Surviving

by Henry Green

  Mademoiselle was nodding and was soon quite lost in a doze.

  The children couldn’t decide at first what they would play. So they sat down and plaited hay into pigtails till they should think of something. They laughed and giggled. And meanwhile the waggon had been filled and stacked, and those two men on top had roped it. Each taking hold on one of these ropes they had slidden down, and now all the men went to shade of that ash tree where the governess was and that other waggon. The noise of their coming woke her and while one of them was finding the cider she passed the time of day with them. Then they offered her a horn-full of cider and she drank the clear yellow, thinking of their farm at home. It was bitter to her taste. It made the back of her neck burn, and she laughed and thanked them. She forgot ants. She lay back even and propped her chin on her arm. The heavy sweet scent of the hay came like honey to her and the smell of these men’s bodies made her homesick. The horses were strong too, the whole summer’s day was reeking and she was most deliciously overcome, clinging to consciousness as to the last firm thing on earth. The men sat near by and one was so amused he lay shaking on his back, hands pressed to his belly, while another wanted to give the children cider, but the rest would not let him.

  Constance next found a short stick among the hay and began playing with it, first putting it about her body. At last she suddenly put that stick to her head. She put it flat with her forehead, so it stuck up above her hair like a horn. And at once she thought of unicorns. In lessons they had come upon them, on the pages of their book, pacing along a ride trampling the flowers. Celia remembered. And so they played at being unicorns.

  Celia found a stick and first they walked on the new grass between the golden dykes of hay and then they ran along these long concentric rings. Each round they made, one following the other, brought them nearer to the middle of this piece which had been mowed in a round.

  The horses harnessed to the full waggon followed them with their wide eyes from where they had been left not far away. The children ran shrieking round and then, as they neared the centre, they grew more quiet. The horses shifted, they would turn their heads away and yet always come back to the children. The men, sitting low in shade, lazily watched them, only the governess paid no attention. And as they came nearer and nearer in to the centre, in ever-shortening circles, those two horses, hidden from the men by their waggon, grew more uneasy. They snorted through their wide nostrils, distended and red. The children came nearer and nearer in: each horse struck at the ground, their quarters trembled, they were thrown into a sweat. And when at last the centre was reached and the children fell down there both of them with what came to the men as a faint cry then those two horses, with a scream, bolted. They careered away, the waggon pitching, crashing behind them.

  Then the men surged out of the deep shade and ran after them in a fumbling group, running and shouting. Mademoiselle also came out, she wavered out towards the children. They, for their part, sat terrified and Constance could remember now how she had thought that they were blameless, she could remember reminding herself then that Mademoiselle had only told them to be sage, or wise.

  •

  Sitting near the Marble Arch she opened her eyes. The world struck white at her, for two moments she was so dazzled that everything appeared like wraiths, or as an image of what was real. People simmered by, walking by on the path she was close to. But when at last everyone took on their true shape and all the rumble of the traffic reoccupied her ears, – before it had been the surf on her seashore, – then she fell to watching.

  Listless, she watched them pass, young and old, old and young, children, soldiers, beggars, dogs, a monkey, nurses with prams. Young couples went by, today was a holiday, and only these had that glaring look of Kings in all their gentleness.

  And then she thought of couples why in a moment, she cried to her heart, they might break out and play, any second now for their own amusement they may take on the parts of unicorns or Kings. And perhaps that was why so many people kept dogs, who can never have enough of your love if they are yours, who will always play with you, for food and love you are Queens to them, Kings.

  A woman will take a walk with her dog and it will keep her pleasantly distracted. As they walk their two perceptions will be allied, when she stops to turn something over with her stick he will come back from where he has run out in front to examine it with her, when he turns in to the long grass and brambles she will cheer him on and watch after his efforts.

  So two people who love each other can go out and as they walk there is no need for them to put anything into words, having expressed everything long ago. As they walk, and the countryside meanders by, they need not be looking at the same things, one may be looking to her right the other to her left, but still their thoughts are most curiously joined and what they both see says but the one same thing to them.

  When Constance and Celia had walked on either side of Mademoiselle they had said always what first came into their heads. They had no withdrawals one from the other, any whim, any little thing, anything whatever they immediately told. Then when they had grown up there were a very few they hadn’t told each other, each had just one or two reservations, but they had already said so much that when they went out walking it was in a great lassitude of silence, a delicious boredom. Constance laughed. For now Celia was married Constance had lost her, when they were together now they avoided silence and said easy things rather quickly to each other.

  Your dog dies and after a little you buy another, your friend goes and if you are lucky you find a new friend. And all the time you are learning to walk alone. When Celia married she had gone the way of all other friends. When you have been two you can’t be three and now Constance was alone. Celia had married Eddy two years ago and now Constance had no one so to speak to play with. Everyone ought to play she thought. She looked at the beggars, the soldiers, the young and old, and there was a woman with that same high voice. If she played ever she would cry from nerves. And yet she would put her legs over a rubber unicorn, better than no unicorn at all only it was a kind of sacrilege, and go bobbing out on the sea. But Constance had no call to use rubber unicorns. And that woman would not go far out, she would be yelling and shrieking like any nursemaid, and she would soon be back under that vast umbrella she had had pitched for her. She thought, and drew comfort from it, how that woman’s life was too full, how she would never be able to walk down Oxford Street her fingers about his horn, her unicorn, arm along his neck, for she would never in her thoughts be alone enough for him.

  And Celia also had lost all semblance of what she had been. Constance laughed and thought if they were to go back together now to the Mediterranean again as they had done before Celia married, Constance thought how different it would be. Although she had been alone when that aeroplane came overhead yet she had bought two aeroplanes, one loneliness for each of them. She had not told Celia about it. They had often swum out together, she had been glad to draw Celia away from the beach, they had lain side by side dazed by the sun and delight out on the sea. So Constance had bought one for herself and one for Celia as a celebration in honour of those occasions. And Constance, who had looked on the aeroplanes as one and the same and had held neither in preference one to the other, had chosen one of the two for her very own when Celia married, a secret one.

  So she was now in the position of someone whose friend has gone and who goes walking alone, gleefully swiping down grass at her side with her stick. And now that reserve which had, in one or two things, been between them, now that also was gone since Celia was no longer with her. Now she was completely alone there was no restraint at her heart and she could walk proudly.

  For sitting in the heavy night in the gardens of their hotel, over the sea, every foot of ground quivering with the shrill cicadas, the heavy night where every tree breathed on her and drooped down from where it had reached up back down to earth and the low noise of the sea, from the cackle of lights she saw through the leaves, she heard Celia la
ughing.

  Once Constance had walked across the School Yard at Eton, and it was deserted, when she had heard such another laugh and had turned round in joy, singing, isn’t that gorgeous in a place built in fear like this. So when she heard Celia laugh she remembered.

  And she had felt Oh how can she laugh like that, why should she bring the playing fields here, and she had hidden her eyes in her warm fingers.

  She had stayed on that seat it seemed like hours, not daring to move in case she came across them. And why, she thought with even now a small pang, why should things one has enjoyed come flying back like a bent withy and strike one and hurt, why should things turn inside out.

  She had heard Celia laugh again then, and for a moment she had thought they were coming straight down on her and then she’d heard her laugh again, this time half way down the rocks and to the sea. She had cried, nothing had ever been so bitter, cried and cried till she lost all count, while the earth shrilled and the trees moaned with the weight of thick leaves on them.

  That had been the last time they had been together to the Mediterranean for Celia had married that man. And now Constance could laugh at all that, only the way she laughed it made hardly any sound at all, being like a soft neigh at the back of her throat.

  For before that last year they had gone out under the moon, under the trees, the palm trees with thousands of birds sleeping above in them so it seemed because they were never altogether still, in the beating night with the earth crying out in the cicadas, where the trees heaved down in the night air which was like bed, they had sat there in a trance when they were younger than they were now, three years ago.

  They had gone to the outmost edge of the garden and lights over that porch which led to the hotel were caught in a tiny reflection in their glasses on the marble table which gleamed like skin in the dark. They sat on a bench which had been made to encircle a tree, when they leant back the bark, which was not hot or cold, pressed into their backs in long furry tongues. The marble table kept a hoard of coolness and their glasses of the dark wine looked like huge soft eyes, the pair of them, marvellously soft.

  In those nights, hand in hand, they had gone silently sailing and voices from the veranda way away and the low noise of the sea had come faintly like a small wind to take them further out on dreams. They had gone slipping out and once Constance had stumbled on Celia’s pulse and had gone beating out on that into a smother of dreams, a glorious obscurity.

  Or again they had climbed from the beach up in the evening by the path which was cut out of the cliff, it went in large flat spirals, and while they were always chattering when they began to climb it by the time they were half way up they had never any breath left for talk. Constance had come in the day time, so she remembered, to hope that this bliss they had then would be renewed each night. For when darkness first showed in the sky after the sun was gone it was then every evening they began their climb.

  When they had to stop they flung their arms about each other and would turn out over the Mediterranean to see that shadow coming in over the water like a sleep. Constance laughed as she remembered. She held Celia tight and in her she embraced that enchantment, all the colours marching night made on the sea and what it is to stand on a cliff and watch. But at the first chill that reached them of that shadow they turned again and slowly climbed up till by the time they had set foot on the lowest terrace of the gardens night was rushing by above them, flying with the speed of the world and with the speed of the sun.

  At that moment a girl laughed as she went along on the path in front of Constance. No one could laugh, in the mood Constance was now, without her looking up, for as she was now laughter ran like blue threads in her blue tapestry, the fabric of her dreams. But this girl sounded like she must be tired and Constance marvelled again at how little the English love heat, for all they talk about it, and decided that they preferred sharp, frosty weather. Certainly this ticket collector did, she said to herself, and followed him with her eyes as he came towards her. He came slowly along, walking splay-footed, dragging his heels, and he had his uniform cap pushed onto back of his head, and the curve of his forehead showed many bumps in it. He was fifty, his eyes were grey, and he was a very small man. Constance thought he did look so ill.

  This man longed for the night. Then, when the shadows came flowing out of trees again all over the ground, and the grass opened its eyes, when the lamps were lit he would soon be able to make his way home then. It was the uniforms that did it and he spent much of his time in hoping that the man who designed his uniform and the tailor who made it might one day have to wear the lousy thing that was more meant for a fireman than a man that had to keep moving. It would be all right for one whose job let him stand on a ladder with the flames licking round him and play a hose onto it and when he got down everyone saying hero, hero, but was none of that talk about when he got home, with his feet feeling like he had been walking on embers all the long day. Not much. Yes and you felt dizzy too with it, nor you didn’t dare have a sit, they were down on you so sharp, or an old man wrote to the papers. And why should people pay for sitting, wasn’t it mean of them that charged it, for the Parks did ought to be free, or they should put more free seats about. Yes, he said, it made you kind of miserable to be always doing a thing which went against your nature but then why there was some you didn’t mind dunning, there was that piece over there, she was so rich she ought to pay. You didn’t mind taking her pence, nor nobody wouldn’t as you could see from here she filled the eyes: and he slowly bore down on Constance.

  Constance opened her bag to look for her purse. In the end she had to take out her handkerchief and pay more attention to what she was doing. Standing above her he held the ticket in his fingers and Lord love us he thought if women don’t put a lot in there. But he found his eyes followed the line of her left hand which held the bag while she fumbled in it with her right, and if, automatically almost, he kept exclaiming within him at the magnificence of that blue cigarette case and God help us look at that holder, yet the major part of him yearned to an exquisite transparency, like a seashell in the sea, where her thumb branched off from the palm of her hand. Save us, he cried out in his heart, if I couldn’t bury my nose in there, such fine hands, never a day’s work in their lives and the nails, like a quartz.

  Can’t you find it miss he said hopefully and she said oh dear and took out that cigarette case out of the way. Let me hold it miss and she said yes do, giving it to him without looking up. He held it and now he was lost, for he began to wonder what it was like inside as he held that case all of a glisten in his hand. His eyes turned from her and he put his two hands to the case so that it lay on his two palms. And so closely did he watch it that when at last she held out his pennies to him she had to say I’m so sorry before he knew she was ready, so that he all but dropped the thing from embarrassment as he gave it back to her. So stupid of me, she said, I’m so sorry, she apologised again, but he had nothing he could find to say. What a pair of eyes, he was laughing inside him, what a grand pair of blue eyes for a man to see he laughed.

  He had looked into her eyes. She had looked into his. She had seen a light of mockery there. As she had seen that monkey go careering down along the path in front of her so Constance, being like she was this day, had invested that collector with another life, a new agility. Being so lovely she had brought him out of himself like the night would do which he longed for so: that light in his eye was almost as she had been with Celia on their rocks on the Mediterranean sea. But he was a man. She felt he had been half mocking at her for being a woman. She had a small creepy feeling at that, like her senses were coiled up inside.

  These things coming to her about him made her petulant with the collector who, so it seemed, had mocked at her King. Spitefully she watched him move away. What was so shocking in monkeys was that they were nearly human, what was dreadful in men was their similarity to apes. He had been very insolent, she thought now, and would have liked to wake him: if he had tried one
thing too much, if he had exceeded in any way at all, then she would have dropped on him. Instead she had apologised. She laughed. It was too squalid, she kept thinking, squalid saying I’m sorry to him when it was so really lucky for that man to see me and so to refresh his eyes.

  For when he had come up to her she had shared her glory with him. Part of the time his attention had been taken up with the things she had about her, that was true, but it was no less true that when their eyes met his eyes received that glare of Kings. Even though he’d had to stand away and mock he’d had it. But it was as though you took up that flat spiralled path and you turned him to face out over the sea, and then he cared for nothing but eating. Looking out over the Mediterranean he would see no food, but feeling you beside him and that you cared for what you saw there, then a mocking light came out in his eye because of you. And this collector, when he had seen her happy, had thought if he’d been luckier he might have had a bit then, – that was her opinion of his look now she thought of it.

  People are most of all indulgent when they are happy and she had shared her glory with him when she had caught his eye. When he’d seen it he must have thought why shouldn’t I come in under the wing of that, damn him. He had felt she was so occupied by Kingship that anyone who put himself forward just then she would mistake for Kings, that the majesty she had on her was so great she could see nothing small or mean, that a mercy had made her infinitely indulgent since she had climbed so high and was so majestically detached.

  She watched a couple pass before her. They had on them a mood so gentle that everything was brother, sister to them. They had that in the way Kings could be proudly apart and yet near to the people. But it was the loneliness in high places which was the great memory you could have, those secret walks with pets where there were no men to ape cheeky monkeys, that was what counted.