Wild Geese Overhead (21 page)

Philip's brow cleared. “Perhaps you'd better not have this, then?”

“If you put plenty of soda in it?”

“Just the usual.”

“Oh. Uhm.” Will considered the glass with thoughtful humour. “What's one more amongst so many? Here's how!” He drank it all right off. “Ah-h,” he exclaimed and went on, “it's a strange thing that the more alcohol you take, the drier you get. It's the alcohol probably does the drying. I wouldn't put it past the stuff.”

Philip began to chuckle. “Look here, old boy, you're well on!”

“Think so? Suppose I am a bit.”

“Come on! It's bed. And thanks for—being so helpful.”

“Don't mention it. But why bed? There's a stage you reach when bed appears an unwelcome irrelevance. You don't feel like making a night of it?”

“No. And you won't.” Philip was amused at this unusual manifestation of Will and, finishing his own drink, got up. “Come on!” He took Will's arm. Not since they were adolescents, confessing some shy ideal, had Philip felt so near, so tender, to his oldest friend.

“Well, if we must, I suppose we must. There's an end to all things—even to things that, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, never had a beginning.”

Philip's laugh was soft and warm, in acknowledgment of a humour dry enough to be nearly bitter. He led Will to his bedroom, opened the door, wheeled him round and pointed out the bathroom: “Just in case you make a mistake,” he whispered, “and go in by the wrong door!” Then his expression cleared. “Good night, Will! Good night, old boy!”

“Good night, Philip.” Will nodded, as if he had not heard Philip's final friendly inflection, and went into his room. He stood on the floor for a little time, filling his lungs with air. Then he methodically undressed, to the extent of folding his trousers along the creases. The slight tremor in his flesh was troublesome, and, in his pyjamas, he sat down on his bed, but got up almost at once and into his dressing-gown. He filled his lungs again as if his blood were poisoned and needed a lot of oxygen. Then he walked out of his room and into the bathroom. Returning from the bathroom, he had to pass Felicity's door. He came to her door. There was no one in the corridor. This was the moment. He paused. A weakening sensation mounted from his chest to his head. He went in blindly at his own door and with an exhausting waste of energy tried to close it quietly; then quickly, in a staggering little run, reached his bed and stretched himself out.

Bitterness. Black deep bitterness. Nothing else. Not drink. No excuses. Black obliterating self-bitterness. He sank into it; his consciousness dwindled, losing its brightness of pain; it became small in the smothering darkness, was lost for a little, then became small again, and slowly grew. He opened his eyes. From between the narrowing lids, they glittered as if the light hurt them. He pushed himself up, took off his dressing-gown, switched off the light and got into bed.

Felicity was waiting for him.

Why should he have to endure this torture of humiliation? Out of what did it come? Why? Why? Why?

Why should the poor bloody body be tortured like this? Jenny had nothing to do with this. That was sheer fantasy. That she should be having her first week-end with Philip, what was that to him? What in the name of God had that got to do with anything? Let him be honest at least about that.

Felicity was waiting for him, wondering.

And he had no desire for Felicity. Extraordinary, unaccountable, unimaginable! Bitter humiliation. Most bitter! His humour grew coarse. With the sexual oaths of the slums, he taunted his spirit and its impotent slave, the body. The humour became more vile than vomit.

Felicity was waiting for him, wondering, and beginning to be hurt in her woman's pride.

But he could find no answer to his Why? For he knew the fault did not lie with his body, which, like all healthy bodies, could be too lusty too often. It was none of the excuses he paraded before himself. It was not even drink—and he knew what drink could do! Genuinely, profoundly, he could not understand this appalling, this insuperable
reluctance
that had him in its grip. It was like an intangible octopus, holding him. The only thing that might have overcome it, he thought, in one of the washes of bitter humour that went over him, was—if he had been used to sleeping with women. But in the instant the thought was born, beneath it was the certainty, as if spoken out of some alien mouth inside him, that even then he could not have overcome it
now
.

It is a most terrible, damning, dreadful thing, that a man's mental side should be so developed that it interferes with the potent body. And, said the alien mouth, at once and with a leer,
It isn't even that!

He smothered that mouth which, in its leer, had become like the mouth of a mud fish.

His head rolled on the pillow. Would he go? Would he get up and go? Mounting with the thought came that weakening excitement and its horrible feeling of nausea. He would have to go! The feeling receded and left him without any thought—until it began to come again. Mounting wave and slow recession, until exhaustion brought another wave across his brain, a wave of darkness, of the beginning of dissolution.

He fought that back with a slight fear—and with a cunning gratitude that shamed him, shamed him to the last secret recess of his spirit. Running away from a decision! Glad to take refuge behind the body's humiliating weakness!

How deep went the root of his manhood into a man! What froth the spiritual was, compared with this dark deep root, and the thin roots that went out from it, gripping flesh and bone and marrow in their wire mesh!

And all the time he knew the decision was being made, slowly, irrevocably, the decision that he was not going into Felicity's room. As in its tortuous torturing course it approached finality, the shame of its acceptance lost its halfliberating spirts of feelings and rebellions and became still and dark and more bitter than any self-shame he had ever known.
At last!
said the mouth.
At last! But this is only the beginning! Before the night is over
,
you may in fact know something of the dark night of the soul!…

A faint scratching, like the scratching of a mouse at the door. His heart stood still. Then the click of the knob, and the silent invisible swing inward of the door, solid with movement. Once more, he had reckoned without Felicity.

When the light went on, she was standing against the closed door, one arm still outstretched to the switch. Light blue dressing-gown, bare throat, poised head with its dark brown hair, and eyes that steadied and gleamed against the light.

He stirred, getting up on an elbow, and tried to smile. She came over slowly, sat on the edge of his bed, and looked down at him. There was pride in her look, and a certain calm ironic assessment.

“Sorry, Felicity,” he muttered. “I'm not feeling very good.” His bitter smile looked sick.

“What's wrong?”

“Too much whisky.”

She kept looking at him, nodded to herself, while her lips moved in their own humour.

“You are as pale as death,” she said in a whisper that sounded loud.

“I feel like death.”

She nodded again, the gleam of assessment in her eyes.

He turned his head to avoid her eyes, pushed himself up against the back of the bed, and brought movement and stress upon the body, for a new horror was mounting in him. The intense excitement of her appearance was deepening the feeling of nausea and he realized that, unless he could fight it down, he might very easily be physically sick.

Balancing the horror of this was the cunning that sickness
might
help him, might help to show Felicity that it was nothing more than whisky. In degradation, there is still a lower deep, still…O God, he was going to be sick! He swung his legs out and staggered over to the wash basin.…

As he turned the taps on to wash the stuff away, Felicity withdrew her warm hand from his cold forehead. “Hush!” she said, supporting him under the arms, for his gasping spluttering cough could be heard more than one room away, and it was not exactly the moment for Philip or his father or mother to appear.… Taking one arm, she supported him back to bed.

“You are
really
feeling very bad now,” she whispered, as he stretched himself and his head fell back. “Poor Will.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “I am feeling much better.” He tried to keep his lips from trembling, for his body was icy cold.

“You'll soon be all right.” She tucked the clothes about him.

His eyes winced; he drew a deep quivering breath.

“Now,” she said. “Go to sleep, like a good boy.”

He turned his eyes on her, glittering points steady and piercing. She regarded them with her slight smile.

“Good night,” she said, and gave a playful snuggle to the clothes over his chest; then she got up and tiptoed to the door. There she paused, her right hand on the switch, and half-turned, her head rising poised and bright out of the blue dressing-gown. Like a perfect actress, she held the look for a time, the friendly faintly mocking smile on her face, then with the finger-tips of her left hand, she blew him a kiss. Click! went the switch, and the darkness came down upon him.

H
is case, though it contained no more than dress suit, shirt and slippers, brought cold sweat to his forehead, and by the time he reached the spot where he had seen the wild geese, he was glad to sit down.

It was a calm lovely April evening, with white cloud here and there in a light blue sky, and peace, charged with singing promise, in the world. The last peewit he had disturbed, ceased its crying. A robin, on a switch of brown birch across the road, began to sing, not with the loud confidence that had so astonished him recently when he had first heard it, but with a reflective warbling, as if the faint chill of the evening were the chill of autumn.

How exquisite the evening, with its foreshadow of night and promise of all the days of summer! The promise went forward into summer as if it were going back into youth. There was a slight quivering ecstasy in this illogical, yet clear, timeless apprehension.

For it was a good thing to be rid of the body's humours. It was a good thing to go through that ultimate humiliation, that final defeat, beyond which there can only be either death or freedom. Or was it death
and
freedom? Anyway, not a matter of solemn debate now! As the robin flew off, he smiled and looked slowly about him and up at the sky. Some pigeons winging to the wood. And one pigeon, shooting upward suddenly, balancing on the peak of its curve a moment with exquisite suspension, then stooping with half-closed wings—to rise again. And all for no ostensible reason in the world. In fact, very un-pigeonlike! An airy grace of swift movement and exquisite poise, taking the wind on its enamel-bright feathers, on its unwinking swift-seeking eyes, on its breast—in soundless ecstasy.

Pretty good at it! he decided, and his eyes rested on the wrinkled bark of an old fir-tree. A suggestion of red, coming through the wrinkles, the red of dead suns and ancient Caledonian forests. And the eyes stare—upon wraith-grey evocations.

The wild geese would be making their nests in the far north. Pairing! He watched them for a moment in a clear vision of landscape and sea, then got up—and went down to the farm.

And here was Mrs. Armstrong, with her husky-laughing welcoming face, full of stout comfort and hospitable manners. The dear woman!

Yes, he admitted he hadn't had much sleep and was going to bed whenever he had got something to eat.

“You had a good night, then?” she asked, lifting her tray and having a last look at the prepared table.

“Yes, very good. Dancing and that, you know—and the refreshments, they were excellent. Perhaps just a little too good for simple fellows not used to strong waters.”

“Ah! Hah-ha!” She nodded. “So there was a late licence?”

He laughed. “There was,” he admitted. “Very much so, I'm afraid—and very late.”

“Ah! And were the ladies very nice?”

“Whisht!” he said. “Sure it's a marvel that I'm in it at all. I had the feet taken from under me so often, that if it hadn't been for the late licence, it would have gone hard with me. It's a dreadful thing—when you don't know how to go about it.”

She laughed. “You needn't try to tell me that! I know how the girls would—I know.” She nodded.

“Perhaps you do,” he said. “For I'm beginning to think that women have some mysterious knowledge or other. However, they didn't tell it to me, and, fortunately, there was always, as I say——”

“The late licence.” Her whole generous body shook with husky laughter. “Was it a nice-looking licence?”

“Oh, very nice. About as attractive a licence as I have ever seen.”

“What did—what——”

“What did it wear? Now, let me see. It was all a shimmering glory of dim green and gold. It sort of fitted tightish up here, with a couple of slim shoulder bands and then down below a full flowing skirt that—that, as it swayed and draped itself, just put the heart clean across you.”

“Oh, my word!”

He started eating, and, after a little further talk, she went out.

His expression grew bleak. He had gone a bit too far. Not quite so completely freed as he had hoped. “You bloody fool,” he said to himself calmly. The food lost its savour and, tired of the physical act of eating, he got up and stood looking out the window.

He stared at the elm-tree, until the stress passed away. I am getting used to the trick of it! he thought. But though he had thus banished the stress of memory, he could not command the airy freedom he had known coming down the road. But perhaps he would learn that trick, too—given time! The faint irony made him restless and deepened his feeling of absolute weariness. He must stretch himself out. Mounting the stairs slowly was like mounting step by step out of himself. He was walking towards his own door, when Jenny's door opened and she appeared. She was clearly taken aback and he stood quite still, looking at her, his face very pale.

Her hesitation was only momentary, but as she came on past him, out of her surprise, she said, the gravity of her face breaking into a smile: “Good evening.”

“Good evening,” he answered.

She was out of sight, going down the stairs, before he got his door open.

He threw himself on his bed. “Lord, I am tired!” he muttered. His heart was beating in a way that made his weariness almost intolerable. A long day's work, following on no sleep and too much whisky.…

He closed his eyes and slowly the pulsations subsided.

The twilight deepened, and he got up presently and looked out of the side window. Jenny was in the garden, not working, but moving slowly from one place to another. Sometimes her head rose, and she appeared to look at something in the distance. He saw that she had the power to stand quite still, lost in what she was looking at or thinking. She moved in the grey twilight naturally.

He came away from the window and, sitting on the bed, his eyes to the front window, upon the still twigs of the elm-tree, he thought to himself how fantastic was that conviction of certainty which had come upon him when Philip had spoken of his weekend. There was absolutely nothing to connect it with Jenny—apart from the fact that Philip appeared to be friendly with her. But, after all, there was Philip's own girl. And Philip might be wanting a quiet week-end for a score of reasons. A cruise, a man's party, and a bit of a gamble—for Philip and his friends were all yachtsmen. A week-end's golf…Philip would not want to appear too selfish. And Saturday and Sunday were his only really free days in which either to take Felicity about or go off on his own. And his dark lady might not like him to float about too much with Felicity, even if Felicity was only staying for a week or two. But Philip would never lose his head over a girl like Felicity, even if she hadn't been his first cousin. As it was, there was a little too much of the same blood in both of them. Felicity would see through his most charming vanities. There wouldn't be a sufficient contrast for savour. And though Felicity, failing something more exciting, would flirt with Philip all right, she would also restlessly want him to “take her around”. So Philip was trying to do the escape act….

But his reasoning did not convince. And this astonished Will: that he should be so certain of what could be, after all, no more than a matter of intuition. Yet it was exactly the sort of thing that had been happening to him since that time, so long ago, when the birds used to torture him in the morning! It was not Philip's words that had spoken to him; it was Philip's secret mind through his eyes, his imperceptible gestures, his negligence, through the blood and lack of blood in the skin of his face. It was uncanny—and quite certain.

More than once lately—he had to admit it to himself—Jenny's face had developed the trick of appearing before his mind's eye. Grave face, with clear steady eyes. Sometimes the face seemed larger than life. The texture of the skin was very clear, not pale, but warm with life, as if there was light in it, yet smooth and grave. It seemed to be waiting….

He got up and looked out into the garden. Jenny was gone, but in the dim light he got a very strong impression that she was still there. The sort of feeling one might have about a woman who had loved her garden and was now dead.

Only Jenny was not dead. She was very much alive. Yet she was in the garden, though he could not see her. And he knew that she would always be.…

Was he really going mad? Was he creating “another world” of shadows, of desires?…

Jenny, moving through the grey light, watching the springing life from her labours in sun and wind and rain. Her secret passion—deeper, he could swear, than her passion for Philip!

Which, anyway, was certainly quite mad!

That a few little flowers, pushing up through the earth, could affect her more than—than—Philip and herself burning together! He banished the absurdity upon a sudden deep beat from his heart.

He turned away from the window and an inner voice, ironically casual, said to him: “Looks as if you're falling for Jenny, my boy!”

He stood quite still, mid floor, while his face narrowed vindictively. Then a swift destructive impulse possessed him and he looked around, fists clenched, for something to grapple and destroy. It landed him on the bed, whose coverlet he clawed and twisted, until the black fury of unreason passed and he lay flat out on his back, exhausted.

The ironic voice was still speaking, but he would not hear it. Presently, however, in a lull the mouth said: “
The dark night of the soul? Last night was only the dark night of the body's vanity. You wait
!”

He got up. Really he must keep some control of these destructive forces. He must. Giving into them was just an indulgence, like giving in to drink. He began to undress calmly, though his flesh trembled weakly. But the cool contact of the sheets thinned the body, dissipated its humours. He lay looking at the still branches in the deep dusk now passing into night, until his mind grew calm, and apprehensions came upon it with a remarkable clarity.…

There, for the first time in his life, he realized the existence of pure evil. Not a negative force, like the absence of good, the absence of ethics, of morals, the destruction of custom; but a
positive
force functioning in its own law and right. His apprehension of it became so acute that it touched his senses, touched them in a darkling way, and the bones behind his nostrils grew dry as in a rank crushed-gourd effluence of some unholy hemlock.…

Out there in the night, in that grey light, passing into final dark, in that appalling stillness. The grey of the window panes dazed his forehead, left his breast open. When he could no longer bear the horror, he turned slowly over, crying inwardly: “Oh God, I am very tired!” He repeated the cry so that all his senses be deafened by it, his mouth grabbing at the pillow. “Ettie!” cried his smothered mouth. “Ettie!” But his brain did not hear. He began to drown in that smother of warmth, for there was little energy left in his body; and, in fact, as if his body had been dealt a final blow, it gave one slow last wriggle and lay still.

Lying in bed, after a long glorious sleep, watching the shadows of the twigs against the blind, and, the blind raised, the twigs themselves against the sky, was very pleasant. His landlady had brought his breakfast up, and it was nearly noon before he dressed, got downstairs and walked out bareheaded upon the lawn. Such a divine day! He strolled round the corner of the house and up into the garden without allowing himself a conscious thought. From one bunch of shoots or flowers he went to another, until he came close by Jenny and said in a casually friendly voice: “Good morning.” She returned his greeting, half lifting her head, and then resuming her task of weeding out coarse grass from among the pink spikes of a large clump of peony.

“Your garden is looking very well. Things are coming on.”

“Yes.” Her voice was calm but not unfriendly.

“That's a lovely blue. What is it?”

“These are scillas,” she said. “They're just about past.”

“Yes, I can see that lot there have opened very wide.”

“That's glory-of-the-snow. Not the same.”

He found the difference. “What lovely delicacy of colouring against the old dead earth!” His eyes lit up at the sight of slim stalks bearing balls of blue-purple flowers.

They were primulas, she told him.
Denticulata
.

“And these?”

“Wandas.”

“What's the colour?”

“A deep maroon, I suppose.”

“Not a very good sound for it!”

But she answered simply: “They've been in bloom quite a long time. They, too, are going.”

Looking at them, he could see that dissolution had touched the edges of the petals.

He must have seen spring flowers often enough, but never certainly had been moved by this sensation of vivid colouring, this note of the incredible in the living purity of colours against a ground still largely wintry and dead. A sheer miracle, each little bloom.

“Oh, look!”

She glanced up at his face and followed his gaze. “These are daffodils.”

“I know,” he said. “I know daffodils. But these are——” He stopped.

“I had them in my rooms last year in a pot,” she said. “They are not so good this year.”

“They're like butterflies,” he cried, “about to take off! I never saw anything like them. Never!” And they did rather look like butterflies, tilted to the sun, shallow trumpets, and petals outspread like wings.

“I liked them—but couldn't afford them.”

“So you bought them?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “How lucky you were! I mean, to have that experience.” He glanced at her and saw the gravity of her face dissolve in a faint humour. But she did not answer him.

“You don't really mind if I walk around, do you?” he asked lightly.

“No. I don't mind. It's not my garden.”

“You can't keep me from walking around, so to speak?”