Bill Knapman and Charlie Venner left the Dando Inn around halfpast three, the new snow already lying about an inch deep on the step at the back entrance. Bill Knapman took a rag from the floor of the car and wiped the windscreen.
“It’ll be worse before it gets better,” he said to Charlie. They’d had several whiskies with Harry Ware. Neither of them felt like work. “Better come back with me, have a quick drink. I’ll better get down the road with the hay for the sheep before it piles up again.”
“I’ll bet that gang went back to Tom’s place,” said Charlie. “Tom’ll be dishin’ up the scrump.”
“Worse’n sheep dip, his stuff. Good for strippin’ paintwork I reckon.”
On the way up the road from Dando Monachorum they saw the American professor’s girl walking by herself. She turned her head away as they came alongside her. She wasn’t far from home and Bill Knapman decided not to stop and ask her if she wanted a lift.
“What’s wrong wi’ her then?” asked Charlie.
“Oh girls that age, no understandin’ them,” said Bill. “The wife’s very nice, y’know.”
“Aye, her’s English. What’s he like, I never spoke to him, some do say he wouldn’t give you the time of day.”
“Keeps to himself, that’s right. Not the kind to push himself in. Could be worse. Remember that bloke who had Trencher’s couple of year ago, what was his name, Buckteeth hyphen Scratcherley?”
“Buckley-Hitchings? The R. A. F. bloke?”
“Yeah, funny bugger he were, second day he moved in he was up at us, said he’d heard tell I made cider, could he have some? No holdin’ him, was there?”
“He didn’t last long. Neither will they lot.”
“Maybe not. Though her’s very nice.”
“Aye, her’s English.”
Karen Magruder thought she might throw a fit of temper and refuse to go to the Christmas party. She knew Bobby Hedden and his gang would be there and they wouldn’t be nice to her. If it hadn’t been for what Daddy had said to her before they left home she would have screamed and screamed and screamed.
“You might not find things so nice at first in England,” he’d said. “You’ll have to make new friends. I’m sorry about that but it’s going to be a big thrill for your mother. You’ve got to help to make it nice for her. England’s her home, where she was born. She hasn’t been home to see it for years and years. I’m counting on you, Karen.”
“But this is our home,” she’d said.
“Yes, but your mother’s first home was in England. She’s looking forward very much to showing you all the places she knows. It’ll be a big thrill for her. And for you. You’ll promise me, won’t you, you’ll do everything you can to make her vacation as wonderful as it can be?”
“Oh yes. I wish we could take Sue-Anne with us. She’s my real friend.”
Karen kicked the snow. She decided she’d walk back to the house and look at her calendar. If there was time she’d write another letter to Sue-Anne. The last time she’d looked at her calendar there were only eight months before Daddy said they were going home again.
Poor mother. It couldn’t have been very nice for her to grow up in England...
Louise Magruder lay trembling on her bed. The words grew louder and louder in her mind... I won’t go back... I won’t go back...
Downstairs she could hear the tapping noise of George’s typewriter. What a cold-blooded fish he was. What on earth had ever possessed her to marry the bloody man? Her mother had been right, damn her. Marry your own sort, it’s best I always say. That was Mummy! She was sure now she’d only married George to show Mummy she had a mind of her own. Of course! The whole thing had been a silly bit of adolescent rebellion. God, she was tired of him. She thought of Patrick...
When George had come home that afternoon and told her they were going to a party for Ryman the poet she had been so annoyed she could have killed him.
“Oh God no! I thought we were going to have a night on our own. Don’t you ever get tired of that same bunch of bores?”
She could hear the stridency in her own voice, but there was no stopping herself. She didn’t care that George was hurt – he was typically American, anything that upset his wonderful home and their wonderful relationship came as a deep shock. She often thought that every tiff they had was in some way an insult to the American way of life.
“You’ll enjoy it,” was all he’d said. So smug! Patronising.
“I will not. Can’t we ever have one night away from all this bloody togetherness? What’s wrong with you, George, d’you think they’ll call you a commie if you avoid them for once?”
“Don’t be silly.” Jesus, always so damned patient. “I promised Hal, this guy Ryman’s a bit temperamental by all accounts. Hal’s relying on you to give him support, you know, both of you being English?”
“Ryman’s Irish.”
“You know what I mean.”
“We all look alike to you, is that it?”
“Come on, honey, it won’t be that bad.”
“If I go I promise you now I’ll get bloody drunk.”
“What an adolescent thing to say! Of course you won’t get drunk. Leave that to the poets.”
They’d been married seven years then and she hadn’t been home for over two years and one way or the other she was fed up. That was the summer Karen had had her sulking fits.
The Sapersteins had invited just about everybody to meet Patrick Ryman, obviously because Hal thought there was safety in a large crowd, Ryman having established a reputation which travelled the college circuit in advance. She’d never known the Sapersteins to supply so much booze to so many people and that was saying a lot, for any time you went to their house you could count on Hal pumping it into you as though prohibition was coming back. Even George had been known to get a little high at the Sapersteins.
That night George had been almost drunk. They were, as he kept saying, going through a “difficult phase”. In other words he was having one of his periodic attacks of virility trouble. Mid-week sex had gone by the board, now he was even having trouble on Saturday nights. He said this was a normal phase, but as far as she was concerned he was suffering from a very common complaint among men. He was tired of her. But would he admit it! Oh no, that would be something like high treason.
At first she’d snorted with disbelief when she saw Patrick Ryman, the poet. The bow-tie and the rumpled suit – and the hair! For a moment she felt deeply ashamed to be British in the same room. How could a man wear his hair like that, all dank and scurfy? No wonder he kept on scratching his head. Apart from the fact that she couldn’t remember a single line he’d written, she had no desire to speak to him, none at all. But inevitably they were introduced. She’d had four drinks.
“Did you hire that suit?” she asked, raising her left eyebrow in what she hoped was arrogant disdain. “Or did Dylan Thomas leave it to you in his will?”
“Oh, you’re the English woman,” he said, smiling boozily. “The wife said I should give all you academics a bit of a show. Dress dirty, Paddy, she says, it’s a sure sign of integrity. At home I wear stiff white collars, y’know. It’s difficult to know what you cultural parasites want from a visiting genius like myself.”
“You’ll do,” she said, maintaining her disdain. “You should now vomit on the rug – that’ll convince them you’re authentic.”
“I may do that, darling. After all, the man did say to treat this like my own home. Can I get you a drink? Or can you get me a drink? If I move my feet I may fall over.”
“Let me,” she said. “I’d like to see you on the floor.”
“Hang around, dear.”
She fetched him a drink from the trolley. The room was crowded, but most people were content, at this stage, to be briefly introduced to Ryman and then to talk among themselves.
“It’s like winning the bloody pools,” he said, taking a disrespectfully large gulp of Hal Saperstein’s Glen Grant.
“What is?” she asked, still antagonistic.
“Coming over here on one of these culture jaunts. One minute there I was at home, a bum with four kids and twenty barmaids to support – the next you’re supposed to be Clark Gable. D’you know something, Mrs. – what was it again – Macwhat? Is that supposed to be Scottish? Anyway, whatever your name is, I’ll tell you my mother used to tell me to put on clean underwear when I went out of the house, if yese git run down, Pathrick me bhoy yese’ll want clean underwear in the infirmary or yese’ll make me ashamet o’ye. Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, if they saw my underpants they’d deport me. D’yese fancy a look at them yourself like?”
“No thank you.”
“You show good taste.”
After a few more drinks she found herself laughing with him, in spite of herself. Everything he said seemed like a deliberate attempt to make her think he was a human disgrace.
“You’ve never read any of my stuff? Och, I shouldn’t bother between you and me and the gatepost, they’re hardly worth the effort, most of the good lines are pinched anyway. Jesus Christ Saviour of Little Children, are all these mighty men gathered here in my name? They must have empty fucking lives.”
He went on and on, talking to her as though she was a fellow waster from a Paddington pub. The party became loud and noisy. People stood in the hall and in other rooms. There was coming and going from upstairs. George was nowhere to be seen. People came up to Patrick and said stupid things. She tried not to laugh when he insulted them with carefully polite replies.
“Am I familiar with Graves? Oh sure, most of my best friends are in them right now. Did you ever hear of the paper in Ireland that was reporting this funeral and they said Councillor O’Toole slipped and fell in on top of the coffin and the incident cast a gloom over the subsequent proceedings? You didn’t? It’s a well-known story. Very evocative, nay redolent.”
People smiled energetically and obviously didn’t understand him. She felt that they were fellow-conspirators. She later couldn’t even remember why it was they decided to go upstairs, but she remembered standing inside a dark room with her back against the wall and Patrick trying to talk her on to the bed. All they did was kiss – it must have been a farcical sight, for she was six inches taller than he was. She remembered him going on and on about how you could get quickie divorces in Mexico City and how he was small and ugly and women didn’t like him and his wife hated him because he’d got her pregnant in the first place and he wouldn’t drink so much only he was the loneliest man in the world and she was the first truly beautiful woman who’d understood him.
She didn’t remember going home with George. In the morning she had a terrible headache. The phone went about ten. Patrick wanted her to come over to his hotel. It was a fantastic effort, in her condition. She’d told herself she was only going to let him know he wasn’t as pathetic as he made himself out to be.
Of course she’d known why she was going, feverish with the hangover, so depressed the house seemed like a soundproof cell.
“So there you are, all my sexual tricks from A to B,” he said when they finally stopped making love. “I hope you notice I had a shower in your honour? I knew you’d be used to hygienic men. I’d have cut my toe-nails but I’ve only got the one razorblade and I need to shave for my audiences. Is it true what they say about these Yanks?”
“What’s that?”
“Here, watch it, you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full, don’t you know any manners at all? You’re depraved! No, here, this girl I know, she’s telling me these American fellas do it like buck rabbits, up and on and quick batter and off again. Is that right?”
“You could say that.”
“For God’s sake, woman! Are you hungry or something? Jesus Christ Our Blessed Lord they’re funny people over here. Are you still going to Mexico with me?”
“Oh, you remembered?”
“Of course I remembered. I wasn’t drunk last night, you know. Sure, your honour, if you thought I was drunk last night you shoulda seen me on Saturday night. No, I’m serious, let’s piss off out of this and fly to Mexico. I saw it in a film, quickie divorces. The wife doesn’t even have to know.”
“You couldn’t afford me.”
“I never said I could. Could you afford me, that’s more like it.”
As the drink wore off it began to appear that he was serious, at least by his standards. Her natural impulse was to make jokes about it but there was no knowing with a funny man like him. He seemed so unbalanced.
“I think I might kill myself if it gets any worse,” he said at one stage. “I’m a burden to the human race.”
“We’d leave five children in broken homes,” she said, trying to bring him to reason, if only for the sake of the lunch at which he was to meet so many allegedly important people.
“Och, to hell with the children, I don’t like mine all that much if the truth be known. Think of that last moment before you die, you’ve done all the decent things all your life, you’re lying there kicking the bucket – do you think it would matter then?”
But she had left the hotel and if George hadn’t found one of Patrick’s letters she would have made herself forget the whole thing. Not that it was a love letter, more a series of childish jokes. George, however, had taken it badly. What he resented was the fact she could have a secret correspondence with another man. It spoiled his beautiful dream of togetherness. He took it for granted that she hadn’t even thought of going to bed with Patrick! That was even more annoying than if he’d gone berserk with jealousy. She told herself that only a very imaginative and intelligent woman could have seen beneath the seedy buffoonery Patrick showed to the world.
And that, she told herself as she lay staring at the ceiling, the unread book lying on her breast, was my big moment. Illicit romance, the only one of my whole life. I should have run away to Mexico with him. It wouldn’t have lasted – but I’d have done something wild and selfish – just for me.
Was it too late? Soon even fat little lonely drunks might not want me...
I guess I was in the wrong, George Magruder said to himself, sitting at his desk in the study. Was that ‘guess’ in the English or American sense? He didn’t think he was in the wrong. Life would be a whole lot simpler if a man could still put a pernickety wife over his knee and give her backside a roasting. But he wasn’t that kind of man, even if Louise had been that kind of woman.
Like many academics he was conscious of, but unable to do anything about, an imbalance between the impressive depth and range of knowledge he had in his special field and the rest of his mental activities. His own secret – and somewhat childish – theory was that there are only so many brain cells and a man who filled an inordinate number of these cells with one subject has less room – literally – for anything else. It was hardly to be expected that one human brain could hold a vast store of information on English literature and then have equal capacity for other commitments of the same intensity.
Einstein, it was said, could not tie his own shoelaces. Nabokov ran about in fields with a butterfly net. A famous critic and lay theologian had a passion for playing croquet in the nude. In his own case, old films took the place of butterflies or seashells. A non-hobby he called it, requiring no more involvement than a good memory and a willingness to sit till after midnight in front of the television.
He could spot famous stars in early bit parts, he could put names to the faces of second-rate bit players. Did anybody else in the world have such knowledge of Hollywood’s immortal trivia? Stars interested him less than the anonymous faces who had down the years peopled the mechanical dreams from the fantasy production belt. He saw them as prototype personalities of the twentieth century... Elisha Cook (the twisted face of the third gangster, the little man who always cracked under pressure), Robin Raymond, Gloria Dickson, Adele Jergens, Charles Smith, Luis Van Rooten, Percy Helton, Russell Simpson (who stepped out of his grade to play the father in The Grapes of Wrath), Don Beddoe, Raymond Walburn, Paul Harvey, John Litel, Tom Kennedy (monopolist of Irish New York cop parts).
If old films were his non-hobby, Westerns were his specialisation. He remembered the plots of innumerable sage-bush sagas starring Roy Rogers (with Dale Evans). He was a connoisseur of secondgrade cowboy stars, Rod Cameron, John Payne, Randolph Scott.
There was nothing surprising about all this, he often said – defensively, for there was something embarrassing about comprehensive knowledge of a subject which few other people are aware of.
“Great minds like simple things,” Louise would say reassuringly, in those days when she was still interested in reassuring him.
“There’s a peculiar and unexplored potency to mass subculture,” was another of his rationalisations. Yet... was John Wayne swapping punches with other giants any more ludicrous a fantasy than Branksheer’s bawdy England? Given the choice, wouldn’t any man prefer to know he could defend his land and log cabin against Shawnee war parties – instead of being stuck at a desk?
It was not an idea he could ever reveal to the people he worked with. It couldn’t stand up to severe analysis, but it was real. It had started as a joke and then grafted itself on to his consciousness; the frontier was no more and a man had to settle for the second-best. Like being a professor.
He couldn’t work. He went upstairs. Louise was reading on the bed.
“I want to say I’m sorry,” he said.
“What for?” Her voice was huffy, a little girl’s voice.
“I’m sorry! I lost my temper unnecessarily.”
“Did you?”
“Come on, Louise, I’ve come up to apologise.”
“All right, so you’ve apologised.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Don’t you want to say anything?”
“No.”
“Look, I notice it’s always me who makes it up first. Aren’t you ever in the wrong, just a little bit in the wrong?”
“Probably.”
“Well then –”
“Oh shut up and leave me alone.”
“Please, Louise, let’s not be stupid, huh?”
He sat on the bed and took hold of her right hand, making her drop the book on the bedcover. She stared at him defiantly, as though he was threatening to strike her.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to hit you, silly.”
He smiled, as he thought, apologetically. Louise thought it was a coy little smirk.
“That’s what’s wrong with you.”
“What is?”
“You haven’t got the guts to hit me. Go on, try it, you’ll feel better. I deserve it. Go on.”
“Come on, honey, let’s not –”
“Don’t honey me, you all-forgiving bastard. What do you think being married is, the stupid PTA? God, you make me sick, look at you, all nicey-nicey smiles, you big sook. What’s going on in that great All-American head of yours? Eh? Be honest – for once.”
“There’s no need to –”
“Yes there is. I’m sick of it, the whole thing. What’s wrong with you? One minute you’re whining and moaning you wish you were a big man – like Hemingway, ha ha, Hemingway’s just your type, little Georgie wants to be a grown-up man with a hairy chest! But little Georgie hasn’t got the guts to hit his own bitch of a wife.”
“All right, I’ll smack your teeth on the floor if it makes you any happier.”
“Don’t smirk at me! You can’t get round me that way. My mother was right, damn her, we should never have got married. I’m no good to you.”
“Oh shut up. It’s time you were getting Karen ready for the party. You’ll get over this, it’s only a mood. It’s affecting both of us living here. This isn’t our house, we hardly own a single thing in it. Maybe we made a mistake coming –”
“No, the mistake was a lot earlier.”
“Oh Louise, don’t say things like that. You’ll only regret them afterwards. I’ll go and find Karen.”
As usual she felt cheated and enraged. The saintly bastard.
When she and Karen drove away from the house she did not wave or smile to George, who stood on the little path at the front door, watching the car tyres send up little spumes of soft snow. Even after the car had gone out of sight up the lane he still stood there, snowflakes settling on his chest and shoulders...
Frank Pawson told the ambulance-driver he was in a hurry to get back to Two Waters.
“We’ll make it by four, easy,” said the driver. “I’m in a hurry myself, the road might get blocked up if it starts snowing again.”
In the back Henry Niles looked tired.
“You’d better lie down on the bench, Henry my old son,” said Pawson. “Have a kip, you’ll be home soon. I know, I’ll strap you down, you won’t get bounced about so much.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Henry Niles, as though he was a small boy being introduced to a new game. As Frank Pawson fastened the buckle he felt like apologising to the poor little bastard. It wasn’t fair, was it, the way things turned out for different people? Here he was fair laughing, things couldn’t be better, and here was poor old Henry, a lunatic. Never had a chance, poor bastard. Still, Henry was lucky in one way – there was a time when they might have hung him, lunatic or not.
“All right then, Henry? Have a bit of a snooze.” He might have been tucking in a baby. He sat back on the other bench and thought about Kate Grady. It had turned out better than he’d hoped. She fancied him, they were at the right age, she was a grown woman and she knew what she was going into, nurses made great wives, life couldn’t have turned out better. Christ, wouldn’t her face be a caution when he told her? He thought of all the brilliantly vicious things he would say, just as he was leaving, pay her back for all her evil. He felt the ambulance moving fast. Put your foot down, matey, don’t waste a second...
The ambulance was doing about forty when it came to the lefthand bend at the top of the twisting slope down to Fairwater Ford. It was then the snowflakes began to fly on to the windscreen, hundreds of fast-moving limpets seizing a foot-hold. Like many professionals, the driver didn’t immediately switch on his windscreen-wipers.
When he saw the snow would stick, he flicked the switch. His vision was obscured.
The glass cleared. He was about ten yards past the point where he would normally have slowed down and applied slight brake pressure to go into the bend. He braked.
The ambulance went into a skid. There was no room for him to drive into the skid. Instead of taking the corner to the left, the ambulance slid, side on, at the low bank on the right hand side.
It hit the bank, which was only eighteen inches high. The impact on the offside wheels sent the vehicle toppling, roof first, over the bank. It turned over once – twice – three times – on the steep slope. Then it came to a standstill, resting on its side, half-way down the incline.
It took Henry Niles some moments to understand that he was hanging off the bench with a leather belt round his chest. Pawson lay beneath him, not moving. Henry Niles was confused. The strap made it difficult to breathe.
“Mr. Pawson? It’s hurting me.”
Pawson lay still. Henry began to whimper. His fingers could make no impression on the metal buckle. He struggled, his legs hanging over Pawson’s head. Then he slipped through the belt and fell on top of Pawson. He started to cry. Mister Pawson didn’t move. Henry shouted. Nobody came. Sometimes they came when he shouted, sometimes they didn’t. The ambulance doors were open, one flap resting on snow. He clambered out, his whimpering stopping when he found his feet in snow.
He remembered it, white and cold and wet. Men had chased him over a big space, he didn’t know why they chased him, he’d run and run and run until he’d fallen in it, they were shouting so loudly his ears had almost burst. Then he remembered why they were chasing him. He did remember, some times, but most of the time he was able not to think about it. He knew that men didn’t like him.
Many psychiatrists and psychologists and doctors had tried to penetrate the mind of Henry Niles, the mental defective who had murdered three children before, at the age of twenty-five, he’d been put away for the rest of his life in Two Waters. These men had come to an almost unanimous conclusion – that Henry had a mental age of eight. None of them could explain why other humans with the same mental age – children of eight years old, for instance – did not have Henry’s deadly compulsion to rape and strangle little girls. Occasionally they detected signs of a more mature intelligence in Henry, but it was impossible to draw him out. With adults he behaved like a frightened child, with children he was a giant ogre. As long as grown-up people were present he tended to cower in corners, like a savagely beaten puppy. But when he was alone in a world of children, he grew up.
He stood alone beside the upturned ambulance. It was nine years since he had been on his own in the fresh air. Back up the slope he saw the other man, the driver, lying in the snow. Sniffing heavily, he started up the slope. Behind him was the great moor, dark now as the snow fell in earnest. He slipped several times as he scrambled up to the driver. He looked down on a face half-pushed into snow. Blood trickled from the ear and moved in a throbbing stream down the man’s cheek.
“Gentle Jesus meek and mild,” Henry moaned. He began to clamber desperately to the top of the slope. He shouldn’t have seen that blood. They would blame him for that. There was blood that other time. It wasn’t his fault. He would have to run away before the men came, shouting.
He had walked about half a mile in the snow, down the road to the Fairwater Ford and over the little footbridge beside the ford and halfway up the hill on the other side, before a car pulled up beside them.
“Want a lift then?” said one of three young farm workers in the car. “It’s a funny ol’ day for walkin’. We can take you’s far’s Compton Wakley, that suit you?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said Henry.
One of the men laughed. Henry looked at him through the open window.
“We ain’t blamin’ you for walkin’,” said the first man, “Got caught, did you? Don’t do to risk it on the moor. Changes fast like.”
The car made good time to Compton Wakely. The men talked among themselves. Henry was happy. They didn’t think it was his fault. They were nice men.
At Compton Wakley he stood by the side of the road until the car drove off. Then he began walking down a road marked by a signpost: FOURWAYS CROSS. He had gone only a few hundred yards when another car stopped and a farmer offered him a lift as far as Compton Fitzpaine. He got into the car.
“You’ll be goin’ to the dance at Dando then?” said the farmer. “You must be dancin’ mad to try and walk it on a night like this.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said Henry.
The farmer snorted.
“It’ll be your own fault if you don’t get back this night,” he said. “I reckons us’ll be the last car along this road the way it’s comin’ down.”
“I don’t want to go back,” said Henry Niles.
“Just as well then,” said the farmer. Dances, he thought, always attracted them.