It’s a Battlefield (19 page)

‘But I ought to wait – another five minutes.'

‘Listen. Where shall we go, south, east, west, north?' He moved restlessly on the edge of the pavement; people stared at him; they pushed him on one side as they scrambled for their buses. He was longing to be out of London, somewhere quiet, away from the traffic, where he could tell her everything he had planned.

‘You're crazy, Jules.'

‘We'll go north. We shall get out of London so quickly then. Camden Town, Golders Green, Hendon, and there you are. No distance then to Berkhamsted, to Ashridge Park, Ivinghoe.' He had gone there two years ago in a side-car for a motor-cycle trial; it had been winter: red berries in the hedges and a thin rime sparkling on the downs; in the Park the grass had crackled under foot.

‘But, Jules, I must be back quite early. Work at eight tomorrow.' He nearly told her then: you'll never go to work again, you're marrying me. I've got the room, I've ordered the breakfast, I've all but bought the licence. Something restrained him: a little inherent caution native to France, to Petit Tourville – ‘Government securities – waste none of it in games of chance . . . the pleasures of the senses'. He thought that he was waiting till night; there were things expressed better in the dark, so that, ‘You're crazy, Jules,' might sound like a caress, when ‘I've such a lech for you' was passion and poetry.

It was not a large share of caution he had inherited; his driving was reckless. He could not keep his eyes on the road with Kay beside him. I shall never be alone again, he thought over and over again. In Camden Town he saw Conder walking rapidly down the pavement towards the Carreras Factory with his head bent and his hat in his hand; Jules shouted and waved his hand, but Conder did not see him, people were stepping out of his way, he seemed to see no one. They stopped for a drink at ‘Jack Straw's Castle'. The dogs were yapping round the toy boats on Whitestone Pond, and an old man kept on saying that he could see St Paul's and nobody listened to him.

‘But where are we going, Jules?'

‘You'll see.'

Down into Golders Green and out to Hendon, the miles drummed out at seventy to the hour on the great curved road, down to the road house by Huntonbridge. They had lunch there, and again he nearly told her everything. But the waiter brought the cheese and the waiter brought the coffee and somehow there was no time to tell her that they were going to be married and live in Dean Street and have a wedding breakfast in the café's private room.

After lunch she was sleepy and curled up beside him, and he drove with one arm round her. It occurred to him, driving very slowly now, watching the hedges and the cows (near Boxmoor a barge drawn to the bank and the old horse feeding), that he had never before had quite this sense of happiness. He thought of his father with tenderness, who had given him Kay sleeping at his side and this autumnal drive with the old year dying and the old horse nodding and the old leaves rotting on the ground. In a field a blue smoke rose from a pyre of weeds which had been lit the evening before and burned gently still in the dry clear air. Cars continually outpaced them; but the joy of speed had left him; he ambled down the road and let high-powered screaming purpose vanish round the corner; he had no purpose beyond the preservation of this peace, beyond carrying peace gently like a precious vase into the evening. He had not been out of London since his drive to Ivinghoe two years ago, tossed in a side-car, silence shattered by the explosions of the exhaust.

In Berkhamsted purpose plunged down the High Street, roared past for Tring and dinner, Jules turned by the church, over the canal and under the railway bridge, along the moat and the fractured walls of the castle. As they climbed above the town, evening swept the common, the gorse, the clay, wounded by old trenches, the abandoned butts, and cast the hillside ferns in shadow. Kay slept and moved and slept again and came awake. She said: ‘It's cold.'

Jules was silent, driving with one hand. A woman moaned and drank and moaned; the earth was dry and a coffin was lowered and the Fire Brigade presented arms. Out of these two came happiness, came this particular evening sun flaming across the radiator, came this sense that never again would he be alone.

She was deliciously out of place in the Park, a little bored, a little puzzled, making up under a tree. It was almost too dark to see herself. She peered into her mirror and banged the compact shut. ‘Listen, Jules, you must be sensible.'

He began to laugh at her; the grass had gone grey and a bird persistently called. ‘Why talk about being sensible? You don't want to be sensible.'

‘That's true,' she said thoughtfully. She looked at him with more interest than she often showed to a man. The men she usually companioned had money and did not work, or the work they did was something she could not understand because it was so highly paid, but Jules was like her in this, he had a boss, he went to work early and his hours were long. Mr Surrogate had said: ‘Don't let's be sensible,' but he had not meant the same as Jules. He had meant, ‘Sleep with me now and don't worry me later,' he drew her out of her own security while he remained himself quite safe in his warm lit flat. He hadn't, above all she resented that even while she lay with him, he hadn't to go to work in the morning. But Jules had. He was no more independent than she.

‘All right,' she said, ‘we won't be sensible.'

He clapped his hands and said: ‘We won't go back tonight,' as if the idea had suddenly struck him. He did not let her know that, while she was washing in the cottage where they had tea, he had taken a room for the night. He was delighted that she did not take offence; only protested that she must be at work ‘so early'. ‘I'll drive you there,' he said. Again he might have told her: you're marrying me, you're not going back to work, but the black-coated wisdom of the elderly tradesman restrained him.

‘Will you love me?' They pressed against each other and protested and laughed and told indecent stories and were happy. The leaves crackled on the ground and a rabbit's tail flashed like a match under a bank of ferns and disappeared. When they held their breath it seemed to them both for a moment that they had never heard so deep a silence; they thought of London at night and how the heavy lorries shook the walls; ‘So quiet,' she said, but already she was thinking: This is serious. I wanted him to do this to me after the meeting. I've never wanted a boy like this before. My God, I'm crazy. I've got to be careful or there'll be an accident.

‘Not really quiet,' he said, taking his arm away from her, hearing the dogs bark in the village, the rustle among the leaves, the gentle fall of earth as an animal passed, the turmoil of insects. But one called this quiet, as one called darkness black; it was the nearest approach to silence. Even if the insects and the dogs were still, there was always the beating of one's own heart. He quite forgot her while he thought: even when I've been most alone, I've always had other things to listen to than my heart; I've never noticed it beating.

She slid lower against the tree trunk and said: ‘How hot it is.' It was less than two hours since she had said: ‘How cold,' but kneeling now she was in the shelter of the branches, and the dry crinkled leaves held warmth close to the ground like earth-browned hands sheltering a flame. She sucked the back of her hand which a stem had scratched and her lipstick left traces on the skin; she watched Jules with a hunger she had never allowed herself to feel before. He was lost again, peering over the bracken between the beeches, and she did not speak a word to help him find himself. She was willing that he should be lost a long time with his eyes a little dilated and his breathing uneven and the hand which touched hers as insensient as a stranger's in a crowded Tube. She could feel herself for a few minutes abandoned with him, Milly's demands on her forgotten.

But Jules' thoughts when they returned to her were practical. He suddenly laughed and put his hands on her shoulders and forced her lower in the bracken. The stems scratched through her stockings, and as she resisted him, she could feel the earth in her nails. ‘Don't be a fool, Jules.' He was on his knees too, forcing her back and laughing at the same time. He was not strong, but he was quick and resilient. He bit the lobe of her ear and pushed at her with his head between her breasts. She remembered the lipstick in her hand and smeared it across his face from nose to chin; she began to laugh too; she could smell the bracken and the earth mould and the Coty Naturelle and a spray of gorse in bitter flower behind her. ‘Stop,' she said, ‘wait a bit. Let's go indoors.'

He loosed her and sat back on his heels. ‘That's a promise.'

‘Why can't you wait till night?'

He grinned and made a little vulgar gesture with his thumb. ‘Ready for more tonight.' He began to whistle; he tried to do a handspring, but put his hand on a thistle and swore. He was happy, he was conceited, he was cocksure. He had his girl. He said: ‘Did you see Conder? Thank God, I'll never be like him. I wouldn't be alone like that for anything. I want company – always. I'd be afraid, alone like that. I'd get fancies.' He flashed at her with comic hopefulness. ‘You aren't a Catholic by any chance?' Easier, then, the formality of marriage, more final the barrier against loneliness, an impregnable dyke till death; otherwise the sea corroded.

‘No,' she said, ‘why?' She stretched her legs regretfully, thinking: why didn't I play with him? It would be fresh like this in the open. What are a few spiders when you're hungry? ‘Why? Do you want me to marry you?'

He shied quickly away, got to his feet. ‘I was just wondering, that's all.' Games of chance, the pleasures of the senses. . . . But it was absurd. He wanted her, not only at this moment but for ever, and why should a black-coated ghost, a solicitor, the distant voices of Petit Tourville restrain him? Government securities. Four pounds a year in interest. ‘Listen,' he said.

‘I'm not sure I wouldn't marry you,' Kay said. ‘I'm fed up with gentlemen. They keep you waiting half an hour and then they don't turn up. He was fond enough of me last night, I can tell you.' Her disappointed senses found a little relief in the thought of the pink counterpane, the beautiful dead woman envying her pleasure from the wall. Jules listened with admiration. She was a catch, surely even that disappointing libertine, his father, must admit that she was a catch. She was young and pretty and practised; he could not imagine a wife who could more ably stir his senses. He felt no bitterness that he was not the first man she had known; one did not expect as much when wages were so low, employment so precarious, everything which made life worth living, the cinema, the dance hall, powder and scent and rouge and stockings, so dear.

He egged her on; he liked hearing her speak of marriage without realizing how close it was to them, how attainable. ‘You wouldn't want to marry,' he laughed, and kicked an ant-heap and felt a curious freedom in the grey air. A leaf span down the wind and touched his cheek. He was in at the death of something old and he was happy.

‘I might try it,' Kay said.

‘You've got too many friends.'

‘I wouldn't lose them. My husband would have to toe the line and shake hands. He'd get what he wanted at night.' It was the answer he had hoped for; he had no wish for any intimate loneliness in love; he wanted uproar, new faces, parties at Southend. ‘Meet Bill. This is Ern. Fancy you not knowing –' Marriage was the switchback, the giant racer, the lobster teas, the guarantee that one would never be alone. He would even have, welcomed her parents if she had had any; but they were both dead. He would never be one to say: ‘Can't we be alone together?'; he had even bought Conder's company with the foreign coins he picked up on the café floor.

‘You'd never be satisfied with one man.'

‘Depends on the man.'

Loneliness was only too easily attained; it was in the air one breathed; open any door, it opened on to loneliness in the passage; close the door at night, one shut loneliness in. The toothbrush, the chair, the ewer and the bed were dents in loneliness. One had only to stop, to stare, to listen, and one was lost. Then sorrow gripped him for all the useless suffering he could do nothing to ease, he was torn by humility, he was desperate for a place in the world, a task, a duty. But give him voices, company, and he was happy, he was cocksure, he was vulgar, he showed off.

‘You see what I can do.'

I've got to be careful, she told herself over and over again. This is when a girl gets a baby; when she's got a lech like this; when she doesn't take precautions; when she doesn't want to take precautions; when she's in love.

They were at the park gates. There was no moon. The dark was round them, but the lights of the car made a small friendly glow in the road. You could almost believe it was a fire to warm your hands at. ‘Come on,' Jules said, and took her hand and ran towards the car. ‘I'm in a hurry,' he said, thrusting her into her seat, climbing into his own without opening the door, pushing at the starter. Warmth passed between them as he pressed down his foot and she tried to quiet her own excitement by telling herself that this was only the echo of last night; of three months' abstinence. But there was this difference. Desire before had always been a form of coquetry; one was careful even if one wasn't good; she had never before been bitter because she must be careful, had never longed to be taken as she was, anywhere, anyhow, in the car, in the bracken, and damn the consequences. If we were married, she thought, if we had money, if we were married.

He had ambled all the way from Boxmoor, but now he drove wildly the dark road back to Ivinghoe. The trees shot up against the light and disappeared; a single cottage at a right-angled turn; a woman flat as cardboard at a gate. When the car came out on to the ridge of down, the wind snapped at them, got into their clothes, worried them like a dog. They left it behind, driving down behind the hump of the beacon. He said: ‘This bus can move,' put his arm round her, accelerated. Kay laughed and pressed herself close to him and told him to go faster, faster, faster. The little needle waggled and climbed. ‘I'm in a hurry.' You could see nothing but the splash of chalky road in front; you were alone in a small vibrating cage, with a blue light burning above the dial; you had never been in this car before today. Like a horse that feels the weakness of its rider's thighs, it had the mastery; it bucketed towards the centre of the road. ‘Go on. Go faster.' They were both a little frightened; he knew the car was not completely under his control; she knew that he was scared. So she said: ‘Go faster, faster,' daring herself and him. The cross-road at the bottom of the hill rushed up to them; she saw a light shooting along the hedgetops on their left and: ‘Look out, a car,' and heard him fumbling at the brake. Two wheels lifted, she closed her eyes, and as the car shot diagonally across the road, prayed: ‘My face, don't let it be my face.'