The Haunted Storm

by Philip Pullman

  “No, I’m not. You could take everything off and entice me as much as you liked, but I wouldn’t move. No, I wouldn’t. Because I’ve just seen another bit of truth in it; sex is no different from anything else. It’s the world, the same as the grass is; it’s – here goes language again. It’s the same as everything; that’s all I can say. And now that I’ve seen that, and now that I realise it as intensely as I do, you won’t catch me with it.”

  He laughed, and much to her own surprise she did too.

  “But quite soon,” he said, “I daresay I will give in… Of course I will. Probably today, at that.”

  And she laughed again.

  “You’re a gross sensualist,” she said. “You want to wallow in every single feeling that comes your way, even the feeling of putting-off and doing-without. It’s a good thing I can see through you.”

  He put his hand gently on her stomach, and caressed it under the dress. Was there anything, in truth, that he wouldn’t wallow in, as she put it? Only laziness, and hopelessness, and inefficiency. He kissed her again.

  *

  Elizabeth was conscious of an oceanic rhythm in her flesh and her soul. It was accelerated, or slowed down, by the appearance of expression in the world.

  For instance, Matthew’s face: effort, and power. And her father: knowledge… her father was obscure to her, and ringed by obsessive questions. She knew quite matter-of-factly of his distinct vivid curiosity about her, and knew that it was sexual in origin. She knew it as clearly as she did because he didn’t know it at all, and couldn’t hide it. It was another channel, another river-bed, a creek that the salt world-water flooded when the tide was high. And it was hidden from her mother and hidden from Matthew, too. She guarded it calmly.

  She was a landscape, as clear and unequivocal as a painting by Tanguy. The expression of it now was passive, and better so, much better and purer so.

  It was expressed in consciousness, by being conscious. She could revel in the nakedness of it, of feeling at one point Matthew’s urgency and self-absorption, at another her father’s world-system erect like a tower, and at another Gwen’s sexual-maternal self-tormenting… They might think that they acted on each other and intermeshed and altered things, but she knew that in between them all, in between each and every organism and structure in the world, her consciousness lay like a fluid light. Nothing touched anything. The uterine medium of her knowledge held them distant from one another, and rapt and unconscious of the fact; and it worked at them endlessly, smoothing, cleaning, bathing and washing them through and through, again and again, on the sandy floor of the world, herself.

  This is all new to me, she thought, and yet there’s nothing I remember that wasn’t like this. Holding Matthew’s face in her hands: he was passionate and clear… yes, she could enter that sensation as easily as falling asleep, or waking up. What Matthew was, she loved; she chose to. She was chosen to; it was the same thing. There was no place where she ceased to exist; that was it…

  He saw, for he was clairvoyant, and he saw everything. He could see her, now, quite clearly, and see the extent and the depth of her.

  A small shock, like a tremor or a ripple, passed through her. The landscape was altered infinitesimally, and settled without a murmur or a breath into its new outline.

  *

  An afternoon was enough.

  The air was thick with evening when they began to make their way home. On the right, in a mass of scarlet, crimson, and salmon-pink, the sun was setting; and possibly because of this concentration of redness in the upper atmosphere, the warmer layers of air below and the gradually-forming mist along the surface of the fields and valleys were tinted with a lush, thrilling green, its complement. It was so thick that it could hardly be accounted for by the chlorophyll in the plants alone; it was ethereal, and seemed to subsist in the molecules of the air itself as much as in the leaves and shoots that sprouted from the ground.

  They walked along, their bodies close to one another, occasionally touching or stopping to kiss. She had gone to sleep earlier on, and had woken up to see him staring at her calmly like a Sphinx. The sexual current between them was barely contained. She had turned over on to her back, slipping her dress off her shoulders and down around her waist, aware of her power. She had rejoiced to see him quiver. His expression had not changed at once: but gradually he seemed to go pale, and the quality of intentness in it changed from being unconscious to being conscious, awake, and striving. She was just a little disconcerted; because instead of making him vivid and animal-like, the reaction she expected, it had the effect of making him appear more and more abstracted and in the end unreal, like a saint in an icon. She’d thought that no-one could match Alan for coldness. But his younger brother would overtake him, in the end; he was still growing, and he would not stop. And then the air felt chilly on her skin, and she did the dress up… She’d wait until he was ready.

  An afternoon of it was enough for him. The world was now feverish, languid, and voluptuous. He saw something stirring on a head of cow-parsley, and stopped to look. A pair of slim copper-coloured beetles were performing with pain-evoking slowness their clumsy ritual of love. And its nature, or its meaning – which is to say its effect on him – was that of mist or a veil.

  But that was the nature of everything; he knew that well enough. And he knew, now, that mist was meant to be dispersed, veils to be rent… But tear them away, and you found another mystery at the heart of it, a greater mystery than the veil and the glorious atmospheric colourings of the mist.

  Suddenly a spasm of sheer disgust shook him bodily. Alan was right. The surface of the world, and the intricate tracery of relationships and delicate meanings that enmeshed it through and through, even the subtle exotic beauty of the sky and the fields were – there was only one word for it – vulgar.

  And the poetic level underneath, the level of correspondences and representations and images and symbols, was even more vulgar and twice as deceitful, because it pretended to provide a universal truth, and a world-wide sense of order and harmony; but it was a network of lies, one leading into the other, melting and coalescing and forming mazes and systems of quicksands and disappearing pathways.

  As for the ultimate level (no! that was not true either: rather, the furthest he could reach), that – meant nothing…

  He slowed his pace gradually and came without realising it to a halt. And a dialogue ran within him:

  (Do you expect it to mean anything?)

  No; I demand that it does.

  (You’ll have to invent it, then).

  No. There is a meaning, and I’ll find it.

  (But you can’t even describe it; and better men than you have looked in vain).

  I shall find it.

  (No, no; for the world is beautiful. Isn’t that enough? You’ll relish it at last, and grow sick of the struggle…And look, now, Elizabeth is getting cold, you’re keeping her waiting…)

  To hell with her; and the world is never beautiful. It’s a lie; and I relish it less and less. I shall pierce it to the heart, and break the window, and get out.

  (That’s a childish dream, a fantasy, a romantic longing; come back to the world, and back to love. Love is real and important; it’s adult and responsible. There’s the real challenge: take love, and make of it a great thing, a marvellous and lasting paradise… take what’s in the world, and make that immortal!)

  It would be immortal corruption and the eternal chatter of apes. It would be a sublimity of untruth and a paradise of leering decay –

  (What of the murdered children? And the Jews? What of the suffering of all the innocent people in the world? The tears of that girl in the wood ran down over her cheeks in floods, and wet the murderer’s hands. And when he lifted them to his face in horror they were wet with tears from wrist to fingertip, and the cuffs of his shirt were wet. Tears, tears; and how can your pride and your dreams alleviate them? Dry one tear on a girl’s cheek, or calm the panic in one child’s heart, and that will be enou
gh to live for).

  “Matthew,” she said, taking him gently by the arm, “you’re frightening me, looking like that. Come now, love, it’s getting cold. It’s a long way to go yet.”

  *

  He said nothing, but followed her blindly, numbed. Nothing was solved; nothing was clear.

  The first stars of the night were out, glittering softly in the broad velvety sky.

  He felt hungry and tired. Overcome by some strong emotion, he put his head on Elizabeth’s shoulder and held her tightly.

  They said goodnight and parted in the village. There was one thing left to try, but not much time; he was growing impatient, he’d had enough.

  Chapter 11

  The telephone rang. It was ten past nine in the evening, and he’d just helped Harry to bed.

  It was Elizabeth. She sounded excited.

  “Matthew, it’s the well – it’s tonight! “

  “What’? Oh Christ; tonight – when?”

  “It’s an eclipse of the moon, daddy said. He told me yesterday, and I saw on the calendar just now that there’s an eclipse tonight at sixteen minutes past midnight.”

  Matthew said nothing; he was thinking furiously.

  “Matthew?”

  “Yes, all right. I’m worried about Uncle Harry. He’s very weak; I was going to call the doctor in the morning.”

  “Oh, golly…”

  “I don’t know if I ought to go. Listen. I’ll call at the rectory for you… if I’m not there in half an hour I’m not going to go.”

  “I’ll come and see you, in that case –”

  “All right. Half an hour.”

  He put the receiver down.

  It was nearly three weeks after their walk on the moors. He had spent the whole time looking after the old man, with a possessive, almost fierce tenderness. He cherished him like a baby; but inside him the desire to settle the business, to get at the mystery, burnt and burnt like a furnace in his heart. It purified him; and now at last there was the chance of it, and Harry was ill…

  He ran up the stairs and knocked at the old man’s door.

  “Come in,” said Harry.

  The light was out; Harry struggled to sit up. “What’s the matter? Was the telephone for me?”

  “No, for me. Look, Uncle Harry – no, lie down, it’s all right.”

  He sat on the bed beside him.

  “Uncle Harry, would you be all right if I went out? I might be a few hours. I don’t really know when I’d be back…”

  “Of course I will. Don’t you worry about that, you go out.”

  A thousand things to say came to Matthew’s lips. He wanted to sit there in the darkness and pour it out, to confess and be blessed, and to ask for forgiveness, above all. He struggled with the words, and gave up; there was a lump in his throat. Finally he leant over and kissed Harry gently on the forehead.

  “Sleep well,” he said. “I wish I could tell you… you’re always so kind, and I’m a fool, a blundering fool… but I love you, Uncle Harry, I love you utterly. Sleep well. I’ll look in to see you’re all right.”

  “Thank you, Matthew.”

  He had the idea that Harry wanted to say more too, but was too tired and weak; so he kissed him again and went out.

  He stood irresolutely on the landing, looking back at the bedroom door and then across at his own, and then out of the window at the rain and the dusk. There were so many cross-currents of emotion and desire: everywhere he looked there was conflict. But the square pane of the landing window, and the rain and the grey evening light outside, acted on him like a magnet, and his whole body itched to be outside.

  He’d have to change. He went into his bedroom and put on a thick shirt and a dark pullover, a pair of levis, and plimsolls on his feet. There was no sense in taking a coat. It had been raining for weeks, and his coat was wet through already. The ground was soaked, and he had no boots, but he’d discovered that plimsolls were the best thing to wear in rain. They got wet immediately, and didn’t bother him after that.

  He shut the window tightly and went downstairs, checked that all the lights were off in the rest of the house, and took the torch from the hall table. It was a heavy rubber-covered one; he hoped it was as waterproof as it looked.

  He went out of the front door and looked at the trees across the road. The dusk seemed to be thicker there, and the rain among the leaves looked like another element altogether, darker than water, heavier than air, and more wild and volatile than earth. There was a vibrant, harsh melancholy in it which played immediately on his soul, making him dizzy and tense with longing… it was the poetic spirit in the world; it was holding him up.

  A thought came swiftly into his head and made him shudder. It would work though, it would work…He knelt down in the road and looked closely at the grass bank until he found what he wanted. A broken piece of fencing with a sharp, jagged splinter at one end of it. He hoped the rain hadn’t softened it too much. He rolled his sleeve up and, holding the stick like a dagger, slashed at his forearm once, twice, and the skin broke: again, harder, and the blood ran out freely. He looked closely at the wound. It was rough and ugly, and he felt faint and sick for a moment with the pain. He threw the stick away, and rolled his sleeve down. That would teach him.

  A wave of utter contempt passed over him. To think that he was weak enough to need that sort of elementary reminder! The back of his hand was already covered in blood. He stuffed it deep into his pocket, and set off.

  As he walked along he realised why tonight there was a feeling of wildness in the atmosphere, a feeling that had been missing from the deadly, soaking sadness of the weeks of rain: tonight a wind was blowing, gusty and fierce, lashing the water into the trees and into his face and hair. Before he came to the fork in the road by the Red Lion he was wet through. The pain in his arm was dragging at his attention the whole time. He’d have to wipe the blood off his hand, he supposed, before he went into the Rectory. But there was no need to go in at all. She’d better be ready. Though why was she coming at all? It wasn’t a woman’s journey, was it? No, no, but she knew the way and he didn’t. So perhaps she’d better come.

  He rang the .bell and stood back out of the light that came through the door as she opened it.

  “Ready?” he said.

  She nodded. She was wearing a raincoat and trousers. The coat was damp; it clung to her shoulders and made them look thin and childlike. He had to suppress an urge to put his arms round her and kiss her and tell her that it didn’t matter after all, that they’d stay inside in the warm… this was a struggle against everything. And ranged against him were all his own instincts.

  He said nothing; what else had he wounded his arm for? The pain was settling down now to a deep throbbing ache.

  “Have you got your watch?” he asked as she shut the .door

  “Yes – what’s the matter? What’s the matter with your arm?”

  “Nothing. Is it waterproof?”

  She looked blank for a moment. “Oh – the watch – yes.”

  “Come on then, let’s get on – I don’t want to stop.”

  He strode out of the drive and down the road. After a few yards he stopped uncertainly.

  “I don’t – I wish – Liz, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to! Just tell me the way.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m as strong as you are, and I want to come. I’m afraid of losing you, Matthew; do you realise that?”

  “Don’t say things like that, or I’ll lose my temper. No, no, I won’t. Let’s get back to the very beginning, on the beach – there was an air of truth about that, and nothing’s had it since, you see, that’s what I’m after tonight. And if you don’t play along, I’ll ditch you without hesitating, Liz, I mean it.”

  “All right. I don’t quite understand – all right.”

  They went quickly through the village, and down the road that led towards Ditton.

  The going was heavy, the rain unceasing. Large stretches of the road were under two or three
inches of water. Elizabeth trudged along beside him, saying nothing, and trying to keep up. He marched swiftly, forcing the pace, and felt after a couple of miles that he was being callous and unfeeling: she hadn’t complained once, though he wouldn’t have minded if she had. It was nearly completely dark, but above the thick pall of clouds the moon was full, and lightened the sky to some degree, so that they could see the outline of the road ahead.

  The desire and the longing that raced through his blood stream raced equally through the wind and the streaming darkness. And there was something else, too, a more obscure sense like a heart-beat, that surged distantly both inside him and outside; what it was, he did not know, but it may have been destiny, or a sense of death, or sexual passion; it felt like all three.

  They stopped occasionally to let Elizabeth ease the pain of a stitch in her side, or get her breath, and then they pressed onwards, doggedly. They walked without speaking for nearly two hours. It had taken longer than he thought to get to Ditton; the water on the road had held them up, slowing their steps. It was a quarter past eleven, by her watch, when they got to the centre of the village.

  “How far is it from here?” he said.

  “Another twenty minutes, I should think,” she replied. Her voice was weak and strained; they looked, both of them, exhausted and worn out. His contempt flared up again – like magnesium, causing everything in the world to stand out harsh and white and throw dark shadows. Maybe it was the very deepest instinct he had; it felt like it, now.

  They were soaked to the skin; their clothes clung to them heavily. The water streamed off their hair, and the wind, which seemed to have freshened during their walk, was chilly and cutting. They looked at each other.

  “Well?” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think at all. I’ll go on; I’m not going to stop. Are you going to stop?”

  “Of course not. But what do you think about it, eh? What’s it leading to?”

  “Don’t speak like that. You sound stupid.”

  “There are veins of stupidity under that, girl, that I haven’t even scratched the surface of. There’s always further to go, always…”