The Balliols

by Alec Waugh

  It was an emotion far more complex, far deeper than the excitement of any ordinary homecoming after no matter how long a separation. It was far more than the feeling, “Here I am back once again where I belong. It hasn’t altered. It never will alter. It is eternal in the scheme of things. However far I travel, I shall find this waiting.” It was in part that feeling. But it was far more than that. Not only was there the contrast between the loneliness and the squalor that had been left and the friendly familiar beauty that had been recovered, but there was the explanation and the justification of that contrast. It was a feeling that was illogical, unreasoned; that the cool brain of an examining counsel could ridicule in fifteen questions; but it was a feeling that encompassing reason, silenced it.

  At the corner of Bury Street and Piccadilly, Hugh paused, watching the stream of London’s traffic clatter past. It was after five. The heat of the day had lessened. The pale cobalt of the sky had deepened. The sun had lost its metallic quality. It quivered in luminous, caressing folds on the crowded pavements; the slate roofs; the patterned awnings; on the taxis snorting and grunting with changes of gear and screech of brakes; on the large low-bodied cars soundlessly increasing and diminishing their speed; on the buses, with their top decks crowded. It was an ordinary London scene, such as Hugh had absorbed without noticing it a hundred times. But to-day, seen after six months’ separation, he saw it suddenly as in itself it was; saw it transfigured, so that for one moment this ordinary London scene became the symbol of London’s life, its variety, its greatness. This eager stir of life, the hurrying crowds, the officers and soldiers, the brisk martial stride; the salutes given and returned; the old men in their stiff hats slowly sauntering towards their clubs; the languid ladies pausing before shop windows; the eager, bright-eyed girls laughing up into the faces of the men beside whom they trotted, from whose khaki arms they hung; the nondescript shabby men, walking slowly as though there was no object in their walk; seeing all that and realizing how each different type formed the sum of the city’s greatness, realizing that he, too, was part of it, that he drew his life and strength from it, that without it he was nothing, since he had been born and bred here, as much as any tree planted in kindly soil; that here in this city was all of life that really mattered to him; that should the life of this city perish, there would remain no life for him that would be worth the living; seeing all that, because of that sight, knowing how, whatever happened, the city’s life blood must flow unchecked, he knew that if the price of that flowing were the desolation that he had left, the desolation he was to return to, the price was not too high.

  Once to every soldier such a moment came. It might come at the sight of a familiar copse, of a half-ploughed field with drifting rain, at the sight of a tall-pointed tower, the calm of a cathedral close. It came in different guises. But it came: for a moment only; as a revelation, to be lost, set aside, mislaid, but never forgotten altogether; so that later in spite of argument, there would remain at the back of the soldier’s mind the knowledge that “Yes, there had been a purpose to it; it was not all loss; something worth fighting for had been preserved.”

  For a moment the mood flickered, deeply, unforgettably; then once again Hugh Balliol was the thing he seemed to be: an officer on his first hour of leave, excited with the prospect of a fortnight’s freedom, his heart beating quickly because in an hour’s time the girl who for six months had been dreamed of, planned for, would be walking across the lounge of a restaurant to meet him.

  He had arranged that they should meet at half-past-six. They would have a cocktail. They would consult the theatre list; they would despatch page boys to ring up the box offices; they would devise for his first dinner in England the most elaborate, the most recondite of menus. That was how he had outlined the plan to her. With her even as with his father, he had a horror of counting un-hatched chickens. But it was not in terms of menus, of theatre lists that he saw the evening.

  He had arranged to meet her at half-past-six. But by quarter-past he had taken his place at the corner table from which he would be able to see her as she came through the glass doors, out of the street, walking slowly, looking around her, with that quick, birdlike dart of the eye from side to side. Then the questing look changed suddenly to a smile as he came forward towards her. He could picture the scene distinctly, so often had he rehearsed it during the long wet nights when he had tramped from one gun position to another. Yet in spite of his excitement he was nervous, uncertain of how they would feel after this long interval; whether it would not be the meeting of two strangers; whether in spite of all their letters they might not find that they had drifted away from one another. He was absurdly, unreasonably nervous, lest in spite of the distinctness of that pictured scene, they should not recognize each other. He had never seen her in summer things; his mental pictures were of someone wrapped close in furs; or at night, bare shouldered under the glare of lights. Would she look very different in flowered chiffon, in a wide-brimmed floppy hat? How awful if after these months of waiting, the first thing he said to her was to be “It is you, isn’t it?“ It was so ridiculous a prospect that he laughed away its possibility. That couldn’t happen. At the same time, something like it might. Their eyes might meet in a questioning glance, a making sure, a saying to oneself—of which each would be aware—” It is? Yes, of course it is. It must be.” Something like that might happen.

  It didn’t, though.

  It happened just as he had dreamed it; as things so rarely do. He had sat watching at the same time the clock above the entrance and the glass doors through which she would come to him. He had counted the hurrying minutes: twenty-five past, twenty-seven past, the half-hour, twenty-eight to, twenty-four to. At any moment she would be coming now. Twenty-to, quarter-to. His nervousness and excitement alike increasing. Had something gone wrong? Wasn’t she coming then? Ten-to. And then suddenly she was there. It was just as he had dreamed it. She was just as he had dreamed her. She came through the glass doors just as he had known she would, with a quick breathless half-trotting step, because she had known that she was late, that had changed instantly on her entrance to the slow drawled stroll that was appropriate to the leisured atmosphere of a restaurant. And just as he had expected her eyes darted quickly like a bird’s from side to side, looking from one table to another in search of him. And then, as he had expected, there came that bright flooding smile as he came towards her.

  Afterwards, too, it was as he had hoped; as he had hoped rather than as he had dreamed. He had not pictured clearly that first ten minutes. They might be shy, self-conscious. There would be the making of conversation, the quick gulping of a cocktail, till they had found their way back to their old easy intimacy. That was how he had feared it might be. It wasn’t. There was no sense of constraint, embarrassment. It was just as though there had been no separation, as though it was only yesterday that they had danced together. And though it was with light talk of theatres, music-halls, and menus that they took their places beside their cocktails at the corner table, it was not in any spirit of making conversation; it was the interlude in a long talk temporarily interrupted. As Hugh sat beside her, while she chatteringly discussed to what play they would go after dinner, he knew very well how easy it would be to say to her the things that during the long hours of night marches he had phrased and rephrased in those endless imaginary conversations.

  His heart was lifted with a tense thrilled exhilaration. Here at last she was; the girl whose image had watched beside him through those long six months; for whose letters day after day he had counted the minutes for the arrival of the ration limber; who had stood for him in his exile as the composite vision of all that life held of graciousness, sweetness, light, adventure. During those six months he had not, apart from the exchange of an occasional facetious banality with a waitress in Amiens, spoken to a single woman. The world of women, its charm, its colour, its decoration, had not existed for him. During those six months, she had been all women for him. Her image had wal
ked beside him, preserving him from despair. “There is a world elsewhere,” he had told himself. “One day I shall be again beside her. None of this will count, none of this will matter.” So had his thoughts run. And the miracle had been accomplished. He was beside her. Nothing else in the world existed.

  With an ease that would have astonished him had he been capable at such a moment of detached self-study, the long-stored sentences poured, wave-like, one upon another: a flood of adoring epithets. With bowed head she listened, on her face such a look of rapt content as you see upon the stone-cut features of a statue before whose altar a priest swings incense. As he paused, she lifted her head, looking straight into his eyes fondly, gratefully. Across the table she stretched out her hand to his. With his fingers folded about hers, he put the question to which that long flow of words had been the prelude.

  “How soon can we get married? To-morrow, or must we wait till the day after?”

  She smiled, fleetingly; then her face grew serious. Her voice, when it replied, was firm.

  “Darling, I’m not going to marry you,” she said. “Not now.”

  It was said firmly, decisively. But he refused to accept its implication.

  “You don’t expect me to take that answer?”

  “It’s the only one that I can give you.”

  “I’m going to badger you with proposals till you say ‘Yes.’”

  “I shan’t say it.”

  He refused to believe that. She felt about him in the same way that he was feeling about her. She must be. Wasn’t she wearing on her finger the ring that he had sent to her from Amiens? It was simply that she needed to be persuaded; to be wooed; to be convinced though she already was convinced. She wanted to set a trial to his persistence. To make sure that he really loved her. Well, he would convince her on that score all right.

  “Badger with proposals” was the right description for the tactics that Hugh adopted. He proposed by telegram. He proposed by letter. He proposed by telephone. He proposed with flowers, with chocolates, with offerings of handkerchiefs and gloves. He proposed over a lunch-table, a tea-table, while they were dancing, in the intervals of a play, on the golf course as they walked from green to tee. He proposed in taxis and tubes, on the tops of buses. He proposed lightly, seriously, flippantly, despairingly; with appeals to her brain, with appeals to her emotion. For the first day or so his proposals were light-hearted. He was playing a game that he enjoyed. He was certain of his ultimate success. It was annoying that his honeymoon should be curtailed, but it would be the more exciting when it came. After the third day he became less certain. By the fifth day he became doubtful. By the end of the week he had become alarmed.

  “But I believe you really mean this nonsense.”

  “Of course I do. And it isn’t nonsense.”

  Alarm became despair. He tried to break down her opposition, fiercely, through her senses and emotions. On the way from restaurants to theatres, from theatres to dance clubs, he would plead to her, close-held within his arms.

  “But you love me. You must love me. You couldn’t be like this if you didn’t love me.”

  “Darling, I do love you.”

  “Then why won’t you marry me?”

  “Oh, darling, why must we go into, all that again?”

  At other times, as they sat opposite each other at a restaurant, or as they motored out into the country for a day at Ranelagh or on the river, he would argue; bringing up the long lines of reasons that he had marshalled through the imaginary conversations of a sleepless night. Reasons that during those imaginary conversations would seem unassailable, would be met next day with the same rigid resolve.

  “It’s no good arguing, Hugh, my mind’s made up. I’m not going to commit myself to anything. It isn’t fair to you, to me, to anyone. You enlisted for the duration. We’ve got to live for the duration. Marriage is something that’ll go on after the war. I don’t know what I’ll be, what I’ll want, when the war’s over. But I do know this. It’s going to be a fresh world. I’m going to be in a position to make a fresh start in it.”

  With that one argument she met all his arguments. She would sit silent, half-listening, her head bent. Sometimes she would look up at him with a look in her eyes that he was to remember afterwards. “You spoil everything,” she would say. “And we could have such fun.” In her voice there would be a wistful note. Sometimes he would grow angry with her, using arguments of which he was ashamed; using the one weapon that no soldier should use. “Fun, indeed! It’s all very well for you to talk of fun. But this may be the last leave I’ll ever have.” He loathed and despised himself for such an exploitation of her pity. He was aware of her recoil from it, of the barrier of self-defence that she flung up, so that she became on her guard with him, never relaxing, never her real self, on the alert to steer the conversation out of dangerous waters; thinking before she answered; so that there was no more any longer of that happy intimacy, that sense of being at one with one another. They were enemies, watchful, distrustful, cautious.

  For three days, three wretched interminable days, it went on like that. Then suddenly Hugh realized that it was no use; that no argument could move her, that she was not to be swept off her feet, that nothing he could do or say would alter her resolve; realized it in the very middle of one of their interminable arguments when they faced each other like enemies across the table of a restaurant. And just as a boxer will in the very middle of an exchange of blows, realize that the game is up and drop his fists, so Hugh right in the very middle of a sentence, checked the flow of words, paused, let a smile displace a frown.

  “I’m sorry. I quit. I don’t know why I’ve been going on like this. It’s no use, I see that now.”

  And just in the same way as when a fight is finished, the enmity that was between two boxers is concluded instantly, so with that one admission of her will, the enmity that was between them ended. They could meet once again as friends, openly, with nothing to conceal from one another. The friendly smile came back into her eyes.

  “It never was any use,” she said. “But I thought you’d never realize it.”

  And just as two boxers when the fight is over will compare notes, revealing the secrets that during the fight they were at such pains to conceal, asking “Did that left hook in the second really shake you?” “Did you think you’d got me when I took that count?” So now they could confess to one another what had been from the beginning in their thoughts.

  “I never thought you’d want to marry me. Not on this leave anyhow,” she said.

  “But you knew that I meant it that last day at Victoria?”

  “That was different. I meant it too, then. But I thought that you’d feel differently after you’d been out there.”

  “That I’d change my mind about you?”

  “No, not that. Just that you’d feel differently.” She paused. “There was a man I met on leave. Two months ago. I’ve never forgotten what he said. ‘At a time like this we should not look ahead. We should live like mayflies that are destined for death at sundown.’ It seemed such an odd way of putting it. I’ve never forgotten it. I thought that’s how you might feel after you’d been out there for a time.”

  It was said casually enough, but through that second sight which is granted now and again to lovers who by identifying themselves with another person, by letting themselves be absorbed by another person, are able to guess at her thoughts, sensations, intimations; thoughts that are as much theirs as hers, Hugh knew for very certain that her meeting with this man had not so much made her expect her half fiancé to feel differently about her as it had made her feel differently about him. “Who was the man?” he asked.

  “I’ve forgotten his name. I don’t think I ever knew it. He’s someone that I met that once, and don’t ever expect to see again.”

  “Was he in love with you?”

  “What an absurd question!”

  She had not answered it directly. He looked at her, curiously, inquiringly. That man, wh
oever he was, had meant something very definite in her life.

  “I wonder whether if you hadn’t met him you would have been ready to marry me when I came back.”

  A thoughtful look came into her face, as though that particular problem had been set to her for the first time.

  “Would I? I might have. I think I should have. Possibly. Oh, I don’t know. Why look backwards? It’s as foolish as looking forward. We’ve this minute to live in. That’s all we know. He was right. We ought to live like mayflies, in a mayfly world.”

  She looked at him with that oddly wistful look that he was to remember afterwards.

  It was on July the first that she said that, across a lunch-table. As he came out into a sunlit Piccadilly, the paper-boys were shouting the news of a great advance, across a thirty-five mile battle-front.

  So it had come at last, then, the big push for which ever since Loos the higher commands had been preparing. It was appropriate that it should have come on such a day. It struck the right note of finality. This business was settled, and soon would be that other one. Already as likely as not his division would have been hurried south. He would return to the bustle of last minute preparations. There would be action, a curtain falling on a curtain. And afterwards a new world to be adjusted. A world where there was no “her” to dream about; where the half of his company would have been shot to pieces; where everything would have to be rebuilt. There would be time then to wonder what kind of future he must build himself. In the meantime there was battle waiting; and the last three days of a leave that had been divided completely into two divisions: the hours he had spent with Joyce, and those that he had spent with his family, and among his friends. So that in retrospect it seemed to him that there had been two leaves, not one; distinct, separate, consecutive. The story of his foiled love-affair and the resumed life of Ilex.