The House on the Strand

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WE SAT IN the lounge at Exeter airport waiting for our flight to be called. Take-off was twelve-thirty. The Buick was parked behind the airport, to remain there until our return, whenever that should be. I got sandwiches for all of us, and while we ate them cast an eye over our fellow-travellers. There were flights that afternoon for the Channel Isles as well as Dublin, and the lounge facing the airfield was filled with people. There were a number of priests returning from some convocation, a party of schoolchildren, family parties such as our own, and the usual sprinkling of holiday types. There was also a hilarious sextet who, from their conversation, were on their way to, or from, a riotous wedding.

"I hope", said Vita, "we aren't going to find ourselves beside that lot on the plane."

The boys were already doubled up with laughter, for one of the group had donned a false nose and a moustache, which he kept dipping into his glass of Guinness, to emerge beaded with froth.

"The thing to do", I said, "is to leap to our feet as soon as our flight is called, so that we can get right up to the front, well away from them."

"If that man with the false nose tries to sit beside me, I shall scream," said Vita.

Her remark set the boys off again, and I congratulated myself on having ordered generous rations of cider for the boys and brandy and soda — our holiday drink — for Vita and myself, because it was that, more than the wedding party, which was making the boys giggle and causing Vita to squint as she peered in her powder-compact. I kept a close watch on the plane on the runway, until I saw that it was loaded. They were pulling the baggage trucks away, and a hostess was walking across the tarmac to our door. "Damn!" I said. "I knew it was a mistake to swill all that coffee and brandy. Look, darling, I must rush to the gents. If they call the flight go ahead and get seats in front, as I said. If I'm caught up in the mob I'll find myself a seat at the back and change places after take-off. As long as you three are together you'll be all right. Here — you take your boarding cards and I'll hang on to mine, just in case."

"Oh, Dick, honestly!" exclaimed Vita. "You might have gone before. How typical of you!"

"Sorry," I said. "Nature calls."

I walked rapidly across the lounge as I saw the hostess enter the door, and waited inside the gents. I heard the flight number called over the loudspeaker, and after a few minutes, when I came out again, our party was walking with the hostess across to the aircraft, Vita and the boys in the van. As I watched, they disappeared into the plane, followed by the school-children and the priests. It was now or never. I went rapidly out of the main door of the airport building, and crossed over to the car park. In a moment I had started the Buick and pulled out of the airport entrance. Then I drew into the side of the road and listened. I could hear the sound of the engines before the plane taxied to the start, which must mean that everyone was aboard. If the engines ceased it would mean my plan had gone for nothing, and the hostess had discovered that I was missing. It was twelve thirty-five exactly. Then I heard the engines increase in pitch and in a few minutes, unbelievably, my heart pounding, I saw the silver streak of the aircraft speeding along the runway and take off, gain height and flatten out, and then it was away amongst the clouds and out of sight, and I was sitting there, at the wheel of the Buick, on my own. They were due to touch down at Dublin at one-fifty. I knew exactly what Vita would do. She would put through a call from the airport to Doctor Powell in Fowey, and find him out. He would be out because it was his half-day. He had told me so, when I had rung up after breakfast to say goodbye. He had said that, if it was fine, he was going to take his family over to the north coast to surf; and he would be thinking about us, and would I please send him a postcard from Ireland saying 'Wish you were here'.

I started to sing, as I turned into the main road and touched seventy. This was how a criminal must feel when he had just robbed a bank and got away with the loot in a stolen van. A pity I had not the whole day before me to explore at leisure, drive over to Bere and look up Sir William Ferrers and his wife Matilda, perhaps. I had found the spot on the map — it was only just across the Tamar in Devon — and I wondered if their house was standing still. Probably not, or, if it was, it had turned itself into a farm like Carminowe. I had located Carminowe on my map at the same time, when Teddy was up in my dressing-room packing my case, and had also found the reference to it in the old volume of Parochial History that had given me Tregesteynton. Carminowe was in Mawgan-in-Meneage, near the Loe Pool, and the writer said that the ancient mansion and chapel had fallen into decay in the reign of James I, along with the old burial ground. I took the Launceston road after leaving Okehampton, for it was faster than the way we had come, and as I crossed from Devon into Cornwall, heading for Bodmin moor like a homing pigeon, I sang louder still, for even if Vita had beaten me to it, and was about to land in Dublin, I was safe from pursuit; she could not reach me now. This was my last trip, my final fling; and whatever became of me in the process I could not hurt either her or the boys, for they would be safe on Irish soil.

In such a night

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand

Upon the wild sea-banks, and wav'd her love

To come again to Carthage.

The trouble was, Isolda's lover had died in Treesmill creek upon the strand, and I doubted if either the threat of convent walls, or Joanna's taunts, or the monk's promise of safe passage to some doubtful refuge in Angers would have made her turn to Roger in the end. The future was bleak, six hundred years ago, for wives who left their husbands, especially when the husband had an eye to a third bride. It would have suited Oliver Carminowe, and the Ferrers family too, if Isolda had simply disappeared, which she might well have done had she entrusted herself to Joanna's care; but to remain under Roger's roof was at best only a stop-gap measure, and could not have continued long. As I drove across Bodmin moor, rejoicing that each mile brought me nearer home, exhilaration was tempered by the knowledge that not only must this be the last trip to the other world, but that when I entered it I had no choice of date or season. The thaw could have come and Lent be over, high summer have taken its place, Isolda herself, having made her choice, be languishing behind those convent walls somewhere in Devon, in which case she would have moved out of Roger's life, and mine as well. I wondered, had Magnus lived, whether he could have perfected the timing factor, thus leaving the awakening from present to past to the participant's own choice; so that today, by some infinitesimal alteration of the dose, I could have summoned up at will those figures in the basement where I had left them last. Never, in the few weeks of experiment, had it happened that way. There had always been a jump in time. Joanna's carriage would no longer be waiting on the top of the hill above Kylmerth; Roger, Isolda and Bess would have left the farmhouse kitchen. That single draught in the walking-stick could guarantee re-entry to my world, but not what I should find there when I did.

The halt-sign brought me up with a jerk on to the main Lostwithiel-Saint Blazey road. I had driven the last twenty miles like an automaton, and I remembered the side turning that would take me past Tregesteynton to the Treesmill valley. I drove down it with a strange nostalgic sense, and as I passed the present farmhouse of Strickstenton, and a black-and-white collie darted out on to the road barking, I thought of small Margaret, Isolda's younger child, who had wanted a riding-whip like Robbie's, and Joanna, the elder, preening in the looking-glass while her father chased Sybell up the stairs with the otter's paw. I came down into the valley, and so intense was my identification with the past that I had forgotten, momentarily, that the river would no longer be there, and I looked for Rosgof's cottage by the side of the ford opposite the mill: but of course there was no river and no ford, only the road turning left and a few cows grazing in the marshy field. I wished I was in the Triumph, for the Buick was too big and conspicuous. On sudden impulse I parked by the bridge below the mill, and, walking a short way up the lane, climbed over the gate into the field leading to the Gratten. I knew I must stand there once more amongst the mounds before returning home, for once back at Kilmarth the future would be uncertain; the last experiment might land me in some trouble unforeseen. I wanted to carry in my mind the image of the Treesmill valley as it looked today under the late August sun, letting imagination and memory do the rest, bringing back the winding river and the creek, and the anchorage below the long-vanished house. They had been harvesting in the Chapel Park fields behind the Gratten, but here where I walked beneath the hedge it was all grass, and cows were grazing. I came to the first of the gorse-bushes, climbing to the top of the high bank surrounding the site, and then looked down to the apron of grass which had once been a path under the hallway window, where Isolda and Bodrugan had sat holding hands. A man was lying there, smoking a cigarette, his coat propped under his head as pillow. I stared hard, unbelieving, thinking that guilt and an uneasy conscience must have conjured his image out of the air; but I was not mistaken. The man who was lying there was very real, and it was Doctor Powell.

I stood there a moment watching him, then deliberately, without malice but with total resolution, I unscrewed the top of Magnus's stick and took out the little measure. I swallowed my last dose, and replaced the measure once again inside the stick. Then I walked down the mound and joined him.

"I thought", I said, "you had gone surfing on the north coast?"

He sat up instantly, and I experienced, for the first time since knowing him, the immensely satisfying feeling that I had caught him unawares and at a disadvantage.

He recovered quickly, the look of astonishment giving place to an engaging smile. "I changed my mind," he said calmly, "and let the family go off without me. You seem to have done the same."

"So Vita beat me to it after all. She didn't lose much time," I told him.

"What's your wife got to do with it?"

"Well, she telephoned you from Dublin, didn't she?"

"No," he said.

Now it was my turn to look astonished and stare at him. "Then what the hell are you doing here waiting for me?"

"I wasn't waiting for you. Rather than brave the Atlantic breakers I decided to explore your piece of territory. A hunch that has apparently paid off. You can show me round."

My one-upmanship began to fade, my self-confidence desert me. He seemed to be playing my own game and getting away with it.

"Look," I said, "don't you want to know what happened at the airport?"

"Not particularly," he replied. "The plane took off, I know, because I rang through to Exeter and checked. Whether you were on it or not they couldn't tell me, but I knew that if you weren't you would head back for Kilmarth, and if I turned up there for a cup of tea I'd find you in the basement. Meanwhile, burning curiosity drove me to while away half an hour or so down here."

His cocksure attitude infuriated me, but I was even more angry with myself. If I had taken the other road, if I had not come through the Treesmill valley and allowed momentary sentiment to sway me, I should have been safely back at Kilmarth with at least half an hour or more in hand before he breezed in to take possession.

"All right," I said, "I know I've played a dirty trick on Vita and the boys, and she's probably ringing you from Dublin airport now and getting no reply. What staggers me is that you let me go knowing what might happen. It's almost as much your fault as mine."

"Oh, I agree," he answered. "I'm equally to blame, and we'll both apologise when we get her on the telephone. But I wanted to give you a chance, just to see if you could make it, instead of going by the rules."

"And what do the rules say?"

"Put your addict inside, once he's well and truly hooked."

I looked at him thoughtfully, and leant on Magnus's walking-stick for support. "You know very well", I said, "I gave bottle C to you, and that was the last; and you must have given the house a pretty thorough search when I was lying prone upstairs all the week."

"I did," he replied, "and searched it again today. I told Mrs. Collins I was looking for buried treasure, and I think she believed me. Suspicious sort of chap, aren't I?"

"Yes. And you found nothing, because there was nothing there."

"Well, you may count yourself damn lucky that there wasn't. I've got Willis's final report in my pocket."

"What does it say?"

"Only that the drug contains a substance of some toxicity that could seriously affect the central nervous system, possibly leading to paralysis. No need to elaborate."

"Show it to me now."

He shook his head, and suddenly he was not there any more, and the walls were all around me, and I was standing in the hail of the Champernoune manor-house looking out of the casement window at the rain. Panic gripped me, for it was not meant to happen, at least not yet; I had counted on being home, behind my own four walls, with Roger acting as my usual guide-protector. He was not here, and the hall was empty, and had been altered since I had seen it last. There seemed to be more furniture, more hangings, and the curtain masking the doorway to the stair above was drawn aside. Someone was crying in the bedroom overhead, and I could hear the sound of heavy footsteps pacing the floor. I looked out of the casement window once again, and saw through the falling rain that it must be autumn, for the clump of trees on the opposite hill where Oliver Carminowe had concealed himself and his men, as they lay in ambush waiting for Bodrugan, was golden brown as it had been then. But today no wind blew, tossing the leaves on to the ground below; the steady mizzle made them hang dispirited, and a shroud of mist clung above Lanescot and the river's mouth.

The crying turned to a high-pitched laugh, and down the stairs came a cup and ball, rolling one behind the other, until they reached the floor of the hall itself, when the ball rolled slowly under the table. I heard a man's voice call anxiously, "Mind how you go, Elizabeth!" as someone, still laughing, came clumping down the stairs in search of the toy. She stood a moment, her hands clasped in front of her, her long dress trailing, an absurd little bonnet askew on her auburn hair. Her likeness to Joanna Champernoune was startling, then tragic, for this was an idiot girl, about twelve years old, with a full loose mouth, and eyes set high in her head. She nodded, laughing, then picked up the ball and cup and began to throw them in the air, screaming with delight. Suddenly, tiring of the game, she tossed them aside and started to spin round in circles until she became giddy, when she fell on to the floor and sat there motionless, staring at her shoes.

The man's voice from above called out again, "Elizabeth… Elizabeth," and the girl struggled clumsily to her feet and smiled, gazing at the ceiling. Footsteps came slowly down the stairs and the man appeared, wearing a long, loose robe to his ankles, and a night-cap. I thought, for a moment, I had travelled back in time and it was Henry Champernoune who stood there, weak and pale in his final illness, but it was Henry's son William, an adolescent when I saw him last, squaring up to take his place as head of the family when Roger broke the news of his father's death. Now he looked thirty-five or even more, and I realised, with a shock of dismay, that time had leapt ahead of me at least twelve years, and all the intervening months and years were buried in a past I should never know. The frozen winter of 1335 meant nothing to this William, who had been a minor and unmarried then. He was now master of his own house, though battling, it would seem, against sickness, and enmeshed as well in the inescapable net of some family flaw. "Come, daughter, come, love," he said gently, holding out his arms, and she put her finger in her mouth and sucked it, shaking her shoulders, then, with a sudden change of mind, darted to the floor and picked up her cup and ball again and gave it to him.

"I'll toss it for you above, but not down here," he said. "Katie has been sick as well, and I must not leave her."

"She'll not have my toy, I won't let her," said Elizabeth, nodding her head up and down, and she put out her hand and tried to snatch it back.

"What? Not let your sister share it when she gave it to you? That's not my Lizzie speaking, surely? Lizzie's flown up the chimney and a bad girl has taken her place."

He clucked his tongue in reproof, and at the sound of it her full mouth drooped, her eyes filled with tears, and she flung her arms about him, crying bitterly, clinging to his long robe.

"There, there," he said. "Father did not mean it, Father loves his Liz, but she must not tease him, he is still weak and sick, and poor Katie too. Come, now, upstairs, and she can watch us from her bed, and when you toss the ball high she'll be the better for it, and maybe smile."

He took her hand and led her towards the stairs, and as he did so someone came through the door leading to the kitchen quarters. William heard the footsteps and turned his head.

"See that all the doors are fastened before you go," he said, "and bid the servants keep them so, and open them to no one. God knows I hate to give the order, but I daren't do otherwise. Sick stragglers bide their time, and wait for darkness before they walk abroad and knock on men's doors."

"I know it. There have been many so in Tywardreath, and death has spread because of it."

There was no doubt about the speaker who stood at the open door. It was Robbie, a taller, broader Robbie than the lad I knew, and his chin was bearded now like his brother's.

"Watch how you go upon the road, then," answered William. "The same poor demented wanderers might attempt to strike you down, thinking, because you ride, you have some magic property of health denied to them."

"I'll ride with care, Sir William, have no fear. I would not leave you for the night except for Roger. Five days since I was home, and he's alone."

"I know, I know. God keep you both, and watch over all of us this night." He led his daughter up the stairs to the room above, and I followed Robbie to the kitchen quarters. Three servants sat there in dejected fashion, hugging the hearth, one with his eyes closed and his head resting against the wall. Robbie gave him William's message, and he echoed, "God be with us" without opening his eyes. Robbie shut the door behind him and walked across the stable-court. His pony was tied to the stall inside the shed. He mounted and began riding slowly up the hill through the mizzling rain, passing the small cottages that formed part of the demesne, lining the muddied track. All the doors were fastened tight, and smoke came from the roofs of only two, the others seeming deserted. We reached the brow of the hill, and Robbie, instead of turning to the right on the road to the village, paused by the geld-house on the left, and, dismounting, tied his pony to the gate and walked up the path to the chapel alongside. He opened the door and entered, I following after. The chapel was small, hardly more than twenty feet in length and fifteen broad, with a single window facing east behind the altar. Robbie, making the sign of the Cross, knelt down before it, and bowed his head in prayer. There was an inscription in Latin beneath the window, which I read: 'Matilda Champernoune built this chapel in memory of her husband William Champernoune, who died in 1304.'

A stone before the chancel steps was inscribed with her own initials and the date of her death, which I could not decipher. A similar stone, to the left, bore the initials H.C. There were no stained glass windows, no effigies or tombs built against the walls: this was an oratory, a memorial chapel.

When Robbie rose from his knees and turned away, I saw another stone before the chancel steps. The lettering read I.C.; the date was 1335. As I followed Robbie out into the rain and down towards the village, I knew of only one name that would fit, and it was not Champernoune. Desolation was all about me, here by the geld-house and in the village too. No people on the green, no animals, no barking dogs. The doors of the small dwellings huddled close around the green were closed, like those on the demesne itself. A single goat, half-starved by its appearance, with ribs protruding from its lean body, was tethered by a chain near to the well, cropping the rough grass. We climbed the hill-track above the Priory, and looking down on to the enclosure I could see no sign of life from behind the walls. No smoke came from the monks quarters, nor from the chapter-house; the whole place seemed abandoned, and the ripening apples in the orchard had been left to cluster on the trees unplucked. And when we passed the plough-lands on the high ground I saw that the soil had not been turned, and some of the corn was not even harvested but lay rotting on the earth, as if some cyclone in the night had swept it down. As we came to the pasture-land on the lower slopes the Priory cattle, roaming loose, came lowing after us in desperation, as though in hope that Robbie, on his pony, might drive them home.

We crossed the ford with ease, for the tide was ebbing fast and the sands lay uncovered, flat and dirty brown under the rain. A thin wreath of smoke came from Julian Polpey's roof — he at least must have survived calamity — but Geoffrey Lampetho's dwelling in the valley looked as bare and deserted as those on the village green. This was not the world I knew, the world I had come to love and long for because of its magic quality of love and hate, its separation from a drab monotony; this was a place resembling, in its barren desolation, all the most hideous features of a twentieth-century landscape after disaster, suggesting a total abandonment of hope, the aftertaste of atomic doom. Robbie rode uphill above the ford, and passing through the copse of straggling trees came down to the wall encircling Kylmerth yard. No smoke curled up from the chimney. He flung himself from his pony, leaving it to wander loose towards the byre, and running across the yard he opened the door.

"Roger!" I heard him call, and "Roger!" once again. The kitchen was empty, the turf no longer smouldered on the hearth. The remains of food lay untouched upon the trestle table, and as Robbie climbed the ladder to the sleeping-loft I saw a rat scurry across the floor and disappear. There can have been no one in the loft, for Robbie came down the ladder instantly, and opened the door beneath it which gave access to the byre, revealing at the same time a narrow passage ending in a store-room and a cellar. Slits in the thickness of the wall allowed streaks of light to penetrate the gloom, and this was the only source of air as well. There was little draught to cleanse the atmosphere of sweet mustiness pervading, due to the rotting apples laid in rows against the wall. An iron cauldron, unsteady on three legs, and rusted from disuse, stood in the far corners and beside it pitchers, jars, a three-pronged fork, a pair of bellows. This store-room was a strange choice for a sick man to make his bed. He must have dragged his pallet from the sleeping-loft and placed it here beside the slit in the wa11 and then, from increasing weakness or lack of will, lain through the days and nights until today. "Roger…" whispered Robbie, "Roger!"

Roger opened his eyes. I did not recognise him. His hair was white, his eyes sunk deep in his head, his features thin and drawn; and under the white furze that formed his beard the flesh was discoloured, bruised, with the same discoloured swellings behind his ears. He murmured something, "water", I think it was, and Robbie rose from his side and ran into the kitchen, but I went on kneeling there beside him, staring down at the man I had last seen confident and strong. Robbie returned with a pitcher of water, and, putting his arms round his brother, helped him to drink. But after two mouthfuls Roger choked, and lay back again on his pallet, gasping.

"No remedy," he said. "The swelling's spread to my throat and blocked the wind-pipe. Moisten my lips only, that's comfort enough."

"How long have you lain here?" asked Robbie.

"I cannot tell. Four days and nights, maybe. Not long after you went I knew it had me, and I brought my bed to the cellar so that you could sleep easy above when you returned. How is Sir William?"

"Recovered, thanks be to God, and young Katherine too. Elizabeth still escapes infection, and the servants. More than sixty died this week in Tywardreath. The Priory is closed, as you know, and the Prior and brethren gone to Minster."

"No loss," murmured Roger. "We can do without them. Did you visit the chapel?"

"I did, and said the usual prayer."

He moistened his brother's lips with water once again, and in rough but tender fashion tried to soften the swellings beneath his ears.

"I tell you, there's no remedy," said Roger. "This is the end. No parish priest to shrive me, no communal grave amongst the rest. Bury me at the cliff's edge, Robbie, where my bones will smell the sea."

"I'll go to Polpey and fetch Bess," said Robbie. "She and I can nurse you through this together."

"No," said Roger, "she has her own children to care for now, and Julian too. Hear my confession, Robbie. There's been something on my conscience now these thirteen years."

He struggled to sit up but had not strength enough, and Robbie, the tears running down his cheeks, smoothed the matted hair out of his brother's eyes.

"If it concerns you and Lady Carminowe, I don't need to hear it, Roger," he said. "Bess and I knew you loved her, and love her still. So did we. There was no sin in that for any of us."

"No sin in loving, but in murder, yes," said Roger.

"Murder?"

Robbie, kneeling by his brother's side, stared down at him, bewildered, then shook his head. "You're wandering, Roger," he said softly. "We all know how she died. She had been sick for weeks before she came here, and hid it from us; and then when they tried to carry her away by force she gave her promise she would follow in a week, and so they let her stay."

"And would have gone, but I prevented it."

"How did you prevent it? She died before the week had passed, here, in the room above, with Bess's arms about her, and yours too."

"She died because I would not let her suffer pain," said Roger. "She died because, had she kept her bargain and travelled to Trelawn and thence into Devon, there would have been weeks of agony ahead, even months, agony that our own mother knew and endured when we were young. So I let her go from us in sleep, knowing nothing of what I had done, and you and Bess in the same ignorance."

He put out his hand and felt for Robbie's, holding it tight. "Did you never wonder, Robbie, when in the old days I stayed at the Priory late at night, or an occasion brought de Meral here to the cellar, what it was I did?"

"I knew the French ships landed merchandise," said Robbie, "and you conveyed it to the Priory. Wine and other goods which the Prior lacked. And the monks lived well because of it."

"They taught me their secrets too," said Roger. "How to make men dream and conjure visions, rather than pray. How to seek a paradise on earth that would last for a few hours only. How to make men die. It was only after young Bodrugan perished in de Meral's care that I sickened of the game, taking no further part in it. But I had learnt the secret well, and so made use of it, when the time came. I gave her something to ease pain and let her slip away. It was murder, Robbie, and a mortal sin. And no one knows of it but you."

The effort of speaking had drained him of all strength, and Robbie, lost and frightened suddenly in the presence of death, let go his hand, and, stumbling to his feet, went blindly along the passage to the kitchen, in search, I think, of some additional covering to draw over his brother. I went on kneeling there, in the cellar, and Roger opened his eyes for the last time and stared at me. I think he asked for absolution, but there was no one there, in his own time, to grant it, and I wondered if, because of this, he had travelled through the years in search of it. Like Robbie, I was helpless, and six centuries too late.

"Go forth, 0 Christian soul, out of this world, in the name of God the Father Almighty, who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who sanctified thee…"

I could not remember any more, and it did not matter, because he had already gone. The light was coming through the chinks of the shuttered window in the old laundry, and I was kneeling there, on the stone floor of the lab, amongst the empty bottles and the jars. There was no nausea, no vertigo, no singing in my ears. Only a great silence, and a sense of peace. I raised my head and saw that the doctor was standing by the wall and watching me.

"It's finished," I said. "Roger's dead, he's free. It's all over."

The doctor put out his hand and took my arm. He led me out of the room and up the stairs, and through to the front part of the house and into the library. We sat down together on the window-seat, staring out across the sea.

"Tell me about it," he said.

"Don't you know?"

I had thought, seeing him in the lab, that he must have shared the experience with me, then I realised it was impossible.

"I waited with you on the site," he told me, "then walked with you up the hill, and followed behind you in the car. You stopped for a moment in a field above Tywardreath, near where the two roads join, then down through the village and along the side-lane to Polmear, and so back here. You were walking quite normally, rather faster, perhaps, than I would have cared to do myself. Then you struck to the right through the wood, and I came down the drive. I knew I should find you below."

I got up from the window-seat and went to the bookshelf and took down one of the volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

I turned the pages until I found the reference I sought. "The date of the Black Death," I said, "1348. Thirteen years after Isolda died." I put the book back upon the shelf.

"Bubonic plague," he observed. "Endemic in the Far East — they've had a number of cases in Vietnam."

"Have they?" I said. "Well, I've just seen what it did in Tywardreath six hundred years ago."

I went back to the window-seat and picked up the walking-stick. "You must have wondered how I managed that last trip," I said. "This is how." I unscrewed the top and showed him the small measure. He took it from me and held it upside down. It was fully drained.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but when I saw you sitting there below the Gratten I knew I had to do it. It was my last chance. And I'm glad I did, because now the whole thing is done with, finished. No more temptation. No more desire to lose myself in the other world. I told you Roger was free, and so am I."

He did not answer. He was still staring at the empty measure.

"Now," I said, "before we put through a call to Dublin airport and ask if Vita is there, supposing you tell me what else was written in that report John Willis sent you?"

He picked up the stick, and replacing the measure screwed on the top and gave it back to me.

"I burnt it," he said, "with the flame from my lighter, when you were on your knees in the basement reciting that prayer for the dying. Somehow it seemed to me the right moment, and I preferred to destroy it rather than have it lying in the surgery amongst my files."

"That's no answer," I told him.

It's all you're going to get, he replied. The telephone started ringing from the lobby in the hall. I wondered how many times it had rung before.

"That will be Vita," I said. "Now for the count-down. I'd better get on my knees again. Shall I tell her I got locked in the gents and I'll join her tomorrow?"

"It would be wiser", he said slowly, "if you told her you hoped to join her later, perhaps in a few weeks time."

"But that's absurd," I frowned. "There's nothing to hold me back. I've told you it's all over and I'm free."

He did not say anything. He just sat there staring at me. The telephone went on ringing, and I crossed the room to answer it, but a silly thing happened as I picked up the receiver. I couldn't hold it properly; my fingers and the palm of my hand went numb, and it slipped out of my grasp and crashed to the floor.

The End