The Lost Life (16 page)

‘Yes.’

‘And the whole place to yourself.’

There is a trace of a smile in Miss Hale’s eyes, and Catherine returns the look, likewise, with the faintest smile. And in this way an understanding passes between them, and is shared.

It is then that Miss Hale picks up the letter, scrunches it up, and throws the paper ball into the wastepaper basket. Catherine watches it land. A barely discernible thud. As though it had never existed. Miss Hale now wipes her hands, consigning the whole business to the oblivion of the next day’s rubbish collection. Catherine finds herself dwelling
on the whole business of wastepaper baskets and what ends up in them. Mrs Eliot’s letter. Miss Hale’s. Both into bins. Both letters, as far as anybody outside the triangle of Miss Hale, Mrs Eliot and Catherine is concerned, never existed. Were never written. The whole episode they have just enacted, the whole nerve-racking mission, never happened.

At the door, Miss Hale thanks Catherine for having undertaken the trip to London. Without saying as much, she implies it is not Catherine’s fault that it was all to no avail and that the shadow of that woman will always be hanging over her and her special friend and never let them be. And, once again, she tells Catherine that she has her sincere thanks. But, more than that, Catherine also has her gratitude.

With that, Catherine leaves and steps out into the high street. When she looks back, the door is closed. Miss Hale has retreated, back into the house. Possibly to dwell on those four emphatic nevers, or to remove the wastepaper bin from the room to a place where the letter can be collected and taken from the house altogether, as though, indeed, it never existed.

Outside, the mid-morning street is busy with a mixture of vehicles — old world and new. As she walks back home, Catherine is pondering the curiosity of Miss Hale. For she is a curiosity. Restrained, proper, even prim, but with a whole other life inside her just waiting to burst out, like the gift of French stockings. And so when Miss Hale tells her, with that knowing look, that the house will be vacant the next day, it is both curious and not so curious. For all that life has to burst from her somehow, doesn’t it? All those lost moments that were there for the grasping at the time, but which never were because of an assumption that time goes on and on, cry out to be lived somehow. Don’t they?

When Daniel leaves, he may do so for good, or he may return as he swears he will. He may, indeed. But Catherine knows, and she bravely tells herself, that they are young, with whole lives to be lived that may or may not include each other. They may never have a life together at all, but they will (and Catherine’s mind is dwelling on the image of Miss Hale at the window, forever at the window, her voice almost broken) have their moment. They will have this much. And in the bustle of the street Catherine is aware of moments, greetings and cheerios, the
opening and closing of a shop door, a farming cart and the clip-clop of a horse mingling with the engine sounds of a passing motor car. Moments gathered together, strands of the day’s music tapering into the long, drawn-out hum of the car as it leaves the town. They may not have a life together but they will have the days. And that, she tells herself, is how a life is lived, through moments and through days.

The sun glints on the rooftops along the street. The windows sparkle. Her feet move swiftly. Daniel will, at this minute, be in his father’s shop, and she moves towards it with urgency in her step, for she has not spoken to him since returning from London and there is much to tell.

Was it an
accident that she came home early, or did she do so on purpose? Or did she do it, as the phrase would have it, ‘accidentally on purpose’? Whatever, she is back. And she is early.

The house has been cleaned. Everything spotless. Everything exactly where it ought to be. Everything is in order, in its place. A model of how the universe ought to be. And quiet. The kind of quiet that a house has when nobody is home. And Emily Hale assumes that nobody is.

It is mid-afternoon. The day is still and sunny, with the hint of a chill. She has been to see a country house nearby, but there are only so many gardens and houses that you can admire before your attention starts to wander. And besides, she was alone (apart from the owner who kindly allowed the visit), and these things are best seen with a friend,
preferably a special friend. It is then the flowers glow and the lawns sparkle. But she was alone, and not wearing a watch had lost track of time, and weary of gardens and lawns and old estate houses she excused herself and strolled back along a well-trodden walking track that took her back into town. And she felt quite the native returning in this manner. No, she didn’t need a lift, she’d told the owner, and no, she didn’t need directions home — all of which impressed him. Yes, she felt quite the native. The sheep bleated and the cows looked up from time to time from their munching, and she felt at home. Except she wasn’t. And she knew she wasn’t. Her friend, for whom she’d crossed land and sea and time, was in London, at work. She was in the country, and bored with country houses, with their estates and gardens. Would this be the way of things? She, always the woman who must be tucked away in some quaint country town in a foreign country, waiting on visits from her friend, who must not say a word of her except to those to whom he is close enough to confide in? And even those friends close enough to confide in, she was sure, no matter how much their loyalties would always be with her friend, would always see her as his stuffy Boston lady. Stuffy, over-refined.
Like one of those women from Mr James whose observations always bear the imprint of a provincial intelligence. One look at the long, bony nose and beady eyes of Mrs Woolf and she was convinced that this was exactly what she thought of her. The whole bunch of them for that matter. She, Miss Hale, forever judged and forever found wanting; refined, polite and dull, only ever tolerated — perhaps indulged, at best — because she was Tom’s special friend, and, therefore,
must
be tolerated. It was no way to live, and who were they to judge, anyway? And how could anybody put up with those eyes and those silences that would inevitably follow anything she said in conversation, unless, of course, her friend came to her rescue. Which would set everybody off, and then they’d all be talking. The conversation would continue. She would be forgotten. She, the stuffy Boston lady, forever tucked away in some quaint little town … It was only at this point that she’d realised that she was clutching a handful of crisp autumn leaves and a brown stem that she must have snatched from a bush along the way. She’d compressed them in her fist to such a degree that the leaves were crushed and the stem had dug into her palm (or perhaps this had
happened when she snatched the leaves from the bush), leaving a small cut with a red smudge around it. Only then did she feel the sting. She’d stopped, and looking down at her palm and the blood asked herself when this ridiculous business had started.
Is
this, indeed, the way it would always be? As much as she might have commended herself on being quite the native when she left the estate she’d just visited, walking back to town was another matter. Thoughts about the way things would be, about the pattern that was emerging, had made her ratty (not a word she often used) and restless — and, yes,
far
from home.

Besides, as much as she tried to ignore them, thoughts of Catherine surfaced at odd moments during the day. Catherine and this young man of hers. Now back in the house and finding it still and quiet, she assumes, and is relieved to assume, that it has simply been cleaned, tidied and left. She assumes that the house has been arranged and left undisturbed for much of the day. Her aunt and uncle are, presumably, still away visiting friends, and although she contemplates calling out just to see if they might be in, she sees no need. After the ratty and irritable finish to the day, she needs peace and rest.

When she goes upstairs and takes the connecting door through to her cottage, she is aware of the soothing quiet of the place and is thankful for it. Distant, occasional birdsongs from the high street outside the window filter through into the ordered tranquil rooms. But nothing much more.

It is only as she is about to drop her cardigan onto the chaise longue under the window in her bedroom that she hears something that doesn’t belong. And at first she doesn’t recognise the sound, only that it doesn’t fit in with the neatness and calmness of the place and that it is an intrusion. But what? Then it returns, louder this time, and she knows right away that this sound is coming from the small bedroom next to hers, just on the other side of the stairs that lead down to the lounge room of the cottage. It is muffled but quite audible, the sound of someone groaning, or gasping, the way one does when experiencing deep pain, or, perhaps, deep pleasure. And instantly, as she quietly sinks onto the chaise longue, she knows who is behind that door, no more than ten or twelve feet from where she is sitting.

And, as much as a voice says don’t listen, as much as a voice says don’t stay, just rise and leave as
quietly as you came, she stays, and the sound draws her in. And the more she listens, the louder it becomes, whether it is because she is listening more intently or because it is louder and because that small second bedroom (which may, at some stage, have been a maid’s room) is
so
close, she doesn’t know. But it grows and grows in volume. Until it fills the air and it is as though some dreadful act of violence is taking place in the next room. Murder. Strangulation. Heaven knows what. Then it comes again, louder still. And, as much as she wants to be gone now, as much as she simply does not wish to hear any more, and as much as she now feels an intruder in her own house, and as much as a voice inside her tells her that such sounds are beneath the lady, she stays, for she is in the sound’s thrall. This thing, this thing that is going on in the next room, has her in its thrall, and as much as the angel of her better nature counsels her to go, the beast of temptation holds sway, and she knows as she sinks further into the long chair that the lady has made her choice. And the sound seems to grow even more, if that is possible. It is a woman, or was once a woman. For this young woman, Catherine, is making old, old sounds, sounds that existed long before houses and
estates and trimmed rose gardens. Long before sweet music, stained-glass windows that glow with a touch of heaven, or even fine, uplifting words that allow us to rise above it all, for it is a sound that goes back beyond words. It is a sound that takes her back to the age of the grunt and the moan. And this is what draws her in — as the elevated
will
, with longing and disgust, look upon the animal they imagine they once were. This is what has her in its thrall, this sound of the thing itself taking place in the next room. This is it. The wordless swamp to which lovers go. But, even as she utters the word ‘swamp’ to herself, the shudder that passes down her spine also carries with it the thrill of a shiver. This is the thing that takes young couples out to the sheep paddocks where only the animals can hear and look upon them. This is the thing that announces itself through the grass stains on the skirts of young women strolling back hand in hand from the paddocks with the young men who led them there or whom they led.

Then, there is a louder gasp, a gasp of pain, surely. For she felt it. She felt it as surely as if she were in that room, the room where, right now, two people are entering that world of shared knowledge
and experience that she has never entered and which she knows she never will. There are, she has told Catherine often enough, different kinds of love, and Miss Hale and her friend have chosen theirs. And she asks herself once more: was it an accident that she came home early or was it on purpose? Or did she do it ‘accidentally on purpose’? And did she seek to brush with this knowledge and experience that is open to any local girl, and which she might readily find in a sheep paddock on any summer evening, but which will never be hers because it must now remain beneath the lady and beneath her friend? And, because of this, did she come back to hear the sound of knowledge being acquired and exchanged? And just as she submits herself to this relentless questioning, telling herself not to be shocked (from the moment she sank into the chaise longue she knew that all shock was mere pretence, for she had come here to be shocked), just as she was telling herself not to be revolted because she had come here to be revolted, and just as she was telling herself not to pronounce any of this beneath the lady (for the lady had come to fall), there is an extended gasping sound, the kind of gasp that is emitted when someone is hit by a pain so sudden it takes their
breath away, and her brain stops. Her brain is numbed, as if having
felt
the experience along with Catherine. And the sound goes on and on, seemingly without end, a sound that is beyond caring who or what hears, a sound that may as well be coming from a sheep paddock as a room. And Emily Hale
is
there. She, too, is emitting it, this sound that doesn’t care who hears because it comes from so long ago — before music, manners and fine words. And when it fades, when the sound subsides, Emily Hale, too, physically feels her body collapse with the dying fall of the sound in the next room, feels her back, stomach, legs and chest sigh into welcome rest. Her head drops, the imagined pain lessens, and she listens.

Her ears strain, but there is nothing. Only silence. A deep, almost lush silence. A restful silence, she imagines. The silence that, well, lovers fall into when they have finished their love-making. The moment of languid ease that paintings of lovers choose to depict, the moment after the brutality of the love-making is over and done with. This is that silence. The silence that poems and novels give you, when you know something momentous has taken place, when two people, two halves have come
together briefly, and rest separately afterwards. No, not separately. Possibly they are holding hands. Perhaps they are still locked in embrace. She can only imagine the scene in the room. And she dwells on the many possibilities, for the quiet calm that hangs in the air is the kind of calm that calls forth contemplation and speculation. And even though she is shaken throughout her whole body, she remains perfectly still, albeit sunk, into the chaise longue, her thoughts floating on the now calm air. She could almost doze off into restful sleep herself. And so she stays in the thrall of this all too welcoming silence much longer than she knows she really ought to. But as much as a distant voice tells her that she has stayed too long, and dwelt much too long in its thrall, she stays on. And on, taking it all into her.

But at some point it also occurs to her that it is an unnerving silence, one which, it strikes her, is even more frightening than the sounds she has just borne witness to. More frightening because the silence — and there is now something unnatural about it — cuts her off, excludes her from the thing taking place in the next room. Until now she had heard the gasps, and felt the rest. Until this silence,
that is, which has cut her off from the thing and rendered whatever is now going on in that room an utterly private experience as apart from a ‘felt’ one. But of course she knows she felt nothing and emitted no sounds, only imagined pain and imagined pleasure. She no more felt any of it than she would a printed kiss. She no more felt any of it than she would the softness and moist warmth of written lips. And somehow, at this moment, that’s not enough. And as she lifts her head and takes in the pervasive silence, which has now returned to the house, she is feeling what she at first takes to be envy. Envy that this young girl, who is the same age that she was when she stood in that long-ago Boston garden, has taken this knowledge into her, and that all she, Emily Hale, will ever know of it is the sound of knowledge being acquired and becoming experience.

But slowly, in the continuing quiet, something different, reassuring, almost comforting, comes to her. For when she tries to imagine herself where this young Catherine now is, and the sweet, smiling face of her special friend where this young Daniel is, she can’t. It would destroy them. She knows this. It is impossible. No, after these last few minutes (or were they more — she has lost all track of time?) she cannot
now imagine herself in that room, and perhaps she has never been able to imagine herself like this. What we become is what we are, and what we were always going to be. And what she was back there in that long-ago Boston garden is what she is now. So when she imagines herself in their place she can’t. Or won’t. They are, presumably, naked. Visible to each, completely naked … no, it is impossible. She cannot conceive of herself naked before her friend, or he suffering the indignity of being naked before her. It would destroy them. It is beneath her, but, more importantly, beneath
him
. No, she could never conceive of herself in that room (and she is relieved that Catherine has chosen the spare room with its single, maid’s bed and not hers, otherwise she could never sleep in her own bed again) where love of a certain brute kind has just been exchanged. She could never conceive of it, and nor could her friend. And if the accident of returning early has taught her anything, it has taught her this.

But while she is absorbing all of this, she is also aware that this silence, this sleep into which the house has fallen, presents another problem. The problem of leaving without being heard. For her footsteps, the opening and closing of the door that
leads back into the house, will surely be amplified in the silence. But, at the same time, she knows she must leave, and that she must not forget her cardigan, for it will show Catherine that she has been here and heard everything. But, as she is reaching for it, as she is about to make her exit, the door of the next room (which is directly opposite the chaise longue and of which she has a clear view because
her
door is open) bursts open with an eruption of laughter.