before her. It was Catherine’s hair. As in a dream she saw Catherine’s shoulder disappearing in the black ooze, her staring eyes cast upward, her mouth open. Fear of death came upon Dora. She fought desperately, gasping for air, but the weeds held her, seeming to drag her down, and the water was at her chin.
Then she heard a distant cry. Dimly, across the surface of the lake, she saw a black figure standing by the wall at the corner of the Abbey grounds, which ended a little way to the left on the opposite bank. Dora, in the last throes of terror, called again. She saw the figure beginning to disrobe. The next moment there was a splash. Dora saw no more; her own fight was near its end. Water streamed into her gasping mouth and the weeds now held one arm pinioned beneath the surface. Her feet trampled deeper in the gluey mud. She uttered a moaning cry of despair. A black tunnel seemed to open below her into which she was slowly being drawn.
“Don’t struggle,” said a cool voice. “Keep quite still and you won’t sink any deeper. Try to breathe slowly and evenly.”
Dora saw, level with her face and strangely near, a head bobbing in the water, a boyish close-cropped head with a fresh freckled complexion and blue eyes. She stared at it, seeing it with a sort of mad clarity, and for the first moment she thought it really belonged to a boy.
Dora stopped struggling and found to her surprise that she was not sinking. The water lapped the bottom of her chin. She tried to breathe through her nose, but her mouth kept opening in terrified gasps. She saw with amazement, now that she was for a moment still, the two heads breaking the surface in front of her, the rounded head of the nun, who was swimming in the clearer water just beyond the weeds and cautiously edging in towards Catherine, and the head of Catherine, tilted over, her mouth and one cheek now submerged, her eyes glazed. With the same strange clarity Dora noticed that the nun’s face was almost dry.
The nun was speaking to Catherine and was now trying to get a hold on her shoulders from behind and pull her out beyond the weeds. Catherine did not struggle. She was limp, as if unconscious. Dora watched. Catherine was being turned on her back. Her chin rose above the surface, her hair floated out behind her, and the nun was thrusting a white arm through it to hold her more firmly. A ripple reached Dora’s mouth and she began to scream again. Her struggles recommenced, her breath came in staccato gasps. She was sinking now. The water seemed to pour into her, she began to suffocate.
She felt the warm muddy water rising upon her cheek. Then the next moment she heard voices, and two strong hands had seized her from behind. She was lifted from under the armpits. Rising a little from the water and turning, still struggling and gasping, she saw Mark Strafford’s face close above her. He hauled her landwards, waist deep himself in the mud. Other hands took her there. She lay exhausted on the ground, the water running from her mouth. The shouts continued, and sitting up a moment later she saw James and Mark, both struggling well out, keeping a footing somehow in the mud, and raising the form of Catherine between them. Helpers plunging, linked together, from the shore, dragged them all to land. There seemed to be half a dozen people now squelching about on the muddy verge. Further out the head of the nun could be seen bobbing. She had relinquished Catherine and propelled herself back into the open water. She shouted something and began to swim round towards the ramp.
Dora collapsed again, lying face downwards on the grass. She coughed, spluttered, and moaned quietly with relief. Someone was asking her if she was all right, but she was still in another world. She listened without thinking that she might be able to answer, absorbed in the wonder of finding herself alive. Suddenly someone leaned upon her and began pressing rhythmically on her back. Dora gurgled and sat upright. Giddiness overcame her and she covered her eyes, but remained sitting up, supported by one arm.
“She’s O.K.,” said Mark Strafford. He transferred his attention to Catherine, but someone was already giving her artificial respiration. As Dora watched, Catherine rolled over with a moan, pushing her benefactor away, and sat up too. Her eyes were vacant, her white dress clung transparently to her body, her long wet hair coursed down over her breasts. She looked about her.
A grotesque figure was pressing forward. Dora stared at it in amazement: a short-haired woman, apparently naked to the waist, and dressed in black from the waist down. Then she realized that it was the nun in her underclothing. The nun leaned over Catherine, asking how she was, and then turned to smile at Dora. She was totally unembarrassed and accepted with a polite nod the coat which Mrs Mark was offering her. She seemed a young woman. Her freckled face was still almost dry.
“This is Mother Clare,” said Mark. “You two seem destined to meet after all.”
Catherine had risen to her knees and was staring about as if looking for something. At that moment more voices were heard in the wood, and several more people appeared, uttering questions and cries of amazement. Among them was Michael.
It was certainly a strange scene: most of the men muddied to the waist, two half-drowned women, and Mother Clare swinging the coat over her shoulders. Michael looked at it with the expression of someone who has had enough surprises and feels that this ought to be the last. But it was not the last.
As he advanced towards the centre of the group and began to say something, Catherine staggered to her feet. She advanced, grotesque with her long stripes of black hair, her mouth hanging open. Everyone fell silent. Then with a moan she ran at Michael. It seemed for a moment as if she were going to attack him. But instead she hurled her arms about his neck and seemed to cling to him with the whole of her wet body. Her head burrowed into the front of his jacket as in tones of frantic endearment she uttered his name over and over again. Michael’s arms closed automatically about her. Over her bowed and nestling head his face was to be seen, blank with amazement and horror.
CHAPTER 24
PAUL paid the taxi-driver. He spent a moment or two working out the exactly appropriate tip. They went into the station. Paul bought the morning papers. They had arrived far too early for the train, as usual. They sat side by side on the platform, Paul reading the papers and Dora looking out across the railway. The sun shone upon, a yellow mustard field and there was a haze over the low green tree-fringed horizon beyond. It was sunny again, but chill; the dusty illusions of late summer were giving place to the golden beauties of autumn, sharper and more poignantly ephemeral.
Dora had spent the rest of the previous day in bed. Everyone had been very nice to her; everyone, that is, except Paul. But the general concern had been for Catherine. Carried back to the Court, Catherine had remained throughout the day in a completely distracted condition. The doctor had been called. After administering sedatives he had shaken his head, spoken of schizophrenia, and mentioned a clinic in London. Late in the evening, after much debate and indecision, arrangements were made for Catherine to go as soon as possible.
Paul, in a condition not far from schizophrenic himself, had divided his energies between studying the bell and reproaching his wife. Fortunately for Dora’s repose, the bell had claimed the larger part of his time; and very early that morning, after a long telephone call to someone at the British Museum, he had decided to travel to London by the ten o’clock train. This haste left no time for packing, and it had been decided that Dora should travel the following day, bringing the luggage. The larger suitcase, filled with Paul s notebooks, travelled with him. Dora was to do what she could with brown paper and string, and take a taxi from Paddington if necessary. The bell itself, the old bell, was also going to London, by road-rail container, for examination by experts.
Dora saw out of the corner of her eye that there was something about Imber in the paper. She did not want to see it. She stared ahead of her at the mustard field. Paul was reading it avidly.
After a little while he said, “Read this,” and handed her the paper.
Dora glanced at it unseeingly for a moment, and then said, “Yes, I see.”
“No, read it properly,” said Paul. “Read every word.” He kept the paper held up in front of her.
Dora began to read. The article was headed – FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD – and read as follows:
Few days in the history of religious communities, lay or otherwise, can have been quite so eventful as the last twenty-four hours at Imber Court, home of an Anglican lay community tucked away in the wilds of Gloucestershire. Event number one was the discovery, by two visiting members of the community, of an antique carved bell which had lain for many centuries sunk in the ornamental lake which surrounds the house. This bell is alleged to be the property of nearby Imber Abbey, Anglican Benedictine convent, which by an odd coincidence was just about to instal a modern bell. Rumour had it that the antique bell was to be“miraculously” substituted for the modern bell at
