Return to Night: A Novel

  The steam rose sluggishly; to fill in the time, and to recover some of her self-esteem, she went up to her bedroom, attended to her face, and put on a dress she had bought in town the week before, a dark-green one with gilt accessories which made the best of her fair skin and reddish-brown hair. The kettle was ready when she came down, and the tea diffused its usual comfort; the solace of middle-age, she thought mournfully, conveniently forgetting that it had tasted just as good after school hockey. She picked up a novel, and was turning it vaguely when the doorbell rang.

  She got up quickly to answer it, walking loudly across the hall so that Lisa would know there was no need to disturb herself. She opened the door.

  “Hullo,” said Julian. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be in.”

  He gave a shy, characteristic smile which almost at once became mechanical; he was looking at her as if he had expected someone different. Her own emotions, which had made her feel quite ill in the first moment of seeing him, steadied at once. She could feel that the accident of her opening the door herself, or perhaps of her dress which was more sophisticated than the things she generally wore, had overset some expectation in his mind like a muffed cue. It made her forget everything except the desire to see him relaxed and easy again.

  “I’m having a late tea,” she said. “You’re just in time to finish it with me.”

  “No, but you’re all dressed up. Are you going out? I won’t stop if it’s keeping you.”

  He was looking at her with something like awe. It occurred to her that almost every time they had met, he had burst in on her when she was in her working-clothes, or she had been dressed for driving.

  “No, I’m not going out. As a matter of fact, I’ve just come in.” She led him through to the sitting-room. “Make yourself some toast; there’s plenty of hot water.’

  He settled down on the rug with the toasting-fork; she felt sure that he had curled himself up with the same instinctive grace, and the same innocence of pose, in front of his study fire at school. It had occurred to her before that for him beauty of movement was not a visualized thing but a sense of inner well-being; it evinced a kind of pleasure, but a purely personal one, like that of eating or sleeping. The professional stage would, sooner or later, inevitably give him the kind of self-consciousness of which now he seemed wholly free. The anticipation saddened her.

  “I saw you this afternoon,” he said. “You didn’t see me.” He held the toast away from the fire, looked at it, and turned it over.

  As simple as that. “Oh, were you in Cheltenham too? Or did we pass on the road?”

  “You were choosing yourself a frock in a window on the Promenade. Is that it you’re wearing?”

  “No, they were a hideous lot.” She laughed.

  “I didn’t run after you because Mother had a train to catch. So t thought I’d come round now, on the chance. It seems such a long time since I saw you.”

  “Is Mrs. Fleming away, then?”

  “Yes. We generally fix things to go away together—it’s awkward about the house, and so on—but one of her sisters has lost a husband—I mean he’s dead—and she’s gone there for a week, and of course they don’t want to be bothered with me, so I’m sort of knocking around on my own. I’m supp—I’m probably going to town part of the time, to stay with a man I know there. Man called Tranter, he was up with me.”

  He brought this out with a disjointed kind of haste, and overearnest attention to the toast. Hilary reflected that for a woman with Mrs. Fleming’s high regard for the conventions, it seemed an odd arrangement to have left him alone in the house with the maids. She said, “I hope you’re a good housekeeper.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll be all right. I’ve brought a lot of food back with me. Will you have this, and I’ll toast some more?”

  “No, I’ve finished; it’s for you. Here’s your tea.”

  “Oh, thanks. I’m sort of camping at home really, rather fun. The staff’s on holiday.”

  “Really?” said Hilary curiously. Convention, then, was satisfied but this seemed more unlike Mrs. Fleming than ever. Probably someone was coming in from the village by the day to “do” for him; but even so—

  “Yes. Safety first, and so on. Mother has it fixed firmly in her mind that if we’re all left alone together one of them will seize the opportunity to start a love child and blame it on me. Quaint, isn’t it? Particularly if you’ve seen them.”

  He took a large mouthful of toast, having delivered himself with a carelessness which thinly concealed bravado. She could almost overhear him thinking that, after all, other people got away with remarks of this kind. All the same, he had gone a little pink.

  “But who’s looking after you, then?”

  “Oh, I’m not that helpless. Good Lord, under canvas I’ve peeled spuds and washed up for thirty. And it’s not for long.”

  “No,” she said, “of course.” A suspicion had risen in her mind which she was doing her best to dismiss. There was certainly something different about him tonight. He looked both guilty and a little above himself. After a few minutes’ desultory talk, he got up and went over to the window.

  “I was thinking,” he remarked, “as I was coming along, that this is the best evening we’ve had this year. Listen to that blackbird. It’s so warm, it might be April almost.”

  “I know. All winter one longs for a day like this, and when it does come it’s too quick, and it leaves one gasping. Then when the light’s gone, one wonders how one didn’t enjoy it more.”

  “It isn’t really gone yet. Don’t you think, though, the evening’s the best time? I suppose you wouldn’t care to come out for a bit? We could park the car somewhere, and then walk.”

  … I can’t, I’m expecting a case. … It would be dark before we could get anywhere. … I think I’m really too tired. … The number of suitable replies was almost infinite. It would be a pity not to select the best. “Well—”

  In a little while Lisa would be coming down, presenting Rupert for dinner and for good manners’ sake, and both of them wishing her in Jericho. Julian turned, expectantly, from the window. He was standing quite easily and looking at her with the friendliest casualness. He was doing it very well. He had on a gray suit and a blue pullover.

  “We shouldn’t have time to get far,” she said.

  “We’d have time for a turn round to smell the air. Come along. It will do you good.” He offered this statement with great assurance, with positive heartiness.

  “All right,” she said. “Just for half an hour. It would be rather nice to get off the main roads. I’ll just get my coat.”

  When she got down Julian had lit a cigarette, and found himself a book from one of the shelves. He put it aside so abruptly that his ash, which must have been lengthening unheeded, fell between the pages as he closed them. It was one of her Penguin Shakespeares; when he slipped it back into place she saw that it was the first part of King Henry IV.

  “Oh, hullo,” he said. “Would you like to go anywhere special? Or shall we just follow our noses and see what comes?”

  “If you like. Somewhere high up.” This was a choice of phrase for which, next moment, she could have bitten her tongue; but he seemed to have noticed nothing.

  Outside the sky was cloudless, a delicate fading blue which deepened in the east, and in the west was still tinged with slant light from the mist-drowned sun. As always on such evenings of early spring, the earth seemed bent, like a child, on sitting up past bedtime. Birds which should have been roosting were singing still; in the rookeries, parliament was in full debate. The tops of the hills, from which the sunlight had just passed, were faintly luminous, as if a radiant film still clung to them like moisture after rain.

  They began almost at once to climb, taking at first the high Roman road which had been superseded now, for heavy traffic, by the new one that followed the valley. Julian had fallen silent, as he often did when he was driving. Looking at the horizon, she did not perceive for some time the speed at which nearer ob
jects were rushing past. At last, the tug of wind in her hair brought her attention nearer home. The speedometer was just passing seventy-five.

  At this hour it seemed to her a quite unjustifiable speed. She looked at Julian. He was driving with grave concentration, and an air of detachment that looked dangerously like abstraction. She felt she ought to reprove him, on principle; she was not, to her own vague surprise, in the least afraid, though she was a conservative driver herself. After all she said nothing, finding a pleasure in the passive committal of her life to the unknown quantity of his judgment and skill. They met nothing, and when the road began to dip at the end of the crest, he slowed down smoothly and switched the headlamps on.

  “I did once touch eighty, in this car. Not bad, seeing it’s more than five years old. Mind you, I bought it in very good shape, and I’ve looked after it. Funny, you can treble that in the air and just seem to be cruising. You didn’t mind, did you? My license is one hundred percent pure.”

  “Have you been flying, after all I told you?”

  “Not a word at home. You told me to wait till I’d seen Sanderson, and so I did. Good enough?”

  “Of course, if you’ve seen him.” She was a little hurl that he had told her only as an afterthought. “He was pleased with you, I take it?”

  “He seemed to be. He gave me a lot of very interesting advice and information. I was thinking, how about getting out and walking here?”

  He was backing the car off the road, as he spoke, into a sparse wood of larches. It had been much thinned, so that grass and a tangle of wild growth had space to flourish between the mats of needles under the trees. Their young shoots were out already. A bridle way led through them, meandering gently downhill, with an old board marked Private at its mouth.

  She said, “Yes, it looks a good place”; the drug of speed had made her blood sluggish, and almost deprived her of the wish to walk. “Aren’t we trespassing?”

  He put the ignition key in his pocket: something seemed to have amused him. “I shouldn’t worry. I’ve known the man it belongs to all my life.”

  They went through a five-barred gate, with hinges over grown as if it were never shut; along the ride the grass was very green, with a warren here and there velvet-cushioned with moss. The sun had set, but the dusk was iridescent and clear and it seemed to grow no darker. She saw that a half moon was up already.

  A rabbit bolted across the path. Julian said. “I used to have rather a good ferret, in the days of my youth. A yellow one, all the best ferrets are yellow. By the look of it, I ought to be getting another. They made an awful mess of the garden las’ year; and I’m a rotten shot.” He branched off into a long and somewhat labored anecdote about his school O.T.C. after which he fell silent, and twitched aimlessly at such twigs as extended themselves in his path. Silence descended again. Hilary was beginning to find it something of a strain. In another minute or so, she thought, she would suggest walking back to the car.

  Voices sounded; a village couple came into view, arm in arm and with clasped hands. In the moment of finding themselves seen, they stiffened self-consciously and looked straight ahead of them; then, clearly deciding to put a bold face on it, remained linked and went on talking with muffled decorum; or, rather, the man continued to talk and the girl to listen. When they passed, Julian loitered behind, breaking off a sprig from a hazel bush, and, when Hilary looked round for him, examining it with a show of botanic interest.

  “Well, really, Julian,” she could not keep from remarking, “I hope it was worth the trouble.”

  He caught her up, looking a little sheepish; then threw the twig away, and grinned. “As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. He was just telling her a good back answer he’d worked off on someone earlier in the day.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t he? He probably can’t afford to marry her for years. You needn’t be so high-hat about it.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Julian meekly. “I was only thinking.”

  “Trespassing seems to be pretty general about here.”

  “It’s a sort of a right of way. We close it once a year, the usual thing. … Haven’t you found out yet where we are?”

  He pointed down through a gap in the trees. She had never seen the house from behind and had glimpsed it several times, already, without recognition.

  “How stupid, I’ve no sense of locality at all. I didn’t know your land went up this way. And we came so fast.”

  She had exaggerated her surprise a little to please him. He stood staring down at the house as if he did not see it.

  “It’s nearer than it looks, the slope’s deceptive. Why didn’t you tell me last year that you resurrected me when I was as good as dead?”

  “I? My dear, I didn’t operate on you. I wasn’t even assisting.”

  “Yes, I know all about that. ‘A couple of hours’ delay in diagnosis, with the rapidly increasing intracranial pressure’”—he had given, it seemed unconsciously, a colorable imitation of Sanderson’s teaching voice—“‘but in the case we have here, early recognition of the signs, drowsiness, falling pulse rate-er-depression of the respiratory center’—or something like that. He didn’t bother to tell me any of it, of course, just threw it away upstage to a couple of students he’d brought in to admire me. I was only exhibit A, I didn’t have to say anything. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “But there was nothing to tell. Considering the training I’d had, if I hadn’t recognized the condition I shouldn’t have been fit to be at large. Fancy your picking up all that stuff.”

  “I’m a quick study. … You must have realized, the first time I met you, that—that I didn’t remember. I’d rather have known.”

  “It wouldn’t have been natural to tell you. One just doesn’t go telling patients that sort of thing.”

  “Patients?” he said, looking away.

  “Now you’re being silly. One has to stick to the rules, even with one’s friends. Besides, in my job it’s—well, it’s good form to take things in one’s stride. Being dramatic about them is just as much not done as it would be in your job to have a real operation on the stage.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve seemed to be theatrical.”

  “Oh, Julian, don’t be so infuriating.” She turned round to him, laughing, though she did not feel like laughter; but he had looked away again. “I only mean that in the nature of things we’re bound to see it in different proportions. Wouldn’t you rather I thought of you as a friend of mine than as a successful diagnosis? I hardly remember it, now, except incidentally as the way we happened to meet.”

  “I understood you the first time, you needn’t keep saying it. I realize you must be pretty well used to saving people’s lives and not getting thanked for it. But I’m not so used to being one of the people.”

  “Well, but as far as that goes I—” She stopped; she had been about to say, “I did get thanked for it.” It was making things no easier, she found, to know what was on his mind, for she could think out no possible means of meeting him half way. “You did thank me, several times. It’s so long ago, you’ve forgotten. Shouldn’t we be moving? It’s uphill all the way back.”

  “How could I have thanked you, when I never knew?” He paused; some strong internal strain had sharpened the outlines of his face. His mouth had straightened; he looked, for moment, older than his years. “Please don’t think hardly about it. You must have, of course. But people—You see, Mother’s done everything important for me, all my life. My father was no good. He walked out on her, quite soon after I was born. She’s never told me that, but you know how one picks things up, out of the air. When he was killed he hadn’t been home for two years, I do know that much. Not since my christening; and he was in France or Flanders all that time, so he must have done something else with his leaves. I don’t know who the woman was. I think she was on the stage. She must have been. It’s the only explanation that seems to fit everything.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Hilary helplessly. She too was convinced; it
was a theory that agreed with her own observation of Mrs. Fleming very well.

  “She wouldn’t like to think I knew this. She’s always been careful to say the right thing about him to me, but I think I’ve known ever since I remember. One just does. … What I think is, that when this business happened—last year, I mean—well, thinking it over, I suppose the idea of my owing my life to someone else while she stood around doing nothing, I suppose It was more than she could take. So she side-stepped it in her own mind, the way people sometimes do. There’s something about it in psychology, isn’t there?”

  The effort of speech, now that it was over, was making him breathe as fast as if he had been running. To Hilary it had been scarcely less painful. She said, “But of course. You were ill, you had a long convalescence. It was very sensible of her not to keep rubbing it in that you’d been in danger. Very likely Mr. Sanderson advised her not to; it often has a bad effect.”

  She was pleased with this improvisation, till she saw his face, and knew that he must have his own reasons for skepticism, which he could not declare. She felt no further capacity for bitterness about it, and only wished that Sanderson had kept his panegyrics to himself.

  She said, “Besides, you’re looking at it in the wrong way, and giving it a quite false importance. When people are worried to death, their minds don’t work along the ordinary tramlines. After it’s over, they want to forget everything and everyone connected with it. And so they should. Your mother’s been charming to me, in any case.”

  “That’s not the same thing. You know what I mean.”

  “You don’t know yourself. Tell me about that ferret you used to have.”

  “My God, do you have to treat me like a child?”

  “I’m sorry. But you’re being a bit difficult, you know.”