Ladies From Hell (21 page)

Sarah seemed her usual self at breakfast; pretty, quiet and grave. It was I who felt distinctly below par. The disturbed night had played havoc with my already-overstrained nerves, to the extent where one half of me would have liked nothing better than to pack up and leave there and then. Partly, it was the girl’s presence that prevented me; the magnetism she seemed to exert, with neither intention nor effort. And yet I felt nothing that could conventionally be termed desire. Somehow it seemed sufficient that she existed and that I could watch her; her deft, light movements, her calm, lovely face, the fall and
swing of her dark hair. If she was aware of my fascination she paid no heed; though once she turned and smiled one of those inimitable slow smiles, neither provocative nor resentful. I found myself wondering how many men, and women too perhaps, she had attracted in her handful of years. It seemed she was surrounded by an almost tangible aura, a life-force; and I remembered a description of a machine, invented by a Russian, by means of which the aura of any man or woman could be rendered visible. The psyche, the very soul perhaps, snapping and flashing in coloured searchlight beams. The notion brought a wholly unexpected rush of feeling; I blinked and pushed my plate away, half-rose before I realized. The magic of the ley had me in its grip again.

The weather had freshened after the storm. A westerly was blowing, driving white-piled clouds fast above the little valley. Coombe Hasset One, her blades still feathered, sat grandly on her hill. Somebody, I saw, had rigged a bright windsock beside the turbine housing. It streamed steadily, veering slightly in the gusts. Listening intently, one could hear the seethe and hiss of the high hill grass. Mixed with it was another sound, deeper and booming, like distant surf; the wind-voice passing through the great still machine.

Boulter had once more lowered the glass wall into its recess; I sat on the verandah till midmorning, reading desultorily from Alfred Watkins’ strange book. At eleven Alec strolled through to ask if I fancied a drive down Beaminster way, as Sarah wanted to shop. That was fine by me; he brought the Range Rover round and we bumped off down the steeply-climbing track, Sarah behind us on the broad back seat. Five minutes from the village, Boulter pointed. He said, “Coombe Hasset Three,”

The big funnel was facing away from us, half hidden by the high swell of the down on which it stood. Its dural panels gleamed new and silver in the morning light. Figures were moving below it, small as ants, and a line of high green trucks were pulled up beside the road. At Coombe Hasset Five the army was again very much in evidence. I saw
what looked to be a command vehicle, near it three of the APC’s Boulter had mentioned. We got a better view of the generator; closer to the road this time, poised above an intervening copse like a vast misplaced aero-engine. Staring up as the Rover drove past, I found the shifting perspectives of trees and grass momentarily giddying. It was as if the turbine itself was moving, sailing grandly against the intense sky.

Boulter explained that the road we were following swung away at this point from the line of the ley. We followed the contour of a spur of downland, turned right again; and he pointed out the standing stone he had described, dark and aloof in a corner of a wheatfield. Beyond it the spire of a half-hidden church marked the blue. I half-glanced back at Sarah, but if she remembered her odd experience she made no comment. She watched the thing calmly as we passed, then put her hair back and grinned at me.

The shopping was largely accounted for, timewise at least, by an hour spent in a little boutique that had caught Sarah’s eye, during which she tried innumerable coloured kerchiefs round the crown of a floppy straw hat before finally settling for the one she had started with. We lunched at a little pub of Boulter’s choice, an unprepossessing-looking place that nonetheless still managed to serve local crab and lobster, drove south again past the sprawling miles of caravans that eclipse West Bay and up on to the coast road above the Chesil Bank. At the high point Boulter pulled on to the hard standing and we sat awhile unspeaking, watching the vast silver crawl of the sea toward the curving reef of pebbles. The cloud was thickening now, still moving up from the west; the breeze blew cool and steady, shivering the downland grass. A shallow front was coming in; the Coombe Hasset chain would have good conditions for its maiden run.

We turned inland finally, worked our way by slow degrees across the great upthrusting spine of Dorset. The breeze held steady, chasing patchworks of sun and shadow across the vaster patchwork of the land. It should have been a memorable drive; but to the unease I had felt was now added a foreboding
as formless as it was powerful. Again it seemed as if something, some thought or notion born of the miles on miles of sea, the seething grass, seemed all but ready to surface into consciousness. I grappled with it finally; but it had slipped away.

Sunlight mellowed the old buildings of Coombe Hasset; and the pubs were setting open their doors. By common consent we pulled in beside The Grapes. It’s a memory that has stayed very clear with me. The low, wide saloon, empty as yet of other customers; the raftered ceiling, sun striking through the latticed windows fronting the street; and Sarah perched on a bar stool, her new hat beside her, drinking bitter solemnly from a dimpled pint mug that seemed too big for her fist.

The army—the ‘brown jobs’, our host insisted they should be called—had, we learned, been active through most of the day. Detachments had been stationed at the control bunkers and the turbine itself, while staff officers accompanied by civilian police had made house to house calls advising the inhabitants to avoid the hill and the vicinity of the generator from nightfall onwards. In consequence the village was buzzing with rumours; though news of the impending test had not been leaked, it was obvious something highly unusual was afoot. The national newscasts had been largely preoccupied with the events of the day before in Parliament Square. Hebden, in a lunch-time interview, had disclaimed responsibility for the actions of his supporters and had announced he intended to fight to the last a proposed High Court injunction restraining him from organizing further demonstrations. The landlord’s views on that, as on the rest of the affair, were succinct; Hebden, in his opinion, should be ‘put against a bloody wall, and bloody shot.’ I find it strange to think, now, how nearly that wish came true, at the end of a night that was a thousand years long.

We drove back up to Ley House, to where the great lilac flowers still bowed and nodded and the stream still ran, roaring, through the ancient sluice. Boulter switched off, coasted the big car to a halt; and the tension that was in me could no longer be held in check. I said, “Alec, what do you intend to do?”

He was halfway from the car. He looked back thoughtfully
for a moment; then he said, “Wait, mainly. We can’t really make any plans till we see what develops. I’d like to get out on the hill later on, though that might not be possible with the army there. We’d best make a reccy when the light starts to fade.”

The girl had gone ahead to the house. I hesitated, rubbed my face. I said, “I’m not too happy about Sarah. I don’t think she ought to come.”

He raised his brows slightly, and considered. He said, “We
should
be OK. I don’t intend any of us sticking our necks out too far. Anyway, it’s a bit late. It’s what she came down for.”

As an answer, it was unsatisfactory; but I couldn’t really marshal any convincing arguments against it. And in any case it was Boulter’s show, not mine; I was just an invited observer. I shaved and showered, asking myself for the hundredth time just what the hell could go wrong anyway. But it was no use; the nagging fear remained. I dressed and walked back downstairs, hearing the strains of the hifi float up to meet me. Boulter, predictably, was playing Britten. He’d introduced me to his music years back; it was yet another thing for which I was indebted to him.

None of us felt much like eating; Sarah temporized with a plate of open sandwiches. We sat as the light began to fade, drank frosted lagers and listened while the power flowed and built again in the room and I heard music that it seemed I’d never really heard before; the Serenade, the Blake settings, the Nocturnal for Guitar that anyway for me had always been filled with jaunty, ragged ghosts. Finally, Boulter shook his head. He said, “Enough of that, I fancy.” He turned to a disc I didn’t know well; Fanshawe’s
African Sanctus
. As the first huge hammered crotchets rang through the room, a strange thing happened. Sarah rose, ran to the great opening in the wall to stand head bowed. She turned, seeming to stare at us; but the gaze was remote, passing beyond us, beyond the room, the great machine on the hill. She raised her hands; and slowly at first, began to dance.

It’s another ineradicable memory. The great room, the broad
pouring of light against which she moved all but in silhouette; the flow and throb with which the place seemed filled, and that mingled now with the lapping rhythms of the music. That same pulsing seemed to absorb, and ultimately to emanate from, the body of the girl-woman as she turned and spun. Yet emanating from her too was a strange, calm joy; so that almost I saw, in her face as it caught the light, the Madonna of the night before. She tantalized, she provoked; yet somehow it was both for and not for us. Almost it was as if—another strange fantasy, induced no doubt by the surroundings, the odd mood into which I had allowed myself to fall—she danced for all the folk of all the ages; and the odd thought came that this moment, like all moments, was pre-ordained. It had always been true, since the leys themselves were young, that at this exact point of time she would do thus and thus, that her body would make just these shapes against the sinking redness, occupy these exact volumes of space. It would still be true that this had been so, when the Earth fell into the sun.

The pickup arm rose with a tiny click; and Boulter let a few moments elapse before walking quietly to the tuner/amp. Another click, and the red and green beacons died. He said gravely, “Thank you, Sarah. Now I think it’s time we took a walk.”

She was dishevelled and I thought not a little dazed; as if the impulse that had gripped her had surprised her equally. She had dropped to her knees; now she rose without complaint, and her breathing steadied. She said, “I’ll get a woolly,” and walked ahead of us toward the kitchen.

It was in fact a little after ten. We left the house silently by the side door, filed down to the bridge. An afterglow lingered, high in the western sky; but the shadows under the trees were velvet dark. I stepped carefully, hearing the steady roar of water, and felt the girl touch my arm. I made out the railing, dimly; and Boulter standing staring up past the outbuildings of the farm to the field gate, the dark swell of the horizon. He said softly, “I think we’ll try the first copse, Glyn. Through the gate, and up round to the right.
OK?”

I said, “Fine by me.”

He said, “Mind where you put your feet. It gets a bit rough farther on.”

He led the way; the girl followed, I brought up the rear. My eyes, now, were used to the dark. The trees ahead showed as a blue-brown pall, like smoke. Above the copse the sky was brightening. There would shortly be a moon.

We reached the gate without incident, stopped again to listen. But the night was quiet. To our left was the great sweep of the down, topped by the long bulk of the turbine housing; to our right the deeper blackness of the wood that clung to the flank of the chalk hill. The gate catch creaked; Boulter eased through, moved on again. He halted in the shadow of the trees. He said, “Ten fifteen. So far, so good.”

The glow on the horizon was brightening rapidly. I could make out now the pale smudge of the girl’s face as she stood beside him. I pointed. I said, “Alec, what’s across there? Above the farmhouse?”

He said, “More trees. Some scrub. Then you come out on the hill.”

I said, “We’d be closer in, if we could get there. On the ley itself. If that’s what you want.”

He shook his head. He said, “I don’t want to have to start explaining things to a nervous squaddie.”

The girl spoke then, softly. She said, “They’re there. But I think they’re higher up. Near the turbine.”

He stared down at her for a moment. Then he said, “Right, let’s go then. Before it gets too bright.”

We crossed the open ground, cautiously. A few minutes’ scramble over an unexpectedly steep slope, and we reached the fresh cover. Boulter moved uphill once more, cautious as a cat; and suddenly we were on the edge of the copse. Ahead, nothing but the high bulk of the down, across which the wind raced with a steady sibilance; and the great mass of the machine, touched now dimly with light.

“And this,” said Boulter, “is far enough.”

We waited, staring up. Voices drifted to us as the
pubs emptied in the village, once the revving of a car. A dog barked, fell quiet; the seething of the grass reasserted itself. Above the opposing wood, the moon showed a smoky orange rim; and the girl gripped my arm.

I said, “Alec, she’s moving.”

He said, “Yes. I know.”

Slowly, soundlessly, the big shape above us was altering; foreshortening as the housing nosed into the wind. In the control room, Coombe Hasset One would have been given over to her computers; soon, at their command, the feathered vanes would rotate, the turbines begin to spin. The wind rose, whispering across the hill.

I rubbed at an ear irritably, and swallowed. But the odd effect persisted. Like a little wad of air pressing against each drum. And surely too the hill itself was trembling; a deep vibration, more felt than heard, accompanied by waves of an emotion not readily identifiable. I bent, stupidly, to press my hand to the grass, and heard Boulter laugh. He said, “She’s on line, Glyn. Dead on time.”

I didn’t answer. I was experiencing the oddest sensation of giddiness and disorientation. The effect was not unlike that of a high speed lift; but this fall seemed endless, and accelerating. The hillside, I knew, was firm under my feet; and yet I fell. I was aware, dimly, of Boulter standing feet apart, holding a wrist up in front of his face. He said, “Two’s in,” and I saw him drop his hand, as if conducting.