by Mary Renault
“No.” His breath caught; he stopped till he was ready. “I’m no good.”
“I love you; what about me?”
“I’m no good to anyone.”
She stopped thinking. She loosened her dress to make a warmer place for his head, and took him into it. The words seemed not to come from her mind, but from some deep place in her body, as blindly and certainly as a caress in the night.
“You’re the best of all. You’re what I wanted always. Before you were born I wanted you, and all your life. I always wanted him to be just like you.”
She was a fool, she decided next moment; she had only made things worse. But it came to him more easily now. He was starved with cold, she thought; it was draining the life out of him, he would be comforted if he were warm. So she slipped down beside him, onto the step of rock below the throne, where she could be nearer. At first he grew tense as if he were afraid, and began to shiver again: he had gone a long way, tonight, into his private world. She made him as comfortable as she could, leaning against the cold stone; and after a while he lay half relaxed and still; cautiously still, like a child who expects, if he gets himself too much noticed, to be sent away. But through his wet shirt he began to seem a little more like the living; and at last she felt against her breast the faint movement of a kiss. It was guarded, almost stealthy; not like a caress, like a half-hearted worthless claim that will be seen through and rejected, hardly worth making. It filled her with impotent anger; but that was done with, and had never been of use. She said, “I love you. Better than anyone,” and kissed him.
Soon they must go, but with his head in her arm she stayed for a little longer. He was quiet and, it seemed, at rest, and she could not bring herself yet to stir him into effort again. Weary herself, she let her mind drift, and found it wander to the hours before she had gone in search—of him; strangely, it seemed now as if all that while she had been seeking him still. It was true, she thought; for the second time that night she had listened to the resisting cry of birth. But this time it would cost her more. This time she was completing it not with her hands but in herself, it was she who had it still before her to suffer and be torn. What she had now was not for her possessing. She was only the Madonna of the Cave, Demeter who fashions living things and sends them out into the light. All she had done, and had still to do, would work to accomplish her own loss; to separate and free him, to make him less a part of her, and more his own. Already the new claimants were waiting to receive him from her; the dangers of the coming years; death, perhaps, not this that he would have chosen but alien and lonely; if he lived, the work which would be his most demanding love; the men who would be his friends; the women who would be beautiful when the last of her youth was gone. Lisa had found an answer, but that was not for her. She would never bear a child to him. It would be too long before she could spare for its needs the love of which his own need had never been satisfied; before his mind was ready, her body would be too old.
He stirred in her arms. “Now you’re getting cold, too.”
“This is a cold place, darling. Let’s go home.”
He got to his knees beside her, and took her in his arms. It was the first kiss, tonight, that he had taken for himself.
“You were frightened,” he said, “when we came here before. Aren’t you frightened now, so late in the night?”
She had forgotten; but she felt what was needed of her. “Yes, I am a little. I’m always afraid of the dark.”
He stood, and lifted her to her feet, taking her weight on his arm. Drawing her face to his shoulder, he patted her hair,
“It’s all right, beloved. See, I’ve got you. There’s nothing to be afraid of, if you just keep a tight hold on me.”
A Biography of Mary Renault
Mary Renault (1905–1983) was an English writer best known for her historical novels on the life of Alexander the Great: Fire from Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972), and Funeral Games (1981).
Born Eileen Mary Challans into a middle-class family in a London suburb, Renault enjoyed reading from a young age. Initially obsessed with cowboy stories, she became interested in Greek philosophy when she found Plato’s works in her school library. Her fascination with Greek philosophy led her to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where one of her tutors was J. R. R. Tolkien. Renault went on to earn her BA in English in 1928.
Renault began training as a nurse in 1933. It was at this time that she met the woman that would become her life partner, fellow nurse Julie Mullard. Renault also began writing, and published her first novel, Purposes of Love (titled Promise of Love in its American edition), in 1939. Inspired by her occupation, her first works were hospital romances. Renault continued writing as she treated Dunkirk evacuees at the Winford Emergency Hospital in Bristol and later as she worked in a brain surgery ward at the Radcliffe Infirmary.
In 1947, Renault received her first major award: Her novel Return to Night (1946) won an MGM prize. With the $150,000 of award money, she and Mullard moved to South Africa, never to return to England again. Renault revived her love of ancient Greek history and began to write her novels of Greece, including The Last of the Wine (1956) and The Charioteer (1953), which is still considered the first British novel that includes unconcealed homosexual love.
Renault’s in-depth depictions of Greece led many readers to believe she had spent a great deal of time there, but during her lifetime, she actually only visited the Aegean twice. Following The Last of the Wine and inspired by a replica of a Cretan fresco at a British museum, Renault wrote The King Must Die (1958) and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea (1962).
The democratic ideals of ancient Greece encouraged Renault to join the Black Sash, a women’s movement that fought against apartheid in South Africa. Renault was also heavily involved in the literary community, where she believed all people should be afforded equal standard and opportunity, and was the honorary chair of the Cape Town branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization.
Renault passed away in Cape Town on December 13, 1983.
Renault in 1940.
Renault and Julie Mullard on board the Cairo in 1948, on their way to South Africa, where they settled in Durban.
Renault in a Black Sash protest in 1955. She was among the first to join this women’s movement against apartheid.
Renault and Michael Atkinson installing her cast of the Roman statue of the Apollo Belvedere in the garden of Delos, Camps Bay, in the late 1970s.
Renault working in her “Swiss Bank” study with Mandy and Coco, the dogs.
Renault and Mullard walking the dogs on the beach at Camps Bay in 1982.
Delos, Greece, with a view over the beach at Camps Bay.
Portrait of Renault in 1982.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1947 by William Morrow and Company, Inc.
The poem by Walter de la Mare on page 211 is from “The Journey” in The Listeners, copyright, 1920, by Henry Hold and Company, and is reprinted with the permission of the author and the publishers. Appreciation is expressed to The Society of Authors for permission to quote in this book the twelve lines from “Selected Poems of Laurence Binyon” which appear on the title page.
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4804-3977-1
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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