The Aerodrome: A Love Story (12 page)

face and looked at me reproachfully, as though expecting me to take back the words which I had just used. I had no disposition to do so, and said: "I suppose you've decided by this time which one it is that you really love." Again she looked at me as though I had insulted her, as indeed with a great part of my mind I wished to do. "Please be kind to me, Roy," she said. "I never meant to do you any harm." She was going to say more, but I rose quickly from the packing case and came towards her as though to take her in my arms. Suddenly I could no longer bear the sight of her distress, and was impelled to show her that I asked for nothing better than to be kind to her, if she would but regard my kindness as a thing worth having. For an instant I was filled with a conviction that all that had happened in the last few hours was unreal, would somehow be miraculously annihilated and explained away, leaving us as I had imagined that we had been or else in an even better state. But as I stepped towards her she stepped back and raised her hand to part us. I saw then how things stood, and went back to the door where I remained, leaning against the doorpost, for I seemed to need some support, and noticed that my heart was beating unusually fast. "Well, then," I said, "which one is it?" Bess took the place which I had left on the packing case. She stretched out her feet in front of her, turning the toes inwards as she looked down at them. She spoke slowly: "It's him, of course, though I know that in lots of ways he's not as good as you are. But he's so much more exciting, and he's done such a lot of unusual things. It may be silly of me, but I can't help being attracted to a man who's travelled a lot, And he says such funny things, too." Here she paused and looked at me with a smile as though half expecting me to share in some joke. "The first time," she went on, "I really don't know how it happened. He just managed to persuade me somehow and he said that if I didn't mean to do anyone any harm then I couldn't be doing them any. And he's really very fond of you. Somehow I'm more at ease with him than I am with you, because he's so sure of himself. And we're certainly just right for each other, physically, I mean. I'm quite different when I'm with him. Really I am." She smiled again, as though certain that this information would please me, and I reflected that the girl in front of me was, if her mother was to be believed, my sister, and I knew that, if she was aware of this fact, she would be much less well pleased with herself than she was at present. I began to smile as she continued speaking. "But I really don't want to hurt you, Roy," she was saying. "You've been so good to me, and if I hadn't met him perhaps things would have been all right between us. I've felt that I ought to have told you this before, but really I wasn't sure quite what I wanted. But I do know now, and it's best to say so honestly, isn't it? Please don't be angry with me, because it just makes me cry." I saw how little sure of herself she was and yet how resolved she was against me. I began to reflect on the many advantages which the Flight-Lieutenant had had over me in this competition of love. It was not only that he had travelled extensively, was better-looking and had a wider experience of people and things; more important had been the fact that all the time he had had a complete knowledge of the situation, while all my knowledge had been partial. The very completeness of my love had caused me, most unreasonably, to imagine that Bess must feel as I did. In point of fact her feelings had been entirely different and the very thing which I had taken most for granted, a devotion to myself, was something which she had never felt at all. The Flight-Lieutenant had known all this? had made his dispositions accordingly, and with complete, success. That he loved Bess in the same way and with the same strength as I loved her, I did not believe for a moment; but I began to see that this comparative indifference might well have been an advantage to him; for while I had been only too anxious to reveal my feelings and declare my devotion, he by exercising restraint had increased his own value. But I knew that Bess was unlike him here and was giving or wishing to give him something of the same affection which I had given to her. She would certainly be disappointed, but I was convinced that no words of mine could help her, and I felt a new feeling of pity and of sadness as I watched her stretching out her feet in front of her and frowning at her shoes. I saw a small smile flicker at the corners of her mouth and the thought suddenly struck me that in this pity as in all my other views of her I might be wholly mistaken; for maybe she was content with what I knew to be the insincerity of her lover, and I began to suspect that in a love affair sincerity is not of much value, indeed a cumbrous and unexciting quality; that it was I myself who was in the wrong and who, in my desire to give away fully my love and to receive fully the love of another person, must be by nature both awkward and repulsive. To throw myself upon her mercy was what I had done long ago, and with no success whatever. I began now to shrink from her as she previously had shrunk from me. About the nature of the pleasures which she had shared with her lover and which had easily outweighed my love I was not curious. They seemed to me secret things of which I was afraid; and yet still, when I looked at her, my heart seemed to reach towards her, though my mind was clouding over in bitterness and a kind of helpless rage; for I had started to think of what next would happen and of what I had before me. "Perhaps it's just as well," I said, "because it seems that I'm your brother." I knew that the words would startle her and that the fact would pain her. As she let her feet fall to the floor and looked up at me with an expression of horror on her face, I was suddenly glad to note the effect of what I had said. What complacency she had shown before had now fallen away from her. Her face was very pale, the corners of her mouth were now pitifully trembling and, as I looked down on her, I was filled again with a tenderness that prompted me to kneel by her side as I had done in the past, to reassure her and to comfort her. But now some overmastering force that was beyond my inclinations, strong as these were, restrained me. I felt that it was impossible for me to move as much as a foot in her direction, and I spoke coolly and distinctly as I leaned against the door and told her briefly what I had heard from her mother, but not the conclusion which I had afterwards reached. All the time that I was speaking she stared at me with wide open eyes. Her chin had dropped helplessly and all intelligence seemed to have been drained away from her face, leaving an expression of mere terror and perplexity that was almost idiotic. When I had finished she let her head fall forward, covering her eyes with the palms of her hands, and I, remembering how different had been my own feelings when I had heard the same news, looked with a kind of contempt at her slight body, huddled up as it was on the packing case. I felt inclined to kick it or to push it over, but I stood still where I was, knowing well how superficial these feelings were, and that behind them there was no condemnation and no distaste, but merely pain. I waited for her to speak, and after a little time she sat up and turned her eyes full on me. Her face had changed so that she was looking at me with friendliness and with confidence; and I found myself surprisingly resenting this altered expression. "How dreadful!" she said. "We must never let anybody know. But in a way it makes it easier, doesn't it?" She smiled and was, I think, a little proud of herself for being able to adopt so sensible an attitude. "I was terrified," she said, "when you came in just now. And I needn't have been, of course; but you were acting so strangely. Oh, Roy, what shall we do now?" And as she spoke I saw suddenly, or thought I saw, how meaningless to her had been my extravagant devotion and how repulsive to her would seem the resolution which I had so quickly come to--never to leave her, in spite of what reason and opinion might demand. She stretched out a hand to me in an appealing and a friendly gesture, but I looked at the hand as though it were the hand of a ghost or else a snake. "Do what you like," I said, and walked out of the hut into the darkening air. My first few steps were slow, I remember, and stumbling, for still I felt drawn to return and seemed to be wrenching myself away from some force that pulled upon me like a magnet; but after I had gone a few yards I began to walk more quickly and soon to run. I turned to the left, away from the road and the village, and ran downhill from field to field, scrambling over hedges and under wire as though my life depended on my speed, and did not stop till I reached the river, where I stood still, quite out of breath, and watched the moon rising above the willows on the other side and just streaking the dark water with its feeble light. Soon I took off my clothes and dived in. I remember swimming under the water and groping along the bottom with my ringers at the mud and the roots of weeds with a strange feeling of exhilaration, and on the surface lying on my back, staring at the moon and the long leaves between it and me, until the cold began to affect me and I scrambled up the bank, put on my clothes, and began to walk back to the village. I wished to examine as soon as possible the calling-up notice which the Flight-Lieutenant had handed me in the hut.

CHAPTER XII

The Air Vice-Marshal

SOME WEEKS AFTER the events narrated in the last chapter I was sitting together with some fifty or sixty other recruits in the aerodrome chapel, listening to an address that was being given to us by the Air Vice-Marshal himself, who had visited us expressly for this purpose. I call the building a chapel, since this was its name among us; but its appearance was quite unlike any other place of worship which I had known. It was indeed more like a cinema or a theatre than a religious building, for the seats were arranged in tiers facing a small stage or platform on which the Air Vice-Marshal was now standing. The chapel was, like much of the accommodation at the aerodrome, constructed beneath the earth and was reached by an underground railway which connected it with our sleeping quarters. By this railway we had come immediately after breakfast, accompanied by the three or four officers who were responsible for our training, and, since the early days after we had been called up had been rigorous enough, we had been surprised to find this place so luxuriously furnished and so unlike the severity of the quarters in which we had so far lived. Indeed, if I had attached much importance to the stories which I had heard previously of the ease and richness of life in the Air Force, I should by this time have been, as many of my companions were, exceedingly disappointed. We had had to rise early and go to bed late. Our beds were hard and crowded close together in underground dormitories. The food was neither plentiful nor particularly appetizing, and most of our days had been spent in the performance of arduous and, to our minds, unnecessary exercises. None of us had so far received any instruction in flying or, indeed, been anywhere near an aeroplane. Reading of any kind, card playing, and the writing of letters were prohibited, and although our instructors had told us that this period of preliminary training would soon be over, no definite time limit was mentioned to us, and before long it became clear that many of those who had been called up at the same time as myself were beginning to regret ever having volunteered for such a service. We were informed that the least word of complaint about our conditions would result in immediate dismissal, and as the days went by more and more recruits were in fact dismissed. Out of a hundred who had been called up together at least thirty were sent back to their homes because of making some remark that was held by our officers to constitute a complaint or to have been made in a tone of voice expressive either of self-pity or of lack of fortitude. A dozen or so more had found their health unable to bear the strain of the prolonged exercises, and I have no doubt that if this period had lasted much longer many others would have succumbed in the same way. I myself had found the training easily endurable. My body was strong enough and my mind in such a state that the hard continuous work was more of a relief to me than a hardship. Though previously, in the days when I had fancied myself happy with Bess, I had thought very little of this profession, now I had become unthinkingly, savagely and, with no conscious effort of the will, determined to succeed and to excel in an Air Force of which I still understood neither the purpose nor the organization. I smiled now when I remembered that in the past the Flight-Lieutenant with his easy and inconsiderate manners had seemed to me to represent the splendid and mysterious life of which we in the village used to talk, although we had never shared in it. I thought of him now with some aversion and with no respect. In his place, if I wished to imagine a person in whose footsteps I would be proud to tread, I would set the figure of the Air Vice-Marshal, a figure of greater strength, more solid purpose, and more extensive power. Often I would think of him as I had seen him in the Rectory, by his mere presence intimidating a room full of my relations; and when I saw him standing, erect as he had been then, in the chapel to which we had been brought, I was glad to listen to him, and stared hard at his face as though there were some kinship between us or as though I might with my eyes attract to myself something of his concentration, his certainty, and his control. We had stood at attention for some moments after reaching the chapel and were then told by our officers to sit down in the luxuriously upholstered chairs with which the building was equipped. As in a cinema there were ashtrays fastened to the backs of the seats and by the ashtrays packets of Turkish and Virginian cigarettes to which we were invited to help ourselves, while orderlies went along the rows serving sherry, whisky, or cocktails to those of us who wished to drink. There was a low murmur of conversation as we expressed to each other our relief at this improvement in our conditions or commented on the decoration of the building in which we found ourselves but, while we spoke to each other, we never lost sight of the figure on the stage, anticipating some sign or word of command from him. For some time he gave us neither, but stood still with a few sheets of paper in one hand and the other hand just resting in the side pocket of his uniform. He looked coolly and slowly along the rows of seats as though searching with his eyes for someone in particular, but no change in his expression revealed whether or not he had discovered that for which he had been looking. Then, as the drinks were being poured out, he let his eyes wander over the roof and walls of the chapel and many of us followed his gaze round the rough grey stone (for the chapel had been hollowed out of solid rock) and the arrangement of lights, shaded with the Air Force colours, that brilliantly illuminated the whole space. So for some time we waited until the lights began gradually to grow dimmer while at the same time small bulbs by the ashtrays in front of us were illuminated so that, when all the lights in the roof were out, we could still see our cigarettes, our knees, and the tables by our knees on which we had set our drinks. Two converging spotlights made a brilliant pool upon the stage. Into this pool the Air Vice-Marshal stepped and began at once to speak. He spoke somewhat quickly and without raising his voice, but with such evident command over himself and over his words that what he said seemed to need no tricks of oratory to make it emphatic. We had expected by way of introduction some explanation of why we had been brought to this place, or at least a summary of what the speaker was about to say to us. But there was no such preamble, and indeed the first few sentences rather surprised us. "Some of you," said the Air Vice-Marshal, "are still thinking about your parents and your homes. You may be considering who or what your parents are, what are the sources of their incomes, the situations and dimensions of their houses. Please put all that out of your minds directly. For good or evil you are yourselves, poised for a brief and dazzling flash of time between two annihilations. Reflect, please, that 'parenthood', 'ownership', 'locality' are the words of those who stick in the mud of the past to form the fresh deposit of the future. And so is 'marriage'. Those words are without wings. I do not care to hear an airman use them. "Think, too, that even if you are certain of the identity of either one or both of your parents, the continued existence of these individuals can make very little difference to you, while your association with them is bound to do more harm than good. Your personalities, even so far as they are developed at present, owe very little to the man and woman whose pleasure resulted in your birth. That you are still tied to the immense and dreary procession of past time is true; it is the business of a man, and particularly of an airman, to rid himself, so far as he can, of this bond. And the first step to take towards this end is to shut out entirely from your lives your parents, people who are unimportant in themselves, but who have served in most cases as channels or conduits through which you have all in varying degrees been infected with the stupidity, the ugliness, and the servility of historical tradition. "On the desirability of freeing oneself wholly from this tradition I need hardly speak. You have only to use your own eyes. You will have seen, for example, in this village before it was taken over by the Air Force, conditions approximating to those of the age of feudalism; a government that was ignorant in spite of its complacency, inefficient, though well-meaning, based on a faith that nobody perfectly understood, and that most people, in all practical affairs, disregarded entirely. Those who exist under such a régime must be slaves, incapable of clarity and consistency either in thought or action, drunk or hopelessly in love when they are not touching their caps to an employer or performing in accordance with some outworn system some mechanical and often unnecessary task. And in the cities you will see even worse things. There you will find people whose preoccupation is not even with an out-of-date machine, but whose lives are devoted to the lowest and meanest of all aims, the acquisition by cunning and hypocrisy of large or small sums of money. This is the type of man which our historical tradition has produced in our age, a monster, whether he be sensualist or ascetic, a man whose power, if he is successful, is accidental and not deliberate, a slave in himself to the most commonplace modes of thought and action, a creature whom you will agree with me, I hope, to treat with undeviating contempt. "Such, then, gentlemen, is the civilization into which history has brought us and which, wholly indefensible as it is, it is yet part of our duty to defend. You will discover in course of time that we aim not entirely to defend it, but also to transform it. Now I wish merely to be sure that you realize one and all the importance of freeing yourselves, in what measure you can, from the stupefying influences of that immense period of time that went by before your birth. As one of many means towards this end we have laid down certain rules which forbid you in the future to address your parents by name, to hold any written communication with them, or to accept invitations to their houses. "In this way we hope to help you to free yourselves from the bondage of the past. But there is another bondage, equally to be rejected. It is the bondage of the future. From this, too, you must be freed, if you are to be what you wish, conscious and deliberate shapers of your own destinies and of those of others. Irrational fear for the future can prove just as dangerous a drug, just as hampering a clog upon thought and action as is the fear of or subservience to the traditions of the past. Let me remind you once more that you are yourselves and only so for a short time. Nothing will matter to you when you are dead, and you cannot reasonably expect to be alive for much more than forty years from now. In this space of time there is much to be done, very much by you who have chosen by our course of discipline to obtain and secure freedom for yourselves and others. "Now people become slavishly attached to the future in two ways, either through the acquisition of buildings, land, or money, or else by bearing or begetting children. I have received reports on each one of you individually from your officers, and I am sure that none of you is so unfortunate and so contemptible as to attach importance to the accumulation of material objects during life, let alone to identify himself with these pieces of material after his death. None of us, however, is averse from physical and emotional pleasure. Consequently the rules which we have had to lay down on this subject are clear and distinct. No airman is to be the father of a child. Failure to comply with this regulation will be punished with the utmost severity." Here the Air Vice-Marshal paused for a moment and stood as though recollecting his thoughts, not looking at us, who must indeed have been almost invisible to him, but staring up at the ceiling. I glanced along the rows of seats and noticed that every face which I could see was intent upon the stage. Surprising as had been much that we had heard, no one, it seemed, had for that reason allowed his attention to wander; and this fact seemed to me a tribute to the personal force of the man before us who, without any obvious effort or deliberate style of oratory, still compelled us to hang upon his words and to remember them, as I knew that we should do, long after his speech was finished. Even now, though we as yet did not perfectly understand the creed and faith which was being put before us, and though there was more of severity than of comfort in what was being said, nevertheless we listened to him with a kind of joy, for it seemed that his own confidence was infused into us so that we believed that any conclusion which he had reached must be accurate, necessary, and inspiring. "Sexual intercouse," the Air Vice-Marshal continued, "is, of course, not forbidden to you. In many ways it is even encouraged. But it must not result in the bearing of children who can possibly own any of you as father. And in connection with this subject it may be helpful perhaps if I give you a little advice which should regulate your conduct with women. The need for what, in a broad sense, may be called love is as powerful an instinctive urge as any, with the exception of the need to supply the body with nourishment. An organization outside yourselves will meet the needs of hunger. With love each of you has to deal more or less unaided; and for that reason I have a responsibility to declare to you what we regard as conduct worthy of an airman. "In the first place you would do well to realize that in a love affair between a man and woman it is inevitable that in the end one of the two will suffer. You must be perfectly determined to see to it that that one is not yourself. It is, is it not, somewhat humiliating for a man to grow sleepless, to lose his peace of mind and his resolution because of the faithlessness, the stupidity, or the selfishness of a woman. And yet we have all seen this happen. Why does it seem humiliating? For it is only slightly humiliating for a man to be ill, and the distress of body and mind that comes from a necessary failure in a great undertaking is rather a matter for pride than for shame. The distress of lovers, however, must appear at first sight to everyone as weak, egotistic, infantile, and unnecessary. Reason will confirm our first impressions. For what sort of a man is he who cannot regulate and control his simplest desires so as to secure pleasure for himself and not pain? "Unfortunately, however, we cannot help observing that in many cases pleasure is about the last thing that men seek or find in their relations