‘Where the hell have you two been?’
She spoke through her teeth. There was still a lot of noise going on outside. We all three sat on the bench together. Clanwaert strolled past. He glanced in our direction, slightly inclining his head towards Pamela, who took no perceptible notice of him. He had evidently decided to return to bed and said goodnight to me.
‘That was the Belgian officer who gave me your message about Szymanski.’
‘Ask him if he’s got a cigarette.’
I called after Clanwaert. He turned back and came towards us. I enquired if he had a cigarette for Pamela, saying I believed they had met. He took a case from his dressing-gown pocket and handed it round. Pamela took one, looking away as she did so. Clanwaert showed himself perfectly at ease under this chilly treatment.
‘We could have met at the Belgian Institute,’ he said. ‘Was it with one of our artillery officers — Wauthier or perhaps Ruys?’
‘Perhaps it was,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the smoke.’
Clanwaert smiled and retired.
‘One of your braves Belges?’ asked Stevens. ‘Since you’ve lived here some time, you’ve probably come across the old girl standing by the door. She’s called Mrs Erdleigh. The other evening, I saw her burning something on the roof. I thought she was sending up smoke signals to the enemy — it wasn’t yet dark — but it turned out to be just incense, which seems to play some part in her daily life, as she’s a witch. We got on rather well. In the end she told my fortune and said I was going to have all sorts of adventures and get a lot of nice presents from women.’
‘Not me,’ said Pamela. ‘You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want to be kept.’
Mrs Erdleigh was, indeed, looking out into the street through the glass doors at the other end of the hall. Her age as indeterminate as ever from her outward appearance, she was smiling slightly to herself. This was the first time I had seen her since living in the flats. A helmet was set very squarely on her head and she wore a long coat or robe, a pushteen or similar garment, woolly inside, skin without, the exterior ornamented with scrolls and patterns of Oriental design in bright colours. She was carrying a small black box under one arm. Now she set this on the ground and removed the helmet, revealing a coiffure of grey-blue curls that had been pressed down by the weight of the tin hat. These she ruffled with her fingers. Then she took the helmet between her hands, and, as if in deep thought, raised it like a basin or sacrificial vessel, a piece of temple equipment for sacred rites. Her quiet smile suggested she was rather enjoying the raid than otherwise. Nothing much seemed to be happening outside, though the row continued unabated.
‘She was mixed up with an uncle of mine — in fact he left her his money, such as it was.’
The bequest had caused great annoyance in the family, almost as much on account of Uncle Giles turning out to own a few thousands, as because of the alienation of the capital sum.
‘Must have made it quite lately as the result of some very risky speculation,’ my father had said at the time. ‘Never thought Giles had a penny to bless himself with.’
‘Let’s go over and talk to her,’ said Stevens. ‘She’s good value.’
He had that taste, peculiar to certain egotists, to collect together close round him everyone he might happen to know in any given area.
‘Oh, God,’ said Pamela. ‘Need we? I suppose she flattered you.’
‘Go on, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘Ask Mrs Erdleigh to join us, if you know her as well.’
I agreed to do this, more from liking the idea of meeting Mrs Erdleigh again than to please Stevens. As I approached, she herself turned towards me.
‘I wondered when you would speak,’ she said gently.
‘You’d already seen me in the hall?’
‘Often in this building. But we must not anticipate our destinies. The meeting had to wait until tonight.’
From the way she spoke, it was to be assumed that she was so far above material contacts that the impetus of our reunion must necessarily come from myself. The magical course of events would no doubt have been damaged had she taken the initiative and addressed me first.
‘What a night.’
‘I could not sleep,’ she said, as if that were a matter for surprise. ‘The omens have not been good for some days past, though in general better than for many months. I can see at once from your face that you are well situated. The Centaur is friend to strangers and exiles. His arrow defends them.’
‘Come and talk to us. There’s a young man called Odo Stevens, who has done rather well as a soldier — been very brave, I mean — and a girl called Pamela Flitton. He says he knows you already.’
‘I met your young army friend on the roof when I was engaged in certain required exsufflations. He is under Aries, like your poor uncle, but this young man has the Ram in far, far better aspect, the powerful rays of Mars favouring him rather than the reverse, as they might some — your uncle, for example.’
I told her I had seen the Ufford — where we had first met — now in such changed circumstances. She was not at all interested, continuing to speak of Stevens, who had evidently made an impression on her.
‘It is the planet Mars that connects him with that very beautiful young woman,’ she said. ‘The girl herself is under Scorpio — like that unhappy Miss Wartstone, so persecuted by Saturn — and possesses many of the scorpion’s cruellest traits. He told me much about her when we talked on the roof. I fear she loves disaster and death — but he will escape her, although not without an appetite for death himself.’
Mrs Erdleigh smiled again, as if she appreciated, even to some extent approved, this taste for death in both of them.
‘Lead me to your friends,’ she said. ‘I am particularly interested in the girl, whom I have not yet met.’
She picked up the black box, which presumably contained spells and jewellery, carrying the helmet in her other band. We returned to Stevens and Pamela. They were having words about a bar of chocolate, produced from somewhere and alleged to have been unfairly divided. Stevens jumped up and seized Mrs Erdleigh by the hand. It looked as if he were going to kiss her, but he stopped short of that. Pamela put on the helmet that had been lying beside her on the seat. This was evidently a conscious gesture of hostility.
‘This is Miss Flitton,’ said Stevens.
Pamela made one of her characteristically discouraging acknowledgments of this introduction. I was curious to see whether Mrs Erdleigh would exercise over her the same calming influence she had once exerted on Mona, Peter Templer’s first wife, when they had met. Mona, certainly a far less formidable personality than Pamela, had been in a thoroughly bad mood that day — without the excuse of an air-raid being in progress — yet she had been almost immediately tranquillized by Mrs Erdleigh’s restorative mixture of flattery, firmness and occultism. For all one knew, air-raids might positively increase Mrs Erdleigh’s powers. She took Pamela’s hand. Pamela withdrew it at once.
‘I’m going to have a walk outside,’ she said. ‘See what’s happening.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ said Stevens. ‘You’re not allowed to wander about during raids, especially one like this.’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs Erdleigh, ‘I well discern in your heart that need for bitter things that knows no assuagement, those yearnings for secrecy and tears that pursue without end, wherever you seek to fly them. No harm will come to you, even on this demonic night, that I can tell you. Nevertheless stay for a minute and talk with me. Death, it is true, surrounds your nativity, even though you yourself are not personally threatened — none of us is tonight. There are things I would like to ask you. The dark unfathomable lake over which you glide — you are under a watery sign and yet a fixed one — is sometimes dull and stagnant, sometimes, as now, angry and disturbed.’