The Elderbrook Brothers (37 page)

‘You leave me alone,' Caidster said thickly. ‘I'm going.'

‘Not yet, Caidster. Stay a little longer, now you've found your way. Besides, you belong here now, don't you? You're handy about the place. A good worker. No complaints at all.' Matthew heard himself speaking, as though it had been another man, and a stranger, speaking from a little distance. ‘Did you climb this tree here, and look in at her window? That's all I'm asking, man.'

‘What d' you want to know that for?'

‘I'll tell you,' said Matthew confidingly. ‘If you didn't look you didn't see anything. And if you didn't see anything you don't know anything. And if you don't know anything your clever talk of what you'd do was all brag and bounce. I'm calling your bluff, dear Caidster, so—did you or didn't you?'

‘Well, then … have it your own way, mister. I did.'

‘You did?'

‘That's right.' Caidster cackled softly. ‘Like me to tell you what I saw?'

‘I don't believe you, Caidster.'

‘Come to think of it,' said Caidster, in a leering tone,
‘you
ought to know what I saw.'

Matthew answered softly, in a voice of silk: ‘You're lying, you little bastard. You saw nothing. There was nothing to see. And what's more you didn't so much as climb the tree.'

‘Not climb the tree!' said Caidster. ‘That I did.'

‘Then let's see you do it again,' said Matthew, quickly advancing.

Caidster made as if to run, but Matthew, being already in motion, was too quick for him. Feeling himself cornered, Caidster with two clutching hands jumped at the gun whose butt hovered threateningly over him. He seized the butt, and a scuffle began, a tugging to and fro. With a sudden change of tactics Matthew pushed instead of pulling, pushed the butt in his enemy's face and saw him fall backwards.

Having retrieved his gun he stood over the fallen man, ready
to strike. He was breathless. His heart pumped in his ears.

Carefully controlling his voice he said: ‘Why be so rough? You're going to climb that tree. That's all I'm asking. Up you get now, like a sensible fellow.' One thing at a time was Matthew's way. His one idea possessed him. He was consumed with a desire to get at the truth of that story. ‘Come along, man.' Again he fell into a coaxing tone. ‘You're not hurt.' That was true. The fellow was not hurt, except in his dignity. ‘If you won't climb the tree I shall know why. You can't. It's too much for you. You can't and you never did. I don't blame you, Caidster. It's not an easy tree to climb.'

Caidster got on to his feet. ‘Easy as pap,' he said.

‘Easy to talk,' said Matthew.

‘All right, you ruddy sod. I'll show you.' He had recovered, in a trice, all his self-conceit. His expression was both complacent and insolent. ‘And I'll tell you summick too. I'm not afraid of no gun, you lily-livered swipe. Taint loaded anyhow.'

‘What makes you think that?'

‘Never mind,' said Caidster, swaggering to the tree. ‘Anything to oblige an old friend.'

He spat on his two hands, rubbed them briskly together, and slapped them against the smooth trunk as though he were slapping a pair of cheeks. He slapped, and held, and began going up. The lowest branches were well beyond a man's reach, but his feet sought and found some invisible support. Watching closely, seeing no hesitation or faltering, Matthew felt a sudden stab of conviction that he had done it before. Bile rose hot in his throat.

‘So I can't climb the tree, can't I?' said Caidster cockily.

He was now perched on the first branch. ‘I'll show you,' he said. And continued the ascent, up and up.

In farming you have to think ahead. But this was not farming. A demon in Matthew's mind said suddenly that he must
see for himself. Nothing else would satisfy him. He went to the tree and felt round its base for footholds. He was less agile than Caidster, perhaps, but bigger and taller. After one or two abortive attempts he reached the first fork and hauled himself up. Caidster by now was out of sight, hidden by intervening branches. For an instant he forgot Caidster, remembering his boyhood and the tree-climbing he had done with Guy. When Caidster came back into his thoughts it was like waking from an evil dream and finding it true. This unwilling intimacy with Caidster, the sense of being exposed to him, made the creature unspeakably horrible in his sight. He was like an evil conscience, or the projection of a hideous fancy. That he was a practical menace too was for the moment lost sight of: he had assumed a significance deeper than logic and larger than life. Matthew was wincingly aware of this thing above him in the tree. It was necessary that he should find it and speak with it, should wring from it a denial of what it had asserted, and so leave him free, cleansed and free. The limbs of the beech were cold to his touch, like marbled flesh. The shaken leaves dropped beads of moisture on his hands and upturned face. Presently he caught sight of his man, the dark twisted shape of him, straddling the branch whose extremity swayed gently towards Hilda's window. It was a branch somewhat apart from the others. It pointed at the window like an accusing finger. For that it was created, part of a preordained pattern which he knew he could not escape. He felt himself to be in the grip of a blind compulsion. He felt himself to be no longer himself. But all his mind was on Caidster.

He gained the branch where Caidster was. But Caidster had left the shelter of the trunk and was still moving away from him, his back towards him, his face peering at the window. Matthew sat in the fork, with his back against the trunk, resting, breathing quickly. He saw Caidster shift his position and looked downwards, searchingly.

Caidster called softly: ‘Hi! Are you there, you ——?

Can you see me?'

Matthew sat very still. It was clear that Caidster supposed him to be still on the ground.

‘You'll pay for this, let me tell you. You'll pay plenty. Everything I want, that's what you'll pay. See?'

It needed only that. The pattern was now clear. Matthew smiled. Not in mirth, not in triumph, but with agony, knowing what he must do.

‘You watch
me
, said Caidster, addressing his imaginary audience on the ground. He took something from his pocket, lifted his right hand, and aimed at Hilda's window. There was the sharp noise of shattering glass. After that the silence was deadly, until Caidster remarked, with crowing satisfaction: ‘See that? It's easy. What I want I bloody well take. See?' The branch swayed dangerously.

Matthew had rested long enough. He pushed away from the supporting trunk and shuffled slowly, carefully, along the branch, towards the voice that derided him.

As if feeling cheated of his triumph Caidster called out peevishly: ‘Where the hell are you?'

Matthew spoke. He could bear his silence no longer. ‘I'm here, Caidster,' he said. ‘Just behind you.'

With a startled yelp Caidster half-turned his head. But Matthew was now nearer, was much nearer, was very near. His knees gripping the branch with a strong, a rider's grip, he reached forward and put one hooked hand round Caidster's chin, and pulled his head back with a jerk, while with the other hand on the man's left ankle he unseated him. A scream and he was gone. Matthew clutched dizzily at the shaking branch. Fall, Caidster, fall. It was inevitable and easy and unbelievable. He saw him go, saw him fall head first, crumple on the ground, and lie still. There followed, in this night of many silences, the deadliest silence of all. The enemy lay quiet in the grass. There let him lie.

THE scream echoed in his mind. Its terror was contagious, seeming to freeze life at its source. He held his breath in an agony of tension, a strangling paralysis, and at last let it escape him in a sigh, a great sobbing sigh, that shook him, emptied him, left him limp. He hung there, clung there, like a bundle of clothes. The tarnished silver of the sky spun round him. The ground, and what lay upon it, he saw dimly, through the cloud of his breath. When the life in his veins stirred again there came with that quickening a torturing anxiety lest his work were not yet done. The death of a man appalled him, but something just short of death would be more dreadful still. An animal in pain he could never face unless to put an end to the pain. If Caidster still breathed he must be succoured, against all logic. Matthew knew it was not in him, now, to do otherwise.

He braced himself for the effort of getting down from the tree. He raised his sickened eyes from the ground, and saw, some yards below him, at her broken window, the white face of Hilda. Moonlight was on it. It was wide-eyed, gasping, transfigured, a mask of terror, strange and impersonal. Yet Hilda it was, and she was looking at the ground. In the moment of his seeing her she raised her head and looked straight at where he was. Whether or not she saw him her eyes did not betray. She stared steadily. He stared steadily at her. They stayed so, stared so, saying nothing, making no sound. There was no sound in the world except the beat of his heart.

As though it had been a dream, the face vanished. He began shuffling his way back along the branch he sat on.

To be active again was a relief, a distraction. But distraction brought its own nemesis. A dozen times during the slow descent his mind, grappling with the immediate task, lost sight of its obsession for an instant, and came back to it with a hideous jerk, to find it fresh and bright, incredible and actual. Careful. I mustn't let go. Careful and calm. Instinct warned him,
just in time, that if he lost control he would himself be lost, and Ann lost, and all lost. What was done was done, and no use wishing otherwise. What is there to be afraid of, he said, and reaching the ground he took firmly the three steps that must bring him where he dreaded to go. He had stiffened his mind to withstand the worst shock, but he had never seen death by violence before, and the sight transfixed him. It was a blast of silence in his ears, a cold finger on his heart. Death it was: he could not doubt it. The body lay writhen and rigid on its back, the head disjointed, the bloody face naked to the moon. The eyes stared glassily, as if accusing him. The tongue protruded. But these were nothing. It's dead, quite dead, Matthew told himself. But if it was dead how could it go on screaming? The scream rang in his ears. It was written clearly on the stark distorted face. Hush, man, hush. You're dead, I tell you. Be quiet and lie still.

What do to next? He had no plan. He had no thought beyond this. Of this itself he had had no thought, till it happened. Yet he had done it. He had willed it and it had happened. His act lay in the grass, still now, quiet now, glassily confronting him. He turned from it and went cautiously into the house, picking his way like a man tiptoeing through mire. The door, as always, made a noise in opening, and he stood with held breath, nerves quivering, lest anyone had heard it. And now he was in the kitchen, groping for a chair. It was Ann's chair he found, and he sat himself in it and buried his face in his hands. His loud boots were now at rest on the brick floor: they could no longer betray him. What was next to be done, except go to bed and forget? He grinned derisively at the idea. He could feel the flesh of his face moving and the lips curling back from the teeth. Suddenly he conceived the notion that there was someone in the room grinning back at him from the darkness. His hand stole into his pocket and fumbled for matches. After an interval he struck one, held it up, saw the shadows give place to him, backing away into their corners. Then the match went out.
Darkness surged back and closed in on him. He waited for the dead man to speak.

Silly fancies, he said, shaking himself. I must get off to bed.

But how could he go to bed and leave that thing lying there? How could he do so and how could he not do so? In the morning it would be found. By whom? There would be an outcry, an inquiry, a thousand sharp questions to face, and a thousand lies to tell. Already those lies stuck in his throat. If only I could sleep, he said, getting out of the chair and creeping carefully, dragging noisily, through the kitchen and into the hallway where the main staircase was. Every stair creaked as he trod upon it. Arrived at the stairhead, sweating and cold, he made out that the door of Ann's bedroom and his was ajar. As he edged his way in, Ann spoke to him.

‘Is that you, Matt?' There was no hint of sleep in her voice.

‘Yes, dear. It's all right. Did I wake you?'

‘No. I wasn't asleep. Where have you been, Matt?'

He thanked God there were two beds in the room. The long illness had made that necessary. Without answering her he flung himself down, and closed his eyes, and hoped she would not speak again.

‘What have you been doing?' she asked.

‘Oh … messing about. Nothing much. Try and get some sleep.'

His thoughts went dizzily round, but his body was dead tired, and gradually a drowsiness took hold of him. For an immeasurable timeless moment the mind drifted away from the problem it could not solve, and peace fell, and remoter memories supervened. He recalled a particular moment of the past, saw himself a small child again, heard his mother's voice, frightened and scolding. Then for an instant he
was
that child. He had ‘run away' to watch the trains go by, had traversed three fields and crossed a road, and scrambled his way through the barbed wire fencing of the steep railway cutting. Quite near the line he had sat himself, and only he knew how safe he was. No train had passed yet, and even
now, some thirty-five years later, he could feel the disappointment of that long unfruitful vigil and his mother's anxious descent upon him after long searching. He felt again the fierce grip of her fingers on his arms, saw her young face bending over him, loving and angry. And he wished she were with him now, to relieve him of the secret which suddenly, in a spasm of horror, was back again in full sight, possessing and consuming him.

It was a small noise that had jerked him back into the present. Ann was speaking again.