Patricia Wentworth: Through The Wall

About a quarter of an hour later he got up and went out into the corridor again. It was in his mind to walk slowly past her window to the end of the carriage, wait for a few moments, and then walk back again, but before he had taken more than three or four steps the train swayed, jerked horribly, and left the rails. The whole thing happened with the most appalling suddenness. Everything broke up in a violent cataclysm. A noise like all imaginable noises stunned the ear. The sudden impact of disaster paralysed the senses. The train reared upon itself, buckled, and crashed. A terrible screaming went up. The sliding doors of several of the compartments swung open as the train tilted. Marian Brand was flung from her seat into the corridor. She fell, and was caught in a desperate clutch. And then everything fell together and they went down into blackness.

When she came to, the blackness was still there. It hadn’t been dark before the crash, but it was dark now. She shut her eyes. After a minute she opened them again. Thought was beginning. There had been an accident. How long ago? It oughtn’t to be so dark. Darkness-burial-the words came to her with the drenching flood. She steadied herself against them, drew on her courage, and got enough to move the other hand. It went out a little way and touched a man’s arm. She felt the rough stuff, the hard muscle, and movement. The blessedness of that relief was not to be measured. Movement means life-not to be quite alone in the darkness with the dead. A man’s voice said, “I’m here. Don’t be afraid.”

It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. It was, in plain fact, a voice naturally pleasant, but a good deal handicapped by choking dust. She said,

“Where are we?”

“Under what’s left of the train. They’ll get us out presently. Are you all right?”

She hadn’t got as far as thinking about that. She began to think about it now, clutching at his arm, experimenting to see what she could move. After a moment she said,

“I’m all right, I think. Everything moves a little, but I can’t lift up or turn-there’s something over us.”

“Yes-lucky for us. There was a ditch-we went down into it. Fortunately we got there first. A door opened and shot us out before the train came down on us. I was in the corridor just outside your compartment. I grabbed you, and we came down together. We’re in the bottom of the ditch. There’s a good deal of stuff over us, and it may take some time to get us out, but we shall be all right.”

As his voice ceased, she began to be aware of sounds which had not come to her before. They must have been there, but they had not reached her-movement, voices, the scrape of metal on metal, a heavy thudding, a sound of groaning, a sound of someone crying, and once, high-pitched and terrible, a scream. It all seemed to be a long way off, not in distance but-removed. The sensation of being withdrawn from her surroundings had not been broken by the accident but intensified. What she thought and felt seemed to come to her from the other side of a misty barrier which made everything unreal.

She drew a long breath. Whether it was heard or felt she did not know. She was still holding to the stuff of his coat. His left hand came over now and took her wrist, feeling for the pulse. Then, releasing that, he took her hand.

“You’re all right. We’ve just got to pass the time. Take your hand away if you want to-but you’re a bit cold-I thought perhaps something to hold on to-”

She said, “Yes,” and, after a long pause, “Thank you.”

It didn’t do to think what it would have been like to be there alone. She was glad when he spoke again.

“Well, we’ve got the time to put in. By the bye, they know we’re here, so you needn’t worry about that. I was calling out, and a man came and spoke to me just before you woke up. They can’t get this stuff off till the breakdown gang rolls up. Fortunately there’s lots of air. What would you like to talk about? My name is Richard Cunningham, and I write- novels, plays, verse, belles lettres.”

He heard her take another of those long breaths, but this time it was quicker.

“You wrote The Whispering Tree.”

“Yes.”

“I read when I can-there’s so little time. My sister reads a lot. She isn’t strong-she can’t take a job. I’ve always tried to manage a library subscription for her. She runs through the books so quickly that I can’t keep up-there’s no time. But I did read The Whispering Tree. I loved it.”

“Why isn’t there time? What do you do?”

“I work in a house-agent’s office in Norwood. We live there.”

“Who is we?”

“My sister and I, and her husband-when he’s there.”

He repeated the last words.

“When he’s there. Why isn’t he there?”

“He’s an actor. He gets a part in a touring company-now and then.”

“Like that?”

“Yes. They oughtn’t to have married. She was eighteen and he was twenty. He was in a bank, but it bored him. He thought he was going to do wonders on the stage. He has a light tenor voice, and he’s quite nice-looking. He got small parts easily at first-and then not so easily. Ina isn’t strong. There’s nothing actually the matter, but she cracks up.”

There was a odd inflection in his voice as he said,

“And you are the bread-winner?”

“There isn’t anyone else.”

There was a curious dream quality about their talk. They lay in the dark-strangers, with clasped hands. Shock and terror had broken down the barrier which convention builds. It was as if their thoughts spoke. It was as if anything could be asked and anything said with a naked truthfulness which needed no excuse. Even looking back upon it afterwards, it all seemed natural to Marian Brand. They had never met before, and they would never meet again.They were on the edge of terror. They lay in the dark and held hands. She said things that she had never said to anyone before. Sometimes there were long pauses. Once or twice there was a faintness, but it cleared. If they were silent for too long, the darkness came too close. Sometimes he asked a question. Whenever that happened she had the feeling that the answer mattered.

When she said in a surprised voice, “But it’s all very dull,” he laughed a little.

“People aren’t dull. They’re my trade. What they do and why they do it-it may be horrifying, or humiliating, or surprising, but it’s never dull. If it is, it’s because you’re dull yourself-one of those whose touch turns all to dust brigade.” Then, quite abruptly, “So you’ve got everything on your shoulders. Haven’t you any family?”

“We hadn’t. My father quarrelled with his people. I suppose you would call him a rolling stone. We went all over the world- France, Italy, Africa, the Argentine, California, New York. Sometimes there was plenty of money, and sometimes there wasn’t any at all. We came back to England when I was ten, and my mother died. Ina and I were put in a school at Norwood, and my father went off again.”

It didn’t come out all at once. There would be a whole sentence, and then three or four words, and then two or three more. The gaps between did not seem to have any relation to the sense, they just happened. The voice would stop, and go on for a bit, and stop again. It was rather like listening to someone talking in her sleep.

It was, perhaps, with some idea of wakening a sleeper that he asked abruptly,

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-seven. Ina is a year younger.”

“I thought you would be about that when I saw you in the train.”

She said in that expressionless way,

“Did you-see me?”

“Oh, yes. You were sitting next to the door into the corridor. I saw you, but you didn’t see me-you were about a million miles away.”