“I hurt you, Di!” I muttered. “And that’s something I’ll! never be able to forget!”
“Oh nonsense!” she said, moving her arm and drawing my head onto her shoulder. “That wasn’t your fault, stupid! It was inevitable. Anyway, don’t remember that, just remember I’ll always belong to you now, no matter what happens, or where I go, or what I do! Nothing can change that and it’s what I always planned and wanted, right from the time I kissed you in the train that time, remember?”
Lying there, my head on her breast, I remembered so much, all of it sweet and uplifting. I remembered my first glimpse of her, riding out of the wood like a child-empress and banishing Keeper Croker with an arrogant glance; I remembered our short journey in the suburban train and her exultant claim as we pulled into the station. I remembered riding beside her into the wind on Foxhayes Common, under winter skies and in hot summer sunshine. I remembered even more vividly still our quiet days on Nun’s Island, and her tremulous earnestness as we stood beside the signal fire awaiting the pilot boat. I remembered it all, every minute detail of it, and the memories filled me with a pride in my manhood that banished the shame of using her so fiercely and possessively. Her voice, and the nearness of her, healed the hurt and filled me with a sense of infinite peace.
I slept until she gently awakened me and I saw that the curtains were redrawn and the light was on. She was dressed in jodhpurs and yellow sweater and was beckoning, her hand on her lips.
“I’ve been on reconnaissance,” she said, unsmilingly, “and it’s all clear. We’ll go out the same way as you came in, but don’t say a word, not a single word, understand?”
We crept downstairs, through the gun room and out through the flower-room door. The sky was gray over Shepherdshey, but still dark toward the copse.
“When will I see you again, Di? It has to be soon!”
She put her mouth to my ear, kissed it and whispered:
“I’ll write the moment I find out what’s happening, Jan. Go now, dearest! And thank you for loving me, Jan!” There was no opportunity to argue, and no real need. I knew now that she would make it possible and that these things were always best left to her.
“I haven’t wished you many happy returns,” I said.
“Wish me now, then.”
“Many happy returns, Di, many, many of them, and all as wonderful as this!”
She nodded impatiently and gave me a little push. I slipped across the paddock into the last of the shadows. When I reached the edge of the copse I looked back and could make out the long, gray shape of the house, but the garden door was shut and she was gone.
I experienced the same small spurt of disappointment as on the occasion of my first visit to Heronslea, when I was whisked down the drive in her mother’s big car and looked at a closed door.
Part Two
Chapter Eight
IN SOME ways that period was the last of the old way of life, not only for me—I was hibernating and barely conscious of the events that led, step by step, to the Second World War—but for people like Uncle Reuben, Aunt Thirza, the journeymen in the works outside our office, for everyone who had seen the twenties and early thirties trying, and sometimes half-succeeding, to swim back into the easy water of the Edwardian decade.
Some people would have it that the old-world isolation of districts like Whinmouth disappeared in the slump of ’31, but this was not really true of our part of the world. The slump never blighted Whinmouth. Down there wages were always low and, as I have said, most of us lived by taking in one another’s washing. There are more people unemployed in Whinmouth today, after nearly two decades of the Welfare State, than there were in 1931, and Hitler was not even a concert-party joke with us until he massacred half his supporters in the summer of ’34. It was only then, when the Nazis began to hit the world headlines, that we became aware that something shrill and hysterical was being shouted at us, something that made our annual British Legion rally and League of Nations Union meetings look genuinely parochial. Up to that time our interest in global politics was halfhearted, like our championship of Oxford or Cambridge in the Boat Race, or reaction to Amy Johnson flying to Australia. We heard about these things on the radio, and some of us read of them in the daily papers, but they were not as important to us as, say, the Chapel Hill tar-barrel race on Guy Fawkes night, and even when a General Election came along only about 60 per cent of the local electorate turned out to vote. We were far more vocal over Councilor Rawlinson’s proposal to remove the Boer War obelisk from Fish Square, and the only national event in which we took a genuine interest was the two-minute silence around the war memorial, and the sale of Flanders poppies.
We had slipped from the nineteen-twenties into the nineteen-thirties almost without noticing, and we were almost halfway through the new decade before Hitler’s name began to crop up in the public bars of hostelries like The Rifleman at Shepherdshey. After that, however, the tide of events carried us along at a pretty round pace. Almost everyone had a radio set by then and when Germany invaded the Ruhr, Mussolini pounced on Abyssinia, Hitler grabbed Austria, and the papers began to headline the Spanish Civil War and the Sudetenland problem, we began to realize that a bad train and bus service was not an absolute guarantee against invasion by the outside world.
Even in Sennacharib one was made aware of this, for on the plain outside the market town they had built a small airfield and the mew of the two buzzards became even more plaintive when silver-glinting aircraft zoomed in from the sea and skimmed across Foxhayes to land.
As a newspaperman, even a small-town newspaperman, I should have been far more aware of all that was taking place than in fact I was, but my grasp of global events was not much better than Aunt Thirza’s. During the first part of this Gadarene stampede I was content to get through my routine work and dream about Diana, and when Diana wasn’t there to dream about, the soundproof wall of self-pity I built around me excluded objective contemplation of the antics of grotesques like Goebbels and Ciano, and even, to some extent, of Mr. Chamberlain and his umbrella. Coming from a professional reporter this is a very lame confession, but it is true for all that; I date this period of personal detachment from the night that Diana and I became lovers, and I pedaled dreamily into Whinmouth just as the sun came up over Nun’s Head and the gulls went about their early morning shopping on the sandbanks.
I was blissfully content for about a fortnight. I did not expect to hear from her until the family had settled in Nice, where they were expected to remain for two months. Uncle Luke’s obstinate fracture kept him from taking any part in the weekly production of the Observer, and as it was now high summer I had plenty to keep me occupied.
Then I had a postcard from her, just a wish-you-were-here gesture but enough to keep me happy for another month or so. Then Uncle Reuben was told by his surgeon that he would never walk again and my concern for him was strong enough to put even Diana out of mind for a time.
The business was reorganized. I was made official editor a week or so before my twentieth birthday and later presented with a thousand shares in the firm, now operating under the title of R. & J. Leigh & Co. (Observer Press) Ltd.
When things settled down a little, and we had moved Uncle Reuben into a new bungalow on Dune Terrace, overlooking the estuary, I longed to tell Diana everything that was happening, partly from reasons of pride in my new status but mostly, I think, because I believed that these changes would have a practical bearing on our future. I even sat down and wrote her a long letter, but I did not post it. I was unwilling to take any action that might prejudice our meeting when she returned to England, and I knew her mother well enough to realize that promotion from junior reporter to editor of the Whinmouth & District Observer was not enough to qualify for the role of son-in-law. I had an uncomfortable suspicion, moreover, that even my winning the Irish Sweepstakes, or my sudden elevation to the post of Foreign Secretary, would not induce Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton to forgive my part in the island escapade. There was no othe
r course open but to await Diana’s twenty-first birthday and because, deep in my heart, I was now quite sure of her, I could await that date—June 18, 1937—with dignity if not with patience.
I was happy enough in my work and I was saving money at what seemed to me a prodigious rate. I took to ranging those scattered parts of Sennacharib where odd and isolated houses had been built, hoping to find one with a sale notice exhibited, or learn of someone living there who was old and infirm and not likely to need it much longer. Up to now it had been a vain quest. There were not more than a dozen homes in the area and two-thirds of them were large, detached houses, quite outside the range of my pocket.
Then, in November of that year, the bubble burst.
I came home from a Saturday afternoon tramp across Nun’s Head and Foxhayes to find a fat letter lying on Aunt Thirza’s hall stand. It was postmarked New York and the unmistakable handwriting set my heart racing like a dynamo. I tore off my dripping mackintosh and carried the letter up to my room, shouting to Aunt Thirza that I would have my tea upstairs and work there until bedtime.
Aunt Thirza came up with a tray and it was not until I had heard her descend, and had locked the door, that I slit the envelope and drew out four folded sheets and a wad of tissue paper about two or three inches square. I unfolded the tissue first. Inside was a small lock of Diana’s hair.
It was softer and darker than I would have imagined but the sharp, neat twist reminded me of the broad lock that used to sweep down to her chin when I knew her first. Later on, when she began to attend West End hairdressers and the fashions changed year by year, this mutinous swath gave up its attempt to reach the corner of her mouth and fell in line with the long roll that touched her shoulders. I looked at the token a long time, almost forgetting the letter. Then I refolded the tissue, put it away in my wallet and settled down to read.
I have her letter still; this is what it said
Hotel Plaza,
New York.
October 21st.
MY OWN JAN,
This letter has been a long time coming, four months by my reckoning, and I suppose I could plead travel as an excuse. Since leaving the Riviera, in July, we have been two-thirds of the way around the world, and I could easily say that the reason I didn’t write was because I was at sea, or packing, or sightseeing, or anything else ordinary people say when they want to put themselves in the right. We aren’t “ordinary people,” Jan. We never have been and never will be. You’ve never pretended to me about anything, so I’m going to tell you the truth because I owe you that at least. The real reason I haven’t written is that I hated telling you lies, and I was all this time finding the courage to say what I’ve got to say now, that we can’t ever belong to one another as we thought we could all this time.
You’ve got to understand one thing straightaway. This isn’t because of Mother—she doesn’t even know we saw one another in London, or on my birthday, and I imagine she thinks I’ve completely forgotten you; maybe she has too, she’s never mentioned you since that awful time she went to your office after the island business.
This is something I’ve thought about myself, day after day, since we became really each other’s, and I knew it then, when I said good-by and perhaps it would have been more honest to call you back and say so, rather than sitting down and writing it cold-bloodedly, but I didn’t and since then things have happened so quickly. We went away and have been on the move ever since. I’ve had to think about it at odd times when I was alone, which wasn’t as often as I should have liked.
The thing is, Jan dear, I’ve learned so very much about myself in the last few months. I know now that it would be wrong to pretend I could be a good wife to you, and live in the country, even country as heavenly as our Sennacharib, because you would never have more than half of me. The other half would always be fretting for the kind of life you wouldn’t even like, no matter how well-off you were, the sort of life your half of me has always sneered at when we’ve talked about it.
I said you had never pretended to me but I think I must have to you, although I do ask you to believe that I didn’t do it consciously. The half of me that you’ve never met is the selfish half, that likes pretty clothes, smart hairdo’s, racing cars, meeting people, going places as I’ve been doing lately, and all the things that come naturally to people who don’t actually earn money but just have it. Said like that, this seems dreadfully crude, even snobbish, but I’ve tried to write it other ways and it always comes out the same. If this is the truth then let it be the truth. I’m a thoroughly spoiled girl and I’ve got used to being spoiled. I can’t cook, or sew, or make-do, and I don’t think I’d ever learn. I could easily say that I would, for the man I loved, and I’ve heard heaps of girls say just that at school and even among the debs, but they don’t mean it, not really, and all of them would rather be old maids than have to do it, or if they did they’d be hopeless at it and drive the man they married up the wall in the end.
I wouldn’t do that to you, Jan, because you aren’t just a schoolgirl pash but something much, much more. I’ve always known that and I’ll always believe it, even if we never see one another again. The point is, going on and on like this isn’t the least bit fair to you. It keeps you hoping and hoping when there isn’t any reason to hope, but what is even worse, it stops you getting a proper kind of girl who would be a good wife, and that’s the whole root of the matter—I’m living under false pretenses, and I’ve known that since about a year after we were separated and you went to work in London. It was very wrong of me to pretend when we met that time and even more wrong—something for which I’ll never really forgive myself—to make you make love to me after the party. Any man, especially a man like you, would have a right to expect something different from this awful letter after that, and I can only plead that it happened because I do really love you in a terribly private kind of way, and when you put your arms around me and kiss me I just want you completely in a way I’ve never wanted anyone else who has kissed me or tried to make love to me. I suppose I wanted to prove this to myself! I had some sort of idea that if it happened the way I thought it might, then the “plushy” part of me that I’ve described to you would sort of wither away and leave just an ordinary woman in love with a man—the man being you, but you see, Jan, it didn’t! Everything that’s happened since—all the luxury cruising and travel and parties and what not—have only bolstered up this stranger to you and convinced her how impossible it would be to turn her back on it for good.
There is one way the half of me that you know will always survive and that’s the physical way. Whenever I think of men as men, whenever I think of being made love to in the purely physical sense, I think of you and I suppose that will always be so and is just something that the person I marry (if I ever do) will have to put up with if he wants me. I can’t alter this but I can be honest with you and say that this isn’t nearly important enough to risk your happiness. People are quite right when they say sex is only part of marriage. If I’ve learned anything from the silly way I’ve been brought up, it’s that. It would be a heavenly part of a marriage to you, Jan, but not enough to make me into the sort of wife you deserve and should have. When I was cut off from all the things I’ve been used to and (for all the jokes I’ve made about them) really like having, we should have dreadful rows. I’d get snappy and you’d get sullen, and in the end we wouldn’t have anything left but bed, and all the wonderful memories we had of Sennacharib, and places like the island, would get blurred. I wouldn’t want that to happen and I don’t think you would either. For me you have always been a marvelous adventure and it’s far better to keep it that way, something to think about when we’re old, a kind of reason for having lived at all, if you understand.
I feel very wretched about all this and I’ve been weeping buckets all the time I’ve been writing, but all the same I’m glad I had the guts to write it and I hope I have some left to post it!
Good-by now, Jan darling, and thank you, thank you,
thank you for everything, for getting into so much trouble for me, for being so faithful, for being so patient, for wanting me so much, but most of all for being just you—my Jan Ridd.
DIANA
I skimmed the letter at first, my hands shaking and a sound like crashing waves in my ears. Then I went through it line by line half a dozen times, pausing and thinking about every sentence and every thought behind the phrases of every sentence. In the end I knew it by heart, every word and every punctuation mark. I had forgotten to light the gas fire and the room was as cold as a tomb. I was shivering, not from cold but from sheer, physical shock, as though I had just avoided being knocked down by a runaway truck and was picking myself up in the gutter, not quite certain if I was still alive.
There was a finality about the letter that stunned me. It was like death, not simply my death but universal death, a sudden cessation of the processes of life, a kind of change in being that blotted out sun and moon, that stopped tides flowing and things growing.
I had had doubts before, serious ones some of them, but never a blow like this, never a denial of the most important thing in my life that came, not from external agencies, like her mother and background, but from Diana herself.
It was over; finished! No more secret meetings, no irregular correspondence, no kisses, no Sennacharib, no future! Over, and decreed so by her, in carefully reasoned terms that made argument futile.
All this time I had been waiting and planning to snatch her away from the places and people prescribed for her, and all this time she had never wanted to escape from them for more than a few moments, as someone might stick his head out of the window to take a few breaths of air, or a fish might surface for a second before returning to the underwater world where it belonged.
Diana Page 29
