myself.
But supposing nothing happened… and nothing happened…? Then of course I must contrive to see Hartley, by some method yet to be invented, and even if it were to involve some sort of ‘showdown’ with Ben. There must be no more charades. The prospect of this perhaps decisive showdown filled me with a mixture of fear and pleasurable excitement, as I saw
With a view to self-defence I searched Shruff End for a suitable blunt instrument. At any moment I might, after all, receive a visit not from Hartley but from Ben. The idea of killing Ben had not entirely left my mind. It was as if, contrary to reason and more calm reflection, a deep trace had been left in my mind, like a memory trace, only this was concerned with the future. It was a sort of ‘intention trace’, or like what might exist in the mind of someone who could ‘remember’ the future as we remember the past. I am aware that this scarcely makes sense, but what I felt here was neither a rational intention nor a premonition nor even a prediction. It was just a sort of mental scar which I had received and had to reckon with. I refrained, as yet, from planning. I vaguely envisaged the moment of ‘battering through’ as a scene of legitimate self-defence. And I searched for a blunt instrument.
It was now late in the evening of the day following my meeting with Perry and Rosina. A bit earlier I had felt a distinct temptation to walk along to the Raven Hotel and follow Peregrine’s example of drowning my sorrows in the bar. I felt a need simply to see a few ordinary human beings who were living ordinary human lives, having holidays, honeymoons, quarrels, trouble with their motor cars, trouble with their mortgages. However I feared to discover the Arbelows still there and I felt I could now do with a long interval before encountering that pair again. Perhaps I would go one day to visit the darling little theatre in Londonderry, but I thought it more likely that I would not. I did not want to go to the Black Lion because of the painful proximity to Hartley and because of the inquisitive dangerous hostility of the clientele and because I might run into Freddie Arkwright. Besides I had to stay near the telephone. Looking for a weapon was at least an occupation.
Mrs Chorney had left various things behind in the attics, which I had searched by daylight and in vain. I had found, lying behind the bath, a long piece of metal, perhaps for use as a crowbar, but it was too heavy and too large to be carried in, as I envisaged the matter, a mackintosh pocket. I had of course reviewed my own tools, but these were ridiculously scanty: screwdrivers but no chisel, and only a sort of little ‘lady’s hammer’. Now in the dark late twilight, I was searching with the help of a candle a space I had discovered under the sink which seemed to be a hiding place of various items. Probing, amidst damp rotting wood and a colony of woodlice, I found a thick heavy piece of metal which turned out to be a hammer head. The shank or handle, or whatever the wooden shaft is called that propels the head, was lying separately and I placed both items on the table.
It was now almost dark outside, the mist, more like a cloud descended, obscuring whatever light the twilit sky might still have offered. A small rain was falling, and although the wind was not strong the house seemed to be moving, shaking itself and twitching, jerking and creaking and stretching like a wooden ship. I could hear the window frames shifting, the bead curtain clicking, the front door rattling, and a little very high tinny vibration which I had, after some search, detected as coming from the front door bell which hung in the kitchen. I was also startled by a sound coming from outside, from across the sea, a prolonged repeated booming, not unlike a ship’s foghorn. I had never heard a foghorn before upon our strangely unfrequented sea; perhaps it was a ship that had lost its way and would, after an interval of silence, suddenly crunch upon my rocks with a most unimaginable din? The foghorn noise, if it was one, had ceased for a time; but now there was another sound, the peculiar regular slapping boom which was produced by the water racing into Minn’s cauldron and being abruptly forced out again. I put the candle on the table between the hammer head and the wooden handle which looked, oddly separated from each other, like ritual instruments belonging to some unfamiliar cult. I listened to the loud hollow regular noise from the cauldron and the force of it seemed to enter my body, it began to seem like a strong beating heart, like a strong beating of my own heart, and then like the menacing accelerating sound of the wooden clappers used in the Japanese theatre.
I felt suddenly very uneasy and decided to lock the door onto the lawn. As I moved to it, with my back to the candle, I could see the scene outside dimly through the window. I stopped with a sharp pang of fright, seeing a dark figure standing near to the door, between the house and the rocks. Then the next second I somehow realized that it was James. We looked at each other through the glass. Instead of opening the door I turned back, picked up the candle, and went out into the hall to find one of the oil lamps. I lit the lamp, blew out the candle, and came back with the lamp into the kitchen. James had come inside in the dark and was sitting at the table. I put the lamp down, turned up the wick, and said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ as if I had not seen him before or perhaps expected it to be somebody else.
‘You don’t mind my turning up?’
‘No.’
I sat down and started fiddling with the hammer. James rose, took off his jacket which was spotted with rain, shook it, hung it over the back of his chair, folded back his shirt cuffs, and sat down again with his elbows on the table and watched me.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Mending this hammer.’ The problem was that the head fitted onto the handle all right, but loosely, so that it would come off in use.
‘The head’s loose,’ said James.
‘I have noticed that!’
‘You need a wedge.’
‘A wedge?’
‘Put a chip of wood in to keep it tight.’
I found a chip of wood (the house was littered with chips of wood for some reason), balanced it inside the metal hole and drove the shaft in, keeping the chip in place. I swung the hammer. The head held firmly.
‘What do you want it for?’ said James.
‘To crush a black-beetle.’
‘You like black-beetles, at least you did when we were young.’
I got up and found a litre bottle of Spanish red wine, opened it and put it on the table with two glasses. The room was cold so I lit the calor gas stove.
‘What larks we had,’ said James.
‘When?’
‘When we were young.’
I could not recall any larks I had had with James. I poured out the wine and we sat in silence.
James, not looking at me, was making patterns on the table with his finger. Possibly he was embarrassed; and at the idea that he might feel himself for once in the position of a suppliant I felt embarrassed too. However I was in no mood to help him out. The silence continued. This was getting like a Quaker meeting.
James said, ‘Can you hear the sea?’
‘That was Keats’s favourite quotation from Shakespeare.’ I listened. The beating sound had stopped and been succeeded by a kind of regular wailing hiss as the large methodical waves climbed the rocks and drenched them and fell back. The wind must have increased. ‘Yes.’
After another pause he said, ‘Anything to eat?’
‘Vegetable protein stew.’
‘Oh good, I’m sick of eggs.’
We sat on drinking for a while. James poured water into his wine and I followed suit. Then I got up to heat the stew. (I had thrown it together that morning as an emergency ration, it keeps well.) As I did so I reflected that the machine which I had ingeniously constructed to separate myself from my cousin forever did not seem to be working very well.
‘Bread?’
