“Now, now, Penelope,” he said sharply. “When you have children of your own you will begin to understand all the things that worried your parents when you were young. Frankly, I never appreciated my mother and father until I had to sit up night after night with Mary, when she was three years old and had diphtheria. It was then I remembered being five myself, and having my father sit up with me when I had scarlet fever. Yes, I began to understand a lot of things then.”
“But, Grandfather, I am no longer a child. And that is what Mother and Father forget.”
I warned Mary last summer about that, Dr. MacIntyre thought: I told her that she must stop being so possessive towards the children.
“You are angry with me,” Penny said anxiously.
“No, Penny. Not angry. Worried, certainly.”
“Please don’t. Not you too.” She looked abruptly away from him, stared fixedly at the garden. The rose-trees, in perfect formation, advanced and retreated through the mist of tears over her eyes. Alice in Wonderland rose-trees, round circles on straight lines, and frantic gardeners splashing paint to turn them red. A rose is a rose, and by any name. All that matters is appearances... Grandfather couldn’t be one of the people who thought like that.
He patted her arm awkwardly, knowing then how much he could hurt her. Not you too. If he failed her, like the others...
“I’m sorry, my dear. We who are old forget so very easily that young people are capable of dealing with life by themselves. They don’t need us as much as we should like to believe.” He paused, and then asked, “You are confident?”
“I know what I am doing,” Penny said slowly. She was groping for words to explain what she felt. “There are some things in life which men and women have got to decide for themselves. Not impulsively. Arguing it all out, really believing in what they do. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” her grandfather agreed. It was equally true that those who did not argue their actions out, for themselves and by themselves, lost control of their own life. Even the first decision of a four-year-old child, whether to tell a lie and escape punishment or to be truthful and take the consequences (a hard decision, for the right one meant pain and the wrong one meant no reproof), went towards building the future man or woman.
He suddenly realised that Penny was speaking again. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said. “I digress mentally nowadays. Something is said, and I agree or disagree, but that isn’t enough, it seems. I must go wandering off.” He smiled. “What was it you were saying?”
“I was saying that sometimes in life there’s a crisis forced on us.”
“Not sometimes. Always. At repeated intervals.”
“If we accept it, don’t fight against it, we may have tragedy. And we have only ourselves to blame. I mean—oh, I am putting this so badly.”
“Give me a practical example,” suggested Dr. MacIntyre shrewdly. “Take David and yourself, for instance.”
“Well, we could have been separated by our families. If we had accepted that, then we would always have regretted what we had lost. I mean, if we hadn’t made sure that nothing was going to separate us, if we hadn’t—I mean—”
“You mean that you were faced with what might have been the elements of tragedy? And that, by adjusting your lives to beat them instead of accepting them, you have averted the tragedy? But what of other things—what of worry, malicious gossip, scandal? They could mean tragedy too.”
“The only real tragedy would be to forget the value of what David and I have together.”
“Did David say that, or is it you?” Dr. MacIntyre asked, with a wry smile. He had been hearing echoes of David all afternoon. As it should be, of course: two people fell in love, and if they were to stay in love, then a third personality, a joint one to which they each contributed, was created between them. No doubt when he saw David in Oxford he would see this third personality shaping too. If he didn’t, then he would have real cause to worry about his granddaughter.
“David,” she admitted. “But I came to believe that too, in my own way, in my own time. So we are both saying it to you. We believe it. And each day we are together proves it. And all the days we aren’t together prove it too. That is why I said that it could only be our decisions that mattered. We are happy when we are together, we are miserable without each other. Only we can know how much.”
“I see,” he said gently. He suddenly wished that he could live to see what his Penelope and her David made of their lives... Then he realised that, even by this regret, he was expressing his confidence in them.
He said happily, “Well, anyone listening to us this afternoon could tell that one of us was very young and one of us was very old.”
“Why?” Penny slackened her pace to match his as they turned to leave the gardens.
“Because we have been talking about Life. What is the next subject up for discussion? Religion?”
Penny laughed, pressing his arm. “I want to hear all about Inchnamurren. I shan’t be able to visit it this summer, you know.” Never again shall I have the long days there, she thought. Long holidays were a thing of the past, which you put away with your childhood—lazy, unhurried days in a magic place. “How are the seals? Do they still lie on the black rocks on the white sands?” And the sun, sinking slowly from the wide, flaming sky, leaving on the horizon a searing line of red for one moment as it slipped into the Atlantic waters. And the waves, no longer roughly beaten copper, but suddenly dark and cold as lead, with fading purple lights... And as you turned back to the village, the west wind behind you, the taste of salt spray still on your lips, the last gulls silenced in the darkness, there was the low moon rising over the red cliffs of Loch Innish to welcome you. And the arm of the sea, flung round the island, was silvered and black. “Tell me about Inchnamurren,” she said.
And she knew by the way he talked so easily, telling her affectionately of the things she wanted to know, that he had decided for David and for her.
34
THE AGE OF GOLD
David paid off the taxi, trying to appear nonchalant. Yes, this was the Square, this was the number. But as he stood looking at the house his heart beat with sudden unsteadiness, and his excitement, so controlled on the journey from Oxford, now mounted.
She won’t be home yet, he reminded himself. You are early.
A middle-aged, untidy woman with a stained apron covering her skirt came up from the basement to let him enter the hall. “Third floor back,” she said. She was too tired even to be curious. But he didn’t need the directions. He had imagined it a hundred times. He mounted the steep, narrow staircase, taking two or three steps at a time. Then on the top landing, facing the door with its neatly printed card, looking at the name, he paused.
She won’t be home yet, he told himself again. For a moment, as he raised his hand to knock on the door, he had the cold fear that she wasn’t there and wouldn’t ever be, that the card with her name was a lie, that she had left and never would return. Then he heard her voice saying, “One moment. Who is it?”
“David,” he answered. And she was there, as he remembered her. She wasn’t just a dream to soften a lonely night, to ease him into sleep. She was there, and his arms were round her, and her hair had the same soft perfume, her skin had the same touch of silk.
“Oh, Penny.” He held her close and closer to him, straining the young soft, firm body against his, tightening his grip as if he would never let her go. He kissed her again, feeling her arms round his neck, her lips answering his. Her eyes were shining.
It’s true, he thought, it is all true. He relaxed, loosening his grip on her waist, sliding his hands along her arms to grasp her hands. He stood back to look at her. “Hello, my beautiful,” he said.
She laughed uncertainly, with a catch in her throat. “Hello, darling,” she said, and she hid her face in his shoulder.
“Well, I hope it’s happiness,” he said half worriedly, half comically, and succeeded in making her laugh. He drew her towards the nearest ar
mchair, pulled her gently on to his knee, and reached for a handkerchief. “Blow hard,” he told her. “That’s better.” But he was still worried. “Now what was that all about?”
“I’m just happy, darling.” She was smiling now as she tucked the handkerchief back into the cuff of his sleeve. “It hit me suddenly: I realised then how lonely I had been without you, David.”
He smoothed her hair with his cheek and tightened his arm round her waist as she tried to rise. “Relax, darling. Let me enjoy myself,” he said.
“But, David, look at me! I haven’t finished dressing. We’ll be late.”
“So we shall.” But he made no move to release her. Her hair was loose as if she had been brushing it, and had not yet had time to comb it into place. She wore a dressing-gown of some kind of dull, gleaming cloth, smooth to the touch. “So we shall,” David repeated firmly, and tightened his arm still more.
“The concert?” Penny asked.
Two tickets were standing proudly on the mantelpiece. In Oxford, planning this evening, it had been an attractive idea to write, “Let’s have dinner at Giovanni’s; you shall wear your smartest dress. And it might be an idea to try for tickets to that Queen’s Hall concert. I see Sargent is to conduct the Holst, and I’ve always wanted to be with you when you first heard it. The London Choir is singing too; the effect should be astronomisch indeed.”
But now he wondered why he should ever have been so insane as to suggest any plans. They weren’t needed. Not with Penny. Just to be with her was plan enough. He kissed her hair and then the side of her brow, gently lifting her face so that it turned upward to him, and his mouth followed the line of her cheek to her lips, resting there, owning them, declaring his love more fully than a thousand words could ever do. He felt her body stir gently in his arms, and his murmured name was lost in the long kiss.
* * *
They arrived at the concert at the end of the interval. (“The Planets are last on the programme, anyway,” David had said. “What is played first doesn’t usually matter. It is generally Oberon or Leonora No. 3.”)
They raced into the Queen’s Hall, hand in hand, and then slackened their pace to a decorous walk down the aisle towards their seats. An excitement stirred in their blood which was not merely the sharing of the expectant tension around them. The crowd and the lights only emphasised their secret happiness. Penny’s eyes turned from the platform, with its massed array of musicians and singers, and gave a glancing smile. David bent to pick up the programme which had slipped from her lap, and his hand rested on her ankle for a moment. She was smiling openly as she watched the conductor take his place, and then bent her head to study the programme notes.
David settled comfortably in his seat and prepared himself for the opening chords with their grim, relentless rhythm. The audience around him slumped into their self-chosen listening postures. Penny, sitting so quietly, unmoving, smiling no longer, stiffened in fear as the marching feet hammered into her emotions. Feel, the music said, feel what can destroy all happiness; hear what can be the end of all hope. And then, even at the height of its warning, the music relented, changed, slipped into the serene, long, descending chords of “Venus, the Bringer of Peace.” After the noise and the tumult it became the vague, shimmering beauty of repose, the last trembling note of happiness achieved.
David felt the music attack him as he had never been weakened by it before. The muted chord, the liquid notes shivered down his spine. His hand tightened gently round Penny’s, and he felt it tremble within his. We have given each other this experience, he suddenly realised. In some strange way our minds and bodies are alive to every note, every change in tone, every breath and sigh in the music. The emotional and spiritual revelation each added to the other as the climax mounted. In this moment evil and ugliness were banished from the world. In this moment all thought and emotion were purified into absolute good.
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold.
Even when the choir’s voice, soaring in the music of the crystal spheres, the ninefold harmony, had died away into a silence as vast and living as that of eternity, they sat together quite motionless. It was the young man next to David who brought him back into the hall of shuffling feet, of sharp coughs, of surging applause.
“How did you like it?” the young man asked too loudly of his companion. Perhaps he was unwilling to pass any judgment until he was sure how the other felt.
“Gay, but noisy,” his friend said, in the clipped, decided voice which never gave any right of appeal. The other man nodded in agreement and stopped applauding. Then they both rose, crushed their way across Penny and David, murmured the conventional but meaningless “Sorry,” and walked leisurely up the aisle. All need for haste was over now that they had made complete nuisances of themselves, David thought angrily. Certainly they had broken the spell. David looked at Penny, still silent, as they emerged into a world of honking taxis; jostling crowds; voices telling each other how marvellous it was, and by the telling losing something of the marvel; the smell of a warm city packed with human bodies and movement. The spell was broken. But the experience, felt so deeply, was his to be held and remembered.
“Hello, Bosworth,” a voice said out of the crowd. It was Marain with a strange young man. There were brief introductions. Marain, after a slight stare in the direction of Penny, seemed not to notice her. He turned all his attention on David. His companion remained quite silent, aloof from everyone, perhaps even from himself.
“I hear you have been working hard,” Marain chided David, reminding him, too, that he had seen very little of Marain in the last few months. Marain would never admit that he did any work whatsoever.
David ignored the slightly amused smile, and said, “How did you find Germany? You were there at Easter, weren’t you?”
“There will be a revolution,” Marain said cheerfully. “The people won’t stand for the present régime. Besides, the German Left is the best organised in Europe. Are you catching the train? We can share a taxi.”
“I’m staying in town,” David said.
“Well, what about lunch some time next week? You haven’t abandoned all interest in politics, have you?”
“No,” David said. He was thinking that this invitation was, after all, Marain’s way of offering an apology. For last month the magazine Experiment had died a natural death, and from the very causes that David and Marain had once quarrelled over. Breen’s father had at last found the solution to all the problems of his son. He had stopped paying any allowance, and Breen could no longer afford to play at being earnest. He was pushing a pen in an office for three pounds a week. In the evenings, so Margaret had reported, he was running up a good-attendance card at the nearest Oswald Mosley meeting-room, no doubt taking lessons in the manly sport of knuckle-dusting.
But Marain, quite unaware that David knew all about the trouble over Experiment, was speaking again. “Good, good,” he was saying. “Let’s say next Wednesday. I’ve an idea which we must talk over. There is no doubt that the Germans are damned suspicious of us. If we could make them understand that there is no reason to be, then the Nazis wouldn’t have a chance with their propaganda to the German people.”
“You mean with the myth that Germany is surrounded by enemies and must prepare to defend herself?”
“Exactly. But we all have to make some kind of gesture which will be publicised in every country. If we say that no young man in Britain is going to fight, then that will prove to everyone, Germans included, that Hitler has absolutely no case.”
“Will it?” David asked. He did not want to start discussing it now, anyway. He made a remark about the concert, drawing Penny into the conversation.
But Marain went on, “Of course, it is only the germ of an idea, and it will take some time and a good lot of thought to work out. The Nazis will be cynical to suit their own purpose, but then the Nazis are not the German people.”
&n
bsp; “No?” David asked, looked at Penny, saw the expression in her eyes. She knew instinctively what he thought about all this. He realised then how close they had come to each other, when even thoughts could be listened to as understandably as words.
The silent young man beside Marain stirred gently to say it was getting rather late...train...
“Wednesday,” Marain said. A slightly relaxed muscle in his face suggested a smile. And then he and his friend disappeared as quickly into the crowd as they had emerged from it.
“He didn’t like me,” Penny said, after she and David had walked some distance in silence. She was hurt. She wanted David’s friends to like her. “Not that he gave me much of a chance. Or perhaps I should have been one of the German people.”
David laughed. “You have more effect than you think, old girl. He did not have to talk to me tonight at all, you know. He could have come to see me in Oxford.”
“Why was he so rude, then? As if he resented me, as if I were an intruder.”
“He didn’t think he was being rude, and he probably could give two or three reasons why he ignored you like that, and none of them would be right. The true one he wouldn’t like to recognise at all. What do men feel, do you imagine, when they see a competitor with a pretty girl on his arm? Especially if they don’t happen to know many pretty girls?”
“You always restore my vanity, darling. What would I do without you?”
“You’ve got that slightly wrong. You mean, what would I do without you? And the answer is Marain. That would have been me if I hadn’t met you.”
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