Free Marnie by Winston Graham

. . it’s nearly over. It’s Kempton Park, isn’t it.’
    He began to write on the margin of the programme. ‘Are you interested in racing?’
    ‘I love it.’
    He looked up as if he’d caught something different in my voice. ‘D’you often go?’
    ‘Not often. When I can.’
    ‘Going to race meetings seems the sort of thing one does in company or not at all. But perhaps you do have company?’
    ‘Not now,’ I said, remembering in time that I was a widow.
    ‘Your husband was fond of it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He went on tinkering with the programme. There was a rumble of thunder. It began as nothing but came nearer, bumping downstairs like a garden roller. I got up and switched off the TV just before
the race finished.
    He looked up when I didn’t sit down again. ‘This will probably take me another five minutes. If you like roses go out in the garden. They’ve been very early this year, but
there’s a bed of Speke’s Yellow round the corner.’
    ‘I think it’s going to rain.’
    He nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’
    The room really was dark now. The sky outside was a ghastly coppery yellow and the leaves of a tree by the window glistened like old spoons. There was a flicker of lightning that made me jump
about nine inches, and I did a graceful retreat towards the back of the room.
    Old Lucy Nye. You couldn’t get away from her, you really couldn’t. ‘Cover the mirrors, dear,’ she’d say. ‘If you see the lightning in ’em you’ll
see the Devil peering out at you. ’Tis true. ’Tis God’s way of showing you Hell. Cover them knives; let the lightning get in ’em and it’ll get in you next time
you pick ’em up. I seen folk struck by lightning, split like a tree. I seen a man with his clothes cut in ribs, his face black and purple, his poor burned hands twisted up like he was boxing.
He was still alive when I got there even though ’is eyes and face had gone . . .’ You couldn’t beat her at that sort of X-certificate stuff.
    It was nearly too dark to see at the back of the room, all shadows – and the furniture was pretty depressing anyhow. There were shelves with old cups and figures and vases on them, some of
the vases chipped and broken, and some were so smothered in old dry mud or clay that you wanted to get at them with a scrubbing brush. Just in front of the shelves was a grand piano as big as two
coffins, and on the piano was a photograph of a young woman standing at the entrance to what might have been a bit of Stonehenge. Dawn had been quite right; she wasn’t pretty; her face was
too long; but she’d got nice hair and her eyes were big and bright.
    A flash of lightning: the thunder that followed was near and nasty and noisy. ‘We’re all corrupt,’ Lucy’d say, holding me on her knee as if I was going to slip down a
nick somewhere. ‘We’re corrupt an’ the worm’ll eat us. But better be eaten than burned . See that one, ah, ah, nearly got us! Come just inside the window, it did, I
seen the tongue flickering. Just didn’t reach us. The Devil’s out tonight all right, lookin’ for ’is own. Keep your ’ead covered, dear, don’t look at it,
guard your eyes!’ You couldn’t beat Lucy, she really was laughable. I laughed.
    He looked up, but I turned the laugh into a cough. ‘That’s about it,’ he said, looking again at the programme. ‘Anyway it’s decently balanced now. Look, can I
explain it to you in case Ward doesn’t follow?’
    I went back to his sofa half a step at a time and he began to explain. But while he was doing it there was a flash that cut right across us, and I gave a yelp and dropped the sheet I was
holding.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘did it startle you?’
    I began to say something, but it got nowhere in a rattle of thunder that stamped down on the house. The whole room shook and shivered like with an earth tremor. Then there was an awful
silence.
    I could see he was waiting for me to go back to him by the window but I