Wild Geese Overhead (15 page)

The wind blew and parted the feathers below its neck. It turned the other way, about to fly off, and the wind parted the body feathers as if they were fur. Quite suddenly, it sang; and the notes were not ardent, they were reflective, thoughtful, except that no thought or reflection touched them. They tumbled down, a little sideways, round perfect bubbles of sound, that burst on the heart not with sadness but with wonder.

A gladness came flooding Will's mind more softly than a summer air. Before his staring eyes, the invisible sheath slowly parted and his mind began to rise up.

A feeling of complete freedom, in a gladness that was calm, an ecstasy that was still as light. His body was in such perfect harmony that it was forgotten. Strangely enough this feeling was intimate, as if it were recaptured. It was not a new experience: it was an entering into an old. This was what he had lost; this was what he had been searching for. And it was not grandiose or mystical or marvellous, but friendly and familiar and utterly utterly certain.

A man living all his life in pain will get used to it, but should the pain suddenly cease.…

The normal conception of time or duration perhaps hardly applies here when it comes to asking how long the experience lasted. But when Will felt its perfect moment passing, his whole body stiffened slightly, then subsided in a long deep sigh.

Reverie, in which he forgot to breathe, held him for a little longer, then he got up and looked slowly about him. His eyes were full of a quiet love. The buds, about to burst, were like notes of music about to be struck. The bird had gone. His mouth opened slightly and he appeared to listen for something. The love was a gladness that brimmed in a tender humour.

He moved away, then turned round, as if taking farewell of that little bay that for ever now would be part of his mind.

There was no thought in his mind; only a lingering brightness; as sun and wind linger in the cheeks when one has come inside.

He suddenly remembered himself as a small boy looking through a stereoscope at a photograph of a certain scene (a garden with two figures and background of hedge). The flat surface of the photograph, which had hitherto been accepted as a true representation, suddenly vanished and everything came rounded and alive, with depth and, above all, an extraordinary amount of light. The effect had been that of pure magic, so that he had, after a moment, looked to see if the photograph were still in front of him. He had cried out with delight, that the scene could be as
real
as this.…

There was no one about the house and he entered his own room quietly. A month or two ago he had been doing a review of a book dealing with early Scottish literary sources and had picked up in a bookshop a cheap copy of Adamnan's
Life of St. Columba
. He had wondered uneasily about certain passages, unable to dismiss them along with the usual miraculous stories. In the end, he had ignored them. Now he opened the book and in no time found the passages, for they must have troubled him sufficiently for him to mark them.

“…in some contemplations of divine grace he (St. Columba) beheld even the whole world as if gathered together in one ray of the sun gazing on it as it was manifested before him, while his inmost soul was enlarged in a wonderful manner.” Again, also in Iona, the saint's face “lighted up with a certain wondrous and joyous cheerfulness, and...he was intensely gladdened.”

Intensely gladdened…enlarged in a wonderful manner…cheerfulness.

Cheerfulness.
He
knew!

Will lifted his face and stood looking out of the window. Written some thirteen hundred years ago, not by Columba, but by another man (his successor on Iona) about Columba—which was more wonderful. And no knowledge here of Indian religions and philosophies.…

“Well, well—here you are!” Mrs. Armstrong stood smiling upon him. “You
are
a fine one!”

“I really am sorry!” He shut the book with a laugh. “I got lost and——”

“Did you have any dinner?”

“Yes. I landed in a wayside pub and they took pity on me.”

“As long as you have had something to eat, I don't mind. But I was growing quite alarmed—though Jenny suggested you probably would be able to look after yourself.”

He laughed again. “She knows! Trust a city person to look after himself—or even herself. All the same, I hope I didn't——”

“Not a bit. I kept it warm for two hours, but then gave up. How do you feel about food now?”

“To tell the truth, I'm ravenous. I walked—and walked——”

She looked at him. “Would you like a plate of soup first?”

He gave in. “I would.”

“Ah,” she said, “I don't believe you've had any dinner at all.” She began to bustle and sent the air about her in cheerful swirls.

He got his lunch, all except the potatoes which were “clean ruined”. And then she tried to give him “his tea” on top of it. He loved her, the dear woman, and regretted that his whims should have given her so much trouble.

Jenny's sarcasm about his probably knowing how to look after himself would have had such a dry flavour! He began to laugh softly to himself, as he picked up the book of essays he was looking for in his bedroom. Suddenly he went to the side window. Yes, there she was, trying to divide a great clump of earthy stuff with a spade. And she was game! He laughed when she staggered and returned to the conflict with what dangerously looked like venom. What about going out and talking to her—and observing how a haughty frigidity might consort with the minimum of correct politeness? The clump was severed. And now she was digging a hole.

He went downstairs. His table had been cleared of dishes. Throwing his book on it, he lit a cigarette and sauntered out the front door, round the house, and up into the garden. The wind had completely died. The twilight was coming.

She did not look at him, and he stood silent beside her until she straightened up.

“Seeing we are living in the same house, I thought I might take the liberty of introducing myself. My name is Will Montgomery. And you, I believe, are Miss Baird?”

“Yes?” she said, cool wide eyes full upon him.

“That's all,” he said solemnly.

“Oh,” she answered. “Doesn't seem very much, does it?”

“No, perhaps not,” he admitted.

“I am busy, as I hope you can see. Perhaps we could discuss your business some other time.”

“As you will.” He bowed. “Unless, of course, I could be of any material assistance to you now?”

She hesitated for one second. “I'm afraid not.”

“Sure?” Deep in his eyes came a gleam of tentative humour.

“No,” she said suddenly. “I don't want you. Thanks.” It was final and abrupt. She picked up her spade.

Quickly, genuinely, he said: “I am so sorry,” and walked away.

That was a slap in the eye! he thought in his room again. She really had an unusual face. One of those still faces that covers something rather distinguished. It would never evade an issue: it would encounter it. He had thought she might have been capable of playing a light-hearted game, a friendly game. But apparently not. And anyway why should she, with him? He liked her for that. Her clear decision, like her clear face, was refreshing. And her eyes had quite an aristocratic candour—so very clear in their blue. Trust Philip to know a good thing!

He lay in his chair, enjoying that short encounter, and saw the twilight coming upon the world. It touched him like a secret conspiracy and brought him to his feet. All right, he answered, I'll go out. His legs were stiff and the small of his back had a soft ache. He stretched himself with an animal satisfaction and smiled.

This habit of smiling to himself—or to his thought—or (and his eyelids quivered) to invisible things—was becoming so curious an idiosyncracy that he had better watch it. He would be speaking to himself next!

When he had gone far up the valley, he sat down. The sky was now almost completely clear of cloud and was the loveliest blue he had ever seen. Evening blue, but irradiated with light—particularly in the east. The colour fascinated him. A cloud on the eastern horizon began to gather light, to fill with it. And he saw a pale disk slowly emerge and charge the cloud with glory; and the disk grew, and grew rounder, and became the full moon rising out of the cloud. It was the largest moon he had ever seen, and he stared at it until his heart ached.

When he had left the main road and turned down the short avenue of trees near to the little bay, he saw Jenny coming towards him. His heart gave a quick beat. So she too had decided to go for a walk! Unless she recognized him, he would, of course, not see her.

And he thought she was going to pass him, but suddenly she turned at his side. “I am sorry,” she said, “if I appeared to be rude in the garden.”

“But you weren't. Not at all.”

“It was kind of you to offer to help, but—I—just didn't want it.”

“I perfectly understood.”

“Thank you.”

“One word more, if I may,” said Will. “You may rely on me not making any further effort to intrude—here or elsewhere.” His voice was clear, almost gentle, in its desire to help her.

She stood quite still, looking up the avenue.

“Thank you,” she said again, and walked on.

Involuntarily he remained looking after her, a catch in his breath. Then he turned slowly towards the house.

He went on past the house, through the gate, and up by the steading.

Amazement still flooded his mind. For he saw that it had not been altogether a question of
his
intrusion but rather of
her
state of mind. She naturally did not want him to intrude, but obviously now—or she would never have been driven to apologies—she would not have been abruptly rude in the garden about a thing like that. She would have put him in his place equally well but with a little more suavity. Looked as if he had intruded—on top of some other intrusion—to exasperate her suddenly.

Was Philip getting at her?

That final way she had said “Thank you”, with an uncertain expression (rather than smile), and walked on, had gone right to the quick.

So she was having her own problem, was she? Bound to—if Philip was putting it to her. He would do it so well, so clearly, leaving her, at the critical moment, to say yes or no—of her own free will—apparently.

Oh, a very clever game! He paused. It's a damned shame! he muttered—and smiled drily.

A pretty handsome mistress she would make. And, being of the independent kind who accepted responsibility for her actions, she could be relied upon to—well, not to whine or beg. Very very nice. Uhm.

He kicked a rotting turnip into the ditch as he went up the farm road with its traceries of moon shadows from the hedge of small trees.

What was he making the fuss about? It had nothing to do with him.

Obviously. Still, it was a pity to see any one intruded upon—too far; that is, when she was clearly not too sure of herself. The garden and the flowers—coming between her and them—it was a bit thick.

Or was all this the wildest fantasy? Born of the moon? That round white moon—that seemed to have grown smaller a little as it ascended the sky. What a serene night! Not immediately behind the moon, but around it at a little distance, the blue of the sky was the colour he had seen more than once in a Madonna's mantle: deep and luminous and full of—he did not know what.

Perhaps Jenny knew!

A grave calm girl. Twenty-six—and possibly twenty-seven. At that age—when the troubling thought arises that even to have experience itself.… Not to miss too much.…

She suddenly touched him on the quick again, and he felt tender towards her, and a little sorry. This withdrew her from him as far as the moon, and his own peace came back with some of the moon's weird magic added.

Life was a lovely thing—and perhaps a little unearthly.

I
t was his half day off, and towards four o'clock—the correct hour for the purpose—Will decided to call on his aunt. He took a tram and as it wound its way out of the busy part of the town towards the wealthy residential suburb where his aunt lived, he was continuously interested in the changing scene. He was looking on something familiar in an oddly double way: the actual scene itself and the same scene as part of the aerial vision of the city which would always now slightly obsess him. His vision gave the actual scene more reality, deepened his interest in a detached, impersonal way.

Several of the ladies wore furs, elderly women whose faces looked clean and fresh through invisible powdering. The characteristic verbal rhythm of the Scots city was not quite lost in the clear enunciation of their words. They would have their private cars, but the tram was handy, and their exercise of economy was an art. Sound sensible women, giving to their completely genteel attitude to life almost an austere warrant. And one of them was gracious, with kind eyes, and a soft attractive voice—that clearly came long ago out of the Highlands.

He turned his face away, lest his eyes betray him, for this was the society in which he had been born and brought up. He could see it more clearly now than ever before—and with an odd sort of warmth. Even its rigid limitations—and these women would fight for their social rights and distinctions more unyieldingly than their men—no longer affected him as they used to do. How they had affected him in those early days when he had first studied the social doctrines of the brotherhood of man! He had wanted to get away from them—away—where and why?

That was a curious thing, now he came to think of it—he had had no definite ambition, or at least no personal urge to become a leader or a reformer or anything of that sort. He had just wanted to get away into the world of men, to be one of the mass who worked and toiled. In that brotherhood he would be freed.

The youthful form of mysticism—and about as ancient as the world's most ancient religion!

He walked along a quiet street of fine houses, and then round into a crescent where the houses were large and detached, with hedges and a tree or two and the gravelled path going down past the side windows of the basement, where the servants worked and cooked, to the back door and vegetable garden.

He mounted the two broad steps, and rang. The maid appeared, opening the tall wide door as if she were guardian to a temple where quiet and orderliness always reigned.

“William!” His aunt got up slowly.

Quickly he moved towards her and shook her hand. “How are you, Aunt Marion?”

“I am fairly well, thank you. Not too much to complain about—apart from your desertion of me and the awful state of the world. What
has
happened to you this long while?”

“Blame the state of the world and all those crises. Have pity on the poor life of a journalist.” He made his excuses with an easy assurance.

Her interest in him concentrated. “The newspapers will have to get all the news, day and night.” She nodded. “Have you to sit listening
all
the time?”

“Some one has to,” he said lightly.

Her face, with its two baby-pink chins, was solemn. Her hair was very white and a little thin in front, showing the pink scalp. She was dressed, as always, in black silk.

“Poor boy!” she said. “I hope you do try to get a little sleep. It is such a terrible time the world has been going through. Does your landlady look after you properly? I think you are thinner than you were. Are you?”

“No, I don't think so. I am really feeling very well.”

She settled into her chair. “We'll have tea now—it's just the time. I do hope no one comes. I don't expect any one. It's not my day. Will you please ring that bell? Thank you. Now, tell me: what do you think is going to happen?”

He saw that her interest in the European situation was almost morbid. This was a relief to him, because normally when he called on her she was full of personal complaints and an egotistic gloom that depressed him, or, in any case, made conversation very difficult. He had always felt awkward in her presence before. But to-day—and he had been prepared for it—he knew that he could have dealt with her complaints like her family doctor. The European situation was, so to speak, a gift!

His business was, of course, to reassure her, and to begin with he adopted the wrong tactic of being too sweepingly reassuring. It was too much for her. And then he became genuinely interested, for he saw that she had constructed an extraordinary myth, almost medieval in its grotesque pictures and assumptions.

The Germans were the Vandals and Goths of a schoolgirl's imagination, strong ruthless fighters who captured and laid waste the Eternal City. Again they were on the march, this time to sweep on to the destruction of the new Eternal City (London) and the conquest of all the world. One could hear the crash of their tanks and their terrifying laughter.

Russia was half-lit and frightful and unholy. Things happened there in cellars and dark woods. The awful thing was that you could not know what was going to happen next; what would come out of the darkness and destroy you—as fire might leap out of a black hole and catch your clothes and burn you to death while you shrieked. Something fiendish in Russia. Will tried here—for the talk went on in anything but a logical way—to discover some realist basis for her fear in the possible loss of her income (dividends and house property), but could not do so directly or in so many words. Possibly, he reflected, the parallel was to the religious woman who desperately feared the victory of anti-Christ, without feeling for a moment that she herself would lose her own belief.

Aunt Marion's attitude to the Italians was perhaps most interesting of all. She feared the Germans and Russians, but she only disliked the Italians. They had to be watched. You never knew what they would be up to. They were sly—and shameless “with all those bare little statues and pictures and things. To tell the truth, I never cared very much for them at the best of times. It's a mistake to trust them.”

The muffins were toasted and buttered and delicious; the tea rich and excellent; plates of little home-made scones and crumpets; two cakes; black-currant jam. A few years off her head and in charge of a Soviet institution, wouldn't she make the dust fly! They'd have to wipe their feet at the door! He helped himself copiously to the jam.

The way the mythology rose in his head from her simple language, he could hardly explain. It was all really intuitive—the reference, for example, to the bare little statues and nude paintings (not that she used the word nude), brought before him her whole girlhood, its schooldays and art lessons and trooping academy visits, its prudish suppressed little shames—inevitable then—and its elaborate system of reticence. How
could
she forgive the Italians, now that she
really
knew there was so much vice in the world?

His reassurance was conveyed in delicate ways. He saw her having a picture of him sitting with his ear to the world. She was not going to give up her myth, of course. Her pictures could not be altered. But though things were in fact so—yet they need not sweep on to the débâcle; they need not fulfil themselves; they, so to speak, could be stayed—by the enchantment of our increasing strength. And that's what was happening.

She nodded. She saw. She agreed.

“I feel I am making a beast of myself by eating so much,” he said.

“If only I had known you were coming, I would have had your special cake, with the cream and nuts. I am so glad you came. I was longing for a real talk with some one. So few understand.”

A suggestion of her more normal gloom, that softly religious personal gloom, touched her mood now. She was all alone in the world and life inhabited places and corridors that went back into the past. Contemplation of it brought a sigh, a sweet sadness, a sad luxury, always of course with a consciousness of rectitude, a certainty that only “the good impulse” had prevailed. What may have been her own small sins were long washed out, forgotten.

He played up here, too, indulging her a little. She had mentioned something that had happened in “the old house”, and he said:

“Curious your mentioning that. I suddenly remembered the garden the other day. It was an incident that you will have forgotten, but it came back to me very clearly. I remembered the thrill I got when Uncle James handed me that stereoscope thing—you know?—that you put a photograph in? It was a photograph of Uncle James bending forward to a child in a go-cart. There was a plot of flowers—tall cups like tulips, and behind there was a hedge——”

She got up, deeply moved, and went to a walnut escritoire. After fumbling with a little bunch of keys, she unlocked a drawer; then she came back and put the photograph in his hands.

He had quite forgotten that it was a double photograph, and the surprise of this held his mind for a moment. But it was the old scene right enough, yellowish now with age, the facial features faded (except perhaps for Uncle James's heavy black moustache). Will did not look up at her. He knew her eyes were damp. The little figure in the go-cart had been their only child and had died a year or two afterwards.

He had not thought of this tragedy when he had mentioned the photograph, and a month ago the realization of what he had done would have appalled him. But not now. He felt the sorrow fall on her like small rain on arid ground. In fact he had time to think privately of the astounding difference between the faded photographic double-print and the single picture of depth and sun-brightness that had been conjured up in his mind not so long ago. Then he handed it back. “How vividly I remember!”

“Yes. You were seven at the time.” And she went on to detail the family scene and occasion. “We had hoped that you would have a new playmate and companion through life, for your dear mother.… It was not to be.”

He was silent.

The silence caught them both for what seemed a long time. Its awkwardness, that would formerly have been an agony, hardly touched him. He lifted his eyes to the window and passed out into the light. As the one sigh broke itself twice going in with her breath to the far recesses of her body, he stirred. He was afraid he would have to go, he said, and looked at her candidly and kindly. Then he quickly heaved himself to his feet.

“It was good of you to come.”

“It was good of you to entertain me, you mean. But I shan't be so long in coming again—if I can possibly help it,” he added.

“I wish you would. It is so seldom that I hear any one talk intelligently, who really knows, that——”

“Don't you worry about that, Aunt Marion. I'll make a bargain with you. So long as you don't hear from me, you can take it that there's no need for worry. Should the international situation throw up any really menacing feature, I'll communicate with you at once—I'll come and see you. You needn't ring. I can find my way out.”

She rang automatically, but ignored the maid, while she herself accompanied him to the door and helped him on with his coat. He could almost feel her lean on him. He was the male head of her tribe (her husband had died many years ago), moving out to the power and mystery of business. “Good-bye, Aunt Marion.” Calmly, as if he had been in the habit of doing it, he kissed her on the forehead.

As he went along the street he turned the involuntary smile into a grimace by putting his hand inside his coat and tugging down the back of his jacket. He heard the tram coming, made a dash for it, and caught it moving. It seemed to bring him back into the heart of the city much more quickly than it had brought him out.

Poor Aunt Marion! Was it weakness to feel a little soft to her? She had at least £50,000. And he realized, as he strolled along the busy thoroughfare, that with very little attention on his part he could hardly help inheriting the greater part of it. Positively too easy.

His thought steadied for a moment. Did he want to? The answer came quite involuntarily: “By God, no!”

It startled him a little, so that he glanced to either side. His mind had cocked its ears like a frightened hare!

What was he afraid of? Dividends and property—that tainted source? Or afraid of losing this freedom which left his shoulders light? Afraid of being caught in the trap?

But he could always give the stuff away. Could hand it to Joe, for example!

Would you? said the cunning inner mind. That's an old one! I know two better than that!

It had a primordial humour, this inner mind, slyly penetrative, dead and eternally right!

He turned his eyes on the street sights to distract his attention and regain a proper gravity. Offices were emptying.

There was a girl in front of him, in her twenties. Her shoes, with their stylish heels, and her stockings, sheathing up under her smartly cut skirt, came right out of a fashion plate. Her walk was restricted to that merest suggestion of a hobble, with its hardly perceptible stoop forward of the torso, that was nature using the artificial to produce the last word in chic. Her silken legs—very perfect legs—were pure suavity, mannered a trifle. Clever hands had pulled the cloth over shoulders and hips and drawn pins from the mouth to keep the seams together. The hat, an odd little affair, was perched on top of the lot—actually, for his eye was keen, on top of a head of hair that was too rich in golden shadows, he reckoned, to have been artificially coloured.

The whole was taken in at a glance, and before he could stop himself he had the shoes off her and the stockings and the rest—but no, she wouldn't quite straighten up from her bare heels. She merely became uncomfortably naked. He didn't pursue the thought. Had no desire to pursue anything. For of all that had happened to him, perhaps the most astonishing thing was that he could enjoy thus walking along a street that he had so often deemed as drab as hell.

It was almost exciting. He did not want to look at things long, particularly not at people, did not want to look too closely; but, that apart, the people and the bustle and the ringing bells of the trams were exhilarating. And why should he look closely? Sheer bad manners. For each must carry his or her integument of concern or fear or hidden disease or hope or lust or what-not—and make the best of it. But only—oh, if only—there was the slightest chance, the remotest possibility, that one day, all of them, would burst their balloons!