Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘What about Walter?’ I called across the water. ‘He won’t know what to do.’

Her mind was clearly on something else as she said: ‘Oh, he’ll find his own way home.’

More minutes passed. The gondolier smiled. ‘One must have patience with ladies,’ he said; ‘always patience.’

I tried a last appeal. ‘If we started at once we could just do it.’

She didn’t answer. Presently I called out again. ‘What luck, Angela? Any hope of catching him?’

There was a pause: then I heard her say, in a curiously tense voice. ‘I’m not trying to catch him now.’

The need for immediate hurry had passed, since we were irrevocably late for Walter. A sense of relaxation stole over me; I wrapped the rug round me to keep off the treacherous cold sirocco and I fell asleep. Almost at once, it seemed, I began to dream. In my dream it was night; we were hurrying across the lagoon trying to be in time for Walter’s train. It was so dark I could see nothing but the dim blur of Venice ahead, and the little splash of whitish water where the oar dipped. Suddenly I stopped rowing and looked round. The seat behind me seemed to be empty. ‘Angela!’ I cried; but there was no answer. I grew frightened. ‘Mario!’ I shouted. ‘Where’s the signora? We have left her behind ! We must go back at once!’ The gondolier, too, stopped rowing and came towards me; I could just distinguish his face; it had a wild look. ‘She’s there, signore,’ he said. ‘But where? She’s not on the seat.’ ‘She wouldn’t stay on it,’ said the gondolier. And then, as is the way in dreams, I knew what his next words would be. ‘We loved her and so we had to kill her.’

An uprush of panic woke me. The feeling of relief at getting back to actuality was piercingly sweet. I was restored to the sunshine. At least I thought so, in the ecstasy of returning consciousness. The next moment I began to doubt, and an uneasiness, not unlike the beginning of nightmare, stirred in me again. I opened my eyes to the daylight but they didn’t receive it. I looked out on to darkness. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes: I wondered if I was fainting. But a glance at my watch explained everything. It was past seven o’clock. I had slept the brief twilight through and now it was night, though a few gleams lingered in the sky over Fusina.

Mario was not to be seen. I stood up and looked round. There he was on the poop, his knees drawn up, asleep. Before I had time to speak he opened his eyes, like a dog.

‘Signore,’ he said, ‘you went to sleep, so I did too.’ To sleep out of hours is considered a joke all the world over; we both laughed. ‘But the signora,’ he said. ‘Is she asleep? Or is she still trying to catch the cat?’

We strained our eyes towards the island which was much darker than the surrounding sky.

‘That’s where she was,’ said Mario, pointing, ‘but I can’t see her now.’

‘Angela!’ I called.

There was no answer, indeed no sound at all but the noise of the waves slapping against the gondola.

We stared at each other.

‘Let us hope she has taken no harm,’ said Mario, a note of anxiety in his voice. ‘The cat was very fierce, but it wasn’t big enough to hurt her, was it?’

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It might have scratched her when she was putting her face—you know—into one of those holes.’

‘She was trying to kill it, wasn’t she?’ asked Mario.

I nodded.

‘ Ha fatto male ,’ said Mario. ‘In this country we are not accustomed to kill cats.’

‘ You call, Mario,’ I said impatiently. ‘Your voice is stronger than mine.’

Mario obeyed with a shout that might have raised the dead. But no answer came.

‘Well,’ I said briskly, trying to conceal my agitation, ‘we must go and look for her or else we shall be late for dinner, and the signore will be getting worried. She must be a—a heavy sleeper.’

Mario didn’t answer.

‘ Avanti !’ I said. ‘ Andiamo ! Coraggio !’ I could not understand why Mario, usually so quick to execute an order, did not move. He was staring straight in front of him.

‘There is someone on the island,’ he said at last, ‘but it’s not the signora.’

I must say, to do us justice, that within a couple of minutes we had beached the boat and landed. To my surprise Mario kept the oar in his hand. ‘I have a pocket-knife,’ he remarked, ‘but the blade is only so long,’ indicating the third joint of a stalwart little finger.

‘It was a man, then?’ said I.

‘It looked like a man’s head.’

‘But you’re not sure?’

‘No, because it didn’t walk like a man.’

‘How then?’

Mario bent forward and touched the ground with his free hand. I couldn’t imagine why a man should go on all fours, unless he didn’t want to be seen.

‘He must have come while we were asleep,’ I said. ‘There’ll be a boat round the other side. But let’s look here first.’

We were standing by the place where we had last seen Angela. The grass was broken and bent; she had left a handkerchief as though to mark the spot. Otherwise there was no trace of her.

‘Now let’s find his boat,’ I said.

We climbed the grassy rampart and began to walk round the shallow curve, stumbling over concealed brambles.

‘Not here, not here,’ muttered Mario.

From our little eminence we could see clusters of lights twinkling across the lagoon; Fusina three or four miles away on the left, Malamocco the same distance on the right. And straight ahead Venice, floating on the water like a swarm of fire-flies. But no boat. We stared at each other bewildered.

‘So he didn’t come by water,’ said Mario at last. ‘He must have been here all the time.’

‘But are you quite certain it wasn’t the signora you saw?’ I asked. ‘How could you tell in the darkness?’

‘Because the signora was wearing a white dress,’ said Mario. ‘And this one is all in black—unless he is a negro.’

‘That’s why it’s so difficult to see him.’

‘Yes, we can’t see him, but he can see us all right.’

I felt a curious sensation in my spine.

‘Mario,’ I said, ‘he must have seen her, you know. Do you think he’s got anything to do with her not being here?’

Mario didn’t answer.

‘I don’t understand why he doesn’t speak to us.’

‘Perhaps he can’t speak.’

‘But you thought he was a man. . . . Anyhow, we are two against one. Come on. You take the right. I’ll go to the left.’

We soon lost sight of each other in the darkness, but once or twice I heard Mario swearing as he scratched himself on the thorny acacias. My search was more successful than I expected. Right at the corner of the island, close to the water’s edge, I found one of Angela’s bathing shoes: she must have taken it off in a hurry for the button was torn away. A little later I made a rather grisly discovery. It was the cat, dead, with its head crushed. The pathetic little heap of fur would never suffer the pangs of hunger again. Angela had been as good as her word.

I was just going to call Mario when the bushes parted and something hurled itself upon me. I was swept off my feet. Alternately dragging and carrying me my captor continued his headlong course. The next thing I knew I was pitched pell-mell into the gondola and felt the boat move under me.

‘Mario!’ I gasped. And then—absurd question—‘What have you done with the oar?’

The gondolier’s white face stared down at me.

‘The oar? I left it—it wasn’t any use, signore. I tried. . . . What it wants is a machine gun.’

He was rowing frantically with my oar: the island began to recede.