Devil By The Sea (19 page)

Auntie looked at the sullen child, huddled in the basketwork
chair beside the stove. She had been sitting there, quite still, for the last hour. The doctor had been and gone, cups of
tea had been made and drunk: she had not said a word. Her bright hair shone against the dark quilting of the chair, beneath
it, her face seemed wan and dead as if the life had been sucked out of it.

“She’s very pale,” Auntie said.

“It’s her hair. All her blood goes into her hair.”

“Does she
know?”
asked Auntie in a whisper.

Mrs. Peacock rattled the cups and saucers in the sink. “Oh, she knows, all right. Quick as a monkey, that one. But that’s
not the trouble, believe it or not. Something frightened her in the dark.”

“Hilary, come to Auntie. Come and tell me what’s wrong.”

Impressed by her stillness, her silence, the old woman went to her and touched her gently on the arm. Hilary looked up at
her and shook her head stubbornly.

“Darling,” said Auntie and bent, creaking, to touch the flaming hair.

The child’s reaction was violent. She flung herself out of the chair and across the room. Back pressed against the tiled,
kitchen wall, she screamed at her great-aunt. “You’re no good, no
good.
You’re deaf. You can’t hear a word. I hate you.”

“Little wretch,” said Mrs. Peacock and moved angrily towards the child, her hand upraised. Auntie barred her way.

“Can’t you see she’s upset?” she said in ringing tones. “The best thing you can do is to fetch her mother.”

“Won’t he come back next week?” asked Hilary patiently. Her mother’s account of what had happened to her father had confused
her own, perfectly clear sense of the finality of
death. It seemed, now, that he had simply departed on a journey.

“No, darling.” Alice’s eyes brimmed with tears at this simple innocence. “He won’t come back ever again. He’s gone to heaven.”

“To be with God and Jesus?”

“I suppose so.” Alice’s voice was uncertain and Hilary looked at her shrewdly. “Don’t you
know?”

“Not, really, my precious,” said Alice tenderly and took her daughter in her arms. She had no wish to impose upon her children
a religion in which she could not, herself, believe. It would have seemed to her a terrible hypocrisy.

“Has he gone to hell, then?” inquired Hilary, surprised.

“Of course not.” In spite of her rationalist beliefs, Alice was emotional in her strong denial. “There is no such place.”

“But there is, it says so,” insisted Hilary. “It says so in the Bible. ‘The wicked shall be cast into everlasting fire’,”
she quoted with relish. Then her face contracted violently. “Besides, I’ve
seen
the Devil,” she cried and clung to her mother.

She could not be comforted. Between outbursts of sobbing, in stumbling, incoherent phrases, she produced her fantastic story.
It would have convinced no one. Truth was lost in terror, reality converted into a fairy tale. Over-wrought, poor child, thought
Alice as she brought her hot milk and tucked her up in bed. The dark had frightened her, that was all, she should never have
let her go out in the dark. Perhaps there had been a man— that sort of occurence was all too common. In the emotional atmosphere
of her father’s death and following upon the murder, such a happening would have been certain to stimulate her imagination.

She went to the window to draw the curtains, remembering, uneasily, that she had always considered Hilary an exceptionally
unimaginative child. She stood, doubtful, staring at her pale reflection in the black pane. The wild night enclosed the house;
above the sound of the wind, she heard the front gate bang.

“It’s only Janet,” she said, to comfort herself, and turning, saw the child’s eyes watching her from the bed.

“I’ll leave the light on, shall I?” she said.

Janet sat in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea. Listening to her distraught sobbing, murmuring the right words at the right
time, Alice was conscious of great weariness. Everything depends on me, she thought, aggrieved. The knowledge of her lonely
responsibility obscured other people’s sorrow.

“If only I’d been here,” moaned Janet for the tenth time.

“There was nothing you could have done,” said Alice, quite sharply, and poured herself another cup of tea.

“He looks so
peaceful.”

Alice reminded herself that even the most outworn of platitudes can express genuine feeling.

“I’m an orphan,” announced Janet dolefully and regarded her stepmother with round, sad eyes. Her tears emphasised her youth,
her skin was soft and damp and shone under the harsh kitchen light.

“At least it has happened gradually,” said Alice in a bracing tone.

Janet sighed. “What am I going to do now?” she asked faintly.

“Get a job like everyone else,” said Alice briskly.

Janet blushed. “When we got to Victoria, I telephoned Sheila. She was at school with me. I thought I might get
a job in London and share her flat.” Her expression became more animated.

“That seems an excellent idea,” said Alice idly.

“Of course I couldn’t
now.”
Janet spoke with heavy reproach. Her face expressed resigned martyrdom.

“I don’t see why not, if you want to,” said Alice cheerfully. She felt a certain lightening of the heart at the thought of
Janet’s departure. “After all, you have to think of yourself.”

“Would it be all right, really?” Her obvious relief was galling and Alice replied shortly, “Of course. I’ve already said so.”

“Now you’re angry with me,” said Janet in a hurt voice and her face clouded.

“No,
no.”
Alice rose from the table. “We’ll discuss it to-morrow. We can’t sit here all night.”

She collected the tea cups and piled them in the sink. Together she and Janet saw that the doors were locked, turned out the
lights. At some point they became aware that they were two women performing a man’s accustomed function and their hearts faltered.

They looked down at the dead man. He looked insignificant and empty, a sack of dry bones. Alice thought: I have been married
to you for ten years, you are the father of my children. Her heart remained dry and cold.

“Maggots crawling out of his eyes,” whispered Janet and put her hands before her face.

“Not if he’s cremated,” said Alice perversely. She longed to shock the girl. “I knew a farmer in Wales,” she said. “When he
died, it was the middle of winter and the ground was too hard to bury him. So they kept him in the kitchen, lying on a settle
in front of the fire. They rubbed salt in him to stop the smell. I don’t know whether it was successful or not.”

“How dreadful,” said Janet automatically. She was neither amused nor shocked. She glanced at Alice, her hands twisting awkwardly
together. “Shouldn’t we …”

“Pray for him, if you want to,” said Alice.

Janet coloured deeply. She blushes like a spinster lady, thought Alice, all over her body. “I don’t know … I just thought….
Do you believe in it?” she asked. Her dark eyes entreated Alice.

“In prayer?”

“No.” She’s embarrassed, thought Alice, as if she’d been caught in a street accident without her knickers on. “In God,” the
girl finished, unhappily.

Alice could bear no more. Her body ached as if she had been beaten with rods. She did not mean to be unkind but she longed
for the cool whiteness of the spare room bed.

“I don’t believe in God,” she said loudly, finishing the matter.

There was a sound outside the bedroom door and they both turned and stared. Then Alice moved swiftly but when she opened the
door, the landing was empty. In the nursery, Hilary lay face downwards in her bed, breathing steadily.

“It must have been the cat,” said Alice, and turned out the light.

When Janet and her mother had been to the bathroom, when their doors were safely closed for the night, Hilary slid from her
room and went into her father’s room. There was no light in the room but she could see the bed and the hump of his body beneath
the bedclothes by the light of the street lamp in the road outside.

She did not dare go near the bed. She said, “Daddy.” in a low, fearful whisper, and remained, shivering, by the
door. She did not expect him to answer. She was acting a part and was aware of this herself. She did not move until the clock
in the hall struck the hour with a low, theatrical boom. Then she fled from the room, back to the nursery where she stood
at the window, parting the curtains and peering out into the dark.

She did not cry. She stood, tearless and still. There was nobody to help her, not even God. No Jesus to keep you safe till
morning light. It was a story for babies like Father Christmas. A dream that fell to pieces when you were old enough and when
that happened, only the Devil was left, waiting for you in the ruins, biting his nails and dragging his cloven hoof.

After a little, she ceased to be afraid and began to luxuriate in the drama of her lonely position. She turned on the light
and stared at herself in the looking-glass, assuming an expression of suffering nobility. Then she yawned heavily, turned
out the light and lay on Peregrine’s bed, dragging the rough blankets over her. This was where his head went. His feet came
higher up than hers because he was smaller; she curled her body slightly so that she could fit into his shape. If she lay
quite still, she could almost feel the hollow his body made in the mattress, she could imagine that she
was
Peregrine. She closed her eyes and fell asleep swiftly and healthily.

Hilary was playing in the garden with Wally. Mrs. Peacock had brought him to work with her because he was wearing his new
school clothes. The evening before, he had been caught robbing an orchard by an angry market gardener and although he had
successfully made his escape, he had been badly frightened and fallen into a flooded ditch. When he returned home, late and
soaked to the skin, Mrs. Peacock had not been angry about the robbery. She knew that Wally was not a delinquent but had merely
been experimenting to see what he could get away with. She was, however, very angry about his clothes which could not be dried
overnight in the caravan. There was no alternative but to put him in his best clothes and, knowing that he would find it impossible
while engaged upon his usual activities to keep them clean, she decided to keep him under her eye.

At first, he was surly with Hilary. He could not be friendly with her because she reflected, too painfully, his own, crippling
disadvantages. Like him, she was too fat and too clever: this similarity which should have formed a bond between them, established
her in Wally’s mind as someone to be avoided.

Hilary was still too young to dislike Wally for this reason. Although she often wondered, with secret terror, why she had
no friends, she did not know she was clever and her feelings for Wally were so blinding that she did not see him as fat.

Once they were alone and unobserved, her loving admiration disarmed Wally entirely. He even indulged her by playing Hide and
Seek, a game which he would normally have considered beneath his dignity. When they were puffed, they sat on the steps of
the wooden summer house at the bottom of the garden and ate squashed-fly biscuits— a term hastily invented by Wally to discourage
Hilary from eating the currants of which he was extravagantly fond. She picked them carefully out of the biscuits and handed
them to him.

“I’m going to the Fun Fair this afternoon,” he said grandly. “It’s the last day. And it’s
my
last day, too. I’m going to school to-morrow. To my new school.” He said this proudly but Hilary was unaware of the significance
of his achievement and merely said, “I wish I could go to the Fun Fair,” and sighed.

“I could’ve gone to the pictures. My Mum gave me five shillings.” He plunged his hands deep into his pockets, rattled the
coins and scratched himself.

“Would you take me?” she said ingratiatingly. “I’ve got some money in my Pig.”

He shook his head. “Your Mum wouldn’t let you go. Not now your father’s dead. Have you seen him?” he asked curiously.

“I looked last night. But it just looked as if he was asleep. I didn’t go close,” she admitted honestly.

“I saw a dead man once. In the street. He was run over.”

“Was he bloody?”

“No,” he said, his voice tinged with regret. “He was sort of yellow. His head was hanging off the edge of the pavement. He
looked all loose, like a Guy Fawkes.”

“It must be funny to be dead,” said Hilary in a speculative tone. “I suppose we were dead before we were born.”

This idea surprised Wally. He picked his nose reflectively.

“I dunno. I suppose we can’t have been really. I mean we weren’t there, were we?”

“You aren’t when you’re dead. You rot away.”

“Yes, but it’s different.”

“You go to heaven.”

“That’s what they
say”
said Wally significantly. They both stared in front of them for a short space, absorbed in this difficult problem. Finally
Hilary said, “I’m sorry Daddy was horrid to you yesterday. It was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t nothing.” Wally was appalled that she should have mentioned the matter. He rose from the step, whistling casually
and began to kick at the rotten wood of the summer house.

Hilary felt his coldness towards her and said ingratiatingly, “He spanked
me.
On my bare skin.”

Wally was comforted by this admission. “Did you have any marks?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. I expect I was black and blue.”

“Let’s see.”

Hilary drew away from him. “No. It’s rude,” she said pnggishly.

Wally flushed to the roots of his hair. “Soppy,” he shouted angrily.

“I’m
not.”
Wally began to walk away and she ran after him pleadingly. “I’ll let you if you like.”

“Think I
want
to?” he sneered. “I bet it isn’t worth seeing. My Dad once went for me with a belt. It had a buckle on the end and it cut
me right open. The people next door sent for the Cruelties. There was an awful row.”