The Sandcastle (21 page)

‘I ran straight out of the house,’ said Nan, ‘and came here.’ She drank some
more whiskey and Tim filled up her glass. She reached out again to the tree.
‘You’d better go back again,’ said Tim. ‘Mor will be waiting, and he’ll be in
an agony.’
Go back, yes, thought Nan. The real pain after all was not that the world had
fallen into little pieces. That was a relief from pain. It was rather that the
world remained, whole, ordinary, and relentlessly to be lived in.
‘Don’t be too hard on Mor,’ said Tim again. ‘He’ll have a bad time of it. And
anyway you are the stronger one. Yes,’ he said, ‘you
are
the strong one,
you know.’
Nan knew. She would have to hold this situation as she had held all other
situations, controlling Bill, easing the effects of his clumsiness, guiding
them both through.
She
would have to cope with this. The thought was
melancholy but there was a little comfort in it.
‘I’ll go out in a minute,’ said Tim, ‘and order you a taxi. But just now relax
yourself and don’t be thinking what you’ll say. Let
him
do the talking.’
Nan thought, he wants me to go, he wants to be rid of me, to move this awful
thing away to another place. She felt no animosity against Tim. In the intense
rainy sunlight of the yard she saw his face close to hers, pale, unhealthy,
puckered up with distress and indecision. She reached out and found his hand.
They sat so for a while, rather awkwardly side by side, as if posing for an
old-fashioned photograph. Nan laid her glass down and with her other hand
plucked some more leaves from the tree. The sun was beginning to warm them. It
was a strange interval.
After a while Nan raised her eyes to Tim. He was looking at her intensely. She
sustained his gaze.
‘Come inside,’ he said, rising suddenly, and reaching a strong arm to pull her
to her feet. ‘Come inside now, and rest in the big armchair.’
Nan got up. The yard began to rotate quietly round her. The whiskey must have
gone to her head. She sat down again. The nightmare feeling returned. The
objects in the yard were present to her with an appalling precision. She made
an effort and stood up on her own. The yard was looking very strange, as if it
were growing brilliant and slightly larger. She saw that she had picked nearly
all the leaves off the sycamore tree. It stood there rather wretchedly gaunt
with a premature autumn, its shadow stretching up the bumpy wall which was
steaming in the sun. A curious light was shining. Nan looked up and saw
directly above her a rainbow displayed against a pewter-coloured sky. She
shuddered, and went back through the door which Tim Burke was holding open for
her.
In the little workroom it was very dark. Tim worked there usually by neon
light. Nan stumbled against the thick leg of the work bench. The big armchair
stood in the farthest darkest comer, a large decrepit thing, banished some time
ago from Tim’s small sitting-room upstairs.
Awkwardly Tim led her towards the corner. Nan began to say something and turned
to face him. A moment later, half pushed by Tim and half collapsing of her own
accord she had fallen back into the grinding springs of the chair. She lay
there spread-eagled, suddenly helpless, her legs outstretched, her shoes
propped at the high heel. She saw through the small square window a section of
the metallic sky and a slice of the rainbow. Tim was leaning over her now, his
hands upon the two arms of the chair. He was leaning closer, and the window was
blotted out. Then, placing one knee upon the edge, he lay upon her, his arms
struggling to meet behind her back while his heavy body crushed her into the
depths of the chair.
Nan lay there limply, her hands upon his back and upon the sleeve of his coat,
not grasping, but dropped there like two exhausted birds. His shoulder was
pressing her chin back and her head sank into the deep dusty upholstery,
releasing a musty smell. For a moment or two Nan lay still, looking
thoughtfully over his shoulder through the half-open door of the workroom and
into the darkened shop. Then she wriggled slightly, trying to release her chin
from the pressure. She became aware that the weight of Tim’s body upon her was
comforting, was more than that. She began in a half-hearted way to struggle.
At once Tim moved, taking his weight off her and endeavouring to shift her to
one side so that he could lie beside her in the chair. For a minute they
jostled, Nan withdrawing her arms and awkwardly edging away, her heels braced
and slipping on the floor, and Tim burrowing beside her, his big hands
underneath her body. Then they lay still again, facing each other. Nan found
that her heart was beating very fast. She felt a little fear and a little
disgust at finding Tim’s white face so close to hers, his lips moist and
parted. Then she threw her arms about his neck and drew him up against her,
partly so as not to see any longer the staring look that was in his eyes.
‘Nan,’ said Tim, ‘I do love you, you know that, don’t you? I wish I could do
something for you, some good thing.’
‘Yes,’ said Nan. She knew that the strange comfort that she felt would last
only a few seconds longer.
‘Dear, I’ve so often wanted to tell you things,’ Tim went on, his voice burring
in her ear.
‘What things?’ said Nan. Distantly she could hear the voices of people passing
in the street.
Oh, foolish things,‘ said Tim. ’Things about Ireland, about when I was a child
there, things I couldn’t tell to anybody else.‘
Nan thought, now Tim is going to tell me about his childhood. She had an
instantaneous vision of herself spending the morning lying in the armchair and
hearing about Tim’s childhood. I must be drunk, she thought. She began to
struggle again.
This time Tim braced his hand against the back of the chair and pulled himself
out until he was kneeling beside her. Nan dragged herself up to a sitting
position. A light dust surrounded them and a smell of the past.
Now that she could see his face again Nan felt her despair returning. After
all, it was nothing but a senseless pause. Another minute and they would both
be feeling embarrassment. ‘Please call me a taxi, Tim,’ she said.
Bowing his head, Tim rose and went out into the shop, closing the door behind
him. She heard him pass into the street. She sat up and began to search for her
handbag. She examined herself in the pocket mirror. As she saw her dishevelled
head in the half light she started quite quietly to cry again. But by the time
Tim had returned she had combed her hair and applied some powder to her nose.
When she heard his steps she got up and they met at the door of the shop. He
put his two hands at her waist.
‘Oh God!’ said Tim Burke. Words failed him.
‘Is the taxi coming?’ said Nan.
‘It’ll be here in half a minute.’
Nan looked into his face. Now that she was erect it no longer appalled her; and
suddenly she wished desperately that she could stay with Tim Burke that morning
and talk to him, talk to him about anything at all, about Ireland, about his
past life of which she knew nothing, about his hopes and fears, about when he
had begun to love her. For an instant she apprehended him there, pale, awkward,
strong, with his two large palms seeming to enclose her body. In that instant
she saw him close, mysterious, other than herself, full to the brim of his own
particular history.
There was a loud knock at the door.
‘It’s the taxi,’ said Tim.
They looked at each other.
‘Shall we send it away?’ he said.
Nan was silent. She wanted, very much she wanted to know him now, this person
that confronted her. She could not think how she had endured to have so little
knowledge of him. In the privacy and difference of his past, in all that had
brought him, by ways that he had never told, to the present moment, there lay
for her a promise of consolation and a long long solace of discovery.
‘If you could only come to me,’ said Tim, ‘be with me somehow — ’
Nan turned from him. With coldness, with violence, the reality of her situation
touched her, the irresponsible silliness of her present conduct. She shook her
head. She saw the glass of whiskey standing near by upon the counter and she
drank the rest of it in a single gulp. The knocking on the door was resumed.
‘Open the door,’ said Nan.
Tim fumbled at the latch, and then the pale sunlight was falling in a broad
shaft into the shop, as far as where Nan was standing. The taxi-man was waiting
in the road.
Nan came forward.
‘Don’t forget me,’ said Tim, as she passed him.
‘Yes,’ said Nan. She steadied herself out on to the pavement.
‘Don’t forget me,’ he repeated, standing behind her in the doorway of the shop.
Nan got into the taxi. A moment or two later it was speeding away. Her grief
was restored to her.
As the taxi rolled along, Nan wondered what on earth she was going to say to
Bill. She had never been in a situation remotely resembling this with Bill
before. In ordinary life all her talk with Bill was planed down into simple
familiar regularly recurring units. Any conversation which she might have with
him was of so familiar a type that they might have talked it in their sleep.
This was one of the things that made marriage so restful. But from now on all
speech between them would have to be invented. The words spoken would be new
things, composing a new world. Nan did not know what she would say - but in
spite of Tim Burke’s warning she was determined that it was she who would talk
and not Bill. She wondered if Bill would say he was sorry. What did people say
at a time like this?
Nan stepped out of the taxi. Tim had already paid the fare. The taxi-man helped
her out. He was wearing an odd expression on his face which made Nan realize
that her breath must be smelling strongly of alcohol. When she thought this she
staggered, and the gatepost came rushing to meet her at an unexpected angle.
She was beginning to feel a slight nausea which was just distinguishable from
the rest of her distress. As the taxi drove away she began to search through
her handbag for her latchkey. It didn’t seem to be there. She must have left it
in the door when she arrived in the early morning. She looked to see if it was
still there. It had gone. She stood in the front garden wondering what to do.
She was very anxious that Bill should not know that she had been drinking whiskey.
So in what was to come she must keep him at a distance from her. She decided
not to ring the bell, but to go in through the drawing-room doors at the back
of the house, which were normally unlatched, and interview Bill in the
drawing-room with the doors open. These thoughts came rather slowly. In the
picture as she now saw it there was only Bill; it was a matter of managing him.
It was something between herself and Bill.
Nan began to walk round the side of the house, supporting herself against the
wall. She felt mortally tired. But when she reached the drawing-room doors she
found that they were closed and evidently bolted on the inside. This was
unusual. She pulled at them helplessly for a while. Then she decided that she
would get in instead by the low window which was beside the doors. It seemed to
be undone. She stepped on to the flower-bed. The earth was soft and muddy after
the rain. She pulled the window open and managed to put one foot through the
opening.
‘Nan, what in heaven’s name are you doing?’ said Bill’s voice from behind her.
He had just come into the garden by the side gate. Nan could see him out of the
corner of her eye.
She said nothing, but made desperate efforts to get through the window. She had
now got half-way, and was straddled across the sill, her skirt drawn tight,
with one leg well into the drawing-room and the other one still outside. She
could see the mud falling off her shoe on to the cushions of the sofa. Her
other shoe had come off, embedded somewhere in the earth behind her.
‘Nan!’ said Bill’s voice again. He was coming towards her.
‘Keep away!’ said Nan. She was pulling furiously on the frame of the window.
She could hear Bill stepping on to the flower-bed. He put one hand on her
shoulder and one underneath her and propelled her forward into the
drawing-room. Nan collapsed on to the sofa. She had to restrain a strong desire
just to lie there and whimper at the idiocy of everything.
She sat up. Bill was still standing at the window looking in. He was holding
her shoe in one hand and was feebly trying to brush the mud off it.
‘Bill,’ said Nan loudly and clearly, ‘how long has this business been going
on?’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll come round the front way.’
As soon as he disappeared, Nan jumped up and opened the doors wide. Then she
drew the sofa a little nearer to them and lay down upon it, propping herself up
with cushions and facing into the room. She found a rug and drew it over her
feet. Behind her lay the garden, drenched with rain and dazzling now with
pearls of light as the strong sun shone upon it, and the plants gradually
lifted themselves up, murmuring as they did so. The fresh air blew into the
room, dissipating, so Nan hoped, the remaining smell of the whiskey. Bill
entered by the drawing-room door.
‘Sit down, Bill,’ said Nan. She indicated a chair near the door.
Bill did not sit down, but stood by the wall kicking his feet. He looked very
like Donald.
‘Let me explain,’ began Bill, ‘about last night. Miss Carter stayed here all
night because of the storm, and because she’d made an excuse to Demoyte and
couldn’t go back there. It was the first time she was in this house. I’d only
seen her alone twice before that - or three times, if you count the first
night. And I’ve never made love to her.’ He hated saying these things. He
stood, pawing with his foot and looking down.
Nan believed him. ‘All right, Bill,’ she said. ‘You are obviously what they
call a fast worker. How little I knew you! Anyhow, I’m not interested in this
sentimental catalogue. You talk as if you were confessing the secrets of your
heart to someone who wanted to hear them.’
At this moment Nan realized with dismay that she was developing hiccups. The
only hope was to check them at once by holding her breath. She breathed in very
deeply.
Bill waited for her to go on, and as she continued to be silent he said after a
moment or two, ‘I should not like you to think that I regard this as anything
trivial.’