Towards Zero Read online

  “Too bad,” said Royde. “Isn’t there a service lift—luggage—all that?”

  “I’m afraid not. This one is used for all purposes. Well I must take it slowly, that is all. Goodnight to you both.”

  He started slowly up the wide staircase. Royde and Latimer wished him goodnight, then let themselves out into the dark street.

  There was a moment’s pause, then Royde said abruptly:

  “Well, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes.”

  Ted Latimer strode lightly down the hill towards the ferry. Thomas Royde stood looking after him for a moment, then he walked slowly in the opposite direction towards Gull’s Point.

  The moon came out from behind the cloud and Saltcreek was once more bathed in silvery radiance.

  VII

  “Just like summer,” murmured Mary Aldin.

  She and Audrey were sitting on the beach just below the imposing edifice of the Easterhead Bay Hotel. Audrey wore a white swimsuit and looked like a delicate ivory figure. Mary had not bathed. A little way along from them Kay lay on her face exposing her bronzed limbs and back to the sun.

  “Ugh,” she sat up. “The water’s horribly cold,” she said accusingly.

  “Oh well, it is September,” said Mary.

  “It’s always cold in England,” said Kay discontentedly. “How I wish we were in the South of France. That really is hot.”

  Ted Latimer from beyond her murmured:

  “The sun here isn’t a real sun.”

  “Aren’t you going in at all, Mr. Latimer?” asked Mary.

  Kay laughed.

  “Ted never goes in the water. Just suns himself like a lizard.”

  She stretched out a toe and prodded him. He sprang up.

  “Come and walk, Kay. I’m cold.”

  They went off together along the beach.

  “Like a lizard? Rather an unfortunate comparison,” murmured Mary Aldin looking after them.

  “Is that what you think of him?” asked Audrey.

  Mary Aldin frowned.

  “Not quite. A lizard suggests something quite tame. I don’t think he is tame.”

  “No,” said Audrey thoughtfully. “I don’t think so either.”

  “How well they look together,” said Mary, watching the retreating pair. “They match somehow, don’t they?”

  “I suppose they do.”

  “They like the same things,” went on Mary. “And have the same opinions and—and use the same language. What a thousand pities it is that—”

  She stopped.

  Audrey said sharply:

  “That what?”

  Mary said slowly:

  “I suppose I was going to say what a pity it was that Nevile and she ever met.”

  Audrey sat up stiffly. What Mary called to herself “Audrey’s frozen look” had come over her face. Mary said quickly:

  “I’m sorry, Audrey. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I’d so much rather—not talk about it if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, of course. It was very stupid of me. I—I hoped you’d got over it, I suppose.”

  Audrey turned her head slowly. With a calm expressionless face she said:

  “I assure you there is nothing to get over. I—I have no feeling of any kind in the matter. I hope—I hope with all my heart that Kay and Nevile will always be very happy together.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, Audrey.”

  “It isn’t nice. It is—just true. But I do think it is—well—unprofitable to keep on going back over the past. ‘It’s a pity this happened—that!’ It’s all over now. Why take it up? We’ve got to go on living our lives in the present.”

  “I suppose,” said Mary simply, “that people like Kay and Ted are exciting to me because—well, they are so different from anything or anyone that I have ever come across.”

  “Yes, I suppose they are.”

  “Even you,” said Mary with sudden bitterness, “have lived and had experiences that I shall probably never have. I know you’ve been unhappy—very unhappy—but I can’t help feeling that even that is better than—well—nothing. Emptiness!”

  She said the last word with a fierce emphasis.

  Audrey’s wide eyes looked a little startled.

  “I never dreamt you ever felt like that.”

  “Didn’t you?” Mary Aldin laughed apologetically. “Oh just a momentary fit of discontent, my dear. I didn’t really mean it.”

  “It can’t be very gay for you,” said Audrey slowly. “Just living here with Camilla—dear thing though she is. Reading to her, managing the servants, never going away.”

  “I’m well-fed and -housed,” said Mary. “Thousands of women aren’t even that. And really, Audrey, I am quite contented. I have,” a smile played for a moment round her lips, “my private distractions.”

  “Secret vices?” asked Audrey, smiling also.

  “Oh, I plan things,” said Mary vaguely. “In my mind, you know. And I like experimenting sometimes—upon people. Just seeing, you know, if I can make them react to what I say in the way I mean.”

  “You sound almost sadistic, Mary. How little I really know you!”

  “Oh it’s all quite harmless. Just a childish little amusement.”

  Audrey asked curiously:

  “Have you experimented on me?”

  “No. You’re the only person I have always found quite incalculable. I never know, you see, what you are thinking.”

  “Perhaps,” said Audrey gravely, “that is just as well.”

  She shivered and Mary exclaimed:

  “You’re cold.”

  “Yes. I think I will go and dress. After all, it is September.”

  Mary Aldin remained alone, staring at the reflection on the water. The tide was going out. She stretched herself out on the sand, closing her eyes.

  They had had a good lunch at the Hotel. It was still quite full although it was past the height of the season. A queer, mixed-looking lot of people. Oh well, it had been a day out. Something to break the monotony of day following day. It had been a relief, too, to get away from that sense of tension, that strung-up atmosphere that there had been lately at Gull’s Point. It hadn’t been Audrey’s fault, but Nevile—

  Her thoughts broke up abruptly as Ted Latimer plumped himself down on the beach beside her.

  “What have you done with Kay?” Mary asked.

  Ted replied briefly:

  “She’s been claimed by her legal owner.”

  Something in his tone made Mary Aldin sit up. She glanced across the stretch of shining golden sands to where Nevile and Kay were walking by the water’s edge. Then she glanced quickly at the man beside her.

  She had thought of him as nerveless, as queer, as dangerous, even. Now for the first time she got a glimpse of someone young and hurt. She thought:

  “He was in love with Kay—really in love with her—and then Nevile came and took her away….”

  She said gently:

  “I hope you are enjoying yourself down here.”

  They were conventional words. Mary Aldin seldom used any words but conventional ones—that was her language. But her tone was an offer—for the first time—of friendliness. Ted Latimer responded to it.

  “As much, probably, as I should enjoy myself anywhere.”

  Mary said:

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But you don’t care a damn, really! I’m an outsider—and what does it matter what outsiders feel and think.”

  She turned her head to look at this bitter and handsome young man.

  He returned her look with one of defiance.

  She said slowly as one who makes a discovery:

  “I see. You don’t like us.”

  He laughed shortly.

  “Did you expect me to?”

  She said thoughtfully:

  “I suppose, you know, that I did expect just that. One takes, of course, too much for granted. One should be more humble. Yes, it would not have occurred to me that you would not like us. We have tried to make you welcome—as Kay’s friend.”

  “Yes—as Kay’s friend!”

  The interruption came with a quick venom.

  Mary said with disarming sincerity:

  “I wish you would tell me—really I wish it—just why you dislike us? What have we done? What is wrong with us?”

  Ted Latimer said, with a blistering emphasis on the one word: “Smug!”

  “Smug?” Mary queried it without rancour, examining the charge with judicial appraisement.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I see that we could seem like that.”

  “You are like that. You take all the good things of life for granted. You’re happy and superior in your little roped-off enclosure shut off from the common herd. You look at people like me as though I were one of the animals outside!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mary.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “No, not quite. We are stupid, perhaps, and unimaginative—but not malicious. I myself am conventional and, superficially, I dare say, what you call smug. But really, you know, I’m quite human inside. I’m very sorry, this minute, because you are unhappy, and I wish I could do something about it.”

  “Well—if that’s so—it’s nice of you.”

  There was a pause, then Mary said gently:

  “Have you always been in love with Kay?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “And she?”

  “I thought so—until Strange came along.”

  Mary said gently:

  “And you’re still in love with her?”

  “I should think that was obvious.”

  After a moment or two, Mary said quietly:

  “Had
n’t you better go away from here?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you are only letting yourself in for more unhappiness.”

  He looked at her and laughed.

  “You’re a nice creature,” he said. “But you don’t know much about the animals prowling about outside your little enclosure. Quite a lot of things may happen in the near future.”

  “What sort of things?” said Mary sharply.

  “Wait and see.”

  VIII

  When Audrey had dressed she went along the beach and out along a jutting point of rocks, joining Thomas Royde, who was sitting there smoking a pipe exactly opposite to Gull’s Point, which stood white and serene on the opposite side of the river.

  Thomas turned his head at Audrey’s approach, but he did not move. She sat down beside him without speaking. They were silent with the comfortable silence of two people who know each other very well indeed.

  “How near it looks,” said Audrey at last, breaking the silence.

  Thomas looked across at Gull’s Point.

  “Yes, we could swim home.”

  “Not at this tide. There was a housemaid Camilla had once. She was an enthusiastic bather, used to swim across and back whenever the tide was right. It has to be low or high—but when it’s running out it sweeps you right down to the mouth of the river. It did that to her one day—only luckily she kept her head and came ashore all right on Easter Point—only very exhausted.”

  “It doesn’t say anything about its being dangerous here.”

  “It isn’t this side. The current is the other side. It’s deep there under the cliffs. There was a would-be suicide last year—threw himself off Stark Head—but he was caught by a tree halfway down the cliff and the coastguards got to him all right.”

  “Poor devil,” said Thomas. “I bet he didn’t thank them. Must be sickening to have made up your mind to get out of it all and then be saved. Makes a fellow feel a fool.”

  “Perhaps he’s glad now,” suggested Audrey dreamily.

  She wondered vaguely where the man was now and what he was doing.

  Thomas puffed away at his pipe. By turning his head very slightly he could look at Audrey. He noted her grave absorbed face as she stared across the water. The long brown lashes that rested on the pure line of the cheek, the small shell-like ear.

  That reminded him of something.

  “Oh by the way, I’ve got your earring—the one you lost last night.”

  His fingers delved into his pocket. Audrey stretched out a hand.

  “Oh good, where did you find it? On the terrace?”

  “No. It was near the stairs. You must have lost it as you came down to dinner. I noticed you hadn’t got it at dinner.”

  “I’m glad to have it back.”

  She took it. Thomas reflected that it was rather a large barbaric earring for so small an ear. The ones she had on today were large, too.

  He remarked:

  “You wear your earrings even when you bathe. Aren’t you afraid of losing them?”

  “Oh, these are very cheap things. I hate being without earrings because of this.”

  She touched her left ear. Thomas remembered.

  “Oh yes, that time old Bouncer bit you.”

  Audrey nodded.

  They were silent, reliving a childish memory. Audrey Standish (as she then was), a long spindle-legged child, putting her face down on old Bouncer who had had a sore paw. A nasty bite, he had given her. She had had to have a stitch put in it. Not that there was much to show now—just the tiniest little scar.

  “My dear girl,” he said, “you can hardly see the mark. Why do you mind?”

  Audrey paused before answering with evident sincerity:

  “It’s because—because I just can’t bear a blemish.”

  Thomas nodded. It fitted in with his knowledge of Audrey—of her instinct for perfection. She was in herself so perfectly finished an article.

  He said suddenly:

  “You’re far more beautiful than Kay.”

  She turned quickly.

  “Oh no, Thomas. Kay—Kay is really lovely.”

  “On the outside. Not underneath.”

  “Are you referring,” said Audrey with faint amusement, “to my beautiful soul?”

  Thomas knocked out the ashes of his pipe.

  “No,” he said. “I think I mean your bones.”

  Audrey laughed.

  Thomas packed a new pipeful of tobacco. They were silent for quite five minutes, but Thomas glanced at Audrey more than once though he did it so unobtrusively that she was unaware of it.

  He said at last quietly:

  “What’s wrong, Audrey?”

  “Wrong? What do you mean by wrong?”

  “Wrong with you. There’s something.”

  “No, there’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “But there is.”

  She shook her head.

  “Won’t you tell me?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I suppose I’m being a chump—but I’ve got to say it—” He paused. “Audrey—can’t you forget about it? Can’t you let it all go?”

  She dug her small hands convulsively into the rock.

  “You don’t understand—you can’t begin to understand.”

  “But Audrey, my dear, I do. That’s just it. I know.”

  She turned a small doubtful face to him.

  “I know exactly what you’ve been through. And—and what it must have meant to you.”

  She was very white now, white to the lips.

  “I see,” she said. “I didn’t think—anyone knew.”

  “Well, I do. I—I’m not going to talk about it. But what I want to impress upon you is that it’s all over—it’s past and done with.”

  She said in a low voice:

  “Some things don’t pass.”

  “Look here, Audrey, it’s no good brooding and remembering. Granted you’ve been through Hell. It does no good to go over and over a thing in your mind. Look forward—not back. You’re quite young. You’ve got your life to live and most of that is in front of you now. Think of tomorrow, not of yesterday.”

  She looked at him with a steady wide-eyed gaze that was singularly unrevealing of her real thoughts.

  “And supposing,” she said, “that I can’t do that.”

  “But you must.”

  Audrey said gently:

  “I thought you didn’t understand. I’m—I’m not quite normal about—some things, I suppose.”

  He broke in roughly,

  “Rubbish. You—” He stopped.

  “I—what?”

  “I was thinking of you as you were when you were a girl—before you married Nevile. Why did you marry Nevile?”

  Audrey smiled.

  “Because I fell in love with him.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that. But why did you fall in love with him? What attracted you to him so much?”

  She crinkled her eyes as though trying to see through the eyes of a girl now dead.

  “I think,” she said, “it was because he was so ‘positive.’ He was always so much the opposite of what I was, myself. I always felt shadowy—not quite real. Nevile was very real. And so happy and sure of himself and so—everything that I was not.” She added with a smile: “And very good-looking.”

  Thomas Royde said bitterly:

  “Yes, the ideal Englishman—good at sport, modest, good-looking, always the little pukka sahib—getting everything he wanted all along the line.”

  Audrey sat very upright and stared at him.

  “You hate him,” she said slowly. “You hate him very much, don’t you?”

  He avoided her eyes, turning away to cup a match in his hands as he relit the pipe, that had gone out.

  “Wouldn’t be surprising if I did, would it?” he said indistinctly. “He’s got everything that I haven’t. He can play games, and swim and dance, and talk. And I’m a tongue-tied oaf with a crippled arm. He’s always been brilliant and successful and I’ve always been a dull dog. And he married the only girl I ever cared for.”

  She made a faint sound. He said savagely:

  “You’ve always known that, haven’t you? You knew I cared about you ever since you were fifteen. You know that I still care—”

  She stopped him.

  “No. Not now.”

  “What do you mean—not now?”

  Audrey got up. She said in a quiet reflective voice:

  “Because—now—I am different.”

  “Different in what way?”

  He got up too and stood facing her.

  Audrey said in a quick rather breathless voice:

  “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you…I’m not always sure myself. I only know—”