Devil By The Sea (13 page)

He answered stubbornly. “You should always say thank you when someone gives you a present. It isn’t polite not to.”

She said, in a mocking voice, “Thank you, dear Peregrine.”

His lips shook. “Not like that,” he protested with dignity.

He stood beside her, a thin little boy in a handed-down dressing-gown that was too small, even for him. Wrists like matches
stuck out of frayed sleeves, there was a sore, swollen patch on his lip. Suddenly remorseful, she knelt and beat her head
solemnly on the counterpane, intoning, “Thank you, O Great One, O Bringer of Rich Gifts.”

His giggles became uncontrollable. He stuffed his sleeve in his mouth. “I said you were asleep,” he said. “I promised not
to wake you up.”

She slid under the bedclothes and lay still, ankles crossed, hands folded on her breast. Seeing the delight on his face,
her heart flowed over with kindness. “You can come into my bed if you like.”

He took off his dressing-gown and hung it neatly over the iron rail at the head of his own bed. Then he climbed into the warm
place she had made for him.

Fixing her eyes on the ceiling, she said casually, “Does your mouth hurt?”

He felt it tenderly. “Only if I touch it.”

She said awkwardly, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

“I expect I deserved it,” he said humbly. Their hands met and stickily clasped.

He said fearfully, “Where did you go?”

Her heart leapt. “I saw
Him
again,” she confided rapidly. “I climbed the cliff and played on the pipes. Then he gave me some bread. He lives in a caravan.
He wanted me to go home with him and see his bird.”

“Did you?” he asked, impressed.

“No.”

He continued eagerly, “I wish I’d been there. Would he have taken me too?”

She considered this and smiled triumphantly. “I don’t expect so, not for a minute. He only likes little girls. He told me
so.”

“But you could have
asked
him to take me. I expect he would if you’d asked him. I’ve never seen inside a caravan. It’s not fair, you get all the fun.”

Had it been fun? She said spitefully, “You’d have been afraid to go. You’re always afraid of things.”

He said meekly, “I’d have tried not to be. Did you see his horns?”

“No. He didn’t have any. I don’t believe he
is
the Devil.” Her voice rose. She felt an upsurge of wild relief as if, by her loud denial, she could strip him of his vile
importance, reduce him to no more than an old man,
mumbling his bread in a field. That was all he was, really, someone to be whispered about, the stranger you were not supposed
to talk to.

By his next words he killed her faint hope forever. “Perhaps he only didn’t want
you
to see. Of course, he can make himself into any shape he likes …”

“Then if it’s true, if he really
is
…” She could not bring herself to finish the sentence. Instead, she concluded, “You didn’t tell Janet. Or Mummy, or anyone
…”

“Oh no,” he said gravely. “I didn’t tell
them.
It wouldn’t have been any use.”

He was so calm about it, so free from the kind of awed excitement that would have hinted at deliberate tale-telling, that
Hilary was convinced. He had tossed his belief at her quite casually, so sure himself of its rightness that it was impossible
to question it.

Shivering, Hilary pressed herself against the warm angles of his body. She felt herself to be poised above a dark and terrible
abyss.

She said, “I don’t suppose I shall see him again, do you? But anyway, I won’t go anywhere without you, ever again.” She ended,
fearfully, “And you mustn’t go anywhere without
me.”

He moved restlessly beneath her clutching hands. “You’re hurting me,” he complained. “I want to go back to my own bed.”

She knew he meant it, he liked his comfort. And she could not bear to be left alone. “Don’t go.” She searched for a bribe.
“If you stay in my bed, you can choose the name for the kitten. So in a way it’ll be your kitten as well as mine.”

She half-regretted the offer as soon as it was made: he would have been contented, she knew, with a far less magnificent gesture.

As she had feared, he clinched the bargain immediately. His nature, though nobler than hers, was also more forthright: he
had a clear eye for his own advantage.

“I shall call her Moppet,” he said firmly, “and if I stay you mustn’t poke me.”

“I won’t,” she agreed meekly. She lay carefully still until he was asleep beside her, holding her body rigidly apart from
his. When his breathing grew heavier, she moved cautiously closer to him, drawing his sleeping arm across her chest. Locked
against his familiar body, she knew comfort and safety. He was with her, he shared her loneliness. While they were together,
she need not be afraid.

When she ran from the house, leaving it, she assured herself passionately, for ever, Janet had forgotten both her coat and
her handbag so that when she reached the town she was not only wet but almost, though not quite, moneyless. The pocket of
her dress revealed a sixpence, a threepenny bit and a halfpenny, presumably the change from a ’bus ride. This discovery plunged
her into the deepest gloom and self-recrimination: what an inefficient fool she was, how did she imagine she could make a
gesture of defiance on ninepence halfpenny?

She sat in a shelter on the front, alone except for a pair of shop girls in plastic mackintoshes giggling in a corner, and
stared at the sea. Her wet dress clung coldly to her body but she was in the elevated state occasionally produced by violent
agitation and unaware of physical discomfort.

She began to examine her relationship with Aubrey in the light of the interpretation Alice had placed on it. At first, Alice’s
belief that she and Aubrey were lovers had seemed the quite unwarranted assumption of an evil-minded
woman. Janet had felt indignation, shame, and above all, surprise. Now, her innocence gone for ever, she saw that her stepmother’s
conclusion had been entirely reasonable. She thought, not being of a sufficiently self-deceptive nature to persuade herself
that
her
case was different: presumably it is more likely, if people love, that they are lovers.

Having admitted this point, she began to feel young and unsophisticated. Her sins had been so childish. She hated Aubrey for
having put her in a false position. She hated Alice for making her look a fool. More than anything else she hated Hilary.
Angry tears stung her eyelids.

The sun came out. Rainbows of oil shimmered in the puddles on the promenade, the gilded dome of the pier pavilion reflected
the bright rays with tawdy splendour. Frail as an echo, the synthetic music of the Fun Fair came to her on the wind.

The front became crowded. In the dying afternoon, children, released from the boredom of boarding house, and ice-cream parlour,
clattered their pails on the beach. People were coming out of the cinema. Arm in arm, they strolled in pairs, their faces
shining in the damp, clean air. She thought: everyone is happier than I am, and walked, self-consciously alone, on to the
pier.

Along the length of the pier, the fishermen leaned on the rails, the deck beside them littered with canvas bags and jars of
squirming bait. In the centre of an interested circle of spectators, a conger eel wriggled and snapped, its red mouth open.
Grinning, a man bent forward and hacked at the back of its head with a clumsy knife.

Averting her eyes, she leaned over the rail and looked at the green water sucking at the barnacled supports of the pier. A
voice called her and she turned to see one of her school friends, a girl she had not seen since their last
term. Wearing an embroidered peasant blouse, her hair knotted in a pony tail she had been walking with her boy friend who
now waited a few yards away, affecting indifference to this encounter. Both girls were embarrassed by his presence and as
they talked, they darted shy glances at his profile. They talked about the girls they had both known: what had happened to
Bernice, to Ann, to the Italian girl who had been going to take a course at R.A.D.A.? The brief spurt of interest they had
both felt on first seeing each other flickered and died like a candle flame in a gust of wind.

Sheila said, “Well, I must be going now…. It’s too absurd, really, that you should
still
be here. London’s such fun, you’ve no idea, dances and parties….” Her eyes shone like glass beads in the sun.

“We must see each other,” Janet ventured, feeling dowdy.

“That would be
marvellous.
If you come to Town, just give me a ring. Cheery-bye for now.”

With the same enthusiasm with which she had first greeted Janet, Sheila left her. She thrust her hand through her boy’s crooked
arm. Brightly, she smiled. The boy gave a shy grin. He was very young, not yet twenty and his navy blazer with pink piping
was too small for him.

They walked towards the shore. Sheila’s high heels clicked on the uneven boards. The boy walked jerkily, trying to match his
steps to hers.

Janet shivered and looked at her watch. It was after six. She walked slowly, anxious not to catch up with Sheila and her boy
who were strolling with their arms round each other’s waists. Unfortunately, they stopped at a seat and she was forced to
pass them. As she did so, she quickened her steps and pretended an intense interest
in the view from the opposite side of the pier. She knew this would not deceive them: Sheila, enlarging on the incident to
her friends, would say that Janet Bray had deliberately followed them.

This encounter increased her sense of isolation. She was a natural outcast, a butt. She had no friends, her family did not
understand her. She saw herself growing old, unmarried at thirty, her life wasting. Shrouded in a delicious melancholy, she
walked home. She had nowhere else to go.

Creeping up the stairs, she met Alice on the landing. She had just closed the door of Auntie’s room and her expression was
forbidding.

“Oh, it’s you, is it.” She was as disconcerted as Janet. Their eyes met guiltily.

“Is she back?” asked Janet in an exhausted voice. She leaned heavily on the banisters, anxious to appear worn out and pitiable.

Alice nodded. “Asleep. She knows about the murder.”

“
I
didn’t tell her.”

“I didn’t say you did. It’s
her
fault.” Frowning, Alice jerked her head at Auntie’s door. “That awful old woman.”

“She’ll upset Peregrine,” said Janet, anxious to put Hilary in the worst light possible. “She’s bound to tell him. She enjoys
frightening him.” She went on hastily to avoid discussing the matter. “I must change my dress.”

“You’re wet,” said Alice in a surprised but uninterested tone.

“Soaked.” Janet elaborated with childish pathos. “Soaked right through to my skin.”

“Of course—you were looking for Hilary,” said Alice in a softer tone.

Janet did not disabuse her. She went into her room.
Alice hesitated for a moment and then followed her. She closed the door.

“Janet …”

“Yes?”

There was a certain respect in Alice’s face and manner. Her voice was hushed and conspiratorial. “I was unkind, earlier. I’m
sorry. If … if you should find yourself in trouble, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

Janet did not immediately understand her. When she did, she was too ashamed of her own innocence to tell the truth. She looked
at the floor with a guilty expression and said, “Yes, yes of course I would tell you.”

Alice, looking for the morning newspaper, had discovered it in Auntie’s room. Since the afternoon, Auntie had progressed through
despair to indifference. She no longer cared what became of her and despised herself for having, in her weakness, been afraid
of Alice. Who was she, anyway? A presumptuous, working-class chit who had bettered herself by marriage.

This state of mind led her, inevitably, into imprudence. When she confessed to Alice that Hilary had found the newspaper where
she had carelessly left it, she did so with a haughty lack of apology that breathed a fine, social arrogance.

Alice behaved rather better. She said it was unfortunate but could not be helped. It would not do to be too angry with Auntie:
she might leave her money elsewhere.

After dinner, when Janet had gone to bed, she spent her anger on Charles. “She’s an irresponsible old woman. Fancy allowing
Hilary to see the newspaper! God knows what she made of it.”

“She’ll forget.” Charles, putting aside the newspaper, looked up reluctantly.

“Not
this.
She’ll make the most of it. She’s got a ghoulish mind. In a few days she’ll persuade herself that she saw the whole thing
at least. You know what she is!”

Charles sighed. “Don’t make too much of it, dear.” He saw that she was working herself into a nervous state and said soothingly,
“I agree it’s a pity.”

Alice continued dramatically, “It’s more than a pity. She won’t keep it to herself. Janet says she’s bound to tell Peregrine.
And he’s such a sensitive little chap. Heaven knows what horrors she’ll tell him. She’ll frighten him out of his wits. He
must be sent away….”

“My dear girl, are you out of your mind?” He saw, by her angry reddening, that this was quite the wrong line to pursue. He
ended, awkwardly, “Where to, anyway? After all, school starts next week.”

“He could go to your brother. He likes the farm. And it would do him more harm to hear about this dreadful business than to
miss a few days school. He’ll listen to anything Hilary tells him. He must be got out of it.”

Her face lit with crusading fervour. If Charles refused to see the danger, then it was up to her to act, to save Peregrine
from contamination. “He must go to-morrow.” She added, in a significant voice, “Janet can take him. I’d like her to leave
Henstable too, for a while. There are reasons….” She had no intention of telling Charles what those reasons were, but she
could not resist making a mystery out of it.

Charles shrugged his shoulders. He was tired: he had no inclination for decision and practicalities. Indeed, he could not
bring himself to think the matter of any importance: it seemed as if a veil had been drawn between him and the world.