“Then we get nowhere.”
“Nowhere. Only in ghost-stories, and those not the best, do you get anywhere that way.”
“But what are we going to do with the damned thing? It can’t lie about the house like a green eye that doesn’t wink. The man’s dead. Suppose the authorities stick by Mr. Tracy. Or don’t? This has been a fool’s errand—”
“I have an idea,” said the vicar. “Take it back to Tollerdown and replace it where you found it. If the next drought sends it up in a suspicious manner, well and good. It seems to like wells. And truth, if she prefers not to talk, can return to one.”
Carston said: “I like that.”
“Good,” said Picus, “learn it to be a toad.” Both prayed he would add—“I’ll be off with it and look up Clarence.”
Not at all.
“I’m not ready yet. Someone had better take it and fetch him. And Scylla. He gets ideas in his head when he’s alone there. Carston, you started travelling about with the thing. Go and drop it and bring them back. There’s a train to-morrow that starts at six.”
CLARENCE and SCYLLA
Scylla slept at Starn. She overslept. A terrific heat had sprung up, and made her feel that there was danger in approaching the hills.
Neither Ross nor Clarence had been seen at Starn, only Nanna had driven in on the baker’s cart to conduct her favourite campaign about the quality of preserving sugar.
“She just wouldn’t listen to me, ma’am. All she ’ud say was that she wouldn’t have you or your raspberries poisoned by what I’d sent.” The grocer’s wife told her.
So Nanna was making jam. Felix was partial, especially to raspberry jam. Russians put it in their tea. It was after lunch that she discovered that there was not a car to be had, and also took a lift off the baker down the valley to Tollerdown. She bumped and swayed over the flint-dressed road, the white dust powdering her, the overwhelming sun bearing her down, until the driver pulled up at the valley’s end, an earshot from the sea, under the hill.
Vast its burnt gold desert shoulder rose beside her, the ribbon path bleached and crumbling. She went up. Struggle with fire and earth and steepness upset her physically: her arms were red, her neck beaded with sweat, her chemise stuck to her skin. Poor nymphs of Artemis. What complexion could stand it? That was why they were painted hunting in woods. Half-way up she sank on a stone and fanned herself with her hat. Remembered another walk, to Starn. She feared that Clarence had seen her, was sulking inside instead of coming to meet her. That was sad. She remembered how once in London she had come to him straight back from Spain, and he had lifted her up and carried her over the threshold, so glad he had been to see her.
Clarence had not seen her. Unshaved, half-dressed, he was trying to torture the body of Picus, the statue he had done of him in clay. He had dragged it out against the quarry wall and pierced it with arrows of sharpened wood, feathered from a gull he had shot overnight.
Scylla found the door open and went softly in.
“Clarence, I’ve come all this way. Can I have tea?”
He heard the low voice, thought of the gull crying. She saw the bird’s half-plucked body, bloody on the floor, and that there were papers torn in strips and little darts. She turned over a fold and saw her own body, and her cry was more like the gull. Bird-alone in the lonely room. Except for a ghost called Clarence, everything was empty. She thought:
‘Run away: Can’t: Where to? It’s all empty, and my knees shake. And I’m curious. Curious and furious and only my body is afraid.’
Clarence wanted to be sure about the bird. He came in slowly, dazed with violence and grief. Bad conscience and fear of making a fool of himself nagged his blazing obsession. He saw Scylla at the door in silhouette, her scarf fluttering off the back of her neck, sweat-darkened curls appliquéd on her forehead, her hat thrown familiarly on a chair, her mouth open.
“Come and look,” he said, and with the fingers of one hand dug into her collar-bone, led her through the kitchen into the half-circle of quarry behind.
She saw Picus in greenish clay, pricked with white feathers. Clarence had made him exactly as he was, a body she had known, for which hers ached.
“You see,” he said, “I only had what I’d made of him to do it to.”
There was an arrow through his throat, and his head had not fallen forward.
“You’re going down the well, where the cup came—”
“Why, Clarence?”
“Best place for you, my fancy-girl. If there’s enough water, you’ll drown. If there isn’t, and I don’t think there is, you’ll break every bone in your body.”
She could run like a lapwing, but he could run fast. She was strong as a tree-cat, but he could tear her in two.
“I came to bring you to Picus. He does not want you to be alone on Tollerdown. He is at Tambourne. Lydia sent you a silly letter because” (get his vanity if you can) “she is so in love with you that she’s mad.”
“And so are you, it seems. Gods! I’m a lucky chap. Unfortunately, Picus doesn’t join the harem. He doesn’t like me any more.
“Going to marry me, are you? You shall in a way. I mean to follow you down the well.”
“Picus is at Tambourne, waiting for you.”
“In time he will be here again. My body will fetch him.”
“You are the most beautiful man in the world, but you won’t be when they get you up out of the well.”
He took her other shoulder in his fingers, thrusting them into the muscle-hollow under her neck, hurting her. She forgot him exacting, petulant; remembered him long before, beautiful, merry, inventive, good. And cruel now. Stupid cruelty. Cruelty frightened her. She lied:
“Clarence, I am going to marry Carston—I teased Lydia—” He turned her towards the well.
“There will be one less of you bitches to come into our lives.”
“We bear you, and I am no stronger in your hands than that bird. Why did you shoot a gull? It isn’t done.” Time seemed very precious. Only a thimbleful left. The well very near. The sun turning a little away from them.
“Woodpecker,” she shrieked, and flung Clarence off, and ran to the statue. She had been so careful not to say that name, and now saw Clarence hurrying to her, the mournful crazy mask splitting, the mouth turning up, the eyes shooting death at her. And Picus, pierced with arrows, smiled down his sweet equivocation. She heard: “That’ll do better.” He had a cord round his waist. He had cattle-ranched once: that was his lariat. She ran once round the statue. A second later he had thrown her, picked her up half-stunned and tied her against Picus. A black flint had cut her head, a patch of blood began to soak through the moon-fair hair.
Clarence walked back and stood by the kitchen door, fitting an arrow to the string. It ripped the skin on her shoulder and entered the clay. She saw another fly towards her and notch her forearm. Another, and there was a tearing pain below her left breast.
Three instants of pain, set in one of fear. Like a great jewel. Clarence stood by the kitchen door, sharpening an indifferent arrow. She made a supreme effort: not to scream much: not to betray herself. Then a moment of absolute contempt of Clarence. Then of pain. Then, as if she were looking out of a window, into a state, a clarté the other side of forgiveness. Not by that route. She fainted.
CARSTON and CLARENCE
Carston’s day had been a penance. A train had landed him some time in mid-morning at a place called Chard. Picus had said that it was nearer Tollerdown than Starn, but no one there had heard of the place. The station lay in no immediate relation to the village. The inn was fusty and unsympathetic. The heat atrocious. A day for no sane man to tramp while the sun was high. Miles across another bend of the heath where Picus had lost him, the down-banks rose, aery turf walls, solid as flesh and blood. One of them was Tollerdown. He held up a passing motorist, who was kind. He gave him a lift down a white road sprung like an arrow across the moor that filled the lowlands like a dark dragon’s wing.