The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic)

by Anna Kavan

  He looked round the room, instinctively seeking some well-known reassurance that had always been there before, but today, when most needed, was unaccountably not forthcoming. An indefinable air of estrangement about the walls and the familiar objects around him transformed him into a stranger in their midst. He was no longer at home here. Oppressed by his reluctance to start the day, to take up the burden of living again, he was still lying in bed; and this unprecedented sloth made him feel even more of a stranger to himself, and to all around him.

  Because he’d just ceased to remember yesterday with any distinctness, at first he didn’t think of his clothes. But when he noticed that the bundle had gone, the shock roused him effectively. Jumping out of bed, he looked quickly around, making sure that the things were not anywhere in the room; then, hurriedly, automatically, he started to dress, his mind all the while gripped separate in apprehension. He couldn’t ask himself why he was so disturbed by the bundle’s disappearance without reviving his guilty shame, of which he was now aware only as the numbed pain of an internal wound, bearable as it was, but liable to become agonizing again at the least touch – at a glance even. It must at all costs be shielded, hidden; his whole being seemed to turn inwards and close round it protectively, to keep it secret. Nobody must know about it, or even guess it was there.

  He knew the bundle was somehow connected with this shameful secret wound. Could it lead to its exposure? His obscure dread was that it might in some way betray his secret. What a fool he had been not to lock his door against Vera’s detestable curiosity, for of course she must have taken the things. Full of animosity towards her, the moment he was ready he ran downstairs, knowing he’d find her in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, before their mother came down.

  *

  The first thing he saw there when he opened the door was the missing garments, clean and pressed, hanging neatly over the back of a chair. Unprepared for this, he was taken aback, and stood staring, while Vera explained, without leaving the stove, how she hadn’t disturbed him the night before but had brought down his clothes to clean them while their mother was out of the way.

  Oswald thanked her uncomfortably, thinking that no one could have been kinder, more helpful. Why wasn’t he grateful? Why did he still feel unfriendly? Dimly he perceived that it wasn’t only that he distrusted Vera – he didn’t want the contact of friendliness with her or with anyone. He who had always been sociable and warm-hearted, was shut off alone, in the dark enclosure of himself. He wondered at it a little without understanding, feeling isolated as he had never been.

  All at once, he knew his sister’s eyes were upon him and he looked at her. Although she averted them hurriedly, he’d already caught their sidelong, searching glance of sharp, hungry curiosity, which infuriated and frightened him like a glimpse of the devil.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ he asked, coldly hostile. A sort of frenzied suspicion surged up in him. She seemed to be trying to uncover his secret wound, round which he clutched himself still more tightly, standing there rigid, tense with exasperation; while she remained silent, her face turned from him, hurt by the way he had spoken.

  In reality, she was a pathetic person. She’d seen her fate clearly when her two sisters left home, doomed to stay there as long as her mother lived, and had forced herself to accept the position. But she couldn’t force herself not to resent her frustration in life and love, or not to be ashamed of her ignorance, which she felt was degrading. Since she was to be denied the experience of passionate love, someone should at least tell her something about it, to save her from the ignominy of her absolute ignorance. And only Oswald could do so – she couldn’t possibly ask her mother. Always brooding, the obsessed girl had come to believe that he knew of the craving, tormenting her all the time, worse than an aching tooth. Surely he couldn’t be so heartless as to leave it unsatisfied?

  By speaking kindly to her for a moment when he came home last night he had raised her hopes. In the midnight silence, working over his clothes, she’d made an imaginary bargain with him, persuading herself that, in return, he would tell her something of those mysteries she was longing to share. There must be a connection between his love affair and the stains she was patiently sponging away; so here was a readymade opening, the subject would come up naturally, of itself.

  When he merely asked angrily what she was staring at, she felt defrauded. It seemed most unkind, most unfair. Driven by her desperate desire for the information he cruelly seemed to deliberately withholding, she asked him how he’d got into such a mess – anyone would think he’d been in the sea. All her pathetic yearning was in her eyes as she put this leading question, begging him to save her from a lifetime of feeling inferior to other women.

  But he thought she was searching for his secret wound with those imploring eyes, which to him were importunate, impudent and intrusive – intolerably spying. His secret was locked inside him, safe as long as it was left alone. But if she kept on peering and prying, something might come to light; which was unthinkable. He shuddered at the possibility of his raw, wincing wound exposed to her indecent inquisitiveness. She ought not to have even suspected its existence. No longer seeing her as his sister, who shared precious memories of the past, he wanted to thrust her away, slash her out of his sight. He had to hold himself in, clenching his fists as he stood, biting his lips, without saying a word.

  Each enclosed in a private obsession, the pair confronted one another like figures under glass domes who could never possibly come together. The girl had no way of knowing that the fair, fine-looking, soldierly young man before her was imprisoned in a very dark place where he couldn’t even see her. But she at last realized from his attitude that he would never tell her the things she was dying to know. It seemed to her a callous disregard of her urgent need; base ingratitude, after she’d worked half the night on his clothes. She was stung into an attempt at retaliation.

  I suppose you quarrelled with your girl-friend, and that’s why you looked so glum last night. Did she push you into the water?’ Half frightened by her own audacity, feeling she was going too far, she couldn’t quite bring off the sneer.

  Her brother still didn’t speak, merely giving her a long, stem, frigid, outraged look, as if to oppose her obscene curiosity with his eyes, until he’d extinguished it.

  Unable to meet that cold, blue, insulting stare, she turned back to the stove. But, the next moment, seeing him on his way to the door, she called after him, feeling goaded: ‘You’re going to her now, aren’t you? Crawling back like a smacked pup ... it’s disgusting ... you might at least wait till after breakfast ...’, her voice expiring in an undignified sob.

  But he was no longer aware of her, or of what she was saying. He had moved with instinctive decision, knowing only that he must get away from her and from everything here. This had become his one aim and object, and he kept on, deeply preoccupied with his inner need to avoid all contact, along the flagged passage and into the yard, not giving Vera a thought. While she stood, crushed by the final affront of his going without a word, as though she were beneath his notice, tears overflowing her eyes unheeded, hearing the coachhouse door open, the car start up and drive away.

  When her mother called to her from another room she didn’t answer, but, angrily drying her eyes, thought with indignation, Off he goes, and leaves me to do all his dirty work as usual. Now she would have to cope with the old lady, pacify her, invent some plausible excuse for Oswald’s behaviour.

  Yet she didn’t really resent it particularly, for in this he was only exercising his masculine privilege, as was to be expected.

  7

  NO more conscious of where he was going than of the distress he had caused his sister, Oswald drove for a time in a curious, neutral, blank state. When he suddenly noticed the moor, all very bare and grey, stripped to the bone for winter, under the leaden and lowering sky, it was with a shock like surprise. Why was he on this road – the road to The Hope Deferred?

  While he slept, tha
t part of him which was concerned with his adjustment to life had decided he must not see Rejane again; and, consciously, he’d made up his mind to telephone an excuse for not coming to say goodbye in person. Now, at first, he thought merely that he’d had to escape from his home, where there was no peace, no security for him. Yet, even as he felt the appropriate bitterness, he knew that his was not the real explanation – his thoughts seemed not to be what he was really thinking.

  Having perceived this, he went on to perceive that the same principle applied to everything, outside as well as within him. Even the moor he’d known and loved all his life appeared changed and unreal. Even his army career, which had been more important than anything to him, had become an illusion; and what was left of his world he couldn’t imagine. His vague impression was that it had collapsed, and that he was lost in the debris, the general debacle.

  When he saw the familiar double drive and the hotel ahead, he realized all at once that he’d been drawn here helplessly, with no say in the matter. He had, simply, to see Rejane. Nobody, nothing else really existed; it was her absence that made his world seem unreal, for she was his only reality.

  Pulling up sharply a little way from the entrance, he sat for a moment, motionless, while this sank in. In all the world, she alone was real and had definition. Everything else was illusion. And she was about to leave him. He sat as if stunned. Then, collecting himself quickly, glancing about to see if he’d been observed, he hurriedly left the car and went into the building.

  His thoughts and emotions were all in chaos. He couldn’t tell whether love or hate was making his hand shake so that he could hardly open the door of her room, though his training in discipline kept him very correct and calm outwardly, his magnificent soldier’s figure almost at attention, as he stood before her.

  After his conduct, and the general nightmare of yesterday, she had neither wished nor expected to see him again. But now she was in such high spirits because she was going back to her own world that nothing mattered; nothing could affect her happiness. She gave him a radiant smile of pure joy because she was leaving him and all this gloomy northern interlude for ever. She even said, ‘I’m glad you came over to say goodbye.’

  She seemed even more beautiful than he’d remembered. In spite of his disillusionment and the efforts he’d made to destroy his love, her beauty still held him enthralled. The sound of the word goodbye caused him an anguish so acute that it wrung from him the exclamation, ‘How could I possibly not have come?’ His eyes burned fever bright, and, as he spoke, he extended his arms curiously in a tortured movement, as if he were on the rack, of which he knew nothing, only amazed by the note of open avowal he heard in his own voice – so it was love, not hate, in the end.

  He watched her, bemused; he was as though mesmerized by her loveliness, which her happy excitement increased by the faintest flush, so that she had the perfection of a pale rose. The very air about her seemed scented and full of light. He took deep breaths of the perfume he loved; and, as though it were intoxicating, or possessed magic powers, a remarkable change came over him. His splendid body seemed to come more alive, the expression more animated on his handsome young face. All of a sudden, he really had that officer-in-a-crack-regiment’s air of light-hearted assurance and of carrying all before him, which had always belonged to his aura but previously been in abeyance. Suddenly smiling and debonair, he proposed to drive her to catch the boat-train, sweeping aside arrangements already made with such smiling confidence that she looked at him in surprise.

  Emerging briefly from her dream of departure, she coolly and shrewdly surveyed the young man who was directing the hotel staff with this new sort of aplomb, as if he expected to be obeyed by everyone to the end of time. This was as he should always have been. Yet to her at least there was something faintly unnatural about the performance; it was not quite convincing. He was giving orders about her things, smiling and irresistible, as if to the manner bom. But his brilliant blue eyes had a crazy sparkle, and, with the lock of whitish hair falling between them, in spite of all his correctness, he looked strange – wild and reckless, feverish; almost a bit demented. She could see through this reckless wildness to the helpless despair beneath. At the back of his crazily glittering eyes was the pathos of a blank lost look, which told her she had nothing to fear from him. As far as she was concerned he was finished – his day was done. He was only a sort of phantom to her from the past; no need to believe he was real for an instant. Back she slipped into her happy dreaming again, already far distant from him, as, with queer, smiling, unnatural ease he escorted her from The Hope Deferred for the very last time.

  Oswald himself was rather puzzled by this access of unexpected assurance. Where could it have come from? But he was glad to accept it and to let it sweep him along. As long as it lasted, he felt bound to get his own way, as if he had made a pact with the devil; or as if the black threat of loss hanging over him brought this strange compensation of confidence which was almost a touch of madness.

  In the car he continued to be animated, refusing to think of either the past or the future, cutting off his perceptions deliberately, trying to limit them to each moment as it came, and to the small, familiar, moving enclosure where he was alone with the woman he loved. The attempt was only partly successful: though he wouldn’t admit it, some part of him never ceased being aware of what each passing moment was bringing nearer. Darkness and loss were advancing, implacable as the night.

  At the station he would not see beyond Rejane’s beauty, which, like a lighted lamp, illuminated the grey, bitter day and the drab platform. Nevertheless at the back of his mind he was aware that the darkness was closing in. The train was due to leave immediately, and, having installed her in it, he got out and stood stiffly, as if on guard, gazing up at her window.

  She was wearing her fur coat, and, though he hadn’t noticed it specially so far, he now saw how the dusky, soft, luxurious coat, made of the skins of many little dead animals, accentuated her living beauty. Its bulk made her seem smaller and frailer, almost like a fragile little girl. A pang went through him, unendurable – how could he be parted from her and live? Again he unconsciously stretched his arms in that peculiar tortured gesture. While the train suddenly shuddered along all its length, all the hairs of the small dead animals trembled, as if with returning life; and the man also trembled, and his life seemed to pause. Darkness was upon him.

  With that night descending, he heard his voice speak again, but most strangely, out of the dark, stricken depths: ‘I can’t bear to see you go.’ It was against all his inherited instincts as well as his disciplined training to say such a thing; but nothing mattered now in the darkness where his life hung in suspense.

  She called, ‘Then come with me – come and see me on to the boat’, smiling, not making the suggestion quite seriously, but with a sort of gay challenge, as if saying, ‘I dare you to come.’

  He had no time to answer before, with a strong heave, the train pulled her away, starting to slide past him, curving and gliding out of the station. Already the engine was out of sight, the bare rails, nakedly gleaming, stretching out longer and longer, while people waved or turned already towards the exits.

  Without a thought in his head, the young man watched the last compartment glide past, then, at the very end of the train came the luggage-van, its big sliding doors still open wide as if to welcome him in; as all his splendid muscles effortlessly combined, with perfect co-ordination and timing, to swing him on board.

  Two men in uniform, stacking trunks at the back of the van, stared, astounded, as at an angel fallen from heaven, before they began to protest and approach him. As if they were paper men, Oswald pushed them aside, with a strange inhuman assurance, pressing money into their hands, a fixed uncanny grin on his face. Not knowing what to make of it, they stood speechlessly staring, while he crossed the iron connecting-plates, clashing and jerking under his feet, and came to the corridor of the train beyond.

  He was still posses
sed of that unnatural confidence, against which no obstruction could stand. The meaningless shapes and noises fell back and were instantly lost, swallowed up by the roar and rush of the train. Everything clattering and rocking round him, with mad immutable calm he walked down the swaying corridor until he found Rejane’s compartment and entered. Light came back to him then, and to the world, his life went on again. At the last moment, he had been reprieved.

  The reprieve was only temporary, a poor depreciating investment to set against the bankruptcy of total loss he would still soon have to face. But for the moment he was beyond fate’s reach, safe in his charmed assurance, laughing and talking with an animation that was not his own, his eyes brilliant and distracted, feeling unlike himself, rather as though he were slightly drunk.

  Rejane glanced at him dubiously now and then, not at all sure that she wanted him with her. She hadn’t expected him to come, really. But his spectacular leap on to the moving train had pleased her vanity; and a handsome man was always a desirable appendage, an accessory to her elegance, and an insurance against any momentary lack of self-confidence. So she accepted him, with certain provisos, for the time being.

  *

  The short journey was soon over. Masts appeared, like a forest of bare saplings, clustered against the sullen gleam of grey water. Then they were at the station, which was part of the docks, and in the harbour itself.

  As Oswald heard the harsh cries of gulls, his assurance abruptly vanished, leaving him unprotected. By the sudden chill that gripped him, he knew he should never have come. Yet he must go through with it now; he was committed.

  With automatic efficiency he dealt with porters and luggage. Then, emerging beside Rejane from the echoing station, he was startled by the portentous sight of the liner’s great hull just in front of them, looming like the ominous, enormous symbol of inexorable fate, high over their heads.