The Wedding Party (9 page)

She was gathering the last of the cooking apples on the high slope of the orchard when she suddenly turned her head and saw him groping his way up the narrow lane. Like a man in the advanced stages of drunkenness he was lurching irregularly from side to side between the high banks, occasionally stopping for a few unsteady seconds to peer into the hedgerows, almost as if expecting even in late October to find a bird's nest there.

She was so convinced that he was drunk that when he finally stopped by the orchard gate and flung one arm flatly out on the top rail of it and stared with mild sightlessness through the trees she instinctively lowered herself a step or two down the ladder and crouched behind the apple trunk. Her basket was hanging by a steel hook from a branch just level with her head and she set it clumsily swaying by a knock from her elbow. When she steadied it by holding the hook tight in her hand the slightly cold touch of steel on her palm made her realise for the first time how frightened she was. She instinctively gripped the hook more tightly and told herself:

‘If he comes for me I shall use it. It's all I've got.'

Then suddenly she heard him give something between a
retch and groan, followed by what might have been the word ‘God', repeated several times. All this time she was afraid to look at him and could only think, foolishly rather than desperately:

‘I've got my dungarees on. I've got my dungarees on. That'll make it more difficult. And the hook. I've got the hook.'

Then when she looked at him again she realised that he was utterly unaware of her being there. He wasn't even looking in her direction. His arms were drawn together now, the hands close together under his chin, tightly gripping a black wooden box about nine inches square. The box appeared in some way to be of desperate importance to him. Once he actually seemed to be about to press his mouth against it but instead he jerked his head sharply upwards and stared with almost fanatically wide blue eyes at the sky.

It was the intense blueness of the eyes that suddenly made her realise that her first impressions of him were entirely wrong. She knew now that he was neither drunk nor, as she had first imagined, middle-aged. He was quite young, perhaps twenty-eight or so, not much younger than herself, she thought. And something about the wide directionless stare of the eyes gave him not merely a great air of weariness. It might also have been that, for some crazy reason, his memory had gone.

For the next half minute or so the temperature of her fear dropped a little. She no longer gripped the steel hook so tightly. Then suddenly a big apple, falling from one of the
topmost branches of the tree, bounced from bough to bough and finally hit the ground with a thud that seemed to bring him, for about half a minute, to his senses.

He turned his head and stared straight at her. The intense disbelief in his eyes was both appealing and sorrowful. She thought he looked like a child who had been beaten and turned from home and now, wearied to death, had lost its way. His lips suddenly moved, quite soundlessly this time, and then as if out of sheer fatigue stayed loosely open.

He knew now that she was there. He seemed to be trying, she thought, to say something to her. It might have been that he was ill or merely trying to ask the way, but whatever it was she no longer felt an atom of fear. Instead she even released her hold on the hook, climbed a step or two down the ladder and called to him:

‘It there something you want? Can I help you?'

‘I'm looking for this place,' he started to say. ‘This—'

His voice was cultured, more firm than she had expected but so low that she only just caught the words.

‘What place?' she said. ‘This is the last house up here—'

‘It's up this lane. Somewhere. I think it is. I'm pretty sure—'

‘This lane doesn't go anywhere. It's a dead-end. There's no through way.'

‘I think it's here – somewhere up here—'

‘Place? What kind of place? A house? Are you sure you've come the right way?'

His head moved convulsively, so that he almost dropped
the box. Then he retrieved it and clutched it more tightly than ever and said:

‘It's a primrose place. You know. A wood. Full of primroses. Thousands of them.'

Now, she thought, she knew. She had been wrong about him all the time. She was now aware that she was dealing with a madman. The eyes were imbecilic; they were neither sorrowful nor weary. Her fear came searing back in a lacerating whirl and she gripped the hook fiercely again and hid her face behind the trunk of the tree.

‘You can't walk without stepping on them. Thousands of them. Millions—'

‘Will you go away?' She suddenly shouted the words in panic. ‘There aren't any primroses. Don't you know? Not now. Not this time of year!—'

‘I never stop seeing them. It's here – somewhere.'

Her throat tightened coldly. She looked wildly up and down the lane, hoping that someone might be passing, but there wasn't a soul in sight. On the very crest of the hillside the colours of autumn flared in gold and orange pyres from great woods of oak and beech. All along the lane the hedgerow lines, yellow and purple and brown, were here and there skeined with berries bright as blood. The unbroken autumn stillness of mid-afternoon seemed to hold her in a trap, the air clenched and sinister.

Her next thought was of the telephone. She would make a dash across the orchard and through the garden and into the house and get to the telephone. She seemed actually to hear herself screaming into it that there was a madman in
the garden, escaped from somewhere, muttering insanely about primroses, searching for some idiotic primrose place that wasn't there.

Then suddenly it all seemed unreal and impossible. She was no more than a stricken rabbit. Even if she got to the bottom of the ladder she would never make the garden gate. Then she heard him say:

‘Don't you really know this place? I've come an awful way. Walked every bit of it.'

‘I don't know any place. There's no place of that sort here.'

‘There aren't many big trees. Mostly hazel I think. And a path going through. And primroses all the way. Everywhere.'

A thread of coherence in all this slightly lessened her fear. His hands trembled visibly again and for the second time he almost dropped the box. Then for some reason she suddenly felt unaccountably sorry for him. She realised now that he had hardly strength enough to hold the box, let alone attack her if she ran.

‘Will you go if I get you some tea?' she said.

He looked vaguely away from her, up the lane, as if he hadn't heard. Almost involuntarily she started slowly to climb down the ladder, her legs stiff from standing on it so long. Half way down she remembered that she hadn't got the hook and it gave her the strangest feeling of being white and naked.

Then abruptly he walked away. Suddenly it was altogether as if he'd never been there. It was all a grotesque illusion, a
mid-afternoon nightmare. Then she saw that once again she was mistaken about him. He hadn't walked away at all. He had simply fallen soundlessly backwards on the roadside verge.

When she got to him he was lying awkwardly on his back. Like a man in a fit he was staring upwards, eyes wide open but sightless. His hands still gripped the box, looking incredibly like two damp white frogs against the blackness of the wood.

The fear leapt wildly through her mind that he was dead. She was half-ready to scream when one of the hands moved slightly and the flicker of a sigh crossed his mouth.

‘Don't move,' she said. ‘I'll get a rug and some aspirin—'

‘Where's the box? Have I got the box?'

‘It's all right. Stay there. I'll get some water and some aspirin.'

‘God,' he said and shut his eyes. ‘Jesus—'

When she got back from the house, three or four minutes later, with a rug and a bottle of aspirins and a glass of water, he was making the feeblest of efforts to sit up. She saw that he hadn't even the strength to raise his head more than an inch or so off the grass and she knelt down and lifted him into a half-sitting position and gave him a sip or two of water. Then she dropped the rug over his knees and said:

‘You fainted, I think. I'll get some tea in a minute. Take it quietly.'

He seemed to revive a little after that and said, very slowly:

‘I expect you probably think I'm mad.'

‘No, no. Take it quietly.'

‘Is the box all right?'

‘Yes, yes. Don't worry about the box. Could you swallow some aspirin now?'

He gave the slightest nod of his head. He was able now to sit up a little more of his own accord and presently, with hardly a tremor of his hands, he took a couple of aspirins.

‘I'm sorry about all this,' he said. He suddenly looked extraordinarily boyish, his fair hair wet at the forelock with the sweat of weakness, his whole appearance shamefaced. ‘I don't think I realised quite how far I'd come.'

‘Don't worry about that.'

‘I've been out of my mind for a week or more. I know that.'

She begged him not to talk about it. Would he come into the house? She experienced not the slightest spasm of fear now. Could he manage it? She'd get some tea. She could do with a cup herself.

‘I ought to get on,' he said. ‘I've come such a hell of a way. No, thanks all the same, I won't come in.'

He shook his head sharply from side to side, as if in an effort to shake it free of final numbness, and said something about having to get it over with. He'd feel better about things once he'd got it over.

‘What are you looking for?' she said. ‘Where are you trying to go?'

‘We'd been married a year. Just under. Where? It's just this wood, you see. I know it's here – somewhere here. It was the April after we were married. I know because we
went through a place called Worten. It stuck in my mind. Is there a place called Worten here?'

‘Yes, there's a place called Worten. Down the hill there.'

‘Then this must be it. Yes, we left the car somewhere down there and then walked.'

He lifted the glass of water and took a fairly steady drink. Had he walked here today? she said, and he said yes, he'd walked, all the way, all thirty odd miles of it. He'd never drive a car again.

‘I felt sort of light-headed when I first saw you. Didn't quite know what I was doing. I'm sorry about all that. I must have frightened you.'

‘What do you mean about primroses?'

‘Oh! that's the place.'

‘But not at this time of year.'

‘Oh! no, no. I know that.'

He stopped talking, took another sip or two of water and then stared hard at her, first at her hands and then at her face.

‘You're not married, are you?'

‘No. I live here with my sister. She's out today. We sort of run it as a bit of a market garden.'

‘Nice spot.'

He suddenly surprised her by getting abruptly to his feet, going to the orchard gate and leaning on it, staring through the apple trees to the red-tiled, white-board house beyond. Now, for the first time, she was looking at him from behind and her surprise at seeing a six-inch strip of plaster running from the base of his skull to the nape of his neck was so
great that she almost cried out. But before she could utter a sound he turned and said:

‘Sort of place we wanted. Just the thing. Never found it, though.'

He looked ill again, she thought, his face ashen. Wouldn't he come into the house for a bit? It was easy to make some tea.

‘No, no,' he said. ‘No, thanks, really.'

Involuntarily he lifted a hand and touched the back of his head as if he felt some pain there.

‘That looks nasty,' she said. ‘How—'

‘Crash. Lost my memory for a bit.'

So perhaps, after all, she had been right about him. The memory and perhaps the brain too had gone a little. That, she thought, might account for it all.

‘You really should take it easy. You should lie down for a while.'

‘Easy?' There was the slightest touch of mockery about the word. ‘Oh! yes. Easy. Like doing a dice – easy. At the time. It's when it catches up with you.'

From mockery the tone of his voice sharpened to bitterness. She was at a loss for anything to say. Instead she picked up the rug from where it had fallen on the grass and began to fold it carefully.

‘Easy. One minute you're doing a hundred and ten. The next you don't remember anything. Then you wake up and somebody's dead. But not you. Oh! no, not you.'

He abruptly stopped talking again and stared at her in a trance of stricken silence. Again she was utterly at a loss for
anything to say. She found it hard, too, even to look at his face, mute and mentally hurt. She found herself simply staring at the box instead.

Suddenly he came out of the trance and said, slowly and with great difficulty:

‘They wanted to know if I would have her name or initials or something on it. But I couldn't have that. Have you ever been into one of those places? They play canned music – just canned music—'

It came to her suddenly what was in the box. A cold crust formed at the back of her neck and slowly slid down her spine.

‘It seems they always offer them to you. I didn't know that before.'

All she could think of saying was to make once again the now pointless and almost fatuous suggestion about making some tea. He saved her from doing this by saying:

‘I'm sure you know this place. This primrose place, I mean. It's right at the top there. Where the road ends.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know the place. I know now where you mean. Yes, it's where the road ends.'

He started muttering disjointedly, saying that he ought to get on. He said something too about the brilliance of an April afternoon, the light of it and the magic. You might have thought the primroses were pools of yellow water. A marvellous place. Absolutely the place.