Each boy held in his hand a very large, very red bone, from which he was gnawing in the frenzied manner that Millie remembered so well.
On the worn, wintry grass before them lay what was left of a human body.
The boys had already eaten their way through most of it, so that it could not even be described as a skeleton or semi-skeleton. The disjoined bones were everywhere strewn about at random, and only the top part of the frame, the upper ribs, remained in position, together with the half-eaten head.
It was Phineas's head.
Things swam.
Millie felt that her soul was rushing up a shaft at the centre of her body. She knew that this is what it was to die.
But she did not die.
She realised that now she was lying on her back in the still-darkened room. Thelma must have moved her. The gas fire was as yellow as before, no doubt because there was something wrong with it; and Thelma in her pink rags and dirty jeans was standing before her, even looking down at her.
'You've been out a long time.'
'I wish I were still out.'
'You may, but I don't. I've things to do. You forget that.'
Millie hesitated.
'Did you see them too?'
'Of course I saw them. Remember, I asked you whether you really had to go on with it.'
'What else could I do?'
'I don't know. I'm not your nursemaid.'
Millie sat up. 'If you pass me my handbag, I'll pay you.'
Thelma passed it. It did not seem to have been rifled during Millie's anaesthesia.
'Perhaps we could have a little more light?' suggested Millie.
Thelma threw on her tunic and, without fastening it, began to draw back or take down the window coverings. Millie did not examine which it was.
She rose to her feet. Had Thelma been behaving differently, she, Millie, would have been shaking all over, still prostrate. She seated herself on one of the dusty black chairs. She counted out forty-nine pounds on to the black table in the corner. Then she gazed for a moment straight into Thelma's vatic eyes. At once the sensations of a few moments before (or of what seemed a few moments) faintly recurred. Millie felt dragged out of herself, and turned her face to the dingy wall.
'You can stay if you wish. You know that.' Thelma made no attempt to take up the money; though Millie could be in small doubt that the sum would make a big difference for Thelma, at least temporarily.
'You can't expect me to keep open house for you always.'
Millie turned a little and, without again looking at Thelma, attempted a smile of some kind.
'I shan't be around much longer,' said Thelma. "Surely you can see that?'
Millie stood up. 'Where will you go?'
'I shall go back to decent people. I should never have left them.'
'What made you?'
'I killed a girl.'
'I see.'
'I did right.'
There was a pause: a need (perhaps on both sides) for inner regrouping. It was a metaphor that Uncle Stephen might have approved.
Millie gathered herself together. 'Is that the sort of thing I ought to do?'
'How can I tell? Why ask me? You must decide for yourself.'
Millie gathered herself together a second time. It was difficult to petition. The forty-nine pounds still lay untouched on the hocus-pocus table. 'You can tell, Thelma. I know you can. They're obscene, monstrous, all those words. You know as well as I do. You're the only one who does. I feel responsible for them. Is that what I ought to do? Tell me.'
Thelma seemed actually to reflect for a moment; instead of darting out a reply like the double tongue of a snake, the flick of a boxing second's towel, as she usually did.
'You're not the kind,' said Thelma. 'It would be beyond you.'
'Then what? Help me, Thelma. Please, please help me.'
'I told you before. Run away.'
Millie stared blankly at the entire, round, empty, world.
'Be more friendly and you can lie up with me. I keep saying so. But soon I shan't be here. I have debts.'
Millie wondered with what currency Thelma proposed to settle.
'Hurry up and put the money away somewhere,' Millie said.
But Thelma again spoke to the point: 'I'll place my right hand on your heart and you'll place your on mine. Then we'll be friends.'
Millie glanced at Thelma's ragged pink garment, but all she said was, 'It wouldn't be fair.' Then she added, 'Thank you all the same.' What a depraved, common way to express gratitude, she thought.
There was a tapping at the locked door.
'Who's that?' asked Millie, as if she really did live there.
Thelma had leapt upon the money like a cheetah and shoved it hugger-mugger into her jeans.
'It's Agnes Waterfield. She comes every day at this hour.'
'God! I don't want to meet her,' cried Millie.
'Well, you'll have to,' said Thelma, and unlocked the door on the instant.
Millie could only snatch her garments and scuttle away like a cat, hoping that Agnes might be too involved in her own troubles and preoccupations to recognise her, though not really believing it.
Outside, it had begun to snow. The big open car was spattered with separate flakes.
*
Millie sped away. Soon the suburb which had once been home was miles behind.
The straggling and diminishing woodlands touched the road at several places before one reached the main section in which lay Uncle Stephen's house. The ground was hummocky here, and nowadays the road ran through several small cuttings, ten or twelve feet high, in order to maintain a more or less constant level for the big lorries, and to give the tearaway tourists an illusion for a minute or two that they were traversing the Rocky Mountains. There were even bends in the road which had not yet been straightened, and all the trees in sight were conifers.
Thinking only of sanctuary, Millie tore round one of these bends (much too fast, but almost everyone did it, and few with Millie's excellent reason); and there were the two boys blocking the way, tall as Fiona Macleod's lordly ones, muscular as Gogmagog, rising high above the puny banks of earth. It was a busy road and they could only a moment before have dropped down into it. Beneath the snow patches on their clothing, Millie could clearly see the splashes of blood from their previous escapade. The boys were so placed that Millie had to stop.
'Got any grub, Mum?'
Quite truthfully, she could no longer tell one twin from the other.
'That's all we ask, Mum,' said the other twin. 'We're hungry.'
'We don't want to outgrow our strength,' said the first twin, just as in the old days.
'Let's search,' cried the second twin. Forbearance was extinguished by appetite.
The two boys were now on the same side of the car.
Millie, who had never seen herself as a glamorous mistress of the wheel, managed something that even Uncle Stephen might have been proud of in the old, dead days at Brooklands. She wrenched the car round on to the other side of the highway, somehow evaded the towering French truck charging towards her, swept back to her proper lane and was fast on her way.
But there was such a scream, perhaps two such screams, that, despite herself, she once more drew up.
She looked back.
The snow was falling faster now; even beginning to lie on the car floor. She was two or three hundred yards from the accident. What accident? She had to find out. It would be better to drive back rather than to walk: even in the modern world, the authorities would not yet have had time to appear and close the road. Again Millie wheeled.
The two vast figures lay crushed on the highway. They had been standing locked together gazing after her, after the car in which there might have been sweets or biscuits; so that in death, as in life, they were not divided. They had been killed by a police vehicle: naturally one of the heavier models. Millie had under-estimated the instancy of modernity. The thing stood there, bluely lighted and roaring.
&n
bsp; 'It was you we were after, miss,' remarked the police officer, as soon as Millie came once more to a standstill. All the police were ignoring the snow completely. 'You were speeding. And now look what's happened.'
'If you ask Detective-Sergeant Meadowsweet, he will explain to you why I was going fast.' Millie shivered. 'I have to go fast.'
'We shall make enquiries, but no individual officer is empowered to authorise a breach of the law.'
By the time the usual particulars had been given and taken, the ambulance had arrived, screaming and flashing with determination; but it was proving impossible to insert the two huge bodies into it. The men were doing all they could, and the police had surrounded the area with neat little objects, like bright toys; but anyone not immediately involved could see that the task was hopeless.
The snow was falling more heavily every minute, so that by the time Millie was once more left alone among the traffic surging round the frail barrier, the two boys were looking like the last scene in Babes in the Wood, except that the babes had changed places, and changed roles, with the giants.
Hand In Glove (1979)
...that subtle gauzy haze which one only finds in Essex.
— Sir Henry Channon
When Millicent finally broke it off with Nigel and felt that the last tiny bit of meaning had ebbed from her life (apart, of course, from her job), it was natural that Winifred should suggest a picnic, combined with a visit, "not too serious," as Winifred put it, to a Great House. Millicent realized that there was no alternative to clutching at the idea and vouchsafed quite effectively the expected blend of pallor and gratitude. She was likely to see much more of Winifred in the future, provided always that Winifred did not somehow choose this precise moment to dart off in some new direction.
Everyone knew about Millicent and Nigel and took it for granted, so that now she was peacefully alotted an odd day or two off, despite the importance of what she did. After all, she had been linked with Nigel, in one way or another, for a long time; and the deceptively small gradations between the different ways were the business only of the two parties. Winifred, on the other hand, had quite a struggle to escape, but she persisted because she realized how much it must matter to Millicent. There are too many people about to make it sensible to assess most kinds of employment objectively. In one important respect, Winifred's life was simpler than Millicent's: "I have never been in love," she would say. "I really don't understand about it." Indeed, the matter arose but rarely, and less often now than ten or twelve years ago.
"What about Baddeley End?" suggested Winifred, attempting a black joke, inducing the ghost of a smile. Winifred had seldom supposed that the Nigel business would end other than as it had.
"Perfect," said Millicent, entering into the spirit, extending phantom hands in gratitude.
"I'll look on the map for a picnic spot," said Winifred. Winifred had found picnic spots for them in the Cevennes, the Apennines, the Dolomites, the Sierra de Guadarrama, even the Carpathians. Incidentally, it was exactly the kind of thing at which Nigel was rather hopeless. Encountering Nigel, one seldom forgot the bull and the gate.
"We'd better use my car," continued Winifred. "Then you'll only have to do what you want to do."
And at first, upon the face of it, things had all gone charmingly as always. Millicent could be in no doubt of that. It is difficult at these times to know which to prefer: friends who understand (up to a point) or those who do not understand at all and thus offer their own kind of momentary escape.
Winifred brought the car to a stand at the end of a long lane, perhaps even bridle path, imperfectly surfaced, at least for modern traffic, even though they were no further from their respective flats than somewhere in Essex. She had been carrying a great part of their route in her head. Now she was envisaging the picnic site.
"It's a rather pretty spot," she said with confidence. "There's a right of way, or at least a footpath, through the churchyard and down to the river."
"What river is it?" enquired Millicent idly.
"It's only a stream. Well, perhaps a little more than that. It's called the Waste."
"Is it really?"
"Yes, it is. Can you please hand me out the rucksack?"
In hours of freedom, Winifred always packed things into a rucksack, where earlier generations would have prepared a luncheon basket or a cabin trunk.
"I'm sorry I've made no contribution," said Millicent, not for the first time.
"Don't be foolish," said Winifred.
"At least let me carry something?"
"All right, the half bottle and the glasses. I couldn't get them in."
"How sweet of you," said Millicent. Potation was normally eschewed in the middle of the day.
"I imagine we go through the kissing gate."
From even that accepted locution Millicent slightly shrank.
The iron kissing gate stood beside the wooden lich gate, opened only on specific occasions.
With the ancient church on their right, little, low, and lichened, they descended the track between the graves. The path had at one time been paved with bricks, but many of the bricks were now missing, and weeds grew between the others.
"It's very slippery," said Millicent. "I shouldn't like to have to hurry back up." It was appropriate that she should make a remark of some kind, should show that she was still alive.
"It can't really be slippery. It hasn't rained for weeks."
Millicent had to admit the truth of that.
"Perhaps it would be better if I were to go first?" continued Winifred. "Then you could take your time with the glasses. Sorry they're so fragile."
"You know where we're going," responded Millicent, falling into second place.
"We'll look inside the church before we leave."
Though ivy had begun to entangle the mossy little church like a stealthily encroaching octopus, Millicent had to admit that the considerable number of apparently new graves suggested the continuing usefulness of the building. On the other hand, the plastered rectory or vicarage to their left, behind the dangerous-looking hedge, was stained and grimed, and with no visible open window on this almost ideal day.
Whatever Winifred might say, the churchyard seemed very moist. But then much of Essex is heavy clay. Everyone in the world knows that.
At the far end was another kissing gate, very creaky and arbitrary, and, beyond, a big, green, sloping field. There were cows drawn together in the far, upper corner: "a mixed lot of animals," as Millicent's stepfather would have put it in the old days—the very old days they seemed at that moment.
Down the emerald field ran no visible track, but Winifred, with the dotted map in the forefront of her mind, pursued a steady course. Millicent knew from experience that at the bottom of Winifred's rucksack was a spacious ground- sheet. It seemed just as well.
Winifred led the way through an almost nonexistent gate to the left and along a curious muddy passage between rank hedges down to the brink of the river.
Here there were small islands of banked mud with tall plants growing on them that looked almost tropical, and, to the right, a crumbling stone bridge, with an ornament of some kind upon the central panel. Rich, heavy foliage shaded the scene, but early dragonflies glinted across vague streaks of sunlight.
"The right of way goes over the bridge," remarked Winifred, "but we might do better on this side."
Sedgy and umbrous, the picnic spot was romantic in the extreme; most unlikely of discovery even at so short a distance from the human hive, from their own north side of the Park. After the repast, one might well seek the brittle bones of once-loitering knights; or one might aforetime have done that, when one had the energy and the faith. Besides, Millicent had noticed that the bridge was obstructed from end to end by rusty barbed wire, with long spikes, mostly bent.
In repose on the groundsheet, they were a handsome pair: trim; effective; still, despite everything, expectant. They wore sweaters in plain colors and stained, familiar trousers. In the s
ymphony of Milli- cent's abundant hair were themes of pale grey. Winifred's stout tow was at all times sturdily neutral. A poet lingering upon the bridge might have felt sad that life had offered them no more. Few people can pick out, merely from the lines on a map, so ideal a region for a friend's grief. Few people can look so sensuous in sadness as Millicent, away from the office, momentarily oblivious to its ambiguous, paranoid satisfactions.
It had indeed been resourceful of Winifred to buy and bring the half bottle, but Millicent found that the noontide wine made no difference. How could it? How could anything? Almost anything?
But then —
"Winifred! Where have all these mushrooms come from?"
"I expect they were there when we arrived."
"I'm quite certain they were not."
"Of course they were," said Winifred. "Mushrooms grow fast but not that fast."
"They were not. I shouldn't have sat down if they had been. I don't like sitting among a lot of giant mushrooms."
"They're quite the normal size," said Winifred, smiling and drawing up her legs. "Would you like to go?"
"Well, we have finished the picnic," said Millicent. "Thanks very much. Winifred, it was lovely."
They rose: two exiled dryads, the poet on the bridge might have said. On their side on the shallow, marshy, wandering river were mushrooms as far as the eye could see, downstream and up, though it was true that in neither direction could the eye see very far along the bank, being impeded one way by the bridge and the other by the near-jungle.
"It"s the damp," said Millicent. "Everything is so terribly damp."
"If it is," said Winifred, "it must be always like it, because there's been very little rain. I said that before."
Millicent felt ashamed of herself, as happened the whole time now. "It was very clever of you to find such a perfect place," she said immediately. "But you always do. Everything was absolutely for the best until the mushrooms came." "I'm not really sure that they are mushrooms," said Winifred. "Perhaps merely fungi."
The Collected Short Fiction Page 66