Authors: Christianna Brand
Rose in Darkness (32 page)
‘By then it was out of their power to help me any more. Out of my own power. I couldn’t help
myself
.’ She said rather grimly: ‘And you knew that too?’
‘The lovely, funny great big painted safari-bags, Sari, the famous quick wees—into the public loos, stash away the empty bottles where nobody could know they were yours; now and again a quick dose too, when you were in need of one. “Gladdies” they call them at the moment, don’t they?—I suppose it was Gladdies you were still on, taken with alcohol. Vodka, not to smell too much on your breath. And the dartings into chemists’ for all that endless cotton-wool, how clever you were, turning it all into jokes against yourself, that distracted people’s minds from suspecting anything! Cotton-wool—and some Gladdies when you’d run out and couldn’t get to the shops on your own. But you had to go alone on your visits to the doctor, to half a dozen, dozens of different doctors, for all I know, to rip off a few forms from their prescription pads; it’s often not difficult and after all, you’re an adept at shop-lifting aren’t you? That wasn’t you Sari, once, not when we first knew you; but with the drugging the moral sense was going, stealing things was just a bit of fun.’ She was terribly still now, the pale, shimmering figure with the candle flame of her hair, but it had to be said, he ploughed steadily on. ‘Fill in the prescription for the Gladdies, perfectly innocent stuff on its own, only not to be taken with alcohol—all the poor bloody kids are using them these days... And all the time, the slow deterioration of character, my poor Sari, that comes with these things—breaking down, breaking down, never able to love for very long, exposing your inner self, not knowing you were doing so, to people who didn’t recognise or understand but just—lost their love for you and drifted away. And now, my dear—there’s nobody left but me.’
She mumbled, dry-mouthed: ‘You said you would always love me, you said you would do anything for me.’
‘And I have,’ he said. ‘Up to a limit—anything. I’ve let people suffer—I let you turn against Charley, I let you turn against Sofy, I let them suffer and only, behind the scenes, did what I could to help them; and I’ve let Rufie suffer. But—up to a limit. And neither I nor you can let Rufie suffer any more.’
Clutching at the long, heavy curtains, hanging on them, her slight weight tearing them slowly from the rails that held them. She stammered out: ‘It was all... From the beginning ...It was the Followers.’
‘It’s been your obsession, my poor Sari. Out of God knows what childhood experience; I suppose they tried, all those psychiatrists, but they could never uncover it. That’s why I loved you and stuck to you and tried to take care of you. It’s been an obsession, you couldn’t help it, all your life has been this escape from the Followers... All your “crutches”—the drugs, the whipped-up hilarities, the friends who might help you to forget until this something—almost terrible, in you, frightened them, though they didn’t understand it, and drove them away. All the great loves who were going to save you and keep you safe for ever—culminating in Phin. You hadn’t yet fallen out of your faith in Phin; you were afraid to the bottom of your soul that this murder business would lose Phin to you. Once they’d demolished the idea of the Juanese followers—’
‘There were others,’ she said in a strange, dead tone. ‘Before and during—always. It wasn’t just the murder, it wasn’t just the Juanese. But tonight, something happened. If the Juanese followers had been all imagination—then the rest might have been imagination too. And they
had
been imagination: that night, in the storm, they hadn’t been Followers—only Rufie in his little black car and Vi Feather with red gloves on her hands...’ The flat voice faltered. ‘Red gloves, red hands, looking like—like...’
Like blood. Phin’s car turning at the fallen tree and going on towards London. Vi Feather turned out by Rufie into the storm; creeping into the back of the car while they two crawled under the tree, stood exchanging identifications. Rising up behind her, those two bloody hands outstretched in explanation and appeal...
What had happened then? What had happened then? Blotted out, thrust deep down into the subconscious in the long engrained habit of thrusting out of sight the unwanted, the frightening, the thoughts one could not face, the memories unendurable...
The shuddering halt of the car, the mindless reaction: fighting off the bleeding hands, forcing it all down out of her sight... The mindlessness, driving on through the storm while oblivion closed in over it, buried it deep down in the matrix of a total forgetfulness, that even later recognitions would not bring to the surface. Driving home, stopping the car, leaving it without a moment’s further thought, just as one would have done anyway, keys swinging in the ignition, dashing through the rain to the warmth and comfort of home, to Rufie, to safety—safety from the Followers. Nothing, nothing left in the conscious mind but the old obsessional fear of the Followers. But the Follower had been Vi Feather with her bleeding hands... And she was falling, falling... An aeroplane falling, tumbling out of the sky, they were screaming, tumbling all about and screaming, Mummy and Daddy were clutching at her, screaming... And the thunderous jolt and the breaking apart and the all-obliterating explosion—and the flight from the nightmare of red flame shot through with yellow and blue, blazing, blazing up as high as the sky... And the blackening figures dancing and screaming among the flames. Running away, running away, saving herself, leaving Mummy and Daddy dancing and screaming in the flames, burning, burning——Mustafa
ISBN 978-1-4532-9045-3
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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CHRISTIANNA BRAND
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