The Hide Read online

  The woman appears with her dear little brush and dustpan. I am ready with the field-glasses, focused beforehand of course, and for the next seven minutes and fifty-two seconds I am rapt.

  Perhaps I am less than usually alert as I am leaving the place, certainly I hear nothing, nothing at all, but as I reach the edge of the drive I come practically face to face with the gardener’s friend, Mr Cade, who is making his way fairly briskly towards the gate. I am taken completely by surprise, but he nods at me with what seems a genial intention. ‘Grand morning,’ he says. I cannot help looking down at his feet. He is wearing what are known or were known as chukka boots, grey suède with crêpe soles at least an inch thick—I see now why he made no sound on the drive. And the fronts of them, right up to the laces, are dark with wet.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ I reply, gesturing towards the morning from behind a privet bush. I still feel shaken by this unexpected meeting, particularly as I cannot understand how this person could have entered the grounds without my knowledge. ‘If you want the gardener, er, Josiah,’ I say, ‘you had better go round to the other side. He is working there this morning.’

  ‘No,’ he says, regarding me steadily but without particular expression. A long, pale, big-chinned face. ‘No, my business was with the lady of the house.’

  He looks at me a while longer as though something is not clear to him and then sets himself forward in motion, a deliberate progress down the drive. I say good day to his retreating back, which shows no awareness of being thus addressed. In less than a minute he is through the gate and out on to the road.

  He could not have entered by the gate of course. I should have heard him or seen him or both—unless he came before I was out of my room before eight o’clock, and that did not seem very likely. No, he must have come over the fields, and entered the grounds the back way via the orchard. This takes at least half an hour even for a very quick walker. The condition of his shoes bore out the supposition—he had gone through the wet grass. But the point was, why? I was unable at the time to fathom it.

  In the afternoon about half past two, just after Audrey had retired for her rest, Marion came out on to the terrace, busied herself there for some minutes. I was standing at the time among the trees just beyond the lawn, so I had a clear view of her. She took up a position in the middle of the terrace, stood straight and still for a second or two then produced from somewhere on her person what looked like a large white handkerchief. Holding it by one corner at arm’s length, she shook it as if trying to shake the dust out. After a minute or so of this she went back inside the house. There was in this series of actions something deliberate and also inherently improbable. I suspected immediately that it was a signal. This suspicion was confirmed some five minutes later when the gardener came walking boldly up the drive. He passed by where I was standing and went on, not following the drive round to the front of the house, but taking the path that led along to the outhouses at the back. As soon as I saw him take this path, I felt certain that he was making for the copse and that Marion would shortly follow. I waited a further twelve minutes then I left my place of concealment, and stepped out on to the drive. I went through the house and conservatory and out into the orchard. There was no sign, of course, of either of them. Taking the same route that I had used before I began working my way round to the point of vantage behind the hedge from which I could overlook the copse.

  It took me longer this time—twenty-five minutes nearly—and I was not sure for most of the way why I was behaving thus, why I was continuing to keep this pair under surveillance. It was not a desire for personal gratification, I did not expect to see anything much happening, not amid that foliage, nor was there any further advantage to be gained with my sister, in fact repetition might deaden resentment in that quarter. Repeatedly, as I crouched and crept my way along, I asked myself why, why endure such discomforts? What’s Hecuba to me? It was not until much later that I finally understood: I had released a certain energy in the world; whatever resulted had to be contained. I could not let it get out of hand—signals, assignations, caresses going on all about the place, unregistered, unrecorded; I had to follow them, once again, had to squat behind the hedge, try to make sense of what they, of what we all, were doing.

  This time they were not visible, even to the extent of their legs; they had retreated farther into the vegetation, into the very middle of the copse, tunnelling farther and farther from the light, it would seem. So there was nothing to see for quite a long time—only the tops of the bushes, still in the sunshine, the pale trunks of trees, the glint of insects’ wings. Then suddenly from the heart of the bushes I heard Marion’s voice, a voice richer and more confident than any we had heard her use at home.

  ‘Well, Mr Clever,’ she said. ‘What colour is it then?’ The gardener made some muttered reply and she repeated the question in the same clear, glad voice. ‘What colour is it then?’ His answer was again inaudible. ‘Wrong, that’s wrong, you don’t really love me,’ she said but very happily, as if quite convinced of the contrary. ‘Think again,’ she said, and at precisely this moment two figures appeared at the crest of the hill leading down to the copse. They seemed to pause briefly, then proceeded steadily downwards. Had they been directly behind the copse I do not think I should have seen them, in spite of the rising ground, because the foliage of the birches would have obstructed my view; but they appeared some way over to the right and then advanced down the field towards the copse diagonally, and so I was able to observe their progress for perhaps two or three minutes. I recognised one of the two figures as the gardener’s friend, Cade.

  ‘You should have said, it is the colour of your eyes, the colour of your hair, things like that,’ Marion said. ‘That’s what he said in the story.’

  The other man was fair-haired and not so tall. They advanced steadily across the field, not appearing to talk to each other. It was obvious that they were making for the copse and equally obvious that they could not be seen by either Marion or the gardener from within the bushes. I watched them fascinated until they were lost to view behind the copse, hearing at the same time Marion’s teasing voice continue: ‘What you should have said, only you didn’t and it’s too late now, is love can be any colour. In this story she asked him that. They were in a restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. She had been badly let down by an advertising man, before the story proper started and she wouldn’t believe anything any of them said. So, she tested him, see? What colour is love? she said to him. You are always going on about it, she said, what colour is it then? And he said, It is the exact identical shade as your eyes.’

  He did not reply, perhaps dumbfounded by the ready wit of this fictional person. ‘You see?’ she said and at that moment there was a low whistle from just beyond the copse.

  ‘What was that? Where are you going?’ I heard her say in a different, sharper tone. She said something more, but it was rendered indistinct by a series of muffled crashing sounds from the bushes beyond. I could see nothing. ‘Josiah!’ I heard the girl cry, in a voice of alarm and entreaty, then again, ‘Josiah!’ The gardener emerged very quickly from the bushes on the side nearer to me, leapt the rubbish tip, stumbled, slipped to his knees, clawed himself upright again with a rather horrifying haste. He went at a sort of jog-trot along the inside of the hedge, disappeared for some moments, then twenty yards farther down I saw his head and shoulders pushing under the hedge into the open on my side. The crashing sounds had ceased. Marion now uttered a series of sharp cries, on the last of which she seemed to choke. Thereafter she was silent for a while. Josiah had regained his feet. He might easily have seen me, but he stood tensely with his back to the hedge, looking straight before him across the field. And now, quite clearly audible to both the gardener and myself there were sounds of scuffling, a male voice grunting as if at some exertion and a reiterated low whimpering similar to a sound made by an impatient dog. I supposed this last sound was being made by Marion. After listening to it for perhaps two minutes,
the gardener craned his head forward, opened his mouth wide and after a brief pause vomited on to the grass before him. He regarded his vomit for some seconds, choked, shuddered, writhed a moment, and vomited again, more copiously. Then he straightened up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and began to walk rather unsteadily away, keeping to the line of the hedge.

  The memory of that slightly staggering retreat is the last one that I have of the gardener. I never saw him again. He looked as he receded, with his narrow, elegant back, his stricken gait, immeasurably lonely and without resource. I had the fancy as I watched him go that he had been wounded in a battle and, seeking the dressing station, had lost himself in a landscape that was neutral, quite indifferent to the outcome of the battle and his wound. His body would be found where he fell, far from here—found in foetal elegance, among flowers, by some totally unprepared person. . . .

  The whimpering ceased. I heard some muttering then the sound of bodies forcing through the vegetation. They were retiring then. Marion had begun to weep, though not noisily. That quiet weeping of the betrayed and violated girl was difficult to endure. It may seem callous to some, cowardly to others, that I remained there with these fancies, taking no action while undoubtedly violence was being done to Marion. But things happened much more quickly than might appear from this account. Moreover, and more particularly, the copse was not my territory. It belonged, and what happened there belonged, to them. I existed only on the other side of the hedge. How can I explain? There was for me no entrance, no way of exchanging observation for action. So I did nothing but wait until the coast was clear and then, with the utmost circumspection, Marion’s weeping still in my ears, begin to withdraw.

  Fosh . . .

  IT WAS HERE he said to wait. I know I haven’t made no mistake about it. Over against the railing, he said. Just to the left of the Pier Arcade. Your left as you are standing with your back to it. You mean the other side from where the bloke is selling papers? That’s right, he said, you wait there. There couldn’t be no mistake about that. Why is he late then? I can see the bus-station clock from here and it is getting on for eight. It is ten minutes to. Half past seven, he said. Get an early start, get on the road early, get the long distance trucks. And here we are, nearly eight o’clock. Even if I got it wrong, which side of the Arcade to wait, I would still see him if he come the other side. I mean, it’s not as if it was crowded. There’s not many people about, this time of day. A few of the locals fishing off the pier, the odd bloke coming over from one of the boarding houses over the way for fags or papers, nobody on the sands at all except this old couple walking beside the sea, right out where the sand is wet. It is going to be a hot day. The sun is clear of the houses already, straight in my eyes when I look that way.

  Gone eight, now. What if Mortimer don’t come? I got no way of finding him. He won’t be on the stall, not after what happened, nor at his digs neither. I couldn’t go looking for him anyway. I have to get out whether Mortimer comes or not but I dunno where I would go on my own. After what I done to Marion there is no point going anywhere on my own, might as well jump off the pier. I will have to get out though, Marion will maybe of put the police on to us. I mean, you have to be a realist, you have to admit there is a possibility. Not that I think she would of done, myself. Marion is not the girl to go to the police, not for a thing like that. The coppers asking her, what happened exactly, what did these men do to you, looking her over all the time like coppers always do because they can’t help it, much as to say, What were you doing in the bushes anyway? No, I don’t think Marion could stand that.

  Besides I know what hurt her most wasn’t what Lionel done to her (it was Lionel that done it, not Mortimer). It was me leaving her and knowing all the time what was going to happen, it was when she looked at my face and seen that I knew what was going to happen. I done a terrible thing to Marion, the worst thing I ever done. I know that. And when she shouted after me, shouted my name like, it wasn’t to keep them off her she wanted me to come back. She wasn’t thinking about that. It was to keep her and me together. It was to stop me doing such a terrible thing. But a course, I could not of stopped then, not after seeing Lionel. (I didn’t know then why Mortimer brought Lionel, it come as a complete surprise, but I know now, I have thought it all out, sitting all night in the bus-station waiting-room. There is two reasons, one behind the other as you might say.)

  It was seeing Lionel with him that made me sick, well I was feeling a bit sickish before but that was mixed up with excitement like, thinking of Mortimer having Marion and me watching. Maybe I would of stayéd and watched, I dunno. Thinking about Mortimer doing it with Marion give me a sort of cramp in the stomach. But the thing I have realised is that Mortimer does not want anything like that, not personally I mean. Taking the realist point of view, that is the conclusion I have come to. Mortimer is not interested in screwing nobody. He is above it, in my opinion. That is the first reason he brought Lionel. And the second is, he wanted to show me that it is all only corporeal, he wanted to drive that message home, so he brought Lionel for the sake of his organ, to show me it doesn’t have to be someone you like, so long as there is the two organs, that is all you need.

  I always felt Mortimer was different. When he started on about the way they walk, in front of Lionel, I got this feeling very strong. And the way he goes on about sexual intercourse and that, but never as if he would want anything to do with it personally. He is more interested in mental things. That’s why I got a shock when he brought it up about sharing Marion, it was surprising. Then he brought Lionel with him, that was what made me sick, him bringing Lionel, but when I thought about it after I understood that he wouldn’t of been no good on his own. And I think now he only took up with Lionel in the first place for the sake of his organ.

  Mortimer done it all for my sake, wanting me to take the realist point a view. He didn’t want nothing for himself, he is above it.

  Twenty past eight.

  She wanted it. I could of had it while we was waiting, she was all for it, nudging with her knee like, but I couldn’t of done nothing, I was all keyed up. Then she had to start talking. What is the colour of love? she asked me. Something she’d read about in one of her magazines. Love hasn’t got no colour, it is a feeling, I told her, but that was not the right answer. I couldn’t hardly follow what she said because I was listening all the time for Mortimer. Some bloke in a story going on about the colour of love.

  Her face when I got up was not surprised. That was after the whistle. I didn’t hear them coming, first thing I heard was the whistle. She didn’t look surprised, particularly, not at the whistle or me getting up. I dunno what she thought, maybe she thought I was going to relieve myself. Then the sound of them crashing through the bushes, it was a lot of noise for only one, frightening, she was asking me something but I couldn’t hear, then Mortimer come through and Lionel behind him. They both looked dead serious. Mortimer said something to me but I couldn’t hear nothing, dunno why, everything went quiet all round me and I couldn’t hear nothing till I heard her shouting after me, shouting my name. All before that was quiet, her starting to get up and them moving towards her and me getting out of it, up the bank. Soon as I started hearing things again I knew I was going to be sick. I will never forget her face when she knew and I will never forget her voice when she shouted after me.

  I know there is nothing wrong with the way she walks. I knew it all along.

  Mortimer and me done a terrible thing to Marion. Mortimer and me done it together. Lionel don’t count. Anyone with a male member would of done as well as Lionel, he is not in it at all, it is just me and Mortimer. Doing something like that brings you close together with a person. That is why he has got to come. If Mortimer don’t come, there will be no point to it, we will of done that terrible thing for nothing.

  Half past eight. Please Mortimer, you got to come. Please God let Mortimer come. Please God. . . .

  That is him. I see him right at the end of the promen
ade, alone on the empty pavement, carrying his suitcase. No one else walks like that, holding himself straight up. Yes it is him, in his navy-blue suit. (I knew all along he would come, a course—Mortimer never breaks his word.) He is still on the other side, walking towards me, getting nearer, but now I don’t see him so well, because of the sun, the sun is behind him and it is shining straight into my eyes. Mortimer starts crossing the road and it is like he is coming out of the sun, I can’t look at him, the sun hurts my eyes, brings tears to my eyes. I close my eyes for a second and then he is beside me and I see that he is smiling. Sorry Josiah, he says, I was unavoidably retarded (his own words), and I know it is really him and we are going off on the road together. We will always be together now.

  Simon . . .

  WHAT WAS STRANGE indeed was the silence that ensued. The gardener did not reappear, of course. Audrey kept to her room. Marion continued to minister to us both with a depressed, but not at all resentful air. She was busy during this time, however, with her own affairs, letters must have been written and received because on the ninth day following her misadventure in the copse she announced that she was leaving us. This announcement of hers in fact was the first breaking of the silence.