The House on the Strand (11 page)

THE QUARRY was steep, carved out of the hillside, spread about with holly and clumps of ivy, the debris of years scattered amongst the earth and stones, and the path leading out of it ran into a small pit, and then another, and yet a third, all heaped about with banks and ditches and knolls of tufted grass. The gorse was everywhere, masking the view, and because of my vertigo I could not see but kept stumbling against the banks, with one thought paramount in my mind —that I must get out of this waste land and find the car. It was imperative to find the car.

I caught hold of a thorn-tree and held on to it to steady myself, and there were more old cans at my feet, a broken bedstead, a tyre, and still more clumps of ivy and holly. Feeling had returned to my limbs, but as I staggered up the mound above me the dizziness increased, the nausea too, and I slithered down into another pit and lay there panting, my stomach heaving. I was violently sick, which gave momentary relief, and I got up again and climbed another mound. Now I saw that I was only a few hundred yards from the original hedge where I had smoked my cigarette—the mounds and the quarry beyond had been hidden from me then by a sloping bank and a broken gate. I looked down once more into the valley, and saw the tail-end of the train disappearing round the corner to Par station. Then I climbed through a gap in the hedge and began to walk uphill across the field and back to the car. I reached the lay-by just as another violent attack of nausea came upon me. I staggered sideways amongst the heap of cement and planks and was violently sick again, while ground and sky revolved around me. The vertigo I had experienced that first day in the patio was nothing to this, and as I crouched on the heap of cement waiting for it to pass I kept saying to myself, Never again.. never again... with all the fervour and weak anger of someone coming round from an anaesthetic, the revulsion beyond control.

Before I collapsed I had been aware, dimly, that there was another car in the lay-by besides my own, and after what seemed an eternity, when the nausea and the vertigo ceased, and I was coughing and blowing my nose, I heard the door of the other car slam, and realised that the owner had come across and was staring down at me.

"Are you all right now?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "yes, I think so. "I rose unsteadily to my feet, and he put out a hand to help me. He was about my own age, early forties, with a pleasant face and a remarkably strong grip.

"Got your keys?"

Keys... I fumbled in my pocket for the car keys. Christ! What if I had dropped them in the quarry or amongst those mounds—I should never find them again. They were in my top pocket, with the flask; the relief was so tremendous that I felt steadier at once, and walked without assistance to the car. Another fumble, though: I could not fit the key into the lock.

"Give it to me, I'll do it," said my Samaritan.

"It's extremely kind of you. I do apologise," I said.

"All in a day's work," he answered. "I happen to be a doctor."

I felt my face stiffen, then quickly stretch into a smile intended to disarm. Casual courtesy from a passing motorist was one thing; professional attention from a medico another. As it was he was staring at me with interest, and small blame to him. I wondered what he was thinking.

"The fact is", I said, "I must have walked up the hill a bit too fast. I felt giddy when I reached the top, and then was sick. Couldn't stop myself."

"Oh, well," he said, "it's been done before. I suppose a lay-by is as good a place as any to throw up in. You'd be surprised what they find down here in the tourist season."

He was not fooled, though. His eyes were particularly penetrating. I wondered if he could see the shape of the flask bulging the top pocket of my jacket.

"Have you far to go?" he asked.

"No," I said, "a couple of miles or so, no more."

"In that case", he suggested, "wouldn't it be more sensible if you left your car here and let me drive you home? You could always send for it later."

"It's very kind of you," I said, "but I assure you I'm perfectly all right now. It was just one of those passing things."

"H'm," he said, "rather violent while it lasted."

"Honestly," I said, "there's nothing wrong. Perhaps it was something I had for lunch, and then walking uphill—"

"Look," he interrupted, "you're not a patient of mine, I'm not trying to prescribe. I'm only warning you that it might be dangerous to drive."

"Yes," I said, "it's very good of you and I'm grateful for your advice." The thing was, he could be right. Yesterday I had driven to Saint Austell and back home with the greatest ease. Today it might be different. The vertigo might seize me once again. He must have seen my hesitation, for he said, "If you like I'll follow you, just to see you're O.K." I could hardly refuse—to have done so would have made him the more suspicious. "That's very decent of you, I told him. I only have to go to the top of Polmear hill."

"All on the way home," he smiled. "I live in Fowey."

I climbed rather gingerly into my car and turned out of the lay-by. He followed close behind, and I thought to myself that if I drove into the hedge I was done for. But I navigated the narrow lane without difficulty, and heaved a sigh of relief as I emerged on to the main road and shot up Polmear hill. When I turned right, to go to Kilmarth, I thought he might follow me to the house, but he waved his hand and continued along the road to Fowey. It showed discretion, at any rate. Perhaps he thought I was staying in Polkerris or one of the near-by farms. I passed through the gate and down the drive, put the car away in the garage, and let myself into the house. Then I was sick again. The first thing I did when I recovered, still feeling pretty shaky, was to rinse out the flask. Then I went down to the laboratory and stood it in the sink to soak. It was safer there than in the pantry. It was not until I went upstairs once more, and flung myself into an arnichair in the music-room, exhausted, that I remembered the bowls wrapped in sacking. Had I left them in the car?

I was about to get up and go down to the garage to look for them, because they must be cleansed even more thoroughly than the flask and put away under lock and key, when I realised with a sudden wave of apprehension, just as though something were being vomited from my brain as well as my stomach, that I had been on the point of confusing the present with the past. The bowls had been given to Roger's brother, not to me. I sat very still, my heart thumping in my chest. There had been no confusion before. The two worlds had been distinct. Was it because the nausea and the vertigo had been so great that the past and the present had run together in my mind? Or had I miscounted the drops, making the draught more potent? No way of telling. I clutched the sides of the armchair. They were solid, real. Everything about me was real. The drive home, the doctor, the quarry full of old cans and crumbling stones, they were real. Not the house above the estuary, nor the people in it, nor the dying man, nor the monk, nor the bowls in sacking—they were all products of the drug, a drug that turned a clear brain sick. I began to be angry, not so much with myself, the willing guinea-pig, as with Magnus. He was unsure of his findings. He did not know what he had done. No wonder he had asked me to send up bottle B to try out the contents on the laboratory monkey. He had suspected something was wrong, and now I could tell him what it was. Neither exhilaration nor depression, but confusion of thought. The merging of two worlds. Well, that was enough. I had had my lot. Magnus could make his experiments on a dozen monkeys, but not on me.

The telephone started ringing, and, startled out of my chair, I went across to the library to answer it. Damn his telepathic powers. He would tell me he knew where I had been, that the house above the estuary was familiar ground, there was no need to worry, it was all perfectly safe providing I touched no one; if I felt ill or confused it was a side-effect of no consequence. I would put him right.

I seized the telephone and someone said, "Hold on a moment, please, I have a call for you," and I heard the click as Magnus took over.

"Damn and blast you, I said. This is the last time I behave like a performing seal."

There was a little gasp at the other end, and then a laugh. "Thanks for the welcome home, darling."

It was Vita. I stood stupefied, holding on to the receiver. Was her voice part of the confusion?

"Darling?" she repeated. "Are you there? Is something wrong?"

"No," I sald, "nothing's wrong, but what's happened? Where are you speaking from?"

"London airport," she answered. "I caught an earlier plane, that's all. Bill and Diana are collecting me and taking me out to dinner. I thought you might call the flat later tonight and wonder why I didn't answer. Sorry if I took you by surprise."

"Well, you did," I said, "but forget it. How are you?"

"Fine," she said, "just fine. What about you? Who did you think I was when you answered me just now? You didn't sound too pleased."

"In point of fact", I told her, "I thought it was Magnus. I had to do a chore for him... I've written you all about it in my letter, which you won't get until tomorrow morning."

She laughed. I knew the sound, with the slight 'I thought as much' inflexion. "So your Professor has been putting you to work, she said. That doesn't surprise me. What's he been making you do that has turned you into a performing seal?"

"Oh, endless things, sorting out junk, I'll explain when I see you. When do the boys get back?"

"Tomorrow," she said. "Their train arrives at a hideous hour in the morning. Then I thought I'd pack them in the car and come on down. How long will it take?"

"Wait," I said, "that's just it. I'm not ready for you. I've told you so in my letter. Leave it until after the weekend." There was silence the other end. I had dropped the usual clanger.

"Not ready?" she repeated. "But you must have been there all of five days? I thought you'd fixed up with some woman to come in and cook and clean, make beds and so on. Has she let us down?"

"No, it's not that," I told her. "She's first-rate, couldn't be better. Look, darling, I can't explain over the telephone, it's all in my letter, but, frankly, we weren't expecting you until Monday at the earliest."

"We?" she said. "You don't mean the Professor is there too?"

"No, no..." I could feel irritation rising in both of us. "I meant Mrs. Collins and myself. She only comes in the morning, she has to bicycle up from Polkerris, the little village at the bottom of the hill, and the beds aren't aired or anything. She'll be terribly put out if everything isn't absolutely straight, and you know what you are, you'll take a dislike to the place if it isn't shining."

"What absolute nonsense," she said. "I'm fully prepared to picnic, and so are the boys. We can bring food with us, if that's worrying you. And blankets too. Are there enough blankets?"

"Masses of blankets," I said, "masses of food. Oh, darling, don't be obstructive. If you come down right away it won't be convenient, and that's the plain truth of it. I'm sorry."

"O.K." The lilt in the K had the typical upward ring of Vita temporarily defeated in argument but determined to win the final battle. "You'd better find yourself an apron and a broom," she added as a parting shot. "I'll tell Bill and Diana you've turned domestic and are going to spend the evening on your hands and knees. They'll love it."

"It's not that I don't want to see you, darling," I began, but her 'Bye', still with the upward inflexion, told me I had done my worst, and she had hung up on me and was now making her way to the airport restaurant to order a Scotch on the rocks and smoke three cigarettes in quick succession before the arrival of her friends.

Well, that was that... What now? My anger against Magnus had been deflected to Vita, but how could I know she was going to catch an earlier plane and ring me unexpectedly? Anyone in the same situation would have been caught on the wrong foot. But that was the rub. My situation was not the same as anyone else's: it was unique. Less than an hour ago I had been living in another world, another time, or had imagined myself to be doing so, through the effect of the drug.

I began to walk from the library through the small dining-room across the hail to the music-room and back again, like someone pacing the deck of a ship, and it seemed to me that I was not sure of anything any more. Neither of mysellf nor of Magnus, nor of Vita, nor of my own immediate world, for who was to say where I belonged—here in this borrowed house, in the London flat, in the office I had left when quitting my job, or in that singularly vivid house of mourning which lay buried beneath centuries of rubble? Why, if I was determined not to see that house again, had I dissuaded Vita from coming down tomorrow? The excuses had been immediate, a reflex action. Nausea and vertigo had gone.

Accepted. They might strike again. Accepted also. The drug was dangerous, its implications and its side-effects unknown. This, too, accepted. I loved Vita, but I did not want her with me. Why? I seized the telephone once more and dialled Magnus. No answer. No answer, either, to my self-imposed question. That doctor with his intelligent eyes might have given me one. What would he have told me? That a hallucinatory drug could play curious tricks with the unconscious, bringing the suppressions of a lifetime to the surface, so let it alone? A practical answer, but it did not suffice. I had not been moving amongst childhood ghosts. The people I had seen were not shadows from my own past. Roger the steward was not my alter-ego, nor Isolda a dream-fantasy, a might-have-been. Or were they?

I tried Magnus two or three times later, but there was never a reply, and I spent a restless evening, unable to settle to newspapers, books, records or TV. Finally, fed up with myself and the whole problem, to which there seemed no solution, I went early to bed, and slept, to my astonishment when I awoke next morning, amazingly well.

The first thing I did was to ring the flat, and I caught Vita just as she was tearing off to meet the boys.

"Darling, I'm sorry about yesterday..." I began, but there was no time to go into it, she told me, she was late already.