The Dark Shore (3 page)

4

Max Alexander was in bed. There was only one other place which he preferred to bed and that was behind the wheel of his racing car, but his doctors had advised him against racing that season and so he had more time to spend in bed. On that particular evening he had just awakened from a brief doze and was reaching out for a cigarette when the telephone bell rang far away on the other side of the mattress.

He picked up the receiver out of idle curiosity.

“Max Alexander speaking.”

“Hullo, Max,” said an unfamiliar woman’s voice at the other end of the wire. “How are you?”

He hesitated, aware of a shaft of annoyance. Hell to these women with their ridiculous air of mystery and cool would-be call-girl voices which wouldn’t even fool a two-year-old child
...

“This is Flaxman nine-eight-double-one,” he said dryly. “I think you have the wrong number.”

“You’ve got a short memory, Max,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “It wasn’t really so long ago since Clougy, was it?”

After a long moment he managed to say politely into the white ivory receiver, “Since
when
?”

“Clougy, Max. Clougy. You surely haven’t forgotten your friend Jon Towers, have you?”

The absurd thing was that he simply couldn’t remember her name. He had a feeling it was biblical. Ruth, perhaps? Or Esther? Hell, there must be more female names in the Scriptures than that, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of any more. It was nearly a quarter of a century since he had last opened a copy of the Bible.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said for lack of anything better to say. “How’s the world treating you these days?
”

What the devil was she telephoning for? After the affair at Clougy he had seen no more of her and they had gone their separate ways. Anyway, that was ten years ago. Ten years was an extremely long time.

“
...
I’ve been living in a flat in Davies Street for the past two years,” she was saying. “I’m working for a Piccadilly firm now. Diamond merchants. I work for the managing director.
”

As if he cared.

“You’ve seen the news about Jon, of course,” she said carelessly before he could speak. “Today’s evening paper.”

“Jon?”

“You haven’t seen the paper? He’s back in London.”

There was a silence. The world was suddenly reduced to a white ivory telephone receiver and a sickness below his heart which hurt his lungs.

“He’s staying here for a few days, I gather he’s here on some kind of business trip. I just wondered if you knew. Didn’t he write and tell you he was coming?”

“We lost touch with each other when he went abroad,” said Alexander abruptly and replaced the receiver without waiting for her next comment.

He was sweating, he noticed with surprise, and his lungs were still pumping the blood around his heart in a way which would have worried his doctors. Lying back on the pillows he tried to breathe more evenly and concentrate on the ceiling above him.

Really, women were quite extraordinary, always falling over themselves to be the first bearers of unexpected news. He supposed it gave them some peculiar thrill, some spurious touch of pleasure. This woman had obviously been reveling in her role of self-appointed newscaster.

“Jon Towers,” he said aloud. “Jon Towers.” It helped him to recall the past little by little, he decided. It was soothing and restful and helped him to view the situation from a disinterested, dispassionate point of view. He hadn’t thought of Jon for a long time. How had he got on in Canada? And why should he have come back now after all those years? It had always seemed so obvious that he would never under any circumstances come back after his wife died
...

Alexander stiffened as he thought of Sophia’s death. That had been a terrible business; even now he could remember the inquest, the doctors, the talks with the police as if it were yesterday. The jury had returned a verdict of accident in the end, although the possibility of suicide had also been discussed, and Jon had left the house after that, sold his business in Penzance and had been in Canada within two months.

Alexander shook a cigarette out of the packet by his bed and lit it slowly, watching the tip bu
rn
and smoulder as he pushed it into the orange flame. But his thoughts were quickening, gathering speed and clarity as the memories slipped back into his mind. Jon and he had been at school together. To begin with they hadn’t had much in common, but then Jon had become interested in motor-racing and they had started seeing each other in the holidays and staying at one another’s houses. Jon had had an odd sort of home life. His mother had been an ex-debutante type, very snobbish, and he had spent most of his time quarreling with her. His parents had been divorced when he was seven. His father, who had apparently been very rich and extremely eccentric, had lived abroad after that and had spent most of his life making expeditions to remote islands in search of botanical phenomena, so that Jon had never seen him at all. There had been various other relations on the mother’s side, but the only relation of his that Alexander had ever met had come from old Towers’ side of the family. She had been a year younger than Jon and Alexander himself, and her name had been Marijohn.

He wasn’t in the room at all now. He was far away in another world and there was sun sparkling on blue waters from a cloudless sky. Marijohn, he thought, and remembered how they had even called her that too. It had never been shortened to Mary. It had always been Marijohn, the first and last syllable both stressed exactly the same. Marijohn Towers.

When he had been older he had tried taking her out
f
or a while as she was rather good-looking, but he might just as well have s
aved
his energy b
e
cause he had never got anywhere. There had been
too many other
men all with
the
same aim in view, and anyway she had s
eemed to prefer
men
much older than herself. Not that Alexander had minded;
h
e had never even begun to understand what she was thinking, and although he could tolerate mysterious women in small doses he always became irritated if the air of mystery was completely impenetrable
...
She had married a solicitor in the end. Nobody had known why. He had been a very ordinary sort of fellow, rather dull and desperately conventional. Michael, he had been called. Michael something-or-other. But they were divorced now anyway and Alexander didn’t know what had happened to either of them since then.

But before Marijohn had married Michael, Jon had married Sophia
...

The cigarette smoke was hurting his lungs and suddenly he didn’t want to think about the past any more. Sophia, astonishingly enough, had been a Greek waitress in a Soho cafe. Jon had been nineteen when he had met her and they had married soon afterwards—much to the disgust of his mother, naturally, and to the fury of his father who had immediately abandoned his latest expedition to fly back to England. There had been appalling rows on all sides and in the end the old man had cut Jon out of his will and returned to rejoin his expedition. Alexander gave a wry smile. Jon hadn’t given a damn! He had borrowed a few thousand pounds from his mother, gone to the opposite end of England and had started up an estate agent’s business down in Penzance, Cornwall. He had paid her back, of course. He had made a practice of buying up cottages in favorable parts of Cornwall, converting them and selling them at a profit. Cornwall had been at its height of popularity then, and it was easy enough for a man like Jon who had had capital and a head for money to earn enough to pay his way in the world. Anyway he hadn’t been interested in big money at that particular time—all he had wanted had been his wife, a beautiful home in peaceful surroundings and his grand piano. He had got all three, of course. Jon had always got what he wanted.

The memories darkened suddenly, twisting and turning in his mind like revolving knives. Yes, he thought, Jon had always got what he wanted. He wanted a woman and he had only to crook his little finger; he wanted money and it flowed gently into his bank account; he wanted you to be a friend for some reason and you became a friend ... Or did you? When he was no longer there, it was as if a spell had been lifted and you started to wonder why you had ever been friends with him
...

He thought of Jon’s marriage again. There had only been one child, and he had been fat and rather plain and hadn’t looked much like either of his parents. Alexander felt the memories quicken in his mind again; he was recalling the weekend parties at Clougy throughout the summer when the Towers’ friends would drive down on Friday, sometimes doing the journey in a day, sometimes stopping Friday night
e
n route and arriving on Saturday for lunch. It had been a long drive, but Jon and Sophia had entertained well
and anyway the place had been a perfect retreat for any long weekend
...
In a way it had been too much of a retreat, especially for Sophia who had lived all her life in busy crowded cities. There was no doubt that she had soon tired of that beautiful secluded house by the sea that Jon had loved so much, and towards the end of her life she had become very restless.

He thought of Sophia then, the voluptuous indolence, the languid movements, the dreadful stifled boredom never far below the lush surface. Poor Sophia. It would have been better by far if she had stayed in her cosmopolitan restaurant instead of exchanging the teeming life of Soho for the remote serenity of that house by the sea.

He went on thinking, watching his cigarette burn, remembering the rocks beneath the cove where she had fallen. It would have been easy enough to fall, he had thought at the time. There had been a path, steps cut out of the cliff, but it had been sandy and insecure after rain and although the cliff hadn’t been very steep or very big the rocks below had been like a lot of jagged teeth before they had flattened out in terraces to the water’s edge.

He stubbed out his cigarette, grinding the butt of ashes. It had been a beautiful spot below those cliffs. Jon had often walked out there with the child.

He could see it all so clearly now, that weekend he had been at Clougy for one of the gay parties which Sophia had loved so much. He had come down with Eve, and Michael had come down with Marijohn. There had been no one else, just the four of them with Jon, Sophia and the child. Jon had invited another couple as well but they hadn’t been able to come at the last minute so there had only been four visitors at Clougy that weekend.

He saw Clougy then in his mind’s eye, the old farmhouse that Jon had converted, a couple of hundred yards from the sea. There had been yellow walls and white shutters. It had been an unusual, striking place. Afterwards when it was all over, he had thought Jon would sell his home, but he had not. Jon had sold his business in Penzance, but he had never sold Clougy. He had given it all to Marijohn.

5

As soon as Michael Rivers reached his home that evening he took his car from the garage and started on the long journey south from his flat in Westminster to the remote house forty miles away in Surrey. At Guildford he paused to eat a snack supper at one of the pubs, and then he set off again towards Hindhead and the Devil’s Punchbowl. It was just after seven o’clock when he reached Anselm’s Cross, and the July sun was flaming in the sky beyond the pine trees of the surrounding hills.

He was received with surprise, doubt and more than a hint of disapproval. Visitors were not allowed on Tuesday as a general rule; the Mother Superior was very particular about it. However, if it was urgent, it was always possible for an exception to be made.

“You are expected, of course?”

“No,” said Rivers, “but I think she’ll see me.”

“One moment, please,” said the woman abruptly and left the room in a swirl of black skirts and black veil.

He waited about a quarter of an hour in that bare little room until he thought his patience must surely snap and then at last the woman returned, her lips thin with disapproval. “This way, please.”

He followed her down long corridors, the familiar silence suffocating him. For a moment he tried to imagine what it would be like to live in such a place, cut off from the world, imprisoned with one’s thoughts for hours on end, but his mind only recoiled from the thought and the sweat of horror started to prickle beneath his skin. To counteract the nightmarish twists of his imagination he forced himself to think of his life as it was at that moment, the weekdays crammed with his work at the office, his evenings spent at his club playing bridge or perhaps entertaining clients, the weekends filled with golf and the long hours in the open air. There was never any time to sit and think. It was better that way. Once long ago he had enjoyed solitude from time to time, but now he longed only for his mind to be absorbed with other people and activities which would keep any possibility of solitude far beyond his reach.

The nun opened a door. When he passed across the threshold, she closed the door again behind him and he heard the soft purposeful tread of her shoes as she walked briskly away again down the corridor.

“Michael!” said Marijohn with a smile. “What a lovely surprise!”

She stood up, moving across the floor towards him, and as she reached him the sun slanted through the window on to her beautiful hair. There was a tightness in his throat suddenly, an ache behind the eyes, and he stood helplessly before her, unable to speak, unable to move, almost unable to see.

“Dear Michael,” he heard her say gently. “Come and sit down and tell me what it’s all about. Is it bad news? You would hardly have driven all the way down here after a hard day’s work
ot
herwise.”

She had sensed his distress, but not the reason for it. He managed to tighten his self-control as she turned to lead the way over to the two chairs, one on either side of the table, and the next moment he was sitting down opposite her and fumbling for his cigarette case.

“Mind if I smoke?” he mumbled, his eyes on the table.

“Not a bit. Can you spare one for me?”

He looked up in surprise, and she smiled at his expression. “I’m not a nun,” she reminded him. “I’m not even a
novice. I’m merely ‘in retreat’.”

“Of course,” he said clumsily. “I always seem to forget that.” He offered her a cigarette. She still wore the wedding ring, he noticed, and her fingers as she accepted the cigarette were long and slim, just as he remembered.

“Your hair’s grayer, Michael,” she said. “I suppose you’re still-working too hard at the office.
”
And then, as she inhaled from the cigarette a moment later: “How strange it tastes! Most odd. Like some rare poison bringing a slow soporific death
...
How long is it since you last came, Michael? Six months?”

“Seven. I came last Christmas.”

“Of course! I remember now. Have you still got the same flat? Westminster, wasn’t it? It’s, funny but I simply can’t picture you in Westminster at all. You ought to marry again, Michael, and live in some splendid suburb like—like Richmond or Roehampton or somewhere.” She blew smoke reflectively at the ceiling. “How are all your friends? Have you seen Camilla again? I remember you said you’d met her at some party last Christmas.”

His self-possession was returning at last. He felt a shaft of gratitude towards her for talking until he felt better and then for giving him the precise opening he needed. It was almost as if she had known
...
But no, that was impossible. She couldn’t possibly have known.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t seen Camilla again.”

“Or Justin?”

She must know. His scalp started to prickle because the knowledge was so uncanny.

“No, you wouldn’t have seen Justin,” she said answering her own question before he could reply. She spoke more slowly, he noticed, and her eyes were turned towards the window, focused on some remote object which he could not see. “I think I understand,” she said at last. “You must have come to talk to me about Jon.”

The still silence was all around them now, a huge tide of noiselessness which engulfed them completely. He tried to imagine that he was in his office and she was merely another client with whom he had to discuss business, but although he tried to speak the words refused to come.

“He’s come back.”

She was looking at him directly for the first time, and her eyes were very steady, willing him to speak.

“Yes?”