Appointment with Yesterday (20 page)

A
N HOUR HAD
passed, and Milly still had not stirred. The room was in shadow now, the brief winter sunlight had faded from the rosy walls and gleaming mirrors. It was already quite hard to read the figures on the dial of the telephone, at which Milly was still staring, vacantly.

She did not know how long she had gone on talking to Jacko, nor how long she had been sitting here since the line had gone dead.

There was no reason to move. It seemed to her, now, that she had known all along that this was how it was going to end. All the time she had been on the run, dodging the police, watching the headlines, concealing her identity … all this time she had known, somewhere deep inside her, that it was not merely the Law from which she was fleeing, but something much more terrible. Her fear of being arrested for murdering Gilbert had been genuine enough, but it had all the time masked a quite different fear, one too terrible to confront: the fear that she had
not
murdered him. The fear that somehow, somewhere, he had survived, biding his time, perfecting his plans for her punishment. He had waited while the moon waxed and waned once, and now he was on the move.

*

No, Jacko had assured her: he hadn’t told the old boy her address at work; he wasn’t
quite
a fool, thank you. Though it was always a bit of a help (he pointed out aggrievedly) if people would tell you what the hell they were up to before they let you in for this sort of thing. And no, he didn’t know where the poor old carcase had gone now, he hadn’t said. And yes, of course he, Jacko, would phone her if anything cropped up. She could count on him and on Kevin too, even though nobody ever told them anything.

 *

So Gilbert was already on the prowl through the darkening streets: peering into the cafés, (the bus shelters, his white hair raked into a cockatoo-crest by the wet wind from the sea.

*

How long would it be before he found her? That he would do so in the end, she never doubted. Already the feel of him was all about her, she seemed to feel the strange power of his madness guiding him as he roamed the ill-lit streets, staring left and right, through lighted windows and through solid walls, with his shining, visionary eyes.

*

Ridiculous! was she taking leave of her senses? Madness was a disability, not a rare and valuable gift! It rendered a person
less
able to achieve his purposes, not more! Where a sane person would seek his objective in a strange town by asking the right questions, following up the relevant clues, a madman would be driven hither and thither by a bizarre logic of his own, getting nowhere, banging up against the relevant facts only at random, like a fly in a window. Milly felt her strength returning. The sheer, gibbering terror had passed, and she began to take stock of her situation.

Here, at Mrs Day’s, she was comparatively safe, at least for the moment. No one, mad or sane, would be able to trace her to this address in the space of a single afternoon, via such a trail of mis-information as they were certainly going to encounter as they went. Like a mediaeval baron surveying his moats and drawbridges, Milly reviewed the obstacles that such a person would have to surmount. First, Mrs Mumford, tight-lipped, minding her own business if it killed her. Then, Jacko and Kevin, lying tirelessly on her behalf to all comers: and lastly (if they ever got so far) there was Mrs Graham who, in her sublime unconcern with things which only involved other people, didn’t even know that Milly had a name, let alone an address, or a continued existence beyond her, Mrs Graham’s, front door.

She would stay here, then, here in Mrs Day’s flat, for as long as it was possible to stay. Why, perhaps Mrs Day would take her on as a proper housekeeper, living-in! It was just what the flat needed, actually, someone permanently around to clear up after the all-night parties, to iron the crumpled finery, put the orchids in water … and it was just then that
she heard the sound. The soft whine of the lift gliding to a halt … the doors sliding open, smooth as cream.

Well, and what of it? There were other flats on this floor, weren’t there? It could be anybody … absolutely anybody.

It was funny, certainly, that there was no sound of
footsteps
after the opening of the lift doors, but not so funny that it need set the veins pulsing in your temples like this. Were not the carpets in this building thick and soft, the acoustics carefully planned to deaden footfalls? Absurd, then, to imagine that someone must be lying in wait out there, or advancing soundlessly in ancient white gymshoes….

She seemed to know, though, what the next sound was going to be, and when she heard it, the shock was the shock of recognition rather than of fresh terror.

It had all happened before, that was the thing: happened exactly as it was happening now, only at a different door, opening on a different flat … the slow fumbling at the latch … the faint scratching of a key inserted by unsteady fingers, and then the door swung silently open….

“Oh!” said the girl: and for a few seconds she and Milly stared at one another in mutual stupefaction, each separately trying to reconcile a turmoil of imaginary expectations to a completely unforeseen reality.

The newcomer was a heavy, thick-set young woman, with a big, freckled face devoid of make-up, and she was wearing a grey jersey and navy blue skirt which (Milly found herself inanely reflecting) the exotic Mrs Day wouldn’t have been seen dead in.

Where on earth did so unglamorous a figure fit into Mrs Day’s glittering life? Friend? Relative? Or—yes, that was the most likely—she must be a betrayed wife come to have it out with her husband’s mistress! That’s how she’d come to be in possession of the door key, of course: she had found it in the pocket of his suit when she was sending it to the cleaner’s, and then (driven by curiosity and by the chronic insecurity of the plain and dowdy wife of an attractive man) she had searched the rest of his pockets … had come across the
love-letters, the pressed orchid…. No wonder, after all that, that the poor girl had been a bit non-plussed at the sight of Milly! Probably she had never seen the legendary Mrs Day, and was right now trying to fit Milly to the part, twisting her hands agonisedly as she did so, with her doughy jaw dropped open.

“I’m afraid …!” began Milly, and “I thought …!”
interrupted
the girl; and then they both gave up simultaneously and stared at one another again.

“I’ve come for my coaching,” the girl volunteered at last—and at the sound of the hesitant small voice, Milly suddenly noticed how very young the visitor was, and how paralysed with shyness—noticed, too, the bulging briefcase she was clutching.

“Mrs Day—that’s our headmistress—she said just to let myself in, as she’d be late. I—I’m sorry … she didn’t tell me there’d be anybody here…. It’s my A-level physics, you see, I was away all last term….”

A headmistress! How one lives and learns! For the second time in five minutes, Milly found all her presuppositions being turned upside down: and her mind was still spinning from this second effort of readjustment, when the buzzer sounded on the front door.

For some reason, she wasn’t frightened at all this time. Somehow, she assumed that it must be Mrs Day herself, and was all agog with curiosity at the prospect of actually
seeing
this many-sided character. “Yes?” she said confidently into the mouthpiece, and heard the caretaker’s voice in reply:

“Mrs Barnes? Good, you
are
still there, I thought you might have gone. Your husband’s here, Mrs Barnes, he’s come to call for you. I’m sending him up now.”

R
UNNING, RUNNING, RUNNING
, all over again, through dingy, ill-lit streets, only this time there was so little sense of escape. She remembered how her lungs had laboured, just as they were labouring now, seared by the freezing night air. Only then there had been a taste of dawn in the January darkness: now, the black night was only just beginning. There had been hope then—though she had scarcely been aware of it—hope of escape, of a new life somewhere on the far side of despair, of new worlds yet untried beyond the horizon of her experience. She had thought then, as she raced through the dark, deserted streets that zig-zagged away and away from the basement in Lady Street—further and further, ever safer, ever more anonymous—she had thought, then, that she was actually escaping: that if she could only run fast enough, and far enough, then she could be out of it all, her very identity left behind like an empty packing case with all the rest of the debris.

Not now, though. From the moment when she had flung herself out of Mrs Day’s flat, and out of the life for ever of Mrs Day’s astonished pupil, she had known, in her heart, that there was nowhere to run; that this was the end of the road.

Oh, she had run, just the same: had run like a madwoman, down all those flights of richly-carpeted stairs, round and round … down and down…. There was a curious moment when Gilbert must have been barely two yards away, as the lift slipped up and past her, gliding upwards in the opposite direction to her headlong flight.

She had not even glanced towards it. On to the bottom she had sped, without pause or backward look. Nor had the startled voice of the caretaker delayed her. The heavy glass door swung back against his exclamation of surprise and protest, slicing it off, and she was out and away, hurling herself from the lights and warmth of the flats as from a high rock, plunging headlong into the dark beyond.

Yes, she had run, all right. She was still running, her breath
coming in short, painful gasps and her heart lurching. Already she had reached the outskirts of the town. The houses were smaller, and shabbier, the street lights dimmer and further and further apart, until presently there were no more lights and the darkness was unbroken, except for an occasional orange gleam from a window as a curtain was twitched aside and a face peered out, idly censorious, to see who it could be, running so fast and so noisily through a respectable suburb at such an hour.

Still she ran on: and after a while she felt the road change to something rougher under her feet. She found herself stumbling against cobbles—or was it dry tufts of winter grass?—And now she could just see that the path ahead of her was forking in two directions, one winding up towards the downs, the other curving down to the right … it must be towards the beach. Already there was a salty tang in the air, and that sense of emptiness and uncluttered distance that is unmistakeable: the sea could not be far away.

It did not matter which of the two paths she chose, for she knew by now that she was running nowhere. The options were at an end. Whichever way she chose now, to left or right, it would still be the way back. Back … back … by the same way she had come…. It had come to pass just as she had foreseen it—was it only yesterday?—as she stood at Seacliffe station watching the London trains come in. The past had got her. It had caught up with her at last. She could feel the weight of it, dragging her backwards and downwards, even while her legs still went through the motions of running. It was like riding to your death on a stationary bicycling machine.

Strange how her legs would not give up, even now! Still they ran: ran, and ran until her heart seemed to be beating some strange tattoo behind her ribs … tapping out
messages
… telling her something…. She could hear voices, just as Gilbert had once heard voices:

“Milly!” they mocked: “Milly Barnes!
What
a name to choose!” and as she ran faster, trying to outdistance them, she seemed to hear their laughter, rollicking in the dark air that raced away behind her.

They had given themselves away, though! She knew now what they were after. They were after her new self, her new identity.

How could they be so unfair? She had worked so hard on this new self, with such skill and with such determination. Out of the jumbled-up remains of a broken, terror-stricken
criminal
, she had succeeded in piecing together a perfectly respectable Milly Barnes, a re-conditioned, good-as-new model, capable of earning its own living, even of making friends for itself.

“Milly Barnes! Milly Barnes!
You’re
not Milly Barnes, there’s no such person!”

She had not outdistanced them after all! They were back … they were all around her! They were siezing on her … laying hands on her new self … confiscating it, as if she had been smuggling it through the customs! “It’s mine!” she kept crying, “I’ve got a right …!” but all she could hear was their maddening laughter … and now here were their hands, tweaking at her, pulling her back, weighing her down, until her legs could carry her no longer, and she sank to the ground.

She knew, really, what it was she had done, and why They had been sent to fetch her. She wasn’t supposed to be here at all. She was a reincarnated soul without a passport … somehow, she had slipped illegally between the frontiers of life and death, dodging the regulations, jumping the queue, getting herself re-born before her time.

And now they were pulling her back, dragging her down to the place where she belonged. “You’re not getting away with
that,
my girl!” she heard them say, amazingly clear and loud against the noisy thudding of her heart. “Re-birth isn’t
that
simple—whatever made you think it was? And so now it’s right back to the beginning for you, Milly Barnes, with it all to do again—and
properly,
this time….!”

*

Milly opened her eyes. She found herself staring ahead into a sky so black and so full of stars that at first she
thought she had died, and was floating free of the earth’s atmosphere, heading out into space.

But then, after a few seconds, she became aware of a pressure against the back of her skull and against her shoulder-blades. She was lying on the hard ground, flat on her back, staring up into the incredible night sky, completely cloudless, and scoured by the cold into this unimaginable brilliance.

What time was it? How far had she come? Painfully—she must have bruised her shoulder in falling—she raised her head, and far away over the black sea she saw the crescent moon sinking, and knew that it could not be very late—not later then nine, anyway.

How long did that give Gilbert to track her down? Say she had fled from Mrs Day’s at about six—what would he have done first, when he found her gone? He would have glided down in the lift again, he would have sought out the caretaker. “She went
that
way,” he would have been told. “Towards the Avenue…. No, I’m sorry, sir, there was nothing I could do, she was going like a mad thing. I tried…. I called out to her….”

And then what would Gilbert do? She saw him pacing stiffly across the dark town, the strange, predatory look sharpening his features, until he seemed to be sniffing the night air, to left and right, like a beast of prey. And people would help him, of course they would—a white-haired old man in such a state of anxiety and concern. “Yes, she went in
that
direction,” they would say, pointing: and “Yes, we wondered if she was all right, but we didn’t like…. Oh, not at all, only too glad to be of help….” and on he would come, on, on, sniffing this way, sniffing that way, until at last all the muddled directions, all the well-meant advice, all his own strange, supra-normal perceptions, would begin to focus in a certain definite direction … would converge, at last, on this spot where she was lying.

She must move! She must hide! She must
do
something! Milly staggered to her feet, and on limbs stiff and almost
numb with exhaustion, she tried to begin running again. But in which direction? She had a mad feeling now that Gilbert was everywhere. Ahead, crouched in the dry winter grass. Behind, padding soft as a shadow through the outskirts of the town. Up in the Downs he would be lurking, too, his white hair like tufts of sheep’s wool, just visible through the dry, crackling gorse and winter furze: and down there at the sea’s edge also she would find him, looming up behind the
breakwater
like one more rotting timber, his terrible silvery eyes shining in the light of the moon.

Nowhere to turn…. No way to run, and yet run she must, for fear had possession of her limbs and would not let her be.

She came at last to the beach, at the point where the parade petered out into a slippery concrete ramp. She scrambled over the damp stone, and landed, with a scrunch of pebbles, on the shingle beneath.

The noise was terrible. For several minutes Milly crouched, absolutely still, under the shadow of the ramp, waiting to see if she had given herself away.

No sound. Nothing: and at last she ventured from her hiding-place, tiptoeing painfully over the stones, until at last she reached the limits of the shingle belt, and felt her feet sinking into soft, powdery sand.

The tide was far out, and as Milly moved towards the distant line of foam at the water’s edge, she had a strange sense that she was no longer moving at random; she was walking towards a rendezvous, to keep an appointment fixed long, long ago. And it was no good turning round and walking the other way, for if she did the rendezvous would be there, as well.

The soft sand had become firm under her feet, then wet, and wetter still, until now, as she approached the curving scallops of foam that defined the limits of the almost waveless water, marking it off from the glistening expanse of sand, she felt her feet sinking in once more, squelching at every step. She could feel the water soaking in above the soles of her shoes.

Far off to the right—a hundred yards or more—she could just make out the breakwater, gaunt and jagged against the starlit water. The treacherous light of the moon seemed to be playing games with the black timbers, they stirred and wavered in front of her tired eyes … one of the taller, narrower ones almost seemed to be detaching itself from the main body—lurching with a strange, lollopping gait out across the sand.

The Voices. Was it in moments of great and unendurable fear that they came to you? They were not mocking her this time, they were not even calling her “Milly” any more—“Milly Barnes” was just a bad joke that had come to an end.

“Candida!” she heard them call, faint and far away: and then, nearer and clearer, “Candida! Candida!”

The syllables of her old name, her real name, beat upon her out of the past, their rhythm rang like the hooves of a galloping horse alongside the quiet sea.

She put her hands to her ears, she tried to black out the sound of the past thundering towards her; she stared, with dilated pupils, across the faintly-gleaming stretches of sand which spread away into the darkness as far as she could see.

Was she going mad? The black upright timber
had
moved nearer … this was no trick of moonlight …! it had detached itself from the breakwater, it was rocking towards her across the glimmering sand. In a few moments it would be near enough for her to glimpse the white hair, flying wild under the moon.

“Candida!” the voice came again, “Candida? What in heaven’s name …?”

She did not believe it. Even after she had recognised the voice beyond all possibility of doubt; had recognised
the swing of his shoulders, too, as he ran—she still did not believe it.

All the same, it was necessary to say
something.

“Hullo,” she said, in a small voice. “Hullo, Julian!”