‘How long did it take you to “snap out of it”?’
‘Me? Well, it’s not the same for a man… I realise that.’
‘I’m not talking about losing the baby. I’m talking about the time you lost Beth.’
She caught him off guard and he looked away. ‘A hell of a long time. But this place helped.’
‘It can’t help me, Davy.’
‘It can if you’d let it.’
She changed the subject. She could never make him understand her affections were centred wholly upon him, owing nothing to this great pile of brick and stone and timber that had succeeded, God alone knew how, in steering him through a succession of crises.
‘Where’s Grace? Why hasn’t she been to see me?’
‘She’s still in France, brushing up for the exams.’
She remembered then. Grace had gone off to spend a month with a pen-friend in Caen, with the object of improving her chances of getting a distinction in French, her best subject. She was glad the kid was out of it, glad too that she did not have to parry someone else’s sympathy. The bell went again and he said, ‘That’ll be the end of prep. There’s a prefects’ meeting in the Sixth and I promised I’d look in. I’ll only be an hour. Will you go to bed now or would you like matron up for company?’
‘No. Do what you have to, Davy. I’ll be all right.’
He went out with a troubled face and she heard him descending to the hall and the quad door opening and closing. The harsh clang of the heavy door decided her, symbolising what Bamfylde had become, a prison where every inmate, save only her, had become acclimatised to its routines and strictures. She knew then what she must do and went about her preparations with feverish haste, cramming a change of clothes into a night bag, checking the money in her handbag and detaching her car key from the ring on the mantelshelf. She opened the door and slipped on to the landing, listening for sounds from below. There were none. All the boys had gone into Big Hall for supper and the forecourt, overlooked by the landing window, was empty in the fading light of the sun’s last rays. She hesitated a moment longer, wondering whether to leave a note but decided against it. A note would mean immediate pursuit and in any case what was there to explain that he hadn’t already guessed. Prisoners didn’t leave notes when they went over the wall to look for better luck on the outside.
She went down the stairs holding firmly to the iron rail, out of the front door and then round by the shrubbery path that led to the ramshackle car- and cycle-shelter. Nobody heard her go, for the incline of the west drive was enough to coast down to the road without starting the engine. A minute later and she was turning right at Stone Cross and speeding between the huge clumps of rhododendrons in the direction of Bamfylde Halt.
4
It was by the merest chance Molyneux saw her. He was driving back from the village, after his customary two pints at the Fleur de Lys, when he saw the glint of the car as it coasted out of the drive and disappeared round the curve of the bank between the two exits. He recognised the beat of the engine and paid no particular attention to the incident until, an hour or so later, he happened to encounter David crossing the quad and say, ‘Glad to see the Missis is perking up, P.J.,’ a remark sufficiently puzzling for David to stop short and ask if he had been in to visit her while he was at the prefects’ meeting. Molyneux said he hadn’t but assumed, after seeing her drive off in the direction of Stone Cross, that she was up and about again.
‘You saw her drive off? Tonight? Are you absolutely sure, Molyneux?’
‘Well, it was her little roadster. About an hour ago. Caught a glimpse of it just as I was turning in the west drive.’
‘It couldn’t have been her. She hasn’t come downstairs yet. Somebody must be joy-riding.’
‘One of the boys?’
‘Who else? No one on the staff would have borrowed the car without asking. I’d better check,’ and before Molyneux could reply he hurried off to the rear to the car-shelter behind the kitchen to confirm the fact that the car was gone.
Even then he had no inkling that it was Chris who had driven it off but it was just possible someone might have required transport in a hurry and, unable to locate him, had gone up to the bedroom to ask for the keys. He went into the head’s house at a run and, hurrying upstairs, experienced an unpleasant qualm when he found the room empty and two of the drawers wide open. The nightdress and dressing gown she had been wearing were on the turned-back bed and he called, ‘Chris? Are you there, Chris?’ but then he noticed her handbag was missing from the dressing table and the near-certainty that she had gone hit him like a blow between the eyes.
He ran downstairs to the kitchen where old Rigby was having one of his stoveside naps.
‘Did you see my wife go out, Rigby?’
The old fellow rubbed his eyes. ‘Out? No, sir. She’s upstairs, isn’t she?’
‘No, she isn’t. Has anyone been in while I’ve been with the prefects?’
‘No, sir. No one.’
Driven by instinct he ran back through the arch to the car-shelter and stood beside Molyneux’s still-warm machine, trying to check the panic rising in him. Women who had recently given birth sometimes behaved very oddly and Chris had been frighteningly depressed since the loss of the baby. He felt the night breeze strike him cold under his arms and shivered. Where the hell could she have gone and why? He took several deep breaths and forced his mind to think logically. Stone Cross direction Molyneux had said, and about an hour since, for he had only been absent about ninety minutes. Stone Cross probably meant the road to the Halt but she couldn’t take a train anywhere at this hour and, in any case, she had the car. A tiny gleam of hope pricked him. There was less than half a gallon in the tank. He knew that because he had used the car earlier in the day to get her tablets from Doc Willoughby’s dispensary. The car averaged, on these gradients, no more than thirty-two miles to the gallon, usually less, and she couldn’t get petrol until morning and even then no nearer than Cooper’s ramshackle garage in Steepcote, ten miles or so on the road to Dulverton; providing she was heading for Dulverton and those open drawers indicated she had taken some luggage. Perhaps this in itself was reassuring. At least it indicated that she hadn’t rushed off into the night in response to some half-crazed impulse.
He dashed back to Rigby, his profound agitation causing him to catch the old chap by the lapel of his old-fashioned tail-coat, a relic of pre-Herries butling. ‘Listen, Rigby. Find Mr Howarth. Tell him I’ve got to dash over to Dulverton and I’ll phone him inside two hours. Tell him to wait up in my study and that it’s very urgent.’ And then, making a snap decision to half-confide in the old servant, ‘Mrs Powlett-Jones seems to have overestimated her own strength. She took it into her head to go for a drive and I’m going after her. In the Dulverton direction. If I don’t ring back after midnight ask Mr Howarth to contact the doctor, do you understand?’
‘Well… yes, sir. Certainly, sir.’
The man looked more bemused than he had at the time of Alcock’s fatal heart attack but there was no time to waste in further speculation. He ran back through the arch and wheeled out Molyneux’s heavy machine. It started at the first kick and in less than a minute he was roaring down the drive and heading for Bamfylde Halt.
Rage as well as concern stirred in him. To go out like that without a word to anyone, at ten o’clock at night, was an utterly irresponsible action, providing she was in full possession of her faculties and he could not believe that depression had brought her that low. He took his profound irritation and anxiety out on the motorcycle, slowing it round the wide bends between the rhododendron clumps and screeching to a halt in the station approach. There was a gleam of yellow light on the platform. That would be Walrus Tapscott, stationmaster and signalman waiting for one of the two goods trains through here each week night. He called over the picket fence, ‘Tapscott! It’s me, Powlett-Jones! How long have you been on duty?’
‘Since around nine, sir.’
‘Did you see an
y cars pass either way.’
‘Yes, sir. Just the one.’ |
‘What sort of car? Small or large?’
‘I dunno, sir. I on’y got a glimpse as I was coming down the signal-box steps. Smallish, I’d say. It went by at a pretty good lick. Any trouble up at skuel, sir?’
‘There might be. I’m finding out. Which way was it going?’
‘Took the Dulverton road at the fork. Saw the tail light.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Anything I can do, sir?’
‘No.’
He was off again, roaring over the gritty surface to the fork and setting the machine at the one-in-six gradient that led over the shoulder of the moor. Ten miles of twisting by-road would bring him to the eastern edge of Middlemoor, looking down into the heavily wooded valley of the Barle and as he went his mind conjured with a variety of destinations beyond Dulverton or the nearest probable filling-station. It might be Taunton, or even London, if her strength held out that long. It might be the north. More likely it was anywhere chance took her, for he had nothing but instinct to help him follow a trail. In the heavy silence of the moorland night the motorcycle seemed to make a prodigious noise. A barn owl swooped out of a spinney and flew diagonally across his vision, causing him to swerve so violently that he almost went into a speed wobble. After that he took a partial grip on himself, slowing down and peering about him in the darkness.
It was lighter when he emerged on to the open moor. A few stars were glimmering over Tarr Steps to his left and somewhere over on the right, in a fold of the plateau, they shone on a patch of water. He thought, savagely, ‘God damn my luck with women… first Beth, then Julia Darbyshire, now this… It’s all so bloody disorganised… they all do the first thing that comes into their heads and jib at making a plan and sticking to it… they all get carried away by their emotions…’ and in his misery he even found himself blaming Beth for not acting quickly enough to avoid that damned lorry on Quarry Hill. It was only when he caught himself thinking, ‘She could have slammed into reverse and shot off the road…’ that he checked the onrush of hysteria and forced himself to review the wisdom of this blind pursuit into the night, thinking, ‘I’m just as bad… I should have seen Willoughby… consulted someone… anything but lose myself chasing a will-of-a-wisp.’
He saw the reflection of his headlight beam with the tail of his eye as he shot past a wide open gateway on the very crest of the moor. Just a dullish flash but enough to bring him to a halt, abandon the machine in the hedge and run back twenty yards or so. The car was there, blocking the opening. The lights were switched off and it seemed to have been parked very carelessly on a hummock of dried mud.
He approached it with his heart in his mouth and saw, with a great surge of relief, that she was slumped in the nearside seat. She did not move when he went round the bonnet but when he reached through the open window and touched her shoulder she stirred and moaned before shaking herself and then sitting bolt upright, one hand raised as though to ward off a blow.
‘Are you all right?’
She stared at him as though he had been a passing moorman. There was just enough starlight to see the bafflement in her eyes and the tight compression of the mouth. He went round the bonnet again and got into the driver’s seat. Her hand, surprisingly, was warm. She said, slowly, ‘Where is this? What’s happened?’
‘You tell me.’
Relief put an edge on his tongue. He had to make an effort to check an outburst of recrimination.
‘I drove off by myself.’
‘Yes. You’d still be driving if the tank wasn’t dry.’
‘It isn’t dry.’ She sounded maddeningly rational. ‘I saw there wasn’t enough to get me much farther so I pulled in.’
‘Why, Chris? For God’s sake, why?’
She did not answer but half-relaxed again. ‘You must have known I’d be scared out of my wits. I only caught up with you by sheer luck. You don’t even seem to know where you were heading.’
‘It didn’t matter.’
He had no answer to this, even though it went some way to explain her state of mind. Presently he said, ‘Do you feel all right? I mean, you got this far… we’re only a mile or so short of Dulverton.’
She said, ‘Odd how far you can get without trying. I had no idea where I was going… how far I’d come. First I wanted to break out and then all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and never wake up.’
Compassion and concern returned to him with a rush. ‘That’s no way to talk, Chris! People are concerned for you. Not just me but Willoughby… everybody. If only you’d tried to explain… Turn up that window. I’ll back out and drive back. She might just make it.’
‘No, wait, Davy!’ Then, ‘How did you get here?’
‘Following my nose on Molyneux’s motorbike. It’s up there in the hedge. I can get someone to pick it up in the morning.’
‘Before we start back… we’ve got to talk. It might as well be now. I’m not ill, not physically ill, that is. It’s quiet out here. Away from that bell.’
It gave him a hint, broad enough to encourage him to humour her.
‘It was pressing down on you?’
‘Unbearably.’
‘There’s a reason for it. After a pregnancy – even a normal one – women get all kinds of fancies, or so Willoughby told me a day or so ago.’
‘He told me, too. But there’s more to it than that.’
‘You aren’t happy – quite apart from the baby?’
‘It’s nothing to do with you, Davy. You must believe that.’
‘I’d like to, but how can I?’
‘You must. I haven’t stopped loving you.’
‘Then what? Try and tell me, no matter how crazy it sounds.’
‘I feel so bloody useless.’
‘Useless? You! But that is crazy! I thought you were settling in. Slowly, maybe, but a bit more every month. Then, when you were expecting the kid…’
‘That led us both astray, gave a wrong impression.’
‘About what, exactly?’
‘About me being someone, doing something useful, having a purpose back there.’
‘Isn’t being my wife purpose enough?’
‘No, Davy. Being anyone’s wife wouldn’t be. That’s the way I’m made and I can’t do anything about it.’
‘All right. The minute you’re fit we’ll go all out to get you a constituency. If it’s so important…’
‘I don’t think that’s the answer. I did once but I don’t any longer.’
‘Then what? What kind of role would help?’
‘If I knew that we’d be home in bed, Davy.’
He thought, distractedly, ‘There’s a way out of this mess somewhere, if I could find it. It’s been half-suggesting itself for a year or more but it’s so damned elusive neither of us can find it.’ He said, ‘At least you must know what isn’t the answer. To cave in, to do the first damn silly thing that suggests itself, like coming out here on your own without letting any of us know how hard-driven you were. We’ve always been able to talk, or I thought so.’
‘Not really, Davy. Bamfylde’s a big place. Most times I can’t hear you and you don’t seem to hear me.’
He acted on impulse then as though he was faced with something more tangible than deep, personal despair. He reached over and swung her round roughly and shouted at her as though he was dealing with a case of hysterics. ‘That just isn’t so! You know damned well it isn’t so! You aren’t making any allowances at all for your physical condition, for the fact that you’ve had your hopes dashed about the baby. You were settling in, and everything would have been plain sailing if the baby had lived.’
She said, calmly, ‘Does it matter – the root cause of it? The fact is I made a hash of this, just as I did with Rowley, and the candidature, and two marriages, and everything else I’ve attempted.’
‘That’s your view. It isn’t mine and it isn’t anyone else’s and the sooner you get that into your head th
e better. I’ll tell you something else. My Mam came home from the pithead after they told her she’d lost her man and two of her sons, and within five minutes of taking her coat off she was getting my tea and washing sheets in the copper. She wasn’t all that singular. I daresay half the women in the terrace were doing the same – adjusting – facing up to what couldn’t be altered. Hardly one of them could write or read English, or do more than scribble their names on a clothing club card, but you’ve had an expensive education. What’s it worth if you crack up like this under a few bad deals? Will you think about that?’
She began to cry, quietly at first but then, both hands grasping one of his, unrestrainedly, so that her body shook and they sat there for what seemed a long time, with silence and emptiness all about them save for her dry, gasping sobs and the long sigh of the breeze. She was quiet at last and freed his hand, fumbling in the glove pocket for her handbag and dabbing her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief. She said, at length, ‘Take me home, Davy. Don’t say anything more. Just drive on home.’
He reversed out of the gate and switched on the lights. The beam seemed to probe a limitless expanse of the moor and away down by the tarn a nightjar screeched. He saw by the luminous dial that the petrol needle was not quite settled at empty. It was mostly downhill and there might be just enough to see them home. They did not exchange a single word until the car coughed at the summit of the west drive and ran over the flat to the forecourt, where the engine petered out. He saw it as a kind of sign, a pledge that his luck would turn and hers with it maybe. The study light was on. She said, ‘Is anyone else out looking for me?’
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