by Rumer Godden
‘You are not tired?’ he asks again. ‘You don’t want to go to bed?’ He knows perfectly well she does not want to go to bed.
‘No. Do you?’ She knows equally well that he does not either.
‘No.’
‘Pelham was tired,’ says Lark. Are they, she wonders, to go on talking of being tired forever? To go wandering round and round in these circles that are so very far from the way they mean to take? Then Rollo lifts his head.
‘Do you always kiss Pelham good night? Does he kiss you?’
‘When Pelham kisses me,’ says Lark dreamily, ‘it doesn’t go any deeper than my skin.’ She feels now as if she were speaking in a dream, but it is real at last. Rollo takes his elbow off the mantelpiece.
‘And when I kiss you?’ asks Rollo and his voice, as once before, is blurred and husky.
There is a sudden stillness.
‘You have never kissed me – yet.’
Then Lark, as if she were compelled to, deliberately puts a spoke into this wheel that is turning so dazzlingly towards her. It might be called a Catherine wheel of hope and fear, bright as flames and sparks, but she arrests it. She says, ‘I keep thinking of India.’
Rollo is jerked abruptly to a standstill. ‘Why do you want to think of that now?’
‘I don’t want to. I have to,’ says Lark and she goes deeper deliberately though she hurts herself. ‘I think of it, and you, and of myself. It will be exciting for you of course. Think of all the things you will see: wild animals and queer flowers; queer religions; the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri and the Ganges and crocodiles. I can see you Rollo,’ she says sadly, ‘on a pony under a palm. You have been playing polo I expect. I see a minaret, and a peacock.’ And she catches her breath as she says, ‘Of course India is very gay.’
‘Need you say that?’ he says angrily. ‘Need you tease me now?’
‘What else can I do?’ She stands up and comes so close to him, by the fire, that her eyes are on a level with his face, and he can smell the scent on her skin and on her hair and the firelight on her dress. Her eyes are dark with feeling, her lips have stopped laughing and he can see her throat move as if words welled up in it, but she does not speak. He does not speak either but he puts out his hand as if he would take hers. ‘Don’t touch me,’ whispers Lark. ‘Please Rollo, please don’t touch me.’
He says with a helpless groan, ‘Oh Lark! Oh Lark! What can we do?’
She turns her head and he bends his and before they know what they are doing they have kissed. Lark gives a little sob and tries to take her lips away but Rollo holds her to him. ‘I love you Lark. I love you,’ he says with his lips against hers. ‘How much I love you Lark.’
When he lifts his head, Lark stands against him unutterably happy even though in her happiness there is a quality of surprise. She leans against him, feeling his arms round her, and she looks down into the fire and round the room. The room is still the same; the candles are burning quietly along the walls; they shine on the gold in the barley-sheaves and poppies in the paper, on the picture frames, on the gilding of the chairs exactly as they did before; they are reflected quietly in the polished piano lid, in the tables, in the mirror; none of them have burst into torches; the shepherdess on the clock is still dreaming and the hands of the clock have only imperceptibly moved; the bronze chrysanthemums in the Chinese bowls are as they were: they have not hung themselves in garlands nor in wreaths; but ‘Then?’ says Lark wonderingly. ‘Then? And now?’ She murmurs: ‘I can’t believe it is true. Is it true?’
‘It is true,’ says Rollo.
‘We shall have six children and a million pounds a year.’
‘What did you say Lark?’
‘Nothing.’ She shuts her eyes and feels his strength behind her. ‘I was thinking.’
He looks down, watching her lashes against her cheek. ‘What are you thinking of?’
‘Of us of course.’
‘How we shall always be in love?’
‘How we shall always be in love.’
‘Even when we are old?’
‘Even when we are old.’
‘What made us say that?’ asked the Marchesa. ‘What made us choose that to say?’
‘And then Selina came in,’ said Rolls. ‘She was always good at cooking other people’s geese for them.’
‘It was your own goose,’ said the Marchesa.
The door opens and Selina comes in. Rolo and Lark cannot help it, they spring apart like guilty children.
Selina has come in full of triumph: her face is lit by it. Her dress of black gauze over taffeta rustles importantly into the room and the candles pick up the fire of her rubies, the ruby set she inherited from Griselda and that Griselda was given by the Eye. She rustles in full of triumph and she stops suspended on a rustle and gleam, as she sees Lark in Rollo’s arms. Her face hardens into an icy coldness.
The sight of visible tenderness is at any time abominable to Selina, but the sight of Rollo and Lark makes her feel as if she were struck and turned to ice. For a minute she stands petrified and then on a wave of angry disgust she comes forward. Lark, after she has sprung away, goes back to Rollo and puts her hand into his, and Selina sees her little finger, as she faces her, caressing and caressing Rollo’s hand. Rollo moves closer to Lark and puts his shoulder behind hers and bends his cheek quietly, privately, to feel her hair. Violent words seethe up in Selina, but by an extraordinary effort she does not say them: she says nothing at all but turns from the sight of them to take off her gloves beside the piano.
‘Well,’ says Rollo like a dangerous bull.
‘Well, Rollo, I congratulate you,’ says Selina lightly.
‘Congratulate me?’ Lark and Rollo stare at her.
‘Yes. It is all settled.’
‘What – is all settled?’ But Rollo knows. A dual set of feelings rise up in him, excitement and a gratified pleasure, and with them, a defiant obstinacy against Selina and them all.
‘My dear boy!’ The glove buttons, not being made of iron but of delicate mother-of-pearl, betray Selina; one of them is jerked off and flies across the carpet to Lark’s feet. ‘Uncle Bunny saw Lord Fitzgerald last night. He will be taking you to call there tomorrow at eleven, but that is only a formality. It is settled and it will be confirmed. I must say you are very lucky Rollo. What an adventure! Uncle Bunny is so delighted.’
‘What is it you have accepted for Rollo?’
That is from Lark. Selina moves to put her gloves down ignoring the question but Lark’s voice cuts across her, ‘Answer me please.’
Selina looks at Lark, as if she were measuring her. She says coldly: ‘Rollo is to be on the staff of Lord Fitzgerald, who has been lent to Afghanistan on a special mission to take over the Army there and remodel it. Lord Fitzgerald fought at Char-asiab and Kabul and Kandahar – what names to stir you Rollo – and he was asked for by the present Amir. It is a wonderful opportunity for Rollo. They sail on the Hindustan next week, going overland to Marseilles.’
‘Next week!’
‘It is dreadfully soon of course,’ say Selina’s lips. Not a moment too soon, say her eyes, jealous quick eyes that cannot help watching that finger. Now she sees Rollo’s hand close over it, stilling it, as he crushes Lark’s hand in his.
‘Lark and I love one another,’ he says defiantly to Selina. ‘We are going to be married.’
Selina is not often wise in her dealings with Rollo but now she is instilled with an insidious serpentine wisdom. ‘You can be married of course,’ she says. ‘You can wait five years.’
‘Five years.’ Lark seems powerless to do anything but repeat Selina’s words.
‘The appointment under the Afghan government is for five years,’ says Selina and she sees Lark’s eyes, startled and frightened.
‘I can’t wait five years,’ says Lark. ‘Selina knows I can’t.’
‘I refuse to go,’ says Rollo.
Selina curbs herself. ‘You can refuse of course,’ she agrees. ‘You have to dec
ide that for yourself, but of course if you did that at the eleventh hour, it would rather reflect on you wouldn’t it? Uncle Bunny, for instance, wouldn’t be pleased. You have to remember too that it is more than just an appointment; it is an exceptional chance. How many people, Rollo, get a chance to see a country like that? Almost unknown, full of adventure and romance. And you will, if of course you go, be working with a great man. Lord Fitzgerald is a great soldier. You will get your majority too. Think of it. A major at twenty-seven!’
Rollo looks at her and he cannot help smiling. Lark sees that smile.
‘The Duke of Wellington was a colonel at twenty-four,’ says Lark.
Rollo’s smile fades. He looks hostile.
‘If Rollo plays his cards well—’
‘I thought he was a soldier, not a card player.’
‘You are being silly,’ says Rollo sharply.
‘Of course, if you refuse to go, you can be married,’ says Selina, ‘but what will you live on? You can’t live on your pay. A captain’s pay isn’t a great deal you know, and you are only just a captain. For years you would have to scrape along. You haven’t any money, have you Lark?’
Lark looks at her with dread and with dislike.
‘After five years things should be very different,’ says the wily Selina. ‘It is only five years.’
Rollo is perfectly still behind Lark.
‘She knows that I can’t wait five years,’ says Lark. ‘That is why she suggests it. She knows I can’t.’ And she cries in desperation, ‘She hates me and Pelham is in love with me and it is intolerable for me here. I can’t wait Rollo. Don’t listen to her. Don’t be afraid. She means to spoil it and cut it short. Don’t let her Rollo. Don’t be afraid. Let us marry and be together and manage our lives for ourselves. I am not afraid. Let us trust ourselves. Rollo listen. Listen to me.’
‘I think Rollo would regret it,’ says Selina.
It is Selina’s calmness and her understatement that wins Rollo; it has the effect of sounding wise, and Lark’s vivid eager speech sounds improbable; and she gives herself away to him over and over again, and he knows, or he thinks he knows, that he is safe in arming himself against her for the present. She will wait, thinks Rollo and aloud he says: ‘Lark. Listen to me. Dearest I love you—’
Lark looks into his face. ‘Second-best love,’ says Lark slowly, drawing herself away.
‘It has to be second,’ says Rollo with a curious honesty. ‘But I love you Lark. You must trust me.’
She cries, ‘How can I? I know that look, that Dane look in your eyes.’
‘I shall marry you when I come back,’ says Rollo.
‘Will you?’ asks Lark with an edge to her voice.
‘I promise you I will.’
‘Thank you,’ says Lark. ‘And if I am not here when you come back?’
‘You are making things impossible for me,’ says Rollo angrily.
‘And you are making things impossible for me,’ says Lark quietly.
‘It is too late …’
‘It isn’t too late.’
‘Lark, don’t you see, I have to go.’
‘If you have to, you have to. It is for you to decide.’
‘Lark …’
‘If you have to, you have to,’ says Lark. ‘But you can’t expect me to agree.’
‘Lark. Promise me you will wait.’
‘I haven’t decided, I haven’t decided,’ says Lark in a faraway little voice, proud and jerky and broken. ‘I haven’t decided yet what I shall do.’
‘Lark. Listen …’
‘It is no use to listen,’ says Lark proudly, ‘I have heard.’
‘Will you be reasonable?’
‘It isn’t a question of reason. It is feeling,’ says Lark. ‘I can’t help it, can I, if you have more reason than I have, and I have more feeling than you?’
‘It is impossible to talk to you.’
‘Why talk then? It is settled. You have settled it, completely, haven’t you? You had settled it all the time. Why go on making excuses?’
‘I am not making excuses!’
Rollo spins round furiously to the mantelpiece. Lark is still, withdrawn from him to the other side of the fire, drawing a circle in the hearthrug with the toe of her white slipper, holding the mantelpiece with one hand, the other caught in the loop of his pearls, twisting them in her fingers.
‘You will break them,’ says Rollo suddenly.
Lark lifts both her hands and undoes the clasp and drops the necklace on the mantelpiece.
‘What a noise we were making just then,’ she says.
‘Lark, what are you going to do?’
‘I told you, I haven’t decided.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I haven’t decided,’ repeated Lark. ‘But I don’t think I shall wait for you, Rollo.’
‘Lark you are angry now …’
‘No I am not angry,’ says Lark, and then the unreality in her voice breaks and she comes back to the real moment and she cries, hiding her face in her hands, ‘But don’t you see, we shall be lost! Lost!’
‘But I didn’t cry for you Rolls,’ said the Marchesa. ‘Griselda’s tears are in this house, and Grizel’s, but not mine. I didn’t cry for you. I wouldn’t. I have always refused to be unhappy.’
‘Unhappy? Happy? I don’t know,’ said Rolls. The gunfire was getting nearer. Now the house shook. He listened to the guns. ‘But we didn’t live – not as we might have done. That was my fault.’
‘Mine too,’ said the Marchesa. ‘I was proud.’
‘We deserve to end,’ said Rolls.
‘There are Pax and Grizel,’ she reminded him. ‘We are not alone.’
And long ago, from a Christmas night, the carol singers begin: –
God rest you merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay …
The singing comes from outside in the Place, up to the landing where Selina is sitting alone. Her guests have gone, though like an echo Mr Baldrick’s ‘Ha!’ seems to ring in the hall and up the stairs. The little tree stands where Proutie has left it, its last candle carefully put out, its branches dull. Selina, an old old lady, sits in her armchair with Juno at her feet, and looks at it.
O tidings of comfort and joy …
I was sentimental, says Selina looking at the tree.
Behind the tree the house seems cavernous. There is no one in it but the servants and Juno and Selina.
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace.
This holy tide of Christmas
Is drawing on apace.
O tidings of comfort and joy.
‘Come Juno,’ says Selina as she slowly stands up. ‘Come Juno. We will go to bed.’
And with Juno waddling behind her, she goes through the silent empty house to her own room.
Rolls moved his chair farther away from the window. The glass rattled now to the guns. The candles were getting low. One of them began to gutter. ‘Were you afraid to die?’ he asked the Marchesa. ‘Were you prepared?’
‘We are always prepared more or less,’ said the Marchesa judiciously. ‘Death comes every minute. Guido took a long time dying and they were always exhorting him to prepare for death, but in the end he was much as usual. Your death is a part of your life,’ said the Marchesa to Rolls.
He went to the shelf of little books over the writing table – Griselda’s books, Selina’s books – and took down a prayer-book so much used that it almost fell apart in his hand. He turned the flimsy pages over until he came to page 192: ‘The Order for the Burial of the Dead’. If I am found reading this, said Rolls, how suitable that will be!
Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live … He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
Rolls was not a poet but he knew what it feels like to be a poet and in this critical suspense – the noise outside was hideous – he could be stirred to pleasure.<
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In the midst of life we are in death … Well, that was commonly known; the Marchesa, Lark, had pointed that out just now; but there was a line later that arrested him, and for a moment, grimly. ‘We shall be lost! Lost.’ Lark’s cry rang in his ear. The bitter pangs of eternal death, read Rolls; and then into his mind came the thought of Grizel. He thought how much he liked her face with its clear skin and straight small nose, the pretty mouth, the direct blue eyes and well-brushed fine brown hair. ‘We thought it was going to end, after to-night. And it isn’t. It is going to live,’ said Grizel. ‘Do you subscribe to that?’ asked Rolls now of Pax. ‘Yes I do,’ said Pax, the slim dark, somehow notable young man. ‘Yes I do,’ said Pax.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, Rolls read calmly. He was calm now. ‘Are we dust when we die?’ asks Roly. Rolls read to the end of the service, quite calm, quite undisturbed.
The heading on the opposite page caught his eye. ‘The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-birth’. He remembered now that one followed after the other.
Children and the fruit of the womb are an heritage and gift … Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant: even so are the young children …
Arrows, thought Rolls, and he went to the windows, the French doors, and, holding the book still in his hand, carefully, without disturbing the folds of the curtains, he slipped between them and the glass to look out. The raid was drawing nearer; the sky was not dark but radiant with moonlight, and the crossed patterns and beams of searchlights, moving, crossing, fixing; the air was a heavy pandemonium of sound. Close to him the windows shook and the floor under his feet shook too as if train after train were running underneath. But the trains are stopped, thought Rolls helplessly. He was frightened though he still possessed that undisturbed deep inner calm. Arrows in the hand of the giant, thought Rolls.
Well, I have shot my bolt now, thought Rolls as the noise unfolded itself across the sky and seemed to gather and thunder over his head. I am ready. I was born almost eighty years ago. It is fair, and he wondered why he had been afraid. Your death is a part of your life. Heads and tails on a coin that you spin every day; any day; not only this day. To be born and to live and to die is quite usual. Perfectly fair.