‘I suppose there is a part of her in me,’ she said. ‘Which is another reason, no doubt, why we rub each other up.’ And when, finally, they stepped inside the foyer, she added, ‘Are you going up?’
‘I think I shall,’ he said.
‘I might stay down.’ An arm was raised in her direction. ‘See you,’ she added and, having released his hand, she started to the lounge: he saw her sink down in a waiting chair and two figures, who had stood for her, sat down beside her.
He knocked on Mrs Corrigan’s door.
She stood there, blinking, not glancing down but, beyond him, to the landing.
The room was in darkness behind.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I was resting,’ she said.
‘Haven’t you gone to bed?’
‘I sleep very badly at present, Bryan.’
Clothes, worn earlier that day, were lying on a chair.
‘Why don’t you open the curtains?’
‘What for?’
‘You can look at the lake.’
‘I’m not very keen on the lake,’ she said.
‘I thought you were.’
‘Not much.’
He could see the impression of the straps on her shoulders from the dress she had worn that morning, and the flush of colour on her upper arm.
‘Are you going to bed?’
‘I shall be.’
‘Do you want me to stay?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Why have you cut yourself off?’ he asked.
‘You’ve Margaret to talk to,’ she said.
‘I’d like to talk to you,’ he said.
‘I’m tired.’
‘Shall I kiss you good night?’
‘If you like.’
She averted her cheek.
‘I’ll sit with you, if you like,’ he said.
‘Go and find Margaret if you want to chatter,’ she said and, adding, ‘Good night,’ she closed the door.
It was Margaret who, some time later, tapped on his door and, having waited for an answer, and received none, tapped on Mrs Corrigan’s, called, ‘Good night,’ and, having received no reply there either, called, ‘Good night,’ again, and closed her door with a bang.
She was standing by the window, and had only come in perhaps moments before for she turned and called, ‘It’s you,’ and he saw that, previous to his entry, she must have been crying.
‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she said.
He closed the door and, as she came back from the window, she asked, ‘Have you had your lunch?’
‘I’ve just come up,’ he said.
‘Is Margaret about?’
‘She’s over the lake.’
‘Who with?’
‘People with a boat.’ He gestured to the window.
‘What do you mean by over the lake?’
‘They have a yacht.’
‘Weren’t you invited?’
‘No.’
‘She never mentioned it to me.’
‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘I’d like it.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said and added, from the door, ‘Knock on the wall if you want me.’
As he lay on his bed he imagined her sitting there, and thought, ‘She is seeing how far she can go and when she sees I won’t be moved she’ll respond by coming closer.’ Then, to his surprise, he heard her knock and when he went to her room he found her standing by the bed, and as if in the interval she hadn’t stirred, she said, ‘It’s you I should be blaming. All I did was give you a chance you never had.’
‘It’s not like that at all,’ he said.
‘Why is it me who always fails?’
‘Do you want me to go?’ he said and, when she didn’t answer, he added, ‘Back to Stainforth?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’d have to go with you. I mean to enjoy myself. Margaret deserves a holiday, too.’
‘When we get back home I’ll give up Peterson’s.’
‘You’d like that.’
‘I’d prefer to stay with you.’
‘And prolong the torment.’
He closed the door; even when he’d returned to his room and lain down on the bed he couldn’t restrain himself from shaking. When, finally, he thought he could stand, he got into his costume and ran downstairs and, in a rage with himself as much as he was with her, ran across the lawn and into the lake.
Perhaps it was the coldness that brought him to his senses; perhaps it was the thought, also, that this was a test, not only of his feelings but of his courage: perhaps it was a combination of both these things which compelled him, swallowing water, to fight to the surface.
A hand clasped his shoulder; it grasped his chest: ‘Cough it up. Spit it out,’ came a bland instruction. His arms were pumped; his back was slapped.
The sky gave way to the ceiling of the foyer.
He heard Mrs Corrigan inquire, ‘Who is it?’
A moment later he was lying on her bed.
‘He’ll be all right,’ a voice suggested.
‘He’ll be all right,’ came the voice again.
He was turned on his side.
A towel had been placed beneath his head.
‘It was an accident,’ he said.
‘I watched you. Without that man,’ she said, ‘you would have drowned.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t intend to. I could easily have swum back. I’ll go out now and prove it.’
‘No,’ she said.
She was pressing him down.
‘Will you forget what I told you?’ she added. ‘I can’t imagine what made me do it.’
His head was raised; the towel was replaced.
A hand brushed back his hair.
The light, when he woke, was fading in the window; across the room, her head bowed, the figure of Mrs Corrigan was sleeping in a chair.
‘What’s all this about drowning?’ Margaret asked.
‘I swam out too far,’ Bryan said.
He was waiting for breakfast, sitting on the terrace, gazing out across the lake.
‘When I told her where I’d been she bit my head off.’
‘Did you make it to the other side?’ he asked.
‘Easily.’
‘What about the others?’
‘One kept up. The others dropped out.’
She sat in the chair beside him.
‘Did they give you a prize?’
‘They gave me lunch. And dinner last night. You look pretty well,’ she added.
‘Not really.’
‘Better than ever.’ She sat forward, her arms wrapped round her knees.
‘I feel all right.’
‘She said you were lifted out.’
‘I could have managed.’
‘She says you might have drowned.’
He could see Mrs Corrigan through the dinning-room window; she was speaking to the waiter who, having held her chair, stooped forward and, in response to something she had said, glanced out to the terrace.
‘Slept well?’ she said when they went in to her.
‘I have,’ Margaret said. ‘Dinner was super, Aunt. You ought to have come.’
And later, when they sat out on the lawn, a motor-boat had appeared from beyond an adjacent headland and, turning in circles, cut a wake in front of the jetty.
‘The Pettingers,’ Margaret said. ‘They’re coming this morning to pick me up.’
‘What for?’ Mrs Corrigan asked.
‘I was invited,’ Margaret said.
‘Where are they taking you?’ Mrs Corrigan asked.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Not swimming?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ She stretched her arms. ‘I’m stiffer today than I’ve ever been.’ She glanced to the lake. ‘I could have swum back if they hadn’t stopp
ed me.’
‘I’m glad they did.’
‘I’ll stay behind if you want me to.’
‘You go,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘If that’s what you promised.’
And later, when the motor-boat came in, she ran down to the jetty; an arm was waved: the boat moved off.
A crescent of foam rocked the tethered rowing-boats and, in successive waves, lapped against the bank.
‘You feeling all right?’
‘I am.’
‘Better than yesterday?’ he asked.
‘Much, thank you.’
The bay was enclosed at the water’s edge by rocks and, on the grassy slope above, by trees: out on the lake the motor-boat, its bow raised, a line of white spume thrown up on either side, was turning in circles.
‘I wanted to drown.’ He paused. ‘But I couldn’t.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Bryan.’
‘If anything happened to you I’d feel the same.’
‘Would you?’ After a while, she added, ‘If anything happened to you I’d be the only one to blame.’
‘I Wouldn’t do anything to harm you,’ he said. ‘Everything I do is because of you.’
‘It’s time,’ Mrs Corrigan said, ‘you were thinking of something else.’
‘There’s nothing else I care about.’
‘I’m sure there is.’
‘Nothing.’
‘If you want to stand a chance there has to be.’
‘A chance of what?’
‘Of living a life with other people.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ Bryan said. ‘But there’s no reason now,’ he concluded, ‘we should ever be apart.’
The sound of the motor-boat grew fainter.
‘You’ll grow away from me,’ she said and, looking up from where she was sitting in the direction of the distant boat, she added, ‘If not with Margaret, then with friends from school.’
‘I don’t have any friends from school.’
‘Because I’ve taken up too much of your life which, normally, you would have spent with other people.’
‘I was like that before I met you,’ he said. ‘I’m like that now. I’m proud of what we are.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘I’d never disown it.’
‘You’d be in no position to,’ she said.
‘I would be,’ he said. ‘And more so,’ he concluded, ‘the older I get.’
‘I see further ahead than you,’ Mrs Corrigan said.
‘You only imagine it,’ Bryan said. ‘All we know for certain is what exists between us now,’ and, glancing at her as she sat beside him, her arm pushed back, her legs thrust out, he thought, ‘Outside of our feelings for one another we don’t exist: everything is there merely to make sure that we look like everyone else.’
‘Why don’t we have a swim?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t brought a costume.’
‘There’s no one about.’
‘Only a dozen people in passing boats.’
‘They’re too busy with other things,’ he said. ‘Once we were in,’ he added, ‘no one would know.’
She swam out several strokes and turned on her back.
She waited, treading water.
‘Can you feel the bottom?’ she asked.
‘It’s deep,’ he said.
‘Swim together.’
He could feel her abdomen beneath him.
‘Anything the matter?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘What you wanted?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You look much prettier in the water.’
‘So do you.’
‘How much?’
‘Lots.’
She drew him to her.
He felt the pressure of her arm around his waist.
Lapped by the waves, the shore invisible beyond her head, it was as if they were elements of the lake itself, their figures loosely joined, their legs entwined.
‘Fay,’ he said, and saw her smile.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
TWENTY-TWO
All evening and into the night the bombs had fallen; glass had broken at the front of the house and come into the bedrooms and into the hall: cracks showed across the panes that were still intact.
From the door of the shelter Bryan gazed out to the windows of the summer-house, their dull, dust-streaked panes, by a peculiar conjunction of adjacent surfaces, reflecting, from the rear windows of the house, the cone-shaped beams of the searchlights.
‘They won’t bomb us,’ he said. ‘What have we got to bomb at Chevet?’ when, from overhead, came a sound of rushing air: the sound grew louder. He closed the shelter door: the sound intensified. It expanded to a shriek.
The ground shook. The shelter rattled.
A peculiar silence was followed by a trembling in his hands and feet.
‘It didn’t go off.’
Mrs Corrigan was old; never had she looked older than at that moment, her face illuminated by the glow from the lamp, her nose and mouth more sharply pronounced, the horizontal creases around her eyes echoed in profusion across her neck where they showed between the collar of her housecoat and the tugged down corners of the blanket draped across her back. She wore no makeup and her hair, concealed beneath a headscarf, lay in loose curls across her brow, dishevelled, pushed back, a loose strand hanging towards one eye and which – waiting for an outcome to the falling of the bomb – she pushed beneath the headscarf, the other hand clenched tightly around the corner of the blanket.
‘I’m frightened.’
‘No need to be,’ he said.
‘It must have landed close.’
‘It fell in the garden,’ Bryan said.
‘Why hasn’t it gone off?’
‘It might be delayed.’
‘We ought to get out.’
‘And go where?’ he said as a whistling sound, more distant, erupted overhead and suddenly, from further down the slope, towards the river, came a loud explosion, followed by a second, then a third; somewhere, close at hand, another pane of glass was shattered.
‘It’s a nightmare. I can’t believe it’s happening.’
Almost in that instant they were flung to the ground.
A tree fell in the garden.
Through the texture of the blanket he could feel her tremble, and feel, too, the guttural sob as she endeavoured to hide her terror, her head bowed, her shoulders stooped.
‘One went off,’ he said. ‘Shall I look outside?’
‘I shouldn’t.’
Having lifted her, he held her to him, felt the slightness of her figure, the strange delicacy of her figure drawn against him until, releasing her, he opened the door.
The house still stood.
‘It was further away than it sounds,’ he said.
Her face, lit by the lamp, was turned towards the door. She extended her hand: a dull percussion of explosions echoed from the town; a splatter of shrapnel fell across the shelter.
He closed the metal door.
‘All the windows are broken, Bryan.’
‘Most of them.’
‘It’s terrible.’ She waited. ‘I feel so ill. I thought I was feeling better.’
Her legs were thin; her figure had lost its shape: a stoop was evident in her shoulders, her head thrust down. ‘Is the war,’ he thought, ‘in the hands of those who planned my life? Is this something I have to endure, and something, too, which I may not even survive? And if I do,’ he reflected, ‘is that, too, a part of the plan? Something, as yet, I can’t imagine?’
In holding her hand he was conscious of how cold she was: ‘Like holding a ghost.’
‘It’s strange to be sitting here,’ she added, ‘the two of us together.’
Her pale eyes, almost colourless in the light from the oil-lit lamp, gazed out at him from beneath the edge of her headscarf with its strange, incongruous pattern of flowers. ‘Even here, amidst all this destruction, she thinks of things tha
t might attract me, and a long time,’ Bryan reflected, ‘since the time when she might have attracted another man.’
The roar of an aeroplane made her flinch: it passed above the house.
‘The most important thing for me,’ he said, ‘is you.’
‘It won’t always be.’
‘It is.’
‘And here we are.’ She flinched. ‘On the edge of destruction and talking of love!’
The town had been bombed four times that week; in previous weeks neighbouring towns had also been attacked: the first night that the familiar drone of oscillating engines had been accompanied by the roar of a loud explosion Bryan, who had been lying in bed, the daylight still showing beneath his curtains, had been flung on to the floor, spread-eagled, and had heard Mrs Corrigan calling, and, moments later, more strangely, had come the rush of air preceding yet another blast in which the floor of his bedroom shook, the walls vibrated, and glass shattered in his window.
Then, on three successive nights, more bombs had fallen and, each morning, on his way to school, he had seen the streets of broken houses, and had had to walk along certain thoroughfares and roads where the bus itself could no longer travel, and had made his way to Stainforth, noting there the broken windows but relieved that the estate as a whole was only slightly damaged.
‘After this, nothing will be the same again,’ she said. ‘If it’s not destroyed it’ll all be changed.’
‘We won’t be destroyed,’ he said.
‘In a way,’ she said, ‘we already are.’
The clamour towards the town died down; the drone of aircraft faded: the wail of a siren, shrill, sustained, followed by another, was taken up by a third, then a fourth, echoing from the village, drawn out – so long and sustained that, before it faded, he imagined in the streets beside the river, where the mills and the manufacturies stood, the survivors of the air-raid raising their heads.
‘They’ve gone.’
He helped her up, opened the metal-barred door of the shelter, and gazed out at the darkened house, at the trees enclosing the garden and made out, finally, directly overhead, a star and the shape, fused by vapour, of a crescent moon.
‘It’s over.’
The freshness of the air, for a moment, overcame them both; she picked up the lamp and turned it off.
‘Are you all right?’
He was stooping in the door; the thinness of the arm beneath the blanket, the delicacy of the wrist, the lightness of the hand, the slightness of her waist: he might have lifted her up, carried her across the garden and into the house.
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