John Harwood - The Asylum

“And Plymouth?”

“No, never—that I can recall, I mean.”

And never to Nettleford, I thought. I had tried to persuade Aunt Vida, saying that I should love, more than anything, to see the place where I was born, only to be met with a barrage of objections: she was sure we would never find the house; it had probably been knocked down by now; the countryside there was just like the Isle of Wight, but not nearly as interesting; and so on until I gave up, inhibited by the memory of her distress that day by the lighthouse, and her impassioned cry: “You were her joy, her happiness: hold to that, and ask no more!”

I looked up from the flames and saw that Frederic was studying me intently. He blushed as our eyes met, and we finished our tea in awkward silence. I felt suddenly, overwhelmingly fatigued; he remarked upon it a few moments later and took his leave, promising to return in the morning.

I slept, that night, without the aid of chloral; a long, dreamless sleep from which I woke in grey twilight to the sound of raindrops spattering against the window. I got out of bed, moving much more freely, and pressed my face against the grille. Steady, drenching rain was splashing along the paths below and bouncing off the tops of the walls. The trees beyond were no more than dim, skeletal shapes, wreathed in vapour.

It was raining like this, I thought, when we lost our house. The autumn was almost over, and the weather had been so wet that I had not ventured out of doors for days. The roof had sprung a leak; water was dripping loudly into a bucket on the floor of Mama’s old room, and our garden had become a swamp, with rivulets streaming around the house and gouging deep channels in the sodden earth. All week the mercury had hovered beside “Rain”; there had not been much wind, only the relentless downpour. But when we woke on Saturday morning, the glass had fallen toward “Stormy,” and a heavy swell was running. As darkness gathered, the roar of the waves grew louder still, and the wind was rising.

Amy and Mrs. Briggs were away, staying with relations as they did on the last Saturday of every month. My aunt and I had finished our supper and drawn our chairs close to the sitting-room fire; she was playing patience, as she often did to settle her mind, but I could tell that she was uneasy. I was sitting with my back to the flames, listening to the gusty roar of rain upon the roof, the creaking of the house, the wind shaking the windows and flinging torrents of water against the glass, and beneath it all, the deep, echoing boom of the waves.

Without warning, the house shuddered violently. Ornaments jangled and fell; a cupboard door flew open; the floor lurched and rebounded. A roar like thunder followed, shaking the walls until my teeth rattled; I thought for an instant we had been struck by lightning, but how could that be, when we had seen no flash?

“It is the cliff,” said my aunt. “Quick, fetch the lantern.”

I seized a candlestick and hurried downstairs, with my aunt close behind me despite her rheumatism. We kept a hurricane lamp on a hook by the kitchen door; I fumbled with the chimney and the box of vestas for an age before the wick caught and the harsh white light flared up.

We hastened along the passage, and threw open the front door to the rush of wind and the deafening roar of the sea, louder and closer than I had ever heard it. I could see our four stone steps, black and glistening, and a little of the gravel path below, but the light was drowned in the confusion of the deluge, like bundles of fine steel rods hurtling past an impenetrable curtain of blackness.

“Shall I go down and see, Aunt?” I shouted, reaching for my waterproof.

“No—too dangerous—must leave now,” replied my aunt, struggling into her oilskins as I closed the door against the noise. “We must find the path—make for the vicarage.”

“Mama’s brooch!” I cried, and was racing back upstairs before she could stop me. I dashed into my room and seized the jewel in its red velvet case. My writing case lay on the bedside table; I seized that too, thrust it into the bosom of my dress, and was back in the hall before my aunt had finished tying on her sou’wester. I threw on my own oilskins and galoshes; we returned to the kitchen door and faced the downpour again. Not long before my mother died, a gate had been let into the back wall: to reach the village, we would have to climb a steep, narrow path up through the gorse for a hundred yards or more, and then follow the road—a welter of mud, after such a deluge—for at least a quarter of a mile before the lights of Niton came into view.

“The rain is too heavy!” I shouted. “If the lamp goes out, we’ll be lost!”

“Must chance it—keep together!” She seized the lamp with one hand, clutched my arm with the other, and plunged into the storm.

I must have walked this path a thousand times; even on a moonless night, my feet would carry me from the kitchen door to the gate with scarcely a thought on my part. But the light showed only a teeming chaos of darkness and rain. We were sheltered, at first, from the full force of the wind, but the lamp still flared wildly, and the hot glass hissed and sputtered as we lurched in what I could only pray was the right direction. Branches clawed my face; black, clinging mud wrenched at my galoshes. I could not tell whether the quivering I felt was simply my own body shaking with fear, or the ground itself trembling; with every thunderous crash from the sea at my back, I expected the earth to vanish from beneath my feet.

After an age of splashing and stumbling, I blundered against stone, and felt my aunt tugging me to the right until we reached the gate and began to climb. Black, streaming gorse caught at our oilskins, leaving scarcely room for us to walk abreast, and the wind grew fiercer as we dragged our way upward, tugging at my sou’wester and sending jets of icy water down my neck.

I was trying to count my steps, and had got to something like fifty, when my aunt gasped and fell heavily, dragging me down with her. The lamp flew from her hand and went out in a flare and a clatter of breaking glass, and we were plunged into absolute darkness.

“What is it?” I shouted, drawing her close and trying to sit up.

“Ankle—can’t walk.”

“I’ll help you.”

I tried to stand upright, but immediately lost my balance and fell into gorse. Prickles stung my cheek. Fighting down panic, I slid one foot across the mud until it struck something soft; I heard another groan and dragged myself back to my aunt’s side.

Slowly and painfully, I managed to get us both sitting up, with our arms around each other and our backs against the gorse. Our gloves and oilskins shielded us from the prickles, but my galoshes were full of water, and I could feel my aunt shivering. I drew her closer still and tried to arrange our oilskins to protect us as best I could. With our heads side by side, we could at least hear each other without having to shout. The gorse gave us some shelter, but the wind still swirled about us, and the rain beat down relentlessly.

“You must go on,” said my aunt hoarsely. “Can’t be too far from the road. Crawl up the path—use the gorse to guide you.”

“I won’t leave you, Aunt. I’d only get lost.”

“Keep the sound of the sea behind you. When you reach the road, keep the wind on your left till you see the lights.”

“No; you’ll freeze if I leave you.”

“We’ll both die if you stay. Might be another collapse any minute. You get help—only chance.”

I tried to picture the rest of the climb. Though the gorse bushes grew close, there were gaps quite large enough to deceive me; once off the path, I would get hopelessly entangled, or crawl blindly until I slipped and rolled to my death.