The Coming of The Strangers

by John Lymington

  “Yes, Jill,” he said, huskily. “I remember you. You’re much too pretty to forget.”

  “You used to joke with me then,” she said. “And it used to make me feel so—so terrific I couldn’t breathe. And I used to dream then; dream in the day and dream in the night, that all of a sudden it would be like a fairy story and you would ask me to come with you, just anywhere. Where didn’t matter. When didn’t matter go long as it might always be someday—I wouldn’t care if you didn’t love me. That wouldn’t matter. If I had you to be mine just for a very short while, then nothing else would ever matter. And tonight, it seemed—it seemed it might come true, but then, these others, they—they came …” He could see tears tracing the soft line of her cheek glowing silver in the moonglow, and he touched her face gently.

  “But Jill,” he said. “I love Laura. I love Laura.”

  “Laura?” She did not start, did not sound angry, but only surprised. “But Laura’s still in love with her husband. She told me. Only a few minutes ago.”

  “Her husband’s dead, Jill.”

  “Yes,” Jill said. “But she still thinks of him all the time. She still—feels that he’s with her. She told me. I was so upset it made me cry. If anyone I loved that much died, I think I would —die myself. I would! I couldn’t bear to go on and hope that somebody might come along that just looked like him, or spoke like him, or even just tried to fill the place he’d left—Nobody could do it, once you felt like that.”

  She paused.

  “I know…” she began again but he touched her wrist to stop her.

  “Jill, I don’t understand this. I…”

  “It’s very simple,” she said quickly. “I love you. I love you so that I hardly know what I’m doing—what I’m saying. Don’t turn me away. For God’s sake don’t do that, l ake me along with you. Drag me behind you, anywhere. I don’t care. Laura— Laura is still in love with someone who’s dead.”

  A great strength and power was growing in her; a new excitement, a sudden unrolling of panoramas she had never believed it possible for her to see. The years of restriction, of wishing, of stifled, secret emotion were suddenly over. She knew the power of her touch when he answered.

  “Jill, you’re wrong. About Laura. There are things one can feel ”

  “Then can’t you feel me now?” she said. “Don’t you know how I feel?”

  “Jill, when I talked and joked with you it was because I liked you, I was attracted to you. Of course I still am. But…”

  She put her fingers to his lips.

  “Don’t! ” she said. “I know you don’t love me, but don’t tell me. Please don’t tell me. Just be kind and let me go on thinking of you, because one day ‘

  “There may not be another day, Jill,” he said quietly.

  She took his hand in hers and lifted it to her lips. She kissed it, and stroked it on her face as she said, low, excitingly, “There will always be a day you will come. I’ve dreamed it for so long it must be true now. When I went with other boys it was because I wanted you. I was trying to see you in them. I was trying to have you with me all this time.” She pulled his hand down to her breasts and when she felt him start away, pressed it tighter to her. “Don’t go away from me. Touch me. Hold me. Please.”

  He felt her breast under his hand and heard her voice, and suddenly he put his left arm round her and pressed her eager body to his and the sensation thrilled through him.

  “Kiss me,” she breathed.

  I love Laura, I love Laura, he thought as he put his lips to hers.

  The milk boiled over and there was a great fuss and smell, steam, hissing and damped out wick.

  I love Laura, he thought as he let Jill go and turned to the disaster.

  CHAPTER VII

  1

  Inspector Darrow smoked his pipe slowly and watchcd Ian Maclaren as if he suspected the doctor of some malpractice.

  “She did?” Darrow said in wonder.

  “She did,” said Marclaren. “She doesn’t seem to have^ much on these ghosties and things that go bump in the night, d’ye see. She has the notion it cud be something like a great jellyfish.” Darrow rubbed his nose with the stem of his pipe.

  “I’ve got some odd sort of feelings myself about this,” he said. “They’ve been picking up stuff on the radar.”

  Maclaren poured more whisky for them both and lit himself a thin cigar. It was late, but both men were used to lateness, and many of their visits for a chat took place in the small hours. “Who have?”

  “Submarine boys,” said Darrow. “Porpoise schools, they’re talking about. But it’s funny Laura Benson should have come to you with the very same idea I had.”

  “You both think the beach is covered with great slithering jellyfish so fine ye cannot see them?” Maclaren nodded then shrugged. “What’s such a menace in that? They cud sting, I suppose. But what else, man?”

  “Jellyfish sounds ridiculous,” said Darrow and drank Scotch. “The whole thing sounds ridiculous,” Maclaren said.

  “But why was she so worried?” Darrow said, and put his pipe in an ashtray. “Do you know, when I saw her this morning over the poltergeist!, I had the impression she was trying to hide something. I couldn’t see why, and I can’t now. Do you know why?”

  Maclaren shugged and raised his shaggy eyebrows.

  “She’s a friend of mine, fellow,” he said. “What she tells me is confidential. But I don’t doubt that you could find it out very easily for yourself—and will, too, in a more unpleasant sort of way. So I’ll tell ye enough to keep yere awful thin nose from digging in where it won’t be wanted.

  “She’s in love with John Sebastian, and she has some sort a idea that he may have something to do with this. That’s what it was. Now if ye can make sense o’ that, ye’re welcome.”

  “Sebastian?” said Darrow slowly. “What on earth could he have to do with invisible flobberies, if any such exist?” Maclaren shrugged.

  “Ye know, we’re both sort a saying ‘if any such exist’ and shrugging and laughing in a contemptuous soft a way, man, but we’re digging awful hard for a couple o’ non-believers.” “You’re wrong, Mac. I don’t happen to be a non-believer. In fact I’m one that believes we’ve got to start accepting a lot of strange things from now on. You’ve just got to look at us. We’re on the threshold of launching space ships that will land men on other planets. It isn’t a dream any more. And maybe our hideous frames will be as revolting to the six-legged shellbacks of Venus as theirs will be to us.”

  “What a turn o’ speech, man! ” laughed Maclaren admiringly. “And ye think that other kinds o’ men are travelling in space as well as us?”

  “You have to look at things as they happen,” said Darrow. “Of recent times we’ve found that an invention is invented at three or four different places in the world at about the same time. In other words they’ve been arrived at by general progress. It wouldn’t surprise me if we had a reciprocal visit from some other-world people once we start. Why should it?”

  ‘‘And ye’re assuming now that these things have arrived already and ye can’t see them?”

  “No. There’s no evidence of a landing anywhere. With all the world hysterically searching the skies for ICBMs and every radar in the world on a permanent blink, you’d have to know.” “There must be big gaps between the screens, man.”

  “Not over this country, surely?”

  “I think our radar is only looking one way. Why should it look any other?”

  “Don’t let’s get on to politics now,” said Darrow. “More interesting is why Laura Benson thinks Sebastian has something to do with it. What can he have to do with it?”

  “What do ye know of Sebastian?”

  “Oh, one hears of debts and so forth. But he’s one of the likeable types so that people mostly laugh about it and wish they could do the same… . He’s been a bit of everything. A writer, an actor, broadcaster, traveller, philanderer—what else is there to know?”

  Maclaren
went to the window and pulled a curtain aside. “There’s a beautiful moon,” he said. “Aren’t we wasting time here when we could ride to the Warren and have a look over the glorious strands of rhis mysterious beach?”

  “I’ve been there once already tonight,” Darrow said, picking up his pipe. “But I could do with a blow. The way you fug yourself up in this study would smoke out a badger.”

  They went in Maclaren’s car which was open, in sharp contrast with his study. The Warren was quiet as the moon above it, a black grass shelf over a placid sea. They walked across to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Below them the tumbled mass of the fallen sandstone heaped halfway up the cliff and spread out over the dunes. To the right the white bungalow lay like a model in its walled garden.

  “At least he’s gone to bed,” Darrow said. “Lights out.

  “Now, whatever do ye see that’s queer down there, man?’5 The doctor stared down, wondering.

  “Nothing,’ said Darrow. “That’s what I saw before. But then, we’re looking for something invisible.”

  “Then we must be a couple of fools,” said Maclaren. “What’s the glow over beyond the headland?”

  “That must be the unfortunate ship,” said Darrow. “Nobody will be allowed to sleep in that tonight. All lights ablaze and everybody blazing mad.”

  “Suppose we go down there,” Maclaren said, pointing to the beach. “And yet ye can see from here there’s nothing. I don’t care how invisible something can be, it must make a mark, man. Nothing can move around on the sand without making a mark.”

  “I’ll call on Sebastian tomorrow,” Darrow said. “An informal call. Just by myself, so he won’t get het up over it. He’s a very quick-tempered man, and inclined to cock a snook at authority. I don’t want to put him off, because there’s just the possibility he might know something.”

  “Ye’d better be careful he hasn’t got a house full o’ them! ” Maclaren said, and chuckled.

  They turned back to the car. It seemed there was nothing moving in the world then.

  2

  Sebastian looked in the cupboard, bringing out tin after tin into the moonlight, uneasily conscious of her standing there watching him.

  “I keep a tin for when Elfrida comes,” he said, desperate for something to say. “She likes to come and chat sometimes, or play cards.”

  “You must be very kind to think of an old woman like that,” Jill said. “Are you always kind to people?”

  He found the tin, and looked at her, his eyes queerly transparent in the blue light.

  “Kind to them?” he said with a sneer. “I sell them when it suits me. I think I told you.”

  “You couldn’t help that,” she said. “There are lots of things we do because we can’t help ourselves.”

  He put a hand on her arm.

  “Don’t, Jill,” he said. “I’m feeling very odd. I can’t explain how. It’s just everything …”

  “You feel about me,” she said. “I know. I can tell.”

  “You’re only a girl, Jill. You can’t tell these things.”

  “Touch my arm and you’ll know,” she said urgently. “Just touch me, and you’ll feel. Touch me, then.”

  She grasped his bare forearm and he felt the thrill of her urgency flow into him, as if there were some trick about it, some electric magic that she could send into him, some physical compulsion, and he was frightened of it.

  “How have you changed so suddenly?” he said, quickly. “What’s happening?”

  “Only what you started,” she said, clutching his arm tighter. “You know that. You can feel that now.” She was drawing him slowly closer to her.

  He felt the compulsion growing, forcing its will in him, thrusting aside any other feelings. Desperately he tried to think of her as she had stood, wiggling her toes in anxiety, making a lovable girl of her, but he could only remember the straightness of her body, the proud youth in her breasts, the magnetic softness of her, and he felt, not sentiment, but desire.

  The tin cracked where he dented it with his grip. It made him start and draw back from the spell of her.

  “Let me get this,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Go and sec how that boy is.” He turned his back on her but he felt he was still seeing her.

  “Let Laura look after him,” Jill said, “if he needs anybody.”

  He turned to her.

  ‘‘You can’t say that!” He was shocked, and she knew it.

  She turned and went to the door.

  “No. All right. I’ll go,” she said.

  She went out to the door of the bedroom where Joe lay breathing hard. She just stood there, staring at the moonlit window, looking over the white mound on the bed. She stayed there thinking a little while, then went back. He had made the cocoa and was carrying it out to the hall.

  “He’s all right,” she said. “He can wait for a doctor now.”

  He gave her a queer look. Not so long ago, he remembered, she had offered to go herself—or had that been merely a desperate move to get out of the house? He did not know. He could not be sure of anything she had done or said before.

  He carried the cocoa into the lounge. Elfrida was lying gracefully on the sofa. Laura turned away from him as he approached the old lady. The action chillcd him and he felt fear again.

  Robert was rolling a cigarette and staring out over the sea with a frown, as if his dissatisfaction with the whole affair was growing stronger all the time. Harris was eating chocolate from his pocket and looking at people with quick, nervous glances, trying perhaps to sec what they were thinking.

  John gave Elfrida the cocoa and turned to Laura. She seemed to know he approached her for she said, “Why don’t you make tea? We would all like that. Go back and make tea, dear.”

  He stopped, and anger rose suddenly in him.

  “If that’s what you’d like,” he said, gruffly. “I’ll get it.

  He walked quickly out of the room again to where Jill waited in the kitchen, standing there as if she knew he would come back. He ignored her outwardly, but her whole being seemed to surround him so that no matter how he tried to avoid her, he telt her there. He filled a kettle, plugged it in, then remembered and got another kettle that would work on the oil stove.

  “Have you seen anything out there?” he asked huskily.

  “No,” she said, almost casually.

  “For God’s sake!” he snapped. “Don’t you care?”

  “No,” she said, and he saw her smile slightly. “Not now.” “You’re mad, Jill,” he said, and turned to the stove. He stayed a few seconds, watching the sands through the window. “You’re mad!”

  “All right, I’m mad,” she said. “But I came here to find you and I’m here with you, aren’t I? Why is that mad?”

  He turned to her.

  “You came to find me?”

  “Did you believe all that stuff about my father?” she said. “He wouldn’t stop me doing what I wanted if I made my mind up. I came to find you, and it was better than I expected. If only these people hadn’t…”

  “When I wanted you to come in here you resisted,” he said, firmly. “I could feel you resisting.”

  “One must make a show,” she said. “Surely you know that?” He turned and lit the wick again, to give himself time to think, to try and fight against this encroaching desire that seemed to be filling his body.

  “When did you decide this? When did you make up your mind to come here?”

  “It’s something that’s been in me for a long time,” she said. Then somehow things begin to pile up. One thing makes you do another, and all of a sudden you realise why. All of a sudden she repeated, and was close to him,

  “Yes”

  He said, swallowing. “That is what I don’t understand.” She looked at him,

  “Do you think we’ll ever get out of here?” she asked softly.

  “There’s always a chance, he said, turning away.

  “That isn’t what you said before,” she said “ You thin
k we’ll be killed. So do I. And I don’t want to die without something I’ve wanted for a long time.” She came a littler closer. “So I told you.”

  I love Laura, he thought. But she believed that I asked this girl. She believed that. She believes it now. She turned away because she believes it. She believes that I’m what I always was before I loved her. She believes I haven’t changed. She believes I was going to have this girl while she was away. She believes that. I know, because she turned away as she did. I know because she tells me. She, pretending she knows I love her, believes that.

  He put his hand to the table for cigarettes lying there. Jill caught it. He bccamc still. She lifted his arm and put it round her as she closed to him, pressing her body against him. His arm tightened round her, then she grabbed him to her and kissed him with the fury of abandonment.

  I love Laura, I love Laura, I love Laura. The repetition was as senseless as the thudding of train wheels, taking him where he would not go. Then all he could feel was the passionate warmth of her lips and the slow working of her body against his, and desire drove all fear out of him.

  He saw Laura suddenly, as if some warning came before his eyes took sight. They stood quite still. Laura came to the table, took up the cigarette packet.

  “There are no cigarettes,” she said, and turning, went out again.

  He pushed Jill away from him and stood there, quite still, watching the empty door. Then he saw the girl’s face, smiling in the moonlight, and turned away so that his back was to her and he could see out of the long window. He saw the indents, silver like metal patterns, on the short grass outside.

  They were waiting. And suddenly he thought, was that all they were doing?

  His heart was beating fast, his brain a turmoil of useless thought, turning like clothes in a washer, tangled, writhing, mixed; Laura, Jill, the things outside, and then gradually Laura and Jill and less of the things outside. As if against his wish the fears of them, the very thoughts of them were fading from his mind and there was only fear of Laura now, growing bigger than Laura, bigger than fear, bigger than anyone there, Jill, and then suddenly there was only Jill.