Return to Night: A Novel

  “But—but this is absolute hell. What can we do? I can’t go round telling everyone that we—that I—”

  “No, darling, it would be a little embarrassing. Have you still got that engagement notice you wrote out for the paper? You were right, you see, and I was a fool. We’d better have it in the social column now, it’s more conspicuous than the other. That should be enough to give them a line.”

  “Yes,” he said, “of course.” She could see that his mind was not there in the room at all. Made cruel by the unspoken thought between them, she added, “It doesn’t mean you have necessarily to marry me, you know. After a decent interval, we can always break it off.”

  He looked at her, then. What she saw pierced her bitterness, and reached her in spite of herself. She said, “Darling, I know. I didn’t mean it. Of course I know:” and, a moment later, her confused emotions focusing absurdly, “For heaven’s sake, take off that awful coat.”

  He got out of it, mechanically, and threw it over her swivel chair. Suddenly rousing himself, he said, “God almighty, what must you think of me? It’s all come so quickly, I—Listen. Never think, because it’s happened like this, that—I can’t say it, you know what I mean. I love you more than I ever did, more than at the beginning. You must often have thought—” He paused; she saw a look in his face that she had seen before, though for a moment she could not remember when; the awkward shyness of one who must find words for what the best people do not say. “You see, one’s always known it would come to the same thing, in a month or two.”

  She stared at him, questioningly, her mind entangled with the present; he went on, not looking at her, “I forget if I told you, I was in the University Squadron, and passed the tests and things. I rather got into the way of keeping it under my hat, because of trouble at home, and—oh, well, you know; I mean what’s the point? What I mean is, I don’t suppose they’ll actually wait till the balloon goes up before they get us in. Any time now, I should say.”

  Feeling her fingers tighten on his coat, he went on, with an air of deeper apology, “I kept thinking, the last war brought her a pack of trouble; it seemed a pity to add anything on. But even so, if there’d been time to feel one could get anywhere—I had a letter from Chris, the other day; someone’s going to read one of his plays. But, as he says, if they decide now to put it on they probably won’t in the end, and if they do, by that time he isn’t likely to be there to see it, and the whole thing feels a bit like make-believe. Well, that’s no excuse. I oughtn’t to have said that. One ought just to go on regardless; only, as Chris says, a bit quicker. He’s started another play. I’m sorry; forget it. Now this has happened, I’m glad it has. One can go on forever, thinking and getting nowhere. Now it’s settled. We can go ahead.”

  “I love you. … I’m sorry I wouldn’t marry you when you wanted. I wasn’t only thinking of myself.”

  “I know. You’re too good for me, you know that.”

  “Julian, don’t.”

  “Why not? That’s the whole thing about it, really. It always has been.”

  Longing for some escape, however brief, from this moment, she searched her mind for something different to speak of; and she thought of asking whether he had heard yet from Padraic Finnigan. But she did not ask; she knew that she had just been told the answer. She said, “If you feel like coming to see me, tonight, do. I’ll leave the doors for you.”

  “Thanks. … If I don’t turn up, don’t think it’s because things have hung fire again. That won’t happen, now.”

  “I know.” This was true. She was certain, now; not of a lover, of a schoolboy who knew the rules. It was time to own up and take one’s beating, when someone else was being put on the mat. Now that it was gone she scarcely felt it, the victory on which it had seemed that everything depended, and its shadow slid from her opened hands. She kissed him, feeling that it was he who grieved for it, who thought she had been cheated of her rights. What she herself was thinking was that if she had not teased him about Lisa he would like her better, and that would have helped. But at school too, she remembered, it was often liable to be someone for whom one didn’t much care.

  “When we’re married,” he said, “I’ll make up to you for all this.”

  She smiled at him. “When we’re married, I won’t turn you out of bed at four in the morning.”

  “That’s definitely a thought.” Both of them felt that this was a moment to be seized. He let her go, and picked up his coat. “It must be teatime. Let me give you some, somewhere, before you go back. Look, I tell you what; let’s start being dashingly blatant straight away, and have it at the Crown. We’ll sit at the middle table, and exchange flaming glances when everyone’s looking. Come on.”

  Chapter Eighteen: A LONG-KEPT SECRET

  THE CURTAINS WERE STILL OPEN; the last of the sunset was fading from thin green into pewter. From its source in a city where encircling brick had made it already night, flying through the dusk to be re-created in its little cage of walnut and glass and wire, the voice read on:

  “To the beauty of earth that fades in ashes,

  The lips of welcome, and the eyes

  More beauteous than …”

  “Another cup of coffee, dear? … Oh, were you listening? Never mind, it’s still quite hot.”

  “Till once again the witch’s guile entreat him.

  But, worn with wisdom, he

  Steadfast and cold, shall choose the dark night’s

  Inhospitality.”

  The cage, for a moment untenanted, purred and crackled softly to itself. Outside, two starlings clashed over a roosting place, swore shrilly, and were abruptly silent.

  “That concludes this evening’s reading, which was from the poetry of Walter de la Mare. We are now taking you over to the New Rialto Cinema, Hackney, for a …”

  “Turn it off, dear, will you, before it has time to begin?”

  “… Song Hits of Yesteryear.”

  “Julian. Do please wake up and stop that horrible noise.”

  “Oh, sorry.” The heaving tremolo faded and clicked out.

  “I thought you were listening, but if you could sit through that—Are you well, my dear? You’ve been daydreaming terribly this evening.”

  “Yes, of course, thanks. I was just thinking. Is there any coffee to spare?”

  “My dear boy, I offered you some only a moment ago. You’re not very good company tonight, are you? I spent such a dull afternoon at the Harpers’ and now I want to be entertained. Come and sit down here and tell me what you’ve been doing. Did you get to the bottom of the trouble with Tony’s car?”

  “You’d never do that. It’s beyond everything but first aid.”

  “I must say he seems very incompetent with it himself. It was lucky for him that Dr. Mansell happened to pass. I didn’t know they knew one another; the family have always gone to Dr. Dundas.”

  “I suppose they’ve met somewhere.” He stirred his coffee. Now, he thought. Now.

  She had come to the end of the ball of wool with which she was working, and was splicing it carefully to another: soft, white rabbit wool for the edging of a bed jacket. The jacket was pale green; her dress, on which it lay, of stiff brown silk, falling composedly to the ground.

  She had almost finished her business with the wool. There would still be time to change the subject before she could pursue it. But he had vowed to himself to accept the first signal that offered; if he refused one, he would refuse them all. He had had as it was to let one pointer go, for it would have been an impossible start, owing to a lie; besides, she might think he had been put up to it, she would want to think that. But now—He finished his coffee, framing it in his head: I’d rather you didn’t talk about her like that, Mother, because I’ve been seeing a good deal of her lately, and—

  “Do you know, Julian, what I’ve been thinking?”

  “No?”

  “That this year we might turn the path by the south wall into a rock garden.”

  “It sh
ould look pretty good. What about the pear tree?”

  “It’s getting old; it never bears well now. Mrs. Layton says their rock garden’s so overgrown that she could spare us quite a number of things, for a beginning. It’s not a thing I should care to tackle alone; but then, why have tall sons if one doesn’t make use of them?” Her fingers, light and cool, rested for a moment against his cheek. “Just take a look at the Radio Times, and see if there’s anything we might like to hear when this thing is over.”

  “A music hall, on the Regional. I’ll try Daventry if you like; there’s some Shakespeare. Taming of the Shrew—” He found himself adding, with deliberate emphasis, “Good Lord!”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “A man’s producing it that I know.”

  “Someone you knew at Oxford, you mean?”

  He felt a kind of giddiness which was not of the senses, a terrified exhilaration like the moment in his first solo when he discovered the undercarriage to have left the ground. What had made him do it this way, of all ways? But it was done. He had given himself the signal. It had begun.

  “Yes. He was assistant producer in the Dream. When I was Oberon.”

  Silence. He looked up. She was bent over her crochet hook, quietly working. What answer, beyond silence, could he have foreseen? Silence, and the dark night’s inhospitality. The solitude enclosed him, familiar, yet strange; for this was the first time he had ever bidden it to him.

  “I’m glad,” he said, finding his voice not much different, “that Johnny’s got his foot in somewhere. He was good all round. By the way, he did a quite handy line in photography. Did I ever show you the one he did of me? In the play, I mean?”

  The needle jerked evenly on. “No, thank you, Julian. If I’m to see a photograph of you, I prefer one as you are, not striking attitudes with a painted face.”

  Now he knew the point to which they were moving; to which he had known always that they must first return when the time came. He had forgotten this certainty, but it had directed him. His mouth felt dry, and the palms of his hands wet.

  “It was quite well painted. You couldn’t see it at all. Would that make you feel better about it?”

  “I’m afraid I shouldn’t be much interested, in any case. Will you ring for Clara, please, to mend the fire.”

  He went over to the coal box and picked up the tongs.

  “What I asked you to do, Julian, was to ring the bell.”

  “How do you think a woman feels, being rung for to shovel coal with a man looking on?”

  “I don’t think you’re quite yourself tonight. If you’d rather not stay here, I think I should prefer it too.”

  “I’ll finish the fire, shall I?” He picked out small lumps and placed them carefully. “I was just thinking, we haven’t discussed my future lately, have we? It struck me. seeing Johnny’s name, that perhaps he could get me something. Broadcasting’s very decent. Just a bodiless voice.”

  “I should rather go into it some other time. I can’t feel it would be very helpful this evening.”

  “It’s always some other time, isn’t it?” He took up a thin log and balanced it on top of the fire. He could feel the blood rushing to his face, the remembered sickness, as if it were happening now again. It was strange to discover it was not happening to the same person. “There’s something to be said for an announcer’s job. I mean, it’s safe. Nobody can wait for him to come off the air after his first broadcast and tell him”—he picked up the log by one end and thrust the other into the red of the fire—“that he’s got a cheap effect by exploiting his looks, which may be forgivable in a chorus girl but is revolting in a man. Or that he’s given an exhibition of self-conscious charm that made them want to sink through the ground with shame.”

  The ivory hook had stopped. “I told you, at the time, we would never refer to that again. Those are my wishes, Julian. Will you please respect them; you seem to have very little respect tonight for yourself.”

  “It’s taken me—what is it?—seven years, to collect the little I’ve got, starting from scratch. Didn’t it strike you at all that what you were talking about wasn’t something that had just happened; it was me; not now of course, there wasn’t anything left, I just had to begin again. I don’t think you know what that means.”

  “I know what it means, Julian, a great deal better than you do. Please don’t use these wild exaggerations; it’s hysterical, and it doesn’t impress me. If something’s happened to upset you, tell me about it straightforwardly. I should be sorry to let you go to bed in this state.”

  “It shouldn’t have upset me, of course, being sliced to nothing after my first proper part. Sort of thing one ought not to notice. But people do mind, in some extraordinary way.”

  He looked up; he could manage it now. As always when she shut him out, he could read nothing in her face except exclusion; yet he felt the surface brittle; unknown movements of the will were going on behind it.

  “I think I must take you to see Mr. Sanderson again. I’ve noticed, of course, that you’ve never been the same since that operation. I told Dr. Lowe so, but he considered that it was nerves and that it would be better to ignore it, so I said nothing. Try, please, to control yourself, and remember that you’re speaking about a little entertainment given by schoolboys, not about some important step in your career.”

  “You could hardly call it a step, I suppose; no.”

  “Since you’ve let yourself dwell on it, I’ll say this, and then we’ll talk of something else. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings; you should have known that I’ve always put your interests first. You know how delighted I was, for instance, when you were made a prefect, and when you got your House colors, don’t you?” She paused, commanding a reply. He forced himself to withhold it. As if he had answered, she said, “Well, then, you see. But this was quite different. It was a cheap success of the wrong kind; it brought out traits in you which I’d always feared, and which I knew could bring nothing but misery to you or other people. It would have been mistaken kindness to encourage you, and very wrong. I was sorry to have to speak to you about it at a celebration, but I couldn’t let it pass. One can’t choose one’s own time.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about the timing,” he said slowly. “That was one hundred percent.” In a kind of detached incredulity, he heard his voice go on, “You didn’t meet Malcolm Blake, did you? No, of course, I was going to have brought him along afterward.”

  “I may have met him; I met a great many of your friends.” She picked up the crochet again.

  “Not Malcolm, he was finishing in the Sixth, we only got together over the play. He produced it, and took Hotspur.”

  “Oh, yes. I thought that was one of the younger masters.”

  “No, that was Malcolm. He knew his stuff all right. In fact he was the only person whose opinion was worth anything, and he’d been pretty decent to me, so I was rather keen to know what he thought. He came along just before I saw you, while I was changing.”

  “If he wasn’t satisfied with you, I dare say it was very disappointing. But doesn’t that bear out what I said?”

  “We never quite got around to that. He’d had a better idea in the meantime.”

  “Do say what you mean, Julian. I should like to get this discussion over.”

  “I was trying to put it delicately. But if you want it in words of one syllable, he just made what’s vulgarly known as a dirty pass.”

  Her hands sank into her lap. After so much calm, the horror in her face gave him a convulsive impulse to laugh. He said. “That isn’t the point of the story. I hadn’t got to it yet.”

  “Julian. I can’t believe—I simply can’t believe you should have kept such a thing from me. When I think that I left you in that horrible place for another two years—”

  “Well, it isn’t usual.”

  “Usual! I’m appalled beyond words that it should have happened at all.”

  “I mean, it isn’t usual to retail it at home along wit
h your batting average. You learn to cope with that sort of thing down in the Fourths. It was a bit of a jar coming from Malcolm, I admit, especially just then, and I suppose I let him see it. Anyhow, he told me I wasn’t worth the trouble he’d taken over me, and he’d always known he was a fool to do it. He was a bit wrought up, of course. I thought he meant it, at the time.”

  “He should have been expelled. It was very wrong of you not to tell me. A man like that should be stopped, before he has time to do harm.”

  “Who, Malcolm? He wasn’t a man like that, he’d gone a bit temperamental over the play. I doubt if the idea had ever occurred to him before that afternoon. However, if it does you good to know, I hit him as hard as I could.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.”

  “Yes, I thought you would be. He could have beaten me up one-handed, but he just gave me a look and walked out. It was his last day, I never saw him again. Well, that disposed of Malcolm. After that I had a shower and dressed, and came round to see you. Taking one thing with another, you can imagine all that about chorus girls and flashy charm went down pretty big with me.”

  He got up from beside the fire, straightened himself, and waited. He had rehearsed it so often, though differently, in his mind, never for a moment believing that he would ever play it. He knew that, even now, a black wall would be split and light would enter, if after all she would take it back.

  “I hope it was a lesson to you, Julian.”

  He looked at her. At last he said carefully, “You mean you’re still quite happy about it, you don’t regret it at all?”

  “‘Happy’ is a very frivolous and cruel word to use. I scarcely know you this evening; I can’t imagine who’s been influencing you. I suppose it must be this Communist you know in London, who sent you that play you were ashamed to let me read.”