I went up to Diana and found her flushed and excited and before I had crossed the threshold she called across to me.
“He said I could go, Jan! He told you about it, didn’t he? He wasn’t just humouring me because if he was …”
I was alarmed for her and hurried across to the bed, putting my arm round her and drawing her close.
“He said you wanted to get up, Di, and talked about taking you up to Foxhayes but you can’t possibly ride there! You must know that, Di!”
The flush died on her cheeks and she became quiet and submissive.
“I do know that, Jan. I suppose that was asking too much but I thought, with you riding Sioux and holding me …”
Suddenly her mouth crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. She looked so much like a child that it was like watching a ‘mix’ on a film when the director is using the flashback technique. Then, with a big effort, she rallied, arresting the transformation and checking the tears. She was quite silent for a moment and I could almost feel her getting to grips with her emotion.
“What can it matter now, Jan? It isn’t much to ask and I’ll do it on my own if I’m cheated of it! At all events I’ll try, I’ll try damned hard if you let me down! You’ll have to lock me in, I swear it!”
There was so much of the old, defiant Diana in the threat that I smiled and capitulated.
“All right Di, if he’s prepared to accept responsibility for it! Five minutes he said and it’ll have to be in a hire-car. You’ll have to wait for good weather too and you’ll have to put yourself absolutely in my charge, do you understand? It’ll be a military op. and I’m the C.O., is that clear?”
She looked artful and nodded twice and at once I began to regret having promised, wondering how the devil I was going to explain such an act of folly to Drip or to the nurses, and wishing that I had had the forethought to get Parker-Strachey’s permission in writing. She knew me well enough to avoid the subject for the rest of the day and the day after that but now and again I caught her cocking an anxious eye at the sky over the Shepherdshey elm clump and when the weather improved, and the temperature rose above average for the season, I had a strong conviction that she would pick my birthday for the day of the excursion.
On that day I went down into the stable yard about seven o’clock to find the early morning sun climbing the eastern wall and the air as soft and mild as in early May. There was a mackerel sky over Teasel Edge and the lightest breeze stirring the leaves of the big copper beech beyond the arched gate. I stood there for a moment listening to Sennacharib shaking itself awake. Birds rustled in the rhododendron brake where the paddock sloped away to the brook and Shepherdshey Village. Beyond the rail old Sioux cocked an eye at me, awaiting the mangold I threw him whenever he was about to be brought in and saddled. The sight of him revived the mad notion I had been considering and rejecting ever since Parker-Strachey had spoken to me of Diana’s plea. I stood irresolute for a moment longer and then the old magic of the place began to work, driving out reason and commonsense like a sheep-dog dispersing a flock-jam in a gateway.
I crossed the drive, vaulted the rail, caught Sioux and led him round to the loose-box. As I sorted among the harness in the tack-room I heard his strong teeth crunch into the mangold and he had almost finished it by the time I found what I was looking for, a great, broad, old-fashioned side-saddle that had lain there for years. It was a Souter and its leathers were as strong as the day it had been made. I examined it carefully before throwing it across Sioux’s back and I chose the best girth in the room, a new nylon cord of Yvonne’s. When I was mounted, I reached across to the top shelf and grabbed a thick, plaid rug and a tether rope and threw them over my shoulder. Then I gave Sioux his head and we lumbered out of the yard and up the main ride towards Big Oak Paddock.
I passed the glade where I had been grabbed by Keeper Croker and bore right through the plantation until I emerged on the western edge of the Teasel Valley that looked directly across to Teasel Wood to the eastern border of Sennacharib. Here, where I could see right down the valley to Nun’s Head and the bay, I could pick out every important landmark, the wooden footbridge marking the farthest limits of Shepherdshey cart-track, the high wood itself, the square mile of larch coverts behind and the wide sweep of purple and gold of heath and gorse that had given Sennacharib its name. This was the spot where, in Springtime, primroses hung in huge, trailing clusters and foxgloves marched through bluebells to the edge of the escarpment. There were no wild flowers now save an odd, obstinate campion, or one of those hardy periwinkles that seem indifferent to seasons and come out whenever they smell the sun.
Sitting there on Sioux I was absorbed in the scene that was familiar in every detail yet always had the excitement of a discovery. Then, shaking the reins, I went on down to the winding stream where I dismounted and ran out the line, tethering Sioux to the bridge rails but giving him enough rope to crop grass on both sides of the path. Leaving the plaid rug close by I walked back down the cart-track to Heronslea and breakfast.
I went up to Diana about nine-thirty meaning to tease her a little before telling her that today was the day, but I should have known better. She read my intentions before I was halfway across the room and sat back on her hands, her eyes shining with excitement.
“It’s today, Jan! It is, isn’t it? It’s this morning? Now?”
“When the sun gets up a bit,” I promised, “and I still haven’t had the nerve to tell a soul!”
“Oh to hell with them all, you don’t have to! They wouldn’t understand, not one of them, not even Drip!”
“All the same they’ll have to know,” I said, “because the car will be calling at the front and I couldn’t possibly get you out unobserved. Have you finished with your tray?”
“I couldn’t eat anything, I was too keyed up,” she said. “Ask Millie to take it away and help me to get dressed. No, wait! … Tell Drip and get her up here. We shall need help and I can handle Drip better than I can the day-nurse!”
“Are you absolutely resolved on this, Di?” I asked, nervously.
“Yes I am and if you let me down I’ll never forgive you! I mean that Jan! It’s more important than anything I’ve ever asked of you!”
I didn’t care any more when she said that I didn’t give a rap for all the doctors, nurses and play-safers in Christendom. Diana wanted to drink wind in Sennacharib and that was the only thing left for her, and the whole world could pay forfeit so far as I was concerned. I owed no loyalty elsewhere. As long as she drew breath I was Diana’s, body and soul.
I went out and told an incredulous Drip what we were going to do and while she followed me about croaking protests and fluttering her hands, I phoned Maddocks, the car-hire firm in Whinmouth and asked them to send their largest car up to Heronslea and leave it in my charge for an hour or so. As I replaced the receiver I was confronted by the day-nurse.
I had had very little to do with her but I knew her for a competent, humourless woman. She now addressed me like a sergeant-major tackling a truculent recruit.
“I can’t have you doing this, Mr. Leigh! It’s outrageously stupid and I’m quite sure you realise it is!”
I told her that I had the specialist’s permission but she dismissed this with a chopping motion of her large, meaty hand. “Mr. Parker-Strachey hasn’t seen her for several days and to take my patient out in a car, even for an hour or so, might be fatal for a woman in her condition!”
Suddenly I was impatient with them all, with every last one of them and with the whole process of prolonging life at all costs. I saw now that Diana was absolutely right and that she in her weakness had more vision than all of them lumped together and stuffed into trunks labelled “Fragile”, “With Care” and “This Side Up”.
“Damn it woman, what the hell can it matter now?” I yelled, glad of a chance to bully someone. “She’s going to die, isn’t she, so mind your own bloody business and stay out of this!”
The nurse faltered but only for a moment.
Her mouth shut like a trap.
“I’ve got my responsibilities,” she snapped, “and I can’t let you do it, even though you are her husband, and in spite of what Mr. Parker-Strachey said or didn’t say!”
The implication that I was lying about the specialist maddened me and I could have struck her in the face. As it was I walked round her, mounting the stairs and turning my back on her high-pitched protests that ended with a threat of instant resignation. I hesitated long enough at the head of the stairs to call down and tell her to pack her things and go, for the world was closing in on me now and I could see but two things clearly—Diana, her lips parted and her eyes shining, and outside Sennacharib, waiting and rustling under its autumn mantle. Nothing else was of the least importance, not Drip shuffling about the bedroom, her veined face swollen with tears, nor the shrill-voiced nurse threatening and abusing, nor the wondering children who appeared from nowhere and peeped from the corners and corridors like mice. None of these people had any significance at all. Neither had the spectre of death marching before me like a guide.
I made Drip help me lift Diana from the bed and we sat her half-upright on the divan, pulling on her underclothes and stockings and foraging in the wardrobe drawers for one of her thick, high-necked sweaters. I spoke no word to her until I heard the toot of the car as it turned into the main drive and crunched up the slope. Then I gathered Diana in my arms, kicked open the door and marched down the broad staircase into the empty hall. On the steps stood Yvonne, staring at us in silent wonder, one finger pulling at her lower lip, one long, bare leg crooked behind the other as she leaned on the pillar of the portico.
“Are you taking Mummy away?” she asked simply, as the driver jumped out and ran round to the rear door.
“No, Yvonne, certainly not!” Diana told her, “I’m out for a whiff of fresh air and it’s Doctor’s orders! Run and tell Drip not to worry any more!”
The child nodded. Her innocent acceptance of the situation affected me so strongly that I could say nothing more and it was left to Diana to tell the driver that he could wait inside until we returned the car. He looked puzzled as he helped me to settle her in the back, propping her sideways on cushions, with her feet resting on the folding box-seat opposite. Then he stood aside as I got into the driving seat and re-started the engine. The big car slid down the drive almost soundlessly and I turned left into the village and left again into the track that led up to Teasel Footbridge. Diana’s reflection seemed to fill the mirror and her face glowed with pleasure.
“Dear Jan, my Jan!” she said and her voice was so strong and steady that for a moment I had an insane notion that we weren’t in a car at all but galloping side by side over the heath, myself a short head in the lead. Then the car breasted the long slope and passed between the high-green banks dividing Heronslea elms and the Teasel slope, emerging on to more level ground where the track petered out and Sioux was cropping grass at the water’s edge.
I heard Diana gasp as I applied the brakes.
“Jan!” she said, and then: “Oh no … no …! You didn’t, you couldn’t have!”
I got out, opened the nearside door and freed her of rugs. She lay quite still staring at me while I untethered the horse, checked the girths and led Sioux across to a slab of granite marking the gateway of a field long since reclaimed by the Common. Then I went back to the car, lifted her out and carried her to the stone, steadying her against my shoulder while I bunched the plaid rug I had left there and wedged it between seat and pommel. Sioux stood perfectly still as I climbed carefully into the saddle, gathering the reins in my right hand and giving the old horse’s flank a tap with my heel. He moved forward at a steady walk, stamping across the plank bridge and up the winding slope between the gorse patches to the spot under the larches where I had paused earlier in the day.
The sun hung over Teasel Wood like a great burnished cauldron and its rays searched out every drop of moisture on the slope and set them shimmering like ten million gimlet-points. The breeze came sighing across the dip and called down to us as a genial giant might hail a pair of pigmies. The scent of Diana’s hair mingled with the scent of peat and hoof-crushed bracken as she stirred in my grasp, firmly but slightly adjusting her perch and causing me to tighten my hold under her thighs. Without exchanging a word we gained the top of the hill and I edged Sioux round in a half-circle so that we could look down the long valley to the sea.
“Is this the place, Di?”
“Yes, Jan, this is it and I didn’t even have to tell you, did I? You can see more from the top of the Tower but never so clearly. This was the place where it all began, remember?”
I remembered. Oh God, God, how clearly I remembered! It might have been an hour ago, a gawky boy in a shoddy, ready-made suit all stuck about with burrs and shredded beech leaves and a laughing girl, less than a year younger, wearing expensively-cut riding clothes and sitting a well-groomed pony with her long legs swinging free of the stirrups and her mouth curved in a half-smile as she said: “You love it, don’t you Jan? You feel about it just like I do! You do, don’t you?” And the boy, looking across the bowl of guineas flung slantwise across a purple mantle, had replied: “It’s Sennacharib!” and quoted opening lines of Byron’s poem.
“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold.”
There it was, exactly the same, untouched by slumps, and booms and invasions and blitzes. And here we were, exactly eighteen years older, a healthy full-grown man and a woman at the gates of death. It was a full circle and had within its sweep the rhythm and shape of the seasons and of everything that grew and died and enriched the earth.
I don’t know how long we remained there, five minutes perhaps, or ten, or much longer. Then she gave a slight shudder and lifted her hand, pointing up the valley towards the hogsback of the Common where the heath met the sky. I saw at once what she was pointing at, two dark specks dancing across the skyline and growing rapidly larger as they veered and twisted along the course of the stream below. It was the buzzards and their sudden appearance made me cry out. Swiftly they came, growing bigger each second, alternately beating and gliding as they tested the currents and displayed their matchless wind-craft, soaring, dipping, recovering and sideslipping, and all the while uttering their long, mewing cries of triumph.
Silently we watched them pass at eye-level along the valley, make a sudden turn as they neared the village and bank away to the east behind the highest firs of Teasel Wood.
As they disappeared the warmth went out of the sun and over the whole valley there was silence and a sense of suspension. Diana, said sleepily:
“I knew they’d show up, Jan! We’d better go now and thank you; thank you again, Jan … my Jan!”
She said nothing more as we picked our way down the peaty track to the bridge. She was not asleep however, for every now and again her eyes opened and seemed to be fixed on some point over on the right, beyond the elm clump of Heronslea boundary wall. I lifted her down, settled her in the car under the rugs and retethered Sioux. Then I backed along the lane towards home.
The day-nurse had taken me at my word and resigned, so I phoned Parker-Strachey and told him what I had done. He made no comment, merely grunted and promised to come down again before the end of the week.
I looked in after lunch and Diana was deeply asleep, one of her favourite anthologies open on the coverlet. I picked up the book and saw that some of the poems were marked in pencil. There were two heavy strokes beside the final verse of an excerpt from one of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River pieces, called Lucinda Matlock. The lines she had marked were:
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love life.
She did not seem to be any the worse for her adventure when I went up after breakfast the following mo
rning. She was quiet and thoughtful but apart from the flurry of excitement she had shown over the expedition she had been subdued for some days now and submissive to those attending her. She said that she wanted to write some letters so I fetched her pen, notepaper and envelopes, promising to come again before I went over to Whinmouth with the weekly order and telling her that if the letters were ready I would take them to post. She seemed to ponder this a moment and then said that there was no hurry about them and Yvonne could take them in the afternoon.
I left Heronslea about midday and ate lunch with my Aunt Thirza and Uncle Luke in their kitchen behind the Quayside Furniture Mart, where I had lived as a boy. I told Uncle Luke about our ride to the top of the escarpment and because the old man was a passionate devotee of the countryside he sympathised and understood but Aunt Thirza, a practical body, clicked her teeth and said, in her richest brogue: “You’m praper daaft, the pair of ’ee! Alwus ’ave bin, ever since you was tackers and ’rinned off to live on that there rock in the bay an’ catch your deaths-o’-cold! Bade is the place for her, ‘till ’er starts to mend, so why dorn ’ee settle for it boy?”
I carried out Drip’s shopping commissions and it was dusk when I drove down the hill to the Shepherdshey crossroads. Yellow lights were showing in the village as I climbed the long avenue between the carefully-spaced beeches of the drive and autumn seemed to have unpacked and settled in at last. Already the greens were fading and the trees looked as they always did at this time of year, like two neat rows of candles, glowing red and gold in equal proportions.
Then, as I turned into the gravelled half-moon under the porch, I saw that something was wrong. Drip was trotting up and down the terrace in her apron, and it needed an emergency to get Drip to show herself out of doors in an apron. The moment she saw me she jumped up and down and beckoned and as I ran up I noticed that tears were streaming down her face and she could hardly speak for sobs.
Diana Page 71
