by Martin Boyd
They went into a fashionable tea-shop. An acquaintance of Sylvia’s came in, and passing their table, stopped to speak to her. Sylvia introduced Dominic and said that he was an old family friend and just off to stay at Dilton.
“Why did you say that I was going to Dilton?” he asked, when the woman had gone away. “Do you think that I ought to?”
“No, but I thought it better to say that you were.”
“Why?”
Sylvia did not answer. She moved the cups on the table and began to pour out the tea. A situation had arisen. She had the same expression as when they walked up the Brompton Road after meeting Cousin Emma, a look of annoyance and uncertainty. Why was he so crude and stupid? It was obvious that she would want to conceal their association. Or was there again no association to conceal?
Dominic hitherto had been so full of his own emotions as a home-coming soldier, that he had not clearly thought of his relationship to Sylvia. He had only been looking for civilization and friendliness. But he was not as stupid as she thought, it was only that his perceptions were stronger than his reasoning facilities. Looking at Sylvia rather petulantly moving the tea-cups, he felt an echo of something else. It was of the woman in Béthune when, after ten minutes of polite conversation, she asked Hollis, if there was nothing doing, to go. He was shocked at himself for thinking of her in connection with that woman, and yet at the same time there was a kind of snap in his brain, as if the jam, the stoppage which so often he felt there, had been finally cleared away, and all that he required of life was open to him.
They did not speak much during tea, but Sylvia’s expression of uncertainty faded. They knew that there was an acknowledgement between them. Their bodies were now directing their minds, and there was no need to speak. When they left the tea-shop they took a taxi back to Catherine Street, and sat silent during the short drive. He did not touch her or take her hand. Their feelings were too strong and certain for any trivial caresses.
In her drawing-room she turned to him and they embraced closely, Dominic kissing her hungrily all over her face and neck. They separated, and when she had straightened herself before the grandiose Italian mirror she rang the bell. When her maid came she said: “Mr Langton has just come on leave. He wants a bath.”
It was as usual to offer a soldier arriving on leave a bath as a cup of tea, and the maid accepted this customary ritual.
“Will he be staying the night, madam?” she asked.
“No,” said Sylvia.
They allowed the maid time to run the bath and put out towels, and then they went upstairs, Sylvia into her own room and Dominic into the bathroom; but when he had undressed he did not get into the bath. He went instead into her room. She had drawn the apricot coloured curtains, on which the sun made a slanting rectangle of light, so that the room was full of a warm evening glow, in which she lay waiting for him on the bed. After months of harsh and squalid living, of brutality and chastity, his passion was almost beyond endurance.
But afterwards he sang in the bath, and when they came down they were more cheerful and easy together than they had ever been. Everything was acknowledged between them. They planned frankly how they could spend his whole leave together, day and night, and decided that it would be best to go out of London.
The snap in his brain, the feeling of mental liberation he had in the tea-shop, had infused his whole body. He had a sense of freedom in his body that filled him with joy. Nothing else mattered. He had won through. All his anxieties, his loneliness and frustrations were wiped away, like dusty webs that had been clouding his sight. He had never known such freedom. Perhaps he had felt a similar joy when he had first been married to Helena, but then it was as if he had entered a haven. He was also taking responsibility. Now he had escaped from enclosing walls and had discarded responsibility. With Helena he was apart from other men. With Sylvia he had broken through into their company. He was the same as other satisfied, normally sensual men, which, he thought, he had always wanted to be. He was full of the delight of his body, and he had ten days of that delight ahead of him. It was enough. All the rest was dreary nonsense. They dined in Sylvia’s tiny semi-basement dining-room. The room was so small that it was as if the dugout where he had first dined in the front line had been touched by some golden fairy’s wand. Sylvia again wore a dress of stiff yellow silk, and in the shaded light of the candles looked as if she were a portrait in the room. Her face was softened not only by this light, but by Dominic’s passionate love-making, so that it had a look of having undergone suffering, of a sad wisdom, mellowing her chiselled perfection.
When they came up into the brighter light of the drawing-room this illusion faded. They were lively and cheerful together, furthering the conspiracy of their bodies.
Sylvia had brought out a large map of England. They spread it on the floor and knelt beside it, looking for some place where they could go to stay. Sylvia, who had a wide acquaintance in the English counties, ruled out areas where they might run into her friends. Dominic, his romanticism working automatically, suggested Cornwall.
“It’s a long way to go,” she said, “but perhaps that’s a good thing. What part of Cornwall?”
“Penzance,” said Dominic.
“Why Penzance?”
“I like the name,” he said.
She laughed and rang up Paddington station to ask about the trains. The best one left at ten in the morning.
“We can’t catch that—not tomorrow,” she said as she put down the telephone.
“Why not?” asked Dominic.
“It’s only twelve hours from now. I shall have to make all kinds of arrangements and everyone will be asleep.”
“Look,” he said. “I’ve only got ten days’ leave. I can’t waste one.”
“No. But I can’t leave London till after tomorrow.”
“You could if it was a matter of life and death.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, pretend it is. It is to me—a matter of life.”
“Very well. I will,” she said. “I must telephone like blazes.”
First of all she rang up two or three London friends and put off social engagements. Then she rang up Hermione Maine, a friend who lived in Hertfordshire, where she had turned her country house into a hospital for convalescent officers. She asked her if she would say that she was staying there, if there were any enquiries for her in the next week. She would telephone her real address. She then wrote brief notes to Miss Charlton and to her mother, saying that Hermione wanted her to go down and help her at the hospital for a few days. All these deceptions, which normally would have disgusted Dominic, he accepted as necessary to remove the obstacles between him and his strong desire.
“There,” said Sylvia, as she stamped the letter to her mother. “Now, I’ve only got to tell the servants that I’m going down to Hermione’s in the morning.”
“You can do anything if you want to do it strongly enough,” said Dominic.
“Have you always done what you wanted?” asked Sylvia a little quizzically.
“Not always. But I’m going to from now on,” he said.
As he walked back to his hotel, having arranged to meet her at Paddington in the morning, he felt that he could always do what he wanted. It was easy he thought, when you knew what you wanted, and he certainly knew that. Hitherto his mind had been confused with childish scruples and nonsense.
In the morning while he was dressing, the telephone rang in his room. It was Sylvia. She had not taken into account the fact that through travelling so often with her father down to Frome, she was well known at Paddington station. She said that it would be better if they did not meet openly on the platform, but entered the train separately, joining each other after it had started. Dominic agreed to this reluctantly. In his new sense of power and freedom he did not want to have to take into account the moral susceptibilities of railway porters.
Followed by one of them he walked along the platform where the Cornish express was waiting,
and had a glimpse of Sylvia already installed in an otherwise empty compartment. She had given a good tip to keep it so, and the porter was used to obliging her father in the same way.
As soon as the train had started Dominic moved along to join her. Apart from this arrangement, and the fact that when the train an hour or two later whizzed through Frome Sylvia pulled down the blind by her window, there was no suggestion of romance about their escapade. They were like two friends who had planned a holiday together, or even like a married couple returning to the country after a London visit. After luncheon in the dining-car they returned to doze in their compartment, or browsed through the illustrated papers which Sylvia had bought, until they arrived at Penzance late in the afternoon.
They went to the largest and presumably the best hotel, where they booked a room and a dressing-room as man and wife. The rooms were large and darkly furnished, but the hotel was high up, and the windows looked across the bay to St Michael’s Mount. The evening sun, shining on the little monastery-castle which crowned the mount, made it appear like some Wagnerian shrine of the Holy Grail. While Sylvia was changing after her journey, Dominic leaned on his window-sill and stared across at it. He liked seeing famous places of which he had heard in his childhood. He was pleased that they could see it from their windows. Without it these hotel rooms might have been a little sordid.
At dinner they became more cheerful and conscious of the object of their journey. The food down here was better than that in London restaurants, and they had good wine. Afterwards they walked for half an hour or so on the darkened quay, but Dominic was impatient to return to the hotel. It may have been because of the provincial dullness, the heavy respectability of their rooms, that he put out the lights when he came into her room. He did not want to feast his eyes on her in this place, but he flung open the window to the summer night and the stars, the sea and the castle.
His love-making was not as burning but it was as strong as the evening before. They lay locked together, believing that they were at last one, each possessing the other, finally, absolutely for eternity.
But when in the morning, after they had parted to dress, they met again to go down to breakfast, it was as if a curtain had fallen between them. Afterwards they walked about the town, looking at the old houses and into the shop windows. But something had gone from their daytime relationship, the tension, the bickering which indicated exciting possibilities. The possibilities had become certainties, and for the moment that gave them a deeper satisfaction, but it made it harder to pass the time. In the afternoon they hired a motor-car and drove to Land’s End.
On the second night he was less urgent in his love-making. It was as if he wondered after all whether he really knew her, and was trying to understand her so that she would be truly his own. He was like a blind man trying to learn her with his hands. It seemed that he could never satisfy this curiosity to know her, could never understand what he was seeking in her.
In the small hours of the morning he awoke and saw a waning moon in the square of the window. He left the bed and went to look out at the castle on its little island across the bay, now more remote and mysterious, more legendary than ever in the moonlight. He wanted to understand it in the same way that he wanted to understand Sylvia, to know why it filled him with longing to be united to something outside himself.
She awoke and found he was not beside her. Then she saw him by the window, his bare shoulders outlined by the moonlight.
“What are you doing?” she asked, and came over to join him. He thought that she was sharing his feeling about the castle and the sea. He felt her arm against his own, and he turned and drew her to him, wanting to make her share his feeling about the castle and the sea, to extend his love to include every beautiful thing.
The next morning again the curtain descended between them. They walked about the town almost in boredom. Dominic reminded himself that it was marvellous for him to be walking in this peaceful sleepy town.
“It’s wonderful to be out of the trenches,” he said.
“Yes. It must be,” said Sylvia, but for her it was only an intellectual idea. In the afternoon he wanted to go over to St Michael’s Mount, but Sylvia did not like going over country houses as a sightseer. She thought it was like prying on people whom later she might meet. There was even the possibility that there might be someone staying there who knew her by sight. She seemed to be daily more anxious about the risks of their escapade.
When they awoke next morning they followed the same routine, the descending curtain of convention, the breakfast, the newspapers, the stroll, the shops.
In the afternoon they went to St Ives. Dominic suggested dining there and returning afterwards to Penzance. She thought that would be tiresome. Then she said: “Oh, very well.” At least it would give them something to talk about.
On this night Dominic stood a long time at the window, looking at the sea and the castle, which she refused to visit. She became impatient, not because she was urgent to have him beside her, but because a kind of remoteness in his attitude irritated her.
In the morning Sylvia woke him early and said that she wanted to leave Penzance. She felt that she could not bear another morning looking in the same shop windows.
“Where can we go?” asked Dominic sleepy and bemused.
“Why not return to London? There’s always something to do, and it’s really safer. We’re rather conspicuous here.” This was certainly true. With the contrast in their good looks, with Sylvia’s quiet air of wealth and unconscious arrogance, they were splendid exotic animals in the provincial street—a black and a golden panther.
Dominic ran his hands through his hair. He thought that in some way he had failed her, as he had failed himself. On that first evening at Catherine Street he had imagined that the delight in his body, that wild sense of power—it was not free love that he had enjoyed but wild love—was enough in itself, that it had banished forever all his doubts and uncertain aspirations. But he could not change his nature in a night, and he still expected that in Cornwall his love would have some meaning beyond itself, would be linked up with the moonlit castle and the sea.
Sylvia had no idea that this was his expectation. She knew perfectly well what she wanted. She wanted him physically. She wanted to experience his passionate unrestrained love-making without fear of interruption by her maid. She knew her own mind, and was confident that as the daughter of a rich peer, every idea she held was the right one. She was sure she was entitled to the best, and as Dominic’s bodily passion was like a flame consuming her, whereas Maurice’s was matter of fact and correct like all his other activities, and as she thought Maurice lucky to have married her and therefore in no position to complain, she really believed that it was right and natural that she should have Dominic if she wanted him. It was her droit de la grande dame. But she did not think that her feelings for Dominic or his for her had any point beyond their own physical satisfaction.
Because he thought he had failed her he agreed to go. Sylvia then said that if they hurried they could catch the morning train, and they left Penzance as impulsively as they had come there.
At breakfast she put forward another plan to him, that he should leave the express at Exeter and go on by a slow train to Frome, and spend a night or two at Dilton with her parents. She had various motives for this. One was that it would avoid the risk of his being seen with her at Paddington. Also, it would put out of her mother’s mind any idea that they had been together. Most of all perhaps because she would not mind a few days’ rest from his exclusive company. She told him what she knew would convince him, but what she also believed, that her father would be hurt if he did not go to see them.
“Shouldn’t I let them know?” asked Dominic doubtfully.
“You can ring up from the station,” said Sylvia. “On leave you can do anything. Anyhow, they’ll be delighted to see you. Say you’ve been to stay with a friend in Cornwall. They think I’m with Hermione.”
When he left her
in the train at Exeter they kissed in a rather perfunctory way, but comfortable and friendly.
“You’d better stay two days with the family,” she said. “I’ll go to Hermione for tonight. Ring up when you get to London.”
It was all matter of fact, and from Sylvia’s point of view entirely satisfactory. Dominic thought too that perhaps it was better this way than if they were in such an emotionally heightened condition that they could not bear to part for a minute, the condition he was in when he left Helena.
He rang up from the Frome railway station and Lady Dilton said that they would be delighted to see him, and that she would send a car for him at once.
When he arrived she was still engaged in sending out some kind of circular or charity invitation, and she gave the impression that she had not left her writing table since he last saw her.
“I hope you didn’t mind my coming without warning,” said Dominic, and blurted out: “Sylvia said I might come.”
“Of course not.” She gave him a sharp glance. “You’ve seen Sylvia?”
“Yes. I saw her in London,” said Dominic, a little awkward and hesitating, but he was often like this when sharply questioned.
“I rang up last night and they said she was in Hertfordshire.”
“I saw her the day I arrived,” explained Dominic, more confidently. “I’ve been in Cornwall for a few days.”
“Have you friends there?” asked Lady Dilton; but without interest. She went on to say that her husband would be over to dinner and would “want to hear all about the war”.
When Lord Dilton arrived he was delighted to see Dominic, for every reason—personally because he liked him; also because he heard he had done well at the front and so had brought credit to the territorial battalion, justifying his confidence in the ugly duckling; and also because he was touched that a young man on leave should be so thoughtful as to desert the gaieties of London to come to stay with two old fogies. He immediately went down to the cellars to find something worthy of him.
