Nuns and Soldiers (62 page)

It was now well into the evening. He had hoped to arrive earlier, but the aeroplane had been delayed. The sun was still over the horizon and the air was very warm and still. The little road was darkened by the strong shadow of the hedge of brambles and scrub oak. Blackberry bushes which he had seen in shrivelled flower now displayed the shrivelled remnant of their fruit. Below them, exulting in dryness, grew in long lines the ochre-coloured sage. Here and there some spiky broom, invisible earlier, still carried flowers of purest yellow. The air was warm and heavy and smelt of pines. After a while he left the road and walked through apricot orchards along a track, a short cut which he had discovered during his painting rambles. The track led to a farm. After that a path fringed with fennel and wild lavender led to some beehives. After that the rocks began. Tim stepped onto the familiar rocks and his hands touching them now and then as he climbed, remembered so much. He mounted slowly, carefully, for about five minutes. The light though still bright was uncertain, distances hard to judge, the rocks seeming to jump and shift before him. He had to keep pausing and blinking his eyes as if to expel some foreign matter. The rocks were yellow now, a hard brilliant whitish yellow in the last of the sunlight, with darkening blue-grey shadows marking their folds and lines of ascent, and all hazed over with a vision-defeating fuzziness as if millions of tiny bees were flying over them, or as if their own spots had risen up in an undulating swarm. They were warm and hard, dense, the densest stuff that Tim had ever touched.

He came by a way that he knew to a point that he knew, and now he looked down into the valley and saw the house. The valley that had been so verdant was bleached now, only the vineyard and the course of the streamlet carried a darkening green in the fading light. Tim, gazing at the house, saw that the loggia which he had mended had fallen down and the vine was prostrate on the terrace. There was something in the olive grove which looked like one of the outdoor chairs lying on its side. The place had a derelict neglected air. He thought he could see where tiles had come off the roof. If he had approached by the road he would have seen the Rover, but from where he stood the car was invisible. He was beginning to wonder whether Gertrude was there at all when a light suddenly came on in the sitting-room.

Tim had made no plan. He had simply come to ‘look’. He felt that he would be in the hands of the gods. Of course it was now impossible not to go on to the house. It was more absolutely familiar to him than Ebury Street; and the idea of Gertrude there alone was absolutely irresistible. Of course, as Tim really knew, in coming to France he had decided to see Gertrude. It was just that the decision was so awful that it had to be taken in two halves, one conscious, and one unconscious. He remembered how touching, how enchanting she had been on that first evening when she had stood upon the terrace and waited for him to come in the twilight through the vineyard and the poplars and across the stream and up through the olive grove, wondering a little if it was indeed he, so sweetly glad to see him when he came. He stood, wondering if she would again come out onto the terrace so that the scene could be magically re-enacted. But no one came out and he went on a little further and climbed down until he found the path at the foot of the rocks which joined the path across the vineyard.

Here again he waited. Indeed he sat down on the grass, looking across the valley at the one lighted window. His desire for her
presence
was intense, it was burning up his whole body. But his fear was intense too, his cowardice which made him simply want now to wait, to breathe, to continue to live. He so feared Gertrude’s anger, her contempt, her terrible terrible rejection of him which he remembered with such intense and continued vividness. He felt that he had only sustained it last time because of sheer surprise and sheer stupidity. The parting had been fast and merciful. He had been like the victim of a catastrophic crippling accident whose pain is checked by a paralysis of the nerve centres. Now he was fully conscious, fully collected and prepared for torment. So much had happened, he had returned to Daisy, not least he had
thought
about the whole business, he had diligently, hopelessly,
made
himself into the intolerable guilty being whom she had rejected. Suppose now he were confronted with spitting anger, with hatred - he could do nothing, only run away, run into a mental desolation worse than any he had known before. That would be the final condemnation that would brand him forever as unpardonably guilty and lost. It was not the crime, it was the punishment that seared the mind, it was the shame. He had thought himself damaged, but he could be much worse hurt now. How could he face Gertrude, what could he say, what could he
explain
to her? Would she listen patiently while he rambled on telling how he hadn’t been with Daisy like she thought, except that of course he had been with Daisy, and that, yes, he had gone straight back to Daisy, only now he had left Daisy again, and - Would Gertrude be interested? Could he tell her about the harvest festival and the leaves? He had felt he must look at the house. Could he just go home now to the quiet life of aloneness which had been graciously vouchsafed him? He was tempting a fate that had not crushed him entirely. But now he was here; and he knew that of course he had to cross the valley. He got up and started to walk down the path through the vineyard.

The poplar grove was full of fallen leaves, blanched yellow on one side and furry silvery white on the other. Motionless, appearing suddenly under foot, Tim could not at first think what they were, they seemed in the odd light like a pavement. When he got to the bridge he found it obstructed by a large willow branch. He was too impatient to pull it away. The stream was small, but too wide to jump, so he simply walked through it. It was very cold and deeper than he had expected. His trousers clung to his calves. He cursed, he felt frightened, he felt suddenly hungry, he felt ready to weep. Why on earth had he come here at night in this stupid way, he was a stupid man, doomed and ruined by stupidity.

When he was just below the terrace he had to stop because he could hardly breathe for the fear and the longing that was in him. He stood like a helpless animal, with his mouth open and his feet apart, gasping. When he was able to control his breathing he climbed up the dry slippery parched grass to the terrace steps. He thought, I’ll simply look in, I’ll simply look, and then I’ll rest again. Nothing has happened yet, nothing need happen at all. He moved with caution, keeping away from the square of light that fell onto the stones. The valley behind him seemed dark already. He stepped carefully over the wreckage of the loggia. He reached the wall of the house and felt the warm squarely cut stones with his hand. Holding to the wall by the lines between the stones he edged towards the window. The first thing he saw was an amazing streak of brilliant green which he made out to be a long branch of the vine which had been laid out along the sideboard underneath the lamp. The second thing he saw was Gertrude and the Count, sitting opposite to each other and holding hands across the table.

 

 

As Tim gazed at the unconscious pair within, whose voices he could now vaguely hear though he could not discern their words, someone else was watching Tim, or had been watching him until a moment earlier when he had passed out of sight by coming up to the house. Anne’s migraine was better, but now she pretended illness. Three nights she had left the other two together and listened to their voices murmuring down below as she endeavoured to fall asleep. She had thought the Count would wait. Now she thought he would not wait. She felt like somebody waiting for a loved one to die. Oh why can it not
happen
, she thought, twisting her head and her limbs as she had done when the migraine tormented her. The evenings were long. She drove Gertrude away. She lay on her bed or sat by one of the windows trying to read Scott, or looking out at the willow valley and the rocks, or at the cleft which showed the line of distant yellow hill upon which the sun rested longer. She gave herself up to a jealous pain which she knew was, in its present quality, temporary, but which she felt it pointless as well as impossible to evade.

This evening she had sat long at the window, not turning on her light though it was now too dark to read, gazing across the valley and trying to interpret the tone of the voices below. Everything was so still outside. When the mistral was there it was impossible to imagine its absence. Now it was impossible to think there could be anything but this particular quiet against which the significant sound of the voices rose up like a distant chant. Then she saw a man upon the rocks. She was thinking how unusual this was when she realized with a violent shock who the man was. She stood up. She covered her mouth. She observed his slow approach with a fierce wild almost cruel joy. But steadfast Anne was silent. She did not move or cry out or run loudly down the stairs. She simply watched Tim to see what he would do. She saw him creep up to the terrace, step over the loggia, and move towards the window. A moment later she saw him step back, carefully make his way to the terrace steps and begin to walk and then to run away down the slope into the gathering dark. Anne could imagine what it was that he had seen through the window. The pair below were silent now. Anne sat down in her chair, still holding
The Heart of Midlothian.

 

 

Tim might as well have flown back across the valley for all he could afterwards remember of his escape. He must have run back instinctively the way he came, in order to return to the village. When he became conscious of where he was he was already lost.

The mental pain was so great that he had to try deliberately not to think. As it was, a cramp in his stomach made him bow down as he ran, now climbed, away from that hateful scene. As the silent rocks had looked in at him and Gertrude holding hands, he had himself been
doomed
to look in and see the identical tender scene, with the Count now playing his part. Perhaps those two chairs were enchanted. If he could have heard of it all in some other way, heard some rumour - but to
see it enacted
like a tableau before his very eyes ... And he thought, she told Mrs Mount she would be alone, and secretly she was with
him.
Of course Tim had reckoned on the Count, even tried to think conventional generous thoughts about ‘the best man winning’ and so on. These were unreal figments, wisps, clouds, illusions, in the awful presence of the reality to which he was now condemned. I shall think of it forever, I shall
see
it forever, he said to himself as his fingers crooked over the ridges of the hard hard rocks. He recalled the wonderful miracle of his holding hands with Gertrude on that night in the spring. When their hands joined a shock wave passed out through all the galaxy. And yet it was so quiet, so tender, a matter for gentle tears and humble prostrated joyful gratitude. Now even the past was desecrated, blackened, burnt. He and Gertrude had sat in a black shell constructed by demons.

He thought, I have been
betrayed.
He had been insulted, lied to, grossly and horribly mocked and rejected. His worst fearful dreams of what it would be like
now
to fail, to face Gertrude’s anger and dismissal, had never included anything as frightful as this. Was it conceivable that it had been arranged on purpose? Had it all been planned by Mrs Mount? Had someone from the village alerted Gertrude? She had finally cast him into outer darkness, sealing his departure with a doom of jealous hate. Oh how well off he had been before when he was alone and hated nobody! Now he hated Gertrude, he hated the Count, and all the loathsome irresistible machinery of jealousy had been installed within him. How
could
they have been so
cruel.
Oh why had he come on this vile fatal journey! Had he not
known
it was a terrible mistake; had he not
known
that he risked his very sanity in coming? He had parted from Gertrude in some kind of dreadful moral muddle, but he had managed to accept the parting as final and even to try to put his life in order. He had left Daisy, he had
sacrificed
Daisy, who loved him, and had been with him forever. Why? It now seemed to him that he had given up this love, this last remaining comfort, simply to placate Gertrude! To appease, without gain to himself, her accusing lingering shadow. He had got rid of his guilt by leaving Daisy. Or rather he had tried to, he could never get rid of his guilt, it was a disease. And now, as a complication of this self-same disease, had come this horrible fever of jealousy and hate. Gertrude and the Count were black devils in his mind, and he could foresee a long long future time during which those devils would perform their appointed task of tormenting him. Oh, they would draw his blood! And where were they at this moment, what were they doing, just those two, together? He felt as if he would vomit, spewing out a black stream of loathing and hatred and shame.

These thoughts, after a while, were slightly checked by the realization that he had lost his way. He had, he supposed, been returning to the village. He had been clambering for some time and ought by now to have reached the place where the rocks came gently down to a slope of grass which led to the level place where the beehives were. But there was no sign of the easy descent to the grass. Instead he was constantly forced to climb higher to avoid little thickets of red-leaved wind-scorched box into a region which he could not recognize where the rocks rose in a series of curious mounds to an unfamiliar skyline. Moreover it had now suddenly grown much darker. When Tim stopped and lifted his head he realized that there was still a lot of brightness in the sky, but saw at the same time how indistinguishably hazy the dangerous rocks had become underfoot. Behind him a huge almost full moon had come into view, but still a cheesy yellow and giving little light. One or two stars were visible. The rock mounds, rising in lines above, seemed like forms in some Oriental temple, vast heads of gods perhaps. He felt that he was now higher up among the rocks than he had ever been before, and that he had quite lost his sense of direction. He cursed miserably, hating himself, hating everything. Now
this
wretched stupidity of being lost.