Return to Night: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  This caused a certain inward jolt. “Were they going?” she asked vaguely. “I see so little of them.”

  “Probably not. I never do retain a very clear impression of anything Mrs. Fleming says. She always seems somehow to be on the other side of a pane of glass. I think she disapproves of me.”

  Hilary suddenly recalled Julian s voice saying, “I thought they were separated or something.”

  “It’ll keep fine,” said Rupert’s noncommittal voice. “Speaking for me, last time I was involved with a horse was in France in ’17, and when I say involved …” He reminisced, farcically, for several heaven-sent minutes. It was not till she was driving away that she thought of suspecting his imperturbable ease, and imagined the conversation continuing behind her: “I felt a change of topic might be indicated.”

  “Oh, my dear, you must be wrong. … Well, it happens of course, even to quite sensible women. He’s very good-looking.”

  In anything she had contemplated saying to Lisa, she had never had the faintest intention of using Julian’s name. For one thing her personal code would have demanded that before doing so she should ask his leave; for another—yes, she had to admit a reluctance to let Lisa know. She and Rupert, even in their most cruel divergences, were so wholly adult and broken-in to the world. All Lisa’s charity would only soften, not alter the picture at the back of her mind. No, it was not possible, now, to say anything to her yet awhile.

  She found Julian in the stable yard, engaged in a sentimental reunion with Biscuit, who saw her first and appeared to inform him of the fact. He swung round, swept her with a respectful adoring glance, and exclaimed, “My God, you do make me feel a tramp.”

  He was certainly very shabby; and, though privately she thought his ribbed sweater and old corduroys became him very well, insisted on explanations. “Mother got rid of my riding-things—in case I should yield to temptation, I suppose. Sent them to the Missions to Seamen, or the Distressed Gentlewomen’s Aid, or something suitable. I had to unearth these from the attic. I do hope you don’t mind.”

  “Your eye’s improving,” she remarked when she had reassured him. From a purely technical point of view, it was; but the fading bruise had taken on a sensational variety of shades from red to yellow and green. It would certainly be some days yet before it got back to normal. The cut had healed, more or less, and he had removed the dressing, making it more than ever apparent that at least one stitch would have improved matters.

  “This looks a nice animal you’ve found me. What’s his name?”

  “Hatter.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Well, I call him Hatter. Don’t you know your Alice? ‘You might as well say,’ said the Hatter, ‘that “I see what I eat” is the same as “I eat what I see.”’ Trouble is he’s been out with learners a lot, I’m afraid, and suffers from a hard mouth and chronic boredom. He’s got quite a nice action once you get him interested. Would you like Biscuit instead?”

  She declined with thanks. After a short battle of wills, Hatter allowed himself to be interested. They took the shortest way up to the unfenced downs.

  There was a great broad trackway there, one of those archaic grass roads which were formed when forest filled the valleys, and beside which the Roman ruler is modern stuff. There was nearly a mile of it. It was glorious. Julian eased Biscuit to a canter—all Hatter’s ardent emulation could not make his pace—and looked round to smile as she caught him up again. She thought, This is the best moment of my life, I know it now and I shall know it always.

  At the end of the track they stopped, glowing and content, to breathe their horses and take a last look at the prospect which trees would presently enclose. After a moment or two Julian said, “Lord, I shall miss this. Still, you can’t have everything.”

  “Miss it?” she asked, forgetting what he meant.

  “Oh, of course it was yesterday and I haven’t seen you. I’ve composed a beautiful letter to Finnigan; I meant to bring it out with me and post it, but I forgot.”

  “Who’s he?”

  He gazed at her in tolerant affection. “He runs the Barchester Rep. Don’t you remember, he’s the chap who saw me do Oberon and offered me a trial?”

  “I might have remembered better if you’d ever told me.”

  “I always credit you with omniscience. Sorry. If he falls through I could try Liebnitz. He made a vague gesture too. But you don’t want me to, do you?”

  “I don’t know. I thought he was something to do with philosophy.”

  He laughed so loudly that Biscuit threw up his head as well. “You have kept yourself unspotted from the world, haven’t you? This Liebnitz is a Mogul. Celluloid.”

  “Oh. When was this?”

  “Oh, after the Dream. It wasn’t the Emperor in person, of course, some minor spy. He came behind to see me with my make-up off, and wanted me to go for a test or something. Of course, it’s all right later, when you’ve had time to learn to act.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Well, that, more or less.” He added, as an afterthought, “I didn’t care much for his way of talking.”

  And tomorrow, she thought, he will astonish me again by his humility. She stole a glance at him, sitting straight and easy with his eyes on a gap of distance between the trees; his face had a look which had taken from it everything immature. She never ceased to wonder, whenever she rediscovered in him, amid so much that was unformed and unsure, this vein of hard integrity. It was a thing that touched on her own world; she knew how to respect it.

  “Though, mind you,” he was saying, “I wouldn’t say no to a year in a French studio, doing bit parts and messing about on the technical side. That would be education. But if you once get one of these Hollywood reach-me-down personalities hung round your neck—No, thanks.”

  Feeling sufficiently secure in the moment to risk it, she said, “So you don’t want to grasp at the fallen mantle of Valentino?”

  She was pleased by his calm, till after a moment of blankness he asked, “Valentino? Who’s he?”

  “I forgot. You wouldn’t remember.” They rode on.

  “I’m starving,” he said. “Aren’t you? I hope you can eat an enormous tea. Mrs. Pascoe does them.”

  They ate it in a parlor adorned with crochet antimacassars on red plush, white china fern-baskets, and mass-produced rayon cushions in hideous modernistic designs. Julian held her hand under the cloth. Afterward he produced, with some triumph, a case completely full of fresh cigarettes.

  “You’re improving,” she told him as they got up to move to the plush armchairs. “I wouldn’t even put it past you to have matches as well.”

  “You underestimate me. I have a lighter.”

  He no longer snatched at a kiss, as though he feared that if he gave her time she would think better of it. He had learned to hold her eyes for a moment before he began. “I don’t think I like you in riding-things,” he said presently. “You look so nice and you feel so inaccessible. What time shall I come tonight?”

  “I’ll ring you up. It’s safer that way.”

  “I’m sick of being safe. I want everyone to know. Listen; let’s go away somewhere. Now, from here.”

  “You’re crazy. Dressed like this, with no luggage?”

  “I’ve got some money. You could get things on the way. There’s a little pub on the Wye, just above Chepstowe, Chris and I put up there once. Nobody goes there this time of the year. Ring up and say you won’t be back.”

  It was only the concreteness of this last that brought her down to earth. “I couldn’t. I’ve got some ill people.”

  “One of the others would see them. Just twenty-four hours, to go on as we are now. One always remembers having wasted things.”

  “Would you?” she said. “With your understudy not warned? Even if it wasn’t a very good play?”

  He said, “You’ve got me there. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

  “I shall be loving you just as much as if I’d gone.”
/>
  He thought this over. “No, you won’t. Not that you aren’t right. But there’s no substitute for living.”

  On the way out Mrs. Pascoe noticed his eye for the first time, and remarked on it with concern. He laughed cheerfully. “Oh, this? Just a bit of jaywalking in Cheltenham the other day. I stepped out from behind a parked car—silly thing to do-and ran slap into another. It was in reverse, by a bit of luck, and going fairly slowly. I did this on the edge of the curb. It’s nearly better now.”

  Mrs. Pascoe was interested, for something very similar had happened once to her husband’s sister. She went into details. So did Julian. An entire episode, complete down to the ministrations of a mythical Samaritan who had asked him in and patched up the cut for him, sprang circumstantially into life. Hilary was fascinated by his glibness.

  As they were crossing the yard, she said, “That was a very efficient improvisation.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t improvised. That was the Official Version of the Incident, constructed with great pains. Do you approve?”

  “It was most convincing.” She had not lost sight of the’ fact that it was her own choice which had made this, and much more of it in the future, necessary. Her shrinking seemed rather hypocritical. “But if you were too much knocked out to feel like traveling, it would seem reasonable to have seen a doctor.”

  “I did consider it. But when I woke in the morning, I felt so well. I didn’t think I ought to bother a doctor—much.”

  “Shameless creature.” Her disquiet dissolved, as often before, in laughter. “Well, I’ll book you an appointment, and it’s more than you deserve. Be careful where you park the car.”

  “I shall be the most private patient you ever had.”

  “Night calls are very expensive for private patients.”

  “Whatever it costs,” he said, “it won’t be too dear for me.”

  She let in the clutch quickly, afraid that someone might have seen their faces from the farm.

  Very late that night, when there seemed nothing that could not be said, she asked him a question.

  “When you said once that you recognized me—what did you mean?”

  “Oh—I remembered your voice, and the feel of your hand.”

  “From the hospital, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “But when I went to you then, you thought you knew me.”

  He whispered quickly, “What did I say?”

  “I can’t remember. I think that you wouldn’t have minded if you’d known I was there.”

  “You told me I hadn’t made a fool of myself.” He turned his head away.

  “You didn’t, darling. You’d been having a bad dream, I think.”

  “Did I talk about that too?”

  “No. … You surely don’t remember it now, do you?”

  “No. No, I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Never mind. But I’d have liked to know who it was I reminded you of. You don’t think I’d be angry?”

  “It isn’t that sort of a thing.”

  His voice, gruff and embarrassed like a boy’s, was half smothered In the pillow. She said, “Go to sleep. I won’t keep on at you any more.”

  “I never thought of your thinking anything like that.”

  “I didn’t think what you mean. It doesn’t matter. Good night.”

  “Don’t go to sleep yet.”

  “It’s terribly late.”

  “I always thought somehow that you knew.”

  “Sometimes one just talks for the sake of talking.”

  “You know really, don’t you? It’s just a sort of a thing I had. When you’re a kid and you’re a good bit on your own …”

  She leaned down; it was her own face she was trying to hide, though the light was out.

  “… but when one reaches years of discretion one ought to pack that sort of thing up.”

  “Everybody has things. Of course they do.”

  “You’re crying.”

  “I love you so much.”

  It was a little while before either of them spoke again. Then he said, “I’ll tell you something. I was afraid to before.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because it’s a thing people say. I thought you might not believe it, and if you hadn’t it would all have seemed so sordid, it would have spoiled things, I thought.”

  “You know I’d always have believed you.”

  “You say that because you don’t know what it is.”

  “It can be anything.”

  “You see, what I kept thinking was, probably this other man told you the same. Sure to have. He would. I mean, that he’d never had anyone before you. And then you found out it wasn’t true. Well—this time it is. That’s all.”

  She thought it was laughter she was holding back, till her eyes ran over again. As soon as she could, she said, “Darling, you ought to have known I’d have believed anything you told me, even that.”

  “I don’t think you guessed, did you?”

  “How could I have done?”

  “I never wanted anyone before. Not enough for it to seem worth doing anything about. I thought one might as well wait, rather than go messing about out of curiosity. That can be pretty dismal, from what people say. It ought to be important, I think.”

  She said to herself, It might have been anyone.

  “Actually,” he was saying with some hesitation, “I did have the opportunity offered me once; but that was off-putting, rather than not.”

  “Was it? What happened?”

  “You don’t want to hear about it, do you?”

  “Don’t be silly, of course I do.”

  “It’s a pretty pointless sort of story. Still, if you like—It was just a thing that happened one Easter vac, down in Sussex. A man in my year was having a twenty-first, and a bunch of us stayed over for a long weekend. We all did things more or less together, nothing much in the way of pairing off, all quite cheerful and uncomplicated. Then the night before the party was due to break up, this girl came along to my room and said had I got some aspirin, because she couldn’t sleep. I was half-asleep myself and feeling a bit vacant, I suppose; and as everyone had been floating about in dressing-gowns and so on quite freely I didn’t think much about it, except to feel slightly affronted at her thinking I was more likely to be stocked up with aspirin than the women were. I said I was sorry I hadn’t got any, and she came and sat on the side of my bed, and we talked vaguely about one thing and another. She was good fun and pretty in a way, and after I was properly awake I admit I quite enjoyed having her there. In fact, if things had gone on quietly as they were for a bit longer, I don’t know—Well, it’s hard to say. But she suddenly got frightfully intense and started talking about self-fulfillment and God knows what, only it was much more embarrassing than I’ve made it sound. I didn’t know how on earth to stop her. And the more she kept on, the more impossible the whole thing seemed. Is that abnormal, do you think?”

  “I’ve felt exactly the same myself.”

  “Have you really? Still, that’s a bit different, isn’t it? Well, anyway, after trying for some time to keep the discussion on an abstract plane and not succeeding, I said the trouble was I’d just got engaged, only it couldn’t be given out yet because her people were abroad.”

  “I hope that settled her.”

  “You might have thought so, mightn’t you? In actual fact, it only seemed to make things worse. Quite honestly, I don’t think even now I could dwell on all the details. I’m afraid in the end I more or less told her to go to hell. And after that, I could have done with some aspirin myself.”

  “Oh, darling. I’m not really laughing. I mean, not at you. It’s the time of night. I never realized there were drawbacks like that to being a man.”

  “I see what you mean—well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. I mean, it’s the sort of situation it’s impossible to come out of well, whatever one does, isn’t it? If you don’t mind, I’ll tell you something I’m afraid will really rather sho
ck you. In spite of being completely revolted by the whole performance, after she’d gone I nearly got up and went after her. I think I might have, except that it struck me she might have gone along to somebody else by then. … I never imagined myself telling this story to anyone. Life’s queer, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It made me wonder whether it wasn’t all rather overrated. Men used to come back after the vac and say they’d done this and that, and one rather felt that being able to talk about it was the principal object, though I hardly know why because when you’d heard one you’d heard the lot. The real people didn’t talk, I suppose, but that doesn’t occur to you till later. … There was one woman who produced a good deal of effect on me. But that was impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “I only saw her act. I never got the chance to meet her. I don’t think I really wanted to.”

  “Tell me. Have I seen her?”

  “Ten to one you have.”

  “Who is it? Don’t be mean.”

  “No, if I do you’ll only say, ‘But, my dear, she’s over fifty.’ Because I happen to know she is. All the same, for quite a while the thing that bothered me most about not getting started on the stage was that I wouldn’t get the chance of playing opposite her before she got too old. I didn’t want to meet her any other way. I suppose you can hardly call that being in love.”

  “I dare say you were quite right not to tell me her name.”

  “If I did you’d understand, I think; but I won’t. It’s queer to think about now, because it seems always to have been you. … Oh, God, you’re a doctor, why don’t you invent something people can take instead of sleep?”

  “I’ve got you instead. That’s enough for now.”

  “It is for me.” But he was half-asleep already. Her own eyes were closing when he said, “Will you do something for me? Or rather, not do?”

  “Either. Anything.”

  “That first day in the hospital. Don’t ever tell me what really happened. Do you mind? I’d rather keep it the way it is.”

  “Have I made it true for you?”

  “Yes. More than true.”

  “I wanted to, even then.”

  “God bless you. I mean that, too.”