The Unicorn (37 page)

There was no doubt that he had been waiting and listening outside and that he came now to terminate the interview. Marian felt at that instant how Gerald attracted the hatred of everyone in the room, and although no one moved it was as if they all swirled about him. There was a black hole where he was.

It was dark in the room now. The rain hissed steadily outside. Gerald was smiling. Hannah moved slowly across to the window and lay against it with her head touching the pane. Gerald held the door wide open and Pip passed through it without haste, and then Gerald was closing the door. It was the defeat of a man by a beast.

There was silence. Hannah said in a low voice to herself, ‘Oh dear.’ Gerald waited, leaning against the closed door, to give Pip time to leave the house. He was still smiling. Then he opened the door again. ‘You two can get out. Get moving.’

Denis, who had been standing perfectly still, gave a sudden exclamation and for just a second Marian expected him to strike Gerald. But instead he ran out of the room. Marian moved slowly to follow him. She tried to bring herself to speak to Hannah, to touch her, but she could not, she could not even look at her. All she could see was Gerald’s grinning face. As she neared him he shot out a hand and gripped her arm hard. She hung in his grasp like a terrified punished child. ‘Go to your room, Maid Marian, and stay there. I shall want to talk to you.’ He pivoted her to the door. The last she saw were his teeth, wide, white and metallic. Then she was outside and the door was bolted.

The light inside the house was sallow and cold. She ran along the upper corridor but could not see where Denis had gone. The tasselled curtains flicked her face as she passed through. She stopped at the stairhead and called him softly. The place was silent, yet with a sense of people brooding behind their doors. In fear of the house she moved to the big landing window. The rain was leaking in through the closed window and lay in pools upon the floor. She looked out at the yellowish rain-lashed garden and saw with a shock a figure standing still beside one of the fish pools. Then she saw that it was Denis. Yet his solitary presence there in the rain and his quick translation from the house to the garden lent him an eerie quality.

Marian ran down the stairs and out through the back of the house on to the slippery glistening terrace. The rain had abated a little. It enclosed her in a cold, fragrant, drifting, penetrating cloud as she ran towards Denis. He was standing looking down at the black trembling surface of the pool. His hair was flattened to his head in long dark streaks and the water dripped from his nose and chin.

‘Denis, Denis, come inside. You’re getting all wet. Come with me, come inside.’

He let her lead him back into the house and on into the drawing-room. The rain water stood out in drops upon the close tweed of his coat and as Marian tried to brush them off he stood preoccupied and silent, staring over her shoulder. She went to fetch a towel, and when she returned he had laid himself face downward on the couch. Marian looked at him for a while and then began slowly to dry her own face and hair. Isolated from her by his grief, he seemed an almost frightening object. She sat down on the floor beside him.

Now everything was the same as before. Yet everything was also different and much worse. That earlier time, which had at moments seemed a nightmare, looked now like a period of innocence and unconsciousness and peace. She had imagined that something had been wound to a conclusion and that she had been set free. She had been ready to go. Yet it was merely the turn of the screw, the turn to the ‘next spiral. She was not free to go, she was more deeply involved than ever; and if Hannah chose to suffer, she chose a suffering now for all of them which they could not avoid.

Marian took hold of Denis’s hand. It was as cold and as limp as a dead fish. His face was still buried in the cushions. How little she knew about this being with whom she felt now so connected. Had she, by coveting him, by seizing him, done him a harm for which he would detest her? She recalled his cry of ‘We are faithless, faithless.’ How much more faithless did they not seem
now,
recalled to their former places. And as Marian looked at Denis’s humped shoulder and at the streaks of black hair upon his neck she thought: I am not Hannah’s equal, for I am connected with her through him.

She thought too: he is now connected with her through me, and he may hate me for this. The shadow of Hannah had been upon her at the salmon pool. Denis must now doubly, because of Gerald and because of her, think of Hannah as a woman who might be possessed. His pains, which had been simple and pure before, would be darkened now. But they were all darkened now by what Hannah had done, and because Hannah was no longer innocent she could no longer save them.

It’s odd, she thought, there is no one to appeal to any more, not even Peter. There is no outside any more. Everything is inside, the sphere is closed upon itself, and we can’t get out Pip had gone, he would wait and watch no longer. Effingham had deserted to the world of ordinary life and reason. She and Denis were ruined servants. The human world was at an end. Now they could only wait for Gerald to come down and whip them to the stables and turn them into swine.

Marian found herself crying quietly. She thought, I am becoming a bit mad. Gerald had told her to go to her room and wait. Through Hannah Gerald now had them all at his disposal. Gerald towered in her imagination: it was as if he were indeed a black man, a colossal Moor. And Marian apprehended with prophetic terror the quality of the new spiral. She feared and detested Gerald; yet something in her also said quite clearly: do what you will.

In a sudden fright she knelt up beside Denis, shaking him. ‘Please speak to me. I am having terrible thoughts. Denis, what can we do? What can we do for Hannah, for ourselves?’

He rolled over slowly. His face, upon which she had expected to see agony, was curiously serene and thoughtful. He leaned his head back, looking wide-eyed at the ceiling, silent for a while. ‘Ah, if she had only not done
that.
She has changed us all.’ ‘I know.’ It was a relief just to talk, like the consolation of prayer. ‘Denis, I’m so frightened of Gerald.’

Denis murmured, still regarding the ceiling, ‘He has become like him. He has
become
him. That is what has happened.’

‘You mean-?’

‘Gerald is Peter now. He has Peter’s place, he is possessed by Peter, he even looks like Peter. He is no longer what keeps Peter away from her. Nothing keeps him off her now.’

‘So it is - like it was at the beginning - it is the beginning -‘

‘Only worse. Peter, Gerald, they have learnt a lot in seven years. This is a spiritual not a physical thing.’

Marian was silent. She was afraid to look at the apparitions which Denis was calling up; she was afraid of Denis, this suddenly cool, savage, preoccupied man. His face was beautiful though, and younger, as if a wind had swept away all the wrinkles of human fret and worry. She could not understand this sudden calm and it did little to quiet her. She said at last, ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Whether one must not in the end fight evil with evil.’

‘No!’ But she said it, she knew even then, not because she abhorred evil, but because she too much feared it.

Her word had scarcely sounded when a great deafening noise rang thunderously through the house. The house shook with it. Marian leapt terrified to her feet, but not more quickly than Denis, who was already at the door of the room, uttering, in the echoes of the strange sound, a great wail of pain. Then Marian realized what it was. It was the sound of a shotgun being fired upstairs.

Denis and Marian crossed the ante-room. They could hear behind them the sound of running feet converging from different parts of the house. Denis had been gabbling something to himself as he ran. Now he hurled himself against the door. It was still bolted. Marian had an impression of many people crowding behind her. Denis had begun to kick the door, splintering the wood, when suddenly the bolt was withdrawn and the door was opened slowly from within.

They fell silent outside. Then Denis entered the room and Marian followed. Hannah was standing by the window looking out at the rain. The shotgun was leaning against her thigh. Her face had the calm angelic look which Denis’s face had worn a few moments since. Gerald was lying on the floor.

Denis ran to Hannah and took the gun away from her. Marian looked down at what was at her feet. There could be no doubting what she saw. She was aware of Hannah sinking slowly to the ground and Denis kneeling beside her. She heard the slight bump as the red-golden head struck the floor. She stepped back so as to see no more. The sphere was shattered now and the open sky looked in. Hannah had brought the day of judgement upon them.

Effingham and Alice paused in the darkened hall. There was a disagreeable stifling smell, perhaps of something burning. A weird sound was issuing from the drawing-room, a lilting, singing, whining sound, rising and falling continuously. Effingham had been long enough in that part of the world to know what it was, and he shuddered. Alice took his hand. There seemed to be no one about. Yet they had come at once as soon as they got Marian’s note with the dreadful news.

They whispered to each other, not daring to speak aloud. Then Marian materialized upon the stairs. ‘Not in there. Come upstairs to my room, will you.’

They followed her up into the darkness. The rain was still falling heavily and the leaden evening sky could send no light into the house. A lamp was lit in Marian’s room.

Marian closed the door and then turned to face them with a little moan. Alice put her arms round her. Effingham looked at the two women clinging together with their eyes closed. He felt paralysed, stupefied, filled with blind horror and revulsion. He could still scarcely believe what Marian had said in her letter.

Alice slowly released her. ‘Who is that keening?’

‘Gerald’s mother. She’s been in the house - ever since.’

‘Why didn’t you let us know at once?’ said Effingham.

‘So much has been happening all day. We’ve had the police here. Jamesie had to go to Blackport to contact them and to telephone New York. And someone’s had to look after Hannah. Denis is with her now. And I couldn’t find a man to take the note. Oh God -‘

‘Steady, steady,’ said Alice. “We’d have arrived sooner only we had to take the inland road because of the rain. The lower road is rather silted up. And half your drive is washed away, we could hardly get up it What happened with the police?’

‘It was very weird. They were terribly simple men. Violet just told them there had been a ghastly accident, and they wrote it all down as she said.’

They will treat what we do as our own affair. I don’t suppose you’ll hear anything more from them. We’ve destroyed your note, of course. Did they say there’d be an inquest?’

They said there was no need for one. The undertaker has been too. He somehow knew and came of his own accord. He says we can’t - bury Gerald anyway until the rain stops. Oh, Alice-‘

Effingham went over to the window. He looked out into the depths of the rain. Nothing could be seen but grey rain behind rain.

He said, ‘What happened about New York?’

‘Peter’s coming over by jet. He should be here some time tonight or early tomorrow morning. Someone will have to meet him at the airport’

‘And Hannah-?’

‘She hasn’t spoken a word since then. I’ve sat with her, and Denis has sat with her, and Violet. She just stays quite quiet, looking rather puzzled. She ate some lunch and some tea in an ordinary way, but she won’t speak. We kept her away from the police of course. Violet said Gerald was cleaning his gun when it happened.’

‘Do you think she’s -‘ Effingham choked on the words. ‘Do you think she’s - deranged - that her reason has given way?’

Marian wiped her eyes. ‘I don’t know. She’s in a terribly shocked state, but so she was before and got over it. I don’t think she’s any more - deranged now than she ever was.’