The Silver Bough (23 page)

The fire had died down to an ash-flecked glow and the grey light in the inner cave made Grant's face ghastly. It stirred as Martin stared down at it, then Grant sat up. He began to shiver violently.

“We'd better go,” said Martin.

As Grant arose, Martin lifted his own oilskin over his arm and they went out to the boat, into which Martin dropped his oilskin and the haversack with the thermos flask.

Grant, swaying slightly, looked at him. “Are you going to tackle it?”

“Yes. But you needn't come, if you don't want to. You'll get out of here in two to three hours.” Martin's voice had the ease of utter impersonality, yet his eyes remained in some remote way personal.

Grant could not gather his wits; something persisted in a sort of myth of danger and largeness; he was desperately cold and tried to control, to hide, the chitter of his teeth.

“We'll try to slew her off, if you give me a hand here,” Martin said.

By a manipulation, at which he was obviously expert, of the three rollers, Martin at last got the boat moving, but it was a heavy and difficult job because he wanted her over towards the south wall of the cave. After an initial breathlessness, dizziness, and furious pounding of the heart, Grant began to feel a warmth in his body. The cave faced west but the seas were running from south of west and he saw that Martin had chosen the only spot for the push-off. The wind and the whitecaps outside were almost gone but the seas looked big as ever and broke with an even greater thunder.

It seemed to Grant an impossible venture, a death questing wildness. Pure green came through the curl of the wave. Martin was quiet and thorough, sparing and instant in movement; the pallor of his face was the pallor of the bone beneath.

“Will you give me a push off?” he asked.

Grant nodded.

They both pushed; Martin leapt over the gunnel and whipped the oars into the rowlocks; Grant pushed on, and when the water was over his knees he jumped but got only his breast over the stern-post; there he wriggled impaled, until he fell over into the boat; but the boat was swinging back and he put out his hands to fend her stern off the cliff, felt his palms scraped by the barnacles without pain, got a skelp from the momentarily shipped blade of Martin's oar, but now they were off on the recession, on the deep back eddy. Next time he fended off with one of the three rollers which, glancing off his chest, ripped through his oilskin and, as the boat left the rock, he all but fell into the sea. A wild effort at recovery landed him in a heap on the footboards. But Martin now was hanging on both oars over the threshold where the waves tripped, losing distance to gain a little more. Grant glimpsed his face and saw a strength in its pallor that was cold and more than human; a bleakness that was more than deathly: it was stoical and everlasting, as if the fellow was not drawing on his mysterious
source
but was part of it. A curious quietness came on Grant. A commitment, a sense of relief in his own act that was a cold gladness. They rose up over the wave and fell down into the swinging hollow, but they were leaving the cave.

Grant saw when Martin began to tire, when the swing of the oars lost a living quality and became automatic. Martin had never spoken; had nodded once commandingly to the floorboard on which Grant now sat beneath the stern seat; he pulled steadily with a side glance for a coming wave. The sky had cleared into great blue patches, fresh and vivid from a sun Grant could not see; only on the south-west horizon were the clouds still dark and lowering, as though swelling about the storm's root.

Martin was pulling away towards the southern island and presently Grant, looking about him, at the cliffs, the tumultuous shore, at Clachar, began to get an idea of how Martin had fetched the cave in the storm. From the sheltered side of the spit north of Clachar House, he must have made out for the north island, brought her through the seas into the inshore lee of the middle island, then holding into the storm and slipping with it, had finally come down on the cave. As his eyes lifted from the imaginary passage to Martin's face, he found Martin's eyes on him. They did not smile; but there was an intuitive recognition in them, so cool and remote in its understanding of his calculations, that he himself smiled, as though detected in a naïvety, and glanced away. But he now knew that that was in fact the route which Martin had taken.

In time, Martin brought her to run before the weather. The wind had died away and, as he baled, Grant for the first time felt safe from the lift and swirl of the waters. To begin with, he had waited for each towering mass to smash in on them, not in fear so much as in a sheer tension of expectancy, but now, in a queerly miraculous way, he felt safe. His mouth, losing its leathery dryness, was growing softly slimy. The wound-up tension inside his skull was easing.

They were making way now. Martin's pallor had taken a grey tinge. Grant, facing Clachar House, could see that the intention was to clear the spit and land on its lee or northern side. The final passage to the boathouse was too narrow, too shallow, for the swing of the seas. The waves were spouting on the broken rocks that ran out to the point of the spit. But once round the spit, there would be no trouble.

Presently Grant was aware that Martin's eyes glistened, that the man had come out from the blind automatic action of the will. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw that the dark clouds in the south-west had swollen up upon the sky; a flurry of wind spat a few sea-drops into his face; a darkness was coming racing over the sea with an edging of spindrift; Martin was almost rising off his seat in the effort to get power into his left oar; then the gust hit them.

For a few seconds it seemed to sweep them over the sea with a tremendous flattening power. It took off, but only as a man might pause to take a deeper breath. The next time its violence drenched Grant in a smother of spray. Martin hung on his oars, and when they shot out he dug them in again, holding to the solid sea.

Grant at last saw the danger that the rower had seen too late. With his back to the spit and watching the near seas, Martin had unknowingly been cutting his passage round the spit too fine. The wind was now driving them right on the spouting rocks, and the more Martin pulled his left to nose her seawards the more the wind caught her. Minute followed minute in iron tension until it was clear that, unless the wind's grip instantly slackened, they would smash. It was then Grant saw the figure of a man staggering over the spit towards them and knew it was Norman the chauffeur; and then he saw another figure, her skirts about her legs, swung this way and that, but lying forward on the wind, coming, and knew it was Anna. His body was whirled round and he was facing the oncoming seas. In a long trough, Martin had put her about and was trying to hold her, stem to the onrush. Grant saw his eyes find the two figures and a white stillness of implacable concentration steady him in a last exercise of his strength. As though infuriated by this relentless obstinacy the wind rose to its last and final pitch. A scraping shudder, white spume, a heave and a wrecking crash, and Grant's body was thrown on a dark rock and the sea went over him.

A
drumming in his ears, dimmed eyes, and, as the dragging on his crumpled pitching body eased, a bursting desire to get up for air; a cessation of the onward thrust, a brimming choking instant and the water was going back and his head was through; a jagged black edge of rock and his hands on their own had it and gripped while his mouth spewed and the recession roared and the air was sucked in a trickle of pain; drunkenly and dimly he saw Anna coming, but he could do nothing, could not move, for he had to get more air first, and the sea hit him, pitched him over the low rock, and covered him again. But the holding of his breath this time was easier than the time before because he was drowning; then a clutch was holding him against the recession and his head was through once more. Anna was hauling him too strongly, too harshly, but he was too stupid to tell her, so he crumpled up for ease, but she was merciless and would not give him the moment he craved; his arms were about her as they fell in the water, but she had no mercy, would not lie still for the life-easing moment, and he was being dragged like a sack, tied at the throat, choked; he was being carried and the pressure at his throat eased; he was alone, his body in a slow wriggle, squeezing itself, like a dark octopus. A formless spot inside him, that was his will, hardened, and pushed its thin spire like a screw upward through the desire for obliteration; it was merciless as the woman had been and told him that there were others.

What he saw, because of the condition he was in, must always hold for him something of the nature of legend. First he saw the woman, the water swirling about her knees, leaning forward over the sea, the wind shaping her, and he thought she was crying wildly and imperiously at the waters, like a sibylline woman; then he saw the boat, her stern in the air, pierced through the side by a jagged rock, whole in her form but spiked and held in a dumb crucifixion; the shore came at him next, roaring and seething in a tumult that was beyond the bourne of life and extended far, streaming tragic eternal elements known only to the spirit; and beyond it, the waves, mounting, curling, incoming, onrushing, and he saw the boat shudder and heave as the smashing waters lifted, and he saw a hand lift against the boat and grip the gunnel and two streaming heads appeared; now the woman moved, going down after the roaring waters, and a great cry to her to go back choked him and he spewed again, blinded, as he tried to get on to his hands and knees. The woman, caught by the waters, held to a rock, and held to something else, and the two heads rose, and Martin's face fell over white and streaming red. Twice the sea got them after that, but the woman with Martin in her arms came at last staggering with him and fell to the ground beyond the sea's reach; but Norman was down, yet not defeated, for on fumbling hands and knees, like a wounded beast, he crawled two slow yards and lay, and when the next wave came it swirled to his thighs, moving his legs like roped weed, but his breast was anchored and he lay.

Grant's eyes came back to Anna on her knees beside Martin, her hands at his throat and breast, her hair plastering her cheeks, and he saw the sheer bone of her face and the strength of it. She was a little above him, against the sky, and her face lowered to Martin's face and cried something, but Martin lay with his head fallen over, a little river of blood on his face. Through a sick darkness he reached them. He wanted to take his oilskin off and made signs and muttered, “Under him”. Anna understood and tore the coat off him, but he held onto it and began rolling it. She struck away his fumbling hands and rolled it for him in a trice; then he made her turn Martin over upon the coat and, getting to his knees, pressed the body above the waist; let it go and pressed again, in the way he had been taught at the swimming baths when a boy. But he was dizzy, sick, and presently became aware that Anna was on her knees astride Martin's body, pressing and relaxing, with a rhythm so natural that her head, as it lowered on the pressing stroke, seemed to be listening to what was passing inside Martin's breast. This affected him in so extraordinary a way that he stared, fascinated, and found himself listening also and waiting. She had put her scarf under the face, and the left temple, taking the weight, had turned the face sideways a little; the mouth was partly open and the trickle of blood which had been going in at the corner of the mouth was now running back into the hair. He looked utterly lifeless, dead as any mass of tossed seawrack, and the pallor of the face held the spent tragic essence of the man, remote now beyond its earthly remoteness.

Something touched Grant in a wild way and he reared up again. Anna's eyes were on him. “Keep on!” he cried. “Don't stop!” He saw her throat swallow and the face set again, but now with a quickening of light in the eyes, as though he had given her hope against all the chances. At sight of this he felt so weak that he could have wept, and a hot stinging behind his eyes enraged him and helped to clear his head and settle the involuntary urges to vomit up his inside. He caught Martin's near hand and began massaging it towards the heart. Norman came staggering up and got down on his knees by Martin's head, put the flat of his hand under the forehead and lifted the face just clear of the ground; then laid the head against the scarf and turned away to vent the spasm that had come over him.

Anna worked on and Grant thought he would get Martin's boots off and slap the feet. The fierce storm-gust had passed away completely and as his fingers fumbled with the laces a shaft of sunlight struck him. Suddenly Anna cried out in a wild heart-rending cry, “Donald!” Grant had never before heard the elemental cry of the woman to her mate; it so affected him that his skin crinkled and he turned back; but she was working on the body with the same rhythmic persistence as before. Norman slewed round and looked at her. “He moved!” she cried, the exultation in her voice high as a seabird's piercing note. Her face was quivering now and her tears blinding her, but her hands did not stop in their strong tender exercise.

When Martin was sitting up, she stood to one side. Norman was in front of Martin, two yards below him on the slight slope, his feet apart, his eyes on Martin's reactions with a narrowed intensity, his cheekbones smooth, swaying just perceptibly. Grant was sitting in a slump, his shoulders and head drooping. His eyes turned on Martin and saw the fine features, in their stone-like agelessness, with death and life as equal guests who could come and go. Martin's lips pressed, the nostrils flexed, the eyebrows gathered, and the breath that had gone in swelled his chest; he breathed again more heavily; his head fell back and he blew a great breath from him and stirred, the teeth showing between the drawn lips.

“Let us go,” said Norman. “It's not far.”

Martin said nothing, but Norman stopped by his shoulder, his hand arrested as though Martin had spoken.

A shudder went over Martin and his fallen head shook—and lifted. At once Norman put a hand under his arm and with a commanding look drew Anna to his other arm; together they helped him to his feet.

Grant got up and saw them stumble a few paces and stop. Martin did not want their help; he wanted to be left alone so that his will would be free to take him in its own way. As he went on again, Anna walked alone but Norman was by his shoulder.

All at once Grant became aware of the warm sun, and a surface shivering went over his body and his jaw trembled. He felt light-headed, strangely freed, and his face turned to Anna and smiled. Her distant expression softened into a faint answering smile and he saw the glisten of life in her eyes. He thought she looked beautiful, with a beauty that inhabited her, and this he would remember, he felt, as one remembered a figure in the landscape of a legend. An extraordinary reality was given to her by the solid particularity of her features, her flesh. She was walking there drenched and moulded and he saw her, and his heart was moved and lifted up.

When Martin reached the first pine, he leaned against it. They all stopped and Norman's features gathered in a troubled impatience, but he waited, offering no assistance. Grant saw Martin coldly measure the distance ahead, slowly push the pine from him with his palm, and start off again. As he came at the front door, his body fell against it while his fist tried to turn the large iron knob. Norman shouldered up and got a grip of it, but the door would not open. Martin's forehead was leaning heavily against the wood as though he had let consciousness slip while still holding to his feet. Norman looked at the bell-pull. There was a clicking sound and the door opened from the inside. Martin rolled sideways but Norman gripped him as Mrs Sidbury, in a red silk dressing gown, stood slim and white-faced before them. Swiftly her flashing black eyes took them in, but Grant saw them stop for an instant on Anna, arrested in pure shock; her brother was stumbling forward and the blood on his face brought a small sharp cry from her even as she caught him and helped him into the hall. Norman went in after them and Grant was about to follow when he stopped to make way for Anna. But Anna was not moving; she was staring and listening. Martin's body had thumped into a chair; Norman's voice said, “Get some whisky, please.” Then slowly, as one no longer needed, Anna turned away.

Grant watched her in a moment's stupor as if he could not for all the world either move or utter a sound. Then he started after her. She heard his steps and turned.

“Won't you go in and take something?” she said.

“No.”

“Do go,” she said. “I'll wait for you.”

“I'm going with you,” he answered.

She did not say more and they went on together. As he stumbled once, he explained, “I'm light-footed, but I'll get home, if you don't desert me.”

“We needn't hurry,” she said.

“Don't say you'll make a cup of tea.”

“I will—at once,” she answered and smiled.

“Now don't weaken me.” He went on a few paces. “If anyone had said I could have come through last night——” He dared not risk shaking his head, yet the astonishing thing was that he did not feel tired: only exhausted to nothingness. He knew he was light-headed because he wanted to till her that he owed her his life and that she was a very remarkable young woman. He wondered if he could tell her this without embarrassing her. But the thought of it weakened him and he had to stand still for a little.

“There's no hurry,” she encouraged him.

“Do you think we could sit down for one minute?” A treacherous trembling had come to his muscles.

“No,” she said. “We must keep going.”

“You're right.” And as he started on he added, “You shouldn't have mentioned the tea.”

He stopped again and asked her, “Have you been hearing anything?”

“Just the birds singing.”

He nodded and went on. But as they came at last to the little bridge he stopped and looked at it, and looked around him at the freshness of the morning on the world, and he did so openly and unashamed. It was something very exquisite and lovely to have come back into.

At last they entered the cottage and as she turned from closing the door, he smiled to her. “Thank you, Anna,” he said, and he took her hand and kissed it in gratitude and homage, then turned to the stairs.