No harm could ever come to her through him, because there was no harm against himself in what he felt for her; alone of all his hidden feelings in the wildest places of his heart, this one which lived for her was sound safe and forever bright.
Still with his arm about her shoulders, he moved round to face her and leaned his forehead against hers as she stood there forlornly, still trembling in the aftermath of her fear. Her eyes opened widely; he saw the black pupils so closely that she appeared to have only one eye, grey and startled, pausing like a deer disturbed at its grazing before taking instantly to the horizon and the wind.
Frightened himself, he drew away and fumbled for the haversack with a blind hand. Backing away from her down the slope towards the tall bracken, his eyes watched her still: a white figure suddenly sprung from the living ground. How came she there in that empty place? he wondered. And what was it that forced him to see her again as though for the first time? A loveliness as external and disturbing as that he had glimpsed by the lake more than a year ago.
For now, as then, he realised, she was still entirely her own. The moment of fear, of sympathy, of most intense caring, while seeming to end their isolation, had in reality thrust them further than ever apart: estranging them, building up in their silence an embarrassment as discrete as some third person whose presence made it impossible for them to go on behaving as they had behaved even though they most deeply wished to do so.
He found the haversack at last and at once became very busy with it, getting out the candles and matchbox with the strange new hand that still looked as though it belonged to someone else; and when at last he spoke he noticed that his voice was no longer careless and ordinary.
“You are game to have tea inside, aren’t you?” he asked.
She moved suddenly, breaking down the planes of her immobility with an almost visible effort.
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps it would be best if I saw what it’s like first; I mean whether we’ll be able to carry the things or not. Give me your torch and I’ll make a reconnaissance.”
She laughed. “What a silly word.”
“It’s not, it’s a perfectly good word. My brother David often uses it.”
“I thought it wasn’t yours.”
“Of course it’s mine; don’t be so superior. If I use it, then it’s mine, isn’t it?”
She handed him the torch. “It doesn’t sound like you,” she said. “It’s not your sort of word, it’s a David sort of word, and I think it’s you who’s trying to be superior, not me.”
He was on his hands and knees now at the entrance to the cave; he wanted both to get out of the light, the strange dusky circle, green grey and white, which lay before the cave and to move into the darkness beyond. He did not look back as he called out to her, “If you’re going to be like this, I’ll stay inside! I just won’t come back, that’s all.”
She made a run at him, he could hear her feet slip on the shale as she rushed up the slope and grasped him desperately by the heels.
“I’m sorry John, I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t mean it. It was just that I thought we should quarrel because everything felt so difficult.”
“I know,” he said. He wriggled in a bit farther until he was right out of the sunlight and then he turned and looked back at her—still standing out there in the open. “But it’s all right now,” he said. “You wait there for me, I shan’t be long.”
He shone the torch ahead of him and saw that the roof of the cave rose steadily from the entrance and swept away from him over the jumbled stone-clad floor to another further constriction about thirty yards ahead. Holding the torch in his mouth to give him greater freedom with his arms he made his way rapidly to this distant orifice.
As he drew nearer he saw that it shone, and for the first time glimpsed the water whose music he had heard earlier; high above him, as he stood there shining his torch upwards, he saw it trickling over the stone threshold of another higher gallery; and for some moments he watched it as it fell in a clear fan-shaped pendulant before losing itself in a mound of wet rocks piled beneath its jaw. He climbed these rocks, and on his haunches began to crawl awkwardly along the new higher level of the cave. Small stalactites scraped against his blazer, his gym shoes and socks soaked up the water from the stream; but the light of the torch enabled him to see that once again the roof was ascending, and that a few more feet of progress would allow him to stand almost upright. Ahead of him, the gallery in which he was moving turned sharply; from where he crouched its two shining, rifled, walls merged so closely together that it was only by shaking his torch and making their shadows dance that he was able to see that they were separate at all.
He determined that before he made his way back to Victoria he would reach this bend and discover what lay beyond it. So far, he was sure, he had been only about five minutes; but he must allow for the return journey and not forget that if she once became really frightened it would spoil everything: they would have to have tea in the open air, and there would be no shared memory of this new darkness and danger, the magic that he was sure lay beyond the present discomfort.
Bent like an ape, the torch still in his mouth, he began to run clumsily over the wet uneven floor, balancing himself by stretching his hands against the walls, and watching the leapings and posturings of the shadows which moved with him. Then at last he was there, safely round the corner and able to stand quite upright and flash his torch ahead of him. Ten feet from him, the narrow tunnel by which he had entered ended abruptly in a coffin-shaped arch, and beyond it he could see nothing. The pale beam of the torch passed through it into the remote darkness of a vast space. Heedless of his torn shirt wet head and chilled feet, he stepped forward breathlessly; this must be the place, it must be.
As far as the torchlight could reach and beyond, it stretched ahead of him: a wide high windless cavern colonnaded by stalactites whose gleaming surfaces took the light and tossed it in bright sequestrations to the roof. There was every sort of formation from graduated pipes like those of an organ, to hanging curtains, sculptured chalices and shrouded monk-like figures. On the sloping floor the limestone, tunnelled and gouged by centuries of water, was eroded into a thousand shapes and runnels, while in the darkness beyond, water-drops fell incessantly and musically from the roof on to rocks and the surfaces of pools.
He waited no longer; he had seen enough to know that whatever the more remote particulars of his discovery, they must be found and shared with Victoria; so he splashed his way back to the dry and deceptive entrance and crawled out once more into the open air.
It was greyer than he had expected; the prolonged rush of the wind had at last summoned up more clouds than it could disperse, and over by the Pennines there were swathes and banks of a stony-blueness which had no kinship with that of the pure sky. Though as yet there was no rain, they knew that it was on its way, that soon the first premonitory drops would begin to stir the heather and confuse the butterflies, driving them to shelter beneath leaves and bracken.
Victoria had gathered two neat bundles of sticks and was rolling them up into her mackintosh as he emerged. The wind, strong enough now to descend into the dingle, blew her dark hair about her head alternately hiding and revealing her face and neck so that she seemed as inconstant as a shaken flower.
He leaned on her shoulder and shouted into her ear.
“You do look strange, were you frightened?”
“No I was far too busy. Look! I’ve got some lovely dry sticks for our fire. It’s going to rain, and whether we want to or not we shall have to picnic in the cave. What’s it like? Any good?”
“You wait till you see it; it’s—breathtaking! a little bit wet perhaps; but by the look of things it couldn’t be wetter than it’s going to be out here. If you can manage the sticks, I’ll take the basket and haversack. We’ll have to go slowly; but then we’re not in any hurry, are we?”
“None at all!” her smile was swift, “we needn’t be back till nearl
y seven, and they’re sure to be in a good mood after the races because George will have had plenty to drink.”
“Surely he won’t be in a good mood if he’s lost money?”
“It doesn’t make any difference either way, because George always drinks to success if he wins and to failure if he doesn’t; so you see, he’s bound to be nice to us!”
They wriggled their way into the entrance passing their things to one another at the difficult places, and then by the light of the torch stumbled along to the high wet throat of the first cavern.
“If it’s very wet where we’re going,” she said doubtfully, “I suppose we could always come back and have tea in this part—it’s so nice and dry here.”
“Never! This is the most wonderful cave I’ve ever seen, and it’ll be worth it even if we get soaked.”
“Is it really? What a sell for George! He thought we’d never find it.”
“That’s why I was so determined that we should,” he said emphatically.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t. We could have invented a beauty between us—I’ve been practising already; what do you call those things that hang from the roof?”
“Stalactites.”
“And the other ones? The ones that stick up to meet them? Are they stalagmites?”
“Yes. But you needn’t worry about inventing those because we’ll be able to bring some real ones back as proof of the fact that we did find the cave, even though there don’t seem to be many truffles here.”
“Oh bother the truffles,” she said, “they were only an excuse really, weren’t they?”
“Exactly!”
“Like the Races are an excuse for hundreds of men like George to go and get drunk.”
They paused for a moment below the waterfall.
“It’s not very big, is it?” she said.
“No, and a good thing too, because we’ve got to crawl through it for several yards.”
“You know, I’m beginning to wish we’d brought towels with us,” she said, as he helped her into the higher gallery. “Enid gets into such a fuss when I get my hair wet.”
“I did bring towels,” he said proudly, “there’s one in the bottom of the haversack. You seem to forget that I’ve been in caves before—with my brother David. I’m quite a spelaeologist.”
“What’s that? A cave-man?”
“Yes.” He passed the basket up to her.
“Well, what’s a cave-woman?”
“I don’t know—yes I do! A cave-woman is a troglodyte; you’re a troglodyte.”
“No I’m not, it’s a horrid word.”
“But you are,” he said, as they crouched beneath the oppressive roof, “it only means that you love the darkness. We’re both troglodytes for today, anyway.”
“I’m not sure that I do love the darkness,” she said. “Promise me you won’t go on too far ahead.”
“I promise. Now have you got your share of the things?”
“I think so.”
“All right then, I’ll lead the way, and you’re not to say another word until we reach the real cave. The password is ‘silence’.”
“‘Silence,’” she repeated.
“That’s right.”
They made their way awkwardly along the narrow tunnel, turned the corner and reached the last coffin-shaped orifice.
“There!” he said. “Now let’s light our candles and you’ll see why I was so excited.”
They held them up before them, and immediately the nearest stones and their shadows, rock-formations and stalactites, leapt out of the far darkness as though an empty space had been newly filled by the utterance of some powerful and forgotten word. For a moment they stood there, instinctively clutching one anothers’ hands. Beyond them, the ceaseless falling of the water, the lisps and chords of notes sounded by water moving and falling from high places to low, the whisper of water through darkness and against limestone, these and the sense of an ancient wind moving in hidden fastnesses, chilled and awed them as they waited.
“I don’t think we should have come,” she whispered. “Let’s go back John; let’s go back! We’ve seen it now.”
“Nonsense,” he said loudly, the cave echoing him. “We’ll build our fire and have tea here just as we said we would. We can’t possibly go back now; we would be ashamed of it for the rest of our lives.”
—“Rest of our lives,” echoed the cave.
Victoria dropped the mackintosh; the hand holding her candle shook as she plucked at his blazer.
“Don’t go in any farther,” she said. “Please don’t. This is a horrible place—even this bit where we’re standing! I don’t like it; I feel that we’re waiting here to hear something terrible.”
“Don’t be silly!” he said. “It’s only a matter of getting used to it. It’s an echo, that’s all.”
“But I hate echoes! I don’t like them; I’ve always been frightened of them; and besides, this one’s not like an ordinary echo—”
“Yes it is, except that it’s an underground one.”
“No it’s not; it’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“Well it wasn’t like your voice; it answered with another voice, a cruel one like George uses when he’s ticking off the mastiffs.”
“You try then. I’ll listen and see if it sounds like you.”
“No.”
He glanced at her by the light of the candles. Her face swam with shadows and colour, he had never seen it so soft and bright before; but glimpsed in profile at this moment, it was flat and two-dimensional as though suspended on some transparent surface beside him in the darkness.
“I promise,” he said, and it was because he was so abject before this sudden beauty that he was so insistent. “I promise that if it doesn’t sound like you, we’ll go straight back. I won’t argue any more. Please just try once.”
“What shall I say?” she whispered, and her generosity in acceding to him made him reckless.
“Oh anything, anything at all! Only shout it loudly, Victoria, that’s always a good way of getting yourself unfrightened.”
She tensed:
“The rest of my life!” she shouted.
—“Rest of my life—of my life!” came the wavering retort.
Beside him she took in another breath:
“I hate you!” she shouted. “I don’t know who you are, but I hate you!”
—“Hate you—Hate you—” the echo repeated.
He felt her move; she stood on tiptoe, trying to reach high up into the darkness that lay ahead, and he put out a hand to restrain her.
“Stop!” he said, “that’s enough, don’t go on!”
She turned on him. “Well, was it the same? Was it?”
“Yes,” he said, “I think so; yes it was, of course it was.” He picked up the mackintosh. “Follow me. We’ll get the fire going; that will make all the difference. It will be cosy and all the stalactites will glitter.”
By the light of the torch he started to pick his way across the sharp wet floor towards what he guessed must be the nearest wall.
“Look! the very place.” He pointed towards a great buttress of limestone with a flattened top which jutted out into the body of the cavern. “We’ll make our fire on that—it’s almost dry because the water is trickling down the wall at the back instead of falling direct.”
She handed him the mackintosh and he unfolded it and placed the sticks and paper on the rock.
“Now give me the haversack,” he said.
“I haven’t got it, I was so frightened I wanted to hold on to you instead.”
He took off his damp blazer and spread it over the mackintosh. “You’d better sit on that while I go back and get all the other things.”
Nursing her candle in both hands she sat down fearfully and he hurried back to the archway. He was frightened himself, but he wasn’t going to show it; if she once knew there was anything he dared not face she would never forget it; and then one day she w
ould love someone older and braver than him and he would lose her. She had been right though; the echo had not been the same; it had been higher and more remote, quite different.
Up above him he could visualise layer upon layer of rock; the great weight reaching up and up to the surface soil on which the heather grew; and here below, where they were, bearing down upon them and upon the darkness like a hammer on an anvil. The more he thought about it the more frightened he became; why had he ever left the fair light of day, the fresh wind and the hurrying clouds, when ordinary night and the countless fear to which it gave rise were both inevitable enough? He knew now that he could very easily allow himself to become frightened right to the sharp edge of panic; and he knew that if he once did so, a chance of being trusted and of showing that he could endure would be lost for ever. Therefore he resolutely banished from the outskirts of his mind all these images which sought from its dim horizons to wing their way inwards. The thing to do, he resolved, was to go eagerly through all the motions of taking pleasure and seeming busy, but to get it over as quickly as he decently could and then return with her proudly to the farm.
He almost ran back with the haversack, and a few minutes later with the aid of a melting candle he had the fire kindled and the small picnic-kettle sitting unsteadily on its mound of sticks.
Victoria peeled the eggs as they squatted together on the mackintosh. “Well anyway,” she said, “I bet we’re the first people ever to picnic in here.”
“Yes,” he took a bite of the rather damp bread and butter “except possibly prehistoric men thousands and thousands of years ago.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I can imagine them,” he said, “grunting and quarrelling; hairy babies wrapped in skins in the driest corners.”
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 14
