Starlight (36 page)

The saloon bar was full. It was a prosperous-looking crowd of commuters, known to each other, exhausted after the day spent in London’s pressures, and noisy with nervous tension. Arnold ordered a pink gin, and, by a stroke of luck, caught the barman’s further attention amidst the loud voices and the smooth red necks.

‘Any chance of a bed here. Do you let rooms?’

‘We do, sir; but the place is smaller than you’d think. We’ve only got three rooms, and they’re occupied.’ He was hovering, almost on the wing, as he spoke.

‘Do you happen to have a Miss Pearson staying here?’

It would be too much to say that the man leered or brightened; but there was a change in his expression, a kind of masking of suddenly aroused interest.

‘Yes, sir, Room Three.’ He added, ‘But she’s out this evening … three double whiskies, yes, sir, thank you,’ to a face, larger, smoother and more carmine than the surrounding ones, that suddenly loomed between them.

This face, too, had showed a change as its owner caught Peggy’s name. He looked with concentration at Arnold, who noticed the look, and afterwards saw him rejoin a group near the door, which, after he had said something, turned as one man to stare. The expressions were something less than amiable.

‘No idea where she might have gone, I suppose?’ Arnold went on, unhurriedly and ignoring the row of faces, and the voices clamouring for same-agains along the curve of the bar. The voices now faltered, unmistakably, and died off into a noticeable hush.

‘Couldn’t say, sir,’ answered the barman, into what was certainly an interested and hostile silence – yes, it was hostile – ‘but she may be up at Rattrays’. The riding-school in the village. Understand she used to work there, sir. Good-evening, Mr Burroughs, the usual?’ He turned away.

‘Thanks,’ Arnold said.

He strolled out into the dusk – through the crowd that did not quite make room for him to pass and did not quite stare at him. The stares were furtive. The atmosphere was like a strong smell.

So Peggy’s been making herself unpopular, he mused, setting out along a dim white lane between poisoned hedges in the direction of the riding-school. It’s that little girl. She looked sweet. I bet they’re on her side. Oh well, all the better. I can do with some local support. He wondered if he ought to have brought the car; it must be less than a mile to the riding-school but she might be upset, and need transport … if he found her.

But he did not doubt that he would find her; he did not even wonder if he would have to go up to the school itself or how he should approach the people there if he did. My star’s guiding me, he thought wryly, casting a cynical glance up at a particularly brilliant one; he had once or twice thought of his strong sensation of guidance as his star. It was almost dark; the line between downs and sky was barely visible. The stars were the ‘isles of light’ that Byron once called them.

Suddenly, coming round a sharp turn in the lane, he saw her coming slowly towards him; a tall figure in a white coat, moving slowly in the dusk, and crying quietly as she came. Crying! Women! Oh yes, twenty years of loneliness made you cry sometimes, whisky or not, but you didn’t cry out loud. He began to walk more quickly. Soundlessly, save for the muffled noise of her sobbing, they approached one another. In a moment he saw the lights of a car, approaching fast, and as it passed him, caught a glimpse of the furious, gesticulating, backward-glancing occupants; they had just missed killing her, and naturally this had irritated them.

After the noise of the engine and the reek of petrol fumes and the impression of anger and resentment had passed, silence and night flowed back into what had formerly been a lonely lane. She was still coming towards him, unshaken, apparently, by her escape, a white moving shape, weeping but more softly now, with her face lifted to the stars. He quickened his step.

‘Peggy?’

She let out a full shriek – but almost instantly it stopped. ‘Oh – it’s you –’ She stood, arms hanging, limply, staring at him. He could see her face clearly by the light of the stars, and it was swollen, ravaged, wild.

‘Did you think I was going to murder you?’

‘Oh – I don’t know – a car just nearly knocked me down – there is a man on the run somewhere, they want him for murdering a girl in Brighton yesterday – for a minute I did think –’

‘Well, it’s only me,’ he answered, keeping his voice quiet and normal.

He felt neither. The sight of her face, and the spectacle of Peggy babbling like an ordinary girl –
Peggy
– had shaken him out of his carefully-prepared state of mind. If she was really broken, if she really had had it, then this was his chance, and he might never get another, and he was frightened, because he wanted nothing but Peggy; nothing in the world.

‘I saw something on the placards, coming down,’ he said indifferently.

‘How did you know I was … how did you … where I was?’

‘Guessed.’ He firmly took her arm, and, turning her, began to walk back in the direction of the public house. His confidence faltered for an instant; established, as it was, over so much longing and so much fear. ‘How … are you? Long time no see …’

The silly question and the cliché died off into silence. It was a warm night; over a gate in the hedge to the right he noticed a field of long grass, silvery in the starlight. The whole field suddenly shivered towards them, under a caressing wind. He wanted to press her arm.

‘You can see how I am, can’t you?’ Her voice quivered. ‘I should think … anyone could …’

‘You needn’t mind me. You know I love you.’ He had not meant to say it, and he broke into a sweat of fear.

‘Oh shut up – shut up, can’t you? I don’t want anyone to love me …’ she began to sob again, dragging her arm away and standing still, in the middle of the road, pushing her hands down into her coat pockets. ‘It’s all … you don’t know what it’s like … you don’t know … I never dreamt … I didn’t imagine, not for a second, that he’d …’

Quite an effort, that, from our Peggy, he thought wryly; I don’t suppose she’s ever talked to anyone before – except that chap. The warm wind, gathering strength, poured itself against him, laden with the scent of dry grass.

‘I suppose he’s let you down,’ he said bluntly, but almost holding his breath.

‘That’s it – that’s it – he would come back here, and I was to stay here while he settled things up and he’s gone back to her – the bitch –’ she went on into a maze of what used to be called obscenities; he listened with disgust, with satisfaction, with pity. But the pity was stronger than the satisfaction and the disgust, and slowly, from the depths into which he had thrust them, there rose up the words
poor kid
. She was twenty-two. Not, thought, Arnold, a great age.

‘Take it easy,’ he said suddenly, taking her arm again, ‘this kind of thing’s happening all over the world, all the time –’

‘She’s pregnant. I couldn’t
believe
it – she – she – I thought –’

She wrenched herself free and flung herself down into the dust and loose flints of the road, and lay there writhing, uttering choked sounds. Arnold stooped and gripped her and shook her. He was suddenly frightened almost out of his wits.

‘Peggy! A car’s coming –
get up
.’

The sound of the engine had grown upon his ear even through the shocking sounds that came from her. He wrenched her body aside as the car swept past, after fully revealing the two of them for a second in its powerful headlights. (The occupants, already late for a television programme specializing in scenes of violence, preferred to indulge their taste without risk of involvement, and ignored the girl lying in the road and the man stooping over her.)

He wanted to wipe his face. He was streaming with sweat. He pulled her up, so that she crouched beside him, moaning, ‘It’s my life. It’s my life. You don’t understand.’

‘I understand absolutely. You had an affair with a chap who’s married and he went back to his wife. It’s always happening. Didn’t you know that – dear?’

‘I
knew
we’d be different – he said – he
said
– I
knew
it would be different – at least, I didn’t even think about that – I just knew – he said –’ Arnold shrugged.

‘You mustn’t take any notice of what we say. When we want you, we’ll say anything. You really didn’t know that?’ She shook her head (at least, he thought,
something’s
getting through to her) as he pulled her to her feet.

‘Now, pull yourself together,’ he commanded. ‘You used to be pretty good at the stiff-upper-lip. Let’s see a bit of it … it seems to have slipped up somewhat.’

‘Shut up and leave me alone.’ But she let him take her arm; she let him begin to lead her steadily along the road. They walked in silence for some time; then, as the lights of the public house were seen some hundred yards ahead, she pulled away from him, and stopped.

‘I’m not going into that hole. They’re all on … her … side … she’s lived here ever since she was born or something, and they had the bloody nerve to
disapprove
… I didn’t notice, at first … but then … I’m not going in, I won’t.’

‘There’s no need to. The car’s outside. All we’ve got to do is to get into it.’

She said nothing, but let him lead her to it, and stood, motionless, hands in her pockets, staring sullenly at the lights and the regulars coming and going all around them, while he unlocked the doors and opened them.

‘I suppose you don’t want your things?’ he asked, as she slid into the seat beside him. ‘Do you owe them anything?’

‘No, I don’t. I took bloody good care not to.’

‘What about your things?’

‘It was only a suitcase – nothing much.’

Her tone was indifferent, harsh with crying, and exhausted. But it was undoubtedly more like her usual one, and he began to feel some relaxation of anxiety and fear. If only he could play upon these signs of ordinary humanity in Peggy! Even the monotonously recurring ‘bloody’, he felt, was reassuring in its school-girlishness.

She was a woman – a girl – and therefore she was not as strong as a man. And he could manage her. Because he was a man, and she was not. It was as simple as that.

It was a black day for you, dear, when you let the upper lip slip, he thought. Or was it? Perhaps – he let the thought shine out for an instant – she needed, and wanted, a master.

‘Any plans?’ he asked presently.

She shook her head.

‘Want to come to Morocco?’

She turned to look at him. The beauty of her eyes was familiar, and struck him with the old, accustomed pain. The stars were bright in their drowned dark depths, glittering between her swollen lids.

‘Not particularly. Why? Are you going?’

‘I could be. Not to any luxury hotels, I don’t mean that kind of trip. I’d camp in the desert, spend five or six months out there, wander about.’

As he spoke, he thought how much he would dislike it; the lack of mildly congenial male society, the solitude, the intrusive and omnipresent sense of Nature uncurbed by the hand of man. Yet what had been his aim in life for over thirty years? To find, and frequent, smart bars, where there were men he could grouse with. To play golf; to drink; to want, and lack, wonderful women.

In the desert there would be Peggy.

‘We might go to Brazil,’ he said presently, ‘see some of those blank spaces on the map they talk about.’

She said nothing. Rather sadly, he offered what he had not wanted to offer. ‘I’ve got plenty of money. We could do things – in style. If you liked,’ he added.

‘I know that,’ she answered crossly. He welcomed the crossness; it suggested that the emotional temperature was sinking.

‘All right,’ she said grudgingly, at last, and at once hurried on, ‘but I’m not sleeping with you. We’d better get that clear from the start.’

‘I haven’t asked you to,’ he said mildly. ‘We’d better get married, though; it’s better, for all sorts of reasons – I’m not thinking only about what people’ll say.’

If Peggy was looking into the cage, testing the strength of its bars with her eye, and measuring the length of the space prescribed for her walking, none of this showed in her face, where there was only sullenness and exhaustion. But perhaps some warning of what this would mean did penetrate her numb, inward anguish. She turned to look at him.

‘You
must
get it clear –’ she said, forcing the words out, ‘I hardly care whether you’re alive or dead. I won’t sleep with you. If ever … he … wants me back I’ll go … though we’re in the middle of Brazil.’

‘Oh, it would take a long time from there; long enough for you to change your mind,’ said Arnold almost jocosely. And added, ‘You may change your mind about a lot of things, before we’re through.’ He took one hand off the wheel to give her arm a friendly pat. ‘You did say “hardly”. I shall keep on hoping.’

She turned away, and for the rest of their journey to London looked at the meaningless traffic and houses going by. But presently, as they were passing through the outskirts of the city, she spoke slowly.

‘You were right. I’ve changed my mind already.’

‘What?’ he exclaimed, unable to control a note of alarm.

‘Not about that … I mean about going back. I wouldn’t now. I hate him.’