Alone together all the afternoon. Oh, at last! … It was so still, we heard the hot bees burning in the rosemary. The blind knocked, knocked. Through it the violent afternoon light was purple, almost black. “No, truly, darling,” he whispered, coaxing, “I didn’t find anybody else Not one … I couldn’t forget you … I did miss you …” I still can’t help wondering sometimes though … About five we came down, had tea and bread and honey in the kitchen where it was cool. Then we walked down across the field with our bathing things … I’d been nervous about producing Rollo; all they knew—except Anna—was a friend down for the day; but now I didn’t worry any more. I suppose it was because of feeling released, slack, peaceful after the afternoon. He was rather nervous. He kept saying: “What’ll I talk to them about? I don’t know about books and pictures, darling.”
That evening was a riot. What fun it was! … A bathing party breaks ice among strangers quicker than anything else I know. Something about swimming together makes immediate intimacy. By the time we were out of the water, we were all old friends. Adrian had turned up with a German young man from Berlin, to whom he’d been showing Oxford. His name was Kurt, and he was very decorous-mannered, anxious for information, determined to be equal to any manifestation of English behaviour. He wore an amethyst ring and a stylish light cloth overcoat, elegantly buttoned in to his waist, never taking it off—except for bathing; and a few spots apart, he was attractive. Adrian had got bored with him and was neglecting him shamefully; and Anna was being nice to him. He was a beautiful swimmer, and justly proud of his torso. He added a curious, slightly unreal element.
The westering sun was spilled all over the water. A pleasure steamer went by, crowded, people were dancing on board to the gramophone. They waved as they passed. On the opposite bank some little girls, skirts pulled up to their waists, were dipping and splashing each other with shrieks; and two fat middle-aged couples in black clothes came and sat down close to where we undressed, and took off their boots and drank ginger beer, and ate out of paper bags and stared, munched, stared at us in silence. They must have been on an outing. Like a picture by Rousseau, they looked; all in a stiff row; the bourgeoisie under the aspect of eternity.
Colin and Rollo hit it off together from the word go. Colin was happy that day—giggling, cursing the horseflies, trying to turn somersaults and dive off Rollo’s shoulders. They made such an odd contrast; Rollo, tall, broad-backed, narrow-loined, white-skinned, ruddy, giving out that sense of harmonious effortless privileged existence; Colin, small, thick, sunburnt, muscular, with his thin hair plastered down long, lank with wet, over his forehead, his face rough-modelled like a head in clay, all broad steep planes, thumbed into hollows at the temples, beneath the cheek-bones. Such a contrast … But that evening Colin had thrown off the thoughts that furrow and corrode him. His face was alight, enjoying the moment, his voice quick and laughing, without its echoing, heavy note of melancholy. I longed to keep him like that always, bathing in sunny water, not thinking at all, just being. Afterwards, dressing, they stood in the sun by a thorn bush, towels round their waists, lighting cigarettes for each other, slipping their shirts vaguely over their roughened heads, their clear, hard, square-breasted chests—deep in talk, not hurrying, forgetting the rest of us. I see them now, so absorbed, so idle in the sun … “What a fascinating character,” said Anna quietly to me, as we sat on the bank. She never says anything she doesn’t mean, so I was glad. She watched him, I could see she was delighted by his physical ease and charm. We went back and had supper. We needed more eggs for scrambling, and Rollo dashed me to the farm for them in his car. That was the only moment we had alone all evening. He was so cheerful, enchanted to find highbrows were quite ordinary and easy to get on with. He said Colin was a marvellous chap, wasn’t he? What did he do? Studying nervous diseases at the moment, I said, and left it at that. The word psycho-analysis starts stubborn resistance in Rollo; the only time I tried to explain, he would go on saying surely people ought to be able to get themselves straight by themselves, and isn’t it an excuse for gutlessness? … He didn’t know anything about it, and he supposed there was a lot in it, but personally he couldn’t imagine himself ever wanting to go and pour out his troubles to a perfect stranger. Why not be a Roman Catholic and go to confession once a week, and be done with it? In fact, he got distressed as well as fogged … So I gave him quickly a list of all the jobs Colin has had in the past. “By Gum!” he said. “He must be versatile.” It sounded so schoolboyish, I got a shock—admiring Colin for all the things he’s tried and got sick of—teaching, translating, being a journalist, being secretary to a gallery, doing woodcuts, masks, hand-printed stuffs, market-gardening—none of which expresses Colin in the least—or rather only the crack right though him which makes everything sooner or later equally distasteful. “Too much in the brain-pan, I expect, to settle down,” said Rollo comfortably—the silly. For the first time I realised it’s no use telling him really what people are like. He doesn’t care to inquire … If I weren’t in love with him, would this matter rather? Might I get irritated? Bored? …
“I am enjoying myself, darling,” I said.
After supper we piled into his car and went rushing to a pub Adrian knew about, a few miles up the river. What was it called? … A pretty name … The Wreath of May. Picturesque is the word for it—old, thatched, whitewashed, sagging, full of beams. We sat outside on a bench against the front of the house. The garden is quite big, long, running down to the river. The light was rich and still, standing in simple gold shapes among the shadows. Groups sat about on the lawn under apple trees, and the grass was brilliant, thick; there were a good many beds of cottage roses, red, white, pink, carefully tended. Two swans lurched up the path from the river. From the bar just behind our heads came men’s laughter and clinking of glass. Chaps with Oxfordshire voices kept roaring up their motor-bikes and going away on them with ugly girls in crinoline straw hats and flowered frocks and high heels and twisted, peaky expressions in their calves, genteelly riding pillion. We drank ale out of mugs. Colin began to get drunk and talk about trees … Staring at a grove of poplars, alders, willows, growing up high all together the other side of the road, picking out the variety of shape, colour, texture, depth in them. “Now why can’t painters do anything about them? … Anna? You just scratch them in all exactly alike and think you’re painting trees … even Simon …”
Anna just smiled. It began to grow dark, stars pricked the blue-iris air, a white owl swooped from the poplar out towards the river, and Colin leapt up excited, waving his arms, saying:
“Did you see? Did you see? That meant something! …” Kurt said, interested, “De oil is ein English symbolism, yes?” and down sat Colin, punctured; and then giggled. After a bit he sighed, and said:
“It’s the first sign of madness when every object appears to contain a hidden meaning—that nothing’s what it is … In another moment you’ll grasp what’s going on behind the scenes, what everything’s up to—but you never do … Those children paddling this afternoon—they were tremendously significant, important in some cosmic scheme or other I thought I had a glimpse of … It’s wrong, it’s bad. Mystic … I find it extremely painful.”
And he was silent, we all were … We went indoors and had more drinks. We found an ancient piano in the bar, and Anna played, and we yelled songs, and Adrian did a mad dance with Colin. Kurt suddenly began to sing to himself; his voice was beautiful, he sang louder, alone, soon, German songs, and everybody came round to listen. Adrian borrowed my hanky to wipe his eyes, and wrung my hand with feeling too deep for words … By the time we left we were all fairly drunk, with varying results. Anna seems to whisk, fly about on her thin legs like a cat, very quiet and amused. Nothing happens to Rollo except that he gets more so … seems to give out double strength, like an electric radiator switched on full from half. He beams and towers and is very much in control of his wits … luckily that night; it was a crazy car load, tearing thr
ough the lanes. The roof was open, and Colin stood up in the back, hailing every passer-by with free courtly gestures. Adrian found our straw shopping bags we’d brought stuffed with bathing things in case of another dip, and he put one on his head, one on Kurt’s, the handles under their chins. God! they looked funny … We had to stop once for them all to get out; Adrian made a wild rushing leap at a quick-set hedge and landed on top, stuck fast, his long limbs waving. We tried to drag him off, and he kept shouting, “I’m an eagle! I’m spread! I’m an eagle!” And Anna and I gave up hauling on his ankles and sank limp, tortured with laughter, on the bank … Rollo seemed to assume the role of host or manager, I remember that, and looked after everybody, giving sudden bursts of laughter now and then to himself, shepherding them into the house. He started off for London about midnight with Adrian and Carl; they had to get back, Kurt was travelling back to Germany next day. They were getting subdued and sleepy, but Colin, who was with us for the week-end, was still going strong. I kissed Rollo good-night and he was embarrassed till he realised kissing was going on all round, and then he gave me a kiss and Anna one too, and Colin and he shook hands, both hands, for a considerable time.
“One last favour, my dear,” said Adrian. “The gin.” And he took the bottle and climbed into the car beside Kurt. They started, we waved … and suddenly Colin went off at a gallop down the road after them, took a spring on to the running-board and went head first in on top of them. We saw his feet sticking out as they rounded the corner, and that was the last of them … He came down again by train next afternoon rather morose and yellow, and merely said the journey back had been successful. Rollo had upper-class charm, he said … “Obviously madly neurotic …” I was furious.
I suppose I saw him about five times in all the rest of that month. There wasn’t any more fun. He snatched times and drove down. Never a night. I ate my heart out rather, as they say … We sat in a cornfield once, and once or twice took a punt on the river … It was towards the end of the month he was always moody, his high spirits were gone. He pretended not—but catching his face in repose, it was heavy, his mouth drooped; though when I asked, he said immediately, no, nothing …
It was an absolute surprise, the sudden plan to go abroad together. I’d been thinking he and Nicola would be sure to be going off somewhere in August, wondering how I could possibly bear it, but I never mentioned it—dreading what I’d hear, I expect—deciding to scrape the money somehow and join Jocelyn, rather than stay alone, gnawing away, always being the planless left-behind one. Anna was going to the south of France for a bit with some others, she wanted to be near Simon … She’s still there, I suppose … I’ll hear when I get back …
Why shouldn’t we? He said, Why not? I’d never heard him speak like that—defiant, bitter-sounding; more as if his motive was to do something against the world than with me. Nicola wasn’t well again, the brief improvement was over, I wasn’t too shattered to hear, she wanted to go down to Cornwall, instead of the trip to Ireland they’d tentatively planned. “And I’m damned if I see why I should go with her,” he said. I felt half-thrilled, half-alarmed, hearing him say it. He could only be away a fortnight, so we decided to fly to Vienna and pick up George’s car and drive about in it. Dear George, always coming in so useful. He’d left his car in Vienna and wanted it driven home. We thought we might do that. It seemed too good to be true, coming unexpectedly like that, I hardly knew myself for joy. The only snag was telling Mother, I dreaded searching questions; but there was no trouble at all. When I went home for a night, she was busy preparing for Kate’s children’s visit, touching up the nostrils of the rocking-horse with red paint, and beyond a momentary attempt to arrange I should stop in France and see James and a warning about not losing my passport, she seemed quite satisfied I should be going out with friends to join friends. She likes people to go abroad and broaden their minds. She rummaged in her wardrobe and dug out for me a little canvas bag you’re supposed to strap on round your waist under your skirt and keep money and valuables in. She’d worn it the time she went to Italy with Dad, twenty years ago. It was astonishingly obscene. I sent it to Anna with instructions. … She- gave me five pounds, which was sweet of her, and I bought this nice coat in the sales.
It’s strange I don’t remember more deeply, vividly about this time … Perhaps I will a bit later when the images have taken their place in the gallery, and I can stand back and look at them. Oh, what a beautiful holiday! … Will it ever happen again? What’s going to come next? Nothing stays without development, growth or decay. The pause has gone on too long, the immobility … Like August, the sinister pause in the year … But August will go over, the year tip imperceptibly towards inevitable change … I feel the change ahead, it must be, I know; I don’t see what or when …
My first flight, sitting beside him, among the other quiet, somehow ghost-like passengers turning their heads, raising, lowering papers; sun on the huge wings, our shadow far below us on the water; sun, heat all the way; coming down outside foreign towns, sweeping off again; the journey so smooth, sheltered, easy with Rollo—the unmistakable dependably-tipping English gentleman. A night and a day in Vienna; but it was too hot, and we found the car and motored off into the country where we could feel lost and safe … Oh, it was peaceful … We stayed always in little inexpensive places for fear of English tourists; not that we didn’t see plenty, but not the ones he’d know. Never more than one night in any place … The super-romantic obvious landscape—peaks, pinewoods, lakes, waterfalls, bright-green villages—not Anna’s taste, or Simon’s, I was sure—rivers rolling their turbulent, thick, grey snow-waters through Innsbruck, Salzburg; spacious white peasant houses with their painted fronts and shutters and rich wooden balconies covered with vines and geraniums; churches set high, with those white towers and green bulbous domes; the bare clean pinewood floors and furniture of our nightly bedrooms; the smiling, sociable Austrian faces with their open uncomplicated look of innocence and equability, their bursts of laughter and music in little cafés, their soft grüss gotts, bitte schöns, mahlzeits … We did enjoy our meals too. I got plump in a week on eggs and meat and creamy vegetables, and coffee mit schlagen. We walked in the woods, we picked blueberries, we bathed, we got bitten by horseflies, and drank from mountain brooks … Lord, what a rustic idyll … The smell of the pines in the hot afternoon, while I read poetry aloud to him. Housman was what he liked best, and Wilfred Owen … He bought me a peasant dress in Innsbruck—nice stuff, silver buttons on the bodice. I wore it every day, he liked it; it gave me a touch of disguise, of novelty and excitement for him …
It wasn’t long. Only ten days all told. It seems much longer—and yet nothing—a pause without even a breath. We never had a quarrel or an argument. More tender, more dreamlike every day, not in the world at all.
One night we drove late, up in the mountains. No moon, but starlight made a muffled incandescence … When I was a child I had more sense of infinity, of the universe, than I have now. I’d stare at the stars till gradually they began to be worlds to me, spinning immense in space, and under the awe and terror of them I’d sink away, dissolve. Now I don’t generally bother to look at them, and when I do they remain points of light in the sky … But that night the feeling came back. “Look, look at the stars!” They hung enormous over peak and valley.
“Good Lord! They are bright!” he said. “What are they so big for?”
He switched off the headlights and drew in to the roadside. It was cold in the mountains, he wrapped me in the rug, I put my head on his shoulder. What stillness it was … I listened. How many sounds? Rollo, whistling softly, intermittently. One frog, very loud. The wind, a light gust, now and then. Cowbells, in the distance. A brook, striking a tiny, rapid chime. A little waterfall hush-hushing somewhere. The number of sounds was surprising; they seemed to help make up the enormous silence … He sniffed up the air, and said:
“I wonder where we are? We can’t be near the lake. I don
’t smell water.”
I giggled. “Rollo, can you really smell water?”
“Of course,” he said. “Can’t you?”
It got too cold, we drove on. Round the next corner was the lake, big stars aching over it, breaking in it, misty. “There now, you can’t smell water!”
And I remember, of course, the evening before the last. Stopping in the evening at a small gasthaus, set a little back from a narrow, dusty road edged with apple trees, leading to the village. There were tables and white chairs set about under chestnut trees, and a band was playing in a corner of the yard—three yellow-haired youths, that is, in leather shorts and green jackets and hats with feathers—two violins and an accordion, playing slightly ludicrous merry tunes, and sometimes singing. After a while they packed up and Rollo gave them some money, a good deal, I should think, from the way they beamed and bowed to us, and wished us luck; and then they took out their instruments and played us one more tune to honour us before they went away. We felt moved by that absurd sentimental little band. After a while, we were the only people left; we sat on under the trees, drinking a bottle of ice-cold yellow wine … Oh, let me think about it all again, let me remember … His eyes looked into my eyes, he was utterly in love with me then … at last … I knew he was.
“Listen,” he said, “let’s not go back. Why should we ever go back? I don’t want anybody any more but you. Let’s just go on being together—anywhere—round the world if you like. There’ll never be anything so good as this again and why should we miss it?—break it off? Let’s not go to Salzburg to-morrow for our letters …” His voice, different from any voice of his I’d ever heard …
“We must,” I said.
The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels) Page 23
