The Coming of The Strangers Read online

  Then he moved. It was a desperate movement of self-preservation. He vaulted the parapet and dropped down on to the sand. The chauffeur was looking up and down the beach for help, for there was no sign of the tramp at all.

  He saw Sebastian approaching and turned towards him.

  “Did you see that?” he demanded hoarsely.

  “Sheer bloody suicide,” Sebastian said, staring out over the water.

  “But he was lifted up, sort of, and ” Robert’s mouth stayed open with nothing more to say.

  “It’s a tricky light,” Sebastian said quickly. “From where I was I saw him just take a header in and not come up again. Where—were you?”

  “I was in that house, there.” Robert pointed back. “I saw some marks on the sands he was looking at, and then he was lifted up–- ”

  “But from there you were behind him, and a long way off,” said Sebastian and pointed to his balcony. “I was there.”

  “That’s nearer.” Robert admitted.

  Both men looked out over the waters, now calm and unruffled.

  “He’s gone, anyway,” Sebastian said, huskily. “Go back to the house and ring the police. Quick! Before it’s quite dark. I’ll watch, but he’s dead or he would have come up by now.”

  “He seemed to be lifted up,” Robert said again, “and thrown, somehow, out there –- ”

  “Impossible,” Sebastian said. “There was nobody here with him. He just jumped in. Took a run and jumped.”

  Robert stared over the water again.

  “You never know what to do, really, do you? Of course he’s dead by now, but you feel you ought to go in –—”

  “Go and phone,” said Sebastian. “There’s no point in going in. Tide’s running out, and it swings round here because of the headland. I wouldn’t go in if I were you.”

  Robert rubbed his hands together as if wiping dirt off them. “No,” he said huskily. “I’ll go.”

  He turned and went. Sebastian stood there, his body bathed in sweat that froze on him with the touch of a light wind running along the shore. He looked at the old sack and the stick the tramp had dropped. He looked back, past his house to the beach running towards the headland. Nothing moved.

  “You said there would be nothing—no violence,” he whispered. “You said that was left behind ten thousand years ago.

  You said– ” The sweat got into his eyes and he pawed it away.

  His rage fell off into despair. He realised at last that he had feared this all along, that he had been deceiving himself more thoroughly than he had been misled by them.

  The police came quickly, but there was little they could do, but take two short, differing statements, collect the sack and stick.

  “The tide runs out fast from here,” the Sergeant said, and with heavy humour added, “Dangerous for bathing.”

  Sebastian remembered the signs they put up for the Summer season warning bathers to go to the west end of the beach when the tide was going out. It was a little thing to remember, but it held his memory like a pain, wondering if he would ever see it again.

  Robert had been back to Elfrida three times, to see that she was all right, for Robert was still convinced that what he had seen was the truth, the more so now that he knew the police did not believe him. Sebastian’s statement had been believable; his had not, which made him more aggressively determined to believe himself.

  The police went. Robert returned to the bungalow. Sebastian walked alone, back towards the white house. The moon was as big as a gong peering round the edge of the headland. He stopped abruptly.

  Against the moon he could see the silver painted sands dimpling from the sea towards the cliffs, in little confused trails of puddled water, dissolving almost as soon as they were made, then turning directly out over the firm sand and surging in a dozen tracks up towards the speckled heaps of the dunes.

  He stood there while fresh water running from the cliffs washed out the traces. He put his hands to his throat as if feeling the fingers of a strangler there.

  “You promised!” he whispered. “You promised me!”

  2

  Robert ate chicken mousse grudgingly.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said, staring out at the moonlit beach.

  “That’s nice of you, my dear boy,” Elfrida said. “But I shall be quite all right.”

  “I think you ought to come back,” he said. “There’s something pretty strangulated going on here. He says I didn’t see that, but I did. That tramp was picked up and thrown out there, and there wasn’t anybody there. Then you had this poltergism in here last night. Same thing, see?”

  Elfrida did not know what to believe, for Robert had grumbled fiercely about the police being a lot of bacon bonses who hadn’t the glim to believe him. This seemed to mean that Robert had let imagination run off with him; as if a poor suicide wasn’t enough …

  “This happened right out on the beach, Robert,” she said gently. “I’m sure nothing will get in here once you’ve gone.” “How did it get in last night, then?” he demanded suddenly. “Didn’t you lock up, didn’t you?”

  Elfrida sighed.

  “I did originally, yes,” she admitted. “But Kissen started making such a noise I felt sorry for her, and I got her collar and lead and took her out to the back garden just for a little while. Then, all of a sudden, she ran like a streak of little lightning, slipped her collar and ran into the house again. I saw her go through the kitchen and out into the hall. I went in, because she has a little trick of running in, until you go in, then suddenly running out the other way, so when I got to the hall door I shut that so she couldn’t get past me. Then I found she had run straight into her own room, so I shut her door, then came back into the kitchen and got some milk and took that in to her, and then I tried to remember what I had been doing—my hair, it was—so I went straight back to doing it. And didn’t remember I’d left the back all open until I heard somebody moving about. Then I got the gun.”

  He listened only to parts of the story, he kept looking out over the sands, feeling a mixture of anger at their disbelief and shivery horror so that he did not want to believe himself.

  “So you reckon if you shut up, nothing will get in?” he said, then shook his herd. “You ought not to risk it. It’s offbeat, all this. Right offbeat. Look. Let me take you back. Best to go back and look a bit of a fool than stay and get—something happen to you.”

  “I shall be all right, I tell you, Robert,” said Elfrida.

  “You’re just a stubborn old woman, that’s what you are,” he said belligerently. “I had a grandma like you. Used to drive us up the wall. She’d sit on a bloody landmine to prove she was in the right.” . .

  “Robert, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t do that,” said Elfrida, with a smile.

  “Well, then come back with me,” he said earnestly.

  “I’m very, very grateful to you indeed,” said Elfrida. “But really, I couldn’t.”

  He cocked his head.

  “You’re not worried about that Chinese puss, are you?” he said. “Look, I tell you I can look after her, and all the tom cats round us have been done. Look, I’ve got a basket ”

  “No, it isn’t jus: the cat,” said Elfrida, frowning. “It’s really that this end of the beach is my home. It’s the last home I shall have, and I don’t want to be driven out of it. I’ve only known real security since my dear husband died. He was dedicated to his country, Robert, and I like to think he did a lot of good, because, God knows, we had a lot of suffering. In India, the Sudan, Malaya, oh, lord knows where. So many places I can only remember one at a time as I get older. I remember a night in a hill bungalow, when my husband was out trying to hold back a riot mob, and knowing he hadn’t much chance, and I was shut in the house with just a couple of boys, and we just waited all night hearing that dreadful, mad noise coming nearer, going away again coming nearer—and we just waited there for the doors to burs: in and ourselves to be cut to pieces. That happened when I was young
and more capable of fear than I am now. I’m not really frightened, Robert. It’s a kind of excitement more than anything. You finish your supper and go home. I’ll be all right.”

  He looked out at the beach again.

  “Don’t you get me?” he said exasperated. “I can’t leave you here by yourself. If you won’t bend your ruddy stiff neck, then I’ll have to stay here with you. You can’t stay here alone, madam, no matter how boneheaded and stubborn you are.”

  “You’re very nice,” said Elfrida. “There is a spare bed, but I don’t think you should stay –”

  “Bed?” said Robert and gave an ironic laugh. “You don’t think I’m going to bed with gowls in clodhoppers marching round the house, do you? No, madam, if I stay I stay right here, on this sofa—ready to go! ” He got up. “Can I put the Rolls up your drive ?”

  “Of course,” she said, “but Robert really, you know this isn’t necessary and you must not –”

  “I’ll just do that then,” he said, opening the windows. “Pardon me.” He turned in the opening. “And I’ll leave it front out, and the gates open, just in case we get a disturbed night.”

  “Oh dear,” murmured Elfrida, as he went. “He’s a dear boy, but why can’t I do as I like?”

  3

  As Robert was about to get into the car the young man touched his arm.

  “Excuse me,” Dickie Harris said. “Seen anything of a suicide down here? I’m from the Echo. I heard a story about a tramp throwing himself in. I just wondered if you – ”

  Robert told him he had. He told him what he had seen. Dickie Harris looked more and more intent.

  “Who else was there?” he asked.

  “Mr. Sebastian,” said Robert, nodding towards the end house. “But he says different.”

  “Have you noticed anything unusual about this area since you came?”

  “Unusual? What do you call that tramp, then? Normal?” “No, I meant—anything else.”

  “Nothing else,” said Robert. “And I don’t want anything else.

  Those boneheads just come down here and walk away as if –”

  “Who?” Harris interrupted.

  “The police,” said Robert angrily. “You see they believed Mr. Sebastian sooner than me. Of course his story was a bit easier to swallow, and he’s a man of substance, you see what I mean. So they just listened to him, wrote down what I said out of politeness, and then went back to supper.”

  “It’s a difficult thing to believe, isn’t it? Your story?”

  “But it happened, I tell you.”

  “That’s what you saw, isn’t it?” Dickie Harris said, keenly. “That’s what I saw,” said Robert, and stuck his chin out. Dickie Harris wanted to believe it, because of what he had heard already, but whichever way you looked at it, the story didn’t make sense. His editor had deliberately cut down the original story because he didn’t think the town would swallow it. What about this one, then, when Sebastian gave an ordinary explanation to cover the incident?

  “It’s WPB stuff,” he said aloud.

  “What?” said Robert.

  “It’s just a Press term we use,” said Dickie quickly.

  4

  He saw her from the balcony, standing near the edge of the sea, hands in her coat pockets, dejected somehow. His heart jammed solid, and then when it worked again he went down the steps to the beach and along to where she was standing. He wiped his hands where the sweat was sticky.

  “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

  She turned suddenly.

  “Mr. Sebastian! Oh, of course, You live here.” She looked at the toes of her sandals. “I’m Jill Denning. I work in the grocer’s.”

  “Of course, yes, I know,” he said, looking past her to the east headland. “What are you doing here?” He added quickly, “You look so miserable. Is anything wrong?”

  She looked up at him.

  “I had a row at home and—walked out.”

  “That’s the sort of thing boys do, not girls,” he said, and smiled. “A girl can’t stay out all night.”

  “I’m not going home,” she said. “I’m not going back! I’m twenty. I’m old enough to know. I’m old enough –” Her voice rose, as if she were on the verge of tears, and she bit her lip to stop them.

  “You’re upset about it,” he said gently. “Come in and talk about it. You know it helps a lot to get it off your chest.”

  At all costs he must get her off the beach, but as he put his hand under her elbow, he felt her resist.

  “I don’t think –” she began.

  “Don’t be frightened of me,” he said, easily. “You know who I am.”

  “Of course I do.” She looked at his face, shining in the moonlight. “My goodness. You’re hot.”

  “Yes, I’ve been—doing some exercises, you know,” he said, and patted his hard stomach. “Better than dieting. Do come in. You may feel better after a little while.” He held his breath and then felt her resistance to his touch grow less and disappear. His breath of relief was so great he almost shouted as he went on. “Talking things over with an absolute stranger is the best thing in the world.”

  They went up the white steps to the balcony. As he showed her in through an open window he looked back at the silent beach.

  She turned to face him inside the room, and in the light he remembered what a very pretty girl she was, her chestnut hair, rather long and rich, her very light blue eyes, wide and anxious now, her big mouth trembling on the edge of a nervous smile. She had a fine straight way of standing, as if defiant of what she had done, her shoulders back, her young, high breasts pointing, her whole body straight down until he saw her bare toes wiggling with nervousness in her sandals, and he was warmed by her presence, relieved that he had got her there from that terrifying beach, and grateful that, for the moment, he was not alone. He gave her a drink and a cigarette, which she smoked with a child’s clumsiness, and they talked for a little while.

  “It’s Daddy. It isn’t really about Joe at all,” she said, anxiously. “It’s always been the same since I was at school. If I go out late it’s always the same. He waits for me. He—it’s just as if he suspects me. I might as well be bad as keep going through all this.”

  “He’s anxious for you,” Sebastian said. “You may have a daughter one day and feel the same as he does.” He wanted her to go home for her own sake; for his own he wanted her to stay.

  “No, I wouldn’t!” she said, and gave a little shudder. “Not ever. Not now.” She shut her eyes suddenly and burst into tears.

  He put his arm round her shoulders, and she recovered into sniffing.

  “I’m s-sorry,” she said. “It get so worked up, I could scream.”

  “We all get like that at times,” he said, and let her go.

  “He was waiting in the garden. I didn’t even give him time to say anything. I hadn’t been with Joe. I was working late. He didn’t even remember that.”

  “I know,” he said. “Fathers do get anxious. After all, they love you very much, you know, and in families things do get worked up like this because there is so much affection there, so much fear for you. If you went back –”

  “I can’t go back,” she whispered. “I just turned round and ran, and then I walked and went on thinking things about him to keep myself being angry and in the right, and I knew I wasn’t, and that made it worse. He hadn’t said anything—not really, but if I went back now he would, and it would go on and on, …. oh I couldn’t bear it again. No I don’t want to go back . Not tonight. I’ll

  Just walk and walk until I walk it all off, and then I’ll go back.”

  “No” he said. There was a little pile of fresh handkerchiefs on the seat of an armchair. He took one and wiped his face with it. “No don’t do that. It really won’t solve anything”

  “You’re still hot” she said in wonder, and then, “Why don’t you think so? I’d be too tired to feel upset.”

  “ A girl can’t go walking aimlessly at night,” he s
aid.

  I’d go along the beach,” she said. “Along and along and along as far as I could. I can always think things out better when I walk on the beach. It’s clean and sort of blows all the nasty feelings away.”

  “No, Jill,” he said huskily. “It just isn’t a good idea for a girl at night. There are all sorts of—odd characters that prowl about.” He was going to mention the tramp, but stopped himself. “I think the best thing is to relax here for a little while. Simmer down. It’s the worst thing in the world to let anger really get hold of you. It makes you hate people when you don’t,

  and because of that you hate yourself ”

  For God’s sake, he thought, let me keep on talking until I

  can think of something to keep her here until

  Until what?

  More and more the trap of his own devising was winding about him, closing him in, as little incidents he had not imagined, people he had not expected, wove new threads around and around, until like the fly, he would no longer move.

  He felt his throat again, and she looked at him curiously. “You’ve got a temperature,” she said suddenly. “That’s what it is. You shouldn’t be sweating like that. I know. I was going to be a nurse, but Daddy… ” She reached up and put a hand on his forehead. “My goodness! you’re wet! ”

  He turned away.

  “No, no. It gets like this sometimes. Out of sorts. Exercise doesn’t really help it. Don’t bother with it…”

  She looked around.

  “Are you all alone here?” she asked. “You shouldn’t be. You’re not well.”

  “Now, please don’t get worried about me,” he said. “I’ve been hot all day. I—I sometimes get it.”

  “Have you had malaria?” she said.

  . “No!” he said, angrily. “No, I’m quite well. Sometimes I just get hot. Ii’s—quite normal.”