No Truce with Time

by Alec Waugh

  Never to drive out along that high hill road; to watch from her verandah for the sight of a small white boat creeping out into the bay; never again to park a car under casuarinas; to watch a circle of sunlight move over polished wainscoting. Never again to know that breathless, taut excitement: that death that was an intenser living.

  Never, never. She could have screamed the word out loud. Never, never.

  Her hands clenched tight upon the chair. Her head was throbbing, pain ran from throat to forehead; with the weakness in her back robbing her of the strength to fight it. Never again. Yet to have to go on seeing him, day after day, week after week, year after year. The restlessness with which she tossed under the mosquito net during the long sleepless afternoons when Barclay had been in New York had been bad enough. How much worse would it be now, with Barclay’s presence to exacerbate that mood.

  She looked back to the days a year ago before she had known him. They had been dull, prosaic. But she had known no better. She had been in a coma. Her body was wakened now, her nerves aroused. How could she become again that inert, insensate person? She remembered the way that mulatto had looked at her that morning. That bold insolent look had sent a quiver of response along her nerves. Her hands tightened on the chair. What would happen to her now? Not that: surely not some equivalent for that. Yet what might not happen, when she was abandoned, at the mercy of those throbbing nerves?

  She closed her eyes, conscious of the extent to which at this moment her will, her powers of resistance were her body’s victims. What might not happen? It was ghastly, monstrous. It was unthinkable. Yes, but what was going to happen to her; during these days, these weeks, these months?

  It was to be for so long, so very long. If it was the question of putting up a week’s, a month’s, a year’s fight. But it wasn’t. It was a question of for ever.

  It wasn’t just a matter of losing Barclay, but of losing the whole world of sensation that he had opened for her. He had made a new woman of her. How could that woman face the succession of those dreary years? She would be like a drug addict, deprived of her drug. She recalled the gleam in those dark eyes. She shuddered, turned away. What sort of a woman was she? What had she become? Was she going mad? Had she gone macl? Was she the slave, that and no more than that, of her nerves and senses? Had she? Was she? She felt powerless, limp, beaten down by this boneless ache, this dreary fever.

  In the room behind, she could hear Gerald’s voice raised above the others. He was happy enough now. But in two hours’ time he would be cursing at life, wishing himself dead, with good cause for wishing himself dead. Who would want to go on living when he had become the slave of his infirmities.

  And it was because one person who loathed life had to go on living, that this terrifying future waited her. It was absurd, it was ridiculous. This fate could be so easily avoided : that was the maddening thing about it all. So easily, so very easily....

  So easily, so more than easily. She was standing in the drive two hours later, waving her hosts farewell.

  So easily, she would just show herself how easily.

  “It’s been lovely,” she was calling out, “so lovely that I’m not at all sure that I can trust Gerald to drive me back.”

  She raised her voice so that everyone could hear her. Next day they would all remember that it was Gerald who had driven home. So easily, so more than easily.... I must let them get away first, she thought, I must be the last to leave.

  “Wait a moment,” she said to Gerald, “I want to light a cigarette.”

  She leant out of the window, to wave a last goodbye.

  “I’m started on my last drive!” she called.

  A mile down the road, she laid her hand on Gerald’s arm.

  “Please, darling. I didn’t want to make a scene before all those people. I didn’t want to embarrass you. But I’d rather drive. Don’t bother to get out. Just move along. I’ll get out.”

  The air was warm upon her cheeks. She paused in the roadway. How good life was, how good life could be. The headlights of a car bound north from Rodney lit the green spears of cane into an emerald brilliance. There was a whirr as the car went by, then once again the canefields were a deep stretch of olive in the moonlight. It was exquisite: so more than exquisite. And this was what life could be : always, and for ever.

  So easily, so very easily. She had to prove to herself how easily.

  He was snoring before she turned the corner of the high hill road that looked down over Petite Anse.

  He made no sign of waking as she turned the car into the garage. Slumped down in the corner, he was snoring heavily, so heavily that she could scarcely hear the soft thud-thud of the engine. Behind her, the wide door stood open. She turned round, looking through. The ragged leaves of a banana tree were silhouetted against the deep ultramarine backcloth of the sky. How beautiful it was. It was the first time she had ever noticed it. How the tropics surprised one with their sudden pictures.

  She had only to shut out that picture, to close the door; and then put out the light.

  She had been wearing gloves. There would be no fingerprints upon the wheel.

  Softly the engine thudded, a faint accompaniment to Gerald’s snoring. It had been a heavy night. She would have to shake hard to wake him: wake him to what? To a fit of choking, to spasm after spasm of coughing; to pain, misery; to a loathing of himself and life. It would be unkind to wake him. He looked so young, so boyish in the twilight.

  In the mornings he looked haggard, bloated, with pouches beneath his eyes. You saw in his face the old man he was to become. Looking at him now, asleep, she saw the boy that he had been. The sight of him touched unexpectedly that pitying, maternal side of her to which fate had allowed no scope. Poor Gerald. To shake him, to rouse him to a life he loathed, when by the mere closing of a door, that and no more than that, she would close a door upon all his troubles, upon all her troubles, upon the troubles that awaited Barclay, that awaited Kitty, that awaited J. B., that awaited who knew how many others that the repercussion of their lives would influence....

  And by the mere closing of a door....

  She closed her eyes. She leant her arms forward across the wheel, dropped her head on them.

  Behind the darkness of closed lids flickered a kaleidoscope of pictures: the wave in Barclay’s hair; the circle of sunlight on polished wood; the glint of moonlight under casuarinas, Never again, never, never again. Those pictures: and those other pictures; a long verandah, a half-read novel, an ashtray full of half-smoked cigarettes, the bold insolence in a mulatto’s eyes.

  I’m going mad, I’m going mad, she thought. Never again, never, never again.

  The closing of a door. Just that: the closing of a door. So easily, so very easily.

  Through her tortured senses the thudding of the engine purred its accompaniment to the heavy, intermittent snoring, the stertorous breathing at her side. The drug addict and the drug. The bold bright stare. The circle of moving sun-light.

  “Oh Gerald, oh my dear, my dear …”

  In a sudden fit of energy, in a sudden mood of pity, of compunction, of feelings so mixed that she could not disentangle them, she raised herself from her arms, looked at him, and bending downwards, kissed his cheek.

  25

  The inquest was held on the morning of the Lady Grenville’s docking. Rodney wore an air of carnival. From daybreak, the narrow streets were paraded with chattering, excited, gesticulating natives in their brightest clothes. The car park was crowded with the unlikeliest vehicles. The high road from Vieux Port was a long line of brilliant head-dresses. The street in front of the court-house was as crowded as the square of the cinema five minutes before opening. The two policemen at its gates strode back and forth with eyes flashing and chests flung out against their neat white tunics, as though it were for them that this gathering had convened.

  The coroner, as he took his place at the high table, looked round him with an air of self-importance.

  “If there is the
slightest disturbance, I shall clear the court,” he said. “This is a tragic and a serious occasion. I insist on its being treated with the dignity that it deserves.”

  He was a tall thin man in the middle fifties, with sallow skin, wide nostrils and long thin-lipped mouth. In Europe his quartering of coloured blood might have been overlooked. He had long, thin-fingered hands of which he was very proud, whose nails he wore long and polished. He held them in front of him as he talked, displaying them in studied gesticulation with pipe or penholder. He had a Simian look. His name was Camberley. He had inherited through his grandfather a small store by the water-front whose scope he had enlarged through the acquisition of a number of minor agencies. He was the owner of the El Santo Record. He exerted considerable influence in local politics and had once been elected to the legislative council. He was proud of his achievements and resented the limitations which the quartering of colour, that he would have himself indignantly denied, placed on their development. Leading articles in the El Santo Record frequently attacked the snobbery of the Whitehall official. He enjoyed the opportunities that his position on the bench gave to exercise authority over those who considered themselves outside the courthouse his superiors. He was well aware that his comments and questions had frequently caused offence. He was on that account the more resolved that no criticism could be made of his conduct now. He knew exactly what he wanted people to say of him. “Old Camberley may throw his weight about when nothing particular’s at stake, but look how careful he is in a case like Gerald Montague’s.” This was a big occasion for Camberley, he meant to make the most of it.

  “This is a tragic and serious occasion,” he repeated. “The island has lost one of its dearest and best loved friends. There is not one man or woman in the island who does not know himself to be the poorer for the death of Gerald Montague. By our own sorrow we can measure the sorrow of the wife who has for eight years now been his companion and associate. It is cruel that her private sorrow should be in this way drawn into the public limelight. But that is the law under which we live: the law that in its impartial justice cannot take into account the private feelings of the individual. The conditions under which our old friend’s life came to its sad and sudden close have to be examined in such a way as the law demands. The law is no respecter of persons. It does, however, lie within our power to render by our behaviour this painful occasion less painful for his widow. I ask you to respect her sorrow. I will now summon the first witness. Michael Dufort. Dufort, you are, I believe, the gardener at Mrs. Montague’s villa. I want you to describe in your own words exactly what happened two mornings ago.”

  “Well, Mr. Judge, sah, it was this way …”

  Dufort was a white-haired negro, who had worked for Gerald Montague’s father as a groom. He was lined and bent. He had reached the agelessness of age. His appearance had not altered in the last ten years, and would not alter if he were to live for another thirty. He had the negro’s natural affection for making a short story long. On an ordinary occasion Camberley would have made effective play of his garrulity, making an exhibition of negro stupidity, of those traits in the negro temperament that he detested in himself. But on this occasion he was quiet, helpful, patient. He made it easy for the old man to tell his story clearly.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I see. You arrived there as usual, at daybreak, to perform your duties. You noticed that the garage door was shut. Did that surprise you?”

  “Well, sah, it takes me a long time to get around to anything.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, sah, ah hab got used to the sound of that ole door swinging. Ah’ve heard that door swinging, why, sah, that’s the first thing Ah hears when Ah comes up the path each morning.”

  “I see. So that when you didn’t hear the sound of the door swinging you felt suspicious?”

  “No, sah. Ah didn’t feel suspicious. Ah just said to myself that sure is a good lock massa Gerald had put on that ole door of his.”

  “So he had just had the lock repaired?”

  “No, sah.”

  “I thought you said …”

  “No, sah, not repaired. There weren’t no lock there, neber. A fine new lock, that’s what he’s had put on. But all the same, it didn’t seem quite right to me. Ah’s got so used to that ole swinging door.”

  It was because he had not got used to this new unswinging door that he had gone across to the garage. He had stood outside it ruminatively surveying the bright new lock. It was while he had stood there, that his nostrils on this clear spring morning had been assailed by a strange smell. No, it had not been strong. Had he not been actually standing there, he would not have noticed it. It was so faint that he had felt no alarm, that he would not have bothered to mention it had he not passed the maid on his way to the outhouses.

  It was the maid Jeanette who then took up the story. No, there had been no alarm about Dufort’s manner. He had just remarked casually that there was a funny smell outside the garage. He had joked about it. He had hoped, he had said, there was not a petrol leakage. He had plans for that afternoon. It was not till she had called her master with his tea and found that his bed had not been slept in that she felt alarmed. At this point, the coroner began to question her.

  “You were not in the habit of finding his bed unslept in?”

  “No, sah.”

  “How often would you have found his bed unslept in?”

  “Neber, sah. Neber not once.”

  “And how long is it that you have worked for Mr. Montague?”

  “Four whole years.”

  “And this was the very first time you did not find him in his bed?”

  “Yes, sah.”

  “He’s never slept in the verandah, in a hammock, or in …”

  “In all those years, Ah’ve neber once found him in my lady’s bedroom. As Ah ve said to Dufort, what’s marriage for unless …”

  “Now, please.”

  A titter had gone round the court-house. Camberley tapped smartly on the desk.

  “If there is one repetition of this conduct …”

  He did not glare down the room. He stared down it in dignified, aloof contempt. It was an expression that he had practised before a mirror. He was not unaware of its effectiveness. He waited till the silence was complete. Then he turned back to Jeanette.

  “You may continue now.”

  Among her friends, Jeanette would have been as capable as Dufort of prolonged parenthetical discussions. But the formality of the court disconcerted her. She told her story, concisely, almost in telegraphese. Yes, she had been surprised, a little frightened. But no, she had not connected her master’s absence with the smell under the garage door. Why should she have? She knew nothing about motor-cars, beyond being driven in them. She was simply worried because she had found her master’s bed unslept in. She had hurried down the verandah to rouse her mistress.

  “And what time do you think that was?”

  “Well, sah, Ah’m expected to bring the master his tea at half after six.”

  “And what time do you call your mistress?”

  “Ah don’t start getting her tea till Ah hear the clock in the town strike seven.”

  “So you expected to find your mistress asleep?”

  “No, sah.”

  “No? Though it was half an hour before her usual waking time?”

  “Sometimes Mrs. Montague is awake, sometimes Mrs. Montague is asleep. Ah neber knows.”

  “And was Mrs. Montague awake, or was Mrs. Montague asleep this morning?”

  “Mrs. Montague was asleep. Ah had to shake her hard, before Ah woke her.”

  There was a murmur through the court as Mary rose from her seat beside her lawyer. She was not in mourning. She was wearing a white cotton frock: with an untrimmed white tennis-hat. Her lack of colour was as much a contrast to the dark faces in the court, the bright blouses and head-dresses as Hamlet’s black doublet in the court of Denmark. She looked very forlorn, standing in the w
itness-box. This time the coroner did not tap his penholder against his desk. He merely stared down the court-room with that same dignified stare, waited till complete silence had been restored, then turned to Mary.

  “On behalf of the court, on behalf of everyone in the island, I extend to you my deepest sympathy. I regret, I regret more than I can say, that this ordeal should be inflicted on you. I can only say that I will do my best to make it as little of an ordeal as possible. My questions will be few and brief. I will not ask you one question that is not strictly necessary. Tell me now, please, how did you feel, what did you feel when you learnt that your husband’s bed had not been slept in?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I did not understand at first. I was very tired. I had been sleeping heavily. I had got back late. I was still half asleep.”

  “I see. Yes, of course I see. Now tell me, when did you see your husband last?”

  “Outside the garage. I left him to put away the car.”

  “He drove the car back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your husband always drive back at night?”

  She shook her head.

  “Sometimes I did. Sometimes he did. We had no fixed arrangements. It was a matter of how we felt.”

  “I see.”

  It was a point that ordinarily Camberley would have played with, elaborated. The temptation to deploy his cleverness touched him, but another kind of vanity was at stake.

  “I see,” he repeated. “Your husband drove you back. What time did you leave the party ? At about half-past twelve ? Then you were back just after one? And your husband drove? You left him to put away the car. You went straight back to your room? You didn’t wait for your husband?’

  “I was very tired.”

  “Naturally. You undressed quickly. You got into bed. You don’t read yourself to sleep?”

  “Not when I’m as late as that.”

  “Did you expect your husband to say good-night to you?”

  “My husband always took a long time undressing. More often than not after a late night I’m asleep by the time he comes into my room.”