The Unicorn

  Marian got through the morning somehow. She and Effingham had synchronized their watches, but she was terrified that hers would stop, and kept trying to wind it every half-hour. She was so incoherent with Hannah that the latter thought she must be ill and tried to persuade her to go to bed. After lunch, to her intense relief, Gerald and Jamesie left the house together, and she watched through glasses the disappearance of the Land Rover along the road to Greytown. In the dead depths of the afternoon she dealt with the Morris. But when that was securely done and she had returned unseen to the house it was still too early to go back to Hannah. She sat in her room chewing her knuckles and feeling faint.

  At last it was time to go. She took a last look round her room, put on her coat and hurried to Hannah’s room. Hannah was not there. After a moment of sickening panic she saw from the window that she was already walking on the terrace. She ran down and they began to stroll with their usual extreme slowness along the winding sunny drive.

  Marian had timed it on several occasions and knew exactly how long it would take them to reach the desired point. She kept glancing at her watch while Hannah talked. The timing was perfect. Only let Effingham not fail.

  ‘I really must try to grow camellias here,’ Hannah was saying. “The peaty soil ought to suit them, oughtn’t it? I just wonder if they could stand the wind. Though there are some sheltered spots. I must ask Alice. Give me your arm, would you, dear, I still feel so tired. Aren’t you hot in that coat? Why not leave it under a bush and we could pick it up on the way back.’

  ‘I think I’ll keep it,’ Marian mumbled. She could hardly speak.

  ‘Or shall we turn back now?’

  ‘A little farther.’ She wondered if Hannah could feel her trembling. She cast a quick look at the wide-eyed rather sleepy face beside her. It was the last drowsy moment for the sleeping beauty.

  The gravel drive was bordered on each side by black soft boggy soil, and there was only one place about half way along the drive where the car could turn, where there was a circle of gravel and a little sundial. They were just passing this, Marian the slightest bit urging Hannah onward with her supporting arm. Effingham was exactly due.

  ‘You were right to put your coat on after all,’ Hannah was saying. There’s a cold wind. Ah, my dear, I wonder how you’ll stand us all in the winter time. I mustn’t start taking you for granted just because you fit in so beautifully. You must have plenty of holidays, you know, as much as you want. And I feel you ought to be doing more of your own work. I’m so glad about the Greek. We must make it pleasant for you -‘

  ‘I love it here,’ muttered Marian. Effingham was half a minute late.

  ‘Why, how nice, there’s Effie in Max’s old car.’

  Thank God. Marian drew Hannah a little aside off the drive. Their shoes sank into the soft soil as the car slowed up.

  ‘Can I gave you two a lift back?’

  Effingham’s face was so white and his eyes so bulging that it seemed that Hannah must notice. But she said gaily ‘Splendid!’ and got into the back of the car at once. Effingham had thoughtfully piled a lot of books on to the vacant front seat. Marian gave him a hard encouraging look and stepped in after her. The door banged, for better or worse, upon their enterprise.

  According to a plan which they had arranged beforehand Marian began immediately to complain of having hurt her foot. It had been hurting all the way down the drive, she said, and, see, she must have cut it without noticing on some glass for it seemed to be bleeding. She leaned down, dropping her head below the back of the seat. With an exclamation of concern Hannah leaned right down too to examine the wounded foot in the gloom of the back of the car. Head well down, Marian could feel the car turning in a circle.

  Hannah must have felt it too, for she immediately straightened up. But by now the Humber was moving with swiftly increasing speed in the direction of the gates. Hannah stared for a moment and then cried out in a shriek, ‘Effie, don’t!’

  As she leaned forward to tug at Effingham’s shoulder Marian seized her in her arms and rolled back embracing her into the back of the car. The Humber was going very fast.

  The next things that happened happened very fast too; Marian recalled them afterwards with a strange photographic clarity with which she could scarcely have perceived them at the time, locked as she was with her face half hidden in Hannah’s shoulder. Hannah moaned and struggled, but Marian was far stronger. Then when they were about sixty yards from the gates another car appeared in the gateway. It was the red Austin Seven driven by Alice.

  The Austin, going fast, bore straight down on the Humber as if it meant to collide with it head on. Effingham did not slacken speed, but put his hand on the horn and kept it there. As the cars rushed upon each other, the Austin keeping its coarse, Effingham swerved slightly, skidded on the loose gravel, and the Humber left the drive and careered across the soft earth into a clump of fuchsias. It was twenty yards short of the gateway. The engine stopped.

  In the silence that followed Marian could hear the engine of the Austin. Alice had braked hard and had put it into reverse. She reversed until she was level with them and then switched off the engine, leaning on the steering-wheel and looking at Effingham. Effingham did not look at her. He got out slowly and opened the rear door of the Humber. The wheels were sunk into the black earth and it was clear that a tractor would be needed now to move the car. The enterprise was over.

  Effingham thrust both his hands through the door and supported Hannah out. She was deadly white and uttered little gasps as he gently drew her out of the car. Then she leaned against him in silence. He put his arms right round her and clasped her very closely to him, closing his eyes, and they stood there absolutely still in silence. Marian got out.

  The enterprise was indeed over. It did not for a second occur to Marian that, even now, she and Effingham might have hustled Hannah out through the gates. But if she had had that thought she would have had to dismiss it soon, for yet another car appeared in the gateway. It was the Land Rover.

  The Land Rover drove in slowly and stopped just behind the Austin. Gerald and Jamesie got out. Jamesie stayed on the far side of the car, leaning on the bonnet, while Gerald advanced to the edge of the drive. He surveyed the scene: the Humber embedded among the fuchsia, with scored earth and scattered gravel behind it, Marian standing beside it, and Effingham on the other side holding Hannah in his arms. Effingham slowly released her.

  Gerald said, ‘Hannah.’

  She moved towards him like a sleep walker, and as she almost stumbled he moved to give her his arm, and led her to the Land Rover. He handed her in, and then quietly started the car again, nosed it slowly round the Austin, and proceeded up the drive in the direction of the house, leaving Jamesie still motionless at the edge of the drive.

  ‘Effie.’ Alice opened the passenger door of the Austin.

  Effingham looked vaguely across at her. His face was empty and flattened as if the outside layer of expression had been removed. Then he frowned, shook his head almost absently, and went across to the car. He got in and the door banged. The Austin briskly started, ran up to turn at the sundial, and then shot back down the drive and out of the gates.

  Marian began to pick her way back to the gravel. Her shoes were covered with black soil.

  Jamesie was still standing where he had been left, and as Marian looked at him he seemed to be glowing with some sort of secret pleasure. He stood, a hand poised, like one who wishes to retain before him the vision of some rapturous scene. He slowly turned his head towards her and smiled. ‘Marian!’

  ‘Hello,’ said Marian. One of her shoes came off. She began to cry quietly.

  ‘Ah, don’t!’ He moved at last and put an arm round her, supporting her as she dealt with her shoe. He still clasped her as they began to walk back toward the house. ‘Here’s just you and me left behind. That’s nice, isn’t it? Here, let me show you some pictures of yourself. I had them specially done in colour at Greytown.’

  Chapter
Eighteen

  She went straight to her room. The house was very silent as she came in with Jamesie, and after they crossed the threshold his chatter at once subsided and he faded away into the shadow of the stairs.

  She entered the room and shut the door. It was still and bright in the room, the sun making great squares on the floor. Her clock was ticking. She had been sorry to leave her clock behind. Well, she had not left her clock behind. She looked at the room in a kind of amazement. Here it was, inhabited, fresh, not yet fallen into the staleness of absence. A jersey and some underclothes lay tossed upon one of the chairs. Yet she had intended never to return.

  There was something new lying on the table, a picture post-card. She picked it up and stared at it. It represented the Velasquez picture of the Surrender of Breda. She turned it over. It was from Geoffrey in Madrid. He announced that everyone else had cried off the expedition, so he and Freda Darsey had had to go by themselves. He said he thought the Titians were really … Marian threw the card into the wastepaper basket.

  She slowly took off her coat. She had so naturally and immediately been thinking about herself. But what about Hannah? They must know that it was not Hannah’s idea, that it had all been planned by herself and Effingham. She must explain, they must forgive. Yet why ‘forgive’? Already her mind was back in the cage. And even if they regarded Hannah as blameless, would they let her now stay at Gaze, since she had proved so dangerous? Would they not send her instantly away, and forbid Effingham the house forever after; so that Hannah would be punished indeed, losing her two best friends. She groaned, and the accusing image of Denis came before her. He had warned her not to meddle; why had she not listened?

  She got up and walked about the room, walking fast and then stopping suddenly to think and walking again. It all now seemed a terrible mistake. She ought to have respected Hannah’s condition. And was there not a sort of fate about it all. They could not have passed those gates. Yet this was mad. She paused at the window and looked across at Riders. The windows were twinkling orange in the western sun. Over there Alice and Effingham were having God knows what to say to each other. Marian felt a resentful lack of interest in whatever it might be. How had Alice known anyway? Effingham must have committed some blunder; and somehow on reflection it seemed inevitable that he would. He had lacked faith. Perhaps she had lacked faith herself. All the same, poor Effingham.

  She looked at her watch. It was the time when she was usually with Hannah. Would she ever sit with her again doing the good ordinary things? The narrow quiet life of Gaze, the prison life, suddenly seemed to her the best life of all. It was large enough for love. So it was large enough.

  As time passed and she moved restlessly, sometimes talking to herself aloud, she became quietly aware that she was waiting for something, she was waiting for something with a deep tense excited expectation. It did not take her long to realize that what she was waiting for was Gerald Scottow’s visit.

  It was nearly an hour before he came. Marian was sitting by the window, and it was getting redder and goldener now outside and darkening in the room, when he softly entered after a little knock. She rose at once.

  He closed the door and moved at once to her bed and sat down upon it. ‘Come here.’

  Marian came to him.

  ‘Sit down.’

  She sat upon an upright chair beside the bed.

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  She gave it to him.

  ‘Maid Marian, wasn’t that a foolish thing to do?’

  ‘Look,’ said Marian, her words all fighting to rush out together, ‘it wasn’t Hannah’s fault at all, she didn’t even know anything about it, we were kidnapping her, well not really that, we were just going to take her a little way, to show her the outside as it were, and then bring her back if she wanted to. We wouldn’t have taken her away if she didn’t want. And she knew nothing about it, nothing whatever, she tried to jump out of the car when she realized. It was all my fault really. Effingham didn’t really approve, I just argued him into it. It was all my fault. Please don’t send me away, please.’

  Gerald, who was still holding her hand, turned it over and tapped the palm with one finger. His big brooding face hung over her in the twilight. He did not smile, but his eyes seemed to glow and lengthen. He said, ‘I’m touched by your anxiety to spare Effingham.’

  ‘Please don’t send me away,’ said Marian, ‘and please don’t send Effingham away. You must understand -‘

  ‘I understand all right. And of course I know that you planned this without Hannah. I think it is you, Maid Marian, who do not understand. You are very young and you know very little about life and suffering, and since people here have been very ready to become attached to you, your little head has been turned, eh? You have imagined that you know our ills and you have imagined that you have the power to cure them. But neither is the case. Eh?”

  ‘I was thinking only of Hannah - ‘ Marian began miserably. She could feel herself being sapped and broken as if the rigid parts of her mind and body were giving way one by one.

  ‘But indeed - we are all thinking only of Hannah. But it is not so easy as you seem to imagine to think about Hannah. What can you do for her, do you think, for her with her years and years of this solitude within her, by simply, as you say, “showing her the outside”? Do you think this would mean anything? Do you think there really is, for Hannah, an inside and an outside any more? You thought, didn’t you, for I can see into your little mind, that if you could pass the gateposts something would snap, something would be broken. That shows you don’t begin to see what’s in front of you. In a way of course Hannah would be upset. It would make a nasty trivial little incident to be got over, a little wound. But in an-other way, you know, she would hardly notice, she would hardly even notice.’

  ‘You confuse me, you confuse me,’ said Marian, near to tears. She was clinging on to his hand now. She felt she was being entangled in some dreadful coil of thoughts. If only she could find the words to bring it all back to simplicity and truth. ‘You can’t think it right to shut her up, she can’t want it really, she oughtn’t to want it, it can’t be right -‘

  ‘Sssh, Marian, there. There are things which are appalling to young people because young people think life should be happy and free. But life is never really happy and free in any beautiful sense. Happiness is a weak and paltry thing and perhaps “freedom” has no meaning. There are great patterns in which we are all involved, and destinies which belong to us and which we love even in the moment when they destroy us. Do you think that I myself am separated in any way from what goes on here, that I am free? I am part of it too. It does not belong to me, I belong to it. And that is the only way it can be here, because of the way the lives of several people are working themselves out, because of the pattern that is what has authority here, and absolute authority. And that is what anyone must submit to, if they are to stay here, and what you must submit to, my Marian, if you are to stay here.’

  Marian’s tears were flowing, ‘You know I want to stay here -‘

  ‘Then I must have an undertaking from you. No more games of this kind. Will you promise? Think carefully before you answer.’

  ‘I promise, I promise -‘

  ‘Well, there’s a good girl. Come here and be more comfy, eh? And let’s mop up those tears.’ He drew her gently on to his knee.

  Marian leaned against his shoulder sobbing and let him dab her face with a big white handkerchief.

  ‘There now. No more tears, my child. Everyone loves you here. I love you. Come put your arm round my neck, that’s better. Come, Maid Marian, no grief, this is a good moment. Lift your face now and let me see you. Let me see your pretty face, there now, let me kiss you.’ He was murmuring to her, moving his hand back over her face and tilting her head. It was almost dark in the room now. Marian leaned helplessly back against his arm, closing her eyes and seeking for his mouth.