Absent in the Spring

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  I’ve stayed where I was – Blanche was right – I’m the girl who left St Anne’s. Easy living, lazy thinking, pleased with myself, afraid of anything that might be painful …

  No courage …

  What can I do, she thought. What can I do?

  And she thought, I can go to him. I can say, ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me …’

  Yes, I can say that … I can say, ‘Forgive me. I didn’t know. I simply didn’t know …’

  Joan got up. Her legs felt weak and rather silly.

  She walked slowly and painfully – like an old woman.

  Walking – walking – one foot – then the other –

  Rodney, she thought, Rodney …

  How ill she felt – how weak …

  It was a long way – a very long way.

  The Indian came running out from the rest house to meet her, his face wreathed in smiles. He waved, gesticulated:

  ‘Good news, Memsahib, good news!’

  She stared at him.

  ‘You see? Train come! Train at station. You leave by train tonight.’

  The train? The train to take her to Rodney.

  (‘Forgive me, Rodney … forgive me …’)

  She heard herself laughing – wildly – unnaturally – the Indian stared and she pulled herself together.

  ‘The train has come,’ she said, ‘just at the right time …’

  Chapter Eleven

  It was like a dream, Joan thought. Yes, it was like a dream.

  Walking through the convolutions of barbed wire – the Arab boy carrying her suitcases and chattering shrilly in Turkish to a big, fat, suspicious looking man who was the Turkish station master.

  And there, waiting for her, the familiar sleeping car with the Wagon Lits man in his chocolate uniform leaning out of a window.

  Alep-Stamboul on the side of the coach.

  The link that bound this resting place in the desert to civilization!

  The polite greeting in French, her compartment thrown open, the bed already made with its sheets and its pillow.

  Civilization again …

  Outwardly Joan was once more the quiet, efficient traveller, the same Mrs Scudamore that had left Baghdad less than a week ago. Only Joan herself knew of that astonishing, that almost frightening change that lay behind the facade.

  The train, as she had said, had come just at the right moment. Just when those last barriers which she herself had so carefully erected had been swept away in a rising tide of fear and loneliness.

  She had had – as others had had in days gone by – a Vision. A vision of herself. And although she might seem now the commonplace English traveller, intent on the minor details of travel, her heart and mind were held in that abasement of self reproach that had come to her out there in the silence and the sunlight.

  She had answered almost mechanically the Indian’s comments and questions.

  ‘Why not Memsahib come back for lunch? Lunch all ready. Very nice lunch. It nearly five o’clock now. Too late lunch. Have tea?’

  Yes, she said, she would have tea.

  ‘But where Memsahib go? I look out, not see Memsahib anywhere. Not know which way Memsahib gone.’

  She had walked rather far, she said. Farther than usual.

  ‘That not safe. Not safe at all. Memsahib get lost. Not know which way to go. Perhaps walk wrong way.’

  Yes, she said, she had lost her way for a time, but luckily she had walked in the right direction. She would have tea now, and then rest. What time did the train go?

  ‘Train go eight-thirty. Sometimes wait for convoy to come in. But no convoy come today. Wadi very bad – lot of water – rush through like that. Whoosh!’

  Joan nodded.

  ‘Memsahib look very tired. Memsahib got fever, perhaps?’

  No, Joan said, she hadn’t got fever – now.

  ‘Memsahib look different.’

  Well, she thought, Memsahib was different. Perhaps the difference showed in her face. She went to her room and stared into the fly-stained mirror.

  Was there any difference? She looked, definitely, older. There were circles under her eyes. Her face was streaked with yellow dust and sweat.

  She washed her face, ran a comb through her hair, applied powder and lipstick and looked again.

  Yes, there was definitely a difference. Something had gone from the face that stared so earnestly back at her. Something – could it be smugness?

  What a horribly smug creature she had been. She felt still the keen disgust that had come to her out there – the self loathing – the new humility of spirit.

  Rodney, she thought, Rodney …

  Just his name, repeated softly in her thoughts …

  She held to it as a symbol of her purpose. To tell him everything, not to spare herself. That, she felt, was all that mattered. They would make together, so far as was possible at this late date, a new life. She would say, ‘I’m a fool and a failure. Teach me, out of your wisdom, out of your gentleness, the way to live.’

  That, and forgiveness. For Rodney had a lot to forgive. And the wonderful thing about Rodney, she realized now, was that he had never hated her. No wonder that Rodney was loved so much – that his children adored him (even Averil, she thought, behind her antagonism, has never stopped loving him), that the servants would do anything to please him, that he had friends everywhere. Rodney, she thought, has never been unkind to anyone in his life …

  She sighed. She was very tired, and her body ached all over.

  She drank her tea and then lay down on her bed until it was time to have dinner and start for the train.

  She felt no restlessness now – no fear – no longing for occupation or distraction. There were no more lizards to pop out of holes and frighten her.

  She had met herself and recognized herself …

  Now she only wanted to rest, to lie with an empty, peaceful mind and with always, at the back of that mind, the dim picture of Rodney’s kind, dark face …

  And now she was in the train, had listened to the conductor’s voluble account of the accident on the line, had handed over to him her passport and her tickets and had received his assurance that he would wire to Stamboul for fresh reservations on the Simplon Orient Express. She also entrusted him with a wire to be sent from Alep to Rodney. Journey delayed all well love Joan.

  Rodney would receive it before her original schedule had expired.

  So that was all arranged and she had nothing more to do or to think about. She could relax like a tired child.

  Five days’ peace and quiet whilst the Taurus and Orient Express rushed westwards bringing her each day nearer to Rodney and forgiveness.

  They arrived at Alep early the following morning. Until then Joan had been the only passenger, since communications with Iraq were interrupted, but now the train was filled to overflowing. There had been delays, cancellations, confusions in the booking of sleepers. There was a lot of hoarse, excited talking, protests, arguments, disputes – all taking place in different languages.

  Joan was travelling first class and on the Taurus Express the first-class sleepers were the old double ones.

  The door slid back and a tall woman in black came in. Behind her the conductor was reaching down through the window where porters were handing him up cases.

  The compartment seemed full of cases – expensive cases stamped with coronets.

  The tall woman talked to the attendant in French. She directed him where to put things. At last he withdrew. The woman turned and smiled at Joan, an experienced cosmopolitan smile.

  ‘You are English,’ she said.

  She spoke with hardly a trace of accent. She had a long, pale, exquisitely mobile face and rather strange light grey eyes. She was, Joan thought, about forty-five.

  ‘I apologize for this early morning intrusion. It is an iniquitously uncivilized hour for a train to leave, and I disturb your repose. Also these carriages are very old-fashioned – on the new ones the compartments are single. But still –’
she smiled – and it was a very sweet and almost child-like smile – ‘we shall not get too badly on each other’s nerves. It is but two days to Stamboul, and I am not too difficult to live with. And if I smoke too much you will tell me. But now I leave you to sleep, I go to the restaurant car that they put on at this moment,’ she swayed slightly as a bump indicated the truth of her words, ‘and wait there to have breakfast. Again I say how sorry I am you have been disturbed.’

  ‘Oh, that’s quite all right,’ Joan said. ‘One expects these things when travelling.’

  ‘I see you are sympathetic – good – we shall get on together famously.’

  She went out and as she drew the door to behind her, Joan heard her being greeted by her friends on the platform with cries of ‘Sasha – Sasha’ and a voluble burst of conversation in some language that Joan’s ear did not recognize.

  Joan herself was by now thoroughly awake. She felt rested after her night’s sleep. She always slept well in a train. She got up and proceeded to dress. The train drew out of Alep when she had nearly finished her toilet. When she was ready, she went out into the corridor, but first she took a quick look at the labels on her new companion’s suitcases.

  Princess Hohenbach Salm.

  In the restaurant car she found her new acquaintance eating breakfast and conversing with great animation to a small, stout Frenchman.

  The princess waved a greeting to her and indicated the seat at her side.

  ‘But you are energetic,’ she exclaimed. ‘If it was me, I should still lie and sleep. Now, Monsieur Baudier, go on with what you are telling me. It is most interesting.’

  The princess talked in French to M. Baudier, in English to Joan, in fluent Turkish to the waiter, and occasionally across the aisle in equally fluent Italian to a rather melancholy looking officer.

  Presently the stout Frenchman finished his breakfast and withdrew, bowing politely.

  ‘What a good linguist you are,’ said Joan.

  The long, pale face smiled – a melancholy smile this time.

  ‘Yes – why not? I am Russian, you see. And I was married to a German, and I have lived much in Italy. I speak eight, nine languages – some well, some not so well. It is a pleasure, do you not think, to converse? All human beings are interesting, and one lives such a short time on this earth! One should exchange ideas – experiences. There is not enough love on the earth, that is what I say. Sasha, my friends say to me, there are people it is impossible to love – Turks, Armenians – Levantines. But I say no. I love them all. Garçon, l’addition.’

  Joan blinked slightly for the last sentence had been practically joined to the one before it.

  The restaurant car attendant came hurrying up respectfully and it was borne in upon Joan that her travelling companion was a person of considerable importance.

  All that morning and afternoon they wound across the plains and then climbed slowly up into the Taurus.

  Sasha sat in her corner and read and smoked and occasionally made unexpected and sometimes embarrassing remarks. Joan found herself being fascinated by this strange woman who came from a different world and whose mental processes were so totally different from anything she herself had previously come across.

  The mingling of the impersonal and the intimate had an odd compelling charm for Joan.

  Sasha said to her suddenly:

  ‘You do not read – no? And you do nothing with your hands. You do not knit. That is not like most Englishwomen. And yet you look most English – yes, you look exactly English.’

  Joan smiled.

  ‘I’ve actually nothing to read. I was held up at Tell Abu Hamid owing to the breakdown on the line, so I got through all the literature I had with me.’

  ‘But you do not mind? You did not feel it necessary to get something at Alep. No, you are content just to sit and look out through the window at the mountains, and yet you do not see them – you look at something that you yourself see, is it not so? You experience in your mind some great emotion, or you have passed through one. You have a sorrow? Or a great happiness?’

  Joan hesitated, with a slight frown.

  Sasha burst out laughing.

  ‘Ah but that is so English. You think it impertinent if I ask the questions that we Russians feel are so natural. It is curious that. If I were to ask you where you had been, to what hotels, and what scenery you had seen, and if you have children and what do they do, and have you travelled much, and do you know a good hairdresser in London – all that you would answer with pleasure. But if I ask something that comes into my mind – have you a sorrow, is your husband faithful – do you sleep much with men – what has been your most beautiful experience in life – are you conscious of the love of God? All those things would make you draw back – affronted – and yet they are much more interesting than the others, nicht wahr?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Joan slowly, ‘that we are very reserved as a nation.’

  ‘Yes, yes. One cannot even say to an Englishwoman who has recently been married, are you going to have a baby? That is, one cannot say so across the table at luncheon. No, one has to take her aside, to whisper it. And yet if the baby is there, in its cradle, you can say, “How is your baby?”’

  ‘Well – it is rather intimate, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, I do not see it. I met the other day a friend I have not seen for many years, a Hungarian. Mitzi, I say to her, you are married – yes, several years now, you have not a baby, why not? She answers me she cannot think why not! For five years, she says she and her husband have tried hard – but oh! how hard they have tried! What, she asks, can she do about it? And, since we are at a luncheon party, everyone there makes a suggestion. Yes, and some of them very practical. Who knows, something may come of it.’

  Joan looked stolidly unconvinced.

  Yet she felt, suddenly welling up in her, a strong impulse to open her own heart to this friendly, peculiar foreign creature. She wanted, badly, to share with someone the experience that she had been through. She needed, as it were, to assure herself of its reality …

  She said slowly, ‘It is true – I have been through rather an upsetting experience.’

  ‘Ach, yes? What was it? A man?’

  ‘No. No, certainly not.’

  ‘I am glad. It is so often a man – and really in the end it becomes a little boring.’

  ‘I was all alone – at the rest house at Tell Abu Hamid – a horrible place – all flies and tins and rolls of barbed wire, and very gloomy and dark inside.’

  ‘That is necessary because of the heat in summer, but I know what you mean.’

  ‘I had no one to talk to – and I soon finished my books – and I got – I got into a very peculiar state.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that might well be so. It is interesting what you tell me. Go on.’

  ‘I began to find out things – about myself. Things that I had never known before. Or rather things that I had known, but had never been willing to recognize. I can’t quite explain to you –’

  ‘Oh, but you can. It is quite easy. I shall understand.’

  Sasha’s interest was so natural, so unassumed, that Joan found herself talking with an astonishing lack of self consciousness. Since to Sasha to talk of one’s feelings and one’s intimate relationships was perfectly natural, it began to seem natural to Joan also.

  She began to talk with less hesitation, describing her uneasiness, her fears, and her final panic.

  ‘I daresay it will seem absurd to you – but I felt that I was completely lost – alone – that God himself had forsaken me –’

  ‘Yes, one has felt that – I have felt it myself. It is very dark, very terrible …’

  ‘It was not dark – it was light – blinding light – there was no shelter – no cover – no shadow.’

  ‘We mean the same thing, though. For you it was light that was terrible, because you had hidden so long under cover and in deep shade. But for me it was darkness, not seeing my way, being lost in the night. But the agony is
the same – it is the knowledge of one’s own nothingness and of being cut off from the love of God.’

  Joan said slowly, ‘And then – it happened – like a miracle. I saw everything. Myself – and what I had been. All my silly pretences and shams fell away. It was like – it was like being born again …’

  She looked anxiously at the other woman. Sasha bent her head.

  ‘And I knew what I had to do. I had to go home and start again. Build up a new life … from the beginning …’

  There was a silence. Sasha was looking at Joan thoughtfully and something in her expression puzzled Joan. She said, with a slight flush:

  ‘Oh, I daresay it sounds very melodramatic and farfetched –’

  Sasha interrupted her.

  ‘No, no, you do not understand me. Your experience was real – it has happened to many – to St Paul – to others of the Saints of God – and to ordinary mortals and sinners. It is conversion. It is vision. It is the soul knowing its own bitterness. Yes, it is real all that – it is as real as eating your dinner or brushing your teeth. But I wonder – all the same, I wonder …’

  ‘I feel I’ve been so unkind – done harm to – to someone I love –’

  ‘Yes, yes, you have remorse.’

  ‘And I can hardly wait to get there – to get home, I mean. There is so much I want to say – to tell him.’

  ‘To tell whom? Your husband?’

  ‘Yes. He has been so kind – so patient always. But he has not been happy. I have not made him happy.’

  ‘And you think you will be better able to make him happy now?’

  ‘We can at least have an explanation. He can know how sorry I am. He can help me to – oh, what shall I say?’ The words of the Communion service flashed through her mind. ‘To lead a new life from now on.’

  Sasha said gravely, ‘That is what the Saints of God were able to do.’

  Joan stared.

  ‘But I – I am not a saint.’

  ‘No. That is what I meant.’ Sasha paused, then said with a slight change of tone, ‘Forgive me that I should have said that. And perhaps it is not true.’

  Joan looked slightly bewildered.

  Sasha lit another cigarette and began to smoke violently, staring out of the window.