by Mary Renault
It was the kind of cold which wet-blankets every activity of body and mind, while never permitting one the indulgence of being really ill. She was merely tired, stupid, miserable, and plain. When she thought of Julian it was with dim good will and an earnest wish that he would stay away.
It was faintly comforting, however, to get one of his rambling, inarticulate letters, containing a paragraph, startling in its sudden neatness and point, about The Ascent of F.6, which he had apparently just read. Having herself seen the play indifferently done, she was seized with a positive eagerness to discuss it with him. She had actually sat down with the pen in her hand before she remembered. Receiving herself, in the course of her work, a constant stream of letters locally postmarked, she had forgotten that he got probably very few in long-familiar scripts. She sat staring at the sheet of paper in front of her, oppressed with sudden frustration and loneliness. To dispel it, she picked up his letter and read it again. A final line which she had overlooked, because it had been squeezed in along the side margin, read, How are you? My cold is gone, except that for some reason I have completely lost my voice.
She wished more than ever that she could write to him; he could not be doing much, and must be feeling lonely and bored. He would be anxious, too, about the audition.
It was on the following Sunday evening, five days later, during church time, when he called again. By that time her own cold was better, and she had developed some respect for her appearance; so it was with unqualified joy that she heard his ring. He entered with his most charming smile, and kissed her warmly.
“Darling,” she said, “how have you been? I’ve missed you so much.”
He kissed her again, and looked down at her half humorously, like someone who has a little joke for which there is no hurry.
“I’ve had your cold, you wretch. But it’s better now.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”
“What are you whispering for? There’s no one to hear.” Then she remembered his letter. “My dear,” she exclaimed in concern, “hasn’t your voice come back yet?”
He smiled apologetically, and shook his head. “I can’t think why not. It’s never played me up like this before. Lowe says I’m rundown or something. I feel all right.”
“You’ve been straining it. You ought to go to bed and rest it completely. Don’t talk at all till it comes back.”
“I tried that, actually, for a day or two. But it didn’t make any difference, so I got up again.”
“You shouldn’t be out in the evening, anyhow. If I weren’t so pleased to see you, I’d be rather cross.”
“There’s a kind of theory that I don’t go out at all. But I felt all gummed up with stopping indoors, and I wanted to see you. So I slung my hook.”
“But how long have you been like this?”
“Only about a week.”
“It shouldn’t last that long. You must see Lowe again—promise—if it goes on.”
“I’ll promise what you like,” he whispered, kissing her, “if you won’t get into a flap about it. It’s only some sort of freak thing. I’m perfectly well really.” He drew her back to him. “Well enough for anything.”
She remembered, suddenly, that it was some time since he had made love to her; they both remembered.
Perhaps it was the interval of separation which made him seem, today, more charming than her best recollections, more tender and sincere. He had learned the art of persuasion with a most flatteringly personal technique, which was the more disarming because it was so spontaneous. When they went up, presently, in the clear spring twilight, the blackbird was singing, clearly and fluidly, on a branch near her open window, and a soft wind blew in, scented with pine.
A few nights afterward he came, late, to her room. The bicycle was in repair, so he arrived a little before one. They were exchanging the inconsequent murmur of talk which passes for conversation on the edge of sleep, when she remembered to say, “How soon did your voice get right again?”
He turned his head lazily on her shoulder. “It hasn’t, yet. Silly, isn’t it?”
“But, my dear—” The drowsiness cleared from her mind, like a haze congealed by cold. They had, of course, been talking in undertones, as always when the house was asleep, so she had noticed nothing. A few minutes before, she had put out the lamp; now she turned it on again, and, sliding her shoulder free, leaned on her arm to look at him. He blinked at her with faint protest.
“Don’t worry. Lowe says it’s nothing to worry about.”
“But, Julian, it’s nearly a fortnight now. Has he gone over you properly?”
“Exhaustively.” He pulled her down, and settled himself back into the place from which she had disturbed him. “He even had an X-ray done of my chest, heaven knows why, and peered down me with a light. He says it’s nothing to matter. It’s a nuisance, though; it holds everything up. I’m sorry, darling.”
“Darling,” she said, “are you sure you couldn’t if you really tried? You’re not just getting worked up about it?”
Moving his head, he looked up at her with the bewilderment which attests innocence more powerfully than anger. “But of course I’ve tried. What do you think? You surely don’t suppose I’m doing it for fun?”
“Of course I don’t. It’s only that—well, it’s all too technical. But it’s one of those things you can make worse with worry, and so on. I think if you were to go away, just for a bit, it might—Why not stay with this man you know in town?”
“What, like this? When I’m at Chris’s we talk till the morning milk. No, it’s sure to clear off when the weather’s warmer. I’m not getting into a state about it. What a neurotic type you must think I am.”
She murmured some easy reassurance, and put out the light. Soon he was tranquilly asleep. She lay looking at the dim shadow of his hair, and confronting the truth with which he had just presented her.
She was neither shocked nor, she found, even surprised. She seemed to feel, as naturally as the weight of his head on her shoulder, his broken will resting on her heart. Untouched by the contempt she would have felt for a planned deceit, she never doubted the honesty of his conscious mind; she only recognized it for what it was, the mark of the deep flaw that goes to the foundations. The root of it was that he did not know. He had escaped out of the reach of his own self-reproach.
He lay breathing peacefully, like the childhood into whose helplessness he had retreated; innocent, his mind at rest from the conflict his body had refused. She had neither condemnation for him, nor the arrogance to credit herself with generosity because she had none. After a struggle, she rejected too the temptation of condemning where she most longed to condemn. The harm had been done too long ago.
For a little while she wondered whether, if she tried to explain any part of this, she could make him understand. All her experience pointed the other way. The hidden resistance went too deep. He would never see—lay people never did—the distinction which was so clear to her: he would always think, at the bottom of his heart, that she had accused him of a shabby and grotesque trick, and his trust in her would never survive it. What had happened so far was trivial in itself; it had importance only as a sign.
At this point her meditations were broken; he had started in his sleep, so violently that it woke him.
“I dreamed I was falling off a mountain.”
“Oh, one of those. With me it’s tripping when I try to run.”
“It must be a book of Smythe’s I was reading. I generally fall when I have this sort of dream.”
“What sort?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He seemed as wide awake as if he had not slept at all. “Well, for instance, in this one I was in the Alps, and some peak was supposed to be unclimbable. So I started out to do it on my own, no tackle or anything, and of course, being a dream, I just did it like going upstairs. It felt marvelous. Bright sunlight, and beautifully warm. Part of the time I just skimmed up it, about ten yards to a stride, half flying, you know. And then I g
ot to the summit, and had a feeling it was too good to be true; that there was a law against it or something. It was all snow, not rocky at all, and not cold; you know those clouds in Italian pictures, that have cherubs sprawling about on them, or gods; it felt like that. I was lying up there, feeling very good at having made it, and yet somehow not so good. It was a long way up from anywhere, miles and miles. And then I noticed one of those lightning conductors they often have, and thought it would be awkward if there was a storm. As soon as I’d thought of it, there was a terrific clap of thunder, and a great flash struck the lightning conductor and knocked it flat; and I could feel the whole side of the mountain collapsing under me. I remember thinking as I started to fall, ‘Of course, that’s why people aren’t allowed up here.’ And then I woke up.”
“What a rotten dream. A nice beginning, though.”
“Oh, they always have nice beginnings. I don’t often have them, now. But the ones I do have seem to have got worse.”
“Tell me another.”
He reflected and said, “I can’t remember any more.”
“I don’t mind if it isn’t proper.”
“No; I forget—It was queer, though, to wake up and find you here. I couldn’t believe it, for a moment.”
“Try and believe it, darling. When you’re alone. Never think that—that you can be punished because of me. You’ve had nothing from me, ever—you can have nothing—that it isn’t your right to have.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked slowly.
“Oh, because—I just think you’ve put me in your imagination with other things that have been there much longer, since you were a child, and because of that, I’ve probably stirred up feelings you had then about what seemed wrong.”
“But of course I don’t think we’re wrong.”
“Not think. It’s more difficult than that.”
He took this more quickly than she had expected, and said, “Well, I was brought up in the country; I suppose I picked up the facts of life in a pretty average way. Don’t you think children are bound to think sex a bit squalid? I mean, only having the instinct can really explain it. It’s just a phase everyone has to have and get over, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. But I think it was harder for you, not having both your parents, and resenting your father because of the way he’d behaved. It makes a difference, they say.”
There was a pause. When he spoke, it was with the forced flatness people use for the unspeakable. “Talking of dreams, I dreamed once that I’d killed him.”
She said, lightly, “Well, that’s quite natural: it doesn’t mean you’re a potential murderer. What was he like?”
“In the dream? Oh, like the photo we’ve got at home. Dim and soldierly. Until after I’d killed him, anyhow.”
“And then?”
He gave an unnatural little laugh. “It was funny, that part. When he was dead, he looked just like me. Only dead, of course.”
She kissed him and said, “It’s about time you had someone to sleep with you.” He had been resting on one arm, but lay down to hide the fact that he was shaking with reaction. She pretended not to have noticed it.
“I expect,” he said casually, “you must be thinking me rather a morbid type.”
“No. You’ve been by yourself too long. Everything’s going to be different now.”
“It is different, already.”
“Will you remember something if I ask you to?”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“It’s only that since I’ve known you, I’ve been happier than I knew it was possible to be.”
He said, softly and incredulously, “You?” and, presently, “I thought loving me must have been nothing but a nuisance to you—what with everything.”
“Well, you know now. Don’t forget about it.”
“I’ll tie a knot in my handkerchief.” They talked no more.
In the morning, as he was leaving, she said, “Would you like it if we went riding one day this week?”
He was enthusiastic; though, when it came to fixing a time, she could see that he was involved in some anxious calculations. His final choice was not very convenient for her, but she did not say so. She lay awake, after he had gone, thinking over what she had decided. She was not proud of it; but it was the only resource that seemed to fall within the scope of her limited knowledge, and it would have to do.
The day of the ride turned out gray and cool, but settled enough. They met, as usual, at the farm. He had still not recovered his voice. As before, he was cheerful and optimistic about it, and dismissed it lightly the better to emphasize his delight at seeing her. It was now possible to conduct a conversation with him at normal distance, even out of doors. He assured her that he felt very fit, and that it was sure to clear up in a day or two. Lowe had given him some new stuff for it.
When they were in the stable yard, she said, “Did you really mean it when you offered to let me try Biscuit? I feel rather tempted, today.”
With the warm generous smile that never failed to move her, he said, “Why, of course. Get up and I’ll fix the leathers.”
As soon as Biscuit ceased to feel his hands, she realized how fresh the horse really was, how powerful, and how much bigger than anything she had ridden before. Pride, as well as the resolution she had taken, nerved her; after a few strenuous minutes, she was aware of having won a guarded toleration and respect. Julian, for his part, had mounted Pascoe’s second best as if nothing could be pleasanter. He looked so naively happy at being permitted to spoil his ride for her sake, that she felt sickened with herself; but her mind was fixed. He would have taken the lane they had used before, the one that went up to the open downs; but she suggested a detour across the fields.
It was easy country; the fences were good, mostly dry-walled stone topped with grass. She had taken the car out before, to confirm her memories of the terrain, and now she knew exactly where to go; but, without putting anything into words, she affected a little unfamiliarity with the neighborhood, looking at him questioningly once or twice before taking the direction she had meant to take all along. She was reassured to see that he knew every inch of the way, a point on which everything depended.
At last they were in the field for which she had been making: a long sloping pasture of coarse grass, contoured so that the fence at its distant end bounded the near horizon; the usual wall, with a hedge, a little higher, on its far side. Toward it, the slope was sharper; she had been right in believing that even from saddle height, one would have to come within yards of it to see beyond.
All this while, she had not given Biscuit his head; if she had, Julian would have been left far behind. As it was, she was leading; looking back, she saw that already he was turning off toward the gate on the left. He waved, and pointed to it with his crop. She smiled uncomprehendingly. “Over there,” she called, with a vague cheerful gesture toward the fence; and urged Biscuit into a gallop.
Behind her she heard the hoofbeats change, the sharp slap of a crop brought down, and his horse’s startled response; but in a moment the sounds fell away; she was gaining fast. Biscuit had been impatient all along. To Hilary, he seemed to go, now, like a charger of the Apocalypse. For the first time she knew how easily he might get away from her. The field seemed, suddenly, not nearly as long as she had believed. The final slope, whose crest was the stone fence, was rising only a little way ahead. It was not steep enough to slow him much. Already, perhaps, she had left it too late. Her hair whipped in the wind. She suddenly ceased to care. Present effort checked imagination ; she had a blurred memory of being told by some survivor that it hadn’t hurt much, at the time. Biscuit’s great shoulders began to breast the foot of the slope.
“Look-out! Hilary! Stop!”
The raw, harsh shout behind her might have belonged to a stranger, if she had not heard her name. She flung her strength against Biscuit’s, to get him round; he pulled angrily, uncertain of her and having begun already to gather himself for the jump. He would
rear at the last moment, she thought, and probably roll on her. But he was answering the rein. When she brought him round, she was near enough to the fence to see over it, down the twenty-foot embankment into the sunken lane below.
A glove came down over hers on the rein; Biscuit snorted, slowed, and stopped. Julian’s face, so set with strain that its lines were like those of anger, stared into hers. Both of them were too breathless to speak.
He said, at last, “Look over there.” His voice was tight and husky, but still quite audible.
“I know. Thanks, Julian. I’m sorry.”
“By God, I should hope you are.”
“I think perhaps you’d better have Biscuit, now.”
“So do I,” said Julian through his teeth. He dismounted, and held Biscuit’s head.
When she was on her feet, he gripped her by the sleeves of her coat, and stood looking down at her. She felt none of the tender and triumphant emotions she had earned; she was, in fact, more frightened, having more leisure to feel it, than when Biscuit had begun to mount the slope. She murmured weakly, “Dear Julian.”
“Don’t dear-Julian me. I could beat the life out of you.”
Before she had time to think, she had actually braced herself in his hands. She relaxed, shamefacedly. “I might have killed Biscuit. I don’t wonder you’re annoyed.”
“Shut up.” His grip shifted from her sleeves to her arms. Quite consciously this time, she braced herself again. Even so, the violent embrace in which he gripped her was more than she had been ready for. Remembering that the horses must make them, even from a distance, conspicuous in this large and empty space, she tried to loosen his hold.
Pausing at last for breath, he said, “I hope I never live through a minute like that again. Did you go crazy, or what? Charging a blind fence like a drunken sailor?”
“He got away from me.” She had meant to manage without telling a lie; but the united efforts of Biscuit and Julian had shaken her nerve, “I was too busy pulling him in to notice.”
Julian kept her locked in his arms. One of them was threaded through Biscuit’s rein, and he was twitching at it irritably, producing as little effect as Hilary’s effort to get free. With equal indifference, Julian ignored both. He was talking into her hair. All she took in was “… all that stuff about one’s past life flashing before one’s eyes. And the future as well.”