He went first to the bathing place. He lay where Hazel had lain to sun-bathe: he stood on the rock from which she had dived. His rock, her rock, their rock. He had never known anyone else to use it, never seen anyone else bathing there. He was glad now that Mr. Burnaby didn’t bathe.
He half hoped that Hazel too could not sleep, that she would give it up, and like himself come out wandering along the shore to look at the place of their meeting. There would be a moment of surprise and embarrassment, then a delicious understanding, a recognition that they were both in love. He went over the whole scene, speaking Hazel’s sentences as well as his own, varying the words slightly with each repetition.
But there was no one in sight, and presently Marcus walked away slowly in the direction of the inlet. It had been mean to wish Hazel awake, he thought, and now he tried to imagine her asleep. He found it difficult. Though he knew the colouring of her hair, and of her eyes, and of her skin, he remembered her as a presence rather than a face. Her face had been too bright for him to see it clearly, and it was only the brightness he could visualise. He wondered if he would know her with her eyes closed, with the brightness cut off. There seemed to be something beautiful and tender in the very idea. He pictured her unconscious head on a white pillow, her hair tousled, her eyelashes against her soft cheeks. . . .
After two hours he returned to the house. He undressed and got back into bed. This time he went to sleep immediately. When he awoke Kate was knocking at the door. “It’s after nine,” she called. “Are ye nearly ready?”
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “I slept in.”
“Me mother says, will ye stay where y’are till ye’ve had yer breakfast?”
“No thanks,” Marcus called back. “Tell her I’ll be down in a minute or two. I’ll hurry.”
All the same he lay on for a few moments. He remembered Hazel in her wet bathing suit, Hazel swimming, Hazel walking along the rocks by his side. Suddenly it occurred to him that she might after all come early. He jumped up and dashed across the passage to the bathroom. He put a new blade in his razor and shaved carefully, but in his anxiety not to let a vestige of bristle remain, he cut himself in three places.
He gobbled his breakfast, and as soon as the last bite was swallowed rushed out. It was ten past ten. Except for two cormorants perched on separate points of rock the shore was deserted. It occurred to him as a horrible possibility that Hazel might have come and gone. It was unlikely; more probably she wouldn’t come at all. The sky was cloudy; the sun was out of sight; a light breeze from the mountains blew down upon the sea. But the hollow where he had lain yesterday was sheltered and he settled there once more very comfortably. He had his bathing things with him and Twelfth Night. Since he had seen Hazel he hadn’t read another line, but he felt an affection for the book on her account. He felt that perhaps it was some hidden magic in the play which had brought her to him, and he hoped that it might be his talisman a second time.
At first he lay on his face, gazing along the coast towards the village. Presently it occurred to him that just having the book with him might not be enough. Perhaps it was necessary that he should actually be reading the play. He opened it and went on from where he had stopped the day before.
When he came to the line,
Poor lady, she were better love a dream,
he paused and sighed. He too might better love a dream. What could come of loving Hazel? For a moment he looked at the problem, but it was black and intricate. To think of it would only make him miserable. He would take this little bit of happiness with his eyes shut to the future. He read on trying to drive all thought of Mr. Burnaby from his mind.
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low:
Trip no farther, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
He read the song over three times. It was all so relevant to his own case, and the advice in the second verse seemed as if it had been particularly designed for him. But he hated Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. He couldn’t understand why Shakespeare had allowed these horrible, coarse, old men to intrude into his beautiful love story. They bored him. He skimmed over the next few pages and then turned back to reread the Clown’s song.
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
Where indeed? he reflected wryly. He felt suddenly weary and pushed the book away from him. In a few seconds he was sound asleep.
He awoke to find Hazel staring down at him. She was prodding his ribs with her foot. “You’re a one,” she remarked. “Don’t ever try and tell me how fond of Shakespeare you are. I wondered what it was you were waggling so impressively yesterday. Now I see through you.”
“‘Enter Viola in man’s attire,’” he quoted. The coincidences were extraordinary. Hazel was wearing long, navy-blue trousers, and a navy-blue sweater with a polo neck.
“Do you mean my slacks?” she enquired: “They’re not man’s attire: they’re girl’s attire, women’s wear if you like.”
At that he noticed that they were different from men’s trousers in the manner of their buttoning. He blushed. “It makes you like a sailor boy,” he said shyly.
The comparison didn’t appear to displease her. “It’s got so cold,” she complained. “I’m not going to bathe.”
“But you’ve got your things,” Marcus pointed out.
“I know. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t know why I brought them.”
By this time Marcus was on his feet. He felt not the slightest trace of sleepiness. He remembered his resolution to use her Christian name. He looked at her squarely. “It was nice of you to come, Hazel.” He spoke awkwardly, trying to hide the passion in his voice. She was so close to him, so confiding. Would she mind if he kissed her, he wondered.
“It was nice of you too—Marcus.” She added his name deliberately, after the slightest of pauses, with a little, knowing, provocative smile.
He took a heavy step towards her, raising his arms: but she darted away from him. He stopped immediately and his face fell. She looked not frightened exactly, but put out. Marcus was ashamed.
She came close to him again and smiled. “Now look,” she said, “I like you, but don’t let’s be silly. It’d only spoil everything.”
“I’m sorry.” Marcus drooped his head penitently—though evidently it wasn’t very bad: she wasn’t too much offended.
“It’s all right,” Hazel told him. “It was my fault as much as yours. I led you on. I didn’t mean to, but I didn’t know you’d be so inflammable. I should have brought a fire-extinguisher. Will you promise to behave yourself in future—be quiet and tractable.”
“I’ll be good,” Marcus promised, “—quiet as a lamb—easy to lead, but hard to drive.” He hoped he sounded light and amusing.
“All right, Lambkin,” she responded, “but I want you to do the leading. I’m the explorer, you’re the friendly native—not too friendly, of course,” she put in hastily. “I’ve always wanted to come in here, but I never have before. I could never get the family to come. The people in the village always said Mr. Burnaby didn’t like trespassers, and that was enough for Daddy—he’s frightfully law-abiding. Nobody knows I’m here now except Joanna. I’d an awful job to get her to come yesterday—and she absolutely refused today.”
“I’m glad she didn’t come,” Marcus said.
“So am I in a way. It’ll
be nice to go back and tell them I faced all the perils alone—like darkest Africa or something.”
“But you won’t be alone,” Marcus said. “Do you not count me?”
“Oh yes,” she retorted. “I do—you’re one of the perils.”
“A peril conquered.”
She ignored this and they walked on round the coast, away from the village and the house in the direction of the lough. Marcus wished that it was new to him too, but it was all familiar. He had been over every inch of it with Mr. Burnaby. He would have liked to share her feelings exactly, to think that he also was exploring.
They scrambled over the rocks peering into pools like children. In the small, sandy bays they stopped to skim stones over the water. They talked about themselves incessantly. Marcus noticed how much more pleasant he found this chatter than the many, more profound conversations he had in the past, walking along the same shore with Mr. Burnaby. Hazel told him a good deal about herself and her family. She had a younger sister, who was both a little dear and a perfect horror—also a brother who had stayed in Belfast to look after the business while his father was away. She herself had been doing the housekeeping for the last year, because her mother had been ill and had been ordered to take things easily. Now, however, her mother was better and when they went home was going to take charge again.
“That’ll give you more time,” Marcus observed.
“Indeed it won’t,” Hazel responded. “I’m going to Queen’s[1] in the autumn to do first year medical: so I’ll have to work.”
“And afterwards I suppose you’ll marry some doctor,” Marcus said gloomily, “and that’ll be that.”
For the first time he saw her looking really angry. “It’s stupid to talk that way,” she told him. “Daddy went off on that tack once—but only once. Some men are so conceited and old-fashioned that they think girls spend their lives hanging about waiting for men to propose to them. I don’t want to get married, let me assure you. I’m going to go abroad and see a bit of the world. I don’t know how I’ll work it yet, but if they have women ships’ doctors I’ll have a shot at that: if not I’ll have to find some other way.”
“You mean you’re determined never to get married?” Marcus asked.
“No, I don’t mean that exactly,” she answered, “but I want to do something first. I’m not going to get married simply because people do. I won’t think of it for years yet—get married and settle down: it’s sort of finishing off, isn’t it?”
“It might be just beginning.”
“The beginning of the end.”
Marcus too talked about himself, though not as openly as he would have liked. The shadow of Mr. Burnaby hovered in the background of his mind forbidding candour—and he had not much to be proud of. He told her a little about school and a little about the family at home, but about his present life he said nothing till she pressed him.
“Do you stay here all the year round?” she queried presently, “—winter and summer?”
“Except when I go home on holidays.”
She looked at him curiously. “I’m sure I’d get bored,” she said. “Do you not feel awfully out of it?”
He imagined that she must think him very odd. For a moment he was tempted to confess how much out of it he did feel, to tell her miserably all that he hated in his life with Mr. Burnaby. Pride, or loyalty, or a fear of appearing contemptible prevented him. He answered instead: “No: it’s I who am in it. You see my work’s frightfully interesting.”
“I thought it’d just be business—stocks and shares, and all that sort of thing.”
“It’s not that at all—that’s what everyone thinks it is.”
“Well what is it then? What do you do?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Oh all right!” Yet she didn’t look satisfied. He remembered how his mother and Margaret had tried to persuade him to talk about his work.
“You won’t tell anyone?” he demanded anxiously.
“How can I, when you haven’t told me anything?”
“I mean that it’s not stocks and shares.”
She regarded him rather coldly and then, when he was almost in despair, her face softened a little. “Not if you don’t want me to,” she agreed. “All the same I think you’re awfully funny.”
He walked on moodily for a bit kicking at stones and scowling. He was angry with Mr. Burnaby for putting him in this position. He wanted to pour out everything that was in his mind to Hazel and here he was warning her off, telling her, almost, to mind her own business.
Presently she put her hand on his arm. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you’ve promised not to tell of course you can’t say anything. I’d love to hear all the same.”
“I haven’t exactly promised,” Marcus confessed. “It’s just that I’m trusted.”
“That’s the same thing.”
The sun came out and they bathed in a small bay between two rocky points. It would all have been perfect but for the dark shadow of Mr. Burnaby. Never for more than a few moments could Marcus forget him.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE next morning at ten o’clock Marcus called at the house where Hazel was staying. Hazel had promised to spend the day with him: they were going to climb Slieve Pennion.
When he arrived he was told that Hazel was just getting ready. For five minutes he talked awkwardly to Mr. and Mrs. Morley, Hazel’s parents, and to Betty, her younger sister. All three had been in the little front garden of the house when he arrived. Betty was watching her father, who was testing the reel of a trout rod. Mrs. Morley was reading a day-old copy of the Belfast Newsletter.
Marcus recognised them as a perfectly ordinary family of Belfast business people. They were the sort of people he had been accustomed to all his life. They seemed friendly and easy-going, and he liked them.
Hazel didn’t keep him long. He caught a glimpse of her at an upstairs window. He heard her whistling, and a moment or two later she appeared at the front door, carrying a packet of sandwiches and an orange. She was wearing a short, wide, grey tweed skirt, and the same navy-blue sweater as on the previous day. Her legs were bare except for ankle-length socks which just emerged above the top of her small, black, low-heeled shoes. Marcus gazed at her in admiration and approval. Then it struck him that he was embarrassing her a little, and he turned away quickly. He glanced instead at the rest of the family. He thought of Hazel doing the housekeeping so that her mother could get well again after her illness. Doubtless she did all sorts of things for the others as well. He felt that in possessing her, her whole family must be perpetually happy. Each of them shone a little in the light of her beauty.
“Hello,” Hazel greeted him, with a slightly forced over-cheerfulness. “Sorry I’m late. My old watch stopped again—there must be sand in it, or something.”
“Oh, you’re not too late,” Marcus assured her. “I expect I’m a little early.” These words came out entirely of their own accord, and without any reference to fact: he knew that he had been neither early nor late. He had taken particular care to arrive on the very stroke of ten.
“Have you got a watch?” Mr. Morley enquired, in a dry, business-like voice.
“Oh, yes,” Marcus said.
“Does it go?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
It seemed to Mrs. Morley that he was being a little unkind. “We don’t want you to be late, dear,” she told Hazel, “and don’t get caught in a mist or anything. All mountains are dangerous if you get lost on them.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be careful all right,” Hazel assured her, and set off down the road with Marcus. It was pleasant for walking, sunny with a light breeze from the sea. Marcus was to look back on it as the happiest day in his life.
Goi
ng through the village they didn’t talk much, yet Marcus was conscious that for the moment at any rate they were united in feeling. They were sharing the sunshine and the smell of the sea and the brightness of the morning; not quite as two individuals, but almost as one. They were joined by an invisible link: it was spiritual and at the same time physical; for their whole bodies seemed to be in harmony.
They passed one or two fishermen, one or two women and girls coming from the well with pails of water, a small boy leading a donkey which had empty wickerwork panniers slung at its side.
Everyone they met greeted them with friendly smiles and wished them “Good morning,” in the soft Donegal brogue.
Hazel knew them all to see. Marcus knew their names. “The wee boy’s Micky Flynn,” he informed her. “He’s going to the bog for turf.”
In a few minutes they were out of the village on the lonely track leading up to Slieve Pennion.
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter:
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
The Burnaby Experiments Page 20