Fear by Night (9 page)

Ann stood as near the water as she could and saw him go. She could only see a very little bit of the road, because it twisted away between the hills. At the turn Charles waved again, and then he was gone.

Ann went back into the house and listened to the life histories of the eighteen children of Mrs. Halliday's uncle, Ebenezer Todd—“Three pair of twins, and five of 'em foxy, and girls—and a red-'eaded girl is what I can't abide. Boys isn't so bad, but the boys was all dark except one, and he was so red you could ha' struck a match on his 'air.” Mrs. Halliday turned her brooch to the light and displayed its bunch of flowers. “That's a bit of it down in the left-hand corner. Makes a nice rosebud, don't it, though there wasn't nothing of the rose about 'im—an impudent rapscallion if ever I see one, and the girls all after 'im like a lot of wasps after plum jam, and dear knows why, for he wasn't no beauty. Married a pork-butcher's widow in the end, and her in her fifties, and a very 'appy couple they made, only no children of course. And there was his sister Aggie, that was like a thread of cotton and no more colour than a bit of tallow, she married a widower with eight—more like a hank of tow her 'air was. There's some of it in that ivy-leaf. What I call a pore thing, my Cousin Aggie.”

Ann's head was going round long before they had finished with the Todds. She hoped she wouldn't be expected to remember about them. She could really only think about Charles and the water that lay between them.

CHAPTER XI

Jimmy Halliday had not returned when Ann went up to bed that night. They hung the key on a nail behind the big fuchsia at the front door. Ann always wondered why they locked the door at all, but neither Riddle nor Mrs. Halliday would have gone to sleep behind an unlocked door. It was a real villa door that shut with a spring lock, so they only had to hang up the key and give it a good bang—“And like as not Jimmy won't be back till breakfast time,” said Mrs. Halliday. “Comes of a poaching stock on both sides of the family, and when it's that way, they'd sooner be out nights than in their beds.”

Ann wondered when Charles would come back, or whether he would come back at all. The strange, floating sound of his voice rang in her head—sound without words, sound like water flowing, and in the middle of it one sharp island of a word—“
back
.” She was sure that the word was “back.” She went to her room, but she didn't undress. She knelt down by the open window and thought about what Charles would do. He would go away for the night and perhaps come back again in the morning, when he might hope that the boat would be in, and that there would be someone there to put him across. Very deep inside herself Ann had a feeling that Charles might come and Charles might call, but that no boat from the island would put out to bring him over.

She jerked away from this.

Perhaps Charles would hire a boat and come back by water. That would be much better. If she saw him coming, she could direct him to the one narrow place where a landing was possible on the other side of the island. She began to think that Charles would come in a boat, but she had no idea how far he would have to go to find one. She wished she knew more geography. She wished she knew where she was.

The day had been fine, but now the eastern sky had clouded over. Some light still lingered in the west. The high tops of the hills caught the last of it, but the loch, over which their shadows fell, was dark. The trees were dark beyond the lawn, and about the house it was dusk—a thin, clear dusk at first, but deepening every moment. Ann slipped down into a sitting position with her arms on the sill. Presently it would be cold, but just for a little the cooling air was pleasant. She did not feel at all inclined to go to bed. All sounds had ceased in the house. The trees were dead still—black painted trees on a background of grey. She could just hear the water moving and no more. Now it was so dark, she could not see where the lawn ended and the trees began. The clouds covered the sky. Somewhere behind them there should be a moon. She wished that they would break and let it through.

And then there was a sound. She could not tell what sort of a sound it was, but it startled her. She kneeled up and leaned over the sill, pushing back the hair from her ears and listening. She could hear something moving amongst the trees, and she wondered if Jimmy Halliday had come back. That only lasted for a moment. You didn't have to listen to hear Jimmy Halliday come home; he came clumping up from the beach after banging the boat-house door, and, day or night, there was no mistaking his tread. This was none of Jimmy Halliday. This was a cautious, hesitant step.

Ann jumped up with a beating heart. It couldn't be Jimmy Halliday. It might be Charles. She opened her bedroom door, took off her shoes, and, carrying them, went down in her stockinged feet. She had got the front door open and was out on the rough grass of the lawn, when something inside her said in a small, cold voice, “Suppose it isn't Charles.” Ann rounded on the voice. “If it isn't Charles, who is it?” It might be—something else. She had a spurt of anger like a flaring match. “What?” she said. “
Something
,” said the voice, and died away.

Ann's spurt of anger carried her across the lawn an into the first shadow of the trees. They hung over her like a wave just waiting to break. She could see nothing, and she could hear nothing except her own pulses. And then out of the darkness Charles Anstruther said,

“Ann!”

“Oh!” said Ann with a sharp-caught breath, and in a moment Charles' hands touched her face, groping. His hands were wet. She stepped back and said his name.

“Charles!” And then, “You're wet!”

“Only my hands.”

“How did you come?”

“I swam of course.”

“Then you
must
be wet.”

“I'm not. I rolled my clothes up in a mac and tied them on my head. It's what they always do in books, but I'd hate to do any distance with a wobbley bundle like that. If I'd had a bathing-suit, I'd have swum over this afternoon. But I told you I was coming back. You knew I'd come—didn't you?”

“I didn't think you'd come to-night. Charles, there'll be a most awful row—you'd better come farther away from the house.” She touched him then for the first time, slipping her hand inside his arm and drawing him down the path.

Just above the beach a track went off to the left. Ann followed it for some twenty or thirty yards till it opened into a tiny clearing. Above them, ringed by the trees, was a rift in the clouds and a patch of moonlit sky.

Charles put an arm about her.

“Ann—are you all right?”

Ann did not find the arm at all unpleasant, but she wasn't going to let it undermine her. Now that Charles had come, everything
was
all right. The things that she had had to push out of sight no longer needed pushing. They had gone back into the bottomless pit which produces nightmares, and a nightmare is a thing without existence. She said briskly,

“Of course I'm all right. Why shouldn't I be?”

“Why are you on this damned island?”

“It isn't—it's a very nice island.”

“Friendly, hospitable place—isn't it? Do all your callers have to swim?”

“We don't have any. We lead the simple life. Presently I shall know all about
all
Mrs. Halliday's relations from their cradles to their having their pictures in the papers because they've been hanged or lived to be a hundred. She's got more relations than anyone I've ever heard of, and most of them had twenty children at least, so you see there isn't a dull moment.”

“Do you think I've come here to talk about Mrs. Halliday's relations? I've come here to talk about you.” His other arm came round her. “Ann, aren't you glad to see me?”

They were standing in deep shadow like deep; dark water.

“I
can't
see you,” said Ann in rather a small voice.

“You can feel me. Can't you—
can't you
? Ann!”

Whether what she felt was the beating of her own heart or his, Ann could not have said. She was held so close that her breath was gone, and when Charles kissed her she kissed him back. But only for a moment. Then she pushed him away and stamped her foot.

“How dare you?”

“Ann—”

“I never said you could kiss me!”

“Ann—”

“I'm not the sort of girl who kisses people! I'm not! I think it's horrible, and vulgar, and cheap!”

“Ann!” Charles had her by the shoulders. He shook her a little. “I kissed you because I love you, and there's nothing vulgar and cheap about that!
Now
will you stop talking nonsense?”

“No,” said Ann—“I won't! It's not nonsense—it's true! You're not to kiss me—you're not to touch me! I won't have it!”

Her thoughts hurried and were out of breath. If Charles kissed her again, she would let go. She was holding on desperately, but if he kissed her again, she wouldn't be able to hold on any longer. She would let go, and when it was too late she would be sorry ever after. Charles was in love, but that world well lost sort of business didn't last, and when he was sane again he would remember that he might have kept Bewley if he hadn't married Ann Vernon without a penny. And all his relations would remember it all the time. No—no—no—no—
no
!

“I won't!” said Ann, and did not know whether she said it aloud or not.

Charles' voice came from a yard away. The pale moony patch of sky overhead made the shadow between them seem darker. He wasn't Charles—he was danger. He was something she must hold her own against, even if it hurt—like this. He was saying, in a different voice,

“I won't touch you if you don't want me to—you needn't be afraid.”

“I don't know why you came,” said Ann, her voice stumbling on the words and a panic fear sweeping her when they were said, because now he would go and never come back any more. Relations looking down scornful noses didn't seem to matter when she thought about Charles going away for ever. But they ought to matter, they must matter, they
would
matter. She pinched her own arm very hard indeed and said, “It's no use your coming here. I didn't want you to come.”

“I'm sorry,” said Charles. He didn't sound sorry; he sounded angry. “I wouldn't have come if I'd known.”

“You ought to have known!”

“I only wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Why shouldn't I be all right?”

“I don't know,” said Charles. “But if you are, I'll be going.”

It hurt more every minute. If it went on hurting like this, she couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear him to go like this. She couldn't bear him to stay. Waves of pain, and anger, and fear broke in her. She said in a polite, careful voice,

“It was good of you to come.”

“Oh, damnably!” said Charles.

Why didn't he go? How could she bear it if he went? Oh, why didn't he go quickly?

And a yard away Charles, ragingly angry, was also wondering why he didn't go—and why he had come. And he would take his oath that she had kissed him. He broke into furious speech.

“I'm going! You needn't be afraid I'll bother you any more—unless you want me! I don't suppose you will, but you might! And if you do—is it any use asking you to write?”

“No,” said Ann—“it isn't.”

She didn't mean her voice to sound mournful, but it did. She saw in her mind the torn scrap of the letter which she had written to Charles, and which wasn't any use because it never reached him.

If her voice had sounded different, Charles would have turned on his heel and gone down to the water. As it was, he fired a “Why?” at her.

If she said that they had torn her letter up, he wouldn't go away at all. And he must go away—only not irretrievably.

“Letters don't always get posted here,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“They don't always get posted.”

The anger that had swept between them like a sudden squall had died as suddenly.

“Ann, what do you mean? You must tell me what you mean. Do you mean you wrote to me?”

With a very little breath Ann said,

“Yes.”

“I didn't get it.”

“No.”

“Why didn't I get it?”

“It didn't get posted,” said Ann.

“Then how am I to know if you want me? Ann, you
might
want me.”

Deep inside her Ann said, “Yes,” and then, very urgently, “Yes, yes,
yes
.” But she couldn't say it aloud. She could only say, “I don't know.”

There was a silence between them. The clouds had moved overhead. The rift was out of sight. Everything was much darker. Then Charles said,

“Could you show a signal somewhere if you wanted me?”

“I don't know—I might.”

“If you put a branch on the boat-house roof or anywhere on that beach, I should see it, and it's not a thing that anyone else would notice. It wouldn't be any use at night of course.”

It came to Ann that if she were to need Charles suddenly, desperately in the night, she would be past helping. A kind of black gulf opened in her thoughts, and a shudder ran all over her. It was nothing. It was the dark. It was wanting Charles, and having to send him away. She said,

“Yes, I can do that. But I won't want anyone. Mrs. Halliday's very nice to me.”

“And Halliday?” Charles' voice was rough.

“He's away fishing nearly all the time.”

Suddenly it was quite easy to laugh—and oh, such a blessed relief! Charles—putting on a jealous voice for Jimmy Halliday!

“Darling Charles,” she said, “you needn't worry about that. He'd take a lot more interest in me if I was a bit of bait or a dead fish.”

It was nice to have got back to being friends again. She drew her breath more easily. The horrible tension was gone.