by MARY HOCKING
‘The blood ran to my head, I think.’ He sounded perplexed. ‘I feel quite dizzy. What were you saying?’
James had turned to the window again. The woman was still walking slowly in search of the playful child. Somewhere, he thought, there are women whose children will be doomed if this man lives. He knew it as certainly as he had ever known anything and he said with a finality which Raoul could not question:
‘Go. Go quickly because I shall ring the police as soon as you leave this room.’
There was silence. He could not look at Raoul again; so he went across to the basin and tapped it. If he doesn’t go, I shall fetch a policeman, he thought wearily; I shan’t like doing that. He bent down to examine the waste pipe. He heard the bedsprings squeak as Raoul’s weight shifted. Then there was one blinding flash of light and the problem of whether he should or should not fetch a policeman was resolved.
Chapter Fifteen
The darkness thinned; the furniture in the room gained substance; the dressing table littered with pieces of cotton wool, brushes, mascara, lacquer bottles; the wardrobe door half-open and a dress hanger on the floor beneath; the bed, neat, the coverlet undisturbed. Frangcon stirred on the couch, opened one eye and craned a stiff neck to get a glimpse of the illuminated dial of the clock. She told herself for the tenth time that it was silly to worry and arranged her cramped limbs more comfortably on the couch. She muttered aloud: ‘Go to sleep; don’t think.’ But as sleep came again it brought with it a desolate sense of failure; she should have stopped Rose. She tried to hold back the tide of sleep, to argue, ‘I couldn’t have stopped her; I didn’t understand what it was all about; I’ve never understood Rose.’ But the darkness was too strong, and the sense of failure persisted.
Beyond the window the sky became charcoal, then a faint, pearly grey; a dustbin lid clattered and someone hissed at a cat; water splashed in the courtyard. Half an hour later, when the sky was a misty blue. Rose came across the yard and went up the stairs to her room. Frangcon sat up and rubbed at her eyes.
‘I waited for you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like to leave until you came back.’
Rose did not answer. When Frangcon had brushed aside the cobwebs of sleep, she looked at her friend. Rose was slumped on the edge of the bed; her hair was slicked across her forehead and Frangcon could not see her downturned face.
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she suggested.
Rose eased herself on to the bed and pulled the counterpane over her. Frangcon walked stiffly across to the bed.
‘Coffee? Yes?’
She had said this before, in the days when Rose’s affairs were gay and amusing; it seemed a long time ago, like a memory of childhood. Rose turned her face away; her voice had an old weariness.
‘If you like.’
Frangcon sat on the edge of the bed. Rose’s face, in profile, looked pallid and the features seemed to have sharpened, the mouth was shrewish. Involuntarily, Frangcon found herself thinking that this was how Rose would be when the sap of youth ran dry.
‘Have you had a bad time?’
Rose humped around in the bed and buried her face in the pillow.
‘Oh, don’t keep on so, Frangcon! Just get some coffee.’
She drank the coffee, shivering, the counterpane clutched around her as though she had suddenly become prudish about her body. In the mirror in the open wardrobe door she could see herself, the damp spikes of hair straggling across the greasy forehead. Disgust puckered her mouth.
‘I look as if I had been mauled by a wild animal.’ She put the cup down and muttered, ‘Never again!’ She began to crawl off the bed, still draping the counterpane around her.
‘I’m in such a mess,’ she explained drearily.
Frangcon shouted suddenly:
‘Then why do you do it?’
Rose tried to push past her, but Frangcon caught at her arm.
‘What are you trying to turn yourself into, Rose?’
Rose said shrilly:
‘Don’t talk to me like that! Someone had to do something. You and James weren’t getting anywhere.’
Frangcon stared at her, while the maggot of fear crawled at last to the surface of her mind.
‘You’ve been with Milo.’
Rose pushed open the door of the kitchen.
‘The Captain dropped a hint that Milo would be good to those who were good to him.’
She tried to shut the kitchen door, but Frangcon forced it open.
‘What did you tell Milo?’
Rose screamed:
‘I told him that Raoul had an appointment in the mountains and that he was catching the bus to San Juan de la Cruz this morning. Now, leave me alone! Go and find James; I’m surprised he’s not here, organizing everything.’
She pushed the door which slammed very hard because Frangcon was no longer holding it. She tended herself undisturbed and when she came out the room was empty. She muttered, ‘Thank God!’ and flung herself down on the bed, hoping that Frangcon had gone out for breakfast.
Frangcon at that moment was half-walking, half-running along the Ramblas. The sense of failure that she had had in the night still disturbed her; but she told herself that now that she was awake she would be able to fight it. She went past cafés and hotels where coffee and rolls were already being served in the early sunlight. She jolted along with her head bent, as though determined to avoid the temptation of food and drink. Once or twice, however, she paused to look for a taxi, but did not succeed in getting one. She did not stop at any of the tourist agencies to make enquiries about the bus, but headed for the bus station in the Plaza de Cataluña. She made no plans. Once you started to plan, reason got in the way, making difficulties, creating problems, undermining determination. When she made up her mind to do a thing she just went ahead. On this occasion, she went ahead so smoothly, and with so little sense of struggle, that she had the odd impression that she was being carried on a tide stronger, and more relentless, than her individual will.
She reached the bus station at five-past eight. The bus to San Juan de la Cruz left at eight-fifteen, the clerk at the booking office told her. As she collapsed gratefully on one of the bench seats, he leant over the counter and informed her cheerfully that that particular bus left from the Estacion de Francia. This time she did take a taxi. She got to the station at eight-seventeen to find that the bus had gone. The driver of another bus informed her that it had been full, otherwise it would not have started so promptly. She spent an exhausting five minutes trying to persuade the taxi- driver to follow it, watched with amusement by a rather supercilious- looking Englishman at a nearby bookstall.
It occurred to her, belatedly, that if what she feared had happened, Raoul would already have been taken away by the police.
‘Did anyone get off the bus at the last minute?’ she asked the bus driver.
He did not understand her Spanish, but after a lot of miming and the introduction of a few phrases in French, she managed to satisfy herself that nothing very dramatic had happened. That must mean that Raoul would be picked up at San Juan de la Cruz; perhaps the police intended to wait until he met his friend so that they could take them both. In which case, there might still be time to warn him.
‘I must get to San Juan de la Cruz,’ she said.
The bus driver shrugged his shoulders; then he crooked his arm and indicated his watch. He managed to make it clear to her that the next bus went in the afternoon and that there was no return bus.
‘Is there a train?’
No. The nearest station was Arillia, and that was the other side of the mountains; he made a massive sweep with his arm indicating something of the dimensions of the Himalayas. If she went to Arillia, she persisted, could she get a taxi to San Juan de la Cruz? He thought that this was very funny and sauntered off, chuckling to himself, to deal with some passengers. The Englishman, who was still watching with a rather superior air of enjoyment, said:
‘You could walk it, you know. These blighters never walk any
where, so it wouldn’t occur to them.’
‘But the mountains?’
‘It’s only the foothills of the mountains. If you like a nice scramble on the Devon hills it won’t bother you.’
Frangcon, who had not enjoyed her one encounter with the Devon hills, turned to him eagerly. He eyed her up and down, noting the full-skirted dress and inadequate shoes.
‘Bit of an exaggeration, perhaps. But still . . . Not going on your own, I suppose?’ When Frangcon did not reply, he prompted, ‘Boy friend going with you?’
She said, ‘I shall be meeting him later.’
In a sense it was true: James would undoubtedly follow her when he discovered what had happened.
The man produced a map from his pocket and suggested coffee. ‘Train doesn’t go for half an hour,’ he explained. In the refreshment bar he unfolded the map on the damp table. ‘It’s quite simple because there’s only one possible route that just winds round and round the sides of the hills until you get there—rather like the walk across the Cleaves from Waters meet to Lynton, if you’ve ever done that. Rather dull, I found it, but you get some goodish views. Got a camera?’ He was sketching out a route on the back of an envelope while he spoke; then he related one or two landmarks to the map with a neat cross. ‘Better take the map. Always a good thing to have a map, just in case. You can drop it in at my hotel—I’m at the Internacional—when you come back if you like. No hurry. I shan’t be using it again.’ He wrote his name on the map and then glanced at the clock. ‘Better go and find the boy friend.’
She went out into the street, not wishing to arouse his suspicions. There was still time to telephone James. But they would never sort things out over the telephone. And anyway, the time for talking was past. Raoul had moved beyond the range of argument; his need was indisputable and the best way of demonstrating this to James was to get him into the heart of the situation. She went into a telephone kiosk and rang Rose’s apartment house; she left a message with the concierge asking Rose to tell James that she had gone to San Juan de la Cruz. Then she bought a ticket and a magazine and boarded the train. As an afterthought, she craned out of the window and attracted the attention of a man with a food trolley from whom she bought some rather greasy-looking rolls and a bar of chocolate. She might have been setting out on a picnic, and she tried to keep up this pretence as the train pulled out of the station. It would not help to think.
Arillia, which she reached several hours later, turned out to be a reassuring little town with a sizeable square and one or two pleasant hotels, and if the mountains which surrounded it bore little resemblance to the soft Devon hills, it was comforting to see well-signposted roads striking out towards them. Perhaps it would be possible to reach San Juan de la Cruz by bus or taxi after all. She stopped at a hotel for another coffee and engaged the attention of the waiter without much difficulty. Unfortunately it seemed that the roads followed the valleys and no one had thought it necessary to provide easy access from one valley to another. The waiter, who spoke a little English, assured her that one could easily walk from Arillia to San Juan de la Cruz. He had been born in the mountains and he had done it often.
As she set out, she found herself thinking, not of Raoul but of James. She hoped that he would not think she had driven him into a corner. In fact, when she came to the small bridge over a stream which the Englishman had marked on the map, she felt as though she was the one who was being driven. She crossed the bridge, found the track on the other side without difficulty, and set off up the slope. She sang a little to keep herself from thinking.
She did not stop until she had been walking for ten minutes. By that time, her breath was coming with difficulty and she was no longer singing. The town and its surroundings had fallen away alarmingly; all that she could see was a geometric design of sloping roofs and gables intersected by roads along which cars crawled like tiny coloured beetles. She put her hand to her side and waited for the straining of her lungs to ease. All around her the hills gathered, intersected by deep, dark valleys; as she looked at them they seemed to converge on her like the towering waves of an angry sea. Perhaps it would not be so sombre once she had got out of this valley. She could see the spidery track of the path winding round the shoulder of the hill. She set off again.
The path climbed and twisted, descended and spiralled upwards again and at every hundred yards the view changed. It was like being on a slow motion switchback at a fairground, the landscape tilting and sliding, moving up and falling away again; the angle of vision changed continuously but she was getting nowhere and as she struggled up the hill it seemed to grow taller and taller. She felt as though she was the victim of one of nature’s more unpleasant deceptions.
When at last she rounded the shoulder of the hill the whole process began again. The valley that lay beneath her was, if anything, more sombre than the last one. Although the hills were covered with shrubs and stunted trees the slope was so steep that as she stood on the path she had the feeling that at one stride she could topple into space with nothing to break her fall until she reached the dark water that frothed over stones untouched by sunlight far below. This feeling of leaning into space was so strong that she began to clutch at ferns and shrubs, pulling herself into the shelter of the hill as she walked, making her progress slower and much more tiring. She was snatching for breath, never able to fill her lungs properly, yet she dared not stop because despair was hard on her heels ready to throw over her a blanket of darkness. She tried to think of Raoul as he had looked when he told her the story of the village, the desolation in the blanched face. But his image was blurred by the terror of these switchback hills. She scrambled forward faster and faster, muttering, ‘God, don’t let me fail.’ But whom she might fail, Raoul or herself, was no longer clear to her.
The path veered, descended, climbed again. Another valley opened out, there was the glint of sunlight on a stone wall, a tiny prick of fight which seemed to rocket upwards. She missed her footing and dived down the slope. It seemed to her that she was going straight down to that sharp point of light and although in fact she did not fall very far she had lost all sense of direction when she slithered to a halt. She looked around wildly and saw a track a little lower down. She crawled towards it, tearing her clothes on brambles, scratching her face and hands as she thrust through the undergrowth. She did not get out the map because there was no time to stop now. She followed the new track, stumbling, crouching forward to grasp at tufts of grass and the trailing branches of trees.
The hills were closing in again, so close that the sunlight was blotted out. She saw the hard sheen of rock wall and heard the sound of rushing water before the final turn of the path brought her to the ledge. It was narrow and it over-hung a deep gorge at the bottom of which there must have been a waterfall, although she could not see it. Half-way down the rock face a solitary tree straggled outwards, its branches almost touching the rock on the other side of the gorge.
Surprisingly, she felt nothing at all. It was as though she had known that this was waiting for her and it was a relief to have come to it at last. The ledge continued for a distance of about ten yards and on the far side there was an inviting path which twisted away from the gorge. She took a step forward, and found that though fear might have gone, her sense of balance had not been restored. She went down on her hands and knees and crawled on to the ledge. She felt herself swaying outwards. She lay flat on her stomach and closed her eyes; there was the sound of rushing water, nothing else. After a moment she dug her toes into the rock and, pulling with her hands, hauled herself forward. She repeated the process two or three times. She had travelled perhaps three feet. She did not look towards the chasm on her left, but she could feel it as though it was a beautiful enemy drawing her strongly. The knowledge of its presence caused the solid rock beneath her to heave like the roll of a ship in a stormy sea. It seemed incredible that she should not be pitched over. Something caught in her hair; she wriggled forward again and a twig snapped and dangled ac
ross her face. The dreadful surging of the rock beneath her increased and the enemy beckoned enchantingly. Anything was better than this; better by far to roll over the side now, since it would happen in the end anyway. The burden or sanity grew heavy. A stone gave beneath her hand and panic jabbed like a cold needle through her head. The shock started her moving again. She must surely have covered six or seven yards now. Her hands explored the ledge ahead, she hauled herself forward; she repeated the process again and again and again until the groping left hand brushed against something. She stopped. Then she moved her hand slightly to the left again, felt grass and earth in her clawing finger nails. Relief was almost too much for her, the rock beneath her lurched, swayed and bucketed. She dug her teeth into her lip until the pain cleared her mind. Then she inched herself forward, resisting the temptation to heave strongly. She hauled herself up the far bank without a backward glance and lay face down in the grass.
She lay there for a long time. Her first coherent thought was that it would be nice to lie there for ever. For some reason this brought her to her feet and she found herself scrambling forward again, although her legs were shaking so much that she could hardly walk. The path led away from the gorge and the slopes of the hills grew more gentle; but this did not comfort her since she no longer cared what happened. When she rounded the curve of the hill and saw the village not far below, it was with no sense of relief or achievement.
As she jolted down the path there was nothing but will-power and a certain obstinacy of spirit to drive her on. She had always imagined that once feeling had died, she would die, too; the discovery that this was not so gave her no pleasure.
The village consisted of one long street and there was only one hotel. Perhaps Raoul would be at the hotel, perhaps not. She made for it because it seemed the only thing to do and because she wanted so much to lie down. There were one or two people about who stared at her as though she was the strangest sight they had ever seen. Some children followed her. She could hear them laughing and whispering and once a boy ran up beside her and stared into her face, his eyes full of devilment. Then he fell back and the laughter began again. She reached the hotel. The narrow hall was empty, but as she hesitated on the threshold, trying to gather her wits for one last effort, a door opened and Raoul came out.