The Lonely (5 page)

There Jerry had had a sudden inspiration, and, inventing a general and a mission, he chivvied a fusty, wing-collared old clerk in the booking-office into parting with two tickets on the Glasgow sleeper, while Patches stood by in open-mouthed admiration at the beautiful lies Jerry was telling.

When the train came they discovered that their tickets called for two bare shelves out of four in a third-class cabin complete with one piece of sheetless ticking, a thin blanket, and a bare pillow the size of a book and the same consistency. Also the compartment had two other occupants: a gabby little bagman from Glasgow, with a suitcaseful of apples and tomatoes that he insisted upon sharing with them, and a fat minor official of the Ministry of Information, who lay precariously upon his shelf and snored to wake the dead.

Patches maintained that it was the booking-clerk’s revenge upon Jerry for the outrageous stories he had told, and dissuaded Jerry from getting off the train and having his life. The M.o.I. man woke up and informed Jerry he was lucky to get the space at all, and that they always booked four people into a third-class sleeper, and usually everybody got on capitally. Jerry was genuinely shocked, and denounced the system as immoral until Patches fell to giggling again and caught his eye, and he blushed and put her to bed on the lower shelf with his blouse under her head and chmbed on to the upper himself.

He lay there in the darkness, listening to the clanking of the train, the occasional anguished shriek of the locomotive, and the incredible snoring of the M.o.I. official. It was a dreadful journey, for neither closed an eye, and the train pulled into Glasgow six hours late.

And so they came to spend their first night alone together in the tall, bare bedroom of the grimy, awful railway hotel. Because they were in the toils of exhaustion when they reached the shabby room, there was no embarrassment between them at the loss of their privacy and the sudden exposure to each other, for of course the room had no bath attached, but only a cracked washstand in an alcove at one end.

Somehow they managed, even though they were awkward and heavy-handed with the need for sleep, but concerned only with seeking the warmth and the depths of the great, heavy, bolstered double bed, which at least looked as though it might yield a little comfort and rest.

When Patches came to Jerry she was in a nightdress of washed-out flannel, and somehow she had managed to weave her hair into two dun-colored braids. She smelled of hotel soap and mouthwash and freshly ironed cloth—and young girl.

At once, and with the simplicity born of her nature and the fatigue of the trip, she came close to him and pillowed her head on his breast with a sigh and a little, tired whimper. A moment later she relaxed her limbs, and her regular breathing told Jerry that she was asleep. He was hardly awake himself.

The pungent odor of soft-coal smoke, pressed to earth by rain, filled the chamber, and the damp drizzly night was loud with the chuffing and snorting of switch engines from the near-by railway, the thunder and crash of shunting wagons, and the high, wailing shrieks of locomotive whistles. Jerry was sure he heard none of it, but he was to find later that never again would he be able to sniff the characteristic odor of train sheds or hear the clattering of couplings and the nostalgic wailing of engines in the night without thinking of Patches.

They went from Balloch to Inversnaid up Loch Lomond by paddle-steamer, with their bicycles aboard.

Here, on the broad, deep-blue surface of the lake, dotted with green islands, there was no war. There was not even an airplane anywhere overhead, and the graceful peak of Ben Lomond, freed from its usual mantle of mist, lifted to the summer sun and with its bold sweep seemed to raise their spirits up with it to the sky.

The past was overwhelmed by the clear beauty of the scene, the sunlight sparkling on the lake and shining from the green-and-purple hills, the clean, sweet air. Places from which they had come, things that had happened to them, had no existence. This was the world, serene and lovely, and they its sole inhabitants.

They stood at the railing, drinking in the air and the beauty, and Terry raised up his arms and said: “God! I want to holler!”

“We’d better!” said Patches. “One—two—three . . .” and they hollered, until the other passengers on the boat turned and stared at them, and three RAF kids came over and said: “I say, that’s jolly good. Do you mind if we join you?” and they all shouted together.

There was a piper aboard, and he played Highland music that Jerry found wonderfully exciting and that brought a new kind of gleam to Patches’ eyes and a straightening of her little back. They lunched for two and six on cold ham and boiled potatoes and some cheese, and drank two bottles of the warm, bitter ale, the flavor of which had somehow come to mean “England” to Jerry.

At Inversnaid the country had grown wild and wooded, and the queer dots they had seen on the hillsides from the boat turned out to be sheep with long, silky white coats and coal-black faces. Just before the steamer docked they passed a waterfall creaming over black rocks splitting a green glen, and Patches hugged Jerry’s arm and said: “Oh, Jerry, tomorrow, may we go there and just sit together and listen?”

They were given a room together in the hotel overlooking Loch Lomond after Jerry had signed the register: “Lieutenant and Mrs. Gerald Wright,” while Patches wandered away and examined the stuffed salmon and deer head on the walls so as not to feel the little pang of hurt that would come when she saw him write it. She would admit not the least shadow of pain to spoil the beauty of being with Jerry.

The next morning the change had taken place in them. They breakfasted in their room and then dressed and went out to seek the falls they had seen from the boat the day before.

Neither spoke very much, but they were no longer apart in their silences. They stayed now with their fingers intertwined, or with Patches leaning her body close to Jerry to feel the comfort of the touch of his limbs, or sometimes rubbing her head softly against his shoulder like a kitten, or just leaning it there contentedly as they sat on the rocks at the bottom of the glen, watching the falling water together and listening to the music of its descent. It seemed as though each stream or jet of glistening black water or boiling spume played its individual melody in the harmony of the softly thunderous symphony and mingled with the turmoil and the music in their hearts.

Later in the day they walked north through flowering rhododendron bushes to look for Rob Roy’s Cave, a cleft in the mountain with a barely perceptible entrance where the famous outlaw was supposed to have concealed himself from the English.

The entrance was carpeted with moss and tiny rock flowers, and there was a humming of bees all about. Jerry said: “Do you suppose it’s really true that he hid in there?”

Patches knelt down and tilted her head sideways to look in. “Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? Did you know he was a distant, distant kinsman of mine? A long time ago we were MacGraeme, and the MacGraemes were related to the MacGregors. I’m supposed to have MacGraeme eyes.”

Jerry said: “Let me see them, Patches,” and knelt too and looked into them. It was cool and dark in the deep glen, and there were depths reflected in Patches’ eyes that moved Jerry, and he saw beauties there that he had never seen before. They were together in a country whose mystery and romance stirred him. It was as if a kind of mantle of fantasy had descended upon the slim shoulders of Patches, as though she were cloaked with the mystic antiquity of the long-dead hero to whom she was distant kin and who once might have knelt, tense and harried, on the same wild, green carpet . . .

He said: “Why, Patches! They’re beautiful,” and leaned over and kissed her.

The next day they pushed their bicycles up the ridge on the old coach road and cycled past ruined castle and turquoise-hued Loch Arklet, their baggage strapped to the rear of their wheels, on to Stronachlachar on Loch Katrine, and from there rode on southwards along the banks of the wild lake and the dark, firred clump known as Ellen’s Isle, where once lived the “Lady of the Lake,” rising mysteriously from its surface, and thence onward to the paradise of the Trossachs.

Their way led them from bare, rugged uplands covered with purple heather and thistle to valleys where steep basalt cliffs alternated with bright-green woods of birch and oak. It was in the uplands that they turned a corner and came face to face with their first wild Highland cattle, great, noble steers with huge, spreading horns, six feet from tip to tip, and proud eyes, their fierceness tempered by a silly set of bangs that came down over their forehead and made them look like movie stars.

Patches said: “Why, it’s Greta Garbo,” but Jerry was fascinated with them. He said: “Those pictures I’ve seen of those old drinking-horns—so that’s where they got them! What a country! I wouldn’t have missed this trip for anything. I’ll never forget it.”

They rode on with high hearts until, thinking of his lightly-spoken, boyish words, Patches fought against the edges of the shadow again. “I’ll never forget it,” Jerry had said. And in that moment of weakness she knew how deeply she yearned to have him say: “I’ll never forget
you,
Patches,” just to hear him say it, to have had the words spoken so that she could treasure and cherish them in her heart long after he had forgotten her.

They stayed in the beautiful Trossachs Hotel by Loch Achrey, to rest and play and steep themselves in the beauty of the surroundings, and Jerry wheedled a whole bottle of priceless Scotch whisky, to carry with them for emergencies, from the barmaid.

But the next night, with no warning, Jerry fell victim to an attack of the combat flyer’s megrims, which made it necessary for him to get drunk, quickly and completely . . .

This was the black mood of baffling melancholy and sinking despondency that would seize him without warning, laying a gloomy hold upon his young spirit and darkening it beyond endurance.

It had to do with the horrors that lay behind the “team” and the “game,” neighboring ships in the flight exploding appallingly and spinning earthward trailing flame, smoke, and debris, the sound of the gasping of hurt men, and the void left by friends who failed to come back.

There was too an inescapable pity that welled in the hearts of these boys who were not by nature destroyers. It could be repressed, or temporarily obliterated, by their harassed, adaptable, tough young minds, but it could not remain stifled forever.

As always, it began with a thought, some memory or association, and then a reliving of some dreadful moment that touched off a powder train of others that followed inevitably, leading to culminating horrors, the contemplation of which he could not bear. He could not fight them off, and he had not yet learned to rationalize or explain them. Hence there was nothing for him to do but get drunk quickly before the ultimate in darkness and despair was reached.

They had been sitting together in a corner of the lounge after dinner, laughing over the attempts of the group of Scotch and English trippers—soldiers on leave in bulky tweeds, with their wives, Naval officers, rich refugees from the bomb-torn south, gnarled-looking natives in rough clothes—to understand an American comedy programme that was being rebroadcast over the radio, when Jerry suddenly tossed off his drink with a queer, nervous jerk and poured out another with a kind of desperate immediacy that struck Patches to the heart. His hand shook when he carried it to his lips.

She saw his eyes and the remote horror that had suddenly come into them so swiftly, and her warm heart reacted at once. She said: “Jerry—something hurts you. Jerry, what is it?”

He didn’t answer her, did not even seem to know her. Patches had never seen him like this before, and yet the urgency of his movement in drinking had struck a chord of understanding within her. They were of the same generation and had known the same battlefield. Whatever it was that tortured him, she knew he needed help, and that quickly.

Silently she filled his glass for him, and when he had emptied it, filled it once more. She continued to do this until Jerry slumped forward, his head on the table. Then with her eyes she picked up two pink-cheeked sailors sitting at the next table. They felt the impulse of her need and got up and came over.

“Anything we can do to ’elp yer, miss?”

“I want to get him upstairs . . .”

The two sailors, with the air of experts who had done this before, steadied Jerry between them and walked him out of the lounge while the occupants stared but made no comments. They got Jerry up to the room, where one of the sailors remarked: “Your Yank’s ’ad a bit too much, eh, miss?”

Patches replied: “Haven’t we all?”

The two went away and left her alone with Jerry. She undressed him and put him to bed, and then remained sitting through the night, watching over his heavy breathing, holding his hand, and wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. Not until morning, when he relaxed and entered peaceful sleep, did she join him to rest herself.

Later, when they awoke and went out to meet what the new bright day had to offer, neither spoke of the episode. It was as though it had never happened, and Jerry’s old ebullience manifested itself in the suggestion that they ride out three miles to the Pass of the Cattle and climb Ben Venue. But Patches thought she felt a new tenderness in Jerry towards her that had not been there before.

It was on their return from Ben Venue, where they had lingered too long, that their little adventure befell them.

It was just a small adventure, when they made a wrong turning and were overtaken by darkness and a bitter Highland storm that came roaring out of the north, drenching, blinding and chilling them.

Soaking and freezing, they floundered along, walking their bicycles in the pitch blackness, until Patches’ continued silence alarmed Jerry, and he stopped and reached for her in the darkness, and alarm turned in him to fear. Patches was in trouble.

He felt it from the way she clung to him. Her body, when he took her in his arms, was shaking with chill, and her teeth were chattering so she could not speak to him. She had been heated from the mountain climb and the subsequent ride, and now the light cycling-jacket she had worn over her thin blouse hung in soaked folds about her. Jerry knew it was imperative she be taken some place where it was dry and warm.