I'll Never Be Young Again

  Instead of which there was the calm unruffled water, and the grave mountains bathing in a white light, and a glimpse of virgin snow in the hollow of those mountains.

  We were all wrong, we ought not to have been there at all. The German women were ugly, their dresses bursting across their large breasts, and grease at the corner of their noses. I felt they had been good-looking earlier in the evening, but now nothing remained to them but the last trace of powder smudged on their faces which they would not even bother to wipe away. The German men leant against them and peered down their necks and fondled their hands, and it was incredible to think they were being attractive to one another.

  They looked at us, and we looked at them, and I knew we were alike and our smiles were the same, and we had all gone ashore to do the same thing.

  Carrie had put the jumper on over her dress. She had put it on in a hurry, and it hung wrong, bunching out at the back. She had powdered her face without a glass and it was like a white mask of powder against her red hair, blowing anyhow over her eyes, and the lipstick was too thick on her lower lip.

  She looked like a clown at a circus. She kept trying to join in singing with the Germans, and bursting into little high shrieks of laughter that jarred for no reason that I could tell, and then seeing I was silent she pressed close against me and whispered ‘Baby’, and fumbled about with her hands.

  I wanted to be alone. I did not care to speak to anyone or listen to anyone. I wanted to be somewhere where there would not be a sound or a whisper of people, where there would be nothing but the peace of the mountains and the tremor of a white stream, and lying on my back looking up at the sky, and the ashes of a dead wood fire at my feet, and the still forms of the two horses standing under the trees.

  The launch drew alongside the steamer, and we went up the gangway to the lower deck. The whole crowd of us wandered along to the smoking-room, Carrie still laughing excitedly, and clinging on to my arm. We found the rest of her party on stools round the bar. They waved and shouted when they saw us. Bill had Mary’s hat on his head, and he was pulling faces and speaking in a high squeaky voice, pretending to be a woman, while Mary’s brother had balanced his spectacles on his nose and sat with his hands folded, giving an imitation of a curate. Everyone thought everyone else was being terribly funny. Matty stood with his arm round Mary’s waist and his face against hers. I saw Mary smile at Carrie as though to ask a question, and Carrie smiled and nodded back. I could imagine she would go along to Mary’s cabin later, and they would giggle together and tell each other everything.

  Carrie climbed on to a bar stool, and sat with her arm round my neck, while she tried to blow paper straws at Bill on the stool opposite. He ducked away, still speaking in the high falsetto voice, and then he dragged his stool next to her and whispered something in her ear which I could not catch, and she shrugged her shoulders and laughed again, and when he winked at me and began to run his hand along her leg she did not put it away. She looked up at me with excited eyes, hoping I would mind, wondering what I should do. I did not care what any of them did. I moved from her stool and stood next to the bar and asked for a drink.When I had finished they were all singing the chorus of some song.

  Carrie was trying to make Bill dance, but he could not stand up straight.

  I went out of the smoking-room without bothering to say good night to any of them. I went straight down to my cabin. I sat on a locker beside the scuttle and looked out on to the water and the blue mountains beyond.

  The last of the boats had been swung up into the davits, and I could hear the rattling sound of the rising anchor, and the throb of the engines, and a clanging of a bell. The ship did not take long to get under way, soon we were turning, and heading for the outlet of the fjord with Balholm left astern of us like a painted village in a picture-book. None of it seemed real. It was a sham place in a sham setting. The colour of the mountains and the water and the sky were false and exaggerated as a child would paint them.

  Balholm was a frosted cardboard village at the foot of a blue cardboard mountain, and the sky was a daub of olive green, and the water was a chart of crinkled silver paper. That was my last impression of Balholm, until we turned into a narrow channel, and another ridge of mountains and another stretch of water hid it from my sight. I knew then that my hatred of it was only the reflection of my own mood, and that it existed definitely as a thing of beauty like a jewel set in the bosom of a white lake, sheltered by the folding arms of the dumb mountains, shrouded by the rustling forest trees, fanned by the cool air from the skies, part of the snow and the singing falls.

  Balholm was true and so were the mountains and the fjords, but I was the sham one with no measure of reality and no quality of truth.

  I was like a little dancing marionette, jigged on an unseen cord, smiling, grimacing, bowing my head to the ground, my hands pointing this way, my legs that way, pulled at in all directions by a number of cords.

  I sat on the bench locker with my head in my hands.

  I would not look at the mountains any more. I was tired. I wondered if sleep would come to me tonight, and whether it would carry away the heaviness of my heart, letting me wake in the morning without this feeling that possessed me now that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Maybe if I laid quite still with my hands pressed hard against my eyes I would remember the mountain path where we had ridden three nights back, and the horses outlined against the sky. I would remember the silence and the stillness of the air, the smouldering embers of the forest fire, the smell of my cigarette.

  Perhaps, if I slept soundly, with no dreams, I would forget the screaming call of a siren breaking suddenly upon the air, echoing shrilly over the water into a black cluster of trees, I would forget the ugliness of passion, the silly excited laughter of a girl, I would forget my own beating heart, my own trembling body, my own sense of inexpiable degradation.

  I got up and started to throw off my things. Then the door opened and Jake came into the cabin. I did not want to look at him at first. I turned my back and fumbled with the tap of the basin. He did not say anything either. I whistled a tune under my breath. I wished he had been drunk, or laughing, or cursing, or in some way dragging himself down to my level.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  I looked at him then, and saw he was standing before the open scuttle with a smile on his lips, and his eyes calm and happy as though he had come straight down from the silence of the mountains, with the beauty of the things he had seen still clinging to him, and the pale light still shining upon his face.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What happened to you?’

  He began taking off his coat, stretching himself, smiling inwardly as one who is happily weary, happily tired, with a long sleep before him and a dream. He looked down at me from a great distance, unchanged, the same as he had always been, and I standing against the basin biting my nails.

  ‘I just went for a tramp,’ he said.

  I lay in my berth, and he in the one above me, and it seemed as though we were back in the fo’c’sle of the barque Hedwig again, with his deep breathing to assure me of his presence, and however lightly I might speak his name he would stir, and answer me at once.

  So that night I woke, after sleeping for an hour or two, and I felt I should not sleep again, for it was the broad light of day, although it was hardly half-past three.

  I put my arms over my eyes, cursing this light that scarcely changed, and I yearned for the comfort of darkness that had not covered me for so long.

  ‘Jake,’ I said.

  ‘Hullo, Dick.’

  ‘What time do we get to Vadheim?’

  ‘Any time soon, I should think.’

  ‘How long do they stay there?’

  ‘I heard something about an all-day excursion.The ship won’t get under way again till sundown.’

  ‘Jake - I don’t want to go on after Vadheim.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Can’t we get away first thing in the
morning before the excursion party start?’

  ‘If you want to.’

  ‘We’ll slip off when everyone’s at breakfast, and you can settle with the purser, and then we needn’t worry over anything, Jake.’

  ‘I’ll fix that,’ he said.

  ‘Where can we get to?’

  ‘Anywhere you like, Dick.’

  ‘I’d like to clear out of these fjords altogether. I guess I’ve had about enough.’

  I heard the unfolding of paper, and I knew he was looking at his map.

  ‘There’s a good road from Vadheim,’ he said. ‘We’ll be able to get a car there, I’ve found that out already. This road takes us to right away up to Sandene on another fjord. We’ll wait there, or we’ll go on to Olden, and then perhaps we can pick up a boat that’ll take us south once more.’

  ‘That sounds the sort of thing, Jake. It will be good to get into the open sea again. I’m sick of this still water, and the close air, and the light never changing - I don’t know. D’you understand? ’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  We were silent for a few minutes. Then I spoke again.

  ‘Jake - who paid the bill at the hotel?’

  ‘I settled up with the fellow in glasses,’ he said.

  ‘Was it all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to have to see them tomorrow, Jake.’

  ‘No - I understand.’

  ‘I don’t want ever to have to see them again.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know what happened?’

  ‘Yes - I know.’

  ‘I don’t want to have to think about it.’

  ‘No. Are you sure it’s all right?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘About the girl?’

  ‘What, Jake?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry over her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Certain, Dick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It didn’t matter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘I knew she’d come away with that fellow Bill, anyway.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I think they’re both like that - the other girl, too.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was all rather bloody stupid, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t say much yesterday, Jake?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been any use.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I knew it would happen,’ he said.

  ‘When could you tell?’

  ‘Back in the mountains.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Everything was different there.’

  ‘Yes - that’s why.’

  ‘God - Jake. I loathe myself so terribly.’

  ‘You’ll get over that,’ he said.

  ‘I feel like hell about everything.’

  ‘It won’t last.’

  ‘D’you know how I feel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s pretty damn filthy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. It doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘I suppose everyone goes through this the first time.’

  ‘I don’t know. Some don’t give a curse. It doesn’t mean much to them.’

  ‘It never did to me when I used to think about it. I thought a whole lot, too.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘What happens if one cares about anyone, Jake?’

  ‘It’s all right then; at least, it should be.’

  ‘How is it any different?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t think about yourself then.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Jake.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t at the moment.’

  ‘I guess I’ll make a hell of a mess out of life.’

  ‘I don’t want you to.’

  ‘D’you remember our last night up in the mountains, before Laardel? God! you must have had a hell of a laugh over me.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Dick.’

  ‘I talked that night, didn’t I?’

  ‘What does all that matter? I understand. You’ll learn to see straight in time, and not lose yourself about nothing,’ he said.

  ‘That’s another way of telling me I’m young, isn’t it, Jake?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Where’s this place we’re going to?’

  ‘Sandene, or Olden. It doesn’t matter which. We’ll find a boat, or we’ll get on another road and strike inland to the railway.’

  ‘Yes - that’s good,’ I said.

  We did not talk any more after this. I dozed a while, not thinking much, and presently I heard the engines cease throbbing, and then the rattle of the chain as we anchored.

  We had come to Vadheim.

  We got away early before anyone was about. Jake settled with the purser, and then arranged with one of the fellows to take us ashore in a launch. I did not have to worry over a thing, he did it all. None of the passengers seemed to be up. They were all below in the cabins. There was nobody about except the chaps scrubbing down the decks and going through the usual early morning routine.

  I could see the place where I had sat with Carrie in the afternoon, where we had put the rugs and the gramophone. I seemed to have lived through a hell of a lot of time there, and it had only been a few hours at the outside. It was funny that I did not have any feelings about it at all. None of it might have happened for all I cared.

  I thought of Carrie and her red hair, and smoking a cigarette, and laughing, and stretching out her hand to the gramophone. It just did not mean a thing. As I stood now, waiting by the gangway for Jake, I could not even remember how I had felt. It was as though my imagination had stopped working, and would not hold pictures any more. I felt like I used to back at home when I went up to the deserted schoolroom and sat down before a blank sheet of paper without an idea in my head. I would sit nibbling the end of my pen, wondering how it were possible to exist as I did without the slightest substance of a thought. That was how it was now, standing by the gangway, waiting for Jake. I could not even recapture the memory of my mood when Carrie and I had come aboard after midnight. It was only a few hours back. There had been disgust, I know, and hatred of myself, and wanting to be quite alone, not even with Jake - most especially not with Jake.

  That was gone now. It was like having been drunk and then seeing the fine morning and realizing that one did not have to take life so seriously after all, because all that sort of thing had nothing to do with the business of the day.

  As for Carrie and the rest of them, they were not real any more. Not in the way they had been. Carrie was any girl I had met in a crowd and forgotten.

  I could not understand why I should feel so impersonal towards her. I could not understand why yesterday I had thought of nothing but her, and today I was leaving the boat, glad to be done, and she a girl with a laugh, and I in a car soon with Jake not even bothering to remember the laugh.

  I could not understand why I was not still excited, and why I did not want her any more.

  It was queer that yesterday my body had mattered so much and now it did not matter at all.

  When I had come aboard at midnight I had not known whom I hated most, she or myself, but now if she were to come and speak to me I should not be aware of any antagonism, she would only be a stranger, somebody out of a crowd. I could not see why desire should turn into degradation, and from degradation into nothing. One ought to go on either with the desire or the degradation. One ought always to mind terribly about things.

  And here I was, whistling by the gangway, waiting for Jake, looking forward to driving in a car along a road. It was all wrong, somehow. I was glad that I did not mind any more, but it did not seem right that it should be so. It was almost callous towards myself - the self who had stood here last night with his hands burning and his body trembling. He had gone for ever, that self, like the boy who had seen ecstasy in the mountains, and the boy who had sung on a ship, an
d the boy who had wished to cast himself from a bridge. They were all gone, these other selves, and they would never come back again. They had vanished, like little thoughts and little dreams, poor has-beens that had lived in me and I in them, now thrown away into the dust, not even lingering as shadows to keep me company.

  So, standing there on the deck of the cruising steamer it was as though I left behind me something that had been part of myself, and I wondered how it was that I left it without a regret. For here was I, calm, easy, thinking of the days ahead, and there was he whom I should not see again, troubled, tortured, exquisitely sad, the boy who had loved a woman for the first time. I had left him behind, but I was not any wiser than before.

  Jake came out then, and we went down the gangway, and into the waiting launch, and so across the stretch of fjord to Vadheim.

  I glanced back at the anchored steamer, and it was not even a place where I had lived, but only an incident, already half forgotten.

  We found there were cars at Vadheim, and Jake was able to arrange for one of these to take us on to Olden. It was not long before we were both seated at the back of the car, and winding away from Vadheim and the fjord into deep wooded country that seemed fine to me because it was different from what we had just left. I glanced at Jake beside me, and it was good to see his dark hair falling over his eyes, and the long scar on his cheek, and the inevitable cigarette between his lips.

  It was good to think that the steamer and Balholm had not really changed anything between us after all.

  With each kilometre we went I knew that the distance was becoming greater between us and Vadheim, and my spirits rose because of this, so that I was aware of a sense of freedom in getting away from it as though there was something in its nearness that might have bound me to it in spite of myself. It was not the steamer, nor the fjord alone, nor even the girl, but all these things combined into an atmosphere that might have closed in upon me had I lingered there even a few hours longer. For all that was a web of my own weaving, and I, a sorry spider, to have been caught in my own mesh. Now I was clear, having made my escape, and I wondered if it would cling to me through life, this quality of desertion, of running from the thing I had created, of escaping in a sense from my own self.