She stood, hesitant, watching him as he lingered, pad in hand, looking down the list of his hospital appointments. She noticed again, the easy poise of his shoulders, and the way in which his whole person appeared to hang from them, so that his clothes, and the body inside them, were carried with an air of grace, of strength in reserve. The patience implied in that poise was also apparent in his face, and his deep-set eyes. The likeness to Tom was only accentuated by the spiritual difference. She realised that he knew; Tom did not. It made her jealous for her lover; more determined to fight for him.
“It was my suggestion that we should go to Chartres to-day,” she said, with just a hint of defiance.
“Quite so, Mary. I may call you Mary, now, I hope?” He smiled as he spoke, putting an equivocal emphasis on the ‘now’, for her to take as she liked.
Mary did not reply. She was still suspicious of him, and expectant of criticism, even of hostility. Dr. Batten continued.
“I believe you are making a mistake, Mary.”
She looked at him, and he was smiling.
“I am not sure that you have a right to say so,” she said. “Your brother and I are not children. We are willing to be responsible for ourselves.”
“Ah! Then you must know him better than I do. But I was not referring to that when I said you were mistaken.”
She suspected that he was playing with her, and she began to grow angry.
“I don’t understand you, Dr. Batten!”
He raised his eyebrows, and she saw his gaze concentrate on her, with an added touch of severity.
“Your mistake, Mary, is in expecting me and my wife to be disapproving. That is what I have wanted to say to you from the beginning of this—this autumnal adventure of yours. For it is autumnal, is it not? and you must not expect too much from it, or for too long. I am cruel to say that. But I can see that you, at least, and Tom too I expect, have thrown judgment to the winds for the time being. It doesn’t matter, except that it may hurt you. That is what we want to avoid. And I will say this now, my dear. I am grateful to you, or rather to the happy chance, if it is chance, for bringing this new force into my brother’s life. You see, I do understand him, so far as one can. He is not the man he was, Mary. That slight wound in the head, the scar of which you see down his face, was not serious. But the circumstances in which he received it were very serious.”
He studied her sadly now. She was frightened, bewildered. What was he leading to? But she commanded her fear, recalling her resolution to carry Tom through to a new life, to a fulfilment of himself. She refused to be intimidated.
“What do you mean?” she said, very quietly. “We know what we propose to do.”
“I am sure you will succeed, Mary. That is why I want to give you my assistance. And you must know what are the facts. That is where Tom is not always capable now. He has lost something. He has lost the ability to face facts. It may be a matter of nervous energy, of sheer animal vitality. He looks fit enough. But that wound remains as a reminder of what he went through. He caught that scratch at the same time as he was buried for some hours in a dug-out after a direct hit had filled it in. He was unconscious for two days after he was rescued. The situation is, Mary, that he has never since quite recovered full consciousness. There is a small part of him left in that dug-out, and refusing to come out. You know he resigned from the Service?”
He contemplated her so benevolently that she felt courage returning, to replace the flood of anger.
“Yes, he has told me that. And I know about his wife, how she has turned Catholic and refuses to divorce him.”
Luke smiled wanly.
“Unhappily, there have been no grounds for divorce, as far as I know. He has just taken everything sitting down, as one might say. Nothing positive has happened to him since that moment of terror froze him. It’s common enough, you know. There are hospitals full of men in that condition, or rather worse. But you have to realise, Mary, that though Tom appears to be a normal man, he is not quite so. I say this for your protection, not his. You are the one who may suffer. That would not be fair to you unless you were fully informed, and had chosen to take the responsibility. I do not say this to frighten you off. That again is what I want to emphasise. I think my wife may not quite agree with me here, for she is a Catholic too. And Catholics are supposed to welcome self-sacrifice, in the cause of orthodoxy. I do not, Mary. I do not.”
He took her hand, and held it, trying to say something difficult to put into words. She stood waiting, looking incredulously at the hand clasping hers. It was hardly larger than her own; white, shapely, nervous. The thumb was exactly the same shape as Tom’s, rather firmer than the rest of the hand. Her heart warmed to this inexplicable man, and she looked up at him, her eyes full of tears.
“I know about that too. I am determined to fight for him, you see. I am not content to let him drift on in this unsatisfactory way, with no aim in life, no attachment, nobody to … to maintain his self-respect. Isn’t it that? The need, I mean; the need to restore his self-respect? He is dignified; but I have found out what lies behind that, or rather what doesn’t lie behind it.”
“You are a perceptive woman, Mary. What has given you this insight? I think I know the answer. You are profiting from many years of objective devotion. Now, even in abandonment, you have not lost that asset.”
“Abandonment?” The word shocked her. “But I love him, that is all.”
“All and enough,” said the doctor gravely, dropping her hand. “That is why I am grateful. For he means much to me, Mary. He is a gallant fellow, after all. And he has broken a promising career; or had it broken for him. He has not died of wounds, you understand. He lives of wounds. He doesn’t know it. But you have apparently discovered it, and are willing to take him on those terms. I say you are willing to take him. Am I wrong?”
She did not reply immediately. This revelation, confirming her perplexity over the character of her lover, had sharpened her recognition of what she was undertaking.
“I have already told him what I intend to do. Nothing shall separate me from him now.”
“Well, you know, Mary, that brings us down to the immediate practical issue. I have more or less forced him to come over to Paris, to get away from a situation in London that might be too much for him. I feel myself responsible because I persuaded him to go into the City, as a possible means of rehabilitation. He has tried several outlets, but they have all petered out. Now he has got caught in this last, which is more serious because it looks as though his innocence, or incapacity, has made him fall foul of the law; or so it seems. He ought, you know, to be there, facing the music with the other members of this board of directors. But I just have not dared to let him face the consequences; an appearance in the dock, perhaps. I don’t fully know; but the lawyers here and in London are dubious, and have been trying to keep him out of it. And I don’t quite trust him to make the best of his case. Yet if he stays here indefinitely, it is as good as a confession of complicity in the dubious commercial conduct, whatever it may be. You see what I fear?”
Mary stood, fully confident again. Here was something tangible that she could attack. She knew at once what she wanted to do, and intended to do.
“I will go back with him, Luke. I will stay with him whatever happens. But surely nothing can happen? He was merely foolish in signing blindly, that night after he got back to England?”
“But we have to prove that. A man in his position pleads ignorance with some difficulty. It does not sound too convincing.”
“No. But I see we should go to London. That is good enough.”
To her surprise, Luke raised her hand and kissed it.
“Thank you, Mary.” Then he smiled, mischievously. “And you must forgive me for not falling in with the other plan. That is because I believe I am wiser than you, and Tom, and that not too welcome American, Aloysius Sturm. Adrian is a heavy responsibility, you understand? I am grateful to your daughter over that. And we have not said anything abo
ut her, have we, until this moment.”
He studied Mary quizzically, waiting for her to confess that she was embarrassed, at least, if not even frightened, by her daughter’s disapproval. Mary now presented what she believed to be her trump card.
“I have had a wonderful letter from her,” she said, almost purring. “All the differences between her and John have been forgotten. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. The marriage was breaking up. I could see that, and it has distressed me from the beginning. Why they could not have discovered earlier what was wrong, I shall never understand.”
“No, I am sure of that, Mary.”
Luke was still smiling indulgently at her.
“I don’t know what you mean!” she said sharply.
“I mean that you would have no inhibitions of that kind.”
“Of what kind?”
“Come now, we need not be evasive, my dear. You still suspect me of criticising you. It is just the other way. I am no Manicheean. I do not accept this monstrous and destructive idea of the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. On the contrary, I believe they should be one, and that the sickness and the evil lie in their division. That again, Mary, is the reason for my objecting to my son’s education being thrown out of proportion. If he is truly the unique musician that he promises to be, nothing will prevent him from ripening in that direction; nothing, except forcing, and the neglect of his other needs, his fulness as a man. You see what specialists are doing for us in this dreadful modern world; the specialists, the experts, the big stars and their insane systems? The charlatan, the politician, the maniac are all three flourishing on this commercialisation of human gifts. We are losing our sanity and our capacity for balanced work, Mary.”
He had suddenly grown emphatic, his grey eyes lighting up, his cheeks faintly flushing. But he stood there, still easefully poised, half-hesitant and reluctant, almost deprecating his own burst of enthusiasm. Mary found that her self-protectiveness had suddenly vanished. She wanted to confide everything to him, to tell him how she felt quite shameless in her passion for Tom, this unexpected re-awakening of natural desire, in the autumn of life.
She had no time to reply, however, for he took her arm, and steered her towards the door to the smaller room where Tom and Mrs. Batten could be heard in conversation.
“Yes, my dear Mary. I know it would have been a good thin for Tom to have a success in America; but not at somebody else’s expense; especially his own nephew’s. That would not have restored his self-confidence. What will restore it, I am certain, is your surrender to him. It is a complicated matter to prove this. Only results will prove it. I am confident. We shall see. He has to face this wretched business in London now. I had not dared to let him do so before. But you can help him there. You will bring him through it. There can be no question of a conviction, I’m sure. But I have been playing a delaying game, with the help of the two sets of lawyers (expensive allies). I am not altogether sure that I did right; but I was afraid. You have got rid of that fear. Another reason why I am grateful to you.”
Mary stopped, before they passed into the little room. She faced the doctor, her resolute purpose enhancing her beauty. Even as she spoke, with quiet determination, she was aware of his admiring attention. The morning sunlight through the french windows touched her, glinting in her silver hair, her warm brown eyes, her mobile mouth. She was a symbol of warmth, of life.
“We propose to live together as man and wife, whatever the circumstances may be,” she said.
“You are a brave woman,” said the doctor, moving aside for her to precede him.
“No, not brave. But we are desperate and both starved. We are claiming a little happiness, so very late,” she said.
Tom stopped talking to his sister-in-law as they entered. Mrs. Batten rose from the writing desk and to Mary’s surprise, kissed her quite unceremoniously. It was a gesture of acceptance. Tom, meanwhile, openly took Mary by the arm, as though presenting her to the family.
“We’re off now, then,” he said. “To make the most of the daylight. It’s a good run to Chartres, and we want to have an hour or two to look round the cathedral and the old town.”
“Both making up for lost time, eh, Tom?” said his brother, putting a hand on his shoulder. With happiness and laughter, the four of them moved to the door, and the doctor and his wife stood outside at the head of the stairs, waving to the descending couple.
The lovers drove off in silence, Tom concerned with the pleasure of handling a fine car, and coping with the swift traffic of Paris. Mary was content to bask in her new happiness. She sat upright, superficially interested in the passing scene, and admiring Tom’s driving. Not until they had emerged from the traffic and the pavé did she break the silence.
“That confirms Joan’s letter, Tom.”
“What does?” he asked, his attention half-engaged on driving. “You talk like an oracle, and you look like a goddess.”
“You’re foolish,” she murmured, pausing to enjoy this adulation. She put a hand on Tom’s thigh, to reassure herself still further. He glanced swiftly at her, then resumed his watching of the road, as he increased speed. Mary studied the scar in his cheek, and recalled what Luke had told her.
“I don’t believe you’re more than twenty-one, Tom.”
He chuckled, and began to sing “I’m twenty-one to-day”, dropping the effort after a bar or two. His attention was mostly on the road to Rambouillet, where he proposed to stop for luncheon.
“We’ll have a meal at the Gerbe d’Or, Mary. It’s time we began to economise. It’s a nice little place, and you’ll like it.”
He said this without looking round. His face was impassive, and Mary was content not to examine closely for evidence of his attitude toward the present awkward situation about money matters. If that had to come, it would come later, after they had been living together for years perhaps. And by then, there would be no need to raise the query herself, for surely Tom would have won through. She mused over this vaguely, under the hot sunshine of happiness and sheer physical satisfaction. Meanwhile, Tom was being economical; a sign of realism. She increased the pressure of her hand on his thigh, and thus they sat side by side, silent again.
This mood lasted through the excellent luncheon, eaten quickly so that no time need be lost in pushing on for the second half of the run to Chartres. They arrived there while the ancient town was still somnolent in the early afternoon. The Cathedral square lay empty, except for two priests walking briskly across and disappearing behind the cathedral of Notre Dame. A dog trotted out, studied the scent of those two black figures, and returned to his home.
“How’s this, my love?” said Tom, having parked the car. “Peaceful enough, eh? Makes one feel an intruder, don’t you think? Are they all looking at us from behind their little windows, these French folk?”
As though to reassure them of his good fortune, he took Mary by the arm, and they walked round the cathedral, lost in admiration, or pretending to be, for they were much concerned still with each other, lost in admiration there also.
They entered the cathedral, having decided to see the interior before daylight weakened. Nobody was about, and they had explored the nave before they encountered another human being, a dusty old concierge with a bead of moisture on the tip of his nose, glimmering roseate in a coloured beam of sunshine filtering through a medieval window. He nodded, shifted his broom from right hand to left, and offered to show them round, assuming instantly that they would agree. He trotted along beside Mary, occasionally touching her arm to indicate a tomb, or an altar, and pouring out a stream of eloquence as incongruous with his appearance as pearls emerging from a shabby oyster-shell.
Neither listened very attentively; Tom Batten because he was filled with his own newly-found well-being; Mary because she was preparing herself to broach the question of practical affairs to her lover. She had been thinking eagerly since the breakdown of the American plan. Thus her response to Gothic relics, and the poetry of medieva
l stonework, was negligible. However, the old man’s voice, so musical and precise, and his obvious enthusiasm, were soothing music to the happy but anxious couple, restraining them for a few impersonal moments from their own affairs, that carried an over-emphatic query, yet to be answered.
Mary was resolved that it should be answered to-day, as she had suggested to Tom when proposing the excursion to Chartres. They left the cathedral with only a vague set of impressions, awe-stricken but not vastly interested. But they had been sufficiently impressed to remain silent again while they walked down through the narrow streets of the town to the river. Life was reviving as the luncheon hour passed into afternoon, and by the time the couple reached the ancient bridge, they found the old stone washing-slabs by the waterside fully occupied. It was warming, after the chilly solitude and aloofness of the cathedral, to see these hefty women rubbing and scrubbing in the sunshine, slapping away at the sheets and garments spread on the flagstones, reaching over to seize more dirty linen from their baskets, and sending out clouds of milky-blue soapsuds to adulterate the river-water flowing rapidly past.
Mary watched them, fascinated by the physical exuberance of those massive arms, shoulders, flanks. Most of the women were middle-aged or elderly, and none of them appeared to have suffered at any time from malnutrition. Their voices rose from the river, hoarse, ribald, a Rabelaisian chorus. The neat and handsome Englishwoman, by comparison, had a nunlike grace. Her thoughts belied her appearance, for she was feasting on that sensuous richness below; the dance of the sunlight on the moving water, the flap and roll of the linen, the movement of the women’s bodies and the gusto of their voices. Here was a pagan world, coloured and tempestuous, shrewd with mirth and those minor appetites that demand a constant diet of everyday indulgence and earthiness.
The spectacle fed Mary’s resolution, and her new-found confidence in her own ability, this daring sensual ability, to enrich her own life and to re-establish her lover’s. She looked at him slyly, wondering if he was equally interested in the almost bawdy scene below. But he was watching the stream, studying the flights of fish that shot like transparent arrows from one shadow to another across the pebbled bed. Feeling this coolness to be inimical to what she wanted to say, Mary slipped her arm between him and the time-worn stone of the balustrade. He worked his hand up the sleeve of her fur coat and clasped her bare arm, moulding her flesh with his thumb. She saw him flush, and noticed that he drew even nearer to her.
The Dangerous Years Page 25