“You’re talking to yourself,” Hazel said.
“I know. I meant you to hear,” he added frankly.
“You should speak a bit louder then. Come on, out with it!”
But to come out with it boldly, without explanation, was a little embarrassing.
“I was reading Shakespeare, the other day,” he began.
“I know you were: nobody said you weren’t.”
“I mean it wasn’t just show—Twelfth Night: I think it’s lovely.”
“We did it at school once. I was Malvolio: it was rather fun—all that cross-gartered bit, you know.”
“You should have been Viola,” Marcus told her huskily. “I think you’re awfully like Viola.”
“I hope not,” Hazel responded. “I mean she was pretty soppy, wasn’t she? What bit were you quoting? I expect I could carry on.”
Marcus repeated the last two lines out loud. “That’s the important part,” he said, blushing, but determined nevertheless not to be faint-hearted.
Hazel frowned. “I am afraid I can’t.”
Marcus was surprised. He wasn’t prepared for a direct answer. “You’re afraid you can’t kiss me.”
“No, you silly. Of course I can’t—or rather I won’t. I mean I can’t go on—I don’t know what comes next. Oh yes I do though, something about the smell of people’s breaths—no, that’s the line after. Wait a minute. Something about a mellifluous voice. ‘A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight’ and the other one says ‘A contagious breath.’ That’s it. And anyhow,” she added unexpectedly, “I’m only nineteen.”
Marcus was puzzled by this last remark. Did it mean that she was relenting—that she might let him kiss her after all? Even if it didn’t, it gave him a little thrill to hear her announce her age so candidly. He had wondered how old she was, but had not liked to ask. It touched him to think that she was so young: but, after a pause, he said, “There’s not much difference. I mean nineteen’s almost twenty.”
Hazel disagreed. “There’s lots of difference. At twenty you’re in your twenties—and twenty-nine’s not the same as nineteen: why it’s almost thirty.” It was a game: she was teasing him, but he didn’t mind. They had the whole day before them, and nothing could be more pleasant than to play a game with her.
“I mean I want to kiss you all the same—even more perhaps.”
“You mean you won’t want to kiss me as much when I’m twenty.”
“I’ll want to kiss you always, just as much, more and more and more.”
“But it’s so early in the morning,” she objected. “You shouldn’t be thinking of things like that when it’s not half-past-ten yet.”
“I’d like to kiss you at any time: it would never be too early or too late. I’d like to kiss you at half-past-six or at half-past-three, or at two or at one.”
Suddenly he wondered if he had offended her. Did she think him sensual and disgusting? Maybe she wished she hadn’t come. If he wasn’t careful she might tell him she was going back. He walked along gloomily for a yard or two and then brought out abruptly. “I’m sorry if you think I’m horrid. I’ll stop if you like. I’ll do anything you like. Maybe you hate the idea of my even touching you.”
Again she put her hand on his arm, just in the same way as she had the day before. There was something extraordinarily gentle about her, and the gesture moved him almost to tears. “But I don’t,” she assured him. “I quite like touching you. It’s only that . . . . that I don’t believe in kissing anyone, and that sort of thing, unless you’re serious; and I don’t want to be serious, not with anyone—not yet. People when they’re in love get so tied up. They sort of own each other. I don’t want anyone to own me—not for years and years—perhaps not ever.”
Marcus’s spirits soared again, just as quickly as they had fallen. “You did know I was in love with you?”
“You shouldn’t ask that sort of question.” She looked at him crossly for a moment; but suddenly she laughed. “I’d never have guessed in a hundred years. You’re so undemonstrative, you know—one of those stern, silent men with an impassive exterior.”
“And you’re not in love at all?”
“I’m not prepared to be,” she declared emphatically and rather reprovingly. “I wouldn’t let myself be—and I don’t think you should either.”
This was fairly definite, but Marcus risked one further enquiry.
“You said you didn’t mind touching me. Would you mind if we held hands?”
“Only for practical reasons. But people don’t hold hands at half-past ten in the morning. You hold hands when you’re ‘Roaming in the gloaming.’”
“What are the practical reasons?”
“There are lots of them. In the first place both our hands would get damp, and horrid, and sticky. We’d both want to let go and neither of us would like to say so. In the second place you can’t walk very well holding hands. In the third place we’ve come out to climb Slieve Pennion—not to spoon. If you promise to talk no more nonsense I’ll forgive you: if not I’ll be angry. Now come on. If we can get to the top by twelve we might be able to do that other mountain behind in the afternoon. I looked it up on the map last night, but the name’s gone out of my head.”
An hour and a half later they reached the top. They were both very hot. Hazel had taken off her sweater and was carrying it hanging down her back with the arms knotted loosely round her neck. Underneath she was wearing a light, short-sleeved sports shirt, open at the throat. Marcus had removed his jacket and pullover. His pullover was stuffed into his jacket pocket and his jacket was thrown over his left shoulder. He held it in this position with one finger thrust through the hanger.
They each put a stone on the cairn which marked the highest point of the peak and then Hazel flung herself down on a flat slab of rock and gazed out at the country below them—the long, heather-covered slopes broken by black turf cuttings, the white cottages with their thatched roofs, the small, stone-walled fields which made up the narrow strip of cultivated ground between the mountains and the sea.
“How blue the sea is,” she remarked. “The higher you get the deeper blue it seems to be.”
“It’s lovely,” Marcus said, “and being with you makes it even better—it makes it just perfect.”
She twisted round to look at him. “You’re hopeless,” she told him. “I thought that climb would have put the nonsense out of you.”
“That isn’t nonsense,” Marcus replied. “I was just stating a fact.”
In turning she had accidentally given her shirt a slight upward tug. At her waist just above her right hip a small gap had appeared. Marcus gazed at the little patch of white skin. He was tempted to put his finger into the gap and run it round, pressing it against her body and loosening the shirt altogether. With an effort he took his eyes away. He knew he shouldn’t even imagine things like that: yet the next moment, he found himself remembering a story in which a boy and a girl had found themselves alone together in a hay-loft; the girl had invited the boy to put his hand inside her blouse and feel the beating of her heart.
“What are you frowning at?” Hazel demanded. “I know my hair’s in a mess. So’s yours for that matter—but then it always is. You’ve a big, damp lock hanging down over your eyes. It makes you look quite distinguished in an arty sort of way.”
Marcus pushed back the untidy lock. “It needs cutting,” he said. “I meant to get it done if I’d gone to London. I’ll have to get it done in Portmallagh; but they half shave you and leave a sort of tonsure on top.”
“And what were you frowning at?” Hazel persisted.
“I wasn’t,” Marcus told her, “or if I was, it wasn’t at anything to do with you.”
“Otherwise, mind your own business.”
“Oh no,” Marcus was distr
essed. “I didn’t mean that at all. I mean there’s nothing wrong with you. I think your hair looks awfully nice like that—the way it is—almost nicer than usual. I was frowning at myself, at something I was thinking.”
“And I’m not to know?”
Marcus lay down beside her on the rock. As if by accident his left arm just touched her right elbow. She didn’t move her arm away; perhaps she didn’t notice, though surely she could hardly help noticing. He felt a little tremor of excitement; perhaps she didn’t mind; perhaps she really quite liked to have him touching her, if she could pretend not to know.
“Is it so secret that you won’t even tell me whether I’m to know or not?”
“I’ll tell you if you promise not to be cross with me.”
“That means I ought to be,” she responded. “However I want to know. That’s the worst of being a girl. You suffer from feminine curiosity. What were you thinking?”
“You promise?”
“How can I promise? If I’m going to feel cross, I’ll feel cross, even if I don’t say anything. I’ll promise not to say anything unless I can’t help it. What was it?”
Marcus considered. “Well you see,” he began awkwardly. “It’s just . . . . I mean your shirt’s coming out a wee bit.”
“So’s yours,” she retorted. “It came out about five times on the way up.”
“I know,” he admitted, “but I tucked it in again.”
“Well,” she answered indignantly, “so would I have, if I’d known. If that’s what you were frowning about, I must say. . . .”
“It wasn’t that,” Marcus interrupted. “It was what I was thinking made me frown.”
Hazel stood up. “You just keep looking at the view,” she ordered sternly. “Now, what were you thinking?”
Marcus stared steadily out in front of him, but what he saw was the white shirt on Hazel’s back and the small, tantalizing portion of her naked waist. “I wanted to put in my finger and pull it out all round,” he blurted out suddenly.
There was a distinct silence. Marcus felt as if a storm were gathering behind him. “You are a shocker,” Hazel exclaimed at last. “You’d every right to frown at yourself. You’d better go on frowning and frowning and frowning.”
“You promised you wouldn’t be cross.”
“I said I wouldn’t be cross if I could help it. I can’t help it. You oughtn’t to let yourself think things like that, and if you do think them you oughtn’t to say them.”
“I can’t help thinking them.”
“Well you ought to keep them to yourself.”
“But you made me tell you,” he expostulated.
“I couldn’t make you.”
“You could make me do almost anything.”
Hazel sat down clasping her hands round her knees. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I wish, I wish. . . .”
“What do you wish?” Marcus asked, “—that I wasn’t a nuisance?”
“Or that I wasn’t,” she responded sadly. “No, it wasn’t that exactly. I wish I were a boy in a way, then there’d be no more of this trouble.”
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “I’m afraid I’m spoiling everything for you. I suppose you wish you hadn’t come.”
She reflected for a moment. “No. I’m glad I came—and you’re not really spoiling things. You would be if I didn’t like you of course, but that makes it worse in a way. I don’t suppose you can help feeling the way you do, though. . . . It’s a pity I’m not a boy and we could be friends without anything like this cropping up.”
“I’m glad you’re not a boy.”
“If you were a girl it would come to the same thing. How would you like to be Joanna, now?”
“I don’t think I’d like it very much,” Marcus confessed, “though I did envy her the other day.”
“Envy Joanna!”
“Yes. Being friends with you and going home with you, when I didn’t even know if I’d ever see you again.”
“Poor Joanna,” Hazel said. “I don’t know that I’m much of a friend for her. She’d much rather sit in a deck chair and read, or knit, and I’m always trying to drag her out and make her walk. They’re all away to Bundoran in the car. They’ve gone for the day. Joanna’ll sleep all the way there and all the way back. She always sleeps in cars. I think it’s very clever of her.”
“Is she clever?” Marcus asked. “I mean at other things besides sleeping.”
“Joanna,” Hazel repeated thoughtfully. “I suppose she is quite: she can be very amusing at times, chiefly personalities of course. She never did anything special at school, but she always did well enough—and she never seemed to work: so I suppose she is quite clever. She says she worked for senior—though it was only for the week before the exam—and that she’s never going to work again. I think everyone should work, don’t you?—I mean girls as well as men, even if they’ve plenty of money like Joanna and don’t need to. Anyhow I don’t believe in people having lots of money. What do you think?”
She paused, but Marcus had no answer ready. He thought of Mr. Burnaby and how his own career was planned. “I think it’s a good idea for some people to have money,” he said slowly. “I mean there are some kinds of work to be done that need money, and don’t earn money, and that no one would subscribe money for.”
“The work you do, I suppose,” she responded. “Couldn’t you just give me a teeny idea what it’s all about? I’d promise never to tell a single, solitary soul—and I can keep secrets: really I can.”
Marcus considered. He believed that, if she promised, she could keep secret anything he told her. After all it was different from telling his people. It wasn’t as if she could put her foot down and make him give it up—yet he knew he ought not to tell her. “I’ll show you something I can do because of my work, because of the work we’ve done,” he suggested at last. “I can’t tell you about my work unless I tell you everything. Even this will look like a trick, but it isn’t: it’s part of something bigger—and all the same I’m not sure. . . . Maybe I’d better not.”
“Oh do,” she begged. “Go on. I promise faithfully I’ll never tell a soul—unless you say I can, of course.”
“All right,” Marcus consented doubtfully, “but I say you can’t: you must never tell anyone.” He looked round. “Have you got a pencil and a piece of paper?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
Marcus took a pencil and an envelope from his jacket pocket. “You can use these. I’ll go and sit with my back to you beside that little pool of water over there. You go up to the cairn and write down something on the envelope.”
“What shall I write?” she demanded.
“Anything you like, so long as you don’t tell me. Just one sentence, not anything long that I won’t be able to remember.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell you what you’ve written.”
She was much less impressed than he had expected. “I saw something like that at the circus once. People wrote down questions on bits of paper and a woman answered them, without seeing the bits of paper. I wrote down something, but she didn’t answer. It was supposed to be telepathy, but John—that’s my brother you know—said it was faked. Is yours telepathy?”
“No,” Marcus answered, “though telepathy’s mixed up with it.” He wished now he hadn’t undertaken the demonstration. For the first time she had irritated him—making comparisons with some woman in a circus indeed!
Hazel got up. “Oh well, here goes,” she remarked.
Marcus got up also and walked to the small, black pool he had indicated. It was merely a slight depression in the mountain-top filled with dirty rain-water and bordered by half-withered clumps of heather. He sat down with his back to Hazel. He had a moment’s panic
when he thought he wasn’t going to be able to project himself at all. Then he managed to calm down. He searched for something to fix his eyes on—it was easier that way. He picked on a large, grey boulder about twenty yards in front of him. He would go to that first and then back over his own body to where Hazel was sitting at the cairn.
It was the first experiment he had made since before his illness and it came to him almost like a new experience. How pleasant it was to float away from his body! How free he felt! He drifted out from the mountain like a cloud: for a moment he hung there without any thought of Hazel, and gazed around. Far below him a hawk was hovering, but he didn’t want to look at it more closely. He had watched a hawk once before, remained beside it in the air, and followed it unseen and unknown on its swift downwards swoop. The victim on that occasion had been a young rabbit, but he didn’t want to see such a spectacle a second time. He turned back towards the mountain and caught sight of Hazel sitting at the foot of the cairn. Immediately he remembered what he had to do and he came close to her. She was staring at his body lying still beside the pool. “Marcus,” she called, and then more loudly, “Marcus, are you ready? I’ve written something down.”
He had just time to glance at the envelope before she got up, shouting, “Marcus, what’s the matter? Why don’t you answer?”
He was back before she reached him, but he did not get up immediately. He had been too completely detached from his body to be able to return to it in an instant. He felt her grip his shoulder and shake him. He looked at her and blinked. “‘Marcus is a big silly!’” It was what she had written on the envelope, and now he repeated it aloud to her.
Hazel was cross. “So you are too. Why didn’t you answer when I shouted to you?”
“I couldn’t,” he replied. “You see I wasn’t there. I was up where you were, reading your message.”
He had expected her to be impressed, but she didn’t seem to be. “If that’s all you do I think it’s stupid,” she said. “Just a stupid trick.”
The Burnaby Experiments Page 21