Nuns and Soldiers (18 page)

‘You tried to destroy yourself,’ said Gertrude, ‘but you failed.’

There was a sharp vehemence sometimes in what Gertrude said to her, almost an incoherent resentment, a desire to probe and needle.

Anne sat quiet in the mornings and the evenings. Sometimes, without thought, she knelt. Was this superstition? Did it matter so much, what was and was not superstition? Would she ever be able to talk to anyone about this? The early birds reminded her of the nuns singing.

‘It’s Sunday.’ The distant sound of church bells, now renewed, had already brought this news to them over the gauzy sheepy hills. The church was in the village, beside the pub, a little grey sturdy building with thick Norman pillars and a narrow dog-toothed doorway. Anne had entered it, with Gertrude and alone. It had seemed to her a beautiful empty place. Whoever lived there had gone away long ago.

‘Yes. The pub won’t open till seven. We forgot last week.’

‘I’ve thought of another reason why you must stay with me forever,’ said Gertrude.

‘What’s that?’

‘I need someone in my life who can drive a car.’

‘I’ve forgotten,’ said Anne.

‘You were a demon driver once.’

Anne had indeed been a dedicated driver in those days. Now she really felt she had forgotten. Manfred had wanted her to drive his big car on a lonely stretch of road coming north, but Anne had refused.

‘You wouldn’t drive Manfred’s car,’ said Gertrude. ‘You funked it.’

‘I funked it. Manfred drives too fast.’

‘You are censorious, I’ve been noticing it. Maybe it’s the one thing you really took away from that gloomy convent. You will judge people. You told me last night I was drinking too much.’

‘You were.’

‘Yes, a judge, I see you as a judge, a holy judge in our lives. I’m not teasing, darling, I like it, we like it, we need it. You shall dispense justice.’

Am I censorious, Anne wondered. She certainly found it harder than she had expected to accept the
tempo
of worldly lives now she was among them. People irritated her, even Gertrude did. She disliked being marked off as ‘holy’ or ‘a nun’. Yet did she not feel different, superior? Yes. A terrible admission.

‘Who’s “we”?’ she said to Gertrude.

‘Oh-I don’t know - Sweetheart, stay with me. I love you, why can’t I have you? Damn giving up the world. Guy wanted me to be happy.’

‘He was right, it is for you.’ But not for me, thought Anne. Happiness has no part in what drove me out and must drive me on.

‘Of course we’ll both work. You can teach. Or why not write a book about losing your faith? That could help a lot of people.’

‘Oh
Lord
!’ My Lord and my God, when will the real suffering start? Consoling Gertrude was a safe interim. Yet her love for Gertrude was the first reality she had encountered outside those gates.

If she had been a priest would she, inspired by some idea of obedience, have stayed inside? Would the priesthood have lifted her above some level where she felt at times that it did not matter what she thought or did, because she was a woman? She carried no precious cup from which the many fed. Anne was confused by speculation which often seemed to her positively diabolical. Better not to think. Yes, with Gertrude she was in safety. Yet it was exactly here that she must wait for the night to begin. It would begin.

Anne and Gertrude had, for their morning walk, gone to the end of the beach, near to where the hard many-surfaced cliff rose out of the breaking waves. The waves rose, leaping rampant up the cliff side, and the keen wind carried the spray. A strong sea was running. The two women turned back, walking on the grey stones near to the foam which was racing in bubbles to their feet. The wet stones were almost black. The dry stones were an absolute grey in which even the brightest sunshine could kindle no hint of any other colour. Anne picked up a stone. They were so similar, yet so dissimilar, like counters in a game played by some god. The shapes, very like, were never exactly the same. Each one, if carefully examined, revealed some tiny significant individuating mark, a shallow depression or chipped end, a short almost invisible line. Anne said to herself, what do my thoughts matter, what do their
details
matter, what does it matter whether Jesus Christ redeemed the world or not, it doesn’t matter, our minds can’t grasp such things, it’s all too obscure, too vague, the whole matrix shifts and we shift with it. What does anything matter except helping one or two people who are nearby, doing what’s obvious? We can see so little of the great game. Look at these stones. My Lord and my God. She said aloud, ‘My God.’

‘What?’

‘Just look at these stones,’ said Anne. She dropped the one she had been holding, then with a sort of animistic possessiveness turned to pick it up again, but she could not now discern which one it had been.

‘Yes,’ said Gertrude. ‘There they are. What about them?’

‘There they are.’

‘It’s hot,’ said Gertrude. ‘If the wind drops for even a moment it’s positively hot now that the sun is shining. Hold these while I take my coat off.’

Anne took from her the little bunch of primroses and short-stemmed violets which she had picked here and there on the green turf edge and under the hawthorns as they descended to the beach.

Gertrude pulled off her coat. They were both dressed for cool weather, but the April sun was now suddenly warm, even hot. Tall Anne was wearing now, for out of doors, the blue and white check woollen dress which she had bought at the village shop in what seemed a remote previous existence. (She wore the dark blue tweed dress for evenings.) Round her neck she wore a long mauve Indian scarf which Gertrude had given her. She had refused to let Gertrude ‘dress her’. She wore black knee-length woollen stockings with the stout convent walking shoes. Her hair had been growing, but she had decided to keep it cut fairly short. Gertrude liked it like that too. She recalled the big golden mane of Anne’s student days, but this silver-blonde fur was now more precious. Walking, a little sun had browned Anne’s thin face, but only lightly, pallidly. Her rather narrow blue-green eyes were, as Gertrude put it, shaded or hazed over, still puzzled by the world. Gertrude was wearing, under her coat, a brown almost summery light jersey dress, sprigged with yellow-brown flowers. Her face had changed a little, become perhaps permanently strained and older. So very much crying had worn it a little, as if it had been touched like the stones, by a lightly pressing finger. Her bright clear brown eyes stared more from deeper sockets, her fine mouth drooped more, lengthened by two faint descending lines. Her hair, which she had only lately started to wash regularly again, was its old self however, knowing not of grief, profoundly and variously brown, longish, now wind-tangled upon the collar of her brown-sprigged dress. She had become slimmer, she was shorter than Anne but she walked as fast.

Sun had now taken charge of the whole landscape. Over the emerald turf of the headland an invisible lark was crazily singing.

‘Oh - the sun - it’s the first time -’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh Anne, look at the sea, it’s all blue now, and flashing, like signals -’

‘Yes. Almost ready for swimming.’

‘You were a demon driver. You were a demon swimmer too.’

‘I thought I’d never swim again.’

‘What about a swim now, would you?’

‘Are you daring me! Or do you think I’d funk it, like driving Manfred’s car?’

‘It’s much too cold, of course, I was joking.’

‘It’s not all that cold. I think now you mention it I’ll go in.’

‘You mean now? Anne, don’t be silly - it’s
icy
cold! You aren’t serious -’

‘I am,’ said Anne. ‘It’s a wonderful idea. If you want to see me swim, I’ll swim!’

‘I don’t! Oh please,
please.
’

Anne had already kicked off her shoes and was pulling off her socks. The flat grey stones were smooth and chill under her bare feet. She undid the Indian scarf and the belt of her dress.

‘Anne, don’t be
crazy
, look at those waves-I wasn’t daring you, we aren’t nineteen!’

Anne was now in a sudden wild frenzy to get into the sea. A strange piercing sensation like sexual desire had sent a spear through her entrails. She dragged her half-unbuttoned dress violently over her head. A moment later, dressed only in the little golden cross upon its chain which hung close about her neck, she advanced into the running creamy foam. She went on quickly, stumbling a little upon the shifting stones, until the white water was above her knees.

‘Anne - Anne -
stop
-’

The sea was intensely and beyond expectation cold. Wild mad exhilaration licked her naked body. The beach descended steeply, a wave met her breast-high and broke over her head. Gasping then yelping with the cold she lost her footing, then leapt into the following wave and was swimming, kicking, lifted up by the strong incoming rollers, her eyes blinking away the spray, seeing the blue-green white-flecked crests of the advancing waves and the brilliant light of the blue sky beyond. She cried out now in wild joy, feeling her limbs becoming warm in the fierce water as she swam out strongly from the shore and gave herself confidently to the huge movement of the sea.

Anne had been an athletic girl, a golfer, a swimmer, a tennis player. Physical strength and physical prowess had been taken for granted in her life, part of a calm sense of superiority which had never faltered until it had run to its destined fulfilment in an ecstatic submission to God. She was strong, Anne Cavidge. She felt this now as she turned on her back and kicked the rhythm of the waves into a matted foam round about her. Enough now. She dolphin-leapt into the fast elegant crawl which she had not forgotten, any more than she had forgotten walking, and headed towards the land. The sea was indeed very cold.

As she now swam back she felt, like an unexpected blow, a sudden lassitude. What had happened to the strength in which a moment ago she had been exulting? Her arms no longer moved effortlessly, they were puny and aching, and her naked body was coated with a profound cold. The nuns had prided themselves on keeping fit. Garden walks were not enough. Anne had followed a regime of exercises. Perhaps it had become less strict as the years went by. The vigour of youth was gone. What’s the matter with me, she thought. I’m weak, of course I haven’t forgotten how to swim, but I’m weak, my limbs are strengthless. Anne gasped, swallowed salt water. She continued to swim towards the land, but now with a terrible exhausted slowness. Over the flecked jumping wave-crests she could see the figure of Gertrude upon the shore very far away, and beyond her the grey cube of the cottage. Perhaps there was a current taking her out to sea! It could not be just her own weakness which made the land seem to recede? She tried harder, spurred now by fear. Was she going to drown now, stupidly,
wickedly
, before Gertrude’s eyes? Yesterday she had climbed the cliff to impress Gertrude. It had really been quite difficult.

Gertrude could see Anne swimming hard to get back against some force which seemed to be preventing her. Gertrude could see too the malignant violence of the breaking waves as they smashed down on to the stones. It was easier to leap out against those waves than to swim in with them. The sea seemed to have become greater and fiercer in the short interval since Anne had rushed into it. I dared her, thought Gertrude, it is my fault. Now, just when I have found her, she is going to die in front of me, to drown helplessly and disappear. Gertrude could scarcely swim. She had always feared the sea. She called ‘Anne! Anne!’ wringing her hands.

Anne, now nearer to the shore, had also begun to understand the strength of the waves, their great size and how violently they broke. Their deafening noise, which she did not apprehend as sound, but as some deadly terrifying vibration, was overwhelming. She looked behind her. The sun must be clouded as the high backs of the incoming rollers were now almost black. Her courage failed, and she began to swim to and fro parallel to the shore, unable to decide to attempt the ordeal of return. She felt in her body, mingled with the chaotic roaring of the broken water, the tremendous force of the oncoming waves, now sweeping her shorewards, so that she had to resist their power in order to stay where she was. She tried to swim out to sea again. She must not become conscious of the cold. She was the helpless plaything of great mechanical forces which could kill her in seconds. She tried to
think.

The problem was this, that when she came in, carried by a wave into the area of the breakers, she would not have sufficient strength to scramble out quickly enough or stand up firmly enough not to be knocked down by the next wave which would then pass over her and draw her back in the undertow. She had not noticed in her former exultation, but she could see and feel now, how steeply the beach shelved, so that where the waves were actually breaking she might scarcely be able to touch the bottom. She could also now discern, amid that unbridled complex of forces, the terrifying clatter of the grey stones as the receding waves drew them down and back into the sea.

Oh my God, oh my God, help me, thought Anne. She thought, I have got to chance it, and now. Already in her weakness she was scarcely swimming but simply fighting with the sea, losing her breath and gasping and swallowing water in the attempt to keep her head up. She did the only intelligent thing open to her. She turned again to look at the huge black-backed waves that were coming in behind her, and chose one which was a little smaller than the others to carry her, now swimming furiously, right in towards the beach. She saw, close to her now, the slope of dark shifting stones and the spread of the creaming raging foam. As the wave with which she was travelling began to break she ceased swimming and tried to touch bottom. The foaming white water rushed past her and over her, then her feet touched, deep down the shifting sloping race of the stones, drawn by the force of the water which was already beginning to flow back. She could see, half-turned, the high just-curling crest of the next wave. She attempted to leap so as to keep her head above it, but it was impossible. She could not gain footing, the water was too deep and too fast as it retreated beneath the incoming roller which now leaned over Anne like a translucent black-green wall. She lost her balance, her strength was gone. The wave crashed down over her engulfing her completely. Her head was below the water, her breathless mouth was open.