The Day of the Storm (24 page)

“You're not going,” he said pleasantly. “You don't really think I'd let you go?”

“He's been hurt, Eliot.”

“So what? You saw what he did to Andrea. He's rotten, Rebecca. You know he's rotten. His grandmother was an Irish whore, God knows who his father was, and he's a womanizing bastard.”

The ugly words, which were meant to shock me, slid off my back like water from a duck. Eliot saw this and my unconcern infuriated him.

“Why do you want to go to him? What good could you do? He won't thank you for interfering, if it's thanks you're looking for. Leave him alone, he has no part of your life, he's none of your concern.”

I stood watching him, hearing him, without making sense of anything he said. But I knew, all at once, that it was over, the uncertainty and the indecision, and I felt light with relief, as though a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I still stood at the crossroads. My life was still a confusion. But one thing had made itself abundantly clear. I could never marry Eliot.

A compromise, he had said. But, for me, it would have been a poor bargain. All right, he was weak, and probably not the most successful of businessmen. I had recognized these flaws in his character and had been prepared to accept them. But the welcome he had shown me, the hospitality, and the charm which he could turn on and off like a tap, had blinded me to his vindictiveness and the frightening strength of his jealousy.

I said, “Let me go, Eliot.”

“Supposing I say that I won't let you go? Supposing I keep you here?” He put his hands on either side of my head, pressing so tightly that it felt as though my skull would crack open, like a nut. “Supposing, now, that I said I loved you?”

I was sickened by him. “You don't love anyone. Only Eliot Bayliss. There's no room for anyone else in your life.”

“I thought we decided that it was you who didn't know how to love.”

His grip tightened. My head began to pound and I closed my eyes, enduring the pain.

“When I do—” I told him through clenched teeth—“it won't be you.”

“All right then, go…” He let me loose so suddenly that I nearly lost my balance. Savagely he turned the handle and flung the door open, and instantly the wind poured in, like some monstrous creature that had been waiting all evening to invade the house. Outside was the dark and the rain. Without another word, not stopping to look at Eliot, I ran past him and out into it, as though to some sanctuary.

I had still to get to the garage, to struggle with doors in the darkness, to find Mollie's little car. I was convinced that Eliot was just behind me, as frightening as an imagined bogy man, waiting to jump, to catch me, to stop me from getting away. I slammed the car door shut, and my hand shook so much I could scarcely get the ignition key fitted. The first time I turned it, the engine did not start. I heard myself whimpering as I pulled out the choke and tried again. This time the engine caught. I put the car into gear and shot forward, through the darkness and the rain, up the puddled driveway with a great spattering of gravel, and so at last out and on to the road.

Driving, I regained some of my previous calm. I had eluded Eliot, I was going to Joss. I must drive with care and good sense, not allow myself to panic, not risk a skid or a possible collision. I slowed down to a cautious thirty miles per hour. I deliberately loosened my death-like clutch on the driving wheel. The road ran downhill, black and wet with rain. The lights of Porthkerris came up towards me. I was going to Joss.

Now, the tide was at full ebb. As I came out on to the harbour road, I saw the lights reflected in wet sand, the boats drawn up out of the reach of the storm. Overhead tattered scraps of cloud still poured across the sky. There were people about, but not very many.

The shop was in darkness. Only a single light glowed from the top window. I parked the car by the pavement and got out and went to the door and it opened. I smelt the new wood, my feet brushed through the shavings which still lay about the place. From the light of the street lamp outside I could see the staircase. I went up it, cautiously, to the first floor.

I called up, “Joss!”

There was no reply. I went on, up into the soft light. There was no fire and it was very cold. A squall of rain swept the roof above me.

“Joss.”

He was lying on his bed, roughly covered by a blanket. His forearm lay across his eyes, as though to shut out some unbearable light. When I spoke he lowered this, and raised his head slightly to see who it was. Then he dropped back on to the pillow.

“Good God,” I heard him say. “Rebecca.”

I went to his side. “Yes, it's me.”

“I thought I heard your voice. I thought I was dreaming.”

“I called up, but you didn't reply.”

His face was in a terrible mess, the left side bruised and swollen, the eye half-closed. Blood had trickled and dried from a cut in his lip, and there did not seem to be any skin on the knuckles of his right hand.

“What are you doing here?” He spoke muzzily, perhaps because of the lip.

“Mrs Kernow rang me.”

“I told her not to say anything.”

“She was worried about you. Joss, what happened?”

“I fell amongst thieves.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Yes, everywhere else.”

“Let me see…”

“The Kernows bandaged me up.”

But I stooped over him, gently drawing back the blanket. As far as his rib-cage he was naked and below this tenderly swathed in what looked like strips torn from an old sheet. But the ugly bruising had spread up and on to his chest, and on his right side the red stain of blood had started to seep through the white cotton.

“Joss, who did this?”

But Joss did not answer me. Instead, with a strength surprising in one so hurt, he put up an arm and pulled me down so that I was sitting on the edge of his bed. My long, blonde plait of hair hung forward over my shoulder, and while he held me with his right arm, his left hand was occupied in slipping off the rubber band which held the ends together, and then, using his fingers like a comb, he loosened the strands, unravelling them, so that my hair hung like a silken tassel, brushing on to his naked chest.

He said, “I always wanted to do that. Ever since I first saw you looking like the head girl of … what was it I said?”

“The head girl of a nicely run orphanage.”

“That's it. Fancy you remembering.”

“What can I do? There must be something I can do?”

“Just stay. Just stay, my darling girl.”

The tenderness in his voice … Joss, who had always been so tough … dissolved me. Tears sprang into my eyes and he saw these and pulled me down, so that I lay against him, and I felt his hand slip up beneath my hair and close around the back of my neck.

“Joss, I'll hurt you…”

“Don't talk,” he said, as his seeking mouth found mine. And then, “I've always wanted to do this, too.”

It was evident that none of his infirmities, his bruises, his bleeding, his cut lip, were to deter him in any way from getting exactly what he wanted.

And I, who had always imagined that loving was something to do with fireworks and explosions of emotion, discovered that it was not like that at all. It was warm, like sudden sunshine. It had nothing to do with my mother and the endless procession of men who had invaded her life. It was cynicism and preconceived ideas flying out of an open window. It was the last of my defences gone. It was Joss.

He said my name and he made it sound beautiful.

*   *   *

Much later, I lit a fire, piling on the driftwood so that the room was bright with flickering firelight. I would not let Joss move, so that he lay with his dark head propped on his arms, and I felt his eyes following every move I made.

I stood up, away from the fire. My hair fell loose on either side of my face, and my cheeks were warm from the fire. I felt soft with content.

Joss said, “We have to talk, don't we?”

“Yes.”

“Get me a drink.”

“What do you want?”

“Some whisky. It's in the galley, in the cupboard over the sink.”

I went to find it, and two glasses. “Soda or water?”

“Soda. There's a bottle-opener hanging on a hook.”

I found the opener and took the cap off the bottle. I did this clumsily and it fell to the floor, rolling in the maddening manner of such things into a dark corner. I went to retrieve it and my eye was caught by another small and shining object, lying half under the kickboard beneath the sink. I picked it up and it was Andrea's Celtic cross, the one that she had worn on a leather thong around her neck.

I kept it in my hand. I poured the drinks and took them back to Joss. I handed him one, and knelt on the floor beside him.

I said, “This was under the sink,” and showed him the cross.

His swollen eye made it difficult for him to focus. He squinted at it painfully.

“What the hell's that?”

“It's Andrea's.”

He said, “Oh, to hell.” And then, “Get me some more pillows, there's a good girl. I could never drink whisky lying down.”

I gathered up a couple of cushions off the floor, and propped him against them. The action of sitting up was agony for him and he let out an involuntary groan.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course I'm all right. Where did you find that thing?”

“I told you. On the floor.”

“She came here this evening. She said she'd been to the cinema. I was working downstairs, trying to get the shelving finished. I told her I was busy, but she just came up here, as though I'd never said a word. I followed her up and told her to go home. But she wouldn't go. She said she wanted a drink, she wanted to talk … you know the sort of drivel.”

“She's been here before.”

“Yes, once. One morning. I was sorry for her and I gave her a cup of coffee. But this evening I was busy; I had no time for her and I wasn't sorry for her. I said I didn't want a drink. I told her to go home. And then she said that she didn't want to go home, everybody hated her, nobody would talk to her, I was the only person she could talk to, I was the only person who understood.”

“Perhaps you were.”

“OK, so I was sorry for her. I used to let her come and get in my way when I was working at Boscarva, because there wasn't much else I could do about it, short of bodily throwing her out of the room.”

“Did you do that this evening? Throw her out?”

“Not in so many words. But finally I'd had enough of her batty conversation and her totally unfounded belief that I was ready, willing and eager to jump into bed with her, and I lost my temper and told her so.”

“What happened then?”

“What didn't happen? Screams, tears, accusations, routine hysteria. I was subjected to every sort of vilification. Face slapping, the lot. That was when I finally resorted to force, and I bundled her down the stairs and threw her raincoat and her beastly handbag after her.”

“You didn't hurt her?”

“No, I didn't hurt her. But I think I frightened her, because she went then, like the hammers of hell. I heard her clattering down the stairs on those ghastly clogs she wears, and then I think she must have slipped because there was the most frightful thumping and bumping as she went down the last few stairs. I shouted down to make sure she was all right, but then I heard her running out of the shop and slamming the door behind her, so that I imagined she was.”

“Could she have hit herself on anything? Bruised her face when she fell?”

“Yes, I suppose she could. There was a packing case full of china standing at the bottom of the stairs. She could have collided with that … Why do you ask anyway?”

I told him. When I had finished he let out a long, incredulous whistle. But he was angry too.

“The little bitch. I think she's a nymphomaniac, do you know that?”

“I've always thought so.”

“She was always talking about some guy called Danus, going into the most gruesome of intimate details. And the bloody cheek of telling everyone that I had asked her to go to the cinema with me. I wouldn't ask her to empty a dustbin with me … What's happened to her now?”

“She's been put to bed. Mollie got the doctor.”

“If he's worth his salt he'll have diagnosed self-induced hysteria. And he'll prescribe a good walloping and send her back to London. And that'll get her out of everybody's way.”

“Poor Andrea. She's very unhappy.”

As though he could not keep his hands off it, he reached out to touch my hair. I turned my head and kissed the back of his hand, the lacerated knuckles.

He said, “You didn't believe her, did you?”

“Not really.”

“Did anyone else?”

“Mollie and Eliot did. Eliot wanted to call the police but Grenville wouldn't let him.”

“That's interesting.”

“Why?”

“Who was it who brought Andrea home?”

“I thought I'd told you. Morris Tatcombe … you know, the boy who works for Eliot…”

“Morris? Well I'll be…” He stopped in mid-sentence, and then said again, “Morris Tatcombe.”

“What about him?”

“Oh, Rebecca, come along. Pull yourself together. Use your wits. Who do you think gave me this beating?”

“Not Morris.” I did not want to believe it.

“Morris and three others. I went along to The Anchor for a glass of beer and a pie for my supper, and when I was walking home, they jumped me.”

“You knew it was Morris?”

“Who else would it be? He's always had this grudge going for me ever since we last crossed swords and he ended up on his backside in the gutter. I thought his putting the boot in this time was just a continuation of our running feud. But it seems that it wasn't.”

Without thinking I began to say, “Eliot…” and then stopped, but it was too late. Joss said quietly, “What about Eliot?”