The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower Page A

woke rigid and screaming. She was mildly gratified to think that they showed her as being ‘highly strung’ and, consequently, ran Lilian’s mind, of noble stock. But other manifestations of the nervousness that she herself had bred and nourished were seen as a taint most surely stemming from the unmentionable side of her parentage.
    Now the house hovered round Emily with evil intent. She was trapped, encircled by it. As the impression of hidden malevolence grew stronger, she went into the hall; from there she could watch every doorway.
    Then slowly, a moment later, with an accumulation of speed let loose, she made for the front door, threw herself against it and struggled with the lock. Sobbing, she ran down the gravel path.
    At once all was different. Up on the gate, if it was cool and black and quiet, it was safer, much safer, than that hideous lighted tomb behind her. Now if they all poured out in pursuit she could fly down the quiet hill calling for help, and people would hear her and come.
    For a moment she looked at the stars, let the sight of them soak her; for a moment in the place where she had been was simply black air and a vision of stars.
    A hiccough brought her back. She began to make the gate swing to and fro and was, for a time, occupied by the sensation of swinging bravely on a gate in the night. But shortly, feeling cold, the sadness of her position made her cry.
    Aggrieved, but scarcely more than that, she grizzled into the flaking paint of the gate and mumbled to herself that her mother would not like this. Miss Bates would not like it. They would be angry if they knew that Lilian had left her alone when she was so frightened. Other people didn’t leave people at night. It wasn’t nice to have girls swinging on gates so late at night. She would not do that to anyone even if she hated them. It was so mean. But no one cared about her, not really...
    From midnight till three o’clock in the morning she stayed there, crying a bit, talking a bit, sucking the gate on the patch reserved for sucking, and falling into day and night dreams. Miss Bates might really be her mother? There were few distractions; occasional cars and no late pedestrians.
    When at last Lilian’s car started up the hill, Emily ran, as she had for the others, to the corner of the garden from which she could see both roads. Recognizing it, she ran into the house and turned out all the lights.
    She was in bed, shivering, in an ordinary room in an ordinary house by the time she heard the garage doors swing open. Stretching in bed, rubbing her cold feet together, she listened to the noises of the return, a small smile of relief on her mouth.
    Lilian and Mr Rosen came in the back door and up the hall to the bedrooms, whispering. There was a confused scuffle, a disagreeable noise which Emily identified as someone being sick. There were more whispers, then raised voices.
    Complacent, disapproving, she drifted towards sleep. They were home and someone was being sick. It was all normal again, all routine. Tomorrow she would see Miss Bates.

CHAPTER THREE
    AS HE left Jack Stevenson’s old weatherboard house, Harry Lawrence pondered on yesterday’s decision and marvelled at it. So there were to be no courts, no witnesses, no legal documents—in short, no disturbances in his life. Three days of talks in coffee shops, harbour ferries, and the zoo, had resolved this. For the indefinite future he and Paula had exchanged firm promises to try again to live together.
    Neither could have told why they leaned to the side of non-action, but to both, after twelve years of marriage, many of them apart, the abstract idea of their partnership was solid and immovable as a mountain. The failure earlier to make the separation legally permanent had carried them past the time when it could ever become so. For while the living, warm and fleshy, even—when encountered face to face—slightly shocking, three-dimensional creature