Let Me Alone (16 page)

She went downstairs, a restless ghost in her pale clothes, feeling lost. The corners of the rooms were darkly shadowed, there seemed to be no one about. Outside, the rain fell angrily, but with declining power. The sky was lightening.

Anna went from room to room, opening and shutting doors, peering through the obscurity at the familiar places. But now she seemed to see it all strangely, from the angle of her approaching departure. Her light skirt rippled in the draught – how unsuitable it felt to her.

In the dining-room, the servants had already begun to prepare the big table for the lunch party. No edibles as yet, but the best table-linen, the most delicate glasses, the brightest silver, all gleaming with a chaste pure white gleam, and a glitter of facetted glass like sparks rising in the dimness. Some white flowers were stirring as she opened the door and the curtains blew about. It was all rather desolate. She shivered, thinking of funerals, and of her father. She felt so cold, so empty. And everything seemed meaningless and far away. The indifference – the horrible indifference.

It was clearing up outside. The room brightened slowly. Anna stood still, staring at the brightest thing in the room: a bright globe of glowing green, like a huge drop-emerald. She did not realize it at first. What was it ? Looking more objectively, she recognized a bottle of bright green liqueur, forgotten and temporarily abandoned on the sideboard. She took hold of it, feeling the slight, velvety stickiness overlaying the cold, brittle smoothness of the glass. Without thinking much, she tilted it, and the green stuff ran out quickly, quicker than she had
expected, up the long, tube-like neck of the bottle, and filled the glass. It was a surprise to find that it flowed so quickly, the sticky, heavy-looking stuff. She drank it up, rather disliking it, the burning, sharp-sweet taste of it. But it was hot. She felt warmer afterwards

‘Anna! What have you been doing?’ Lauretta scrutinized her closely. But there was no time for talk. They had to start for the church.

Anna sat in her corner of the car watching Heyward Bland, who was going to give her away. He had got himself up very smartly for the occasion, very spruce and correct, with a white flower in his buttonhole. But the fuss and excitement made him rather irritable. Catching her eye he smiled in a forced fashion and patted her chilly hand. Then he coughed and cleared his throat irritably. He seemed stiff and pompous beside her, and she disliked his proximity. However, he was doing his best to be friendly.

There was an undignified dash across the churchyard to the shelter of the porch. It had stopped raining, but the squally wind was still driving cold flurries of water from the dripping branches. Lauretta was frowning, worried about her beautiful dress. The Colonel looked more irritated than ever. Anna laughed and ran up the path, avoiding the puddles. A sort of recklessness had come over her. She felt like some other girl, quite detached. Perhaps it was the liqueur which had gone to her head.

They went into the church, and the first thing she saw was Matthew, standing in the aisle, waiting for her. She smiled at him, almost gay, in her new recklessness. Matthew smiled back, very faintly and constrainedly, in return; she could see that he was put out, even annoyed,
by her frivolous air. It was evidently a serious moment for him.

Feeling dashed, she took her place beside him. His solemnity made her uncomfortable. Was it possible that this ecclesiastical rigmarole had genuine significance for him? She noticed how dry and close the hair was on his head; as though it had no sap in it, no life of any kind. He did not look at her, though she knew he was aware of her regard. Obstinately he turned his stiff profile, and refused to look. They moved up towards the altar.

The church was new and rather ugly and bare, with a look of being strictly utilitarian and hygienic. There was something rather mean about the red brick, and the stumpy pillars, and the rows of cheap wood pews; proletarian. Lauretta’s expensive flowers looked both haughty and forlorn. On one wall someone had started to paint a biblical scene, life-size, all in drab browns and greys and a muddy-looking olive-green. There was a boat in it, and improbable, woolly-headed, conventional waves. It was supposed to represent Peter walking on water. The place was bitterly cold.

Anna shivered as she knelt in the bleak church, in front of the altar. Her dress was much too thin, there was no protection in the pale stuff. Only her head felt hot; and in her mouth the hot, bitterish taste of the liqueur still lingered like a satirical comment. The clergyman read out some words, and Matthew Kavan repeated them, distinctly, with a certain satisfaction, relishing them. Then it was her turn. She stumbled through her part, watching the ugly, life-sized figures on the wall, the men with their curly beards and dirty-coloured clothes. The painter had, in a strange way, managed to suggest in all the faces a meanness, a vulgarity, something petty and
sordid that belonged essentially to English twentieth-century industrialism. It made Anna think of factories, and long grey streets of little houses, and backyards with dingy washing hanging out, and a smell of fish frying. All of which she particularly loathed. In reaction, she felt a sudden stirring towards Lauretta, who represented the other side of the picture. But she could never be friends with her. There had always been an impassable barrier between her and Lauretta. Higher and higher it had grown, topped with barbed spikes of resentment and enmity. And now she was going to leave Lauretta for good. Strange, to be going away. But she was glad, very glad, to make her exit. She had had enough of Lauretta. How far she had grown already, through the years, from the child whom Lauretta had visited at Mascarat, and impressed and bewildered and patronized with her fluttering charm. Life, the express train, had got into its stride already.

She glanced sideways at Matthew, who was kneeling beside her, hiding behind his neat brown profile. But Matthew seemed perfectly unreal: so inhuman. Ridiculous that he thought he was being married to her!

Matthew, the surprise packet, was kneeling beside her, touching her. But there was no contact between them, no possible connection. The strange being, how remote he seemed. Unreal, he seemed to her, just a shape and a colour and a queer round, hard head, like his own effigy moving about the world. But he was thinking about her. She could feel in him, underneath his attention to what was going on, a preoccupation with herself, a disapproval. He disapproved – she could feel it – of her wandering thoughts, of her lack of solemnity, of her failure to be impressed by the moment. As she knelt at his side, pale
and grave and abstracted, she could feel his irritable thoughts playing upon her, in spite of his devout concentration. He wanted to be serious and devout. To appreciate the solemn occasion. But some other instinct kept his thoughts, under his superficial attention, sliding out persistently to the proud, aloof girl beside him. He almost hated her for her distracting influence. But he could not keep his thoughts away.

When it was all over and the book had been signed, the whole company emerged again into the windy daylight.

It had cleared up a bit, the wind was harrying the clouds like an angry dog, a shred of blue sky suddenly appeared over their heads.

‘Happy is the bride whom the sun shines on!’ cried Lauretta gaily.

And sure enough, a chilly radiance came spilling down from the heavens, spilling palely over them as they stood. The half-stripped trees bent and strained and swung above them. It was Lauretta’s great moment. Her triumph. But the wedding guests had a sense of flatness as they moved off in groups, back to their cars. The wedding had been, for no very definable reason, something of a fiasco. A chilly sort of affair.

And the wedding-breakfast, or the lunch-party, or what ever you like to call it, with its cold lobster mayonnaise and coldly gleaming, pale wines, was not much better. Although it was all so expensive and conscientiously festal. Everyone felt secretly a little relieved when it was over.

And then the good-byes had to be got through. All the women kissed Anna. She had changed into her travelling clothes, and stood with Matthew at the front door, all in brown, looking rather like one of the lost brown leaves
that were blowing about everywhere. There was a crowd, and a confusion of good wishes. Lauretta’s turn came last of all.

‘Good-bye!’ cried her girlish, trilling voice, for the last time. ‘Good-bye!’ She put her arms round Anna and kissed her, in her slightly theatrical way. She even managed to squeeze a tear from one of her bright eyes. There was a spark of real warmth in her heart, nevertheless.

Matthew looked on, rather obliterated. Anna stood still.

‘Come along, my dear,’ said Matthew, at the door of the car.

There was the beginning of an uncomfortable pause while everyone waited for Anna to make a move. Lauretta gave her the tiniest push. The girl went forward, gazing about with clouded, cold-grey eyes, like the sky: at one with the cold, unfriendly, uncongenial sky. For a moment she seemed quite lost. Then she got into the car and sat down. Matthew got in after her, the door banged, and they drove off in a thin keening of farewells.

They were to drive to London in a hired Daimler. Matthew did not possess a car of his own.

M
ATTHEW
and Anna were spending their honeymoon in London. It was not at all the weather for the country. And besides, Anna still had some shopping to do for her tropical outfit.

Matthew had made all the arrangements in his rather fussy, rather officious way for them to stay at a queer little hotel in Jermyn Street that he knew. Outside, it looked undistinguished, and even somewhat shady, with its dingy paint, and its closely covered windows that were like so many eyes closing in a sly and possibly disreputable wink. But once inside, treading the thick, hot, patterned carpets, surrounded by the ugly, monumental furniture, immensely solid mahogany islands set in immense oceans of florid woolliness, you knew instinctively that you were in the very stronghold of respectability.

The place was a pure survival from the past, leading straight back to the pride of the Victorian era with its vast solidity, and its stuffiness, and its cumbersome gilt mirrors, and its strangely hot-seeming, heavy, plushy, everlasting materials. Reminiscent of old volumes of
Punch.
And the thickly-carpeted, elephantine staircase, winding up like the moss-grown coils of some comatose, terrific serpent, up to the unimaginable, fusty recesses of roof and attics.

A porter showed Anna and Matthew to their room, set down their hand-luggage, and departed. Silence
descended. A peculiar stuffy, hot, discreet silence, intensified rather than lessened by the distant growl of traffic.

Anna looked round the room, examining the furniture, the immense wardrobe, rising sheer like the hull of a battleship, and the suggestive double-bed, not quite so large. The room was far too small for the furniture. Between the bed and the wardrobe there was scarcely any floor space. The door could only be opened with difficulty. Anna was a little dismayed. And she was like a person waking uneasily from a deep sleep. In the car she had been drowsy and vague. Now she awoke slowly to this hideous apartment, and Matthew smiling and smirking at her, a bit constrained, but thoroughly pleased with himself as usual. She was a little dismayed.

‘What a small room!’ she exclaimed, glancing up and down.

The smirk was intensified on Matthew’s face.

‘Plenty of room for us. We’ll be nice and cosy here,’ he said, smirking at her, and taking her hand.

Anna was repelled, and very much surprised. This coy attitude, this almost lewd expression, was the last thing she had expected. All her alarms, which Matthew’s apparent coldness had dispersed, came hastening back to her. Up to now he had simply not existed, physically. What if he were to become physically importunate? The thought of his smooth, lean body made her shudder.

‘No. We must get another room,’ said Anna sharply. She moved as if to go to the door, but Matthew held her fast. There she was, tethered to him by her reluctant hand. She felt angry and humiliated. ‘Let me go!’ came her voice, petulant.

He took no notice.

‘We shall do very well here, in this room. I want you close to me.’

Anna looked up at him. He stood obstinate, with his neat row of teeth, his eyes smiling but opaque.

Then she looked at the bed.

‘I shall get another room,’ she said coldly. But a slow red covered her face. It angered her like a betrayal, coming when her heart was cold with resentment. She was afraid she would cry.

‘Oh no, you won’t,’ said Matthew in his soft, stupid, gentle voice, so uncomprehending; but gentle as if she were a child. ‘You’ll stay here with me.’

She stiffened at his obtuseness. And as she stiffened, he put one arm round her, possessively, and kissed her. She felt the monkeyish, sinewy strength of his long, thin arm holding her with a certain conscious mastery, a certain deliberate disregard of her, as though she belonged to him. And he kissed her on the mouth, with relish, ignoring her resistance; also as if he owned her. He made her feel his predominance; the brainless, brute predominance of the husband. The triumph of pure brawn. He infuriated her. He lighted a flame of sheerest anger in her heart. She suffered shamefully at that moment. But in her heart, the black flame kindled, indestructible.

When he realeased her and moved away, his face was closed and smiling, but innocent, as though nothing had happened. Utterly unaware he seemed; it might really have been someone else who had embraced her. Distracting, the way the man had of stepping outside himself, of cutting clear away from his own behaviour. The naïve, rather winning look that came back to him between his enormities; some humility, some wistfulness in it. She could have forgiven him, if only he
had not lighted the anger in her heart that burned up all clemency.

There was silence for some moments. He thought she had given in to him. He bent down and began to unfasten the luggage.