Part 56 (1/2)

Thelma locked the door.

'I'm not locking you in. You can leave any time you like.'

And Millie could indeed see that the key was still there.

Thelma lifted the crystal and placed it on the floor. Sure enough, it was much smaller than Millie had always supposed such gadgets to be. Perhaps they came in different sizes, according to the purchaser's needs and resources?

The only light was from under the door and from the small yellow gas fire. The room was odorous as well as stuffy.

Thelma signalised this fact by throwing off her dark-blue tunic. Beneath it she wore a fragile pinkish garment with big rents in it, through which her brown skin could be seen by what light there was. Her mop of hair was uncombed and uneven in length.

'Do what I am doing,' directed Thelma; and added, 'If you really must go on with this.'

When Millie made no answer, Thelma wriggled down on the floor until she lay at full length upon her front with the crystal about two inches before her eyes.

She looked ridiculous; or any other woman in her position would have looked ridiculous. Millie had supposed that crystal-gazing was done seated at a table. Moreover, a very suitable table was in the room with them.

'I advised you to take off your sweater,' said Thelma. 'Why not be more friendly?'

Millie continued calm. Upon the pa.s.sage to truth, crosscurrents are to be expected.

'I'm all right,' she said, and lay down upon her front on the diametrical other side of the small crystal. She rested her chin upon her two hands, as Thelma was doing. At these close quarters, Thelma's lupine aroma was very pungent. Millie tried to concentrate upon gazing into the crystal. She a.s.sumed that to be the right thing to do. If only the crystal had been proportioned for a mature woman instead of for a waif!

But that matter began to adjust itself, and before Millie had had time even to begin feeling physically uncomfortable. As she gazed through the crystal at Thelma's rock-pool eyes, the yellow light from the gas fire turned blue; and the circ.u.mference of the crystal expanded and expanded, as did Thelma's...o...b.. on the other side of it. Indeed, Millie realised quite clearly that it must always have been impossible for her to have seen Thelma's eyes through the actual crystal. All anyone could really have seen through it, would have been Thelma's nose and a small distance on either side of it.

Incandescent with darting blue lights, the crystal grew until it filled the room, until it was the room, and Thelma's eyes were no longer there, as if her face had split vertically down the middle and her eyes had rolled away round the polished sphere, each in a different direction.

But by now Millie was in a room no longer. Nor was she lying inconveniently upon her front. On the contrary, she was in a small woodland clearing and was observing with perfect ease what therein transpired.

The two boys were sitting, rather absurdly jammed together, on a tree trunk. It was not a whole fallen giant of the forest, but a neatly sawn-off section, awaiting the arrival of the timber float and its tractor, or perhaps left there by intention as a nature seat for wooers, an accessory to picnics. In fact, the boys, ravenous as ever, were at that moment engaged upon a picnic of their own.

Each boy held in his hand a very large, very red bone, from which he was gnawing in the frenzied manner that Millie remembered so well.

On the worn, wintry gra.s.s before them lay what was left of a human body.

The boys had already eaten their way through most of it, so that it could not even be described as a skeleton or semi-skeleton. The disjoined bones were everywhere strewn about at random, and only the top part of the frame, the upper ribs, remained in position, together with the half-eaten head.

It was Phineas's head.

Things swam.

Millie felt that her soul was rus.h.i.+ng up a shaft at the centre of her body. She knew that this is what it was to die.

But she did not die.

She realised that now she was lying on her back in the still-darkened room. Thelma must have moved her. The gas fire was as yellow as before, no doubt because there was something wrong with it; and Thelma in her pink rags and dirty jeans was standing before her, even looking down at her.

'You've been out a long time.'

'I wish I were still out.'

'You may, but I don't. I've things to do. You forget that.'

Millie hesitated.

'Did you see them too?'

'Of course I saw them. Remember, I asked you whether you really had to go on with it.'

'What else could I do?'

'I don't know. I'm not your nursemaid.'

Millie sat up. 'If you pa.s.s me my handbag, I'll pay you.'

Thelma pa.s.sed it. It did not seem to have been rifled during Millie's anaesthesia.

'Perhaps we could have a little more light?' suggested Millie.

Thelma threw on her tunic and, without fastening it, began to draw back or take down the window coverings. Millie did not examine which it was.

She rose to her feet. Had Thelma been behaving differently, she, Millie, would have been shaking all over, still prostrate. She seated herself on one of the dusty black chairs. She counted out forty-nine pounds on to the black table in the corner. Then she gazed for a moment straight into Thelma's vatic eyes. At once the sensations of a few moments before (or of what seemed a few moments) faintly recurred. Millie felt dragged out of herself, and turned her face to the dingy wall.

'You can stay if you wish. You know that.' Thelma made no attempt to take up the money; though Millie could be in small doubt that the sum would make a big difference for Thelma, at least temporarily.

'You can't expect me to keep open house for you always.'

Millie turned a little and, without again looking at Thelma, attempted a smile of some kind.

'I shan't be around much longer,' said Thelma. ”Surely you can see that?'

Millie stood up. 'Where will you go?'

'I shall go back to decent people. I should never have left them.'

'What made you?'

'I killed a girl.'

'I see.'

'I did right.'

There was a pause: a need (perhaps on both sides) for inner regrouping. It was a metaphor that Uncle Stephen might have approved.

Millie gathered herself together. 'Is that the sort of thing I ought to do?'