The Haunted Storm, Page 5

  For most of his childhood he had been neither happy nor unhappy, but quiet and withdrawn, almost as if he were resting after violent action; he seemed to his parents not young at all, but an old man with the body of a boy. Not that he was wise beyond his years, or even dignified, as some children are, but he had an air, even in his earliest years, of remoteness and abstraction, which at first worried and then amused his parents. It was because he had always been conscious of something between him and the world, a veil over things. and had grown up thinking that it was natural – that everyone felt it – while still remaining uncomfortably aware of it. He had only spoken about it two or three times. Once, when he was nine years old, he had a fantasy that the surface of everything, including his own skin, was covered in an invisible jelly-like grease nine or so inches thick, and in order to touch anything he had to scrape his hands together first to clear them and then scoop it away from the place he wanted to touch. As soon as he took his hands away it grew again. His mother used to watch his hands moving in their strange ritual and wonder what he was doing, but she said nothing, thinking it was a game. Then one day he came to her in distress; he was almost crying, and his hands were moving here and there, sweeping back and forth, rubbing his chest, scraping the edge of the table. He couldn’t tell her what the matter was. He knew she wouldn’t understand, but it was too horrible to hold back.

  “What is it, darling? What is it, tell me,” she said, sensing that something really was wrong.

  But he couldn’t tell her. He tried to, but because it had been in his head for so long, unshared, he had no way of explaining it. His mother was calm, and she comforted him, and presently his panic died away; but for a long time after wards the compulsive movements of his hands showed her that the mysterious grease he had talked about so clumsily, with tears in his eyes, still grew like moss on the surface of things.

  Sometimes however the veil was suddenly torn away, and he seemed to see the world not with his own eyes but with the eyes of an angel or a god: the bark of a tree, when he was eleven, burst into eloquent flame in front of him, and burned in its own colours without being consumed, leaving him weak and rapturous. And another time he woke up on a wintry morning to find the sun shining through a fern pattern of frost on his window, irradiating his bedroom with a miraculous forest of brightness that grew and grew as he lay there, and entered his body and shone inside his chest and all his limbs, so that he was conscious of light filling him from his head down to the tips of his toes. It felt spicy, fresh, and immeasurably clean and good, and it had a sound too, like the rustling whisper and tinkle of innumerable frozen silver bells. He lay there still and afraid to breathe, thinking quite literally that he had died and been taken to heaven. At times like this it seemed as if the light of another sun shone on the world, inconceivably strange and distant, just as the ordinary sun sometimes burst through a bank of clouds at sunset and lavished all its colour on one solitary house or tree; but the circuit of the other sun was mental and spiritual, and subject to no laws that could be understood on earth.

  Thus Matthew had grown up, half in the world and half out of it, not knowing where he belonged. And it was when he was most confused that he took refuge in the family identity which otherwise meant little to him. He saw himself as a reincarnation of that other Cortez, plundering the world and pausing to stare in awe at some new interior ocean; but such fanciful visions had little to do with the actual family he knew. His father’s relatives were mostly stern and overbearing, although his grandmother could be kind; he did not feel easy with them. On his mother’s side, however, he had a relative for whom he felt nothing short of devotion: and this was his uncle, Harry Locke.

  He was really the uncle of Matthew’s mother; when her parents had died in her childhood he and his wife had brought her up with their own children. Harry Locke had been a builder, and his firm had prospered and become one of the largest in the west country. Since his wife’s death twelve years before, he had retired and become a lay preacher. He was rich, but almost accidentally rich, as if his wealth had come to him instinctively, for he had no apparent shrewdness or cunning; his business had grown as a result of his own diligence and honesty, as a bird’s nest grows because of certain qualities in the bird.

  Between Harry Locke and Matthew there was a bond of great love. Matthew had found that he could talk to his great-uncle with no fear or shame, and Harry’s religion, though it was naive and even childish, appealed to him strongly sometimes. Harry was an evangelical Christian, and he preached at chapels and revival meetings all over the west country, gaining as time went by a local reputation as a powerful and eloquent preacher. Matthew had no great respect for Harry’s colleagues and fellow-preachers, and in general felt little but contempt for the banalities they preached; but his objections were blunted and turned aside in the case of his uncle by a strange kind of moral force, as uncompromising as light, which emanated from the old man when he preached and which had the power of moving even a hostile or indifferent audience.

  His uncle’s character was simple, but puzzling in the same way as the success of his business was puzzling. If you looked for intellectual subtlety, or avarice, or arrogance, or for anything like “lust of result”, you would find him empty of them. But if you watched him closely and without pre conceptions you would begin to see certain traits emerging: passive, almost negative things like patience or good temper or kindliness or calmness, quiet things, but things that earned him loyalty and love while ensuring that his personality could not, because of this very blankness and plainness, be idolised or even copied by his followers. Matthew respected his uncle because he sensed that Harry’s mildness covered a deep sense of what he called “absolutes”: the questions that plagued and worried him like dogs and which others had forgotten. But whereas Matthew was tormented by these things, Harry seemed to draw strength from them. He had tamed them, and moved among them, Matthew thought, like a master.

  It was natural, then, that when Matthew needed advice and help, he should turn to his uncle. He had not seen him now for a year or so, and had forgotten the things which irritated him in Harry’s religion.

  Six or seven months went by after Matthew had gone down to the beach and listened to the girl; and it had been it peaceful but sterile period. Matthew was drained of all his will and energy; he lived, emotionally, on the memory of her face dominating the darkness and her voice subduing the sound of the waves; and he wrote down all he could remember of what she had said. In the absence of any concrete evidence of her, her words were almost as effective in evoking her memory as if she had written them down herself, and then kissed the paper often so that it held her scent.

  He went home and lived with his parents in London, and found a job in a factory nearby, saving all the money he earned and going for long walks by the river. It was peaceful; but when spring came, he felt the stirrings of energy and restlessness inside him, and, with them, a renewal of pain and longing. He was overcome by odd compulsions which appeared quite arbitrarily and were, for the moment, irresistible: a powerful thirst would seize him for days on end, and no matter how much water he swallowed, he could not moisten the parched dryness of his throat, and he would have to smother his food with gravy in case he choked; or, having gone to bed, he would have to get up again and dress and go outside, fearing that the house would collapse at any moment. He found a kind of protection in various talismans which he collected avidly – a twig of driftwood from the river, a triangle of blue plastic he found on the floor of the factory, a pebble, a photograph in a newspaper, a small jar made of blue glass. Because of some peculiarity in their shapes, or some intensity of emotion prevailing when he came across them, these things and half a dozen others like them gathered into themselves a formidable power and became, as far as their protective strength went, gods or guardian angels which Matthew carried around with him, or set up on his bedside table while he slept, according to each its privileges and omitting and offending none.

  While h
e lived his solitary and precarious life his parents ignored him as benevolently as possible, letting him come and go as he pleased; but in spring they decided to go away for a fortnight, and suggested to Matthew that he, too, should have a holiday. His mother was worried about him; but she did not tell him so. Matthew was a little disturbed by the idea. He had withdrawn too far to face the prospect of going away again with equanimity, let alone excitement, but on the other hand something inside him was aching for change, that was certain. The questions were waking with the seasons, and he could not placate them for much longer. When his father mentioned it, he was taken aback, but tried not to show it.

  “All right,” he said. “Yes, I could do that. I don’t really want to go anywhere, though.”

  “Why don’t you go and stay with uncle Harry?” said his mother. ‘He’d love to see you. You haven’t been there for years.”

  And as soon as she said that, he realised that he must go. Uncle Harry would listen to him, at least; and above all, he would not be dangerous; he would not threaten, and perhaps he would even know some of the answers. And as soon as his mind was made up, he could not wait. He gave in his notice at the factory, worked impatiently for the last week, and wrote to his uncle. His mood now was vastly changed: instead of being preserved in an accumulation of ice, he felt subterranean rivers rushing and gulfs opening beneath and around him, and soared sometimes among clouds of fretful, delirious elation. Instead of being frightened by the movement, as he had thought he would be, he was keyed up, anticipatory, excited.

  Harry Locke, for his part, was pleased to get his letter, and worried only that Matthew would be bored. He lived alone, looked after by a woman called Mrs. Parrish, who lived on the farm next door with her husband and elder son, Peter. The farm itself belonged to Harry, and the Parrishes worked it for him; but as they belonged to Harry’s chapel, and were as devout as he was, the relation between them was much closer than that between landlord and tenant. Matthew knew them well, and liked them. He had stayed many times in the village as a child.

  He arranged to come down on a Friday afternoon and arrive at his uncle’s in the evening. But as the evening went by and there was no sign of him, Harry began to wonder where he could be. He expected the telephone to ring, but the evening grew late and it stayed silent; and eventually he went to bed, hoping that Matthew was safe.

  It was nearly half past eleven on Saturday morning when he turned up. Harry was shocked by his appearance; he looked ill, pale and thin, and he kept glancing nervously around almost as if he were guilty of something.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, uncle Harry,” were his first words.

  “I got off the train last night – yesterday evening – and I felt my headache coming on; I could hardly move, I had to go to a hotel and go to sleep straight away – I’m sorry, I should have tried to ring you.”

  “Never mind that, that’s all right,” said Harry. “But how are you, son? You don’t look too good now. D’you want to lie down?”

  “Oh, no! No, I’m better now. They go as suddenly as they come, these headaches; I’m fine now.”

  But Harry was not happy about it. He had never seen Matthew so jumpy before. Whereas in his childhood he had been quite happy sitting alone with a book for hours on end, now he could not sit still for a minute; he would get up and walk about, chatting loudly and rather hysterically about nothing at all – about his father and mother – about the weather; Harry was bewildered. Over lunch, which they had with the Parrishes, Matthew was subdued and quiet; but as they walked in Harry’s garden in the afternoon, the old man had a glimpse of what was on Matthew’s mind.

  “Uncle Harry,” Matthew began, “what would you do if you began to be obsessed by something? Would you think it was the devil possessing you? Don’t you think God could possess you too? I don’t mean drive you mad – or rather, yes, I do mean drive you mad. Could God drive a man mad?”

  “No,” said Harry slowly. “The man would have to be upset first for the idea of God to send him mad. But, you know, it might not be God. It might be the devil after all. He can take a thousand shapes and forms, and if the man didn’t know what God was like, the devil could easily fox him and turn his mind astray by pretending to be God. He could do that, I reckon. Why d’you think it’s God, though?”

  Matthew shrugged.

  “It’s either God or it’s nothing at all. You know what psychiatrists would say – what any clever person would say – it’s just imagination. Imagination’s their god – they think it has wonderful powers – they’re just like savages who think that if they hear thunder, it’s because the gods are angry with them; and if anything’s wrong with your mind, it’s just imagination. Or it’s some complex or other, or an imbalance in the chemicals in your body. They don’t really understand it, so they’re superstitious about it. But the imagination really doesn’t have a tenth of the power they think it has. It’s a poor shabby thing and it can’t even cope with everyday things like – oh, like feeling bored; you can’t even imagine you’re not bored, it’s as weak as that. And you certainly can’t imagine God. No, I know it’s God there, haunting me. But He doesn’t believe in me.”

  He stopped talking, and they walked on a few paces. It struck him suddenly that he was using Harry in just the same way that he himself had been used, on the beach; and as he remembered her face, the desire to see her again was so strong that he felt his chest tighten with longing. He wanted to say a hundred things at once, to go back to the beginning of his conversation with Harry and go over it again; he wanted to tell Harry about her; he wanted to talk to her, herself, talk furiously, talk without ceasing; he wanted to clarify, clarify, clarify, down to the roots of the world and the hidden corners of his heart, and learn once and for all what was the truth.

  And there was not a thing he could do about it; he could only go on, further into confusion, He wondered if he would die like this, with unintended lies upon his lips, protesting his false innocence.

  “I understand,” said Harry.

  “But – there’s something else. Six months ago I met a girl – no; that doesn’t matter, I don’t mean that.”

  He paused for a few seconds and tried to collect his thoughts.

  “Go on,” said Harry.

  “No; I get carried away by words. There, you see! I said, ‘six months ago I met a girl’ – that’s wrong, it’s a lie, although six months ago I did meet a girl – and fell in love with her – it’s not her that’s described in that sentence, though, I can’t describe her at all. The trouble is, I don’t know her name. So describing her – or saying anything at all about her – won’t be true. I can say it, I can tell in detail what we did, but there’s God inside me who’ll listen to what I’m saying, quite indifferently, because I might just as well be saying something else. No; not God, I mean, me, my central part. She – I can’t get at her, if you see what I mean, because I don’t know her name; oh, a thousand things besides her name, but that’s the most important. Perhaps that’s why I can’t get at God either; perhaps God isn’t His name. Perhaps you’re right, it’s the devil.”

  He sank into silence. Harry did not make the mistake of thinking that Matthew’s last words indicated that he really thought Harry was right about it. He recognised that Matthew’s argument was coming round on itself, biting its own tail, not because of anything he had said but because Matthew was talking out of panic, using words without feeling their weight beforehand, so to speak. Matthew seemed to be thinking the same, because after a minute he spoke again. “I ought not to talk at all, I ought to keep quiet about it,” was all he said.

  They walked up and down for a while, with only the song of the birds and the occasional sound of a car in the distance breaking into the drowsy silence. The garden was not large, but it was beautifully kept, and Matthew was aware of a strange, indifferent, meditative air of harmony which filled it, even though he was so disturbed himself at the moment. The same feeling emanated from his uncle. Harry was not particularly
striking to look at; he was powerfully built, and still very strong in spite of his age, but there was nothing else remarkable about his appearance. His hair was thick and grey, and his eyes mild and brown. Nevertheless, it was an arresting face, because of something indefinable in the expression – the set of the eyes – the hint of a smile about the mouth; it had a quality of absolute stillness about it. You felt that if he were to sit down in the garden, the birds would come and play around him, perching on his shoulders and arms and legs with no fear at all, and that even if he were to move suddenly they would only flutter their wings and adjust their balance and settle down again. This was why Matthew felt able to talk quite unselfconsciously, whereas if he had been talking to anyone else he would have been tied in knots of embarrassment, cursing himself.

  He wondered for a moment if Harry had even heard what he’d been saying. He’d hardly said anything in reply. But why should he expect a reply? It was enough to be able to talk, wasn’t it? No, he thought, it wasn’t. Perhaps the answers, if there were any, wouldn’t come from Harry at all, but from some other source as far removed from the world and all that he knew as that other sun was, that shone so mysteriously on the world for a while and then vanished again.

  Suddenly both of them looked up and over to the farm. There was a cry; it was muffled, and Matthew wasn’t sure if he’d heard it at all, but for some occult reason a spasm of alarm took hold of both of them. They heard a door slam, and the sound of hurrying footsteps, which only a few seconds later got louder and crunched on the gravel beside the house. They saw, as she came into the garden, that it was Mrs. Parrish.

  She was nearly running; and she looked so frightened that it was almost comic at first, and Matthew had to be careful not to smile as she hurried breathlessly up to them and nearly tripped on the edge of the grass. But her face was white.