North Face: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  He said, “Don’t you either? Why not?”

  “I suppose there are just too many people. You have to keep running to stay in the same place, like the Red Queen. And things cost money that ought not to, like peace and quiet and something nice to look at out of the window. After a time, the people you meet all seem to have tired cross faces, and then you know it’s really you.”

  “What part of London were you in?”

  “Belgravia—the shabby part. I had a room in one of those decayed mansions, all plaster mouldings and alcoves for palms, and huge windows on the stairs blacked out with paint; they’d scraped a few holes in it after the war and left the rest. The other people were mostly Indians, and queer old women who didn’t like strangers. The rooms had been divided up, so that they were about twice as high as they were wide; it’s odd how a room that shape never seems to get friendly. Have you ever stayed in one?”

  “I’ve just come from one. In Pimlico.”

  This simple statement cost him an immense effort. As soon as he had made it, he felt a curious lightening within. He had carried the solicitude of those months with him ever since; this moment’s breach in their loneliness seemed not to belong to the present, but to be an alteration of the past.

  “Pimlico?” she said. “Why, that’s only just round the corner. I often walked round that way, going to look at the river.”

  The same stretch of embankment, he thought, must often have seen them both in the same twelve hours, him by night and her by day. Neither said, “We might have met,” because to each it seemed now that they had.

  “What did you do with your spare time?” He felt a reasonless assurance that he could ask such questions without fear of their rebounding.

  “The ballet sometimes, when I could get in. Once or twice I got asked to parties; a lot of the other girls lived in London, of course. Or I just used to read, and pretend I was somewhere else.”

  He imagined her, at times when he must have passed her door, small and quiet in the well of her dingy room, its forlornness closing like well-water high over her unresisting head, herself withdrawn to Arabia, or China, or old France. In childhood, he thought, she must have been much in her own company; but, lest she should feel herself being intrusively analysed, he did not ask. He thought of the tall houses with their pillared stucco porticoes, the bomb-gaps like missing teeth, their lost look of an exploded security and permanence; now, while he talked, their catacombs still enclosed a thousand diverse solitudes which drifted helplessly past one another without touching. It fell away from him; he lived there no longer. Half a dozen spoken words had done what the mountains had failed to do.

  “And now?” he said. “You’re quite alone?”

  “I suppose so,” she answered consideringly, as though he had presented her with a definition. “But then, who isn’t? Hullo, look, here’s the bus.”

  It turned out to be fairly full, and they had to sit separately. Neil, sharing a seat with a woman whose hat occluded most of the window, could see more easily the back of Ellen’s head. The soft curls at the nape, bouncing with the bus, looked from behind like a girl’s of seventeen. He sat thinking of Lupus Street and the Embankment with a memory unalterably changed, but still wishing not to think of them at all; till some kind of impalpable, transferred discomfort made him realise that he had been staring unseeingly at the woman in the hat. Ineffectually (the seat was narrow) she was trying to edge away; no doubt she expected to have her knee squeezed any minute. Damning all women, he offered his seat with relief to the next who got on the bus.

  Ellen was supporting in her lap the legs of a large sleeping baby held by the farmer’s wife beside her, and looking down, in intense interest or deep abstraction, at its pink woollen feet.

  “Sorry,” he said, as a lurch of the bus threw him forward at her shoulder. “There’s no handrail. I won’t do it again.”

  She looked up, her face startled into complete blankness. “It’s all right. I thought you were sitting at the back.” A slow, deepening blush, beginning at her throat, travelled up into her hair.

  Some more people got in, pushing him beyond her. Standing, he was too tall to see out of the window at all. Suddenly the bus seemed intolerably crowded, and the contact of its other occupants a furious irritation. Their bags and parcels in the rack, on a level with his eyes, were extensions of them, and seemed to look at him with interest.

  The outside air, when they emerged at last, was by contrast delightfully cool. They wandered round the small marketplace with its stone-roofed cross, and fell into step together; or, rather, into that irregular pleasant rhythm which, for people of different heights, can produce the same effect.

  “How long have we got here?” Ellen asked.

  “Until four-thirty, I think. It seems an idiotic time for the last bus; only gives us about two hours. I’ll take a look at the board and see if there isn’t a later one.” The table was fixed on one of the columns of the market cross; he returned with the news that there was, after all, a later one at six-thirty. This would leave them plenty of time for the castle, without prejudice to their tea. Relieved of the need for haste, they pottered about and presently found the lane that led to the castle. It was a green tunnel with a high roof of elms, and a grass verge wide enough to accommodate, at one point, an encampment of gipsies. It was past the season for the wildflowers that gipsies hawk; but one woman gazed at them, from under her down-turned shapeless hat, with an interest that hinted at calculation.

  “She looked,” said Neil when they were past, “as if she wished she had something to sell us.”

  “Yes, didn’t she?” said Ellen, quickening her step. She had met gipsies before, and knew their line of sales-talk.

  The lane ended at a wooden gate. There, beyond it, was the massive shell, the roofless keep and part of the wards. Much was there beside; a gaggle of voices, shrill and incessant as the chattering of starlings though much louder, and a moving vista of round, identically trimmed hats. A tired young woman was trying to be everywhere at once; her face, denied the persuasions of art which would have helped it to something like prettiness, proclaimed her calling as loudly as a slave’s collar. A school House, thought Neil, noting the assorted age of her charges, not a form.

  He swore, and apologised. “Out of every day in the week, I would choose this one.”

  “You couldn’t help it,” said Ellen reasonably. “It’s an Act of God, like a thunderbolt.”

  He could see however that she was disappointed. Neil shared the touching belief of all men that there are other, more victorious men to whom this kind of thing never happens. “If we had tea early,” he said, making the best of it, “they might have gone.” Provided, he thought, they haven’t brought it with them.

  “They’re sure to have gone, by then. There’s lots of time.”

  They turned back down the lane, enjoying the shade leisurely, since it was too early yet for tea places to be open.

  “Lovely lace, lady. All hand-made.”

  Oh, no, thought Ellen, a wave of helpless protest crawling up her spine. Temporarily blinded by her own pre-occupations, she had not seen the approach of the gipsy, who seemed to have materialised out of the hedge. The lace, of that very coarse kind which is a staple product of gipsies, dangled enticingly from her dirty brown hand. She had chosen a point where the path narrowed; it was impossible to get by without pushing her aside.

  “Not today, thank you.” Next moment she realised that the only sensible move would have been to buy the stuff out of hand. But she only had a few shillings on her,, and the older-established caution had had first word. It was too late now.

  “Beautiful lace, sir. Only five shillings. You’ll not see lace like this in the shops. It’ll be lucky to you, sir.” Her soft, sweet, cadging voice dropped a tone, stagily confidential. “Something for the young lady to remember you by.”

  “Let’s look at it,” said Neil. Though he knew rather less about lace than about conic sections, he picked up the bund
le and looked at it searchingly, as if he had travelled in it for years. He hoped this would lead the conversation into technical channels.

  “Please don’t,” asked Ellen, fatally interrupting just as this seemed about to succeed. “I never put lace on things, it tears in the wash.” A new and formidable embarrassment leaping on her at this point, she added, “I mean, of course, not for me.”

  “Tear in the wash, lady? Hand-made lace? Why, it’ll last you and your children out.” The gipsy had stopped smiling, Ellen saw in alarm; her black eyes sparkled. If she turned awkward everything so far would be, comparatively speaking, bread-and-butter. Ellen almost offered for the lace at once; but it was too late now, it would only seem that she was asking him to buy it for her.

  “Look lovely in your bottom drawer.” The dark eyes smiled again, boldly, sure of themselves now. “Come, now, sir. It’ll turn your luck, and the young lady’s too; you’ll never regret the day. See, now, I’ll make it four shillings, to a courting couple.”

  “All right,” Neil said. He paid the money over. The confusingly violent protective instinct, which had suddenly possessed him, made him vague about the transaction; he handed two half-crowns. The gipsy clutched them and stowed them away in the pocket of her torn skirt, firmly deflecting his eyes by holding them with her own. They had an opaque polish, like agates, under their heavy brows.

  “Thank you, sir, bless you, and good luck to you. There’s a red-haired woman crossed your path for sorrow, but there’s happiness before you if you’ve got the patience. Take care of high places, and you’ll live to a fine old age.”

  “Thanks,” said Neil mechanically, starting away. The gipsy, however, had not quite done. She had turned to Ellen; the professional cajolery had given way to an air of sudden enjoyment as of one who now pleases herself.

  “You’re a grown woman now, lady, and you’ll spoil your luck if you don’t remember it. From now on your troubles will be your own making.” Her voice dropped, skilfully, into another penetrating aside. “And mind what I say, you’ve a gentleman there you can trust. He’ll never bring you to harm, for he’s one that’s known more trouble than you have. You remember that, lady, and your luck will hold.” She went off through the bushes with a stride like a man’s, her draggled skirt swinging over broken shoes.

  Neil gazed at the lace in his hand, painfully conscious that he could not go on inspecting it much longer, and had better think what to say next. Meanwhile he observed that the stuff was of a thickness which, as even his inexpert eye could see, would outweigh any fabric thinner than calico. There appeared to be some yards of it.

  “Well,” he observed at length, “the notorious Warning seems to have got into reverse.” This somehow failed to hit the authentic note of farce. Trying again, he added, “Sheds a light on the ballad, doesn’t, it? Awful results of sales-resistance.”

  “They do it on purpose,” said Ellen. A tenuous hope, that her voice would emerge sounding casual and blasé, did not survive the moment of speech.

  “Shock tactics.” The fatuity of this overcame him; he dried up.

  Ellen straightened her shoulders. A little rush of anger, with the gipsy and with herself, broke the strangle-hold of her shyness. He had been left to cope with everything, she thought; it wasn’t fair.

  “Look here,” she said, bringing it out quite strongly, “we’d better get used to the idea that it’s just one of those days. The stars are in the wrong house, or something. I mean, if we make up our minds beforehand, we shan’t mind. There’s sure to be one thing more—they always go in threes, like breaking china. We’ll just have to be tough.”

  Neil laughed, not without gratitude, and partly because her face saying “tough” had looked funny. “Does breaking china go in threes?”

  “Oh, yes, always.”

  “Can you do anything with this stuff?”

  “Just because that old witch blackmailed you into buying it, you don’t have to give it to me.” She struggled obstinately with a return of shyness. “I’ve no house-linen, I live in digs. Someone who had might be glad of it. It—it would do for pillows or something.” She was grateful that he didn’t look at her. It was terrible, she thought, what things slid out when one was running on in an effort to sound natural.

  “Well, there’s Mrs K I suppose. She goes in for fancy mats.” He turned the lace over in his hand, as if considering this in detail. “I can’t think of anyone else, if you don’t want it. I’m living in digs, too.”

  A bird flew across the lane in front of them; the sun made a fringe of gold in the thin edges of its wings.

  “Oh,” said Ellen. “Well, thank you very much. It’s sure to come in for something; and it does last a lifetime, as a matter of fact.”

  “You’d better have it; she might call the luck off. I’m feeling a ready prey to superstition just now.” He gave it her, and they smiled at each other in an incautious happiness which neither was quite in time to disguise. It was with something of a shock that they found they had emerged meanwhile from the castle lane and were in a street. The local constable, who did not look busy, had stopped his bicycle with one foot on the kerb, and was eyeing them with kindly toleration.

  “Excuse me, sir. That lace the lady has there—may I ask if you bought it up the lane?”

  “Yes,” said Neil. “Not on coupons, is it?”

  “That’s all right, sir, that is; you’ve not committed any offence. But if you’ve been subjected to any annoyance, or the lady, I’d be glad to hear of it. We’ve been getting complaints.” He fished in his pocket, where the corner of a notebook appeared.

  “Annoyance?” said Neil reservedly. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Nor the lady?” The constable thumbed his notebook, with diminishing hope.

  “Not at all, thank you,” said Ellen firmly. She put the lace in her pocket, where her hand gently retained it. “I was glad to have it; you know, it’s hard to get.”

  When law and order had cycled away they caught one another’s eyes, hung for a second on the edge of a laugh, and funked it at the last moment.

  The Wheatsheaf Hotel had not received the benefits of modernization. The façade was Georgian, but inside one could stand in the Tudor hearth and, looking up, see a square of sky. The service was leisurely, the bread fresh; they were the first comers and had the placid low-ceilinged room to themselves. They talked books, the kind of pseudo-impersonal conversation into which scraps of personal detail filter easily, without the need for acknowledgment. After the meal, they pottered round the church, and found that by a pleasing oversight the door to the tower had been left unlocked. Climbing past the sleeping bells, they stood on the warm leads, looking at the little town spread like an illustrated map below them.

  “I suppose,” said Ellen, “all over the world there are places like this, which one can’t believe will ever change. ‘And like this insubstantial pageant faded’ …”

  “That was always true.” Neil looked at the stone of the balustrade roughened and pitted by weather so that it was no longer possible to trace on it the mark of human tools. “Once it was easy to forget it, that’s all.”

  “Perhaps it’s wrong to accept it. Fatalism doesn’t help.”

  “It depends what you mean by accepting it.” He felt no resistance against sharing his thought, but some trouble in finding words. Things had come to him while he was by himself in the woods, real, but as glimpses of light and colour are real, of which one can say little more than ‘bright’ and ‘blue.’ Their shapelessness in terms of speech had not occurred to him, at the time. “I mean, letting go of things need not be an act of despair, I suppose. Sometimes one feels freer, and even the things one lets go of are better than they were. Sorry to be so vague.”

  “No, you’re not. But—” She had drawn a little away; he saw in her face a look of frightened resistance. “It’s inhuman,” she said at last, “There are some things one must hold on to.”

  He had no answer to this: it was not a point of d
iscussion, but as if she had said “I am cold” or “I can go no further.” Leaning over, he watched the tiny foreshortened figures crossing the market square. In its far corner was a shape like a long blackbeetle sleeping against a diminished tree. “Perhaps,” he said, “we ought to be getting down. That looks like the bus.”

  “It can’t be that time yet! And we still haven’t seen the castle.”

  “You can see it from here,” said Neil. “I was keeping quiet about it.”

  She followed his eye, and laughed. “How funny they look from here. Just the hats weaving about. What are they doing—playing rounders? Never mind, the church was quite as good.”

  “We’ll come again.”

  When they got to the bus, they found themselves in sole possession. This inspired superiority at first, followed by a gradual misgiving.

  “I suppose,” said Ellen, “it is the right one?”

  “It’s the only one, so it can hardly not be. It’s probably well known in the district for starting late.” After another ten minutes, however, he walked round to the front of it, where the direction board, turned half way up into the frame, kept its secret still. “We’ll give it five more minutes, and if nothing happens I’ll go and find somebody who knows.”

  They were fortified, however, before this by the arrival of a stout placid woman with several baskets and a hat trimmed with grapes, who settled herself in the front seat and began to knit a pink bed-sock with reassuring contentment.

  “They must have altered the time,” said Ellen in an undertone. “She looks all set for half an hour.” At the sound of her voice the woman looked back at them, with benevolent curiosity. Neil took advantage of this to ask her when the bus was supposed to start. This seemed to please her; she lowered the sock and sat round conversationally.

  “Would you be wanting to see Mr Lambourne? He won’t be long now.” She added, as one who removes the last ambiguity, “I’m Mrs Lambourne.”