North Face: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “What you doing?”

  “Oh, all right.” He stood, and tossed her up; she squealed in delicious fright, eight feet from the ground.

  “There. Now you’re going back.”

  “Don’t want to. I wants to stop here. No-o!” With the incalculable suddenness of her years, she started to cry.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Neil helplessly. “Your nose’ll run again.” This was already happening; he was obliged to deal with it. Feeling insecure with one of his hands engaged, she steadied herself on the wall by grabbing two fistfuls of his shirt at the shoulder. He felt, without seeing, the familiar drag in the familiar place.

  “Listen,” he said with sudden resource. “Do you know what sweet coupons are?”

  “Yes.” Hope mingled in her eyes with contempt for a silly question.

  The vague little street ran to a dead end; there was no traffic in it. “Take these, and this, and run across and buy some sweets. But only if you go straight back and eat them indoors. Promise?”

  She squirmed eagerly down between his knees, and away. His arm and side felt cold when her vivid warmth had gone. Getting to his feet quickly, he glanced at the sweet-shop door. Ellen was out of sight, and couldn’t have seen anything. Relieved, he walked away down the street. She could catch him up.

  At a round marble-topped table in the dark end of the shop, Ellen was drinking a glass of fizzy lemonade. It was all she had had time to think of when, her business done, she had found it impossible to show herself outside. It was a highly gaseous brand, and made her choke a little. The woman with the ration-books had remembered something else, and was still there.

  “Hullo, Rosie my dear,” said the shopkeeper. “What can I do for your mother today?”

  “Please Mr Bates I want some choclit.”

  “What’s this, then? You had all your ration this month, you know that.”

  “Gentleman give them me.”

  “Did he now? Starting young, isn’t she, Mrs Tanner?”

  The woman with the ration-books looked round sharply.

  “Now, Rosie, that’s naughty. Your mum would never have that if she was to know. You don’t want to get talking to strange men and letting them give you things, not when you don’t know who they are.”

  “Why?”

  “Never you mind why, you ask your mum.” There was a muttering across the counter; the audible tail-end was “… some poor little innocent soul only in last Sunday’s paper.” The child listened, with grave curious eyes. “You go straight back in, Rosie, and remember what I said, or me and Mr Bates will have to tell your mum of you.” The woman picked up her shopping and went out.

  When Rosie, looking doubtfully at her chocolate bars, had gone too, the shopkeeper said, “It’s a fact, you have to be careful, times like these.”

  “Yes,” said Ellen. “I suppose you have.”

  “We’ll be getting the still lemonade in next week. Not to everyone’s taste, the mineral isn’t.”

  “It’s very nice. It’s just that it gets up your nose rather.”

  “A bit strong for you, like?”

  “Just a bit.”

  She groped in her pocket for her powder, and looked in the glass. Alienated by this loose modernity, Mr Bates went away into the shop parlour. It was the kind of luck which was rare in Ellen’s experience, and she was duly grateful. When she was presentable again, she went outside.

  “Any luck?” said Neil, strolling back to meet her.

  “No. Only pink fancy ones. He thought he had, though, and I had to help him hunt all over the shop. That’s why I’ve been so long.”

  “Never mind. We haven’t got to the real shops yet.”

  There was no market square here, but a steep little high street, with a narrow kerb which the bottle-necked traffic overhung. They edged along it—it was congested with a Saturday shopping crowd—looking for somewhere to eat, and for those useful rarities which must be seized where one happens to see them.

  “Do you want anything special?” asked Ellen. She had been silent for some time.

  “Only braces, as usual. I’ll be wearing a belt with my dinner-jacket soon.”

  “They’ve got some there.”

  “What, those damn-awful plastic things? Just try wearing them.”

  “Neil—”

  “M-m? Only waste time, I suppose, asking inside.”

  “Neil, if you’re really sure you want to marry me—”

  “They never … What was that?”

  “I just said I’ll marry you, if you still want me to.”

  Neil stepped back from the shop-window, and collided at once with a housewife carrying vegetables, who said “Pardon” angrily.

  “My dear good girl. What a place to tell me.”

  “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Almighty God!”

  “I know it wasn’t very …”

  “Don’t keep begging my pardon, you crazy little idiot. Where on earth can we—” The outfitter’s had not even a recessed doorway. “My dear, I—” He took her hand.

  “Excuse me.” Another human freight-carrier shoved them apart.

  “Well,” said Neil at length, “thank you, my dear. Let’s go somewhere and have tea.”

  14 Exposed Traverse

  MISS SEARLE HAD SPENT the day alone. She had not at any time contemplated inviting Miss Fisher’s company. The most pleasurable incident of the morning had been the arrival of Miss Fisher’s new friend, by car, to call for her; he had not only fulfilled, but even surpassed, Miss Searle’s expectations, and had given a sufficient demonstration of what Miss Fisher’s judgement of people was likely to be worth.

  The day had been a little uncomfortable for sitting about, and she had not felt inclined for a long expedition. She had taken lunch in Bridgehead. It was a depressingly typical seaside resort, except for the small fishing-quarter which she had already explored. The weather, she thought, was discouraging, with its hot gritty little wind.

  She had known from the outset that this year’s holiday was only a pis-aller, and it had been much like her expectations. The place was peaceful and picturesque, she had fortified her health against the coming winter; and the holiday could be held, therefore, to have justified itself. Lacking congenial contacts, one could always divert oneself by a study of types. To prove it she diverted herself, for a second time, with Miss Fisher and her friend.

  In spite of this determined lightness of touch, she found herself still quite upset by the debased view of life with which Miss Fisher had tried to infect her, and eager to assert herself against it. It was not enough merely to have opposed it in words; something more concrete was required. She owed it to her own standards, to human charity. She would have been surprised if anyone had told her that she wanted to assuage an inward sense of injury and loss by an act of forgiveness. She had owned to herself neither loss nor disappointment; she only felt, as she felt the weather, that it would elevate her to be kind. Clearly, only one kindness was appropriate towards a person accused of something which no one of right principle could condone: to demonstrate one’s belief in his innocence.

  It should not be difficult, she thought. A small social gesture could count for so much.

  Circumstance smiled on her intention. Everyone, as it turned out was in for the evening meal.

  Miss Fisher was ostentatiously gay. She displayed a goggle-eyed plaster doll, and remarked that the way to win prizes at fairs was to bring someone along to do the manual work. Her lipstick was slightly smeared. She ate little; but, she explained, she had had tea late.

  Miss Searle noted with satisfaction that Mr Langton and Miss Shorland behaved in a way that lent no colour at all to Miss Fisher’s recent innuendoes. They made separate entrances, he quiet and casual, she, as usual, a little reserved, and joined at once in general conversation. Miss Searle had no difficulty at all in working the talk round to the subject of bridge and discovering that everyone, in some sort, played. She could never, she said, understand the me
ntality of people who sat down to bridge every evening; however, a game passed the time pleasantly once in a way. Perhaps if no one was doing anything after supper …

  Miss Fisher, who had not said much since her emphatic first appearance, looked up from her plate and gazed at Miss Searle in fascinated incredulity.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m fond of a rubber myself now and again, but I don’t know I’m sure if—” Her eyes wandered, with ill-concealed sympathy, along the table.

  Without giving her time to finish, Ellen said, “Of course, if you want to make up a four. Though I’m afraid I’m not very good.” She looked at no one but Miss Searle.

  One of those moments passed which is not long enough to be called a pause, but long enough to make people wonder whether a pause is coming.

  “Provided it isn’t one of these esoteric variations,” said Neil, “I’d be delighted.” He looked only at Miss Fisher.

  The cut partnered Neil with Miss Searle, a well-balanced arrangement on the whole. Miss Fisher turned out to be a surprisingly good player, Ellen an unsurprisingly bad one. Miss Searle had a sound memory, but no cunning. Neil, whom all card-games bored to the point of illness, had had a bridge-playing headmaster at his first school: now as then, he played with dull, dogged mediocrity.

  It was, as Miss Searle put it, just a friendly game; she was opposed to stakes, not only on moral grounds but because they tended to rouse unpleasant feeling. Tonight, since no one but Miss Fisher, who was keeping the score, had a very clear idea who was winning, there was a refreshing absence of post-mortems. For Miss Searle, it was enough to see everything going agreeably, and to know that her own attitude was sufficiently defined.

  Neil, for his part, would have been glad to give the game his whole mind; but the habit of using half was ingrained, and he could not displace it. He looked round at Ellen, who was frowning at her cards as if she were trying to bring them in focus. Her retreat of this evening had come as a climax to the day’s disturbance and strain. It had been while they were having tea that, on the point of remarking that after it they could get away by themselves, he had begun to perceive she was expecting this moment with a mounting panic, which she was trying desperately to disguise. Whatever had caused her to commit herself—quixotry, affection, or some struggle for self-mastery and decision—she was in the grip of a reaction which was almost numbing her wits, and a frantic determination to ignore it. She was going to be made love to if it killed her, and to swear it was rapture with her last breath. He had protracted the tea as long as possible, to give her time and to decide himself what to do; but things had only grown worse. In the end all he could think of was to take her to a cinema, where he had held her hand, and she had clung to his with all the passion of a frightened child begging not to be punished. After that there was not time to walk home, and they had caught the bus.

  Tonight, he had thought, she would have settled down, they would go out, and he would manage somehow to reassure her. He blamed himself for a good deal of it. It had been too easy to revenge upon her shyness his physical frustration and his doubt; this afternoon had not been the only time. But had he really deserved this? It was so hurtful that he still could not quite decide that she had meant it. She had very little social sense when she was nervous, and might have been at a loss for a quick excuse; but she must surely have realised that, if she had given him the chance, he would have got her out of it.

  “Your bid, partner,” said Miss Searle, with light friendly reproach. He apologised, and switched over to the bridge department, which had been functioning, up to a point, quite independently. They made the trick.

  If things got no better, what was he to do? It had been clumsy and unimaginative, he supposed, to have begun talking so soon about marriage. She had seemed, that other morning, so vulnerable and alone, so clearly unsure of where they stood, and wondering, as he could see, whether he wanted the events of the previous night laughed off or forgotten: it was then that he had known for certain that he did not. Should he offer now to let her think again? Unconscious in her essential modesty of her power, she would jump at once to the conclusion that he was having doubts himself, and, whatever she felt, withdraw. They would never get back from there … “Double.”

  It seemed to him that they were like an incompetent climbing party which, having advanced without a proper study of the route, finds itself, at a point where advance and retreat spell equal disaster, and where the exposure is beginning to tell. For her, he thought, all this could scarcely be worth while. For himself, it seemed safer tonight not to put the question. If a woman had subjected him out of coquetry to this nerve-tearing sequence of advances and checks, his experience would have seen through her and his pride dragged him clear. If she had done it out of stupidity, he would already have begun to despise her. But this continual sense of a need as great as his own reaching towards him and beaten back by forces he only half understood, the morbid inescapable jealousy against which there was no weapon and which he was ashamed to own, got under his practised self-protection, and roused a sensual reaction against which, sometimes, he could throw up no defence at all. He had been too soft with her, he thought. He ought to have learned by this time that it didn’t pay.

  The card-table was the folding kind, very small. He could feel as if he were touching her bare elbow resting on the baize a few inches from his hand. Just then he would willingly have hated her; but she was short of a hair-grip still, the loose lock was slipping back again over her eyes with the half-curl like a question mark at the end. She was staring at her cards with her lower lip caught in, and seeing none of them. She looked in the state of which one says that the person is a thousand miles away; but she was not, and he knew it; she was only a thousand miles from the game. Against all that happened today, against even his own will to perceive it, he felt the distracting certainty of being, at this moment, her meditation and her desire.

  “Five hearts,” said Ellen. She put the hair back from her face, a slow, gentle movement; as surely as if she had turned and told him, he knew that she was remembering the times when he had done it for her. He looked at his cards; he had the ace and knave of hearts himself. Her bidding was growing progressively wilder. In her movement, in her stillness, in her voice, he could feel her aware of him, and aware now, too, that their auras of perception had joined. From her place of hiding she had reached out to him. They had exchanged no outward sign at all; but he found himself waiting, with a painfully-hurrying heart and a watchful stillness: the room was a forest, leaves stirred in the night wind, light feet flinched on the edge of the clearing; he drew into the shadow beside the pool.

  “Having no diamonds?” said Miss Fisher in an undertone, not unkindly.

  Ellen looked down at the trump she had just played, then at her hand; she stammered something abject, and knocked a couple of cards on to the floor; they landed beside his chair. Both of them stooped together, and their heads brushed softly in passing. It might have happened to anyone, except that neither apologised; but he was quite sure now.

  He woke up in time to agree with Miss Searle that everyone revoked once in a lifetime, and that in any case it was only a friendly game.

  It was his turn to be dummy, succeeding Miss Fisher; he offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. Miss Searle did not smoke.

  “Cigarette, Ellen?”

  It was the only sign he could find to make her, a faint awkwardness of surface manners, to have given the other light before so that their ephemeral contact should not be broken. He knew that it was understood. Nothing could happen now that would not say, in one language or another, the same thing. There was only one ash-tray on the table. He gave it to Miss Fisher, and, crossing to the mantelpiece, got another and put it down beside Ellen’s hand. He dared not touch her, partly because it would have been obvious to everyone; but it made no difference now.

  They shared the ash-tray. He smoked at a pace he could not control; the cigarette was gone in three or four minutes. Ellen was a little
longer. When she put out her stub, she held it, absently it seemed, for a moment, then moved it across the tray and laid it touching his.

  He could not see her face; she had let her hair slip down again, and turned away.

  Neil got up, went over to the window, made some excuse to the company about the room getting warm, opened the casement a little and looked out. There was no sign-language this time for what he wanted to ask her: whether she knew what she was doing, and how much more of this she thought he could stand? When the game was over, and its protection gone, she would run out on him again. There was a knot in the curtain-cord, a granny-knot, but old and hard to undo. He found himself with smarting fingers, and two ends of broken cord in his hands. He knotted them together, and came back.

  As he sat down, she stroked back her hair again. There was something subtly different in it now, welcoming and tender, a promise instead of a reminiscence. For a moment, frightened of the current in which he was being carried, he rallied his bitterness and mistrust: he had invented everything, he told himself, and would go on thinking so whether it was true or not. But it was too late. The invisible cord was not to be broken.

  Suddenly—he had no idea after how long—the cards were being stacked, the points counted, conversation was being made about how quickly an evening went. It was, apparently, nearly eleven; he and Miss Searle had run away with the score. He thanked her, and told her they seemed to be a natural partnership, or something of the kind; she appeared pleased so it must, he hoped, have made sense. All the women began to move vaguely about the room, collecting books and bags and odds-and-ends. Ellen came back to the table, picked up the bridge-marker, and flipped its celluloid leaves slowly to and fro. Mechanically, he picked up the score-pad and the cards. What did she want of him? If he kept her back from the bedtime procession, everyone would know why; if he asked her to come out, at this hour, it would be a public declaration. Either way, their silent conversation would be broken with a shout. She might refuse, or she might come, and it might well be intolerable either way. In a visitation of profound certainty, he decided to do nothing at all.