The Unicorn (40 page)

The gathering daylight had brought with it, as she gazed from the window, another shock. She had been looking at the grey composing shapes of the valley and had become aware that they seemed to be composing in a very strange way. She almost for a while wondered if she were dreaming, in one of those weird dreams where a waking consciousness seems to accompany the dreamer. The scene outside looked entirely different. She turned back several times to the room to make sure that she was indeed in her own room and not in some quite other part of the house which had a view she had never seen before. But her room was familiar, and on the far side of the valley she saw, as the light gained, the unaltered silhouette of Riders. But the valley between was utterly changed: and then at last she realized what had happened and why it was that Effingham and the others had not come back. There was a huge torrent, wide, brown and turgid, roaring down the centre, dividing the two houses. The bog had released its waters.

The bridge had completely disappeared, and the white cottages were submerged to half their height. The stream had cut a steep-walled cleft at the top of the valley through which it descended, straight and very fast, its former meanderings forgotten. Further down it spread out, boiling and foaming among the boulders, casting thick lines of debris upon the shore, and surging forward in the centre with the violent motion of a big fast river. The bottom of the valley had become a surging lake, hundreds of yards wide, where with a churning of brown and white, in a series of whirlpools, the waters met the sea.

It must have become, soon after Effingham and Alice had departed last night, quite impossible to get across. Marian looked upon the wrecked, altered scene with appalled amazement, and then with a kind of dazed relief. The general cataclysm dulled her own pain. She trained her field-glasses upon the valley. The lower slopes were strewn with a wide debris of stones and bushes. She made out the bedraggled corpse of a sheep. Further up there were pale glistening streaks among the heather which she later saw to be dead salmon lying broadcast upon the hillside. The river must, in the night, have been even more tremendous. No one could possibly have crossed it.

The rain was gradually abating now and the sky was lightening, turning to a dirty light yellow and bringing a new sharp clarity to the devastated scene. Marian looked through her glasses at Riders, but could see no signs of life whatsoever in the other house. It lay above the rushing waters like a stranded and abandoned ship. It seemed to her confused mind a very long time since she had said in such imploring tones that she wanted to crowd the house with people. Crowds were no use now any more. This was the end game.

Marian had not yet dared to think fully or properly about what had happened in the night At times it seemed like a dream, something done in unconsciousness; and in certain moments of half-sleep she thought that perhaps it was just a fantasy in her mind and that she had imagined it all. Yet, with a pain which had not yet fully claimed her, she knew that there had been an act and that it belonged to her. Even Jamesie seemed like an accessory; she did not even trouble to reflect upon Jamesie’s motives, so little did he seem responsible. It was she who had done the thing that mattered. Had she done right to give Hannah this last thing, the freedom to make her life over in her own way into her own property? When at last Hannah had wanted to break the mirror, to go out through the gate, ought she
then
to have been her gaoler? It Was not any more the old image of freedom which could move her now. It was Hannah’s authority which had moved her, her sense, in the pathetic scene of her final imprisonment, of Hannah’s sovereignty, of her royal right to dispose of herself as she would. Marian could not at that moment have been her keeper. The memory came to her of Jamesie kneeling upon the floor and Hannah gliding past But had she done right? She could not yet give the words a sense. But she knew, as she moaned and rubbed her forehead upon the cold window pane, that she had taken upon herself a blood guilt which would make its own reckoning.

No one could be her judge. But there was one person who could help her and that was Denis, because he was innocent and because he loved Hannah. And although he could not be her judge he could, she felt, at least if necessary be her executioner. Denis and Peter were coming together. Now their figures merged strangely in her mind. Her task had been to protect Hannah. She had performed it, but too perfectly. And now she stood, as it were, in Hannah’s place and it was perhaps on her that the axe would fall. She turned to look for the hundredth time along the length of the drive.

A car had appeared in the distance near to the gates and was approaching slowly over the devastated gravel. It was not the Land Rover. It was not the Humber either. It was a completely strange car. Marian gazed at it with fear and confusion. Was this some quite new person coming, some quite strange person coming to Gaze from the outside world, some doctor or some inspector, someone who would assess, clear up, explain and punish? The car approached the house and stopped. Then the door opened and Denis got out. He was alone.

Marian turned about and shot out of her room. Her flying heels made an echoing din along the corridor and down the stairs. The house she ran through echoed as if it had already been emptied of its people and its things. There was no one about and no one on the terrace when she got there just as Denis was mounting the steps. She saw his face, strained and exhausted, strangely blank. When he saw her the features seemed to droop with a sudden relief and he opened his arms to her. He looked familiar now, renewed, restored. But she closed her eye against his shoulder with a groan. It was clear that he did not yet know.

She became aware that his clothes were dripping wet and stiff with mud and sand. She held him off a little, gripping him hard and careless who saw them from the windows behind. ‘Where’s Peter?’

Denis held her two forearms firmly as if to prevent her from falling. They stood there like two wrestlers.

‘Peter. You haven’t heard?’

‘No-‘

‘Peter is drowned.’

Marian leaned back against the balustrade, drawing him to her. Behind his head the sky had become a soft bright fawn colour. It had stopped raining.

She could hardly speak. ‘Drowned. How?’

‘I should not have come back by the coast road. There was a great flood coming down at the Devil’s Causeway. The car got out of control and went into the sea. I got out quick enough but Peter did not.’ He went on holding her and staring into her eyes as if her attention could rescue him from the appalling memory. He added, They are bringing him now.’

Another car had appeared distantly on the drive.

He said, ‘Let us go in now and tell Hannah.’

Marian’s grip restrained his movement. Her mouth opened mumbling but she could find no words. Then she threw her head back and uttered a long harsh cry. After that she said, still staring at him, in a very low voice. ‘It is too late. Hannah is dead.’

He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he removed her clasp from his arm and turned his back to her. As she began to whimper and to paw at his shoulder she saw beyond him the second car coming slowly nearer, bringing Peter Crean-Smith home at last

Effingham, driving the Humber through the rain from the night on into the morning, learnt the news about Hannah and Peter at one of the inland villages. Max and Alice were with him. They had taken an inland route which was very roundabout and had been lost twice and once stopped by flood water. Carrie and two of the maids and a man-servant were following them in the Austin Seven, but they had lost touch with them far back while it was still dark. They had paused at an inn for some breakfast and been told the news.

The Humber came crawling up the drive at Gaze, bumping across the deep rain-channels, just as they were carrying Peter Crean-Smith into the house. Effingham left Alice to help Max. He ran on to the terrace and stood watching. He felt stupid, curious, excluded. The emotional current of the scene did not pass through him. He followed the procession into the house. Marian was in the hall. She was pointing to the drawing-room door, her handkerchief pressed tightly against her mouth. Denis was lying on the stairs, his face hidden. He looked like something that had fallen from a great height No one paid any attention to Effingham. He was suddenly a stranger. He wanted, like a stranger, to find someone to whom he could say, ‘Oh, I am sorry, I am so sorry.’

Alice and Max were coming slowly through the door and he could see beyond them that the Austin Seven had arrived. Marian pushed past him and sat down on the bottom step. She laid her head against the banisters and began to weep in a series of low cries, ‘Oh, oh, oh -‘ Effingham stared. It did not seem to him that he could establish any communication with Marian and Denis, and the spectacle of their grief sickened him. The others were gathered behind him. Quickly he stepped over Denis’s legs and ran up the stairs and along the corridor to Hannah’s room.

He rushed in and paused in appalled confusion. The sun was shining now and the room was bright, almost welcoming as if it did not know what had passed. A clock was ticking jauntily. A last remnant of fire glowed in the grate. There was a dark stain on the carpet near the door, and the drawers of the desk were open and papers were strewn about everywhere upon the floor. But otherwise everything was the same. The pampas grass and dried honesty were stiff and immobile in their vase. Peter’s photograph gazed across the room at exactly the same angle. There was the familiar smell of turf and whiskey. Surely in a moment Hannah would emerge from the inner room. Then as he stood there alone he heard the heavy dragging tread of Max and Alice’s shuffle as they came along the corridor after him; and for one violent moment he was tempted to hurl himself against the door to prevent the old man from entering.

Effingham stood stiffly, staring into a corner. Something was lying there. It was Hannah’s old yellow silk dressing-gown, lying there in a heap. Max moved slowly past him and sat down in Hannah’s chair. Effingham gave a moan and descended abruptly on to a stool. He felt almost delirious with tiredness.

‘Open the windows, would you,’ said Max. He spoke with his usual authority but very wearily, letting his big head, yellow and hollowed like some Chinese object, fall heavily back against the cushions. He looked like death itself usurping Hannah’s place.

Carrie, who had followed them up, ran to the window. The room seemed to be full of people.

‘Brace up, Effie. Drink this.’ Alice was pouring whiskey out of Hannah’s decanter. She thrust it into Effingham’s hand and he sipped it. It tasted of Hannah. His eyes were closing.

Fresh cool rainy air blew through the room, carrying away the close quiet smells, lifting the litter of papers along the floor and stirring the honesty and the pampas grass. Two of the maids were gathering up the papers and stuffing them back into the drawers. Alice had picked up Hannah’s dressing-gown and hung it on a hook.

‘What is this? What are you all doing here, this great crowd of you? Why are you walking about and giving orders in this house?’ Violet Evercreech stood in the doorway, leaning upon a stick. Her voice was high and piercing with anger. Jamesie stood just behind her.

Alice answered, ‘Forgive us, Violet. We came to see if we could help. We only heard the news on the way.’ She pushed a chair forward for Violet.

‘And coming into this room, and drinking. Have you no shame? No, you cannot help. I can bury my own dead.’

She ignored the chair. Jamesie swung it to the side and sat down on it himself. He rested his elbows on his knees and covered his face. The maids retired into the ante-room.

No one spoke. Violet crashed her stick upon the floor. ‘You can go. I don’t need you to open windows in my house.’

Max turned his head slightly to Alice, who was leaning back against the mantelpiece, her feet wide apart. Alice said, ‘Don’t turn us out, Violet. We have a sort of right to be here.’

Violet looked venomously at each of them. ‘Oh yes! You’ve lived like vampires on the sorrows of this house and now you are even come to gape at the dead.’

‘Violet, don’t be angry. My father is tired. We’ll -‘

“You’ll go
now,
the whole gaping crowd of you. I am in charge here.’

‘Anyway,’ said Alice, her voice sharpening a little, ‘it’s a matter to be decided, I suppose, who all this
does
belong to now.’