The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie Read Free Book Online Page A

faced north-east, looking out across the vast beauty and peace of the outer harbour, hear any sounds of street traffic at all—nothing but the hush and splash of the ocean, landlocked and serene, against the breakwater and the boat-house piles, the grating screams of the grey gulls shearing for ever across the sky’s huge disclosure, and the mild and distant sounds of the ceaseless traffic of the sea as the ships came and went, by night and by day . . . Yes, it was a place of peace, where the spirit could, if it would, be still.
    This time I led the way, and Maybee stayed in the darkness of the rear seat, smoking in silence. The caretaker’s small flat was on the floor below street level, and while Hubble waited I went down the single unlit flight of stairs, and rang the bell. It was a bad hour in which to wake a man out of his first sleep. For some time there was no answer. I tossed up my keys to Hubble and told him to go up to the third landing and let himself into the flat next to mine. A deep silence filled the building, for it was almost one o’clock, and though we who were tenants lived near the Cross we had, for the most part, suburban habits. Irma was the only one, besides myself, who had kept late hours; and now, of course, time would never again mean any more to her than she meant to time, or to me. She was gone, and sometimes during this long night my own desire to live had wavered, as though willing to be gone with her; and only the thought of Alan, so young and proud and bright with happiness and intelligence, had steadied and fed the flame of that desire when it seemed to weaken within me.
    I realized now, as I listened to Hubble’s ascending steps soften into silence on the carpeted stair, that never again would I return home in the hours after midnight to find her lying on the blue rug, open-eyed and quite motionless before her low-tuned wireless receiver, listening to foreign broadcasts; never again would she pull me down on to the floor beside her, roughly and without a word, and invariably begin to rub my hair with almost ruthless fingers until, although refreshed by this and by her bodily nearness, I could bear neither without moving for a moment longer.
    Standing down there in the dark, I felt very tired. No sound of movement could be heard from Alec’s little flat, and I pressed the bell-button a second time, holding it down a little longer. The abrupt opening of the door inwards, away from my face, startled me, but in spite of the sensation of profound weariness, I had command of myself; and in any case, I am not a nervous man. Alec’s daughter, prepared I think to be indignant, stood against the light of the small entrance hall, wearing like a cloak a woollen dressing-gown that partly concealed her winter pyjamas. She was still half-asleep.
    ‘It’s Lloyd Fitzherbert, Emmy,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d like to see your father for a minute.’
    ‘’S asleep, Mr. Fitz,’ she struggled to say. ‘Won’t I do?’
    Alec had no wife alive, but had got his job of caretaker on the understanding that his daughter shared the work and the living quarters with him. He once told me she was better than any wife, as she would not bother to quarrel with him and took his mild orders obediently; and it is certain that this was one of the best-cared-for buildings in the whole rabbit-warren of a residential district in which it unobtrusively stood. It is no less certain that I never knew a young woman, as generally presentable as Emmy, who gave such an immediate impression of having no private life of her own whatever.
    ‘I think you had better get him up for me,’ I said; and though we spoke only in casual murmurs, our voices seemed to echo up the stair-well with a ghastly hollowness, like the voices of conspirators in a cellar.
    She went away from the door, and I heard her call her father in a hushed and regretful tone, and heard his sudden answer in the brisk voice of a man who wishes to be thought wide