To the Dark Tower (31 page)

‘‘Oh, integrity!" She sat back in the chair, her lips trembling. Her fingers wrenched at the damp handkerchief.

‘‘But don’t you see—surely you see—it simply wouldn’t work. Grotesque. Utterly grotesque." He repeated the word to impress it on her.

‘‘Oh, yes! Perhaps!" Her voice jarring, grating, jerking out of control, she went to the window. Outside she could see the river with sails on it—calm, green, distant."Grotesque. Oh, yes—it would be that. But wonderful—wonderful also."

‘‘Grotesque
and
wonderful?"

She swung round."Why not? From the sublime to the ridiculous—it’s not as far as you think. They lie side by side. They mix. At any moment the sublime may tip suddenly downwards into the pit. And then you begin to laugh." She spoke hurriedly, quoting from her last letter, which had never been posted. She, herself had come instead."I think you’re too ready to see the ridiculous in the sublime—too ready to laugh. That’s the trouble with so many people. And as for looking for the sublime in the ridiculous—oh, no—never! Oh, can’t you see—can’t you see how wonderful it would be—the gesture—the magnanimity of the thing—"

Strange, he thought. That’s S. N. G. Uncanny. His voice, his words. But he only shook his head."I still say—no. Never. Never, never, never."

She sank into the chair her eyes slowly filling with tears."Then I’ve made this journey for nothing," she said.

Suddenly he found himself pitying her."I’m sorry," he said."You must understand. I only wish there was some other way of helping you. Oh, don’t cry."

Clutching the arms of the chair she suddenly broke down. Her body shook. The words jerked out of her:"It’s-so-hopeless. I-don’t-know-what-to-do. I’m-so-unhappy."

He went across to her chair, but could not bring himself to touch her."Is there anything? Is there any way? I mean—"

For a long time she was inarticulate with grief. He waited, walking sometimes to the window, patting her shoulder, trying to comfort her. Then, wiping her eyes on the moist, frayed handkerchief, she said:" There! I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. It just happened. I’ve never done that sort of thing before. I’m sorry."

He took a cigarette and lit it. Thinking: Of course I should never have consented to this talk. I might have known. How plain she looked! Her face blotchy, eyes red. He could not stop gazing at her, fascinated. The raw hands were horrible.

‘‘Don’t make me go yet," she pleaded, misinterpreting his movement for a cigarette."Let me stay. Let me see you for a little. A week. Five days. Three. Oh, please. Three days of your company. Please."

For a while he thought, staring past her, out of the window. Then he said:"I’ll make a bargain with you."

‘‘A bargain?"

‘‘You shall have your three days. But afterwards—you must promise never to badger me again. No letters. No visits. You understand?"

‘‘I understand."

‘‘Well?"

‘‘I accept, of course."

‘‘Where are you staying? Perhaps you would like to go to your hotel. Then you can come back here for lunch."

‘‘I have no hotel, yet. I just grabbed a suit-case and came. It was the impulse of a moment. But I’ll find somewhere."

‘‘I doubt if you will. This is the week of the regatta. The hotels are full. Perhaps you’d better stay here. I’ll get Clark to make up a bed."

‘‘Oh, thank you, thank you!"

She clutched at his hand, smiling, trembling. But he drew away and rang the bell.

Clark disapproved, of course. His presence alone was sufficient to make dinner a fiasco. He moved about sourly, while they sat in silence. The meal was fastidious, but sparse, the room cold. The General had dressed. He noticed how blue her shoulders were, how bony; her nails were brittle; she had rouged her cheeks inexpertly. All this, and Clark’s unspoken disapproval, irritated him. He found he could not eat. Instead, he watched her every movement in impotent disgust.

She ate well. It was the first time that she had had an appetite for many months. When he said:"Will you have some more?" pointing to the joint with the carving-knife, she said:"Yes, please," and passed her plate. This mere act, her hand pushing the plate towards him, made him furious. He piled her plate with meat to see if she could get through it. She did.

As she ate he listened to the slow click-click of her jaw, the methodical chumping. Once she put her napkin to her mouth and hiccoughed behind it. Later, eating an orange, she let the juice run down her chin in a manner which sickened him. Her fingers became soppy with it.

It was not a good beginning. And when, as he rose from the table, he saw her undignified scramble to find the shoe which she must have taken off during the meal, then he all but told her to go.

In the drawing-room he suggested some music."Oh, yes," she exclaimed in delight." Oh, please. Do play."

‘‘I hadn’t meant that. I was thinking of the gramophone." He was politely cold.

‘‘But you can play. Oh, please." She went to the piano and opened it." Mozart. I know he’s your favourite composer. Please play some Mozart."

My vanity, he thought. Why do I do it? Granados. Someone worthless. At least, I shall deny her Mozart. He began to play one of the Goyescas, without interest. She stood beside him.

At the end she said:"Oh, lovely! I do love Mozart!"

He slammed down the lid."Let’s have the gramophone."

‘‘I sleep on the terrace. You mustn’t be frightened if you see me prowling about."

‘‘Of course not. But on the terrace—in May! How could you?"

They were talking at the bottom of the stairs. Her room was on the ground floor, his upstairs. Clark had just passed with a hot-water bottle for her.

‘‘Well—good-night."

‘‘Good-night"

She put up her face at him, oddly, as though expecting to be kissed. The eyes were bright, feverish; the lips trembled apart, disclosing small, discoloured teeth. She gripped the banister.

‘‘Good-night," he repeated.

Later, lying out on the terrace, while one by one the lights on the opposite hillside went out, and a ship hooted, and a car moved along the road below with a swivel of headlamps, he felt strangely replete. He was not certain whether this sensation came from the conjunction of stars and sound and fragrances, or from her presence. For a long time he lay there, wondering. It was very late; something scurried in a bed of ferns; a chill breeze blew across his face with a tang of salt. Drawing his blanket up to his chin he yawned. Oh, Lord, Lord! Lying in the sun that morning everything had seemed finished. And now lying in the moon...

Suddenly turning his head towards the house he noticed that her light still burned.

The second day. In the cove he bathed while she watched him. Far away, the ferry bumped across the river, children called, a ship glided slowly, slowly towards the sea. She lay on the warm sand. Spreading five fingers. A moment ago he had sat where her fingers were spread. She looked out to the figure climbing the slippery rock, the Tower. Oh, the implacable ache of love. The lust of the eye. Watching, watching incessantly. That the image may be sealed, that the negative be made positive. Hoarding a few careless postures, flex of elbows, a twirl of the wrist. The lingering, unending hunger.

Afterwards they walked into the town for ices. Sitting in the crowded restaurant Shirley plunged her spoon into the mound of strawberry and then put it to her mouth. And immediately, even as her teeth began to ache at the impact, she was filled with an immeasurable nostalgia, a thirst for the past. She was a child, and this was a café in Fontainebleau, with a red-and-white striped awning and tables out in the street, and the General was her father. And with this transfiguration came all the certainty and faith of childhood: life ceased to be an endless variation on a worn-out theme; but life itself was many themes, many recurring themes. And the past was here, now, not a tyrant, but an ally. The past was in the flavour of the ice-cream, and in the quality of the light, and in the ache of her teeth. And slowly, slowly, her eyes began to fill with tears.

‘‘What is it?" the General asked."What’s the matter?"

‘‘Nothing," she said."Nothing. It’s so cold."

That evening they sat out on the terrace. A breeze was blowing and she found it chill. Her teeth chattered; she shivered in her overcoat. But the General appeared not to feel it. He sat back in a wicker-chair, smoking. The moon had not yet risen, so that it was impossible to see him except as a dark shadow from which erupted at intervals a shower of sparks. The air was laden with the smell of his tobacco; she could hear his teeth bite on the stein of his pipe.

She, herself, did not smoke. She crouched, rather than sat, her back against the wall. It was only in this way that she could avoid the wind. Her eyes were watering with it; her lips felt chapped. But she did not dare to suggest that they should go in. In any case it was very beautiful on that hillside, the white house a ghost behind them, lights flaring up opposite like matches struck at random in the dark, and the water coiled, sinuous, shot with its random reflections. Later, the river would sparkle. But now, without the moon, it only gleamed. The silence was heavy, falling about them, dulling the twitter of birds, the sound of cars. They were lapped in it, rocked in it, gently, gently.

In spite of physical discomfort, the cold, the wind, she felt immeasurably happy. It seemed as if at last some conclusion had been reached. Like an intricate pattern which one cannot grasp till the last arabesque is put in, like the rounding off of a sentence with some gracious period, some dying fall, so now what had seemed haphazard, trivial, formless, suddenly crystallised into a rhythm, a beautiful order. She tried to put this into words. Somehow it was easier to talk when she could not see his face and he could not see hers."It’s extraordinary how happy I feel. For that I must thank you. To-night—oh, it seems as if everything had been a preparation for me here, and you there, and this terrace, and the lights. An inevitable sequence, steps of a ladder. Entirely inevitable. It had to happen. Imagine reading a detective story—clue after clue baffling one—and then the solution, making all that has gone before suddenly intelligible—making it fall into place. That’s how I feel."

But she would not really express what she meant. In her mind was the image of those unquiet spirits, maimed, sundered, who wander through the world seeking each other; they bleed while they are apart, they mourn, they pine; but when they find each other, then all their wandering becomes as nothing, then all that matters is that the two should have at last become one, and that the halves should have been united. Behind her she saw the immeasurable days of seeking; each day was a step, a clue; and now the halves were no longer sundered, they no longer bled.

Pushing back his chair he said:"It’s getting cold. Let’s go in."

He, too, was succumbing to the magic.

The third day. A letter from Croft:

M
Y DEAR
G
ENERAL
,—I have now made four copies of this letter; and each time it seems more difficult to say what I have to say. I am writing to tell you of a certain change in my plans which will, I am afraid, disappoint you. As you have probably inferred already, it concerns our projected trip together. Briefly, my news is this: Cynthia and I (for reasons which I need not go into) have decided to get married within the next month or so, instead of after my return from South America. This, in itself, will mean a delay of several weeks. But when I do go, Cynthia, not unnaturally, wishes to accompany me. I have told her of all the hardships and dangers involved, but she is quite willing to accept them. She is a person of great resourcefulness and courage. Now of course there was nothing in all this to prevent our original agreement standing; Cynthia would have been delighted to have you as a third, and so should I. It is my publishers who have forced on me a change of plan. Their contention is that the selling value of the book will be greatly enhanced if my wife and I make the journey together
alone
. Naturally, I would not, in normal cases, care two hoots about how the book sells. But in view of the marriage and so forth one has, unfortunately, to consider these things. In any case my publishers are willing to give me many more facilities if I accept this one condition.

… Well, there it is, H. W. I know you’ll think me quite despicable. Lord knows how I hate the thought of all the mawkish publicity that will now be put around. But, frankly, we do need the money. And if the book is a success, then at least it will put us out of reach of that sort of thing for a long while. You see, I do have to consider Cynthia now, and not solely myself. I do hope you will understand.

What makes it so difficult to say all this is that I know how disappointed you will be. I really am most deeply sorry...

The General, eating breakfast out on the terrace, tore the letter into four pieces which he left beside his place. His face was grey and strained.

‘‘Excuse me," he murmured. Getting up, he crossed the lawn and disappeared. His feet made dark imprints on the wet grass.

Later, he returned."What do you want to do to-day?" he asked with forced cheerfulness. Picking up the pieces of the letter he dropped them into his coffee-cup.

The General was making a model yacht. He took her into his carpentry shed to show her.

‘‘It’s wonderful," she said.

‘‘Oh, no, it’s not. Look at that. And that." He pointed out various defects in the wood."I only hope she’ll be seaworthy."

‘‘And the sails?"

‘‘I’m sewing them myself. The only thing she really needs now is a figurehead. But I’m a pretty poor carver." He held up a grotesque figure."Obviously that won’t do."

‘‘Let me try."

‘‘Do you carve?"

‘‘Oh, yes. It’s one of the things I do with my girls. They much prefer it to basket-work." She took up a piece of wood and a penknife."May I?"

‘‘Go ahead."

‘‘Let’s go out on to the terrace."

As they worked, they talked together. For the first time that morning he ceased to think about Croft’s letter, cursing him for what he regarded as a betrayal. The intolerable bitterness that had weighed him down like a disease, his hatred for Cynthia, coming thus between him and his dream of the Amazon, his disappointment were all somehow assuaged. He began to think: What does it matter anyhow? I’m too old for that sort of thing. Perhaps she’ll die out there. That’ll teach her. Perhaps they’ll both die. No, not Croft. Let him return chastened.