A Severe Mercy

by Sheldon Vanauken

  And so we completed the Shining Barrier: we would die together. We were pagans, not compelled by any religion, expecting only the dark. We had only each other and our lovely love. ‘Until the lilacs close/Beneath the deathly snows.’ If we shared this love, should we not share this death? We resolved — deeply and intensely resolved — that, be our days long or as brief as a shooting star, we would go together. If one were killed by sudden chance, the other would instantly follow. Or if one were mortally ill or when both became too old and frail to enjoy life (perhaps about thirty, we may have thought initially), then we would go. We would take a plane up, up into the high pure sky, and put the nose down, thundering straight downwards, a bright arrow in the sunlight, in the last long dive. A bit later, when we began to plan our schooner yacht, the ‘last long dive’ (as we still called it) changed: we would take our little ship to sea; and then one night, with the stars shining upon the heaving waters, we would open the seacocks and go down together. Our resolution to do this thing was like steel: this we would do. Now the Shining Barrier was truly invulnerable. I wrote a poem of the last long dive, a way to die:

  IF THIS BE ALL (Rondeau)

  If this be all to glorify

  The end of love and to deny

  The parting that alone we fear—

  When wasted days for one draw near,

  Surrender them without a sigh —

  We’ll sail, then, seawards, you and I,

  And sink our ship and so we’ll die

  Still, still together, oh my dear!

  If this be all.

  In light we loved in days gone by;

  As darkness shudders down the sky

  We’ll plight again, and death—austere

  Dark minister—shall wed us here,

  Together under night to lie,

  If this be all.

  On a May morning, long before the dawn had begun to lighten the sky, I drove into the university. Under Davy’s window I whistled the ‘Alert’. She, already dressed, came down, and we drove through the night. At an abandoned airfield I left her, warmly bundled up against the pre-dawn chill, and drove away. Davy stood in the lee of a derelict hangar. A faint light appeared in the east, and she could see patches of mist on the empty field. Then she heard the sound of an aircraft. She shivered, as much from excitement as from cold. A moment later she could see the plane coming through the skies, an open-cockpit biplane, swooping down across the field. Beyond the field it banked steeply around and descended, shouldering through the patches of mist. The nose came up and it landed lightly. The helmeted pilot pushed up his goggles and waved.

  Davy came running up. I hugged her and gave her a helmet and goggles. Then I put her in the forward cockpit, making sure that the seatbelt was tight. In the cockpit with her was a mass of lilacs. I climbed back into the after cockpit and taxied to the edge of the field, turning into the wind. The east was brighter now, but the sun had not yet risen. Davy turned and grinned.

  I pushed the throttle all the way forward. The engine roared and the plane ran down the field. It lifted, was airborne. The earth fell away. We climbed into the sky, into the dawn. Suddenly we were bathed in sunlight, though the earth below was still dark. Higher and higher: we were above the scattered clouds, rose-coloured in the sunrise. The air was cold and pure. I pulled the throttle back till the engine was just turning over. Davy was singing loudly. She held up a lilac and the blossoms drifted back. I put the nose down. The ship rushed earthwards, and lilac blossoms streamed back in our wake. Just below was a rosy cloud. I dived straight into it. A moment of damp greyness, then we burst forth into sun-bright air and swooped upwards again under full throttle. Davy waved and twisted round to grin, meaning that she loved it: it was her first flight. The plane banked steeply, rushed downwards under power, and then swooped upwards—up and over in a loop. In the moment that we hung upside down, Davy laughed and shouted. So we played in the sky in that beautiful and splendid Maytime dawn. Flight in lilactime.

  After the descent to earth, back at her House, we said goodbye, for I must return to college. It was still morning, and we were alone in one of the reception rooms. Davy, sitting on a sofa, was telling me what she had thought during the flight and how she was looking forward to learning to fly, as of course in sharing she must do. I was standing, about to depart, standing across the room by the door, still in my leather flight jacket with helmet and goggles dangling from my hand. A beam of sunlight slanting through one of the tall windows fell upon my head and shoulders, turning my light-brown hair to gold. I was smiling at her. She paused in what she was saying, then she said in a low voice: ‘My golden one!’ She never quite forgot the image of me standing there in the morning light, an image linked to the dawn and flight. When she lay dying after the years, she murmured ‘My golden one!’ and I knew all she was remembering: lilacs and flight into the mystery of the dawning and me standing there in the light.

  In that same lovely Maytime we took to the river in a canoe. Here she was the skilled one and I the crew. At night we would paddle far upriver, and then, sitting together, leaning against the rack, we would drift down, talking in low voices so as not to offend the peace of the night. Remembering, I think of her face, a pale heart-shaped Mur in the starlight, and the bright stars themselves above the dark trees.

  As May moved into June a shadow hung over us. A week or two after the term was done, I should have to leave—it had all been arranged before we had even met — to be a ranger at Grand Canyon. We were together at Glenmerle on the last day—a perfect June day — down by the lily pond; but Davy was sad and gloomy. We were both sad at parting; but for me it was adventure, at least, while she, poor little thing, must work indoors at that studio. Still, we had today. We talked: talked of throwing away golden hours, of love heightened under the sword, of how what must be borne ought to be borne gallantly and gaily. As we talked, Davy made valiant efforts to throw off her gloom. She made wry jokes at herself and then fell into a vein of dark crazy humour, and finally, amused at herself, she recovered joy. I ran up to the house and fetched beef sandwiches and lemonade, and we merrily picnicked under the June sky.

  And then, after all, the separation was not so absolute, for she prevailed upon her mother and brother to go a-journeying—with her of course—to the westward; and the grandeur of the Canyon, in the day and in the night, became part of our sharing. She became the Assistant Rim Patrol when I was on duty; and off duty we explored and wandered far out along the rim, the moon filling the upside-down mountain, as the Red Indians call it, with mystery. One night in the woods behind us, something—whether catamount or bear we never knew—gave a horrible hoarse cough, midway between a consumptive cow and an amplified mosquito, that froze our blood; and we tip-toed very rapidly away from there.

  In September as the new term began, we were secretly married — secretly because of my father’s forbidding views on early marriage, especially of people still in statu pupillari. Why, then, marry? Not, certainly, as a sanction for sex: we had known each other in the spring without guilt. There was no great reason: there might be in some emergency a legal value in our being wed. And I thought Davy would be pleased—which she was. It was not, assuredly, a desire to feel ‘married’, for we thought of marital attitudes and jokes as destructive of love; and we never did overcome our distaste for the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’: we said we were ‘comrade-lovers’. Perhaps we had a sense that there ought to be a confirmation by ritual of our deep vows.

  At all events, one Saturday morning, licence in hand, we set forth to find a clergyman in some village far from our usual haunts. We drove into a village and found the Rectory. Despite ourselves we felt a small wave of excitement. But we had reckoned without football: the Rector was on his way to watch and cheer. Village after village, hundreds of villages: not one gentle old man writing his sermon and meditating. Amazed at the faithlessness of the cloth, we became hot and tired and discouraged. On the point of giving up, we tried a last Rectory; and there we fou
nd a white-haired old gentleman who had doubtless been meditating. Perhaps a saint. Thunder rumbled as we went in. He talked to us kindly for a few minutes. Then, as thunder crashed and rain poured down, we were wed. A bed-ridden sister upstairs signed as witness, which she wasn’t; so perhaps it wasn’t legal. As we left, the sun was striking through. The air was rain-washed and cool, and there were bright puddles by the walk. As we drove away, a rainbow appeared. Heaven approved. When we got to the wooded park where we would have a two-day honeymoon—the only guests in the small hotel—we discovered that each of us had a different idea of which village we hadfinallymarried in. In later years, whenever there was some unresolvable difference about a fact, we would chant the names of the two villages at each other.

  In time the secret marriage became rather an open secret. Mother knew and was conspiratorially delighted. Even my father must have had the odd suspicion, but he chose not to inquire. Actually, he liked Davy a lot. She was a gay, bright, mischievous spirit, and she would always play chess with him, a game much played at Glen-merle. ‘Miss Jean’, as the servants called Davy, became part of the family, and in the following summer she came to Glenmerle to stay all summer.

  That was the summer when Davy and I rode or walked for miles every morning. Even walking we would usually do ten miles and once twenty. On one such walk we found a puppy, mostly collie, with perhaps a bit of wolf, at a farmhouse. We chose him over his brothers and sisters because he was the stubbornest and yet had sad eyes; and we named him Laddie. Subsequently he was a blithe and venturesome companion on all our walks or rides. Once he crept through a fence to bark at a huge and dangerous sow. She grunted and heaved herself up to lunge at him. He danced about and then seized her tail, causing her to squeal with pain and rage while, despite his spread paws, she dragged him along. He decided, apparently, that he didn’t dare let go, though he rolled his eyes at us. We were laughing so hard that we couldn’t have helped, even if we had known what to do. At last he did let go, and fled, soaring over the fence like a hunter.

  The walks, especially as the sun got up and began to warm us, were leisurely, full of pauses to talk to a farmer or farmwife. Some-times they would have us in for a glass of fresh milk. Or sometimes we would stop and sit on a wall, eating a sun-warmed tomato, talking or peacefully silent. Often we talked of the sad and somehow outrageous fact that in most lives, perhaps our own before long, there isn’t time for long walks and sitting on walls. We quoted a poem by W. H. Davies to the effect that it is a poor life if we have no time ‘to stop and stare’ as sheep and cows can do. We agreed. Nor were we cheered by the prospect of an occasional day off from an office, for with only one day there would be a sense of time at one’s back, a time too limited to ‘waste’ sitting on walls. How were we to contrive a life full of time—a timeful life—where we could be quiet and leisurely, where we could stop and stare ?

  One day when we had walked as usual and then come back to Glenmerle to swim and eat a mighty breakfast and nap, we were sitting down by the swimming pool in the long June evening, reading a Chinese gentleman, Lin Yutang, on the good life—which to him as to us required leisure. As dusk came down, we shut the book and dived into the pool. Dressed again, we resumed our chairs, looking down towards the park where there were a million ‘fireflies dancing in a netted maze/Woven of twilight and tranquillity’, in Richard Le Gallienne’s lines. We talked about the good life, the life without the pressure of time. A life we could lead together, even if we had to sell apples along the road. How were we to have such a life?

  Perhaps the little waves in the pool, still astir and glinting with starlight, had something to do with it. Anyhow, someone, perhaps Davy, said meditatively.

  ‘It would be nice to live by the sea. It’s beautiful. And we could have a boat.’

  ‘If we had a cabin boat,’ I said, ‘we could live on that. Go where we pleased. No rent. Good lord, Davy! Do you realise that if we had a boat, living would hardly cost anything No rent; fish and crabs to eat?’

  ‘I like fish,’ said Davy. ‘Except for the bones. Just think of the wild, beautiful coves to anchor in! Or if we wanted to be in a city, we could go into its harbour and be right in the centre of it. But — well, don’t cabin boats—cruisers—use enormous amounts of fuel? All the money we saved on rent would go for that.’

  ‘Um, that’s true,’ I said. ‘That’s no good. Oh, I know! A sailboat! With a cabin. The wind is free. A sailing yacht is more seaworthy anyhow. We’re on to something, Davy!’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she said excitedly. ‘Oh, dearling!’ And then, more doubtfully, ‘But we don’t know how. Yachts are terribly complicated—all those ropes! And navigation . . .’

  ‘We can learn, can’t we?’ I said. ‘Actually, I did sail a little, at school. Anyhow we can learn. And, Davy, think of it! Anywhere! England, Hawaii -all the most interesting places are on the sea. And we’d have our books and music with us.’

  ‘Our home with us!’ she said. ‘Like turtles. Or one turtle for two. Never mind! We could get jobs wherever we were, and then sail away. And Laddie could be a seadog!’

  ‘And we could write books,’ I said. ‘Oh, dearling, I think this is our answer—the way to freedom! Beauty and time to live. If we can just get the boat. . .’

  So the sea-dream was born, born by the quiet waters of a swimming pool. By the time we went up to bed, just as a great misshapen golden moon was rising, we were practically sailors. A slight roll in our gait perhaps. And the painting of the square-rigger on my wall had a new meaning.

  The next day we bought yachting magazines and books and plunged straightaway into them. We read immensely, not only books on yacht design and handling but books on the far places of the world, including the fascinating tales of Tahiti by Nordhoff and Hall. Indeed, we became particularly enchanted with Polynesia: Hawaii, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the wild Tuamotu, the cloud of islands under the wind. It was not long before we had a real grasp of the considerations involved in choosing a vessel: she would be, we decided, a schooner, a blue-water yacht with a long straight keel, about forty or forty-five feet overall. We debated gaff versus jib-headed rigs and whether the galley should be amidships or aft. We knew what shrouds and strakes were, bilges and baggywrinkles; and we shouldn’t have dreamt of calling a line a rope. As unthinkable as shooting a fox. On the basis of some moderate military experience at school, I applied for and got a naval-reserve probationary commission in order to learn navigation: we did correspondence-course assignments together in seamanship, piloting, navigation, and even gunnery. But salty though we were, our life on the ocean wave was still limited to the canoe, when we ought to have been setting topsails, clawing off lee shores, keel-hauling people, and the like. All we needed was a yacht and of course an ocean. But the necessary thousands seemed as remote as the moon: my father would never give them to us, for he had firm ideas about my winning my own goals.

  From the first our ship was named Grey Goose. Not only wild nature and a water bird, but a lover: the grey goose, if its mate is killed, flies on alone for ever. We designed and had a jeweller make grey-goose signet rings in gold like a coat-of-arms: the grey goose, fess, flying over stylised waves at the base, and above it and ahead, dexter, a tiny sapphire star.

  The Grey Goose was initially only a means to an end: the good life. The timeful life. But our imaginations were more and more caught up in the grace and beauty of the ships and the sea. We would sail the seas in storm and sunshine to far islands, carrying with us our beloved books and our few possessions—our earlier thoughts on the burden of possessions fitted in neatly—and we would be free, free to be, free from schedules. And, with time, we would write: which of course we could do if we chose—had I not just got a First in English?—just as we could become seamen if we chose. Or make love endure.

  We wrote a huge poem of a hundred andfiftylines called ‘Anchor Watch’, beginning with the moment when we should row out to Grey Goose: ‘And from our deck we scorn the land.’ Then, through ‘all that bri
ght exultant afternoon,’ we stow our kit below: ‘The books and music in the main saloon’, and food and guns. At twilight we sit on our deck, ready to sail with the morning tide, dreaming of all that lies ahead: storms and southern nights with the moonpath stretching across the moving waters ‘where the ghosts of galleons sail’. We see the yacht entering some far lagoon, where ‘the anchor splashes and the bow swings round’, and we stow the sails, hearing ‘the sound of breakers on the barrier reef. We play music that floats ‘across the darkening lagoon’ and then sleep while the tall masts are ‘pencilling across the stars’. That was the dream, born by the pool at Glenmerle, that had caught us up. It caught up more than one of our friends, too. The combination of our bright and adventurous dream and our evident love for one another half-persuaded some of our friends that we had discovered some special secret of existence. So perhaps we had: the quality of joy. Someone —was it Byron?—spoke of having known but three genuinely happy hours in his whole life. Thinking of that remark, we hugged to ourselves the knowledge of literally hundreds of joyous hours. As I had seen under the tree in the meadow long before, a great love is the way to joy. But how should it be paid for ?

  We were having the heights but maybe the depths were drawing near. Europe was at war. True, not much was happening—except the quite incredible defeat of a German battleship by three valiant cruisers of the Royal Navy—and perhaps it would end soon. But perhaps it wouldn’t: perhaps it would turn into real war, drawing America in, and then years might pass: youth and the dream lost.

  Then the Blitz thundered across France, and the British army was taken off from Dunkirk by anything that would float: we longed to be there with Grey Goose. France surrendered. England, everybody said, would be next. We refused to believe it, and we betted every penny we had on England. We listened to ‘Rule, Britannia’ with our hair standing on end.