The Coming of The Strangers Read online

  “Man, I’m getting tired of being stared through,” Judy said.

  He jerked back to where he was, with the noise and clack and the music changling from the electric box.

  “I was thinking” he said.

  “Man, man,” said Judy in mock wonder. “That’s the way age gets you.”

  “Yeh,” said Joe. “I’m twenty-two. Getting on. I think I’ll get up as well.” He got up and she caught his hand.

  The paint, the pose, everything seemed to fall away from her and she was suddenly a frightened, hurt little girl.

  “Don’t go,” she said, pleading.

  He tried to think of how to say it.

  “I’ve got something to sort out, Judy,” he said.

  “Take me with you,” she said, in a whining little voice. “Take me to the flicks. Take me anywhere, Joe.”

  He shook her hand away and turned to the door.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  He felt as if he had put his boot in her funny little face. As he got out to the pavement, his emotions were in turmoil.

  “What’s the matter with me?” he muttered. “This can’t be it, can it? All mixed up and feeling sorry when you do things like that? Where did I get that way. What’s the matter with me?”

  CHAPTER IV

  1

  Jill’s expectancy of Archie Denk’s drunkenness was fulfilled earlier than she had thought. His fumbling around for bills, accounts, figures in the cash books was vague and. pathetic. She did her best for him, but his mind was not with her or her figures. They worked in the little office that was a corner of the store room, and he was constantly retreating into the store room proper, and the clink of a bottle would mean an increase of the distance between reality and himself.

  She was sorry for him, but angry and impatient, too. This meant a wasted evening, for it would all have to be done again, yet every time she said it would be better to do it tomorrow, he made a foolish effort to concentrate.

  And then at last he sat on a stool and looked at her.

  “It’s all up. I can’t go on,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t say that,” she said, compassion rising in her for his queer lost attitude. “You’ve got a good business, Mr. Denks.”

  “It’s like an apple—the wasps get in. You only see a little hole, and when you press it, it goes in like a paper bag, all the side’s been eaten out. That’s what it’s like. Someday you’ll see little hole in Archie Denks, and then you’ll find she’s eaten out everything that was inside me. Everything. Eaten it all out and bought hats and clothes, and showing off and trying to beat everybody … Money, pouring out, pouring out. She won’t The bank says you can’t go on like this, Archie. Me! Me! It isn’t me, God knows ”

  His eyes ceased to focus and he sat like a dummy.

  I—I’m sorry, Mr. Denks,” she said helplessly.

  He shoved his hand over the desk pushing papers, bills and accounts up in a heap that began to spill to the floor.

  “It’s no good,” he said, pulling himself together. “Let’s cut it out I’ll take you home.”

  “No, don’t trouble, Mr. Denks, really ”

  “I’ll take you home,” he said. “It won’t take a minute.”

  He insisted. She did not know what to do. He was drunk, and she did not want to lose her job there. Since Joe had gone like that, she felt desperate to hang on to anything that seemed secure, or anyway familiar. She did not consider the insecurity revealed by the books, and his outburst; she just determined to hang on to something that wasn’t really there.

  They got into his car. Her alarm lasted only a short while. He drove slowly, and without taking a solitary chance. Though

  other cars, impatient with the drunken snail, hooted past, he kept on steering correctly with an almost deathly concentration. He did not speak at all. He climbed up on to the Warren on top of the falling cliffs.

  “This will do,” she said, quickly. “I’ll walk across the grass from here.”

  He stopped, hauling on the brake so that the car almost leapt off its springs one end. She got out, and he insisted on getting out as well. …

  “I live just over there,” she said, pointing across the Common, over the bushes, the little crab-apple trees twisted with the sea winds to the roofs of a row of small modern houses, showing little black triangles against the gathering purple of the evening sky. “Thank you, Mr. Denks.”

  He caught her arm and looked at her with a glassy gaze.

  “I shoon’t have told you about her,” he said. “I’m sorry I told you. Man shoon’t speak about his wife …”‘ He let her go and stood there staring and swaying very slightly. “I only had a wife one night,” he said, almost to himself. “Said I hurt her. Never again. Working, working, all these years, and not even a wife.” He came out of the reverie. “You go on, now, dear. Go on home. I’m sorry it’s late.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Denks,” she said.

  Instead of the smart, bustling white-coated employer she saw him suddenly as a worn and empty little man, just staring hopelessly at nothing. As she turned to go home she felt she should go back to him, to say she was sorry, but she realised it was impossible for her and she went, leaving him standing there, trying to see what his life was about.

  He realised that he was alone, and turned back to the red and white car, standing, it seemed, a miraculously long way off.

  He began to walk towards it? curving slightly on either side of die straight line, keeping his eyes partly down, so that he could see two cars merging into one at the top of his vision, and the darkening grass almost to his feet.

  Then he fell over something, something as high as his shin, and he went headlong, silent in the effort to realise what was happening. As he landed he twisted, and he saw nothing but the grass. As he fumbled to get up, his hand rested on what felt like a hard, cold stone, and through his befuddled brain he was dimly aware that though he could feel the stone under his hand, he could see that nothing was there. Then as he remained, half sitting up, the unseen stone suddenly slid away from his hand, apparently towards the cliff edge.

  The series of sensations registered in his brain suddenly, shocking it into activity. He jumped up.

  Jesus Christ! ” he gasped, and ran headlong for the car.

  When he got in and slammed the door he almost passed out with the overwhelming horror of the idea that something ghastly had happened to him. He bit his hand to make sure he was feeling, then waved his fingers in front of his eyes.

  “It’s a breakdown,” he whispered, the sweat starting out on his face. “It’s a breakdown!

  He began to fear his fate with an awful dread, but as people said after they knew, it seemed as if Archie Denk’s luck had changed for the better at last.

  He should have been dead that night.

  2

  When Jill got to the house, her father was at the gate. He was a fine-looking man, with a firm, kindly face. As she came up and saw him she stopped, involuntarily, her heart fluttering.

  “I told you,” he began, pointing at her, “that I would not have this ”

  She turned quickly.

  “Oh, no!” she cried. “I can’t bear it. Not again! For heaven’s sake, don’t! ” She started to run away across the Common again, towards the cliffs and the sea.

  “Jill!” She heard him calling. “Jill, come back! Come back here! ”

  She ran almost as if he were running after her, instead of standing surprised and bewildered by the garden gate, failing utterly to understand what he had done. He looked back towards the house, fearing that his wife had heard, then looked after the running girl.

  “She’s hysterical,” he said, shifting the blame in sudden comforting inspiration. “That’s it. She’s always been a bit highly strung.”

  He was satisfied with his explanation, and felt she would be back when she got over her tantrums. She always had done. He would just say nothing, pretend that Jill was staying out late and she would come b
ack.

  He watched Jill until she had gone from sight, and then he Brown’s dog from next door, rooting about amongst the bushes and the sand bunkers left by the old golf course, thirty years before. Brown’s dog was big, black, unrelated to any known order and was cocky, suspicious and belligerent. He was also fearless.

  Denning saw him as he turned to go back into the house, digging and rooting in the sand, and then there was a terrified yelp. Denning looked back again and saw the big, black dog running at full pelt away from the bunker, yelling as if someone were after him. He streaked past his own house and past Denning’s and went away into the woods down the road, all sense gone in fearful flight.

  Denning looked back to the bunker.

  “What bit him?” he said.

  The dog’s yelling faded into the woods, and Denning stood there listening. Distant and shut in, he heard the strains of the Brown’s wireless or television, or probably both together, but beyond that, and the faint noise of the sea he heard a hushing sound, a murmuring.

  He felt a crawling sensation on his skin.

  “It’s more cliff going,” he muttered. “It’s time they did something about it.”

  He looked over the Warren, and the warm rounded shape of its mound rising away to the hill towards the east and the yellow glow of the rising moon between the thin-leaved little trees against the sky. It was a quiet moon, big and peaceful, as if nothing was happening beneath its smooth, round face.

  3

  Elfrida was always at her most graceful at tea, so that even while at friends’, which she was that day, she could still kick her shoes off and put her feet up into a resting posture on the sofa, getting no more than a whispered “Marvellous for her age! ”

  Four ladies of varying ages had listened to her story of the poltergeist and put every conceivable question to cover her personal reactions at the time.

  “Aren’t you afraid to go back there, Elfrida?” a flowery blue had said, cocking itself slightly.

  “My dear, I am used to being alone now,” said Elfrida. “So that a ghost is better than nothing at night—so long as it’s a male ghost.”

  Laughter. Of course, how witty; the naughty old woman.

  “I’ll gladly stay the night, if you like, Elfrida,” a small, nervous little woman said.

  There’s no sense in two of us being frightened to death. Miranda, said Elfrida, “but that very good-looking chauffeur of yours can take me back as usual. I’m sure he will give me courage, though how you afford that sort of thing these days is beyond me. Chauffeurs, not courage, of course.”

  The chauffeur did take her. She sat in the front with him.

  What do you do when you’re frightened Robert?” she asked, gravely “I mean you do get frightened don’t you?”

  Everybody gets frightened,” said Robert. It all depends how. If I get frightened in the open say, I run. That is, I would run, if I didn’t look a fool. You mean, suppose I’m all by myself? Yes, well, I’d run. I’d run like a bloody champion. He gave a start realizing that he had been carried away. I beg pardon madam, of course ”

  “No, I find it, very picturesque,” she said. “What I mean is, supposing you are in a house by yourself and something is outside trying to get in. What would you do then?”

  “Yell for help,” said Robert, who was quick-minded.

  “Yes, but suppose you wanted to stay there, because you were — were, what do they say now—bloody-minded and wouldn’t give in?”

  ”I don’t know,” he said. “Dig in, you mean? I don t know. I’d lock myself in, I suppose. Yes, I’d do that, but I’d leave one or window open for me to get out in case they got in.”

  Now that’s very sensible,” Elfrida said, nodding, “I didn’t think of that”.

  “You ” he said, startled.

  “Yes, you see I’ve had a little ghost trouble, and my .friends all want me to leave the place and go and stay with them till it’s over, you understand, Robert. But I’ve said I won’t, and I feel very foolish about it, because I don’t really want to go back, but I can’t not, can I? I mean, I’d look a fool, and you just said you wouldn’t run if you looked a fool.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head and slowing down. ‘‘Do you want me to take you back?”

  “No, no,” said quickly. “No, I want to go on home. Do you think I’m an old fool?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “If you’re doing it because you feel you’ve got to, well, that’s all right. It shows you got guts if not much sense. But if you’re doing it for kicks, well, Aar’s your pleasure.”

  “So that you think I’m right either way?” she said, proudly.

  “I didn’t say right,” he said, “I said guts.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked, firmly.

  “It’s difficult to say”, he admitted. “I’ve never met any, so far as I know.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “Do you?”

  “No,” said Elfrida.

  “No?” He looked quickly at her. “But you said you had ghosts at your house.”

  “I’ve got something at my house,” she said. “They say it’s a ghost. I says it’s something”.

  “That’s like saying black’s white so long as it isn’t black,” he said.

  “You know me by now,” she said. “You’ve driven me home Thursday afternoon for over a year. Isn’t it dreadful to get into a rut?”

  “I like taking you home,” he said. “You say such funny things ”

  “Well, this time I want you to do something for me,” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  “Search the house before you go,” she said, as they pulled up outside it.

  “I’ll do that, madam,” he said. “But don’t hold it against me if you find I can rub faster than you.”

  “Go on with you! ” she said, and got out as he held the door for her.

  It was then six o’clock, and either way the beach was deserted. At the gate, which he held for her, she stopped.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that something must happen?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I turn round and dodge down a side street when I see them coming.”

  “You’re too material, Robert,” she said, sailing in through the gateway.

  As she got the key from her ornate bag her thin fingers trembled slightly.

  “Look,” he said, touching her arm, “you won’t mind, will you? but I think you ought to come back. Stay with us the night.”

  “I can’t, you see,” she said. “Kissen’s here. I can’t leave her. The cat, you know.”

  “The cat?” he echoed in astonishment. “Hey, I can look after the puss. In my cottage.”

  “I can’t go bade now, Robert,” she said. “I just want you to look through the house, and then I’ll feel safe.”

  “Chauffeur, gardener, part-cook, boilerman, steward, laundry- basher, sometimes butler, that’s me,” he murmured as she turned the key. “Now a ruddy ghost-layer. Ah well, anything for a laugh.”

  He followed her into the house.

  4

  Anti-submarine radar had been picking up unidentified echoes for forty-eight hours off Freshgate Bay, but they had been formless, drifting, aimless little golden blips on the screen. They were reported because there was little else to report at that time.

  On the Thursday, during the afternoon, there was a sudden increase in the echoes, which seemed to be coming inshore at the headland end of the bay, where one mile east-south-east, the hapless Shropshire lay on the shingle bank.

  “Porpoises or some such,” the commander of the radar station said, but passed the report to the Commander-in-Chief, Harmouth, who was in a mood of extreme agitation. The following day the First Lord would pay a visit, and leading up to this event all was being put into shipshape order, and item by item all was going wrong, as sometimes happens. All was put right, item by item but with each correction the Commander’s agitation increased and the grounding of the Shropshire m
ade him finally unapproachable, so that no one without immediate cause went near him until the end of the day.

  “Well,” he asked his Flag Lieutenant. “What are these blips?

  Anything sighted?”

  “No, sir. Nothing at all.”

  “Fish!” said the C-in-C. “Fish, man, fish!”

  “I think : radar reported because of the increasing activity ….”

  “The poor bloody fish are getting out of the Shropshire’s way!” shouted the Commander. “And so would I if I were within a thousand miles of that bloody idiot. Tell your pop-eyed blip bashers to look for submarines not sardines … Have the tugs reached the Shropshire yet?”

  “Yes, sir, but ……” the Flag Lieutenant fidgeted with his tie.

  “But what?”

  “They don’t think they can get her off tonight, sir. She’s hard on.”

  “Good God!” The Commander’s eyes bulged so that they stood almost free of their sockets. “You can’t be serious! Willy’s coming down tomorrow. Perhaps yon have not heard. Willy, the First Lord, the First Lord, Willy, God bless his mean little corkscrew of a heart. Willy’s coming down tomorrow with all the ruddy little red-tape men coming up behind and typewriters playing – tomorrow! And Shropshire’s going to be stuck out there like a Piccadilly prostitute on Review Day? No! I can’t face it. Do you know what I’d do Bertie? I’d cry. I’d burst into tears. But – he grabbed up the paper knife like a dagger towards his officer’s heart “I’ll make bloody sure I don’t cry alone! Send signals! Blow them up! Action, blast you! Animation.”

  With one sweep of his wild hand the radar report was pushed under the yacht club’s notice of racing for Whitsun weekend, and the blips kept on fading and shimmering on the radar tubes, like a thin streak of golden rain in in the bay off Freshgate, the number of the echoes that evening reading about thirty and increasing.