As MacGregor pulled up in the yard by the thatched farmhouse a homespun collie ran out and jumped into his lap.
Muriel put up her hand to tidy her hair and said: “I seem to be back from a long cruise—on a stormy sea!”
“Ach, she’s got a boisterous motion in her. Why the hell don’t ye let down that hair?”
Muriel pulled down her hair out of the formal waves and was combing it out as Mrs. Buchanan came down the steps. She wore a violet-and-red plaid blouse that somehow made her a Highland gypsy under the black cloud of her hair. She had astonishing jet-blue eyes.
“Me daughter, Mrs. Buchanan!” He paused. “The second youngest.”
“Welcome young lady. I can see the family likeness!” she said in a forthright way. “The scones are in the oven. I suppose ye got them on the wind, Doctor?” Then she went off, muttering. “Another one o’ Robbie Bums’ daughters!”
MacGregor laughed. “Best cup o’ tea in England here. Come on.”
They had tea in the kitchen, and Muriel found it a pleasant change to be treated as a lassie. When she went into a tenant’s farm at Barrington she was the squire’s wife.
As they left, MacGregor fished out a pouch of tobacco and threw it on the table. “Bit o’ baccy, for the guidman.”
They drove a few miles and up a cart lane where overhanging hawthorns smothered them with blossoms. Then they pulled up on top of the rise, and through the steam from the radiator Muriel saw the valley twisting along the stream below them. She brushed the hawthorn snow out of her hair and felt herself fragrant with the summer.
“Strictly accordin’ to the canons o’ punctual medical etiquette I suppose I ought to know who ye are.”
“Do you want to?”
“No. In fact, that’s just what I don’t want to know.” She paused a moment. “Anyway, I live a good distance from Dorminster.”
MacGregor got put over the jammed door. “I was goin’ to say that it didn’t break me heart to hear ye say that, but lookin’ at ye now, I don’t care a damn if ye’re the vicar’s wife.”
At times, she was discovering, MacGregor could be downright and honest about the things other people side-slipped in conversation.
As they went down the green and twisty path to the river, she was trying to understand why letting her hair down gave her such a sense of freedom. She found herself in a secluded patch of ground by the corner of the stream, and MacGregor walked over and looked down into the pool.
“Aye, it’s a lyrical strip o’ water, shining along like a line of poetry.”
With a sudden throb in her Muriel felt it perhaps had found its poet. MacGregor standing up there was as forthright and natural as a tree in its own ground.
“It’s lovely here.”
“All the country wants,” said MacGregor, “is to be let alone. All it wants is a bit o’ trimmin’ now and again like that beard o’ mine.” He joined up his rod, threw a fly on the water, laid the rod on the ground, and sat on his haunches. “That’s all the fishin’ I do. Just a kind of apology to meself for comin’ into the country.”
She felt that he was the last man in the world to need an apology for anything. She crooked herself down and tried to see the trout in the pool.
“I can’t see any trout.”
“All ye can see of a trout is that ripple that breaks over him, like sometimes ye’d see a ripple of sunlight in a woman’s hair and ye’d think for a moment ‘twas a little tremble o’ the spirit in her.” MacGregor stretched himself out on his back. “‘Tis funny how the character comes out in a person. When I see that twist o’ smoky gold in your hair, I know that streak o’wildness away back in you that tells me a grandfather or a grandmother maybe grew up like a bit o’ natural corn among the hills.”
“There is not much you don’t know, MacGregor. On my mother’s side we came down from an old country stock—you know a patch of wild acre turned into a nice smooth lawn after a couple of generations of church and army. Am I all trimmed and tidied up?”
“Well, I suppose if ye turned this river into a canal, it would be just a road of water, but ‘twould come down all the same from the mountain springs. And just a whisk o’ lightning and just a whack o’ thunder, up in the hills, and ‘twill come down in a flood and burst the walls o’ the canal. Two things you can’t dam up forever—mountain water and human blood.”
He changed suddenly. “Ah, this sun! Bah, how I hate workin’ with me head stuck over a jar o’ bluidy germs!”
She laughed. She was lying along the ground and turned on her hip to look at him. “I don’t know why you are a doctor!”
“Yah, a bluidy germ in me, that’s lookin’ for more germs.”
“You had to do it?”
“I knew you’d know. I like ye for the way ye know things.”
“I know them with you, anyway.”
MacGregor moved a little to watch a grasshopper. “I’ve got a wee cottage by the lochs, where ye can see mountains standin’ with their feet in the water, and their heads in the sky, and if it wasn’t that I can go there now and again, and get out of the laboratory of my mind, I don’t know if I could be stickin’ it for very long. I’m tellin’ ye, ‘tis a weary and a laborin’ thing, the workin’ on the brain. ‘Tis like a sponge, that gray matter in the head, that soaks up all the blood in the body to keep it moist, until in the end there’s not a drop o’ juice left in ye, and ye’re like an old withered tree with cerebral sparrows arguin’ all day and all night on the top. There’s more than one young doctor I know whose work is his wife, and whose wife is his housekeeper, and I’m thinkin’ ‘tis a scant and monkish thing his life must be. A bluidy dry old attic it is, the scientific head, and it puts cobwebs on a young man’s eyes. A kind o’ bluidy silent music it is, without a drop o’ joy...And here am I, as bad as any o’ them, pratin’ away like a parrot in his cage, when I should be just singin’ like a lark with you here in the sunlight.” He paused. “I always come down here alone and just lie out in the sun like Adam in his garden...There’s a kind o’ bluidy mourning in clothes over a bronzed and healthy man...But that cold white winter flesh is as naked as a plucked fowl, and I’m thinkin’ ‘tis well out o’ sight...”
Her long golden legs were sensible to the sunlight and her frock had come up on her thighs, and she said: “You can lie like Adam now, for all I care.”
“I’ll take me shirt off at your word. I like the hot hand o’ the sun on me chest.”
He took off his shirt, and she felt a thrilling in her marrow at the unexpected girth of muscle on him.
“Well, you don’t look as if you are imprisoned in the great indoors!”
He laughed. “Ah, I got a lot of rowin’ when I was takin’ those medical goats. The sanatorium was up by the lochs. We practiced a bit o’ hygiene on ourselves.” He laughed. “Well, I’m a pagan from the waist up, and a chapelman from that down!”
She laughed. It was evident that it wasn’t Sunday for the chapelman, and she knew that MacGregor understood the gist of her laughter. Suddenly the bronze hair on his chest seemed electric with light, and she felt sharp twitches in her body.
It was a little time before he said: “It’s funny how you can lie quiet and silent outside and the blood thunderin’ like a red torrent inside you.”
“Yes.” The word was a whisper. She felt the expansion in her blood to this man, and suddenly had an extraordinary confidence in herself. Some instinct told her that he would respect her more if she began what must begin. With a natural and sudden movement she laid her cheek down on his warm chest, and slowly moved it up with her mouth searching for the warm red mouth inside his beard. When his beard touched her face the hairs shocked her like the tendrils of live wires, and then she felt her breast swell suddenly in the pouch of his hand.
Afterwards, she knew, she would understand the significance to her of that mating in the clear sunlight. But now she surrendered herself to the physical delight of things snatched up like shafts of light into her eyes—the shine
of sweat on the muscles that girded his loins, the extraordinary blush of blood that seemed to come like a red undertone through the golden coat of her own skin, the curious plasmatic glint of natural oil, the involuntary twitch of muscles as if they had an individual life of their own. She exulted in the physical man and had a pride in being able to match her vigor to his. All her body ached in the sensual telepathy of the blood, and she cried out loud in the sweet deliverance.
They lay quietly for a little while and then he chuckled.
“What in God’s name do you want to see a doctor for?”
“Perhaps I didn’t know what the complaint was until I found the cure.”
There was a slight alarm in his face. “For God’s sake, don’t tell me that a woman like you can have that kind of worry.”
She sat silent for a time, and like a black cloud in the blue sky she remembered love-making with Nicholas when she had switched off the light. And she knew now that it had been as much her fault as his. She knew that it was a long history and put it out of her mind. She said: “I’m not in the mood for a diagnosis now.” He understood and for a time he talked very quietly of country things, and from his slow, murmured remarks a kind of philosophy formed. She listened, as if she would understand his mind as perfectly as her body understood his body, and then she sighed in content.
“How sweet the air is now!”
There was a kind of loveliness in her simple thanks, and he took her hand and said: “You are a lovely girl.” He paused. “You always will be a girl. You have that singin’ in you.”
Once more before they got up to go they enjoyed love, and when at last they turned up the path to the car she looked back at the little corner by the river and felt somehow like a plant that was being torn away from its bed. They drove in absolute silence homeward as the purple shade of the dusk slowly climbed in the hinterland of the blue light. As they mounted the shoulder of hill that lay above Dorminster she felt a sudden hatred of going back. Some impulse to fight off the parting gave her confidence and she put her hand on his thigh. And as she put out her hand she knew that she had found her womanhood. It was the first confident thing she had done and she felt the blood mantling her cheeks as he turned and smiled. After a time he stopped singing, and as the vale of Dorminster came into gradual view below, an emphasis of her womanhood seemed to command her, and she made very sure that he would stop the car. On the top of the rise he pulled up quietly, and then he got out and lifted her over the door, and they went into a small grove. As the birds startled up from their nestling in the dusk, she felt queer, shy little thoughts fluttering up in her, and their love-making now seemed to gather a gentleness and poignancy from the twilight. They were silent walking back, and he paused with his hand on the lever when they got into the car.
“I’m sorry I’m going back in the morning.” He paused. “I only came back to get some gear. I’ve got to do research in Oxford and then perhaps in London.”
“I don’t like you going back tomorrow.”
He started the car and then stopped it halfway down the hill. There was a gold glint on her wedding ring. He said: “I didn’t expect to be saying this—but if you hadn’t that ring on, I might have asked you to marry me.”
Then he jammed in the clutch and drove homeward in a violent and dangerous way. When they got out in the back street he asked:
“Where are you going?”
“Up to the Ladies’ Club.”
“Well, come through by the house and go up by the Close.”
She knew that he was not going to kiss her or touch her again and she felt a little cold. The door was open as they came round into the garden, and as they turned the corner, Saluby came down the steps. She saw him pause, as if to consider, as he saw them. She felt herself that she didn’t care a damn what Saluby thought.
Saluby said to MacGregor: “Where the hell have you been?”
“Fishing.”
“Good evening!” Saluby spoke politely to Muriel, as if she were some unknown friend of MacGregor’s. Then he turned to MacGregor. “I’ve been here since five, and I’ve got to go now. I’ve got a case waiting.” Muriel moved a step. “I must go now. I’ll leave you both to talk.”
She gave her hand to MacGregor. “Thank you very much.”
“It was a pleasure to help you.”
It was curious how MacGregor had changed suddenly into the formal doctor.
“I can’t stay to talk,” Saluby said. “See you tomorrow, MacGregor.”
“I’m going back in the morning.”
“Oh hell.” Saluby looked at his watch. “No. It’s no use. I’ll ring you up before bedtime.” He said in a casual way: “I’m going up into the town. Can I give you a lift?”
“I’m going to the Ladies’ Club.”
“That’s fine. I’m going to the chemist next door.”
“You’ll be all right with Dr. Saluby,” said MacGregor.
Saluby stopped his car at the other side of the Close. “What the hell happened? I telephoned and you had gone. I didn’t know what the devil to do.”
“I saw the door open and I walked in thinking you were there. Then I found it was he.”
“What on earth did you say?”
“What could I say, except that I wanted to see Dr. MacGregor?”
“Lord, what did you think up!”
“Nothing. He began to pull my leg, and he told me I looked as if I’d got a toothache in my big toe, and advised me to go back to my tea in a refined ladies’ teashop, and to leave him to go fishing. I gave him a frightful surprise when I asked him where the river was—and then I went down fishing with him. He forgot all about the illness I was going to think up.”
“Well, I’m damned! Does he know who you are?”
“No. He never asked me. He doesn’t know I know you.”
“I must say you’re a pretty clever woman. I was in a dither. But what on earth did you want to go fishing with him for? He’s a damned clever man, but he’s a bit of an old stick.”
“Is he old?”
“No. I don’t think he’s forty. I didn’t mean it that way. I can’t understand you wanting to go fishing with him.”
“Well, I’d dismissed Blake and the car for a couple of hours and I had nothing else to do.”
“Well, I hope it wasn’t too heavy going.” He paused. “You see, I’m very fond of him, and I know he’s going to do something big, and I’d hate to think somebody would find him boring simply because he’s—well, a bit Scotch, and puritan.”
“I thought he was charming, and I was not bored. Heavens, Blake will wonder if I’m lost. Better let me down at the corner.”
“You’re very quiet this evening,” he said, before he started the car.
“Oh, it was peaceful down by the river.”
“Well, I’m glad no harm was done. Thank heaven you have some wits about you.”
She got out at the corner and knew that it was all right with Saluby. The sun was red on the beard of the Sir Walter Raleigh statue in the public garden.
FIFTEEN
When Nicholas sat himself at his desk on this next Monday he admitted a candid fear of the morning mail in his mind. Miss Coleman put down the single Personal letter by him, and Nicholas felt himself inclined to shout at her: “Why the hell don’t you say something about this Monday letter!” He calmed the ridiculous impulse and took the mail. There was a note today from Mr. Elder. Miss Coleman read the formal and courteous apology. Mr. Elder was no longer in bed, but his doctor had advised at least another week’s rest. Nicholas heard her vaguely, his eye transfixed on the notepaper.
“Leave it there, Miss Coleman. Let’s take the business.”
When he got her out of the room he picked up Elder’s note, got a magnifying glass out of his desk. The same paper! He took up the Personal envelope and saw the Ampthill, Bedford, postmark. Getting closer to London! Whole thing worked out with diabolical skill. He compared the notepapers. Certainly the same, and the letterhead also cut of
f Elder’s note of apology. Nicholas saw Elder’s cold bleached face on the blotting pad, like a pale shadow on the white. A ghost! An old, evil ghost. Well, he would deal with Elder.
At lunchtime he went around again to the optician and confirmed his magnifying glass in the microscopic cell. He had taken his own microscope to Barrington. The young man in the shop was showing a curiosity, and Nicholas felt that he ought not to go there again. Anyway, he felt, there would be no need. He was confident that he had located the sender of the letters in Elder. He was so relieved and excited that he ate hardly any lunch.
All through the afternoon the matter beat down on his mind as endlessly as the hot sun on London, and suddenly he knew that he would have to clear this matter up today and get it out of his head. It was an insult not less than a threat. A resentful microbe had worked itself out through years of patience in Elder’s mind. Well, he was going to end the whole damn thing before he went to bed tonight.
When Miss Coleman had brought him the final letter, to sign and he had concluded the day, he said to her: “Sidonie, I won’t be round tonight. I have to see old Dorman on the India. Dining with him. You understand?”
“Yes.”
He was putting away his things in his case and as he was tucking in his Times he remarked: “Don’t know Why I take this to the club with me. Enough to waste a whole day in this paper.” He paused. “Do you take it?”
“Of course.”
He smiled. Evidently it was unthinkable that Mr. Bude’s personal secretary should not take The Times. He ambled on: “I’ve got a weakness for the Personal Column. Knew an author once who said he made his income out of that. Ever look at it?”
“Oh, sometimes—vaguely. Why?”
“Oh, nothing, just curiosity.” He kept on stowing the case. “You don’t happen to remember if you read last Thursday’s Personal Column.”
The Chinese Room Page 8
