Cotter's England (21 page)

He talked on and on about his wonderful adventures. Her thoughts began to play softly among these adventures as if playing in these upland breezes he was piping in.

She smiled when he stopped, "Go on with your horrifying experiences."

"What do you mean?"

"You say that."

"Someone—said that to me a little while ago."

She knew who. They remained silent. After a few minutes it occurred to him that she was trying to make him forget his sorrow.

He began to talk again, "I was out taking a walk one day, the sky very clear and light, the sun broadshed, the birds were flying about and I was thinking of nothing. I was just wandering aimlessly. Clouds of ideas pass over you and leave you; and I was quite dizzy. It was spring. I was thinking I would like to be a hermit. I would like to live in the woods and be a voice to people, tell them things I know. I would talk to the animals and whistle. I can't sing because they made me sing alto too long. People would say, There's a man in the woods who can tell you things that will make it easier for you. If I did that, I could become a healer perhaps. I would have to develop it."

"That is why your voice is like that, floating," she mused. After a while, she said, "Isn't that a pretty hotel!"

It was an old long white building with a few well-placed windows.

"Would you like to stay there?" he asked.

"Oh, yes."

"We could stay there tonight. Let's go in now and have lunch."

She was amused, "How could we stay? They expect us home."

"Oh, we'll send telegrams. I've done it before. Marion and I did it."

They both began to laugh. They had lunch at the hotel. He went upstairs and when he came down said he had been to look at the rooms. They could have a room.

"Goodness, you would get into trouble with Nellie."

"I don't care what trouble they make. I'd do anything for you."

She went out and got into the car. He followed her in his manner, bright and composed.

After they had been driving a few minutes, and were out of the little country town, he said, "I know plenty of hotels along the road. I stopped at a few of them with Marion."

"And yesterday Nellie told me not to mention Marion; but to talk to you about death!" She laughed.

He said roughly, "She needn't worry. I'm glad I knew death in that way."

He became silent.

"How can you say that?"

He remained silent.

"It must have been misery."

"I don't think about it. I'm free. As soon as the earth covered her, I felt alive, really alive, streaming with life, like a young hill covered with grass in the spring rains. The cemetery is on a hill and it overlooks nurseries and planted hills. There was no feeling of death at all. And do you know the only thing that worried me?"

"No," she said timidly.

"What I would do for a woman. She had been ill a very long time."

Camilla looked round at him and then at the long grassy hill they were passing and she smiled, thought of a joke and burst out laughing. He laughed too.

"Why does Nellie talk about death so much?"

"She knows nothing about it. It's just good copy. I saw hundreds of dead men. I used to be the first to go into burnt-out planes: things like that. I could get in through small twisted apertures. I decided never to fight, only to help, to heal, or carry stretchers."

"I'm glad to talk to you. I was lonely. I didn't know it."

He said nothing about Edmund or the children. He went on talking, his voice carrying through the noises of the road, the engine, all through the day.

"She was very ambitious: she would have written a play if she'd lived. Even when she was in pain, she would talk about her ideas.

"A strange thing happened the morning she died. I was just sitting there, knowing I had to pack and get out. The housekeeper came to me and said, Mr. Green, here's the mallet you asked for. I said, Take it away, I don't want it. I didn't remember asking for a mallet. She said, You said, Find it, give it to me and I'll hide it. I don't know what it means.

"It was cold and damp in the church and in the churchyard. I forgot my coat, but I didn't mind. I wanted to feel bad; but I didn't. The clergyman was in a hurry to get inside. We filed past him; I didn't even look at him. I was thinking, It will soon be spring."

They got back to London late at night. He took a wrong turning, got into a maze of one-way streets and it was some time before they got to the newspaper office where Nellie was waiting. She introduced them both warmly and sweetly to her colleagues. She was worn out. She had had another struggle getting her article in, a whole day's work boiled down to a few lines in the midnight edition: and it would come out altogether by morning. But it seemed to her that her story was the most important of all, the real truth about humanity. She exclaimed, waved her cigarette, danced a lanky step or two, hovered in patch and color, like a harlequin among the desks and girls in plain blouses and men in shirt-sleeves. At last, regretfully, she left the office. It was nearly one in the morning. They drove home, Nellie still talking about her wrangles in the office and the pity of it that a real labor paper, the only real one, had no money, while giant presses labored night and day turning out tripe. George had arrived home suddenly, but she couldn't get off.

When she got them home, sitting with her in the kitchen over a late light meal, she suddenly noticed them, it seemed.

"Forgive me, chicks. Did you have a little chat? There's a little brandy in the cupboard. Eliza's sleeping with your children tonight, Camilla, as arranged. We'll have some coffee. Are you unhappy, Tom? Are you feeling all right, pet? What did you talk about, chicks? Ah, I'm glad of it, though; introspection is the wine of the soul: it divides us from the animals. If you don't introspect, the soul sleeps."

Noticing Camilla's quiet and Tom's enigmatic air, she said sharply, "What is it, chicks? You didn't quarrel, did you? You've both had very tough experiences and I suppose your nerves were on edge. I shouldn't have let you go off together. I suppose you worried the sore tooth."

"Where's George?" said Tom rudely.

"Upstairs asleep. I have me orders not to wake him. He says he doesn't want to hear me post-mortems. He telephoned me, though, bless his heart. At the office, twice. Bless the lad. And you go, too, Tom lad. You look all in."

Tom took his dismissal.

"We had a lovely day. It's so long since I had a day off," said Camilla.

He smiled, and went without a word.

Nellie looked quickly at them both and when Tom had gone, began in an undertone, anxious, "Are you sure? Ah, I'm afraid I was wrong leaving you to turn over the blotted pages of life together."

"Oh, it was glorious, Nellie."

"You must excuse the poor lad, he's not himself. He's been twisted. The thoughts of the past are aching in his mind. It's moral neuralgia. I hope he didn't tread on your feelings, Camilla. He can be cruel and hurtful. You're such a sensitive plant."

This was so unlike anything she had heard in her life before, for she was a stalwart woman, that Camilla smiled.

Nellie took in the smile and hurried on, "No woman can mean anything to him, poor lad. It's the empty corridor of time he faces; and only the footsteps of ghosts in it."

She sighed, "Love is an empty shell to him. You pick up a shell on the beach and listen to its singing. But the shell is dead. To have nothing, Camilla! A life spent in sighing and longing. And what I taught him, to look inwards, the healthy introspection, the facing facts, she took away from him. She made him a buffoon dancing in a hall of mirrors. She tried to cut him off from reality to make him her lapdog. I can't take it!"

She jumped up, twisting in her misery. She controlled herself and sat down, saying earnestly, "No wonder the thought of death attracts him. It's a comfort when life has betrayed you. There's an end to the shame and flapdoodle! But he's light-minded. He can't hold to a single truth. That's why I'm glad he has you. You're solid. You've put that foolishness of sex behind you. You're not interested in hoaxing romance. Aye, you're good for him, salutary, a good cold bath for a neurotic fool. But can ye understand it, Camilla, love, now you've seen the boy? He was a truthful, simple-hearted boy, so fair-minded, guileless. When I had him. Oh, he was mine, Camilla; his sister's. Ah, it's the bloody dames, Camilla, taking the meek, poor-spirited boys and using them. Aye, but why do I talk to you about it? You know. Aye, you know. He's been talking to you about it, has he?"

"No."

"No? No, it's a sealed-up life. No, it's rare for him to make friends. No, it isn't that that worries me. It's the harpy that'll be after him next. The lad's weak, he's a nonresister. It's almost a principle with him. Life happens to me, he says. But what did you talk about then, Camilla?"

Camilla became animated; a delightful smile appeared as she told Nellie about the stoats and asps. She became self-forgetful. Nellie listened frowning and her glossy feathers lay down flat and dull. A deep silence settled in her; she became motionless. Camilla began to laugh in her deep southern voice, her splendid statuesque body became that of a living woman, a woman of maternal and sexual passions, the deep-throated woman who could, who would love insensately, "What strange things happen to him! He has only to look out of the window. He's a poet, a singer. I listened to him all day. I can still hear his voice, a thin penetrating voice you can't forget. I felt so much happier. I think it's this voice. I can hear it now. I can see why women fall in love with him: he's delightful. I love him myself. I see why you love him. I don't love him like you, Nellie. It is just a feeling, a simple sort of pleasure. Were you there when the two hundred starving people went down to the Soviet ship in the Tyne for a meal and they all thought themselves invited by Tom, because he knew the engineer and the engineer told him to come for a meal and bring a friend?"

She laughed aloud, seeing the amazing incident again, as Tom had told it. Nellie muttered.

Camilla continued, "But Nellie, he is not empty at all. He is strange, not like other men. He makes you feel like a child at a picnic."

Nellie sat in perfect silence.

"You have shaped him, Nellie; and what he is to you, he is, in shape, to other women. He made me happy. That is his charm. Marion wasn't a spider. She wanted the happiness he can give."

After a while, Nellie roused herself to say quietly, "I have never heard these stories. I am surprised."

"Doesn't he tell you?"

"No, you see, we talk about intellectual things."

"The feeling Tom gives a woman is altogether unselfish. I can't get over the impression—this story of his tenderness, compassion, sacrifice and his love for Marion. This is a beautiful thing."

Nellie sat still.

"I understand your love for him. You love him, don't you?" said Camilla with a note of surprise.

"Naturally, we were close. I didn't think about loving him. It was something deeper, a communion; that comes only once in a life, if it comes at all. He could never have with anyone else what he had with me. We don't have to talk or tell anecdotes. We have a perfect understanding."

Tom now reappeared in a blue paisley-figured dressing gown, blue leather slippers and a scarf. He had settled his hair, shaved; his face was a smooth rose and white; his eyes were wide open, as those of a child. He sat down at one side of the fire smiling at them, sitting bolt upright and appearing to await some comment upon his looks. But Nellie did not notice them. She smoked, flicked ashes and drank tea. Tom's changed appearance, his childish complexion checked Camilla; she did not understand it. Nellie noticed her feelings and her clever mouth twisted into a smirk. She softened and began to unwind the speech she had got ready for them.

In a murmurous voice, she began, "It's so cosy and warm, why, it's lovely having you together. I'm glad you had a good talk. The world's shut its curtains against you. You drop into the wayside inn and there for a moment you have a few words with a fellow traveler. It's all there is, but it's warming. And then the lonely road. But it's the heart-cheering moment. It's wonderful that you two could have an hour together by a stranger's fire. You've watched the lonely black sky together, and felt adrift. And you know that destiny is individual. Destiny is loneliness. It's mysterious and no one can share it. No one can shed his blood for you, no one can die for you, no one can live for you. It's the final truth. It's single blessedness to the end. There's no marriage in death; it's a stark commentary on our sham passions. They're sideshows on the lonely road. Eh, it's wonderful for me, chicks, it makes me humble, to meet two clear-eyed people like you, who do not believe there are any bargains in Vanity Fair. The lonely road, leading right through Vanity Fair. That's a freezing thought! What beautiful souls you are, like saints, like hermits! Eh, I'd like to have your courage. I'd get myself a canvas house, like the watchman on the roadworks, my brazier, my tent, my bunk, my black tea, sitting up all night, musing and thinking; that's my ideal existence. Nothing but the wind blowing, the blackness—that's the reality. You've got such a terrible thing hanging over you both—I thought it would be a good thing for you to talk it out. Aye, I was glad I arranged the trip. I thought you'd help each other.

You didn't mind me bringing you together, then? Did you have a little talk, then Tom?"

"We talked quite a bit," said Tom.

"Did you, pet?"

She sat leaning forward, elbow on sharp knee, smoking and musing, quite serious now. The others, like lovers between whom something has been decided, sat still, just glanced at each other.

She remarked at length, "Aye, mankind isn't consistent. It's fine people like you and Tom who are consistent. That's how we live; we're inconsistent. But you fine, sensitive, unselfish souls that have left your great passion behind you are better than the rest of us. You're superior. We've got nothing to teach you. You belong to another race. You've gone away beyond us. You can never come back. Your voices will speak to us from another place."