Fear by Night (8 page)

“When he feels like it.” And then he laughed, and Ann wasn't sure that she liked the sound of his laughter.

And then she found the piece of paper.

She was out at the back in the yard watching the hens feed. Mary had thrown them some house scraps, and now she came and went to the rubbish-heap beyond, bringing out her ash-bucket to empty. There was a high gusty wind overhead. A little piece of paper came blowing along the yard. The wind caught it, twirled it high, and dropped it at Ann's feet. She bent to pick it up, and it fluttered away from her as if it was alive. Laughing and breathless, she caught it at last where the path turned upwards amongst the trees. It lay in her hand like a little dead, captured thing. It had whirled away from her and danced on the wind, and now it was only a scrap of dirty paper. And then quite suddenly she stopped laughing and was hot through and through with anger. Under the smudges and stains she could see two words. They were words in her own writing. She had written them herself, and she had written them to Charles—“especially rocks.” Part of “especially” was torn away, but she knew what she had written.

Someone had torn up her letter to Charles.

The heat of her anger burned her through and through. And then it was gone, and she was afraid. She really was over the rim of the world. Nobody knew where she was. Charles didn't know where she was. She wanted desperately for Charles to be able to find her.

Presently the fear died down, as the anger had died. She tore the scrap of paper in half and buried the pieces under a heather root.

She thought about writing another letter. She thought about complaining to Mrs. Halliday or to Jimmy. She stood there sheltered by the trees and argued with herself. The letter might have been destroyed by accident.… Oh no, she couldn't make herself believe in an accident. Then if it wasn't an accident, what was the use of complaining? A second letter would only share the fate of the first. She stood there for a long time, and then went soberly back to the house.

CHAPTER X

In a few days Ann had explored the island. It was a most irritating island, because there were only two places where you could get down to the water's edge.

There was the beach below the house, and away on the opposite side of the island another tiny strand not a dozen yards across. Everywhere else the sides of the island fell sheer or were banked with a huddle of great rocks and boulders. The beach below the house was a short semicircular stretch of white sand with the boat-house filling up a corner. On either side a tiny headland ran out into the water, and the water was deep.

Ann had a fright when she tried to paddle out to the headland. The beach shelved gently for a few yards, and then quite suddenly she was up to her neck. It was as if she had stepped down a yard. She stood there with the water moving her lightly to and fro. A ripple came up over her chin and touched her lips with salt. She had the feeling that before her was another deep step down, or perhaps the island fell sheer away to the bottom of the loch. She was afraid to move, but she had to move, and presently she turned round and found a foothold and climbed back into the shallow water. Her clothes hung about her heavy and cold, and she found that she was trembling a little. But all the same, now that she was wet, she meant to find out more about that sudden drop.

What she needed was a pole or a stick. She broke a long thin branch from one of the birches above the landing-place and measured it in yards, counting a yard from her outstretched finger-tips to her mouth, as all women do. It was not quite nine feet. She held it thin end up and went back into the water, feeling in front of her with the butt end of the branch. Everywhere at a distance of between three and four yards from the beach there was that sudden deep step down, and in some places the drop was more than three feet. Four feet—five—six—and once she could not touch bottom at all with her nine-foot bough. What would have happened to her if she had waded out in one of those deeper places? It was an easily answered question. Her own words came back and mocked her: “
I shall take care not to be drowned
.”

When she had taken off her wet things she carried them down into the kitchen for Mary to dry. It was the middle of the afternoon and the house was dead quiet. Mrs. Halliday was having her nap, and Jimmy Halliday was out with the boat. When Mrs. Halliday slumbered, Riddle slumbered too. Ann thought it would be nice if no one but Mary knew that she had fallen into the loch. She came in with her dripping bundle, shut the door behind her, and put her finger to her lips.

Mary raised herself slowly in her chair. She had been sitting, as she always sat when she was alone, with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her cupped hands, and a drift of wispy hair across her eyes. Her blank look gave way to a startled one.

“I fell in and got soaked,” said Ann. Her eyes laughed, and the air of an adventure hung about her. “Can you dry my clothes? I don't want everyone to know I was so stupid.”

Mary put up a hand and brushed the wisps of hair aside. The hand shook. She got up out of her chair, came a step nearer, and said in a toneless, whispering voice,

“Did ye see it?”

They were the first words that Ann had heard her speak. She had thought her dumb, and now she wondered if the poor thing's wits were astray. She said very kindly,

“I just fell in. You will dry them—won't you?”

Mary came nearer and put out her hands until they rested on Ann's shoulders. They felt cold and heavy there. Mary didn't look at her. She stood with bent I head, looking down.

“Did ye see it?” she said again. The words were distinct, but separated from one another as if by the effort it cost her to speak them. It wasn't quite like a human person speaking. In the back of Ann's thought it reminded her of a gramophone record running down.

“I didn't see anything.” She lifted the wet clothes between them. “Look—they're soaking. Will you help me wring them in the yard?”

There was just a moment's pause, and then the clothes were taken out of her hands.

Whilst they were wringing them out and hanging them before the fire, Mary was her vacant everyday self. Her strong hands moved efficiently and her blank gaze went past Ann as if she wasn't there. Only just at the end, when Ann put a hand on her arm and thanked her, she opened her lips as if she were going to speak.

“What is it?” said Ann.

The lips closed again. Ann had the feeling that they had spoken, and that what they had said was there between them in the room. It was rather a horrid feeling. She said with a quiver in her voice,

“What is it? Has something frightened you?”

The lips opened again, made an assenting sound, and shut in a grey, hopeless line.

“What is it, Mary? What's frightening you? Won't you tell me?” She put her arm about the thin shoulders and felt how tense they were. “Poor Mary! Do tell me.”

The lips were very near to her ear. Again with a grinding difficulty words came from them.

“Keep frae the water or it'll get ye.” And with that she twisted away and went out into the yard to the cow-shed.

It was next day that Charles Anstruther came to the shore of the loch and looked across at the island. There didn't seem to be any way of getting to it. He supposed that there must be some way, since the smoke of a chimney was rising from among the trees and he could see what was obviously a boat-house. He stood there and hallooed, but no one answered him and no one came. It began to look as if visitors were neither expected nor desired, and his suspicions of Mr. James Halliday took a new lease of life. It was a preposterous thing to immure Ann on an inaccessible island. The whole thing was preposterous. He felt a damned fool, standing here hallooing at a piece of perfectly unresponsive scenery. The place was as lonely as if it was back in the twelfth century. At the edge of the loch there was a stone cottage with its roof fallen in and foxgloves growing by the empty hearth, and that and the thread of smoke on the island were the only signs that any human being inhabited, or ever had inhabited, this loneliness.

He stood there wondering what he should do next. He certainly hadn't come here just to go away again. It was a long way from London to Loch Dhu. He had reached Oban to find the
Emma
moored there. It seemed quite easy and practicable to row out to her and ask for Miss Vernon's address.

There was a skipper and a boy on board. Not a sociable person the skipper. A few terse words of one syllable appeared to exhaust his conversation. All the same he managed to convey quite clearly that he hadn't got any address, and that he wouldn't give it if he had. It wasn't his business to give addresses; it was his business to wait for Mr. Halliday's orders and to stay where he was till he got them. At this point he walked away and leaned on the rail with his back to Charles.

Charles was aware of the grinning boy. He took out a cigarette and lit it, and at the same time allowed the crisp corner of a bank-note to appear. The boy's grin became fixed. His eyes goggled. Charles unfolded the note, refolded it, put it away, and caught the goggling eye. It seemed to him that it held a hopeful, lingering look. He addressed the skipper's back.

“If Mr. Halliday should send you an address, my name is Anstruther and I am at the Marine Hotel.”

There was no response. Charles had not in fact expected one. He returned to the shore.

The qúestion was, did the boy know the address, and would he be able to communicate with Charles if he did? His eye had certainly glistened at the sight of the fiver. Well, no address, no fiver.

Twenty-four hours passed, and it looked as if there was going to be no boy. The front at Oban affords a very beautiful prospect, but prospects were not being of any use to Charles. He walked up and down the long paved stretch and counted the hotels, and wondered why one of the houses had a roof like a bishop's mitre. These are occupations which pall. There were, besides, shop-windows full of strings of pink, and blue, and white, and purple stones. There was a beautiful Ionic cross of smoky cairngorm. Behind the surface attention that he gave to these things was a growing anxiety about Ann.

He was looking at the cross, when he was aware of a dark blue shoulder almost touching his own. He moved a little. The shoulder moved too. A quick glance of annoyance showed him the slightly ferrety features of the
Emma
's boy. They wore a half embarrassed, half familiar grin. The pale blue eyes fixed themselves on Charles' face. Then, with an awkward thrust of the shoulder, he said in a hoarse whisper,

“Abaht that address—”

Charles' frown smoothed out. He looked encouragingly at the unpleasing youth and said,

“Can you let me have it?”

The grin widened. The embarrassment became more evident.

Charles took out his note-case and opened it.

“I'll give you a fiver—if you've got it.”

“I got it all right,” said the boy. “Skipper dropped a letter he was posting. I got it all right.”

“Well?” said Charles. He unfolded the note and held it out.

“Skipper 'ud take the 'ide off me.” His eyes sought Charles with a look of furtive intelligence.

Charles said briefly, “How much?”

The boy licked his lips. His heart beat with terror at his own audacity. The skipper would certainly have the hide off him if he knew. He said “A tenner,” and had an awful spasm of fear lest he should get nothing at all.

He got the tenner, and Charles got the address.

In his relief the boy emptied out all the information that he had. It chiefly concerned the whereabouts of Loch Dhu. It was not to be confused with the better known loch of that name. The boy had been there once, and it gave him the pip—“fair made me 'air curl.”

Charles got away with an impression in his mind about Loch Dhu. Now that he was standing upon its shores, the impression remained. The rugged and precipitous hills, the sheerness of their descent into the water, and that air of a place once inhabited and now deserted all went to deepen its influence upon his imagination.

He hallooed again, making a trumpet of his hands, and suddenly someone ran across the little white beach and stood at the water's edge. It was Ann. She stood there waving, in a blue cotton frock with the sun on her. It was late afternoon, and the shadow of the island was across the beach. Only Ann's head and shoulders emerged from it into the sunshine. He shouted, “Ann!” and across the water his own name came back to him with the echo of hers:

“Charles—Ann—”

He shouted, “Is there a boat?” dwelling on the o and prolonging it till the echo brought the sound again. In vivid pantomime Ann showed him a locked boat-house and a departed boat. Across some two hundred yards of water his name came to him again like a ghost that vanished before it could be grasped.

What a predicament! He had come to see Ann, and he saw her. And he might as well have stayed in town.

Ann, on her side, felt herself slipping from that high secure place to which the sight of Charles had lifted her. She had been on the heathery knoll when his first call came. It had been very pleasant there in the sun. The breeze came and went. It was very pleasant, but under the pleasantness there was something that she had to keep pushing out of sight. She wouldn't look at it long enough to be sure exactly what it was, but it rather spoiled the sunshine and the heather. And then Charles called, and Ann's heart came up into her throat and she started scrambling and running for the beach with an overwhelming joy and relief.

But now she saw him a long way off and with no means of coming nearer. It was the sharpest disappointment she had ever known, and beneath the disappointment the thing which she had pushed away out of sight began to stir.

Charles was shouting again.

“… back …”

Did he mean that he would come back again? He was pointing at the sun, and the water, and himself. She couldn't make out what he meant. She shook her head, and Charles made strange signs with his arms. It would have been funny if it hadn't been heart-breaking. It was still more heart-breaking when, after a little more of this, he waved and turned from the shore.