Fear

‘You see!’ said Phrynne.

Gerald sat up straight on the side of the bed.

Almost at once further sections of sound subsided, quickly one after the other, until only a single peal was left, that which had begun the ringing. Then the single peal tapered off into a single bell. The single bell tolled on its own, disjointedly, five or six or seven times. Then it stopped, and there was nothing.

Gerald’s head was a cave of echoes, mountingly muffled by the noisy current of his blood.

‘Oh goodness,’ said Phrynne, turning from the window and stretching her arms above her head. ‘Let’s go somewhere else tomorrow.’ She began to take off her dress.

Sooner than usual they were in bed, and in one another’s arms. Gerald had carefully not looked out of the window, and neither of them suggested that it should be opened, as they usually did.

‘As it’s a four-poster, shouldn’t we draw the curtains?’ asked Phrynne. ‘And be really snug? After those damned bells?’

‘We should suffocate.’

‘Did they suffocate when everyone had four-posters?’

‘They only drew the curtains when people were likely to pass through the room.’

‘Darling, you’re shivering. I think we should draw them.’

‘Lie still instead and love me.’

But all his nerves were straining out into the silence. There was no sound of any kind, beyond the hotel or within it; not a creaking floorboard or a prowling cat or a distant owl. He had been afraid to look at his watch when the bells stopped, or since; the number of the dark hours before they could leave Holihaven weighed on him. The vision of the Commandant kneeling in the dark window was clear before his eyes, as if the intervening panelled walls were made of stage gauze; and the thing he had seen in the street darted on its angular way back and forth through memory.

Then passion began to open its petals within him, layer upon slow layer; like an illusionist’s red flower which, without soil or sun or sap, grows as it is watched. The languor of tenderness began to fill the musty room with its texture and perfume. The transparent walls became again opaque, the old man’s vaticinations mere obsession. The street must have been empty, as it was now; the eye deceived.

But perhaps rather it was the boundless sequacity of love that deceived, and most of all in the matter of the time which had passed since the bells stopped ringing; for suddenly Phrynne drew very close to him, and he heard steps in the thoroughfare outside, and a voice calling. These were loud steps, audible from afar even through the shut window; and the voice had the possessed stridency of the street evangelist.

‘The dead are awake!’

Not even the thick bucolic accent, the guttural vibrato of emotion, could twist or mask the meaning. At first Gerald lay listening with all his body, and concentrating the more as the noise grew; then he sprang from the bed and ran to the window.

A burly, long-limbed man in a seaman’s jersey was running down the street, coming clearly into view for a second at each lamp, and between them lapsing into a swaying lumpy wraith. As he shouted his joyous message, he crossed from side to side and waved his arms like a negro. By flashes, Gerald could see that his weatherworn face was transfigured.

‘The dead are awake!’

Already, behind him, people were coming out of their houses, and descending from the rooms above shops. There were men, women, and children. Most of them were fully dressed, and must have been waiting in silence and darkness for the call; but a few were dishevelled in night attire or the first garments which had come to hand. Some formed themselves into groups, and advanced arm in arm, as if towards the conclusion of a Blackpool beano. More came singly, ecstatic and waving their arms above their heads, as the first man had done. All cried out, again and again, with no cohesion or harmony. ‘The dead are awake! The dead are awake!’

Gerald became aware that Phrynne was standing behind him.

‘The Commandant warned me,’ he said brokenly. ‘We should have gone.’

Phrynne shook her head and took his arm. ‘Nowhere to go,’ she said. But her voice was soft with fear, and her eyes blank. ‘I don’t expect they’ll trouble us.’

Swiftly Gerald drew the thick plush curtains, leaving them in complete darkness. ‘We’ll sit it out,’ he said, slightly histrionic in his fear. ‘No matter what happens.’

He scrambled across to the switch. But when he pressed it, light did not come. ‘The current’s gone. We must get back into bed.’

‘Gerald! Come and help me.’ He remembered that she was curiously vulnerable in the dark. He found his way to her, and guided her to the bed.

‘No more love,’ she said ruefully and affectionately, her teeth chattering.

He kissed her lips with what gentleness the total night made possible.

‘They were going towards the sea,’ she said timidly.

‘We must think of something else.’