The Lost Life (17 page)

Daniel, like some indolent child of the aristocracy, has just, in the manner of dismissing the staff, ordered the ‘maid’ back to work. But Catherine has no sooner burst into laughter than she opens the door and the laughter stops. She thinks she must have imagined it. That her guilt has conjured up Miss Hale. But she’s not a vision, a product of the imagination, guilty or otherwise. It’s her, all right. And she’s just sitting there, on the other side of the stairwell, under her wide bedroom window, on the … what do you call it?…chaise longue, directly in
front of her, no more than ten or twelve feet away, as surprised at the sudden appearance of Catherine as Catherine is surprised at the sudden materialising of Miss Hale.

One look in her eyes and Catherine (who has mercifully remembered to throw on her loose everyday working dress) is convinced she has made a dreadful mistake. That she has completely misunderstood everything. That Miss Hale informed her of certain facts about the house being vacant the day before purely in the line of duty, things that she, as casual domestic staff in the service of Miss Hale, ought to know, and that was that. But she, Catherine, hadn’t left it at that, had she? Catherine had concluded from all this exactly what she wanted to conclude, and, in the process, had got things dreadfully wrong. One look at Miss Hale’s eyes, and she is convinced of this. These are Miss Hale’s rooms, after all. But she has had the presumption to treat them as her own. Like those servants in romping stories that get up to all sorts of high-jinks when the master’s away, but who are inevitably found out, and in the most flagrantly compromised manner. How could she? How could she get it so wrong? These are Miss Hale’s rooms and she has
soiled them, as surely as she has soiled the sheets. What on earth had she been thinking?

Catherine stands stock still in the doorway. Daniel, thank goodness out of view, lying naked on the tiny single bed and having heard the guillotine come down on Catherine’s laughter, has immediately concluded that the lady is back. Absurdly, but reflexively, he pulls a sheet over him (which Catherine catches from the corner of her eye, and which almost, against her will, causes her to burst into yet more laughter), and turns his face, frozen in apprehension, to the doorway and to Catherine. They are two children caught out while up to no good — or caught out in the execution of some prank they have mutually agreed upon. They are suddenly aware of their nakedness. Expelled from the brief paradise of having a room of their own. Catherine, motionless in the doorway, everything, arms, legs, hands, perfectly still (as if she were modelling the scene), staring directly back at Miss Hale.

It is, Catherine imagines, like one of those childish games when two people stare at each other and the first to blink loses. And she is convinced it will be her because she is so clearly in the wrong for having taken advantage of Miss Hale’s rooms in the
most unforgivable way, for having broken her trust so completely. And she is about to drop her chin to her chest and find some words to say, although she is not sure she can speak at all at the moment. But, unbelievably, it is Miss Hale who breaks first. Miss Hale who blinks, whose gaze shifts down to the floor. An odd gesture of what? Of dismissal, that she can’t bear to look upon her any more? That the very sight of Catherine is distasteful? It might be, but something in the way her body slumps tells Catherine that it is not distaste or dismissal. Something in the lady’s slumped posture tells her otherwise. And she doesn’t need to think too long on what this lowering of the eyes means. For, Catherine is thinking, haven’t we all done precisely this? Haven’t we all lowered our eyes in admission … of what? Of guilt? Yes, that’s it. Haven’t we all done this? Yes, yes. Only Catherine had never thought she’d see the eyes of Miss Hale lowered in such a manner. But this is precisely what has just occurred, and in Miss Hale’s gesture Catherine reads apology. And in reading apology she also reads that permission was always granted, and that she hadn’t got things dreadfully wrong. That she hadn’t soiled Miss Hale’s rooms as surely as she had soiled the sheets. That Miss Hale is not the sort who
just comes out and says things, and that Catherine had understood her instructions perfectly.

An odd sense of power accompanies the realisation. And, once more, the word ‘virgin’ occurs to Catherine as she contemplates the slumped figure of Miss Hale in front of her. Miss Hale, who has loomed larger than life through her summer, but who now has never looked so small. Again, the word ‘virgin’ comes to her. And this is where her sudden sense of power comes from, for Catherine holds in her hands the testimony (a rolled-up bed sheet with a visible small red smudge) that she, Catherine, has had the experience — whether it brought pleasure or was simply something to be endured in the end, for the pleasure and the pain are not the point — she, Catherine, has had the experience that has haunted Miss Hale all these years. Something Miss Hale has sought out, in one way or another, all these years. Not just the act, but the completion of a moment left suspended. And for a while it must have seemed that ordinary love (and it was perhaps the ordinariness that would have been bestowed upon her, not the act itself, that mattered) might have come Miss Hale’s way. But it wasn’t to be. No, her friend, instead, had bestowed upon her a ‘different’ kind of love.

As she is staring at Miss Hale, who has not yet looked up, an entirely new thought occurs to Catherine. And she is almost as stunned by the thought as she was by the sudden appearance of Miss Hale. That whole sense of entering a story, if only vague or occasionally nagging, but which has, nonetheless, persisted all summer, rises in her. And while standing there, with Daniel’s expectant face just visible from the corner of her eye, Catherine silently addresses Miss Hale, with the clear insight and the concentrated wisdom of her eighteen-and-a-half-year-old mind. Is this it, she is silently asking? Is this the life you never had, the one you might have had all those years ago? Oh, you might not even have been aware of it but is this what you wanted, and is
this
what we had to give each other all along: a ‘felt experience’?

And now it’s not Catherine who feels as though she has intruded upon Miss Hale. For, in this moment in which wild thoughts and feelings tumble over one another, and which she knows will stay with her forever in relentlessly detailed clarity, she is asking herself just how long Miss Hale has been there? And how much of that private world of Catherine and Daniel’s has been heard, listened in on, and, thereby, made public? For,
just one pair of ears, one listener, one eavesdropper (however intentional or unintentional) is enough to turn a private moment into a public one. Or, even a performance. So, far from being the one who has intruded, Catherine is now feeling intruded upon. And, however consciously or unconsciously determined, there is the nagging thought in Catherine’s mind that she has delivered, on cue, the right scene at just the right moment.

All of this, from laughing at Daniel’s feigned aristocratic indolence, to locking eyes with Miss Hale and witnessing the lowering of her gaze, has taken a matter of seconds — ten, possibly fifteen. She is not sure, for it is one of those moments in which you are not aware of minutes and seconds, not the usual moments that fill your days. They’re special ones that say to you you’re going to remember this — in every minute detail. But as she snaps out of the spell, and while Miss Hale’s head is still bowed, Catherine becomes conscious of the bundle she bears, with the small red smudge visible at the top, and wonders what to do with it. And it is only then that she remembers where she was going before she came face to face with Miss Hale when she opened the door. And, as any cleaning maid would, she does
what Daniel in all his feigned indolence ordered her to do. She returns to work, assuming the manner of the domestic staff she is, and walks straight down the stairs, leaving behind the bowed figure of Miss Hale without speaking, taking the soiled sheet to the laundry to be cleaned. And, as she strides away, out into the open sunshine of the common garden at the back where the laundry is, she knows, beyond doubt, that Miss Hale will be gone by the time she returns. And that then she and Daniel can leave their room, leave the house (unoccupied as promised) and merge back into the street life of the postcard town, which will be Daniel’s for only a few days more and which Catherine cannot, now, wait to be shot of.

Control. Power. And yes, a certain satisfaction accompanies the whole action. But, as she enters the back garden, there is something else. A quickening of the heart. A fluttering of the nerves. A sense of having, intuitively, stepped into a role and triumphed. And, in the process, of having
lived
with an intensity that makes her hunger for more and leaves her tingling all over.

A week later, Catherine watches the bus containing Daniel lumbering up the high street of the town. She is, she knows, watching him leave. And he is waving to her through the rear window of the bus, his face sad in a way that she can’t quite define. She is not reflective at this moment; she is barely even thinking. She is only conscious of something being wrenched from her. A painful wrenching. Of course, she’s had all this time to prepare herself. But not only is Daniel being wrenched from her, so is the ‘us’, the ‘we’, the ‘them’ that had spent the summer together. When did she start talking like that? When did she start making plans in the plural? She has no idea, for it happened without her noticing. But one day this summer she started thinking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’, and it is only now that she realises how much it had meant — to be two. And the sadness hasn’t even hit her yet. It’s too soon for sadness. For the moment there is only this wrenching feeling. As well as that odd, puzzling sensation that it can’t be real, it can’t be true. She’s not
really
standing in the street waving goodbye to a bus taking Daniel from her. Possibly forever. Other people say goodbye, other people leave each other, not Catherine and Daniel. Then she reminds herself that he will come back and that they will be writing to
each other all the time he is away. It is not goodbye, but
au revoir
. And with that little French thought, a flicker of a smile lights her eyes. All the same, she’s glad she’s back at school. Glad the tasks of her final year will swamp her mind, numb her feelings and fill her days with work. Perhaps, if she’s lucky, the year will be over before she knows it.

The bus recedes, the same bus that they have so often taken to the cinema at the towns nearby, or just for the sake of an afternoon trip. But this, she tells herself, as his face becomes smaller and smaller, is no afternoon trip. And, in the years to come, she will realise that beneath the pain of losing Daniel, the Catherine who is standing back and watching at this moment knew perfectly well all along that something final was taking place. And that, just then, what she saw in Daniel’s eyes as he stared back at her through the rear window of the bus was the admission that this was goodbye, not
au revoir
. And the sadness of the moment is this: that for all his talk he is, in fact, seeing his Catherine for the last time through the eyes of someone in love. But they don’t know this yet. And though they will meet again, they will never look upon each other with love in their eyes as they have this summer.

And no matter how much he swears he’s coming back for her, he won’t. And as much as he swears that he will miss her, there will come a day when he won’t. And she won’t. And they will both know that what they have just shared is what books, and the world for that matter, call first love. And just as books and plays very sensibly leave the story of first love at the climactic moment, so will Catherine and Daniel.

Then the bus is gone, around the corner at the top of the high street, and with it the last of Daniel. And as she turns to go, the sensation comes back again, that wrenching feeling.

And Miss Hale? Catherine has glimpsed her in the street once since the week before, for being back at school she no longer has time for cleaning. The distance was sufficient for them both to ignore each other. She went on her way (to the baker, the butcher, she can’t remember) as though she had never made the acquaintance of the refined Boston lady, or her special friend, and had never received the privilege of being counted as one of Miss Hale’s girls. And Miss Hale went her way as if Catherine could have been just anybody — one of the local girls who got up to all sorts of things in summer fields at nights.