During the day the dream would go from her, and weeks or months might pass before it came to her again, and then suddenly in the silent hush of morning when the world is asleep and before the first bird stretches his wings, she would be standing on the terrace before the house in the full warmth of the sun, her face turned to the open window. Her dreaming mind, lost to the world and intensely alive in its own dream planet, would quieten and relax, would murmur in solitude, ‘I’m here, I’m happy, I’m home again.’
No more than this and no conclusion; it was a momentary state beyond heaven and earth, suspended in time between two strokes of a clock, and so would be vanished again, and she waking to the familiarity of her own bedroom and the beginning of another day. The clatter of breakfast cups, the street noises, the hum of the sweeper on the back stairs, all the usual homely sounds would bring her back to reality with a shudder and a frustrated sense of loss. Since her illness she had become more than ever absent-minded, so her aunt told her; it was like living with a ghost, with someone who was not there. ‘Look up, listen, what are you thinking about?’ And she would lift her head with a jerk, startled by the demands made upon her. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’
‘You’re mooning, always mooning,’ came the reply, and she would flush sensitively, easily hurt, but wishing for her aunt’s sake she could be brilliant and entertaining. She would pucker her forehead in a frown, and steal up to the old school-room and lean her arms on the window-sill, looking down upon the roofs of houses, glad to be alone yet aware of her loneliness, knowing in a strange unconscious fashion that this was a passage of time; she did not belong here, she was waiting for something that would bring her security and peace like the sunken tangled path in her dream, and the house, and the happy valley.
The first thing he said to her was, ‘You aren’t hurt, are you? You walked straight into the car. I called out to you and you didn’t hear.’
She blinked back at him, wondering why she should be lying on her back in the road, and remembering suddenly stepping off the pavement into nothing, and she said, ‘I always forget to look where I am going.’
Then he laughed, and said, ‘You silly one,’ brushing the dust from her skirt, while she watched him gravely, aware, with a little sick sensation, ‘this has happened before.’ She turned towards the car and it seemed to her that she recognised the set of his shoulders and the way his hair grew at the back of his head. His hands, brown and capable, they were the hands she knew. Yet her eyes could not deceive her and she had never seen him before.
‘You look pale and shaken,’ he said, ‘I’m going to drive you home: tell me where it is,’ and she climbed in beside him, knowing that the pallor of her face was nothing to do with the accident nor her recent illness: she was white from the shock of seeing him, and the realisation that this was the beginning of things and the cycle had begun. Then her fragment of knowledge was gone from her, like the dream that departed at daybreak, and they were a man and a woman unknown to one another, talking of trivialities, glad in each other’s company. She was telling him, ‘It’s not very pretty this part of the world, just suburbs, not real country,’ and he smiled and said, ‘All country except the west seems foreign to me and dull; but then I come from Ryeshire.’
‘Ryeshire,’ she echoed, ‘No, I’ve never been as far as that,’ and she lingered over the word, repeating it, as though it found response in her heart like a lost chord. ‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ she said, and the words trailed away like words belonging to someone else, someone left behind, a younger sister, and she herself wandering through a field of sorrel with the scent of honeysuckle in her nostrils and the sound of a river in her ears, born anew, alive for the first time.
She heard herself saying, ‘I remember Ryeshire was coloured yellow in my atlas in school,’ and he laughed: ‘What a funny thing to remember.’ Then again came the flash of knowledge: ‘He’ll tease me about that one day and I shall look back at this moment.’ She must remind herself that they were strangers, none of that had happened, and she was only a girl who had been ill, who was dull, who was absent-minded, and ‘Would you like some tea?’ she said, formal and polite. ‘I think we shall find my aunt at home.’
The patter of conversation, the crunch of toast, the maid coming in to light the lamps, the dog begging for sugar, these were natural, inevitable things; but they held significance, as if they were pictures hanging on a wall and she were a visitor to a gallery inspecting each picture in turn. And later: ‘Good-bye,’ she said, knowing she would see him again and glad at the thought, but something inside her afraid of the knowledge, wanting to thrust it aside.
That night she saw the valley very clearly; she climbed the path to the house and stood on the terrace outside the open window, and it seemed to her that the old sensation of peace and escape from the world was intermingled now with a new consciousness that the house was no longer empty, it was tenanted, it held a welcome. She tried to reach to the window but the effort was too much for her, her arms fell to her side, the image dissolved, and she was staring with wide-awake eyes at the door of her own bedroom. She was aware that it was still very early, the maids not yet astir, but the telephone was ringing in the hall.
She went downstairs and took off the receiver, and it was his voice. He was saying, ‘Please forgive me. I know that it’s an impossible hour to ring up, but I’ve just had the most vivid nightmare that something had happened to you.’ He tried to laugh, ashamed of his weakness. ‘It was so strong, I can scarcely believe now it isn’t true.’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she said, and she laughed back at him. ‘I was sleeping very peacefully and feeling happy. Your ringing must have awakened me. What did you think was the matter?’
‘I can’t explain,’ he said, and his voice was puzzled. ‘I was certain you had gone away and were never coming back. It was quite definite, you had gone away for good. There was no possible means of getting in touch with you. You had gone away on your own accord.’
‘Well, it’s not true,’ she said, smiling at his distress, ‘I’m here, quite safe – but it was nice of you to mind.’
‘I want to see you to-day,’ he insisted, ‘just to make sure that nothing has happened. That you still look the same. You see, it’s my fault, if I hadn’t knocked you down with the car this wouldn’t have happened . . . That’s what I felt, all mixed up in the nightmare. You will let me see you; tell me you will?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’d like to see you too,’ because it had to happen, she had no choice, and his voice was the echo of her own thoughts, suppressed and unfulfilled.
When they were married, he used to tease her about that first morning after they had met, and how his telephoning had roused her from her sleep. ‘You can’t escape now,’ he said, ‘you belong to me and are safe for eternity. My nightmare was indigestion. You must have been in love with me to have answered the telephone so promptly! Look at me, what are you thinking about? Mooning again, always mooning.’
He put his arm round her and kissed the top of her head, and although she clung to him in response there was a little pang in her heart because after all perhaps he had not understood; he would be like the rest of the world, irritated in spite of himself at her abstraction. ‘I don’t moon,’ she said, leaning against his shoulder, aware that she loved him, but part of her still unclaimed, inviolate, that he could not touch, and for all her worship of his hands, his voice, his presence, she wanted to creep away, be silent, be at rest.
They stood at the window of the little inn looking down on the river, the rocking boats, and the distant woods beyond. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ he said, ‘and Ryeshire is as lovely as you expected, isn’t it?’
‘Much lovelier,’ she told him.
‘Better than the yellow corner of your atlas?’ he laughed. ‘Listen, to-morrow we’ll explore, we’ll wander over the hills, we’ll plunge into the woods.’ He spread his map upon the table, he busied himself with plans and a guide of the
district. She felt restless, stirred by a strange energy. She wanted to be out, to be walking, not idling here in the little sitting-room. ‘Some time I must clean the car and fill up with petrol,’ he said, ‘stroll up the road and I’ll follow later. I won’t be long.’
She slipped out of the inn, and up the road to the bend of the river, then down to the beach, stumbling over stones and seaweed and little loose boulders of rock. She came to a creek turning westward, surrounded on either side by trees sloping to the water’s edge. There were no boats in this creek; it was silent and still, the quiet broken once by the movement of a fish below the surface casting a ripple on the face of the water. Now the beach vanished into the coming tide and she must force her way through the trees to the high ground above, plunging steadily, excited for no known reason, feeling that the very silence was due to her, and the trees rustled in homage, dark and green, the outposts of enchantment.
Suddenly the path dipped, and she was taken down, down, into the confusion of a valley, her valley, the place where she belonged. The tall beech trees were on either side, and then, as she had always known it, the path dwindling to a mud track, tangled and overgrown, while yonder the house waited, mysterious and hushed, the wide windows alight as though afire with the rays of the setting sun, beautiful, expectant. She knew she was not frightened at the realisation of her dream, it was the embodiment of peace, like the answer to a prayer. At first glance the place had seemed deserted and the house untenanted, but as she came on to the terrace it was as though the white walls flushed somehow and were strengthened, and what she had thought were weeds forcing themselves through the crazy paving were rock plants in bloom. She felt a pang of disappointment that her house should be the dwelling-place of other people. She crept closer, and raising her arms to the sill – always the final action in her dream – she gazed through the window to the room beyond. The room was cool and filled with flowers, the warm sun did not touch the coloured chintzes. It was a gay room, a boy’s room, the only formal note the heavy chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
There was a table in the middle with a butterfly net on it, story-books lying on the chairs, and in the corner of the sofa a bow and arrow with a piece of broken string. A jersey was hanging from a hook on the door, and the door was open as though someone had just left the room. She leant with her cheek against the sill, rested and happy, and she was thinking ‘I’d like to know the boy who lives here.’ As she smiled, idle and content, her eyes fell upon a photograph on the mantelpiece, and she saw that it was a photograph of herself. One that she did not know, with her hair done differently, a likeness which, with all its freshness and modernity, struck her as being in contrast to the room curiously faded and old-fashioned.
‘It’s a joke,’ she thought, bewildered, ‘someone knew I was coming and put it there for fun.’ Then she saw her husband’s pipe on the mantelpiece, the one with the knobbly bowl, and above, the old sporting print that her aunt had given her. The furniture, the pictures, she was intimate with them all, they belonged to her. Yet she knew these things were waiting in packing cases in her aunt’s house in Middlesex and they could not be here. She felt nervous and distressed, she knew not why, and ‘It’s a silly sort of joke,’ she thought, ‘he is making fun of my dream.’ But, puzzled, she hesitated, her husband did not know about the dream. Then she heard a step, and he came into the room. He seemed very tired, as though he had been searching for her a long time, and had come to the house by a different way. He looked strange, too; he had parted his hair and changed his suit.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said, ‘how did you get here? Do you know the people who live in the house?’ He did not hear her, but sat down on the sofa and picked up a paper. ‘Don’t pretend any more,’ she said, ‘look at me, darling, laugh at me, tell me what has happened, what are you doing here?’
He took no notice, and then a manservant came in and began to lay tea on the table in the middle. ‘The sun’s in my eyes,’ said her husband, ‘will you pull down the blind?’ and the man came forward and jerked at the curtains, staring straight at her without recognition, ignoring her as his master had done, and the curtains were drawn so that she could not see them any more. A moment later she heard the sound of a gong.
She felt very tired suddenly, very weak, as though life were too much for her, too difficult, more than she could ever bear: she wanted to cry, and ‘If only I could rest I wouldn’t mind,’ she thought, ‘but it’s such a silly joke . . .’ and she turned away from the window and looked down the path to the tangled valley below, exquisitely scented, mysterious and deep. There would be moss there, soft bracken, the cool foliage of trees, and the lilting murmur of a brook singing in her ears. She would find a resting place there where they could not tease her, she would crouch there and hide, and presently he would reproach himself for having frightened her, and would come out on to the terrace and call down to her.
As she hesitated at the top of the path, she saw a small boy staring at her from the bushes who had not been there before. His eyes were large and brown like buttons in his face, and there was a large scratch on his cheek. She felt shy, wondering how long he had been watching her. ‘Everyone seems to be playing hide-and-seek here,’ she said. ‘I can’t make it out, they pretend they don’t see me.’
He smiled, biting his nails. She wanted to touch him; he was dear for no reason; but he was nervous like a startled fawn and edged away. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said gently, ‘I won’t hurt you. I want to go down into the valley, will you come with me?’
She held out her hand, but he backed, shaking his head, red in the face, so she set off alone, with him trotting some distance behind, peering at her, still uncertain of her, still scared. The trees closed in upon them and the shadows, the song of the brook rang near, and she hummed to herself, lighthearted and happy. They came to a clearing in the trees and a bank of moss beside the stream. ‘How lovely,’ she thought. ‘How peaceful, they’ll never find me here,’ delighted with the mischief she had planned, when the boy’s voice, quiet as a whisper, came to her for the first time.
‘Take care,’ he was saying, ‘Take care, you’re standing on the grave.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said, and looked down at her feet, but there was only moss beneath her: the stems of bracken, and the crushed head of a blue hydrangea flower. ‘Whose grave?’ she said, raising her head. Only he was not there any more: there was no boy, he was gone, and his voice was an echo. She called him: ‘Are you hiding? Where are you?’ and there was no answer. She ran back along the path to the house, out of the shadows, and she could not find him.
‘Come back, don’t be frightened; where are you?’ she called, and then came once more upon the terrace by the house. With a little sense of fear in her heart she saw that the white walls of the house no longer glowed in the warmth of the sun. There were weeds between the paving, not plants as she had thought. There were no curtains on the window of the room, and the room was empty, the walls unpapered, the floors bare boards.
Only the gaunt chandelier hung from the ceiling, grimy with cobwebs, and a breeze blew through the open window so that it swung very gently like the pendulum of a clock, to and fro, ticking out time. Then she turned and ran fast along the path whence she had come, up and away from the silence and the shadows, running from this place that was unreal, untrue, so desolate, forlorn. Only herself was real, and the great murky ball of the sun setting between the beech-trees at the head of the avenue, hard and red, like a flaming lamp.
He found her wandering up and down the beach by the river, staring before her, crying to herself. ‘But what is it, my darling?’ he kept saying. ‘Did you fall, are you hurt?’ She clung to him, clutching the safety of his coat.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. I went for a walk in a wood somewhere, and I forget what happened. I keep feeling I’ve lost something and I don’t know what it is.’
‘You silly one,’ he said, ‘you silly,
mooning one, I must look after you better. Stop crying, there’s no reason to cry. Come indoors, I’ve got a surprise for you.’
They went into the inn and he made her sit beside him in the chair. ‘I’ve got a lovely idea, and it’s going to thrill you. I’ve been talking to the landlord of the inn,’ he said, his cheek against her hair. ‘He tells me there’s a property near here for sale, a lovely old manor house, a place after your own heart. Been empty for years, just waiting for people like us. Would you like to live in this part of the world?’ She nodded, content once more, smiling up at him, the memory of what had been gone from her.
‘Look, I’ll show you on the map,’ he said, ‘here’s the house and there’s the garden, right in the hollow, running down to the creek. There’s a stream about here, and a clearing place in the trees, a place for you, beloved, where you can wander, and rest, and be alone. It’s wild and tangled, quite overgrown in parts; they call it the Happy Valley.’
And His Letters Grew Colder
Dear Mrs B:
Forgive me writing to you like this without the slightest introduction. The fact is, I know your brother out in China, and having successfully wangled six months’ furlough, arriving in England a few days ago, I am seizing this opportunity to tell you how very pleased I should be if you would let me look you up sometime and give you news of Charlie. He is extremely fit, and sends you many messages, of course.
Please excuse me for blundering in upon you in this abrupt manner. I am,
The Doll Page 13
