The Silver Darlings (54 page)

“You’re just a sound, reasonable weight,” he replied critically, and she laughed.

“Finn will be with all his relations now,” she said, and went on talking brightly about them. Soon they were at her door. “Is it too late to ask you in?”

“It’s not too late for me—but thanks all the same!”

“That wasn’t a nice way of me to put it, was it?”

“We’ll take it that same way.”

“Well, come in.”

“That’s better! But it’s getting a bit late, Catrine. Don’t you think so?” His voice was friendly and sensible.

“Perhaps it is late.”

“Yes. I think so. Some other time. Well, I’ll be off. You’re not afraid to spend the night alone?”

“Oh, no.”

“You’re plucky!”

“I just don’t think about it.”

“I don’t know of any other woman who would do it—apart from Lexy!”

“That’s a nice name to couple me with!”

He stood quite still. She could hardly see him, but in his stillness there could always be something strong and ominous. Had it been Ronnie she would have known
exactly
what he felt. She was never sure of Roddie.

“Good night,” he said in the same clear voice, and walked away.

“Good night,” she called and, going inside, quickly found her hands fumbling with the bar, and her heart
beating
as if something tremendous had happened from which she had narrowly escaped.

Quiet-footed she entered the kitchen and stood against the wall beside the window, listening. The fire was low. When it seemed his footsteps were gone from the night she drew the window-blind and, getting down on her knees before the fire, began to build it up. But why was she
building
it up? It was time for bed. She thought: I’m all through–other! and tried to smile.

There was nothing tangible in her mind to explain this heart-beating and feeling of escape. Something had
happened
—and
was over. She began to realize that Roddie had made up his mind to leave her alone. And that somehow was astonishing. She hardly knew what to do with the fire; whether to walk or sit. He had never mentioned Ronnie’s visit—nor referred to Tormad’s death.

So then at last she was free of the dark image of Roddie. It was all over. Astonishment was not only in herself but in the air about her, in the squat stillness of the low
three-legged
stools, in the table, by the quiet bed.

She did not ask herself questions, because this, as yet, was something she could not think about. Behind thought was feeling, charged with deeper meaning than thought. And this meaning was alive and immanent.

Suddenly her thought accepted the full meaning: this was the end of another chapter in her life. It was the end. For long years Roddie’s life had run parallel with her own, ready to touch it, for ever threatening to touch it, and in some way this had been part of the rich troubling
excitement
of life. She had not desired it, often feared it, always was concerned to keep it at bay. Naturally enough, for there had been no absolute certainly of Tormad’s death—as
Roddie
knew; naturally enough, for that reason alone.

But she was not thinking. Her mind in the kitchen was like a bird astonished at finding itself in a cage. The past was known, and had not to be thought. She was all alone in the kitchen and no-one would come.

Sleep was so far away from her that it was no good going to bed. She did not know what to do and felt helpless. It was a pity she had not taken Shiela’s oldest girl, Janet, who was twelve, down to stay with her, as Shiela had suggested. But she had laughed and said no she did not mind being alone. For some unaccountable reason she had actually looked forward to being alone, to being all by herself, as if the essence of some long-forgotten pleasure might arise and surround her, like the scent of honeysuckle in the air.

She began to be afraid, not merely of the emptiness in the house, but of something nameless and dark and
looming
,
coming out of the night and out of her own mind. Images tended to form quickly and pass. She was not afraid of Ronnie; he could enter with assurance and stay. They had understood each other so utterly. But all at once she saw Ronnie’s face and heard his words: “I see it is too late,” and she was appalled.

For now the words had a new power, a different
meaning
. Before, they had made the tragic pattern of life clear; they had set things at a distance: Tormad, herself, Ronnie, and the paths they had travelled, the paths traced by fate, awful and inexorable. But they had been seen with clarity, with the ultimate understanding that accepts. So figures are seen moving below in a glen of the memory or on ridges against the sky.

But now the words were not spoken by Ronnie but in the dark recesses of her own mind, and they came upon her with a sense of immediate horror. The clear picture was blotted out like a piece of sentiment.
Too
late
—
too
late—for
you
,
Catrine.

Roddie had nothing to do with this. It was far beyond Roddie. It touched the ultimate loneliness of herself.

It was her first real intimation of Death.

Her eyes brightened and glanced in fear. Her mind flew hither and thither. Would she—would she go out and run—run—all the way to Shiela’s? She could say she would rather have someone; take Janet back with her. She didn’t know what to do, and stood helpless, staring towards the door through which she should pass. Her eyes went beyond the door into the little room, Finn’s room, and saw Kirsty lying on her death-bed. The vision was so stark that she had to stare at it, unable to drag her eyes away, as though by doing so she might commit some appalling wrong against Kirsty. At last she withdrew her eyes from it, decently, if under a terrible strain. As she set one live peat against another, she found she could not lift her head to look at the door. Kirsty was standing there. She raised her head. There was no-one there. The tongs fell with a clatter
from her trembling hand. She bit her lip against the scream that rose. She got up and backed away from the door. Bran moved from her blind feet with a little yelp. “Oh, Bran! Bran!” She had forgotten the dog and now, stooping, fondled him with an erratic hand, her eyes on the door.

The dog twisted about her legs, licked her hand, and she told him to lie down. She spoke in a loud, reckless voice, filling the house with her voice, so that everything could hear it. When the dog had yelped, her eyes had blinded. In this way she got back a small measure of assurance. Now, she thought, with Bran it would be easy for her to go through the night to Shiela’s. She would hold on to the dog.

She was trembling all over. The dog was no real
company
. If she went into the middle room and assured herself that Kirsty was not there, that the bed was empty and everything normal, she might be all right. It was her mind that was going to bits. She found, however, that she could not go into the room; and, with the shawl tied round her head, she found she could not go out into the night. She thought: This is madness! She had not been afraid even when Kirsty was lying dead in her room, not afraid in this way. She was losing her courage. She was becoming
hysterical
. She would move about exactly as if everything were normal; smoor the fire and go to bed.

She took off the shawl, hung it up, and went about the kitchen, tidying and putting things straight. Ker body
remained
tremulous, felt very light, and presently she had to sit down. But she could not lift the tongs; had not the power to lift the tongs and smother the light.

What had gone wrong with her? “The years pass …” Ronnie’s voice. Not death—but the death of the years. While you still have the years, everything is possible, everything can be encountered, even death. But with the years gone, with the years dead, all that was possible is past, and ahead, ahead in the lonely darkness, is Death.

She raised her head and all over the skin of her face ran
living pain. She pressed the back of her right hand fiercely against her mouth, and when she drew it away there was blood on it. She stared at the blood, as at a terrifying
portent
, for she did not know how strongly she had bitten her lip when the dog had yelped. This bright red occasionally affected her because of its colour link with the rowan berries. She now started to her feet, crying out, small strangled cries. Bran whined. She encountered her face in the little looking-glass, saw the blood on her lip, and realized she must have bitten it. But the face was dim in the glass and flickered, and she turned away from the eyes, quickly, as if someone had stood behind her. Mid-floor, tensely listening for she knew not what, she heard two faint footfalls outside. Even before Bran growled, she knew it was Roddie. He was coming back; he could not leave her as he had done! She stood unmoving, unbreathing. His fingers would tap at the window or tap at the door. Now … now…. He would be waiting, wondering, his hand ready; standing there, ready to tap. She felt the blind
darkness
of his body come against her face.

But no fingers tapped. A long time she stood, held by the presence outside. At last the thought was born: could he have gone? She went to the door and, holding her breath, listened. A small sigh from the night went past the door. She swung the bar and pulled the door open. “Who’s there?” she asked. But no-one answered. “Go in, Bran,” she said to the dog in a formal voice, closed the door on him, and stood outside. It was pitch dark. “Who’s there?” she asked more loudly. She stepped along the house as far as the window, with a courage stronger than fear, a
desperate
courage. “Who’s there?” she cried, but her voice was thin and high and would not carry far. For she had to control it.

There was a heavy stillness in the night; an absolute silence. A cold breath came on her face, damp and clammy; a faint sigh ran along the edge of the thatch. The night pressed her against the wall. She turned for the door and
tried to walk slowly, normally. But once inside, she banged the door shut and hurt her finger-nails clawing for the bar and swinging it into position; then leaned against the door with her shoulder, with all her weight, breathing heavily.

As she came into the kitchen, Bran was waiting for her, his head slightly lowered, his eyes gleaming with an
unhuman
intelligence, blue-green fires, lit from inside the skull. As she stared at him, his tail moved slightly, but his lowered head remained still, the eyes watching her.

From a recess in the wall, she took a tallow candle, lit it at the fire, and, holding it before her breast, went towards the middle room. As she pushed its door open, a cold obliterating sensation crinkled her temples and ran down her back and left side. The draught flickered the candle flame and for a moment she saw nothing but swinging
stabbing
movements in the dark. Then the room settled and the counterpane on the bed was as she had left it, drawn smooth as sleep, passive as death, a waiting place for sleep and death. By the foot of it was Kirsty’s chest, a dark wooden box, holding “the bonnie things” from her life on earth. And holding—already—a few of Catrine’s own.

Behind her Catrine drew the door shut quietly and glanced up the dark passage towards the guest-room. But there was no need to go there. In the kitchen, however, she stood with the candle in her hand, staring over it, her lips apart. She tried to think of the inside of the guest-room clearly, but could only see the movement of dim figures, several figures, bending over and whispering. She turned and went up the passage, hesitated before the door and cleared her throat, her flesh running icy cold. Then she pushed the door open so that the candle flame hardly flickered and entered. But as she entered, while the leaning flame straightened, she thought she saw, over against the farthest wall, the figure of Kirsty’s father, standing quite straight, with a look of remote yet infinite understanding in his grey face. As the figure faded from the shape of things hanging on the wall, a swooning sensation beset her. The
candle swayed, and when the hot drops of grease stung her hand, she screamed. The scream set her in a wild flurry and stopped her from falling. She got along the passage in a way that she never afterwards clearly remembered, and came back to herself lying on her own bed in the kitchen.

As her mind cleared, the omnipresence of terror lifted somewhat also, as if her visit to the two rooms had in some measure cleared the house of it. But she remained in so highly sensitive a state that if anything else happened, even a small thing, the sensitiveness would snap. She knew this, and told herself about it, trying to rally her dissolving spirit. For a long time she was conscious of this struggle going on inside her, and the temptation not to struggle, to let go, to give in, was at moments extremely strong. But she held on against this seductive desire to let dissolution have its way, and presently the wild wave receded, the tumult subsided, and she began to breathe with some ease in exhaustion.

Slowly upon her there came a mood of quietism, and she wondered if it was the old man she had actually seen or just the pattern of things on the wall. She had not been thinking about him at all. He would not do her any harm. He would only help her if he could. But she was afraid of him now, she did not want to see him, because he was dead.

So the living forgot and feared the dead. The thought touched her heart’s sympathy and strengthened her a little. But it did not take away the fear.

It was extraordinary how Kirsty and her father had come to life in her mind and in the house as they had never done since their death. The years pass….

The years pass. She saw them pass. Year after year after year. They took her with them. She was walking with them on the road, the road vanished, and there was Kirsty on the bed, dying as she had seen her die, with her dreams, the bonnie things, locked in the wooden chest by the bedside.

She was on Kirsty’s road…. But she rebelled at the thought, and with that came a greater access of strength.
She was young. She felt so young. In her mind and her body she felt like a young girl. She was no
older than Shiela, who was in the midst of life, a warm swarming life.