A damned awful mood had come over him, amounting to: Why live?
He stared at the water. If one were to go quietly overboard. … A lot of trouble saved, an end of getting up in the morning, shaving, wondering what to do next—all the dismal rigmarole.
The cold foam churned in the water, flashing and falling behind, flashing and falling behind. … The darkling water … Oliver had called it so, murmuring to himself, resting on his oars, staring out from the fishing-boat one night. The darkling water…funny word.
The gulls still followed the ship, calling and complaining, a hundred voices out of the black void. …
The gulls wheeled and fell down the sky all day on motionless wings, cutting a whole arc of blue in one long, slow, white fall. They had lain on the rough Cornish beach and watched them circle and squabble—hundreds and hundreds of them; settle a moment in their fouled rock crannies—swoop off again.
By day they were birds, with ravening fierce bird-habits, beautiful in their flight; but by night … by night the gulls were the last voices of humanity, after the end of the world; the unappeasable sick protesting echo of all the futile desolation. He had thought so all at once that night, that last night when every sight and sound had seemed to reflect, enlarge, sharpen his own pain; when climbing the tremendous cliffs in the late twilight they had both paused with one accord, listening in silence to those voices, querulously complaining, mocking—stressing the breach, the final failure with infinitely cruel, with diabolical relish. By then, the quarrels and struggles were all over. They had nothing more to say to one another. The gulls were saying the last word on their summer holiday—crying that everything was wrong, for ever.
Oliver’s face (his terribly attractive, crooked face) rose up before him, pale, haggard, with a terrible expression: saying something that in one moment, so it seemed, had changed the very face of July, and all the warm, rich, serenely shining landscape. …
Diving from a rock, swimming under water right round the bend, coming up finally out of sight of Oliver, wondering cheerfully if Oliver had missed him, floating idly back, enjoying himself most frightfully, and finding Oliver. … No, it didn’t bear thinking of—his face, his low voice saying in such stony anguish “I thought you’d gone”; saying, “What a good joke, so typical”; saying that it was only one more instance of his utter lack of sensibility and consideration, and going on to say … to plunge them further and further into a chaos of stored-up grievances, of accusations that one would never, never be able to deal with, or quite forget.
Where was Oliver now? Whom was he making miserable? Or had it really been, as Oliver said, all one’s own fault?
That boy, now, that young Seddon … what about him? It might have been the merest formal note, of course, which that envelope had hidden. Why should one have been so convinced that it was intimate, important?
He was a clever chap, of course, artistic, cultured—all that Oliver was, and that one had tried for a while, quite uselessly, to make oneself. … But was Oliver really attracted, taken in by such a ghastly prig? And then his conceit, his pompousness, his affectation: the things he wore, the colours; his hair; the book of poetry he would carry about with him. …
Still the looks, the charm—one had to admit that to oneself. One had been drawn to him reluctantly, hostile and fascinated, the unspoken name of Oliver weighing the air between them. For that had been the queerest thing: one could have sworn that the chap recognized him, was on his guard—interested. Probably Oliver had told him the whole story, exhibiting one’s own behaviour in the most unfavourable light. …
Stop thinking about it, once for all. There was plenty to look forward to. Months of freedom before one, no compulsion to take a job before the summer. Father had really been very decent—much more amenable than most parents. But of course he must keep his promise: to stick to the next thing, wherever he landed up.
What was it she had said about him?—“always gay and lucky. …” She’d made him promise. Fancy promising! Funny idea she’d had of him: exaggerated.
That had been a queer time altogether.
He saw her looking at him with her peculiar smile. … The thought of her would keep on coming back to worry him. Wasn’t there something more he might have done or said? She seemed so peaceful, so large, so quiet—like sculpture almost—but she wasn’t peaceful. He had felt that strongly. There she was for ever, hating it—saying that she’d think about him. “On my death-bed.” How extraordinary! Could she have meant it? He should have said something in return—something complimentary or a bit affectionate. Was that what she’d wanted? At one moment he had thought it was going to be a tight corner. … But surely, it couldn’t have been that? …
No good thinking about it. He had failed again; bungled it somehow. He had never been able to understand himself—much less anybody else. He was a person who would never be able to find any one to confide in—or to love him.
Time to turn in. But first a drink, perhaps a chat. Laughter came out again from the smoking-room. It sounded as if the ice was already broken. Perhaps there was some one specially amusing on board. It was time to start enjoying the journey.
Ever so slightly the ship rolled, creaked, vibrated; the strong bowels throbbed.
For a moment longer he watched the great bows plunging majestically; spinning out of their prodigious iron austerity delicate ruffles, ephemeral films of foam; white laces, ruffles of foam blown over a dark breast; blown over a swelling breast … a vanishing breast.
About the Author
Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1930 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox
978-1-5040-0305-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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A Note in Music Page 23
