At last she quieted down and there was silence. Very faintly, she began to snore. It was a strangled, gasping sound that was almost as bad as her sobbing.
My cold, vicious calm returned. I stood up and flexed my fingers. Now, I thought, I will put you out of your misery. This is the moment for which I have been waiting.
I paused outside the bedroom. I could hear Eve jerking about in bed, moaning and muttering to herself. I edged into the room and moved quietly around the bed until I was sure I was near her. I put my hand out cautiously and felt the top of the quilt and then, very slowly, I sat down on the bed. It creaked under my weight, but the movement did not wake her.
I felt her body twitch and jerk under the bedcloths. I could smell the whisky on her breath. My heart began to pound. I reached out and found the lamp switch. Holding it in my shaking fingers, I groped for her throat.
My hand hovered in the dark, then I touched her hair. She was under my hand. I drew a deep breath, clenched my teeth and snapped on the light.
She was there, close to me, my hand a few inches from her throat, but I could only sit and stare at her. I could not move. She looked so utterly helpless. She lay on her back, her lips parted and her face twitching as she slept. She looked very young and unhappy and there were dark shadows under her eyes. My hand dropped limply and I felt all the viciousness drain out of me. I knew then, as I looked down at her, that I had been out of my mind and at the sight of her I was suddenly sane again.
I could not kill her. My mouth went dry when I realized how close I had come to doing so. I wanted to take her in my arms and feel her respond to me. I wanted to tell her that I would look after her and she need never be unhappy again.
I looked down at her, seeing her elfish, heart-shaped face with its determined chin and the two deep furrows above her nose. I thought if only she always looked like this — helpless and needing protection, the hard lines smoothed from her face and her eyelids hiding the windows of her dreadful, callous, selfish little soul. If I could only trust her not to lie or cheat or drink or to be cruel to me. But I knew that was impossible. She would never change.
The cat came and rubbed itself against my arm. I stroked it and for the first time since Carol had died, I felt relaxed and content. As I sat close to Eve, with the cat pushing its head into my hand, I realized a fulfilment of a desire that I wanted to go on and on.
Then suddenly Eve opened her eyes. She stared at me with bewildered, terrified hatred. She did not move and she seemed to have stopped breathing. We looked at each other for a full minute.
“It’s all right, Eve . . .” I began, reaching for her hand.
I did not think it was possible for anyone to move so quickly. She whipped out of bed, snatched up her dressing gown and way by the door before I could touch her. There was a scraped, bony look on her face and her eyes glinted strangely in the shaded light of the lamp.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” I said, cold with panic. “Eve I’m sorry I did this . . .”
She mouthed at me, but no sound came. I could see she was heavy with sleep and the whisky was still stupefying her. It was only an instinct for self-preservation that had made her leave the bed so quickly. And yet, as I watched her, she frightened me more than I was frightening her.
“It’s all right, Eve,” I went on, soothingly. “It’s Clive. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She said in a croaking whisper, “What do you want?”
“I was passing and I had to see you,” I said. “Come and sit down. It’s all right, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Her eyes were becoming alive. She licked her dry lips and when she spoke again, her voice was clearer. “How did you get in?”
“You left a window open,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. “I couldn’t resist surprising you, but I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She still stood by the door. Her eyes began to glitter and her nostrils became pinched and white. “You mean you broke in here?”
“I know I shouldn’t have done it, but . . . well, I did want to see you.”
She drew in a deep breath and her face went livid. “Get out!” she screamed, throwing open the door. “Get out, you snivelling cur!”
I flinched away from her. “Please, Eve,” I implored. “Don’t be angry with me. I can’t go on like this any more. I want you to come away with me. I’ll do anything for you. Only don’t be angry.”
She took a step forward, her face twisted with insane rage. “You crazy, sloppy fool,” she said in a low, vicious voice and then filth spewed out of her mouth.
I put my hands over my ears sickened and terrified by her obscenities. She crouched before me, her eyes blazing in a chalk white face. She looked hideous in her crazed fury. Her tongue lashed, soiled and burned me. “Do you think I’d waste my time with a little two-bit jerk like you?” she finally screamed at me. “Get out! You’re never to come here again. Get out! You’ve hung around me until I’m sick of the sight of you. You’re so thick skinned you don’t know when you’re not wanted. Do you think I want your lousy twenty dollar presents? Get out and stay out and never show your ugly face here again!”
My fear of her suddenly left me. Suffocating rage and a vicious desire to hit back brought me to my feet. “You slut! I’ll teach you to talk to me like that,” I shouted at her.
She screamed me down. “I know what your game is. You’re worse than any of them. You’re trying to get me for nothing. So you want me to go away with you? Why, you cheap heel, I’ve men with more dollars than you’ve got nickels who want to marry me. But I don’t want them and I don’t want you! I’m sick of men! I know all their filthy little tricks and their rotten little minds. I wouldn’t be found dead in a ditch with a man. I know what you want, but you’re not going to get it from me!”
We stood and glared at each other. The only sound in the room was the cat’s deep throated purr. I wanted to smash her now. A cold, murderous rage seized me and I wanted to hit, rend and mangle her with my hands.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said softly. “I’m going to hammer your rotten little head against the wall until your skull cracks. You’ll never torment any more men after I’ve finished with you.”
She drew her white lips off her teeth and spat at me.
I came slowly round the bed and moved towards her. She stood her ground, her eyes blazing and her small hands like fleshless claws. Then as I reached for her, her hooked fingers slashed at my face, like a cat striking.
Her nails missed my eyes only because I jerked my head back in time, but they clawed down my nose and cheek. I was blinded with pain and fury. I struck at her, but she was too quick for me. My fist missed her head and slammed against the wall. I reeled back, crying out with pain.
She slipped out of the room and ran into the kitchen. The telephone was in there, but I gave her no time to call for help. There was no exit in that little room except through the door by which she had entered and already I was standing in the doorway.
I looked at her, feeling warm blood running from the furrows she had clawed in my face. She had pressed herself against the far wall, her hands behind her and her eyes glittering. She showed no sign of fear as I rushed at her.
As I crossed the room, she raised her arm. In her hand was a knotted dog whip. She lashed me across the face. The suddenness of the attack and the blinding pain sent me staggering back. I threw up my arms as she slashed at me again. The whip came down across my shoulders like the torch of a red hot iron. I cried out and swearing at her, I tried to seize the thong as it whistled once more down on my head. But she moved like a lizard and she had crossed the room, turned and cut at me again as I was trying to recover my balance.
She drove me before her, her lips drawn back and her eyes like glowing embers, systematically slashing at me, hitting me round the head, back and neck.
I was stunned by the pain and I tried to get out of the room into the passage, but she headed me off.
There was no escape from that whistling thong that cut at me with white-hot streaks of pain. I stumbled over a chair as the whip curled across my eyes. The pain was excruciating and I screamed out and fell on my knees.
As she continued to slash at my unprotected head, I dimly heard someone pound on the front door. Then she stopped her insane, vicious attack and I lay on the floor, blood pounding in my ears and my body hot in agony. Way back in my head somewhere, way back in the dark, I heard voices and I felt a hand seize my arm. I was dragged to my feet.
I lurched forward, half crying with pain. Harvey Barrow stood before me. His whisky ladened breath fanned my face.
“Suffering snakes!” he exclaimed. “You’ve half killed him,” and he burst out laughing.
“Throw him out,” Eve said viciously.
“I’ll throw him out,” Barrow grinned, folding his fist in my shirt front. He jerked me towards him. “Remember me?” he demanded, his coarse face close to mine. “I haven’t forgotten you. Come on, you’re going for a little walk.”
He shoved me into the passage. At the front door, I tried to break away, but he was too strong. We struggled for a moment, then as he forced me out of the house, I glanced back at Eve. She stood in the lighted doorway and stared fixedly at me. I can see her now. She had pulled her blue dressing gown tightly round her and her arms were folded across her flat breasts. Her face was wooden. Her eyes were wide and glittering and her mouth was set in a hard thin line. As our eyes met she tossed up her head in an arrogant gesture of triumph. Then Barrow shoved me into the street and that was the last I ever saw of her.
“Now, you masher,” Barrow said, showing his short yellow teeth. “Maybe you’ll leave her alone.” He drew back his fist and hit me in the face.
I sprawled in the gutter and lay there.
He bent over me. “I owe you that,” he said, “and I owe you something else.” He dropped a hundred dollar bill and a ten dollar bill in the gutter beside me.
I watched him walk down the path and into the house. Then the front door slammed behind him.
As I reached for the notes, John Coulson burst out laughing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A STORY never ends.
You throw a stone into a pond and in a few seconds it has disappeared. But that is not the end of it. Your action affects the surface of the pond and circular ripples begin to form at the point where the stone has hit the water. These ripples gradually widen until the whole surface of the pond is in gentle motion. It takes a long time for the pond to become still again.
I sit at my typewriter in my shabby room and look out of my window at the water-front of this small Pacific coast town. Russell is waiting patiently for me to begin the day’s work, but today, I am in no hurry to join him.
We have a boat and for the past year we have taken hundreds of tourists to the chain of small islands that skirt this Pacific coast-line. I run the boat and Russell sits in the bows and tells the tourists stories of gun runners and Chink smugglers who used these islands many years ago. The tourists seem to like Russell and he, in his turn, seems to like them. Personally I hate their stupid sheep-like faces and the sound of their strident voices, but as I remain on the bridge during the trips I do not have any contract with them.
We do not make a great deal of money, but we get along all right. Russell is very thrifty and has already put enough by to see us through the slack season.
No one has ever heard of me in this town. My name means nothing to the tourists, but perhaps if this book is ever published, I will see my name in print again. Oddly enough I do not mind being a nobody. I did at first, but as time passed I realized that I would not have to worry about writing a new novel or a play. I would have no bills to pay and I would not have to entertain and do the hundred and one things that a celebrity has to do. I was now free of all that and, although I missed some of the trappings of fame, I decided that I was happier as a nobody.
I don’t know what I should have done without Russell. I owe everything to him. It was he who found me, half-crazed, lying in the gutter outside Eve’s house. I was lost and if he had not come along at that crucial moment I believe that I would have taken my life.
It was Russell who had bought the boat. It was a fine thirty- foot job fitted with a hundred horse Kermath. He bought it with his savings. I did not like his buying it, but it either meant that or starving. So I let him buy it.
At first, I thought it was a crazy idea, but Russell had it all worked out. He said that an out-door life would put me on my feet again, and besides, he liked an out-door life himself.
At that time I did not care what happened to me, but I felt I had to point out that he was sinking his money in a forlorn hope, but he just let his eyebrows crawl up his forehead which was as good as saying, “wait and see’.
I was much more enthusiastic, however, when we went down to the harbour and inspected the boat. Although Russell had paid for it out of his own pocket, he managed to make me feel that I had as big a share in it as he had. Although we were now no longer master and servant, it seemed only right that I should be the captain and he should be the mate.
We had only one awkward moment before we settled down to our new roles. It happened when we decided to re-name the boat. I said right away that we should call it “Eve’. I pointed out that the tourists would remember a name like that and since it did have rather a wicked flavour they would even gain some harmless amusement from it. Anyway that’s how I put it to him.
But Russell would not hear of it. I had never known him to be obstinate before and after trying to persuade him for some time, I finally lost my temper and told him he could call the boat anything he damn well pleased.
When I went down to the harbour the next morning, I found a sign writer had put Carol’s name on the stern of the boat in red, two-inch high letters. I stood looking at her name for several seconds and then I went to the end of the deserted jetty and sat with my back to the waterfront and looked out at the Pacific.