C. Lewis - That Hideous Strength

And they did–a world-without-end minute in which odd creakings and breathings became audible, and behind the mask of each glazed and tight-lipped face, shy, irrelevant thoughts of this and that came creeping out as birds and mice creep out again in the clearing of a wood when the picnickers have gone, and everyone silently assured himself that he, at least, was not being morbid and not thinking about death.

Then there was a stir and a bustle and the Committee broke up.

The whole process of getting up and doing the ‘morning jobs’ was more cheerful, Jane found, because she had Mrs Dimble with her. Mark often helped; but as he always took the view–and Jane could feel it even if he did not express it in words–that ‘anything would do’ and that Jane made a lot of unnecessary work and that men could keep house with a tithe of the fuss and trouble which women made about it, Mark’s help was one of the commonest causes of quarrels between them. Mrs Dimble, on the other hand, fell in with her ways. It was a bright sunny morning and as they sat down to breakfast in the kitchen Jane was feeling bright herself. During the night her mind had evolved a comfortable theory that the mere fact of having seen Miss Ironwood and ‘had it all out’ would probably stop the dreams altogether. The episode would be closed. And now–there was all the exciting possibility of Mark’s new job to look forward to. She began to see pictures in her mind.

Mrs Dimble was anxious to know what had happened to Jane at St Anne’s and when she was going there again. Jane answered evasively on the first question and Mrs Dimble was too polite to press it. As to the second, Jane thought she wouldn’t ‘bother’ Miss Ironwood again, or wouldn’t ‘bother’ any further about the dreams. She said she had been ‘silly’ but felt sure she’d be all right now. And she glanced at the clock and wondered why Mrs Maggs hadn’t yet turned up.

‘My dear, I’m afraid you’ve lost Ivy Maggs,’ said Mrs Dimble. ‘Didn’t I tell you they’d taken her house too? I thought you’d understand she wouldn’t be coming to you in future. You see there’s nowhere for her to live in Edgestow.’

‘Bother!’ said Jane, and added, without much interest in the reply, ‘What is she doing, do you know?’

‘She’s gone out to St Anne’s.’

‘Has she got friends there?’

‘She’s gone to the Manor, along with Cecil and me.’

‘Do you mean she’s got a job there?’

‘Well, yes. I suppose it is a job.’

Mrs Dimble left at about eleven. She also, it appeared, was going to St Anne’s, but was first to meet her husband and lunch with him at Northumberland. Jane walked down to the town with her to do a little shopping and they parted at the bottom of Market Street. It was just after this that Jane met Mr Curry.

‘Have you heard the news, Mrs Studdock?’ said Curry. His manner was always important and his tone always vaguely confidential, but this morning they seemed more so than usual.

‘No. What’s wrong?’ said Jane. She thought Mr Curry a pompous fool and Mark a fool for being impressed by him. But as soon as Curry began speaking, her face showed all the wonder and consternation he could have wished. Nor were they, this time, feigned. He told her that Mr Hingest had been murdered, sometime during the night, or in the small hours of that morning. The body had been found lying beside his car, in Potter’s Lane, badly beaten about the head. He had been driving from Belbury to Edgestow. Curry was at the moment hastening back to college to talk to the Warden about it; he had just been at the police station. One saw that the murder had already become Curry’s property. The ‘matter’ was, in some indefinable sense, ‘in his hands’, and he was heavy with responsibility. At another time Jane would have found this amusing. She escaped from him as soon as possible and went into Blackie’s for a cup of coffee. She felt she must sit down.

The death of Hingest in itself meant nothing to her. She had met him only once and she had accepted from Mark the view that he was a disagreeable old man and rather a snob. But the certainty that she herself in her dream had witnessed a real murder shattered at one blow all the consoling pretences with which she had begun the morning. It came over her with sickening clarity that the affair of her dreams, far from being ended, was only beginning. The bright, narrow little life which she had proposed to live was being irremediably broken into. Windows into huge, dark landscapes were opening on every side and she was powerless to shut them. It would drive her mad, she thought, to face it alone. The other alternative was to go back to Miss Ironwood. But that seemed to be only a way of going deeper into all this darkness. This Manor at St Anne’s–this ‘kind of company’ –was ‘mixed up in it’. She didn’t want to get drawn in. It was unfair. It wasn’t as if she had asked much of life. All she wanted was to be left alone. And the thing was so preposterous! The sort of thing which, according to all the authorities she had hitherto accepted, could not really happen.

Cosser–the frecklefaced man with the little wisp of black moustache–approached Mark as he was coming away from the Committee.

‘You and I have a job to do,’ he said. ‘Got to get out a report about Cure Hardy.’

Mark was very relieved to hear of a job. But he was a little on his dignity, not having liked Cosser much when he had met him yesterday, and he answered:

‘Does that mean I am to be in Steele’s department after all?’

‘That’s right,’ said Cosser.

‘The reason I ask,’ said Mark, ‘is that neither he nor you seemed particularly keen on having me. I don’t want to push myself in, you know. I don’t need to stay at the NICE at all if it comes to that.’

‘Well, don’t start talking about it here,’ said Cosser. ‘Come upstairs.’

They were talking in the hall and Mark noticed Wither pacing thoughtfully towards them. ‘Wouldn’t it be as well to speak to him and get the whole thing thrashed out?’ he suggested. But the Deputy Director, after coming within ten feet of them, had turned in another direction. He was humming to himself under his breath and seemed so deep in thought that Mark felt the moment unsuitable for an interview. Cosser, though he said nothing, apparently thought the same and so Mark followed him up to an office on the third floor.

‘It’s about the village of Cure Hardy,’ said Cosser when they were seated. ‘You see, all that land at Bragdon Wood is going to be little better than a swamp once they get to work. Why the hell we wanted to go there I don’t know. Anyway, the latest plan is to divert the Wynd: block up the old channel through Edgestow altogether. Look. Here’s Shillingbridge, ten miles north of the town. It’s to be diverted there and brought down an artificial channel–here, to the east, where the blue line is –and rejoin the old bed down here.’

‘The university will hardly agree to that,’ said Mark. ‘What would Edgestow be without the river?’

‘We’ve got the university by the short hairs,’ said Cosser. ‘You needn’t worry about that. Anyway it’s not our job. The point is that the new Wynd must come right through Cure Hardy. Now look at your contours. Cure Hardy is in this narrow little valley. Eh? Oh, you’ve been there, have you? That makes it all the easier. I don’t know these parts myself. Well, the idea is to dam the valley at the southern end and make a big reservoir. You’ll need a new water supply for Edgestow now that it’s to be the second city in the country.’

‘But what happens to Cure Hardy?’

‘That’s another advantage. We build a new model village (it’s to be called Jules Hardy or Wither Hardy) four miles away. Over here, on the railway.’