The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories Part 15

'The new tenant! The new tenant's coming. They're going to let me give up the keys at last. And the new tenant doesn't think he's going to like it. But he'll get used to it. It's a life-tenancy, ha-ha-ha!'

Peter and Dora were received in Keroualhac with the same silence that they had preserved almost unbroken in the boat. They were both considerably shaken by their encounter with the madman, but neither was willing to admit as much, Peter because he feared to arouse Dora's derision, Dora because she was bewildered by herself. She was still far from accepting the Bretons' view of the island, but the effect it had on one was certainly very odd. During their flight to the sh.o.r.e she had known sheer unreasoning terror - a phenomenon which had not disturbed her rational mind before. Now, in the sunlight, and with a fresh sea-breeze blowing, she was exceedingly ashamed of this lapse. What was she to say if people asked about the trip to the island? Should she admit her fear, or make light of it, laugh it off? And what would Peter reply if questioned? But there was no need for Peter to speak. His white, set face was an announcement that all had not gone smoothly, even without the nerve twitching in his cheek.

As it happened, Dora need not have worried. No one was anxious to ask. The men on the quayside withdrew when they saw them coming and contented themselves with a long, unfriendly stare. They made no pretence of continuing with their occupations of mending nets or applying a lick of paint. They simply stood there in their uniform seamen's jerseys, dark trousers and sea-boots, and looked on with a hostile yet pitying air. Even the owner of the boat did not come forward. When Dora approached him, he promptly turned his back. Not even Dora was proof against such a demonstration.

TIow stupid they are,' she observed as she turned away.

Her remark was audible, but they remained impa.s.sive.

'You've annoyed them,' Peter said. He longed to dissociate himself entirely from Dora's actions, but this was the most he could do.

'I like that! What have I done that you haven't?'

Peter forbore to explain.

'They're like savages,' Dora continued, unabated. Tt's as if we had broken a taboo.'

'Let's hope they won't turn hostile as savages.'

'Darling, this is Europe, for heaven's sake.'

'And the twentieth century,' Peter added.

Dora saw no connection between the two.

The street from the harbour was silent and deserted. The whole village knew they had been to the Island of Regrets. Children at play were called sharply into the houses; loiterers were seized and cuffed by the maternal hand. Conversations across the street were abruptly ended; the evening rang with the slamming of front doors. Only in the churchyard did the visitors encounter unimpaired indifference, the dead of Keroualhac having no cause for fear.

'Unfriendly lot,' Dora said, referring to the living. 'I shan't be sorry to get back to our hotel.'

'If it still is our hotel,' Peter muttered.

Dora looked at him. 'What do you mean?'

'With feeling running this high, we'll be lucky if they keep us.'

'Of course they'll keep us. We've booked in till tomorrow.

If not, I shall certainly complain. To the French National Tourist Office, and to Michelin and Baedeker and the Guides Bleus and anyone else you care to name.'

Tm sure you will,' Peter said hastily, 'but it won't solve the problem of tonight.'

'There may not be a problem. Stop fretting,' Dora commanded, her voice sharper because she was ill at ease.

However, she was right, as usual. She would be, Peter thought. At the Coq d'Or the proprietor had seen them coming. He came forward to greet them as they arrived.

'Bonsoir, madame. monsieur. You have made your expedition? The whole village can talk of nothing else. It is not every day there is a visit to the island. I hope at least that you have no regrets?'

'None at all,' Dora told him very firmly.

Peter allowed it to seem that she was speaking for them both.

'You see?' she said when they were alone together. 'The proprietor made no difficulties. Hotel people are civilised and cosmopolitan. They have to be - it's part of their stock in trade. It just underlines the difference between them and these ignorant peasants. The proprietor isn't afraid to speak to us.'

Nevertheless, it seemed to Peter that the proprietor was troubled. He had lost the easy manner of last night. He was politer than ever, even deferential, but there was a certain reserve in what he said. He kept his distance as though there was a physical barrier between them. At the bar, he did not join them for a drink. Instead, he stayed firmly behind the counter; it was as if he had walled himself in. He kept himself busy rearranging bottles and polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses. There was no one else in the room.

It was Dora, of course, who opened the conversation.

'Who lives on the Island of Regrets?'

'No one, madame.'

'But someone does. We met him. We both saw him. Unless you're going to say he was a ghost?'

'No, madame, there are no ghosts on the island.'

'So he's a living person?'

The proprietor looked away.

'Isn't he?' Dora pursued. 'After all, the boat calls with provisions. He must be as alive as you.'

This time the proprietor faced her. 'You have met this person, you say?'

Dora nodded.

'Then you will know that he is a madman. There is always a madman on the lie des Regrets.'

'How do you mean - there is always a madman?'

It may sound strange, monsieur, but it is so.'

'But who sends them there? Where do they come from?'

'That monsieur, we do not know.'

'It's fantastic,' Dora burst out. 'Such callousness, such indifference.'

The proprietor was polis.h.i.+ng a gla.s.s. 'Every community has its share of such poor creatures,' he said softly, 'and always they must be put away. They are dangerous to themselves and to others. The incurables, as one might say - although beasts in cages would be a better description, since they must always be behind bars; and what bars could be more effective than to be cast away on the lie des Regrets without a boat?'

'You mean they are left there to die?' Dora asked in horror.

'No, madame, our madmen live for many years. They are amply supplied with provisions. By tradition, the whole village contributes. And when one goes, another is always forthcoming - no one knows from where. One day the whisper spreads through the village: "There's a new madman on the lie des Regrets."'

'And you send out a welcoming committee?'

'Monsieur will have his little joke.' The proprietor was re-polis.h.i.+ng the gla.s.ses. 'You must pardon that I am soaffaire. We hear tonight that a big coach party is corning and every bed will be in use. It does not happen often,' he continued, as if aware of the thinness of the excuse, 'but when it does, we are naturally very busy, since every room must be turned out.'

Complete stillness reigned in the hotel; the bustle of room-turning-out was evidently over. The excuse was so patently transparent that Peter was tempted to smile. The proprietor, while aware of his duties as a hotelier, was making sure they did not stay beyond tonight. Not only was some dreadful fate expected to overtake them, but they were regarded as bringers of bad luck. The whole of Keroualhac ached to be without them, and they would never be welcomed back. This was therefore their last chance to probe the mystery surrounding the lie des Regrets.

'What about that house on the island?' Peter demanded. 'That could do with a bit of turning out.'

It was the proprietor's turn to show a gleam of humour. 'Madmen are not good housewives, as a rule.'

'You're telling me,' Dora broke in. 'The place is filthy. How long has it been left to rot like that?'

'Since the owner built it,' the proprietor answered. 'He was another one who would not heed.' He looked at them over the gla.s.s he was polis.h.i.+ng for the third time. 'Everyone told him that the He des Regrets was dangerous, but he did not choose to believe. He visited it, declared it to his liking, and decided to build a summer retreat. He had ample time to reflect upon our warnings during the years that he spent upon the He. He was rash enough to wish when he first set foot there that he might pa.s.s the rest of his life in this idyllic spot. As usual, his wish was granted and as usual it became a source of regret.'

'What happened?' Dora demanded.

'His wife died first of all. She was being rowed across from the mainland by a boatman who had lived here all his life. Inexplicably, he misjudged the crossing. They were caught in the tide-rip and drowned.

'As if this were not sufficient sorrow, his daughter was taken from him that same year. One wing of the house was not yet completed. The child was playing there when a wall collapsed.

'Instead of leaving the scene of his bereavement, our island dweller shut himself up in the house. He grew melancholy, neglected his financial enterprises; he made business trips to Paris less and less. He was a director of many companies, prosperous but not solid, except in build. The Stavisky scandal broke over him like a thunderstorm, for which he was completely unprepared. In a week his shares, like those of so many others, tumbled; his frantic speculations on the Bourse all failed. He returned to the island broken in mind and body. Within a week it was apparent he was mad. His servants in terror sought refuge on the mainland. He was left alone on his island. For fifteen years he lived there. When he died, another madman took his place.'

I don't understand -' Dora was beginning.

'No one understands, madame. One afternoon the boat-crew, unloading provisions, were hailed by a different man. No one knew where he had come from. To this day we do not know his name. He was succeeded by another, and another. The one you saw must be at least the sixth. Nor do we know how they get to the island in the first place, since no boatman has ever taken one across, but you have shown us, madame, that it is possible to hire or steal conveyance, and our madmen, who do not lack cunning, could easily have done as much.'

'But how do they know when to go there?'

'How does the swallow know when to journey south? There are things, monsieur, that science does not answer. And now, my wife calls that your sole is cooked.'

The proprietor came out from behind the bar-counter, not without a certain hesitation, Peter thought. And as he served the food and poured the wine, Peter noticed that the proprietor kept as much distance as he could, between himself and his guests. Nor did the proprietor's wife issue forth after supper to receive their compliments on her cuisine, and the little chambermaid, seeing Dora coming, crossed herself and took to her heels. It was as though the whole village feared that disaster was going to strike them, some sudden death-in-agony in the night. Like the boy who had so rashly eaten blackberries on the island, and now lay in the churchyard with a twig of mountain ash on his grave. In this climate it was easy to see how superst.i.tion became established. The will to perceive causality was already there.

Next morning, when they came down safe and well to breakfast, Peter detected a slight disappointment in the air, mingled with relief that they were going and could therefore bring down no wrath on Keroualhac. Not a soul was to be seen and yet all eyes were upon them as the proprietor himself saw them off in the direction of Brest and St Malo.

During the next six months their recollection of the island faded as preparations for the wedding got under way. For Peter's sake, Mrs Matthews had determined to speed things up; long engagements were bad for the nerves, she said.

Peter was indeed in a state of considerable nervous tension, but not for the reasons that his future mother-in-law supposed. The impending union weighed heavily upon his spirit. He wished it were over, or else that it need never take place. But when he voiced his doubts to Dora she became tearful - an act in which long practice had made her adept - and rushed to confide in her mother, who discovered that April was a better month than June. Peter suffered her sympathetic understanding with outward grat.i.tude and inward rage. He displayed the same stoic self-control when enduring the banter of his colleagues at the Ministry of Ag. and Fish. He had little time to reflect - or, when he did, to ponder - on the events on the lie des Regrets. As for Dora, the island would have pa.s.sed out of her memory completely had it not been for the vexing business of the snaps.

Every one of the snapshots she had taken on the island came out blank. The chemist's a.s.sistant talked knowingly about a faulty shutter, but the camera, when examined, was all right. Nor was Dora a tyro photographer, unused to light-readings and the like, or one who forgot to wind the film after each exposure or failed to take it out of the camera with care. The chemist's a.s.sistant maintained that he had not been negligent; he and Dora united in blaming the film; but the manufacturers, to whom Dora complained energetically, replied after six weeks that it was not their fault. The film had been tested in their laboratories and had emerged with flying colours. No other in that batch had been reported faulty and they could therefore accept no liability. They added, in what read like an afterthought, that the film appeared to have been exposed to strong white light. Dora crumpled the letter angrily when she received it and refused to have the matter mentioned any more.

Three weeks before the wedding, which was at Easter, Dora went down with a cold, caught while preening in her wedding-dress in an unheated bedroom before the only full-length mirror in the house. The cold made her feel heavy and miserable; her temperature began to rise. Despite a couple of days in bed and endless aspirins, the indisposition failed to respond.

The doctor, when he came (rushed off his feet by a measles epidemic), was not unduly alarmed 6y Dora's case. He satisfied himself that she had not got pneumonia, and departed, leaving a prescription behind. Peter fetched the prescription from the chemist - the same chemist who had developed the photographs - and was served by the same a.s.sistant, a small black-bearded young man. Peter thought he glanced at him accusingly as the white-wrapped sealed package changed hands, but he dismissed this as due to his imagination; it was not his fault that Dora was ill.

And ill she was. No one could accuse her of malingering. Her temperature had continued to rise. At ioi it was not dangerous, but it steadfastly refused to come down. Dora herself seemed fretful and restless, suffering now here, now there. So many of her organs seemed in turn to be affected that it was tempting to seek some psychosomatic cause. The doctor called again, looked baffled and remained cheerful, though there was no doubt his patient had lost a lot of weight. A BCG test for TB proved negative. Even so, the doctor's cheerfulness did not fade. Dora, he a.s.sured her mother and her fiance, was one of the healthiest young women he knew, and as usual when the healthy succ.u.mbed to illness, they were apt to worry and make recovery slow. He had no doubt that Dora's disease was due to a virus - exactly which he was not prepared to say. The viruses, like the Joneses, were so numerous as to defy cla.s.sification; from uniformity came diversity. He suggested that Dora should go into hospital for observation and admitted that the wedding might have to be put off.

Dora wept when the suggestion was put to her. She had made up her mind to be an Easter bride. Her mother and the doctor tried to soothe her. Peter felt guiltily that he ought to do the same, but his half-hearted attempts were so unsuccessful that Mrs Matthews ordered him from the room. On the landing he paced up and down uncertainly, a prey to the conflict of his thoughts.

Dora did not improve in hospital; instead she grew steadily worse. Wasted, feverish and hollow-cheeked, she was scarcely recognisable. The wedding was indefinitely postponed.

It was while Peter was visiting her that she dropped her bombsh.e.l.l. She put her burning hand in his and said: 'Darling, I'm not getting better - I'm not going to. It's because we went to that wretched lie des Regrets.'

'Nonsense, Dora,' Peter said sharply. 'What are you talking about?'

'I don't know.' Her eyes filled with tears - of weakness this time. 'It's just the way I feel about it all.'

'Sick fancies,' Peter said with attempted heartiness. 'You'll be as right as rain very soon.'

'But they don't even know what's the matter with me. A virus disease can mean anything.'

'Or nothing,' Peter tried to rea.s.sure her. 'You mustn't upset yourself like this.'

'No,' Dora agreed with unaccustomed meekness. 'Only I keep thinking about that wish.'

'What wish?' Peter demanded.

'The wish that I made on the island - that I might believe in magic. Like you.'

Peter also had expressed a wish on the island, though he preferred not to think about it now.

'I don't see any connection between your wish and your illness,' he objected.

'But there is.' Dora lowered her head in confusion. 'I believe in magic now.'

The icy fingers on Peter's spine made him s.h.i.+ver. Without conviction, he said: 'You're being a bit extreme, like all converts. This could be coincidence.'

'No.' Dora shook her head with something of her old vigour. 'I've never been ill like this. It's like that boy who ate blackberries on the island, except that his was mercifully quick.'

'And you're not dying,' Peter said with what cheerfulness he could muster. 'And you didn't have anything to eat. Or did you?' he asked, alarmed by Dora's silence.

'No, Peter, I ate nothing.'

And then it all came out in a torrent of self-justification. She had taken something from the Island of Regrets. 'Only a fir-cone, Peter, like the ones I was pelting you with. And I never intended taking it. It must have fallen into my bag. I didn't find it until two nights later in the hotel at St Malo, and then I said nothing to you.'

'What did you do with it, then?'

'Nothing, darling. I brought it home and put it in a drawer.'

'You mean you've still got it?' Peter demanded with sudden excitement.

'Yes. It's in the top drawer of my desk. Unless Mummy's tidied it away,' Dora added. 'She does sometimes. But it was there before I fell ill - I saw it. It's opened a bit but it's otherwise perfectly preserved.'

Peter stood up. 'In that case, we must return it.'

'Do you think that will do any good?'

'It won't do any harm, and your doctors are not being successful. Restoring the fir-cone is your only chance.'

'But there's no postal service to the island. And no one from Keroualhac would go.'

'If you like, I'll take it,' Peter offered.

Dora made objections, but allowed them to be overruled. She gave him instructions where to find the fir-cone, and Peter went at once to her house. Mrs Matthews looked startled and not too pleased to see him, but she held the door open none the less.

'What is it? Is Dora worse?' she demanded as soon as Peter had stepped into the hall.