Woman in the Mirror

  He looked up at Cader Morb brooding so close over the scene. The cliff face had been blackened by the heat and smoke. Soon that would be washed by the winter rains and the scorched moss and thrift begin to grow again. But the desolation would be complete. The wilderness would have its way.

  And as for the people . . .

  ‘I went down to look for something,’ Gregory had whispered when he opened his eyes about seven o’clock. ‘And – and I lost my glasses and upset the lamp . . .’

  A relief of a sort to know there had been no design. Yet, while one obviously believed him, one still wondered how Norah had come to be left up there. Had Althea, confronted with near panic all round her, improved the sudden opportunity by a discreet and malignant silence? After all, however the fire had started, nothing could have suited better than for Norah and Simon to be its victims. Christopher found it increasingly difficult to estimate Althea Syme’s calibre. He could well believe her capable of such deliberate non-action; or he could equally believe that the sight of Gregory lying unconscious – perhaps dead – at the foot of the bathroom stairs, would rob her of every thought but the survival of her son.

  At the moment she was acting the part of a weak, miserable, ineffectual woman who had been robbed of her house and nearly of her son. All the command, the self-importance, the vigorous authority had apparently gone out of her. Or she had collapsed genuinely into such a state. He could not tell. No one could tell but Althea Syme herself, and perhaps even she did not know. Perhaps the distinction between the two states was not as great as first appeared. Some people genuinely were like that: they had to bully or be bullied; either they impressed by their importance or were impressed by other people’s, and each state was part truly felt, part assumed.

  Anyway, Gregory would live. He had been sick a couple of times, which the ambulance men had said was a good sign, and he had been put to bed with hot water bottles, and his mother advised that if he could be kept quiet for twenty-four hours where he was the advantages would outweigh a jolting journey to Aberystwyth with hospital care at the end of it. Now Mrs Syme sat beside his bed, the picture of a patient, doting mother.

  Simon only had gone in the ambulance. Norah had offered to go with him but smiling sadly he had refused. Of all the people in the house, he was the only one who had suffered serious burns, but they were not dangerous. It was one side of his face, which was likely to heal without leaving a scar, and his arm, which was worse and might need a skin graft.

  But while being temporarily attended to he had been much more withdrawn than he had been for some days. He had been smilingly charming to Norah but she had not been able really to get at him. Shutters had come down between them. At first she had thought that his discovery of Christopher in her room was at the bottom of it: he had shown his shock, and all their explanations might not suffice to convince him. Yet she was inclined to think it something more. She realized that, if her association with him came to be what they both hoped, he might still have his moods, his periods of semi-withdrawal. She did not at all mind. She knew that she could help him out of them.

  But when they parted he had said: ‘Do you ever rail against time? Its inescapable order, its plodding, relentless tread?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘None of us can ever swim upstream to pre-empt the future nor downstream to alter by a hair what happened yesterday. No wonder men smoked opium or experiment with mescaline. It gives the illusion of freedom. But we are all slaves.’

  ‘Surely the future’s yet to be made.’

  He kissed her. ‘Perhaps the future is already past. Perhaps the cardinal error in this life is to hope.’

  Before the ambulance men left Norah had had minor first aid for both hands which had been skinned on the rope and for one knee which had been bruised against the wall of the house. There were a few other casualties. Christopher’s right hand was burned across the knuckles, Timson had been hit by some falling debris, Ann Dawson had somehow contrived to sprain an ankle and Mr Croome-Nichols had been treated for shock. Too late, when everybody had been seen to, the local doctor appeared, looked them over with an absent-minded eye, and went home to breakfast.

  So their own breakfast was somehow served in the laundry where a fire had been lit, a table spread, a few chairs assembled. It was an odd meal at which no one seemed to wish to speak an unnecessary sentence. Talk was confined to the basic needs. Mrs Syme was not present, as she was sitting with Gregory. The doctor had had a good look into his eyes and had said he would be all right in a day or two. Tea was served to Althea, but she would not eat.

  Norah did not eat either. She was still suffering from the traumas of two days and of the night. Her head felt as if someone had thumped it with a blunt instrument. After yet one more cup of tea she went outside, to stare at the smoking ruin and to shiver in the fitful early sunshine.

  A shadow moved behind her.

  ‘You need a coat. Chill on top of shock is not a good idea.’

  She said: ‘I’m all right, Christopher. It’s not really the cold.’

  They stood in silence.

  He said: ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t quite know . . . Go into Aberystwyth later in the day, get credit at a bank, buy a few necessaries.’

  ‘I’ve money.’

  ‘Thanks but . . .’

  ‘Can’t I even help you that way?’

  ‘Well . . . thank you.’

  ‘I’ve a duffle coat at my cottage. Might be useful. Shall I fetch it?’

  She smiled. ‘What are you going to do today?’

  ‘What I can to help here. Then have a look at my cottage. Care to come over?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. There’s nothing much you can do here, and I imagine your obligations to Mrs Syme ended last night.’

  She hesitated. ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Down the slope and round the corner. That’s if no one has nicked it.’

  ‘Well, don’t you . . . ? I mean, wouldn’t you rather just drive off and wash your hands of the whole mess?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘What about the three hikers?’

  ‘They’re all asleep. And I can telephone from my cottage for a car to take them back to Aberystwyth. It’s the least one can do for them.’

  She hesitated again, studying him. ‘All right. Thank you, I’ll come.’

  He said: ‘You stay here. I’ll bring the car up.’

  ‘No, I’d rather walk. I think it’ll do my knee good to use it a bit.’

  As the first clouds moved across the watery sun they began to walk slowly down, she limping but not accepting his help.

  He said: ‘I can make you some good coffee. That tea was getting monotonous.’

  The car was still there. He unlocked it and they drove off, down the road Norah had come up, innocently, uninvolved, so short a time ago. It seemed to her half a life. At the second gate he turned left and bumped over a field. ‘A short cut,’ he laconically explained. And presently they rejoined another lane, ran up a valley which left Cader Morb dwarfed by higher bluffs, twisted up a shaly hill with two hairpin bends and ran through a tiny village with a church and a chapel and a pub, a dog scratching in the mud, two cows peering over a wall, some thatched cottages and a few people stirring. ‘Llandathery,’ he said. It was about a mile beyond that, his cottage, set back from the road and shadowed by some pines.

  A typical shepherd’s cottage, which Christopher – or someone – had done up. Probably it had been uninhabited, falling down. Neat and clean now though very small, with a fine view over rolling fields to the mountains, which were empurpled with the shadow of gathering clouds.

  She said: ‘There doesn’t seem too much mess. It’s really only the kitchen and the corner of the other room.’

  ‘Well, it can stay like that till Mrs Jones sees to it. She’s a kind old girl who comes in Tuesday and Friday afternoons.’

  Watching him put the kettle on she said: ?
??Your three hikers can’t have thought it worth turning out again on such a wet night.’

  ‘They didn’t. They would have been perfectly happy to sleep in my sitting-room dodging the drips. But in the end I got them moving again.’

  He telephoned to Aberystwyth on behalf of the hikers. Then they made coffee. Ever since the crisis and the high words of last night their conversation had been restricted to impersonal things, and there was no change now. For his part it was as if he had now accepted her arguments and decisions of last night. However much he might dispute them in his own mind, he would not carry on the dispute with her.

  She was grateful for this and accepted his company on that basis, aware of an area of uncertainty within herself which would have resented intrusion. It was not conflict that she suffered but a sense of disassociation from the commitments of the last two days. It might have suited her better to be quite alone, but undemanding companionship had the greater comfort in it. For a while she didn’t want to think, she didn’t want to feel. The emotion had been squeezed out of her and she had none left.

  He knelt by the fire, making it first with sticks and then with good shiny Welsh coal which quickly gave off its heat; and she wandered round the little room looking at the photographs. There was one of a very handsome young woman reclining on an Edwardian couch.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that was my second. I’m afraid I’m very susceptible to good looks. But I learned my lesson.’

  ‘Permanently?’

  ‘I hope so. She was – I found her very hard to live with. Not at all because she had a nasty nature but because she had an unresponsive one. Instead of depth of feeling she had – shallows that you couldn’t get beyond . . . No doubt it’s not quite the thing to criticize one woman to another, but, in spite of your present plans, I think it’s right for you to know.’

  ‘And your first wife?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  He made a disclaiming gesture.

  She said: ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘Another divorce? No, no. It all happened in the course of nature – unfortunately.’

  ‘I’m – sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I mean that I thought the other.’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  She said no more, dropping the personal chord before it began to sound within her. After a few minutes he pulled the couch nearer the fire and encouraged her to sit on it. She curled up, sleepy in the warmth. The coffee had gone down comfortably but not stimulatingly. Her eyes pricked and she sank into a deep brief slumber in which she was suddenly back in the sitting-room with the rocking-horse, and Marion and Simon in the mirror waiting for her to walk through. She started sharply awake, staring wide-eyed round the unfamiliar room which was now empty.

  Christopher came back. ‘Sleep if you feel like it. A nap will do you good.’

  He pulled up a chair and stretched his feet towards the fire, picked up a magazine and leafed through it, then leaned back and closed his own eyes.

  This time she went much more gradually into sleep. It was as if her consciousness was aware of the pitfalls of nightmare and relaxed its grip with caution. Slowly, slowly she was lowered into the dark.

  And in the dark was Simon. And he said: ‘Take my hands, hold my hands, because you only can help me now. It was to be a voyage of discovery but already we’re among the wrecks. If we remember our love and concentrate on that, only on that . . .’

  She woke a long time later, not at all stiff in spite of her cramped attitude, and strangely refreshed. It was as if an hour had recouped the loss of the night. She lay there utterly still and felt she had wakened from a nightmare and could welcome gratefully the commonplace of ordinary life. But it was not the nightmare of an hour, it was one that had lasted a week. She was herself again.

  In his chair Christopher Carew slept untidily, one arm dangling, hair on forehead, shoe slipped off, breathing like a long-distance runner.

  Without moving her head, her eyes roved round the room taking in the photographs, the well-worn furniture, the high mantelshelf with its tobacco jar, its portable radio, the pear-shaped oak clock, the Bristol jar, the candlesticks. Coal in the fire had fallen away but glowed like Aladdin’s cave. Take my hands, hold my hands . . . Words from a dream. Had it all been a dream?

  The week at Morb House had been a venture in hypnosis, organized by a designing woman but slipping completely out of her control. Somehow the forces within the house had grown too strong for her, for them all. Althea could never have foreseen or wished this end. Who could? Who did?

  That moment in the bedroom when they had all seemed trapped, there had seemed to be an inevitability about it; that she should die with Simon did not seem unexpected. Yet now, in the cool light of another day . . .

  A piece of coal fell into the hearth with a clatter and Christopher woke.

  In a moment he was on his knees, picking up the smoking coal with the tongs, rebuilding the fire. He looked up at her.

  ‘Surprising how heavily one can sleep when one’s knuckles are smarting like hell. I feel much better for that. Do you?’

  ‘Yes, a lot. What time is it? Lord, we must have been asleep two hours!’ She got up, straightening her skirt, examining without favour her hasty stitches of the night when she had tried to repair damage done during the escape.

  ‘There’s plenty of time. Would you like something to eat now?’

  ‘No, thanks. I don’t seem to have any appetite at all at present. But don’t let me stop you . . .’

  He shook his head. ‘What would you like to do now? Sleep some more? There’s my bed if you want it.’

  ‘No . . . I think we ought to be getting back. Then I need to go into Aberystwyth. As I said, I need clothes and . . .’

  ‘And to see Simon?’

  ‘ . . . . Yes.’

  He got up. ‘I’ll take you. There are a lot of things we have to thrash out.’

  The early cloud had cleared, and an autumn sun warmed their backs as they walked to the car.

  ‘I’ll take you straight to Aberystwyth if you want.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ve been wondering . . . the thought of seeing Althea again isn’t very . . . But no, we’d better go back to the house first. I keep thinking – hoping – a few of my things may have survived.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect it.’

  They drove off, back the way they had come, through a village scarcely more awake, down the hairpins, along the valley, across the bumpy field. Norah got out to open the gates and presently Cader Morb was in view and the stark cadaver of the house. The blackened chimneys and gaunt walls stood out against the hills like the walls of an old abbey. The dignity of ruins . . .

  The firemen were still there, and certainly more things were outside now dotting the grass. A surprising number of chairs, part of a Coalport teaset, a blanket in which were heaped a pile of blackened knives and forks and some relatively undamaged silver teapots; the remnants of the tape recorder, a heap of water-soaked books.

  There was also a second police car.

  ‘I’ll go in and see how Mr Croome-Nichols is,’ Norah said. ‘See if I can help in any way. Then we can go.’

  She got out and Christopher backed the car to turn round. As they did this a police inspector came out of the ruined door of the house and walked towards them.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, are you connected with this household?’

  Christopher explained.

  ‘Oh, well, I wonder if I might have a word with you?’ The inspector glanced at Norah apologetically. ‘I think possibly alone.’

  ‘Surely.’ Christopher got out of the car. He said to Norah: ‘Will you go and see how things are in the stables, or d’you prefer . . . ?’

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ she said, and stared after them as they strolled towards the house. After a few moments she saw Mr Croome-Nichols and another policeman emerge from the stables and walk to join them. The clergyman’s silver
y white hair lifted like a halo in the light breeze. They all disappeared up the three steps and through the hollow doorway which had once been the front door of the house.

  Norah got back into the car, thoughts of arson floating through her head. Then she changed her mind and dismissed the whole thing, left the car again and limped across to the stables.

  The car had come and the three hikers had gone; Ted Repple had left a scribbled note of thanks. The servants were dozing, wanting some sort of instructions which Norah did not feel in a position to give. With Simon in Aberystwyth control of the household must still rest in Mrs Syme’s hands and Althea was still sitting with Gregory. Doole stared Norah up and down with hostility, as if carrying on the vendetta of last night.

  After five minutes, as Christopher did not come she left again, a prey to vague unease, determined to follow them and discover what the mystery was about. But as she walked towards the house they all came out and stood on the steps. Mr Croome-Nichols remained talking to the two policemen, but Christopher, seeing her, came down the steps and approached her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, seeing his face.

  He took her by the arm. ‘Let’s get in the car. It’s – it’ll be easier sitting there.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked again.

  They reached the car and he opened the door for her. She hesitated on the point of refusal, then sat in and swung her legs; he shut the door.

  ‘It’s – bad news,’ he said, opening his own door and sliding in. ‘Norah – it’s bad news. They’ve found among the ruins two skeletons which seem to have been dead a long time.’