The room was bare and close under the roof. The rain beat on the stone tiles above our heads and the wind howled in the chimney. The dormer window was uncurtained. It was fitted with stout iron bars. She lit a candle on the wash-stand. 'I'll leave you now,' she said. But halfway to the door, she stopped. Again I was aware that she was trembling. She seemed to be trying to say something. Her eyes looked frightened and unhappy in the hot light of the lamp. Suddenly it burst from her, startling and abrupt. 'Your name's Pryce — Jim Pryce. Isn't it?'
The way she said it: I can't describe how it jarred on me. It wasn't only that her voice was brittle and harsh. It had fear and hatred and — oh, it was just horrible.
'Your father's name is Robert Pryce?'
I nodded.
'Is he — alive?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
She seemed to shiver. Then she turned quickly and without shutting the door behind her ran down the steep staircase. I heard her footsteps hurrying away into the silent depths of the house as though she feared to look over her shoulder.
I went slowly to bed, wondering how she knew my name. For a time the peculiar behaviour of the girl excluded every other thought from my mind. But then I began to notice the room. I don't know what there was about the room. I know now of course. But I didn't then. It was such a bare, miserable little place. And there were the iron bars across the window and that strange little natch in the door. It was somehow the way I imagine a prison cell looks I lay in bed and, tired though I was, it was some time before I put the candle out. Even then I could not sleep. I lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the storm and thinking over the strange events of the day. Sometimes the wind would be no more than a whimper in the eaves. Then it would come roaring against the house, beating at the walls till they shook to their foundations. It would come like a wall of water flung at the tiny barred window. It would ramp and whine and the rain would beat at the glass like a shower of gravel. Then it would die away to a whimper again so that I could hear the solid sound of the breakers thundering against the granite cliffs. And every now and then a flicker of distant lightning would show me the room, and in the sudden darkness that followed, I'd hear the grumble of the thunder away towards the Scillies.
I must have gone to sleep at last. Perhaps I had only just dozed off. Perhaps I had been asleep for hours. I don't know. All I know is that I was suddenly wide awake and instantly conscious of the room. God, how that room wanted to talk to me! I was trembling and sweating. Then in a flicker of lightning I saw the door opening. It was the click of the latch that had awakened me. My body tensed, expecting God knows what. 'Who's that?' I asked. My voice sounded hoarse and unnatural.
'It's me,' a voice whispered back.
A match flared in the dark and was instantly extinguished as a gust of wind crashed against the window. Another match was struck and a candle flame wavered uncertainly.
It was Kitty. She stood there for an instant, the candle trembling in her hand. She had a dark dressing-gown over her nightie and her feet were bare. Her eyes had a wild look and she clutched an envelope to her breast. She didn't say anything. She just stood there looking down at me. It was as though she didn't trust herself to speak.
I sat up leaning on one elbow. 'Why have you come?' I asked She found her voice then, but it was strange and husky. 'Because I promised,' was what she said.
'Because you promised? Promised who?' I asked.
'Your mother.' Her voice sounded small and sad in that strange room. 'I didn't want to,' she added quickly. 'But — I'd promised.' She moved forward. It was a timid movement. There,' she said. Take it.' She thrust the envelope into my hand. Then with sudden relief in her voice: 'I've done what I said I would. I'll go now.' She turned towards the door.
But I caught her dressing-gown. 'Don't go,' I said. 'What was my mother doing here? You knew her. What happened?'
'No.' Her voice trembled. 'Don't ask me anything. Let me go — please. You have the letter now. That's all I promised to do. Let me go, I tell you.' Her voice was frightened now. She struggled, but I had her by the wrist. 'Sit down,' I said. I was determined not to let her go. There were so many questions I needed answered. 'How did you know who I was?'
'It — it was the way you held your head when you asked a question. That and your eyes. You've got her eyes.'
'You knew her then?'
She nodded. 'Now let me go.' Her voice trembled again.
'No,' I said. 'What was my mother doing here?' She suddenly fought to free her wrist from my grasp.
'What was my mother doing here?' I repeated, and she cried out at the pressure of my hand on her wrist. For a moment she fought to free herself then suddenly she relaxed and sat limply down on the edge of the bed. I felt her trembling all over. She was all wrought up. The candle was spilling hot grease on to her fingers. She reached out and set it down on the table by the bed.
'Now,' I said, 'will you please tell me what my mother was doing here?'
She gave a sob. I looked up at her. She was staring at the little hatch cut in the door. She wasn't crying — she was fighting for breath. I waited. At last she said in a strangled voice, 'She was — she was Mr Manack's housekeeper.'
The housekeeper. In a flash Friar's words came back to me — and the words of the landlord up at the inn at Botallack. And the name of the licensee above the door at Cripples' Ease. I looked down at the envelope in my hand. It was addressed to 'Robert Pryce, or his son, Jim Pryce.' The ink was faded and the writing shaky as though it had been written by someone very old — or someone labouring under great emotion. 'When did she give you this?' I asked.
'A long time ago.' Her voice was little more than a whisper. 'Before the war. Nine years ago it must be. It was just before — " She hesitated. 'Just before her death,' she whispered.
'How did she die?' I asked.
I felt her body stiffen. She did not answer.
I gripped her wrist angrily. 'How did she die?' I repeated.
'She — she went over the cliffs.' Her voice was flat. She spoke like a person in a trance.
I felt suddenly as though all the breath had been knocked out of me. And yet this wasn't half the horror of it. 'Why?' I asked.
She looked down at me then. Her eyes were wide and staring. So might Macbeth have looked on Banquo's ghost. All sorts of terrible thoughts ran through my mind.
'Why?' I cried out. 'Why did she do it?'
'Read the letter,' she said. She was panting for breath. 'Read the letter. Then let me go. I came to give you the letter. That was all. That was what I had to do. Don't you understand? I don't want to answer your questions. I don't want to think about it.'
'How long before her death did she give you this letter?' I asked.
'I don't know. I can't remember. An hour — maybe two or three. I don't remember.'
'My God!' I breathed. Then it was suicide?'
She nodded slowly.
I ripped open the envelope then. Inside was a single sheet of the same spidery writing. It trembled in my hand as I leaned forward to read it in the dim flicker of the candle. It was headed: 'In my room — 29th October, 1939.' In my room! Not Cripples' Ease, Botallack, Cornwall. Just 'in my room.' As though that were all her world.
Kitty leaned forward and picked up the candle, holding it over the letter for me. It guttered in the draught from the window and the grease spilled across her fingers and dripped on to the bedclothes. I had let go of her wrist and it was only afterwards that I realised that she could have left the room then. Why she didn't, I don't quite know. Curiosity perhaps. The letter had been in her possession all those years. But I'd rather say it was her sympathy — her sense of my need of her company as I read the last thoughts of a woman going out to kill herself on the rocks of Botallack Head, a woman who had once gone through the labour of bringing me into the world.