‘Yes,’ said the visitor faintly, thinking: that, in a nutshell, is not the love affair. When ‘we’ can be ‘we’ in private only, or only in certain social circumstances, girders are lacking to keep the erosions in time’s structures sufficiently repaired; thinking also that if you go travelling, you find the world choc a bloc with co-habitations no less improbable than the union of the Captain and his mate. Day after day, year after year, lasting a lifetime. Beloved wife, beloved husband, when the terminal, very sad and trying illness comes to be rounded off with due ceremony in the obituary column. Sensible dull faithful couples, mutually tolerant, without pitched-up expectations. This bird-witted, this faded pre-war girl with her musical comedy airs and graces, pretty, pert, chaste, provocative, would never be a candidate for bitter sexual dislocation.
Presently Mrs Cunningham yawned and said:
‘I’m getting a bit peckish. What about you? I tell you what—let’s run down and take pot luck with Johnny, shall we? Why don’t we? I’d like you to meet him.’
‘He may not want to meet me.’
‘Oh yes, he’s sure to. Any friend of mine he welcomes. I quite often pop down of an evening when I know Jackie’s entertaining. Louis’s a wonderful cook. Come on, let’s hurry.’
Skirting the palm tree grove that fringed one side of the bay, they emerged upon the beach—upon that crescent of dazzling coral powder, sifted with sand, with pounded mother of pearl, scattered with black driftwood, with ribbons of dry parchment-coloured seaweed, with broken palm shells, crab shells, with papery slivers of bamboo and other brine-bleached shards and skeletons, all frozen beneath the moon’s full incandescent eye. Presently they pause just clear of the water’s filmy verge, where the last crystal shallows and blue-rinsed transparencies slide in, dissolve, spilling over and over again a whispered breath, a lacy ruffle. They look towards that striking image in the middle distance: a hut, a sea-grape tree, moulded and spectrally illumined, netted in hard, snaking, blue-black shadows; the whole complex standing out in stereoscopic relief, with that air it has already started to create of mystifying weight and meaning. At the heart of it glows the amber effulgence of a lit lamp.
The visitor removes her sandals, feels the soft furry tingle of midget waves expiring round her feet. The other lifts her head and calls a long high-pitched coo-oo-ee. Silence; then an owl’s hoot answers. ‘That’s him,’ she says. ‘It means All Clear’; and they start to walk towards Johnny’s improbable dwelling. ‘It’s not just anybody I’d introduce, but he’ll take to you. You have repose. Noisy people are what he cannot bear—loud voices, horse play. That lot Jackie collects up there—he can’t abide them. And Jackie’s as jerky and restless as a puppet on a string. I’ve mentioned he’s the love of my life—it’s the truth. He doesn’t love me back of course, but he puts up with me. He’s very kind. As I said before, I hope I shan’t be jealous.’
‘Of course you won’t be—what an absurd idea. Does he love Jackie?’
‘I think he hates her. I shouldn’t have said that, forget it. The fact is, I doubt if he loves anybody. Perhaps he did once upon a time, before he—I believe he was engaged and broke it off, after the crash. Poor girl, whoever it was. I imagine her one of those long-legged outdoor English blondes. Perhaps he did love that old Mrs—I’ll remember her name in half a tick. She was old enough to be his grandmother, but—well, I don’t know, she didn’t act like one. I suppose she must have been a famm fatall—and with that sort old age doesn’t mean they’re on the shelf. They’ve got something different from ordinary common or garden sex appeal. The same of course goes for Johnny, in a different way. You’ll see for yourself.’
Then they have arrived before the hut, whose shell-encrusted surface gleams and sparkles; beyond it, Johnny is to be seen in a wheel chair drawn up to a table upon which a chess-board is set out.
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About the Author
Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1944 by Rosamond Lehmann
Cover design by Andy Ross
978-1-5040-0771-9
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Ballad and the Source Page 39