The Reckoning (65 page)

‘
You're hurting me,' she said, with a sigh of pain, but he
didn't seem to hear her.

‘
If I can't have you, then there's nothing to live for. I will
have you — I don't care what it takes.'

‘
I can't —'

‘
Don't!
I tell you, Polly, I'm at the end of my tether! I've
done my duty, I've done everything that was asked of me, and
where has it got me? Well, I'm not going to take any more of
it. Things have got to change, and they've got to change now,
soon, or I shall do something desperate. You and I will have to
— Polly? What is it? What's the matter?'

‘
I don't know,' she muttered thickly. She looked at her
hand, gripped by his so tightly that her fingers had gone
white, yet she no longer felt the pain. Her hand seemed small
and far off, growing more distant all the time. He was
receding too, and his voice boomed strangely, near and far
away, like the sound of the sea in a cave.

‘
Are you all right? You've turned so pale,' she heard him
say through the fog.

‘
I feel —' she began, and then swayed in her chair. 'Dizzy.'
Too much wine, she thought. I'm not used to it.

too much wine,' he was saying. He let go her hand and
came round the table, put his arm round her to support her,
while he reached beyond her for the bell. She lolled against
him, feeling so tired and strange, longing to lie down so that
things would keep still and stop swinging round her like bells
in a steeple, ringing in her head along with the sea booming in
the cave ...

A servant came in, tiny and far-away, and there were
hurried exclamations and explanations and after a long and
confused time Polly discovered she was lying on a bed, and a
maid she had never seen before was pulling a counterpane
over her.

‘
... sleep, miss. You'll feel much better ...' her voice came
and went. Polly sighed, and slept.

*

She dreamed she was falling, and woke with a jerk of her
limbs; woke to confusion, not knowing where she was. Her
head ached and she had a foul taste in her mouth, but worse
than either was a nameless feeling of dread which filled her.

She sat up in bed and stared wildly round her at the walls and
the furniture as though willing them to yield answers. Where
was she? What had happened?

‘
Help me,' she whispered to the empty air. Memory seeped
slowly back. She was at an inn. She was — in Aylesbury, yes. She had come here for the fair with — with Harvey! Yes, now she knew. Where was Harvey? How long had she been asleep?
She must have had too much wine. She remembered feeling
dizzy, and then — and then nothing, until she woke here.

Oh, but her head ached, and she was tortured with thirst.
She must call for someone. She reached over for the bell-rope,
and the movement made her dizzy again, but she got hold of
it in clumsy fingers, pulled it hard and long, and then
subsided against the pillows, breathing hard.

The door opened and a chambermaid came in. She looked
vaguely familiar.

‘
You rang, miss? How are you feeling now? Proper poorly
you looked before. I said to Mr Collins —'

‘Where is Lord Harvey Sale?' Polly croaked.

‘
His lordship stepped out, miss, quite a while ago. He said you was to rest here quietly till he came back for you. I don't
think he 'spected you to wake up so soon. You looked like you
was out for the count, miss, begging your pardon.'

‘Stepped out where? Did he say where he was going?'

‘
Not in my hearing, miss. I 'spect he went to see the fair —
it's a rare good one this year, miss. What a crying shame you should miss it. Should you like anything, miss? A cup of tea,
perhaps?'

‘
Yes, tea,' Polly said eagerly. Her tongue was sticking to the
roof of her mouth.

‘
Very good, miss,' said the maid kindly. 'I'll bring some up
right away, and some hot water — I 'spect you'd like to wash your face after being asleep. Makes you feel all sticky, don't
it, miss, sleeping in the daytime?'

‘
Thank you,' Polly said. The feeling of dread was still
there, but it had shrunk to the back of her mind. In the fore
ground was the urgent desire to quench her thirst and to
urinate. 'How long have I been asleep?' she asked as the maid
reached the door.

‘
Near four hours, miss,' the maid said cheerfully. 'Lord,
you went out like you'd been poll-axed!’

Half an
hour later, Polly had washed, straightened her hair
and clothing, and drunk two dishes of tea, and was waiting,
with increasing anxiety, for Harvey to return for her. Where
on earth could he be? Why had he not waited at the inn? How
could he leave her like that, so that she woke alone amongst
strangers? At last her restlessness drove her from the bedchamber and
downstairs. The coffee room was as full as the tap room, and
very noisy, and she had no idea where the private parlour was
that they had used, or whether it would still be empty; so she
walked along the passage and out to the front of the inn.
There was a bench there which, for a wonder, was empty. She
sat down with her back to the inn wall and watched the world
going past.

The fair was obviously still in full swing, and gathering
momentum in the sunset glare towards its evening excite
ments. The feeling of unreality left by having slept in the
daytime, and so unexpectedly, was increased by the passing crowds of strangers in holiday mood. They all seemed to be
oddly dressed; and wasn't there more than the usual propor
tion of deformed or pox-scarred people amongst them? A one-
eyed man seemed to leer at her from under his hat as he
passed, arm-in-arm with a man who hopped briskly on his
one leg, a wooden crutch under his other arm painted red and
white in stripes, like a barber's pole. A grotesquely fat woman in a purple pelisse coming the other way had an extraordinary
shock of white hair, and her face was smeared with blood.
Polly shrank back on the bench as the woman shrieked aloud;
but no, she was shrieking with laughter, and the blood all
over her mouth and chin was nothing but the sauce from
some kind of pie she had been eating. She crammed the last of
it into her open shrieking mouth, and wiped the red off her
chin with her fingers as she passed.

Polly felt the dampness of her palms and armpits, and
struggled to shake off the feeling that she was still asleep and
dreaming. Oh, where was he? Why did he not come? She
longed to see a face she knew. She longed to go home, to get
away from the bedlam of this bizarre stream of misfits.

And then he was there, hurrying through the crowds from the direction of the square towards the inn, not having seen
her yet. His face was set grimly, and he thrust people aside
unseeingly as he approached, as a man might thrust through
bracken.

She rose to her feet. 'Harvey!’

He stopped dead and jerked backwards slightly, his eyes
opening wide, as though some unseen assailant had punched
him hard just over the heart.

‘Polly!'

‘Harvey, what is it? What's happened?’

He came on, beginning to smile, holding out his hands.
‘Nothing, nothing. I wasn't expecting to see you there, that's
all. Are you all right? How are you feeling now?'

‘But Harvey, are
you
all right?'

‘You startled me a little, that's all.'

‘But you're as white as a sheet.'

‘
Nonsense! I expect it's just the light. Are you better now?'
he hurried on, 'Because we really ought to be going home. I
don't want to drive back through the dark, and in any case, it isn't right to leave Minnie any longer, even if it was her own
choice.'

‘
Yes, yes, let's go home. I don't like it here. The people all
look strange and I feel as though something bad is going to
happen.’

He took her hand gently and turned her towards the door of the inn. 'That, my darling,' he smiled, 'is a very common
symptom of the aftermath of too much to drink. If you had
been born a boy instead of a girl, you'd be familiar with it
from many a carouse with your peers at Eton and Oxford! In
its extreme form, it can bring the crawling horrors right up to
the foot of your bed.'

‘
Oh, don't!' she shuddered. 'Don't talk of it! Is that really
all it was, Harvey, just the wine?'

‘
What else? You're not accustomed to it, my love, that's all.
I should have been more careful about refilling your glass —
my fault entirely. You may blame and scold me as much as
you please: I deserve it.’

He found the landlord and settled the bill and sent for his
tilbury to be brought round, and then Polly was sitting up
beside him as he cracked his whip and sent the horse forward.
Once they were clear of the crowds, he put it into a fast trot,
and they bowled homewards through the fading light.

The air was warm and full of insects, and though Polly
might well have dozed through the journey home, she was
kept awake by moths striking her face softly, and small flies
getting into her mouth. Soon the town was left behind, and
the fields and hedges took over, and then the fields grew
steeper and the trees began, and they were driving back into
the green and alien heart in whose chamber she had survived
for so many months, hearing nothing but its beating and the
whisper of its unquenchable life.

‘
Harvey,' she said suddenly as the banks reared up to either
side of her, and the canopy closed overhead into a green
tunnel, ‘I can't go on like this much longer. Living here, I
mean. It's killing me. I must get away, one way or another.’

He had been silent all the journey so far, crouching a little
forward, seeming intent on driving to an inch, getting the best
speed out of his horse without foundering it. Now as she spoke
he answered at once, almost as though his words were part of
her sentence, without inflection, and without looking at her.

‘
Yes, my darling, you shall. Soon. Be patient a little longer,
only a little longer.’