The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic)

  It was the time of the long-drawn-out twilight, not quite dark enough for the headlights, though a slow dissolution was setting in, the familiar everyday world dissolving out of existence. Peering out as he drove, Oswald felt a confused longing for peace – for the quiet gravity and stillness of the hour, so characteristically northern, to extend its influence to his brain. But everything seemed different today, the peaceful charm of the dusk infiltrated by something malevolent, evil. Though objects still retained their usual forms, they gave the impression of being about to change into more sinister shapes, in a world gone grey and uncanny, as if disembodied. Suddenly he had the crazy notion that the malevolence he seemed to feel in the air came from the woman beside him, who seemed to be everywhere, outside as well as within him. The stony road, those trees, that rock, the steering-wheel, his own hands upon it, all were poisoned, permeated by her, because they were perceived by his senses, where she had established herself, to reside for ever.

  To his obsessed imagination, it seemed that a part of her had, in some diabolical way, entered into him while she lay in his arms – a sucker, or a tentacle, through which she could always feed, vampire-like, on his living essence. How unspeakable! What a horror!

  Appalled, clenching both hands on the wheel, he felt his whole body stiffen with the horror that tightened each nerve. At this moment a tree loomed up ahead, and, instead of following the curve of the road, he drove straight at it, though still without recognizing the suicidal impulse. His unclear thought was that his horror was so great that it must extend to the car, which, in consequence, would insist on leaving the road, crashing into the tree and smashing itself to pieces. At that speed, the violent wrench with which he, at the last moment, kept the car on the road, almost capsized it. After lurching dangerously, it righted itself, shaving narrowly past the three, while the tips of the dangling branches scraped the roof like sharp fingernails.

  This peculiar thin, scratching sound seemed to recall Oswald to himself. Even now he didn’t see his real object, merely telling himself he must be mad to take such risks for no reason. Slowing down for a moment, he pressed his hand to his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and, while he did so, his unguarded face looked boyish again, lost, bewildered and touching.

  Then, resuming his stem military mask, he switched on the headlights and settled down resolutely to finish the drive speedily and safely, keeping his eyes away from Rejane with a deliberate effort, thankful she didn’t ask what had happened.

  Though the lurch and the queer scraping noise of the twigs had brought her out of her dreams she’d merely blinked sleepily at the light jumping from tree to tree, then closed her eyes again, feeling that, now that darkness had fallen, this endless drive was like an illness she might as well sleep through, since she had to endure it. When next she looked out, the white double drive of The Hope Deferred was opening ahead like welcoming outspread arms, and she exclaimed in delight, ‘Why, we’re here!’ The memory of Oswald’s uncivilized conduct was now recalled to her – she’d forgotten all about it, insignificant detail that it was – by the absence of any response.

  Actually, at her spontaneous exclamation, the man felt an overwhelming wave of love. The old charm still worked, he could hardly resist, even now. He was worn out, so exhausted in body and mind that he longed only to give way to her, not to struggle any more. What bliss it would be just to put his head in her lap and feel her hand on his hair! With a sensation of being pulled apart, he reminded himself of what she really was, told himself that the spell was an evil one, the naturalness a fake.

  ‘If anyone asks, I shall say you slipped on the rocks and that I fell trying to help you’ was all he said, in a voice that sounded to him unnatural, stiff with disuse.

  ‘Say whatever you like,’ she replied indifferently, running up the steps without looking round at him.

  He knew he ought to drive off at once. Yet somehow he found himself following her into the hall, as if pulled after her against his will. He saw the manager come hurrying forward, glancing with instantly suppressed astonishment at her sea-stained clothes, saying, ‘We were getting anxious ...’ The man’s curiosity was odious to him. But she went on her way unperturbed, seeming not to notice, simply waving an airy hand towards him, indicating that he would explain their late arrival.

  ‘And please have them send me up something to eat – I shan’t come down again.’ She spoke with finality, dismissing them both as of equal status, with a civil, impersonal ‘Goodnight’, just before she vanished, like an employer bestowing a tip.

  As he watched her disappear, for a second the young officer really felt as if he would die unless he ran after her, threw himself at her feet and implored her to spend this last evening with him. The insult of her voice and manner passed over his head, unnoticed.

  Then, collecting himself, he approached the manager, spoke a few words of explanation, and, without waiting to see how they were received, marched out to the car again and set off for home. Deadly tiredness had overwhelmed him like the sudden onset of influenza. He hardly knew what he was doing, only conscious within himself of the emptiness, the shame and the disappointment – the detritus of his own utter failure, both as a lover and as a man.

  At this hour the road he knew so well was deserted, and he fell, as he drove, into frequent blank spots, like sleeps, when nothing registered with him; emerging from one of these to find himself crossing the humpback bridge and in sight of his destination. Longing for the sanctuary of his own room, the privacy and relief of sleep that would not be disturbed, he drove up the last steep incline to his home.

  6

  THE family had never owned a car. Since cars came into general use, there had never been enough money to buy one. So there was no proper garage. Oswald used the old coach-house, facing the back door across a wide, cobbled courtyard. He installed the car here, went out and shut the heavy door, meaning to lock up and then go indoors. But, in a trance, almost, of weariness, after turning the big heavy old-fashioned key in the lock, he stood with it in his hand, leaning against the door in the dark.

  He was as he remembered being only once or twice before in his life, after some exceptionally exhausting exercise, too tired to move or even to think. His present tiredness had the useful effect of blocking memory as well, so that he need know nothing about what had happened at Bannenberg.

  The effort of driving had kept him awake, more or less. But now that he was standing still doing nothing but lean against the door, his eyes started to close. Oblivion seemed to catch hold of him and to draw him out of his body with soft, clinging, irresistible hands. Dreaming already, asleep on his feet, he seemed to see the high, yellow-wheeled dogcart his father had driven, which was one of his earliest memories. ‘There’ll soon be some skating,’ he told himself, trying to think back to his boyhood and to lose himself in his dream.

  He was growing colder and colder, but he still didn’t move, weariness and discomfort mingling in one vast, all-embracing grievance, heavily tinged with self-pity. Surely he was at least entitled to the privacy of his own room. Longing to shut himself in there and go to sleep, he dimly saw himself as being like some hunted animal, persecuted by men and by its own kind, wanting only to crawl into its lair, unmolested and unobserved.

  *

  A moment later, the back door opened, releasing a stream of yellow light, not quite bright enough to reach across the courtyard to where he was standing.

  ‘Oswald?’

  The young man heard his sister’s voice call his name, but, in his abnormal state, saw no necessity to answer – she belonged to the hostile conspiracy against him. In silence he watched her looking round, not seeing him yet, peering from inside the door, evidently reluctant to come out into the cold in her flimsy, short-sleeved dress. It was one she often wore in the evenings, with a full skirt and a flowery pattern of roses. He had seen it dozens of times without taking much notice, and had no idea why it now inspired in him an irrational annoyance. That she changed only
at night because the concession to gentility pleased their mother didn’t affect his irritation at seeing the big, quiet, serious girl wearing a dress more suited to somebody frivolous and lively.

  Why can’t she see she’s just making herself ridiculous? he thought, as if this was why he didn’t attempt to communicate with her. But then a more natural impulse made him step forward, moving his chilled body with difficulty, his legs stiff, his feet clattering on the cobbles like lumps of iron.

  ‘So it’s you.’ Vera’s voice sounded both curious and censorious. ‘What are you doing out here? Why don’t you come indoors?’

  He could tell that, even before she’d really seen him, she knew something was wrong, and he longed to get into the house without having to talk to her. But her tall figure in the absurd, full, flowery dress almost filled the doorway and left him no room to pass. Still locked in a silence too difficult to break, he advanced into the light and, planting himself in front of her, stood there without opening his mouth: while she stared at him in amazement, exclaiming, ‘Heavens! What’s happened to you? Has there been an accident?’

  To Oswald, her gaze seemed to jump out of her eyes – he could feel it running all over him from head to foot, investigating, with eager stealth and speed, every defect in his appearance, noting it in some invisible inventory, from which she would later deduce the whole story of his adventures. Her furtive, avid manner of conducting this swift examination was immediately, immensely repulsive to him. To avoid looking at her, he lowered his own eyes to the cobbles; which at once became identical mounds of sand, strongly lit on one side by theatrical sunset light, in a desert where he was wandering, nameless and lost. Then he was astonished to see, in a trough of darkness between two of the dunes, a tuft of dry, withered grass growing; and at once he was himself again, everything sprang back into its true perspective.

  But what on earth had gone wrong with him? Why was he seeing things as they were not? He felt, for a second, really alarmed by his alien thoughts and illusions, which seemed outside his control and liable, at any moment, to escape from his skull (if they hadn’t done so already) in the form of actions equally uncontrollable. The shock made him pull himself together. When Vera asked again, ‘What’t the matter? What’s happened to you?’ he replied clearly and firmly: ‘Nothing. Nothing’s happened. Except that I slipped and fell down ...’

  There was an infinitesimal pause, during which he realized that he couldn’t possibly hope to get off so lightly. He would have to say something more, offer an explanation.

  ‘You know what the place is like inside,’ he said with difficulty, dangerously skirting the fringe of forgotten events. ‘How dark and slippery it is ...’

  Closer than this he dared not go, already feeling the heave of some intolerable thing, struggling to break through into consciousness. Clenching his fists with the effort of not knowing what it was, he hurried on. ‘I don’t want Mother to see me like this.’ His sensation was of having come to the very edge of a frightful precipice, from which he’d stepped back only just in time. Thinking more of this than the words, he’d already said, ‘After all the fuss this morning she’s bound to imagine the worst’, before the remembered echo of his own brutal voice speaking then silenced him abruptly. It was hopeless to expect Vera’s co-operation. She always had been against him, and now he’d given her real cause for resentment.

  The last thing he expected was to hear her say kindly, ‘You look dead tired. Why not go straight up to your room? I’ll keep Mother out of the way and bring you something to eat after she’s gone to bed.’

  He glanced at her with instinctive distrust but softened at once, seeing on her face a forgotten look of secret complicity, with which as children they used to help one another out of their various scrapes, in league together against adult authority. It brought him a sudden swift warmth, a glimpse of the golden glow of perpetual sunshine lighting that happy childhood world he had shared with her.

  ‘Thanks, V. That’s jolly decent of you.’ Without knowing it, he fell automatically into the idiom of that innocent, carefree, lost period; immeasureably more lost to him than yesterday – the thought shot, cometlike, through his head, trailing dangers at which he refused to look. He looked at his sister instead, and, noticing the goose-flesh of her bare arms, was momentarily touched.

  But childhood’s radiance was already fading. And now her hungry, expectant glance extinguished it altogether and alienated him afresh. Though she asked no questions, her curiosity was to be felt, all the more noticeable because it came out of her silence and sympathy. Her eyes kept turning towards him, full of hateful inquisitiveness, and of a mute urgent appeal of some sort, incomprehensible to him – it was no concern of his. All that concerned him was their curiosity, which seemed to delve into him, searching about for his secrets in a way that was dangerous and repulsive, though he was too tired to know just where the danger lay.

  Becoming exasperated in his exhaustion, with a sense of giving up the struggle, he thought, I simply can’t stand those flowers another second, allowing his irritation to swamp everything. Then he pushed past the offending dress and went into the house, through which he could have found his way blindfold, hurrying up the back stairs in the dark, and along the familiar passages to his room, where he thankfully shut himself in.

  The large, cold, bare room, though it had always been his, was oddly impersonal, scrupulously clean and tidy, his few simple possessions grouped neatly and with a sort of unconscious pathos, as if ready for instant departure from a temporary encampment, where he would not stay long enough to justify any attempt at comfort.

  It was the sanctuary for which he had longed, and for a moment its severe plainness had a restorative effect. But this soon wore off, and he became aware that something was wrong, making him restless and uneasy. He’d shut out of his mind the obscure threat of Vera’s curiosity as he shut the door; but something infinitely more disturbing had entered with him. Though he didn’t know what it was, deep within him his unacknowledged shame was making itself felt – suddenly the austerity of the room seemed to reproach him. He felt he defiled it in his filthy clothes. With loathing, he tore them off, bundled them up together.

  But then he didn’t know what to do with them, he was at a loss. His instinct was to destroy the things; he’d have liked to push them into the kitchen stove. But he was afraid of meeting his mother or sister if he left his room, and that there would be more questions. As he stood there in his pyjamas, holding the bundle, his fair, fine, disordered hair made him look a boy, his face touchingly young, tired and bewildered.

  Asleep, almost, on his feet, he was at his wits’ end, unable to evolve the simplest plan. Finally, in desperation, he threw the bundle across the room and fell into bed, unconscious even before his head was on the hard pillow.

  *

  Oswald never stirred when his sister came in a little while with a tray of food. She looked at the handsome, blond young fellow lying there, lost and drowned in sleep, dead to the world, and saw that he was not to be roused. As she was going out again, she noticed the bundle of clothes on the floor; and her face, which had been muted and rather sad, sharpened in that curiosity her brother found so repulsive. She stooped to investigate, pulling the bundle open a little; then, still with the same hungry, inquiring expression, took it away with her, closing the door softly so as not to disturb the sleeper.

  It would have taken a far louder noise than that of a door to wake him just then. Sleep was his vital need, and he had to have it. It was his one possibility of escape from an insupportable situation. If only he could go on sleeping until he was back on duty again and his troubles were over, was his last thought, as he had the impression of hurling himself deliberately into the black abyss opening to receive him.

  In the morning, instead of coming fully awake as usual, in possession of all his faculties, as at the sound of a ghostly bugle, he woke reluctantly, climbing laboriously and against his will out of the dark gulf where he had lain with
out moving the whole night long. If only he need not wake but could remain there, ignorant and innocent, as he’d been in his sleep! But it was no use wishing, already he was back again in his life. Before he’d even opened his eyes, he felt the events of yesterday lying in wait for him. He remembered, and pressed his eyelids together to shut out the light, unwilling to face the shame of existing.

  However, the intervening hours of sound sleep had fulfilled their function, removing the actuality of Bannenberg a little from him. The guilty horror was slightly less immediate; he could think of it now as he could not have done before.

  Yesterday he had refused absolutely to admit that passion had made him act like a wild animal. Now, though it was still torture even to glance at the fact, he saw that, if ever he was to be reconciled to himself, he would have to accept the truth and learn to endure it. He even saw dimly that this might be possible. Eventually. But not yet. The thing was too recent. The memory too agonizing, too raw.

  Even the partial recognition, which was all he could so far achieve, had already, during these first waking moments, filled him with such sick self-disgust, such distaste for living, that he didn’t know how he was to go on. How could he bear his existence, through all the years stretching ahead? If only he could have stayed asleep! But the black abyss, into which he had plunged last night, now seemed quite out of his reach, not to be attained until it closed over his head for ever. And what a long dreary time of misery he would have to live through first!

  As it had to be lived through, because he had to remain alive, he must forget about what he had done. He took this for granted, as if he couldn’t possibly be required to face life in full consciousness of his guilt. He couldn’t endure it, no man could, it would not be expected of him. So, as a temporary expedient only, he again thrust the memory of Bannenberg out of sight, down into the deepest depths of himself. He did it because he must, if his life must go on.