by Joan Phipson
“I’m quite well again,” Catherine said. “And I’ll be even better by then.”
Mrs. Hartley peered at her with the close scrutiny she kept for sickbeds, and which usually infuriated Catherine. But now she welcomed it and did her best to look enormously robust. She was, indeed, feeling quite well again, and Mrs. Hartley must have been satisfied with what she saw, for she nodded briskly and said, “There’s no need to worry, Hal. I shall write and tell him to come.”
“Very well.” Mr. Hartley had a further thought. “Kitty, you’ll have to start a bit of preparation. He’s asked you to find out the best places to go and how to get there. How near he’ll be able to drive his car and that sort of thing.”
She nodded. She had forgotten all about Rupert since the accident. It was good to know he had not forgotten her and she began to look forward to the holidays. When she next saw Mr. Lovett she explained to him that for a little while she would not be able to visit him quite so often.
He had said nothing to this and she could not tell if he was disappointed or not. But when she told him the reason she saw the interest come into his face again and he said, “In that case I’ll excuse you from your visits to me—on one condition, that you promise to come when you can and tell me where you have been and what you have seen.”
“I will,” she said at once. “I always do.”
“Not always,” said Mr. Lovett. “You tell me only what you think I ought to know. You thought I didn’t realize that, but you see I do. Oh, I’m content with your decisions. Don’t worry. We’ll leave it at that.”
He had left her nothing to say, and she felt closer to him now than she had ever felt. But she still did not tell him everything.
Sometimes she experienced again that sense of an expansion of her mind, and through the new window the view was clearing. Thoughts she seemed to have had before, brief, clear pictures that were new yet not new, now swam and swelled like thunder clouds behind it. But her still recent concussion was an easy explanation and “Routes for Rupert” soon filled her mind. She asked the teachers at school about routes and they made suggestions which she followed up. So she began going for long, solitary walks, notebook in hand and sometimes a packet of sandwiches. Slowly she began to collect information, and sitting motionless for long periods by remote pools or in patches of scrub, she learned patience as Terry had recently learned patience.
Terry and all that he implied little by little faded into the background of her mind. She thought constantly now of Rupert, and it pleased her to believe he would be in her debt. Surely this would mean something to him? For the time being her problems were overlaid by pleasant things. It did not once occur to her that she was in any danger, alone for so long in places where nobody came. She knew enough not to fall over any of the many cliffs that plunged sheer into the gorges below and that were often hidden by undergrowth and scrub. At this time of year all the snakes were hibernating. There was no other danger that she was aware of.
Yet there was one, and because she did not know of it she was the more vulnerable. It would have happened anyway, sometime, somewhere. Sooner or later she would see clear through that new window. But she made one slip, and so she was caught, defenceless, when the time came for her to understand it all.
One day she sat too long by a deep and lonely waterhole and darkness came down before she reached the first track, and she found herself lost. She was alarmed, but not too alarmed, because she knew that as soon as daylight returned she would find her way out. She knew her way about as well as most people in the district, and she knew as well that it was quite possible to walk over one of the cliffs. In the darkness it was better to stay still and wait. She found as sheltered a place as she could and resignedly settled down for a long, cold night. She knew her family would worry about her, but there was nothing she could do about it. She put them out of her mind and tried to think more useful thoughts.
It was very still out there in the scrub. The wind had dropped and already the tingle of frost was in the air. There was no moon, but the stars shone very bright and clear. Far away she could hear the hum of traffic but the faint sound was too dispersed for her to locate accurately. The highway was somewhere within half the invisible horizon, and people were still rushing up and down it, pursuing their normal, closeted lives, thinking their normal, limited thoughts, all unaware that somewhere in the dark night beyond the road one girl crouched under a bush, alone with the night, trying to keep warm, telling herself she was not at all hungry. Where she sat there was not even the faintest whiff of petrol fumes to connect her with mankind; only the smell of the bush and the sounds of night birds and frogs in the distant waterholes.
Yet one person knew she was there and knew exactly where to find her. At first Terry took no notice of the picture in his mind. He was more active again now and he, too, was busy with other things. And he had come to accept the fact that his mind had been full of disconnected pictures since the accident. But this one was more insistent. It remained with him longer, and little by little drove out all the other pictures. In the end he took notice of it, and with a sudden surge of excitement he realized he had one of his enemies just where he wanted her. He waited until after the evening meal—the six o’clock chop, potato and cabbage and the cup of tea—and then he went out. He took his motorbike out of the shed where it had been since his father had repaired it after the accident, told his mother he had to see a guy about something and went off down the road quite slowly because there was plenty of time and he knew he had the night before him.
It was at the very moment he left the house that Catherine knew she would be found that night, and she knew who it was that would find her. She thought of moving, of hiding herself even deeper in the scrub, but she dared not move in the dark and she knew that wherever she hid he would find her. It was not a matter of finding. He just knew where she was all the time, in the same way that she now knew where he was. More than this, she began to suspect with horror that there were times when snatches of his thoughts were clear to her. Sitting there alone in the bush she was frightened. And, moving smoothly through the night towards her, Terry knew that she was frightened. It was a good moment for him. It remained a good feeling until it occurred to him to wonder why he knew so much about her. It was a question he had not asked himself before.
He wound his way through the scrub, following the narrow track. And as he drew nearer, all the nerves in his body began to tighten. His breathing quickened and the thoughts in his head chased one another, half-formulated and with increasing speed. Something inside him was building up to a climax. It would be reached, he knew, when he came upon her. His grip on the handlebars tightened. He was not aware that his teeth were clenched. He was not even aware that he had begun to go more slowly, as if his whole body drew back from the meeting. But he kept on, and the headlight threw its beam, like a spear, through the trunks of the trees and across the passing clumps of scrub.
She had given up trying to hide. She had seen his wavering light from a long way off and she had watched it wobbling nearer to her, sometimes bright as it shone directly in her direction, sometimes extinguished as he swept round corners and through stands of trees. But it always came nearer, and now she climbed out from among the bushes, stood very straight with her hands clenched beside her and waited for the motorbike to break out through the undergrowth. The reason she did not yet know what he intended to do with her was because he had not yet made up his mind. She sensed vaguely the turmoil within it, the impending feeling of crisis. But at this moment, in this dark wilderness she could not guess what the outcome might be. That it could be a turning point in his life, as it was to be in hers, she had not yet conceived.
The glaring headlight suddenly shone full on her, and she waited, motionless, for it to run her down a second time. This time she had no stick and no escape. The light came nearer, but she could see nothing beyond that sheet of white glare. She did not have to see. Terry was there, looking at her, seeing her helpless
ness, without protection of any kind. To give herself strength she deliberately thought of Mr. Lovett and of how she must protect him so that, somehow, she must save herself now. Then the roar of the motor stopped and the silence of the night bush came flooding back, filling the space between. But the headlight was still on and she was blinded by it. She could do nothing but wait for Terry’s next move. And she did not know what it was going to be.
Terry himself did not know. He had been sure as he wove his way through the scrub that when he came to her he would dish out in some way what had been coming to her for so long, and even more now that he had a debt to pay for the damage—the very painful damage—to his throat. But when he came round the last curve, saw straight ahead of him the thick clump of scrub and the erect figure beneath it, those clear, simple thoughts of vengeance cracked and broke forever. In their place came the tremendous impact of a wild and sudden revelation, where vengeance had no place, where, instead, curious feelings he had not experienced before began cautiously to percolate. It was as if bubbles inside him, for so long building up, were bursting one by one. He looked at her, standing there, exposed from limp dark hair to dusty feet, and knew that what had been clouded and unguessed at was now clear. He turned off the motor. Then, at last, he turned off the headlight, and for several minutes neither of them could see at all.
As they stood there, blinded and silent, what had been revealed to him, what he was still groping to understand, came slowly to her too. From the small sounds she could hear she knew he was getting off the bike, propping it up and was very deliberately walking towards her. She stayed quite still. She could just see him now as her eyes adjusted. She began to tremble, but she forced herself not to move. He stopped about two arm’s lengths away. She knew that he could see her again too. But he still did not speak. When she considered, very slowly and carefully, what had just come to her, when she was as sure as she could be that she had made no mistake, she spoke to him.
“You know what’s happened?”
“I’m not sure.” His voice was almost a whisper. The metallic note was quite gone.
“You are sure. You just don’t want to believe it.”
“Do you?”
“No, No!” The word rang round the hills, seemed to echo against the cliffs and gradually lost itself in the deep, invisible gullies. She moved now. She took a step back. He continued to stand looking at her, and she stopped. When she spoke again it was in a whisper like his. “What can we do?”
He laughed. At least, the sound was more like a laugh than anything else, though it might also have been a gasp of anguish. “Have another accident.”
“You think—” She could hardly accept the idea. “Is that when it happened?”
“What do you think?”
She tried to get her mind working sensibly. But nothing was sensible any longer. “I think—there was something before that.” She stopped, and she could see his eyes now, watching closely. It seemed very necessary to him that he should hear every syllable of what she said. She continued in the same stunned half-whisper. “I never knew what it was. But I could stop it. Now it’s different.” She said no more.
After a long pause while neither moved, though she knew his heart was pounding like her own, he said, “Now I can’t stop it. And it’s worse. It’s there all the time.”
“Yes.” Suddenly her knees buckled and she sat down. She was no longer frightened of what he would do to her. She knew he would do nothing. But a larger fright had engulfed her former fears and she stared at him.
Half the night seemed to have passed before he moved again. He gave a shiver and a breath came out of him with the small sound that some animal might have made. He knew she would sit there, just as she was, getting colder as the night wore on, until daylight showed her the way home. She knew he would turn now, walk to the motorbike, kick the engine into life and go home. For between them flowed some kind of understanding, some kind of telepathy unguessed-at before the accident, but now, perhaps in those moments of joint unconsciousness, made clear. She knew and he knew that from time to time their thoughts and perhaps their feelings would always be known to one another. Catherine thought of the times when his thoughts were full of malice, full of destruction, and wondered if she would have them too—and suddenly shivered. It did not occur to her then that her own strong impulses to warmth and pity—and even love—might filter through to him. And Terry was not sufficiently familiar with these feelings to recognize them when they came.
That night Terry got into bed knowing Catherine was sitting where he had left her. He knew she was cold. He knew she was still trying to understand what had happened. He knew he would never understand and when he was less tired he would see how the crazy situation could be turned to his advantage. One thing had already changed. In future, resentment and hate would take another channel and he was glad he knew Mr. Lovett was blind. After that he slept.
Catherine did not sleep at all. She tried to make herself believe it was not true. For quite long periods she succeeded, but then Terry would wake again and turn over, and she knew her mind had been invaded by wisps of thought, incomplete, hazy, but always tending towards destruction. So that she could forget these periods she kept her eyes on the eastern sky, waiting for the first signs of a division between the night sky and the blackness of the distant hills. When it came, when it was possible to distinguish between the solid hills and the glimmering sky she felt a surge of vitality and a prick of joy that the daylight, at least, had not failed her. And when it was light enough to see her way she got up, took her bearings and headed for home.
She found her family all up and drinking cups of tea in the kitchen. As she walked in her father said, “You see? I told you to wait until daylight.”
Her mother wailed and rushed towards her, and Diana said, “Oh gosh,” and dropped her head on her crossed arms.
“They would get all worked up,” said her father. “I told them that if you’d got too far away to return by dark you’d have to wait till you could see. It’s damn lucky there isn’t an army of police swarming all over the hills.”
Diana lifted her head to say, “They couldn’t have seen her in the dark, either,” and dropped it again with a sigh.
It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket. The horrors of the night fell away and she knew that here was protection and a building of fortress walls against any kind of alien penetration. She apologised, and told them it had all happened as her father said, and she allowed her mother to take her to bed, fill her up with warm drinks and parboil her with the electric blanket. It was impossible to talk about Terry.
Chapter 17
The date of Rupert’s visit drew nearer and Catherine spent most of her spare time scouting for him. She already had a considerable list of places he might and could visit, and, learning more about birds than she had ever known before, she made other lists of where they might be found. Diana, who happened to be between jobs, helped her all she could and often drove her in the car when she wanted to go farther afield. The prospect of the coming September pleased them both, and this time all was harmony between them.
For some weeks Catherine saw no more of Terry, but it was no longer necessary to see him to know what he was doing. What he was feeling was another matter, for his feelings fluctuated violently. She might have guessed that as his health improved he would return more and more to his normal frame of mind. It was no longer possible to plan what he would do to Catherine so he concentrated on getting what he considered justice for his father. The pity he felt for his father had its limits, but his moral indignation was kept bright and burnished by his mother, who had always been one for action rather than idle complaint. Terry had not forgotten the idea that had come to him in the hospital, and he constantly asked his mate Joe how the new look-out was going and whether the bridge had been started.
There came a day in the middle of August when Joe was able to say, “Dug the foundations for the bridge today, Terry.”
“Goo
d,” said Terry, and if Joe had been expecting him to look pleased or grateful for the information he was disappointed. Terry’s face wore its habitual blank expression and he only added, “You keep telling me how you’re getting on, eh?”
But later that day when Joe had long gone home and Tom had left the garden Terry walked down to the new look-out. Remembering the accident he had so nearly experienced, he kept well back from the edge. But everything was safe now. The stone parapet round the look-out was four feet high and the only way in, or out, was by the gap left near its higher side where the bridge was to join it to the other look-out. No gap had been left where it backed on to the slope of the hill because Mr. Lovett would not be coming that way. When he visited the look-out he would always come by the bridge.
For a long time Terry stood beside the seat. For a long time he gazed towards the other look-out, to the gash in the hillside where the first of the earth had been removed for the bridge foundations. Behind the old look-out the garden lay gathering shadows as the night crept over the hill. He could just see the roof of the house where it penetrated through the surrounding trees. At this time of year, with the deciduous trees bare, there was more of it visible than in the summer. From one chimney came a long, straight column of smoke. The garden was empty, but anyone standing in it would have seen Terry, a thin, black silhouette in the middle of the new look-out and behind him a huge backdrop of hills and gullies and a limitless expanse of lemon-coloured sky already darkening to violet.
But there was no one there to see. There was only Conrad on his evening round, too low-hung to see anything at all. He did, however, stop once and lift his head. Then he gave one short bark and trotted back indoors, where he whined a little before settling down at Mr. Lovett’s feet. Terry heard the bark, and a second afterwards was no longer there. The new look-out was empty once more.