The Friendly Young Ladies: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry. I was half asleep, and you woke me up. I suppose it startled me.” There was a brittle quality in the naturalness of her voice. His hand was still under her head; he took it away, giving her hair a jocular little tug. She smiled and sat up.

  “What about trying that cheese on the chub?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Leo. “Let’s.”

  Neither of them got a bite. Leo sat staring at her float on the water. She had braced the end of her rod against the punt, to hide the unsteadiness of her hands. It will pass off, she thought, in another minute. Please God, let it go away and don’t let me think about it any more. She fixed her eyes on the cool water that went slowly past, as if it would carry away with it, out of sight and mind, what she wanted to lose; the moment when his closed mouth, stooped over hers, had been beautiful and inevitable, making a heaviness in her throat, the shiver of regret that had shocked her when he had turned away. The water flowed on slowly, too slowly; the willow-leaf by which she had first reckoned its progress had hardly travelled a yard. She heard him move, and the scrape of a match as he lit his pipe again; presently the spent stick added itself to the willow-leaf in the slow procession downstream. Worst of all had been when he had spoken to her, and she had not been able to answer; she had wanted to strike at his gentleness and his friendly toleration, to hurt him, even physically, to punish, yes, but also to rouse him. She had sought escape as one seeks in a dream where there is no escape except by waking; and, when he had smiled at her, she had wakened in time. But the memory, the fact, remained, shaking and refracting the peaceful sunshine, rocking the settled happiness which, half an hour ago, had been too stable to know its own existence. She found herself dreading the moment when he would turn or speak, lest his face or voice should show that something remained with him also.

  She wanted only to forget about it, not to shape it into thought; but like an image on water into which one has thrown a stone, thought re-formed, making its clear pattern on the surface of her mind; showing her the preciousness of what was threatened, a contentment which the very perception of it endangered. So easily, so casually and so long this friendly gate had swung ajar, till she scarcely remembered that it could be locked against her, or that there was, for her, no other passage through which the life of her instincts and imagination could enter the real world. Whether it was his gift of sympathy, which naturally inclined him to take people as they wished to be taken; whether it was a sense of personality in him so strong that it made him, often, indifferent to sex where the personality interested him more; or whether it was simply some fortuitous miracle between them, she had neither known nor cared. With him, and through him only, she had the company of her kind; freely and simply, without the destructive bias of sexual attraction or rejection, he let her be what her mind had made her and her body refused. For the rest, her way of life had always seemed to her natural and uncomplex, an obvious one, since there were too many women, for the more fortunate of the surplus to arrange themselves; to invest it with drama or pathos would have been in her mind a sentimentality and a kind of cowardice. Because of this confidence she had got what she needed from women easily, and without the sacrifice of pride. But no one, except Joe, had given her what she had wanted from men since she had swum and climbed with the boys of her Cornish home; a need as deep and as fundamental, to be a man with his friend, emotion-free, objective, concerned not with relationships but with work and things, sharing ideas without personal implication to spoil them, easily like bread or a pint of beer in a bar. She had accepted this gift from the first almost without thought, not analysing its goodness, only feeling it to be good; it had been so elementary and wholesome a part of life that she had never questioned it till now, when it was threatened.

  It should never be questioned, she saw, never be handled or dissected; the structure was too fragile, too much a matter of environment and chance, it might disintegrate with a moment’s clumsy jarring. Beneath the surface of her mind all these conclusions must have been shaping for years, they came together so readily and swiftly now; Joe’s matchstick, the yellow leaf, were still in sight, only a little way astern. His pipe, since she became aware of them, was scarcely alight; she could hear him pulling at it to make it draw. She remembered that sometimes thoughts had passed between them before either had put them into words, and tried again to shake her mind free, lest it should be happening now.

  If, perhaps, she thought about someone else, someone harmless and amusing, involving one’s emotions a little, but lightly and without consequence; interesting enough to provoke speculation, but whom one might, or might not, ever see again. … She had gone quite a long way into these generalities before she perceived the concrete image behind them; it brought her mind up all standing, and without warning she found herself full of the sense of absurdity, and laughed.

  At once it was as if a thread of tension had been snipped in half. Everything settled; the leaf and the matchstick, caught in a sudden eddy, gave a twirl and vanished. Joe hauled in his line, found a minnow on the end of it, and laughed too. He swung round to look at her, his face open and untroubled. The lark was singing again, or perhaps she had only been ceasing to hear.

  “I keep meaning to ask you,” he said; “there’s a lot of boat-varnish over from those gadgets we were knocking up at my place. Couldn’t the canoe do with a lick? If so I’ll bring the stuff along sometime and we’ll have a go at it.”

  “Really? I was telling Helen we’d have to get down to it sometime soon. It’s getting the old stuff off that’s going to be the job.”

  “Oh, it won’t be more than a morning’s work between us. I should sink it overnight first, to fill out the seams. A fine day, but not too hot, we’ll want for the new coat. We could start the other any time.”

  “Good. Not to-morrow, I’ve got to go to town. Any time after that. What about getting along? We don’t look like catching anything here, and it’ll soon be getting cool.”

  Joe reeled up his line, and stretched himself. “We-ell, right now it’s not so darned cool I couldn’t use a pint of bitter. C’mon and get it.” For a few startling seconds, his leisurely unmannered voice held clearly the echo of a Western drawl. It happened once perhaps in a month or so; Leo found it perennially fresh and fantastic, like the appearance in a familiar landscape of some rare migrant bird. “What’s the matter? “he enquired. “Signed the pledge, or did I say something?”

  She laughed. “Sorry. Just professional interest. You were talking Arizona. Didn’t you know?”

  “People tell me sometimes. I can never hear it myself.”

  “Do it again.”

  “On your way, hombre, let’s hit the saloon.”

  “That’s bogus Hollywood, you fool.”

  “It goes if you think about it. Ten to six. Where’ll we get this drink?”

  “The Bell will be the nearest. I wonder if they’ve fixed the skittle-alley yet. It’s too fine for darts today.”

  “Suits me. I’ve lost too many pints playing darts with you.”

  “Mind if I punt now? I’m getting out of practice.”

  “O.K. Thanks. Maybe if I go over this stuff again now I shall see what’s wrong.”

  Leo swung the punt out into the main stream, her mind and her muscles given over to acquiring the style which so far had eluded her competence. The trick of it came easily today. Joe sat frowning at the manuscript on his knees; presently he got out his pen and began eliminating sentence after sentence with long hard strokes. He was as distant from her as if he were at home. In his withdrawn presence there was a kind of freedom which was better than solitude. Her mind sought its own thoughts, and the wind blew through her hair.

  Happiness crept near again, like sleep, like a shy wild animal that approaches when no one heeds its coming.

  CHAPTER XVII

  LEO WAS BORED. SHE had missed her train home, and had thirty-five minutes to wait for the next; the terminus was hot, dirty and noisy; she was wearing
London clothes; and she had just seen the cover-design for her new book, which showed the hero, with the wrong kind of face and a musical-comedy costume, soulfully kissing the supernumerary blonde, as if the plot depended on it. She had brought nothing to read. Running an indifferent eye over the bookstall, she bought The Aeroplane and sat down with it on a seat.

  A smell of liquorice and of very young, very warm humanity invaded her neighbourhood in gathering strength, as a small boy, who had been kicking his heels half-way along the bench, edged nearer to look over her shoulder. Presently, feeling no doubt that their common interest was already an introduction, he stabbed a black-rimmed finger at the page.

  “Is that undercarriage re—the sort you can pull up?”

  “Retractable. Sure to be, they all are now.” Leo, to whom such encounters were nothing out of the way, glanced up without surprise. “Yes, look. Here it is in the air.”

  “How’s it work?”

  Leo fished a pencil and an old envelope out of her pocket. “Well, roughly, like this.” They bent over the diagram, their heads together.

  “Suppose,” he enquired, having mastered the principle in two or three minutes, “it was to stick when you were flying?”

  “You’d just have to keep on flying till you could get it down again, if the petrol lasted; if it didn’t, you’d look for a good place to crash-land.”

  “Coo. You might have to bale out, then. What do they have them for?”

  Leo explained, adding, as an afterthought, “Is someone waiting for you anywhere, by the way?”

  “No, I’ve got a platform-ticket.” He displayed its remains. “They’re only a penny. Can I see some more?”

  The conversation became increasingly technical. Leo’s look of boredom disappeared. Luggage was dumped round them and gathered up again; the other end of the seat was occupied by two women who, secure in the presence of such absorption, discussed a family quarrel as if they were alone. Pictures of a racing Supermarine led to matters of slipstream and wind-resistance. He looked up, his scrubby mouse-coloured hair tickling her face.

  “You don’t half know a lot. Can you fly?”

  “A bit. I’ve taken over now and again with a dual control. You can’t call it flying, of course, till you’ve gone solo and made a landing.”

  “When are you going to?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve stopped doing it now.”

  “What did you stop for?” His hot firm little body leaned eagerly nearer. “Were you in a crash?”

  “Oh, no. I got on all right. It’s easy.” The simple brag in this statement, boy to boy, seemed perfectly natural to both of them.

  “You ought to of got your licence, then, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t have time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I knew a man with a plane who used to take me up, but I haven’t seen him lately.”

  “Why?”

  “No special reason. Just one thing and another.” She looked away, remembering several things, among them the station clock. Her glance travelled towards it, but was intercepted. Peter, looking pleased, interested and reflective, was standing a few yards away from her. He had evidently been watching her with enjoyment for several minutes. Allowing her just time enough to appreciate this fact, but not enough to resent it, he made towards her, with a smile full of intimate, perceptive appreciation.

  “Oh,” said Leo abruptly. “Hullo.”

  “I thought I’d wait a minute,” he said, “till you weren’t so busy.” His voice and his eyes added, Charming, charming.

  The grubby, confiding warmth at Leo’s side drew away. Her new friend was not without perceptions of his own. He had an elder sister, and knew the approach of soppiness when he saw it. It was a disappointment, when one had seemed to be in the company of an intelligent human being; but there it was, women were all the same, and one might as well be getting along. In any case, the Scotch express was almost due. He moved off without formality, as he had arrived.

  “You can keep this if you like.” Leo held out The Aeroplane.

  “Thank you,” he said, accepting it with distant courtesy, and clumped away. A faint smell of healthy dirt and liquorice lingered behind him.

  Peter settled himself in the vacant space, bringing a sharply-contrasted aura of tweed, antiseptics, tobacco and soap.

  “I’m sorry if I interrupted anything,” he said charmingly.

  Leo found this irritating. His smile, however, was impossible to ignore without active rudeness, and she returned it.

  “Are you travelling by train,” he asked, “or meeting one?” Into this simple question he conveyed, without effort, the assumption that her private life would naturally be interesting and discreet, together with a delicate tact founded on like experience.

  “I’m only on my way home.” She felt for her bag; she only carried one when she was in town, and was liable to forget it. “Forgive my getting up just as you arrive, but the train’s almost due.”

  “It won’t be in for ten minutes. We’ve plenty of time.”

  Leo accepted the correction. Unlike Helen, she visited London seldom, and with a reluctance which did not make for efficiency about it. As she groped in her pocket for her ticket (a handbag was for non-essentials) the plural pronoun arrested her. She looked up.

  “It’s my train too,” he explained. “I’m on holiday, you know.”

  Leo had, in fact, forgotten completely; her mind had been taken up, lately, with other things.

  Her cordiality, a purely social reflex to cover her lapse of memory, seemed to please him.

  “I was frightfully disappointed,” he said at once, “at not being able to look you all up yesterday evening. As a matter of fact, I had a rather special case on hand and I thought I’d see it through the night, anyway, before I started off.”

  The eyes of Leo’s memory were opened. She recalled Elsie’s painstaking toilette, her restlessness, her unusual interest in what they were going to have for supper, her glances at the clock; her deepening silence as night drew on and the headache with which, refusing Helen’s offered remedies, she had finally gone to bed. An exasperated sense of the absurdity of women, from the cradle to the grave, caused Leo for a moment to relinquish the thread of the conversation.

  “… about eight years old,” Peter was saying, “from one of these waif and stray places. He came in with an acute intussusception, and. …”

  Leo found herself listening after all. She could attend indefinitely, at any time, to someone talking about a job in which he was expert. She attended now. Indifferent to the flattering effect of her concentration, she devoted to Peter’s recital much the same single-mindedness as her late companion had lent to the study of retractable undercarriages. Under its stimulus, Peter gave increasingly of his best. With a sense of style which was all the happier for being mainly unconscious, he began to touch in the dramatic high-lights and shadows, to re-create the tension and comradeship, pathos and danger, the split-second triumph in the moment of defeat, the tired, commonplace satisfaction at the end of it all. He was even sometimes a little sentimental, as people who deal with realities can afford to be; it came off very well, and suited him.

  Leo’s attention held. Both the woman and the boy in her were aware of a certain willingness to impress, and each, in its different way, was secretly entertained. But at the bottom of it all was a genuineness which disarmed amusement, and made it impossible not to like him. He capitalized his quite real assets so openly that it became somehow endearing. Even while she wanted to smile, she saw round his eyes the honest evidence of strain and a sleepless night, and was at pains to say the right thing at the right moment instead. It was Peter who remarked in the end: “Well, I suppose we ought to go and do something about this train.”

  He supposed truly, but five minutes too late. Leo’s theory about its time of departure had, in fact, been the correct one. It was the last of the rush-hour series; the next was not due for nearly two hours.

  Pete
r apologized, but not excessively. With the air of one who would have thought it cheap to contrive such an effect, but found it pleasing as a gift of circumstance, he suggested that they should go back to his place and have a drink to pass the time.

  “Is it far?” Leo’s brows drew together; the boyish note roughened her voice a little. “I don’t want to miss the next one.”

  “Eight minutes by tube,” said Peter briskly.

  “Hadn’t you better use the time getting some sleep, if you were up all last night?”

  “I got in four or five hours this morning. Plenty for me.”

  “All right. If you like, then.”

  The tube was full, and conversation in it impossible. Peter led her out at a station whose name she did not trouble to peer after; she emerged, quite disorientated, into a main road of cheap shops, and the rattle and shriek of trams. It was the peak shopping period of such quarters, just after working hours. Peter threaded his way with the ease of habit; the effort not to become separated from him in the crowds left her with little attention to spare. She supposed that they would turn some corner to find, by one of London’s sudden transitions, a street in which someone might conceivably live. He took her by the elbow, checking her in a stride hardly shorter than his own.

  “This way in,” he said.

  She had scarcely noticed the hospital, except as something characteristic of the street, like the trams. He gave her a gentle push through the great iron gates of the main entrance, into an asphalt courtyard edged with borders of seedy, soot-choked flowers. She stopped to stare at him.

  “What are we going in here for?”

  “I live here.” Her vagueness amused him, and gave him a kindly sense of patronage. “I’m a resident, didn’t you know?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Leo. “Of course.”

  They went into the entrance hall, with the porter’s desk and telephone exchange, and up a huge dark stone stairway. Leo looked about her with an interest which Peter accepted as the wide-eyed wonder of the explorer, being unaware of the fact that Helen had continued to work as a nurse for more than a year after Leo had known her.