Thunder On The Left Part 6

"You must meet Phyllis," he said.

Then he had found, later, that it wasn't necessary, for she had known Phyllis as a child. How small the world is, he said sadly. "Phyllis and I were small, too," she replied.

She wondered if there were four Phyllises also?

"Ten minutes to Dark Harbour," said G.o.diva's porter, coming into the vestibule with his whisk brush.

She hardly noticed him dusting her, she was thinking of George the Fourth, the perplexing phantom she had accidentally startled into life. She felt for him a strange, almost maternal tenderness; an amus.e.m.e.nt at some of his scruples, an admiration at the natural grace of his mind when he allowed himself to be imaginative. But behind these, a kind of fear: for George the Fourth had grown gigantic in her dreams; sometimes, in panic, she realized how much she thought about him. He was so completely hers because he was hidden in the securest of hiding places - inside a person who belonged to someone else. So she couldn't resist the invitation to go down to the Island, to renew memories of childhood . . . and the most interesting of those ghostly children, she thought, would be George the Fourth, only twelve months old.

She had had to remind herself, sometimes, that the first three Georges did belong to others . . . but if you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so. For the amazement had been mutual. She had awakened George the Fourth, but he had awakened someone too. . . . And frightened by these thoughts (it had been her lonely pride to stand so securely on her own feet) she was flying from the dream of George to George himselfand Phyllis.

Over the wide sea meadows the train sounded its deep bl.u.s.ter of warning: a voice of triumph a voice of pain, announcing reunions that cannot unite, separations that cannot divide. And George Granville - all four of him, at that moment - driving over the long trestle to the mainland, heard it from afar, and in sheer bravado echoed the cry with his horn.

X

In the bathtub Phyllis wondered, for the first time in her life, whether she was "literary." She sat soaping her knees and revelling in coolness that came about her waist in a perfection of liquid embrace. She found herself - perhaps because her eye had fallen on the volume in the den, while she and George were bickering - thinking about Shakespeare. Now, in an intimate understanding that many an erudite scholar has never attained, she perceived what the man with a beard was driving at. The plays, which she had always politely respected as well-bred women do respect serious inst.i.tutions, were something more than gusts of fantastic tinsel interspersed with foul jokes - jokes she knew were foul without understanding them. They were parables of the High Cost of Living - the cost to brain and heart and spirit of this wildly embarra.s.sing barter called life. The tormented obstreperous behaviour of his people was genuine, after all: they were creatures in a dream, like herself; a dream more true than reality. She could have walked on in any of the plays and taken a part without sense of incongruity. She felt as if she were a phantom in one of the pieces: a creature in the mind of some unguessable dramatist who had mysteriously decided to make a change in the plot. She thought how she and her friends had sometimes sat through Shakespeare matinees, subconsciously comforting themselves with the notion that real people don't behave that way.

Why, Bill, you poor old devil (she said to him), how you must have suffered to be able to write like that.

It made her feel quite tranquil by comparison. But of course her own particular absurdities had special kinks in them that were unique: even He would have been surprised. But he would have understood.

A soft flow of air had begun to move after the storm. The big maple tree, just outside the bathroom window, was gold-plated in the dropping sun. The window was above the bath and the ripple of those gilded leaves reflected a gentle s.h.i.+mmer into the porcelain tub. Her s.h.i.+ny knees were glossed with pale green light. Shakespeare would have liked that. She fished for the soap, which slipped round behind her like a young thought.

I suppose that as long as I was 99 and 44/100 pure I never could appreciate him. But I don't know whether I altogether enjoy people who understand so well. That's the trouble about George: he's getting weirdly acute, poor soul. Now, Mr. Martin: he looks divinely sympathetic, but I don't think he quite. . . .

People wonder why one always confides in those who don't understand. But of course! To confide in people who do is too terrible. Giving yourself away - yes, exactly: you no longer are keeper of your own gruesome self. That's why the Catholic notion is so sound: confession to G.o.d is nothing at all, you know He doesn't care. But to confess to a priest . . . golly, that must take courage.

She lay down for one last l.u.s.tral wallow, closing her eyes with a calm sensation of new dignity and refreshment. The cool water held her in peaceful lightness, lifting away whatever was agitated and strange. For a moment body and spirit were harmoniously one, floating in a pure eddy of Time. I feel like a nun, she thought. She rose, trickling, threw the big towel round her shoulders, and studied herself in the long mirror. Really, I'm not much more than a child, she mused happily, admiring the slender, short-haired figure in the gla.s.s. Or perhaps I feel like a harlot . . . a courtesan, nicer-sounding word. Discarding the towel she struck a humorous parody of the Venus Aphrodite att.i.tude, and then felt a little shocked. She could feel her cheeks warming. She remembered George's coa.r.s.e remark when they saw the statue. "It's no use," he said. "Two hands can't do it. Any one as timid as that needs three." She sang a little refrain, trying different tunes for it. She couldn't remember whether she had heard it, or just made it up: What did Mrs. Shakespeare do When William went away?The soft flutter of maple leaves outside the window was like a soothing whisper. From the other side of the house she could hear the click of croquet mallets and b.a.l.l.s. Time for the children to have their supper, or they won't be finished before the others get here. Thank goodness it was cooler, Lizzie wouldn't be so hara.s.sed. Wrapping her silk kimono round her, she looked out of the window. Lizzie's flag was still flying. With a rough delicacy of her own, the cook did not like to run out her private was.h.i.+ng on the family line, so she had strung a cord from the kitchen door to a branch of the maple tree. There, floating like a hoist of signal buntings, were Lizzie's personalia: all the more conspicuous for her mistaken modesty. They were indeed (it was George who had said it) like a string of code flags: a blue ap.r.o.n, a yellow s.h.i.+rt, a pair of appalling red breeches. George always wanted to know to whom Lizzie might be signalling with these homely pennants. They are a kind of signal, Phyllis thought. A signal that life goes on, notifying any other household within eyeshot that here too the humble routine of kitchen and washtub and ironing board, of roof and meat and sleep, triumphs in the end over the wildest poet's dream.

Shakespeare would have relished them, and been pleased to see these bright ensigns hoisted so frankly in the yellow air.

Dressed in a gauzy drift of white and silver, she paused at the cus.h.i.+oned bay windows by the head of the stair. Her body enjoyed that mixed feeling of snug enclosure and airy freedom which is the triumph of feminine costume. Even her inward self shared something of this sensation: within the softly sparkling raiment of thought she was aware of her compact kernel of ident.i.ty tranquil for the moment, but privately apprehensive and alert. On the oval gra.s.s plot Martin was playing croquet with the children. Janet, nicely adjusting two tangent b.a.l.l.s with a bare brown foot, gave them a well-aimed swipe. Phyllis heard the sharp wooden impact and Martin's cry of good-humoured dismay as his globe went spinning across the turf, leaving a darker stripe on the wet lawn. It bounded over the gravel and into the bushes, right by the corner where she had first seen him. She watched him chase it, lay it on the edge of the turf, and drive it back. How graceful he was! He raised his head with a little unconscious lift of satisfaction as he watched the ball roll where he wanted it to lie.

A film seemed to have been skimmed from her eyes. Perhaps it was that level stream of evening light: the figures moved in a G.o.dlike element of l.u.s.tre: every motion was perfect, expressed the loveliness for which life was intended, was unconscious and exact as the movements of animals. They were immersed in their game as though there were no past, no future: she felt she could watch them for ever. Martin's face, gravely intent, bent over his ball. She saw the straight slope of his back against the screen of shrubs. The mallet clicked, there was a sharp tinkle as the ball went through the middle hoop, touching the little bell that hung there. How can any one look so charming and yet be so hard to talk to?

Through the scooped hollow of the dunes, catching tawny sparks from the sand, violet dazzles from the sea, the cleansed radiance of sunset came pouring in. The children's bare legs splashed in brightness as though they were paddling; honey-coloured light parted and closed again about their ankles, the wet shadows dripped and trailed under their feet. The house, growing dusky, was a d.y.k.e stemmed in the onset of that pure flood. It caught and held as much darkness as it could; the rest went whirling out. As if in answer to the little croquet bell, the old clock in the hall whirred and jangled six hoa.r.s.e clanking strokes. They eddied a moment and then were whiffed away by the strong, impalpable current that seemed to be sweeping through. You could tell, by the dull sound, that the gong was rusty. No wonder, a house by the seash.o.r.e, empty so long.

After the cough of the clock silence came up the shaft of the stairway. Not themselves alone, but the house too, had its part in everything. She could feel its whole fabric attentive and watchful, and wondered how she could have been heedless of this before. A house of ugly pattern, with yellow wainscots and fretsawed mantels and panes of gaudy gla.s.s: but she guessed now, what one can only learn under strange roofs, how precious houses are. And how wary they have to be, fortresses against fierce powers, suns.h.i.+ne, darkness, gale. Life has flowed through them: clocks have chimed, logs crumbled, stairscreaked under happy feet. These whispers are all they have to treasure: if you leave them alone too long they get morbid, full of sullen fancies. She remembered herself, visiting that house as a child, once seated at this same window, watching others play croquet . . . was it memory, or only the trick of the mind that splits the pa.s.sing instant and makes one live it twice?

"Come, children!" she called from the window. "Time for your supper."

She went slowly down the stairs. Be calm, be calm, she said to herself; this too will pa.s.s; this isn't Shakespeare but only the children's supper time. But the flow of her blood warmed and quickened as water grows hot while you wait with your hand under the bathroom faucet. On the landing, where a shot of sunlight came arrowing through from the sitting-room window, she waited to adjust a slipper. She could hear them on the gravel outside. If he came in now he would find her just so, gilded and silvered like a Christmas card. But their voices remained on the veranda where the children's meal was laid. She could not afford to wait long. Now, now, were a few precious moments. This was a dream: and dreams must be recorded at once or they vanish for ever.

She heard one of them sneeze. It was Janet: she knew all their sneezes and coughs by ear. Yes, they probably have caught cold, bathing in that storm. And they have to sleep outdoors tonight, too: on the porch, because of this infernal Picnic. It's much colder; the thermometer must have dropped twenty degrees. She hurried to get the sweaters from the cupboard under the stairs.

They were sitting at the veranda table, with milk and bread and jam. Mr. Martin was in the fourth chair.

He looked as though he too was ready for supper.

"Well, chickabiddies, did you have a good bathe? I hope you didn't catch cold. Here, put on your sweaters."

They looked up at her gaily. Their upper lips were wet and whitish.

"How pretty you look!" exclaimed Janet.

She had meant to toss him a brief, clear, friendly little gaze; an orderly hostess-to-pleasant-guest regard; but this from Janet startled her. She could see that he was holding her in his eye, meditating the accuracy of Janet's comment. She did not feel ready to face him.

"Thank you," she said lightly. And added, "Wipe your mouths after drinking."

"He says that's a milk moustache," cried Rose, gesturing to the visitor. "It makes you healthy."

Phyllis made a clucking reproach with her tongue.

"You mustn't point. It's not polite to say he. Say 'Mr. Martin.' Jay dear, after supper run and put away the mallets. I've told you, I don't know how often, not to leave them lying on the lawn. . . . Oh, not you, Mr. Martin. Janet'll do it after her supper."

But he was up already and gone to get them. I suppose this perpetual correcting sounds silly to him, she thought. But how can I help it? George never disciplines them.

"It makes him hungry to watch us eat," said Sylvia. "He wants some supper."

"He's joking with you. We'll have ours by and by."

She followed him into the garden. As she put her crisp silver slipper on the tread of the veranda steps she saw how the foot widened slightly to carry her weight. How terribly I'm noticing things. Somethingflickered at the corner of her eye: she suspected it was Lizzie, at the pantry window, trying to attract her attention. A throng of trifles jostled at the door of her mind, tapping for admission. Probably the ice has given out, after such heat. Well, then, they'll have to do without c.o.c.ktails. I can fix the sandwiches tonight when everyone's in bed. If it turns chilly there won't be enough blankets. Nounou won't be back until late, I must get the children started to bed before . . . I won't think of these things.

He had put away the croquet implements.

"Thank you. We've just time for a little stroll before the others get here. - I hope you'll like Mr. and Mrs. Brook. They're extremely nice, really, but a bit heavy."

"Perhaps they eat too much." He said it with the air of one courteously offering a helpful suggestion.

She had wanted, wanted so to be alone with him: she had a desperate feeling that there were urgent things to be said, and now she could utter nothing. Her mind ran zigzagging beside her, like a questing dog, while she tried to steer their talk into some channel of reality. Her thoughts kept crowding ma.s.sively under her uneasy words, pus.h.i.+ng them out before they were ready, cutting into her speech like italics in a page of swarthy Roman type.

"We all eat too much in hot weather, I dare say. Oh, if I could only write him a letter I could make him understand. He's so sophisticated, I suppose the quaint things he says are his way of making fun of me. Why did I suggest our walking like this? You can't see a person's face when you're walking side by side. And if we go round the path again, Lizzie will get me from the pantry. Let's sit down on the bench."

"It's wet, it'll spoil your pretty skirt."

Skirt! . . . What a word for this mist of silvery tissue she had put on specially for him.

"So it is. Well, let's see what the storm has done to the roses."

The little walk under the trellis was flaked with wet petals.

"Poor darlings, there's not much left of them now. If Shakespeare was here I should feel the same way. Speechless. Why, he's like a G.o.d: lovely to think about, impossible to talk to. He doesn't give anything, just absorbs you: you feel like a drop of ink on a blotter. I have a horrid suspicion that the ice has given out, you mustn't mind if your c.o.c.ktail is warm."

He kept looking at her in brief glances. Each time she met them it was like getting a letter in some familiar handwriting but stamped with a strange postmark.

"Are they better cold?"

I give up, I give up. It's no use. I can't even think. There's some sort of veil, mist, between us. He is a kind of G.o.d. He's brightness, beauty. Every movement he makes is a revelation and a question. How can I speak to him when all I want is to love him. There's nothing earthy, nothing gross about this. It's lovelier than anything I ever dreamed of. And if I tried to tell any one it would sound like tawdry farce. . . .

Dimly she divined what lay between them, what always lies between men and G.o.ds, making them such embarra.s.sed companions - the whole of life, the actual functions of living; the sense of absurdity (enemy of all tender beauty); trained necessities for silence, that darken the intuitions of the soul.

It's as impossible as - as the New Testament. I feel like Christmas Eve: there's a new Me beingborn. You can't have a Nativity without pangs. And not even any one to bring me frankincense and myrrh. . . .

She stopped, picked one of the late rosebuds, and put it in his lapel. She checked a frightened impulse to tell him that she named the baby Rose because it was her favourite flower and she looked so like a rosebud when she was born. This was courage, because to say it would have carried on the doomed conversation one paragraph farther in safety. To any one else she would have said it. But now she spoke shakenly, from far within.

"You're not easy to talk to - Martin."

His face changed, he looked less anxious. He took her hand. She found herself not surprised: it seemed entirely natural. She felt his fingers lace into hers. Just as Janet does, she thought.

"I get frightened when people talk to me," he said.

She looked at him, wors.h.i.+pping. The bad spell was broken. Instantly she felt they could communicate.

He was frightened too - the precious! Over his shoulder she caught sight of the little old-fas.h.i.+oned weather vane on the stable, a gilded galloping horse with flowing tail. Always racing in blue emptiness and never getting anywhere. Like Time itself; like this marvellous instant, so agonizingly reached, that could never come again. No one who knew her in her daily rote would quite have recognized her then as she looked into his eyes. She was completely herself, born again in innocence, in the instinctive yearning for what she knew was good. The unknown ripeness of woman woke for an instant from its long drug of peevish days, small decisions, goaded nothings. Humbled, purified, bewildered, she saw the dark face of Love, the G.o.d too errant for heaven and who suffers on earth like a man.

"Martin, I love you."

"I love you too," he said politely.

Beyond the stable she heard the sound of the car.

XI

"It was just adorable of you to come."

Ruth was getting out of the car. They kissed.

"Why Phyllis! How sweet you look! Gracious: I thought this was a Picnic, and here you are in a dance frock. For heaven's sake lead me to hot water. Those awful Pullmans; I'm simply speckled with cinders. I feel gritty all over."

That of course, must be Miss Clyde, on the front seat.

"How do you do! After all these years! I don't suppose we'd have known each other. But we ought to, George admires your work so much."

They shook hands. It was a hard, capable little hand, calloused like a boy's. Phyllis knew now that she remembered the grey-green eyes: agates, gold-flecked, with light behind them. Eyes softly shadowed underneath, as though from too much eagerness to understand; eyes dipped in darkness. The small shy child of long ago, who stood apart from games. How many strange moments had both been through since last they met?

George was getting out the suitcases. He was afraid to watch Phyllis and Joyce greet. When a finely adjusted balance hovers in equilibrium you don't breathe on the scales.

"We were on the same train," cried Ruth, "and never recognized each other."

Ben felt the twinge of anxiety common to the husband who hears his wife tell an unnecessary fib. Ruth had said this once before already, in the car, so perhaps it was important. Her allusion to Pullmans, also, was based (he suspected) on the erroneous notion that Miss Clyde had ridden in a day coach. But he liked to back Ruth up, if he knew what she was heading for.

"I guess we've all changed," he said mildly. "The old house hasn't, it looks just the same."

"Miss Clyde's brought her paint box," George said. "She's going to do a picture."

"Oh, yes, and we have another - why, that's fine, Miss Clyde - we have another artist here too, Mr.

Martin. You must all come in and meet him."

She stood holding the screen door aside, welcoming them in. George, coming last, saw how her cheerful smile faded to expressionless blank when the guests had pa.s.sed. She had relapsed into automatic Hostess. How lonely she must be to look like that. I wish it was over, he thought. His mind felt like a spider that has caught several large flies at once: the delicate web was in danger of breaking.

They entered the hall.

"It isn't changed a bit!" Ruth said. "Exactly as I remember it - except it seems smaller. That old table, for instance, that used to be just enormous. Well, hot water first. I can sentimentalize much better when I'm clean."

George was thinking: Ruth's probably the kind of woman who always twists the toothpaste tube crooked, but her babble will help us around corners.

"I hope Miss Clyde won't mind being in the little sitting room downstairs: you see we're just camping outhere, you must all make yourselves at home."

Joyce tried to frame some appropriate reply to Phyllis's clear, faintly hostile voice. She was in the tranced uneasiness of revisit. Coming from the station she had been trying to realize the Island again: her mind was startled by the permanence of the physical world. Things she had not thought of for so long - things that she had apparently been carrying, unawares, in memory - were still there, unaltered, reproaching her own instability. The planks of the station platform, the old scow rotting in the mud, the road of crushed oyster sh.e.l.ls, the same vacancy of sand and sky.

In the car she and George were both achingly mute. There seemed to be a sheet of gla.s.s between them.

The Brooks emitted cheerful chatter from the back seat, George replied with bustling geniality, his only mask. How wonderful if they could just have made this ride in silence; she had a feeling that all sorts of lovely meanings were escaping her. There was the notch of blue light where the road slipped over a p.r.i.c.kling horizon of pines. How just right were the slopes of the puppy-coloured sand-hills, the ta.s.selled trees against the pure lazy air, the coloured veining of the fields. Now, now; here, here; I'm here and now, she had to remind herself. It's G.o.d's world, whatever that can mean. Golly, you must be careful how you make fun of religion: it's a form of art. She imagined a painting of that aisle of sandy road, climbing through the tall resiny grove. Religion would be a good name for it. - George had never seemed so far away as now when she sat beside him. Would it always be like that? Oh, teach yourself not to love things, she thought. Be indifferent. It's love that causes suffering, it's tenderness that weighs heavy on the heart. How ridiculous to say that G.o.d loves the world. He doesn't give a d.a.m.n about it, really. That's why He's so cheerful . . . such a competent artist. His hand doesn't shake. Still, I don't think I want to meet Him. It's a mistake to meet artists you admire; they're always disappointing.

"I shouldn't have come here," she said. "I love it too much. Those trees. They look so surprised. I have a guilty pa.s.sion for pine trees."

Driving the faithful car had strengthened George. Even the paltriest has an encouraged sense of competence with that steady tattoo underneath his feet. The artist that lay printed like a fossil in George's close-packed heart - the artist that only Joyce had ever relished always responded to the drum of the engine. He adored the car; when he drove alone to the Island (sending the family by train) he sang to her most of the way. This was his guilty pa.s.sion. Now it was the car's rhyming vitality that came to his rescue. He broke the gla.s.s. He cut himself, but he got through.

"Any kind of love is too much," he said.

Then he was grieved to find himself uttering such a cheap oracle; but it comforted Joyce because she saw it was a symptom. It showed that he was trying to tell the truth. She did not dare look at him: she was too conscious of the others behind them, who seemed as ma.s.sively attentive as an audience in a theatre. Then in a wave of annoyance, Surely I have a right to look where I want? She did so. She could see the confidential tilt of his eyebrow so plainly, she knew he was hers for the taking. Nothing but themselves could stand between them.

"How queer: that's just what I was thinking," she told the eyebrow.

"Oh, do you believe in telepathy?" chirped Ruth. "Ben sometimes knows exactly what I'm thinking without my saying a word."

It can't happen often, George thought.

"What were you laughing at?" he found time to ask her, as the others were descending from the car.

"I was just thinking, there's not much danger of my meeting G.o.d, because I'm not pure in heart.""Oh, I shall be perfectly comfortable anywhere," she said.

The single swathe of suns.h.i.+ne carved the hall, dividing it into two dusks as the word Now divides one's mind. All, all unchanged: the series of hemispherical bronze gongs at the dining-room door, the wakeful asthma of the tall clock, the wide banistered stairway with its air of waiting to creak. The soft, gold-sliced shadow trembled with small sounds, and light voices of children drifted down from above. If this was still real, then what was her life of today? Why pretend any longer to make the world seem reasonable? It was all a delightful ironic farce with an audience applauding the wrong moments and the Author gritting his teeth in the wings. What use was Time if it availed so little?

The broad stream of sunlight flowed through the house like a steady ripple of Lethe, was.h.i.+ng away the sandy shelves of trivial Now, dissolving little edges of past and future into its current, drawing all Time together in one clear onward sluice. What are we waiting for, she wondered. What is everyone waiting for, always? She was painfully aware of George standing near her. It was not silence that sundered them, but their grotesque desire to speak.

"George," Phyllis was saying, "you give Ben a drink or something while I take the ladies - "

In the shadow beyond the table there was a clicking sound. Through the wide opening of the dining-room double doors two figures crawled, on all fours, with a toy train. Janet was in her pyjamas, ready for bed.