North Face: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “Well … that’ll be all right, then, sir, this time.” The light, which had begun with an air of accident to move exploringly towards Ellen’s ankles, went to ground again. “But you can see we got to enforce the bye-laws, or we’d have all sorts in here.” Civilly, but with inflexible rectitude, it added, “If you’ll come along now, I’ll let you out the proper way.”

  In the open, where the torch was quite redundant, it continued to function; it seemed to be ex officio, like a truncheon or a mace. Neil, who had not had a chance to look at Ellen yet, fell a pace or two behind. She smiled at him; she was evidently determined to be very tough indeed. He gave her a quick squeeze and whispered vulgarly, “Feels like a couple of cats being put out for the night.” The light paused, in a marked manner, for them to catch up.

  It was a good job, Neil reflected, that the guardian of decency and of the keep hadn’t stayed to inspect the branch which had given the alarm. It might just possibly have added up to the statutory five shillings’ damage, and a joint summons. The local press notices would have gone down wonderfully at Weir View.

  Arrived at the gate, the caretaker produced a massive key, and paused, like one who feels it his duty to improve on occasion. “Any time you want to see the castle, it’s open ten till seven summer-time, four in winter. Conducted tours at three. It’s very historic, if you got the interest. Books about it there’s been written. You’d find it very educational, and the young lady too—for its own sake.”

  Having paused lest so delicate a rebuke should be entirely missed, he set the gate open; slanting the torch, at the last moment, to sweep Ellen comprehensively from top to toe. As the gate shut, the light behind it narrowed to a thin blade, like that of the sentinel angel at Eden gate. The unparadised sinners wept hand in hand, with wandering steps, out into the lane.

  There was a certain tall rhododendron-bush, shaped in two buttresses with a cleft between. As if it had grown in conformity with local custom, the shelter it offered was strictly vertical; but very dense. Its assets were well known to the regular members, so that it was always taken up early, and sometimes vacated early also; thus, on a busy evening, it might have a second tenancy or even a third. One late-arriving couple, who had hoped to secure the reversion, had drifted towards it encouraged by stillness, but, hearing a murmur at the moment of approach, moved silently and correctly on. The voices, low-pitched instruments in a muted orchestra, continued and undisturbed.

  “You don’t let me hear you. Say it again.”

  “It must be time we went back.”

  “Say it and we’ll go.”

  “I—I did.”

  “You ought to grow out of being so shy.”

  “Let’s not talk.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re—not being ourselves.”

  “God, who wants to be?”

  “Promise not to remember, and I won’t either.”

  “All right. Shall I tell you something? Come here …”

  “My—my dear. I’m sorry, oh, I know—”

  “You’re not asked to be sorry. Say ‘So would I.’”

  “Please don’t let’s talk.”

  “It’s not much, just to say it.”

  “It is, and—”

  “You don’t have to think about it. Say it, that’s all.”

  “No, don’t make me.”

  What are you frightened of?”

  “I—I’m afraid of seeing you tomorrow. We’re not like this really, and—”

  “All right, then, we’re not ourselves. Say it … I couldn’t hear that. Again.”

  “So would I.”

  “… Oh, God, you’re right, let’s go back. No, just …”

  “My darling, my—Neil, let me go. I tell you I’m not like this. I don’t want us to remember. You don’t understand.”

  “Never mind. We won’t remember.”

  Soon afterwards, the next prospecting couple found a site to let. The outgoing tenants passed them within a yard; but the etiquette of the lane was well observed. Ghosts of different centuries could not have treated each other to a more perfect oblivion.

  10 Party Overdue

  THE SOUND OF THE sea was creeping inland with the stillness of night. Moths bumped and fluttered against the uncurtained window. The garden gave off the changed scents which are extracted by dew. Miss Searle and Miss Fisher sat in the chairs which they had pulled up the window a couple of hours before, to catch the first coolness after the heat of the day. A picture of the scene would have been a composition in evening quiet. Filling the room, yet quite separate and irrelevant, the powerful voice of a young man was raised in the climactic speech of a play. It climbed skilfully, dropped at the psychological moment, and finished in a dynamic undertone. A shot sounded. A woman screamed. All this noise had an odd effect of living to itself, privately, in a different dimension.

  One of the moths, finding the open part of the window, flew in and dashed itself on the electric-light bulb in suicidal passion, a theme from Byron in miniature. The play had finished. A self-assured, reasonable voice stated, “Well, I’ve just returned from three months, in the British Zone, and the most vivid impression I’ve brought back. …”

  “Do excuse me coming in. I thought I’d wait till the play was over.”

  Miss Searle sat up in her chair, and looked at the wireless set with sudden attention. “Of course, Mrs Kearsey.” Turning to Miss Fisher she said, “Do you want to hear this talk?”

  “No, thanks,” said Miss Fisher. “Politics or something, isn’t it? Do come in, Mrs K. We’re just off to bed. If that play’s finished, it must be after eleven.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Kearsey significantly. “I know it is.” She came in, and sat down.

  Miss Searle, who had been putting her bag and books together, let them go. It would be impossible now to escape upstairs without rudeness. Mrs Kearsey and Miss Fisher were looking at one another; Miss Searle saw in their faces the look of two women walking circumspectly—like sniffing dogs, she thought with the sudden vividness of disgust—round a sensational theme. The hideous appointments of the room seemed to crowd in on her; she could see, as if her eyes had pierced the ceiling, their counterpart in the bedroom to which she would presently go upstairs.

  “I really don’t know what to do,” said Mrs Kearsey to Miss Fisher, “about the locking-up.”

  “Somebody not back?” Miss Fisher believed in minding her own business until she had been given the entry to other people’s in the clearest terms.

  “It’s both of them.” (The eyes seemed to be adding, “Yes, by all means, do come in.”) “I know they’re together, as it happens, not that I pay any attention how people spend their time, I mean that’s nothing to do with me so long as I know what meals to expect them in for. But Mr Langton asked me to give them a light lunch early because they had a bus to catch, and he said they’d be in to supper the same as usual … That’s the only reason I happen to know today.” She pulled her dress straight across her lap, looked a little self-conscious as if she had seen Miss Searle’s face with the tail of her eye, and added, “I really don’t know what to think.”

  Miss Fisher looked out. The moon had risen above the trees; in the lighted frame of the window it looked more than usually secret and remote. Turning back to Mrs Kearsey she said, “Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s quite dark, now.”

  “There aren’t any buses round here run later than nine, not even from Bridgehead, and no trains only the main line. And it’s dark soon after seven, now.”

  To walk in the dark, thought Miss Searle, would obviously delay people; why not say so simply and naturally? There was nothing significant in darkness, she thought with distaste; in winter it was dark at four.

  “It doesn’t seem a bit like Mr Langton,” Mrs Kearsey was going on, “to lose his way. He never goes out without a map. And he’d surely find the right road again before it got dark like this.”

  The dark again, thought Miss Searle; almost mediaeval. It did
not occur to her that her own mind was contributing anything to her associations, except by way of criticism. Her attitude to its literary contents had been for years that of a curator.

  “Of course,” Miss Fisher was saying, “they might not have noticed how the time was getting on. It does seem to get dark so suddenly, this time of the year.”

  They will be positively disappointed, said Miss Searle to herself, when this turns out to have some quite commonplace explanation. What purpose do they imagine they are serving by staring out of the window like this? We have surely established the point, by now, that it is dark … She was used to the classified specimens in her mind, on their proper shelves. She could enumerate their beauties. It was a long time since any of them had stirred in their places: she had quite forgotten that they were alive.

  Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night … Spread thy broad wing over my love and me, That no man may us see, And in thy sable mantle us enwrap. Oh lente, lente currite, noctis equi.

  “I really don’t like just to leave the door on the latch, with everybody in bed. There seems to be such a lot of funny people about nowadays. I think I shall just wait up for a bit longer. You can’t settle, really, knowing you may be got up again any minute.”

  “Well, it seems a shame, Mrs K. You’re the one that’s been working all day. You run along, and I’ll make myself comfy down here on the sofa. A lot better than night duty.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Miss Fisher, but I couldn’t think of it … Of course, Miss Shorland has always kept herself to herself since she’s been here. She’s nicely spoken and doesn’t make trouble, but I don’t feel I know much about her, really. But it isn’t like Mr Langton not to be considerate. I don’t know, I must say.”

  On the contrary, thought Miss Searle, it is very like Mr Langton to be inconsiderate, at least about the times of meals. During the first few days he was here he was late for three, and missed two for which he was expected. Women of this class always prefer a morbid explanation to a straightforward one. The type that forms queues outside the Old Bailey for unsavoury trials.

  (Now lies the earth all Danae to the stars …)

  Suddenly Miss Fisher turned back from the window. Her voice had lost its politely nebulous quality. She might have been speaking to a muddled probationer on her ward.

  “Did they say where they were going?”

  “Not that I remember,” said Mrs Kearsey. “Only on a bus.”

  “Mr Langton’s a mountaineer. That’s how he spends half his time, climbing about on the cliffs. And this Shorland girl goes in for it too. I’ve heard them talking.”

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs Kearsey’s face changed; it grew simple, almost childish in distress. “I never thought of anything like that. And here it is half-past eleven, and nothing anyone can do this time of night.” With a child’s inconsequence she added immediately, “What shall we do?”

  “Seeing they went by bus,” said Miss Fisher, “they may be anywhere. There’s nothing to be done now, before the morning.”

  Her voice had flat, deliberate kind of hardness. Miss Searle had a curious illusion that she had grown in stature. She had seemed to reach for the voice, as for an essential object of defence kept at hand for a familiar necessity. Miss Searle, taken by surprise before her own defences were up, had a sudden perception of what Wordsworth, in a different context, called “unknown modes of being.” Dimly she sensed the daily knowledge of grief, pain and death, and the pressure of urgency which makes it irresponsible to feel too much. An uncomprehended feeling of affront and invasion stiffened her. First scandal, she thought, then melodrama.

  “I don’t think it likely,” she said quietly, “that there’s been an accident. Mr Langton and Miss Shorland were shouting to each other as they went downstairs; one could hear them even through a closed door. I remember their saying that they didn’t intend to climb; in fact, though I was paying very little attention, I believe Mr Langton said definitely that there was nothing which could be climbed where they were going.”

  “Oh, well,” said Miss Fisher, “that’s one thing off your mind, Mrs K.”

  “I’m glad you happened to hear that, Miss Searle, or I should have worried.” Mrs Kearsey looked at Miss Fisher. The moment of selfless humanity, which had given a goodness to their faces, was no longer there to unsettle Miss Searle. “In that case—well, all I can say is, perhaps they missed the bus.”

  Miss Fisher looked at her watch. “It’s nearly twenty to twelve. If I were you, Mrs K, I wouldn’t waste my sleep waiting up now.”

  Rising irresolutely, Mrs Kearsey went back to the window. (Not again! thought Miss Searle.) “I don’t think I will, really, now that it’s got so late. It wouldn’t be like Mr Langton to try and cross the moors; I mean by himself he might, but not with a lady, after dark.”

  Miss Searle rose. “Transport is very unreliable nowadays. No doubt we shall find that’s the explanation. Let’s hope they were able to find accommodation at such short notice.” With separate, formal goodnights, she left the room.

  Miss Fisher’s eyes followed her to the door. She found that she had almost said, “Don’t go yet, Miss Searle. Stay for a bit and keep me company.” It was too late now; Mrs Kearsey, with an air of relieved liberation, was getting under way. It wasn’t like her to be deceived in people, she confided; usually she could tell the very first day if they were that sort. She gave some pungent examples.

  “Well,” said Miss Fisher absently, “doesn’t that show you?” She remembered that she had had an invitation for this evening; if she had had the sense to accept it, she would still be out, with business of her own to mind. She wished she could go out now, even alone. She would have been miserable, she supposed; and where was the sense of being miserable on your own, when you could have a bit of company? There was enough trouble in the world, without working up more; and yet, it would have been quiet down on the shore, empty and still. It might not make one more sensible about things, but one would be differently unhappy. Groping to explain this to herself, she thought that it would seem, somehow, like an old story, as old as the world; it would take one out of oneself. She could get no nearer than that, and gave it up.

  If Miss Searle had stayed in the room, Mrs Kearsey wouldn’t have let her back hair down like this; she was always very careful with Miss Searle, quite the lady. People always thought there was nothing you couldn’t say to a nurse. It was all very well, in hospital; but off duty, there were times when it would have been nice to be able to walk, aloof and unquestioned, out of a room without anyone thinking it odd and wondering whether something had upset you. Yes, thought Miss Fisher; if I had a kid of my own, I’d see she had every advantage, even if I had to stick ten years’ private nursing to make the money. It gives you a chance to keep yourself to yourself when you need to. And if you feel a bit low about something, you can read a book where it’s all put beautifully about someone hundreds of years ago, and think, after all, other people have been through it, old queens and ancient Romans and all that, and it would make you feel better; instead of listening to this stuff … well, why take it out on Mrs K? She’s got her job to do and her worries, same as anyone.

  “As far as that goes,” she said, doing her part, “the things that go on in hospital sometimes, you’d be surprised …”

  A stealthy arm of moonlight, creeping over the pillow, took ten minutes to reach Miss Searle’s face. In enormous space the moon hung, burning-cold and still. One side of the pillow was still screened from it; she moved her head away.

  She had taken two aspirins, after praying against the sin of uncharitableness on behalf of Mrs Kearsey and Miss Fisher. The aspirin should be acting by now, but the light from outside was very disturbing. Even at the cost of ventilation, she had better pull down the blind. Getting up, she went to the window. A broad avenue of glittering light divided the sea, aimed at her like a pointing sword. Even the birds seemed half awake. No doubt it was this which was making her brain over-active; should she r
ead a little? No, it would be foolish now not to give the aspirins a chance. She stood with the blind-cord in her hand, thankful to have escaped in time from the sordid and (she was quite certain) baseless gossip downstairs. A tiny breeze ruffled the water; the blade of moonlight shivered. Moonlight … a shore … a discarded sword. These vague associations were always irritating till one had tracked them down. But of course: it was too stupid to have hesitated over so hackneyed a passage.

  In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love To come again to Carthage.

  Extraordinary how frequently, even by the literate, the “in” was misquoted “on.” But it was getting chilly, and after aspirin one should keep warm. Besides, one had only oneself to blame for being unable to sleep, if one were foolish enough to take one’s work to bed with one.

  11 Difficult Crack

  “COULD WE—PLEASE—NOT go so fast?”

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I have to walk at such a lick as soon as I start thinking.”

  “I was afraid you were angry.”

  “As a matter of fact, when I’m angry with women I always beat them to death. Just killing them with exhaustion strikes me as rather pansy.”

  She laughed, stammered, and said, “You are a fool.”

  “Try again. It isn’t difficult really.”

  “I’m still out of breath.”

  “Stop a minute. We’ll be on the main road when we cross that stile.”

  They were on the last lap of the journey back, walking from the bus-stop to the house, across the high downland that overlooked the sea. On a spring mat of heather between the gorse-bushes they sat down. The humming of bees mingled with a distant bleating of sheep, and the Aeolian-harping of wind in the telegraph wires. It was a hot, bright, blowy morning.

  “Now,” said Neil, “have another try.”

  “What at?” She picked a bilberry from a clump beside her, tasted it, and made a face at its sharpness.