Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Dennis Parry

  Varvara was not very interested in drink. She had lived in a rabid Sunnite community where, for Moslems, the Prophet’s ban on alcohol was rigidly enforced. Nevertheless, I gather that there was plenty of liquor about for those who wanted it: certainly her father, when in the mood, did not go short. The trouble was—and this tends to be true of any product which is manufactured in defiance of popular opinion—that the quality was execrable, more fitted for the bottom of a petrol-can than a young girl’s stomach.

  Still, she had no prejudices. And she possessed the kind of ‘good head’ which is often associated with a generous capacity elsewhere. She was thirsty and down it went by halves to my full pints. I was keeping control of the situation until pub-freemasonry set in and we became involved with the regular customers. They consisted chiefly of men who earned their living in the warehouses by the waterside, with a sprinkling of mechanics and small shopkeepers. I woke up from a long session of dirty stories to see her far away on the other side of the bar surrounded by a different group. She was sitting on the counter with her hat on the back of her head, singing in the Turki language.

  A man next to me nodded knowingly.

  ‘Belge, I’d say. ’Ot—I seen ’em in Ostend.’

  My action in running her out of the place was not popular. Many doubts were expressed about my parentage and virility. But eventually we broke free. All the way up the street Varvara reproached me in ringing tones for my infirmity of purpose.

  ‘You have taken me from among the servants of God,’ she cried. ‘I knew them and they were as pure as apricots!’

  I gritted my teeth but did not answer. I had begun to realize how much more I had bitten off than I could chew. Now that it loomed over me the climax of my plan seemed quite impossible. Not just dangerous, but so utterly foreign to my nature that I could never execute it. I should almost certainly have thrown in my hand, if chance had not thrust the means of law-breaking across my path.

  We had turned back towards the river and were traversing the street below the one which contained the pub. Here a part of the roadway was up for repairs. Just beyond the fenced-off cavity, a few bicycles with crates in front were leaning against the kerb outside a shop: I suppose they belonged to delivery-boys. But the significant factor was the presence of a policeman marching slowly up the opposite pavement. I was overcome by this hint from the auspices.

  As we passed the first bicycle I casually pushed it over: the constable did not turn. But at the fall of the second he looked round briefly. With his eye still on me, I kicked the third under the handlebars so that it fell with a crash. The officer turned round and began slowly to retrace his steps in our direction.

  I felt that I was committed, yet, at the same time, I had not done enough to ensure my object. There was a mild weariness about the policeman’s approach which suggested that in Horrage vulgar horseplay with bicycles was too common to earn more than a rebuke. I cast about for something more actively reprehensible. Whilst he was still twenty yards off I took a penny out of my pocket and shied it at the glass of a street-lamp. Rather humiliatingly it missed, but at any rate it showed that I was a serious criminal who would not stop at damaging municipal property.

  I was reminded of Varvara by a loud, challenging cry. She had ducked under the roadmakers’ barrier and was standing beside a dump of tarred blocks piled up for laying. She had one of them in her hand. Uttering another happy yell of defiance she flung it smartly through the window of a tobacconist.

  What did she think she was doing? I don’t suppose she had the least idea. For the moment she was a creature not of reason but pure heredity. She was her father happily plunging into the thick of one of his ‘damned uproars’.

  The constable quickened his pace to a trot. But the next instant he was forced to double up to avoid a couple more of the blocks which Varvara had dispatched straight at his head.

  This was getting too serious for me. I had not bargained for assaults on the police. Calling Varvara to follow—I suppose a real gentleman would have made her lead the way—I fled up the street. I had abandoned my plan and I no longer intended to be caught after a mere token flight. I made for the riverside because I remembered that lower down where the embankment ceased there was a series of wharves which had always used to be dotted with timber stacks and dumps of scrap metal. If we could reach that area we might be able to play hide-and-seek until dark came on.

  An ominous sound struck my ears. The constable had drawn his whistle out and was blowing it as he ran. The strain of listening for an answering blast made me careless. I was crossing the road towards the seat in the embrasure where we had sat earlier that evening, and I stepped off the kerb before I was ready. Immediately a sharp pain shot through my ankle, turning my run into a series of rapid hops. I glanced round and saw that my pursuer was closer than I had imagined. Indeed whilst I looked he overhauled Varvara on the opposite side of the road but continued after me on the honourable but incorrect assumption that the man must be the chief desperado.

  I realized that I could not get away and resistance would only make my case worse. Panting I sank down on the bench overlooking the river. Next moment the policeman’s hand was on my shoulder, not roughly, but with a grip that showed he was ready for trouble. He was a big ginger-haired man and his face was covered with the largest and most individually defined beads of sweat which I have ever seen on a human being: they were like marbles.

  ‘I’ll come quietly,’ I gasped. But these words, spoken honestly for myself, soon took on a treacherous air. Varvara had other ideas. When she approached panting heavily my captor probably thought that she was sportingly putting herself in the bag in order to take her share of the blame. I would not swear but that a faint smile of complacency crossed his face. If so, it was soon wiped off. Slowing to a walk, she came right up to him. Then, without the slightest warning, she advanced her forearm, held like a horizontal bar, under his chin. At the same time she put her leg behind his and pushed. It was simply a variant of a common wrestling throw, but the element of surprise was increased by the fact that one did not associate such aggressive tactics with a woman.

  The man let go his hold on me. He went back so quickly that one had the illusion that he had been lifted off the ground. In fact he must have taken a couple of rapid unbalanced steps before he came up against the wall of the embankment. He struck it about the level of his buttocks, his feet flew up, and he toppled over. There was a moment of agonizing silence and then from below there rose an awful squelching noise. To my brain, fevered by one frightful accident, this sound could only indicate the breaking up of the human body. I did not stop to reflect that such consequences were a little too dramatic for a fall of a mere twenty feet.

  Varvara and I looked at each other—I appalled, she still flushed with berserk joy. Gingerly I approached the edge and peered over. What I saw gave me a sense of relief so exquisite it almost made the previous anguish worth while.

  Between the two small jetties built from hard stone a short stretch of the river-bank had been left in its primeval state. There were perhaps five yards of good Thames-side mud, having a consistency somewhere between those of treacle and suet. By good fortune the constable had landed on this substance. Otherwise he would probably have broken his back or staved in his skull. As it was, he had obviously been winded by the fall. But whilst I watched he began to stir. Slowly he disengaged himself from the clinging slime leaving behind an almost perfect impression of his rear view.

  Varvara joined me for a moment. But she wasted no time in gratitude to Providence.

  ‘Run,’ she said. ‘Or he will catch us again and next time he will know to beware of me.’

  That last was a very unfortunate phrase. We both knew it. When we set off again, I had the impression that we were running away from certain parallels and inferences rather than the police.

  If there had been any pursuit, my ankle, though not so bad as I had feared, would have undone us. But the constable must have been severely
shaken up, and perhaps he had lost his whistle. Our greatest luck was that the road happened to have been empty throughout the incident, otherwise some public-spirited person might have raised a hue and cry.

  Even so I realized that if there was any search it would certainly include Horrage station. I pushed Varvara on to the first bus we saw in the High Street. It happened to go to Dartford, from where we got a train almost immediately. I don’t think we spoke at all during the journey.

  From one point of view my crusade had been an outstanding success. I had set out to confuse the issues and to bamboozle Varvara by folly out of worse folly. Yet I would have foregone this achievement. I would have let her involve herself with the Law if I could have won back my old certainty that she had nothing to fear except the shadows in her own mind. But that parapet, that policeman, that throw . . . and that uncle. . . .

  It was after ten when we arrived back at Aynho Terrace and everybody in the house seemed to have gone to bed. Still avoiding each other’s eyes we did likewise.

  I lay awake for a long time, examining the rusty underpinning and defective supports of my moral sense. I was not even quite sure that the thing was there at all. Did I recognize wickedness? Well . . . yes, in selected forms, principally mean dealing and gross cruelty. But I did not seem able to accept any crime as heinous, merely because authority had so labelled it, or because of the gravity of its consequences. Murder was a terrible offence. It took away something which could never be replaced. But when it came down to particular cases, who wanted Cedric back?

  In the last resort, however, training and the reasoned opinion of humanity had their effect. Without actively blaming Varvara I felt that she had somehow burdened herself . . . not exactly with a load of guilt but with a sort of persistent disability or taint.

  At one point I forced myself to envisage the scene on the roof-garden in the hope that I could reduce the charge to manslaughter or pure accident. But it was hard to believe that a push or trip was administered in a high unfenced place with any object but that of throwing the victim off. The only plea which could be readily sustained was a misguided self-defence. There had never been any doubt about the genuineness of her belief that her uncle had tried to kill her.

  Eventually I fell into an uneasy sleep; from which I roused up at the first squeak of my door. By the light of the moon which was now shining brightly I saw Varvara enter, statuesque in her dressing-gown. Though we made pretty free with one another’s rooms, we never paid visits after we had finally said good night. Something must have happened to make her deviate from this custom. I was suddenly afraid lest I should have to listen to a confession.

  ‘David? Are you awake?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘There is a ghost trying to get into the house,’ said Varvara.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘That of my uncle, naturally.’

  ‘You’re dreaming. Where did you see this thing?’

  ‘I heard it,’ she corrected.

  ‘You mean a voice seemed to speak to you?’

  ‘I know what you are thinking, David,’ she said sadly. ‘But my conscience is silent because it is pure. Besides the ghost has not spoken yet. It is outside sawing through the railings.’

  ‘Why in God’s name should it do that?’

  ‘To escape the impalement.’

  I suppose my face showed what I thought of this beautiful notion, for she continued: ‘If you go to the window you will hear it.’

  I did so and became aware that she was not talking nonsense. A faint but insistent noise of a kind not readily identified was rising from below, and as far as I could judge its point of origin was in the garden directly below the flat roof from which Cedric had fallen. It was an odd rasping sound which seemed to change quality from moment to moment without changing volume; now it did indeed resemble somebody working on metal with a file, but then again it would soften to a sort of harsh snoring. Aynho Terrace was quiet at night but it was still uncanny that the noise could reach us so clearly without any cause being visible. Though I was well situated for scanning every yard of the small moonlit garden, I could see nothing to account for it.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘There’s only one way of setting your mind at rest.’

  Yawning, I pulled on my trousers. But when I made for the door Varvara hung back. I fear that I was delighted for once to be able to appear as the bold and resourceful male. It was clear that she believed in ghosts: I did not. When I was little I was afraid of large dogs and rude boys with knobbly fists and most of the other things that a real little man should face valiantly. On the other hand I did not mind dark cupboards or empty houses or stories told on winter nights. This, as the annoyed mother of a schoolfellow once pointed out, was due to my innate lack of reverence and sense of the mystery of life.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it was when I come back,’ I said.

  Varvara gritted her teeth and followed. We went down to the back-door which led into the garden at ground level. It had glass panels and whilst I was easing back the bolts I could look through on to the moonlit gravel and grass. Except for a few small patches of shadow the visibility was excellent. And still out of nowhere came the noise, louder now and faintly apoplectic. Despite my vaunted insensitiveness I felt the hair crisp a little on the back of my head. It really did sound as if an animal was trying with pain and labour to extricate itself from some horrible trap.

  We skirted the back of the house. The rasping was so near now that it seemed to rise from the ground beneath our feet. And yet I was almost convinced that there must be some auditory illusion and it was being carried over from the next-door garden; when suddenly from behind me Varvara gave a cry. I whipped round and saw her pointing at a spot immediately beneath the railings. The stone foundation into which they were sunk cast a few inches of deep shadow. Still I could see nothing at all, until I stood behind her and followed the exact line of her finger. On the ground was a rough ball, less than a foot in diameter. It seemed to be disturbed by an internal agitation which caused slight changes of shape but not of place.

  I went up and poked it with my foot—as good a way of testing apparitions as has yet been devised. But the next instant I drew back sharply, for something had pricked me through the cloth of my bedroom slippers. Slowly, still uttering their extraordinary mating noise, two hedgehogs separated themselves from an embrace.

  ‘What is it?’ said Varvara, breathing almost as heavily.

  I explained. I had heard of this phenomenon before though I had never personally witnessed it, and without experience it is hard to believe how much row these animals will kick up in their erotic transports. Since I also knew that they were often deliberately introduced into London gardens to keep down pests, the affair had lost all its mystery for me. But Varvara was not entirely satisfied. She bent over the hedgehogs, inspecting them closely.

  ‘They look like wicked, long-nosed old men,’ she said. ‘Why should they come to trouble us on this of all nights?’

  ‘We have had ghosts,’ I said firmly, ‘and we are not going to have transmigration as well. Doesn’t your Church forbid these superstitions?’

  Varvara went into a heavy sulk compounded of shame and annoyance at having her orthodoxy impugned.

  I led the way back upstairs, hoping that we had not disturbed the household. Between us we already had enough to laugh off.

  She did not speak again until we were outside her room. Then she tried to recoup herself with a little of the smart jargon which she was picking up from Andrew and his friends.

  ‘Sorry to have been such a nitwit. Too boring!’

  ‘It was enough to scare anybody. I didn’t understand it.’

  ‘Nor yet do you!’ she said with a sudden vehement change of manner. ‘If you had lived in Doljuk, of which you are so fond, you would be wiser and less brave.’

  By this time, despite my weariness, my blood was up in defence of rationalism.

  ‘Can you honestly pretend that you’ve
ever seen an evil spirit or a ghost?’ I countered.

  ‘I have heard them hooting and chattering in the desert to lead the caravans astray.’

  ‘I said—have you seen such things?’

  ‘That also,’ she replied, though more reluctantly.

  My eyes were fixed on her with satirical challenge and she knew that she had got to justify her claim.

  ‘It was nearly a year after my mother’s death,’ she began, ‘and I was sleeping alone in my room, when suddenly I heard a noise of something moving outside. I took a lamp and a knife and I ran into the passage. There I saw a figure dressed in coat and trousers like a Tungan woman, but unveiled. It stood beside the sockets for the water-jugs outside the room of my father. For a moment I thought that it was a thief or an assassin sent by the new Governor, but it threw up its arms with a thin cry, and vanished down the stairs which ran into the courtyard. Some of the servants were sleeping there, but when I questioned them, they swore that they had seen nothing.’

  ‘Had your father?’

  ‘No,’ said Varvara. ‘Nor did he ever, though the thing came again several times and it was always lurking near his bed. I believe that it was sent by the sorcery of an enemy to harm him, but his nature was too strong for it.’

  I looked at Varvara hard but she returned my gaze with unembarrassed candour, and I knew that I could not touch her ghost. It was a situation in which even the most determined iconoclast must be powerless. So oddly, when she spoke as a daughter, did inhibition and frankness mingle in her mind.

  Next day the inquest duly took place. It was held in a depressing building of red brick with tall chimneys and a domed skylight over the well of the Court which gave it an odd resemblance to a mosque. Turpin, who with Varvara and myself made up the witnesses from Aynho Terrace, remarked on the likeness in characteristic fashion: