by Mary Renault
There was a queer minute or two of breathlessness, in which she experienced no delight, but simply an agonising disturbance, shocking body and mind, which was all her poisoned nerves could substitute for it. She felt, almost, resentment that joy and sensation should be forced on her incompetence. Presently things settled, and she remembered she had no money. Mic would be lucky if he had enough for his own share. The month had turned and their salaries were due, but that in her case came to about thirty shillings. There was her father: but it offended her to lie to him in order that he might subsidise something of which he would disapprove. As she ticked over all these obstacles, she knew that she would go with Mic in the end. Her tired mind was fixed, with the determination of a donkey that has lain down.
She knew that behind this confidence there must be some resource she had not thought of. Presently it came to her. She gambled a trunk call to Jan’s college, and found that he had left the Lodge his last address. It was a possibility that had not occurred to her before; they were not in the habit of writing to one another about anything that would not wait. She wrote at once. It was quite likely that he might have some money, if he had not given it all away lately, or left his cheque-book with his washing in the last place but one.
She never knew what to say to Jan. His own letters—three or four a year, on her birthday or when he was abroad—had a virtuosity that paralysed her style: they delighted her, but reduced her to the inferiority of the schoolroom. It was of little consequence, as Jan, given the facts, supplied the marginalia for himself. So her explanation now was very untrimmed (“We’ve been living together, technically, since June, but this is the first chance we’ve had to do it actually, so it would be fun if we could”) and ended in a postscript dictated by family tradition and knowledge of Jan: “Don’t if it leaves you with less than two pounds five, as I have that much myself.”
Jan replied next day, by express letter, apologising. He did nothing by halves, and, when he apologised, lay down, strapped himself to the altar-stone, and handed you the knife. That she should have wanted something that he could supply, and been doubtful how to come by it, seemed to have upset him. He sent her twenty pounds (she had asked for five) and his love to Mic. She kept all the money, knowing that he would merely be irritated if she tried to return any. It was useless to speculate on what he had left; if it was less than his fare to Cambridge, he would be certain to enjoy the walk.
It would have been helpful to discuss plans with Mic, but it was unlikely that Sister Ramillies would let her in: and if she did, they might as well advertise themselves on the front page of the Daily Mail. She knew he would not want or expect it. There was a little inn on the far side of the Downs, where they had had meals sometimes. She booked a room there for a week, and wrote to Mic to explain. To call for him when he left the hospital would be most dangerous of all, so she arranged that they should meet at the flat.
Everything was as it had been left when Mic was taken away: the bed open, a glass of milk turned sour beside it. It was strange to see dust. He must have kept the woman away for fear of infection. She put things to rights, rather laboriously and with pauses to rest. When it was finished she waited, her spirits suddenly sagging: she felt unequal to the moment of meeting, and turned away from the sight of her own pale face and lifeless hair in the glass.
At last she heard a taxi stop and the downstairs door open. She had forgotten that there were so many stairs, because in the ordinary way they both took them two or three at a time. Half-way up his light careful step stopped altogether. Vivian flung open the upper door and came out on the landing. Mic, who was standing with his hand on the wall, saw her, ran the rest of the way, began to kiss her, and stopped to gasp for breath.
“Oh, Mic, you fool! How could you be such an ass!” It was not what she had arranged to say. She held him tightly and felt the sharpening of his shoulders through his clothes. His eyes looked bigger than she remembered them.
“Sorry,” he said. But it only seemed to amuse him a little. “Let’s go and sit down.” He led her in with an arm round her waist and curled up beside her on the bed. His lack of self-consciousness about his own weakness seemed to blow her fretful anticipations away. Her plans and determinations slipped from her; she was no longer in charge. As they kissed again, more efficiently this time, she thought how easy his honesty made it to underestimate his strength.
“You’re not listening,” he told her.
“Of course I was.” But she had been listening to his voice, not to what he said.
“They had no business to make you take your holiday as sick leave.”
“I suppose not. But I’m glad I’ve got it, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been telling you I’m glad for the last five minutes.” His calm continued to surprise her: she had seen him so often in a state of resistance: she had not guessed that this capacity for acceptance could exist behind his rebellions. Perhaps the line between the inevitable and the assailable was more clearly drawn in his mind than in hers. He made no fuss when she confessed to having borrowed from Jan.
“No,” he said in answer to her question. “I don’t suppose I would have. But you felt it was all right, and—anyhow it’s done. So let’s enjoy it.”
To be with him, after so much struggling in solitude, was such a release that she had been reminding herself watchfully how little physical strength he really had.
“I’d better start packing.” He swung himself to his feet. “You shouldn’t have cleaned this place up, I thought I’d get here first.”
“We’ll pack together instead.” She caught her breath. “Mic, I’m glad you’ve come back.”
“Didn’t you think I would?” He caressed her, lightly but provocatively; principally, she knew, by way of a red-herring for the hounds of remembrance.
They took the car through by-ways, cautiously and in shifts. Fortunately she had learned its mannerisms by now. The fresh air, and being free and together, made them both a little lightheaded.
“This is rather fun,” said Mic as they changed over. He contemplated his hand, which was still faithfully reproducing the car’s vibrations. “I shall never want to convalesce in bed after this, it’s too interesting. Do yours do it too?”
“No, it’s the other end I feel. Like a sort of low-voltage electric chair.”
Half a mile farther on she braked suddenly, restarted, and said, “Oh, damn.”
“You lie down in the back for a bit,” said Mic. “I’ll carry on.”
“No, it isn’t that. I forgot to stop at Woolworth’s and buy the ring.”
“The … Oh, are we married? I’m glad you reminded me.
“Do you mind?”
“Of course not, it was obvious.”
“I thought it would be quieter. You’re not angry?”
“Why on earth should I be?”
“I haven’t sold your principles or anything? I was so afraid you might think we ought to sort of wave the oriflamme of our unfettered love.”
“Unfettered—Christ! When I’m making five hundred we’ll buy an oriflamme and a new car. I’d say we were Mormons for the sake of a few hours’ peace.”
“I said we were Mr. and Mrs. Freeborn, would you rather I’d said Smith?”
“On the whole, no, because they know my name. But about this ring.”
“We’ll tell them I had to have it cut off on account of my arthritis. That’s it. Something cruel it was. You should have heard the way my old man carried on about it. Never had it off for five-and-thirty year. I feel just like that, too. Do you love me?”
“You were driving, I thought you said.”
They grew, as they climbed the hills, more and more amused about less and less. They effervesced like something undergoing a chemical reaction. It was impossible to stop, though they both wondered what would happen when they subsided.
“There might be a shop in Kenster,” said Mic. It was on their way, a small town consisting chiefly of a cattle-market and three mid-Victo
rian public houses. Between the Crown and Prince of Wales they found a shop: A. Brewster, Jewellery, Novelties and Gifts. Mic measured her finger with a piece of string.
“Would it come under the heading of Novelties, do you think? Or Gifts?”
“The window-dresser seems doubtful.” A card of very yellow rings, labelled “9 ct. Shell, British Made,” was propped against the protruding stomach of a plaster kewpie-doll wearing dusty feather drawers. Bridge-markers in the shape of curiously spotted dogs flanked it, like heraldic supporters. Below were many ingenious combinations of electro-plate and coloured glass. Nothing seemed to have been moved for years.
Mic vanished into the penetralia. Presently the kewpie-doll was displaced, and from behind its site a pair of eyes, wearing rimless pince-nez, examined Vivian with fascinated interest. After what seemed a long time the rings disappeared and the eyes followed, reluctantly.
“I’ll drive,” said Mic when he came out.
“Was it expensive?”
“Only three and six.”
“Three and six! Darling, that’s extortion. Woolly’s are every bit as authentic. Why did you buy it?”
“Well, I felt a bit reckless because I hadn’t the bridesmaids’ presents to pay for.”
When they were out in the country again Mic stopped, and took the box out of his pocket. It was made, she saw, of paper imitation shagreen.
“Permit me,” he said.
Careful! thought Vivian suddenly. She had been perceiving for some time that the allegretto movement was nearly over.
“Shall I say ‘Obey’?” she asked. “I don’t mind if we leave out the paragraph about procreation.”
Mic put the ring on her hand without replying. Its yellowness was faintly browned in places: it had evidently been a Novelty for a number of years. They looked at it, then at one another. She felt the thin metal cutting her as his fingers tightened over hers.
“Vivian. God, I—”
“So do I, but shut up about it.”
She pushed his hand back on the wheel. Their odd physical state had increased their sensitiveness to one another until a moment like this was nearly unbearable. She slid her fingers from under his, and felt his silent consent: but things had got beyond them. He started the car and they drove on in silence, their faces aloof so that a stranger might have thought them enemies, shut away from their outward selves in an inward communication frightening in its completeness, in the impossibility of isolating from one another the slightest current of feeling or of thought. It was too much, and she tried to find words that would break the circuit and end it: she had never in her life felt like this, so unable to determine how much of what seemed herself was her own.
They were too near, she thought, with a strange shudder of the spirit half of delight and half of fear: it was not nature, there were counterpoises and antagonisms set between men and women to divide them, even while they strove for union, and let them keep the shape of their separate souls. With instinctive wisdom they entrenched themselves in their differences, which nature had provided for their security. If people wandered beyond these fronts and met one another in no-man’s-land, leaving their weapons behind them, this happened: this insufficiency of the body’s surrender, this insatiable mating of the spirit, so lightly invoked in simile and song, so rare and terrifying in consummation.
Mic’s face was without expression. Though she would have found it impossible now to drive the car herself, she knew how it felt in his hands and experienced his half-mechanical confidence. She knew what he was thinking—that physical love had become almost irrelevant, but might make them feel better.
“The engine’s running well.” He said it as though he were talking in his sleep.
“Stop for a minute.”
He stopped the car in an empty road, windswept, between half-fallen stone fences. They embraced as though they were trying to break through one another’s bodies.
“Hurt?” said Mic on an indrawn breath.
“I wanted it to.”
“I know.”
He kissed her again: she could feel the saltness of blood in her mouth.
“What can we do?” he said.
“God knows. Be better tonight, perhaps.”
“Yes. We might sleep.”
“You shall. I promise. Couldn’t you sleep?”
“Not much.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes.”
“When, the night before last?”
“Yes.”
“I knew … I’ll be there tonight.”
“It’s beyond that now.”
“We’ll pretend it isn’t, and go to sleep.”
The inn where they were going was on the side of a hill, sheltered behind from the north and east, with a great deal of sun and space in front. There was an arbutus hedge, and bushes of beriberis in the garden, and the front was washed white. They had liked it first for its name, which was the Live and Let Live.
“I’ve never seen the bedrooms, have you?” Mic said when they were nearly there. (The lightning-flash had, for the moment, made the emotional air more breathable.)
“No. But ours is the front one. It will have a bed with brass knobs, and a honeycomb quilt with the fringe ironed flat. There’ll be two china candlesticks with pink roses on them, and a mahogany-and-marble washstand, and a text over the bed—passion-flowers and ‘Thou, God seest me’, I expect—and on the other wall a light-brown photograph of Mrs. Swan’s father’s grave with all the wreaths. Oh, and a feather mattress. Do you hate them?”
“Hate them, I dreamed of them all last week. Do those ward beds have to be so hard they need to rub your bottom with methylated spirit every day to keep it from wearing out?”
“Only once a day?” said Vivian, concerned. “They ought to have done you oftener than that, a thin patient like you.”
“A what?”
“Sorry, darling.”
By the time they arrived they were both feeling very cold and stiff-jointed, though they had been driving for less than two hours. They were hungry, too: Mic had had the hospital dinner at twelve, and Vivian some biscuits she had unearthed in the flat. Her spirits had fallen; she wished that they were going to a place of their own, and that her wedding-ring had not brown patches on it, and wondered if the bed would be properly aired. It occurred to her suddenly and sinkingly that perhaps Mic would rather have stayed in town; that he would never tell her so; that she might have let him rest till tomorrow; that he liked to manage things for them and that she had not been able to give him even the illusion of it. Damped with these thoughts, she got out of the car in silence.
“Thank God,” said Mic, “you had the sense to fix this up. If you hadn’t I should probably have drifted back to the flat, and it needs a rest.”
“I hope it will be all right,” she said. She took it for granted that he should answer her thoughts and relieve them, but a deeper and watchful part of her was saying, He is surer of himself, less afraid of being dependent: and she felt her own need of him grow frighteningly, and take her by the throat.
The front door was shut, and the place looked blank and unwelcoming, as inns can out of hours. Suddenly, before they could knock, the door opened, letting out a smell of clean warmth and baking bread, and a little light-haired woman in a faded print dress. She had a sweet reedy voice and shortsighted blue eyes, and wrapped them in a welcome full of mild and milky pleasure, like a cow’s breath. Was this all their luggage, she had been thinking of them driving over all those hills in all this wind; she did hope they would be comfortable; there was a fire downstairs and two hot-water bottles in their bed and some of those scones in baking the same as they had liked before for their tea, and they’d take an egg with it too, she felt sure. Her soft and maternal eyes never went near Vivian’s left hand. Mic thanked her for both of them; Vivian had discovered that if she said anything she would cry.
They had tea by an open coal fire, an unaccustomed joy to both of them. After the table was cleared t
hey sat together in a great horsehair chair, growing heavy-eyed over the flames and melancholy with evening and weariness.
“Hold me tightly,” she said. “I feel dark and slipping away.”
“It’s half-past nine. Let’s go to bed.”
Vivian’s forecast of their room had been fairly accurate, except that it was Mrs. Swan’s mother, alive and in bugles, on the wall, and the text was “God is Love.” They had unpacked before tea.
“Have you ever thought,” said Vivian as she washed by the light of the china candles, “that civilised people undress in separate rooms?”
Mic stretched lazily; he had been quicker and was in bed.
“Funny, isn’t it? I like you washing. The candle makes a gold line all down you when you’re wet and shiny. You’re thinner, aren’t you?”
“A bit. Does it spoil my chest?”
“I’ll let you know. It looks all right. If you’d rather I wasn’t here I’ll lie on my other side.”
“I can’t think of anything that would embarrass me more. What do you think is the matter with us? Colette says women should never appear in any stage between their frock and their skin. I know at least one who keeps all her make-up under the pillow so as to do her face before her husband wakes up. Would you love me more if I did those things?”
“Don’t talk like that.” Mic narrowed his eyes in the candlelight. “I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t call yourself Women. It sounds beastly. … Rows of them, all pink and bulging. In frilled drawers.”
“Is that how you see them?” She stopped herself from adding “still.”
“I don’t see them at all as a rule. I did just then.”
“Well, what about me?”
His eyes passed over her, loving and familiar, like an embrace.
“You’re simply you.”
She put down the towel with which she had dried herself, and stooped over him. He looked up at her smiling. She could see a small bright image of herself, picked out by a tiny point of candle, in his eyes. Her heart tightened.