The Sandcastle (25 page)

Nan bent forward, chafing one white foot between her hands. She felt the tears
rising. She could not control them any more. She took a deep breath and her
weeping began. Sitting there, her hand still clasped about her daughter’s foot,
she wept without restraint. The moon shone brightly down upon them both.

Chapter
Fifteen
DURING those days Mor learnt what it was to have a mind diseased. There was no
longer any point at which his thoughts could find rest. They fled tortured from
place to place. Only by absorbing himself in the routine duties of the school
was he able to find, not peace, but the means simply of continuing to exist. He
felt as if he were under an intolerable physical strain, as if his body were
likely at any moment to fly to pieces. Other strange physical symptoms came to
trouble him. An unpleasant odour lingered in his nostrils, as if he could
literally smell the sulphur of the pit; and he had from time to time the
curious illusion that his flesh was turning black. He had to look continually
at his hands to be sure that it was not so. Nightmares troubled him, waking and
sleeping — and one bad dream conjured up another, running from box to box to
release its fellows. The world around him seemed to have become equally mad and
hateful. The newspapers were full of stories of grotesque violence and
unnatural crimes. He knew neither how to go on nor what to do to bring these
horrors to an end.
Part of his torment was the knowledge that Rain was tormented equally. She had
stopped painting, and had told Mr Everard that the picture was finished. The
date for the appalling presentation dinner had even been fixed. Her decision
distressed Mor, not because he imagined that it mattered now whether the
official date of her departure was late or early, but because he felt
responsible for having ruined the picture. Although he did not think that in
the long run he either would or could do harm to her art, he could not forget
what Bledyard had said. Rain had intended to improve the picture, to paint the
head over again. She had not done so, because he had reduced her to the same
frenzy that he was in himself.
Mor was standing in Waterloo station. He was waiting for Rain to arrive by
train. He had had some school business in London, and they had agreed that she
should meet him after lunch when it was done and they should spend the rest of
the day in town. Mor noted, desperately, that to be together was not now quite
enough of a salve for their unhappiness - they had to have novelties and
distractions. He thought, this is what it is to be one of the damned.
There was still fifteen minutes to wait before the train arrived. Music began
to play through a loud-speaker. Mor looked at the people hurrying to and fro in
the wide echoing hall between the booking-offices and the platforms. The music
drew the scene together until it had the look of an insane ballet, eerie,
desolate, and sinister. The performers glided to and fro across the stage,
weaving in and out with an inscrutable precision. Mor turned his head away. He
bought a paper and opened it quickly. Dreadful headlines stared him in the
face.
Bridegroom Kills Bride in Car Crash. Possible Contamination of Earth’s
Atmosphere: Scientists’ Grave Warning
. Mor crumpled the newspaper up and
threw it into a wastepaper basket. He sat down on a seat and lighted a
cigarette. He would have liked a drink, only it was the middle of the
afternoon. He had taken to drinking quite a lot lately.
His thoughts began again upon the old round. Had he misled Rain totally
concerning the nature of his marriage? Did Rain really love him anyway? Would
her attachment to him endure? Supposing he were to destroy everything in order
to be with her, would it turn out in the end to be a disaster? Was he not
simply criminal to contemplate a union with so young a girl? Perhaps he was no
more to her than an ephemeral father figure, endowed by the pain of her recent
bereavement with a size larger than life? All this he had discussed with Rain
herself in considerable detail for hours and hours and hours, without coming to
any satisfactory conclusion. These talks went on now so far into every night
that Mor was exhausted, waking tired and headache-ridden, scarcely able to
stagger through the minimum of necessary tasks. She had tried to convince him,
oh she had tried to convince him, at least that she loved him. He knew that she
was convinced herself. At times, the spectacle of this love moved him so much
that it seemed that nothing else mattered. But Mor knew now, and it was both a
torment and a consolation, that in this damned condition no state of mind
lasted for very long. Certainty and uncertainty chased each other through him
at intervals, and it seemed that it would be a matter of chance in which phase
exactly he should decide irrevocably to act.
One decision at least had been definitely put off. Rain had not yet become his
mistress. She herself had wished to. But Mor had decided that it was better to
wait a little while until the situation had become clearer. Time passed, the
situation did not become clearer, and Mor began to conjecture that just this
delay might be his fatal error. But it was some lingering puritanism out of his
rejected childhood which still made him hesitate to become in the final and
technical sense unfaithful to his wife. He knew that, in almost every way that
mattered, his unfaithfulness was now complete. He had written to Nan hinting as
much - but he had not dared to speak clearly to her, for he feared that she
might return while he was still in a state of indecision. He saw that he had
now definitely and irrevocably parted company with the truth. In the country
where he lived now, truth could not decide his choices. Neither could
happiness. He had told Bledyard that this would guide him - but now even this
light was gone. He no longer conceived, as measurable entities capable of being
weighed against each other, his own happiness, Rain’s, or Nan’s. He scarcely
conceived that he could ever be happy again - nor did this especially matter.
What remained real and composed his agony was his intense, and it seemed to him
increasing, love for Rain; combined with doubts about whether it was not wrong
to thrust this love upon her, and complete paralysis at the thought of having
to announce to Nan and the children that he was going to leave them. If only
his love for Rain could drive him a little madder, or, on the other hand, his
sense of belonging to his previous life become a little stronger, he would be
able to decide. As it was, he was perfectly balanced in the midst of all these
forces and quite unable to move. Only from time to time, consoling in itself
and carrying the promise of a possible decision, there came to him a vision of
himself and Rain together, far away from the present agony, beyond it, having
forgotten it, enriching each other by love. This vision, he felt, if he could
only hold it steady in his imagination for long enough, would draw him to a
decision. Yet even this would not be sufficient. He realized, with a spasm of
pain, that in order to come to his beloved he would have to summon up not his
good qualities but his bad ones: his anger, his hatred of Nan, his capacity for
sheer irresponsible violence. Between him and Rain lay this appalling
wilderness; and how changed by it would he be before he could finally reach her?
He must keep his look upon her very steady if he was to go across.
Mor threw away his cigarette. It was nearly time for the train to arrive. He
went to the end of the platform to wait. His longing to see her drove away all
other thoughts. He stood staring down the line. A few minutes passed. Surely
the train was late. Mor began to walk up and down, biting his nails. Perhaps
something terrible had happened, perhaps there had been an accident. He had a
momentary but very detailed vision of Rain lying bleeding in the midst of some
piled and twisted wreck. He looked at his watch again. Oh, let the train come!
Now at last the train was appearing, there it was after all. It slid smoothly
round the curving platform, stopped quickly, and immediately disgorged hundreds
of people. They surged towards the barrier. There was no sign of Rain. Perhaps
she had been taken ill. Perhaps she had decided not to come. Perhaps she had
been offended at something he had said yesterday. Perhaps she had decided to go
away altogether. No, there she was, thank God, so small he hadn’t seen her
behind that porter. She had seen him and was waving. She was almost at the
barrier now. She was here.
‘Oh, Rain — ’ said Mor. He enveloped her in a great embrace. He no longer cared
if anyone saw him, he no longer cared about concealment and gossip.
Rain struggled out of his clutches, laughing. She drew him across towards the
exit, looking up at him. ‘You’ve been crying, Mor,’ she said. ‘You have a way
of crying inside your eyes which is terrible. I would rather you shed tears.’
Mor realized that he had, after his fashion, been crying. ‘Well, you see how
feeble I am!’ he said. ‘But it’s all right now.’ They came out of the station
and began to walk towards the river.
‘Where shall we go?’ said Mor. He had discovered that Rain knew London far
better than he did.
‘First we cross the bridge,’ said Rain, ‘and then I take you and show you
something.’ She was pulling him along, as a child pulls an adult. They came on
to Waterloo Bridge.
The enormous curving expanse of the Thames opened about them girdled with its
pale domes and towers. Above it was a great sky of white bundled clouds. The
day was chill, and there was a promise of rain. The river glittered, thrown up
into small foam-flecked waves that set the anchored barges rocking. Yet above
the tossing water the air was light, and the familiar skyline receded into a
luminous haze. They both paused to look, and Mor felt within him the quick stir
of excitement which came with the first sight of London, always for him, as in
his country childhood, the beautiful and slightly sinister city of
possibilities and promises. The wind blew upon them coldly. They looked
eastward in silence.
Rain shivered. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘in this place it’s autumn already. I
thought the leaves fell in September. But here they begin to fall in July. I
don’t think I could live in England all the year.’
Mor shivered too, but not at the wind. He was reminded yet again that Rain was
free. Also, he had not been able to keep it out of his consciousness, she was
wealthy. She could wonder to herself whether she would spend the winter in
England, or go back to the Mediterranean, to Majorca perhaps, or Marrakcsh. At
this thought Mor felt a mixture of attraction and revulsion.
Rain read his thoughts. She did not want him to know that she had read them.
She wanted somehow to make it clear that she did not envisage any going away
that did not include him. She said, ‘I wonder if we shall work together one
day, I at my painting and you at your books -’
Mor had told Rain about the half-finished work in political concepts. He had
still not said anything to her about the possible candidature. This was all the
less necessary since he had almost finally decided now that he would not stand.
Whatever happened, probably, he would not stand. He could not bring himself
even to think about the Labour Party at the moment. Compared with his present
preoccupations, everything to do with the Labour Party paled into triviality.
He was surprised to find how little he cared. He must settle the more pressing
problem first — and other problems could just look after themselves.
‘You would always be working hard,’ said Mor, ‘but I don’t know how I would
make out in a state of’ — he searched for the word - ‘freedom.’ He pictured
himself for a moment living in a hotel in Majorca on Rain’s money. He did not
find the picture nauseating, merely ludicrous. Of course, there would be
nothing like that. When the scandal was over, he would start a school of his
own. They had envisaged this and even discussed it. Mor tried to fasten his
thoughts upon a possible future. It was not easy. Instead, he kept seeing in
his mind’s eye the face of his son. He remembered with a jolt that it was less
than ten days to Donald’s chemistry exam.
They reached the other side of the bridge. It was beginning to rain.
‘We go the rest of the way by taxi,’ Rain announced. She seemed unusually
cheerful today. The storms of doubt and guilt seemed to have passed over for
the moment. Mor thought, if only she were, even for a short while, absolutely
certain, I could make my decision; and this thought seemed to bring it nearer.
He hailed a taxi, and once inside he held the girl violently in his arms and
forgot everything else.
The taxi stopped, at Rain’s request, just off Bond Street, and they got out.
Mor looked round vaguely. Rain’s presence made him live so completely from
moment to moment that he had not even wondered where they were going. Then he
saw a poster beside a door near by. It read: FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
An
Exhibition of Works by
SIDNEY
and
RAIN CARTER.
Rain watched him, delighted at his surprise, and began to lead him in. Mor felt
considerable emotion. Except for the portrait of Demoyte, he had seen no
paintings by Rain, or her father, in original or reproduction. He felt both
excited and nervous. He began to think at once that he might hate the
exhibition. They climbed the stairs.
Rain’s appearance created a mild sensation in the room above. She was known to
the girl who sold the catalogues and to two art dealers and the owner of the
gallery, who were chatting in the middle of the room. One or two other people,
who were looking at the pictures, turned to watch. Mor felt himself for the
first time in Rain’s world. He felt intimidated. She introduced him without
embarrassment as a friend of Demoyte’s. The art dealers knew about the Demoyte
portrait, inquired after it, and said that they would make a point of going
down to St Bride’s in the autumn to see it. The notion that connoisseurs would
now be making pilgrimages to St Bride’s was strange to Mor. In any ordinary
state of mind it would have pleased him. But now to speak of the autumn was
like speaking of some time after he would be dead. He listened as a condemned
man might listen to his warders chatting.
Rain seemed in no hurry. She exchanged news and gossip with the three experts.
They spoke a little of her father’s work, mentioned the recent sale of one of
his pictures, and the price. The price astonished Mor. He stood aside in
silence, looking at Rain. She seemed now so utterly at her ease, quite unlike
the weeping ragamuffin he had seen two nights ago when they had talked for
hours about their situation. She could step out of