Night Without Stars (30 page)

“That's it.”

“You were pleased about it.”

“Why?”

“Because someone else thought the way you did, I suppose.”

“Was it Hazlitt or—or …”

“Emerson? I never looked it up.”

She said after a minute: “And the frogs were croaking.”

We listened together. They were there but farther away than before.

“It was somewhere about here that the thing was settled so far as I was concerned.”

She looked at me. I could see she couldn't refrain from saying: “Was it? Why?”

“Don't know. I think it followed the close-up, didn't it?”

She moved her head slightly, the light catching her eyes. “Yes.… That was a little obvious. I'm sorry.”

“It was the first time,” I said, “that I really got any idea.… D'you remember I put my fingers on your face like this …”

She shrank back against the wall. “Oh, no. There's no need to-night. You can see perfectly well.”

“And then somehow the rest followed.”

She said: “Look, Giles, this is a very nice walk and I like you, but I don't want to go that way again.”

“Was it an unpleasant way?”

She shrugged slightly. “ That is not in our bargain.”

I leaned back against the wall. “Being strictly rational and unsentimental—what's your objection?”

“… That I don't want—any of that.”

“Not any part of the way?”

“Not any part. Besides—if you feel as you say you do …”

I said: “It's all over and done with as far as you're concerned. That's admitted. So there's no risk to you in it. Nor have you any fidelity to anyone, as you had last year. The thing's a passing pleasure—or a passing event at least—with no afterthoughts. Isn't it your way of thinking we should take the sensations as they come—make what there is to be made of them—then shrug and pass on?”

After a minute she turned from the wall. “ I'm not scared of your kisses, Giles, if that's what you're … You can kiss me if you want to—if it's going to do … any good. You've been very persistent—and kind. But don't think you've
talked
me into it. Your reasoning isn't really very good this time. It's in—rather poor taste.”

I drew her a little out of the light of the lamp and looked at her. She looked beyond me.

I said: “ Yes, it's in very poor taste and I'm
ashamed
of it. I'm damned ashamed of half the things I've said to you these last few days—and my persistence
and
what you call my kindness. But I'm not ashamed of loving you and never will be. Look at me, you devil!”

She looked at me. “Alix!” I said in a whisper. “ Wake up! Alix! Can you hear me?”

She smiled slightly. “I think it's you that's afraid.”

“Yes,” I said, close to her. “We're both afraid, if it comes to that. I need courage just as much as you. It's not the courage to do what I'm doing now—that's surface stuff. It's the courage to
know
. And there's only you can give it me. No one else—
anywhere
.…” I kissed her.

After about half a minute she tried to get her mouth away, but it didn't work. Then she didn't resist any more.

I just couldn't believe it. There were footsteps somewhere near and I let her go. But somehow at the last minute my hand touched hers and I grasped it. She let it stay. I couldn't believe that either. The bones in her hand seemed small, childish. I heard her breathing beside me. Something had swelled in my throat, was thumping there.

Four men were coming past, laughing and joking. They were working men, shirts open at brown muscular throats.

She leaned against me. She was trembling, and I wasn't much better.

I said in English: “Darling Alix. Darling Alix.”

Her hand tightened on mine for a second. She said: “ Oh, God, I'm lost again. Don't let me go.”

I suppose I should have taken that literally. I suppose I shouldn't have let her out of my sight any more at all. It would have been the natural precaution of a strong-minded person. Then none of the rest would have happened.

But in a reasonable world it would have seemed an unreasonable act.

We didn't break up that night until after midnight. We sat in a café and talked—as if we hadn't talked enough these last few days. But it was talk with a difference.

She seemed dazed by what had happened, still unsure of herself, and afraid. She kept looking at me, laughing sometimes, at others with her eyes narrowed, trying to understand.

We talked about all the things that so far had never conceivably been discussed. She was worried about Charles. I was, too, but didn't say so. She said she would have to tell him herself. He was due back to-morrow morning. She would go home to-night and tell him, try to explain when they met tomorrow. Then later I could come up and we would talk everything over. I agreed. At the time there didn't seem much else to do. As I say we were still in a reasonable world.

I stood for a couple of minutes beside the futuristic Studebaker while she sat with her hands on the cream-coloured wheel.

She said: “ I don't know, I suppose I've been deceiving myself, thinking that I had no feeling.… It was there from last year but … Giles, even now I'm not sure. Is it some sort of midsummer madness?”

“Midsummer sanity, thank God.”

“Which is the real me, the one who came out this morning—or the one you're sending home to-night?”

“They're both part of the same. You're all of a piece; there's nothing irrational about it.”

She said: “ It's no good; I'm
not
the wife for you. In an English village I shall be scared of the people, and they'll be scared of me.”

“You underrate your own toughness—and theirs.”

She smiled a bit. “ I shall never, never underrate yours. All through you've had the most … courage and patience and—and forbearance. I should never have believed—”

“No,” I said. “Keep off the hero-worship. Anyway, there's no excuse for it. Everything's been done from the most selfish of motives. Alix—I don't like to see you go.”

She put her hand on mine. “I'll phone you to-morrow as soon as I've seen Charles.”

“You promise—whatever you feel like in the morning.”

“I promise, Giles.”

So I let her go.

When I got back to my hotel I felt drunk. Excitement and triumph. I walked round and round the bedroom like a caged tiger. I felt like shouting and singing, and only a consideration for the traveller in silks and linens in the next room kept the situation in hand. In the end I couldn't stick it any longer and went out again, walked through the empty streets for nearly an hour. I felt as if I should never be tired again.

I made plans and changed them ten times; I talked to Bénat, lectured Johnny, explained to Cousin Lewis, bought a house, introduced Alix, spent Clara's legacy, drove Alix about England; there was practically nothing I didn't picture in that hour.

Back at the hotel again at last, I undressed and got into bed, but it was no good putting out the light. I sat there and chain-smoked until four. Then at last the light off and sleep for a couple of hours.

Awake at six, and, in one of those queer half-sleepy moods that yet seem to see further than most, I began to think things out.

It all seemed so much clearer now. I thought: the young girl, warm-hearted, exceptionally intelligent, highly strung, adoring her mother. When she's nine that changes, mother leaves them, goes off with another man. Higher the admiration the greater the fall. Father dies as result. Probably at that age thought of her mother in another man's arms would seem intolerable, disgusting. The first soar, long since healed over and apparently recovered from. Then ten years later marries man and comes to love him very deeply. He's hanged by Germans. A great bereavement, sustained by a memory. Idolises memory of Jacques. Two or three years later she learns he was a common rake of a particularly nasty kind, a liar and a cheat. Scar number two, still festering.

Yet psychologist would say first much more important. Hadn't it left its mark on Charles, too?

Strange issue for a country doctor in Dijon, these two. But the mother …

I turned over. Not easy for me. Last year,
before
explosion of Jacques, legend, I'd noticed in Alix something.… Not all attributable to Jacques's tragedy. Nor was everything in her this year the outcome of Pierre's disclosures. It was the result of them, built on something older. You couldn't call it a sense of guilt where sex was concerned—that was too strong; rather a shying away, a
hint
of distaste—and only noticeable now and then. Back to nine, that dated back to nine. Yet she'd loved Jacques naturally, with all the warmth of her nature. This thing only a quirk which normal love and happiness would straighten out. I could give her that.
Would
give her that. I'd tackle it—with all the patience of my own love. Six o'clock blues. Not afraid.

Always provided I got a chance. She'd promised last night—this morning? She'd tell Charles. Natural she wanted to explain it herself. Once I got her away …

If
I could get her away. What about Charles? Where did he come in? Almost everywhere.

By this time I was wide awake.

For some time I'd been pretty sure there was a sort of sex relationship between Alix and Charles, and equally convinced it was not physical sex. Because it was devoid of physical complications, Alix had come to look up to him as the one stable and uncontaminated thing in her world, realistic, astringent, cynical. He wouldn't let her down as her mother had done and couldn't in the way Jacques had done. Whether she admitted it or not, she was still seeking illusion. And he accepted it.

Accepted it because he wanted her and needed her. Had done practically all his life. You can't be a man if no one accepts you as a man. Alix had accepted him as a man at fourteen. In a queer more adult way she still fulfilled the same function.

They'd quarrelled when she married Jacques. Not because he knew Jacques for a profligate, for he hadn't known. They'd quarrelled because he couldn't stomach someone taking his place as the most important influence in her life. For the first time he had been pushed out.

Would he be any more willing now?

I sat up and looked for a cigarette. My mouth was dry already from smoking too much.

I remembered the glances he'd given me after dinner at the Villa Lavandou, the uneasy idea I'd come away with, that when the evening began he looked on me as a nuisance to be put up with, but by the end of the evening he hated me. I realised now that he didn't mind my curiosity about Pierre, my interferences at Villefranche. They were part of a danger he'd been in so long that he was used to it. Anyway it was a danger like a drug—it stimulated and refreshed. Without it life was dull and pedestrian. My persistence amused him. It wasn't until I turned my persistence back to Alix that his view changed. I'd found a weak spot. Perhaps with his keen sensibilities, his special insight into his sister's moods, he'd realised more than either she or I did at the time that there was some weakening in her taking up of the challenge.

Well, even so, it wasn't anything to get worried about. No doubt he'd use all his persuasion to make Alix change her mind. But I didn't think she would. There might be all sorts of conflicts still inside her—Charles's love and influence could hardly be overreckoned—but she wasn't weak. She'd keep her word.

And if she kept her word there was nothing more he could do. He couldn't stop her marrying me if she wanted to. God help me, I was worrying over nothing. I lay back in bed and tried to think of all the pleasant fancies I'd had last night.

But the chill wind wouldn't be shut out. It blew round all the nice little day-dreams, turning them back to front and making them look like spectres instead. The greater happiness they promised the longer shadows they threw.

At seven I got up, had a bath and shaved, sat on my balcony watching the morning sun gilding the streets and sucking the vapour out of the night clouds. I had an early breakfast on the balcony, drinking cup after cup of coffee while the sun crept round, warming my feet, showing up the dust on the balcony rail. Charles wouldn't be back till ten at the earliest. Then an hour to talk it all out. Quarter to eight now. Three hours at the very least.

The maid dropped the papers into my letter box and a couple of letters with them. One was the hotel bill, the other was Cousin Lewis telling me that old Hampden had had a stroke and was likely to be an invalid for the rest of his life. There'd have to be some rearrangement of the firm now, said the letter. There was far too much work and responsibility for one principal; I ought to think over my position very seriously; did I feel well enough to put a term to my holiday and settle in as a full partner, or was I prepared to see a new man brought in from outside?

Have patience, Cousin Lewis, I'm on my way.

Oh, Lord, is it really going to come off? Does she love me or have I hypnotised her into thinking so? I don't believe that, I'm almost sure not; but if I have then by God I'll go on hypnotising her for the rest of her life. For the first time I began to have some understanding with men who had chucked away everything for a woman—the sort of classic love stories that make the dullest films. I knew what they felt like anyway.

I hadn't patience to do more than glance at the headlines of the news. Everything was in a mess as usual. I couldn't help it. My personal crisis loomed like Mount Everest. At nine-thirty I decided to go and collect the car from the De la Rue Garage, and stuffed the papers and letters in my pocket. But at the street door I stopped and went back. If by some mischance Alix decided to ring up early I wasn't going to miss it. It was a bit like waiting for a call from her after the murder. Somewhere was the uncomfortable suspicion that she might disappear again.