The Haunted Storm Read Online Free

went out on to the moor to get away from things, and I was quite happy at last. Then – well, there he was. I don’t know where he appeared from. He might have come out of a cloud. I thought he was a workman, because he was dressed in rough clothes and he seemed coarse, not coarse spirited but coarse-bodied, as if he just used his body and never enjoyed it. Without one word said we were lying down together and we made love, or rather – I did nothing at all and he made love to my body while I, the central part of me, watched and watched and kept watching to see that – to see that he didn’t hurt himself, or demean himself in any way – I would have protected him, because already I was in love with him.
    “Probably that means very little to you. Probably you’ve never known what it is to set eyes on someone and fall immediately in love so deep that you’d give them anything straight away, without even speaking. You’d let them do anything to you. You’d prostitute yourself and care only that they didn’t hurt themselves or shame themselves in what they did. What happens to you – hurt or shame – doesn’t matter a bit anymore; and you’re no more important than a speck of dust. Suddenly you’re outside yourself and scattered, and the most important thing there is, is this stranger.”
    He had been concentrating on her words, puzzled beyond measure by what she was saying and why she was saying it, and her leg lay forgotten under his hand. Now he thought of it again and felt it wet and warm where his hand had been; but an inch away, the flesh was cold. He stroked her shin, and the softness of her calf where his fingers brushed it made his body run like water inside with lust for her. She saw it in his eyes, and in the middle of her words she smiled at him. He tried to smile back, but too many emotions got into the smile and spread it out in a foolish grin, and he looked away with embarrassment. On the underside of her right knee, where his hand rested, he could feel a small pulse throbbing like a tiny bird.
    Now they were both insulated from the storm. Even the rain that fell on their bare heads did not really touch them; and in the fastness of the mental ark that had formed around them, they faced each other intently. Matthew sensed that she was about to speak again. Down on the Spur, the boat lay stranded; but he had forgotten it.
    “So that was what I did. Or what I set out to do in the first few seconds. But something else happened and I found it all very different – all of it from the uttermost tiny thoughts in my head to the distant things like the horizon or a lark high above me. It was that suddenly I was thrown – no, I don’t mean quite that – I suddenly found it to be a whirlpool, you know, but it was in nothingness and it produced matter. Not nothingness – the spirit, rather. But it threw out matter and all matter was somehow generated in this whirlpool that I was in. I don’t know if you understand what I’m getting at. But I don’t suppose it matters. Only about three things matter at all – matter – that’s the word. Do you see? And now there’s a sort of mixed-up area between us, that includes all the beach and storm and sky and all that you bring to it – to me – and all of what I’m saying – it’s all mixed up now – I did so want it to be clear – oh God; it’ll come clear in a minute.”
    An extraordinary ambivalence, like a fiery two-edged sword, came from this girl and pierced Matthew to the heart. All questions such as “who was she? where did she come from?” were torn away on the wind and lost in the dark sky, and all that was left was the fact of her. And this fact affected Matthew in two ways, making him a total slave to her – in much the same way as she had described her own relation to her lover – and also a wise and kindly father confessor, anxious to hear, comfort, and forgive. Yet as far as she was concerned, he might have been a brother – or a