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But they carried on, faded away in the direction of the village, sank her
hopes.
Goodness, it was almost dusk, she must have fallen asleep. Surely John
wouldn't be long now. She began to worry, it was almost half past nine. If he
wasn't home by ten then she would go to the fence and shout for the Howarths,
ask them to phone the police station for news of her nephew. The Howarths were
always very good about phoning for her; she really ought to get a telephone of
her own put in before the winter in case of an emergency. She'd give John
until ten o'clock, no longer.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly. Somehow it was out of place
in this modern bungalow but she wouldn't get rid of it. You had to cling on to
a few things that reminded you of happier days.
Ten to ten. Elsie Harrison sucked her lips, it really was getting quite dark
outside now. She listened hard, but there did not seem to be anybody about
outside at all. Probably the villagers had taken the policeman's advice
literally and were all remaining indoors. She wondered if the Howarths might
have their windows shut and be unable to hear her. She must do her best to
rouse them.
She reached for her sticks, had to exert considerable effort to haul herself
up out of the easy chair, felt a wave of slight dizziness as she came upright.
That was her blood pressure but she wasn't going to tell the nurse about her
dizzy turns; she knew too much about her already.
She felt for the light switch, pressed it down. The strip light in the ceiling
flickered hesitantly, took a second or two before it gave off that dazzling
white light that lit up every corner of the room. Elsie Harrison blinked, had
to wait for her eyes to adjust. One unsteady step in the direction of the door
and then she stopped, gave a little cry of fear.
The snake was lying on the mat just inside the slightly open back door.
Motionless, it might have been dead, or a stuffed woollen draught-stopper like
those they sold for 75p down at the church rummage sales; except that its eyes
moved, glittered and winked evilly in the fluorescent lighting.
The reptile was three feet, maybe four feet long, olive coloured, tapering
from the blunt squat snout down to a fine slender tail. Now it moved, almost a
lazy stretching of its entire body. See just how long I am and I'm not dead or
stuffed. I'm alive!
Elsie Harrison's dizziness returned causing her to sway unsteadily and then it
passed. Her heart began to pound as though it were deliberately racing against
the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, triggering off her fear.
She wanted to scream, a piercing cry that would fetch the Howarths round on
the run, but her throat had gone dry and a kind of temporary seizure paralysed
her vocal cords.
She glanced about her. The snake barred her escape via the door and she could
not reach the window without going near the fearsome intruder. Just the corner
behind the chair she had vacated, nowhere else. She was trapped.
Keeping her eyes firmly on the reptile she moved awkwardly, unsteadily
backwards, until finally she had the chair between herself and her adversary.
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She was breathing heavily and there was a sharp pain in her chest.
She leaned on the upholstery, clasping a walking stick in either hand,
wondering if she had the strength to strike a blow if the thing advanced.
She'd darned well have a go if it came any nearer. Oh, please God, send John
home soon.
She would have to shout out to warn him when she heard him coming or else he
would walk right into it. And all she could manage at the moment was a hoarse
whisper.
'Go away, you devil. Go away.'
The snake did not move, just lay there stretched out across the doormat,
watching her. Waiting. She wondered what kind it was, some venomous viper from
the swamps of somewhere-or-other, no doubt. Her flesh crawled and her
heartbeat was speeding up even faster, hurting her with those fast little
hammer blows inside her chest that she had felt this past six months but had
kept to herself.
The light wasn't as bright as it usually was, quite dim in fact. Perhaps the
fitting was going, due for replacement.
Elsie leaned her full weight on the back of the chair. She couldn't stand much
longer. The pain in her hip had started up viciously but it wasn't as bad as
the one in her chest. Oh Lord, she couldn't stand it much longer. 'Go away,
you devil, and let me sit down. D'you hear me, go away?'
And then something inside her seemed to explode, an agonising pain as though
she had been delivered a physical blow, throwing her back against the wall
behind her. She cried out, a pathetic little shriek of terror and the dimness
turned to blackness. She slumped forward and the chair rolled sideways on its
flimsy castors, Elsie Harrison pitching headlong, unconscious before she hit
the floor.
Even then the snake did not move. Possibly there was a slight change of
reptilian expression on its blunt features. One of puzzlement.
It was after nine o'clock before the shotgun-carrying searchers had finished
combing the moorland above Stainforth. Hot and weary, their feet painful after
the necessity of wearing knee-length protective rubber boots, disillusioned.
The dogs lay panting, licking at tufts of grass in the hope of obtaining a
droplet of moisture but there was none. A barren wilderness where only the
heather and bracken survived, bilberry bushes loaded with red fruit that would
ripen in a month or so, the domain of the grouse and the buzzard, even the
free-ranging sheep preferring the lower slopes where there were patches of
shade to be found.
John Price had had his misgivings from the start, a feeling that one sometimes
got that it was all going to be a waste of time. You sensed you were in the
wrong place but with no alternative you had to start somewhere.
The snakes were definitely not on the moor unless they had gone to ground
somewhere and it was unlikely that every one of the escaped eight reptiles
would have done that. Of course, the dogs had no idea what they were hunting, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]