by Mary Renault
“I expect it’s an educational thing. They use the old Manor for them sometimes. I don’t know her, do I? Does she teach?”
“I haven’t met her lately. We were at school together. She was senior to me; very popular and good at games. Fancy her remembering me.”
Kit laughed. “Did you have a crush on her?”
“How unkind you are, Kit.” She put the letter down. “Every one’s sentimental at school. It isn’t anything to sneer at.”
“I didn’t mean to. We’re all products of the system.”
“There again. All your criticism is so destructive nowadays, Kit. I do so wish you hadn’t changed like this. That’s how Dr. McKinnon always talks.”
Kit got up. “I’ve a heavy round this morning,” he said. “Don’t wait lunch for me if I’m late.”
“I shall see you get a proper meal, dear, whatever time you come in.”
She picked up her next letter, and slit the envelope with neat-fingered precision. Kit went down to his consulting room.
In the course of his morning round he visited Laurel Dene and was received, as he had been each time since the night call, by Pedlow. Evidently in the mornings the girl, Christie, went out. Kit was glad to have avoided her. His brief disturbance had settled, and everything had shrunk to the reasonable proportions of morning. He had analyzed and dismissed the incident, feeling detached and clinical. He felt safe from entanglements; he looked forward to an uncomplicated future, devoted chiefly to work and ideas. He had had enough of personal relationships to last him the rest of his life, and had never taken easily to the kind of episode in which no personal relationship was involved.
He was pleased with his work that morning. X-ray confirmed a diagnosis which had been a long shot; a new vaccine treatment was getting results; his worst diabetic was sugar-free for the third day. Miss Heath had looked better too, and he had walked out of the house unconcerned with anything else. He was whistling under his breath as he drove through the principal shopping street of the town. There was a Belisha crossing in the middle of it, and he slowed down for a group of pedestrians. The last one to cross was the girl from Laurel Dene. She was wearing a neat olive-green suit with a hat and shoes the colour of gingerbread. Kit thought how average she looked, groomed into the uniform of the season; the angle of the hat, the face-tints, the clothes striking the moment’s balance between waist, shoulders and hips; even the kind of walk that the clothes required. At this moment she saw him; they exchanged conventional salutes and smiles. Kit drove on, unmoved as he would have been by the model in a gown-shop window; and experiencing, under the satisfaction that this afforded, a curious feeling of flatness. Dispassionately he noted that her ankles, which had been out of sight last time, were good; and returned to the consideration of his last case.
He went to bed tired with a good day’s work; and dreamed disturbingly, as, when he was most pleased with the settled pattern of his life, he sometimes did.
A couple of afternoons later, he met Janet carrying a bowl of bronze chrysanthemums into the guest room. She was humming to herself, and looked more animated than she had been for weeks. “Those are nice.” He stopped for a moment to breathe their sharp frosty smell. “You’re good with flowers, Janie. Who’ve we got coming?”
Janet’s song stopped. “Oh, Kit! What is the use of telling you anything?”
“Did you? I’m sorry. Never mind, tell me again.”
“You know we discussed the whole thing at breakfast only the day before yesterday.”
Carefully tracking the conversation backwards to its source, Kit remembered. “Oh, yes. Some one for an education conference.”
“Peggy Leach. And she never said it was education, that’s what you said. You never pay much attention to the things that interest me, do you?”
Above the spread of the metallic flowers her pale face, sullen in its smooth frame of dark hair, had a strange perverse beauty. It found some flaw in Kit’s practised defences. His mouth hardened.
“In the course of this morning,” he said, “I’ve seen two people who are going to die, three who depend more or less on me to prevent them from dying, and one who’d be better dead. I’m sorry if I seem vague about the small talk at breakfast last Thursday week.”
Janet drew in a little quick breath. He tried before she should speak to gather himself together; but she remained silent, while something sharp and unknown flickered into her eyes. It was beyond anger; it seemed to him for a moment to be fear. He saw that her lips were pressed so tightly together that the blood had gone out of them.
“That was a bit needless,” he said. “I’m sorry—forget it.”
“Forget it?” She spoke as if she had only just found speech possible. “You’ve never in your life spoken. …” She stopped with a little sound of bewildered anger; she had tilted the shallow bowl towards her, and a stream of water was darkening on her dress.
“Here,” said Kit, “let me take it.” He lifted the bowl out of her hands, found a place for it on a side table, and began to mop with his handkerchief at the wet stain. The dress, like all her things, was beautifully cut and modelled; he found himself thinking what a perfectly proportioned body she had, with a kind of objective surprise as if it had never had personal significance for him. He felt a sudden sense of relief and freedom, and his anger went, leaving a confused pity for which he dared not seek expression. He occupied himself with the handkerchief and the dress.
“It doesn’t look as if it would stain,” he said. “You’d better change it though, or you might get a cold.”
“Yes,” she said expressionlessly. He bent to give the place a final rub. She snatched the handkerchief out of his hand and stood still, pulling it through her fingers.
“My dear, is it worth it? I’ve said I’m sorry.”
She looked at him for a moment in silence, then said half under her breath, “You humour me now. Like a bad-tempered child.” Before he could answer she had gone. His handkerchief lay at his feet on the floor.
He picked it up, damp and tinged very faintly with the correct and delicate perfume that she used. With the potency that scents have to involve all the other senses in memory, it brought back to him the first days of their honeymoon; the sound of deep broken water under the rocks of the Channel Isles, sun and blue air filling the curved spaces of the bays; Janet with her fragile, beautifully tinted hands full of tiny shells that seemed like miniatures of them. He remembered walking with her in the tree-roofed inland rides, where the sunlight dripped through like honey into round pools among the ferns. The churches had been lined with memorial stones to seamen drowned about the coasts; death had seemed to hang near like the other edge of a shining and sword-like life. Her rare concessions had been like the rewards of enchantment; he had not asked, had scarcely known that he desired, generosity of her or that she should attempt to adapt her way of living to his; not questioning what she offered, since she seemed to have given everything in choosing him to receive it. It had been a life lifted out of life. He saw it now, remote and complete as if it had been expressed in art by a stranger, detached from its consequences with the finality of death; and suddenly he felt the waste in himself of the power of wonder and delight: he remembered that he was young, and had been planning for himself the achievements of middle age.
The handkerchief was still in his hand. He put it in his pocket and, picking up the flower-bowl, carried it into the guest room and put it down on the table where, he saw, she had already arranged a mat to keep it from marking the polish.
He had visits to pay in the afternoon; so it was a little after teatime when he got home. Janet’s visitor had arrived, and they had started tea. Miss Leach greeted him warmly. She was a tall young woman with a pink outdoor skin, teeth that showed when she talked and bright blue eyes shining with a penetrating kind of cheerfulness. She had on expensive tweeds spoiled by a bead necklet and a fancy wool jumper that just missed the colour-tone. Kit felt a little enveloped by her friendliness. She asked him all those question
s about his work and interests which are most difficult to answer in general terms; and, when he made some reply which he felt to be particularly dim and unenlightening, received it with eager interest. Janet she left in the background, in the manner which suggests an intimacy too secure for words.
After tea they talked round the fire. It was a cold day: Kit’s round had been rather draughty and comfortless; and he would have liked to relax with a book and his feet in the fender; but Janet was looking warmed and expanded and, for her sake, he made himself as pleasant as he could. It was best, he found, to let Miss Leach choose her own line; if some one else opened a topic—books for instance, or the news—she would pursue it with a faintly indulgent air, as if it were a kindness she were doing on principle. She had the air of saving up something with which to give children a surprise. After half an hour of it, Kit retired as gracefully as he could into the background, and she and Janet exchanged news about what So-and-So was doing now. Miss Leach’s items were always impalpably pointed, and seemed to be leading up to something undefined.
Kit excused himself when it was time for his evening surgery. Miss Leach dismissed him with a benevolent smile, as if he had asked whether he might get down now and play with his trains.
The evening surgery was used chiefly by panel patients who came in on their way from work. He had grown to look forward to this part of the day. He found their directness restful; the hedgings and modesties of the private patients were too much an extension of his life at home. Among the servant girls and errand boys and the old workmen with dirty knowledgeable hands, he could recapture for a little while the satisfactions of hospital life, where now he was only a semi-outsider giving anaesthetics or taking an occasional clinic during some one’s holidays. Sometimes, after a too-guarded day, the mere use by a navvy of some coarse physical term had a kind of nourishment in it.
There were fewer patients than usual to-night; but after they had gone he spent the best part of an hour in the consulting room, filling in record cards, smoking and reading. His chair was hard, and the place radiator-warmed and a little cheerless; but he scarcely noticed it now. When he went upstairs again, Janet and Peggy were sitting side by side on the sofa, talking in undertones. As he came in he saw Peggy reach over and give her hand a confidential little pat.
At dinner she told, in a tactfully jocular way, anecdotes to show how sensitive Janet had been at school.
Kit was expecting a confinement call, and would not have been sorry if his patient had chosen to-night for the event; but the telephone was obstinately silent. About nine o’clock he tried recourse to the gramophone. After the first concerto Miss Leach said, with bright wistfulness, how much she admired people who understood good music. Some day she hoped she would have time to learn a little about it, but there always seemed so much … The effect was to make Kit feel faintly selfish and ostentatious, as if he had boasted of proficiency at some snobbish and exclusive game.
At ten, however, it fortunately turned out that Miss Leach had had a long journey, and would like to get early to bed. Janet took her to her room; and, when she did not return, Kit thought he might decently escape to his own. When he crossed the passage ready for bed, he still heard their voices murmuring through the guestroom door.
He did not settle quickly; he felt restless, unhappy and disillusioned, and unable to escape it by turning the thing into a hackneyed situation and a music-hall joke. Long after the finish of their married life he had hoped for her friendship, and had a genuine respect for her taste. He was ashamed of the extent to which his feelings had been hurt, unsure of all his judgements, and lonelier than he had ever been in his life. He tried to read, but gave it up and, shutting off thought with dogged obstinacy, at last got off to sleep.
He seemed scarcely to have closed his eyes when the telephone rang. He thought with resignation that this was typical timing for a confinement; and, as he sat up in bed, collected his ideas about it and checked over in his mind the contents of his midwifery bag.
“Is that Dr. Anderson?”
“Speaking.” His recognition of the voice had been so immediate that he seemed to have awaited it. He answered, feeling two distinct existences; one which listened attentively to a case-history and made appropriate deductions, another which followed its own reasoning, made its own decisions, and, thrust impatiently aside by the first, still moved in the darkness outside the circle of the lamp, tinging the colour of the night.
“The symptoms have only just come on. Yes. Yes. And you’ve given her the digitalis mixture. Good. All right; don’t worry. I’ll be right along.”
When he was dressing he found himself looking out a clean collar—a thing he had never done on an urgent call in his life—and shut the drawer again with a slam.
The house was quiet and unlighted. He went softly downstairs and out to the car. He was in the garage before he noticed that it was his midwifery bag he had brought out. He ran back to the surgery for the other, swearing at himself.
It was still raining, quietly and steadily, filling the air with a monotonous sigh. The light over the porch at Laurel Dene was reflected in a deep puddle in one of the sunken places of the drive. Christie opened the door as he drew up; she had on the Chinese-blue dressing gown she had worn before.
For a moment neither of them spoke; then Kit said, “Good evening,” and she answered and stood aside from the open door. Kit put down his bag and began to get out of his driving coat, wet already in the distance between the car and the porch. She helped him to pull it off, then said, “I don’t think she’s so bad this time as last. Perhaps I ought not to have sent for you.” Again it was as if her voice had broken a pause.
“Not at all,” Kit said. “One can’t afford to take chances with a condition of this kind. You were perfectly right to call me up.” He crossed the hall to Miss Heath’s room, hearing, distinct in the silence, the movement of her silk gown behind him.
He opened the door quietly, and then paused on the threshold, instinctively barring the girl’s passage with his hand on the jamb; for in the first moment he thought that Miss Heath was dead. Her round yellow face lay motionless in its mound of pillows, with closed eyes; her mouth, faintly blue, was a little open. He bent nearer. A faint, rhythmic sound disturbed the quiet. It was a gentle snore.
Kit tiptoed gently to the bed. It was true that her colour was far from good. She might, he thought, have had an attack of some kind a little while before. Perhaps he was mistaken; she might be unconscious. Leaning close, he listened to her breathing. No: she was asleep.
He looked round. The girl had not come into the room, but was standing where he had left her in the doorway. Her face was set with what seemed a sudden fear. He came back to her and they went together into the hall.
“No,” he said. “It’s all right. She’s fallen asleep.”
He saw her hands, which she had clenched tightly together, relax. She nodded her head. “It was only just—when you went over quickly like that. I thought something might have happened when I was out of the room.”
“That did cross my mind for a moment. But there shouldn’t be any further trouble to-night. If she can sleep … How long has she been sleeping, by the way?”
She looked up quickly. “It can’t have been for more than a very few minutes. Just since I went out.” She was twisting a little pearl ring on her finger. Women slept in their pearls, he remembered, to keep them warm. He tried to think of something professional and intelligent to say, but could only try to remember the colour of her eyes, which were hidden, and see that her lashes were tinged with the dark red of her hair and that her lids were transparent and faintly veined with blue.
“Well,” he said at last, “you needn’t worry now.”
“No.” She played with the knot in the silk cord of her gown. They had stopped in the hall, half-way to the door; he could not remember how long they had been standing there.
He forced himself to go on talking. “Do you get many of these disturbed nights? Yo
u ought to make them up in the morning.”
“Oh, I’m all right. I can sleep on if I want to. But you can’t, can you? I’m sorry. You look tired.”
She looked up at him, meeting his eyes before he was ready. He would have to get away, to say something, he thought; but he did neither. It was she who, without seeming to have moved, was suddenly close to him. She looked up into his face with a cloudy smile.
It did not seem to him that anything new had happened when he took her in his arms. He had known how her eyelids would feel: cool and fragile, and the soft brush of her lashes against his lips.
This is insanity, he thought, half-awaking; and gripped her with all his strength because in a moment she would try to go away. But her firm silky shape only moulded itself more closely to his hold, and one of her arms slipped round his neck. Her mouth was still smiling, distant and dreamlike, as he closed it with his own.
In the years of his marriage, and even before, he had forgotten what it was to be made welcome without reserve. A light cracked behind his eyes. He did not know that he had lifted her almost off her feet. She clung about his neck, her head falling back a little; he kissed her throat and the hollow of her shoulder.
They stopped at last for breath and she rested, unmoving, in the support of his arms; her lashes lifted a little and her eyes, deep and shining, seemed to include and pass beyond him. The blood began to flow back, clear and bright, into her lips which his kiss had whitened.
“Send me away,” he whispered. “Do you hear? For God’s sake send me away.”
“Not yet.” She slid her hand upward along his arm, and brushed her fingertips lightly over his hair.
He held her harder. “Send me away. I’ve no right to be here.”
“I know.” She drew his face down again to hers. “I know all that. Not yet.”
He could feel the stretch of her muscles, firm and flexible, as she reached upward in his tightened arms. He kissed her and felt her fingers move in a vague caress about his head. Her gown, loosened sideways, showed two ribbons of pale satin knotted at the shoulder. She shut her eyes and rubbed her face sideways, as a cat does, against his cheek.