The Self-Enchanted Page 9

  He heard a soft pattering, and squinting down to peer out, saw snow falling faster, darting down like white fire, as though flung forcibly to earth. It was bouncing up from the road. He handed Miss Tydings the thermos. She was alert, a worried frown on her face.

  “There should be a heater in here,” she said. She rapped on the cab window, but the drivers did not hear her.

  Antoinette had not shifted her position, but her eyes were open. She worked her mouth, her jaw moving loosely up and down. He sat forward, tensing himself. Then Miss Tydings bent over her, feeling her pulse. He felt the air turn warmer.

  “The fools have remembered the heater,” said Miss Tydings shortly. As the warmth eddied round them, the ambulance suddenly ground to a stop. As it did, Antoinette sat up on the stretcher, as though with a last convulsive burst of energy, having waited patiently for her chance. Miss Tydings shrank back. She turned and stared at Christopher, and so did Antoinette, with those horrible possessive eyes.

  “It was too cold,” she whimpered. “You thought the cold would kill me. It’s not that easy.” She laughed, a sort of sobbing sound. “I’m there already,” she said. “At the house. And I won’t leave.” She fell slightly sideways, and he had to touch her, to prevent her from toppling over. He pushed her back down on the bed, but too hard, so that she was half-propped against the side of the ambulance. She moved her mouth again, indistinctly, but loudly, with an expiring rush. “You’ll sit in my body,” she said. “You’ll die.” She gave a convulsive rattle, that seemed to pour visibly from her mouth. Her eyes changed, becoming infuriated, taken by surprise, and she reached a hand towards him and then fell forward on her face.

  Unable to help himself, he leaned against the far wall, and began to scream. Despite the drivers, despite the world, he was alone with her. She was dead, but she had not gone. He began to itch all over. Miss Tydings moved forward, pulled Antoinette back, and covered her with a blanket, but he could feel her more than ever, prying at him. He was alone with her body for four hours, in the heavy darkness of the stalled ambulance, with the windows sealed. Miss Tydings finally went to sleep. At four o’clock the heater failed.

  Each image of her that shaped and dissolved was an image of terror, the stern, angry woman of his childhood, who hated him. All he could remember of his father was a hot sexual mouth and the heavy smell of liquor. But of her he remembered she had been cruel, with hard hands. Now she was here, refusing to be dead, and he thought of his own death before him. But there he would cheat her. He would have a child. He would lift up a bawling piece of his own flesh and dash her down with it. Not a dark bastard like he had been, but blond, and not tainted as he had been tainted.

  As he thought of that, she seemed to wither, and he knew that was the way to cheat her. But it would have to be soon, before it was too late.

  She had been so surprised to die. She must not be allowed to kill him the same way.

  The snow had stopped. He plunged for the door, fumbling for the handle, found it, and fell out into a snow-bank. Only a few last peevish flakes drifted down out of the exhausted sky, as impotent as feathers. He rubbed snow on his hands, where he had touched Antoinette, digging his fingers into the searing drift, to wash her away. Looking around him, he saw the ambulance had stalled a few miles south of Bishop. On his left was the Nevada desert, on his right, the mountains. It was nine o’clock in the morning and the sun was bright. He slammed the door of the ambulance, so as not to see her body, and the breath poured out of his mouth like steam. He knew that for the moment he was safe; but not safe so long as she lay there, for if her body reached the valley, he would lose the valley for ever.

  So when they got the ambulance started again he thought out what to do. The light played in a deceptive pattern over that portion of the blanket which covered Antoinette’s face. The smell of death, like that of rotting flowers, was still heavy in the ambulance. Spreading his hands in front of him, he looked at them. It seemed to him that they were the oldest parts of his body. As he did so, Miss Tydings woke up. She looked irritable.

  “You should let me give you something for your nerves,” she said. “Where are we?”

  “We’re near a town called Bishop,” he told her with an effort. “There’s an hotel there.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “Something will have to be done,” she said, motioning to the body.

  “There’s a funeral parlour at Bishop. They can manage it.”

  Miss Tydings shrugged her shoulders and getting out a piece of gum popped it into her mouth, chewing vigorously. At last they reached Bishop.

  Once there, the drivers refused to do anything more, but parked the ambulance on the street and stumbled into a coffee shop. Miss Tydings glowered at Christopher and made off for the hotel. Christopher phoned the undertakers. He could not bear to be in the same town with the ambulance and its contents. He looked up the local taxi-driver, and did not feel safe until he was inside a cab. It was a drive of a hundred miles, but he had to get out of Bishop. Once in the cab he fell asleep, exhausted and withdrawn.

  *

  Later he woke up in a terror of sweat, and did not know where he was. He was cold and stiff, but the sun stood at noon. He looked down at himself, his clothes wrinkled and smelly, and fingered his beard. He did not want to wear contaminated clothes into the valley, but there was nothing else for him to do. He looked at them with revulsion, where she had touched them.

  Looking out the window, he sighed with relief. They had turned in from the highway, and that was what had wakened him. They were plunging straight across a steep rise of ground into the mountains five miles away. It was the ridge that separated the valley from the desert. In the cleft of the higher peaks lay a great purple cloud of impending trouble.

  Below him now lay the lakes, icy, a slight rime around their shores, and the village, with his own cliff above it, rearing up waiting out of the woods. He caught the sparkle of sunlight on the windows of his own house. Suddenly he felt safe, rolled down the window, and stuck his head out into the air. It was so cold that the hairs in his nostrils froze. He thought of Sally, isolated down at the other end, beyond the lakes.

  The driver turned up the sharp grade to the cliff, stopping outside the house. “Quite a place you’ve got,” he said. “But I wouldn’t care for it myself.”

  Christopher paid him off and was left alone, confronting his house. It looked bleak. He went down the causeway and let himself in, noticing a forgotten shaving on the floor of the entry. The house was barren and terribly cold. He was tired and dirty. Despite himself, he made a suspicious tour from room to room, opening closet doors, slightly ashamed of himself when he found nothing. He was haunted by the sensation that someone was following him, dodging from room to room.

  The living-room was empty except for one chair. There was a change of old clothes in one of the closets. He ripped off what he was wearing and walked back naked through the house. Out on the terrace, the wind whipped life back into his flesh. He dropped his discarded clothes down the exposed face of the cliff, past the remains of the terrace wall.

  Glancing round him warily, he went to the bathroom, locked himself in, and took a cold shower. The water congealed on his skin in long drops. He dried himself and put on the old clothes from the closet. They were dirty and smelly, the clothes he had worn when working with Carson.

  The snow had begun to fall again while he was in the shower, and that had made the house more shadowy. The window to the terrace stood ajar, quivering in its frame, almost as though it had been pushed open by something cold, wet, and angry. As he looked, the snow ran treacherously and lightly across the floor towards him.

  He was terrified. He must never be alone again. He could feel the pain of fear in his stomach, bitter and hot. He could feel Antoinette growing stronger, himself weaker. The house shivered around him, under the storm. And then the phone rang.

  “Who is it?” he demanded, and there was no answer at all. He put it down, and then it rang again. T
his time he was less eager to answer it.

  It was the undertaker wanting to know what to do with the body.

  “Burn it,” shouted Christopher. “Burn it. Throw it away.” He threw the receiver up on the hook, to break all contact with her, and watched the snow blow across the floor, cursing under his breath.

  X

  When he could stand it no more, and not sure of what he was doing, he wrenched open the service door and went through the cold out-rooms of the house to the garage. Getting the car started wasn’t easy. But at last he rolled up the doors and started out. He only subconsciously knew for where. The car slipped and slithered through the snow. He switched on the headlights, which did not penetrate the endless shrouds of the storm, but only lit them up with a hard yellow glare that made them seem to fall about him all the faster. He plunged downhill, swerved to the right, narrowly missing the sinister black bole of a tree, and turned up to the Carson place. He ran the car off the road and got out, afraid to turn the engine off. The storm clutched at his neck. He got to the kitchen door, but it was locked. He beat on it, and there was no answer.

  He began to shout. “Sally,” he called. “Sally.” The pain in his stomach came again, the involuntary physical twist of fear. Suddenly the door opened and he fell inside. Half-stumbling, he banged the door behind him and locked it.

  Sally was standing before him, pale and drawn, in a worn and faded blue dressing-gown, her hair down her back, one hand shoved deep into a pocket. The other was clutched round a poker with a hook on the end of it. She stared at him, startled and afraid, and then slowly put down the poker.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “Get dressed at once.”

  She looked at him blankly. “What’s happened?” she asked. “You look terrible.”

  “Get dressed.”

  “Let me get you a drink first.”

  “There isn’t time,” he said, and believed it. “Please.”

  She made up her mind. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  “Wear something warm and get me a coat.”

  She left the room, but he had the feeling that here he was safe. He looked in a cupboard, got out a bottle, and drinking from the neck of it, went and stood beside the stove, trying to get a grip on himself. It was no use. What he must do, he must do. He could no longer bear to be alone. He looked up and saw her standing in the doorway, bundled up in one coat, and with another over her arm. “Here,” she said. “Put this on.” Her eyes did not leave his face. She helped him on with the coat. “Better?” she asked.

  He nodded, feeling the need to touch somebody, to crawl back to the human touch of safety. He reached out and took her arm. She flinched, but she let him do it. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. He pulled her towards the door.

  “But I’ve got to see to the stove. The house might catch fire.”

  “Let it,” he snapped. He dragged her out into the snow, put her in the car, and went round to his own side. The motor was still running. With the idea that if he went to the desert end of the valley the storm would be less bad, he headed the car in that direction, even though it was the way towards Bishop.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps to Reno.”

  “You can’t drive to Reno in this,” she said. “You’ll kill us. Besides, I left the stove burning.”

  “To hell with the stove.” He gave the car more gas, so that it slithered on the road, if he was on the road. He drove among the trees: it was the only way to judge where the road was, slipping, sliding, but somehow making it. As long as she was there, he felt safe. He was even grateful for her being there.

  She sat passively, her face hidden from him, huddled up in her coat, watching out the window. He saw she was eyeing the reflection of the speedometer in the glass.

  “What’s happened?” she asked at last.

  “My mother died.”

  “I’m sorry.’

  “Why be sorry? She was a devil.”

  She had nothing to say to that. They drove on until he saw that he was on the long straight road leading out of the valley. He speeded up, reached the crossroads, and headed north towards Reno, past the volcanic cones and the lake. They began to climb the pass that led north. The car swerved once, near the edge, and he heard Sally suck in her breath. Then, at last, they reached the top of the pass and he was safe, having put the worst behind him. He stared straight ahead, trying to keep the car going, the windshield clogged with snow, the wind a strong flat wind shoving the side of the car like an immense hand. “I want you to marry me,” he said.

  She was silent for a minute. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  She sounded sad. “I don’t love you.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether you do or not. I can’t be left alone.” He almost screamed it at her. “You can have anything you want, but don’t leave me alone.”

  She glanced at him quickly. “And suppose I do marry you?” she asked. “You’ll want a child now.”

  “What?” He stared at her sharply, trying to peer at her in the shadows. “What on earth made you think that?” Her face looked sharper in the half-light of the car.

  “Most men do.”

  “I told you, I don’t want to be left alone.”

  “Is it so terrifying to be alone?”

  “You know it is,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed slowly. “I suppose I do.”

  “I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “Except love,” she said bitterly.

  “I’m not asking you for love,” his voice was cracked.

  “I’m asking you for help.”

  Her mouth softened, almost into a look of pity, but with an angry spark in her eyes, half-buried, half-insulted. “And why do you think I’ll marry you?” she asked.

  “I don’t care what you marry me for. Only don’t leave me alone.”

  She leaned back against the cushions of the seat, staring at nothing. “What will your friends say?” she asked. She let her breath out slowly, almost unwillingly, and it formed a grey cloud of ice before her.

  “I have no friends.”

  “No,” she said. “I guess you don’t have, do you?”

  He reached for her hand. At any rate it was something to touch, something to hold on to. “Well?” he asked.

  For a minute she did not answer. She stared straight ahead of her. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll marry you.” She shifted uneasily in her seat. “Do you know why?”

  “No,” he said shortly, wondering what piece of pride she was going to salvage out for herself.

  “Because I pity you.”

  “Do you think I need your pity?”

  “No, I don’t.” She looked at him angrily, like a mother out of temper with a child.

  “To-night,” he said.

  She paused, looking out into the snow, as though into the future. “If you wish,” she said, and her voice was tired.

  So she did not love him, and they were married by a justice of the peace at five in the morning of November 15th, in the city of Reno, which lies at the foot of the Sierra, in the middle of an undulating desert.

  It was not at all the sort of future she had ever foreseen, when she had fallen to dreaming. She was sleepy, dirty, and tired. She waited in the car while Christopher went into the Boyce Hotel and got a room. Then he hurried her through the almost empty lobby. Through a doorway she could see a few tired people still pumping nickels into slot machines. At the desk the clerk smirked when Christopher signed the book as Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Barocco. Looking down, she saw the name entered indelibly in his neat, flowing hand, with the address not of the valley, but of a street in San Francisco, of which she knew nothing. Now she was the wife of somebody who came from places she had never seen and of whom she knew nothing.

  Barocco stood with his blunt hands on the counter, irresolute and wan, “Get a justice of the peace and send him up to our rooms,�
� he said.

  The clerk offered congratulations. Christopher didn’t even bother to listen. She realized suddenly how odd they must both look, she with her hair in wisps and straggles, in that clumsy coat, and Christopher looking a little mad. The bell-boy took them upstairs and her heart sank. He switched on the lights and left them alone.

  It was just a room, with no cheerfulness, expensive and sterile. Outside it the glare of neon signs lighted up the snow. Christopher tipped the bell-boy and told him to bring up some rum toddy. Then they were alone together, with nothing to say, until the justice of the peace came. They sat in silence, looking at each other. At last she got up and took off her coat. She had worn an old pink dress, because it was warm wool. It was out of style and looked ridiculous. She looked years older than she was, but no older than she felt. She decided she couldn’t stand it.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she said.

  He nodded. She went into the bathroom, feeling utterly lost and scared, and got into the shower. She got her hair wet, so that it lay in matted ratty strings behind her, but she did not care. She heard the bell-boy’s voice and the clink of glasses. Then someone knocked on the bathroom door.

  She started. “I’ve nothing on,” she called. “Wait a minute.” The handle of the door turned and then went back to its original point.

  “The toddies are here,” called Christopher. “They’ll probably do us both good.” He sounded apologetic.

  She got out of the shower, towelled herself, slipped into her dress, and unlocked the door. He was standing by the windows, a glass in his hand. He scarcely seemed aware of her at all. She had not even dried her legs properly, and a trickle of water ran down one of them. He laughed and handed her a glass. “To marriage,” he said.

  She sat down holding her drink, and he also sat down. After a while Christopher got up and turned on the heater. It rattled and hissed and began to steam.