Return to Night

by Mary Renault

  “And so,” said Lisa, “we were back where we’d started, asking ourselves which of us should destroy the other. Only we weren’t capable any more of being destroyed independently. And we wanted one another alive to come back to, even if it were only for a few weeks of every year. And ever since then, that’s how it’s been.”

  There were a number of things Hilary would have liked to know; whether, for instance, Rupert was faithful to her, and, if not, how she felt about it. As if she had reflected aloud, Lisa said in her quiet commonplace way, “He tells me most things. It makes him feel better; and me too, oddly enough. Personally, whatever he says, I don’t feel I’ve got the right to consider myself more than a mistress with special privileges. But it’s so much better being that to Rupert than everything to anyone else I’ve known.”

  Hilary smoked in silence for a minute or so. At last she said, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have another baby?”

  Flatly and without emotion, Lisa said, “Oh, I did. A few months before you came. It was born dead, and they wouldn’t let me look at it.” She bent, and threw a fresh log on the fire. “I suppose if Rupert were there, I could bring myself to go through it again. But not without him. I think for some reason it must be meant.”

  “Things like that aren’t meant,” Hilary said. Having been much moved, she spoke rather shortly. Lisa smiled at her; by now they understood one another pretty well.

  “I mean,” she said, “that perhaps after all it’s something in me. If you have a child, it ought to come first; that’s how the race goes on. Once I could have done it. But some things go deeper with time.”

  “Judging by what I’ve seen,” said Hilary, “though I may be wrong, I think you’d probably make the ideal mother. Children stake out their own claim. A compensating balance might save your soul, and the child’s as well.”

  Lisa looked at her curiously. “You may be right,” she said. “It’s a point of view I hadn’t thought of.”

  Chapter Eight: IN THE DOCTOR’S ROOM

  THE WEEK BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR carried its usual freight of hangover and reaction. Everyone who had been saving up ailments, to avoid fuss over the holiday, brought them along to the doctor. A heavy kind of cold, which had begun to be epidemic, developed into full-fledged influenza, the type with sinus and antrum complications. For the first time since she had taken the practice over, Hilary had too much to do. She thrived on the work and blessed it.

  On the twenty-seventh of December, Lisa heard from Rupert that he would be able to get to London; she went about singing to herself, and doing mysterious things to clothes which Hilary had never seen her wear.

  On the twenty-eighth, a note arrived for Hilary. It was from Mrs. Fleming, asking her to an informal dance to see the New Year in. It ended, Please forgive this late invitation; we had meant to ask you on Christmas Day, but you were called away so suddenly that we missed our opportunity.

  Hilary asked herself why, in the name of misfortune, this nuisance should happen now. It upset everything. Of course, she ought to accept it; as a gesture to herself (for, if it had been anyone else in the neighborhood, she would certainly have gone), and a reparation between her own conscience and Mrs. Fleming, a pleasant and harmless woman against whom she had allowed herself to harbor a pathological prejudice. Yes, she said to herself, she would write in the evening.

  That day’s work turned out to be the heaviest yet. It left her tired, and with the beginning of a headache. It was not till she got up to her room that an uneasy feeling of some impending reluctance defined itself in the note which stared at her from the mantelpiece. When she walked over to get it, she saw her own face in the mirror behind it, weary, unadorned, and stamped with the haste and anxieties of the day. The thought of any social activity at all would have been a burden; the thought of this one, she found, was like the thought of entering for a marathon. She knew that she could not and would not go.

  She phrased her refusal in the nicest terms, explaining that she suspected herself of coming down with influenza, and was finding the work as much as she could manage.

  In the morning the headache had gone; which, said Hilary to herself, went to show the value of dealing with one’s correspondence promptly. Lisa had left for town; she had the place to herself. Equipped with a detective story, she stretched herself in a long chair, rang for tea, and prepared herself for two hours of triviality and peace.

  She was hardly through her first cup when there was a tap at the door. Her reluctant answer brought in Annie.

  “Is it urgent?” she asked mechanically.

  “I couldn’t say, doctor. It’s that Mr. Fleming. He says he hopes you’re better, and to give you these.” She advanced with a huge sheaf of forced chrysanthemums.

  “But, really, I—” Hilary wandered vaguely round the room, ostensibly seeking a suitable pot. “Has he gone?”

  “No, doctor. He said if you weren’t in bed could he come in and see you for a few minutes?”

  “Oh. Yes, ask him in. And bring another cup, please, and something with water in it.”

  Annie went, with a searching look over her shoulder. Presently, a voice out in the hall said, “Oh, good. Thank you.” The sound made him present before he walked in at the door.

  “Hullo.” He lengthened the word and stressed the last syllable: a long and eloquent sentence expressing gratitude for being admitted, delight at seeing her, concern, sympathy, and relief, could not have conveyed any of them half so well. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I should think it would be more to the point if I asked you whether you minded coming all this way for such a fraud. And flowers, too. I ought not to be able to look you in the face.”

  He came up to her, surveying her with great gravity out of long blue-gray eyes. His intentness, and his unconsciousness of himself, underlined his beauty till it seemed too improbable to be true.

  “Quite right,” he said. “You’re behaving very badly. You ought to be in bed. Now sit down and rest, or I shan’t stay even the minute I’m going to.” He took her by the elbows from behind, and steered her into a chair.

  She subsided, and heard the cushion being patted into place behind her. Having arranged her to his satisfaction, he took the chair on the opposite side of the fire, and, leaning forward with elbows on knees, looked at her again. Becoming quite concerned on her own account. She tried to remember, unsuccessfully, whether she had done anything about her face when she came in.

  “Don’t make me more ashamed of myself than I am. I’m pretty sure now it isn’t going to be flu after all. You’re going to have some tea with me, aren’t you?”

  “Well, if it really won’t stop you from properly resting—” When the flowerpot arrived along with the cup, he said, “Now just you stay put, I’ll do it,” and did so, tidying up carefully after him.

  “They’re magnificent. Do you grow them?”

  “They’re not bad this year. As a matter of fact, these were supposed to be for the church next Sunday. Don’t tell a soul. There’s much more point in giving them to you. Haring about dying on your feet and looking after everyone except yourself.”

  “For heaven’s sake. I’ve had just enough work to be good for me, for once.”

  He said, thoughtfully, “You know, you quite make me wish I’d gone ahead with it myself. I did think of it, at one time.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Well, I read English. It would have meant starting more or less from scratch.”

  “It’s been done. I met a man once who did it on his retiring gratuity from the Navy; he was forty when he began.”

  “Really? Pretty good. The only thing is, I was never very hot on the science side.”

  “So what did you decide on in the end?”

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve more or less let the question lapse for the moment. You see, as they keep telling me I can’t take on anything needing sustained mental effort for at least a year, there doesn’t seem much point in getting too many
ideas.”

  Hilary looked up sharply. “Did Sanderson tell you that?”

  “Not him actually. But it seems to be the general idea.”

  “He doesn’t generally insist on that. Of course you’d need to take care physically for a bit. But you don’t want to be a middleweight champion, or anything, do you?”

  He laughed. “Well, no, I don’t think so. I’d be cruiserweight, anyway. People don’t think so, but I’ve got big bones, that’s where it goes. Oh, yes, and talking of bones reminds me. I was going to ask you a bit of a favor; only I didn’t mean to today, in case you were feeling rotten.”

  “What was it? How do bones come in?”

  “In a big way. I was wondering if, just for one night, you could possibly see your way to lend me a skeleton.”

  “A skeleton?” She gazed at him, with bewilderment followed by inward exasperation. There he sat, charming, diffidently eager, planning heaven knew what adolescent crudity; she could not bring herself to ask him. “But I haven’t got one. I’m not a lecturer in anatomy.”

  “Oh, I see.” He looked quite dashed. “I thought most doctors had one tucked away somewhere.”

  “My dear boy! Seeing that an articulated skeleton can cost anything up to seventy pounds, and the simplest way of moving one about is to borrow an ambulance and lay it out on the stretcher, it isn’t a thing one acquires casually. Must you have one?”

  “Well, not really. It would have been ideal, but I expect I can fake up something or other.”

  “You know,” she felt moved to say, “it isn’t my business, of course; but sometimes these rags don’t turn out as funny as people think beforehand. I remember one where the victim pretty nearly died of shock.”

  “But I don’t want it to terrify anyone with. Good heavens, what a frightful idea.” He looked quite reproachful before relenting enough to add, “Of course, I ought to have explained. It’s for a stage prop.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, I apologize; but if you knew what some medical students are capable of—What exactly do you want it for?”

  “Actually, for the Lynchwick Dramatic Society. I’m producing for them this year. Some of them aren’t at all too bad, in the right sort of stuff. Of course, they’ve the usual yearning toward Sheridan and Coward—attraction of opposites, or something. I suppose. But once you’ve jollied them out of all that, it’s amazing what you can get out of them. I’ve got two chaps from the aircraft works that are perfect naturals, and one who can really act. They’d rather set their hearts on a real skeleton. Of course we could have the thing screened from the audience and use a bit of suggestion; in fact I’d prefer it myself. But you know how it is, a few slap-up props are good for morale. It’s more for the effect on the cast I want it, than anything.”

  “I wish I had one for you.” She spoke mechanically; she had been, for a few moments, quite startled by his change of tone. It had been almost a change of personality. She recognized in him for the first time what she had unconsciously missed most, because in her own world she had been used to taking it for granted; the voice of a man talking with casual confidence about a job. “Have you done much of that kind of thing?”

  “Oh, well, on and off. I produced at school, and acted a bit. And when I went up to Oxford, I was in Ouds.”

  “Really?” He couldn’t have made the Ouds, she was thinking, on looks alone. “I might even have seen you, then. No, I suppose not; the only one I’ve seen in the last four years was The Tempest, one of the summer ones. You weren’t in that.”

  He grinned. “Don’t you remember me? Well, I am hurt.”

  This was more than awkward. She cast her mind back: the Ferdinand, fair and much too small; the Prospero, broad, and the voice too deep; the Trinculo, definitely not. Perhaps she might have missed him in a minor part. “Well, I give up.”

  He leaned forward, then suddenly dropped his arms so that they hung beside his knees. His face, thrust out, took on a mournful and malevolent stare. It recalled to her the face he had made for Betty and Christine.

  “I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow, And I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts …”

  Even after she had heard, and remembered, the gross and forlorn voice whose sullenness had been so curiously moving, she exclaimed, “Don’t try to tell me the Caliban was you.”

  “And you never knew me again. You can’t imagine what that does to me. And I had such cute green gills. I made them myself, out of pig bladder.”

  “Well, now that I’ve got my breath, let me congratulate you. You were far better than the Stratford man the same year.”

  “Who, Streatley? I think he was all right, if you see it funny. Shakespeare may have done, at that. The Elizabethan sense of humor was so much tougher than ours, one’s apt to over-interpret what one can’t swallow, don’t you find? Still, I must say I feel a sort of sadness for the poor beast, myself.”

  “But the face. Was it a mask?”

  “Just greasepaint. I pooled ideas with the chap they sent down from town, and did it myself.” He added, with modest satisfaction, “The gills were mine. He was rather against them, but he admitted in the end they were a help. I always think there ought to be something a bit fishy about Caliban, don’t you? After all, he smelled like a fish.”

  “What else have you done?”

  “I was the First Madman in Malfi. That was great fun. A sort of cheese-colored face; paralyzed down one, side. Like this.” He illustrated, with unpleasant realism. “Oh, and Oberon the year after.”

  “But I remember reading about that. Was that you?”

  “I was after Bottom, really, but they weren’t having any. Still, Toller was very good, and I’d had a lot of fun, so I couldn’t grouse. There’s something in Oberon, too, if he isn’t prettified; great mistake, that. I believe I’ve got a couple of snaps somewhere, if all this doesn’t bore you stiff. But are you feeling tired?”

  “Not at all. Let me look.”

  He fished a thick, rubbed leather wallet out of his pocket. “I expect they’re here. Yes, here we are.” He handed them over; the work, she saw, of a competent amateur, no doubt one of the cast. “It looks a strong make-up,” he said, “for the open air. But the audience wasn’t very close; and of course the lighting came on halfway through.”

  “It’s very striking,” she said, covering an inward disappointment. “But I still wouldn’t have known you. I should have thought your own face would have done, with a few quirks here and there.”

  “I tried it. But I didn’t fancy it.”

  “Did you keep any of the clippings about it? The one from the Observer, for instance? I’d like to see it again.”

  “Very likely.” He produced a strip of newsprint, and handed it over. When she had taken it, he looked for the first time embarrassed. She ran her eye down the cutting, confirming the impressions she had retained.

  … No such allowances, however, had to be made for Julian Fleming’s Oberon. Here was a fresh, strong, and consistent interpretation. A few technical faults, which experience will remedy, were offset by imaginative coherence, a fine presence, and a delivery which wasted nothing of the great incantations. It seemed a pity to handicap a flexible and subtle performance with a make-up so heavily stylized that it approximated to a mask; enough came through, however, to set up a standard inimical to indulgence elsewhere, and …

  She looked up. “I know less than nothing about the theater from inside. But I should have thought that after a notice like this in a London paper, you wouldn’t have much difficulty in breaking into the professional stage.”

  He said, with what seemed complete indifference, “Oh, not by now, I should think. They have short memories, you know.”

  She said quickly, “You had an offer, then?”

  “Vaguely. But there were—various difficulties. I hadn’t had my viva, or the result of my finals or anything. And, oh, well, there were any amount of things.” He took the cutting from her, and put it back. He would have taken the photographs too,
but she withdrew them, and sliding away the top ones, took out the one below.

  “This isn’t Oberon,” she said. “What is it?”

  A second glance made obvious what it was: a flash, taken during performance, of one of the Boar’s Head Tavern scenes from Henry IV. Beside an unconvincing lath fireplace, Falstaff, crudely whiskered and padded, with bloat lines penciled on a youthful face, was standing with a tankard. Near him on a long settle Prince Hal was lounging, long-legged in silk hose, one hanging scalloped sleeve brushing the floor, smiling up with lazy impudence into his face. He looked slight and graceful and immensely young; it must have been taken before he was fully grown.

  “Well,” she said, “here at last is something I can recognize you in. Was this one of the plays at school?”

  “Which? Let’s look.” Not only his face, but his voice had altered; both had a guarded lack of expression she had never known in him before. He leaned forward, took the picture before she had made any movement to return it, and gave it a cursory glance. “I thought it was another from the Dream. Really, the rubbish one does accumulate.”

  He made as if to put the photograph back, but, instead, leaned out of his chair and tossed it into the fire. It struck the unburned end of a log, glanced away, and fell into the fender. Hilary picked it up.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make a mess of your fireplace.”

  He spoke with the appearance of lightness; she sensed, below it, a tension which she tried to ease by continuing to talk. “Oh, nothing seems so dead-and-done-with as the fairly recent past. But you don’t want to throw out the baby along with the bath water. In a few years you’ll be sorry not to have a complete record. What about your memoirs?” She smiled. “You’ll want this for the chapter on Early Successes.”

  “Very funny.”

  She looked up, quite at a loss. He had spoken with a bitterness which was made doubly disconcerting by his evident impression of having adequately concealed it.

  “It wasn’t meant to be so funny. Quite a lot of people have started in Ouds and got to the West End. Why not you?”