“Yes, you said that before. And I’ll do it, to oblige you. But I can’t help it if it seems absurd, the two of us sitting here—me turning over my memories—you staring at me. Is there any real point in it?”
Marot had mastered his anger. He replied bleakly, impressively. “I told you I wished to show you some part of your life. Not only as it was but as it is. I do it neither to amuse myself nor amuse you. I have more important things to do, as you will soon understand. I say you will understand because this will begin to make you understand. Like a child who learns something.”
“A child is about the last creature I feel like, these days.”
“Perhaps so. You have built yourself a prison to live in, and now are weary of living in it. This means there is some hope for you. If you were content, there would be none. We may need you, it seems. It is certain you need us. Now be quiet, please—remember, as I said—and I will show you time alive, the life as it is.”
Now Ravenstreet was obedient, feeling that any further protest would be unmannerly; he was curious too about what might happen. Ignoring Marot, who was staring at him fixedly, he tugged again at the chain of memory. At first everything was as it had been during the interval when he had been alone, disconnected, fragmentary, so many odd dates and names, faded glimpses of people and places. . . . Then he was with Philippa that last day or two—where was it?—Something Bay. That was important enough, but how little he remembered, how much the years had obliterated for ever! . . . And then he woke up in time alive. . . .
CHAPTER FOUR
Time Alive
He wasn’t simply remembering. This wasn’t like memory at all. He was back in September, 1926, and this was the little cottage that Philippa had borrowed for them at Pelrock Bay. He knew this was their tenth day together and that they still had another four to go. He had just come back from bathing, had put on his blue woollen shirt and old flannel bags and was stretched out in the lop-sided basket-chair, smoking a pipe. His body still felt the glow and tingle; his hair was salted, sticky; the sea was still roaring in his ears and even now a smell of seaweed came from somewhere. The door and window were wide open, and through them he could see an indeterminate blue that might be either sea or cloudless sky, only broken through the window by a segment of cliff that was pale yellow in the hazy September sunlight. It seemed to float, that cliff; but then the whole morning was afloat in the blue. The small sitting-room was solidly there; some sand on the worn linoleum; the green little hearthrug that clashed with the newer and more metallic green tablecloth; the grate, narrow, high, old-fashioned, that they had never cleaned after the fire they had had the first two nights; the three shelves of books, mostly the old red Nelson’s Sevenpenny series, pre-war stuff; the photogravure of the saucy Royalist maid between the two Roundhead soldiers; the calendar for 1924; the deck-chair with its torn canvas back and the two Windsor uprights at the table; the two Victorian glass ornaments on the windowsill; the smoky low ceiling that badly needed doing over; the two brass oil-lamps on the tiny dresser, with the three quart bottles of beer between them. Yes, it was all there, the hour and the place, the great gold morning no longer lost, only waiting for him to recognise it again.
Out of wherever he had been before—and hadn’t he been sitting with a strange old man somewhere?—he had brought nothing but a standard of comparison, which enabled him to realise how much richer the mere act of living seemed to be in this here and now, how a wealth of sights and sounds and smells had been newly restored to him, as if he had been returned, after some grey and muted exile, to the world that was rightly his, to some kingdom where spirit sharpened the senses and they in turn fed the spirit. Hadn’t he told somebody somewhere, far away in some unimaginable twilight, that he had been dead? Well now he was alive. He wriggled his toes inside the stained gym shoes he was wearing. He blew smoke towards the doorway and saw it dissolve into the blue. Even his hunger, for they hadn’t had much breakfast and the morning was wearing away (Phil had gone out to buy something for lunch, of course), had life in it, a kind of promise he’d been in danger of forgetting when he’d been somewhere else, dead perhaps.
He was waiting for something, though, besides Phil and lunch. And now that he was back—just the same except for one essential bit of him that watched, noted, compared, knew fresh delight and perhaps (he would see) an anguish he’d never known before—whatever it was, this thing for which he waited, it cast a shadow over the bright morning, already hinted at that anguish he might feel. He knew it would be much better if he didn’t sit there waiting, if he went out to meet Phil along the road from the village or returned to the beach, only a few hundred yards away, if he did anything rather than sit there and wait. But for what? And then he was admitted into the thought of the self, out of a multiplicity of selves, who had planned all this, his bathe, Phil’s trip to the village, his waiting here alone. He knew now. He wanted to be here alone when the postman called.
The postman came, with a tremendous knock, a crimson whiskered face round the door, a remark about the weather, and two letters for Mr. Charles Ravenstreet. One was from Frank Crewe: Dear Charlie, Hope you are having a fine holiday and are feeling full of beans. But I want you back—sharp. The Midland order has come in and is better than we thought—this is where we really start to move, Charlie. The other thing—but don’t say I told you—is that Maureen is worrying about you and if you don’t get back this week she will be going off herself in a huff, which might spoil everything I have wanted for you two. So what about it? The other letter was typewritten and formal and was from a London firm of electrical engineers who had two or three branches out East. They had considered his application—he had applied for a job some weeks before, when Frank admitted that the New Central Electric was looking rocky—and were prepared to offer him a position in one of their Far Eastern branches: five years contract, starting at four hundred a year, with a living allowance that would be increased on marriage, and a chance afterwards, if they were satisfied with his work, of a job in London. So there it was. The crossroads were here. He could stay with Frank, marry Maureen, start moving up with the firm—and if the Midland order was better than Frank had expected, then it was very good indeed and New Central Electric would have to expand. But the letter from the London people meant that he could marry Philippa now if he wanted to, for here was the job going. It would have been difficult—no, impossible—to stay on with Frank and marry anybody else but Maureen; the old boy was too set on seeing him married to his daughter. But here was a way out if he really wanted Philippa for keeps, as he’d told her he did, often told himself too. Before this job out East had been offered to him he’d had a good excuse not to marry her, with this semi-engagement to his boss’s daughter hanging over him. In a difficult year like 1926, still feeling uneasy after the General Strike, an ambitious young electrical engineer isn’t going to jilt himself clean out of a job just to marry a girl he’s already sleeping with. After all, he’d never promised to marry Phil—they’d only talked about it vaguely, usually when they were sharing a cigarette after making love. But now with this letter from London here was the job he could take Phil out to (she’d go anywhere with him, he was certain of that), so the old excuse wouldn’t work any longer; and here by the very same post was Frank, probably egged on by Maureen (a cool sly one, not making a direct move herself), as good as ordering him back to get on with his work and his courting. He’d have to decide today: here were the crossroads.
The essential Ravenstreet, who was back here with something added, didn’t think these thoughts but seemed to experience them just as everything else there—the quality of the morning, the look of the cottage, the feel of his skin after bathing—had been experienced. These thoughts were part of the scene. But unlike everything else, they were unwelcome. No escape from them, though; no possible substitution of other and better thoughts. Moreover, while this younger scheming self was thinking, withdrawn from his surroundings, the hour and the place lost their beguilin
g sights and sounds and smells, the morning withered, and neither spirit nor sense felt satisfaction. What this watching, noting, comparing, essential self of Ravenstreet’s felt now was apprehension, as if some mysterious anguish, never known before, might be threateningly close.
Phil arrived, out of breath, to dump two chops on the table. She was rather small, sturdier than she first appeared to be, almost as dark as an Indian, not regularly pretty but varying between amusing ugliness and something like real beauty. She was his own age, twenty-seven, had been engaged when very young to a fellow who was killed in 1918, and then forsworn love and driven all her energy into a bookshop and lending-library business, of which she now owned a half-share; and in the shop, where he had first got to know her, she was a cool little character, with never a hint of sex, but once he had broken through all that and they had been able to make love properly, she had openly and delightedly revealed herself as eager, impulsive, passionate. But she still remained more independent than most girls, tried to pay her way, and avoided any husband-catching tricks and emotional blackmail. There were times, however, when she clung to him desperately, her nails biting into his flesh, and often then her eyes would be filled with tears; but she never told him what was the matter. Except when they were deliberately fooling around or actually making love, to which she abandoned herself almost with a kind of despair, she kept her pride, never pressing him to tell her anything if he showed any reluctance, never making any fancy demands to test her hold over him, but just keeping going with him. This holiday, however, had been her idea, perhaps because she had been offered the cottage; yet now and again he felt she might have some special reason for wanting to be alone with him for two whole weeks, something outside her usual desire for him, and he wondered at times if she was waiting now for him to say they ought to get married.
“Anything been happening?” she asked.
“Not a thing.” Ravenstreet heard himself saying this. It was queer, not at all pleasant. The words came out too smoothly and easily, like little packets from a well-oiled slot machine. Quickly too, so that they were out before he could think of changing them.
“No post?”
“I’d a note from my boss, Frank Crewe.” Nothing about the other letter, about the offer that would enable them to marry. Suppressed in a twinkling too; he was off again at once. “He says we’ve got that Midland order and wants me back at once.”
“Oh no!” She was all dismay.
“That’s what he says. We’ve been counting on that order. Makes all the difference.”
“Well, we’ve been counting on this holiday. He can do without you for a few days, can’t he?”
“Possibly. Danger is, he might decide that he could do without me for ever and ever. He’s rather that sort. Either you’re with him, heart and soul, or you’re not. I’ve told you that before, Phil,” he added rather sulkily.
It was bewildering, sometimes sickening, then and later, how one part of him felt all that was behind the words he spoke, while the other part, newly arrived, remained in its detachment, not necessarily feeling nothing but feeling something quite different from the speaker, whose thoughts and emotions were given with the scene. What Ravenstreet felt now, right at the heart of the experience, was a horrified astonishment at the duplicity of this apparently naïve young Charlie Ravenstreet, who was making every word, every shift of tone, every gesture, contribute to a performance so elaborate in its technique, so contemptible in its aim. Did we go through our adult lives acting in this fashion? If this is what could be done with love in a cottage, with a dark girl, tender and passionate, in golden weather by the sea, what mountebanking and humbug must go on elsewhere!
She was regarding him questioningly, her whole person still and solemn. “Yes, I know. What have you decided to do, then, Charlie?”
“Nothing yet. Give me time to think, Phil.” It was not entirely a false show of irritation; but of course the performance was still going on.
She knew something was wrong, caught the stale old whiff of treachery—as he saw now, with rage, with shame—but she forced a smile: “I’ll start lunch. You must be hungry. I’m famished. Lovely chops.” She was rather noisy as she bustled about in the tiny kitchen.
The young man who moved uneasily about the sitting-room and then went to sit on the bench outside the window, in the huge glow and quiet of that September noon, was a battlefield where two sets of selves struggled for mastery. There was a Charlie who had taken her in his arms so often and then shared a cigarette in that miniature world of peace and tenderness, who wanted to rush into the kitchen, put his arms round her again, tell her about the letter with the job out East in it, and share her excitement and joy. But the other set were doubtful about this excitement and joy, here today and gone tomorrow, asked how much it was really worth, and exchanged sound long-term views. To some of them there was something foolish and cloying in this whole love business. One of them, not a nice fellow but persuasive, came wriggling out of the dusk to declare that, quite apart from the better prospects that Frank Crewe as a father-in-law might offer, he was more interested in what might lie behind young Maureen Crewe’s pale uncertain look, her rather sly manner, her cool virginity, than he was in Phil’s open warmth, her familiar surrender, all too easy. Why throw chances away, he argued, for something you’ve had and could have again, no doubt, any time you wanted it. And the young man, who would call himself Charles Ravenstreet whatever he did, made no move toward the kitchen.
They were gay at lunch, talking hard, laughing a lot; lovers on the spree. There was pretence in it of course on both sides, yet now and then it was real gaiety, youth breaking through. Throughout this meal and afterwards, during the early afternoon when after washing-up and clearing things away they suddenly fell to making love, Ravenstreet found himself varying bewilderingly between complete identification with his younger self, tasting the meat and vegetables and bitter beer, feeling the warmth of her lips and the pressure of her body, and a bitterly critical distance from the scene, when he observed rather than experienced it. At those moments he was far more aware of what she was thinking and feeling than this young man was, this young man she truly loved who was himself yet not himself. He knew her doubt, her resolve to forget the doubt, her sudden sick descents into despair; yet there was something—a secret fact, a giant fear—overshadowing her mind that remained unrevealed to him. His younger self didn’t even know that something was there. Yet that fact, that fear, was the key, and there was a door, into a life that would have meaning, that couldn’t be opened without it.
She slept, exhausted, in the low-roofed oven of a bedroom, and a certain Charlie Ravenstreet, overcoming and then forgetting the others who would have to live with him through many a year, remembered a five-thirty-five train and began creeping about the place, putting his things together. A horrible fellow, who should be out of the sun for ever; yet Sir Charles Ravenstreet could feel the man’s sweat on his forehead. Did this go on and on and on? Couldn’t it be stopped? Couldn’t it be changed? Were we—oh, a nightmare conclusion—machines that yet could feel a living being’s guilt and anguish? As if a little wheel or coil somewhere deep among the cogs had quivering nerves!
She awoke and looked at him, and there was no stopping the tragic little farce they had to play now. Every false word slipped out before he could change it. His sense of frustration was terrible, for he felt certain there existed some power, which he couldn’t discover how to use, that could break this evil spell of recurrence, a strength he couldn’t find that would lift the heavy hour out of this groove.
“You’re going, then, Charlie?”
“I must, Phil. Just can’t be helped.”
She was fighting herself to believe him. Treachery clouded the air between them. “Would you have gone without telling me—if I hadn’t wakened up?”
“I don’t know.” He was irritable; he fussed about with his bag. “I don’t suppose so. But I knew you were tired.”
“Are
you tired—of me?”
“Now—for God’s sake—that doesn’t come into it at all. You know I don’t want to go back. But I feel I ought to—I’ve told you how things are at the firm. We’ve got to get busy, as Crewe says. What’s the matter with you?” A mistake this. He hurried on: “We’ve had a wonderful time—ten days together, a lot more than we thought we’d have. If I’ve got to cut it short now—well, it’s a nuisance but it just can’t be helped, that’s all.”
She was crying, with no words to explain how lost and gone she was in her misery, blotting out sun and sea, all the gold turned to heated brass.
“I must say you’re being unreasonable, Phil.” Even this fellow knew this to be a lie.
She found some words. “You weren’t even going to take me back with you.”
Out they came, the false look of surprise, the false words. “Of course not. You don’t want to go back, do you? I thought you’d want to stay on here—finish your holiday.”
She was a fury, glaring and black. “Don’t talk like a bloody fool. Why should I want to stay on here—without you? What am I going to do? What am I going to feel? Don’t you understand anything at all?”
This was a fine chance. “You told me you wanted to come here whether I came or not.” Quiet, reasonable, deadly. “This was your favourite place, you said. So I don’t see why you’ve got to scream your head off, calling me a bloody fool, just because I assume you’d want to finish your holiday. And I haven’t got my own business, remember. I have to do what I’m told—or take the consequences——”
“Oh—shut up——”
“All right. I’ll shut up.” He did some more and quite unnecessary bag work. And this other Ravenstreet found himself staring at a green linen shirt—he’d bought it at a sale in Oxford Street when up for the day in London in the autumn of 1925—and his fingertips felt its harsh but cool and pleasing caress. She had gone. He heard a tap running. When she faced him again, a minute or two later, she was neat, pale, composed, beyond the battle for love now.
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