by P. D. James
The room was at the back but was not quiet. She lay stiffly between detergent-smelling sheets and identified the distant sounds: the voices now soft, now raucous, breaking into guffaws of laughter as the last customers left, cars revving up, doors slamming, the distant barking of a dog, the background swish of cars on the side road. Gradually her legs grew warm and she relaxed, but her mind was too stimulated for sleep. She was possessed by a mixture of excitement, anxiety and a strange disorientating sense that she had moved out of her familiar world into a limbo of time in which nothing was recognizable, nothing real except Ashe. She thought: No one knows where I am. I don’t know where I am. And now Ashe was no longer with her. Suddenly she pictured herself next day moving out of the quiet hotel into the dim light of the October morning to find that he wasn’t where he’d promised to wait, that the bike wasn’t there, that she waited and he still didn’t come.
The thought wrenched her stomach and, when the spasm passed, left her feeling cold again and a little sick. But there was still a vestige of common sense and she held on to it. She told herself that it wouldn’t be the end of the world. She had money, she wasn’t in danger, she could take a train back home. But she knew that it would be the end of her world, that there was no safety now except with him, and that the home to which she returned had never been a home to her and never would be without him. Of course he would be there, he would be waiting for her. He would be there because he loved her, they loved each other. He was taking her somewhere private, somewhere special, somewhere only he knew about where they could be together, away from Mrs. Buckley’s accusing, worried eyes, away from that basement flat which had never really been hers, had always been grudged, away from death and murder and inquests, insincere condolences and her own overwhelming sense of guilt, the feeling that everything, including her mother’s murder, was her fault and always had been.
They would have to go back to London eventually, of course, they couldn’t stay away for ever. But when they went back everything would be different. She and Ashe would have made love, they would belong to each other, would get married, would move away from the past, find their own life, their own home. She would never, ever, be unloved again.
She was glad that they hadn’t made love in London, that he had wanted to wait. She couldn’t remember when her interest in him, in his mysteriousness, his silences, his power, had grown into fascination, but she knew the precise moment when fascination had sharpened into desire. It had been when that half-developed print, floating gently in the developing fluid as if it were coming alive, had suddenly become clear and they had gazed together at the lineaments of horror. And she knew now why he had taken that photograph even before he had called the police. He had known that, one day, he would have to face that horror again before he could exorcise it and put it out of his memory for ever. He had chosen her to share that moment so that the worst terror he had ever known would be her terror too. There would be nothing secret between them. After that realization it had become difficult not to touch him; the need to put a hand to his face, to lift her mouth for the kiss which, when it came, had been so formal, so transitory, had at times been overwhelming. She loved him. She needed to know that he loved her. He did love her. She clung to that certainty as if it alone could bring her out of the dead years of rejection into a shared life. Under the bedclothes, she pressed the ring hard against her finger as if it were a talisman.
And now her body warmth was returning, the noise was becoming muted and she felt that first slow dropping into the borderlands of sleep. When at last sleep came, it was dreamless.
3
She awoke early, long before it was light, and lay almost rigid, looking at her wristwatch every ten minutes, waiting for six o’clock, when she told herself that it would be reasonable to get up and make tea. There was a tray in her room set with two large thick cups and saucers, a bowl containing tea bags, sachets of coffee and sugar and a couple of biscuits. There was a small kettle but no teapot. She supposed she was expected to make the tea in the cup. The biscuits were wrapped but still tasted stale, but she made herself eat them, not knowing when she would have the chance of a meal. Ashe had said: “Don’t draw attention to yourself by going down to breakfast. It’ll be too early anyway. We can stop and get something on the road.” She understood the need to get away from London, from the concerned faces, the inquisitive eyes, Mrs. Buckley’s undisguised antagonism.
She understood all that. But it still seemed strange that Ashe should be so concerned that they shouldn’t be seen together on the journey, that he should worry about her being recognized in this small insignificant hotel. She had slung the blond wig on the back of an upright chair, the only one in the room. The wig looked ridiculous. The thought of putting it on again was repulsive. But she had arrived at the hotel as a blonde. She would have to leave as a blonde. When they arrived at Ashe’s secret place she would take it off for ever and be herself again.
By six-forty-five she was dressed and ready to go. She had become so infected with Ashe’s caution that she found herself creeping downstairs as if she were sneaking out without paying her bill. But that had been settled the night before. There was nothing to worry about, no one to watch her go except an elderly porter in a long striped apron who was shuffling across the hall as she made for the door. She put her key on the desk and called out to him, “I’m just leaving. I have paid,” but he took no notice and passed through the swing doors into the bar.
Carrying her helmet and with her backpack slung across her shoulder, she turned left off the main road to where he had said he would be waiting. But the side road was empty. For a second her heart seemed to miss a beat. Disappointment rose bitter as bile on her tongue. And then she saw him.
He was riding slowly towards her, coming out of the darkness and the morning mist, bringing with him the remembered surge of excitement, the reassurance that everything was under control, that her one night alone was the last time on the journey when they would be separated. He drew up and clasped her briefly to him, then kissed her cheek. Without speaking, she mounted behind him.
He said: “Was it all right, the hotel? Were you comfortable?”
Surprised at the concern in his voice, she said: “It was all right.”
“They didn’t ask you any questions, where you were going?”
“No, why should they? I couldn’t have told them anyway. I don’t know, do I?”
He restarted the engine. Above the noise he said: “You’ll know soon. It isn’t far now.”
And now they were riding along the A12 towards the sea. The dawn came in pale reds and pinks, solid as a range of gleaming mountains against the eastern sky, the yellow light streaming down its slopes and spilling into the crevasses. There was little traffic, but Ashe rode well within the speed limit. Octavia longed for him to go faster, to ride as he so often had over the South Downs in great surges of sound, so that the air ripped at her body and stung her face. But this morning he was cautious. They rode through sleeping villages and small towns under the brightening sky, between low wind-torn hedges and the flat landscape of East Anglia. And now they turned south and were riding through a forest with straight paths leading between the tall firs into a green darkness. And then that too ended, and there was heathland, gorse and small clumps of silver birch. The road here was narrow as a track. The light was strengthening and she thought she could smell the salt tang of the sea. Suddenly she was aware of hunger. They had passed a number of brightly lit roadside cafés, but either Ashe wasn’t hungry or he had decided not to risk a stop. But surely they would arrive soon. They had packed plenty of food. There would be time then to have a picnic breakfast.
To their right the road was fringed with woodland. And now he was riding almost at a walking pace, looking to each side of the road as if searching for a landmark. After about ten minutes of this crawl he found what he was looking for. There was a holly bush on the eastern side of the road and, opposite it, a few yards of broken wall.
/> Dismounting, he said: “This is the place. We have to get through the wood.”
He wheeled the Kawasaki under the boughs of the holly and into the trees. There must, she thought, once have been a path, but it was long overgrown, obstructed by hanging boughs and encroaching shrubs. Sometimes they had to bend double to get beneath the branches. From time to time Ashe would make her go ahead to hold back the springing boughs so that he could force the bike through the thickets. But he seemed to know where he was going. They didn’t speak. She listened for his commands, obeyed them, and was glad of the protection of her gloves and leathers against the thorn and matted brambles. And then, suddenly, the wood became less dense, the soil sandier. There was a fringe of silver birch and then, miraculously, the wood ended and she saw stretching before them a green sea of reeds, hissing and sighing and gently waving their frail tops, as far as the eye could see. They stood for a moment, panting with exertion, gazing out over the tremulous waste of green. It was a place of utter loneliness.
Filled with excitement, she asked: “Is this it? Is this the place?”
“Not quite. That’s where we’re going. Over there.”
He pointed over the reed beds. About two hundred yards ahead and a little to the right she could just see the top of a clump of trees barely visible above the reeds.
Ashe said: “There’s a derelict house there. It’s on a kind of island. No one ever goes near it. That’s where we’re going.”
He was looking towards it and it seemed to her that his face was alight with happiness. She couldn’t ever remember seeing him like this. He was like a child who knows at last that the longed-for present is within his grasp. She felt a pang that it was a place and not she who had brought that brightness to his face, that joy.
She asked: “How can we get there? Is there a path? What about the bike?” She was anxious not to sound discouraging, not to spoil the moment by making objections.
“There’s a path. It’s very narrow. We’ll have to wheel the bike for the last part.”
He left her for a moment and went to the edge of the reed beds, walking along the fringes searching for a remembered place. Then he returned and said: “It’s still here. Get on the pillion, we can ride for the first part. It looks firm enough.”
She said: “Can’t I take the wig off now? I hate it.”
“Why not?” He almost tore it from her head, then tossed it behind him. It caught on the bough of a young fir tree and hung there, brightly yellow against the dark green. He turned to her and smiled, his face transformed. “This is the last part. We’re nearly there.”
He wheeled the bike to the beginning of the track and she mounted behind him. The ridge was little more than a yard wide, a sandy narrow path through the reeds. On either side they grew so high that the tops waved six inches above their heads. It was like riding slowly through an impenetrable forest of whispering green and pale gold. He rode warily but without fear. Octavia wondered what would happen if he swerved from the path, how deep the water was on either side, whether they would thrash about among the reeds, struggling to pull themselves up onto the narrow ridge. From time to time, when the pathway became sodden and even narrower, or the edges had crumbled into the water, he would dismount and say: “I’d better push the bike here. You walk behind.”
Sometimes the track became so narrow that the reeds brushed both her shoulders. She had the sense that they were closing in on her, that soon there would be nothing ahead but a wall, insubstantial but impenetrable, of green-and-pale-gold stalks. The path seemed endless. It was impossible to believe that they were making their way towards their goal, that they would ever reach that far island. But she could hear the sea now, a faint rhythmic rumble that was curiously comforting. Perhaps that was how the journey would end, the reeds would suddenly part and she would see in front of her the grey trembling expanse of the North Sea.
It was just when she was wondering whether she dare ask Ashe how much further they had to go that the island came suddenly into view. The reed beds opened up and she saw the clumps of trees, firm sandy soil, and behind the trees the glimpse of a derelict cottage. There was an expanse of about thirty feet of water, reed-free, between the island and where they stood. It was spanned by a ramshackle bridge two planks wide and supported in the middle by a single wooden post, blackened with age. Once there had been a handrail on the right, but this had rotted away and only the uprights and a foot of the rail still remained. There must once have been a gate barring the entrance to the bridge; one of the posts was intact and there were three rusted hinges embedded in the wood.
Octavia shivered. There was something oppressive, even sinister, about the stretch of still, olive-dark water and the broken bridge.
She said, “So this is the end,” and the words struck chill, as if they were a portent.
Ashe had been wheeling the bike. Now he propped it on its side-stand and moved over to the bridge, walking cautiously to the middle, then testing it by jumping up and down. The planks sagged and groaned but held firm.
Still gently jumping, he spread his arms, and she saw again that happy transforming smile. He said: “We’ll unpack and carry our stuff across. Then I’ll come back for the bike. The bridge should hold.”
He was like a boy relishing a first longed-for adventure.
He came back and unpacked the bike. Encumbered by two sleeping-bags and the leather side-panniers, he handed her one of the rucksacks. Laden with that and her own pack, she followed him over the bridge, then under the low branches of the tree, and saw the cottage clearly for the first time. It had long been derelict. The tiled roof was still partly in place, but the front door hung open on broken hinges, its base embedded in the soil. They moved into what was originally one of two ground-floor rooms. There was no glass in the one high window. The door between the rooms had gone and only a deep sink, stained and scarred, under a tap wrenched from the wall, showed that the further room had once been a kitchen. The back door, too, was missing and she stood looking out over the expanse of reeds towards the sea. But it was still out of sight.
Disappointed, she asked: “Why can’t we see the sea? I can hear it. It can’t be far away.”
“About a mile. You can’t see it from here. You can’t see it from anywhere on the reed beds. At the end of the reeds there’s a high bank of shingle and then the North Sea. It isn’t very interesting. Just a stony beach.”
She would have liked to be there, to get away from this claustrophobic greenness. But then she told herself that this was Ashe’s special place; she mustn’t let him know that she was disappointed. And she wasn’t disappointed, not really. It was just that everything was so strange. She had a sudden vision of the garden at the convent, the wide well-tended lawns, the flower beds, the summer-house at the end of the garden overlooking a meadow, where they could sit in warm weather. It was the kind of country she was used to, English, ordered, familiar. But she told herself that they wouldn’t be here for long, probably just overnight. And he had brought her here to his own special place. Surely this was where he meant to make love.
Now, like a child, he asked: “What do you think of it? Good, isn’t it?”
“It’s secret. How did you find it?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he said: “I used to come here when I was in that home outside Ipswich. No one knows it’s here except me.”
She said: “Were you always alone? Didn’t you have a friend?”
But again he didn’t reply. Instead he said: “I’ll go and get the bike. Then we’ll unpack and have some breakfast.”
The thought lightened her spirits immediately. She had forgotten how hungry, how thirsty she was. She watched from the water’s edge as he went back over the bridge, kicked back the prop-stand, and wheeled the Kawasaki backwards.
She called: “You’re not going to ride it, are you?”
“It’s the easiest way. Stand clear.”
He mounted the bike, revved up and drove furiously towards the bridge. The fr
ont wheels were nearly on dry land when, with a crack which sounded to her like an explosion, the centre post gave way, the two near planks splintered and fell and the struts of the side rail were flung into the air. At the first crack Ashe had stood up and leapt for the island, reaching it with inches to spare, slithering on the sandy earth. She dashed forward to help him up. Together they turned and watched as the purple Kawasaki slowly disappeared under the brackish water. Half the bridge had collapsed. There was nothing now but the two further planks, their shattered ends sinking in the water.
Octavia looked at Ashe’s face, terrified of an explosion of rage. She knew that the rage was there. He had never shown it with her but she had always been aware of those smouldering depths of feeling held so tightly under control. But instead he gave a great shout of laughter, harsh, almost triumphant.
She couldn’t keep the dismay out of her voice. “But we’re cut off. How are we going to get home?”
Home. She used the word un-self-consciously. Only now did she realize that the house in which for so many years she had felt alien and unwanted was her place, her home.
He said: “We can take off our clothes, then swim for it, holding them out of the water. Then we’ll dress and make for the road. We’ve got money. We can hitch into Ipswich or Saxmundham and take a train. And we don’t need the bike any more. After all, we’ve got your mother’s Porsche. That’s yours now. Everything she had is yours. You know what that solicitor told you.”
She said sadly: “I know what he told me.”
She heard his voice, eager, the voice of a new, a different Ashe. “There’s even an old outside lavatory in the garden. Look, it’s here.”