by Joseph Hone
In the end he saw it was no use and suddenly he let go, dropping ten feet like a stone, sprawling over on the grass. Immediately afterwards, free of his great weight, the balloon surged upwards, the last tie-rope dangling just above the heads of the police as they arrived beneath. One of them had a revolver out; others shouted up at us.
But we couldn’t hear their voices. Already we were fifty feet above them, a hundred feet, rising fast in an upcurrent of sun-warmed air, the gas burner still on full charge, drowning all other sound. And soon all the men were far below us as we climbed through the last streaks of mist, a huge red rose in the brilliant morning air, the sun rising well above the line of trees to the east, burning my eyes, blinding me, so that I could see nothing.
But Alice had certainly managed to escape: there was no doubt about that. We were rising like an express lift, as if some great hand had snatched us up from the earth, and I could feel that, could feel all the pits opening in my stomach as we shot upwards. And despite my horror at the event, I suddenly felt a huge elation then as well, embraced by this sheer miracle, the giddy weightlessness of rising thus in space, the Manor and the parkland falling away, the green countryside just beginning to form a relief map beneath us with model animals and other toys on it.
I was blinded by tears from the rush of wind in my eyes, as well as by the sun, so that when I finally managed to look at Alice I saw she was laughing, laughing fit to burst, as at some fantastic joke. Yet I could hear nothing of her laughter against the great blast of gas that was propelling us up into the pale blue dome of sky. She was like the butt of some joke in an old comic silent film, a crazed woman caught in nothing but her slip, lost to the world.
We must have been about a thousand feet up when Alice suddenly released the lever and the gas flame died. There was an extraordinary silence then. And now that we were apparently suspended in mid-air without reason, I felt nervous for the first time, even afraid. There wasn’t the slightest turbulence, nor the sound of any wind through the wire lines of the balloon – nor the murmur, the faintest echo rising from the ground beneath. I looked over the side of the basket. A bird, a big seagull, glided past some hundreds of feet below us. But we were quite stationary, stuck in the air, trapped in space, in a vast, early-morning silence from which, like dangling puppets, we should never find release. Yet Alice looked at me then with triumph: a woman at last embarked on a long-postponed vital journey.
‘You see,’ she said. ‘We made it! We’re on our way.’
‘Yes,’ I said gently, determined not to antagonise her at this height, for she still had the gun in her hand. ‘You made it.’ And though we very obviously weren’t on our way and were going nowhere, I didn’t mention this.
Alice looked over the side of the basket, gazing down at the Manor and then at the parkland on the far side of the cricket pitch where all the little candy-striped jousting tents with their flowing pennants were still in place, the flower-strewn stand and the line of hurdles in between. The early sun, behind the tents and banners, casting long sharp shadows across the grass, gave these remains of the tournament a vividly fresh, three-dimensional effect from this height, like a field of battle, empty at first light, the warriors asleep under canvas, a field where the glory, far from being over, had not yet begun.
Alice gazed lovingly on this site of her dream, taking no notice at all of the reality on the other side of the park, the crowds of police by the cricket pavilion gazing up at us. She had no idea, beneath this heaven in a gilded orb, that her dream was behind her now and all Camelot laid waste.
She said, still looking over the side, ‘You see, there’s nothing you can’t do if you really try. And there’s so much we can do now. That big brambly wood over there,’ she went on, looking westwards, ‘We can really clear that, let the flowers breathe – and pull down that ridiculous barbed wire fence. Don’t you think?’
She turned to me, intense, suddenly ecstatic, just as she had been with me before, offering up some brilliant project which we might share in the future.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We can do that. That fence is ridiculous.’
Alice, I saw then, acknowledged no defeat. Her land, her great house and all the myths she had created there, though hundreds of feet away were now at last near enough for her to reach out and fully possess them.
Clare, who had been gazing rapturously over the side as well, suddenly said ‘Pigs? Sheep down there. We can have pigs,’ she added very definitely.
‘Pigs as well,’ I said. ‘I hope so.’
‘I want to sort out the books in the library, too,’ Alice went on, pushing further ahead into all the lovely caverns of her dream. ‘And the top corridor, all that Victorian stuff: I’ve left it far too long. That crocodile for example, the big beady-eyed monster upstairs, should we put it in the hall porch and scare the guests?’
Freed from the earth there was no longer any restraint whatsoever on Alice’s fantasies, no barrier at all for her now between illusion and reality. Both were one, the same bright flame, sustained by every frustrated longing she had ever had.
‘And the people, of course!’ She spoke again. ‘They can come now. All the people.’
‘Who?’ I ventured.
‘Why, the real people, of course.’
‘The people like yesterday, you mean? At the tournament.’
‘Yes – yes.’
She looked away from me. She was calmer now, distancing herself, as if studying long guest-lists in her mind, sorting out the wheat from the chaff, the quick from the dead, selecting the real, true people who, now that all the calculating cheats and liars had been vanquished, would finally make up the round table with us in the great dining-room. Alice, in her successful ascent from the world, had struck a decisive victory over the infidel, finally dispensing with all the earth-bound, common lot.
But there was one element in her fantasy still unfulfilled, a holy grail of sorts almost within her grasp but yet to be achieved. And that was me. I could tell from her eyes when she turned to me again just then that she still doubted me, doubted my full consent in her plans, doubted that I would share this glittering future with her, this coming world which lay all about us in its infancy, as clearly mapped as the real earth beneath us was just then, deeply etched in dark and misty greens by the long shadows of the morning.
She spoke with the gravity of a bishop before a marriage or confirmation. ‘You do believe me?’ she asked.
‘I do,’ I lied.
‘Everything?’
‘Yes. Everything.’
I moved across to her then and held her in my arms. ‘Everything,’ I said again.
And in those moments, when she was so close to me, I suddenly found, against all my better judgement, that I did believe her. It was as if, in touching her and making these promises, I had transformed all her folly into lovely inventions and happy devices, genuine articles of faith which she returned to me now and which I could thus no longer deny. I believed her. She let her belief run through me, like the lovemaking we had never managed, so that the sensation was physical and I was suddenly giddy, my head singing, struck by this passing miracle.
In those moments, and as she stood away from me, her face caught in the rising gold of the sun, Alice was transfigured. She had justified her life at last, with all its preposterous flaws and startling visions. The flaws were forgotten peccadilloes now, erased mistakes in the design, as in some great church window, where only the faith remained. Alice had come into her real estate at last, a place entirely of the spirit. At last, in a balloon instead of on a white charger, she had been rescued from that dark and brambly wood. Yet I was not her saviour: I knew that now. Forsaking the world, she had saved herself with her own great fidelity. And she was that chalice with the wine, not I – I who had simply had the luck to taste it briefly.
A small breeze had come up as the sun rose, and now suddenly we were moving, as well as falling in the sky.
Alice said, ‘There! We’re off. We’d be
tter get some height again.’
She pulled the lever, but nothing happened. The gas snout, rising above us from a coiled pipe like the worm of an old pot-still, was silent. Alice tugged the line again. But again nothing happened. The mechanism that lit the gas had failed, or else there was some trick or process in the ignition which we knew nothing about.
‘Do we have any matches?’ Alice asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing …’
‘Maybe you could climb up?’ she queried.
‘Why?’
‘See if something’s stuck in the pipe –’ There was an urgency in Alice’s voice, and with good reason, for we were falling now, beginning to descend quite fast. And without the gas, with the air cooling all the time in the fabric above us, we were likely to hit the earth with quite a thump.
I tried the lever myself, but it was no use. The life had gone out of it. I checked the pipes leading up from the two big gas cylinders in the basket, shaking them, thumping them, before switching the supply from one cylinder to another. But it made no difference. There was plenty of gas, I realised now, for we could hear it each time we pulled the cord, hissing up into the great gold throat of the balloon. It was the spark which was missing. The magic had disappeared. And now we were dropping faster, in a long angled glide, moving over the cornfield beyond the cricket pavilion, falling towards the ring of tall beech trees above our hidden valley with the lake beyond.
‘God,’ I said. But I kept my voice down. We were gaining speed and losing height all the time, as we dipped down into the cooler airs above the moist valley where we could see the mist still lying all over the lake in the middle.
I wanted to say something. But there was nothing to say. My throat was suddenly bone-dry and all I could do was fight the panic. The police, meanwhile, I saw, had doubled back, running across the park following our disastrous flight. The wind, which had been nowhere before in the balmy morning sky, blew past my ears now, and I could feel the dead weight of the balloon growing all the time as the warmth died inside it, and we fell to earth, helpless puppets in this great child’s toy gone wrong. We all knew we were going to crash then. Yet Alice was suddenly very angry, not afraid.
‘Why us?’ she shouted, above the wind, her eyes wild with defiance. ‘Why? We’ve done nothing wrong. It was the others!’
I didn’t have the words, or the time to reply. The bronze burnt tops of the old beech trees were rushing towards us now as if we were on the steep slope of a roller-coaster. I gripped the side of the basket, protecting Clare, bracing myself, Alice next to me. It seemed as if some down-draught had caught us, that we were being sucked into the tall trees on the rim of the valley. I couldn’t see how we could miss them.
But at the last moment we had just enough height to smash through the topmost branches, twigs cracking beneath the basket, and then we were headed straight for the misty waters of the lake, straight for the island in the middle, where only the little Gothic pointed roof of the Hortons’ mausoleum stood clear of the milky pools covering the water. There was nothing we could do then, except wait for the crash.
‘Get down!’ I yelled. ‘Below the sides, arms over your heads, back to the water!’
We were all of us down in the bottom of the basket then, bracing ourselves in a huddle, Clare between us – just a moment before we hit the roof of the mausoleum.
If only we had hit the water. But instead the basket jackknifed upwards against the slope of the roof while the balloon rushed onwards, so that suddenly we were on our side, being dragged across the slates, and then I was falling, pitched from the basket, falling into the milky envelope beyond the mausoleum, before the sudden intense cold as the liquid beneath gripped me. I was still holding Clare as I fell. But I had lost Alice.
It was chaos then. Something in the crash had hit me on the temple, a great glancing blow. But I was still conscious as I went under the water, struggling for what seemed like minutes in the depths, with Clare gone from me now as well. And when I reached the surface I could barely see a thing through the white shroud that lay all about me.
Someone was screaming. It was Clare: I knew that thin voice. And finally I saw her, bobbing up and down in the mist a few yards from me. She seemed unharmed. We swam towards each other. But there was no sign of Alice.
I looked round for her wildly. The roof of the mausoleum had fallen right in, and the basket had come to rest on its side in the water several yards away with the squashed gold fabric of the balloon itself just visible in the mist beyond. The water had begun to calm all around us and I heard shouts from invisible people on the shore. But Alice?
I shouted for her as I reached Clare, holding her up in my arms, treading water.
‘Alice!’ I screamed. But my voice seemed faint, choked. And I realised it was from the blood that had trickled down my cheek and into my mouth. I would have dived for Alice then. Perhaps she was trapped beneath the basket or the crumbling shroud of the balloon. But I couldn’t leave Clare.
Eventually I turned, making for the shore. But as I did so I heard a splash behind me and looked back. Over by the balloon, ten yards away, I saw Alice’s head rise for an instant in the water, a sudden dark, glistening sheen of hair. Was it a trick in the deceptive misty light? No, it was her, that head and naked shoulders, half her body rising sheer from the depths for a moment with an arm raised high, like a missile, just as she had risen from this same water three months before when I’d swum with her here after we’d first met. I turned back, swimming towards the rippling circles. But I was weak now and Clare was struggling. It was no use, we would all of us drown.
I tried to dive back into the water when we got to the shore by the old boathouse and I had handed Clare over to the police who had arrived all along the banks now. But that was no use either, for the men held me there against my will and I finally hadn’t the strength to resist.
Several police swam out into the lake themselves, looking for Alice, as the mist began to clear, and I sat shivering on the stone pier, the remains of my Albanian costume in damp shreds all about me.
Someone came up to me and put a coat round my shoulders. I looked up. It was Ross: Ross – who had stalked me through this same valley months before and through the hospital corridors in Banbury. He had got me at last.
‘There,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right now.’
‘What did you want with me, Ross?’ I said to him eventually.
‘To save you – from yourself, Marlow,’ he replied at once. ‘Rushing off like that from your wife. You see, I knew you hadn’t killed her. And I knew you were holed up somewhere in these woods, you see. I just wanted to save you … all this trouble.’ He looked round him, at the debris on the lake.
‘But I left Intelligence years ago,’ I said. ‘Why should you bother with me?’
‘We always look after our own, Marlow.’
I knew Ross was lying then. He had wanted rid of me – under lock and key at the very least – when my old department had got wind of my memoirs. He would have his way now, but I hardly cared.
I still had Clare in my arms. I was stroking her wet hair, holding her to me. Ross tried to take her from me then. But my strength came back and I resisted fiercely.
‘It’s all right,’ he reassured me again. ‘Her grandfather’s here.’
I saw the little procession of people arriving then, sliding down between the burnt beech trees into the valley: Captain Warren, sprightly as ever with his boot-black hair, being helped down the treacherous slope by a group of police officers.
Clare saw him as he walked up to us: and there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. But she pushed herself deeper into my embrace and stayed there, crushed against me like a threatened wild animal again. When the Captain came clearly into view, standing above me, I looked up at him coldly.
‘It was never going to be any good,’ he said, shaking his neat head. ‘I couldn’t have got you out on the boat, all the way here and back to Lisbon. It would never have wor
ked.’
I didn’t say anything. But then something struck me, as it had so often struck Alice. ‘You could have tried,’ I said with annoyance. ‘You might have trusted me. Nothing venture –’
‘But why should I?’ the Captain interrupted, his own anger suddenly rising. ‘Why should I have done anything for you – after what you did to Laura.’
He saw me as a murderer too. He was wrong. They were all wrong. They lacked faith. And I remembered Alice’s shouts, as we fell to earth in the balloon. ‘Why us? We’ve done nothing wrong! It was the others …’ And I believed her then, all right.
I turned away from the Captain, and found myself rocking Clare in my arms, looking out over the lake where some of the police were still diving about, vainly searching for Alice as the mist finally cleared and the sun rose high enough above the trees to dip in over the copper-coloured water, fingering the valley with gold. I had lived for months, I thought, in this burnt-out Arcadia – and that, at least, would always count …
Months before, a body had risen like a sword, sheer from the lake, happy in the sun – and the same body had appeared for an instant in just the same way, minutes ago, desperate for survival. Alice had disappeared. But wherever she was in the water she remained a promise I might one day redeem. Ross joined me again and we both looked out on the fruitless search.
‘Of course, she was so much her own worst enemy, too,’ he said. ‘Inventing things all the time. Crying wolf.’
‘What do you mean?’ I had hardly any anger left, even for Ross. But I did my best.
‘She wouldn’t be drowned out there somewhere, Marlow, if she hadn’t been such a storyteller –’
‘You’re the liar, Ross –’
‘Oh yes, the local police would have believed her then – when she phoned them two nights ago, saying you were with her, right there in the house with her, she said, in the next bedroom in fact. But they didn’t believe her. Just thought it was another of her fantasies. It wasn’t the first time she’d taken them for a ride, you see. Ever since she first came here, apparently – she’s had them on the hop over something or other, calling them all hours of the day and night: she was being raped or the Martians were landing out on the cricket pitch. That sort of joke. Besides, they’d been through the whole house and the estate with a fine comb, twice before, looking for you. So they didn’t believe her when she called them late the other night, after that fancy dress ball. They did nothing about it – till that nurse of hers called them yesterday afternoon. Saved a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it, if she’d been the sort of woman you could believe. But she was crazy. And that’s that.’