The Coming of The Strangers Read online

  As his voice died the stillness remained unbroken. A great despair.

  He knew they had heard. He was just not worth answering any more.

  He wiped his face with his hand, drew a great shuddering breath, then went and put the unfinished drink on the trolley.

  “No good, Laura,” he whispered. “No good.”

  Chapter II

  At five a.m. the grey dawn made everything stand out with a flat definition, like a bad photograph. He stood at the windows, tie undone, hanging loose, his jacket over his arm, staring out at the breaking day. Behind him, Elfrida was sprawled on a big sofa, one still elegant leg propped up on the arm, the other drooping over the edge, spreading the great skirt of the gown like a fan. Laura came in with a tea-tray.

  “It smells cold now,” she said, undoing the belt of her dressing gown and then flipping it into a tighter tie.

  “Tea,” he said, huskily. “A remarkable invention for this unearthly time of day … Have you—thought?”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “But I feel I’ve been tricked—cheated somehow.”

  He came closer to her.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t explain it,” she said impatiently. “You know sometimes you get these feelings—there doesn’t seem to be any reason for them, they just flick in, and suddenly, that’s what you feel.”

  She looked sulky for an instant as she bent to deal with the tea. He knew instinctively what she really meant and touched her arm.

  “I’m sorry, Laura,” he whispered. “Please ”

  She looked up, and her dark eyes were bright and deep with some emotion he could not tag. Her full lips began to smile a little.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said, in her quiet, warm voice. “I’m going to have my way, John. I’ve slept a little since last night, and I can see things in a different light. One does at this time of day. I thought and thought, and remembered and saw you all the time, watched you do little things, over and over again, and I know now it isn’t you, John. There’s something hiding behind you, tearing you to bits and trying to take us right apart from each other. You know what it is, and you hate it. I know that. I’m going to find out what it is, and then destroy it.”

  He swallowed before he could speak again.

  “Laura you don’t know” he whispered, for fear the sleeping woman should hear. “You can’t understand.”

  “I understand you, John,” she said, looking at him steadily. “That’s why I love you, and that’s all that’s going to matter.

  Whatever the rest is, it’s just something we must get rid of.”

  He looked at her and it felt as if his heart was being wrenched out of him, slowly, with infinite cruelty. But there seemed only one thing to say—for the present.

  “Yes, Laura.” She hardly heard him.

  The first golden shafts of the sun began to finger the walls of the room, bringing them back to warmth and life; a life that he knew, and that for a moment did not seem so utterly remote, so unreachable.

  But he knew it was unreachable.

  “Laura,” he said, as she straightened, “I don’t want you to find out anything. I’ve got to break this up. God knows how much I love you, and it is because of that we must break up. Don’t try me too far, Laura. You know how weak I am. Just believe me. It’s got to break ”

  She put her arms round him suddenly and held him to her closely.

  “I’m Laura,” she said, in a half whispering little voice. “Remember me? My eyes, my lips, my shoulders, my breasts, my tummy, my thighs, right down to my toes. Remember me? And every tiny bit loves you, loves you, loves you, and won’t let you go. I don’t care what’s behind you. I want you, now and always. Kiss me, John. Kiss me and remember me all over again.”

  He held her tightly, and kissed her, and she could feel a fear in his lips that her warmth could not dispel. She drew her head back.

  “You’ll remember ” She stopped and her face softened with a great compassion. “Oh John, don’t cry, my darling,” she whispered. “We can win. Whatever it is, we can win.”

  “Laura!” he held her so tightly that it hurt, and he kissed her savagely, as if to let his passionate need of her drive away his fears.

  Elfrida opened one eye and saw them.

  “Oh goody,’ murmured Elfrida, and shut it again.

  2

  The town awoke as usual on a sunny May morning. The milkman passed through the empty streets with their motor floats, all red and gaudy in the sun. The post vans fled, little busy buzz boxes, eager for the day, and the men on foot came with their satchels and packets, welcomed here, unnoticed there, feared at some places. Shopkeepers opened up and looked at the sun, for the sun opened pockets. The buses began to rumble into the square, letting out their shopgirls, their solicitors’ clerks, the bank men and the people for the early train. Then the cars came and lined the streets, making avenues for more, and a few people, early adventurers, came to the pavements and flowed through in their motley, with buckets and children and spades and nets and picnics and myriad transistor radios that roared and claimed no apparent attention. Most flowed on and down to the. beach to gather in a little mass like a flattened ant heap at the very mouth of the town, leaving great sweeps of beach to either side practically unoccupied.

  And at Beach End, there was the notice, only a few days old, “danger—cliff falls”, which effectively kept the crowds away from there, even had they the energy to walk so far.

  Near the pier the promenade became lined with cars slanting on to the sea while others came along towards Beach End, U- turned and made their way back nearer the middle.

  Laura came out on to the promenade, her eyes shaded with a big straw sunhat and sunglasses. She stood there in open flowered jacket, bikini and rope sandals, fine brown limbs and luscious figure catching the eyes of the men in the slow passing cars, so that they rolled with her, turned back to look again, then opened wider, finding the inevitable U-turn ahead.

  It was all so ordinary that the odd events of the night were difficult to believe now. The telephones were on again; the overhead line up the promenade had been severed, perhaps by youths, cutting off the last few installations towards the end of the beach.

  Laura hesitated there, trying to make up her mind what to do as she stared along to Beach End, gleaming white in the sun.

  She did not know what to do, but desperately needed somebody to talk to, to confide in, so that she could let the whirl of thoughts and fears out of her mind, see them in the-open and sort them out to what they really were. Thinking about it alone just meant turning them over and over again till they got hot and dry and more and more confusing.

  John, of course; for anything else but this. And knowing that, it was difficult to stop her mind endlessly turning towards him.

  She had come out to convince herself that things were normal. The few people on the beach were the early visitors, and the hangovers from late Easter. Where she stood there was hardly anyone but the few idling cars going by, turning, and coming back. But it was normal. That was the thing—it was normal People were ordinary, the day was fine.

  She had meant it to be ordinary in leaving her house to cross the road to the beach, throw off the jacket, hat and glasses and swim in the fresh, invigorating sea: a sea that would cleanse her from the terrors of the night and make her bold to follow her determination.

  Yet she stood there by the road overlooking the sand, dressed so that people stared, and did nothing. She would not go on to the sea, could not, somehow, go back to the house, but stayed, like the coward on the end of a springboard, poised in nowhere.

  She put her hands to her temples, covering the gesture to adjusting the arms of her glasses in case someone looked and guessed her awful indecision.

  “Excuse me.”

  She turned sharply and saw a young man there, fresh-faced and smiling, though his smile faltered suddenly as she slipped off her glasses and she turned to
face him. The full force of her beauty made him stumble mentally.

  “I–” he said and dried up.

  “Yes?” she said shortly.

  “My name’s Harris I’m from the Echo” he rushed out. “Mrs. Bontrer-Gosse pointed you out. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind,” she said curtly. “In fact I never give interviews in a bikini. I’m going for a swim. Goodbye.”

  His arrival had made up her mind. She went down the stone ramp to the beach and ran across the sands to the edge of the sea. She threw down her jacket and glasses and ran in through the little ripples of the calm. He shook his head, grinned awkwardly, and stuck a finger down his collar to ease it.

  “Popsie!” he murmured. “Golly!” He gave a little whistle, then turned and wandered away along the promenade, keeping an eye on the lonely bather.

  Soon she came running out, shaking her black hair that reached to her shoulders. He watched every movement, every curve, and the thrill of excitement stored in him, knowing he would come close to her again, and this time, with luck and some courage, he would prolong the brush-off. She slipped the rope sandals on, got into the towel jacket and ran back. When she had crossed the road and gone into the garden he watched the solitary trail of footprints in the sand as if there was something wonderful in them.

  He waited impatiently for as long as he could, and then began to walk slowly towards the gate she had gone through. He looked aside at the footprints again, and then he stopped. It seemed for a moment there was another set of prints on the edge of the sea, where the sand was wet, tracing a line behind her and crossing it slightly. The prints were filling with water and fading out. He frowned, for it was odd, that. If he had not watched her with such closeness he would have thought she had run a little way in a different direction, and then come back, but he knew she had not.

  He stopped and looked for a while, but there were no further marks.

  “Funny,” he said, and turning to meet her again he forgot it.

  She was in the garden, still wearing the rope sandals and a bright, striped slip-on frock. She was drying her hair with a coloured towel, and he was a little surprised, thinking that rich people had electric driers. She shook her head to free her hair as he came in at the gate.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” she said, going on drying. “What do you want?”

  His heart skipped at the thought he was not going to be shoved out at once, and he came across the grass to her.

  “My editor—do you know Mr. Glass?”

  “He is bald-headed and very shiny, has rimless glasses and rubs his nose practically endlessly,” she said, briefly.

  He gave a sudden little chuckle and his admiration multiplied. “Well, come to it,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “I wonder if you’d like to say something about your poltergeist,” he said hopefully.

  She stopped drying.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  She could have saved the question: Elfrida had phoned the paper. She sat down on a garden chair and resumed drying.

  “Sit down,” she said, and softened towards him. “There isn’t very much I can tell you. It’s just one of those mysterious little things that happens now and again.”

  When she had told him what she knew, he felt a little disappointed, but her presence made up for the lack.

  “I see,” he said. “And you searched the house this morning?” “Yes, the whole place, and there wasn’t a sign of anything but some damp near the French windows, which could have been anything.”

  “Do you know Mr. Sebastian?” he asked.

  She hid her eyes with the drying procedure, while she thought. Do I know him? Yes, and I love him and I could break his bloody neck right now, the darling exhausting beast!

  “Yes, I know Mr. Sebastian,” she said, evenly. “He was Here with us.” She wound the towel round her head like a turban and let her hands fall. “Would you like to get the cigarettes? On the table just inside the windows.”

  He went quickly and came back. He gave her one, put the box on the table and fumbled in his pockets for matches. She had her face turned up to him, and instinctively turned it away so that in his sudden dart, he kissed her ear. He straightened,’ his face burning red. She looked up at him, a boy in agony.

  “Oh gosh! I’m sorry, I—I just couldn’t help it.”

  “You must learn to help it,” she said quietly. “It could cause trouble.”

  “I’m sorry” he said desperately. “Please, I’m—terribly sorry.” It’s all right, she said. “Give me a light, now.”

  His hand shook so much she had to steady it with hers Sometimes in the pictures and places like that, I—suddenly get the idea I’m going to shout out something—something disgusting,” he said. “I have to put my hand over my mouth to stop it. It’s like doing something you don’t want to do but can’t stop.”

  “I know the feeling,” she said. “Let’s stick to the interview, shall we?”

  The match burnt his fingers. He started and threw it away. “I say,” he said. “Did you notice anybody near you in the sea just now?”

  She cocked her head.

  “What made you say that?” She frowned and looked at her cigarette. “Did you see anyone there?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “But I thought I saw some other footprints in the sand out there.”

  “I heard someone,” she said slowly. “After I had come out, I heard someone near me, splashing in the water. That is, I thought I did. But when I looked round, there was nobody. It was when I picked up my things off the sand.”

  “I suppose the poltergeist doesn’t come from the sea?” he asked, gravely.

  “I know nothing about them,” she said, and there was a trace of uneasiness. “Just what I’ve read in newspaper reports.”

  “Last night was the first time you heard anything?” he asked. “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Benson, have you noticed anything else that’s been unusual in the last few days?”

  He watched her intently as she stared at a tree, then slowly unwound the tov/el from her head and shook her hair free.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Obviously nothing I noticed at the time or I should remember it.”

  “Did you report this to the police?”

  “No,” she said. “It didn’t seem their job.”

  Damn the police, and their uses, she thought. It was because of John, somehow. I don’t understand why, but I have the feeling that I don’t want them to come and try to find things out about him. Why has it taken me till now to realise that? But why—why do I think it at all? What can it be to do with him?

  “Mrs. Bontrer-Gosse did,” he said. “A detective-sergeant came, and as nothing was missing or broken into or—well, really, because there was nothing wrong at all, he was polite and said he would put it on record.”

  “That’s what we thought they would do.”

  “She has a cat,” said Harris, intently.

  “A little Siamese, yes.”

  “It’s shut up because it’s in a sex period, or whatever it’s called,” he said, some inner excitement making his eyes shine orange in the sunlight. “She left it there last night. When she went in this morning, the cat had torn everything in the room to shreds.”

  “Kissen did?” Laura said, in surprise. “But she’s a dear little thing.”

  “Well, it seems she went mad, or something drove her mad,” he said. “Maybe the poltergeist. Do animals get worked up about ghosts? Dogs do. What about cats?”

  “It could be that she was frightened by something,” Laura said, slowly, and then became faintly defensive. “But I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  He smoked his cigarette quickly for a few puffs, sorting out what he would say.

  “Of course, you might be thinking, ‘Oh he’s only twenty and out to get a good story to do himself some good!9 ” he said quickly. “Well, that’s a bit true, of course. Old Glass got this call from the old lady, and he
just said, ‘Oh go down and see if there’s anything there.’ I don’t know whether you remember but we’ve had one or two cases of amateur black magic lately.”

  “You mean those rude pictures painted on the walls of empty buildings,” she said, slowly. “Obviously some little gang of teenage students, calling up the devil for kicks.”

  “Well, Mr. Glass thought this might connect,” Harris said, earnestly. “But then when I heard it was an old lady, I thought it would turn out to be nothing but imagination. But then—she isn’t that kind of old lady, and there was one little thing after another, and then you– ” He looked at her, tense with excitement. “There’s something here.”

  Involuntarily she gave a little shiver.

  “The sea was cold this morning,” she said. “What do you mean—one little thing after another?”

  “Just the noises she heard, and the shellcase being pushed over, then the cat going mad, then you having noises here—It’s all little bits, you sec. Little bits adding up. And then”—he hesitated, as if afraid of shocking her—“those footprints. They weren’t yours. There must have been something out there.”

  “Oh lord, don’t let’s have an invisible man,” said Laura, and felt an uneasy little quiver inside as she said it. “That’s a horrible idea!”

  “It wasn’t a man,” he said suddenly, and closed his eyes.

  What do you mean?”

  “I’m remembering,” he said. “I’ve got a kind of photographic memory. I can bring things back sometimes … Yes. I’m sure. If a man walks, there’s one print, then another; the left, then the right. But there were too many out there; too many prints all coming and moving along at the same time. Of course! ” He opened his eyes. “That’s what seemed odd! ” She got up.

  “You’ll give me nightmares,” she said. “Do you get paid for making up your own stories?”

  But Harris’s burning imagination touched her nerves, and brought the lines of strange, unconnected sketches to her mind.