Twopence Coloured

by Patrick Hamilton

  Of such stuff was “For God, King, and Country.” There being no seats in the house above two shillings, a rough-and-ready money’s worth was being given, and there was no possibility of complaint. The whole was, moreover, to those who had the wit to see it and make it so, as subtle and exquisite a piece of fooling as the theatre might provide. But even apart from this point of view, and taking into account the pious gravity with which it was for the most part received, Jackie never had again, in the course of her career, the same assured sense of fulfilling an honest demand. She could look back upon this period with affection.

  In the next three productions Richard had no hand. They lost a great deal in spirit and abandon, but he was in each case given the leading part, which he played with a breadth exactly calculated to fit his audience. On Saturday nights he gave a West End performance, and evaded derision, and on Thursday night (the early-closing and most impressionable of nights) he expanded into the Surrey side and carried all before him. Mr. Carters was conscious of having found a jewel, and came forward with startling contracts, which were refused. It was a lesson, to Mr. Carters, against the employment of cheap labour — a lesson, after years of conservatism, impossible to be learnt.

  The juvenile parts were thrown to Jackie, who acquitted herself well. With her accustomed quickness and gravity she learnt enough shallow tricks of voice and gesture (there were only about a score) to carry herself through without disgrace. On this substratum of elementary technique she hoped, when the time came, to build a performance.

  *

  And so the time fled by until the last week. It had long been decided that she would not be able to remain at Southshore for the last week, for Charles would then be absent on his cricket. There was talk of her staying on alone with Richard, but it came to nothing. Richard was plainly against it.

  Thus it was that one Friday evening, at five o’clock (and without one word said to each other about themselves), she found herself looking out at the sea from the window of a pleasant room in Kemp Town. Richard had found this for her, and had just delivered her. She had one week more down here, and then London awaited her. Her suitcases were on the bed, and she was back again with her rooms and her tragedies…. She could hardly believe she had to face them again.

  And then, on Wednesday, which they spent in the country, the thing happened.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE RAIN

  I

  THEY were to spend the day on the Downs, and he called for her at her rooms, and they caught a bus at Castle Square for Patcham.

  It was Thursday. She had not yet lost the sense of release in having her mornings free from rehearsals, and she was bright in the sunshine of the Square, and talkative on the jolting bus.

  The conductor’s bell pinged away, with automatic and unquestioning merriness: she clasped her sandwiches, and looked at the sky (which was doubtful), and smelt the cold air, and let her spirit slide upon a thin layer of content.

  They reached Patcham at eleven o’ clock. Here the sky was already grey, and the bus, ranting through the chill, still little village, pulled up amongst the trees, and was quiet.

  If it had not ranted so, previously, its sudden quiet would not have been so breathless a quiet, nor would the stamping leisured exodus of the few wayfarers from the top of the bus, and their immediate vague disappearance to dreamy destinations, have struck the heart with something akin to dread. But this is what it did to Jackie. The thin layer of content was sensibly breaking up.

  He helped her on with her mackintosh, and she helped him on with his, and speaking of the weather, which was obviously going to be very bad, they took the road that led to the Downs.

  “Would you like to go back?” he said.

  “No. Rather not,” said Jackie. “I expect it’ll pass.” And then, because she had a sudden ill thought of next week and London, she found herself almost trembling, and she knew that the layer had collapsed.

  It was a nightmare — a rain-grey nightmare on a white dusty road. The idea of going back to Brighton was horrifying. The whole idea of existence was horrifying — greyly, coldly desolate. She could just keep in touch with it, just survive, so long as she walked with him along this road. She could never do anything else…. This must be infinitely prolonged.

  They walked on, in a seldom broken silence, for about ten minutes, and then he said they might as well put their sandwiches in his pocket: he thought there was room. She gave him the package, and he commenced to try to do so….

  “I’ll do it,” she said, and he succumbed without a word. The moment of contact was dreadful. He lifted his hand weakly as she stuffed them in. He was a weak, trembling, inefficient, inadequate thing, like herself….

  They walked on again. The rain still held off, and they came to Clayton Hill. The road lay between two steep embankments. Here he said that he thought he saw some blackberries, up above, and she looked upwards languidly with him. And then left him, and climbed up to get some, with a kind of numbed despair, and found a great deal. “There are lots up here,” she cried, and “Are there?” he said, but would not climb up to join her. She picked a handful. He watched her from below…. A car rushed by‚ and he said nothing, and looked at her…. Then she climbed down, warily, and with the awkward grace of her youth. But could not manage the last part, unless she risked a jump, and smiled weakly at her predicament, and took his hand, and managed it. But the blackberries were all crushed in her hand. She showed them to him in her messy fingers, and they stood close together, and he selected the best one for himself. He ate this, and she consumed the rest — one after another — her childish greed for sweet things rising momentarily above her sombre mood — blending strangely in with her disconsolate condition…. They walked on in a dream.

  *

  In a dream. At the top of the hill they side-tracked to the right along a rutted clayey road that led to the two windmills of Clayton Hill. The sky grew darker every moment, but still it did not rain. There was a wind up here, though. Far in the distance, and over infinite grey undulations, lay the lead-grey sea. One of the two mills was in motion — steadily creaking in the wind. Creaking above the county, which sang in the gusts beneath. An unearthly sound, heard alone by them. And miles below they discerned a doll-like train, gushing madly ahead to London, like a messenger with vindictive tidings. They could not hear any noise, though they thought they caught a long-drawn whistle…. That silent, gushing train was most dreamlike of all.

  And then it began to rain.

  Hesitantly at first, with sudden dashes of spleen. They put their collars up, and he took her arm, and they made for a tall-treed little wood in a valley to their right. The spleen increased, and all at once it was no longer spleen, but the steady deliberate abuse of intentional downpour…. They cried to each other and commenced to run…. They were racing each other. She half fell once, and he looked back, but she recovered and followed…. They arrived together, hand in hand: and they looked each other gravely in the eyes, and found themselves in each other’s arms, and paused, and kissed each other.

  It was the rain’s doing. It patted down on the roof of leaves, and stormed slantingly in the open. It was ruthlessly responsible.

  The rush of noise was amazing. They were the most quiet of all things on the Downs. After a while she left his face, and put her head on his shoulder.

  *

  Then she was lying back, speechless, on the wet turf, and he was leaning over her. And “Oh, Jackie dear — dear!” he was saying. And she was taking his head in her hands and kissing it — shamelessly, deliberately, and with profound proficiency. She had never done such a thing in her lite before, but she was, from some mysterious and beautiful source, an adept. Each contact of her lips was the deliberate signing and sealing of her surrender. She was his for ever, and that was the end of the matter. Then she put him away from her, and they sat up, and began to talk.

  *

  The rain still held. Sometimes Jackie left their retreat, and went out to bl
ink at the sky, and hold out her hand, and make unfavourable reports. Sometimes he joined her, and held her hand, while they blinked together. They smiled and laughed continually, and he seldom let go of her hand. At half-past twelve they had their sandwiches. They sat up, munching with smiling stuffed mouths at each other, infinitely charmed by this droll and irrelevant replenishment of their baser selves. But then they were infinitely amused and charmed by everything. And they called each other “dear” and “darling.” Tremblingly, exultingly they did this, and giddy with their sudden right to these age-old utterances of cherishment — their sudden admittance into the ranks of lovers.

  They saved a few sandwiches providently for Tea (as they called it), stowed them away in his pocket, and as it was now raining very feebly, went out, arm in arm, for a walk. They began to talk about the future after a time, but they soon decided that that might wait for to-morrow. After all, they had the rest of their lives for that, hadn’t they? They spoke little. There was nothing but the grey scudding sky, the roar of the wind, the soggy white track, and the rumble and exacting recurring creases of her mackintosh as her body swayed along…. “Thank God it rained,” she said.

  They came into the main road at last, and encountered a poor wet cyclist, wheeling his machine up the hill, and a dismal labourer, who asked them the time. With infinite pains did they endeavour to give the true time to this labourer. In such a way only might they weakly compensate him for his unlovely and loveless condition. They desired to compensate the entire world.

  They had a look at the Clayton church, and they had a look at some ducks in a pond near by, and were filled with pity and affection for their perky, splashed, rainbow-coloured, benignant, waddling, silent affairs — an affection communicated to each other solely by the hand, for they had no words for such things. Then they said that they would go home for tea. But by home they meant their old retreat under the trees, and by tea they meant their sandwiches. They climbed the hill by another route. This climbing was marked by a charming event, for, going aside from the road, Richard discovered a nest. And in this nest was a thrush, resting upon its young. It appeared to take no notice of them, but looked ahead, in the quiet, dripping hedge, with shining eyes of angry patience. They were almost horrified by the intensity and stark singleness of purpose in nature. The poor bird, as Richard said, could n’t even read a book: its present object was to sit upon its young, and it had to wait, in utter resigned exclusion from all activity, until that object was fulfilled. Richard took this light-heartedly; but Jackie, as they passed on, was thoughtful and impressed. Under the influence of her love she was a different creature — queerly sensitive to new strange appeals….

  They found their old place, and they sat down to have their tea. But the sandwiches were all crushed and damp in their greasy paper, and, on their being put down for a moment, two little ants were found running all over them in criss-cross directions. And a beetle was near by‚ with an air of having had an evil black bite or two; and they were rather put off. But they did not want their tea, really: they only wanted to sit up, warm and close to each other, and watch the rain, which was now pouring down with all its old liberality, and coming in two fascinating different rains — one slantwise and heavy — the other perpendicular and fine — a clever, enchanted pattern.

  And sitting and watching this rain on the humid ground, and with Jackie’s little wrist-watch ticking away the last hour they had, and with Jackie’s grubby, moist little hand in his, and with Jackie’s face and mouth, all stained with blackberries, and in a great mess, lain against his own, they spent the last glowing hour of their day.

  And all at once it seemed to Jackie that until this moment she had not understood this thing at all. She felt something stealing in upon her — something which made her cold and frightened, and yet infinitely consoled…. She remembered that thrush, in all its little fortitude and helplessness and loneliness, and she was suddenly aware of communing with something beyond herself, above herself — of being an ally, even, in some magnificent and pitiless purpose beyond her.

  All things conspired to this conclusion — the whole thick, intense, labouring life of the drenched grey summer about her — the lush grotesquerie of it all — birds, trees, ants, spiders, beetles, flies, nettles, weeds — the flora and fauna of a rain-soaked universe, working out their own strange, vivid destinies. She was filled with the uncanniness and stupendous wickedness of nature in this half-light. And yet because she was here with him, because her whole life was now fulfilled by him, she was part of that wickedness, and exulted in that participation. She was in the grasp of nature — and nature, with all its merciless cruelty, was a merciless bestower as well — a bestower for its own ends, and she had been singled out for its loveliest and most terrible of gifts.

  And if nature was cruel, thought Jackie, then she, Jackie, also was cruel. And from her eyes glowed all the mysteries of all the cruelties since the world’s beginning.

  *

  His arms were still about her, and she could not move. She could never be parted from him, ever again. She was damp and afraid, but she was safe. So long as he held her, she was safe. It was not her own doing. The earth around her, with its gaunt burden of mist and rain, imprisoning them here, was answerable for it all.

  All these thoughts flowed through her, and she wanted to express them to him. She wanted to tell him her revelation, her new, exultant understanding and wisdom. She wanted him to know that she, a poor thing in the rain, was the proudest and most momentous thing on earth; that she was no longer a girl — that he, mystically, had made her a woman. Yes, that was it; he had transformed her into a woman. She was a member of the race: she was uplifted: she was here to further the divine and terrific intrigue of the weeping world around her. It had found her, and she had found herself.

  And he had done this. He was her own. She looked up at her possession. He was quite a weak thing — a mere implement in the hands of her overflowing and irresistible emotion. And yet her whole soul surged out in a flood of gratitude to him, for having come and awakened her. She could never tell him. She began to cry.