The Haunted Storm by Philip Pullman Page A

only way out was to continue, to bludgeon her into accepting it. But some scruple held him back and made it impossible to talk.
    As if to underline the difficulty, a car went past them just at that moment and they had to step on the grass verge. And this action somehow – because it was forced on them and they had to act for a moment in a way that had nothing to do with them – generated an awkward and rather formal tension between them. Matthew felt that he was losing again, that it was now nearly out of his reach; but then she saved it.
    “But, you know,” she began hesitantly, “the fact is that we still – don’t know each other. And if you want to know what I was thinking on the beach – you were right, I wasn’t thinking that at all, what I said just then – but what you’ve just done saying that – it shows that what I was thinking about you was true, because I was thinking that you’d be more daring than I was, you’d go further, you’d speak more – openly, and where I’d hedge and make excuses and stay silent, perhaps, you wouldn’t… you’d say it, whatever it was. I can’t say it more plainly than that. But yes, I can, I’ll do what you do. I’ll tell you –”
    “Tell me what it was you shouted, then! Tell me what you cried out just as you ran away!” Matthew said urgently.
    “All right…” she said, and put her hands to her forehead as if it were aching. The gesture touched Matthew’s heart, for it looked as if she were trapped, like a shy wild animal that could not bear being looked at, and he longed to say “no, don’t do as I tell you, you needn’t…” but he let her go on. “All right, I’ll tell you,” she continued, “I’ll have to think to remember the exact words, but I told you in that cry that you had the same touch as he did, as my lover did – but you don’t have to take it literally, like that – not just the way you touched me; it wasn’t just the way he touched me at all – oh, do you see? It was a whole sort of aura, a whole sort of atmosphere about it, power, stillness, something like that – do you see? I said nothing but ‘It’s you,’ I think; I said I’d found you…”
    Her voice faded. He felt dizzy, unreal, as if the wind that swept the trees and the road and the clouds had now entered his head, his eyes, his limbs, cleaning him, sweeping him bare and ecstatic.
    “Elizabeth, Elizabeth,” he muttered, “I – am – unable… I can’t believe any of it… anything; and I can’t believe you’re lying!”
    He took her shoulders roughly and squeezed them tight. She looked at him openly, without fear or shame, and he saw desperation in her eyes, and anger, and contempt, and pleading. He looked away, unable to bear it, up at the cold grey sky; that was where he belonged! That was his home land, those grey wastes, haunted by gulls and by geese! And he drew strength from it, too, he felt resolution entering him.
    “Matthew –” she said, “I don’t care what you do, or what you say; it’s almost incidental; but you – that’s all – that’s all I – oh, all I – I can’t say it, I’m afraid to say it! But I don’t want you to care about my being afraid, I don’t want you even to listen , just hear it casually, turn away, look me once in the eyes perhaps, and say nothing about it – that’s what I want; and what I’m afraid to say is that you – that central part – that’s all I love. There, I’ve said it. I can’t pretend I haven’t, now. I’ve copied you and said what l thought.”
    Matthew was still holding her by the shoulders; he dared not let go. But he could not look into her face – he had to look away, at the road, at the hedge, at the windy sky, and all of them seemed to flicker and tremble on the edge of articulation, on the edge of becoming something else…
    “No!” he cried; it burst out of him – “no! Look, I’ll tell you! Look at me now, I can’t look you in the face, you see that? You know