The Haunted Storm (2 page)

Then the throbbing increased and the first filaments of pain began to burn in Matthew’s head; he shut his eyes and, on another impulse, raised his right hand and stretched his fingers out to the sky, and prayed for lightning to strike him dead.

But none came; and presently, to his astonishment, the pain subsided, and the throbbing died away, leaving him clear and light-headed for what seemed like the first time for days.

He stepped back from the edge, dizzy, and lay down weakly on the grass. The rain beat at his face and streamed over the length of his body, and he shivered with cold, but at least his head was clear. He considered his position.

He could go back to the hotel and do nothing; or he could stay lying ·on the grass until he fell asleep; or he could stand up and try to get down to the beach and walk for a while beside the raging sea. On the whole the last idea seemed the best, he thought. He got to his feet and tightened the belt of his coat.

He was still a little dazed from the relief of losing his headache. Nevertheless as soon as he began to move along the cliffs he almost regretted it, because by being in the forefront of his attention it had at least dammed other things back. Now, with it gone, there was nothing to restrain them, and they came flooding through. Prominent among them was the desperate longing for an unmistakable signal from God. From God, or the Devil, or any other interested party – as long as it proved that the universe had depth, and width, and significance, and that Matthew’s life partook of them. Also among the various fevers that shook his mind were a wide, impartial lust, a fear for his future, and, not least, a thin, maniacal glee that he had survived so far.

Armed and driven onward by these feelings, Matthew looked for the footpath that ran along the top of the cliffs, and, having found it, set off along it as fast as the rain and the slippery mud would let him. It must lead down eventually, he thought, to the beach; and he was right. Fifty yards or so along from where he had been standing, there was a fold in the cliff, and the path led straight towards the edge. Matthew thought it was going to plunge right over, but he found, hidden by the fold and shielded from the wind, a series of concrete steps leading down the cliff, with a stout railing embedded in them. He had had no idea it was there. Perhaps the tide of the world had changed in his favour for a while.

Holding the rail tightly he set off down the path. The steps were streaming with water, but the rough concrete was not slippery. The sole of his right shoe was now gaping even wider.

The path followed a series of natural ledges downwards, taking the easiest way. At times it was completely exposed to the wind, which nearly flattened Matthew against the rock wall. The state of his mind – and he was able somehow to stand back and watch it – was fluctuating as wildly as the light and the wind. One minute he would be secure and half-enjoying everything, and the next a great rush of despair would seize his heart and nearly force him to his knees from sheer weakness. Then he would feel himself gripped by a wave of lust, pure cerebral lust with no object, and that in turn would give way to a huge emptiness, an echoing cavern of no-purpose. All the while he carefully picked his way down the steps, clinging tightly to the railing in case he should slip. He thought for an instant of how he had been standing a few moments before on the cliff-top, and shuddered. His head was filled and emptied in turn. Tears for his helplessness came to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, mingling with the rain.

The bottom steps were covered in a drift of pebbles and rough soil from the base of the cliffs. He let go of the railing and stepped on to the beach, looking around. The beach sloped down sharply to the water, which was ten yards or so in front of him. The tide was almost at its height, and the waves crashed angrily with a roar that deafened him completely. They were high and fierce, and the water raced sideways after the waves broke, each retreating back into the belly of the next. He walked carefully down to the water, wiping the rain from his eyes, and stopped just where the highest rush of the water came. He could feel the shingle moving underfoot as the great mass of water crashed down and swept back and sideways again.

The light was greener now, taking its colour from the water; and the clouds were universally black. The body of each wave was a trembling, translucent black-green, and the foam and the spray that shot far into the air were ghostly white. Further out were lighter patches on the water, patches of mud-green and what looked like yellow. The spray dashed into Matthew’s face, but he hardly noticed.

There was something moving out on the sea, and it was drifting in to the shore.

At first he was inclined to ignore it. But his eyes stayed on it and before long it had absorbed his interest to the point where he could not look away if he tried. Above the roar of the waves and the shingle he could hear, faintly and intermittently, the noise of an engine, but soon that stopped. The boat, meanwhile – for that was what it was – had drifted in further, and he could see lights on board, and even make out dimly the shape of it. It looked like a fishing boat of some kind, with a small wheelhouse amidships, where a light was glowing. It rose and fell heavily with the waves. It was being carried in almost languidly, and borne along to his right. He supposed that the engines had failed.

It was still two or three hundred yards offshore – it was hard to tell in the wild confusion of spray, and the extraordinary light – but it was definitely coming closer. Matthew, eyes fixed on it, began to stumble along the beach, following it. His feet slipped once or twice on the shingle, but he kept his balance. He could see someone in the wheel house, moving about unhurriedly. Probably there was nothing they could do. He thought he could see a dinghy hanging over the stern; why hadn’t they lowered it into the water and rowed safely ashore?

He came to a spot where the shingle gave way to a mass of rocks, and had to take his eyes off the boat to clamber over them. They were rough with limpets, but great clumps of seaweed made them slippery, and he had to go carefully. When he got back on to the shingle he ran a little way to catch up with the boat, stumbling and nearly falling head long, and panting with excitement. Something, either the boat itself or the sea, had gripped his emotions and was holding them tight. The world had come alive again, and in the sweep of the wind and rain he felt a hint of that mysterious romance which had emanated from the sky over the rooftops earlier on.

With a shock he realised that the vessel was heading straight for the Spur. In fact, no sooner had he realised it than it struck, and he caught the breath in his throat with dismay. It had lifted high on a wave – a little less than a hundred yards out now – and come down, with a crash, on the rock. It hung there, at an angle, and then a second wave, even higher, lifted it and forced it further on to the flat top of the Spur – and there it stayed. The light still glowed in the wheelhouse; he could see no movement on board.

Nothing happened for a minute. Puzzled, he sat down on the shingle, drawing his knees up and clutching his coat around him, watching the boat closely. It did not budge; it was too deeply wedged on the rock. He thought he saw someone in the wheelhouse, but he was not sure. Waves broke against the far side of it, and the spray burst into the air and streamed over the deck and down the side. The tide was fully in; the boat couldn’t possibly be lifted off. When the waves receded it would be left stranded on the rock.

The light of day had mostly gone, and the storm was dying away, but it was raining harder than ever and the clouds were still thick and black. The light was gone from the sky, but by some freak chance of the air, things – all things – appeared to glow with their own luminosity. The black sky hung over everything, and everything was visible in immense detail, from the fingers of spray down the side of the boat to the tiniest pebbles at his side. He could even read the name of the boat: Jeannette. All the stones, every single one in the steep beach below him, and each tiny ripple on the tossing black-green sea, were outlined with a weird clarity in black and silver and deep green.

He breathed in deeply, and turned his face up to the pouring sky, partly in prayer and partly in a deep excitement that things were happening. At the very same instant, when he had his eyes closed, he knew with absolute certainty that someone had appeared from nowhere and sat down beside him.

He brought his head down nervously, and looked to his left – and yes, there was a figure there, seated just a yard to his left. He wasn’t sure, in that first few seconds, if the figure was male or female. The light, strange as it was, was clear enough, but there was a subtle ambiguity about the way he or she was sitting – or something, perhaps, in the face – at any rate, his first thought was, “Where the devil has she appeared from?”

Now it was clearly a girl; how could he have wondered?

“How long’s she been following me?” he thought.

She was extraordinarily beautiful. The slight boyishness which had made him unsure of her sex was at a second glance one of her best features; it made her slim, and it made her look tough and challenging. Her hair was dark – he couldn’t be sure of the colour – and about as long as his own, and thick and wavy. The wind off the sea blew it round and forward on both sides of her face, which was isolated in darkness. Her eyes were dark and heavy-lidded. Her nose was firm and very slightly Roman, with proud and finely arched nostrils. Her cheekbones were high and wide and her cheeks pale, the skin drawn tightly over them. Her jaws were clenched and her chin seemed to be trembling. Her mouth was wide; the upper lip was full, and curved proudly like a lion’s. There was little or nothing of ordinary femininity in her face – no submissiveness or passivity, no gentle weakness, but a harshness and strength that roused Matthew to a pitch of excitement and which he seemed in an obscure unconscious way to recognise and greet like an old friend. Her expression in one way was disconcertingly familiar; and in another, it overawed him; it was open, and rapt, and trembling, as if she were staring out over abysses of revelation, and there was such passionate conviction in the way in which she looked not at, so much as through and around Matthew that the very solidity of the earth beneath him seemed suddenly false and perilous.

With difficulty he took his eyes away from her face and looked downwards at her body. She was wearing a raincoat, buttoned at the neck, and sandals, and nothing else that Matthew could see. Her legs were bare, and the sight of her naked skin, slightly goose-pimpled with cold and streaming with rain, made his flesh burn with a strange blend of lust and compassion.

Their eyes came together again and held each other for about half a minute, without a word passing between them. In that time a subtle weighing-up seemed to take place on both sides – Matthew with a dozen questions racing through his mind, and she, to judge from the look on her face, under a pressure at least as great as the one that burdened him.

From the very beginning, too, there was a wild and tender eroticism in the air between them – an urge towards the flesh in the meeting of their eyes and also, because of the suddenness of the meeting and because of the intensity with which they both felt it, in the cold air itself, and the rain, and the hard pebbles beneath them.

She shifted her weight on the shingle as if she were uncomfortable, and then, her eyes fixed on his with an expression half-mocking and half-pleading, she opened her legs a little and drew her knees up.

This gesture jarred on Matthew; it seemed gross… but then, he realised several things at once, as she spoke.

“You can touch me if you like,” she said.

Their minds seemed to come into sudden contact. Firstly, this was an invitation, as he saw, which was meant to blunt the edge of his lust by its coarseness – as it had, for a second. He knew that it was deliberate, and knew that she knew that he knew; and knew, deeper than this, that there was a powerful magnetism between the two of them, deeper than any words on the surface, and that the invitation was really an admission of it – and really an invitation.

His eyes on hers and his heart racing, he put out his hand towards her – and then she spoke again.

“You can touch me with one hand only and you mustn’t come any closer than this. And you can put your hand anywhere you like and do what you like with it, but when I go, you mustn’t follow me.”

He nodded, agreeing, and slowly reached out and put his hand on the bottom of her left shin. He was sitting tensely, with his knees drawn up like hers, a small stone tightly gripped and forgotten in his right hand.

Their eyes hadn’t left each other for minutes. A multitude of expressions crossed hers; there was no mask between her and the world – or between her and Matthew – for he saw, instantly, all that possessed her. He sat tight, just looking at her, and said nothing. The suspicion gradually left her eyes.

She put both hands to the side of her head as if she was trying to shut out the infinite noise of the storm and the clatter of the shingle, and shut her eyes and pushed the hair back from her face. Remote and frail and weary she looked in that gesture, and Matthew’s heart melted altogether.

She looked suddenly at him, seemed to say “Shall I start?” and seemed to read agreement, for she settled herself more comfortably on the shingle, and started to speak.

“You look just like him,” she said abruptly, and then paused a second; “my lover, I mean. Your eyes are the same as his but his are stronger. I don’t care if you don’t want to hear. I want to talk. Yes, just then when you put your hand on my leg, your expression was the same for a second, but it’s not now. I think I can feel what’s going on in your mind. But I’m going to tell you about my lover.”

She spoke quietly, but her voice was so clear – and there was such urgency in it – that Matthew heard her quite distinctly over the storm. She sat leaning forward slightly, with both hands on the shingle at her sides, playing with it distractedly. He found himself wondering dazedly at the beauty, firstly of her face and figure, and secondly of her voice; of all strange things, this limpid trembling beauty of hers was the most unreal.