The House on the Strand

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I LAY THERE waiting for the nausea and the vertigo to pass. I knew it had to be endured, and the quieter I remained the quicker it would go. It was already light, and I had sense enough to glance at my watch. It was twenty-past five. If I gave myself a quarter-of-an-hour, without moving, all should be well. Even if the people at Treesmill farm were already astir no one was likely to cross the road and come to the shed, which was hard against the wall of an old valley orchard, the stream a few yards away from where I lay, all that remained of the tidal creek. My heart was thumping, but it gradually eased, and the dreaded vertigo was not as bad as that previous time when I had come to at the Gratten, and had the encounter with the doctor at the lay-by at the top of the hill.

Five minutes, ten, fifteen… then I struggled to my feet, and slipping from the orchard walked very slowly up the hill. So far so good. I climbed into the car and sat another five minutes, then started the engine and drove equally carefully back to Kilmarth. Plenty of time to put away the car and lock up the flask in the lab, then the wisest thing to do would be to go straight to bed and try to get some rest. There was nothing more I could do, I told myself. Roger would take Isolda back to that Tregest place, wherever it was, and poor Bodrugan's body would be safe in the care of those monks. Someone would have to carry the news to Joanna at Bockenod. Roger would take care of that, I felt sure. I now had a regard, even an affection for him, he was so obviously moved by Bodrugan's appalling death, and we had shared the horror of it together. I was right to have had that sense of foreboding on the beach below Chapel Point before sailing back to Fowey with Vita and the boys. Vita and the boys… I drove into the garage just as I remembered them, and with the memory came full understanding. I had driven home in one world with my brain still in the other. I had driven home, part of my brain completely sensible to the fact that I had the wheel in my hands and belonged to the present, while the rest of me was still in the past, believing Roger on the way to Tregest with Isolda.

I began to sweat all over. I sat quite still in the car, my hands trembling. It must not happen again. I must take a grip on myself. It was just on six o'clock in the morning. Vita and the boys, and those damned guests of ours, were all asleep upstairs, and Roger and Isolda and Bodrugan had been dead for more than six centuries. I was in my own time… I let myself in at the back door and put the flask away. It was fully light by now, but the house was silent still. I crept upstairs and into the kitchen, and put on the electric kettle to make myself a cup of tea. Tea was the answer, a steaming cup. The purr of the kettle was oddly comforting, and I sat down at the table, remembering suddenly how much we had all had to drink the night before. The kitchen still smelt of the lobster we had eaten, and I got up and opened the window.

I was in the middle of my second cup when I heard a creak on the stairs, and I was about to streak down to the basement and remain perdu when the door opened and Bill came into the room. He grinned sheepishly.

"Hub," he said. "Two minds with but a single thought. I woke up, thought I heard a car, and suddenly had the most fearful thirst. Is that tea you're drinking?"

"Yes," I said. "Have a cup. Is Diana awake?"

"No," he replied, "and if I know my wife after a binge, not likely to, either. We were all pretty well stoned, weren't we? I say, no hard feelings?"

"No, none," I told him.

I poured him out a cup of tea, and he sat down at the table. He looked a mess, and his pyjamas, a livid pink, did not tone with his grey complexion.

"You're dressed," he said. "Have you been up long?"

"Yes," I said. "I've been out, as a matter of fact — I couldn't sleep."

"Then it was your car I heard coming down the drive?"

"It must have been," I said.

The tea was doing me good, but it was making me sweat as well. I could feel the sweat pouring down my face.

"You look a bit off," he said critically. "Are you all right?"

I took my handkerchief out of my coat pocket and wiped my forehead. My heart had started thumping again. Must be something to do with the tea.

"As a matter of fact," I said slowly, and I could hear myself slurring my words, as if the tea had been a strong dose of alcohol that had temporarily knocked me off balance, "I was an unseen witness to an appalling crime. I just can't forget it."

He put down his cup and stared at me. "What on earth?" he began.

"I felt I needed some air," I said, speaking very fast, "so I took the car down to a place I know, about three miles from here, near the estuary, and a boat went aground. It was blowing damned hard, and the chap aboard with his crew had to take to the dinghy. They made the opposite shore all right and then this appalling thing happened…" I poured myself another cup of tea, despite my trembling hands.

"These thugs," I said, "these bloody thugs on the opposite shore — the chap from the boat didn't have a chance. They didn't knife him or anything, they forced his head under water and let him drown."

"My God!" said Bill. "My God, how terrible. Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said, "I saw it. I saw the poor devil drown—" I got up from the table and began walking up and down the kitchen.

"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked. "Hadn't you better ring the police?"

"Police?" I said. "It's not a job for the police. It's this chap's son I'm thinking of. He's ill, and someone will have to tell him, and the other relatives."

"But, good God, Dick, it's your duty to inform the police! I can see you don't want to be involved, but this is murder, surely? And you say you know the chap who was drowned, and his son?"

I stared at him. Then I pushed aside my cup of tea. It had happened, oh, sweet Christ, it had happened. The confusion. The confusion between worlds… The sweat was running down the whole of my body.

"No," I said, "I don't know him personally. I've seen him about, he keeps a yacht the other side of the bay, I've heard people talk about the family. You're right, I don't want to be involved. And anyway I wasn't the only witness. There was another chap watching, and he saw the whole thing. I'm pretty sure he will report it — in fact, he's probably done so already."

"Did you speak to him?" asked Bill.

"No," I said, "no, he didn't see me."

"Well, I don't know," said Bill. "I still think you ought to telephone the police. Would you like me to do it for you?"

"No, on no account. And, Bill, not a word of this to Diana or Vita. Swear it."

He looked very troubled. "I understand that," he said. "It would upset them terribly. My God, you must have had one hell of a shock."

"I'm all right," I told him, "I'm all right." I sat down again at the kitchen table.

"Here, have some more tea?" he suggested.

"No," I said, "no, I don't want anything."

"It just goes to prove what I'm always saying, Dick. The crime figures are mounting steadily, in every civilised country in the world. The authorities have just got to take things in hand. I mean, who would believe it happening here, off the map, down in Cornwall? A set of thugs, you say? Any idea where they came from? Were they local men?"

I shook my head. "No, I said, I don't think so. I've no idea who they were."

"And you're quite certain this other fellow saw, and was going to report to the police?"

"Yes, I saw him running. He was making straight for the nearest farmhouse. They'll have a telephone there."

"I hope to heaven you're right," he said.

We sat for a while in silence. He kept sighing, and shaking his head. "What an experience for you. What a damned awful experience."

I put my hands in my pockets so that he should not see them shaking. "Look, Bill," I said, "I think I'll go upstairs and lie down. I don't want Vita to know I've even been out. Or Diana either. I want this thing to remain absolutely private between ourselves. There's nothing you or I can do now. I want you to forget it."

"O.K.," he said, "about not saying anything. But I shan't forget what you've told me. And I'll listen for it on the news. By the way, we shall have to leave after breakfast if we're to catch that plane from Exeter. Is that all right by you?"

"Of course," I said. "I'm only sorry to have spoilt your morning."

"My dear Dick, I'm the one to be sorry, and for you. Yes, I should go upstairs, and try to get some sleep. And look here, don't bother to get up and say good-bye. You can always plead a hangover." He smiled, and held out his hand. "We loved yesterday," he said, "and a thousand thanks for everything. I only hope nothing else comes up to spoil your holiday. I'll write you from Ireland."

"Thanks, Bill," I said, "thanks a lot."

I went upstairs, undressed in the dressing-room, then retched violently for about five minutes down the lavatory. The sound must have woken Vita, for I heard her calling from the bedroom.

"Is that you?" she said. "What's the matter?"

"All that muscadet on top of bourbon," I said. "Sorry, I can hardly stand. I'm going to turn in on the divan here. It's still quite early — about half-past six."

I closed the dressing-room door and threw myself on the divan bed. I was back in the world of today, but God alone knew how long it would stay that way. One thing was certain. As soon as Bill and Diana had gone I should have to telephone Magnus.

The unconscious is a curious thing. I was deeply disturbed over this total confusion of thought that might have made me blab the truth to Bill about the experiment itself; but five minutes or so after I had lain down on the divan I was asleep and dreaming, not, strangely enough, about Bodrugan and his appalling fate, but of a cricket match at Stonyhurst when one of the team got hit on the head with a cricket-ball and died of haemorrhage of the brain twenty-four hours later. I had not thought about the incident for at least twenty-five years. When I awoke just after nine I was perfectly lucid and clear in the head, apart from a hell of a genuine hangover, and my right eye was more bloodshot than ever. I bathed and shaved, and could hear sounds of movement from our guests in the room next door. I waited until I heard Bill and Diana go downstairs, then I put a call through to Magnus. No luck. He was not at the fiat. So I left a message with his secretary at the University saying I wanted to speak to him very urgently, but it might be better if I put the call through to him rather than he to me. Then I stuck my head out of the dressing-room window overlooking the patio and shouted to Teddy to bring me up a cup of coffee. I would appear in the hall to bid our guests godspeed five minutes before departure, and not a moment before.

"What's wrong with your eye? You hit the floor or something? " asked my elder stepson as he brought coffee.

"No," I told him. "I think it's a back-lash from the wind on Monday."

"You were up early anyway," he said. "I heard you talking to Bill in the kitchen."

"I was making tea," I said. "We both of us had too much to drink at dinner."

"Guess that's what turned your eye all streaks and not the sea," he said, looking so like his mother in one of her more perceptive moods that I turned away, and then remembered that his room was above the kitchen and he could conceivably have overhead our conversation.

"Anyway," I asked before he left the dressing-room, "what were we talking about?"

"How should I know?" he replied. "Do you think I'd pull up the floorboards to listen?"

No, I reflected, but his mother might, if she heard a discussion going on between her husband and her guest at 6 a.m.

I finished dressing, drank down my coffee, and appeared at the top of the stairs just in time to help Bill down with the suitcases. He greeted me with a conspiratorial glance of enquiry — the girls were below us in the hall — and murmured, "Get any sleep?"

"Yes," I said, "yes, I'm fine." I saw him staring at my eye. "I know," I said, touching it, "no explanation for that. Must have been the bourbon. By the way," I added, "Teddy heard us talking this morning."

"I know," he said, "I heard him tell Vita. Everything's O.K. Don't worry." He patted me on the shoulder, and we clumped downstairs.

"Heavens!" cried Vita. "What have you done to your eye?"

"Bourbon allergy," I said, combined with shellfish. "It happens to some people."

Both girls insisted on examining me, suggesting alternative remedies from penicillin ointment to T.C.P.

"It can't be the bourbon," said Diana. "I don't want to be personal, but I noticed it yesterday as soon as we arrived. I said to myself; Whatever's Dick done to his eye?"

"You didn't say anything to me," said Vita.

Enough was enough. I put a hand on each of their shoulders and pushed them through the porch. "Neither one of you would win a beauty prize this morning," I said, "and it wasn't the bourbon that woke me at dawn, but Vita snoring. So shut up."

We had to instal ourselves on the steps for the inevitable picture-taking by Bill, and it was nearly half-past ten before they were finally off. Once again Bill's hand-clasp was that of a conspirator.

"Hope we get this fine weather in Ireland," he said. "I'll watch the papers and listen to the radio forecasts to see what's happening here in Cornwall." He looked at me, nodding imperceptibly. He meant that his eyes and ears would be alert for the first mention of a dastardly crime.

"Send us postcards," said Vita. "Wish we were coming with you."

"You always can," I said, "when you get fed-up here." It was not perhaps the most encouraging of remarks, and when we had finished waving and turned back towards the house Vita wore an abstracted air. "I really believe", she said, "you'd be glad if the boys and I had gone off with them. Then you'd have this place to yourself again."

"Don't talk nonsense," I said.

"Well, you made your feelings pretty clear last night, flinging off to bed directly we'd finished dinner."

"I flung off to bed, as you call it, because it bored me stiff to see you lolling about in Bill's arms and Diana waiting to do the same in mine. I'm just no good at party games, and you ought to know it by now."

"Party games!" she laughed. "What utter nonsense! Bill and Diana are my oldest friends. Where's your much-vaunted British sense of humour?"

"Not in tune with yours," I said. "I've a cruder sense of fun. If I pulled a mat from under your feet and you slipped up, I'd have hysterics." We wandered back into the house, and just at that moment the telephone rang. I went into the library to answer it, and Vita followed me. I was afraid it might be Magnus, and it was.

"Yes?" I said guardedly.

"I got your message," he said, "but I've a very full day. Is it an awkward moment?"

Yes, I said.

"You mean Vita is in the room?"

"I understand. You can answer yes or no. Anything turned up?"

"Well, we've had visitors. They arrived yesterday, and have just left." Vita was lighting up a cigarette. "If it's your Professor — and I can't think who else it would be — give him my regards."

"I will. Vita sends her regards," I told Magnus.

"Return them. Ask her if it would be convenient for me to come for the weekend, arriving Friday evening."

My heart leapt. Whether with excitement or the reverse I couldn't say. In any case with relief. Magnus would take over.

"Magnus wants to know if he can come on Friday for the weekend," I said to her.

"Surely," she answered. "It's his house, after all. You'll have more fun entertaining your friend than you had putting up with mine."

"Vita says of course," I repeated to Magnus.

"Splendid. I'll let you know the train later. About your urgent call. Does it concern the other world?"

"Yes," I said.

You went on a trip?

"Yes."

"With ill-effect?"

I paused a moment, with a glance at Vita. She had made no attempt to leave the room. "As a matter of fact I'm feeling pretty lousy," I said. Something I ate or drank disagreed with me. I've been violently sick and have a peculiar bloodshot eye. It may be due to drinking bourbon before lobster."

"Combined with taking a trip, you may well be right," he answered. "What about confusion?"

"That also. I could hardly think straight when I awoke."

"I see. Anyone notice?"

I took another glance at Vita. "Well, we were all pretty high last night," I said, "so the males of the party woke early. I had suffered a very vivid nightmare, and told Vita's friend Bill about it over a morning cup of tea."

"How much did you tell?"

"About the nightmare? Just that. It was very real, you know what nightmares are. I thought I saw someone set on by thugs and drowned."

"Serves you right," said Vita. "And it sounds more like the two helpings of lobster than the bourbon."

"Was it one of our friends?" asked Magnus.

"Yes," I answered. "You know that chap who used to keep a boat years ago over at Chapel Point, and was always sailing round to Par? Well, the nightmare was about him. I dreamt his ship was dismasted in a storm, and when he finally came ashore he was murdered by a jealous husband who thought he was after his wife."

Vita laughed. "If you ask me, she said, a dream of that sort means an uneasy conscience. You thought I was getting off with Bill and your vivid nightmare resulted from that. Here, let me talk to your Professor." She crossed the room and seized the receiver from me. "How are you, Magnus?" she said, her voice full of calculated charm. "I shall be delighted to see you here in your own home next weekend. Maybe you'll put Dick in a better temper. He's very sour right now." She smiled, her eyes on me. "What's wrong with his eye?" she repeated.

"I haven't the slightest idea. He looks as if he's lost a prize-fight. Yes, of course I'll do my best to keep him quiet until you arrive, but he's very stubborn. Oh, by the way, you'll be able to tell me. My boys adore riding, and Dick says he saw some children on ponies having a lot of fun on Sunday morning when we were in church. I wondered if there were riding-stables somewhere the other side of the village there — what-do-you~callit'rywardreath. You don't know? Well, never mind, Mrs. Collins might tell me. What? Hold on, I'll ask him…" She turned to me. "He says were the children the two little girls of someone called Oliver Carminowe and his wife? Old friends of his."

"Yes," I said. "I'm almost sure they were. But I don't know where they live."

She turned back to the telephone. "Dick thinks yes, though I don't see why he should know if he hasn't met them. Oh well, if the mother is attractive he's probably seen her around some place, and that's how he knows who they were. She pulled a face at me. Yes, you do that," she added, "and if you get in touch with them next weekend we might ask them round for drinks, and Dick can get an introduction to her. See you Friday, then."

She handed the receiver back to me. Magnus was laughing at the other end of the line.

"What's this about getting in touch with the Carminowes?" I asked.

"I got out of that rather neatly, don't you think?" he countered. "In any event, it's what I intend to do, if we can get rid of Vita and the boys. In the meantime I'll get my lad in London to check up on Otto Bodrugan. So he came to a sticky end, and it upset you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Roger was there, of course? Did he have a hand in it?"

I said no.

"Glad to hear it. Look, Dick, this is important. Absolutely no more trips unless we take one together. No matter how big the temptation. You must sweat it out. Is that agreed?"

"Yes," I said.

"As I told you before, I shall have the first results from the lab by the time I see you. In the meantime, abstention. Now I must go. Take care of yourself."

"I'll try," I said. "Good-bye." It was like cutting off the only link between both worlds.

"Cheer up, darling," said Vita. "Less than three days and he'll be here. Won't that be wonderful? Now what about going upstairs to the bathroom and doing something about that eye?"

Later on, the eye bathed and Vita having disappeared into the kitchen to tell Mrs. Collins about Magnus coming for the weekend, and doubtless to discuss his gastronomic tastes, I got out my road-map and had another look for Tregest. It just was not there. Treesmill was marked, as I knew, and Treverran, Trenadlyn, Trevenna — the last three on the Lay Subsidy Roll as well — but that was all. Perhaps Magnus would find the answer from his London student.

Presently Vita wandered back into the library. "I asked Mrs. Collins about the Carminowes," she said, "but she'd never heard of them. Are they very great friends of Magnus's?"

It startled me for a moment to hear her speak the name. I knew I must be careful, or the confusion might start up again. "I think he's rather lost sight of them," I replied. "I doubt if he's seen them for some time. He doesn't get down very often."

"They're not in the telephone directory — I've looked. What does Oliver Carminowe do?"

"Do?" I repeated. "I don't really know. I think he used to be in the army. Has some sort of government job. You'll have to ask Magnus."

"And his wife's very attractive?"

"Well, she was," I said. "I've never spoken to her."

"But you've seen her since you got down here?"

"Only in the distance," I said. "She wouldn't know me."

"Was she around in the old days when you used to stay here as an undergraduate?"

"She could have been," I said, "but I never met her, or the husband. I know very little about them."

"But you knew enough to recognise her children when you saw them the other day?"

I felt myself getting tied up in knots. "Darling," I said," what is all this? Magnus occasionally mentions names of friends and acquaintances, and the Carminowes were amongst them. That's all there is to it. Oliver Carminowe was married before and Isolda is his second wife, and they have two daughters. Satisfied?"

"Isolda?" she said. "What a romantic name."

"No more romantic than Vita," I replied. "Can't we give her a rest?"

"It's funny", she said, "that Mrs. Collins has never heard of them. She's such a mine of information on local affairs. But in any case there's a perfectly good stables up the road from here at Menabilly Barton, she tells me, so I'm going to fix something up with the people there."

"Thank God for that," I said. "Why not fix it right away?"

She stared at me a moment, then turned round and went out of the room. I surreptitiously got out my handkerchief and wiped my forehead, which was sweating again. It was a lucky thing the Carminowes were extinct, or she would have run them to earth somehow and invited a bewildered descendant to lunch next Sunday.

Two, nearly three days to go before Magnus came to my rescue. It was difficult to fob Vita off once her interest was aroused, and it was typical of his malicious sense of fun to have mentioned the name. The rest of Wednesday passed without incident, and thank heaven I had no return of confusion. It was such a relief to be without our guests that little else mattered. The boys went riding and enjoyed themselves, and, although Vita may have suffered from anti-climax and a normal reaction from a hangover, she had the good sense not to say so, nor did she make any further reference to our party the preceding night. We went to bed early and slept like logs, awaking on Thursday to a day of steady rain. It did not worry me, but Vita and the boys were disappointed, having planned another expedition in the boat.

"I hope it's not going to be a wet weekend," said Vita. "What in the world shall I do with the boys if it is? You won't want them hanging about the house all day when the Professor is here."

"Don't worry about Magnus," I told her. "He'll be full of suggestions for them and for us. Anyway, he and I may have work to do."

"What sort of work? Surely not shutting yourselves up in that peculiar room in the basement?"

She was nearer the truth than she imagined. "I don't know exactly," I said vaguely. "He has a lot of papers tucked away, and he may want to go through them with me. Historical research, and so on. I've told you about this new hobby."

"Well, Teddy might be interested in that, and so should I," she said. "It would be fun if we all took a picnic to some historical site or other. What about Tintagel? Mrs. Collins says everyone should see Tintagel."

"Not exactly Magnus's line of country, and anyway too full of tourists," I said. "We'll see what he wants to do when he arrives."

I wondered how the hell we should be shot of them if Magnus wanted to visit the Gratten. Anyway, it would be his problem, not mine.

Thursday dragged, and a dreary walk along Par sands did little to alleviate it. Magnus had told me to sweat it out, and by the evening I knew what he meant. Sweat was the operative word, and in the physical sense. I had seldom if ever been troubled by this common affliction of mankind. At school, yes, after violent exercise, but not to the extent suffered by some of my companions. Now, after any minor exertion, or even perhaps when sitting still, I would sweat from every pore, the perspiration having a peculiar acid tang to it that I fervently hoped nobody would be aware of but myself.

The first time it happened, after the walk along Par sands, I thought it was merely connected with the exercise I had taken, and I had a bath before dinner, but during the course of the evening, when Vita and the boys were watching television and I was sitting comfortably in the music-room listening to records, it started again. A clammy feeling of sudden chill, then the sweat pouring from my head, neck, armpits, trunk, lasting for perhaps five minutes before it passed, but my shirt was wringing wet by the time the attack was over. Laughable, like sea-sickness, when it happens to anyone but oneself, this side-effect, which was obviously a new reaction from the drug, threw me into sudden panic. I switched off the gramophone and went upstairs to wash and change for the second time, wondering what on earth would happen if I suffered a further attack later when I was in bed with Vita. Nervous apprehension did not make for an easy night, and Vita was in one of her conversational moods that lasted through undressing and continued until we were lying side by side. I could not have been more nervous had I been a bridegroom on the first night of honeymoon, and I found myself edging away to my side of the bed, giving vent to prodigious yawns as a sign that excessive fatigue had overtaken me. We turned out the bedside lights, and I went through a kind of pantomime of heavy breathing on the verge of sleep which may or may not have fooled Vita, but after one or two attempts to coil close — which I ignored — she turned over on her side and was soon asleep.

I lay awake thinking of the hell I would give Magnus when he arrived. Nausea, vertigo, confusion, a bloodshot eye, and now acid sweat, and all for what? A moment in time, long past, that had no bearing on the present, that served no purpose in his life or mine, and could as little benefit the world in which we lived as a scrapbook of forgotten memories lying idle in a dusty drawer. So I argued, up to midnight and beyond, but common sense has a habit of vanishing when the demon of insomnia rides us in the small hours, and as I lay there, counting first two, and then three, on the illuminated face of the travelling clock beside the bed, I remembered how I had walked about that other world with a dreamer's freedom but with a waking man's perception. Roger had been no faded snapshot in time's album; and even now, in this fourth dimension into which I had stumbled inadvertently but Magnus with intent, he lived and moved, ate and slept, beneath me in his house Kylmerth, enacting his living Now which ran side by side with my immediate Present, and so the two merged.

Am I my brother's keeper? Cain's cry of protest against God suddenly had new meaning for me as I watched the hands of the clock move towards ten past three. Roger was my keeper, I was his. There was no past, no present, no future. Everything living is part of the whole. We are all bound, one to the other, through time and eternity, and, our senses once opened, as mine had been opened by the drug, to a new understanding of his world and mine, fusion would take place, there would be no separation, there would be no… This would be the ultimate meaning of the experiment, surely, that by moving about in time death was destroyed. This was what Magnus so far had not understood.

To him, the drug released the complex brew within the brain that served up the savoured past. To me, it proved that the past was living still, that we were all participants, all witnesses. I was Roger, I was Bodrugan, I was Cain; and in being so was more truly myself.

I felt myself on the brink of some tremendous discovery when I fell asleep.