“Scylla, you silly bitch, wake up. Man, I know all about wounds. Side glanced off a rib, the rest’s nothing.”
“All but our cruelty to her. I’ve not been that.”
“No, you’ve not. Less than us. Yes, call it my fault. I can be sane. Where’s Clarence?”
“In the studio, not quite conscious. I can’t find the key.”
“He’ll do. Scylla’s quite comfy here. Go and make her some tea. Stiff whisky for us. Clarence had a bad head wound. With that and the sun, and my bitchery— Where’s the cup?”
“In the well. I made him put it down. Said it was your orders. Then he collapsed.”
“Where did this happen?”
“At the back. Go and look.”
Picus went out into the quarry and looked at the statue of himself. Spots of Scylla’s blood, blackening in the dying light. None of his own. He took an axe from the woodpile and knocked the image of himself to a stump. Carston heard the dry pieces falling, the patter of dust.
Scylla stirred and sat up. Two cups of tea pressed to her lips met and clicked together.
“I can’t drink out of two cups at once.” Carston withdrew his. She drank.
“Is it Picus?” she said, feeling for their hands.
Carston said:
“Is there nowhere in this hell-forsaken country where we can get a doctor?”
“She doesn’t need one,” said Picus—“only us. No, love, I won’t go away. We’re going to sleep here. Hush, love. I’ve got to do magic and make you well. Better magic than at Gault.”
“What’s happened to Clarence?”
“We’ve put him in the studio. His head’s all wrong. To-morrow he won’t remember about this.”
“He isn’t coming back? Picus, I don’t know how. Lydia wrote an idiot letter. I just came in. Not to be beastly, but to try—” She began to cry a great deal. Carston stayed with her. Picus went to the studio alone.
Soon he came back with an armful of bedding. He laid it on the floor.
“He’s asleep. He will sleep.”
“What are we going to do?” cried Carston, at exhaustion’s breaking point.
“Sleep. We shall all sleep. Where we are, round her. Cover her over. Put a drink for her in the night. Finish the whisky. So. We shall all sleep. You at the foot. I at the side. On this side, love, or you’ll lie on the cut in your hair.
“Shoes off, Carston. We shall need our feet to-morrow.
“Door open, and perhaps a rabbit will come in.
“Sleep, man, sleep. We must. Scylla, that’s a fat star winking. Clarence is locked in. Had a turn like this before, and thought he was a nun.”
Carston heard a giggle.
Of course, if Picus said a rabbit would come in. If Scylla wanted a rabbit to come in. . . .
The shepherd’s wife sat up on a heap of rag quilts. The thatch bore down over a window sunk in the rubble wall, the panes wood-squared, double-fastened with paint, the ledge filled by a tropical green geranium, flowerless, filtering the light. The shepherd snored.
“Get up!” she squealed, and kicked him. “I be going across to the house.”
A little later the old trollop left the rustic slum, and was crossing the hill’s dewy shoulder in the delicate light. The day before she had been afraid to go; but in the night, encouraged by a bottle of whisky, she had seen Mr. Ross in a dream.
Clarence had built the studio out into the quarry at the back. She looked in first at its window and saw him sleeping there. Always out and about early he was. Picus had left the key outside in the lock. She went in. Clarence woke. There was a pain in his brain that felt like a nut. Before there had been a worm in the nut, but that had gone to sleep. He had felt the nut before. In a day or so there would not even be a nut, certainly not what went before the nut, the worm boring and making a wild pain that made a wild dream, on the edge of whose memory he was living.
“You’re early,” he said—“Get some tea.” And I’m in my clothes. “And mind you put it in with the teaspoon.”
He went to the well to sluice himself and saw his statue in bits. Looked up for a rock-fall from the quarry, which was impossible. Found bits of wood and feathers sticking in the clay and strode back to the kitchen. Heard her clacking that indeed she didn’t know, and that the living-room door was locked.
He went round to the front, to the open door, saw where a hare had made her form. Looked in and saw, still sleeping, Picus, Carston, Scylla. He shook his friend’s shoulder gently:
“Hi, boy, what’s happened?” Picus woke at a touch, pointed outside and rose silently.
“Who’s taken my statue outside and smashed it?”
“Come out with me. Out and down a bit. A boat’s in. Down at the Lobster Pot they’ll fry us fish.”
“But I’m not shaved. Can Carston fix up some breakfast for Scylla? Does he know the old woman can’t? What’s happened, lad? You look like a wet Sunday. Headache again?”
“No. Only you must come on.”
He dropped sharply down the hill, Clarence behind him. He felt his mouth twist into a sneer. Clarence the kindly host, the country-gentleman making the best of a cottage and lack of retainers. Then that contempt was unjust. The unfamiliar concept of justice and injustice stuck and was accepted.
