The Grass Widow's Tale gfaf-7 Read online

  From behind the white trestle on the left of the road a young police constable stepped out full into their path, with his hand extended to wave them down. Bunty heard the man beside her gulp in air in a huge sob, and felt his foot go down on the accelerator.

  The boy in uniform was standing confidently in the centre of the free way; his confidence in the law he represented drew a warning scream up into her throat, but she choked on it silently and could not utter a sound. She would have closed her eyes, but it was impossible, the young figure held them fixed in fascination. She saw his face leap towards her, saw it dissolve from tolerant serenity into incredulous doubt, and then into terror, as the car drove straight at him.

  At the last instant the wheel swung dizzily, and was hurled impetuously back again. The constable leaped backwards, late but alive, as the car swerved round him and surged away. They missed the boy by inches, and the lamp standard on the other side by the thickness of the old car’s well-maintained paint. Bunty uttered a cry, and clawed her way round to kneel on the seat and look back through the rear window; the young policeman was just getting up from the ground, and the police car that had been standing by, not expecting any trouble, was charging off the mark after them, too late to hold them in sight for long, unless it could better the crazy seventy-five they were exceeding through the sleeping town.

  She slid down into her seat weakly, and lay limp beside her enemy. His eyes were dividing their attention now about equally between the road ahead and his rear-view mirror. He didn’t ask her anything; she might not have been there. He was nothing but a machine for driving, and what a machine, precise, confident, daemonic. Well, they knew now what they had to contend with. That attempted murder was notice enough. It was more than a case of dangerous driving and jumping the lights now. This pursuit would be serious. To be honest, she was more sure that they would chase him to the ends of the earth for trying to kill a police constable than for murdering an anonymous girl.

  As for her, she had lost her chance. Unless that pursuing car, just about holding its distance, managed to stop them short of the motorway, she was as good as dead.

  But between them—shouldn’t he share the credit?— they had ensured that the hunt should be up in full cry after them.

  He shook off the police car in the country roads between Hawkworth and the M.6. No doubt of it now, he was a local man, or at least he’d lived here long enough to know these roads like the palm of his hand, better than the police driver knew them. They hit the motorway at the quietest entrance, well away from the town, and after that he took the fast lane and drove like an inspired devil. Who was there to enforce the limit? It was an unreal limit, in any case, on a clear, starlit night with visibility equal almost to that in daylight, and little traffic on the road. And whatever this man might or might not be, he was a driver of exceptional gifts. They would take some catching now.

  The marvellous road unrolled, broad, generous, splendidly surfaced, unwinding before them in a hypnotic rhythm. Service areas sprang up beside them in a galaxy of lights, and passed, committing them again to the dark. Her tired eyes began to dazzle, and then to ache inconsolably. She closed them, and instantly could see more clearly. The ride was so calm that with closed eyes it was possible to rest, and think, and even understand.

  Almost certainly, she was going to die. It was essential to grasp that, and to come to terms with it. She must not expect anything better. If better was to be had, somehow she would fight her way to it; if not, she had to deal with what was possible. Inordinately clearly she saw what was happening to her, and it was no longer a dream, and no longer fantastic.

  After all, this sort of thing happens to other women, too, in slightly different circumstances, but to the same ultimate effect. Doctors tell them suddenly, after what should have been a routine examination, that they have been carrying malignant growths round with them unknown, perhaps for months, perhaps for years. Symptoms come late in the day. Or, worse, the doctors don’t tell them, but subscribe to the convention that cancer is unmentionable, and coax them into hospital with soothing pretences that minor treatment is necessary, and only slowly, with infinite anguish, do the victims penetrate to the knowledge that they have been carrying the balance of life and death within them, with all the betting on death. A mistake, to make death the enemy. Death is the ultimate destination of every one of us, and what’s beyond remains to be seen. But fear, doubt, delusion are the real enemies. If you know, you have at least the chance to effect a reconciliation.

  She had that chance. If he had killed her at once it might have seemed to be a mercy, but now she knew that it would have been nothing of the kind. There was always the last moment of realisation, the horror of knowing too late, without time to come to terms, without one instant to muster the last dignity. It is not death which is the violation, it is fear.

  It was there within her eyelids, death, within touch of her hand, smiling at her. Already it was becoming better-known, almost familiar. It was waiting for everyone, somewhere along the line, often when least expected. What’s the use of claiming immunity? Of yelling at fate: Why me? In effect, why not me? Those who go out innocently to do their regular shopping, and inadvertently step under buses, seemed to her, strangely enough, infinitely more to be pitied.

  They were off the motorway, unchallenged, and striking north still for Kendal, Penrith and Carlisle. She knew this road, she had travelled it before, and could recognise landmarks, even in the dark. There had been a long, hallucinatory interlude of half-sleep, drugged with speed and darkness and isolation. Nothing could happen to her, as long as he drove. No succour could relieve her, as long as he drove.

  It was somewhere between Penrith and Carlisle that she spoke to him, softly and reasonably as to a backward and capricious child. Her own senses were dazzled with this rush through the night, she heard her voice as a stranger’s, a calm, rational stranger’s, arguing with unreason.

  “Murder isn’t a capital crime any more, you know that? They don’t hang you now.”

  He didn’t say anything, he merely drove like a machine; she might as well not have been there.

  “What you’ve done may not even be considered murder. If there was great provocation on her part, and loss of control on yours, they might reduce the charge. You think you’re forced to kill again, now that I know, but that’s an illusion. Your life isn’t threatened.”

  He took no notice at all. Everything in him, every sense, every force, was concentrated on just one purpose, to get to wherever it was he was going, and get rid of his burden. He heard her, though, she was sure of that; he knew exactly what she was saying. He had nothing to say in reply because nothing she had said made any difference to his resolution. And she herself felt exasperatedly how futile it was to tell a young man he could keep his life and spare hers, at the cost of a mere fourteen years or so in prison! No, he wasn’t interested in that prospect. He meant to get clear away, to escape undetected, and there was only one way he could hope to do that. She knew too much to be left alive. None the less, she went on trying. She had to. Acknowledging that you may have to die doesn’t absolve you from putting up the devil of a fight for your life.

  “And supposing they do catch up with you? They know which way you were heading, and they won’t give up, you know that. There’s a policeman involved now. Why make it worse for yourself if they do get you? You might get by with a plea of manslaughter for her—you won’t for me!”

  Her eyes had grown accustomed to the night by now, she could see clearly the outlines of the sharp profile beside her, and they remained as fixed as stone. It was like talking to a re-animated corpse that could function mechanically, but could never be reached by any human contact.

  “It would be simpler to ditch me here. I don’t know where you’re going, I don’t know who you are, I don’t know anything about you. By the time I got to anyone, you could be miles away. And,” she said reasonably, “you wouldn’t have the delay and trouble of disposing of me. That m
ight make all the difference between getting clean away and getting caught. Because you don’t think I’m going to make it quick and easy for you, do you?”

  Maybe she had been wrong in thinking he couldn’t be reached, for the knuckles of the capable hands that lay so knowledgeably on the wheel had sharpened into pale points of tension, white as china, and his cheek-bone strained at the stretched silvery skin as if it would break through.

  “And there’s hardly room for two in the boot,” she said viciously.

  “Shut up!” he gasped in a muted howl of pain and despair. “Shut up, damn you, shut up!”

  The last thing she remembered recognising was the smithy at Gretna, journey’s-end for so many runaway couples pursued north by this road. The irony roused her to a faint spurt of laughter. She was so drugged and lightheaded with exhaustion by then that nothing was quite real. Even fear could not keep her awake any longer. Uneasily, stiffly, she slept against her enemy’s shoulder.

  She awoke with a violent start, flung forward against the dashboard, fending herself off feverishly with her hands, still half-dazed and jangled between truth and illusion. He had braked violently, and for the moment that was the only reality she could grasp. Then it was like a curious dance, the car swinging first left and then right in a frustrated measure, like a man in a hurry trying to get past a slower walker on a narrow pavement. She heard the man beside her swearing furiously through his teeth as he wove this way and that. And then she saw the hare, bounding along in front of them in the middle of the road, as hares will, frantic with fear but still trusting in his speed to get him out of trouble. The car, driven with patience and precision, tried to edge him aside into the hedge-bank, and always he resisted the suggestion and raced straight ahead.

  “Go on, curse you, get out of it!”

  She looked at the light and the land outside the windows of her moving prison, and saw that it was almost morning, the air grey and still before dawn, and they were on an upland road between rolling wastes of heath, with the shadowy shapes of hills beyond, like gauzy folds of sky. If he slowed much more, she might almost dare to claw open the door and run… He had pocketed the gun long ago, on the side away from her, and his eyes were on the stupid creature that loped ahead of him, he would be slow to react at this moment. But run where? There were no houses here, and little cover.

  And it was too late now in any case. He had dropped back and ambled to give the hare a long enough start to feel safe, to forget the impulse to flight, and return to the heather. And there went the long ears and lolloping hindquarters, off into the bracken under the low hedge, and out of sight. The car shot forward again in a smooth acceleration, and sailed past the spot where the creature had vanished. The needle of the speedometer crept back energetically to seventy. Since the moment when they had driven at the policeman on the edge of Hawkworth, only that hare had kept them for a few minutes within the legal speed limit.

  She had no idea where they were, or how long they had now been on the road. In the chill of the dawn her sense of fear seemed to have reached a dead level where her predicament was at once disbelieved-in and accepted. She was finding out a great deal about the human mind under stress, the odd detachment and accuracy of observation of which it is capable even in terror, and the rapidity with which terror itself can become familiar, and cease to impress. You even reach, she thought, the point of contemplating without panic that there really may not be any way out; and you reach it unbelievably quickly.

  The car swung sharply to the right, hardly slowing for the turn, and entered a narrow, winding, sunken lane. The air had a cold tang that made Bunty’s nostrils quiver, and the trees along the ridge on their right all leaned towards them in a way there was no mistaking. Somewhere just out of sight before them lay the sea.

  The miniature valley, trees leaning over it on either side on the sheltered slopes, opened in a few minutes into a broad circle of gravel before a small cottage, pink-washed over walls of stone below and brick above, with a low-pitched, overhanging roof. It had a bright, polished, cared-for look which meant that someone with money and leisure had taken it over. There was a brand-new garage to the left, tucked under the slope of grass and trees, there were modern windows, obviously installed since the takeover, and decorative shrubs had been deployed artfully among the grass to make the most manageable of gardens. Someone’s pleasure place, there’s no mistaking the signs. And this man knew his way about here; she recognised it from the manner in which he had taken the sharp bend into the lane, and she saw it again in the dexterity with which he swept the car round and stopped it right in front of the cottage, in such a way that on her side there was just room to open the door, and she would be stepping out practically into the porch.

  The moment the engine stopped he had the gun in his hand again, ready, and in one swing he was out of the car.

  “Get out. And don’t try to run, you wouldn’t get far.”

  As she straightened up stiffly after the long ride, the round black eye of the gun stared at her steadily across the roof of the car. She didn’t try to run. Against the ten yards of pale wall on either side she would have been an easy mark. He came round to join her at his leisure, and taking her by the arm, put her before him into the porch, where his own bulk securely hemmed her in. He reached above him under the low roof, and swung aside a corner of the wooden beading. The key had its regular hiding-place, and he was in the secret.

  “Go in, please.”

  The growing daylight showed her a tiny hall in spectral pastel colours, a staircase on one side, two white doors on the other, the minimum of holiday-cottage furniture, but of an elegant kind. The outer door closed behind them with a solid, final sound, and they were shut in together. She heard the key turned again in the lock, and watched him withdraw it and pocket it. And now at last he was no longer occupied with driving; his hands were free.

  “Upstairs! You’ll find the bathroom on the left. I’m sorry there’ll be only cold water until I see to the main switch. Take your time.”

  It was fantastic. The automatic politeness of his upbringing still clung to him, glaringly odd in this relationship. He might have been apologising to a guest for the lack of amenities, except that his voice was too dull and drained of feeling to match the words. She looked back from the door of the bathroom, and saw that he had seated himself on the stairs below, and had the gun ready in his hand still. No chances were going to be offered to her, no chances of any kind.

  The back view of him was strangely desolate, the head drooping with its lank black hair dishevelled, the shoulders sagging. If she was sick with weariness, what must his exhaustion be? In the end there might be the chance he could not deny her; even he must succumb to sleep sooner or later.

  She shot the bolt of the bathroom door after her, and groped for the cord of the light-switch, but nothing happened. Of course, the main switch was off, somewhere down there in the back premises, and there’d be no lights until he turned it on. The window was small, and the light from outside seemed to have dwindled almost into night again, now that she saw it from withindoors. It was barely half past five, after all that nightmare journey.

  The cold water was bracing and welcome, and simply to be alone there, with a door and a bolt dividing her from him, was in itself a new lease of life. Evidently this place was used frequently and always kept ready for occupation, for there was soap on the wash-basin, and towels in the small white cupboard. Neat, small guest tablets of soap that fitted admirably into the palm. She considered for a moment, and then rolled the one she had used in her handkerchief, and slipped it into her handbag. There was nothing else she could see that might be useful to her; she took her time, as he had suggested, about looking round for a weapon to use against him. She had hoped there might be a razor, at least of the safety variety, in the cabinet, and therefore blades; but of course, the owner used an electric, there was the socket for it beside the mirror. Nothing there for her. The bolt on the door was a fragile thing, if she refused
to come out it wouldn’t preserve her for long. There remained that window, discouragingly small and high though it was.

  She carried the stool over to it, climbed up, snapped back the latch and hoisted the sash. Empty air surged away before her face. Craning over the sill to look down, she saw that on the rear side of the house the ground fell away sharply in a tumble of stones, almost a cliff, and instead of being one modest story from safe ground, she found herself peering down fifty feet of broken rock. No hope of climbing out from there.

  So in the end she would have to open the door again, and go back to him. She did it very softly and cautiously, easing back the bolt without a sound, for she had left him sitting on the stairs a long time, and sleep might have (NB: typo in printed book (...instead of being one modest story from safe ground,...) she set foot on the landing he was on his feet, too, and turning to mount the remaining steps of the flight.

  “Into the next room, please.” He reached past her to open the middle door of the three. “Yes,” he said, following the rapid glance she gave to the curving latch and the key-hole below it, “there’s a lock. I can’t afford any slips now, can I? You didn’t leave me much choice.”

  Just over the threshold of the little bedroom, primrose and white, a charming place to house a guest, Bunty halted. With her back turned to him she said softly and deliberately :

  “Do you know why I opened the boot?”

  She didn’t look round, but she felt, almost she scented, the effusion of his desolation, bewilderment and despair, and the ache of his amputation from the harmless creature he must once have been.