Friendly Young Ladies (36 page)

“He writes rather well,” she said.

“Very well. That’s the pity.”

She turned the pages; whenever she ceased to read, her mind was wiped as blank as a slate. Joe strained the coffee into a jug, poured it out into two thick china mugs and brought one over to her.

“There’s something in this,” she said, tasting it.

“Only a spot of rum. Not much. Good for the circulation.”

She smiled back at him, for the first time. “I saw a film of the circulation once. Like a lot of hoops bowling along. A frog’s foot, they did it with. The coffee part’s good, too.”

“M-m. I’ve made better. Throw it down while it’s still too hot to taste.” He sat down beside her, nursing his mug between his knees. “I saw a damned funny thing once. A couple of hearties had a slight misunderstanding and tried to life-save each other. In Parson’s Pleasure it was, while I was up at Oxford. One of them tried this slugging trick, and the other, who’d only been turning somersaults in the water, didn’t think a lot of it and slugged him back. They churned up the river like a couple of alligators. Then the vice-president of the Union came out of the huts; having missed the preliminaries he thought they were both drowning and didn’t feel equal to the double event; so forgetting he was stripped to the buff he went haring round the screens and started waving his arms at the first punt he saw, which was full of Somerville women. They thought he was an exhibitionist gone berserk and tried to make off, but they only liked to look one way, so by the time I’d found my pants and got there they were going round and round in the water, and the chap was just about to leap in and swim out to them so as not to waste time.”

Leo choked over her coffee, and put it down on the floor to laugh. Once she began, she found it hard to stop. She caught her breath and said, “You never told me that one before.”

“Oh, surely. Look, your cigarette’s gone out. Have another.” He bent over her to light it. “You’re going to have a hell of a bruise there in the morning.” He took her chin in his hand, turning her face towards him. She smiled up at him; his face, shadowed with the light at his back, smiled back. The yellow lamplight, the rough primitive room like a room in the backwoods, were suddenly beautiful. “I caught you a crack with the punt-pole, if you remember. Slipped out of my hand.”

“Clumsy devil. You ought to have paddled, like I said.”

“Yes.” He looked down at her, no longer smiling. “I know that.”

There was a silence. A launch went by, swift and purposeful in the night. They were still while its sound lasted. Then he collected the empty coffee-mugs, and took them over to the table.

“That lamp keeps smoking,” he said idly. He bent over it, his shoulders making a great shadow over half the room. “Maybe it wants trimming.” He touched the key; the flame leaped, then dwindled; the light became a little pool on the table, and went out. She could see, after a few seconds of blankness, the pale glimmer from the uncurtained windows and his outline against it, his face still turned to the dead lamp. “That’s torn it,” he said evenly. “The wick’s gone in. I’ll have to fix it when it cools.”

Her cigarette burned in front of her, a point of light making the darkness emphatic. He must have turned off the stove when the coffee was finished; she had not noticed because she was no longer cold. His shadow moved across the window towards her. She felt a contraction at her heart, and drew back a little, feeling behind her the planks of the wall.

“I was going to have a cigarette,” his voice said, close beside her, “but Lord knows where the matches are.”

“Take a light from mine.” She held it out, leaning forward, her eyes on its red spark. He rested his knee on the edge of the bed beside her, and took her wrist to guide her hand. But both their hands were still.

The cigarette was drawn gently from between her fingers. She watched it move away and downwards, and disappear on to the floor. His weight settled beside her, and a board in the wall creaked as his back came to rest against it. He took her hand in both of his, and held it against his knee. The pulse that had been beating in her head quieted. His hands were steady, hard and warm. She moved back a little, relaxing against the wall, and found herself resting on his shoulder. He moved his cheek softly against her hair.

The memory of the river flooded over her, realized and fully understood for the first time. She was filled with a horror of herself; and she must have moved her hand, for his grip tightened. She clung to his fingers, as people cling to ease a moment of physical pain.

“Joe,” she whispered. “You know I … You know I tried …”

He said gently, into her hair, “It’s hell, getting cramp in the water.”

She turned and flung her arm round his neck, hiding her face against him. He gathered her on to his knees, holding her as one holds a child.

“Let it go. Let it go, my dear. It’s over now.”

“It’s never over. Sometimes I think I’d be better dead.”

“Let it go.”

“It isn’t that I … You see, it’s only …” She could not go on.

He finished for her, easily, it seemed without emotion, “Something went wrong the first time.”

She shut her eyes. She was trembling again.

He moved his head a little away. As if it had been light enough to see him, she knew that he was looking past her, at the pale blur of the window.

“Do you remember,” he said at last, “that morning on Scawfell Pikes? I suppose you might say it was a pretty close call.”

“Yes,” she said, wondering, “I suppose you might.”

“Did it strike you at all that most people wouldn’t have led straight on up that chimney, afterwards, without asking you first how you felt about turning back?”

“I shouldn’t have liked it if you had.”

“No, I suppose not. That wasn’t the reason, though. I couldn’t have made the descent from where we were then.”

“Don’t talk such rubbish,” she said, almost forgetting what had gone before. “Why, that part was as easy as climbing a tree. I could have done it on my own.”

“Yes, you rather enjoy a vertical view, don’t you? I used to wonder how soon you’d spot my lukewarm enthusiasm for what the manuals call ‘a sensational prospect’. You were always pointing them out to me, I remember. The fact is, when I’m climbing at any height, I can’t look straight down for more than a split second; I get vertigo if I do.”

“Joe. Why didn’t you say?”

“Why didn’t you?”

The tautness of her arm round his neck relaxed, and she shut her eyes again, but not in fear.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said, “if you know what you’re up to and have someone you can trust at the other end of the rope. There’s nothing to it. Except that there are always some people who need to go on.”

She turned her face upward, trying to see him. He bent his own, and kissed her, slowly and deliberately, holding her like a woman now and not like a frightened child. She felt his gentleness and carefully controlled skill, and a confidence that was imposed on himself for her support, not fully felt; and remembered his first kisses in the garden. Something seemed to break in her, and a great fountain of tenderness and loyalty washed through her, as if her body and mind were being filled with light. She became no longer of importance to herself. Whatever happens, she thought, everything must and shall be well for him; and she turned to confront her fear for his sake; but it was like facing one’s death and finding that one has died already and the spirit is free.

As his kiss ended, she put her hand behind his head and drew it down again.

“It doesn’t matter any more.”

He scarcely returned her kiss, but caught her to him and held her still; a sheltering, almost a tragic gesture, like that of a woman. They were quiet, with his face against her hair, while there passed between them a force of emotion so strong that the physical was swept away in it, and she felt, without knowing why, her eyes fill with tears.

“Leo,” he said at last, under his breath, “if you’d rather, now, I’ll take you home.”

She said, quite simply and with an open mind, “Is that what you want to do?”

“No.” He moved his hand over her head. “But we can do that, or anything, now.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

The wide gown, loosened already, was slipping from her shoulders. She pulled the girdle-cord, and let it fall away. He took her back to him, stooped with her and laid her on the pillow. She felt his lips move against her eyelids.

“You’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll look after you.”

In the
Lily Belle
, in the little buff and green room they called Helen’s, a light went on. To Elsie, the soft glow seemed, after hours of lying face downward in the darkness, a white glare, scorching her eyes. She got up from the bed and, blind at first as if in sudden darkness, felt her way to the water on the dressing-chest, for she was thirsty from lying so long awake. Standing there to drink it, she saw taking shape out of the dazzle, in the glass before her, her own face, its plainness underlined by weeping and strain, her limp hair, her awkward schoolgirl’s body. For the first time they were real; she believed in them; they were not a disguise in which a lovely future hid, ready to break forth like winged creatures in the spring; they were herself, and would always be, for now she had accepted them. Her life would be lived within their boundaries.

She had cried her eyes dry; as if her mind too had been emptied, it received for a little, as from without itself, an alien clearness. She thought, I could have loved him from a long way off, and never wanted anything, and been happy. It would have been like Monica Hathaway at school, but better. People say it’s a bad thing. But it makes poetry live for you, and music, and the sky at night, and after it’s over, some of it goes into them and lasts the rest of your life. You forget the silly parts quite soon, and you’re left, in the end, with something you’re not ashamed to remember. Not like this.

As long as I live, I shall be a person whom someone made love to because he was sorry for her. But I know, now, that it wasn’t even really making love. Just being sorry: nothing else.

Leo was sorry for me too. It must have been difficult to keep me from knowing how they felt about each other. It happened at first sight, I suppose. I can see it all now. The night he came to supper here, and she went on the river with that friend of Helen’s; he could hardly talk to me, waiting for her to come back. Everything’s been easy for Leo. She’s always believed in herself; she’s never been afraid.

I thought I hated her, but I don’t. To hate people you have to feel they’ve robbed you, that they’ve kept you down. I was down from the beginning. If he hadn’t loved Leo, he would have loved someone else. He’d never have loved me. How could he? I shall never be able to make anyone love me now. You have to believe, first, that you’re a person who can be loved.

She put out the light, and went over to the window. Everything was dark, even the island in midstream where the lamp had burned, on other nights, later than all the rest, blinking when the wind swung a willow-bough across it. Her mind turned, in its unhappy drifting, to the afternoon Joe had spent teaching her to punt. I didn’t know it at the time, she thought; I didn’t think about it, but I was quite peaceful and contented then. He’s such an ordinary sort of person; but he seemed, somehow, to make ordinariness fun. I wasn’t ashamed of anything, or believing in anything that wasn’t real. I wonder if he’s lonely too, sometimes. I don’t suppose anyone would fall in love with him either. He’s so awfully unromantic. It’s a pity; I expect he could make some rather dull sort of woman very happy. If she’d never met anyone like Peter. Peter. I wish I’d died when I was ill at home, I wish I’d been dead before he came.

It’s a punishment to me, she thought, leaning her head against the window-frame, for running away. Mother loved me, and I made her unhappy. Leo said you paid for making other people suffer. (But Leo never seems to pay.) I was never meant to get away with things; even at school I was always caught when other people weren’t, and had to go back to detention on Wednesday afternoon. I must go back to Mother and Father now, and make it up to them. Nobody else wants me, anyway.

At least, she thought, I won’t be mean about it. It isn’t Leo’s fault. She and Peter are affinities, I expect. They couldn’t help themselves. I must write her a letter before I go, and tell her I understand. She did her best about me. Like Peter. Everyone meant to be kind. I suppose it must be simply me.

She put on the light again, and looked in the dressing-chest for something to write on. Her diary was there: she tore a leaf from it, the leaf for to-morrow. She would not be needing it now.

Helen moved across the garden, down to the water-side. The dull moonlight shimmered on her fair hair and her dressing-coat of pale green satin; she looked ethereal, like a water-spirit seeking its element again. But she had gone to see if the canoe was there.

It rode at its painter, neat and toylike, its fresh varnish shining slickly. The cushions, which she had taken out that evening for the night, had not been replaced in it. The dinghy was beside it, the oars dry. Leo and Peter must have gone to town.

She went back again to the room on the upper deck, lit a cigarette, and looked out of the wide window. The river was still; away downstream the island rode like a black barge. She had hoped to see a light on it; it would have been company of a kind.

She can be certain of me, because I’m free. I’ve gone where I chose, and had what I fancied, and I’m here because this is better. I can never be sure of her. It’s like keeping a wild bird that loves you because it’s got a broken wing. If the wing knits up, then you know; one way or another. That would be something real, one could bear that. But to watch this trying and falling down again, each time it’s as bad as before, it hurts both ways.

It’s been too long, now. I shall never really know, I suppose. That may be better, for me. Perhaps it won’t be so bad this time, for her; not so far to fall. But, in a way, that’s the worst; to see her getting practical about it. I wonder what Joe would say, if one could ask him. Give her rope, or something, I suppose. He’s easy-going, is old Joe. Sometimes I’ve thought … But that’s another thing that’s gone on too long.