The Echoing Grove

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘Darling, don’t sound so dignified and majestic. Everybody’s been telling me they’ve got their dignity to consider. If you’re going to say it too I cannot bear it.’

  ‘Well, you were so nasty. You sounded as if you were accusing me of laying traps for you.’

  ‘Never, never. You’re the only person I can trust not ever to lay traps for me.’

  ‘I don’t think that statement altogether bears examination.’

  By the time she had said that, terror of course had vanished, suspicion had become a mere titillating hazard in the delicious game of reconciliation. He had closed the conversation on the note she most approved—it so reinforced her pride in him, her confidence in her good influence over him; the firm, ambitious note about his job. He was determined not to fall down on it; to justify to her as well as to himself his decision to give up schoolmastering and earn his living on the staff of an intellectual publisher and editor: this as a step towards his true aim, his single one, he said: ‘To write a good book.’ ‘What kind of a good book?’ He shook his head, smiled through a mask: ‘You’ll see one day perhaps …’

  More than once during that first tranced period of watching him move, so much at home, so much a stranger in her house, drawing near and nearer, yet seeming still remote, untouchable, she had been traversed by a flash of recognition. Of whom, if not of that young man of Dinah’s, seen only once, so long absent from her conscious mind, had he reminded her? The clues lay in the apparent openness, simplicity and trustfulness of the initial self-presentation; in the noiseless animal lightness and suppleness of movement; in the … something unsubstantial, romantic, out of time or out of the contemporary, that endowed them both with what could be acknowledged as, or mistaken for, authority.

  Yes. But no, no: the resemblance was superficial and only a hint at that. Jocelyn stood in sunlight; he was penetrated with warmth in all his fluid fertile essences. The other stood the other side of light. As she had seen him once, once only, she saw him now: moving in his orbit like a planet fed by thin air, infrequent dews, nourishing only grey forms of life—lichens, seaweeds. What shone from him as he stood in Dinah’s doorway to receive her, as he passed through the room, returned, then vanished from it was a kind of reflection, deceptive, intermittent.

  Lying in the shroud of this November morning she stared at his risen image as clear to her as if she had received, suppressed it only yesterday. He stood in his pale, silent, moonlike coldness, obscuring her potent child of light. Then they changed places, and Rob stood a tall shadow behind the other’s shoulder. She saw his eyes, more than opaque, extinct. Jocelyn’s were mobile, brimming and darting, not fixed on her. Then these eyes, both pairs, faded; and as she turned over, drowsy now, the eyes of Rickie opened on her, suspended in darkness against no background. They were the eyes of his youth, of the time of their first meeting, so clear, large, lustrously blue that, as she had remarked to a confidential girl-friend in her bedroom after a dance one night, his face seemed to have a window on to a patch of blue sky inserted in it.

  The eyes became abstract, incandescent flares; at the peak of their intensity went out. With a memory flitting across her—surely irrelevant, uncalled for?—of their honeymoon—midday, southern French coast, heat of baked rocks enveloping their beautifully coupled, water-freshened, sun-strengthened limbs as they lay after swimming relaxed—his face bent to hers, suddenly wild, dumb, brilliant against the whole Mediterranean sea and sky.

  ‘Rickie, what is it? Why do you look at me like that?’

  No answer.

  Moment of despair and ecstasy? … Trick of transfiguration, of bewilderment from the enormous, pure and savage light?

  With this transparent memory opening and closing on her, she fell into a morning sleep.

  Midnight

  Emerging from Knightsbridge tube station and exploring in the direction of Harrods, Rickie hit finally upon the street he was almost sure that he was looking for: a brief by-street of miniature late-Georgian houses, half boarded up and shuttered, but still intact from end to end, and agreeable by reason of the compact small-scale yet generous simplicity of its perspective. A slightly soiled bedraggled free-and-easiness had come to overlay—it was Spring, 1944—what must have been a pre-war character of modest domestic elegance. Children were playing hopscotch in the middle of the road; one or two prams were parked upon the pavement; several raffish dogs converged with prurient competitiveness and studied méfiance upon a dustbin; two middle-aged housewives, their heads tied up in kerchiefs, called to one another across the street from upper windows; another, young, trim and pretty, leaned out as he passed to water some hyacinths in a window-box. Her pose, lyrical, devoted, offered to all and no one the charming smile she gave as he caught her eye; presenting him suddenly with an image of romantic decoration; with the forgotten taste of an unthreatened vernal intimacy.

  For a moment, in a spirit of almost abstract contemplation, he saw himself anonymously, one of a young couple starting married life on a small income, in a delightful little house. No, he could not put actual names or shapes to the pair whom he envisaged. Without much curiosity he pondered, as he went slowly down examining front doors, whether it could be a symptom of premature senility, this daydreaming habit that was growing on him—if indeed it could be called daydreaming, this recurrent state of—what?—of sleep-walking, this phantom-like observation, fluid, undirected, without personal desire attached to it. Directly he knocked off work it was apt to happen: he became like one waiting in an ante-room, not with particular anticipation and not with apprehension: the state, more, of one to whom waiting has become a habit, a way of life disassociated from its original raison d’être; so that expectation of … whatever it was … summons to present his case, or to hear judgement passed on it, had in course of time evaporated, leaving him with a tenuous internal freedom … Not turning backwards to recapture his own past, but fading out at will, slipping his identity; intently, idly playing with all possibilities, selecting one substitute-identity, then another, to fill out—or scale down—or put a frame round the amorphous semi-transparent mass of low-powered energy that seemed himself. For instance, just now he had been a young man, not recognizably his youthful self, simply a youth in love going eagerly home in the evening to the loved one … as it might be Colin if he survived the war; as it might have been Anthony; or one of those scarcely known friends of his who had written letters of condolence; or any young sailor, solider, airman. Any piece of humanity could invade him like a cloud and like a cloud pass through and out of him. Any woman could move him. ‘Anything in skirts.’ Dangerous condition to be in: regression to adolescent sexuality, prelude perhaps to becoming a dirty old man? … But so far the element of the chase seemed mercifully absent. If he wanted in a sense to go to bed with all of them, equally he wanted to go to bed with none. He simply found himself endeavouring to learn them; speculating, as it were incorporating their femininity and then in a disinterested way relinquishing its manifestations … If this was the result of sexual frustration, it was an unexpected one. Sometimes he wondered if he would be any use any more to any woman. Why not find out? No time; or too tired; or could it be too lazy? Nobody he could think of went to bed alone these days, or not for long. He could not say that he had remained chaste latterly from choice or out of principle. Every Government department including his own seemed stuffed with oncoming far from ill-favoured girls; he had taken several out to dinner, gone back to bed with one called Rachel: divorced, dark, hungry, clever, Jewish, rather beautiful; had had to retreat quite soon from an adventure for which he had only appetite not heart.

  At the time—two years ago it must be now—when she had started to make it clear to him that she envisaged something tremendous, permanent, his basic emotion—underlying some affection, some gratitude, remorse, dismay—had been astonishment. How could she have imagined …? What could have so misled her? It was his need for love, she said, the way he aske
d for it. He was appalled. Of all the men she had ever known, she said, he was the most capable of a real relationship with a woman. If, as she guessed, he had been badly hurt she could assure him he was not permanently damaged. Let him only surrender, be healed, not be afraid. He couldn’t help feeling frightfully annoyed, he was not afraid—merely not prepared to harbour so much more than he had space or welcome for. Another thing, she declared he was such a homeless person, so without a shell … Oh, she was a jolly understanding girl. The net result had been to make him long suddenly for one, for the one who from first to last had beckoned and dismissed him, bound him and set him free so magically, so non-committally that any other woman’s touch seemed leaden, or rasping, or insipid … As for his being homeless, if that meant anything at all, it meant only that he was like most other people nowadays; that he partook of the destiny of thousands all round him all over Europe. Perhaps it was this that lay at the root of this loss or intermittence of personal identity, this perpetual sense of … of breaking through boundaries into a vast uncharted waiting twilight. Certainly this sudden attack of—well, curiosity, that had overtaken him a few hours earlier and had driven him out on his present search—certainly this was the sort of thing that happened to the homeless, to the homesick. Must look up Georgie, find out how she was getting on, what news she had of Jack. There was something he wanted to tell or hear from Georgie … not quite sure what or why, but it had suddenly got itself hitched on, like a makeshift rudder, to this whole state of paradox, this passive urgency … (he turned the phrase over on his tongue) this flux, this drift.

  He wondered if something—curtains, some object in the window—would mark her house for him with a suggestion of her personality. Coming to a standstill half-way down the right-hand pavement he took a survey: a tall straight slight figure in naval uniform lifting his head warily; a young man’s eyes, alert and quizzical; yet veiled; a sunken face, lined, young, not without noble essence; at once spirited and quenched: a failed Olympian look. From the door of the house opposite, where a pram stood, a woman ran out, whisked a shawled bundle from its repository, and hurried in again. Her figure, silent, purposeful, suddenly gave focus and animation to the street’s perspective. He glanced back and saw that the hop-skipping children, the busybody dogs had vanished, as if by arrangement; or as if … But no, that was impossible. For weeks and weeks London had had no Warnings. They could not surely have sounded within these last few minutes; the intermittent benumbing of his senses could not have reached that pass. All the same the mad imprudence or imperturbability of Londoners!—these children leaping with infinite tomorrows, that woman putting her baby out to sleep, that other growing flowers … in view of what he knew to be about to be unleashed from the other side of the Channel. When? … He found himself staring at the perambulator which a few moments ago had seemed a normal part of the paraphernalia of human living. Now with one twist of an inner lens he saw it crushed, twisted, empty with a difference …

  ‘What have you lost?’ a low penetrating voice remarked from an unexpected quarter.

  He swung round, looked down to see Georgie, none other, halfway up a flight of area steps, staring up at him from ground level through iron railings. Below her an arched recess led to what appeared to be a basement entrance.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said with a broad grin, flushing. ‘At least I’ve found it. You. You asked me that once before. Why do you?’

  ‘When did I?’ she said, advancing up the steps. ‘It isn’t an opening gambit one should use twice. I am mortified.’ She emerged on to the pavement beside him, her large eyes fixed unwaveringly on his face. She was dressed in a candy-striped shirt and dark red linen slacks. ‘When did I?’

  He shook his head, stooped to kiss her cheek, saying: ‘A sight for sore eyes.’ Then: ‘Perhaps I dreamt it. Never mind.’

  ‘Well …’ she said vaguely. Looking away, she drew an audible quick breath. ‘Always I get this feeling when you appear that you are wondering what you are doing, where you are. Or rather, where you could possibly have left part of you.’

  ‘Now now!’ he said, a light half anxious, half provocative in his eyes, ‘don’t start on me. I’m horribly self-conscious. Like all Englishmen—as you know. Please say you’re glad to see me.’

  ‘I am glad.’ She raised her eyes to his again. ‘How glad I am. I thought you’d never come.’

  ‘Oh, darling Georgie …’ He took her hand up, kissed it, dropped it. ‘I know I’ve left it late. It was because … All these last few months I’ve been so diabolically hard pressed.’

  She nodded, confronting his rueful coaxingness with a guarded smile.

  ‘But suddenly, today,’ he went on, ‘things began to look more like a patch of clear weather towards nightfall in my department, and precisely as I lifted my cup of tea I had a vision of you, looking almost as nice as you do—not quite. So I left the office helter-skelter and came questing for you through these enigmatic by-ways. Instinct my only guide, darling—who was it said what a great matter instinct is? It brought me to your very door with practically no deviation.’

  ‘You hadn’t my address?’ Her voice made a statement of the query.

  ‘I lost it, darling. How could I have?’ He noted her averted cheek. ‘You wrote it down for me, I know, last time we dined. But where? My memory—some days honestly, I have to wrestle to remember my own name. My wallet seems stuffed with little pieces of paper bearing cryptic signs, but the clues don’t stand up to scientific analysis. It isn’t,’ he added with a faint unease at her continued appearance of reserve, ‘under your name in the book, is it?’

  Her lip twitched. ‘No. It’s under Jack’s aunt’s name. Maybe I didn’t tell you that. She’s a refugee in Ireland and she offered me the house rent free. She was scared her china might get stolen if she left it empty. But I can still be contacted at the Ministry—American Division. I’m still there.’ She flicked him a glance of almost open mockery.

  After a slight pause he said in a sociable way: ‘I like your street. Attractive bijou residences.’ He scanned the façades with an appearance of intentness. ‘Funny how our meetings seem to develop a repetitive design. This is the second time I’ve seen you rise from basement level. Remember?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘1940 that would have been, I suppose.’

  She nodded. ‘The time I spent the night in the coal-hole. Nobody came to look for me because the house was supposed to be empty. When the corner house came down I thought it was mine, on top of me … It seemed—well, there aren’t any words really for total obliteration alone in a black underground trap. I’d have been glad of a rat for company. But the resurrection is the only part I remember.’ She put her arm through his. ‘I remember it totally every day of my life. Coming up at dawn, as soon as I saw I could get out, not daring to see what I expected—and finding you on my doorstep. Knowing you had come to look for me. Being wrapped in your overcoat. Taken away, fed, warmed. The most beautiful morning of my life.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten either,’ he said, quickly pressing her arm against his side.

  ‘Well, won’t you come in?’ she said, leading the way into the house. ‘What luck you came just when you did. I was just starting out to visit some girl-friends down the road. They have a high-class gramophone and some records I enjoy. But I would much rather talk to you. Jack’s fine—he’s somewhere in the Apennines, I had a letter yesterday. How is Madeleine?—and that honey girl of yours? And the boy?’

  Following her into the living-room, he gave her a somewhat perfunctory account: Clarissa had enjoyed her first term at a new boarding school, Colin had had a sharp illness in the summer, virulent pneumonia, just after passing out from Sandhurst. His last Medical had not been altogether satisfactory—strained heart, though very slight. He, Rickie, could not help hoping that when he had his next board they would invalid him out. Madeleine was very well, she’d been having a bit of a holiday in Cornw
all or somewhere with a friend—needed it, slaving in the garden as she did.

  ‘You haven’t seen her lately?’ His eye followed her as she mixed him a drink, moving about with light economical movements that reminded him—always had—of Dinah.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why don’t you run down for a week-end? She’d love it.’

  She made no reply but set her lips; and presently he went on with a sense of compulsive blundering; ‘You and she hit it off all right, don’t you?’