The Shadow and the Peak

by Richard Mason

  “Be careful,” Douglas said. “His duppy might be around somewhere.”

  “I don’t believe in duppies,” she said. “He’s dead. Honestly, you ought to have seen him dying. He enjoyed it.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He insisted on going into a public ward so that everyone could see him. He kept saying he was dying in case anyone misunderstood. It was rotten there weren’t any newsreels.”

  “Didn’t he have any last words?”

  “Oh, yes. He said I was to forget him. I wasn’t to let him ruin my life. I said I wouldn’t. That’s probably what killed him.”

  “I can hear Burroughs coming back,” Douglas said. “I’d better go and have a bath.”

  “Damn Burroughs,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell him to go to hell?”

  “I’m no good at telling people to go to hell. I’m too progressive.”

  “Well, you are,” she said. “But, anyhow, I don’t care about Burroughs. Nothing can spoil this.”

  “Only duppies,” he said.

  “I told you, I don’t believe in them,” she said. “I’m not hauntable any more.”

  It was a huge bath. He filled it almost up to the waste-pipe. There was a toy boat on the side and he played with it for a while. As he was washing he thought of Burroughs’s striped pants and began to laugh. He was feeling rather light-headed after the flight. He thought they ought to ask Burroughs to bathe with them in his striped pants to scare away the barracudas. That seemed worth remembering to tell Judy. He got out of the bath and pulled up the plug. As he dried, he could hear the water running out of the pipe and splashing into the drain outside. It sounded like the rain splashing out of the gutter from the roof of his bungalow. Then the noise of the waste-pipe stopped, and he remembered that when the rain had stopped the dogs had been scratching at the door, and he had watched Mrs. Pawley go off in her Wellington boots, and as he picked up her umbrella he had seen Silvia’s little white face and her skinny white arms hanging at her sides and her wet lank hair, and, then he had seen her eyes and she had said . . . It didn’t matter now what she had said—if Judy could get rid of ghosts, why couldn’t he? He put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and he thought of Judy’s smiling eyes, and he began to feel light-headed again as he went back down the passage to the room. Burroughs was already dressed and was standing waiting for him, looking upset. He came over to Douglas and said in a hushed voice:

  “I say, old man, there’s something up with your friend. She’s been crying.”

  “Crying?”

  “Sobbing her heart out. I heard it from the balcony. I couldn’t make out what was going on, so I peeped in. She was lying on the bed with her face in the pillow. I thought, I’d better not disturb her. It’s funny. She looked so happy this afternoon.”

  “She lost someone recently,” Douglas said.

  He nodded sympathetically.

  “As you know, I’ve been through the same thing. You don’t think you ought to go in? I was always grateful for the comfort of friends.”

  “I’ll see her later.”

  Burroughs seemed genuinely upset. The bounce had gone out of him. He said he would just go out and get his bearings—he would be quite happy nosing around by himself for a while. He went off, and Douglas dressed slowly. While he was doing his hair Judy knocked on the balcony door and came in.

  “Heavens! Aren’t you ready yet?”

  “Very nearly.”

  “I’ve been waiting for ages.”

  He wouldn’t have known she had been crying, but she kept her head turned away, looking round the room, in case there was some trace left in her eyes. She noticed the elephant on the dressing-table.

  “What on earth’s this? Something Burroughs takes round with him?”

  “No, it’s something of mine.”

  “It’s broken,” she said. “Why do you keep it?”

  “It’s supposed to bring good luck and fulfilment of dreams and all that sort of nonsense. But it’s not awfully good at it.”

  “You keep it, all the same,” she said.

  “You must have something to hang on to. I used to think you could make do with a decent hobby, but photography hasn’t helped Burroughs much.”

  “I never had anything,” Judy said. “I have good luck, all the same.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m here in Tobago with you.”

  “You were crying just now,” he said.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said. “Does it show?”

  “Burroughs heard you.”

  She laughed. “Isn’t it stupid. I found one of Louis’ buttons in my case. I’d promised to sew it on for him. I can think of him coughing his innards out without turning a hair, and then I get upset over a button.”

  “Isn’t it funny?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “You know what I’m like.”

  They took a taxi to another hotel for dinner, to avoid Burroughs, and ate outside on a terrace. There was an evening breeze rustling the palms. Sometimes when the palms stopped rustling they could hear the rustle of the sea, and there was the clean smell of the sea in the soft, warm air. All the stage-props of happiness, he thought; and he pretended to himself that he was happy.

  Presently Judy said, “Douglas, why aren’t you going back to the school? Something happened, didn’t it?”

  “How do you know?”

  “You don’t laugh properly,” she said. “Your eyes haven’t laughed once.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll tell you if you like.”

  While he was telling her she sat in perfect silence. He saw the happiness melting from her face. By the time he had finished she had turned quite pale.

  She gazed at him without speaking for a minute. Then burst out all at once, in a kind of fury of unhappiness, “Oh, Douglas, you are a fool! I always said you were, didn’t I? You are, honestly, darling—a perfect fool.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he said.

  “Not because of what happened in Jamaica. I mean for this. Why did you want to see me again? Why on earth were you such an idiot?”

  “I wanted to be with you before,” he said. “I do still.”

  She was shaking her head, almost in tears. “It won’t work. You know damned well it won’t. Not after all that.”

  “Why not?” he said. “We’re grown up now. We no longer expect perfection.”

  “No,” she said. “No, it wouldn’t be any use. You’d never laugh again properly. You’d never be able to look at me. You don’t think I want you like that, do you?” Her eyes had become blurred, and a tear fell as suddenly as a falling star and stopped abruptly on her cheekbone. She brushed it away quickly and smiled. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I never cry, except over cigarette-ends and buttons and that sort of thing. Couldn’t we go and talk somewhere else?”

  All at once he felt quite flat. “Perhaps we’d better go back,” he said.

  They took a taxi outside. It was a huge open car with battered mudguards. The driver had to bang the door several times to make it close. He was grinning happily as if he enjoyed it. They started off, and a moment later the door flew open again, and the driver stopped and got out and finally fixed it with wire. As the car moved forward again, Judy said brightly:

  “You needn’t feel awkward because you’ve brought me here. I could easily go off somewhere. I could go to Haiti. There was an Argentine chap on the plane from Buenos Aires who was going there for the cock-fights. He invited me to go with him.”

  “Do you want to see a cock-fight?”

  “I believe they’re much more gruelling than bull-fights, but it might be quite a thrill to go once. He’d send me an air-ticket if I cabled.”

  “Did he want to marry you?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. He has a wife already. Right up my street, you
see. And bags of money.”

  “You always cared so much about money,” he said. “Look at Louis.”

  “Well, it’s not too late to start caring now,” she said. “And I’d honestly like to see a cock-fight. It wouldn’t be half so gruelling as watching you despising yourself. And before long you’d be despising me, too. We should be a rotten couple.”

  “That wasn’t how I’d thought of it,” he said.

  “You’d thought of it without Silvia,” she said. “Without any ghosts.”

  “Yes,” he said wretchedly. “I was never much good at laying ghosts. I wish I’d taken more lessons from you.”

  “It isn’t something you learn. It’s something you are. It’s just being shallow.”

  “Or just having courage,” he said.

  They were going uphill. Two Negro girls in pink cotton dresses moved off the road into the grass in front of the car. Their eyes were caught in the headlamps for a moment and looked big and guilty and startled. They vanished in the darkness behind. It was two miles back to the hotel. They went the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the hotel, Douglas paid off the driver and they went upstairs.

  In Judy’s room, he said to her, “I suppose you really want to go to Haiti?”

  She shrugged, and turned away, and said lightly, “Oh, he’s a jolly attractive chap. I might get quite a kick out of it.”

  “Are you crying again?” he said.

  She laughed. “Only a bit. But if you ask me like that I probably shall. I’m rotten at farewells. It doesn’t matter who they’re with.’

  “You can’t send a cable until the morning,” he said.

  “I know. But I’d better send it then, hadn’t I?”

  “We could decide tomorrow,” he said.

  “All right,” she said. “Tomorrow. In the cold light of dawn.”

  “I’m at my best in the cold light of dawn,” he said. “It’s the nights that are the worst.”

  “Oh darling, I’m sorry,” she said, looking miserable again. “I’m terribly sorry. You can stay tonight, if you want—if you really think it would help.”

  “No,” he said. “It probably wouldn’t. It would hurt too much to think how different it all might have been.”

  When he was back in his own room, he undressed quickly and climbed into bed. Burroughs had not yet returned. The balcony door stood open, and the air was soft and full of tropical smells. He could see the light from Judy’s room falling across the balustrade on to the dry tattered fronds of the palms.

  Presently he heard the door open.

  “I haven’t woken you, have I?” Burroughs said. “I’ve been writing downstairs—telling my daughter all about you. Did you have a good evening?”

  “Yes—splendid.”

  He saw Judy’s light go off; but down below were the lights of the little town and the reflections of the lights in the water. Burroughs undressed and sat on the edge of his bed in his pyjamas. He was writing again. After a while he said:

  “You’re not asleep yet, are you?”

  “Not yet.

  “I meant to ask you. What did you teach at that school of yours?”

  Douglas smiled wearily and closed his eyes. Behind his lids the Peak awaited him, standing serenely amongst its dwindling shadows. Slowly, beneath the naked branches, the tiny lifeless sack began to turn.

  “Innocence,” he said.

  About the Author

  Richard Mason

  Richard Mason was born near Manchester in 1919. He served in the RAF during the Second World War before taking a crash course in Japanese and becoming an interrogator of prisoners of war. His first novel, The Wind Cannot Read, which drew on these experiences, won the 1948 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was made into a film starring Dirk Bogarde. Several of his following novels were also cinematised, most famously The World of Suzie Wong, about an artist’s romance with a Hong Kong prostitute. His last novel, The Fever Tree, was published in 1962. Mason moved to Rome in the early 1970s and lived there until his death in 1997.

  About Bello

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  Copyright

  First published in 1949 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2017 by Bello

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  ISBN 978-1-5098-5249-9 EPUB

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  Copyright © Richard Mason 1949

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