The Flight of the Maidens

by Jane Gardam

  But the track that had been cut for them remained, grassy and green and cropped by sheep and never overtaken by the heather, because of the oak railway sleepers—expertly laid by the quarrymen—that lined its floor. A layer of thick shingle between each sleeper mingled still with the wild flowers and weeds.

  In the past year, since the war’s end, a youth-hosteller had marked the place where you left the road on the ridge for the track with a small cairn of rocks and the stone pattern of an arrow. From this cairn, known only to the elect of the cycling and rambling world, to the black pencil chimney, the deep, quiet but very bumpy old railroad track stretched for nearly five miles.

  Una knew nothing of tracks and slate quarries and was concerned today only with the wind in her spiky hair. She overshot the cairn and had to be called back by Ray, who yelled after her, then whistled to her piercingly through his fingers.

  She was almost at his horizon. The sun was going down. He stood waiting for the dot that was Una and her bike to steady, turn about, grow gradually bigger. At length she came up alongside him again.

  ‘Down ’ere.’

  It was still warm as the sun set, but down on the track it was already darker, dark beyond its hour, and the wind on the ridge above could be heard blustering about. Una saw that clouds to the west were beginning to gather together, and before remounting her bike she turned back to look at them. They were piling into creamy, smoking towers.

  Ray watched them, too, clouds working themselves into hysterical contortions, silently exploding, upward, upward.

  ‘I’ve seen some rare old things up ’ere before today,’ he said. ‘Typhoons.’

  ‘Typhoons!’

  ‘Well, you know, twisters. Like in America. Wizard of Oz.’

  ‘What, here? Up on the moors?’

  ‘Oh, aye. You never know what to expect up ’ere. You have to be careful. I don’t like the look of them clouds.’

  ‘It’s like a mushroom. It’s like the Bomb.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, it’s a thunderstorm, so let’s get on, shall we?’

  They jolted and jerked along the railway sleepers, sometimes trying to ride the grassy margins, but that was even harder going. Rain began casually, then continued in earnest.

  Soon it was falling in torrents and they had to stop to climb into yellow oilskins, capes and hoods. It was noisy inside them. Their fingers on the handlebars turned scarlet with cold and within the ugly oilskins their bodies steamed. The track, after winding about, became a straight stretch of mud between the oak sleepers. The sleepers shone like glass. They slithered off their bikes and pushed.

  Great booms and crackles of thunder announced their arrival at High Dubbs and a ripple of lightning fell down the sky and disappeared below the buildings.

  ‘Just as well it missed the chimney,’ she yelled.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Might have hit the chimney.’

  ‘Chimney’s stood there long enough. There’ll be a conductor.’

  ‘Is it locked—the hostel?’

  ‘Aye, it’s locked. There’s a key int’ shed. Christ!’

  A colossal barrage of thunder went rolling round the moor, followed by another and another, ending up directly overhead.

  ‘Give me air raids,’ she said. ‘Anti-aircraft stands still.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Guns keep still.’

  Standing now directly below the chimney, which appeared to have no lightning conductor though it was too dark now to be sure, Ray tipped his bike over in Una’s direction and vanished into something like a dog kennel. He emerged with a gigantic, rusty key. Holding this in both hands he made an attack upon the hostel door, the lock looking more fragile than the thing it served. Door and Ray lunged forward together, blown there by wind and rain, and Una, wheeling the bikes, moved forward over a flagstoned, freezing-cold kitchen floor and then stood dripping in the dark. Another long ripple of electricity passed the window, followed immediately by the most tremendous crash of thunder so far.

  ‘There’s matches in a tin,’ he said.

  ‘I was going to say—’

  ‘Gi’s yer bike. Prop it up, then. Yer shivering.’

  ‘I’m not cold. It’s just my teeth chattering.’

  ‘Jump up and down. Gi’s yer ’ands ’ere.’

  Ray had removed his oilskins and thrown them down. He undid his zip-jacket with the YHA badge on the pocket, took her hands and directed them beneath it and beneath his shirt and pressed them to his skin. He began to move the backs of her hands up and down beneath his own. But still she shivered. She shivered rather more. He pulled her nearer.

  ‘Better? I can blow on yer back if yer like?’

  ‘Blow on—?’

  ‘Aye. They do it int’ Arctic.’

  ‘Arctic?’

  ‘Turn round.’

  He removed her little hands from his torso and spun her round, lifted the back of her sweater, opened his mouth between her bare shoulder-blades, and blew.

  She yelped. He went on blowing.

  ‘It’s great. Oh, it’s really hot! It goes all around.’

  ‘Saves a lot of lives,’ he said. ‘Ski instructors do it. It’s Alpine technique.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve had a heater in me.’

  ‘You should get yer ’air dry now,’ he said, moving away, not bothering to pull the back of her jersey down. ‘There’s a roller towel on back oft’ door. It’s a bit claggy but, well . . . ’Ere, get this fire started, there’s sticks and that and paper. Tin’s int’ cupboard. I’ll get out overt’ coal-house,’ and he left her standing, the back of her jersey rucked up to her shoulders.

  She had never made a fire. Her mother did all that. The room was dark as midnight but the storm seemed to be resting and she heard now the authority of the impersonal deluging rain. When the thunder tried again it was fainter. It had moved further away. Further away.

  ‘Where’s the light?’ she asked when he came splashing in, slamming the door. The lightning rippled. Further away. The thunder sounded sleepy now.

  ‘Hell!’ he said, and took the tin from her, found newspaper lining a partly open drawer and sticks from a groaning side oven in the range. He arranged coals over them, and with a match from the box in the tin, he lit the twigs.

  They watched the flame falter, blacken the paper, tremble, rise and, in no time, blaze.

  ‘There’s a gas bottle and ring ower there. Hast got the beans and that?’

  She brought out a large tin of baked beans from her saddle-bag, and some bread. ‘The bread’s damp.’

  ‘It’ll do,’ said Ray.

  A blue flame roared in a corner, and a saucepan was illuminated near the gas ring. Ray peered into the pan and crossed to a tap sticking out of a wall above a stone trough. After great bastinados of knocking and retching, some gulps of dark brown water splashed out of the tap and he rinsed the pan.

  ‘Get some more coals ont’ fire,’ he said. ‘You canst do that much if you can’t do owt else.’

  She was appalled. Excited.

  ‘And get you stockins off. And some dry things on.’

  Eating the hot baked beans and drinking powerful tea, they sat opposite each other, either side of a paraffin lamp placed on a bare table.

  ‘I’ve a bottle of beer,’ said Ray.

  ‘I don’t like beer.’

  He found a tin mug and drank the beer. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you grinning?’

  ‘I’m happy,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’m glad you didn’t drink out of the bottle.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.

  ‘You’re different,’ she said. ‘From usual.’

  He built up the fire.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said and carried the dirty plates over to the
tap and trough and wiped them over with an evil dishcloth. Put them away. ‘See,’ she said, ‘I can be useful. I’m not just a scientist. When . . . when do we go to bed?’

  ‘Scientist!’ he said. He’d pulled his chair nearer the fire, turned his back on her. Outside, the rain clattered down but the thunder had stopped. ‘Useful!’ he said. “Ere, I’ll get bikes intert’ shed; gi’s the oilskins. I’ll hang ’em int’ old oil-house overt’ yard. It’s dry there. They’ll be good be morning.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we dry the bikes down?’

  ‘I’ll see t’ilt.’

  While he was out with the bikes, she didn’t know what to do, whether or not to go looking for bedrooms and lavatories. In films the girl always went up the stairs first. You didn’t follow a man up unless he was a monster and you were cowed or hypnotised. And it would be very embarrassing going up entwined, side by side. The uncertainty, or the certainty, of what she was doing filled Una’s whole being.

  Tonight could change my life, she thought. I could go up to Cambridge grown-up. Half of them at school have done it already. Almost everyone but Hetty and Lieselotte. Well, maybe a third. Well, Mavis Braithwaite has anyway. And Ray’s been my only one for years and years, and I his. And never. Not even kisses.

  She found a clanking WC with a rusty chain that unleashed a tempest of tea-coloured water. Ray came in, slamming the door once more, and gave a savage kick at the fire as she came down the stairs carrying the lamp.

  ‘Are we going to let the fire go out?’

  ‘It will whether we like it or not,’ he said. ‘It’s a small enough grate.’

  ‘Do we lock the front door?’

  ‘What for? Who’s coming?’

  ‘I just thought it might be a rule. A youth-hostel rule, sort of thing.’

  He swung about, came across to her, took her shoulders and shook her.

  ‘Here!’ she said. ‘Stop it. What’s up? You shouldn’t have drunk all that beer.’ She thought, All the years and he’s never touched me at all. Tonight, all alone, he shakes me.

  ‘You talk about youth-hostel rules. You talk about washing-up. Do you ever read the newspapers, woman?’

  ‘Well, not tonight, I don’t. Shut up. You’re hurting.’

  ‘What are you proposing to do at Cambridge?’

  ‘Physics.’

  ‘Physics? You? Do you ever think what Physics means? Do you ever consider what ’appened a year ago this month? Una? Are you just plain, solid infantile? You’re unawakened. Cambridge, hell . . . I don’t mean sex, that stuff, unawakened. I mean you are politically, morally and intellectually unawakened. Do you have one, one, analytical area? One concept, except passing exams? Eh? Eh?’

  ‘I’m off to bed. Let go of me.’

  ‘At this moment in Japan there is a liquidated civilisation. Turned to air. Transformed into cinder. Thousands on thousands. Kids and women. We did it. We found it. We found out how, and we used it. No warning. Nothing.’

  ‘We did give a warning—some sort of warning. And if we hadn’t, someone else would have done it. And it’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘The old argument.’

  ‘Well, it stopped the war. If we hadn’t done it, it would have gone on and on and killed as many, maybe more. It probably saved lives by, you know, doing it in one go.’

  ‘You’re obscene. What papers d’you read?’

  ‘Ma gets the Daily Mail.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, better than none, mebbe, but I wonder. And you think you can be a physicist!’

  ‘I didn’t know you hated me.’

  Beginning to cry, she ran and stumbled out of the room, found stone stairs inside a cupboard door, climbed them holding the lamp high and saw two doors, one labelled ‘Men’, one ‘Women’.

  She slammed into Women, crashed the door behind her and saw several stacks of bunk beds with miserable mattresses each with a metal ladder up the side. At the end of each bunk there was a bed roll.

  She blew out the lamp, climbed a ladder, flung some of her clothes and her shoes on the floor, undid the bed roll and curled down in it.

  It smelled of mossy autumn woods. Far away some reviving thunder began to rattle out an ominous song.

  My first time alone with a man. And the man is Ray, for goodness’ sake. It is not usual. It is not kind. It must be a punishment. Perhaps I am not meant to be loved. It is the punishment for expectation. I thought it would be something wonderful, and all I get is the blame for Hiroshima.

  ‘I didn’t split the bloody atom,’ she shouted as he came stumbling into the room, feeling for the lower bunk. He too had slammed the door. Now he slammed off his boots. Whatever was wrong with him? She heard him scruffling about with his bed roll, like a dog; and lying down.

  Both lay staring upwards, one above the other, in the dark.

  Long, long afterwards, as she thought, He must be asleep by now, he said, ‘Sorry, Une.’

  ‘It’s O.K. ’

  ‘Don’t know what I was on about.’

  She said nothing. She heard him creak off the lower bunk and in a moment he was climbing the ladder. The whole scant structure swayed. She felt him staring straight ahead over the top bunk in the dark.

  ‘You’re down by my feet.’ She wanted to laugh. She thought, Hetty would die. ‘Ray?’

  She felt him heave himself up on his strong arms and he was lying with her, his dear face in her neck.

  ‘God, I’m sorry, Une. I’m jealous of Cambridge. I’m no good with women.’

  She put both arms round him and said, ‘You are. You are. You’re marvellous and you’re mine.’

  They lay there in the mossy damp and she began to feel more happiness than she’d ever known. Sleepy. Giving. She held his face.

  Then, far away, there was the sound of a vehicle coming down the track. It was faint, but it was there. It was coming. It was certainly some sort of motor. They lay rigid, wrapped tight, speechless, Una’s head drawn away from Ray, Ray’s head alert, their warm legs still entwined. Then she buried her face in him.

  ‘It’s a car,’ she said, her voice muffled and sad.

  ‘It can’t be a car.’

  ‘It’s coming down the track. It must be more youth-hostellers.’

  ‘It can’t be. It’s past midnight. And never in a car.’

  They broke apart and Ray sat up. ‘There’s no warden ’ere,’ he said, ‘never has been. Oh, Une, I was sure there wouldn’t be anyone else.’

  ‘There is, though. Here it comes.’

  They lay down again and the approaching car came roaring nearer and passed the window, its lights swinging spitefully across the room, lighting the bunk, passing on. There was a slamming of doors.

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Ray. ‘I’d better move to Men.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Ray. Lock our door.’

  He got down from the bunk and said, ‘Une? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He locked the door and climbed back and they lay in the top bunk again, together.

  Footsteps were on the stairs, voices—a man’s and a woman’s. Nobody tried their door and the voices faded into the other dormitory. Whoever it was was not stopping for food or fire, or even the loo.

  There was shuffling and creaking and the dropping of shoes and slowly, slowly, Ray and Una relaxed and began to whisper. Una started to laugh and Ray squeezed her like a vice and said, ‘Shut up.’ The rain outside was stopping. Only drops now splashed from the lintel. Then even the little splashes stopped. The window frame brightened up and, outside, clouds could be made out in a navy-blue sky, and a round moon appeared. Drops like tiny moons hung in a row along the glazing-bars.

  Then from the next-door dormitory came the most dreadful shrieks and cries and a sort of quacking of ducks. It went on and on, faster and faster, and reached crescendo.


  ‘Ray?’ It was morning and she was sitting up in bed, warm, delighted, unravished, proud. ‘Ray? Where are you?’

  He was dressed and grinning and looking at her. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Get up and come down. He’s a soldier.’

  ‘Who’s a soldier?’

  ‘Last night. The people last night. Quack, quack.’

  She remembered. ‘Oh, a soldier! I thought it sounded like a ten-ton tank coming along.’

  ‘It’s a jeep thing. He’s here with his fiancée. She’s like a ten-ton tank—from the back anyway; it’s all I’ve seen.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘I’ve been down. They’re cooking their breakfasts. Sausages. It must be army rations. She looks awful. Maybe he’ll give us a rasher.’

  ‘Were they surprised? To know we were here? Oh, Ray!’

  ‘He nearly fell dead. She just sat there looking at the fire.’

  ‘I’m coming!’

  She sprang out of the bunk in her bra and pants and began to dress as if he watched her do it every day.

  He said, ‘You should never wear clothes.’

  Hiroshima faded.

  They came out together from the stair-cupboard door into last night’s kitchen and there she saw a tall man prodding bacon about in a pan and a large woman dreaming by the grate.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Eustace, bright of eye, fork aloft. ‘May I introduce my fiancée, Brenda Flange?’

  15

  My darling Hetty, wrote her mother in her third letter in five days. Hetty had not opened the first two and nor for a while would she open this one.

  My darling Hetty,

  I realise now how very cross you will have been with me for writing to you before you had even left, in order that there would be a letter waiting for you at Betty Bank (what a pretty name) in case you had a sudden fit of homesickness. I know your father thinks ‘Leave her alone’, though he seldom speaks, but I just could not resist. The house is so quiet without you. Whatever will it be like when you go to London?