The Closed Harbour (24 page)

He knelt down and spoke through the keyhole. Marius had suddenly recognised the voice.

He had carried the chair to the window, under which he now sat, his hands pressed to his knees. And out of the voice had risen the man. He saw him at the Heros, standing up to stare when Philippe had been so rude, saw him following him down the road, sitting opposite him in a Bistro, smiling and saying good-evening to that Madame Lustigne, the man who was everywhere, the man with wings. The man who was following him. Now he was outside the door. There he was, speaking again.

"I am only another creature like yourself" Labiche said.

For the third time he knocked gently on the door.

The smashing of glass sounded like thunder throughout the house. Labiche jumped.

"Marius."

He began a tattoo upon the door. But there was no answer, and the door would not give. He heaved his weight against it, and the shaky lock broke clear, the door was wide, and he was in the room. He felt for the switch. The lighted room revealed nothing save the open window. He ran from the room and down the stairs.

Marius was already running down the street.

"Poor man," thought Labiche, as he rushed to the rear of the house.

Outside he found nothing, and the glass made a sharp crushing sound under his feet. For a moment he leaned against the wall.

"If he'd understood," thought Labiche, "running away from me. I'm completely harmless," and then he hurried quickly down the street.

Marius had reached the end of the street, and now stood against the wall, his hands to the collar of his coat, hugging this, pressing his head against the brick. A single light from the bared, and dirty yellow bulb threw curious shadows upon it, and Marius's head grown huge in shadow seemed to be climbing roofwards. Beyond this the darkness, wall upon wall of darkness. Marius remained perfectly still, listening. Footsteps sounded in the distance, drew nearer, grew louder, passed by. He moved from the wall and ran on. He passed through patches of light and darkness, the air was suddenly cold and chill. He kept close to the buildings, the doors, the walls, fugitive sounds struck at him as he ran, a voice from a doorway, somebody laughing, the clink of glasses, somebody hammering.

Stepping off the kerb he tripped and fell, got to his knees, at the moment that the light came, stabbing the darkness, drowning him, he was unable to move. The car pulled up with a screech, its horn tore at him, he could not remember reaching the other side, but beyond this light was darkness again, darkness itself reeling, darkness as fluid and flowing as the sea itself.

He flung himself to its shelter and ran on. He stopped dead in his tracks, he seemed to sense the oncoming protection, and threw himself into the doorway of the empty shop. He crouched, shivering, put out a hand, drew back in horror, exclaimed, "Labiche!"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," the old woman said.

The voice was drowned by a greater sound. Marius thought them the footsteps of a man. He stiffened by the darkened window.

"Labiche" he said.

Labiche was everywhere. The sounds drew nearer, resounding stampings, he saw sparks fly up from the cold stones, and then they ceased. He could not move. He stood listening for the sound again. But here darkness and silence held tightly. It was as he began to move from the window, slow, furtive, forever turning his head and looking to his rear, that the shape loomed up. Marius stood in the middle of the road. He shut his eyes.

The great horse was stood quiet against the kerb, the sacking across its magnificent shoulders. It drew breath, it reared its head, it sensed silence, sensed air, sensed the strange stillness of this dingy street, its shops shuttered, its warehouses sealed. It reared its head again to the chill night air, it stood serene and powerful, beyond the frontier of man himself. Behind it there glowed a tiny light, a bluish white light, and past this its master had gone, and it heard his dragging foot steps before they died away in the depths of the Bistro.

Marius did not move. He was aware of darkness, aware of this curious shape that seemed to rise before him as upon another level of air, and then he heard the curious sound, the single giant stamp of the hoof, saw fire struck from the stone. Into the long narrow street there poured out through the bared teeth the single neigh.

"Labiche."

Marius turned and fled by the way he had come.

The sound of a syren held him for a moment, and frantically he looked one way and then another, as though he were searching for its direction, as though he were smelling out those swarming, protecting quays. He found himself once more leaning against the high wall, and the dancing shadows, the naked light swinging ever so slightly near the roof top drew his attention for a moment or two, and he pressed the flat of his hands against this wall and rested there. Always he was listening, always he was ready, waiting for the footsteps. When the light suddenly went out, leaving him hidden against the wall, it was as though he had reached beyond the barrier of the feet.

The light might never have gone out, Marius yet pressed to the wall, and, for a second or two shut off his own breathing. From the opposite corner Labiche was watching him, he had never lost sight of Marius. He walked when Marius walked, stood when he stood, ran when Marius ran. He saw the light go out.

"Poor creature, he thinks he's making for the quays, he's wrong."

Through the darkness Labiche could see the quays, to him they were as clear as daylight.

The hawsers, heavily hanging, trailing over slack water, climbing to hawse pipes, under deserted decks, the yawning hatch, truck tops buried in the darkness, a dampened flag sagging in the upper air, winches powerless and cool. A reflection upon water that gave it skin. A conglomeration of smells rising from trampled ground, rising from the heat and hum and litter of that day, as though the whole earth had suddenly closed in upon this mysterious port, and powerful above these, the smell of pitch and rope. Life burrowed inwards, Labiche knew, who sometimes came at night to the quays, and once saw, pressed close and riding easily upon the slow stir of water, the sleeping gulls. Labiche
knew
.
Eyeless, he could point anywhere. The map quivered under the hand. He saw the feet driven into the piled grain, sharing warmth with the rats, the exposed face, white against timbers, the head lost in the sacking, a late stupration in the rotting boat, bewildered creatures moving in from all compass points as darkness drew down. The hideous collapse of ferocity and desperation. God-frightening, powerless in sleep. Labiche could read clear upon his map, Magnificent and Bestial.

He heard Marius shout.

A lone gull sweeping low over the roof cut off his thoughts.

"It must have scared him," said Labiche to himself, and looked towards this frightened and miserable man. And as he looked he felt the priest behind him.

"Nothing is good, Labiche, until it is loved, nothing evil until it is hated."

When Marius moved, he moved.

Suddenly he began to run. Something at last had smashed through the darkness, rode as high as heaven and he saw it, something like a great tower. As he moved swiftly towards it he thought it moved. He stopped, raised his head, the eyes stared at the height, as quickly were driven downwards as though drawn by some magnetic power of the light below.

Marius did not know it was a door, did not know it was open, yet went slowly forward. The moment he stood within it he saw the stars.

This church had ship's shape, and the stars shone through the large rent in its roof, legacy of fiery and demented nights. Marius stood very still, he heard himself breathing. And then he lowered his body and finally sat upon the marbled floor.

Beyond him there were other lights, one on either side of the altar, at whose foot was knelt a priest, old, bent, and farther behind him, in one bench and another, as still as stone, other figures. Marius was conscious of sounds, they rose from the foot of the altar and soared upwards, and after a moment their echo swept up from the rear of the church. Marius uttered no sound, but stared fixedly at the lights ahead of him. The great bowls hung motionless under the flickering lights.

Labiche, in his dark coat, his hat pressed almost flat upon his head had come into the doorway, and now leaned there, and saw the seated figure, three benches up in the centre aisle. He entered, blessed himself at the font, then tip-toed quietly to a rear bench on the left hand side of the church, knelt and watched. He was aware of the murmuring sounds at the foot of the altar, but against these he heard the deep, sonorous ticking of the clock above his head. He turned to glance upwards towards the choir stall. Darkness had curtained it off. Even whilst he looked Marius had risen and was walking slowly up the centre aisle. Labiche rose, moved slowly after him, and sometimes he stopped at a Station of the Cross and prayed there, and then went on. He saw the scattered figures, heads bent, he could not tell whether they were men or women, they were still, rapt, and as he moved farther and farther up the aisle, he glimpsed the single tall candle burning in front of the statue of Saint Francis. He had moved beyond the clock's sounds, and the priest's words came clear to him.

"Passer invénit sibi domum—"

And Labiche said under his breath, "Confiteor deo omnipotens deus," moved again as Marius moved.

Once he saw Marius turn right round, look down the church, his attitude that of one waiting, and always, listening. His footsteps rang clear upon the marble, but he did not seem to hear them. His whole attention was drawn by the two lights.

There they were, partly hooded in their bowls, port and starboard, the ship ploughing steadily forward under the stars. For a single moment the sound of the sea rose to his ears as he drew nearer the lights. Passer invénit sibi domum, et turtur nidum, ubi repónat pullos suos; altária tua, Dómine virtúitum, Rex meus et Deus meus; béati qui habitant in domo tua, in saeculum exculi laudábunt te.

He stood quite still listening to the sounds.

Labiche had stopped moving and now leaned against the pillar that hid him completely from sight. He saw Marius move into a bench, he counted the benches from the top, as he saw him walk sideways along this, suddenly stand and stare at the pulpit. As he came out into the narrow aisle, he passed within inches of Labiche, who heard him breathe. As Marius reached the next bench a figure stirred, appeared to rise as from nowhere, a woman, who, as she blessed herself dropped her beads, and these fell with a slight scraping sound upon the floor.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen."

Marius pitched forward as though these words had struck him in the back, and then he was running up the steps to the pulpit. Labiche hurried after him, waited by the tiny oaken gate.

"Clear away aft," Marius shouted.

He stood, his back to Labiche, hands cupped to his mouth.

"Away for'ard."

The words rolled like organ notes around the silent church.

"It is as well," thought Labiche, "it is as well."

He walked quickly to the top of the church, genuflected and turned, and drew near to the still kneeling priest.

"Excuse me, Father."

The priest did not move. But from the bench on the right a man withdrew, he had seen the small man go up to the altar rails. He touched Labiche. "Ssh!" he said.

"Ssh!" said Labiche, gripped the man's arm, drew him from sight.

"Ill," he said, "very ill, that is to say—" and still pulling at the man's arm he drew him far down the church.

"Let go for'ard."

"Terrible," the man said, "blasphemy," and Labiche said under his breath, "it is understood, please come outside."

The man shivered a little in the cold night air.

"Ill," Labiche said, "terribly ill. An ambulance had better be sent for."

This was done.

XII

L
YING
back in this small white bed, Madame Marius had never felt so cool and so comfortable. She hoped her daughter, in another room, was equally so. She felt cleaner. It was as though through the night hours body and mind had dripped clean, the noise, the confusion, the harsh voice of that city, the clinging heat; even Madame Touchard's mongrel dog had ceased to bark. The litter of days, that had gone. She looked at the room in which she lay. Bare and clean. Bare walls of palest blue, a single white-painted chair, the plain scrubbed floor boards, a cleanliness in the very air. No mirror, no pictures, no radio, no curtains, no carpet, no table. Life simplified. No rubbish. No clock ticked. She wondered what time it was, and looking through the window saw the light reflected upon the great belt of poplar. This bed on which she stretched yet reminded her of the other, the last few hours on its lumps and flock, she shut her eyes as with some disgust, she refused to see it. What could not be shut out, too warm and flushed with life, were the memories of that journey. This refused to fall clear of the mind. The train jogged remorselessly back by the way it had come. She saw the rolling fields dissolve to outskirts of city, and then to city itself. The taxi, the station, every sight and sound and smell, moving in their order, controlled nightmare, the creature at her side, the afternoon madness.

"That she should have had hidden at her very breast, that letter from Royat, all those weeks—I would never be less than just to her, never."

She moved on these words, as on wheels, she was rushing to the station in the taxi, Madeleine close and warm beside her. The memory gripped and held. The whistle of the train was sharp in her ears.

His name was Despard. He got out of his seat, flung out their baggage, cried a porter, followed them in, right to the booking hall.

"Forty francs," Despard said.

"Robber! Thirty," replied Madame Marius.

"Forty francs," he said, parrot-like, final, his eyes fastened on the redoubtable black bag, he felt he could strip it open by a look.

"Wretch."

He saw the black bag open, his fingers itched, time was pressing, it always did. Behind him he felt pressure of other passengers endeavouring to get to the booking-office window, and in the distance there were the shouts, the hiss and stink of steam. And of the voice at the window, barking like a dog.