The Last September (26 page)

“How do you mean ‘more or less’?” he said suddenly.

“Well, I don’t live anywhere, really.”

“I do: I live near Birmingham.” He put the half-eaten sandwich down with distaste on the edge of the cloth and pulled up a plate to cover it. She felt she was quite finished with. Suppose, she thought, they were all like this! Should she go? She made a movement, he did not see; she was disappointed. He put the hand to his temple, again listening.

“Tired?”

“Oh no,” he said, with irony.

“I’m going back now.”

“Such a pity. Anyone so charming …”

“Well, I’m bored,” she said.

“It’s a pity you don’t know about my head, it’s a most curious head, it would interest you … How shall I keep you? Look here, seriously, about Lesworth—”

“Oh!” she said, suddenly cold inside.

“About our young friend—” He pulled up his chair close; she had a feeling like gates shutting. “Tell me this—”

But the roar of merriment, solid and swerving steadily as a waterfall past the door, splintered off in a crash. Silence came, with a hard impact. “Thank God, they’ve upset the gramophone!” Daventry smacked his knee, remotely, as though rehearsing the gesture. His look decomposed in laughter. “Done in,” he said, drawing life from the thought. Simultaneously, a universal shriek went up: it was smashed, finished. “Really,” she thought, “you laugh like Satan!”

“Well, well,” said Daventry, tilting his drink about, “it’s been a pleasant evening.” Here they all came—a stampede in the passage— She was glad of them, for under the storm of his mirth that swept their island, disarranging the interlude, she had sat cold and desolate. A gramophone passing, a gramophone less in the world; it was not funny. But between bursts of laughter she had felt him look at her lips, at her arms, at her dress like a ghost, with nostalgic and cold curiosity. About their young friend?—she wasn’t to know.

Mrs. Vermont seemed broken also, she leaned on the adjutant. “Stay her with sandwiches,” called out somebody, “comfort her with—with—more sandwiches!” Moira mopped her eyes with a trail of her dress, but nobody noticed. They jostled about the table. Plates rang, shunted in all directions. “Sitting in here!” cried Gerald, exalted. “Splendid!” Somebody waved a mouth organ; could one dance to that? More and more squeezed in at the door: the room would burst. The cracks of the walls that had been straight a minute ago like bars now seemed to bulge out visibly: light glared down on the resolution of backs and pink, reaching arms. “
Our
young friend, our
young
friend, our young
friend
,”
thought Lois, and watched Gerald. Though she watched wherever he went, she could not see him. There was nothing, in fact, to which to attach her look except his smoothness and roundness of head, which seemed for the first time remarkable. She looked for his mouth—which had kissed her—but found it no different from mouths of other young men, who had also been strolling and pausing between the huts in the dark. The page of the evening was asterisked over with fervent imaginary kisses. And one single kiss in the wind, in the dark, was no longer particularised: she could not remember herself, or remember him.

As he came up, she looked quickly away. She looked at an empty plate down on the floor, at a thin disk of cucumber flaccid against its rim. “What have I done?” she thought; she looked at the plate with dread. And: “Oh, sandwich?” said Gerald, turning to bring up some more. Or perhaps it will be natural tomorrow? Nothing could keep her from having to eat a sandwich. “Darling …” he whispered, brushing against her shoulder.

“Tired?” asked Mr. Simcox, seeing her face. “Oh no,” she said, with Mr. Daventry’s best irony.

MR. and Mrs. Montmorency were sitting on the steps as Lois drove up the avenue. Francie waved, Hugo looked warily round the 
Spectator. 
“Well … ?” cried Francie, as Lois came into earshot. Above, twenty dark windows stared over the fields aloofly out of the pale grey face of the house. The trees had rims of light round them; everything seemed a long way away. With a sigh, Hugo put down the
Spectator
and came to lift Lois’s suitcase out of the trap.

“Well … ?”

“Oh, marvellous. But what do you think: we broke the gramophone.”

“Oh, the poor gramophone!”

“It was the Gunners’ gramophone— Where are the others?”

“We have no idea.”

The Montmorencys now felt certain it must be a tiring day: even Lois looked pale. They had been having an intimate conversation about the future: both with a sense of courage as from sweeping aside some decency. Why not, Hugo had said, build a bungalow somewhere? “With no stairs?” Francie kindled at the idea, slipping a hand under Hugo’s. And live there always? Certainly—why not?—they would unstore the furniture. And at the thought of their tables and sofas coming again out of limbo, Hugo’s face was illuminated by a look of defiance.

“But where would we build?” said Francie, wrinkled up with delightful anxiety. Hugo said they would motor round for a bit and no doubt some idea would suggest itself. “We could choose the view,” said Francie. But at this point, for some reason, he had taken up the
Spectator.

The man came round for the pony; Lois sat down on the steps and began to chatter. It was surprising, really, how much had occurred. And fancy, the Colonel had been furious … Even Hugo listened with some attention. “Dear me,” he said when they heard about Mr. Daventry. Francie expected it must be a great relief for a man in that state of mind to meet a girl to whom he could really talk: “But he didn’t talk; he really was most extraordinary. Of course, he was once a major.” Francie wished she had seen her go off in that green frock—all, how should she say, like a poppy, only a different colour. Would Lois put it on for them all tonight?

“It’s not really a frock one sits in,” said Lois dis-couragingly. Francie said it was almost a pity in some ways that Laurence was so intellectual. “I know, we’ll make Hugo waltz with you, he waltzes beautifully.” But the thought of Hugo waltzing—as Hugo suspected —made Lois melancholy.

Laurence, disturbed by her voice, shut an upstairs window. His industry nowadays was remarkable. He dragged at his hair and stared at the trees through a flawed pane, across which Laura Naylor had scratched 
her name with a diamond. At his elbows books were in toppling stacks, movement produced an avalanche. A wasp hung round him, tentative, scrawling Z’s on the air. “Go away,” he muttered, “you are superfluous.” Finally, he was obliged to open the door and shoo the wasp out of it; it undulated across the landing and in at the half-open door of Marda’s room, as though it had an appointment. Though he did not care for the wasp, Laurence went in after it, to see if she had not left
South Wind
behind. She had indeed—which was like her. The wasp dithered above the looking-glass in triumph; he took aim with the book and almost hit it. An eight-day clock still ticked; it was five to four, it would soon be tea-time.

As he came out, Lois appeared at the top of the stairs, carrying a suitcase.

“Hullo, what have you brought
that
up for?”

“Oh yes,” she said, putting it down in surprise. “I meant to have left it half way.”

“Well—?”

“Really,” she cried, unreasonably, “this house is nothing but Montmorencys; they are an absolute state of mind … I only wanted to see if you were here,”

“Well, I’m not, practically: I’m working.”

“Oh—why do you work in the spare-room?”

“I was dealing with a wasp.”

“Laurence, I had a marvellous dance.”

“Splendid!” He turned to his door, but she, in tremendous need of his unsympathy, brought out, imploringly: “They were all there, everyone. And my dear, the wind; I thought the hut would be blown away. And we broke the gramophone. There was a most sinister man called Daventry, with shell-shock… .”

“Good,” said Laurence, “and 
you
look sleepy!”

Lois, lamblike under the force of suggestion, leaned back against the banisters, yawning. “Livvy kicked all night, she will be a horrible wife … Laurence, I wish you would tell me something to read.”

“I should go to sleep.”

The idea seemed grateful: she thought of her room with the high ceiling, the foreign chill to the cheeks of afternoon pillows, the delicious crime of crossing silk-clad ankles over the rucked-back quilt and the slow recession of fact down a long tunnel till the windows stretched and faded. But, pulling at her fingers, she said impatiently: “But I want to begin on something; I do think, Laurence, you might understand. There must be some way for me to begin. You keep on looking into rooms where I am with silent contempt—what do you think I am for?

He leaned against the frame of his doorway, looking at her with surprise and a degree of humanity. Today three weeks, term would have begun again; he did for a moment stretch to an effort of comprehension: there was nothing for her to go on with. The vacancy, more than negative to him, which had succeeded Marda made the natural claims of a life on his young cousin. With that concession to fancy one makes for the doomed or the very weak, he suggested she should go on with her German. He gave her two grammars, a dictionary, and a novel of Mann’s, which she took from him doubtfully. When he was back at his table, his door ajar, she went across stealthily to the door opposite.

“There’s a wasp in there,” called out Laurence at once.

“Oh, I just thought I’d see if …”

But she went downstairs, defeated, forgetting her suitcase.

She had not seen Gerald again this morning, though all contracted with apprehension she had waited in Mrs. Fogarty’s drawing-room—the multiplicity of the photographed young men’s faces, candid and vigorous, further appalling her. An orderly had come down with a note from barracks. The crested envelope, handed in with its air of a claim on her, had austerity like some limb of an institution. She lost her last sense of Gerald, she felt committed. Fumbling open the envelope, asking: “What have I done?” she wondered what had become of that last lonely disk of cucumber on the plate. After “My darling darling”—she was reprieved, provisionally; Mrs. Fogarty coming in in a wrapper—greatly worn, she said, after last night’s gaiety—had insisted that if she would not drink port she must drink milk—it was a long morning—and eat some of this nice sponge cake.

And: “
know who has been breaking hearts!” said Mrs. Fogarty, knifing the sponge cake which was moist and eggy and “gave” at the knife deliciously, like an eiderdown.

The anteroom chairs, now looking at Lois askance, knew also. What she had done stretched everywhere, like a net. If she had taken a life, the simplest objects could not more have been tinged with consequence. The graded elephants on the bookcase were all fatality. She went into her room hurriedly. “All the same,” she thought, looking round with patronage at the virginal wallpaper, “it
is
something definite.” And with curiosity, with complicity almost, she looked at herself in the glass.

Gerald’s straight, round writing had, to her imagination, a queer totter, like someone running for life in tight shoes.

—I have so much to say to you, though there is all time now there seems to be no time. Lois, when I am with you you make me awfully dumb with your darling wide-awake eyes, and when we are apart you seem so close I feel you must understand, so why try to explain when I am so stupid? So I won’t try to say what I feel; all that matters is that you are beautifully beautiful. Sometimes, till now, I have felt you must think me awfully stupid and introspective and dull; I have wondered so much what you did think about all the time: it seems unbelievable now that I am really to know. You seemed so complicated, it was cheek to associate you with the sort of person that I am, and now you are lovely and simple and all mine. Last night doesn’t seem like part of my life at all—I can’t believe it was me who danced and drank whiskies and tinkered about with the gramophone—and yet it’s the reallest thing ever. And what I am doing this morning seems so important—although it keeps me away from you—because I am doing it
for
you. It is awful to think of you here in Clonmore and not to be able to get to you, and yet it is wonderful to think of you waiting, and of who you are waiting for being me. Lois, your dear cold arms were so lovely, I mustn’t think of that now. All your life I am going to keep you and wrap you up and protect you and never let you be cold again. It is awful to think you have ever been lonely and sad—you are so brave, you know, and I never guessed—and yet I am almost glad of that, because it makes some reason for me. Darling, I kissed the thought of you and feel so terribly humble. I must not write more now. If you can, leave a letter for me 
at the Fogartys’. Does she guess? I thought perhaps you might like to confide in her. But of course I will tell nobody, as you wish. Goodbye, my most beautiful woman; I cannot write how I love you.

GERALD

Folding the sheets again in their order, she thought: “It is you who are beautiful,” and later, “If this thing is so perfect to anyone, can one be wrong?” An escape of sunshine, penetrating the pale sky in the southwest, altered the room like a revelation. Noiselessly, a sweet pea moulted its petals on to the writing-table, leaving a bare pistil. The pink butterfly flowers, transparently balancing, were shadowed faintly with blue as by an intuition of death. Lois bowed forward her forehead against the edge of the table.