Friendly Young Ladies (37 page)

I’d better get to bed. She won’t feel like talking when she comes in. If Elsie weren’t here she could have slept in that room, if she wanted, and been quiet by herself. It must be restful to be Elsie, not touching reality at any point of the compass. I wonder how it feels.

She put out her cigarette and lay down; but for a long time her eyes were open, looking at the river and the changing clouds.

In Mawley, in the best bedroom of the Red Castle Hotel, Peter, with his mouth slightly but not ungracefully open, was sleeping the sleep of the just.

The square of the window sharpened, and, enclosed in its dark frame, the trees defined themselves greyly. Over the water hung and turned, in infinitely slow spirals, the drifting wreaths of the mist. A bird cheeped, found that it was too early, and sank into the fluffed warmth of its feathers again.

Leo came out of a sleep so deep that, for a moment, she could not remember where she was. Her thoughts held only a shapeless colour and light, such as one brings back from a dream when the horn gate has closed already upon its story. She held them about her, feeling only that they were better than anything the day could give. But at the first touch of her will, they condensed into consciousness.

She knew where she was, and why; her mind was like water holding a still reflection, her body, heavy with peace, gave back dim echoes of pain and delight, too quiet to stir it from tranquillity. She lay as she had fallen asleep, still in his arm with her own flung across his breast, her head on his shoulder. If she moved a little she could see his face; but she did not move, lest it should wake him.

It was easy to be still, for only her mind was waking, as if sleep were a pool from which she had raised her head, while her limbs still drifted under its smooth surface. It was better, after all, to be awake and remember.

So many kinds of contentment were mixed together in her; the contentment of the adventurer after peril, of the captive after release, of the woman after love. They were falling already into the stuff of her life, and she had almost ceased to wonder at them. She thought instead about what she had learned of him, and how like it was to what she had already known. She knew now that his love affairs had been like his books, few and good and deeply felt, passionate in impulse, patiently complete in execution; she knew that hack-work had never coarsened his style. She knew too something she had not known before, that some trouble in his life, solved or reconciled long ago, had left hidden in him an instinct of compassion so strong that he was ashamed of it as if it had been a kind of violence. For a time she had released it; and after its cause was gone, when he himself had half forgotten it, some of its power over him had passed to her. She knew that she had possessed his imagination, suddenly and unawares. She thought of all this as she lay watching the night thin away in her half-shut eyes. She did not think that she loved him finally and irrevocably, because it was a fact too certain for thought, and, besides, it had become an old story.

He lay half-turned towards her, companionable and warm. He was used to sharing a bed—she knew that too—and to sharing it kindly, with someone he was prepared to find there in the morning. He was sleeping very quietly; she could feel his breathing, shallow and soundless, not like the breathing of a sleeping man. Then she knew, without moving or opening her eyes, that he was awake, and had been awake already for a long time.

Through all those moments of clouded, dreamy well-being, he had been lying with open eyes, looking out above her head at the creeping light, solitary in his own thoughts; facing, with the straightness he could not have escaped if he had wanted, the implications of what had happened, and what would happen if it went on. He had been thinking—she was sure, as if he had turned to her and told her—of his half-written book, needing a steady mood, solitude and time; remembering the mistress who had been easy to him, who had accepted for years, without destructive suffering, the part of himself which, in the end, would still be all that he would have to give. His thoughts seemed to flow to her, clearly and inescapably; they might so easily, at another time and place, have been her own. She felt them with the mind of a friend who could share and approve them; it was only to the woman in his arm, naked and newly born, that they were desolation and loss.

Her first choice had been true, she thought; they were only possible to one another, ultimately, in the relationship of man to man. They had been allies, acknowledging one another’s codes of living, and making the same reservation of themselves. The ghost of their old companionship seemed to be lying here beside them, with a face of its own like the face of a dead boy struck down quickly in a smile. He was smiling now, with a boy’s cheerful unpitying scorn, at the woman holding the man who looked out beyond her, the silly fool in love, for whom nothing would be enough.

Go ahead, said the ghost, smiling at her. Hang round his neck, the way you did last night in the river. He’ll take it, for a bit. He won’t expect the same guts from you that he did from me.

He won’t let you drown him. He’s got horse-sense; it’s one of the things I always like him for. It won’t be a lot of fun for him, handing you off; you’ll leave a bruise on him that will last longer than the one he’s put on your face now. But what do you care? Women are all the same.

“You’re awake,” said Joe’s soft voice against her ear. He tilted up her face and kissed her. “Come over on my other side, darling, my arm’s gone to sleep. How long have you been foxing there?”

“Only a second.”

She smiled at him; but something in her face made him look from her to the growing light in the window, and say quickly, “It’s early yet.”

She turned into his arms, and felt him relax; she had broken the circle of his thoughts, and, loosing himself from them in relief, he was becoming sleepy again. It was still no more than twilight. But presently a brightening greyness forced itself under her eyelids.

“I must go soon,” she said.

“Not yet.” He roused himself a little to add, “We’ve been out so often before breakfast, no one will think anything of it. They might wonder if they saw you now.”

“I’d like to be back before Helen’s awake. She’ll begin to think something’s happened to me.”

“Hasn’t it? It has to me.”

She laid her cheek against his. It would begin or end from now; and in this moment it seemed to have begun before her own life, and that she could as easily destroy the morning.

“Leo.”

“Yes?”

“You know, don’t you, this can’t end here.”

“My dear,” she said, “it’s to-morrow now. It has ended.”

“We said that. But not now.”

“Now more than ever. You know that’s true.”

“It would tear up our lives,” he said slowly. “I’ve thought of all that. But it might be worth it.”

“It might be. But it never is.”

As she brought out the words she was herself incredulous of their bleakness. Was this all she could say to him, for everything? He was silent now, and she had time to remember. He had looked after her, as he had promised, with a generosity so self-concealing that only instinct had made her aware of it, till she had been able to release both of them from the separate consideration of You and I. She had not known that there would be a moment when her fear would overtake her again, but he had known; or that she would want the comfort of speech, but he had given it. Now for all this she could not offer as much as a gesture, a kiss or a tightened arm; he was too quick to understand.

“I suppose,” he said presently, “I knew this. I’ve never known you say a thing and not stick to it.”

“Or you,” she said.

“I won’t go back on it, if it’s what you want.”

She said, smiling, “It was a damned good bonfire, wasn’t it? In spite of so much water.”

“What do you want, Leo? Do you think you can get back into your sweater and corduroys and disappear as if they were the cloak of darkness?” He leaned on his elbow, looking at her. “There’s nothing you’ll be able to hide in them now from me.” She felt her body clean and beautiful, as the sun makes it.

“There’s nothing I’ll want to hide from you.” she said.

“Leo. Do you mean—”

“So we’d better just not meet at all. There’s a lot of room on the river.”

He said nothing. It seemed to her that she had been speaking for a part of his own mind. Over her head, on the joists of the ceiling, there were racks fixed to hold rods and tackle; she remembered the day they had put them up together.

He turned to her out of this thoughts, with sudden fresh insistence.

“Leo. Darling, look here. I can work any place where there’s a door that shuts, and so can you. I’d been thinking anyway that when this book was done I’d take a trip to Arizona. We’ll go now. We’d be in time to see a bit of the fall round-up. Wouldn’t you like to know how you look in a Stetson, Tex?”

He pulled round her face, smiling at her. She turned it away, out of sight. When she could bear to speak again, she opened her mouth to say gently, “Don’t be fantastic, my dear, these are your people, how could you take a woman there?” But she was still with the words unspoken, realizing what it was that, as yet half-unconsciously perhaps, he had implied.

“We’d have to go on a cargo-boat,” he said. “At the moment I don’t think I could run to a liner. It takes longer, but it’s more fun.”

She looked up at the roof, counting, carefully, the brass hooks in one of the joists. In the end, she found she could bring it out quite easily. “Thank you, Joe dear. But I don’t suppose I’d ever write another line if I saw the real thing. Imagine how safe and modern it must all be now.”

His voice altered. “I don’t know how much you know about me,” he said slowly. “I’ve taken you for granted so long, it seems incredible when I think of it. But, on my side, nobody’s going to be really hurt by this. I’m as sure of that as anyone reasonably can be. I don’t suppose you want to know anything more.”

“No,” she said. “Thank you for telling me.” She paused for a moment, and went on, “On my side, there’s Helen. I don’t suppose you want to know any more about that, either.”

“I don’t think I need to,” he said quietly. “I’m very fond of her. But Helen will never be without resources.”

With sudden recollection, she said, “Elsie would. Entirely without. … You see, my dear, it’s everything. ‘Too like the lightning. …’ Look, the sun’s beginning to rise.”

They turned their eyes, together, to the first bright slant of green along the willows. Somewhere among them a bird began to sing, on a low clear note, agonizingly joyful.

He lifted himself to look at her. Her life seemed for a moment to stop still; for she had seen in his eyes, at last, a question in answer to which she knew she could not lie. But there was too little vanity in him: he did not ask it.

“Shut your eyes.”

She closed them, and he covered them with his hand.

“You see,” he said, “It isn’t morning.”

There was already in their kisses the salt taste of farewell.

She turned more closely into his arms. He had been awake, she remembered, longer than she. She could, perhaps, make it a little easier for him to leave her.

Smiling and apart, the dead boy’s ghost looked upward, approving the neat varnished rack across the joists, and a workmanlike mend in the roof.

A
BAR OF SUNLIGHT FELL
across Helen’s eyes. Even before she opened them, she knew that it must be late. All was well; she had not to leave for town before noon, and her wrist-watch, when sleepily she reached for it, showed ten-fifteen. Yet all was not well, for some reason she could not at once remember. It must be the oddness of Leo’s having overslept too; she woke by habit, about eight, at whatever time she had gone to bed. Reflecting no further, Helen turned with a hand outstretched to rouse her, and found herself alone.

Her memory cleared. For a moment her mind made the heavy protest of the sleeper awakened to trouble before the brain or the body are ready. She repeated to herself last night’s reassurances. But, before she had got to the end of them, she had thrown back the covers, caught up her dressing-gown as she went, and run barefoot down the ladder. There was no sound anywhere. The dinghy and canoe were in their places; the galley was as it had been left the night before. If Leo had gone out this morning, it was without a meal, without having waked either of the others or laid the table; and it was after ten.

This time it had been so light, so trivial, so—Helen accepted the word that till now she had avoided—so calculated; foolproof, safety-first. Well, then; perhaps it had justified itself. What if it were the first time Leo had stayed away all night without warning? Helen implored herself not to be an old maid; but without effect. With reluctance, even with shame, she knew that she was afraid.

She turned from the galley into the living-room, and stood still. So great was her relief that she felt, as people do at such moments, a little cross at the waste of mental strain. Leo was there, with the old rug they kept for sun-bathing thrown over her, lying on the couch asleep. It seemed immediately obvious that, late as she must have come in, she should have done this, and that she should have closed the curtains to shut out the early sun which would, by then, almost have risen. Helen went cheerfully across to fling doors and curtains open. Neither the noise nor the light made Leo stir.

“After ten,” Helen began to say. But at that moment, coming near, she saw the face on the cushions by daylight. She was silent, before the dead blank abandonment of weariness, the dark transparent eyelids, the outlines of the face dulled as if by deep anaesthesia. For the first time she saw that Leo was fully dressed. From under the edge of the rug a fold of her red skirt hung, crumpled like a rag. A smell of river-damp came from her tumbled hair. Helen leaned nearer, looking at what had seemed at first to be a shadow on the edge of her jaw. The light, falling full on it, showed a dull, darkening bruise.

Helen’s first and characteristic reaction was to go out into the galley and make tea. The electric kettle made it a quick business, nearly as swift as Helen’s accompanying thoughts.