Thieving Fear

THIRTY-ONE

It wasn't a rubber mask, grotesque enough to give children nightmares and sufficiently rotten to disgust anyone. The eyes were part of its discoloured substance, which quivered like a misshapen lump of jelly as if to prove it was alive, however little it deserved to be. It was Ellen's face, one glimpse of which was enough to make her hurl the mirror away. 'What have you done?' Hugh cried.

He cared more about his find than he did about her. She couldn't blame him, even for turning his back as if he'd been waiting for an excuse to finish enduring the sight of her. How might he look when he had to face her again? Which would be worse – unconcealed revulsion or another instalment of his pretence that she wasn't as hideous as he'd just betrayed she was? She didn't think she could bear either. She floundered away as fast as her swollen legs would work and stumbled behind a vertical ridge of the cliff.

It was prominent enough to hide her bulk, but how long would Hugh be fooled? She felt pathetically childish, like both an inept competitor at hide and seek and an outcast sent to stand in a corner. She could see nothing but brownish clay, a section of which was faintly stained by an almost formless blotch, her shadow. Her nostrils were growing clogged with the smell of moist clay or of herself. If only the night of which the sky was a promise would fall and render her invisible! She heard Hugh utter some remark, so muffled that he seemed not to care if she heard, and then he called her name.

While she didn't press her face into the clay, she hunched her shoulders as if this might somehow make her less apparent, a kind of magic only a child would believe. Hugh's next shout was more worried and more distant, and she was afraid he might lose his way without her, except how could he on a beach? He didn't, because in a few seconds she heard him behind her. 'There you are,' he said.

She inched into her dark corner and felt as if she were speaking to the clay. 'Can't you just let me be?'

'What are you being?'

'You tell me, Hugh. Go on, the truth.'

'A worm.'

Perhaps after all she hadn't wanted so much truth. 'Well, thank you,' she complained.

'You're welcome.' After quite a pause Hugh added 'In a manner of speaking, I mean. That's what you look like, what I said.'

It seemed that his refusal to see how she'd changed had been her last defence. 'Well then,' she said bitterly, 'take a good look.'

'I am.'

'Can't you stop?' Ellen pleaded, not just about looking. 'Don't you understand anything?'

'I'll stop if you stop being a worm.'

This was too much, and she twisted around to confront him. 'How do you suggest I do that?'

'You have now. You looked as if you wanted to crawl inside the cliff.'

Was he secretly amused by her reaction or by his own wit? If she'd persuaded him at last to be less wary of her feelings, she wished she hadn't tried so hard. 'Maybe I did,' she said.

'Don't crawl in yet. You're meant to be helping.'

'Remind me how.'

'You can make sure nobody comes along while I'm digging.'

'Have you forgotten what I told you?' Ellen said as that fear came flooding back. 'He's got out.'

'Unless he's gone further in.'

At once she was aware of the cliff at her back. She imagined hands sprouting from the clay to drag her close to whatever face might burst forth. As she lurched away from it, Hugh recoiled an extravagant step. 'What's wrong?' she was shocked into asking.

'Nothing really. Come to think, that's exactly what we need.'

'I don't understand you.'

'You can do that if anyone wanders along. Chase them away. Scare them off.'

'You think I'm that bad.'

'I just want you to feel you're some use.'

He could have been offering her an illusion to distract her from her state, though she wasn't far from feeling he no longer cared whether he convinced her. If he'd had enough of her at last, she could only blame herself. All these thoughts gave way to panic as he took hold of the spade, which was standing to attention in the sand. 'If he can move about,' she whispered, 'how do we know what he'll do?'

'That's what we're here to find out, isn't it?' When she met this with silence Hugh said 'Or do you want to leave Rory how he is?'

'There's no need to be so aggressive. It isn't like you.'

'Maybe it is. Maybe I've got to change as well.' Before Ellen could decide how this referred to her, Hugh stalked away to brandish the spade at the hole in the cliff. 'Are you in there, Pendy?' he shouted. 'Going to show yourself?'

The hole and the clay around it seemed to shiver, and Ellen prayed that only her vision had. 'Hugh,' she cried, 'you shouldn't –'

'Then we'll have to come and find you,' he declared and rammed the spade into the cliff.

The burrow gaped in protest or an equally silent warning. It grew more than twice as wide when he dug out a spadeful of clay in which a thin object was writhing – not a crumbling finger, a worm scaly with earth. Hugh turned as if the loaded spade were the needle of a compass. 'Don't come any closer,' he told Ellen.

'Why not?'

'You don't want to end up looking like a pile of mud.'

He flung the contents of the spade away, spattering the beach. He must have had this sort of careless action in mind, but how insensitive was his task going to make him? As he drove the spade into the cliff again she didn't know whether she was more afraid of seeing deeper into the hole or of having no chance to from where she stood. Hugh swung around with the spade heaped high, and she saw a dark mass drop out of the cliff behind him. It was only a lump of the roof of the burrow, and she managed to keep her cry behind a grimace. Nevertheless once he'd slung the spadeful in the general direction of the aloof river and frowned at the collapsed section of earth he said 'Go a bit further.'

'What are you asking me to do?'

'I'm saying go away. You're putting me off.'

'How am I, Hugh?'

'I don't want to have to keep looking at you.'

Ellen forced her puffy lips to work. 'I can't blame you, but tell me why not at least.'

'Because it's wasting time,' Hugh said with the remains of patience. 'But if I don't I might throw something at you.'

Why couldn't he aim the spadefuls away from her? His sense of direction must have deserted him again, unless he was afraid it would. Ellen did her best not to feel rejected as she trudged backwards several yards, apparently not far enough to erode Hugh's frown. The next pile of earth he threw across the beach fell short of her and to her left, apart from a clod that exploded sufficiently close to scatter particles over her feet. 'You're no use there,' he said.

'Can't I do anything right?'

'Feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to help either. You might just as well be a pile of mud.'

'All right, let's have your advice how I can improve myself.'

'Don't be sarcy or I won't. Just because I'm not as good as you doesn't mean I'm never worth listening to.' He stared at her as though it demanded an effort and said 'You can't see from where you are.'

'Is there something? What –'

'You can't see if anyone's coming along up above.' More disdainfully than she would ever have expected of him Hugh said 'You need to be up there.'

She ought to have known this without being told. It showed how thoroughly she was absorbed in her own flesh, which was infecting her mind with sluggishness. As she lumbered to the foot of the path she saw that the entrance to the burrow was wide enough for a thin person to crawl forth. Despite this it was darker than ever, perhaps because the sky was, so that she had to squint in an attempt to be sure that the clay at the back wasn't shifting furtively. 'Aren't you going?' Hugh urged.

His wearily impatient gaze sent her plodding upwards. Every stretch of the zigzag track brought her above the hole in the cliff. It occurred to her that the higher she climbed, the greater the weight of the clay she was tramping on, rendering it heavier. If Hugh's digging had undermined it, suppose she was the factor that made it collapse? She glanced down from a bend in the path as he unloaded the spade across an immoderate extent of beach. He looked up to discover why she was hesitating, and for an instant if not longer – it felt as protracted as the worst nightmare – she saw his unconcealed disgust at the sight of her. She must be even more revolting when viewed from below. He didn't have the grace to blush as he neutralised his expression and said 'Anything up?'

Even if she had been able to part her swollen lips she couldn't have answered him. When she floundered along the path it was mostly in a desperate bid to leave his revulsion behind. With each laborious step she seemed to feel her legs bulge from supporting their unsavoury burden. She tried to forget herself in her surroundings, although the blackened sky towards which she was climbing felt like more weight she was unable to avoid. She couldn't tell whether the wind was raising the smell of the cliff or of her clammy self. She clambered over the treacherous edge at last and might have fled across the common if Hugh hadn't immediately shouted 'Anyone?'

The expanse of restless grass was deserted all the way to the distant hedges that enclosed its landward sides. 'No,' Ellen said. The wind made short work of her answer, and she leaned over to call 'Nobody.'

'Tell me the moment there's somebody.'

'You too,' Ellen immediately regretted having said.

Either Hugh couldn't bear to look at her or dismay at her remark kept his head down, unless he was bent on making sure there were no signs of life within the burrow. He ducked into it, and she heard a dull thud almost too muffled to be audible but unpleasantly reminiscent of a tentative heartbeat. It was the impact of the spade, and in a few seconds another heap of clay was strewn across the beach. The hole must be dauntingly wide and deep by now, since Hugh barely reappeared in the course of the action. The next soft thump was still more muted, and only clay emerged. By craning over the edge, Ellen was just able to distinguish another buried thud, but how audible would any warning be to him? While the beach remained empty, the weather mightn't daunt walkers much longer; a strip of light had begun to glare beneath the lid of the sky across the river. She could almost have imagined that Hugh's digging had magicked the entire landscape open. She was gazing at the horizon, where the cloud was lifting in the direction of the beach, when she heard voices across the common. Two women in orange anoraks and tugged by large russet dogs had appeared at a gap in the hedge.

'Hugh.' When this brought no response she leaned out so precariously that she was afraid her weight would overbalance her. 'People,' she cried.

A wind did its best to return this to her mouth. She had to repeat it before Hugh followed the latest evacuation of clay out of the tunnel. 'Where?' he demanded.

'Up here. Coming this way.'

'Get rid of them. I'm seeing more in here.'

He vanished into the tunnel without giving her time to reply, and she turned to see the foremost woman stooping to release her dog from its leash. Ellen imagined the animal racing unchecked across the common and down the path to join Hugh. It might dig faster than he could, not to say unstoppably, and what would happen once the woman followed it? 'Excuse me,' Ellen protested, which had no effect. 'Don't,' she shouted and tramped across the grass, waving her blurred blobs of hands on either side of her face.

The woman who had yet to emerge from the gap in the hedge spoke to her friend, who peered towards Ellen and to some extent straightened up. 'Can we help you?' she rather less offered than said.

'Don't come this way,' Ellen cried. 'Don't let your dogs.'

'We're allowed to let the dogs off here.'

'Not down the cliff. It isn't safe.'

She was dismayed to be reminded how that might apply to Hugh. The sounds of the spade were inaudible now. The women shaded their eyes as harsh light spilled from beneath the cloud. 'We can't hear you,' said the woman who had nearly unleashed the dog.

'Not safe,' Ellen came close to screaming, and floundered after her massive shadow as it flopped towards her audience. 'Not safe.'

'What isn't?'

'The path. It's gone.'

'Still can't hear you.'

'You heard me just before.' Ellen had begun to feel that her voice was as feeble as a cry in a nightmare. Was only the wind stealing it? The unquiet grass fluttered the outline of her shadow as if it were preparing to grow more misshapen. 'No path,' she cried with all her breath.

'Where isn't there?' the woman enquired, stooping to her impatient dog.

'To the beach. You can't go that way to the beach.'

Ellen was about to claim to be helping the rangers in case this lent her credibility when the woman shaded her eyes once more. She stiffened and then stood up fully, yanking at the leash. Whatever had changed her mind affected her friend too. Without speaking, both women retreated, dragging their dogs through the gap in the hedge.

They must have seen Ellen clearly at last. Her hideousness was some use after all. She turned to trudge back to her post and was instantly blind. The cloud had lifted above the sun, which was all the more dazzling because of the blackness. Ellen shielded her eyes and kept them lowered so as not to see her hand in any detail. 'They're gone,' she called as she reached the edge of the cliff.

Hugh didn't respond, surely only because the wind had borne her voice away from him. She was about to lean over when she heard a dog bark. She swung around, but it wasn't as close as the wind must have made it seem. It wasn't on the common. Just her shadow was, and the shadow of the hand that was about to take her arm.

'Hugh, are you trying to scare –' None of this had even left her mouth as she turned to confront him. The sun glared around him, blotting out his face and appearing to char his silhouette thin – altogether too thin. She was able to cling to the notion that it was Hugh until the figure darted forwards, its skin flapping in the wind, to demonstrate with its embrace how skeletal it was. It might have been whispering a parody of affection in her ear, unless that was simply the wind in its gaping face. Certainly the hiss grew sharper as her captor drove her backwards. Its spidery weight shouldn't have overwhelmed her, but terror did. Perhaps it took away her sight as well, or perhaps that was the sun.