Marnie (39 page)

That red eye of that lorry was like Dr Roman’s eye when he tried to hypnotize me – only it worked better. It had a nasty dirty wink about it. Roman said: ‘It’s no good
coming to me, my dear. I can’t help you now, my dear, it’s not psychological, it’s in the blood. Child murder, it carries on from generation to generation; if you had one of your
own you’d do it in, my dear. You’re for it, my dear, didn’t you know?’

Suddenly the red eye got bigger and bigger and came up to my side of the car and peered in like an evil face, and then before I could scream we’d overtaken the lorry and it was gone.

‘Not long now,’ Terry said. I thought even he sounded tired and strung up.

Mark was there waiting at the door again, only this time Mother wasn’t with him. He came out, down the path past the stable to the small gate. And he said: ‘It’s all nonsense,
Marnie, all these barriers you’re putting up.
Nothing’s
in the blood,
nothing’s
in the upbringing,
nothing
happened at Sangerford that we can’t throw
away for ever if you want to
try
, if you’ve got courage and some
love
. Because they’re so much stronger than all these shabby ghosts. If you once find your way through the
first thickets, there’s nothing then that we can’t do together.’

I jerked my head up as the car began to slow. I said: ‘There’s nobody here, because I sent Mrs Leonard home. But I’ll be all right tonight.’

‘OK.’

I said: ‘I think I’m pretty well all in, Terry. I’d ask you in for a drink but I’m pretty well all in.’

‘That’s OK.’

I said: ‘I’ll try somehow to make it up between you and Mark, Terry. It may not be too late.’

‘It’ll be impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, my dear, I tell you it’ll be impossible.’

The car turned in at the drive, but the gravel crackled in a different way. The house – there was a light in the house.

Terry blew his horn.

It wasn’t Mark’s house. I said: ‘Where are we? This isn’t our house.’

‘No. I had to call here. I promised. It won’t take a minute.’

I looked at him. His face had got a shiny look as if it was damp. It was shiny like a fish, with rain or with sweat. It looked green. He was whistling but there wasn’t any sound.

The door of the house opened. A man stood at the door, and there was another one behind him.

Terry said: ‘You see, my dear, I’d arranged to take you for a run this evening. You promised to come so I arranged to call in and see these people – for a drink. It’s
about four hours later than I arranged but that can’t be helped, can it?’

‘What are you talking about?’

The man came down the steps. The other man followed him. There was a woman at the door now.

The man who was first down the steps was Mr Strutt.

Terry said: ‘In a way I’m sorry to do this to you. At the last minute it seems pretty hard to – to carry through. In a way I’d rather it hadn’t to be you, my dear.
One makes promises to oneself. One pays one’s debts, if you see what I mean. But I doubt if you’d understand.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Even his eyes looked green in the light coming from the house. ‘Just work it out. You don’t need to look very far. I’m sorry, but really, you know, Mark had it coming to him,
didn’t he?’ He was still talking half to me, half to himself – talking to keep his own thoughts off himself, I think – when Mr Strutt opened the door.

‘Good evening, Miss Holland. We’d almost given you up.’

‘I telephoned,’ Terry said.

‘Yes, but it
is
rather late. Do get out, Miss Holland, we want to ask you a few questions. Let me see, you know our Birmingham manager, don’t you? Mr George
Pringle.’

When that sort of thing happens to you you don’t faint. Not if you’re my type, you don’t. You get slowly out of the car and look at Mr Pringle for the first
time for two years, and you’re suddenly back in that office and you remember every pimple and blemish and blotch of his face.

And behind you you hear the other car door slam and you know that Terry has got out, and for a moment that swallows everything else, how you’ve been such a fool as to think he was willing
to be a friend to the wife of the man he hated most in the world. Half of your mind thinks that and the other half thinks but maybe it was better that you never suspected he would stoop this low.
If you have to live in the world, then you have to have some view of the world that doesn’t drip with slime.

And they’ve not exactly caught you, but they stand one on either side of you and slowly you begin to walk up the steps to the top where Mrs Strutt is waiting. And you think, well, this is
the end of everything now, it’s out of your hands. This is the end. For a second you think, maybe you could fight, you could still fight; deny everything, how can they force you to admit what
you won’t admit; just go on stalling till Mark comes. But when the second is gone you know somehow that that isn’t the answer any more, that is, if you really are going to make a break
with things as they used to be.

And you think – because it’s true what people say, that a drowning man lives all his back life in a few seconds, and so a drowning woman has plenty of time to think between steps
– and you think anyway whatever happens you can still wait till Mark comes. Everything rests on him.

But by the time you are at the top of the steps – and Mrs Strutt, looking embarrassed and rather sorry for you, has stepped aside to let you go in – I mean you know that really deep
down at root it isn’t Mark it depends on but you yourself. Because he can only help you to help yourself. If you can’t stand him touching you and you still only want to get away from
him and you want to go on living a solitary life and codding up a make-believe world with a different name and personality every nine months and rustling bank notes stuffed surreptitiously in your
handbag – then he can’t help at all. He can only help if all that is over and instead you want at any rate to try to love him and to trust him and to be loved.

And the only way to love and trust now was through this door, among enemies, with a police-sergeant any minute being called at the end of the phone.

I stopped there and looked back, but not at any of the three men. I looked across the garden. The high wind was still blowing here, and a ragged cloud like a broken fish and chip bag drifted
just over the trees. The trees were rustling and waving and they smelled of pines. All the garden looked dark and foreign and strange.

Mark had said: ‘I want to fight
for
you. We’re in this together’; that was something I’d have to hold on to.

I thought, the way to love is through suffering. Who had said that? Did it mean anything or was it just the usual talk?

You know, I thought, this isn’t going to be the hardest part, this is the easiest part, going through this door.

I took a deep breath and turned and went in.

Winston Graham is the author of more than thirty novels, which include
Cordelia
,
Night Without Stars
,
The Walking Stick
and
Stephanie
, as well as the
highly successful
Poldark
series. His novels have been translated into seventeen languages and six have been filmed. Two television series have been made of the
Poldark
novels and
shown in twenty-two countries.
The Stranger From the Sea
has now also been televised.
Tremor
, Winston Graham’s latest best-seller, is also available from Pan Books.

Winston Graham lives in Sussex. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1983 was awarded the OBE.

By the same author

ROSS POLDARK

DEMELZA

JEREMY POLDARK

WARLEGGAN

THE BLACK MOON

THE FOUR SWANS

THE ANGRY TIDE

THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA

THE MILLER’S DANCE

THE LOVING CUP THE TWISTED SWORD

NIGHT JOURNEY

CORDELIA

THE FORGOTTEN STORY

THE MERCILESS LADIES

NIGHT WITHOUT STARS

TAKE MY LIFE FORTUNE IS A WOMAN

THE LITTLE WALLS

THE SLEEPING PARTNER

GREEK FIRE

THE TUMBLED HOUSE

THE GROVE OF EAGLES

AFTER THE ACT

THE WALKING STICK

ANGELL, PEARL AND LITTLE GOD

THE JAPANESE GIRL (short stories)

WOMEN IN THE MIRROR

THE GREEN FLASH

CAMEO

STEPHANIE

TREMOR

THE UGLY SISTER

THE SPANISH ARMADAS POLDARK’S CORNWALL

First published 1961 by The Bodley Head Ltd

This edition published 1997 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2012 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-447-20723-8 EPUB

Copyright © Winston Graham 1961

The right of Winston Graham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
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liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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