by Mary Renault
In her heart she knew that she never wanted to see Peggy again. She wanted to spend the evening, as she had spent so many evenings such a little while ago, sitting composedly, conscious of poise, of delicate grace and aloofness, aware of a secret audience, knowing that Kit was watching her under his lashes when he thought she was looking the other way.
She remembered how she had found him on the morning he had overslept. He had looked so vulnerable and so young, lying there tousled and half-clothed in a dead sleep of weariness. She had felt powerful and compassionate. His absorption maddened her. She got to her feet, moved only by the impulse to throw something at it.
“I think I shall go to bed,” she said. “I’ve rather a headache.”
He looked around. “Have you? Too bad. Yes, go to bed and sleep it off. Meeting tired you, I expect.”
“Perhaps it was that.”
“Peggy’ll be all right, I suppose? I’m seeing McKinnon this evening.”
How could he, she thought, how could he stroll calmly out of the house after she had explained to him that she was ill? It had never happened. He had loved to be depended on, to be allowed to gain a little importance with her. She pressed the handkerchief to her forehead.
“Yes, Kit dear, do go out and amuse yourself. I know I’m not very entertaining company for you when I feel like this. I’m sure Peggy will understand.”
He said nothing. She collected a few small things about the room, waiting. Surely he would apologize, or at least protest. As she got to the door she looked over her shoulder. He was glancing at the clock, regretfully putting his book away because it was time for the evening surgery. He looked neither angry nor hurt; simply a little tired. She went out.
In her own room she drew the green satin curtains, undressed and lay down. The ordered prettiness of the place wrapped itself comfortingly around her. How generous, after all, the things she had said to Peggy had really been. It was for his sake, she reflected, more than for her own that she minded. Poor boy; in his self-centred way he loved her so much. Her mind drifted on to a little scene in which her cold got worse. She had pneumonia; double pneumonia; she was dying, and Kit leaned over her bed, asking her forgiveness, frantic at the thought of losing her. “Don’t have any regrets,” she was saying to him, very gently, in her dying voice. “Some day you’ll—understand.”
Her real illness—the blanketing weakness, the fading of thought and desire, the squalor and pain—she had long ago pushed into the basement of her mind. It had emerged slightly altered; tidied-up and refined, the dramatic values underlined and inartistic passages soft-focussed.
How concerned the boy at the meeting had been about her! She smiled maternally at the thought of it. It had, she remembered, seemed to mean so much to him that she should come with him to the next meeting, and hear the International he admired. They could sit at the back, he had said, so that if she felt faint they could come out at once. If she did not come it might spoil the freshness of his enthusiasm. That would be such a pity. Really, somehow, she must try to be well enough to go.
CHAPTER 7
IT WAS NEXT EVENING, while the International was dealing faithfully with the sins of his former state, that Kit’s surgery was interrupted by an urgent call from Laurel Dene.
He found Miss Heath semi-collapsed, shrunken and blue in her high chair of pillows, clinging to Christie’s hand. She scarcely noticed Kit when he came in. As he slipped the needle, with the almost painless speed of practice, under the withered skin of her forearm, Christie was saying in her warm comforting voice, “I didn’t mean it about going away. Of course I’ll stay with you. I promise I will. Always. See, you’re going to be all right now.” A faint gleam of relief mingled with the fear in the moist, shallow eyes.
When the worst of the attack was over, Pedlow came to sit with her mistress. As she went over to the bed to take up her charge, her body looked softer, less angular; mysteriously, almost comfortable. “Well, there, now, Miss Amy,” she said. Miss Heath’s eyes wandered past her, following Christie to the door.
Kit and the girl went out together into the grey twilight garden with its sweet evening smell of dusty leaves and dew.
“What now?” he said.
It was a last checking point for decision. They searched one another’s faces in the shadow, both knowing it.
Kit found that he could think no further than the whiteness of Christie’s face, and the little blue streaks under her eyes. She had been tired, and then badly frightened. The deadness of the half-light took the last trace of colour from everything but her hair; she looked like a restless ghost. When he took her hands she blinked, swallowed, and began to cry.
The moment of choice passed. He comforted and held her. She was not to worry about anything to-night, he said. He would take care of it all. He would look after her. He wouldn’t bother her; everything should be as she wanted.
She nodded, tightening her arms round his neck. It was no good talking about anything now, she said as he dried her eyes; they would feel different in the morning. She would be sensible then; she would do anything he said.
Everything, they promised one another, would be all right.
Three nights later, on his way back from a midnight call, Kit went through the garden at Laurel Dene, round the edge of the lawn, to the drawing-room windows. There was no need, he found, to tap on the pane; they were wide open.
“Darling. I’ve had an idea.”
“M-m?” murmured Kit, inclining half an ear. Christie always had ideas when he was feeling sleepy, but her voice was so pleasant it didn’t matter.
“I’ve got it under the pillow. Just let me put the eiderdown over your head, then I can put the torch on.”
Kit turned over, resignedly, while Christie arranged the eiderdown in a small tent over both their heads, and lit the interior with a Woolworth flashlamp.
“I like your hair,” he said, “with the light through it.”
Ignoring this side-issue, Christie dived under the pillow, and produced a crumpled piece of paper, on which were diagrams rather like the framework of noughts and crosses, complicated with arrangements of dots.
“Do you know what this is?”
Kit, who was still blinking in the light, recognized it after a moment as the commonest cipher generally used in preparatory schools. At the bottom was a sample sentence.
“It’s a code,” Christie explained superfluously. “Now we can write each other proper letters.”
“What, in that?”
“Yes, then it won’t matter if any one finds them.”
“Oh, good God,” breathed Kit. “Give it to me.”
“Don’t you think it would work?”
“Darling, if you have any more ideas like that, don’t do anything about them before you ask me, will you?”
“Not if you don’t like, sweetest. But it would have been fun. How soon the air gets breathed up under an eiderdown, doesn’t it?”
Kit had been astonished, at first, to find how quickly Christie had lost any kind of tragic feeling about their necessary deceit. Once she began, she had taken to stratagems as small boys take to playing Red Indians. There was something in it, he guessed, of escape from the crueller realities of the situation; but most of it was nature. Her favourite plots were concerned with the exchange of notes; he had assured her that there would be no harm in her occasionally using the post, but she preferred to conceal them in his gloves when he left them in the hall, to throw them, wrapped round stones, into his car as he came up the drive, or to put them in his bag, where they were liable to fall out embarrassingly at the next case he visited. The real trouble, for Kit, was that she transported him too effectively into the atmosphere of a Nesbit storybook; he often had to shake himself awake in order to take seriously the risks they were running.
They agreed at last on a posting box, a hollow tree in the drive. It was unsafe, but not more so than most of Christie’s more ingenious ideas. He could not bear to hurt her feelings by asking her t
o write less often; besides, he enjoyed her letters, which had a wild originality of thought and spelling.
Since Miss Heath’s last attack, he called there twice a week. Her hold of life was more tenuous than ever, but she was radiantly happy.
“I feel so much younger, doctor,” she confided to him. “Perhaps it comes of being more in touch with the world. Christie’s so good about reading me the papers. Poor Pedlow’s intentions of course were most kind, but it seems she had been keeping the most essential facts from me for years, from some idea that I should worry. As I said to her the other day, I hope I have more faith in Providence than to be frightened of Hitler. Such a nervous, excitable temperament; no doubt he was unkindly treated when he was a little boy. What was I saying? Yes, I’m thinking of buying a wireless set shortly; so nice for concerts, and the news. Can you recommend a reliable make?”
One day Kit remarked to Pedlow, in the hall, that Miss Heath seemed brighter lately, and that it was good to see her taking so much interest in life.
Pedlow said, “Yes, doctor, no doubt,” and held open the door. The air outside seemed, suddenly, colder than he had thought.
He managed to visit Christie about one night in seven. Their system, which they had evolved between them in one of Christie’s more realistic moments, worked quite well. It was necessary that, if he went out in the night, he should have received a telephone call, since even the soft-toned bell he had in his room could be heard, if any one happened to be awake, in other parts of the house. So in the small hours Christie used to dial his number on the telephone in the hall, tap on the mouthpiece when he answered, and slip back to her room; a quick and almost soundless procedure. A safer plan, when it was available, was for Kit to go round at the tail-end of a legitimate night call. If this turned out to be a scare needing little attention, he could risk the extra time.
At Christie’s end of the business there was always the fear of the servants hearing something, though their rooms faced a different way. The house was full of the noises of old houses; sounds of mice, and cautious sounds of wood creaking as it contracted in the cool of the night. They never had, either of them, a moment’s security or of what by common standards could be called rest. Kit wondered, sometimes, when he was alone, why he found it worth while. He never wondered whether he did.
The truth was that she was the first person in years who had given him any use for being young. Fraser, Janet and the patients, if they had nothing else in common, seemed all alike in demanding from him the virtues of middle age.
One night, when they had not met for over a week, Christie rang him up at one in the morning. He had left a note asking her to do it, and had been lying awake for it; but the sound of the bell seemed an explosion in the silence and made him feel like a burglar who has trodden on the burglar alarm. The house was still quiet. He picked up the receiver, listening for the tap; but a sibilant whisper came through instead.
“Is that you, beautiful? Don’t be long.”
“For the Lord’s sake!” Kit, though not given to nervous outbursts, had felt the hair rise on his neck. “Wait till I say something. If I’d been called out, Fraser would have got that.”
“Oh, darling, I am sorry. I didn’t think, because you told me to ring. You’re not angry?”
“No, dear, of course. Look out at your end.”
“It’s all right. Pedlow snores. Isn’t it a good thing? What I wanted to say is, I’ve got a new scheme.”
“Well, don’t … hullo, are you there? Hold it till I come, won’t you?”
“It’s practically finished.”
“Oh, God, I’ll be right along. … Yes, darling, of course I do.” A board creaked somewhere in the house; raising his voice a little, he added, “Just keep her warm and give her sips of water till I come. Good-bye.”
When he tapped at the glass door, Christie met him with a dark coat thrown like a cloak over her nightdress. She took him by the wrist and led him outside again, finger on lip. Something had happened, he thought. Not daring to ask, he followed her towards a dark hump of shadow which he recognized as the summerhouse on the lawn.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered at last, his heart pounding on his ribs.
“Nothing, love. Don’t sound so worried. It’s just my idea. Come in.”
The summerhouse was muffled in thick Virginia creeper, which rounded the angles of the roof and walls, and hung in a deep fringe over the doorway. He could just see it, in the faint glimmer of a half-moon masked with clouds.
Fantastic as the notion was, it had its points. The place faced away from the house, and was in earshot of Miss Heath’s bell. His chief feeling about it was an irrational satisfaction in not being actually under his patient’s roof. It was absurd that this should seem any better, but somehow it did.
Christie lifted the curtain of leaves aside, pulled him in and kissed him.
“I haven’t quite finished doing it yet,” she explained presently. “I thought perhaps it might be noticed if I did it all too suddenly. But it seemed a shame not to be making the most of it before the nights get too cold.”
Kit got out the fountain-pen torch he used for examining throats, and flickered it here and there. Making startling and surrealist designs in the small beam, gaunt shapes detached themselves, trailing vast shadows, from the darkness. He picked out among them an old basket garden lounge—dangerously rickety and buttressed with a Tate sugar box at one end—covered with a fur carriage rug; a circular iron table with fancy legs; a croquet set with most of the paint cracked off and the balls split; a rotted tennis net rolled on a post, with cobwebs filling in the meshes; a racquet of 1890 design, with five strings; and a number of cushions in varying stages of decay. These were the recognizable objects. There were also a great many pieces of things, odd twiddles of wrought iron and broken bits of plaster mouldings.
“I shall cover the cushions,” whispered Christie, “gradually. I’ve done two already.”
Kit moved the torch back and saw that two of the amorphous lumps had been freshly dog-stitched with what looked like the material of an old summer frock. On the top of the iron table, the last of the Michaelmas daisies were arranged, with trails of creeper, in a jam jar.
“Lovely,” he said, and sat down on the basket lounge; it bent under him with a groan.
“It’s all right really,” Christie assured him, “now I’ve fixed it. I jumped on it this morning with both feet, as hard as I could, and it hardly gave at all. Do you like it in here?”
“Awfully,” said Kit.
“I’m so glad. I’ll have it even nicer next time you come. It was such fun getting it ready. Come here and let me kiss you.” She sat down beside him on the basket lounge, which collapsed immediately. Fortunately dust, cobweb, and stray creeper which had grown in through the cracks of the wall, muffled the sound.
“Are you hurt, darling?” asked Christie, embracing him tenderly. She had landed somehow across his knees.
The crash had shaken down a shower of dust and bits, stirring up a sharp, earthy, potting-house smell. Somewhere against the opposite wall the scurry of a startled mouse sounded. The cushions had their own smell of sun-baked plantations and old conservatories. A little wind swayed the creeper to and fro across the glimmering gap of the door, and a sweet, cold, dewy air blew in with it. On his knees, oddly emphasized by it all, was Christie, warm and sweetly scented and smooth in her satin nightgown. She clasped her arms round him and laughed softly down his neck.
“We’ll have to mend it,” she said.
Kit pulled her down into the loose musty cushions. “That’s a rotten idea. Let’s have it where it can’t fall any further.”
He felt Christie’s cheek fold into a smile.
After this, they generally used the summerhouse on nights that were dry and warm. Christie became passionately attached to it, and lavished on it all the proprietary care that is expended in earlier youth on private tents, holes in bushes and roosts in trees. She covered the cushions one by
one with bits of frocks and petticoats, or remnants joined together, and decorated the jam jar with gold paint in a fancy design. The lawn-mower and tennis set she draped over with a coloured dust sheet; and she kept a sort of treasure chest under the basket lounge. But her chief delight was entertaining Kit to a meal. For his better piece of mind he never enquired when, or how, she raided the larder to provide the thick tongue sandwiches, bits of cake and chocolate biscuits which she arranged in tasteful patterns on two odd plates and a couple of saucers. Once, triumphantly, she brought out cups as well.
“I’m going to do you really well to-night, sweetness. I’ve got some wine.”
“How marvellous. But I say, had you better? Wine’s the sort of thing people really do miss, you know.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. That would be almost stealing. No, I got you this specially, myself. The man at the store said it was all right. It’s Burgundy. Hold your cup, and I’ll pour you some out. No, sweet, you have the one with the handle. Honestly, I like using this.”
The bottle was impressive, brilliantly labelled with coloured views of the Antipodes and giving off a dark red, dramatic bouquet.
“Is it nice?” asked Christie, watching him anxiously as he drank.
“A treat. But, darling, it’s a shame for you to have to get it. I’ll bring along a drink myself, next time. We’ve always got stuff in the house.”
“But, precious, I love giving you things. Have one of these biscuits with it. They’ve got coffee cream sort of stuff in the middle. Rather good.”
Kit finished his cupful, and allowed himself to be pressed to a second. He ate two coffee cream biscuits, and a pink cokernut one. The red potion, mixed with the scent of night and dry wood and leaves and Christie, took on a Swiss-Family-Robinson kind of charm. It was certainly warming. They were both laughing at nothing very much when Kit threw the carriage-rug over them, and blew into the broken flower-pot that shielded the candle.