Stranger At Home (8 page)

Voices yelled at him. They yelled in Spanish and Portuguese and Dutch and German, but they all said
Work!
Faces swept past him, faces he knew but was too tired to name. Dark faces, oiled with sweat, cursing him. There was just one face that held steady. It was behind them, a long way off, and he couldn't see it clearly, but he knew that it was a good face and that it would help him and that he wanted it very much. He began to crawl toward it.

People beat and kicked and shouted at him. Green hides as stiff as iron were in his way, and torrents of coffee beans and mountains of burlap, and the choking stink of tanneries and guano and dirt and hot bilges and blood. The sun wrung him out and dropped him, so that he crept on his belly, but the face he wanted was still there, steady in the distance.

He couldn't seem to get any closer to it, but it grew clearer as the other things faded away. It was a woman's face, framed in soft black hair, and it had eyes as golden as wine. He dragged himself on, and suddenly it was cold, very cold, and he was creeping along the floor of a room that was high and beautiful like a cathedral nave. White curtains fluttered from long windows. Ahead there was a bed, narrow and hard and without pillows. A man lay naked upon it as on a catafalque, his eyes closed, his arms crossed over his breast. The face was still there, beyond the bed, high against the wall, and it was only a painted picture.

The broken, shivering thing that crawled on the floor cried out to the man on the bed.
Take me back. I am lost. I'm afraid.

And the man on the bed answered slowly, moving only his mouth:
I am dead
.

Michael Vickers cried out. He could hear it as he woke, a cry of sheer, simple terror. He sat up, snapping on the bedside lamp. He was dripping with cold sweat and his head was aching again. Coolin put his chin on Vickers' thigh. Vickers took hold of the dog and sat perfectly still until he had stopped shivering. Then he got up, slowly and stiffly because of the pain in his head, which was much worse when he moved. He lighted a cigarette, and stood looking around the room. The curtains moved lightly in the breeze. He picked up his dressing gown and went out into the hall, where he put it on. He had forgotten his slippers. He did not go back for them.

He went down the hall and rapped on Angie's door.

She answered, and he went in. The lamp was burning on the bedside table. There was a book, open and face down on the blanket, but he knew that she had not been reading. She sat quietly against the piled-up pillows and watched him. When the light struck his face she leaned forward and said: “What's wrong?”

“I've got a blinding head.”

He said it almost angrily. She pushed the book off onto the floor and moved her legs under the fluffy white blanket. For a moment he stood still. Then he went and sat down on the bed, where she had made a place for him. She touched his hand, gently, and frowned.

“Why, Vick – you're trembling.”

“The damn thing hurts, that's all.” He shrugged it off.

She looked at his eyes and the line of sweat on his forehead, but she didn't say anything. She slid the top pillow off and moved over. Presently he stretched out on top of the blanket, and she saw his bare feet.

“You shouldn't be running around without your slippers. You could catch cold, or step on a pin, or something.” She reached down and pulled the spare blanket up over his legs. Vickers laughed.

“What are you laughing at?”

“It's funny, that's all.”

“What's funny?”

“After living the way I have for four years, it's amusing to have someone fuss over my bare feet.”

“It's nice, though, isn't it?”

The crawling thing on the floor cried Take me back, I am lost, and the man on the bed answered slowly, I am dead
...

The world turned over.

From a great distance a voice spoke his name. “Vick.” And then, softly, “Pappy.”

He was deathly cold, and the saliva ran in his mouth. He said, “What?”

“My wrist, darling.”

“What about your wrist?”

“Nothing, only it's going to break in a minute.”

A hand appeared before him. It was his own, and it was gripping Angie's forearm in the way the hand of a drowning man grips the proverbial straw. He opened his fingers, and left the marks of them livid on her flesh.

He started to sit up. There was a crack in his skull as big as the Grand Canyon. “I have a grim feeling I'm going to cat.”

“Don't be silly. You didn't eat any dinner.” She pressed him back. He realized that she was out beside him now, with just the spare blanket over both of them. Her arms went around him. He could remember his mother holding him in just that way. Her body was wonderfully warm, wonderfully safe and comforting. The nausea passed. She reached up and touched his hair in the light remembered way, and then her lips brushed the ugly scar.

“Your poor little noggin,” she whispered. “You must see a doctor about it.”

“I suppose so.”

“Is it very strange coming back?” She laughed, not very humorously, and amended, “Well, considering what's happened, I guess it would be for anybody. But you know what I mean. The house, the people, the city, all of it. Being Michael Vickers again.”

Involuntarily his arms tightened around her. “Yes. Very strange.”

“You must have suffered terribly.”

“No more than the rest of them.”

“Fiddlesticks. They were used to it. You weren't.”

“They got just as hungry as I did. And I had the edge on them for size. I found that out on the coffee docks. I could sack and load rings around them.”

“Don't try to be noble, Pappy. You'd never missed a meal – and good meals, too – nor done a day's physical work in your life. Don't tell me it was easy.” She paused, then added softly, “And don't tell me you weren't having nightmares about it just before you came in here.”

He did not answer. She looked down at his face and saw the change come over it. His eyes were closed, but she didn't need to see into them.

“Was it Harry Bryce?” she asked sadly. “Did you recognize his voice and...” She did not finish.

Vickers said, “No. I didn't even see Harry.”

“But if you had...”

“I couldn't have recognized his voice. I told you it didn't sound human. I was crazy with dope. And anyway – not murder. It's too dangerous, too stupid, and – too quick.”

He felt her shiver. There was a long silence.

“Vick.”

“Yes?”

“I told you the truth about Harry.”

“He had a lock of your hair.”

“Why not, if he wanted it? He got it from my hairdresser.”

Again there was a long pause. Vickers' head was beginning to ease off. He was warm again. The dream was retreating into the mental cave where it lived. He knew it was there. But when it was decently veiled, the sharp destroying edges of it hidden, he could study it objectively. He could say to himself quite reasonably,
I feel like that because
, and go on with the nice neat rationalization. It was only when the bloody thing attacked him in his primitive emotions that it got the better of him.

He put his hand sleepily on Angie's head, drawing it closer into his neck.

“You said you'd been trying to find out what really happened to me. Any results?”

“Nothing. Except in a negative way. I'm sure Harry Bryce didn't do it.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yes. Harry's pretty well gone to pieces in the last year or so. You can't live at Harry's rate of speed forever. I've made him tell me about the cruise, and your disappearance, over and over when he was far too drunk to have any control over what he said. And he always told the same story. Not in the same words, or the same sequence – sometimes just fragments of it – but he never varied the facts.”

Vickers thought that over and said, “Mm-hm. And the others?”

“I don't know. Surely not Job... He's really a very sweet person, worships his youngsters, puts up with Harriet on account of them. He drinks too much, but with Harriet around, who wouldn't? And Bill...” She shook her head. “Oh, it's crazy to think either one of them would do such a thing! People we've known so long.”

Vickers said, “That's naive, darling. You will never know how naive.” He was drowsy now, delightfully relaxed. He turned slightly, toward Angie, drawing closer to her warmth. “You know, I could see you long before I could remember anything else. I knew your name. Angie. Later on, when my memory was beginning to function by fits and starts, I'd try to think, How did she feel about this thing, or what would she have done about that? And d'you know, Angie, I...”

“I know,” she finished for him. “You couldn't remember, because you never bothered to find out.”

“I found out a couple of things, though. I spent a lot of time thinking down there. I'm an egotistical son of a bee. Some of my thoughts didn't please me at all, but I couldn't seem to duck them. And I tried, believe me!” He paused. “I notice the rug is gone. The one before the fireplace.”

“Yes.”

“One of the things I learned down there was what it feels like to be mastered, physically.”

She whispered, “You weren't very nice to me, Vick.” She drew her breath in, started to shape words with it, then changed her mind.

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

“What was it?”

“Never mind, Vick. I learned a long time ago, it's the moment that counts with you, not the days. I'm happy right now. Why spoil it?”

“Good God, but we're philosophical!” He sighed and went to sleep.

He woke very early. Angie was still close to him. Worn out, she had fallen into a heavy slumber, and hardly stirred when he moved away from her and got up.

He stood looking down at her, his face strangely remote and sad. Then he went out, very quietly, and closed the door behind him.

Downstairs in the breakfast room Joan Merrill was having her early cup of coffee and her newspaper. Her ritual never varied. Promptly on the stroke of six she arose, splashed cold water on her face, combed her hair, put on her dressing gown and went down to the kitchen, where she brewed her own particularly black and muscular fluid with no help from Cook, who was still abed like a decent body.

While the pot was dripping, Joan went out and collected the morning paper. Both family and servants had learned to avoid Joan until she had finished with it. By that time the duties of the day had usually put an end to her fulminations against the administration, local politics, national politics, the actions of labor unions, foreign policy, and the sinister behavior of Soviet Russia. Joan thoroughly disapproved of humanity and held little or no hope for it.

This morning, however, she had no interest in anything except the headlines that concerned Michael Vickers and the violent death of Harry Bryce. She poured herself a second cup and lighted a cigarette, and stared with a deep and bitter loathing at the gallery of pictures confronting her.

Coolin padded in and said good morning. She patted him and rose to let him out, then stopped as Vickers said from the doorway, “Never mind. I'll do it.”

Joan sat down again. She said coldly, “Good morning, Michael.” Vickers, still in dressing gown and slippers, opened the side door into the garden. Coolin trotted out, and his mate appeared like magic from somewhere in the shrubbery. Vickers watched them go off together, leaping and wrangling in devoted mock combat.

“What happened to Dee?”

“She died. The vet said it was grieving over you. We nearly lost Coolin, too, but Angie pulled him through. She used to sit up all night sometimes, coaxing him to eat broth out of a spoon.”

Her tone said quite plainly,
You weren't worth the life of a good dog
.

After a moment Vickers said, ‘I'm glad you got him a new mate. What's her name?”

“Molly.”

“That's good enough.” He returned to the table and sat down. “Is there some coffee left?”

She reached another cup off the sideboard and poured him some. Vickers sipped it, hoping it would dissolve the vestiges of pain still creeping about the corners of his skull. It seemed strong enough to dissolve anything.

“Joan,” he said, “how would you like to go down to the beach house for a while?”

Joan sat perfectly still for a long moment. Then she said with careful distinctness, “I don't quite understand.”

Vickers looked down at the table, very quiet, very serious. “Angie and I have a lot to get straight between us. You can understand – we want to be quite by ourselves for a while.” He waited. Joan said nothing. She had not moved. Vickers glanced up at her. “If you don't fancy the beach place, choose a hotel. I'd say a trip somewhere, if it weren't for the police.”

“No,” said Joan. “I shouldn't care for the beach place.” She got up. “This is rather sudden and surprising. If you don't mind, Michael...” She started toward the door.

“But I do mind.” Vickers turned slightly in his chair, and she stopped. “Angie's very tired, she's sleeping, and I don't want her disturbed. After all, Joan, she's my wife, not yours. I'd like her to myself for a while.”

Joan was facing him now. She was quite calm. “You want to get rid of me.”

“That's a crude way of putting it. But, for a while, yes.”

“What does Angie say about it?”

“She agrees with me.”

“Then why should you mind my seeing her?”

Vickers rose. “Look here, Joan. I know you don't like me. I know that you wish I had never come back. Yesterday you accused me of killing a man. You are, to say the least, a disturbing factor. Matter of fact, I'm being rather decent not to fire you.” He laughed abruptly, becoming friendly again. “Really, Joan! Is it too much to ask, after four years – a few weeks alone with my wife?”