Frontier Passage

by Ann Bridge

  “My darling, I am so tired. I’m all in. To-morrow—we shall be together to-morrow.”

  Then he had to change that—it could mean something he didn’t intend to mean. “We can talk then,” he said. And again he felt her trying to see him, in the dark, trying to understand why he spoke of talking, when she had made her meaning so plain. But he couldn’t help that; really he could do no more now. He took his hand away from her hair, and leaned back against the harbour wall; actually he could hardly stand any more. He made a last effort to meet the thing that was so manifest in her, the surprise, the painful question which came beating on him like aerial waves through the enveloping dark: in that same exhausted toneless voice, he said: “You will never know how much I love you—but now I simply must get to bed. I’m half dead.” And then he wished he hadn’t said ‘To bed.’ Nothing he could say was right, everything was discordant, because the whole situation was so utterly impossible and false.

  But whatever else of bewilderment or pain his incompetent words had brought to her, she understood at least the fact of his exhaustion. “Of course, you poor darling,” she said. “Come.” And most tenderly, as he had often seen her leading Pilar, holding his hand, she led him back along the sea-wall to the hotel.

  Rosemary, sitting with Crumpaun, saw them come in when they stepped out of the cold dark into the lights and warm stuffiness of the hall at the Grande Bretagne. Milcom’s face appalled her. There was some awful tragedy there. She glanced quickly from him to the Condesa. That other face, lovely, a little drawn with the cold, told her much less—whatever was wrong, Raquel had not yet fully grasped it. Oh goodness, is it Juanito? the girl wondered, and he hasn’t dared to tell her? Still wondering what it was, disturbed, anxious, soon after the glass cage had borne them upstairs she too said good night to Crumpaun, and went up to bed.

  Milcom slept heavily. He had the sensible habit of ensuring sleep when sleep was essential, and took a big dose of something. He woke refreshed; the morning was fine and full of sun; and while he drank his coffee and shaved he came to a decision. He just couldn’t kill the thing at once; he would take one more day. Once more, just once, he would walk with her in quiet country, watching the grace of her movements; once more he would hold her hands—her beautiful hands!—and take her in his arms, and kiss her. He would give himself that; he could trust himself for that. And to-night—well, to-night he would just have to be good, he thought. The instinctive phrase brought a smile round his mouth; it took him back to his childhood, and his mother. Her eyes were so like Raquel’s eyes! “My son, I wish you to be good”—so often she had said that; he could hear now the lovely fall of her voice on the last words. He went on thinking about her, and, irrelevantly, there came into his mind the tale he had heard so often on so many war-fronts—that men dying on the battlefield call not for their wives, but for their mothers. Or was it so irrelevant? Was he not on a battlefield, and death near?—the death of this new thing in him that could have grown to such beauty. Sighing a little, he went downstairs to order a car for the day.

  In the morning they drove through the soft Basque countryside, the wooded hills plum-coloured with winter, the valley floors still a brilliant green; they lunched at Ainhoa—no longer in the garden, but in the darkly-timbered dining-room—off trout and stewed wood-pigeons. In the early afternoon they went up again to the glen behind S. Joseph’s Chapel, hoping there to be out of a teasing little wind that had a bite in it. They left the car in a lane’s mouth, and on the way they went up onto the little flat-topped knoll with the oak-trees. But there were no crocuses any more; the bright fragile beautiful things were all dead and gone; the withered grass held only the pale rough-surfaced shapes of the dead oak leaves. “As grass and as the flower of grass, it is cut down, dried up and withered,” James muttered to himself. Solomon or David or whoever it was knew all about it, he thought.

  Up in the glen they found a strange happiness—the strangest he had ever known, James thought afterwards. Raquel did a wonderful thing. All day, he had known that she knew, now, that there was a catch in all this; that something was wrong, and that this day—to him, this stolen day—was a kind of make-believe. It was an inevitable knowledge, to a person of her sensitiveness. But she had asked no questions, let no hint of concern or anxiety escape her, and up there, as they sat among the soft browns of the withered bracken, she made of the make-believe a thing of unbelievable beauty. Relaxed, soft, tender, she slid into his arms, slid into passion, with a completely unexacting ease; let her mouth rest on his mouth, or her cheek on his cheek, like a blissful lover who has not a care in the world, for whom Fate is smiling and the future secure. Something about the way she did that melted and subjugated James to depths of devotion that made his earlier love for her seem as nothing. It exalted him, too—the contemplation of her selflessness, so expressed, and his own love carried him away into realms beyond music or the utmost beauty of earth. He actually turned white under the pressure of this experience.

  She saw it. She said—“You are cold, my dearest love—you are pale.”

  He didn’t answer. She said then—“Where are you?”

  Those words roused him. She knew everything. She knew how far he had travelled, beyond the bourne of common experience. Slowly he raised himself, looked at her, and laid his hand over her eyes. She knew why he did that, and wept then. But he, after a moment, laid his head on her breast, like a child on the breast of his mother, with a deep sigh. She stroked his head and his cheek with infinite tenderness; at that moment the rare and wonderful fusion of the lover with the mother was completed in her. He moved a little, shifting his position into deeper comfort, and almost at once actually fell asleep.

  He slept for perhaps twenty minutes. He woke with a start, rubbed his eyes boyishly, and looked about him. There was her face, her breast, her supporting arms. He apologised abjectly. “Darling, how could I? I am sorry.”

  She smiled at him, with a wonderful look of contentment and peace.

  “You have slept and waked again in my arms. I have wanted that for so long.”

  He turned and stared at her then, in startled enquiry.

  “So long? Not before we came here?”

  She nodded. “Before.”

  “Even in Madrid?”

  “Yes, in Madrid.”

  He turned his head away thinking—“If only I had known!” Oh yes, if he had known then, if he had understood then, before he had ever seen the Conde, all would have been so simple. He would have had none of these scruples. Ghosts in a city of ghosts could have loved quite irresponsibly. She roused him from those bitter thoughts by saying very simply—“Was it not so with you?”

  He turned and looked at her again—the long long neck, the gothic face, the eyes, and said, with a sigh—

  “Probably.”

  She laughed, at that, and her laughter brought him back to the present.

  “It’s getting cold—let’s go,” he said.

  It was getting cold. The mild winter afternoon was drawing in; the late light warmed but faintly the tawny slopes behind them, the green villa-studded coastal stretch away in front, and faded even as it deepened. He rose, pulled her to her feet, and stood for a moment looking at it all. He wanted to be able*to see this place, for ever, just as it was. Then they walked off, slowly, to the car.

  The day had been good so far, he thought—but there was the evening to be got through yet. How, he wondered, almost wishing that days need not have evenings. As they drove home he suggested taking her to dine in Bayonne, and she assented, as she did to everything. They went back however to the Grande Bretagne to have tea and change. As they came down, an hour or so later, Rosemary Oldhead was standing in the hall; they spoke to her, and James had a momentary panic-stricken impulse to invite her to come too. But he checked it—that wouldn’t do. He must manage to fight the thing through alone.

  They drove in to Bayonne, spinning along the great winding highway through a night that was full of wind, and parked the car
on the space outside the Cinema, near the bridge. They dined slowly, in a small simple place with admirable food and good claret—they lingered over their dinner, over their coffee, over their brandy; but even so, it was early when they finished, and James began to wonder wretchedly what to do next. The cinema? That, too, was so obvious as to be almost insulting.

  “Have you ever been to the Barre?” he asked her suddenly.

  “What bar? The Basque, yes,” she said, puzzled.

  He laughed. “No, sweetheart, the bar at the mouth of the Adour, where the ships come in to come up the river. It ought to be rather splendid to-night, with this wind.”

  “But what is it? What does one see?” she asked.

  “Big waves,” he said, signalling to the waiter for his bill. She was right, of course—it was ridiculous to go at night; there was no moon, and they would see nothing. But he had set his heart on the Barre, suddenly. And presently they drove down beside the river, and out through the pine trees near the coast road, and parked the car on the flat sandy space close to the sort of tower where the signal is run up to inform ships that the water is high enough for them to ride in across the bar on the incoming tide, or out on the outgoing one, between the two great stone-built walls that control the river’s mouth. Down here the wind was strong; in the faint glimmer from the tower light they could just see the great waves surging in and battling with the river’s current, where they met it coming down. They walked out along the embankment, slippery with spray and rough with flung shingle; beyond, in the starlight, the white crests of the breakers were dimly visible as they foamed shoreward, and broke on the sandy shoals. That great wind, salty and clean in the night, the roaring noise of water all about, and the splendid shock when a huge wave struck the solid stone beneath their feet were inspiring to James—he breathed deeply, for a moment forgot his preoccupations. But a burst of spray slapping up close in front wetted them, and he drew her back. They wandered off along the shore, in the direction of Biarritz, feeling a sandy track with their feet, the roar of sound and those great white shapes in motion keeping them company on their right.

  James had chosen the Barre to visit, partly because he loved it, partly because he felt that out there it would be windy enough, open-air enough, cold enough to discount passion. But it was not. On the rough track, in the dark, Raquel stumbled over something and nearly fell. He put out his arms to catch her, and then was suddenly overcome. There on the open shore, with the roar of the Atlantic in his ears, and the wind sending scuds of spume flying overhead, he stood still and pulled her roughly, violently to him; kissed her with unwonted violence, violently used his hands. Sighing, relaxed, utterly surrendered, he felt the completeness of her response. It was too much. He threw in his hand. It was no good; he couldn’t and wouldn’t go on with his ridiculous struggle. Love had its rights, as she had said—and by Heaven, it should have them!

  “Come along,” he said, in a tone she didn’t know—and led her back to the car.

  If James had driven back by the shore road and through Biarritz, everything might have turned out differently. But he didn’t know Biarritz very well, and the exit onto the main road is muddling; he was, now at last, in a hurry, and went back into Bayonne and out onto the Route Nationale. Just short of where the Biarritz road debouches onto the highway there is a bad bend—and there, driving fast, James nearly ran into the débris of an accident. A Peugeot car had hit a peasant’s cart—light-less, no doubt—and had shot half off the road and turned over on the grass verge; hay from the cart was strewn all over the tarmac, mixed with broken glass; the horse was plunging about between the shafts of what was left of the cart, while the frightened and angry peasant tried to soothe it. James, as his headlights revealed all this, pulled in to the edge of the road, stopped his engine and sprang out. The Peugeot’s engine was still running, as the exhaust showed; the air was full of the smell of petrol. He ran over, forced open the upper door—the car was on its side—and managed to switch it off. He could feel a man’s body inside, and hear breathing; but, alone, he could not get him out. He went back to the car where Raquel sat.

  “Have you got a torch?”

  She had, a little midget of a thing, in her bag.

  “Good. Hop out,” he said. “Do you think you could hold that horse?” he asked her, as she stood in the road.

  “Of course.”

  They went over to the peasant. “Madame will hold the horse,” James said briefly—“we must get that man out.”

  The peasant was sulky and reluctant; the car had broken his cart and spilt his hay; it was not for him to pull people out of cars; let the gendarmes come and do it. James, furious at his brutish inhumanity, cuffed him sharply over the head; as the man staggered back he gave the reins to Raquel, took the peasant by the collar, and urged him towards the car, cursing him in fluent French the while. “We will see if you will help or not, mon ami! Had you a lantern lit, for example, on the back of you cart? I see none in the road.” The peasant, cowed, admitted that he had, in fact, had no lantern—he was only making a small piece of road on the great road. Jame’s threats of what would happen to him brought him to help, quite efficiently, in dragging out the occupants of the Peugeot. There proved to be two of them; both were considerably cut about; one was unconscious, and remained so, the other revived in the night air, and soon spoke. They were two of the Non-intervention Commission’s couriers from St.-Jean, who had already made the double journey to Burgos and back, four hours each way, that day; on their return they had been sent on into Bayonne to collect some document. They had dined there, and on the way home rammed the cart. “No light, the wretched bastard, as usual,” the young man growled.

  This adventure, and the ensuing fuss and activity which it involved did for James what wind and waves and cold night air had failed to do. He laid out the unconscious man on the grass, covered him with his coat, and drove in to Bidart to notify the police, leaving Raquel in charge; then he rang up a doctor in Biarritz and the head of the Non-intervention Commission at the Grande Bretagne, summoning them both. He could not leave till they came, and besides the police required a full deposition from him—since the peasant, peasant-wise, had walked off into the night, horse, cart and all. By the time he had attended to all these things, and the ambulance had been fetched, the emotional’spell was completely broken. It was nearly midnight before he and Raquel got back to the Grande Bretagne, and when they did he ordered a whiskey for her, told her to be sure to take a good hot bath, and sent her to bed—after which he sat in the hall with Crumpaun, drinking whiskey himself, and discussing the accident and the methods of the Non-Interveners with their couriers, perfectly comfortable and manlike, in the curious emotional release that a sudden violent event brings to highly civilised people.

  Rosemary was there too. She had been bitterly disappointed to see so little of Milcom so far; only just those two glimpses. She was going sailing with Count de Barrial to-morrow morning, and couldn’t be sure of being back in time for lunch, even if Raquel asked her to lunch with them, as she half hoped she would. Restless and unhappy, she had hung about downstairs all the evening, hoping to see Milcom on his return; when the telephone call interrupted the Non-intervention bridge, she heard about the accident. This was of course an excellent excuse for staying downstairs longer still—she had rushed up to tell her Mother: “I’m with Mr. Crumpet—I’m perfectly all right. But I must hear about it”—and got permission to stay up. So, shortly before the ambulance arrived, she saw Milcom and the Condesa come in, and to-night it was the woman’s face which struck her. She was white, and had a curious drained look, as if something had somehow been emptied out of her. That might just be the effect of seeing a bad accident—or it might not. She couldn’t be sure. She puzzled about it vaguely while she sat on the fat leather arm of Crumpaun’s chair, sipping an unwonted whiskey and soda, listening to the two men’s talk, and watching Milcom’s face. He looked quite different to-night. He looked—funny, that—he looked as if he had
achieved something. In that case it couldn’t be Juanito. And she had looked awful. Then what on earth was it? Still speculating, Rosemary at last went to bed.

  The next morning was again fine and sunny, though not warm; there was a keen wind. Rosemary went off for her sail, and about eleven Milcom and the Condesa, in the car, drove out on the coast road to Hendaye; when they had gone about a third of the way they left the car and walked along the cliffs, where they had picked striped gentians on James’s last visit. There are combes, some deep, some shallow, breaking the line of the cliffs here, and in one of these, as James had expected, they found a sunny hollow facing seaward, in the sun and out of the wind, where they could sit; there they settled themselves down on James’s coat, spread on the thick tufted grass. The day of make-believe was over; he had got to do the thing now. Between the green banks of the combe spread a segment of the sea, intensely blue, with the sardine boats rocking about, looking for all the world like tiny cigars, on the swell—their abrupt disappearances and reappearances, and an occasional burst of white spray appearing over the green lip of the combe when an unusually large wave broke on the slabby rocks below were the only visible evidences that that blue expanse was not perfectly calm. They sat looking at it for some time without speaking. At last James pulled himself together. Taking her hand, he looked searchingly into her face.

  “Raquel, you believe that I love you, don’t you?”

  “Yes—that I do believe,” she said, her eyes on his.

  “Well, go on believing it,” he said, almost roughly—“but listen to what I say, and you must believe that too.” She nodded in assent.

  “How long is it since you last saw Pascual?” he asked abruptly.

  She reckoned. “It was in that hospital, in August—no, September of thirty-six; he was wounded near the end of August and we went to see him when we heard, at the beginning of September.”