The Sandcastle

  Amazed, Nan arrived close to the rock, and stood there looking out at Felicity. In spite of the chill of the evening Felicity was dressed only in a bathing-costume. A number of odd tins and bottles stood upon the rock. It looked as if she had been having a picnic. But it must have been a strange picnic. The flare continued upon the surface of the water and the incoming tide carried it almost to Nan’s feet where it burnt uncannily. Felicity now stood paralysed, staring down at the flames.

  ‘Darling,’ said Nan, ‘have you gone quite mad? You’ll catch your death of cold standing there with nothing on. There’s quite a cold wind now that the sun’s gone down. And if you don’t hurry you’ll be stranded on that rock. Where are your clothes?’

  ‘Here,’ said Felicity dully. She produced them from a shelf on the other side of the rock.

  ‘Throw them across to me,’ said Nan, ‘and you’d better pass me those other things as well, whatever they are, and then come across yourself at once. I think as it is you’ll have to wade.’

  A wide channel now flowed between Felicity’s rock and the mainland. Afloat upon it the flame was still alight.

  ‘Whatever were you burning?’ said Nan. It smells very funny, and it’s odd the way it hasn’t gone out.‘

  The flame rose from the glassy surface of the gently flowing tide and was reflected in it. The sun was down now and the air was denser with the twilight. Then quite suddenly the fire was out, and there was nothing but a little blackened lump, floating near to the edge of the rock.

  Fascinated Nan leaned down and was about to pick it out of the water.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ said Felicity. ‘Here, catch!’ She bundled her clothes up into the towel and threw them. Nan stepped back hurriedly and caught them. Then in a fever of haste Felicity began to pack all the remaining objects into a bag. She took it in her hand and gently tossed it across the channel. It landed neatly upon a rock. Then Felicity jumped down into the sea. She gasped at its coldness. She began to wade across to where Nan was standing. On the way she beat with her hands at the charred black thing which still floated there. It disintegrated completely.

  Nan had the towel ready for her. She began to rub her down vigorously as she had so often done when she was a small child.

  ‘Don’t, you’re hurting me!’ said Felicity. Then, with snuffling sobs, she began to cry.

  ‘Dear me, dear me!’ said Nan. ‘What a cry baby! You’re always wailing. Now then put your vest on quick - and tell me what’s the matter.’

  Felicity was trembling with cold. She got her vest on and began to fumble with her dress. She said, ‘I saw a butterfly flying out to sea. It will get lost out there and die.’ She pulled the dress on over her head. Her tears were still falling.

  ‘What nonsense, child!’ said Nan. ‘It could fly back again, couldn’t it? Anyway, they can fly for miles, they often fly over to France. That’s nothing to cry about.’

  Felicity sat down. It was quite dark now. The moon shone out of a cloudless sky of dark blue, revealing on either side of them the tumbled heaps of rock. Felicity was trying to dry her feet. Nan felt them. They were limp and cold as ice.

  ‘I saw a fish,’ said Felicity, ‘that a man had caught. It was a big fish. It was lying all by itself on the sand, and struggling and gasping. I wanted to pick it up and throw it back into the sea. But I wasn’t brave enough to.’ Her voice broke in renewed sobs.

  Nan bent forward, chafing one white foot between her hands. She felt the tears rising. She could not control them any more. She took a deep breath and her weeping began. Sitting there, her hand still clasped about her daughter’s foot, she wept without restraint. The moon shone brightly down upon them both.

  Chapter Fifteen

  DURING those days Mor learnt what it was to have a mind diseased. There was no longer any point at which his thoughts could find rest. They fled tortured from place to place. Only by absorbing himself in the routine duties of the school was he able to find, not peace, but the means simply of continuing to exist. He felt as if he were under an intolerable physical strain, as if his body were likely at any moment to fly to pieces. Other strange physical symptoms came to trouble him. An unpleasant odour lingered in his nostrils, as if he could literally smell the sulphur of the pit; and he had from time to time the curious illusion that his flesh was turning black. He had to look continually at his hands to be sure that it was not so. Nightmares troubled him, waking and sleeping — and one bad dream conjured up another, running from box to box to release its fellows. The world around him seemed to have become equally mad and hateful. The newspapers were full of stories of grotesque violence and unnatural crimes. He knew neither how to go on nor what to do to bring these horrors to an end.

  Part of his torment was the knowledge that Rain was tormented equally. She had stopped painting, and had told Mr Everard that the picture was finished. The date for the appalling presentation dinner had even been fixed. Her decision distressed Mor, not because he imagined that it mattered now whether the official date of her departure was late or early, but because he felt responsible for having ruined the picture. Although he did not think that in the long run he either would or could do harm to her art, he could not forget what Bledyard had said. Rain had intended to improve the picture, to paint the head over again. She had not done so, because he had reduced her to the same frenzy that he was in himself.

  Mor was standing in Waterloo station. He was waiting for Rain to arrive by train. He had had some school business in London, and they had agreed that she should meet him after lunch when it was done and they should spend the rest of the day in town. Mor noted, desperately, that to be together was not now quite enough of a salve for their unhappiness - they had to have novelties and distractions. He thought, this is what it is to be one of the damned.

  There was still fifteen minutes to wait before the train arrived. Music began to play through a loud-speaker. Mor looked at the people hurrying to and fro in the wide echoing hall between the booking-offices and the platforms. The music drew the scene together until it had the look of an insane ballet, eerie, desolate, and sinister. The performers glided to and fro across the stage, weaving in and out with an inscrutable precision. Mor turned his head away. He bought a paper and opened it quickly. Dreadful headlines stared him in the face. Bridegroom Kills Bride in Car Crash. Possible Contamination of Earth’s Atmosphere: Scientists’ Grave Warning. Mor crumpled the newspaper up and threw it into a wastepaper basket. He sat down on a seat and lighted a cigarette. He would have liked a drink, only it was the middle of the afternoon. He had taken to drinking quite a lot lately.

  His thoughts began again upon the old round. Had he misled Rain totally concerning the nature of his marriage? Did Rain really love him anyway? Would her attachment to him endure? Supposing he were to destroy everything in order to be with her, would it turn out in the end to be a disaster? Was he not simply criminal to contemplate a union with so young a girl? Perhaps he was no more to her than an ephemeral father figure, endowed by the pain of her recent bereavement with a size larger than life? All this he had discussed with Rain herself in considerable detail for hours and hours and hours, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. These talks went on now so far into every night that Mor was exhausted, waking tired and headache-ridden, scarcely able to stagger through the minimum of necessary tasks. She had tried to convince him, oh she had tried to convince him, at least that she loved him. He knew that she was convinced herself. At times, the spectacle of this love moved him so much that it seemed that nothing else mattered. But Mor knew now, and it was both a torment and a consolation, that in this damned condition no state of mind lasted for very long. Certainty and uncertainty chased each other through him at intervals, and it seemed that it would be a matter of chance in which phase exactly he should decide irrevocably to act.

  One decision at least had been definitely put off. Rain had not yet become his mistress. She herself had wished to. But Mor had decided that it was better to wait a littl
e while until the situation had become clearer. Time passed, the situation did not become clearer, and Mor began to conjecture that just this delay might be his fatal error. But it was some lingering puritanism out of his rejected childhood which still made him hesitate to become in the final and technical sense unfaithful to his wife. He knew that, in almost every way that mattered, his unfaithfulness was now complete. He had written to Nan hinting as much - but he had not dared to speak clearly to her, for he feared that she might return while he was still in a state of indecision. He saw that he had now definitely and irrevocably parted company with the truth. In the country where he lived now, truth could not decide his choices. Neither could happiness. He had told Bledyard that this would guide him - but now even this light was gone. He no longer conceived, as measurable entities capable of being weighed against each other, his own happiness, Rain’s, or Nan’s. He scarcely conceived that he could ever be happy again - nor did this especially matter.

  What remained real and composed his agony was his intense, and it seemed to him increasing, love for Rain; combined with doubts about whether it was not wrong to thrust this love upon her, and complete paralysis at the thought of having to announce to Nan and the children that he was going to leave them. If only his love for Rain could drive him a little madder, or, on the other hand, his sense of belonging to his previous life become a little stronger, he would be able to decide. As it was, he was perfectly balanced in the midst of all these forces and quite unable to move. Only from time to time, consoling in itself and carrying the promise of a possible decision, there came to him a vision of himself and Rain together, far away from the present agony, beyond it, having forgotten it, enriching each other by love. This vision, he felt, if he could only hold it steady in his imagination for long enough, would draw him to a decision. Yet even this would not be sufficient. He realized, with a spasm of pain, that in order to come to his beloved he would have to summon up not his good qualities but his bad ones: his anger, his hatred of Nan, his capacity for sheer irresponsible violence. Between him and Rain lay this appalling wilderness; and how changed by it would he be before he could finally reach her? He must keep his look upon her very steady if he was to go across.

  Mor threw away his cigarette. It was nearly time for the train to arrive. He went to the end of the platform to wait. His longing to see her drove away all other thoughts. He stood staring down the line. A few minutes passed. Surely the train was late. Mor began to walk up and down, biting his nails. Perhaps something terrible had happened, perhaps there had been an accident. He had a momentary but very detailed vision of Rain lying bleeding in the midst of some piled and twisted wreck. He looked at his watch again. Oh, let the train come! Now at last the train was appearing, there it was after all. It slid smoothly round the curving platform, stopped quickly, and immediately disgorged hundreds of people. They surged towards the barrier. There was no sign of Rain. Perhaps she had been taken ill. Perhaps she had decided not to come. Perhaps she had been offended at something he had said yesterday. Perhaps she had decided to go away altogether. No, there she was, thank God, so small he hadn’t seen her behind that porter. She had seen him and was waving. She was almost at the barrier now. She was here.

  ‘Oh, Rain — ’ said Mor. He enveloped her in a great embrace. He no longer cared if anyone saw him, he no longer cared about concealment and gossip.

  Rain struggled out of his clutches, laughing. She drew him across towards the exit, looking up at him. ‘You’ve been crying, Mor,’ she said. ‘You have a way of crying inside your eyes which is terrible. I would rather you shed tears.’

  Mor realized that he had, after his fashion, been crying. ‘Well, you see how feeble I am!’ he said. ‘But it’s all right now.’ They came out of the station and began to walk towards the river.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ said Mor. He had discovered that Rain knew London far better than he did.

  ‘First we cross the bridge,’ said Rain, ‘and then I take you and show you something.’ She was pulling him along, as a child pulls an adult. They came on to Waterloo Bridge.

  The enormous curving expanse of the Thames opened about them girdled with its pale domes and towers. Above it was a great sky of white bundled clouds. The day was chill, and there was a promise of rain. The river glittered, thrown up into small foam-flecked waves that set the anchored barges rocking. Yet above the tossing water the air was light, and the familiar skyline receded into a luminous haze. They both paused to look, and Mor felt within him the quick stir of excitement which came with the first sight of London, always for him, as in his country childhood, the beautiful and slightly sinister city of possibilities and promises. The wind blew upon them coldly. They looked eastward in silence.

  Rain shivered. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘in this place it’s autumn already. I thought the leaves fell in September. But here they begin to fall in July. I don’t think I could live in England all the year.’

  Mor shivered too, but not at the wind. He was reminded yet again that Rain was free. Also, he had not been able to keep it out of his consciousness, she was wealthy. She could wonder to herself whether she would spend the winter in England, or go back to the Mediterranean, to Majorca perhaps, or Marrakcsh. At this thought Mor felt a mixture of attraction and revulsion.

  Rain read his thoughts. She did not want him to know that she had read them. She wanted somehow to make it clear that she did not envisage any going away that did not include him. She said, ‘I wonder if we shall work together one day, I at my painting and you at your books -’

  Mor had told Rain about the half-finished work in political concepts. He had still not said anything to her about the possible candidature. This was all the less necessary since he had almost finally decided now that he would not stand. Whatever happened, probably, he would not stand. He could not bring himself even to think about the Labour Party at the moment. Compared with his present preoccupations, everything to do with the Labour Party paled into triviality. He was surprised to find how little he cared. He must settle the more pressing problem first — and other problems could just look after themselves.

  ‘You would always be working hard,’ said Mor, ‘but I don’t know how I would make out in a state of’ — he searched for the word - ‘freedom.’ He pictured himself for a moment living in a hotel in Majorca on Rain’s money. He did not find the picture nauseating, merely ludicrous. Of course, there would be nothing like that. When the scandal was over, he would start a school of his own. They had envisaged this and even discussed it. Mor tried to fasten his thoughts upon a possible future. It was not easy. Instead, he kept seeing in his mind’s eye the face of his son. He remembered with a jolt that it was less than ten days to Donald’s chemistry exam.

  They reached the other side of the bridge. It was beginning to rain.

  ‘We go the rest of the way by taxi,’ Rain announced. She seemed unusually cheerful today. The storms of doubt and guilt seemed to have passed over for the moment. Mor thought, if only she were, even for a short while, absolutely certain, I could make my decision; and this thought seemed to bring it nearer. He hailed a taxi, and once inside he held the girl violently in his arms and forgot everything else.

  The taxi stopped, at Rain’s request, just off Bond Street, and they got out. Mor looked round vaguely. Rain’s presence made him live so completely from moment to moment that he had not even wondered where they were going. Then he saw a poster beside a door near by. It read: FATHER AND DAUGHTER. An Exhibition of Works by SIDNEY and RAIN CARTER.

  Rain watched him, delighted at his surprise, and began to lead him in. Mor felt considerable emotion. Except for the portrait of Demoyte, he had seen no paintings by Rain, or her father, in original or reproduction. He felt both excited and nervous. He began to think at once that he might hate the exhibition. They climbed the stairs.

  Rain’s appearance created a mild sensation in the room above. She was known to the girl who sold the catalogues and to two art dealers and the owner of t
he gallery, who were chatting in the middle of the room. One or two other people, who were looking at the pictures, turned to watch. Mor felt himself for the first time in Rain’s world. He felt intimidated. She introduced him without embarrassment as a friend of Demoyte’s. The art dealers knew about the Demoyte portrait, inquired after it, and said that they would make a point of going down to St Bride’s in the autumn to see it. The notion that connoisseurs would now be making pilgrimages to St Bride’s was strange to Mor. In any ordinary state of mind it would have pleased him. But now to speak of the autumn was like speaking of some time after he would be dead. He listened as a condemned man might listen to his warders chatting.