when Logan said Just behind her,
‘What on earth are you doing? What are you looking for?’
She looked round at him, searching for a reasonable explanation. If she admitted she had lost something, then he might take it into his head to search himself, and she didn't want that.
‘Woodworm,’ she said. ‘It’s very old, this dresser, and Aunt Hes wouldn’t want anything to happen to it―so I was Just checking .’ Her voice trailed away lamely.
�
��I see, Logan said gravely. ‘And what were you planing to do? Dazzle them into submission with the torch, or hit them over the head with it when they came out to see what the light was?’
‘Very amusing!’ Briony scrambled crossly to her feet, brushing off the knees of her jeans. She said sharply, ‘It isn't lunch time yet, is it?’
‘Not yet.’ He eyed her flushed averted face. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said on a high note. ‘What could possibly be the matter? Everything is for the best in this best of all possible world. We’re cut off by snowdrifts, there’s no electricity, and if this goes on much longer we shall soon be down to one hot meal a day. Everything’s fine!’