Return to Night: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “I’m not worth it.”

  “After this I’ll be afraid to let you out of my sight.”

  She realized that his voice had become perfectly normal. It would be better, probably, not to leave him to discover it by himself. She said, “Did it hurt, shouting like that?”

  “Good Lord, do you think I had time to notice? As far as I remember, I just kept on till something gave way.”

  His good faith was wholly transparent, if she had ever doubted it. He felt at his throat and said, “Seems all right now. A bit rough, that’s all. Must have shifted something, I suppose.”

  “I don wonder. Well, it was more than I deserved. Darling; if we stand like this much longer, the whole neighborhood will be arriving on bicycles to take a look.”

  On the way back, she wondered what had ever made her suppose that she would feel self-satisfied with her success. It had worked: oh, yes. But he had put a trust in her which he had never demanded in return; she had not enjoyed deceiving it.

  The following day was a Sunday. Opening her paper, she turned first to the dramatic column. (Once it had been the book reviews; but at some stage in recent months the routine of years had undergone a change.) The critic had concerned himself with provincial repertory, giving a longish paragraph to Barchester. Commenting on the enterprise shown by this company, he noted that its director, Mr. Padraic Finnigan, had decided to tour the American little theaters in search of new ideas, and would be, the critic understood, outward bound by the time those lines went to press.

  Hilary almost longed, for the sake of emotional escape, to make the false judgment which it was no longer in her power to form. But long ago the image of Julian, working inward, had passed from the mind into the blood; she knew him; she could trace almost the processes by which his memory had edited some advance rumor or printed line. He had believed what he had told her. Loving her, and conditioned to lying, he had fought himself to keep truth with her, even while she had entangled him in a whole new course of lies. Something had cracked in the tug-of-war; playing Sancho to the Quixote of his will, his body had taken over, a better liar than he. She might just as well have made a holiday of yesterday’s ride, for today’s news would have cured him. It was a judgment on her, she thought.

  He came round to see her a few nights later, full of the news about Finnigan; charming, sincere, apologetic, unable to think how he could have made such a muddle, been such a damned fool. That this should happen, just when his voice was right again, was typical of the perversity of things. He had brought her a new book she had been wanting, a new embrace which only lack of imagination had kept her from wanting, and Faustus’s invocation to Helen, delivered in a thrilling undertone in the dark. He had had no more bad dreams, he assured her, but rather a good one, which he would tell her if she wouldn’t be shocked. He was irresistible; at the top of his form. A sorcerer innocent of his own devices, he offered her forgetfulness like an enchanted cup. She took it, and entered with him his kingdom of escape.

  Chapter Sixteen: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

  IT WAS ONE OF HILARY’S DAYS FOR AN EVENING SURGERY. She drove into the little market town, where she had two rooms on the ground floor of a small Victorian house, just off the High Street, converted by her predecessor. No one ever came in the evening but the working people, whom she liked and got on with. There was the usual rush about six o’clock. The concentration needed to combine thoroughness and courtesy with speed was just what she had been needing. By ten minutes to eight, everyone had gone; she relaxed at her desk with a cigarette, thinking she might safely close a few minutes early. Precisely at seven fifty-five, the bell on the waiting-room door sounded. She called, “Come in.”

  The communicating door opened. Julian came in, his hair streaked across his forehead from the wind. His eyes looked drawn; he gave her a quick, over-bright smile. A handkerchief was wrapped clumsily round his left hand.

  “My dear.” She went through, locked the outer door, and came back to him. “Show me your hand. What have you done to it?”

  “Done?” He looked down, took off the handkerchief and put it in his pocket. “Sorry, I forgot. I thought if there were other people they might wonder why I was here.”

  “But, Julian, you can’t do that. You can’t come to me as a patient. Whatever you do, never try that again.”

  He began, impatiently, “What does it—” and then, his face changing, “You mean, because we—Oh, God, I didn’t think. Do you mean you could be struck off the register or something? Of course. I must be crazy.”

  “Really, darling!” She laughed; it partly relieved her tension. “Struck off for what? You’re past the age of consent, and single unless you’ve been deceiving me all this while. What do you suppose they could charge me with? Indecent assault?”

  His strained face relaxed in a faint grin. “That black eye wouldn’t have looked too good.”

  “About the only advantage a female enjoys in this profession is that she isn’t exposed to accusations of rape. But, seriously, my dear, seducing patients from another doctor ranks nearly as high. If you’d been seen, it might easily have trickled round to Lowe. What made you do it? Has anything happened?”

  “No. I just wanted to see you.” He began wandering round the consulting-room, opening drawers and peering inside. “You know, I’ve never been in here before.”

  “Everything’s put away.” She was used to seeing these things handled by men who knew how to use them: Julian, vaguely picking up objects of unrelated purpose by the wrong ends, looked irritatingly out of keeping. “… No, I shan’t tell you what it’s for, you’d think it disgustingly sordid. … Don’t undo that, it’s sterile. For goodness’ sake come away, it’s worse than having a child about the place. Here, have a cigarette. And now tell me all about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” He sat down beside her on the edge of the desk, and put his arm round her waist. “I just felt like seeing you, that’s all.”

  “But why here? You wouldn’t do a queer thing like this without some reason.”

  He said, with a constrained smile, “Don’t be so cast-iron rational about everything. Why shouldn’t I suddenly want to see you? What’s queer about it? Let’s go out somewhere; this place smells forbidding, it puts me off.”

  “Lisa’s expecting me in to dinner. Now look, darling, obviously you came here to tell me something.” She felt her nerves tightening; the effort of control hardened her voice. “I’m not moving from here till I know what it is.”

  He slid down from the desk, crossed the room, and suddenly wheeled round on her. “For God’s sake. What’s the point of keeping this up? If you don’t want me about, say so. I can find something else to do.” She was too much taken aback to answer; he went on, sullenly, “If you’d told me straight away I was nothing but a damned nuisance, it’d have saved time. I’d have been gone by now.”

  “Don’t let me keep you,” said Hilary instinctively. Almost before she realized that she had said it, he was at the door. Her heart jerked; he was opening it without a backward glance. “Julian. Come here.”

  He came back, looking wary and ashamed. She pulled down his head, and gave him one of those caresses which are in the nature of a private joke. “Another time, when you feel in a filthy mood and want something done about it, you can just tell me. That’d save time, too.”

  “I’m sorry.” He suddenly strained her to him. “Kiss me. No, properly. Don’t stop, for a minute … If you’d let me walk out of that door, I’d have gone nuts.”

  “You’re impossible, aren’t you?” But flippancy broke on him unheeded. His love-making was exhausting, because it was the desperate expression of a demand not physical at all. They stood among the hard consulting-room furniture, while he told her, at irregular intervals, that he knew he wasn’t fit to be with, that he had had to come, that it was nothing; that he got like this from time to time, he really couldn’t say why; that it would be all right now that he had seen her, if she could put up with him a minu
te or two more.

  Worse than the strain of all this was the effort required to keep from questioning him again. She came from a family which had believed strongly in talking everything out. It had usually worked, and the belief that this remedy would solve all personal problems was ingrained in her. Forcing herself to silence, she resented, more than she realized, the denial of an outlet which her nature required. But she was, at the moment, too much concerned for him to think about this. It ended with her ringing up Lisa to say, with equivocal truth, that she had had an urgent call, and letting him drive her out to an appalling meal in an obscure country hotel. He had, as a rule, a healthy and unfastidious appetite; tonight he ate almost nothing. Over coffee in the little smoke room, which fortunately they had to themselves, she asked him whether he had had dinner already at home.

  “No. I’m supposed to be over at Tony Blake’s. I rang up from a call box and told him some story. I’ve just been driving about, waiting till I thought you’d be finished.”

  Beginning again to say, “Why?” she changed it to “Where?”

  “Oh, up and down on the earth. Like Satan, you know. Satan walked, though, didn’t he?” He began searching his pockets; she gave him another cigarette. “I went over Mott’s Farm way.”

  “Did you”—she caught sight of his profile, bent over the match, and finished quickly—“see anything interesting?”

  “I contemplated the beauties of nature. The esthetic type, you know.”

  Hilary got up, and went over to examine a picture on the opposite wall. It consisted of a complete set of cigarette cards depicting British Fresh-Water Fish. Later she could recall several varieties of eel, though at the time she had not been aware of seeing anything at all. She thought, however, as she went back to her chair, it would make as good a subject of conversation as any other. What she said was, “Julian, I can’t stand much of this, and neither can you. Had we better change our minds?”

  He had followed her with his eyes across the room, and, when she turned, looked away at his cigarette smoke. Now he said, “What do you mean?” He had made his voice blank; his eyes were those of a man who has evaded arrest for a long time, and feels a hand on his shoulder.

  “What I say. I won’t be a burden on anyone’s conscience, least of all on yours. What I think right or wrong doesn’t matter; your mind hasn’t been at rest since this began. I know why; I don’t want you to tell me about it. What matters is that if you come to me with a conviction of sin, we shall never be happy and it can’t last. I’m not willing to go through with it on those terms. Tell me now—you’ve had plenty of time to think—and if that’s how it feels to you, we’ll say good-by. Now, today.”

  He got up, and stood looking at her. There was a moment when she thought he was silent from indecision (it was the moment in which he was still trying to realize what she had said); and in this interval, the cold sinking of her heart told her, with merciless point, how much farther she was committed even than she had been aware. But she had trained her face, long ago, not to give her away, and it served her now. Julian was less successful; perhaps he had no such concern. He simply stared at her, his whole mind turned outward from himself.

  He said, at last, “I can’t blame you. I expected this.”

  “Did you?” she found herself saying. “I didn’t.”

  In a voice from which all its characteristic vividness had been bleached away, he said, “Oh, yes. You think I’ve got bad blood In me. I have, of course; you can’t say I didn’t tell you the truth about it.”

  “Julian,” she said, bewildered out of her purpose, “what are you—” She stopped; the waiter had come in. Julian swung round at him and said, “Two more coffees, please,” with the grand-seigneur manner he adopted when highly wrought. Looking surprised (understandably, thought Hilary, recalling the chicory essence, tinned milk, and tepid water) the waiter retreated.

  “I can’t drink it,” she said mechanically. “Julian, are you out of your mind?”

  “Not at the moment. You’re trying to put it nicely, of course. But of course I know; I’ve always known. You can’t have a father who’s a swine and a brute, as mine was, without wondering where it’s going to come out in you. You’ve been thinking that, too, haven’t you?”

  She could not believe, at first, that it was not a piece of deliberate theater. But a look at him was enough to demolish this theory. His sincerity was alarming.

  Collecting herself, she said, “How could you suppose such a thing? You must be mad. One would think your father had been a criminal. If you know as little about him as you say, you’ve no right to speak like that about a man who died as he did.”

  “In the war, you mean? That’s sheer sentimentality. Every kind of man died in the war.”

  “You don’t know what kind of man he was. You don’t know how people lived then, or what men had to go through. You don’t know any of the circumstances at all.”

  “I know the only thing that matters. I hope to God I never know anything more.”

  Something in his tone, or his face, arrested her. He was like someone who, stumbling blindly, finds he has crossed a forbidden threshold and that it is too late to step back.

  “I think it might be better for you to know.”

  “Better?” There was a discreet tap; the waiter, with two more cups of stagnant coffee. Looking at him with aloof loathing, Julian said, “And the bill, please. Thank you. No change.” The door shut again.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so bloody rude. Perhaps it would be better to know, for you. On the other hand, I suppose it’s partly because nothing like this has happened to you that you’re the person you are. Not that I’d have you different. But you can’t tell what it’s like to have lived all your life knowing there’s—something, and—and that in any crisis it may come out.”

  Hilary saw light. It illuminated much in the past; it left her, in the present, groping more blindly than before.

  “But, my dear, this is—Hearing things is bound to be painful, at the time. But there can’t be anything you could hear that—wouldn’t be better for you than this. The war was lettered with broken marriages between quite average people. They had violent experiences apart from one another, and it made them feel separate. It’s part of the general beastliness of war.”

  “I’m not talking about average people. I’m—I don’t want to talk about it. Or think about it. Just tell me whether or not you’re through with me. If you are, then I shall know.”

  “What will you know?”

  He was silent. At this moment, the door burst open, and a mixed party surged into the room, demanding drinks. Julian picked up Hilary’s coat, and in rigid silence helped her into it. They went out.

  He stopped the car at random; in an almost pitch-dark field, by a palely weaving stream, they sat on Julian’s coat. Somewhere an invisible horse trod and snorted and tore at grass. Still locked in an almost palpable silence, Julian sat with his arms round his knees. Presently she took one of his hands—it was stone-cold-and held it.

  The chill of the ground began to come up through the coat they were on, and the chill of the heavy dew through hers which she had shared with him. She could see no end to it all, only a pendulum swinging, up and down and side to side, in the same rhythm, endless and enclosed. She began to shiver; he gave her the whole of her coat again, and held her tightly, trying to warm her lest she should wish to go. She would have stayed, but the shivering once begun would not be controlled. “You’ll take cold,” he said. “We’d better be getting along.”

  “It must be getting late. I ought to go.”

  He said without moving, “As well now as later, I suppose. I was just thinking it would be less trouble to die.” Before she could answer, he was getting up.

  Lisa was keeping coffee hot for her by the fire. Thankfully, Hilary offered her quota of small talk and petty news. In the midst of it, and without much change of tone, Lisa said, “Tell me, now; i
f a woman came to you who’d lost two babies in succession, would you call her a fool to be starting another?”

  “Oh, not necessarily at all; it would depend on—” She looked up. “My dear, of course not. I always said that. I’m terribly glad. Isn’t it a bit soon, though, to be sure?”

  “I feel pretty sure. It’s just like the other times.” She explained; Hilary agreed that she was probably right. “I think,” added Lisa lightly, “that I should feel quite disappointed if anything happened this time.”

  Hilary said, with firmness and certainty, “It won’t. We’re going to make a job of this.” Seeing the reinforced hope in Lisa’s eyes, she thought she must have said it well.

  Lisa would have dropped the subject almost at once; she always had difficulty in believing that anything personal to herself could fail to bore other people. Once Hilary had disposed of this, she was glad to talk. Hilary gave her all the advice she knew; she reflected that a necessary part of the treatment would consist in not leaving Lisa too much alone.

  Emphasis was not in Lisa’s nature at any time; so Hilary was a little while in realizing, from one day to another, the eager trust which her trained knack of confidence inspired. The discovery profoundly moved her; she was grateful to Lisa for so much quiet easing of life. She took pains with the arrangement of her work, and once or twice put Julian off when she discovered that Lisa had an evening on her hands. The reasons she gave were not very adequate; she knew herself to be the only person in Lisa’s confidence and respected her almost fanatical love of privacy. Now and then she was conscious of an unhappy satisfaction which was not wholly the fruit of self-sacrifice. With Lisa for a decent reason, she obeyed impulses which she would not openly have entertained; to prove to herself her independence, to revenge on him certain moments of solitary thought; to stir, in a way for which she would not afterward accuse herself, his sense of insecurity. She caught herself thinking, sometimes, that she had been making things too easy for him, reconciling him too readily to a state of affairs which it was right that he should find intolerable.