Strange Stories (21 page)

‘Take her away, man,’ said the Commandant, with scornful ferocity.

‘In a day or two perhaps,’ said Gerald, patiently polite. ‘I admit that we are disappointed with Holihaven.’

‘Now. While there’s still time. This instant.'

 There was an intensity of conviction about the Commandant which was alarming.

Gerald considered. Even the empty lounge, with its dreary decorations and commonplace furniture, seemed inimical. They can hardly go on practising all night,’ he said. But now it was fear that hushed his voice.

‘Practising!’ The Commandant’s scorn flickered coldly through the overheated room.

‘What else?’

‘They’re ringing to wake the dead.’

A tremor of wind in the flue momentarily drew on the already roaring fire. Gerald had turned very pale.

‘That’s a figure of speech,’ he said, hardly to be heard.

Not in Holihaven.’ The Commandant’s gaze had returned to the fire.

Gerald looked at Phrynne. She was breathing less heavily. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘What happens?’

The Commandant also was nearly whispering. ‘No one can tell how long they have to go on ringing. It varies from year to year. I don’t know why. You should be all right up to midnight. Probably for some while after. In the end the dead awake. First one or two; then all of them. Tonight even the sea draws back. You have seen that for yourself. In a place like this there are always several drowned each year. This year there’ve been more than several. But even so that’s only a few. Most of them come not from the water but from the earth. It is not a pretty sight.’

‘Where do they go?’

‘I’ve never followed them to see. I’m not stark staring mad.’ The red of the fire reflected in the Commandant’s eyes. There was a long pause.

‘I don’t believe in the resurrection of the body,’ said Gerald. As the hour grew later, the bells grew louder. ‘Not of the body.’

‘What other kind of resurrection is possible? Everything else is only theory. You can’t even imagine it. No one can.’ Gerald had not argued such a thing for twenty years. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you advise me to go. Where?’

‘Where doesn’t matter.’

‘I have no car.’

‘Then you’d better walk.’

“With her?’ He indicated Phrynne only with his eyes.

‘She’s young and strong.’ A forlorn tenderness lay within the Commandant’s words. ‘She’s twenty years younger than you and therefore twenty years more important.’

‘Yes,’ said Gerald. ‘I agree ... What about you? What will you do?’

‘I’ve lived here some time now. I know what to do.’

‘And the Pascoes?’

‘He’s drunk. There is nothing in the world to fear if you’re thoroughly drunk. DSO and bar. DFC and bar.’

‘But you are not drinking yourself?’

‘Not since I came to Holihaven. I lost the knack.’

Suddenly Phrynne sat up. ‘Hullo,’ she said to the Commandant; not yet fully awake. Then she said, ‘What fun! The bells are still ringing.’

The Commandant rose, his eyes averted. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more to say,’ he remarked, addressing Gerald. ‘You’ve still got time.’ He nodded slightly to Phrynne, and walked out of the lounge.

‘What have you still got time for?’ asked Phrynne, stretching. ‘Was he trying to convert you? I’m sure he’s an Anabaptist.’

‘Something like that,’ said Gerald, trying to think.

‘Shall we go to bed? Sorry, I’m so sleepy.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about.’

‘Or shall be go for another walk? That would wake me up. besides the tide might have come in.’

Gerald, although he half-despised himself for it, found it impossible to explain to her that they should leave at once; without transport or a destination; walk all night if necessary. He said to himself that probably he would not go even were he alone.

‘If you’re sleepy, it’s probably a good thing.’

‘Darling!’

‘I mean with these bells. God knows when they will stop.’ Instantly he felt a new pang of fear at what he had said.

Mrs Pascoe had appeared at the door leading to the bar, and opposite to that from which the Commandant had departed. She bore two steaming glasses on a tray. She looked about, possibly to confirm that the Commandant had really gone.

‘I thought you might both like a nightcap. Ovaltine, with something in it.’

‘Thank you,’ said Phrynne. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’ | Gerald set the glass on a wicker table, and quickly finished his cognac.

Mrs Pascoe began to move chairs and slap cushions. She looked very haggard.

‘Is the Commandant an Anabaptist?’ asked Phrynne over her shoulder. She was proud of her ability to outdistance Gerald in beginning to consume a hot drink.

Mrs Pascoe stopped slapping for a moment. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ she said.

‘He’s left his book,’ said Phrynne, on a new tack.

‘Mrs Pascoe looked at it indifferently across the lounge.

‘I wonder what he’s reading,’ continued Phrynne. ‘Fox’s Lives of the Martyrs, I expect.’ A small unusual devil seemed to have entered into her.

But Mrs Pascoe knew the answer. ‘It’s always the same,’ she said, contemptuously. ‘He only reads one. It’s called Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. He’s been reading it ever since he came here. When he gets to the end, he starts again.’

‘Should I take it up to him?’ asked Gerald. It was neither courtesy nor inclination, but rather a fear lest the Commandant return to the lounge: a desire, after those few minutes of reflection, to cross-examine.

‘Thanks very much,’ said Mrs Pascoe, as if relieved of a similar apprehension. ‘Room One. Next to the suit of Japanese armour.’ She went on tipping and banging. To Gera’d’s inflamed nerves, her behavior seemed too consciously normal.

He collected the book and made his way upstairs. The volume was bound in real leather, and the tops of its pages were gilded: apparently a presentation copy. Outside the lounge, Gerald looked at the flyleaf: in a very large hand was written: ‘To my dear Son, Raglan, on his being honoured by the Queen. From his proud Father, B. Shotcroft, Major-general.’ Beneath the inscription a very ugly military crest had been appended by a stamper of primitive type.

The suit of Japanese armour lurked in a dark comer as the Commandant himself had done when Gerald had first encountered him. The wide brim of the helmet concealed the black eyeholes in the headpiece; the moustache bristled realistically. It was exactly as if the figure stood guard over the door behind it. On this door was no number, but, there being no other in sight, Gerald took it to be the door of Number One. A short way down the dim empty passage was a window, the ancient sashes of which shook in the din and blast of the bells. Gerald knocked sharply.

If there was a reply, the bells drowned it; and he knocked again. When to the third knocking there was still no answer, he gently opened the door. He really had to know whether all would, or could, be well if Phrynne, and doubtless he also, were at all costs to remain in their room until it was dawn. He looked into the room and caught his breath.

There was no artificial light, but the curtains, if there were any, had been drawn back from the single window, and the bottom sash forced up as far as it would go. On the floor by the dusky void, a maelstrom of sound, knelt the Commandant, his cropped white hair faintly catching the moonless glimmer, as his head lay on the sill, like that of a man about to be guillotined. His face was in his hands, but slightly sideways, so that Gerald received a shadowy distorted idea of his expression. Some might have called it ecstatic, but Gerald found it agonized. It frightened him more than anything which had yet happened. Inside the room the bells were like plunging roaring lions.

He stood for some considerable time quite unable to move. He could not determine whether or not the Commandant knew he was there. The Commandant gave no direct sign of it, but more than once he writhed and shuddered in Gerald’s direction, like an unquiet sleeper made more unquiet by an interloper. It was a matter of doubt whether Gerald should leave the book; and he decided to do so mainly because the thought of further contact with it displeased him. He crept into the room and softly laid it on a hardly visible wooden trunk at the foot of the plain metal bedstead. There seemed no other furniture in the room. Outside the door, the hanging mailed fingers of the Japanese figure touched his wrist.

He had not been away from the lounge for long, but it was long enough for Mrs Pascoe to have begun again to drink. She liad left the tidying up half-completed, or rather the room; half-disarranged; and was leaning against the overmantel, drawing heavily on a dark tumbler of whisky. Phrynne had not yet finished her Ovaltine.

‘How long before the bells stop?’ asked Gerald as soon as he opened the lounge door. Now he was resolved that, come what might, they must go. The impossibility of sleep should  serve as excuse.

‘I don’t expect Mrs Pascoe can know any more than we can,’ said Phrynne.

‘You should have told us about this - this annual event - before accepting our booking.’

 Mrs Pascoe drank some more whisky. Gerald suspected that it was neat. ‘It’s not always the same night,’ she said throatily, looking at the floor.

‘We’re not staying,’ said Gerald wildly.

‘Darling! ’ Phrynne caught him by the arm.

‘Leave this to me, Phrynne.’ He addressed Mrs Pascoe. ‘We’ll pay for the room, of course. Please order me a car.’

Mrs Pascoe was now regarding him stonily. When he asked for a car, she gave a very short laugh. Then her face changed. She made an effort, and said, ‘You mustn’t take the Commandant so seriously, you know.’

Phrynne glanced quickly at her husband, is. The whisky was finished. Mrs Pascoe placed the empty glass on the plastic overmantel with too much of a thud. ‘No one takes Commandant Shotcroft seriously,’ she said. ‘Not even his nearest and dearest.’

‘Has he any?’ asked Phrynne. ‘He seemed so lonely and pathetic.’

‘He’s Don and I’s mascot,’ she said, the drink interfering with her grammar. But not even the drink could leave any doubt about her rancour.

‘I thought he had personality,’ said Phrynne.

‘That and a lot more, no doubt,’ said Airs Pascoe. ‘But they pushed him out, all the same.’

‘Out of what?’

‘Cashiered, court-martialled, badges of rank stripped off, sword broken in half, muffled drums, the works.’

‘Poor old man. I’m sure it was a miscarriage of justice.’

‘That’s because you don’t know him.’

Mrs Pascoe looked as if she were waiting for Gerald to offer her another whisky.

‘It’s a thing he could never live down,’ said Phrynne, brooding to herself, and tucking her legs beneath her. ‘No wonder he’s so queer if all the time it was a mistake.’

‘I just told you it was not a mistake,’ said Mrs Pascoe insolently.

‘How can we possibly know?’

‘You can’t. I can. No one better.’ She was at once aggressive and tearful.

‘If you want to be paid,’ cried Gerald, forcing himself in, ‘make out your bill. Phrynne, come upstairs and pack.’ If only he hadn’t made her unpack between their walk and dinner.

Slowly Phrynne uncoiled and rose to her feet. She had no intention of either packing or departing, nor was she going to argue. ‘I shall need your help,’ she said. ‘If I’m going to pack.’

In Mrs Pascoe there was another change. Now she looked terrified. ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go. Not now. It’s too late.’

Gerald confronted her. ‘Too late for what?’ he asked harshly.

Mrs Pascoe looked paler than ever. ‘You said you wanted a car,’ she faltered. ‘You’re too late.’ Her voice trailed away.

Gerald took Phrynne by the arm. ‘Come on up.’

Before they reached the door, Mrs Pascoe made a further attempt. ‘You’ll be all right if you stay. Really you will.’ Her voice, normally somewhat strident, was so feeble that the bells obliterated it. Gerald observed that from somewhere she had produced the whisky bottle and was refilling her tumbler.

With Phrynne on his arm he went first to the stout front door. To his surprise it was neither locked nor bolted, but opened at a half-turn of the handle. Outside the building the whole sky was full of bells, the air an inferno of ringing.

He thought that for the first time Phrynne’s face also seemed strained and crestfallen. ‘They’ve been ringing too long,’ she said, drawing close to him. ‘I wish they’d stop.’

‘We’re packing and going. I needed to know whether we could get out this way. We must shut the door quietly.’

It creaked a bit on its hinges, and he hesitated with it halfshut, uncertain whether to rush the creak or to ease it. Suddenly, something dark and shapeless, with its arm seeming to hold a black vesture over its head, flitted, all sharp angles, like a bat, down the narrow ill-lighted street, the sound of its passage audible to none. It was the first being that either of them had seen in the streets of Holihaven; and Gerald was acutely relieved that he alone had set eyes upon it. With his hand trembling, he shut the door much too sharply.

But no one could possibly have heard, although he stopped for a second outside the lounge. He could hear Mrs Pascoe now weeping hysterically; and again was glad that Phrynne was a step or two ahead of him. Upstairs die Commandant’s door lay straight before them: they had to pass close beside the Japanese figure, in order to take the passage to the left of it.

But soon they were in their room, with the key turned in the big rim lock.

‘Oh God,’ cried Gerald, sinking on the double bed. ‘It’s pandemonium.’ Not for the first time that evening he was instantly more frightened than ever by the unintended appositeness of his own words.

‘It’s pandemonium all right,’ said Phrynne, almost calmly. ‘And we’re not going out in it.’

He was at a loss to divine how much she knew, guessed, or imagined; and any word of enlightenment from him might be inconceivably dangerous. But he was conscious of the strength of her resistance, and lacked the reserves to battle with it.

She was looking out of the window into the main street. We might will them to stop,’ she suggested wearily.

Gerald was now far less frightened of the bells continuing than of their ceasing. But that they should go on ringing until day broke seemed hopelessly impossible.