by Ann Bridge
“That’s the spirit!” he said.
They walked on and on. Thunder was grumbling away somewhere in the distance now, and occasionally the blackness round them seemed to shiver into a pale visibility, misty and blank, before it faded out into blackness again. Whereas before they had been worried and annoyed by forks in the path, Hillier now began audibly to wish for one—he was still afraid they were getting too far to the left.
“Anyhow we’re still going uphill rather than down, aren’t we?” Anastasia said.
“I think so. This infernal valley is pretty flat. If only these clouds would lift and that wretched thunderstorm make up its mind and do some lightning, it would help a lot! You remember what a mass of little valleys and cols there were at the head of the strath, and they each had a path in them. How we should welcome some of Mr. Tu Yu Jen’s brutal and licentious soldiery now, shouldn’t we? They could at least show us the way.”
But there were no soldiers, and the storm did not oblige; there was nothing for it but to keep on. Anastasia, besides being cold, was at last beginning to feel tired too. “I wonder what time it is,” she said presently.
Roy stopped and flashed the torch on his wrist. “Half-past nine.”
“Goodness, we have been slow! I expected we should have got to La Trappe by then,” Anastasia said.
“So did I, or soon after; and so we should, but for this superfluous rain,” he said. “I say, how are you? Are you all right?”
“Oh yes, rather,” she said.
“How wet are you?”
“Absolutely wet.”
He laughed. “So am I. Are you cold.”
“Not very.”
“I think we’d better have some chocolate,” he said. “Will you hold the torch a moment?”
“Have you got some? How brilliant of you!” she said, taking the torch. “I shall be glad of that.” Directing the light onto his hands, as he opened the packet, she said suddenly “Look there!”
“What?” She saw him jump.
“Only another path—isn’t it?”
He took the torch and waved it about. Another small path branched off at their very feet; they had stopped precisely at a fork.
“That’s a piece of luck,” said Roy, handing her some chocolate.
“But which do we take?”
“Oh, surely to the right, don’t you think?” he said, beginning to eat.
“I wonder,” she said doubtfully. “I should have thought it was safer to go straight on.”
“But my dear Asta, it doesn’t go straight on—it goes definitely left. Look! It’s a pure Y. This must be the one. I’m sure we’ve been bearing too much left.”
“Well, I’m not sure of anything,” she said. “Only you know we did go right, up near the head of the strath last time, and got pounded.”
“I think we’re a good bit further on now,” he said. “Look at the time. You remember that path I spotted, as we came over, was a right-hand fork when we came to it.”
Anastasia didn’t remember; what she did recall was his certainty further back, at Rose’s fork.
“All right,” she said. “Carry on.”
Stimulated and slightly warmed by the chocolate, they stepped out again. Now, as if in response to Hillier’s wishes, the mist was suddenly illuminated, and a few seconds later thunder first crackled and then roared overhead, in a series of heavy bangs—in the following silence the rain poured down more heavily than ever, with a loud swishing sound.
“That’s more the style!” said Hillier. “Now if only these clouds would lift, we should see exactly where we were.”
And not long afterwards they did. The flashes of lightning grew more and more brilliant, though at first they only illuminated the foggy blankness and the beating rain. But the mist was thinning now; at each flash they saw the path—how small it was!—a few yards ahead of them. At last there came one of those moments when the sky seems to open from end to end and pour a blinding bluish-white light from Heaven onto the cowering earth—and in that light, sodden and forlorn, the tiny path leading up to its very door, they saw a small branch-thatched hut.
Anastasia recognised it at once. “Oh goodness! Here we are again,” she said. And then, to Hillier’s half-irritated admiration, she burst out laughing in the darkness.
“Are you sure it’s the same one?” he asked—he felt terribly crestfallen.
“Perfectly—I sat by it for hours with Henry, while you were all careering over the skyline. But we’ll soon see—give me the torch.”
“How shall you know?” Roy asked, handing it to her.
“Because it’s got hay stuff in it, and there’s one of those paper New Year mottoes fastened up over the door.” She brushed past him and went forward, switching on the torch as she did so. Damp and discoloured, a perforated pink paper streamer hung limply down over the rush-built door, in the round white patch of light.
“Hades! You’re right,” said Hillier miserably. He felt as limp as the streamer. “Now what do we do?” he asked.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s much good trailing about any more tonight,” said Anastasia. “I don’t think we shall get anywhere. What’s the time?”
He looked. “Nearly ten. You don’t think we could find our way now, if we went back? I feel pretty sure I remember the turns after that last fork.” But his voice sounded deflated, without his earlier brisk confidence.
“No, I don’t feel a bit sure,” said Anastasia. “That will only take us, at the best, to that very scrambly path down, with all those bushes and rocks. It would mean using the torch the whole time, and there’s only about half an hour left in it. And if one of us turns our ankle, we really shall be pounded. I think now we’re here, we’d better stop till the morning. We shall get daylight soon after five.”
“All right,” Hillier agreed. “Then let’s get in out of the wet.”
They pulled open the door and went in, Anastasia flashing her torch over their place of refuge. It was very small, and was three-parts full of a sort of scrubby mixture of dried weeds and grass.
“What’s this? Fodder or litter?” Hillier asked, examining it.
“Fodder, I expect—or it may be fuel.”
“Anyhow it’s pretty dry,” he said, feeling about with his hand, “except over here near the wall. If we keep to the middle we shall be all right. I’ve slept in far worse places than this.”
It was surprisingly dry. Their clothes, on the other hand, were extremely wet; neither had a dry stitch on them anywhere—the water was dripping off the hems of their shorts, and Anastasia wrung it out of the cuffs of her jacket as she stood by the door, sticking the torch into the flimsy wall while she did so.
“That’s no good,” said Hillier. “You’d better take those things off and sleep in your underclothes.”
This would have been excellent advice if Anastasia had been wearing any underclothes, but she was not—on summer walking-trips in China one wears shorts and a shirt, and leaves it at that. She pointed this out: If it was ordinary decent hay, Hillier said discontentedly, they could have got under that, “but I doubt if there’s much warmth in this branchy stuff. But you’ll get your death if you stay in those dripping things.”
This was self-evident—a little light clicketing noise was already to be heard at intervals, between the bangs of the thunder overhead—the chattering of Anastasia’s teeth. The night temperature at 5000 feet is fairly low, even in summer, and the walls of the hut were by no means air-proof. Eventually they hit on a chilly but sensible plan—they wrung the water out of their jackets, put out the light, took off their shirts and shorts and wrung, those, too, as dry as they could, and put them on again. Then, once more by the light of the torch, Hillier scooped out a sort of hollow in the unfriendly litter.
“There,” he said, contemplating his handiwork, “if we crouch down in that and pull the stuff over us, and put our jackets on top, we may get fairly warm. Hop in,” he adjured her, thinking he saw her hesitate—“this is no
time for the conventions. Adversity, as your friend Henry would undoubtedly say, makes strange bedfellows. But we shall want all our joint warmth if we are not to die of cold.”
Anastasia laughed. “Of course,” she said, scrambling in. He tucked the bristly stuff round her, carefully, and put her jacket over all. “How’s that?” he asked. “Comfortable?”
“Not too bad,” she said, pulling her jacket forward so that it came under her chin. “It catches in one’s hair so.”
He got a clean, though wet, handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. “That any good?”
“Oh yes—thank you.” She pulled the twiggy pieces out of her hair and tied her head up in it.
“Now some more chocolate, I think,” said Hillier, when he in his turn had arranged himself in the litter beside her, and propped the torch in another part of the wall, within his reach. He handed her a slab, and they munched it. Anastasia was rather pleased with him for his lively sensible handling of the situation; he for his part was greatly struck by her uncomplaining good-temper throughout their adventure, and even more by her endurance. Apart from the hour’s rest at lunch, and a few minutes at tea, she had been on her feet uninterruptedly for fourteen hours. He was beginning to feel a little warmer, too, in spite of his clammy clothes. “I think this hay-box is actually going to do its stuff, more or less,” he said. “Are you fairly warm?”
“Not too bad.”
“Good. Shall I put out the light?”
“Yes—let’s save it. You never know,” she said.
But Anastasia was not getting warm. In spite of her tendency to stoutness, she had a poor circulation, and strong as she was, she was much more tired than he. After a few minutes her teeth began to chatter again—she tried to hold them together, and even put her sodden handkerchief in her mouth, but it was no good. Little jumps and jerks took possession of her chilled and weary muscles, making her legs and arms twitch.
“This won’t do,” Hillier’s voice came in the dark.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got to get warm. Where are your hands?” He sat up, rolled up her damp shirt sleeves, and rubbed and massaged her hands and arms rather expertly.
“Thank you,” said Anastasia meekly, between her chattering teeth.
“Your back is what you’ve got to get warm,” he went on, rubbing away—“all these chills and rigors come from the nerves down the spine; once you get that warmed up you’ll be all right. I had just this performance once with a man on Demavend. Now—are your arms warmer?”
“Yes—a good bit.”
“Right. Then lie down with your back to me, and I’ll lie right up against you and warm your spine.”
The desire and need for warmth is one of the strongest of human instincts, an offshoot of the instinct of self-preservation, the oldest and strongest of all. The organism recognises profoundly, at certain crises, that without warmth it must perish; and less primeval ideas and more recent inhibitions melt before this simple and urgent need. Still jerking and twitching, Anastasia Lydiard did as she was told; she was really too exhausted and cold to mind much what she did. She vaguely expected that Hillier would lie with his back to hers, but he did not; he slid an arm through underneath her body, and folded the other across her arm and chest—his hot breath came on her neck. Warmth—rather a moist warmth like a poultice, but still warmth—began to creep through her; it was extraordinarily comforting. Gradually the twitching of her chilled limbs lessened, the chattering of her teeth stopped. She began to get sleepy. It was comfortable; it was very good of Roy. It was all very funny, too, really; she thought of his remark about Hargreaves, and felt like laughing, but she was too sleepy to laugh. She was sinking into a heavenly void of rest, pricked here and there with little points—the sharp twigs sticking into her neck and side—but it was too much trouble to move them. She fell asleep.
Hillier remained awake rather longer. He felt the jerkings of her muscles lessen, and then cease; he noticed that her teeth had stopped chattering. “Warmer now?” he murmured—but she made no answer, and he realised that she was asleep. Cautiously he moved his upper arm and found her hand—it was getting warm to the touch. She would be all right now, he told himself. But he did not move; he lay in a curious contentment, still holding her. The literary toughs, male and female, he reflected, confronted with a situation like this, would now assume that he wanted to seduce her. That showed how much they knew—when you had been walking thirteen hours, and been soaked through for three, and had no alcohol about, you didn’t want to seduce anybody. But he liked having her in his arms—it was friendly, very peculiar, and surprisingly nice. He thought a little about Anastasia, and how very much he liked her. He liked her intelligence, her uprightness, her moral force; and yet, the nippy feminine way in which she managed people—him, Henry, Antony. He liked her detachment—he liked the naturalness of her sense of humour. So many people’s sense of humour was a carefully tended, rather exotic plant—hers was a small hardy bush, growing native and free out of the strong soil of her mind and character. He had even come to like the vagueness to which her constant mental preoccupations led. It made him less in awe of her, and the element of vanity in Hillier’s character made him rather dislike being in awe of people. This was perhaps one reason why he was feeling so warmly to her at that moment—one does not feel very much in awe of a person whom one is holding tightly in one’s arms to stop their teeth chattering. This absurd business was doing something to his feeling towards her, and what it was doing was nice. She was really rather a darling.
Cautiously, he moved his free arm and felt her hand again. It was quite warm. Still more cautiously, he slid his other arm out from underneath her, turned over, and fell asleep.
He woke later in the night, or half-woke; he knew vaguely who lay beside him, and still half in the unguarded simplicity of sleep, turned to her with an instinctive movement of desire. The very action brought him more awake, and he checked himself at once. What could have made him do that? Ah—as his sleep-drugged mind cleared, it came back to him that he had had a dream. Well, he thought, resolutely turning on his other side, anyone could have a dream—there was nothing in that. But before he fell asleep again his mind, which worked in sentences, as the minds of his kind do, produced a sentence which was rather surprising—This show isn’t going to be settled that way. All by itself, it seemed, in sleep his mind had got there—there was a show between him and Anastasia, and it was going to be settled. The idea did not disturb him—it filled him with immense, if confused, satisfaction. Once more he fell asleep.
When he next woke, a broad uneven band of light, with that peculiar brilliance of the light of a clear morning was pouring in above the rush door; bright specks, stars of light, gleamed from the chinks in the branch-built walls around him. He looked at his watch—it was six o’clock. Time to be getting on, he thought, with a certain regret; their nest in the scrubby hay was warm as toast now, and his clothes were dry—he was really very comfortable. But there was that wretched little Mrs. Pelham, coughing her guts out down in that filthy room at Tu Chia Chuang—they must go on and get her her stuff. He rather prided himself on thinking of all this before he turned to his sleeping companion. Anastasia slept like an infant, on her side, her chin tucked babyishly into the rough hay he had spread over her; her short dark lashes lay thick on her cheek; there were blue veins in her closed eyelids, faint blue smears under the lashes—but her usually pale cheeks were softly tinged with the warmth of sleep. Like that, she looked childish, undefended—much less forcible and alarming than by day. And another absurd thought rose in the shape of a sentence to the surface of Hillier’s mind—it’s something to know beforehand that she looks so nice in bed! Quite deliberately, he leant over and gave her a kiss.
She opened her eyes, slowly, turned a little, and saw his face bent over hers—so close, there was hardly a doubt what he had been at. But Roy left her in no doubt—even as that sleep-brought pink deepened with
the slow surprise in her face, he bent down and kissed her again.
For another second she lay still, half-smiling, sleepy and sweet. Then she sat up, quickly, and exclaimed—“My dear Roy, what are you up to?”
“Waking the Sleeping Beauty!” he said.
She frowned. “There’s no need to go all primitive,” she said, rather crossly, pulling his handkerchief off her head, and shaking out her black hair. “What’s the time?”
“But we did go all primitive,” he said, ignoring her question, and smiling with absurd contentment.
“We had to get warm—” she began rather coldly.
But Roy rose as she spoke, undid the crazy withy latch, and threw open the door of the hut. The uncertain oblong framed a picture of flowery pastures grey with wet, glittering in the early sunlight, and blue shapes of hills beyond. He stepped out into this shining world, so that the sun lit up his fair head, and stretched largely and gladly—tousled as he was, with sprigs of dried weeds sticking to his blue shirt, there was a touch of splendour about Roy Hillier at that moment. Then he turned to her, and spoke quite simply and seriously.
“I’m sorry if I made you cross, but I can’t help being glad that I’ve held you in my arms. Now let’s go down and get those things, shall we?”
Chapter Eighteen
The thunderstorm which finally revealed the little hut to Roy and Anastasia up in the hills beyond the Small Dragon Gate did not neglect the Village of the Tu Family, but it got there earlier. Already while Henry Hargreaves and Antony, soon after seven, were sitting eating their supper rather disconsolately on the t’ai, the first bangs and crashes of thunder took place, and Antony, like a nervous mother, started up, saying—“I wonder if Rose minds this?” He could not remember. “Do you know?”
“As a matter of fact I don’t, my dear fellow,” Henry said. “She doesn’t mind much.”