Dark Dance Page 17

  She held up the candle and began to descend the stairs.

  A little ripple went over them, and she braced herself, but otherwise they did not move.

  She was strong and they were old. How would old Carlo react to a kick on the ankle, her teeth in his wrist. The candle might be used as a weapon.

  She got down into the hall. They were a wall in front of her, between her and all the doors.

  She moved towards the drawing room and walked right at them.

  She thought of striking them, the matchstick sounds of the breakage of old bones. She would do it if she had to—

  Eric and Stephan stepped aside. They let her pass.

  She went into the unlighted room, the candle bursting on the ridges of furniture. The door to the conservatory veered at her, half-open as it always was by night.

  They were coming after, creeping forward with a susurrus of materials and soft shoes. Creeping after her as if they stalked her. But would they spring?

  She pushed wide the door and edged through the lanes between the great plants, black and white and grey. They brushed her like strengthless and accusing hands. Rachaela thrust them off, and the stems broke, the petals showered like confetti.

  She gained the door on to the night and pushed it and stepped over the sill.

  She walked across the garden, over Carlo’s weeded lawn, under the girders of the cedar. Only the little gate now.

  She put down the candle and left it burning there. She glanced back as she shut the gate behind her.

  All the Scarabae—all but one—were crowded in the garden. They watched her. Their grim old faces gave away nothing. Like elderly kiddies at a play they did not understand yet knew to be important, they regarded her as she stood behind the gate.

  Goodbye, she thought. Goodbye for ever.

  With a feeling of great cold, almost of terror, she turned away from them, brushing a spray of their petals from her coat. Who would believe this flight by night. She thought of all their eyes glittering in the candleshine. Eyes like beetles caught on the bushes. She resisted the temptation to look back a second time.

  Rachaela walked along the path, in among the pine trees with the sullen roar of the sea to her right. When the trees broke, she came out on the uncut lawn of the heath.-The sea lashed between the bulkheads of the cliff. The standing stone rose white in the darkness. There was a thin moon, a wrack of cloud. The night was noisy with its own nocturnal sounds.

  Now she must remember the way that Cheta and Carlo took. She needed to find the village in the dark.

  She moved along the heath, and from a tuft of darkness something came out and stood in her way.

  Last of them all, it was the cat.

  Rachaela slowed her pace but did not stop. The cat eyed her. It was sleek, its ears raised not flattened. Did it know her still or would it turn on her now she was an outcast? Was it some supernatural sentinel of the Scarabae?

  She came level with the cat, stretched out her hand, and the cat sniffed her. She smoothed its great barbaric head.

  ‘You’re a beautiful monster,’ she said, ‘are you going to let me by?’

  The cat withdrew from her like a sooty ghost and stole away along the slope towards the standing stone.

  From a distance of thirty feet she heard it clawing the earth. It was not concerned with her. She was through all the ordeals now, and had only the journey to accomplish.

  There was a kind of separate fear on her as she walked.

  The vast heath was full of stillness and life. Noises were continuous, chirrups of unimaginable creatures, the sudden flush of something in a bush, the beating of wings. Once three night birds rose into the blue-black of the sky.

  She disturbed the pattern of the nocturne.

  There were stars, brilliant and manufactured, so many of them, ridiculous to believe that they were suns and planets. The cloud formed the shape of a skull beneath the moon, huge eyeholes of sky glaring down. Anything might come out of the sky.

  Or off the ground.

  Rachaela walked stolidly, the weight on her back like the sins of the pilgrim in some religious tale.

  What were her sins? Incest, for one. But the word meant nothing. Do what you like so long as you don’t get caught. But there—

  Perhaps the long hard walk would help her. Shake loose the sin.

  Silly to hope for that. She had acted unthinkingly and was punished.

  Was it a sin to leave the Scarabae?

  Were they still standing like statues in the garden? Had Anna and Stephan led them in?

  She must forget the Scarabae. Forget Adamus.

  Her mother had never managed it. She would have to be different.

  It was not difficult to recollect the route Carlo and Cheta had taken. Certain landmarks had been unconsciously remembered. She had turned inland at the right spot she was sure. Yet where was the road now?

  Out of a stand of pine a slim grey beast emerged. It checked and looked at her. The markings about its eyes made it savage, wolf-like, but it was only a fox, more discomposed than she at the meeting. It trotted briskly away.

  Beyond the pine trees the road ran, desolate and haunted black.

  Rachaela did not like the look of it by night. She walked carefully to one side. Some colossal thing might come from the dark, storming down on her.

  The gutted farmhouse appeared, silvered by the moon. Uncanny lights could have blazed in the windows, but they did not. A black rook or crow sat in the hedge, as if to challenge her. She saw the glitter of its eye. All things here were Scarabae. But the rook paid her no attention, did not fly at her crying in a human voice Go back!

  How the night worked on her imagination.

  The village might be gone, or dead, or all the inhabitants turned to stone like the houses.

  No, the village was only that. It obeyed the laws of normal things. There were telephones, and they would answer if she knocked loudly enough.

  She had only to follow the road now.

  Nothing walked or ebbed behind her.

  The moon was setting, the cloud like streaming hair or bubbling steam.

  She did not recall that wood there by the road. Could she somehow have taken a wrong turning on the straight, unbranching surface? Had part of the land been lifted up and spirited away?

  But there, she remembered that derelict wall. Beyond that rise, the village would be. Probably.

  She achieved the crest of the road and saw it spill over, and the village in the bottom of the valley, silent as if drowned a hundred years beneath a lake.

  The door to the pub called The Armitage was of thick wood, lacking a bell or knocker. A side door was streakily painted and had two sorry pots of weeds beside it, and a bell and letterbox.

  The sky was higher and the stars had lost their clockwork effulgence. Dawn was near. Wakey wakey.

  She rang the bell brutishly, keeping her hand on it, and flapped the lid of the letterbox.

  After a long while muffled sounds came from above. A window lighted.

  As she had supposed, it had been best to take them by surprise.

  The window went up. A bald but tousled head poked out.

  Is that you, Sandy?’

  Rachaela cleared her throat.

  ‘No. I need your help. An emergency. Your telephone.’

  There’s a telephone up the way,’ said the aggrieved being above.

  ‘Vandalized,’ said Rachaela. As if the bastard doesn’t know. ‘Please. It’s urgent. I’ll pay you for the use.’

  This time of night,’ said the man.

  ‘Please,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘Are you from the farm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just wait there.’

  The sky was bluish-grey, vast films of darkness seeping out of it.

  From outposts of the dirty village, wild birds began to sing their lawless aubade.

  She pictured the man stamping down through his pub, irate and duty-bound. Who was ‘Sandy’? Another who knocked the
m up before daylight.

  The door was unlocked and scraped open.

  ‘Now what is it you want?’

  ‘Your telephone.’

  ‘I don’t know. Who are you?’

  ‘It’s very urgent. I must call a car.’

  ‘A car? What do you want with a car?’

  The man, she had noticed, had a London accent, like the van people. Another outsider.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ Rachaela repeated.

  ‘All right. You’d better come in.’

  Rachaela moved through. The hallway smelled beery and unclean.

  ‘I need the number of a hire car,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘Wants the phone and wants a bloody number an’ all.’

  ‘I’m sure you have some numbers.’

  ‘Maybe, in the bar. I’ll have to go through. Wait there.’

  The man went off in his brown dressing-gown.

  From above, a woman called plaintively, ‘What is it, Harry?’

  Rachaela stood in the dark and threadbare hall. She gazed at the telephone. She felt drunk. Perhaps it was the smell.

  The man came back and thrust a card at her.

  ‘That’ll do. I’ll ask you two pounds for the call. Don’t be more than five minutes.’

  Rachaela took the card, opened her bag, and put down the money on the smeary table. The man scooped them up at once.

  ‘Harry!’ called the woman.

  ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘What’s happening, Harry?’

  ‘Some girl here wants the phone,’ he shouted. ‘Get up and make us some tea. You women,’ he said to Rachaela in disgust.

  She picked up the telephone receiver, disbelievingly, and dialled the number of the card. Quickies.

  It rang. It rang and rang.

  Twenty-four-hour service said the card. Perhaps they had gone to make tea also, or to the lavatory.

  ‘Quickies Cars.’

  Rachaela caught her breath.

  ‘I need a car to get to the town station.’

  ‘And where from?’

  Where from. Rachaela said, ‘Just a moment.’ She said to the man, ‘What’s the name of this place?’

  ‘What, here?’

  ‘Yes, the village.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Bidgely,’ he said. She thought he said.

  ‘Bidgely,’ she enunciated cautiously into the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the man on the line.

  ‘Bidgely. Can you spell it for me?’ she asked the pub owner.

  He spelled the word. It was ‘P-i-t-c-h-l-e-y’.

  ‘Don’t think I know that one,’ said the car-hire man.

  Rachaela said firmly to the impatient pub man, ‘Would you be very kind and give him directions?’

  ‘Well you’ve got a bleeding cheek I must say. Getting me out of bed at this hour, wanting me to give directions.’

  Rachaela handed him the phone.

  To her relief he took it and did as he was bid. The advice sounded incomprehensible to her but when he handed her the phone receiver back, the car man said, ‘OK, I’ve got that. Be about an hour. That’s the soonest I can make it.’

  ‘All right. Thank you.’

  ‘What number is the pick up?’

  ‘By The Armitage public house.’

  ‘Right-oh.’

  Quickies clicked into the void.

  ‘There you are then,’ said the man.

  His woman was coming down the stairs in a blue candle wick dressing-gown and her hair in curlers.

  They watched Rachaela off the premises and slammed and locked the door.

  An hour, and an hour perhaps to get back into the town—still plenty of time, as she had judged it, to catch the ten-forty-five for Bleasham.

  Suppose it was not Tuesday that the train ran.

  It was. It was and she would be in time. Somewhere someone had to tell the truth. She was determined now. She would make it happen.

  Rachaela sat on the ground, on the slope of unbuilt land up the street, where the van came when the van came.

  She watched for the car.

  The village started half-alive about her, lights went on in some windows, then off again as the daylight strengthened. A woman came out of her house and apparently poured a pot of tea around the base of a bush. Another one put washing on to a line, gaudy bedclothes and sombre shirts.

  A car or two, the wrong ones, took off down the street in the direction of the town.

  A dog barked.

  The village was, as she had thought, a dump, where time was whittled away in some vintage manner. Tainted by Scarabae.

  But the car would come.

  The car was late.

  It was half past nine and the car had not arrived.

  Rachaela stood up. Was the driver lost?

  The driver would not be lost.

  An old green Ford Zodiac materialized on the road, driving down into the village. It went past Rachaela, and pulled up outside the pub.

  Rachaela ran.

  ‘I have to catch the ten forty-five at the town station.’

  ‘I doubt if you’ll do it, miss,’ said the driver sadly.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘It’s the traffic, you see. Should have ordered the car sooner, miss.’

  ‘I did.’ She got in. ‘Will you try?’

  ‘The Poorly connection is it you want?’

  ‘Poorly, yes. For London.’

  ‘Your best bet is if I drive straight over to Poorly. Cost you a bit more, but you’ll get the eleven-fifteen London train for sure.’

  ‘All right. Do that then,’ she said recklessly.

  ‘You understand, I’m trying to help you out.’

  ‘Drive to Poorly.’

  ‘Don’t want you to think I’m just angling for extra fare.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. So long as I get the train.’

  The village reversed, took off and poured away.

  After all, this was the moment of severance.

  The car raced up the road. Rachaela felt a flare of mad joy. As if she could leave all her troubles behind. But they were only just beginning.

  The driver was talkative. She let him go on, offering the proper monosyllable here and there. He wanted to tell her his life-story, not hear her own.

  Perhaps he had lied about missing the town connection. He had four children, two parents, and a weak-willed sister.

  The colour of the car, grey-green, the country rushed by. They passed houses and fields and a number of prettified pubs, all showing that the influence of the Scarabae had been left behind. Churches rose in meadows, picturesque, with leaning gravestones. Faint blossom was on some trees like wispy bridal veils. Spring began here too.

  She had lost the months as well. Was it March?

  They turned through lanes, and joined a motorway and left it. It was ten thirty-five. Certainly too late for the town train now.

  A sign said Porlea 6 miles.

  Rachaela almost laughed.

  Perhaps everything would change like the names once she was out of their net.

  Nobody stood on the platform for the despised means to London, but in the ticket office the man had assured her that all was well, or at least, sane.

  The station was bright with lots of red plastic, but cartons lay in the litter bins and a discarded magazine loitered on one of the seats.

  Birds sewed back and forth over the line.

  Then the train came, massive, filthy and real.

  An announcement informed the vacant platform and Rachaela that this train was the London via somewhere, calling at something and elsewhere and who cared at all? In an ecstasy of selfishness she got into the magic train.

  It was quite crowded but in her pleasure Rachaela did not mind. She found a seat and placed her bags at her feet.

  Thank God. Oh thank God.

  With a gliding forward-thrust the train achieved its truth. It was bearing h
er away. Everything would be all right.

  The woman with the shopping basket cuddled on her lap made her fifth attempt upon Rachaela.

  ‘Don’t you find these long journeys are a nuisance? It’s the motion. I can’t settle to anything. I brought my knitting. Do you knit? But I drop stitches, I find. Knitting a cardy for my granddaughter. Very fancy pattern. I can show you my grandchild. I always carry a photo. Such a bonny child. Not like my daughter at all. More like my mother’s side. Such lovely hair. A proper blonde. Of course it will darken. I never let my daughter do anything to her hair. You leave it the way God intended it.’

  Have it cut, said Rachaela’s mother, and a nice set. Easier for you to manage.

  The photo was produced and given to Rachaela. A fat, pale child with yellow hair, smiling, jam on its upper lip, unless it had also a red moustache.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘No,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘A pity, I always think, not to have them while you’re young. It’s the best time. I had my Janet when I was eighteen. And then John and Kieran. I love children, don’t you?’

  Rachaela did not answer.

  Fields and pylons passed. Distant houses with crimson roofs. A far-away river with a castle on its bank. Oh, to be there. To have some destination. There was only London. And until then this woman.

  ‘Hurry up and give me a grandchild, I said to her. Oh Mum, she says,‘I’m only twenty. I had you when I was eighteen, I said. I expect you’re waiting for Mr Right,’ said the woman to Rachaela. ‘We’ve been together, my Martin and me, twenty-four years. A perfect match my sister used to say. I just wish, she used to say, I’d had your Martin, and your lovely children. What do you think you’ll like, dear, a boy or a girl, for your first? A girl’s best. Keep the boys in order. Like a second mum my Janet was.’

  Rachaela stood up. The woman was not affronted. Her universe contained only one, the rest were bit players, successful or not.

  Rachaela dodged her way to the lavatory.

  The lock was whimsical. She got it shut, and leaning with difficulty to the jolting bowl, she vomited colourless fluids from her empty stomach.

  Was this the truth after all, even so early, the proving of the facts? Not the train, not London, but this?

  As her head cleared, Rachaela propped herself against the wall. She voided the lavatory, and ran cold water in the basin, laving her face, hands, wrists.