J. B. Priestley

“ Somehow it was as if all things had narrowed to one perilous rim.
‘Give me London,’ said Gladys, her mouth close to his ear. ‘London every time. You never see a night like this there. It never seems so bad. Ugh! I’d get the horrors here. And, mind you, I’ve struck some rotten places in London, but you always feel you’ve only to make a little dash for it and everything’s all right, there’s the lights and the buses and policemen just outside. But look at this.’
‘We’re probably cut off altogether by this time.’ Penderel found the idea attractive. ”

“ Margaret nodded in silence. The thought of being left in total darkness filled her mind. Her skin tightened and shrank again from a clammy touch. If those lights did go out, she wouldn’t move a yard from the fire and Philip until morning.
Mr. Femm, who had exchanged a remark with Penderel, now remembered his duties as a host and stretched a hand towards the dish of potatoes.
‘Stop!’ screamed his sister, making them all jump. ‘What are you doing? We’re not all heathens.’
He brought back his hand, folded his arms, and looked across at her with a sneer on his face. ”

“ Blood and sweat ran down his face, blinding him; the pain in his side was intolerable; and he felt his strength ebbing out; but he held on, held on as if there was nothing else left in the world to do. And all the while his mind, escaping from this shameful nightmare of stench and blood and pain, went darting back to queer memories and flashing along the edge of vivid little dreams; and once more he was lying in the long cool grass near the playing-field wall, or listening to Jim and Tom Ranger outside a tent, a glimmer of starlight there, or standing under the blossom at Garthstead ”

“ There came gibbering into it the fancy that she was the victim of a plot, that all the others had been deliberately spirited away by Miss Femm, who would lock them all up and then come creeping back to lay a toad-like witch’s hand [174] upon her. For one sickening moment she could feel that hand, but the next instant the whole fantastic web was broken. Nerves and a too eager imagination were playing her false again, playing false indeed to life itself, through which there ran the unbroken cord of sanity; they were lying and treacherous, betraying her mind back into primitive darkness. ”

“ Mine’s this. If you approach life in the old noble-silly fashion, then it’ll simply cheat you and bump you badly. If you don’t, if you crawl into it with no grand illusions, then you’ll come to terms with it, of course, and live easily, but you’ll be nothing but a pig, and it’s not worth having at all on those terms.’
‘That’s not unlike mine, you know,’ said Philip. ‘Only I feel I could patch up your trouble, that a compromise is possible.’
‘And that’s what I felt about yours,’ cried Penderel. ”

“ He’d always been more afraid of madness than anything else—the very thought of a maniac had always filled him with terror, and when this creature had raved on the stairs he’d felt sick, as if he were being pelted with lumps of putrid flesh—and of course he’d have to come in the end to face it alone. The thing came at last, the darkness shaping itself, and immediately everybody disappeared, doors were locked all round you, and you found yourself alone with it. That noise again, much nearer this time! Yes, he was at the other end of the landing. ”

“ I’m always glad to wake in the morning and find myself out of my dreams, which always turn me into a poor shaking barbarian wandering in the dark, compelled to do some idiotic thing with terror all round me. Ordinary life’s bad enough, but it’s a prince to the stuff we spin out of our rotten unconsciousnesses every night. Don’t you think so?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Penderel stopped to consider the question. ‘I think I must be one of the other people. I often have a splendid time in dreams, and hate waking up. Perhaps when I wake up, I land into one of your dreams. ”

“ He lashed himself into a kind of anger as frightened men frequently do. ‘But to go running out there,’ and he pointed shakily at the door, still open to the night, ‘in the dark, with the floods there, the rocks tumbling down, everything cold and black and pitiless. And nowhere else to go, no escape!’ And he clashed together his bony hands.
Penderel stared at him. ‘A bad business, certainly, if one had to go. But one hasn’t, you know. Even if we have to go, you won’t have to. You can stay comfortably here.’ And as he said this, he looked Mr. Femm in the eyes. ”

“ You don’t understand women at all. You don’t know anything about them.’
‘That’s true,’ Penderel confessed. ‘I don’t understand ’em. I don’t even pretend to. Another thing, I don’t like the fellows who do.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Philip. ‘It’s a funny thing, but the men who write little books about women, or lecture about them, or pretend to specialise in them in their novels are always complete bounders. You must have noticed that, Penderel?’ He had said this before—he could almost read the number of times in Margaret’s glance, demure, amused, tolerant—but he spoke with conviction. ”

“ Margaret was saying something, but he couldn’t hear a word. The downpour and the noise of the engine were almost deafening. Suddenly he stopped the car and leaned back, relieved, relaxed, free for a moment from the task of steering a way through the roaring darkness. He had always felt insecure driving at night, staring out at a little lighted patch of road and groping for levers and switches, pressing pedals, had always been rather surprised when the right thing happened. ”

“ We said we’d get the lamp and we’ll get it. Why shouldn’t we?’
‘Why should we if we don’t want to?’ said Mr. Femm, calmly. ‘And I don’t want to. Are you afraid of telling a few lies? If you are, I will take it upon myself to tell them.’
‘It’s not that, though I must say I don’t like lying. And in this case it would be particularly mean.’ But Philip couldn’t be angry, it was all so absurd. He never remembered a more absurd conversation—the two of them standing there in the little glow of candle-light at the end of the landing, arguing about a tiny errand they had undertaken. ”

“ Penderel noticed that Waverton, now no longer a manipulator of brakes and gears but a human being, was looking about him curiously and stealing an odd glance or two at friend Femm. And well he might, Penderel told himself, and suddenly felt unreasonably sorry for Waverton. Somehow he felt that Waverton ought not to be there. Waverton wasn’t like him, a man without a load, almost outlawed, naked, but a fellow who had given—what was it?—yes, hostages to fortune. He had, for example, a wife there, now changing her clothes. How odd women were, always either not quite human or too human! ”

“ We’ve no easy and rapturous contact with things themselves; we only watch their shadows, either anxiously or, at the best, with a dim sense of triumph. There’s the snag, the catch, then. We’ve either eaten too much or still too little from the Tree of Knowledge. As it is, we know just enough to give life a hair-trigger.’ Then he looked round apologetically. ‘Sorry. I seem to have made a speech.’
While the others were waving away his apology, Margaret was telling herself that she had never heard Philip reveal himself so clearly and fully, even though he did it unconsciously. ”

“ But it was only a flimsy affair of paper and the rain had played havoc with it. Philip, who was visited by a sudden feeling of cosiness, watched her turn it over and stare at it with wide grave eyes. Then he saw her shake her head; just like a child, he thought. He wanted to tell her so and give her a quick little hug, a sign across a thousand miles of desert; then rush away to the nearest shelter and talk everything out with her. ”

“ He listened at the door. Vague, distant sounds came through, suggesting that Morgan had not yet been overpowered but was still putting up a fight somewhere at the end of [267] the corridor, perhaps in or near the kitchen. A creak from the stairs sent him back into the middle of the hall, with his heart-beats filling his ears. But nobody was there.
If that had been the moment for action, he felt, all would have been well. There was, however, nothing to do but wait, listen to the mocking old timbers and wait, stare at the jumping shadows and wait; and now he suddenly felt sick and afraid. ”

“ Good old eating, thought Penderel, it’ll carry anything off. Not that he minded these little family quarrels of the Femms, he told himself; he rather enjoyed them. They were like a passage from a new kind of morality play; a short scene for the sneering bone and the screaming flesh.
Nobody spoke. It was one of those silences not easily broken; their strength is tested by a tap or two of words tried over in the mind, and then they are left alone. Margaret bent over her plate. Philip was idly watching Miss Femm, who was heaping red meat on the plate that Morgan held out to her. ”

“ She looked at Philip speculatively. What would he ask her?
[102] ‘Your turn to ask now, Waverton,’ said Penderel. ‘And you’re lucky, having a wife for victim.’
Philip looked at her as if she were a strange person. It gave Margaret a little thrill, though she knew that it was because they were playing this game, for she had noticed that look before in company.
‘Your question is this,’ said Philip, still looking at her as if he had hardly ever seen her before. ‘What do you want? What are you getting at? What do you want, in your heart of hearts, to do, to be? ”

“ His mind, outracing him, found an opposing presence, an enemy, but no name for it; a density of evil, something gigantic, ancient but enduring, only dimly felt before, but now taking the mind by storm; it was working [192] everywhere, in the mirk of rain outside, here in the rotting corners, and without end, in the black between the stars. Margaret never seemed to understand about it, but now it had made her understand or she wouldn’t be calling like that. ”

“ Penderel thought he would give them another and louder rap. ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller. That’s why poetry is so good, he told himself, his hand on the knocker; at such times odd bits of it come shooting up in the mind like rockets. Rattatta-tat-tat. Should he give them another and conclusive tat-tat, rounding off the phrase? No, that always sounded so complete that there was no urgency in it. That was loud enough anyhow, loud enough—as people said in their hellishly grim fashion—to waken the dead. ”

“ At times—he is a dangerous maniac. Always he wanted—to destroy—to wipe out everything—so that life—could be made—over again. There was—you see—a kind of nobility—in Saul—but now his mind—lives—in darkness. Not always—but the madness returns—to destroy him—the destroyer.’
‘Where is he?’ asked Margaret, shakily. The question was directed at the bed but actually she was looking at Philip, who was now nodding his head and frowning as he always did when he thought he knew something important.
‘I know where he is,’ Philip announced. ‘I’ve heard him and seen his room, at least the door of it. ”

“ And so you see, Horace, we can stay where we are.’
Mr. Femm had now recovered himself. ‘It is obvious,’ he said, looking at Mrs. Waverton, ‘that you will have to remain here for the night. The misfortune is yours, not ours. I am afraid we can promise you very little.’
‘No beds,’ screamed his sister, with that terrifying unexpectedness of hers. Penderel had begun to cherish an intense dislike of her, and longed to bellow in return, particularly when she gave another screech: ‘They can’t have beds.’
‘As my sister hints,’ said Mr. Femm, smoothly, ‘there are no beds, I am afraid, at your disposal. ”

“ They kissed. Then [220] her hand was passed over his cheek, and his arms tightened about her and they kissed again. It was all done very quietly and comfortably, without any of the blind fumbling and straining of a new passion, yet it had not only meaning but intensity. This intensity, however, like a slant of sunlight, had passed through a mellowing atmosphere of large friendliness.
Now, her hands pressing against him, she gently pushed herself away. Penderel drew a long breath. He wasn’t bewildered, he wasn’t ecstatic; he was suddenly and solidly happy. He felt enormously rich. ”

“ Femm retreated a step, his eyes two pin-points in a crumpled sheet of paper. Penderel hadn’t seen a man look so frightened for years. What an oddity!—dense at first, and then flying into a panic. A man so thin, with so little flesh and so much shining bone ought to be braver than that; he was almost a skeleton, and skeletons, jangling and defiant, [31] are brave enough. It’s our flesh, Penderel told himself, the jellied-stuff that rots so easily, which quivers and creeps, goes goosey with fright; but our bones stand up and don’t give a damn. ”