Peter turned out the light, leaving the windows open in the vain hope of a breath of wind to circulate the fetid air in the room. Outside the thunder persisted but there was still no rain. He twisted and turned, and the wet heat made the sheet cling to his body.
Around two o’clock he fell into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed that he was standing naked at the foot of his own bed here in the House of the Four Winds. The room was dark, but he could see by the light of the full moon, which hung outside the high open windows like a witness. In front of him a woman was lying face down on the soft white eiderdown. She was wearing a white silk skirt with the hemline ending just below the knee. It was the same skirt that his wife had worn at dinner that evening. Above the waist the woman was naked, and she lay with her invisible face and forearms supported on a mass of white pillows. He couldn’t tell if she was sleeping, and so he leaned forward and slowly traced two lines with the tips of his fingers down the back of the woman’s calves, feeling the strength of the tightening muscles underneath.
As he reached her ankles, she drew herself forward, away from him, and raised her body up into a kneeling position. The skirt gathered up on to her thighs, and Peter followed her, kneeling at the end of the bed. Reaching out with both hands, he took hold of the skirt and folded it up on to the woman’s waist, exposing her perfectly shaped buttocks.
And then it was as if time and movement were suspended. He knelt above the woman’s body with every fibre of his being willing himself forward to take hold of her. Yet nothing could happen unless she gave some indication of her consent.
It was a tiny wisp of wind that broke the moment. Some stealthy movement in the still air elicited a scarcely audible sigh from the naked figure beneath him. She pulled her knees forward and apart, raising herself up on her forearms so that Peter could see the swell of her breasts hanging down on to the white eiderdown. Everything was revealed to him, and with a cry of fulfilment he thrust himself forward and deep into the very centre of the woman beneath him.
As he pulled himself back from the brink of orgasm and prepared to enter her again, Peter called out the name of this woman that he loved so much.
‘Anne. Anne. I love you, Anne.’
But the woman, who half turned her head toward him out of a mass of white pillows, did not have his wife’s blue eyes. These eyes were green. Glittering green. How could he have mistaken that raven hair for the brown tresses of his wife? It was Greta beneath him on the bed. And someone was beating on the door trying to get in.
Peter woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in the strange bed with his body covered in sweat. It was not a knocking on the door that had woken him but the crash of the old leaded window against the casement. It had broken free of its catch and was swinging madly to and fro in the great storm that had burst over the house while he was asleep. A grey light showed that it was past dawn, although no sunlight penetrated the cloudy sky.
As Peter watched, the window crashed against the casement again and two of its leaded panes broke. The sill was awash with rain and shattered glass. Peter leapt from the bed and tugged at the window, forcing it back on to its latch but catching his elbow as he did so on a shard of broken glass. Blood dripped on his feet and on the apple-green carpet. Looking down, Peter saw that his penis was only now beginning to wilt. He stood still for a moment regarding himself with disgust tinged with a sense of ridicule before he crossed to the bed and wrapped the sweat-soaked pillowcase around his arm.
Outside, the previously statuesque yews were being blown in all directions by a screaming wind while the great rain beat against the House of the Four Winds with an unappeased fury. Beyond the yews the black gates stood open and Peter could see a small figure struggling up the drive toward the house.
Peter pulled on his clothes as fast as he could and ran down the wide curving staircase to the front door. Dropping the pillowcase tourniquet from his arm, he turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Mrs Marsh from the cottage across the road was dimly recognizable beneath her raincoat as she struggled to make her way up the steep steps to the yew tree terrace. Sir Peter hurried forward and pulled her into the house.
‘What is it, Grace? You look white as a sheet. Has something happened?’
‘No, it’s all right, Sir Peter. It’s just that my Christopher’s a volunteer on the lifeboat and they got called out just before midnight. He usually keeps in touch with the shore by radio when the boat’s out and so I can phone them to see that everything’s all right, but our telephone line’s gone down and so—’
‘You can’t. And so you need to use ours. Come into my study, and you can take your coat off.’
‘Thank you, Sir Peter. I’m sorry if I got you up.’
‘You didn’t. The storm woke me. Broke the window upstairs. It seems like quite a gale.’
‘It is. I haven’t felt the wind like this since the storm we had here ten years ago. I just hope that Christopher’s all right. I don’t know what I’d do—’
‘It’s all right, Grace, everything’s going to be fine,’ said Sir Peter with a conviction that he did not feel as he picked up the telephone on his desk. He had heard the underlying panic in her voice.
‘Damn. It’s dead too. Look, Grace, I’ll drive you down to the harbour. It won’t take a moment.’
Mrs Marsh weakly protested, but Peter remained firm. There was nothing in fact that he wanted more at that moment than to get out of the house and put a space between himself and the events of the night. The trouble with Anne; the debauchery of his dream; the blood on the floor.
‘There, I’ve written a note telling Anne where we’ve gone. I’ll just get my coat, Grace. I won’t be a minute.’
When Peter came back, he found that Grace Marsh was no longer alone. Greta had put a coat over her nightdress and was sitting beside Grace on the old black bench in the hall, the one with the four evangelists on the front. As she turned towards him with a look of concern Peter felt himself plunged back into his dream and it was only with a supreme effort of will that he fought down a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to take her in his arms.
‘What? You’re up as well.’ Peter blurted out the first words that came into his head.
‘Yes, I want to come too. Please let me.’ Greta’s green eyes glittered.
‘All right. But mind yourself on the steps. That wind’ll blow you into the road if you let it. Grace, you hold on to me. I’ll have you down at the harbour in less than ten minutes.’
Peter held the steering wheel of the Range Rover almost in his lap as he craned forward on to the dashboard in order to pick out the turns in the narrow road that wound down to the harbour. He was conscious of Grace Marsh straining forward just like him, as if willing herself closer to the harbour and news of her husband.
Going out to sea now would be like signing one’s own death warrant, thought Peter to himself as he glanced out at the foaming mass of furious high waves beating against the shore.
‘I’m sure everything’s going to be all right,’ he said, summoning as much conviction into his voice as he could. ‘Everyone on the lifeboat is very experienced.’ The harbour came into view through a sloping wall of rain.
‘I know. Thank you, Sir Peter. It’s just that there’s not been a storm like this one since 1989. And that was when …’
Grace’s voice trailed away. Peter knew why. The storm of ’89 had not only uprooted the great chestnut tree in Flyte churchyard planted in honour of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee; it had also ended the lives of two Flyte fathers swept from the deck of the lifeboat as it went to rescue a sinking fishing boat out in the bay.
In the back of the Range Rover Greta gazed out at the sea. She felt electrified by the storm. Never had she seen such violence. She heard nothing of the anxious conversation being carried on in the front.