Through the Wall

Chapter 26

Penny lay in bed in the attic room. She had drunk the milk which Eliza brought her, just as she had taken the soup and the lightly boiled egg which had been presented to her for her supper. If she refused, and for as long as she went on refusing, Eliza would stay. She loved Eliza, but she wanted to be alone, so she drank the milk and the soup and ate the egg, and Eliza patted her and called her “my lamb,” and presently she went away.

She went through into the next house by the door on its attic floor, and when Penny heard her shoot the bolts behind her she got out of bed and locked her own door. Nothing was less likely than that either of the aunts would come up. The stair was ladder-steep for one thing, and they wouldn’t be interested for another. The thought of Aunt Florence sitting immobile at the foot of her bed and looking at her with bulging eyes, or of Aunt Cassy fidgeting and jingling and saying things about Felix, was just pure nightmare. The sort in which you want to scream and run, and there isn’t anywhere to run to.

She locked her door and lay down again. The bed was close up to the window and she could look out over the sea. She lay there watching it. She couldn’t see the other side of the cove. She couldn’t see the place where the steps came down and Helen Adrian had fallen and died. Her view began where the fine shingle changed to sand. The tide was out. Dry sand, wet sand, and shoaling water. Rock, and pool, and orange seaweed. The sky losing its blue, paling before it darkened.

Time went by. No one came near her. The tide turned. There were sounds in the house below-Cassy Remington’s voice, Florence Brand’s heavy step, the sound of water running in the bathroom, the sound of doors opening and shutting, and, at last, silence settling in the house.

Penny waited for a long time. Then she got up and dressed herself-stockings and shoes, her old thick skirt, Felix’s old shrunk sweater, an old tweed coat. She was cold with the bitter chill of grief. The shoes were sand-shoes, they would make no noise.

She went down the attic stair to the landing, and from there to the hall without making any sound at all. She moved in the silence without jarring it. No one could possibly have heard her pass from the hall to the drawing-room. The chairs were all still there in the dark, turned from their usual places to face the table behind which Inspector Crisp had sat and questioned them. Penny could see the room as if it was full of light. She could see them all sitting there. She could hear Florence Brand saying, “Felix is not my son.” She could see the constable from Farne coming up the steps from the garden with a bundle of clothes-grey slacks, and a sweater stained with Helen Adrian’s blood. The picture was there in every detail, bright and clear. The room was dark about her, and her eyes told her that it was dark, but the picture of the lighted room was clear in her mind. She could cross to the glass door and open it without so much as brushing against one of the chairs which looked towards the Inspector’s empty seat.

When she opened the door and came down the two steps to the paved path at the back of the house she had a sense of escape. It was dark outside, but not with the enclosed darkness of the house, and it was cool, but not with the heavy chill of the room she had left. There was no breeze, only a faint movement of the air setting in from the sea with the flowing tide.

She went across the lawn and sat on the stone steps which went down to the next terrace. The tide was coming up fast. She sat there listening to the movement of the water. All day she had been calling Felix. That was why she had wanted to be alone. Everything in her called to him. Now perhaps he would come.

There was a story which she had heard Eliza tell when she was a child. She hadn’t been meant to hear it. Eliza wouldn’t have told it if she had known that Penny was outside the kitchen window, pressed up against the wall listening. It was an old story from Eliza’s mother’s side of the family, and it was about a woman who had called a dead man up out of the sea. There was a lot about charms and a full moon and the turn of the tide that went by her, but some of it she never forgot. She was remembering it now. A fine summer afternoon and the sun hot on the wall. Eliza’s voice coming out through the open kitchen window as she talked to her friend. “Sarah Bethel was the woman’s name.” Penny always remembered that part, because of Bethel being in the Bible. And that bit at the end, “So she waited on the turn of the tide like the wise woman told her-‘He went with the tide and he’ll come with the tide, if so be he comes at all, and no good counting on it.’ But he did. So my mother told me, and it was her mother told her, and she knew the woman well. The tide was far out and the moon rising, and with the turn of the tide he came. First she knew of it something splashed in the shallow water, and then she saw him black against the moon. It was one of those big full moons, as yellow as an orange. She saw the shape of him against it, and the splashing came on up to the edge of the water and stopped there. Sarah Bethel said she didn’t know whether she was dead or alive with the fear that came on her. She stood where she was, and the splashing stopped, and there was a darkness between her and the moon. She couldn’t see nor she couldn’t hear. And when she could move again she come away, running and falling and catching her breath, and beating on the first door she came to be taken in.” That was the story-a full moon, and the turn of the tide, and a dead man coming up from the sea. And Sarah Bethel who called him and turned coward when he came.

Penny had always thought very little of Sarah Bethel. She didn’t think about her now. She thought about Felix. If he would come to her by any means, in any way, from any depth, how wide her arms would be to welcome him! She let her love flow out. It felt as strong and resistless as the tide that was coming in from the deep places of the sea, only it was warm and comforting, and the sea was cold. If Felix came to her out of the salt cold of the sea, she felt as if her love was strong enough to warm him and bring him back to life again. It was so strong, and warm, and living that it took away the pain which had been part of her all through that dreadful day. Whether he was dead or alive, nothing could stop her loving him.

The sea moved below her. It was over the shingle now. She thought about Sarah Bethel and the footsteps that had come from the sea.

But when the footsteps came they did not come from that side at all. They came from the other side of the house, they came from the road. If she had not been strained to the limit of what is possible and a little beyond it, she would hardly have heard them. They were faint, and far, and stumbling, but she felt the beat of them as if they were falling on her heart. She ran across the lawn and round the house and out on to the road, and heard the footsteps halting and coming on again, halting and coming on. The road was brimmed with shadow. Someone came out of the dark with a flagging step. Penny ran to him and caught him in her arms, and said his name as if she couldn’t be tired of saying it.

“Felix-Felix-Felix-”

He was cold to her touch. He leaned on her and shuddered, and said in a lifeless whisper,

“I’ve-come-back-”

She held him with all her strength and with all her love. The only words that she could get were, first his name, and then,

“You’re cold-you’re cold-you’re cold-”

He said, “Yes.” And then, “Let’s come in.”

She took him round the house and through the dark drawing-room and hall to the kitchen. There was an old shapeless wicker chair which Mactavish liked to sit in because it sagged in the middle. As soon as Penny put on the light Felix let himself down into it and sat there, leaning forward over his knees and staring down upon the floor.

Whilst she was stirring up the fire, putting in sticks and coal, and a drip out of the paraffin bottle to make a blaze, he neither moved nor spoke. She put water to heat, made a steaming cup of cocoa, and beat an egg into it, but he didn’t seem to know what was going on. He was wearing somebody else’s clothes-a pair of corduroy trousers that were too short and an old pullover which strained across his chest.

She came to him with the cup of cocoa in her hand and kneeled down in front of him, setting it on the floor.

“Nice hot drink, darling.”

When she had said it half a dozen times he said, “What’s the use?” and began to shudder, so that his whole lean body was shaken.

Penny got up. She wasn’t going to have her cocoa spilled. She got another cup and poured off about a quarter of what was in the first one. Then she knelt down again and held the second cup to his lips.

“Drink it up, darling. It will do you good.”

His teeth chattered on the rim, but she got the quarter cupful down, and the rest was easier. When both the cups were empty she said in an accusing voice,

“When did you have anything to eat?”

“I don’t know-this morning-”

She was still kneeling there in front of him. She said, “Silly!” And he made an abrupt movement.

“Don’t!”

“Felix-”

He caught at her then, holding her roughly, desperately, his face against her shoulder, his sobs shaking them both. After a little she began to murmur the foolish loving things you say to a hurt child.

“Darling, don’t cry. It’s Penny-tell Penny. I won’t let anyone hurt you-I won’t let them. Tell me-darling-only tell me. I know you didn’t-”

That was the most dreadful moment of all, because he lifted his head and said in a convulsed voice,

“Didn’t I?”

Penny felt as if her heart would stop, but it didn’t. She held him tight and said,

“Of course you didn’t! Why did you go away? I thought you were dead.”

He said in a confused way,

“I don’t know-I wanted-to be-”

She thought he was going to say “dead,” but it didn’t come.

He hid his face against her again. The sobbing had ceased, but sometimes she could hardly hear the words. It was more as if she felt them, as she felt the labouring breath and every now and then the deep shudder that shook him in her arms.

“I didn’t sleep-I couldn’t. It was all over. She was going away-she was going to marry Mount-it was finished. As soon as it began to be light I went down to the cove. I was going to swim right out. I think I meant to come back-I don’t know. But when I saw her-lying there-”

She had to hold him whilst the agonized shudder passed.

“You found her dead?”

He said in an exhausted voice,

“I think so-” Then, with an effort at control, “When I’m telling you like this, I know that I couldn’t sleep, and that I went down to bathe, and found her. But when I start from the other end and look back, sometimes-I can only see myself kneeling there, touching her-and the blood-” His voice left off.

She held him until the rigid muscles relaxed.

“You didn’t hurt her. Darling, you wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

He said, “Don’t! I’ve got a foul temper-but I didn’t touch her-I know that-really. As long as I’m sane I know it- only every now and then I feel as if I was going over the edge-and then I’m not sure.”

“That’s the shock, darling. It was a most dreadful shock. I’m going to get you something to eat.”

“I couldn’t!”

“There’s some good stew. It won’t take a moment to heat, and you can go on telling me what happened.”

He did not realize how much of his burden she had lifted, but he was able to find the relief of words.

“I only thought about getting away. I wanted to get out of it all. I meant to swim right out and go on swimming till I went down. I stuffed my clothes in under the bank and waded in, and then-I just went on-swimming-”

When she had put the saucepan on the fire she came back to him.

“I thought you were drowned.”

He said, “Better if I had been. They’ll think-I did it.” Then, with a sudden jerk of the head, “Who did?”

“They don’t know.”

“They’ll think it was me.”

“They’ll find out. Go on telling me. You swam-and then-”

“There was a chap in a yacht-just himself and a boy. I was about finished. They got me in. A nice chap. He lent me some things-money to get home with. He landed me along the coast. I thought I would wait till it was dark before I came back. I walked from Ledstow.”

“And nothing to eat all day?”

She jumped up and went to stir the saucepan. Mrs. Woolley made a marvellous stew. It was beginning to give off a savoury smell. All at once Felix was aware of tearing hunger.