‘Oh Roddy, don’t.’
She covered her ears with her hands. He had never spoken at such length, or with such obvious intent to convince.
‘I’m only trying to warn you,’ he said, rather defiantly, ‘I’m not worth saving. Nobody must ever take me seriously. I’m not worth wasting a moment over. Nobody can do anything with me.’
His mood was verging towards laughter. His face broke up teasingly as he finished speaking and turned to look at her. But she averted her face, drearily pondering.
Why had he spoken like that? A self-contempt so settled, so hopeless … He had seemed to be warning her to keep away from him for her own sake.
‘It’s no good,’ she said suddenly, involuntarily.
‘What’s no good?’
‘You’re what I choose to think you are. There’s no point in heaping yourself with abuse. You can’t make me dislike you; you can only make me sad. But I suppose that gives you pleasure.’
He was silent. She went on tremulously:
‘And when you – when people say they don’t feel or care – that they’re no good – it only makes me think – I could show them how to feel and care. I could make them happy. I could look after them. I dare say you know that’s – the effect it has on me. That’s why you say it.’
He was still silent. She leaned her head forward against the wall and felt tears smart under her lids.
He seemed to be musing, his eyes fixed on the fire, his hands held out to it.
‘Are your hands still cold?’ she said wearily. ‘Get them warm before you go.’
Suddenly he held them out to her.
It was a gesture so impulsive, so uncharacteristic, it seemed of startling significance; and she could not answer it.
‘Yes, they are cold,’ he said. ‘Let me feel yours. Yours are cold too. What funny hands – so thin and narrow, such delicate bones. Rather lovely.’ He clasped them hard in his own. ‘When I do that they seem to go to nothing.’
She smiled at him dimly, half-tranced, feeling her eyelids droop over her eyes, giving him, with her helpless hands, all of herself; as if, through her finger-tips, he drew her in to himself in a dark stemlessly flowing tide. He stroked her palms, her whole hand, over and over with a lingering careful touch, as if learning the outline by heart.
‘They feel so kind,’ he said musingly. ‘They are, aren’t they, Judy? Dear little kind things – like the rest of you. Are you always kind, Judy?’
‘Always to you, Roddy, I shouldn’t wonder.’
He relinquished his clasp suddenly, saying with a shake of the head:
‘You shouldn’t be … However, I’ve warned you.’
‘Yes, you’ve warned me.’
She smiled at him sadly.
In a minute she must tell him to go. They would be coming out of Hall, bursting into the room to discover the cause of her absence.
‘Are you tired?’ he said.
She nodded, realizing suddenly the collapsed forward droop of her body, the whole pose of deadly fatigue.
‘I’ve been very ill, you know.’
‘Oh dear! You never told me. You let me take you for that bloody cold drive. You’ll be ill again.’
‘It’s all right. I shan’t be ill again.’
‘You are naughty,’ he said, looking at her anxiously.
He never could bear people to be ill or in pain.
‘Come and lie down at once on the sofa,’ he said.
She obeyed him, and let him arrange the cushions beneath her shoulders, with a delicious sense of dependence.
‘The drive won’t have hurt me,’ she said, ‘because I enjoyed it so much.’
He stood looking down at her.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ he said softly.
‘Yes, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wasn’t it a queer unreal drive?’
‘Quite unreal, I suppose.’
‘I wish it had never stopped.’
He made no answer to this but still stood watching her.
‘You’ll have to go, Roddy. They mustn’t find you. Besides you’ll be missing your dinner.’
‘I’ve missed that long ago, I should think.’
‘Oh Roddy, how awful! I’ve made you miss your dinner.’
‘I know. It’s monstrous of you. And I’m so hungry.’
‘I’ve missed mine too but I’m not hungry … Roddy what will Tony say to you?’
‘He’ll be very much annoyed.’
‘Shall you say you were with me? He wouldn’t like that, would he?’
‘No.’
‘Tony is jealous of me. Once he looked at me with pure hatred. I’ve never forgotten it. Does he love you?’
‘I think he does.’
‘I think he does too. Do you love him? You needn’t answer. I know I mustn’t ask you that.’
‘You can ask me anything you like.’
But he did not answer.
‘It is so terrible to be hated. Tell him I won’t do you any harm.’
But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps she meant endless mischief. Supposing she were to take Roddy from Tony, from all his friends and lovers, from all his idle Parisian and English life, and attach him to herself, tie him and possess him: that would mean giving him cares, responsibilities, it might mean changing him from his free and secret self into something ordinary, domesticated, resentful. Perhaps his lovers and friends would be well advised to gather round him jealously and guard him from the female. She saw herself for one moment as a creature of evil design, dangerous to him, and took her hand away from his that held it lightly.
‘I’ll tell him you won’t do me any harm,’ he repeated absently. He was staring into her face.
‘You’re going away now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know when I shall see you again.’
‘I don’t know either,’ he said smiling.
‘Tomorrow you’ll have forgotten. But I shan’t forget this evening.’
‘Nor shall I. I don’t forget you, Judy. I sometimes wish I could. I’m a little afraid of you.’
‘Afraid of me?’
‘Afraid of you – and me.’
Later on when he was gone she must make herself think of that. It might have power to hurt: she could not tell now, with his unmasked, disturbed face watching her. Now there was nothing but depth under depth of welling happiness.
‘You know, Roddy,’ she said after a silence, ‘the awful thing about you is that I can never pick up again where we left off. Tonight you’ve talked to me as I’ve always longed for you to talk to me, as if we could trust each other, as if we were two creatures of the same sort alone together. Don’t you feel we know each other better after tonight Roddy?’
He was silent for a moment, his eyes twinkling; then he said: ‘I feel you’ve made me say a great many indiscreet things.’
‘Poor Roddy! You’d better go, before I wring something out of you you’ll regret to your life’s end,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know I shan’t rest until I’ve forced you to tell me all your secrets. And when you have, I’ll go and tell them to everybody else.’
She shut her eyes and turned her face from him. There was a long silence.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said in the end.
‘I’m not.’
‘Didn’t I tell you I was inadequate?’
‘Yes you told me.’
‘Well now you believe it, don’t you?’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Ah – you’re incorrigible … Good-bye, Judy.’
She turned towards him again, took his hand in both hers and clung to it.
‘Roddy, you have – quite liked – being with me … haven’t you?’
His face softened.
‘I’ve adored it,’ he said ge
ntly.
‘And when shall I see you again?’
He shook his head.
‘Roddy, when?’
He stooped swiftly until his face almost touched hers, and murmured, watching her:
‘Whenever you like.’
His lips closed on hers very lightly. She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek and forehead. When after a moment or two he raised himself she thought he was smiling again.
She lay perfectly still, watching him while he lit a cigarette, smoothed his hair, put on his coat and went to open the door. Then he turned, still smiling, and nodding as if encouraging her to smile back. But she continued to lie and stare up at him as if from the bottom of a well; as if all of her were dead except the eyes which just moved, following him.
The door closed after him. Soon the sound of his footsteps faded along the corridor.
She raised her hand slowly and with difficulty, as if a weight were holding it to her side, and pulled the lamp’s green shade down; and the whole room sank softly into semi-obscurity.
Some trick of green light brought suddenly to mind the look of early spring woods at twilight: fresh buds and little leaves dashed with rain, an air like dark clear water lighting the branches with a wan glimmer.
She looked at her body lying long, slender and still on the couch; she saw her breast rise and fall faintly with her breathing; and she had a sense of watching herself return from a long swoon, bathed in crystalline new life, transformed and beautified.
The trivial femininities of the room had made, she thought, an inept background for his elegance. But now there seemed something graceful, foreign, curious in the lights and shades, in the forms of flowers, books, furniture; as if he had left his impress upon them.
She heard the footsteps of Jennifer coming swiftly towards her door … Not a word, not a whisper to Jennifer. She and he could never meet, even in mind. The profoundest instinct forbade it.
Jennifer came gaily in.
‘Tired, darling?’ she said. ‘You were quite right not to come to Hall. It was bloodier than ever. Come darling, let me put you to bed – you’re so tired. I’ll look after you. I’ll make you some scrambled eggs after you’re in bed.’
Then Jennifer suspected nothing. She did not see that all was changed. She was deep in the mood of tender solicitude which came upon her now and then since the illness, when she remembered to think Judith fragile. She lifted her in her arms, and carried her into the bedroom …
Nothing had changed after all. There was Jennifer laughing, talking, letting the eggs get burnt while she did her hair; bending down finally to kiss you a tender good night. Judith tried to think of Roddy. A little while ago he had been stooping over her as Jennifer stooped now, with eyes that were different and yet the same. But he had disappeared; she could not now remember what he looked like.
Nothing was altered then, no order was reversed or even shaken. There were these moments; but all around and about the extravagant incongruous brilliances, the divine crudities, the breath-taking magnificences of their pattern, life went on weaving uninterruptedly: weaving uncoloured trivial things into secure fabric.
9
Then, almost it seemed, while she still told herself these things: while the memory of Roddy’s brief presence still surged up bewilderingly to drown her a hundred times a day, and then slipped away again, lost in the mysterious and doubtful darkness cast by his ensuing silence; while Jennifer remained the unquenched spring of all gaiety and reassurance, all delight: while the whole ordered dream went on as if it could never break; even then, with the third year, the shadow of change began to fall.
It was a look, a turn of the head, a new trick of speech, a nothing in Jennifer which struck at her heart in a moment; and then all had started to fall to pieces. Jennifer was no longer the same. Somewhere she had turned aside without a word, and set her face to a new road. She did not want to be followed. She had given Judith the slip, in the dark; and now, when she still pretended to be there, her voice had the false shrillness of a voice coming from far away.
She remembered Jennifer saying once, suddenly: ‘There’s one thing certain in my life: that is, that I shall always love you.’ And afterwards her eyes had shone as if with tears and laughter. She remembered the surprise and joy, the flooding confidence of that moment; for it had been said so quietly, as if the realization of that ‘always’ held for her something sorrowful, a sobering sense of fate. Her manner had had a simplicity far removed from the usual effervescence and extravagance: she had seemed to state a fact to be believed in forever, without question. In her life where all else was uncertain, fluid and undirected, where all turned in mazes of heat and sound, that only was the deep unshaken foundation, the changeless thing … She had seemed to mean that, sitting back in her chair, her arms laid along her lap, her hands folded together, everything about her quiet and tender, her eyes resting on Judith as they never had before or since, long and full, with a depth of untroubled love.
That had been on a day in late April, at the beginning of the last summer term. The happiness of reunion had never before seemed so complete. She had been in Scotland, Judith in Paris with Mamma, living resentfully in a reflection of Mamma’s alien existence. And then they were together again, and the summer term had opened with its unfailing week or so of exquisite weather.
They had taken the green canoe one morning and wandered up the river to Grantchester. There was no one at all in the Orchard when they reached it.
‘Thank God I see no grey flannels,’ said Jennifer. ‘I suppose the grass is still too wet for undergraduates to sit out.’
A light breeze was blowing through the orchard, ruffling long grass, dandelions, buttercups, and daisies. Under the trees, the little white tables, set in the green silken brilliance, were dappled with running light and shadow, and the apple branches, clotted with full blossom, gleamed against the sky in a tender childish contrast of simple colours, – pale pink upon pale blue. The air was dazed with a bewilderment of bird-song.
A rough brown terrier with golden eyes came prancing out on them, making known their presence with barkings half-ferocious, half-friendly. The dark waitress came lazily from the house, reluctant to serve them.
‘Is the Orchard open?’
‘Oh yes, it’s open.’
‘Can you let us have lunch?’
‘Oh I dare say.’
‘What can you let us have?’
‘You can have a cheese omelette and some fruit-salad.’
‘Divine,’ said Jennifer, and leapt for joy.
‘You better have it in the shelter. The grass is wet.’
She wandered away, smoothing her black untidy hair. She would not smile. There was something arresting and romantic in the thin sallow dark-browed young woman, preserving her ugliness, her faint unrelaxing bitterness among all the laughing renewals of her surroundings.
‘I’d like to pick her up and shake her into life. Make her smile and be young. Make her cheeks pink and her eyes bright,’ said Jennifer. ‘If I were a man I’d fall bang in love with her. What is her name do you think? Jessica? Anne? Rosa?’
‘Miriam.’
‘Yes, Miriam.’
How the remembered insignificant words brought flooding back the irrecoverable quality of that day!
Tits and robins, perching all around them, and the golden-eyed dog, had helped them to finish their meal.
Then they had lain back in their chairs, staring and saying nothing. And then it was that Jennifer had turned and broken the silence with her quiet, inevitable-seeming declaration; and after it Judith had reached out to touch her hand for a moment; and continued to sit beside her and dream.
Later in the afternoon they had seen grey-flannelled legs approaching and risen to go.
They met the dark girl walking down the gravel path towards the orchard, carrying a trayful of cro
ckery.
‘We’ve come to pay you,’ said Jennifer radiantly smiling.
She gave the price without a flicker.
‘Judith, have you that much on you, darling?’ said Jennifer, and added, turning again to the girl: ‘We have so enjoyed ourselves.’
There was no response save a quick suspicious glance.
Currant bushes, wallflowers, narcissi, pansies, yellow daisies and tulips blossomed richly on each side of the path.
‘What a delicious garden!’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s at its very best, isn’t it?’
‘It’s looking nice,’ she admitted.
Jennifer pointed to a clump of stiff, purple-black tulips.
‘Those tulips are like you,’ she said, her eyes and mouth, all her glowing face, coaxing and appealing.
And suddenly the girl gave a little laugh, looking with soft eyes first at Jennifer, then away, shyly and deprecatingly, as who should say: The idea! Me like a tulip! Well, you are a one – Daft …’ but gratified and amused all the same.
‘I shall always think of you when I see tulips like that,’ said Jennifer. ‘Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye, Miss …’ She smiled, almost mischievously this time, and hurried on with her tray.
‘She was quite human,’ said Jennifer. ‘I wonder if she’s got a lover or if she’s longing for one, or if she’s been jilted, or what … What makes her all shadowy and tight inside herself?’
She stood looking after the girl, as if meditating going back to ask her.
How Jennifer struck sparks with ordinary people! She knew how to live. To be with her was to meet adventure; to see, round every corner, the bush become the burning bush.
In a little while she would have forgotten the girl whose problem was now so urgent and exciting; but you yourself would always remember, – seeing it all dramatically, seeing it as a quiet story, hearing it as an unknown tune: making of it a water colour painting in gay foolish colours, or an intricate pencil pattern of light and shadow.
They left the Orchard.
‘I think,’ said Jennifer, ‘we will never come here again.’
They had not come again. That time had remained unblurred by any subsequent return in a different mood, with more companions, in another weather or season.
Dusty Answer Page 17
