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The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories

Page 26

by Christopher Dolley (ed)


  ‘Where is Pierre?’

  Ah, there he was; he was far out, swimming as far as they could see parallel to the beach.

  She got up and walked along the beach. The mounting chaos of the sea was like the confusion of her heart. The sea had broken loose from the still sky and the stable earth; her life was breaking loose too from everything she had known. Her life was becoming free and alarmed. The prostration of each wave upon the sand mocked her with the imagination of desire for ever fulfilling and satiate; satiate and fulfilling. She walked dazed and giddily towards Alex as if she were being blown towards him. Her dress blew and the wind wetted her eyes. She lifted her arms above her head and the wind blew into her legs, drove back her skirts. She paused. Did he see her? Did he see her miming her passion with the wind?

  She marched back to her husband. The wind caught and blew her almost unwillingly fast towards him.

  ‘Tom!’ she said. ‘I shall have a child by someone else.’

  He looked at her, in his habitual startled stupor. He hated this sea, this beach, this extraordinary country. He simply did not believe in it. Those words seemed like the country, wild and incredible. He just did not believe them, any more than he believed that the wind could speak. God, he thought she’d had her scene for the day and had got over it.

  He was struggling.

  ‘I have decided,’ she said. It was an ultimatum.

  He smiled because he could not speak.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘If you say so, I believe you.’

  She had terrified him. He was like a man blundering about a darkened room. Say? What could he say? She’d be crying before the night was out that she could never leave him. Or would she? He was relieved to see her walk away and to sink back into his habitual stupor. When she had gone he wanted to seize her and shake her. He saw another man lying naked on her; the picture enraged him and yet it gave him the happiness of an inexpressible jealousy. Then tears came to his eyes and he felt like a child.

  She was walking away looking for Pierre and thinking, ‘He doesn’t believe me. He’s a lout.’

  She watched Pierre as she walked. An old man, a nice old man, a funny old man. And very brave. Two unconcerned men, making no fuss, one old and one young: Pierre and the Jew.

  The grace of the Jew, the comic strength of Pierre – they belonged to a free, articulate world. She was opposite to Pierre now. The sea was heavy in his course, the waves weightier there, and once or twice a roller cracked at the crest as he was swimming up it. But he was coming in, she saw, very slowly coming in. He was coming in much farther down. She came back to Tom.

  ‘Look,’ she jeered. She seemed to have forgotten her earlier words. ‘You said he couldn’t swim!’ Coram screwed up his eyes. She walked down once more to the place where Pierre would land. The roar of the waves was denser and more chaotic. Tom followed her down. Pierre hardly seemed nearer. It was long waiting for him to come in.

  At this end of the beach there was rock. It ran out from the promontory into the water. She climbed up to get a better view. Suddenly she called out in a controlled voice:

  ‘Tom. Come here. Look.’

  He climbed up and followed her. She was looking down. When he got there he looked down too. ‘Hell!’ he said.

  Below them was a wide cavern worn by the sea with two spurs of rock running out into the water from either side of it. The enormous waves broke on the outer spurs and then came colliding with each other and breaking against the tables of rock submerged in the water, jostled, punched and scattered in green lumps into the cave. With a hollow boom they struck and then swept back on the green tongue of the undertow. The place was like a wide gulping mouth with jagged teeth. Mr and Mrs Coram could not hear themselves speak, though they stood near together looking down at the hole with wonder and fear.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, clutching his arm. He pulled his arm away. He was frightened too.

  ‘Tom!’ she said. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pierre – he’s not coming in here?’ she said.

  He looked at the hole and drew back.

  ‘Tom, he is. He is!’ she cried out suddenly in a voice that stopped his heart. ‘He’s drifting. He’s drifting in here. These rocks will kill him.’

  Tom glared at the sea. He could see it as plainly as she. He backed away.

  ‘The damn fool,’ Tom said. ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘He’s not. Look.’

  He was drifting. He had been drifting all the time they had talked. They had thought he was swimming parallel to the beach, but all the time he had been drifting.

  They could see Pierre plainly. In five minutes he would be borne beyond the first spur and would be carried into the hole.

  As he came nearer they saw him at battle. They saw him fighting and striking out with his arms and legs. His cap had come loose and his grey hair was plastered over his head. His face had its little air of deprecation, but he was gasping and spitting water, his eyes were stern and bewildered as if he had not time to decide which of the waves that slapped him on the face was his opponent. He was like a man with dogs jumping up at his waving arms. The Corams were above him on the rock and she called out and signalled to him but he did not look up.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she called.

  ‘Course he’s all right,’ said Coram.

  It seemed to her that Pierre refused to look up, but kept his eyes lowered. Increasingly as he got into the outer breakers he had the careless, dead look of a body that cannot struggle any more and helplessly allows itself to be thrown to its pursuers. The two watchers stood hypnotized on the rock. Then Mrs Coram screamed. A wave, larger than the rest, seemed to dive under Pierre and throw him half out of the water. His arms absurdly declaimed in space and a look of dazed consternation was on his face as he dropped into the trough. The sun in the sky flashed like his own monocle upon him and the rich foam.

  ‘Quick. He is going,’ she cried to her husband, clambering down the rock to the beach.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. He followed her down. She ran towards the surf. ‘We’ll make a chain. Quick. Take my hand. He’s finished. We’ll get him before he goes.’

  She stretched out her hand.

  ‘Get Alex,’ she said. ‘Run and get him. We’ll make a chain. Quickly run and get him.’

  But Tom drew back. He drew back a yard, two yards, he retreated up the beach, backing away.

  ‘No,’ he said angrily, waving his arm as though thrusting her away. Yet she was not near him or touching him.

  ‘Tom!’ she called. ‘Quick. You can swim. I’ll come.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  She did not see for a moment that the look of angry stupor on his face was fear, that he was prepared to let Pierre drown; and then, as he half ran up the beach, she saw it. He would not go in himself. He would not fetch Alex. He was going to stand there and let Pierre drown. ‘Tom,’ she called. She saw his thick red glistening face, his immovable glowering struggling stare. He stood like a chained man. He would stand there like that doing nothing and let Pierre drown. She was appalled.

  So she ran. She ran down the beach, calling, waving to the Jew.

  It happened that he had got up and was wandering idly along the surf towards them. He heard her cry and thought she was calling out with the excitement of the wind. Then he saw.

  ‘Quick,’ she called. ‘Pierre is drowning.’

  She clutched his arm as the Jew came up to her. He gave a glance, jerked away her arm, and ran swiftly along the beach. She followed him. She saw him smile as he ran, the slight gleam of his teeth. When he got near the rock he broke into a short laugh of joy and rushed into the water. In two strokes he was there.

  She feared for both of them. She saw a wave rise slowly like an animal just behind Pierre and a second greater one, green as ice and snowy with fluttering spume, following it closel
y. The two swimmers stared with brief, almost polite surprise at each other. Then the Jew flung himself bodily upon Pierre. An arm shot up. Their legs were in the air. They were thrown like two wrestlers in the water. There was a shout. The Jew came up, his arm went out and his hand – the big hand she had seen upon the table that morning in the Pension – caught the old man under the armpit. They were clear of the rock. They swayed like waltzing partners and then the enormous wave picked them both up, tossed them to its crest and threw them headlong over and over on the shore. The falling wave soaked Mrs Coram as they fell.

  Monsieur Pierre crawled dripping up the shingle and sank down panting. His face was greenish in colour, his skin purple with cold. He looked astonished to be out of the sea. The Jew had a lump the size of an egg on his shin.

  ‘I thought I was finished,’ Pierre said.

  ‘I’ll get some brandy,’ Mrs Coram said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is not necessary.’

  ‘You saved his life,’ she said excitedly to the Jew.

  ‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘I found myself the current out there is strong.’

  ‘I could do nothing against the current,’ Pierre said. ‘I was finished. That,’ he said in his absurd negligent way, ‘is the second time I have looked death in the face.’

  ‘Rub yourself with the towel,’ she said.

  He did not like being treated as an old man.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said. After all, once he had attempted to swim the Channel. Perhaps they would believe now he was a swimmer.

  ‘It is always you good swimmers who nearly drown,’ she said tactfully.

  ‘Yes,’ Pierre boasted, becoming proud as he warmed up. ‘I nearly drowned! I nearly drowned! Ah yes, I nearly drowned.’

  The emotion of the rescue had driven everything else from her mind. The scene was still in front of her. She looked with fear still at the careless water by the rock where only a few minutes ago she had seen him nearly go. Never would she forget his expressionless head in the water. With the eyelids lowered it had looked grave, detached, like a guillotined head. She was shivering: her fingers were still tightly clenched. Supposing now they had Monsieur Pierre dead beside them. How near they had been to death! She shuddered. The sea, green and dark as a blown shrub, with its slop of foam, sickened her.

  He is not very grateful, she thought. And she said aloud:

  ‘Monsieur Pierre, but for Alex you would be dead.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Pierre, turning to the Jew not very warmly. ‘I must express my warmest thanks to you. That is the second time I have looked …’

  ‘You get no credit,’ she said to Alex in English just in her husband’s way. It was odd how she had his habit in a time of stress. ‘He thinks he’s immortal.’

  ‘Parlez français,’ said Pierre.

  ‘She says,’ said Alex quickly, ‘that you are immortal.’

  All this time she was standing up. One side of her dress had been soaked by the wave which had borne them in. As she talked she could see Tom standing forty yards off. He was standing by the car as if for protection and half turned from the sight of the sea. She was still too much in the excitement of the rescue, going over it again and again, to realize that she was looking at him or to know what she thought of him.

  ‘We must get you home,’ she said to Pierre, ‘quickly.’

  ‘There is no hurry,’ he said with dignity. ‘Sit down, Madame. Calm yourself. When one has looked death in the face …’

  She obeyed. She was surprised they thought her not calm. She sat next to Alex as all the afternoon, when he had gone off, she had wished to do. She looked at his arms, his chest and his legs as if to find the courage shining on his body.

  ‘It was nothing.’ She could see that this was true. It had been nothing to him. One must not exaggerate. He was young. His black hair was thick and shining and young. His eyes were young too. He had, as she had always thought, that peculiarly ancient and everlasting youth of the Greek statues that are sometimes unearthed in this Mediterranean soil. He was equable and in command of himself, he was at the beginning of everything, at the beginning of the mind and the body. There was no difficulty anywhere, it was all as easy as that smile of his when he ran into the water. Had she been like that when she was young? How had she been? Had everything been easy? No, it had been difficult. She could not remember truly, but she could not believe she had ever been as young as he was young. Without knowing it, she touched his bare leg with two of her fingers and ran them down to his knee. The skin was firm.

  ‘You’re cold,’ she said. The coldness startled her. He had probably never slept with a woman. She found herself, as she touched that hard body which did not move under her touch, pitying the woman who might have slept with this perfect, impersonal, impenetrable man.

  There was resentment against his perfection, his laugh in the water, his effortless achievement. He showed no weakness. There was no confusion in him. There was no discernible vice. She could not speak.

  And now, as she calmed down and saw Tom, her heart started. She saw, really saw him for the first time since the rescue and went up the tiring shingle to him. He was still standing against the car.

  ‘The damn fool,’ Coram said before his wife could speak. ‘Trying to drown others besides himself. They’re all alike.’

  ‘It is no thanks to you that we saved him,’ she said. ‘Leave it to me! You ran away!’ she said angrily.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Drown myself for a fool like that? What do you take me for? He wasn’t drowning anyway.’

  ‘He was,’ she said. ‘And you ran away. You wouldn’t even go for Alex. I had to go.’

  ‘No need to shout,’ he said. She stood below him on the shingle and he winced as if she were throwing stones at him. ‘These people get me down in this place,’ he said, ‘going into a sea like that.’

  ‘You ran away when I called,’ she insisted.

  ‘Are you saying I’m a coward?’ he said.

  He looked at her small, shrilling figure. She was ugly when she was in a temper, like a youth, gawky, bony, unsensual. Now she had joined all the things that were against him. The beauty of this country was a fraud, a treachery against the things he had known. He saw the red street of his childhood, heard the tap of his father’s hammer, the workers getting off the trams with their packages and little bags in their hands, the oil on their dungarees. He heard the swing door of his laboratory, the drum of machines and smoke drooping like wool through the Midland rain, saw the cold morning placards. That was his life. The emeralds and ultramarine of this sea and the reddened, pine-plumed coast made him think of those gaudy cocottes he had seen in Paris. The beauty was corruption and betrayal.

  He did not know how to say this. It was confused in his mind. He blustered. He glared. She saw through the glowering eyes the piteous struggle, the helpless fear. He was ugly. He stood there blustering and alone with his dust-covered car, an outcast.

  ‘I’m saying you could have helped,’ she said.

  She looked in anger at him. Her heart was beating loudly, her blood was up. It was not the rescue – she half realized now – which had stirred her – but the failure to rescue. From the very moment when he had run away, something in her had run after him, clamouring for him, trying to drag him back. Now, his muddle seemed to drag her in too.

  ‘Help that swine!’ he said.

  Pierre and Alex came to the car carrying their towels.

  ‘You think of no one but yourself,’ she said to her husband in front of them. ‘For God’s sake let’s get home.’

  Everyone looked at her apprehensively. Coram got into the car and she, determined not to let him escape one moment of her contempt, sat beside him. Pierre and Alex were at the back. In silence they drove from the beach and over the hill from which the white town could be seen stacked closely in the sun, like a pack of tall cards. As the car crawled through the na
rrow streets which were crowded in the evenings with holiday-makers and workers who came up from the harbour or down from the fields, Pierre put his head out of the window He waved to friends sitting in cafés.

  ‘I nearly drowned!’ he called out. ‘I nearly drowned.’

  ‘Drowned?’ people laughed, getting up from their tables.

  ‘For the second time in my life,’ he called, ‘I have looked death in the face.’

  ‘Tiens!’

  ‘Yes, I nearly …’

  Coram trod on the accelerator. Pierre fell back into his seat, his little scene cut short, as they swerved up the dusty road to the Pension.

  Coram was silent. They got out and he went to put the car away. Pierre went to his room and she and Alex went up the stairs of the shuttered house to their rooms. She was ahead of him. When she got to his landing she saw his door was open. She turned and said:

  ‘May I see what you are like?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  She went into his room and he followed her. The shutters were closed and the room was dark and cool. There was the white shape of the bed, the pile of books by its side, the white enamel basin on its iron stand and his suitcase on a chair. He went to push open the shutters.

  ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ she said. But one shutter slipped open. Her face was white and hard, tragically emptied of all expression as she looked at his polite face.

  There was nothing.

  She went over and lay on his bed. He raised his eyebrows slightly. She saw him raise them.

  ‘They are hard in this house,’ she said. ‘The beds.’

  ‘A bit,’ he said.

  She leant up on one elbow.

  ‘You were plucky,’ she said, ‘this afternoon. But my husband ran away.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘He had not changed. He had not been in.’

  ‘He ran away,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t even go and fetch you.’

  ‘One could not expect …’ Alex began.

  ‘You mean you are young?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex.

  ‘My husband is my age,’ she said in a hard voice. ‘Turned forty.’

 

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