The Wine-Dark Sea (47 page)

‘Hedvig Falkenberg was asking after you,’ said Henry. ‘Rather pointedly, I thought. Make some kind of contact, will you? I can’t have a coolness with the Falkenbergs on my hands. On top of everything else. They can be damned
sensitive
, these foreigners.’

Margaret more or less promised, and meant to keep her word. She did not even have to tackle the terrifying Swedish telephone, as one would at home. She had merely to walk the half mile or so up to the Falkenbergs’ house on its low ridge above the town. Visitors seemed at all times to be not merely welcome but awaited. The walk would do her good. Even the steady rain might wake her up or make her sleep: it was striking how a single force could lead to antithetical results. But Margaret let the hours pass and did nothing. And when Henry returned that night, she did not even have to make an excuse.

‘Everything’s settled, Molly,’ he cried, almost
exuberantly
. ‘Thank God, we can go home tomorrow.’

Possibly it was owing to the lifting of the weight on his mind that, on this second night after his return from
Stockholm
, Henry slept much more quietly; much better, as people say. Margaret heard him purring gently and evenly as a child: hour after hour after hour, while the church clock chimed and the rain pattered. As this second sleepless night slowly passed, Margaret ceased finding explanations, making excuses, pretending to herself.

If only she could walk about! A few minutes after the stroke of five, she got out of bed, and, in almost total silence, drew on her shirt, trousers, and anorak. She stood for a long time looking out at the infinitely slow and laboured dawn. She would have liked to escape, but in this place the door would be locked, and a night porter, even if there was one, would shrink away from her and be beyond communication. She must still, for a spell, be reasonable.

She hid away her clothes and crept back into bed. Henry was still purring away, but as she drew near to him, he seemed to give a single, curious sigh, as of a man dreaming about the past which is always so much sweeter than the present.

*

‘Henry,’ said Margaret after breakfast. ‘You have said several times that I’m not looking very well. As a matter of fact, I haven’t been sleeping. And quite by chance, I’ve found a place where people from all over the world go when they don’t sleep. Would you mind very much if I stayed behind for a while? Just for a short time, of course?’

The argument took every bit as long as she had expected, but Margaret was developing new resources now, even though she had little idea of what they were.

‘I’ll let you know immediately I get out of the wood,’ she promised. ‘It’s one of those things you have to live through until you emerge the other side.’

Robert Fordyce Aickman was born in 1914 in London. He was married to Edith Ray Gregorson from 1941 to 1957. In 1946 the couple, along with Tom and Angela Rolt, set up the Inland Waterways Association to preserve the canals of Britain. It was in 1951 that Aickman, along with Elizabeth Jane Howard, published his first ghost stories entitled
We are the Dark
. Aickman went on to publish eleven more volumes of horror stories as well as two fantasy novels and two volumes of autobiography. He also edited the first eight volumes of
The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories
. He died in February 1981.