Lion man, Bob Arkwright, came round the corner out of a side lane. He approached us, with the quiet intent look of a dog who approaches silently, about to snarl and bite.
‘That was a bad business, Mr Arrowby.’
‘Yes.’
‘I warned you about the sea, didn’t I.’
‘Yes.’
‘He couldn’t get out, that was it.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I seen him, just the day before, I was up near the tower and I seen him trying and trying to get up that sheer rock near your house, and he kept falling back. It was mad crazy to swim with the waves like that. Then he managed to get up somehow, but he was dead beat. When he got up the top he just flopped. What must have happened he tired himself out and then the waves threw him against the rocks. That was what happened, I bet. He shouldn’t have been let swim there. That sea’s a killer, I told you, didn’t I, didn’t I?’
‘Yes. It shouldn’t have happened.’ I moved on.
He called after me. ‘My brother Freddie knows you. He knows you.’
I did not turn round. Lizzie and I were silent all the way home. I decided I would tell James to go tomorrow, and I would despatch Lizzie the following day. I could not cashier them together because I did not want James to give Lizzie a lift to London. I felt I no longer needed her, and I could certainly dispense with him, and it was beginning to be intolerable to have them as witnesses of what I increasingly felt to be the punishing horror of my degradation.
I entered the house resolved to seek my cousin out and tell him to leave the next morning, when I heard a most extraordinary rhythmical shrieking sound. It took me a moment to realize that it was the telephone, whose presence I had forgotten. This was the first time that it had rung, and I immediately thought that it might be Hartley. Then of course I could not find the thing, could not remember which room it was in. I located it at last in the bookroom and ran to it with desperate hope.
It was Rosina’s voice.
‘Charles. It’s me.’
‘Hello.’
‘I say, I’m sorry about that wretched boy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Very sorry. Well, what can one say? But listen, Charles, I want to ask you something.’
‘What?’
‘Is it true that Peregrine tried to kill you?’
‘He pushed me into the sea. He wasn’t trying to kill me.’
‘But he pushed you into that awful hole where the sea churns about.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the Raven Hotel. I’ve got a bit of news.’
‘What?’
‘You know that monster epic film of the
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s offered me the part of Calypso!’
‘That should suit you.’
‘Isn’t it marvellous? I don’t know when I’ve felt so delighted and so happy.’
‘Good. Just leave me alone, will you, Rosina?’
‘I am leaving you alone.’ She rang off.
As I came out of the book room I could now hear Lizzie talking to James in the kitchen. The door was shut, but something about the tone of the conversation struck me as odd. I paused, then went and opened the kitchen door. James, looking at me over Lizzie’s shoulder, said, ‘Charles.’
Prophetic terror pounces quickly. My heart became fast, my mouth dry.
‘Yes?’
They came out into the hall. Lizzie was red-faced, frightened.
‘Charles, Lizzie and I want to tell you something.’
Very fast does the human mind rush towards the most precise visions of disaster. I lived in two seconds through a long experience of mental torture. I said, ‘I know what you are going to say.’
‘You don’t,’ said James.
‘You are going to say that you have become very attached to each other and feel that you must tell me so. OK.’
‘No,’ said James, ‘Lizzie is attached to you, not to me. That is the point, and that is why I have got to tell you something which I ought to have told you long ago.’
‘What?’
‘Lizzie and I have known each other for a long time, only we decided not to tell you because you would be sure to be irrationally jealous. That is the matter in a nutshell.’
I stared at James. He looked as I had I think never seen him look in all his life. He looked not exactly guilty but somehow confused and at a loss. I turned round for a moment and opened the front door wide.
‘You see-’ said Lizzie, near to tears.
‘Let me do this,’ said James.
‘I don’t think you need to say anything more,’ I said.
‘You are leaping to conclusions,’ said James.
‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Listen to the truth. I met Lizzie a long time ago at a party which you gave for a first night. I happened to be in London, I happened to come.’
‘For once. I think I can even remember the occasion.’
‘Lizzie remembered me simply because I was your cousin. Then at a later time, after you’d left her and when she was unhappy, she rang me up to ask if I knew your address in Japan-that was when you were working in Tokyo.’
‘I wanted to write to you, I felt I had to,’ said Lizzie in a choked voice. ‘It was my idea, I pushed him into it-’
‘But you met each other,’ I said, ‘you didn’t just talk on the telephone.’
‘Yes, we did meet, but very very rarely, perhaps in all those years six times.’
‘Do you expect me to believe that?’
‘He was sorry for me,’ said Lizzie.
‘You bet he was! So you met to discuss me.’
‘Yes, but only in what I might call a business-like way.’
‘Oh, very business-like!’
‘I mean, Lizzie just wanted to know where you were, how you were. We never otherwise discussed you. Our acquaintance was slight and it was impersonal and unemotional.’
‘That cannot be true.’
‘It was entirely concerned with you, not with Lizzie and me. And as I say, we scarcely ever met or indeed communicated in any way.’
‘He told me to stop bothering him,’ said Lizzie, ‘but sometimes I so much wanted to know how you were-’
‘James is the last person who ever knew how I was!’
‘Of course,’ said James, ‘we ought to have told you long ago that we knew each other slightly. But the nature of the acquaintance was likely to irritate you. I know, if you will forgive my saying so, what an insanely jealous disposition you have.’
‘You have been at pains to make clear that I had left Lizzie at the time your acquaintance ripened-’
‘It never ripened. And
