Woman in the Mirror

  She had closed the conservatory door on him when he left, but it now felt so stuffy and airless in the passage that she was reluctant to go up at once to her bedroom and lie between the sheets and try to sleep. So she went back into the conservatory and thence into the garden again, taking slow breaths of the cool scented air.

  Why had she not told him? Because without that fair and valid reason his fears for her safety looked a trifle disingenuous. If she went with him to his cottage tonight, however much he might succeed in persuading himself or in persuading her that it was really for her protection, they were likely to end by sleeping together. And if she deluded herself or him into supposing she thought different, she too was being disingenuous. If she went she couldn’t avoid it, and it was unlikely from her present feelings, that she would want to avoid it. So don’t go. Just at present don’t go. They had met three times. Something had flared between them. She didn’t know yet whether it was important or unimportant. But she didn’t at this juncture of her life want a casual love affair, however passionate. That it would be passionate she had no doubt at all; but she was being rushed by events; she needed longer, to think, to breathe in between, to consider, to take her time. She was sure of nothing and wanted to be sure.

  But also, even if there were some very small element of risk in her remaining here, she still wasn’t at all ready to leave. She had decided that this morning and saw no reason yet to change her mind. Too much had happened and too little was explained. Whatever the tragedy of seven years ago, this didn’t explain what was happening now. Even if Simon should be a schizophrenic, no one had suggested he had ever been violent. (Why, then, had he mentioned danger himself? Was it danger from some other source?)

  The moon had come out again and the garden was luminous with it. Where the light fell the shrubs were a snowy green; where the shadows lay it was azure-grey. Deep glooms existed as if whole areas had fallen away into some fathomless pit. Night animals stirred. She began to walk down towards the lake.

  A night like this perhaps seven years ago. Only a breeze stirring in the valley, but gales forecast around the coasts. The front door of the house open, shaded lights flickering, a big car at the door, an elderly maid standing, three figures going out: the young man she had seen in the photo in her room, with him a girl, Marion, slim, medium to tall, brown hair; they were carrying suitcases; at the wheel a tall fair man sitting angrily silent. In the car, the door shut, the motor started, dimmed headlights switched on and away. Over the mountains, winding through the night. The house silent, the maid abed. Then the following day the big car returning with Simon alone. Driving up to the door, climbing wearily out, back into the empty house . . .

  She stopped and looked back at the house. It was all in darkness except for one bedroom. She had never mastered its geography and had no idea who was not yet asleep. The animal bulk of Cader Morb blocked out all the sky to the north, the rock face here and there iridescent in the moonlight. It was about another fifty yards to the edge of the lake. She walked down, noticing that as she went lower so the tip of the crescent moon began to touch the nearest mountain.

  Why had Simon drawn a woman’s body floating in this lake? It was something else she had not told Christopher. The painting had quite deceived her, leading her to believe that Marion had been drowned here. Marion was too far away to come back every night from the Welsh coast to ride her rocking-horse again. What silly fancies came to one’s mind with the barest encouragement!

  Another silly fancy came to her mind at that moment and stopped her in her tracks. She could not give that thought room, otherwise there might really be danger, and it would be danger for her . . .

  By the edge of the lake there was less protection from the breeze, and the rushes whispered among themselves. There was a bit of an island in the middle on which Mrs Syme had planted something called gunnera manicata. In this light the giant leaves did not so much look like rhubarb as like the scales of an extinct lizard of enormous proportions squatting on the bank with its head turned towards her.

  She stood for a while, holding the cardigan to her throat, looking across the water, taking deep breaths, letting the breeze cool her heated face, willing her mind to empty itself of alarmist thoughts. It was curious how one could hypnotize oneself into terror with an absolute conviction of evil. Once when she was twenty she had thought herself gravely ill; every symptom corresponded precisely with the symptoms of the disease; she had the lot. A visit to a doctor blew it all away. Every symptom except one had a rational and healthy explanation, and that one was easy to cure. The ominous, the incontrovertible build-up was in her own mind.

  So now.

  The moon was in shipwreck. Half was sunk behind the mountain. She decided to wait until it had quite gone and then walk up to the house to see if she could catch a piece of its sinking over again. There was a rustling behind her and she would not turn, knowing it was the wind among the drying leaves of a tall pampas.

  What had Simon said last night when she had followed him into the drawing-room? Many strange things, but one among them stranger and nastier than the rest. But if he was mentally ill, then possibly nothing at all that he said should be taken seriously. Yet, if he had been released, the doctors must be satisfied that he was cured. But cured of what – of mental illness or of guilt . . . ?

  The pampas rustled again, and she thought she heard a footstep. What was it Keats had written? ‘The sedge has withered from the lake and no birds sing.’ Was she alone and palely loitering? Perhaps Christopher was still around, had come back to try to persuade her over again . . .

  She turned and a man stood right behind her. But it was not Christopher.

  II

  Simon said: ‘It’s you. I wondered who could be here so late.’

  The moon had almost gone. Its last light showed up his narrow taut face, the pale skin which had seen so little sun, the intense preoccupied eyes. She swallowed her heart and said: ‘I – came for a walk. The house – was stifling.’

  ‘Yes . . . in more ways than one.’ He put his head a little on one side, peering at her in the encroaching dark. ‘I come this way most nights. I always loved the lake – before it was cleared and ruined.’

  ‘Is that why the conservatory door was unbolted?’ Her voice, from the shock, was wavering, unsteady.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You came out that way?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Doole is a great one for locking doors. It’s a habit that grows on one.’

  She shivered, half involuntarily, half put on. ‘Well, I think I’ll go in now the moon has set.’

  ‘“The sedge has withered from the lake and no birds sing.” Wasn’t that what you were saying?’

  She stared. ‘Did I say it aloud?’

  ‘The barest whisper.’

  ‘You – must have been . . .’

  ‘I was standing immediately behind you.’

  ‘Yes . . . well, it just occurred to me.’ She moved to pass him.

  He said: ‘Don’t go. Not for a minute or so. The garden becomes more exciting in the dark.’ She stopped. ‘In the dark, I think, boundaries become frayed, one is more able to merge with inanimate things.’

  She did not speak but stood beside him while the last of the moonlight died and only the spiralling monument of cloud was lit.

  ‘Do you ever think of it?’

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘The separativeness of self-consciousness. Without it, all things seem to live and to be an equal part of creation. Perhaps if one pondered it sufficiently it would be an answer to the mystery of life and death.’

  ‘I don’t – follow.’

  ‘Well, isn’t it a question of accepting the complete oneness and absolute sentience of all creation? Sometimes I wonder that. You see, man, because of his defective sight and hearing, imagines himself a distinct and highly individual – and indeed superior – part of the universe; whereas if he didn’t or couldn’t use his eyes and his ears he’d perhaps come to realize
that he is, in mind, in body and in spirit, a part of an eternal pattern – d’you see what I mean? – one with it, woven into it, of the same texture throughout.’

  She moved a step or two and he moved with her.

  ‘It’s out of doors,’ he said, ‘that you come to realize that sentience isn’t confined to those categories of matter, those compositions of the carbon atoms, such as ourselves. Look at these stones.’ He kicked one. ‘Or that rock or those mountains – and of course in the sap of the tree, which pulses as surely as blood in the veins, the grass, the thrusting spear of grass, even the soft ground we tread on – in them all there’s an identity with human kind . . . So that nothing is lost. Nothing is ever lost. D’you follow?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Well, even death is only a change. Isn’t it? A change from what perhaps we see as beautiful to what we see as horrible. But that’s a defect of sight and a failure of knowledge. I’m not sure that we need immortality. Because we’re all part of the eternal mind and cannot escape even if we would. Corruption is another form of creation. It’s a continuing process of development and change.’

  She said: ‘I’ve just lost my father. I wish I could feel more comfort in such a theory.’

  ‘Have you? I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’ He touched her arm and then dropped his hand. ‘After – after Marion had died, when I thought Marion had died, I went through hell. Torments of bereavement and remorse. It was only after a couple of years that I realized . . .’

  She said: ‘Tell me more about your theory.’

  ‘It’s not so much a theory as a slow realization. It’s not as cerebral as a theory. Let me put it this way.’ He was silent for a while as they took a few more paces up from the lake. ‘D’you know I never painted anything for years . . . ? I suppose – look, you ask me to explain, but the moment I try to explain I have to put it into words – which, being made by men, are limited in their capacity of expression – and I have to theorize, which is contradiction of, or a rationalization of, what I feel here.’ He touched his heart.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I thought what you said might comfort me.’

  ‘It’s strange – and pleasant – to be thought capable of comforting anyone. I’m usually looked on as the disturber.’

  ‘It’s the loss of personality that I find so hard to accept. So much lost and wasted.’

  He stopped. ‘Possibly Dylan Thomas said it all. It’s art speaking for life, isn’t it? “And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon.” How does it go on? “They shall have stars at elbow and foot. Though they go mad they shall be sane . . . Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost love shall not . . . And – and death shall have no – no dominion . . .”’ His voice shook as if he were near to tears.

  Moved by his emotion she almost lost her fear. ‘Simon, you feel too much, too intensely.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said quickly, ‘that was what Marion used to say. You’re so much like Marion. She would have said just that.’

  ‘But I’m not Marion.’

  ‘Well, you help to release feeling within me – as she did. Don’t suppose – one of my problems these last few years, as it was early in my life, was a – an inability to feel deeply on a – a personal level. I was – too far away. Sometimes I almost became – someone else. Only Marion could release pleasure and grief. “Green pleasure and grey grief” – who said that? And I believe you can – by being so much like her – not only in looks but in personality – release in the same way green pleasure and grey grief.’

  They began to walk on again, until they were halfway back to the house.

  ‘Though lovers be lost,’ he said, ‘love shall not. That’s the defiant cry of humanity, imprisoned within the walls of its defective hearing and sight.’

  She said: ‘You must feel deeply to be able to paint.’

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s why there have been times in my life – long spells – when I haven’t been able to paint at all. When background and foreground become interchangeable, then creativeness suffers a sort of “heat death”.’

  After a few paces more she asked: ‘Have you ever exhibited?’

  ‘What? My paintings? No . . . oh, no. They are not for the world to see.’

  ‘But if they give you pleasure – at least the pleasure of self-expression, might they not give pleasure to those who see them?’

  ‘To a few, perhaps. But – exhibition; doesn’t the word explain itself? Exhibitions are for exhibitionists. I don’t wish to show off my soul – to hang it up for all to see. It would be like undressing in public.’

  They walked through the dark in silence. Here and there the path was narrow and he stepped back for her to go ahead of him. When this happened her skin prickled, body taking over from cooler brain.

  As they neared the door he said: ‘I don’t remember talking so much as this to anyone – certainly not for years.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s easier to talk in the darkness.’

  ‘No . . . it’s easier to talk to you.’

  ‘I think you should let “a few” people see your paintings, Simon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, if you believe in the – the interrelation of one part of life with another, can’t emotions also be interrelated – and therefore shared? And if they are shared, isn’t that some comfort? Surely one of the most valuable things in friendship, or in marriage, or in blood relationship, is to be able to share happiness and – and sorrow – to laugh together and if necessary to cry together. Therefore a creative person such as yourself who maybe can express what most of us can only feel . . . perhaps it is part of his – his responsibility to try to communicate his emotions to the world.’

  He opened the door of the conservatory and they went in. She switched on her torch.

  ‘We might be burglars,’ he said, ‘in my own house.’ He struck a match but then shook it out again. Briefly his face appeared, lit by the smoky light. ‘No, it’s better in the dark . . . You’re such a kind girl, Norah. And an intelligent one. I wonder if you’d be as headstrong as Marion. You deserve well of life . . . But then so, of course, did she.’

  They went through into the dimly lit hall and he followed her up the first flight of stairs. At the top he turned to go down the long passage leading to his bedroom but hesitated. He said: ‘You encourage me to hope,’ and then went on.

  Up in her own bedroom Norah slowly undressed. The fear and the tension were slowly draining out of her, to be replaced by feelings of courage and resolve. She lay in bed and did not sleep, tossing and turning, wrestling with the personal decisions she had to make; uncertain whether to allow the conflicting forces in the house to whirl around her and remain herself a play of them, or whether to strike out herself.

  Once in the middle of the night she thought she heard the tapping in the next room, but she would not get up to see.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I

  It was the day for Mrs Syme to speak at her luncheon in Shrewsbury and she clearly took it that Norah would go with her. Norah went. It was an interesting meeting: the Townswomen’s Guild; about sixty at the luncheon; after it Althea spoke for half an hour. Her subject was the virtues and the failings of the Welfare State, and she held the audience’s attention throughout. It was a lucid survey, dealing with individual cases but never losing sight of the general picture. She pulled no punches yet never took political sides; and she ended by stressing the duty of every woman to help to make this great scheme work, by co-operating, by turning it to full advantage without abuse, by understanding the true intentions of the designers and by seeing themselves as important units in one of the greatest democratic experiments of all time. ‘Make no mistake,’ she ended; ‘the eyes of the civilized nations are on us. If we fail to make it work we shall earn only derision: if we succeed we shall be the envy of the world.’

  They drove home in fitful sunshine. As Norah had half expected, A
lthea was in a relaxed mood and expansive, having drunk a fair amount of wine at lunch and having enjoyed the added intoxication of delivering a successful address. All day the girl had hidden her resentment, exerted herself to resume the relationship of earlier times. Now she listened to her friend, putting in the occasional question, the required comment. It was easy while the talk was of generalities.

  Then, with only half an hour to go and the mountains already closing around them, Althea broached the subject Norah had been thinking of all day.

  ‘How are you getting along with Simon?’

  ‘Very well, thank you. We had a long talk last night.’

  ‘He told me yesterday he’d quite got over the shock of thinking you like his sister.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘You sound surprised,’ Althea said.

  ‘I am. I thought it still bothered him.’

  ‘Has he said something more to you about it?’

  ‘Yes . . . I didn’t know he’d been ill? Althea. Seriously ill, I mean.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘Oh, not in so many words. But we were talking by the lake. He said he’d lost his memory.’

  Althea Syme glanced at Timson’s square head and bristling hair under its peaked cap. The partition was raised, so he could hear nothing. ‘He had a sort of breakdown. It was quite short but it was quite bad while it lasted.’

  ‘After Marion’s death?’

  ‘Yes. It was the last straw, I suppose. He’d hardly recovered from his war experiences, and his sister’s death . . . well . . .’

  ‘He said he blamed himself for what happened.’

  ‘I must say he’s been confiding in you, pet. Usually you can hardly get a word out of him.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t say more than that. I wonder why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Well, it’s natural to be upset – but not to blame oneself.’

  There was a pause. Althea said: ‘Simon was frightfully possessive towards his sister. He couldn’t bear her to go out with other men. When she married he absolutely opposed it. Her husband and Simon had been in the Air Force together. After their honeymoon Marion and Richard returned to Morb House before leaving for Ireland. It was wartime and there was only Simon – they of course had no chauffeur. So he drove them to the boat – and left them there – and came back. No one ever saw them again. He feels, I’m sure mistakenly . . .’