Clive Lewis - That Hideous Strength

“That’s because the grown-ups kept you in,” said Camilla. “Any child loves rain if it’s allowed to go out and paddle about in it.”

Presently they left the unfenced road beyond Sandown and went bumping across grass and among trees and finally came to rest in a sort of little grassy bay with a fir thicket on one side and a group of beeches on the other. There were wet cobwebs and a rich autumnal smell all round them. Then all three sat together in the back of the car, and there was some unstrapping of baskets, and then sandwiches and a little flask of sherry and finally hot coffee and cigarettes. Jane was beginning to enjoy herself.

“Now!” said Camilla.

“Well,” said Denniston, “I suppose I’d better begin. You know, of course, where we’ve come from, Mrs. Studdock?”

“From Miss Ironwood’s,” said Jane.

“Well, from the same house. But we don’t belong to Grace Ironwood. She and we both belong to someone else.”

“Yes?” said Jane.

“Our little household, or company, or society, or whatever you like to call it is run by a Mr. Fisher-King. At least that is the name he has recently taken. You might or might not know his original name if I told it to you. He is a great traveller but now an invalid. He got a wound in his foot on his last journey which won’t heal.”

“How did he come to change his name?”

“He had a married sister in India, a Mrs. Fisher-King. She has just died and left him a large fortune on condition that he took the name. She was a remarkable woman in her way; a friend of the great native Christian mystic whom you may have heard of-the Sura. And that’s the point. The Sura had reason to believe, or thought he had reason to believe, that a great danger was hanging over the human race. And just before the end-just before he disappeared-he became convinced that it would actually come to a head in this island. And after he’d gone.”

“Is he dead?” asked Jane.

“That we don’t know,” answered Denniston. “Some people think he’s alive, others not. At any rate he disappeared. And Mrs. Fisher-King more or less handed over the problem to her brother, to our chief. That, in fact, was why she gave him the money. He was to collect a company round him to watch for this danger, and to strike when it came.”

“That’s not quite right, Arthur,” said Camilla. “He was told that a company would in fact collect round him and he was to be its head.”

“I didn’t think we need go into that,” said Arthur.

“But I agree. And now, Mrs. Studdock, this is where you come in.”

Jane waited.

“The Sura said that when the time came we should find what he called a seer: a person with second sight.”

“Not that we’d get a seer, Arthur,” said Camilla, “that a seer would turn up. Either we or the other side would get her.”

“And it looks,” said Denniston to Jane, “as if you were the seer.”

“But please,” said Jane, smiling, “I don’t want to be anything so exciting.”

“No,” said Denniston. “It’s rough luck on you.” There was just the right amount of sympathy in his tone.

Camilla turned to Jane and said, “I gathered from Grace Ironwood that you weren’t quite convinced you were a seer. I mean you thought it might be just ordinary dreams. Do you still think that?”

“It’s all so strange and-beastly!” said Jane. She liked these people, but her habitual inner prompter was whispering, “Take care. Don’t get drawn in. Don’t commit yourself to anything. You’ve got your own life to Live.” Then an impulse of honesty forced her to add: “As a matter of fact I’ve had another dream since then. And it turns out to have been true. I saw the murder-Mr. Hingest’s murder.”

“There you are,” said Camilla. “Oh, Mrs. Studdock, you must come in. You must, you must. That means we’re right on top of it now. Don’t you see? We’ve been wondering all this time exactly where the trouble is going to begin: and now your dream gives us a clue. You’ve seen something within a few miles of Edgestow. In fact, we are apparently in the thick of it already-whatever it is. And we can’t move an inch without your help. You are our secret service, our eyes. It’s all been arranged long before we were born. Don’t spoil everything. Do join us.”

“No, Cam, don’t,” said Denniston. “The Pendragon-the Head, I mean, wouldn’t like us to do that. Mrs. Studdock must come in freely.”

“But,” said Jane, “I don’t know anything about all this. Do I? I don’t want to take sides in something I don’t understand.”

“But don’t you see,” broke in Camilla, “that you can’t be neutral? If you don’t give yourself to us, the enemy will use you.”

The words “give yourself to us” were ill chosen. The very muscles of Jane’s body stiffened a little: if the speaker had been anyone who attracted her less than Camilla she would have become like stone to any further appeal. Denniston laid a hand on his wife’s arm.

“You must see it from Mrs. Studdock’s point of view, dear,” he said. “You forget she knows practically nothing at all about us. And that is the real difficulty. We can’t tell her much until she has joined. We are, in fact, asking her to take a leap in the dark.” He turned to Jane with a slightly quizzical smile on his face which was, nevertheless, grave. “It is like that,” he said, “like getting married, or going into the Navy as a boy, or becoming a monk, or trying a new thing to eat. You can’t know what it’s like until you take the plunge.” He did not perhaps know, or again perhaps he did, the complicated resentments and resistances which his choice of illustrations awoke in Jane, nor could she herself analyse them. She merely replied in a colder voice than she had yet used:

“In that case it is rather difficult to see why one should take it at all.”

“I admit frankly,” said Denniston, “that you can only take it on trust. It all depends really, I suppose, what impression the Dimbles and Grace and we two have made on you: and, of course, the Head himself, when you meet him.”

Jane softened again.

“What exactly are you asking me to do?” she said.

“To come and see our chief, first of all. And then-well, to join. It would involve making certain promises to him. He is really a Head, you see. We have all agreed to take his orders. Oh-there’s one other thing. What view would Mark take about it?-he and I are old friends, you know.”

“I wonder,” said Camilla. “Need we go into that for the moment?”

“It’s bound to come up sooner or later,” said her husband.

There was a little pause.

“Mark?” said Jane. “How does he come into it? I can’t imagine what he’d say about all this. He’d probably think we were all off our heads.”

“Would he object, though?” said Denniston. “I mean, would he object to your joining us?”

“If he were at home, I suppose he’d be rather surprised if I announced I was going to stay indefinitely at St. Anne’s. Does ‘joining you’ mean that?”

“Isn’t Mark at home?” asked Denniston with some surprise.

“No,” said Jane. “He’s at Belbury. I think he’s going to have a job in the N.I.C.E.” She was rather pleased to be able to say this for she was well aware of the distinction it implied. If Denniston was impressed he did not show it.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that ‘joining us’ would mean, at the moment, coming to live at St. Anne’s: specially in the case of a married woman. Unless old Mark got really interested and came himself”

“That is quite out of the question,” said Jane. (“He doesn’t know Mark,” she thought.)

“Anyway,” continued Denniston, “that is hardly the real point at the moment. Would he object to your joining-putting yourself under the Head’s orders and making the promises and all that?”