The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic)

  Only a woman, he knew instinctively, could satisfy them; but none of those accessible to him were sympathetic; so his confused, inarticulate unhappiness became fixed, tolerable because of its definite limitation. Everything would come right again when he went on leave, back to his home and to his mother, he was sure of that. He had always been perfectly happy to spend all his free time with her, never wanting anyone else, even after he’d joined the regiment.

  Throughout the voyage home he was dreaming of her, looking forward to their meeting; to a renewal of their close mutual understanding.

  Yet, just precisely this time, when he came back after the years of absence, needing her more than he’d ever done since childhood, there seemed no understanding, everything was changed. She seemed changed, older, further away; they seemed to have grown apart. He found he could no longer confide in her as in the past. It was a terrible disappointment to him. He was left with his undefined grievance, his dissatisfaction, of which he became much more conscious, without the distraction of duty and discipline that had kept him going.

  All at once, his predicament seemed far more grave, since he could see no end to it. And it seemed so unfair, when all the time he’d been doing his duty in uncongenial circumstances – as a northerner, he’d always hated the tropical heat. Surely he deserved something, after the years of exile? Something of the dream that had touched him when the soldiers sang in the brief moment before the night, and the smoke rose in straight lines, diaphanous, pungent, into the cloudless sky?

  His dream was too indefinite to put into words; perhaps no more than the desire to feel at ease again in his life; he knew only that it had failed to materialize. And his home, where nothing was as he had so confidently expected and believed it would be, had failed him.

  His brothers had grown up and departed to various jobs; two of his sisters were married and living in distant towns. That left only Vera, the most intelligent and least attractive of the girls, the one he liked least, the one doomed, apparently, to a life of frustration as companion of his mother in her declining years.

  As soon as the excitement of his arrival was over, disappointment engulfed him. Since the contact with his mother was broken and couldn’t be mended, there seemed no point in their being together. In spite of their mutual love, the years relentlessly kept them apart. When he answered her questions, he was all the while conscious that she really wanted something more personal than the objective account of his travels that was all he could, or would, give her, feeling – without ever quite allowing the thought to form – that this was all of him she was now able to understand.

  His home was very isolated, high up on the moors, miles from any large town. There were no distractions, apart from a few boring visits to scattered neighbours. As things were, he could see no sense in staying on there, and began to make vague plans for getting away.

  His sister meant very little to him, a big serious girl who seldom spoke, and whose presence he accepted very much as he accepted the furniture he had known all his life; until she astonished him by saying she knew what he had in mind – it was just like him to go off to enjoy himself, leaving her stuck here with her mother on this godforsaken moor.

  Startled by her criticism, Oswald told himself she was warped and bitter because she’d been condemned, practically, as the last unmarried girl, to stay here as long as the old woman lived. But it was such a commonplace of their society, it was always happening, he couldn’t take it very seriously. Her bitterness, anyway, seemed excessive; and why should it be directed against him?

  It took him some time longer to find out that what Vera really resented was his acceptance of the money essential to his career, which she helped her mother to earn by doing odd jobs of sewing and preserving and so on, for their richer acquaintances. He’d never even thought about it before. The family tradition required the eldest son to enter his regiment, which necessitated a private income of some kind: therefore an income must be provided for him – it was as simple as that – and, if it could be provided in no other way, so it must be. Now appalling vistas of doubt opened up.

  His sister said frankly that it annoyed her to see him taking everything as his right – he should realize what was being done for him – and now let the subject drop. Neither of them ever mentioned it again. But of course it went on working in Oswald’s mind. Not only had he been made to feel guilty but put under an obligation he could neither end nor discharge, since he couldn’t think of leaving the army.

  So much for his idea of going away, which now became impossible, an act of monstrous ingratitude he could not contemplate for a moment. Instead, he rather grimly set himself to make amends, devoting himself to his mother, trying to please her in everything.

  But it was not a success. Consciously, the old lady understood nothing of what was going on under the surface: though she was grateful and proud to be seen about with her handsome son, so much attention embarrassed her. Feeling the hidden strain, she would have preferred to be treated in the old offhand way that seemed natural to her, and left at home.

  Oswald’s efforts began to seem rather futile, as it became clear that he was unable to make her happy – his own unspoken grievances saw to that, making him feel on edge, so that he experienced more and more often the irritation that had twitched at his nerves when she spoke of Rejane.

  *

  Her presence was a point of anxiety in him now, preventing his thought from concentrating upon the unknown woman across the room. For a second, when he glanced at the stranger, his dream seemed to hover near, an indescribable brightness, spreading wings of promise, of peace. All he wanted was to sit quietly near the woman who had evoked his dream. But, all the time, he had to consider his mother. At any moment she would start fussing, saying they must start for home.

  Suddenly a soldier’s automatic awareness of weather conditions made him look out of the window. A peculiar blanching and blurring process was obscuring the light outside. The sun was paling, a curious dimming was everywhere apparent, pallor was diffusing itself into the air, smudging the shapes and stealing the colours of the garden flowers. Eclipsed to a pale lamp, the sun abruptly went out altogether; the cliff withdrew from sight. Only a few of the flowers in the foreground still floated, dim and derealized, colourless ghosts of themselves, in the thick white mist billowing up from the invisible water, which could be heard softly sucking and smacking the rocks below.

  All solid reality was now contained by the room, the world outside obliterated by this nebulous whiteness steaming up from the creek. In a sudden childish fantasy Oswald saw it as a screen, behind which the hidden rocks, the flowers, the water, were working to help him attain his dream, that undefined shimmering thing, out of reach, but nearer than it had been, no longer utterly inaccessible.

  His mouth softened and lost its sternness. Suddenly he looked younger, boyish, again. Now he was as he should have been all the time, with a more natural confidence, and something altogether warm and winning about him. Feeling happier than for a long time, he leaned back, stretching out his long legs, fully relaxed in his chair for the first time since he’d sat down there.

  His natural warmth, which the army trouble had almost suppressed, was restored to him. Now he saw his mother’s face as pathetic instead of provoking, and was filled with compassion for her. Eager to show her how much he still loved her, he said with an affectionate smile, ‘It looks as if we’re here for the night.’

  For the night ...?’ She was sitting with her back to the window, and had anyhow been far away in some daydream of her own, from which she returned in confusion, not understanding.

  ‘Look out of the window.’

  Instead of doing as she was told, she gazed fixedly at him, astonished by the change, recognizing the humorous, playful look and voice of the past. Her heart began beating fast in joyful excitement. Her beloved son seemed suddenly to have come back to her as he used to be, in his true self, as he hadn’t been since his return. But, even as she looked fo
ndly into his face, where the old, easy, smiling charm had replaced irritation and sternness, in the background was the hurting fear that he might revert to what he had seemed before. So, controlling herself, she looked over her shoulder. And at once the rolling whiteness outside put her into a nervous flutter.

  ‘Fog! Why didn’t you tell me sooner? But I ought to have guessed from the way it suddenly turned cold ... We’ll have to hurry back before it gets any worse ...’

  Already, while still speaking, she had collected her modest possessions, and now she quickly stood up, her anxious eyes looking down at Oswald, lounging in his chair, smiling, and clearly not intending to move an inch.

  ‘It’s quite bad enough for me as it is,’ he answered her lightly, ‘so you might just as well sit down again.’

  ‘But Vera’s expecting us back to dinner ... She’ll be wondering ...’

  ‘Then you’d better ring up and explain.’

  He leaned back, smilingly assuming from some mysterious reservoir of forgotten disguises the mischievous sly look, with which, as a little boy, he had always charmed her, and which he knew she still couldn’t resist.

  ‘It may clear in a minute,’ she weakly protested, wanting to be reassured, not about the weather, but that he was indeed the one who’d seemed unaccountably lost to her.

  ‘It may, or it may not.’ He was consulting his watch. ‘We couldn’t get back in daylight, possibly. And I’m not risking fog-pockets up on the moors in the dark – not even for you.’

  Playful, engaging, casual, he refused to be serious, yet wasfixed in his masculine will to stay. The affectionate, teasing voice tugged at her heart. But she had been so hunt, she understood so little, she was afraid to believe in the magical transformation, saying at random, ‘You really think it would be dangerous?’

  Stretched out there, immovable as a rock, relaxed and solemnly teasing, he replied, ‘I do’, disguising his impatience. Knowing the pathetic cause of her hesitation, he gazed at her gently, deliberately charming her to accept her own happiness, all irritation gone out of him and forgotten.

  ‘Very well. I’ll go and telephone Vera.’ With a little ecstatic sigh the mother surrendered finally, incapable of further resistance. By some miracle her darling had been restored to her, all the more precious because he had seemed lost. As she crossed the room she looked back several times, hardly able to let him out of her sight, in case he again disappeared. She idolized him, absolutely, he could do no wrong; therefore the past unhappiness must be her fault, though she didn’t see how ...

  *

  At last the door closed behind her, and Oswald was free to give his whole attention to the lovely pale face, framed by smooth dark hair, of which, all the time, he had been intensely aware, establishing, while he talked to his mother, a curious silent understanding with the unknown woman. Though seeming to take no notice of Rejane, he had known, through his acute consciousness of her, that she was listening to their conversation – it was almost as if she had been included in it. So it now seemed quite natural that she should ask, ‘Is it really dangerous to drive in this?’ With a slightly foreign gesture that he found charming, she indicated the fog, as she got up and went to stand at the window.

  ‘Yes, it can be dangerous on the moor.’ Oswald stood up too and approached her. ‘It’s easy to miss a turning, or to get off the road altogether.’

  To his delight, everything seemed easy and natural. And, as he came to stand at her side, with the dramatic effect of a curtain going up for their special benefit, the dense whiteness parted outside, momentarily revealing a strange grey world of ghost vegetation, quenched and unearthly, every cold leaf and petal running with moisture as if under water, before it descended again.

  ‘How long will it last?’

  Not noticing the frown that accompanied the question, Oswald said cheerfully, ‘No one can tell you that – another two minutes, perhaps. Perhaps another two days.’

  ‘One might really be stuck here for two whole days? ... Not able to get away?’

  Now he had to meet Rejane’s incredulous indignant look; a look almost of consternation, the mere notion of being detained forcibly by something she couldn’t control being intolerable to her self-willed nature, which, since childhood, had known no restraint or coercion.

  Taken aback and uncomprehending, he made some vague reply, out of his depth suddenly, his confidence abruptly shattered. In all his life no woman had ever moved him like this one, who had brought his dream into the room. But she was receding visibly, and anxiety seized him: he had only these few flying seconds, before his mother returned, in which to establish a bridge to the lovely stranger. Hearing her say, as if following her own thoughts to a conclusion, ‘That settles it. I shall go on the next boat’, he was really alarmed, exclaiming, ‘Oh, but you mustn’t!’ horrified by the prospect of losing the wonderful being he’d only just found, watching her nervously, while she murmured, as if to herself, ‘I should never have come here at all.’

  ‘My mother said you weren’t the sort of person to come to the moors.’

  Why did he have to waste time on such a futile remark, when there wasn’t a second to lose? However, to his immense relief, it seemed to recall her attention.

  ‘Did she say that? How strange ...’

  Though Rejane clearly saw more in the words than he did, he dismissed his mother with ‘She’s good at fortune-telling and all that ...’, continuing hastily, ‘You can’t have seen much, with all this rain, can you?’ Without giving her time to answer, he went straight on: ‘Some parts of the moor are magnificent, it’s got a beauty of its own – out of this world. But visitors hardly ever see the best places because they’re so hard to get at. But I shouldn’t think you’d mind that. I wouldn’t expect you to like things that were too easy.’ The last words were prompted by a sense of urgency; but, having spoken them, he looked at her doubtfully – had he introduced the personal note too soon? He gazed intently into her face as if in search of a revelation.

  Rejane looked back at him with her unchanging, almost black eyes, in which no expression was legible, although she was watching him with a new interest. Strange how he suddenly seemed to have come alive, thrown off some repressive burden. This sudden emergence of intensity and imagination, in conjunction with his solid, manly good looks, was surprising and totally unforeseen. His face, animated now, had that touch of seriousness that had so captivated the army wives – she too found it attractive.

  ‘What have you seen so far?’ he was meanwhile asking, encouraged by her attentive regard. ‘Isap Tor, I suppose, and the Five Falcons and Roko. All very nice and neat, tidied up for the summer tourists, but not the real moor at all.’ Loneliness had intensified his feeling for the countryside round his home, so that it was easy for him to speak of the moor without any self-consciousness. ‘I could show you wonderful places that are sheer magic. But you wouldn’t be able to drive there because there aren’t any roads – just heather and bracken and rock and the sea creeping in where you least expect it. In the old legends the sea is always at war with the tors, trying to undermine them. But those towers of rock won’t fall until the last judgement. They’ll always be standing there like besieged fortresses, never falling, old as the earth itself, fixed in their places like the sky and the waters under the earth.’

  He had a very agreeable soft voice, almost a singer’s voice in its delicate, slow inflections; and now it had unconsciously assumed a slight singsong lilt, imitated from the local storytellers of his childhood. Suddenly he heard it, heard what he was saying, and stopped, slightly embarrassed, as he always was by the sensitive, imaginative self he kept battened down out of sight beneath layers of masculine toughness, only fully aware of it when, as now, it had dangerously exposed itself.

  This time there was no danger, apparently; Rejane was looking at him with evident interest. But his practical self had come uppermost, and, determined to persuade her before his mother interrupted them, he said coaxingly, ‘Do stay a bit longer
and let me show you something of the real moor.’

  She’d already made up her mind to stay, but she said nothing yet. It amused her to watch the delicacy with which, not presuming to touch her, by way of emphasis he laid the tips of his fingers gently on the book she was holding. And his northern voice was fascinating when he was being intense, with its queer singing undertone and extraordinary flexibility; unimagined depths of softness were in it now, almost a coo. She smiled to herself faintly, though she still said nothing.

  Her silence was beginning to seem hopeful to him. Now, suddenly, in the midst of his pleasant excited feelings, came one so singularly inappropriate that it distracted him for the length of time he took to wonder why in heaven’s name a danger signal should have gone up in his mind, as if warning him not to go any further. He forgot about it at once, and went on with his pleading: ‘Don’t be frightened away by the fog. Look, it’s lifting already!’

  The world outside was in fact reappearing, though minus a dimension, as if made of water, frequented only by the ghosts of things as they were under the sun. Looking back at Rejane, he hoped wildly that she would say yes. The calm magnolia-mask of her face did not change, nor did her jewel-dark eyes, their fluttering fans of lashes long and soft as a sable paintbrush. Unkindly keeping him in suspense, only at the very last, when they’d both heard his mother’s approaching step, she gave him a slight, smiling nod.

  Unconscious of any unkindness, he was overwhelmed by a wonderful thrill of joy he could hardly conceal, and in a warm, vibrant voice said to the old woman coming into the room, ‘You must help me describe our moors – we can’t have people going off without appreciating them, can we?’