Chapter 2

As she screamed she was conscious of a powerful impulse not to let him hear what it was that she was crying out; and the sound got lost in the air as a wordless shriek. How could she let him know? How dare she? As she stumbled away over the shingle she heard her breath rasping in her throat and before she could do anything about it she was torn by a burst of sobbing, and she flung herself to the ground and cried, with great gusts of tears shaking their way out of her into the flying darkness.

She could not say “You are the one,” she could not tell him, because the whole balance of her life was tilted against finding him. To come upon him so suddenly put her in a dangerous position from which she could only escape by trying to deny that he existed. Oh! Everything she had told him was true! And now this casual stranger – was he casual? Perhaps not; he seemed as intent as she was, and his eyes went as far as she would go, and further, into the darkness – had plunged her again into the whirlpool which generated, it seemed to her, the seeds and forms of everything she was not. So; was it love she felt? But what else could it be? Well, if it was, love was a cold thing, as sharp and in different as a flailing sword, and now it had cut her again.

She lay still and exhausted on the shingle. The darkness was complete at last, and the rain had settled into a steady beating rhythm. She shivered. She was soaked through and through. She wondered what was happening down there on the rock: had there been men there, rescuing a boat? It had flickered intermittently on the screen of the world like a scrap of dream, and she was no longer sure if it had happened at all. And where was he now?

No; that was ended. She had discovered him, but she had turned her back and gone away; she had told him, but she had done so in a scream that no-one would have understood; and now it must come to an end, and be forgotten.

She gradually became conscious of a sharp pain in her left leg, and eased it away from a stone that pressed against the shin. As she did so she felt suddenly cold, as if she had been sustained up to that moment by the warmth in his hand and fingers. She shivered again, tired out and empty. Had he thought she was beautiful? The thought came from nowhere and disappeared.

She sat up stiffly and leant her weight on her right arm. The wind blew her hair across her eyes for a second, and the wet strands of it slapped and stung her cheeks. The light had all gone; she could see only the obscure line of the horizon, and when she looked round, the dim shapes of the sandhills; but she saw more from memory than by the sight of her eyes. The rain dashed into her face and numbed her.

Now she would have to leave this stormy mask behind her, and walk out of the drama of night and air and water and go back home, faceless. Tattered snatches of movement still caught at the edges of her soul and tempted her to run back down the beach, seek him out, force his eyes to stare into hers again and then never leave him; but they were only broken impulses without any weight of meaning behind them, and they clung for a second, and then fell off. The knowledge that in an hour or so she would have no identity – that she had no identity now – frightened her suddenly, but it was a familiar fear, and she knew how to deal with it.

Her method was to recollect as painstakingly as possible all the circumstances which had formed her, and then to pretend that they were true; to repeat her name over and over under her breath, and then to pretend that she was herself. In this way she preserved a fragile and tenuous stability which enabled her to live her real life and experience her real obsessions unobserved.

But this time, she realised, the reconstruction of her false self would have to be far more elaborate, detailed, and passionately carried out than ever before; because she had no way of telling when, if ever, she would be able to abandon it again.

She stood up carefully and leant against the wind, pushing her hair out of her eyes and looking intently towards the sea; and saw nothing there but chaos and darkness. A slight dizziness affected her for a moment, and she nearly fell over; and in that second she felt suddenly warm, and heard a voice speaking with great clarity; but when she recovered and stood upright again, she had forgotten what it had said.

She turned her back on the sea and began to walk up towards the dunes. She had so much to examine, to sort out – really, it seemed as if she had lived for a thousand years. She was assailed, as her feet met the first patch of sand, by an oceanic sense of tragedy that made her put her hands to her head and rock back and forth with anguish; and it was only after a low moan of pain had escaped her lips that she recognised the source of it in the intense pain in her ears, caused by the cold wind and the rain. The impressions of her senses and the impulses of her mind were inextricably confused; she realised it, and found in it merely another cause for regret. The world – and to the vague and unsatisfactory term “the world” she attached, in her own speculations, a precise, elaborate, and meticulously organised meaning – was retreating from her with the formal inevitability of a mass of high waters after a flood; and this was the only true cause of ruin, and the only true reason for anguish.

With her hands pressed tightly to the sides of her head she trudged up the slope and into the dunes, where the going was heavy on the deep, soaking sand but where, at least, the force of the wind was broken and dispersed. Something in her chaotic state seemed to have improved a little: it was caused, she realised, by the simple dogged action of walking, which went a little way towards imposing a measure of order on the confusion of memories and emotions and movements that she was trying, now, to organise into a recognizable semblance of herself. Gradually the whirl of ideas began to find one or two vortices to settle around. She found herself wondering why, first of all, she had instinctively reacted as she had done towards the stranger, and why she had justified it to herself so emphatically afterwards; for now, a little calmer, a little less oppressed, she began to recognise in this refusal a cause of great potential sorrow. And secondly she began to take stock of herself once more: her head was less painful now, and as the rain seemed to be easing off, she took her hands away from her ears and brushed her hair back, pressing the water out as much as possible. She shook her coat, shivering with distaste as drops of moisture on the collar ran down her neck. Well, she had not drowned, nor had she been raped; so for the time being, she thought, her body was safe enough.

Half unconsciously she began to divide up the scattered pieces of sensation and knowledge that moved along with her into what was hers and what belonged to the night and the wind and the rain. And one of the first things she made herself acknowledge – with an involuntary smile – as she came out of the sandhills and into the grassy field, and saw the lights of the town in the distance, was the fact that her name was Elizabeth Cole.

Her next task was to get herself home. This involved making a train journey of an hour or so, and then waiting for a bus; and the bus, when it came, took twenty-five minutes or half an hour to travel the six miles between the town and the village she lived in, and by that time she would be half dead, she thought, or more than that: completely dead, and her body would walk into the house and climb the stairs and get into bed, and close its eyes on the emptiness forever.

But for the moment her eyes were open. She looked half-hopefully down each street as she came to it, feeling the usual silly fears: suppose she met him coming round a corner? Suppose he, too, were to get on the train, and come up to her in the corridor with a knowing smile? Better to ignore the fears, to pretend that she was in disguise – and so, indeed, she was, she thought.

A clock outside a jeweller’s shop told her the time, and she realised that she had three-quarters of an hour to wait for a train. As she passed a coffee bar the smell of food reminded her of how hungry she was: she stood and stared inside for a moment, thinking how clean it looked, how bright and warm and comfortable. In every way it was ideal: and all she had to do to be allowed to sit in there for a while was pay for some food and a cup of coffee, perhaps, and she had money in her purse.

She sat at a table with her back to the street and ate greedily. The place was nearly empty: there were only a boy and a girl in the corner and a man on his own reading a newspaper. She felt more sure of herself now,. The red plastic of the seat was more than comfortable; it was as soft as mist. The colour reminded her of a dress she had had as a small girl.

She thought of taking off her raincoat and hanging it on the coat-rack by the door that led into the kitchen. But she thought that it would not get dry, and would be uncomfortable to put on again, so she merely undid the buttons and let it hang open. The neck and shoulders of her pullover were wet too.

She bought some cigarettes and smoked one in the waiting-room on the station. The stove in there was heated by coke. The top of it was so hot that when she touched the tip of the cigarette to it to light it, for she had forgotten to buy any matches, she thought her hand was burning, and expected to see flames running all over it.

The ticket collector was in the booking office, and she could not find anyone to show her ticket to. But as she gave up waiting and went through the gate on to the platform, he came out and clipped her ticket. It was soaking wet and he tore the edge a little.

The train came in on time and stood at the platform for a minute or so. The carriages had a corridor running down the middle of them, with the seats on each side of it in groups of four round a table. There were perhaps ten or fifteen people in each carriage. Elizabeth sat on the left-hand side facing the engine.

The railway line ran along the coast for about ten miles before turning inland. It had stopped raining now and patches of starry sky showed between the racing clouds. The moon seemed to strain against the wind to hold still. Elizabeth leaned back and watched it, resting her cheek on her hand.

She felt at ease, fed and warm. The heating-pipes under the seat would soon dry her coat out. She was balanced.

A small group of fishermen’s huts in the distance was lit brightly and surprisingly by the moon. There was no-one near them, and perhaps they were totally empty. Later on she saw a barn in a field, standing away from the rest of the farm buildings. It was dark and enclosed, but she felt that at any moment someone might light a lantern and go out to it, and perhaps even put a paraffin stove in there to warm it up.

She could see a light flashing at regular intervals far out at sea. It was a lightship, and it was anchored near a wide stretch of shoals and treacherous sandbanks. The railway line ran along a high embankment of stones set a little way back from the beach. When the tide was in and a high wind was blowing off the sea the side of the train was soaked with spray that dashed against the windows. The tide was going out now, and the wind was dropping.

If she were rich, she would lay this panorama in front of her lover, for him to sleep in and dream. But which lover? Now she no longer knew who her lover was; and for the moment she craved for nothing. She herself could go to sleep, if she chose to. And because she craved for nothing, she was not unhappy when the train turned away from the coast and went inland.

It was travelling fast. Telegraph posts flashed by invisibly like tokens of regret. If she regretted anything it was not having let him speak. There would have been so much for him to say to her! And she would nod dumbly, entranced, and beg him to kiss her again.

Two women on the other side of the carriage were talking, about the cousin of one of them, and her baby. He was called Peter and his father was a plumber. Elizabeth listened to them for a while. They talked quietly, slitting side by side without moving.

Just before it left the coast the train passed a wide estuary with a long low island in it where thousands of water-birds had their nests. In countless trees inland owls would be stirring and haunting the air with their cries.

There was no fear in the world at the moment, and no darkness. Darkness was caused by distance, for all things shone with their own light, and if she could not see them, it was only because they were too far away and not because it was dark. She had seen his face well enough, hadn’t she? It was the same with fear. Things had their own benedictions and reassurances. It was only when you couldn’t see them that you began to be afraid. He had blessed her with his hand and faithfully observed her commands; he had reassured her by the intent silence in his eyes. How they had stared! It was almost as if he’d been afraid. No, no; he had not been afraid.

Far off in the woods a vixen called to her cubs to warn them that a human being was nearby; her savage and uncertain-sounding cry, between a bark and a moan, echoed time and time again between the trees.

Elizabeth smiled to herself with relief. But it was strange, all the same, that none of the men to whom she had confessed had done exactly what she wanted. Most of them tried to speak. She might so easily have been murdered by any of them. She must have been lying in fragments, separated, disconnected, for the past months; or asleep.

For some distance the railway ran parallel to a road. It was not a main road, but it was straight and had a good surface. She imagined him in a car, a large, expensive, comfortable car, driving swiftly along the road beside the train, looking up at her fixedly, with his hands on the wheel; the expression on his face was bewildered at first, then stern, and finally, unwillingly, happy. And if the train stopped somewhere she would get into the car with him, and listen to him as he talked.

She got off the bus and stood, a little dazed, beside the main road that led through the village as the bus drove away. The village was empty at this time of night; the pubs would be doing business, but there was no-one in the streets or in the village hall. It was not a Sunday or a feast day and her father would not be in the church; it was far too late for evensong now anyway. She could see lights in many of the windows, so people were alive; they were probably watching television, most of them, or talking, or playing games. In the window of the grocer’s shop on the other side of the road a neon light glowed, illuminating the interior of the shop.

The road was wet. The street-light fixed to an iron bracket in the wall behind her shone distinctly green, but the colours of the tar on the road and the bricks of the wall and even the paint were all reduced not to shades of green but to shades of grey, though with a metallic hint of green in them. It was clear colour, and one that showed up the textures of things with great force and clarity, tempting her to peer closely at them, to examine, to make comparisons, or just to look for a moment, clearly.

There was a swirl of petrol on the wet road in front of her, and she crouched down to look at it. Even the rainbow purples and reds and blues were subordinated to the monochrome luminosity of the streetlamp, and revealed themselves in minutely differing curves and stripes of texture, some of them glassy-smooth and others almost completely matt. It set her teeth a little on edge to look at it, and she stood up again and glanced away down the street.

A car went past, braking as it came to a curve that led round past the garage, and its lights flared brightly in the air and on the wet surface of the road, making a sudden red smear of brilliance on things, so that the palms of her hands felt hot.

The road seemed endless, although she could see hardly a hundred yards of it from where she stood. What she could see, the surface of things, was just like the road: it was either too open or too enclosed, and she could not tell which.

She leant back against the wall and closed her eyes, and felt the air blow around her face. Perhaps what she could not see would be more welcoming. What lay around the village? Fields, to be sure, and on one side, as she had told him, the moor, that came down behind the church and the rectory. The moor was wide, at least, and never deceived her. Fields lay darkly side by side and she could fly above them silently. There were barns that contained hay, and barns that were empty but for tractors, farm machinery, perhaps an old car… the thought of them made her shiver. How did this appalling dilemma get into the world, that made things either near or far away, either calm or frenzied, either hot or cold, either soothing or anguishing? There was no escape from it. It was embedded in the depths of her like a long splinter of glass, pinning her to nature.

 The surface of the road was like a giant slash of ink across a sheet of dirty paper that was smeared with grease and tiny grains of dust. She knew without letting her eyes dwell tin it that it was less attractive than clean concrete, and she knew equally well that the garage down the road had a forecourt which was bounded by a wall of concrete slabs. Furthermore, it contained and exhibited a large number of glossy surfaces of paint and enamel, and these would be even more cool and refreshing to her eyes than concrete.

She began to walk slowly down the road, her hands in her coat pockets. Until she got to the garage her only link with wholesomeness was the gusty air, which made her shiver; but she did not bother to tighten her coat around her or to button the neck, because she was striving to suppress the loathing that rose in her throat for the clutching night. She fixed her eyes on the bright neon light in the little building in the forecourt of the garage and resisted the impulses of all the other surfaces she was aware of, which flew up in her imagination and drove themselves against her like snow.

She came to it and rested her hands on the cold roughness of the concrete. The garage was deserted, as she had hoped. At the back of it was a large corrugated iron building where they repaired cars; the little glass-sided hut in the forecourt, with the neon light on inside it, was where they sold accessories and kept the till. In front of it stood three petrol pumps. There was a circular sign about three and a half feet high which swivelled on a metal frame and stood in the entrance, saying “Closed”. Her eyes took it all in gratefully. She looked first of all at the wall. Her hands lay side by side about three inches apart on a rough grey shelf which formed the top of the wall. It was perfectly flat. She had seen insects crawling on stone walls at night, lapped in a mellow air of peace, and wished she could throw off her alien body and join them. Now her hands, with their flawless surface, were tortured and inert, like victims of passion: but a passion that was not hers. that she had never felt, that she had never imagined or dreamed of… it had passed over her without even a shadow and fastened the mouth of its attention on these hands of hers, biting and twisting them unrecognizably and leaving them torn and shapeless, but still the same shape as before, unchanged.

The circular sign was caught in a gust of wind and swung round creaking. She looked up sharply and found her heart moving out towards it, as helpless in the sweeping air as the metal was.

Then she really began to ache with sorrow for the stranger on the beach; because he had gone for ever, and because she didn’t even know his name. Memory was false, and God and the world were false, but if she knew his name she could say it to herself and think of him… he had obeyed her too faithfully, and it was her fault and not his. How had the God of the world brought her to this?

She visualised as strongly as she could the rest of the village, on a sudden impulse, and spread it out around her like a cloak. She did this in order to fix herself there, because she was coming to pieces again after the momentary wholeness of the train journey. She concentrated as hard as she could, gripping the wall tightly with her invisibly tortured hands, and tried to see in her mind’s eye the entire darkened expanse of the village. Most of it lay behind her; hut that made no difference. The road, on her right, curved to the left ahead of her and led downhill a little way past the builder’s yard and out of the village. A few yards ahead on the right the road was joined by the other road through the village; the two of them formed the two sides of a triangle which was completed by a shorter road joining the two. The road directly behind her led through the village, past the village hall and the recreation ground, and out to the villages of Holy Ditton and Eastley. The road that joined it ahead of her was the main road to Silminster, and along it on the left were the church and the rectory, as well as the primary school and another garage. In the centre of the triangle there was a pond, a war memorial, a square of grass, a bus shelter, and a number of shops and houses.

Elizabeth pictured it all dimly, but it was not enough to make her feel safe. There was more yet that needed to be done, just as a beginning; as for completing the work, that might take a lifetime… now why, oh, why had she run away? Coward that she was! She might have finished it all with one blow. No, no, not kill herself; all that she meant was, release him from his promise; but then she’d have had to surrender herself altogether. Though wasn’t that what she wanted? Coward that she was!

She heard a number of men leaving the pub near the bus shelter. One or two of them were walking down towards her, talking loudly. She grew afraid they would see her. Before she had time to move they did, and one of them pointed to her. They knew who she was. They spoke to each other, and laughed. They came past the garage staring at her and she recognised one of them. Then they went on down the road and shouted something, calling her names, and they both laughed loudly. It paralysed her.

She went back into the shadows beside the main garage building, and a lump came to her throat. The long grass wet her legs; nettles stung her. Light from a distant street lamp shone dimly on the corrugated iron, and she thought of lying down, covered with the long grass, so that she would be forgotten. Behind the garage was a field in which a rusty harrow lay abandoned, covered with grass. She wondered if he would know what it meant to lie down on wet grass and wish for oblivion. If only he had forced her to listen to him…

Two miles away in the darkness the well lay in the wood, with the ivy dragged suddenly from its stone coping by the hands of her father. There was a quality of rape implicit in the very existence of things, and nothing was safe from it, nothing.

Her mother opened the door of the sitting-room and looked out.

“Oh! It’s you, dear,” she said. “Where on earth have you been? Oh, look at you, you’re soaking wet; come and hang your coat in front of the fire.”

“It’s all right, mummy; don’t fuss,” said Elizabeth.

She stood in the hall, looking and feeling a little uncertain. After a second she began to take off her raincoat. She handed it to her mother, but stayed where she was, looking downwards, puzzled.

“What is it, dear? What’s the matter?” said Mrs. Cole.

“Come in, come along, there’s a dreadful draught out here. Come and get warm; you’re frozen.”

She took Elizabeth’s hand and tugged it gently, and Elizabeth followed her into the sitting room. Her mother shut the door behind them.