Benighted

by J. B. Priestley

  ‘How d’you mean, there isn’t much time? There’s plenty of time. There always is.’ But she was hurt rather than puzzled. He must mean that he wouldn’t be seeing her any more after this, and somehow she had expected he would be, quite a lot.

  ‘I don’t know what I meant,’ he said. And he didn’t, now that he came to think of it. It was just a queer spurt of emotion, feeling all things rushing by them. ‘I think I must have meant the usual poetical Preacher stuff: we’re like flowers that are fresh in the morning and withered in the evening; you must know the sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ She dismissed these antique fancies with hearty contempt, all the more hearty because she felt suddenly relieved. ‘That’s only true about looks, when you’re bothering about your face and figure. But it’s not true about anything else, is it? Everybody I’ve ever met had more time than they knew what to do with; even old Bill there—with all his cables and telegrams and private secretaries and rushing about—has more gaps than he knows how to fill; I know that. Those old fellows—they read ’em out in church, don’t they?—must have really been Beauty specialists.’

  ‘Perhaps they were—in a way,’ he put in, reflectively. ‘But what were you going to say, before you began about not putting on any airs?’

  ‘Oh, yes. About me and Bill. Well, it really boils down to this. It’s been a convenient arrangement for both of us. As I said before, I like him, and he’s helped me a lot, given me a pretty good time. There’s been nothing regular about it, you know; no little flats and all the rest of it; he’s just taken me out when he’s felt like it or when I’ve felt like it, and we’ve had a few week-ends away. This is the longest and the farthest: I was down on this one from the start, but he was desperately keen, wanted a day’s golf at Harlech. If he was like some of them I’ve seen and heard of, not gone away with, though—for ever pawing round you and very smarmy—there’d have been nothing doing. But what he really wants—most times anyhow—is just somebody to be with, to talk big to at dinner or late at night. He likes to sit on the edge of a bed, boasting a bit to round off the day. He’s lonely really, for all his talk. He ought to have married again; his wife died when he was young and he hasn’t forgotten her either. You can guess that pretty soon. I’ve weighed him up.’

  ‘I can see the balance in your hand,’ said Penderel. ‘It’s terrifying, but go on.’

  ‘Now you’re making fun of me,’ she cried. ‘I shan’t tell you any more.’

  It was queer, Penderel thought, how simple she became as soon as she talked directly to him, almost childish, whereas every time she spoke about anything else she surprised him. ‘You must go on. I want to be terrified, and I only wish Porterhouse could hear this. It would open his eyes, though he’s by no means a complacent fool about himself, judging from that little anecdote he told at the supper table. Tell me some more about him. Blow the masculine gaff.’

  ‘Another thing about him is this. I fancy it’s true about a lot of men too. When he asks me to go out with him or to go away with him, it’s not so much that he really wants me there.’ She stopped for a moment to think it out. ‘What he really wants is not to be wanting somebody, d’you see? And that’s not the same thing, is it?’

  ‘Not by a thundering long chalk,’ he told her. ‘There’s all the difference in the world between ’em.’

  ‘Well, that’s how it is, mostly, with him. He wants everything, you see, or thinks he does; and if he was by himself, knocking about town or staying at some swell seaside hotel, and he saw a lot of smart and pretty girls drifting round, he’d be as mad as blazes because he hadn’t one. He wouldn’t be able to eat his dinner for thinking about it. But if he has one too, there with him, staring him in the face if he cares to look across, it’s all right then. And he’s got somebody to show off and somebody to explain himself to and boast to, later on. That’s where I come in, then. You see he happens to think I’m rather smart and fairly pretty. Probably you don’t.’

  ‘My dear Gladys, I think you’re astonishingly pretty, a staggerer.’ He didn’t though; and it suddenly occurred to him that he had met quite a number of prettier girls—belonging to his own class, as people still said—who hadn’t interested him at all, whereas this girl was most curiously attractive and exciting. Like a jolly good music-hall, he told himself. Well, whatever it was that drew him, it wasn’t the mere look of her, though that was agreeable enough.

  ‘You’d have to say that, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t think I am very pretty, so there,’ she said, quite earnestly. ‘There’s honesty for you.’

  ‘Why, what’s the trouble?’

  ‘Oh, my face is too broad, to begin with, and my nose isn’t right. My figure isn’t either, not for these days when you ought to be very long and slender or a kind of boy.’

  ‘They’re all wrong. Don’t you worry about them,’ he remarked easily. ‘I detest these death’s head and crossbones women you see everywhere now.’ He remembered, with pleasure, her fine sturdiness, now so much neighbouring warmth. But he was still wondering what it was that attracted him. All her obvious characteristics, of course, her courage and common sense and jolly impudence, floated on a deep rich stream, a Thames itself, of feminine vitality. She made Margaret Waverton seem nothing but a faintly freshened and animated mummy. And the Thames must have come into his mind, because, in some queer fashion, she was mixed up with his feeling about London. It was as if his thought of her danced all the time before a backcloth of the London scene, the roaringly human streets of Cockneydom—of buses and evening papers and oyster-bars and teashops and barrel organs and music-halls. That in itself, on such a night, might explain it all. But he had a feeling that it didn’t.

  She was asking him if he was listening. ‘I’ve been hearing it some time,’ she added.

  ‘Hearing what?’ He leaned forward a little, then looked at the vague rounded pallor of the face beside him, a mystery and an enchantment in its little darkness of eyes and lips.

  ‘Outside. A kind of rushing noise.’

  ‘I’d almost forgotten there was an outside. I can hear it now though. It’s getting louder.’

  ‘I should think it is. Sounds as if a river were coming down on us.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘What are you going to do?’

  He was opening the door of the car. ‘I’m going to see what’s happening.’

  ‘It sounds as if you want something to happen. I believe you do. If you’re not careful, you’ll make it happen.’ There was a trace of real resentment in her tones.

  He was out now on the floor of the shed, which sloped down towards the entrance. It seemed to be very wet. There was the noise of a great wash of water coming down, and already it seemed to be rushing past outside and creeping up the shed. It was difficult to see though, because the little lights of the car, which had been backed in at an angle, did not shine his way.

  ‘I say, Roger.’ Gladys was calling to him. It was queer to hear his Christian name like that, coming out of a dark place in a still unfamiliar voice. He felt as if he had suddenly dropped fifteen years and started over again. ‘If you’re going far, wait a minute,’ she went on, ‘because I’m coming with you.’

  ‘I’m not going far,’ he replied. ‘Hardly a step farther.’ The water was certainly coming into the shed; a flood had been loosed upon them from somewhere; there was the sound of a river roaring past. ‘Look out,’ he shouted. ‘I’m coming back.’ A sudden rush of water had swept round the corner like a little tidal wave. In a second it was nearly up to his knees, and the next moment he was climbing into the car again.

  ‘Look at that,’ he panted. ‘Water’s pouring into the place.’ She leaned across and looked through the open door, while he tried to squeeze the water out of the bottom of his trousers.

  ‘Why,’ she cried, ‘if it gets any higher it’ll be in here soon.’

&nb
sp; ‘In that case,’ he grunted, still bending and trying to wring his trousers, ‘you’ll have to keep your feet on the cushions.’

  She put out a hand. ‘But suppose it gets higher and higher. My God, we’re simply trapped here!’

  He straightened himself now, brought his face close to hers and smiled at her through the deep dusk. ‘We could get out somehow. Besides it can’t rise much. It’s bound to run away very quickly. It’s rather amusing, don’t you think?’

  ‘Amusing!’ He thought he saw her pull a face at him. ‘I like your idea of amusement.’

  His fingers touched something smooth and cold. It was the flask. He’d forgotten that too. ‘There’s just a spot left,’ he said, shaking it. ‘You have it.’

  ‘Don’t want it, thanks. Finish it yourself.’

  ‘Shall I? Or shall I keep it for an emergency? Or is this an emergency? Tell me that.’

  ‘You just said it wasn’t, didn’t you, Mr. Clever Man? But hurry up and finish it.’ She leaned sideways against the cushions, her face turned towards him. ‘I believe I want to go to sleep,’ she yawned. ‘I’ll be off in a minute.’ But inside she didn’t feel a bit sleepy, all excited.

  ‘If you went to sleep, something tremendous would happen and then you’d miss it.’ He went rambling on while he slowly unscrewed the flask. ‘You might wake up to find the water an inch from your chin and trout darting under your arms. Then again, of course, you might wake up to find that you weren’t here at all but crossing Piccadilly Circus to catch the last Tube train.’

  ‘And where would you be?’

  ‘Nowhere at all. You’d have just dreamt me. You know how people you’ve seen only once or twice, as you saw me, pop up in your dreams and become quite important. Well, I should be one of them.’

  ‘I don’t want to wake up in Piccadilly Circus then.’

  ‘Why?’ He looked at her above the flask.

  ‘Because I like you.’

  ‘And by rain, by darkness, and by Sir Roderick Femm himself,’ he cried, ‘I like you too! I feel this is a great and solemn moment. You’re sure you don’t want any of this whisky?’

  ‘Yes, I told you I didn’t.’

  ‘Then it must be put to an even nobler purpose than that of helping to rot my liver.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Something crazy, I’ll bet. I can see it coming.’

  ‘I’m going to sacrifice it—the last drop too, mind, and I’m coldish—to celebrate this moment. I’ll address a few remarks, we won’t call it a prayer, to the gods, and then I’ll pour it out as an offering, a libation. How’s this?’ He sat bolt upright. ‘Oh, gods of light and beauty and happiness,’ he began, in rich, vibrating tones, ‘crowned with flowers in eternal May, hear the cry that comes from the little world that you have left so long unvisited. Behold two mortals whose hearts were fashioned for your service but who sit in a darkness within a darkness, homeless, lost, the black water rising round them——’

  ‘I shall want to weep in a minute,’ she interrupted. ‘You ought to go on the stage, Roger.’

  ‘I am on the stage, Gladys. I’m on it all the time, but only wander about trying to remember what my next cue is, and what the play’s about, and wondering who the devil can be in the audience. But you’ve ruined my exhortation now. I’ll have to trust to the libation. Here goes.’ He held out the flask and raised his voice again. ‘Accept this offering, all that we can give, the last drops of our golden spirit.’ The flask was solemnly emptied into the water just outside the door.

  ‘Well, d’you feel any better now?’ she enquired as he returned to her side. She was smiling at him.

  He had twisted round, so that they were sitting face to face, and now his hands shot out to clasp her arms. ‘Do you know, I believe I do,’ he cried. ‘I think they’d had a glance at us—those gods, I mean—even before I made the libation, and now they may really take notice of us. When I come to think of it, I’ve felt depressed only once to-night, and that’s almost a record.’

  ‘When was that?’ She pressed gently against the hands that were still curved loosely round her arms.

  ‘Oh, before you arrived; just after we went into the house. I can remember the very moment. I’d been left alone, and suddenly everything went as hollow as hell—perhaps you don’t know the feeling?’

  ‘Don’t I though! I’ve had weeks of it, when it’s a bother to breathe, let alone get up and wash and do your hair and dress and eat——’

  ‘And walk about and talk to people or even look at their silly eyes, and then undress and crawl into bed, to try and sleep, and after that begin it all over again. I know. Still, I shouldn’t have thought you would.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ she said gravely. ‘Why did you think I didn’t?’

  ‘You seemed to have so much life in you, good red stuff,’ he replied, considering her. ‘I couldn’t imagine anything downing you for more than a minute. I don’t believe it does.’

  ‘Oh yes, it does.’ She nodded her head, round-eyed, like a child. Then she laughed. ‘For that matter,’ she cried, ‘I shouldn’t have thought it of you either. I never met anybody so full of beans. Why, even when you’re saying how miserable you are, you seem to be enjoying yourself a lot more than most people are when they think they’re really happy for once. Look at Sir Bill there. He wouldn’t admit he wasn’t ever enjoying himself, but at the top of his form, with a pint or two of champagne tucked away inside him, he’s a damn sight more miserable than you are when you talk as if you were nearly dead. So there, Mister Roger.’

  ‘Ah, but’—and he shook his head—‘to-night’s different. That’s what I’m really trying to tell you.’

  ‘I’d risk every night being different, with you. Not that you aren’t fed up, of course. It didn’t take me long to see that. And then that story of yours. That got over all right with me, I can tell you. But you’ve no need to sit about, thinking it out over and over again or doping yourself. You’re not really that sort. I know. You’re full of fight and fun. I’m a bit like that myself but not so much as you are, and that’s why I like you or partly why. Only I’m not clever like you and that makes it easier for me.’

  ‘I’m just not quite so clever as a ten-year-old retriever,’ he protested. ‘And that’s not modesty either. I don’t even want to be clever. I’ve met some of the clever ones, and they make me sick.’

  She stirred and then moved a little closer to him. ‘Why don’t you do something?’

  ‘What’s this?’ he exclaimed softly. ‘Good advice?’

  ‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it? I expect you’re thinking it’s damned cheek, coming from me.’

  ‘No, I’m not. It couldn’t come from a better person; I wouldn’t have it from anybody else, I believe. But what do you mean exactly?’

  Before she replied, she slid a hand up the cushion and then rested her cheek against it. He found something curiously moving in that little action, seen vaguely in the gloom of their little covered place. It was one of those things that women carry over from childhood. And now she was beginning to explain herself in that funny little voice of hers, which had been hastily shedding acquired accents and becoming more piquant all the time they had been talking together.

  ‘What I mean is this,’ she began. ‘Have a pop at something. Start something fresh. Take a chance again. But try something you haven’t tried before. You can call it good advice if you like, and it is for your own good I’m telling you; but I don’t mean you ought to go to night-school or keep hens or put five shillings a week in the Post Office Savings Bank. You can work the confidence trick or run a roulette board, if it comes to a pinch—though I can’t see you doing anything like that—but the thing is, do something. If you think everything’s all wrong—about the war and all that—you could at least take a soapbox round and spout at st
reet corners, like the Bolshies or socialists or whatever they are. Anyhow, do something, and then you won’t know yourself.’

  He’d had a glimpse of the essentially feminine point of view. We’re tremendously important as persons, he said to himself, but they’re just detached and amused about all our antics, whether we’re running a roulette or weighing the sun. We’re still spending half our time, in their eyes, scrambling in and out of the big nursery cupboard. Gladys plainly thought his grand deep philosophic pessimism—which she was obviously ready to lump with socialism and relativity and psychoanalysis and fascism and anything else she may have heard about—could be disposed of by talking it out, being only so much steam to be let off. And perhaps it was so much steam to be let off. Perhaps she was wiser than he was. It was all very fascinating; and one thing having this point of view described in books and quite another thing coming across it like this, suddenly seeing a fantastically coloured searchlight flashing out of a familiar sky. Here at his elbow was really another world; and it was soft, warm, and breathing, a person, somebody you could talk and laugh and cry with, not so very different in most things, indeed strangely like you. His thought, having raced round this little circle, suddenly stopped.

  ‘And if you’re cross now,’ she was saying, ‘then you’re no sport, and I don’t like you.’

  ‘I was never less cross,’ he cried. ‘The fact is, I’m all excited. Either there’s something very heady about a car that’s standing still or throwing that whisky away has made me drunk.’ He really did feel oddly exultant all of a sudden. ‘I think the spell must be working. Life’s suddenly changed from being a damned long dusty road into an enormous hamper, and I feel as if I’m trying to lift the lid now. Gladys, I want to give you a colossal hug.’