Because you simply don’t know what difficulties a person might be experiencing at a given time, what internal pressures make it necessary for a night-long binge or a day-long breather.
Ordinarily she wouldn’t have questioned what Jan had been doing all day. But this was no ordinary situation. She said. “Housekeeping chores. Jan, you came up here to write a book, not be a lightkeeper!”
He frowned at her. “Now look-”
“I’m not criticizing you,” she went on hurriedly, “I’m making a comment on what this situation is doing to us. I’m having the same problem; it’s all I can do to grind the beans for coffee in the morning. I can’t work, I’m not sleeping well, I’m moody and depressed half the time. It’s affecting us physically and psychologically and creatively… ” She realized her voice had risen and begun to wobble, and clamped her mouth shut to stem the flow of words. Steady, Ryerson, she thought.
Jan was still frowning, but it was a different kind of frown now-one of consternation rather than annoyance. He reached for a spoon and stirred his coffee, in spite of the fact he didn’t take milk or sugar. At length he said quietly, “I didn’t realize it was bothering you that much.”
“I try not to show it, just as you do.”
Again he was silent.
“You must feel it too-the tension, the waiting, as if something awful’s about to happen. That business with the well… it could escalate into something much worse than that. You know it could.”
“I admit the possibility, yes.”
“But you don’t think it will?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. And you admit you feel the strain too?”
“Of course I do… ”
“Then let’s get away before-”
“Alix, I’ve tried to explain how important this time is to me! Why can’t you understand that?”
“I do understand it. But I also understand that you’re accomplishing nothing under these circumstances and neither am I. All we’re doing is sitting out there at the light feeling miserable. Cape Despair… my God, what a perfect name for that place!”
More silence. She was about to break it when he said abruptly, “All right. I can see your point.”
“Can you? Then let’s do something about it.”
His eyes took on a faint calculating gleam. From long experience Alix recognized the look with a sense of relief: he was about to plea bargain. She had finally gotten through to him, at least partway.
“I’ll offer you a compromise,” he said.
She waited.
“I still say there’s a good chance Novotny will give up when he sees that we won’t be forced out of the light. And even if he doesn’t, we can take precautions to insure that he isn’t successful with any more of his little tricks.” She started to speak, but he held up his hand. “We can avoid the village completely from now on-shopping’s better here in Bandon anyway-and we can get out more for evenings like this. This is a good restaurant; I’m sure there are others. And there are drives we can take, places we can visit. There’s no reason we have to stay at the light all the time. As you said, we didn’t come here to be lightkeepers.”
“But-”
“The compromise is this: If anything else happens, anything nasty or even unpleasant, then we’ll leave immediately. Go to Seattle, visit Larry Griffin for a minimum of two weeks… ”
It was a concession that pained him; she could see that. But there it was. And she could also see that it was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
She studied him for a moment in the glow from the red candle on the table. His jaw was set, his eyes firmly meeting hers. This, she knew, was one of the crucial moments in their relationship: she could recognize his need as greater than her own and thus ensure the survival of the marriage; or she could override his need with hers and continue a process of erosion that seemed to have already started.
No contest, Ryerson, she thought. She said, “Compromise accepted,” and smiled and reached for his hand.
Alix
It was after nine when they returned to the lighthouse.
The fog had come in again; it moved in sullen, sinuous patterns over the headland, hiding the cliff edges and the sea beyond, obscuring the top of the tower so that it seemed to have been cut off two-thirds of the way up. It gave the cape a remote, alien aspect that made Alix shiver, even though the station wagon’s heater was turned to high.
She drove through the gate and braked in front of the garage; Jan got out to unlock the doors. The mist made him look oddly insubstantial for a moment, even in the glare of the headlights. Then he came back to the car and she drove them into the darkness inside.
“Home,” she said, making it sound as light as she could. But there was no conviction in the word.
He said, “You go ahead to the house. I’ll lock up out here.”
“I can use some coffee. How about you?”
“Fine. With a little brandy in it.”
She hurried across the yard, taking out her house keys as she went, and unlocked the door and switched on the living room light. She shut the door quickly against the gray fingers of fog, but the chill of it was in the room-a dankness flavored with stale pipe tobacco and the vague lingering odor of manure. Or was she just imagining the manure smell? Jan had cleaned the bathroom, but another scouring wouldn’t hurt; she’d do that first thing in the morning, while he took care of locating chemicals for the well. They’d have to go back to Bandon for that, probably. He would have gotten them today, except that it had been after merchant’s hours when they’d arrived. Her fault. She shouldn’t have spent so much time driving around or walking on the beach.
She set about building a fire in the old wood-burner, hoping that the damned thing wouldn’t start smoking before it spread its warmth. She was still arranging wood on the grate inside when Jan came in. He said, “Here, let me do that. You make the coffee.”
“With a slug of brandy, right?”
“Make it two slugs of brandy.”
In the kitchen she took the drip grind from one of the canisters-decaf, or they wouldn’t sleep tonight-and put it into the Mr. Coffee. But when she opened the cupboard, she found it empty of bottled water. There was none in the fridge, either. Had Jan used up the last of their supply cleaning the bathroom? No coffee for them tonight, if he had.
She went down the three steps and through the cloakroom to check the pantry. She had her hand on the latch when she thought she heard something inside, a kind of shuffling or skittering movement. A chill seemed to make the same sort of movement on her back, as if someone had drawn a bony finger downward along her spine. She listened for a moment, standing rigid, but there wasn’t anything else to hear. Her imagination acting up, producing more horror fantasies about rats in that abandoned well under the pantry floor. That, and nerves.
She opened the door, reached inside for the light switch. It was way over near the shelves on the left; you’d think the people who had built the place would In the darkness something moved across her hand-something alive, something that chittered.
A cry froze in her throat; she jerked her hand back, banged her knuckles against the inner wall. Her dragging fingers touched the switch plate. Reflexively she flipped the toggle upward.
Scurrying things on the floor, on the shelves. A bag of sugar ripped open, spilling whiteness like granulated snow. Yellow eyes glaring, fangs bared, little clawed feet snicking against wood.
Rats!
The pantry was full of rats!
Her throat unlocked and she screamed, a shriek of revulsion and primal terror, and then recoiled backward, pulling the door shut with a crash. But one of the rats got through. She saw it, felt it slither across her boot-huge,
