Return to Night: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “I only call in now and again. I’m not a nurse, I’m a doctor.”

  “Good Lord, a doctor. Whyever didn’t I think of that?” He stared at her all over again; it would have been almost a relief to her, by now, if he had started to say the conventional things. Instead he added, as if an apology were the first imperative, “You see, till after the operation there’s almost nothing I remember.”

  “That’s quite usual. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  “But, of course, I remembered you.”

  Hilary was interested. She must, she thought, have stirred up by association some memory of the accident, submerged till now. Such resurrections were apt to be painful. She said, reassuringly, “Bits of things may come back to you; or perhaps nothing will. It’s quite normal to forget, it means nothing either way.”

  He did not answer. The look he gave her—a compound of disappointment, diligence, and the hesitation of one who does not like to own that he has missed the point—seemed so little related to the situation that she asked herself for a moment whether he had made a complete recovery after all. But he seemed quite well coordinated and alert. Presently he said, “Yes, I see,” in the tone which means that one wishes one did; and came, suddenly and evidently, to the end of his resources. She became rather desperate for conversation herself. Since he was not her patient, a fact which had been heavily underlined, she could not ask him details about his symptoms; yet one would have said he was waiting for her to make some move or. other.

  “Well,” she said, “Matron’s expecting me to coffee; I should be getting along.”

  “Oh. But must you?” His face was positively dismayed. “I’ve hardly seen you yet.”

  “Come and have some too; I’m sure she’d be delighted.”

  “She wouldn’t; she’s death on visitors in the morning. I’m only supposed to be leaving a parcel.” He seemed suddenly to have shaken himself together. “Isn’t there somewhere we can talk for a minute without being chucked out? Me, I mean, of course, not you.” He smiled, anxiously watching her face for sign of offense. She had never seen, in man or woman, such an exterior treated with such utter lack of exploitation by the personality within. It was almost uncanny. Curiosity, as much as anything, made her say, “If you like we’ll take a turn round the garden. But I mustn’t be long.”

  “Oh, fine.” They went out through the pointed stone archway, and into the drive between the laurels. The sky was coolly blue and clear, and rooks were cawing in a clump of elms net far away. A little moss-grown path branched off from the side of the drive. He took her elbow, and steered her into it.

  They came out into a little derelict box garden, once squared and formal, now run wild. Marigolds had sown themselves in the unclipped walks; there was a gardener’s shed in one corner, against a hedge of arbutus; an old roller stood outside.

  “What a gorgeously forlorn place,” he said. His voice was as attractive as the rest of his physical attributes, but when he pronounced the word “forlorn” she noticed something else about it, a lack of the carelessness with which he treated the rest. It had a quality which suggested training, only a faint suggestion of the kind which remains when a skill has been absorbed and mostly forgotten.

  “Let’s sit down here.” He pulled off his coat and tossed it over the top of the roller. “That’s to save your nice white coattails. I’ll sit on this.” A piece of dirty-looking board lay on the ground close by. He curled himself up on it, loosely, like a boy.

  “Really I don’t think I’ve got time to sit. Matron doesn’t like being kept waiting.”

  “You can tell her I was consulting you.”

  “I certainly can’t.” It slipped out before she thought.

  “Oh, but I am. I can’t get over not having thought you might be a doctor.”

  It was not till this moment that her suspicions crystallized into certainty. When he had failed so oddly to say the conventional things, she had wondered for a moment and at once been ashamed of herself. Now she knew, as if she had seen it written and signed; about her part in his recovery, as far as it had been decisive, he had been told nothing at all. She thought of the dressing-case, the covering note. The shock of disgust she felt was so strong that it was impersonal; her whole conception of humanity slipped downward with a jar. She was recalled to herself by hearing his voice saying, “Don’t hover so distrustfully. There’s nothing to stop you from getting up again.”

  “This thing’s covered in rust. Your coat will be ruined.”

  “It’s dry, it’ll brush off. How women do fuss.” The word “women,” as he spoke it, was totally devoid of masculine provocation; it suggested, irresistibly, aunts, school matrons, and nagging devoted maids. She sat down, mechanically, her mind still concerned with its discovery. It was not for a moment that she thought, Then what does he want with me, after all.

  A sharp consciousness of being stared at made her look down. He was gazing up at her with the same curious, strained expectancy that she had noticed before in the hall.

  What is he waiting for? she thought irritably. And choosing the first triviality that came into her head, she said, “I’ve been away part of the summer; that will be why we haven’t met. I went to Sweden.”

  “Oh, really? Are there any good caves there?”

  “I’ve no idea,” she said blankly.

  “You don’t go in for them at all?” There was a kind of defeated hope in his voice.

  She said, “I’m afraid not,” thinking, I wonder whether he would strike one so oddly if he looked more average.

  “Don’t mind”—he looked, for the first time, a little embarrassed—“if I seem to ask you some rather stupid things. The fact is, when you were with me, I couldn’t see properly, but I seemed to be seeing, and it’s given me some rather confused ideas. I really should think before I start talking rubbish.”

  She regretted her unhelpfulness instantly. It was rare for patients to retain such memories after so long, or, indeed, at all. Moreover, Sanderson was preparing a paper on traumatic hallucinations, and this was one of his own cases. If she could learn anything to the purpose, she ought certainly to send it in.

  “It isn’t stupid,” she said. “It interests me very much. I’d like you to tell me about it.”

  “Would you?” he said; and looked straight up into her face. Perhaps it was only his seriousness, and iris thick black lashes, which gave him an air of unhappiness and doubt. His eyes, reflecting the clear sky, looked startlingly blue when she had supposed them to be gray. It was all a little disconcerting. Abruptly he lowered them, and shifted his hands, which he had locked round one ankle. “I don’t think so, really. These things sound rather idiotic, don’t they, in cold blood.”

  “Not to me,” she said reassuringly.

  He looked up at her again, and then discovered something unsatisfactory about his shoelace. Pulling it undone, and retying it painstakingly, he said, “Well, don’t mind if it sounds silly. It’s only that there’s a cave I know fairly well because I’ve been there a number of times, and I suppose it’s a natural thing if one’s wandering a bit to wander to places one knows. Only I thought, part of the time, that we were there.” He added, indistinctly, “That was afterward.”

  “After what?”

  She had no time to read the face which he turned to hers, and as swiftly averted. It might have expressed many things—incredulity, shame, even a mortal reproach. It gave her an unhappiness which pointed out to her her unfitness for this kind of research. All she could say was, “Well, never mind.”

  In a voice which was quenched to an almost colorless flatness he said, “I don’t think I can remember anything else.”

  “You don’t have to.” She spoke gently, and saw that there had returned to his face a kind of hesitant trust. “You told me all I wanted to know. I must go. Matron loathes cold coffee.”

  “Just tell me one thing. Did I—behave badly, or anything? You know, the sort of thing I believe people do, shouting and swearing and b
eing embarrassing about their pasts?”

  “Not at all.” Here was comfortably familiar ground. Nearly everyone (except, curiously enough, the people with most cause for concern) asked this sooner or later. Suppressing the amusement which the word “past” had given her, she added, “Your brain just slowed down and you went to sleep.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I had it rather on my mind.”

  She got up. He made a movement as if to follow; then sinking back again, and smiling up at her, said, “I’ve got cramp. Give me a pull.”

  Good-humoredly she took his outstretched hand in both of hers; there was a good deal of him, and she did not want to be ignominiously pulled over. He got to his feet with a smoothness which did not suggest much muscular contraction, and stood for a moment looking down at her. He could not be much under six foot; one scarcely noticed it except at such close quarters. “Thanks,” he said. He picked up his coat, shook it perfunctorily, and put it on.

  “The back’s covered in bits. Let me brush it, you’re not presentable.”

  He stood there obediently while she did so, and forgot to thank her, as if he were used to it. When she had finished he searched his pockets, and produced the cigarette case which she had last seen lying on the Matron’s blotter. When opened, it proved to contain one cigarette, old and sad-looking. He made an apologetic face, and offered it to her.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I only smoke at odd times.”

  “If this is one of the times, for goodness’ sake have a fresh one.” She became aware of the fact that she could very well do with one herself. He accepted gratefully, turning out to be unprovided with matches as well.

  When they had got back to the drive he stopped and said, “I’ll see you again.”

  “I expect so.”

  “Let’s not leave it so indefinite, though.” He reflected. “How about—could you come over to lunch?”

  “I don’t think,” she said hastily, “I dare make any fixtures at the moment. I’m so busy, I shouldn’t be reliable.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Give us a ring and come at a moment’s notice.” But his air of confidence, this time, was a little forced. She could understand it. The voice of the Matron came back to her: “Anything she does will be done very nicely, you can be sure.” She murmured vague platitudes about the work letting up perhaps, in a month or two; and saw his face register relaxation as well as regret.

  “Never mind. We’ll manage something.” She saw that he meant what he said, and found that it gave her pleasure. I can’t imagine why, she reflected; he’s so erratic and unpredictable, he’d soon become quite exhausting; I suppose it’s just the esthetic factor.

  “I do hope,” he was saying, “I’ve not really put you in wrong with the Matron, keeping you here. In the surprise of actually meeting you, I’m afraid I only had room for one idea at a time. Had we better think up a story before you go?” He seemed quite serious about it.

  “Oh, she’ll have started without me. There’s no nonsense about her.”

  “I know. Poor old thing, isn’t it a shame? I think I shall give her a bottle of curious scent for Christmas, called Black Limelight or Ecstase or something… In a way, it was rather a shock. Suddenly meeting you, I mean. You see, actually, I’d become reconciled to the idea that I’d imagined the whole thing. I couldn’t ask about you, because—well, not remembering what you looked like, there seemed nothing to ask. I imagined you quite different, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry.” She laughed.

  “It’s all right. I’ve got used to it now. In fact, I feel as if I’d remembered all along. It does seem odd, though, that I haven’t heard the nurses mention you, or anything. I’ve talked to them quite a lot and I thought I’d got the low-down on pretty well everyone. … Good Lord, I must be crazy. I haven’t asked you now what your name really is.”

  “It’s Mansell.”

  “Is it?” He looked, for an unguarded moment, positively stupefied. Recovering himself with headlong haste, he said, “You know, I do think I may have heard it, just vaguely, and forgotten again.”

  Hilary was hideously conscious of blushing down to the neck.

  “You know,” he pursued reflectively, “I think nurses are an interesting study, very. I mean, seeing life so much in the raw, as it were, you’d think they’d become frightfully understanding about human nature, wouldn’t you? I often think it’s curious how they’re not.”

  The feeling of relief and well-being which swept over her quite startled her by its force.

  “Well, they understand some aspects of human nature pretty soundly. And, of course, the brighter ones do gravitate more to the big places.”

  “I suppose they must.”

  They had come to the last bend in the drive. “The last part,” she said, “is just under Matron’s window. I think I’d better go up it looking busy and by myself.”

  “You could say you were talking to an old patient. That’s what the nurses say.” He offered this information helpfully, without the least shade of irony.

  “Well, good-by,” she said, and then suddenly at a loss, “I’m glad you’re getting on so well.”

  “I’ll get on all right now.”

  She was round the bend of the drive before the oddness of this valediction reached her; and, when it did, the likeliest thing seemed to be that she had not correctly heard.

  Chapter Seven: A Hospital Christmas—And A Kiss

  IT LOOKED LIKE BEING A GREEN CHRISTMAS. Hilary, who had no accompanying superstition about fat churchyards, but on the contrary had seen many chronic invalids and old people killed by cold, welcomed the mild moist weather and the golden rags of autumn which quiet air left hanging on the trees. The place had become friendly to her, the blunt hills with their gray outcrop of stone-roofed houses, their meandering lines of dry walling, and the dips of soft misty space between their shoulders.

  She and Lisa got on increasingly well. It was a relationship owing much to the mutual knowledge that either could seek privacy at any time without affront to the feelings of the other. The house was a newish one built round an old core; Hilary’s two rooms were almost self-contained, her sitting-room having its own glass door on to the garden, and, in one corner, a steep staircase leading into the bedroom upstairs. They need never have met except at meals, but with increasing frequency spent their evening together by the log fire in the hall.

  Rupert Clare had gone from Czechoslovakia to Berlin. When Hilary asked for news of him, Lisa said, “He’s been to a number of theaters. His private letters are all opened and read, of course, so they consist almost entirely of items like that, at present. So do mine.”

  They neither of them had any plans for Christmas. Hilary, whom a vast family gathering in Shropshire was eager to receive, could not leave her practice. Rupert, who was a Scot, was saving for the New Year the few days which were all he could hope for. The two women found in one another the excuse for decorating, saving their mail against Christmas morning, and such small follies which neither would have had the heart to pursue alone; and were mutually grateful.

  On Christmas Eve, Hilary, coming in from an evening call, found in her sitting-room a huge pot of cyclamens growing in moss. The card attached to it turned out to be Julian Fleming’s. On the back, in a neat sloping fifth-form hand, was Are you coming to the Hospital tomorrow? She turned it over, wondering what it was that seemed odd; and realized that it was the mere fact of his possessing visiting-cards at all. Such adult accessories seemed, somehow, out of keeping. When she had defined the thought, she found that it annoyed her.

  She had had two weeks of duty at the Hospital since their first meeting, and during each of them had encountered him there a little too often, it seemed, for mere coincidence. He always contrived to leave with her, and to drag out their progress through the gardens as long as possible. On these occasions, if he talked at all, it was about nothing, in particular, and as unself-consciously as if they had been meeting for years; he had a fund of
local gossip, and a nice undergraduate sense of fun. When he dried up completely, which he frequently did without any warning, it appeared not to embarrass him in the least. She scarcely knew why she found these moments so irritating; it was in fact the contrast between his face in repose and animation. Its structure was emphatic, vivid, and clear, with a subtle flare in the contours that seemed made to express a brilliant intensity. As soon as he spoke again, it would all resolve into a pleasant, diffident adolescence.

  That night it grew so cold that Lisa had to bring extra blankets out of store; and Hilary woke early next morning, her eyelids pierced by a pale dazzle in the air. The window was covered with a lace of crystals; when she had thawed a space clear, she found it was not snow that had fallen, but a deep branching hoarfrost. It clung to the grass like thick white fur. Lisa and Hilary stood on the porch, tasting the tingling air and looking at the white woods feathering the hills, and found it hard to go in to breakfast and the parcels beside their plates.

  The frost held over, pure and crisp, into the afternoon. Walking on grass was like stepping on the friable icing of a birthday cake. The round of visits, to which she had looked forward as a nuisance spoiling the day, provided enchantment at every turn of the road. And it was all here yesterday, she reminded herself, in the form of a clammy and depressing mist. A few degrees’ drop of the thermometer, and the same trees and wet become intimations of immortality. Who was that idiot who used to say that the so-called sense of beauty depended solely on the recognition of biologically favorable conditions? It had been David; but it took her some moments to remember that.

  She had nearly forgotten the Hospital too; a lapse which would have cost her all the ground she had gained with the Matron. Everyone who had the slenderest connection with the place got invitations to the Christmas-tree ritual at three in the afternoon, and for the doctors it was a sine qua non. Lisa had dressed two dolls, exquisitely, in brilliant peasant costumes. Hilary wondered, when she saw them, why Lisa had no child.