by James Wilson
My voice was starting to thicken. She tactfully dropped her dark eyes.
‘So …When the doctor told me she was dying … I sent him out of the room, and sat by her bed, and – though he’d said she couldn’t possibly hear me – I began to …’ I paused, trying to get my ragged breathing under control. ‘I really don’t know why, I must be a savage, I suppose, but I honestly believed that – if I could only nerve myself to it – I’d be able to bring her back again. It would be like trying to rescue someone from a burning house. Just one supreme act of enchantment. Do it with enough faith, enough conviction, and it would have the power – even at that late stage – to overcome the ravages of scarlet fever.’
She twitched, as if something had stung her. Then she reached out her hand, and laid it over mine.
At that moment, outside, we heard the bathetic goose-honk of a motor-horn.
‘Oh!’ She whipped back her hand and started to her feet, like a child caught doing something shameful. Then she turned abruptly, and began frantically patting the seat where she had been sitting.
‘What’s lost?’
She didn’t answer. I found my matches, lit one, and held it above her, cupping my palm over the flame to make a tiny lantern.
‘Ah!’ She lunged forward, and snatched something up. Then she stood looking past me at the rain, nibbling her lips and lacing her fingers so tightly that I couldn’t see what they were clutching.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she seemed momentarily to have forgotten I was there. She stared at me, frowning with the effort to assimilate what I’d said.
The horn sounded again.
‘Who is that?’
‘My … my … school-mistress friend.’ She was grimacing, and the tension in her throat had squeezed her voice to a girlish falsetto. She was either in great fear or great distress all of a sudden, that was obvious – but what the cause was, I was at a loss to understand. Behind me, I heard the lych-gate squeak, and the leisurely clack of a woman’s footsteps starting along the path.
Mary Wilson stiffened, then hunched forward slightly, pressing whatever was in her hands against her belly. And in that small, unconsciously protective gesture I suddenly glimpsed what it was that was anguishing her.
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I see. Even she doesn’t know what you came here for, is that it?’
She blinked at me aghast, as if I’d performed some startling act of mind-reading.
‘No,’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone, except –’
‘Would you like me to take that, and bury it for you?’
She hesitated a second. Then – after peering round me, to make sure her friend was still not close enough to see what we were doing – she impetuously thrust a small wooden box into my hands. By the time I had managed to fumble it into my pocket, she had already edged past me, and was standing shivering in the entrance, clutching her sodden hat like a rag. Something in the narrowness of her shoulders, and the forlorn slant of her bare head as she bowed it against the rain, made me think of a frightened child steeling herself for her first day at school.
‘Under the yew tree?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Here.’ She slipped off my coat, and held it out to me. ‘Thank you.’
Her teeth were chattering. I said:
‘Please – keep it if you want –’
She did not even reply, but simply dropped it over my knees, and hurried out into the night.
I wanted to call after her; but that, I realized, would only embarrass her further, by forcing her to explain my presence to her friend. So I shrank back into the gloom, and waited until I heard the chug of the motor-car rise to an imperious roar, and then start to dwindle away into the distance.
I pressed my ear against the church door. All I could hear were some indistinct scuffling noises, which – to judge by their dullness and faintness – seemed to be coming from the vestry. I couldn’t guess what the vicar was doing – but, whatever it was, it certainly didn’t sound as if he was about to leave.
I crept down the path, glanced round quickly to make sure I was still unobserved, and then darted for the cover of the yew. In no more than five seconds I was crouched beneath the matted canopy of the branches – quaking with cold, and my shoulder stabbed and scraped by small sharp twigs, but miraculously shielded from the deluge pummelling the ground all around me.
I took out the box. The darkness under the tree was so impenetrable that I was unable to see even the merest outline of its shape, but when I ran my fingers over the surface I could feel a regular pattern of something cooler and harder than wood, which told me it was inlaid with ivory or mother-of-pearl. Indian, I imagined: perhaps a treasure from her own childhood, which had fuelled her fantasies about the exoticism of her background. It was impossible not to think of the artistry that had gone into making it, and feel a pang at the wastefulness – it seemed almost like a tiny murder – of burying it where no one would ever be able to appreciate its beauty again. But it was its very preciousness, of course, that – in Mary Wilson’s eyes – fitted it for its purpose.
I could not resist easing it open, and slipping my finger inside. Yes, there it was, lying under a square of card: a curl of silky strands, tied together with a piece of thread.
I closed the box again, and started scooping out the soil between two roots. It was dry and crumbly, and in only a couple of minutes I’d made what I judged to be a big enough hole. I laid the box inside, and began pressing earth on top of it.
What happened next was so utterly unlike anything else I have ever experienced that no image can more than dimly suggest it. The closest I can come to it is to say that it was like finding a wild bird has somehow got into your sitting-room, and is whirring its wings against the window. There was the same shock at encountering something familiar in the wrong place; the same fear that a creature so small and fragile might inadvertently hurt itself, or break its neck. But the room, in this instance, was my own skull; and the bird nothing I could put a name or even a shape to. And it was beating so hard in my temple that I feared I should faint.
I stumbled out into the open again. My mind was in chaos: thoughts and memories harried into a wild swirl, like papers threshed by a gust of wind. The only idea I could hold on to from one moment to the next was that I must be ill, and needed help.
I stared about me. Nothing – not the church, or the graveyard, or the glow of lights from the village, or even my own dirty hands – seemed familiar. Some instinct, though, drove me towards the lych-gate. As I went, I was startled by a sudden sound, which frightened me into a run.
I know now – but didn’t then – that it was the church clock striking the half-hour.
II
I have no recollection of finding the Railway Inn, or of how the landlord received me; and my only memory of my first night there is of a strange delirium, in which Mary Wilson’s fractured reflection appeared, dazzlingly bright, in a broken looking-glass. At the same time, I was engaged in an endless struggle with the sheet, which seemed in some way to be a part of me, clinging to my over-sensitive flesh like the half-sloughed skin of a grass-snake. In my confusion, the two things seemed somehow connected: if I could just arrange the sheet properly, the image of Mary Wilson would be whole again, and I should be at peace. But, try as I might, I was never able to manage it.
In the morning, I was drenched with sweat, and conscious of a painful throbbing in my finger where the rose had pricked it. I tried to get up, but my legs folded under me, and I collapsed on the floor. The noise brought the landlady running upstairs to knock on my door and ask if I was all right. Hearing nothing from inside but a feeble moan, she immediately called the doctor – who helped me back into bed, swabbed my swollen finger with carbolic, and told me I must stay where I was until the fever had abated.
Though I never again sank into the madness of that first night, the hallucinations of Mary Wilson’s splin
tered face continued to trouble me. Over the next day or two they would suddenly, without warning, dart up in front of my eyes like brilliantly coloured tropical fish, so vivid that they seemed more real than the faded rose wallpaper and cracked ceiling on which they superimposed themselves – giving me, for an instant, the odd impression that there were really two of me, each of us using the same apparatus to look at something different. Gradually, as my finger began to heal and my temperature returned to normal, these spectres started to retreat – until finally they were no more than a kind of ever-present potential: a luminous quality around the edge of my vision, like the rim of light you see on the horizon just before sunrise.
By the third day, thanks to the care of the landlady, Mrs. Grant, I was strong enough to get up for an hour or so; and – knowing that my wife must be starting to grow anxious about me – I thought I should take the opportunity to cable home. My kindly nurse protested, saying I would only set myself back again if I went out, and offering to go in my place. But I was too embarrassed to let her see what I had written; so I hobbled down to the post office, and shamefacedly slid my message across the counter:
Tell Bear have narsty case of sniffles. Will tellygrarf when comin home.
The post-master scanned it a couple of times, then looked up and said:
‘Are you sure that’s the right spelling, sir?’
‘Quite sure, thank you.’ And, before he had time to question me further, I hurriedly paid him, and left.
On the way back, I decided, on an impulse, to stop at the church. I told myself that I was simply being practical – that the effort of walking had tired me more than I had expected, and it would be prudent to take a rest before making a final assault on the hill up to the pub – but as I went through the lych-gate, I knew from the sudden tingling of my skin that something else entirely had driven me there. It was only when I found myself stumbling not towards the church itself but across the graveyard to the yew tree that I realized what it was.
I knelt down, and lifted the nearest branch. Yes, there was no doubt about it: the earth was freshly turned. Mary Wilson had not been – as I had begun to suspect she might be, though I had scarcely acknowledged it – simply a feverish chimaera produced by an infected finger. I had actually met her. I had buried her box.
I experienced a tremendous gush of relief – mingled, incongruously, with the sense that I had just assumed some momentous burden. Slowly, I clambered to my feet, and limped to the porch. I had just gone inside, and was about to lower myself on to the seat, when I noticed a red-covered book standing on the window-sill. From the way it was displayed – upright, and half-open – it looked as if someone had found it on the floor, and put it in as prominent a place as possible, so that whoever had left it there would immediately see it when he (or she) came to retrieve it.
I took it down and opened it: She, by Rider Haggard. On the fly-leaf was written: Mary Stone. Southsea. May 1898.
Mary. Southsea. Surely it must be hers. Everything was right except the surname – and that could be explained by the date. She would have been only a girl in 1898. Stone must have been her maiden name.
Pressing the book to me, I hobbled back to the Railway Inn, and passed out on my bed.
*
The landlady was right: by venturing out so soon, I had set myself back again; and as a result it was almost another week before the doctor finally pronounced me fit enough to go home. On the eve of my departure, I made myself as spruce as I could, trimming my moustache, and slapping some colour back into my pasty cheeks, and putting on a clean shirt; then I slipped She into the poacher’s pocket of my coat, and went down to the bar. Mrs. Grant smiled at my changed appearance, as you might at a child showing off his new school uniform.
‘Gracious, sir, I’d have hardly known you. You going calling on Sir Humphrey Darby?’
I smiled back. ‘I don’t know where I’m going. I have to return something to somebody, but I’m not sure how to find her. All she told me was that she was staying with a friend who has a motorcar.’
‘What, here in the village, you mean?’
I nodded.
‘Oh, that’ll be Miss Shaw, up at the Motte, I expect. She has the only motor-car round here that I know of.’
‘How far is it?’
‘About a mile past the church. On the Buriton road.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. As I turned towards the door she called after me:
‘But I can do that for you, Mr. Roper, and gladly. You didn’t ought to be going out on an evening like this. Remember what happened the last time.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Grant,’ I said. ‘But a short foray will do me good. Brace up my muscles for tomorrow.’
I was, indeed, dreadfully weak still, and had to keep stopping to catch my breath; and it was almost dark by the time I finally found the Motte. It was some distance from its nearest neighbour, and hidden by tall untidy hedges. I opened the gate, and started up the gravelled drive. Ahead of me I could see a neat whitewashed house, with a stable block to one side, and a line of tattling fir trees to the other. The only feeble light came from a delicately veined fanlight above the front door, but I could just make out the other windows – large, and arranged with classical regularity – glinting in their recesses like dirty pewter. There was something eerily desolate about the place, as if it had been hastily abandoned after some disaster. But if an accident had really befallen Miss Shaw, then surely Mrs. Grant would have mentioned it?
I rested my head against the door-jamb for a moment, then tugged on the bell-pull. There was no response. I tried again, using both hands this time. After a few seconds, I heard footsteps, and then the heavy clunk of a bolt, and the squeak of unoiled hinges. The door cracked open eighteen inches, and stopped abruptly as it hit a chain. A lamp appeared, and then – a foot below it, and jaundiced by its glow – a round, unsmiling woman’s face.
‘Yes?’
‘Good evening. Is Mrs. Wilson in?’
She craned forward, frowning, her eyes screwed half-shut with the effort of trying to see me.
‘There’s no Mrs. Wilson here.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought she was staying with Miss Shaw.’
‘She was. But she went home last week.’ She began to close the door. I drew out the book and thrust it into the shrinking rectangle of light.
‘She left this at the church,’ I said. ‘I was hoping to return it to her. Would your mistress be able to let me have her address, do you think?’
Her face softened, as if merely by mentioning the word church I had demonstrated my trustworthiness.
‘No, sir, I’m sorry. The mistress is away herself.’
‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’
‘Not this side of Christmas, I’m afraid. She’s gone to India. To visit her brother in Simla.’
‘Ah. And you wouldn’t … you wouldn’t, I suppose, have any idea where her address book might –?’
She shook her head. ‘She’ll have taken it with her, sir.’
‘Well, that does seem rather conclusive.’
The obvious thing, of course, would have been to give her the book in any case, and ask her to keep it until her mistress got home, or until Mary Wilson wrote enquiring after it. But that would have robbed me of the opportunity of returning it in person – which for some reason I was peculiarly reluctant to lose. So, before the housekeeper could offer to take it, I said:
‘I’m sorry to have troubled you, then. Good night.’
And without waiting for a reply, I turned and set off briskly
down the drive. I had gone no more than ten paces, however, when she called after me:
‘I can tell you one thing, though. Where her ticket was for. Mrs. Wilson, I mean.’
I stopped. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘She left it behind in her room, see, and the housemaid found it and gave it to me, and we ran after her, and just managed to catch her in time. And I noticed the name on it. And it stu
ck in my mind, because it seemed a funny thing to call a railway station. It sounded more like a farm or something. Somewhere you’d expect someone to live.’
I took a step back towards her. ‘What was it?’
‘Langley Mill,’ she said. ‘Langley Mill.’
*
Early the next morning, still carrying the book, I at last set off for home. Thinking that it might possibly be on my way, I asked the station master, before I got on the train, if he could tell me where Langley Mill was. He frowned as if I were mad, and grumbled:
‘Oh, it’s miles away, sir. In Derbyshire. Heart of the mining country.’
Being forced to travel like an invalid, wrapped in a borrowed rug, and entirely dependent on the goodwill of porters and cab-drivers to get me from one stage of my journey to the next, I made frustratingly slow progress, and didn’t finally arrive until the last silver threads of daylight were fading from the sky. The house was dark, except for a dim yellow glow from the drawing-room; and the only other sign of life I could see, as the gardener’s boy helped me down from the trap, was a great black swirl of rooks gathering in the skeletal branches of the trees at the end of the garden. It was a desolate enough homecoming – but at least, I thought, it meant that I should find my wife alone, and would not have to contend with anyone but her and the servants.
I was wrong: I realized it the instant I switched on the light in the lobby, and saw a greatcoat that didn’t belong to me swagging out from the jumble of jackets and mackintoshes hanging on the hooks. Beneath it was a pair of muddy boots – not neatly stowed against the wall, but splayed with proprietorial carelessness in the middle of the floor. There was only one man I knew who would behave like that in my house: my brother-in-law.
I started towards the drawing-room, but stopped abruptly again when I reached the door. There were muffled animal sounds coming from inside, like the grunts and squeals of a pig sty. I pressed my ear against the wood. My wife (there was no mistaking the whooping-cough bray of her sobs) was crying angrily, while her brother tried to smother the flames by murmuring, over and over: