The Unicorn (29 page)

‘When will he arrive?’ said Hannah. Her voice was quiet but suddenly weak and thin.

‘In a few days. He sent off the cable as he was getting on to the ship.’

‘So the seven years are at an end,’ said Effingham. He tried to get up. Something seemed to be wrong with his legs.

Hannah stood perfectly still with her arms hanging at her sides. She was wearing her long robe of yellow silk and she looked like a priestess in the moment before the rite, pregnant with some strong emotion. She stared at Gerald. ‘Peter,’ she said softly. Effingham had never heard her utter that name and it rang and jangled mutedly about the room. ‘Peter. Coming here. In a few days. Is that really true, Gerald?’

‘It is really true, Hannah. Would you like to see the cable?’

She gave her head an irritated little shake and twitched away the sympathetic hand which Marian had laid upon her shoulder. She said again, ‘Peter,’ as if trying to get used to the sound. And then, ‘It’s not possible. Is it really true, Gerald?’

‘Really true. Sit down, Hannah. Have some whiskey.’

I’ve had enough,’ she murmured, and turned away to the window and looked out. They all looked at her figure, so decisively detached from them. There was silence in the room.

Alice said at last, clearing her throat, ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’re in the way. Effie and I had better go. Come on, Effie.’ With a quick pull she had him on his feet.

Hannah said without turning round, ‘Don’t go Effingham,
please.’

Alice, surly and firm, said, ‘He’s drunk. He’d better sleep it off. I’ll bring him back when he’s sober. Come on, Effie, lift your big feet.’ She began to propel him towards the door.

‘Effingham, please stay here, please -‘

‘I tell you I’ll bring him back.’

‘It happens quite automatically,’ said Effingham to Scottow.

Effingham was unsteadily descending the stairs, clinging on to Alice’s arm. The sunlight hurt his eyes. As he went out of the glass doors he heard a sound behind him in the depths of the house. It was his own name uttered in a cry which rose to a shriek. He got into the Austin Seven and went to sleep.

‘Effingham! Effingham!’

They were shouting and calling again. He listened lazily for a while. The voice came from far far away across the dark bog. He turned a little and sank again into blackness.

‘Effingham!’

I won’t wake up, he thought. In a moment there would be silence. But now someone was shaking him roughly by the shoulder and going on and on. He murmured protestingly and half opened his eyes. It was night and there was a dim lamp burning on his bedside table. Max was sitting on his bed.

‘I’ve been trying to wake you for so long -‘

The great shadowed bulk of the old man, suddenly so heavy and close, was menacing. Effingham shrank away into the bed. Something appalling had happened which he could not at the moment remember. He began to close his eyes again.

Max was shaking him once more, digging his fingers savagely into his shoulder. ‘That hurts!’ murmured Effingham petulantly. He had always disliked Max’s hands, feared them. He had a violent headache and his legs were hurting. He remembered the night in the bog and more vaguely the morning at Gaze. Peter Crean-Smith was coming home. ‘What time is it, Max?’

‘Late, late, Effingham. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.’

‘Have I slept so long? How did I get here?’

‘You fell asleep in the car. Alice and I put you to bed. How do you feel?’

‘Terrible!’ It was too late to go to Gaze now, everyone would be in bed. It was a comforting thought. Whatever was happening it was not happening now. There was nothing he could do now. Sleep was overwhelming him again, great clouds and folds of sleep like a warm fog.

“Wake up properly, Effingham. It’s time to get up now.’

Effingham felt weak and prostrate and sorry for himself and safe in his bed. The darkness crouched behind Max, thick and heavy and full of strange smells. He said, ‘My legs are hurting and there’s no point in getting up now.’ Sleep, sweet oblivion, had not yet abandoned him, it still covered half of his consciousness. ‘Let me sleep again, Max, for God’s sake.’

‘No. I oughtn’t to have let you sleep for so long. You must get up now, Effingham. Oh, why did you have to be drunk on this day of all days!’

‘It wasn’t my fault! Didn’t Alice tell you what happened? I can’t go to Gaze now anyway, it’s too late.’

Peter Crean-Smith was coming back. This was a terrible yet quite incomprehensible fact. Peter’s actions seemed to belong to some other dimension of being. Surely tomorrow he would go to Gaze and find that all was as usual. Hannah would make all well. She would swallow it all up, she would assimilate the evil news and make it not to be, she would suffer Peter internally as she had always done, and there would no more be heard.

‘You must go there at once, Effingham. Do you think there is any sleep in the castle tonight or that anything is in its place? God only knows what today has been. You must go back.’

Effingham lay still and looked at Max’s huge shadow crouching on the wall and ceiling. Only let it be tomorrow, let it be daylight. He shrank utterly from the idea of a night-time arrival at Gaze. He had always feared the violence that lay behind the legend of the sleeping beauty. It had hung behind the figure of Hannah like a dark cloth, perceptible but not stirring. He now feared dreadfully to find that background suddenly alive with movements, with faces. And what he feared most of all was to see Hannah afraid. Then he suddenly remembered the cry which had rung through the house as he went out through the doors. He sat up abruptly.

‘But what could I do if I did go over now?’

‘Just be there. Your presence in the house will prevent some things. You ought never to have come away.’

‘You’re being very alarmist,’ said Effingham. But he began to get up all the same. ‘Damn it, how much strength and sense do you think Hannah’s got?’

That is just what we don’t know. But she’s certain to need help. And if you aren’t there she may take it from someone else.’

Effingham brought the Humber to a halt close to the front door and switched off the engine and headlights. The bulk of the house crept into view above him, against a clouded almost black sky, with lights very faintly glimmering in several windows. He got out on to the terrace and stood still, afraid of the sudden silence and of the sound of his own footsteps. The noise of the car would have announced his arrival; yet he felt himself, before the dim consciousness of the house, unwanted, ignored, invisible. He began to walk quietly along the terrace, stumbling every now and then against the soft clumps of wild sea pinks until he could see Hannah’s window. There was the same faint light there. He went back to the front door, found it unlatched and entered.

The hall was dark, but a lamp on the upstairs landing murkily suggested the stairs, and a faint glow came from the open drawing-room door. He cautiously pushed the door.

‘Effingham! Thank God!’

Marian appeared in the half darkness and in a moment he was holding her tightly in his arms. Only then did he re-member what he had been saying to the three women that morning. He must have been thoroughly drunk. He realized that there were other people present in the room and he let her go.

The room was lit by two lamps and by the irregular flickering of the log fire Denis Nolan was sitting in front of the open piano staring at the keys. In a corner beside one of the lamps Jamesie was sitting at a table with a whiskey decanter and a glass. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to Effingham or to the little scene which had just occurred.

“Thank heavens you’ve come,’ said Marian, leading him to the fire. T simply haven’t known what to do. I was longing for you to come. Today has been a nightmare.’

Today. There had been, while he slept, a whole eventful day.

‘What’s happened? Oh, Marian, why did you let Alice take me away?’

‘I know. I’ve thought of that too. I was stupid, I should have interfered. I’ve done everything wrong. Have some whiskey? No, I won’t. I was drinking the stuff for hours. I’m quite lightheaded, I’ve eaten nothing.’

‘What’s happened, Marian?’ Now in complete possession of his wits, Effingham felt the full apocalyptic terror. A world was about to end, and he knew not how.

‘I don’t altogether know what’s happened. Something has happened or is happening -‘

Denis played a scale on the piano and then a few odd notes and phrases like the song of a bird. It rang weirdly in the dim flickering room, like a distant nightingale. Over Marian’s shoulder Effingham saw Jamesie’s pale self-absorbed face. His face was grubby like that of a child, perhaps from weeping. He seemed far gone in drink.

‘But what have you been doing all day, what has Hannah done -‘

‘I’ll tell you what I know. After you went Hannah started to cry, and she cried in a hysterical way for nearly an hour. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen anyone in real hysterics, wailing and gasping for breath. Well, it was terrible. I stayed with her of course and kept trying to calm her and kept saying the same things to her over and over again. We were left alone together during this time. Then she did become quieter - that was about midday - and I’m not sure that it wasn’t worse then. She just cried quietly with occasional little moans and whimpers. I’d been fairly sensible all the time she had hysterics, but this was just too much for me and I started to cry too. So we sat together and cried for another hour. It sounds idiotic, but I was so tired and something about her frightened me so much. During this time various people came in and looked at us, but no one tried to talk to us. Then Hannah became quite silent and I stopped crying and I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t reply to anything I said.’

‘Had she said anything earlier on?’

‘No, nothing at all. Well, then Violet Evercreech arrived with some coffee and things to eat, but Hannah paid no attention. Violet wanted me to go away and leave her with Hannah, but Hannah wouldn’t. She held on to me and motioned Violet to go. She still didn’t say anything, it was as if she’d been struck dumb, it was very frightening. Violet went away very upset. I drank some coffee and tried to make Hannah take some, but she just shook her head and wouldn’t even look at me. During this time Gerald came in once or twice but didn’t try to speak to Hannah. Denis came and did try, but she paid no attention to him. Then she settled into a chair near the window and sat looking out for another hour. Then quite suddenly and quite calmly she said to me that she was going to rest and she thought I should rest too. That was about half past three. I was stupid then. I ought to have lain down on the sofa in her room. But I was so dead tired I was practically unconscious. I saw her to bed, and then I went to my room and slept there and didn’t wake up till nearly nine. I was mad, I should have told someone to wake me. Anyway, I rushed to Hannah’s room and found that the door of the ante-room was locked. I got terrified and began knocking on the door, but almost at once Denis appeared and said that Hannah had woken up about six. He’d been lying on her sofa in the place where I ought to have been. She asked for some tea and that was brought. She seemed perfectly calm, he said, but awfully pale and weird. Then she sat for a while quite quietly, frowning a little as if she were thinking. Then she asked for Gerald to be sent to her. Gerald came and told Denis to go. And a little later when Denis tried the outer door he found that it was locked. Oh, I forgot to say that when she woke up she asked if you had come back.’

‘Oh God! And then?’

‘Well, and then I don’t know. They’ve been in there ever since.’

‘We must go to her at once,’ said Effingham. ‘Gerald’s probably trying to brain-wash her about Peter.’