Absent in the Spring (19 page)

‘Heart's blood,' he had said. ‘Heart's blood.'

And then, afterwards, how he had said, ‘I'm tired, Joan. I'm tired.' And later, so strangely, ‘We can't all be brave …'

He had been thinking of Leslie when he said that. Of Leslie and her courage.

‘
Courage isn't everything …
'

‘
Isn't it
?'

And Rodney's nervous breakdown – Leslie's death had been the cause of that.

Lying there peacefully in Cornwall, listening to the gulls, without interest in life, smiling quietly …

Tony's scornful boyish voice:

‘Don't you know
anything
about Father?'

She hadn't. She hadn't known a thing! Because, quite determinedly, she hadn't wanted to know.

Leslie looking out of the window, explaining why she was going to have Sherston's child.

Rodney, saying as he too looked out of the window, ‘Leslie doesn't do things by halves …'

What had they seen, these two, as they stood there? Did Leslie see the apple trees and the anemones in her garden? Did Rodney see the tennis court and the goldfish pond? Or did both of them see the pale smiling countryside and the blur of woods on the farther hill that you saw from the summit of Asheldown …

Poor Rodney, poor tired Rodney …

Rodney with his kind, teasing smile, Rodney saying Poor Little Joan … always kind, always affectionate, never failing her …

Well, she'd been a good wife to him, hadn't she?

She'd always put his interests first …

Wait – had she?

Rodney, his eyes pleading with her … sad eyes. Always sad eyes.

Rodney saying, ‘How was I to know I'd hate the office so?' looking at her gravely, asking, ‘How do you know that I'll be happy?'

Rodney pleading for the life he wanted, the life of a farmer.

Rodney standing at the window of his office watching the cattle on market day.

Rodney talking to Leslie Sherston about dairy herds.

Rodney saying to Averil, ‘If a man doesn't do the work he wants to do, he's only half a man.'

That was what she, Joan, had done to Rodney …

Anxiously, feverishly, she tried to defend herself against the judgment of her new knowledge.

She had meant it for the best! One had to be practical! There were the children to think of. She hadn't done it from selfish motives.

But the clamour of protestation died down.

Hadn't she been selfish?

Hadn't it been that
she
didn't want to live on a farm herself? She'd wanted her children to have the best things – but what
was
the best? Hadn't Rodney as much right to decide what his children should have as she had?

Hadn't he really the prior right? Wasn't it for a father to choose the life his children should live – the mother to care for their well-being and to follow out, loyally, the father's idea of life?

Life on a farm, Rodney had said, was a good life for children –

Tony would certainly have enjoyed it.

Rodney had seen to it that Tony should not be balked of the kind of life that he wanted.

‘I'm not very good,' Rodney had said, ‘at forcing people to do things.'

But she, Joan, hadn't scrupled to force Rodney …

With a sudden, agonizing pang, Joan thought, But I
love
Rodney. I
love
Rodney. It wasn't that I didn't love him …

And that, she saw, with a sudden revealing vision, was just what made it unforgivable.

She loved Rodney and yet she had done this thing to him.

If she had hated him it could be excused.

If she had been indifferent to him, it wouldn't have mattered so much.

But she had loved him, and yet, loving him, she had taken from him his birthright – the right to choose his manner and way of life.

And because of that, because she had used, unscrupulously, her woman's weapons, the child in the cradle, the child that her body was bearing within it – she had taken something from him that he had never recovered. She had taken from him a portion of his manhood.

Because, in his gentleness, he had not fought with her and conquered her, he was so much the less, for all his days on the earth, a man …

She thought, Rodney … Rodney …

She thought, And I can't give it back to him … I can't make it up to him … I can't do
anything
…

But I love him – I do love him …

And I love Averil and Tony and Barbara …

I always loved them …

(But not enough – that was the answer – not enough –)

She thought, Rodney – Rodney, is there
nothing
I can do? Nothing I can say?

From you have I been absent in the Spring
.

Yes, she thought, for a long time … ever since the spring … the spring when we first loved each other …

I've stayed where I was – Blanche was right – I'm the girl who left St Anne's. Easy living, lazy thinking, pleased with myself, afraid of anything that might be painful …

No
courage
 …

What can I do, she thought. What can I do?

And she thought, I can go to him. I can say, ‘I'm sorry. Forgive me …'

Yes, I can say that … I can say, ‘Forgive me. I didn't know. I simply didn't know …'

Joan got up. Her legs felt weak and rather silly.

She walked slowly and painfully – like an old woman.

Walking – walking – one foot – then the other –

Rodney, she thought, Rodney …

How ill she felt – how weak …

It was a long way – a very long way.

The Indian came running out from the rest house to meet her, his face wreathed in smiles. He waved, gesticulated:

‘Good news, Memsahib, good news!'

She stared at him.

‘You see? Train come! Train at station. You leave by train tonight.'

The train? The train to take her to Rodney.

(‘Forgive me, Rodney … forgive me …')

She heard herself laughing – wildly – unnaturally – the Indian stared and she pulled herself together.

‘The train has come,' she said, ‘just at the right time …'

It was like a dream, Joan thought. Yes, it was like a dream.

Walking through the convolutions of barbed wire – the Arab boy carrying her suitcases and chattering shrilly in Turkish to a big, fat, suspicious looking man who was the Turkish station master.

And there, waiting for her, the familiar sleeping car with the Wagon Lits man in his chocolate uniform leaning out of a window.

Alep-Stamboul on the side of the coach.

The link that bound this resting place in the desert to civilization!

The polite greeting in French, her compartment thrown open, the bed already made with its sheets and its pillow.

Civilization again …

Outwardly Joan was once more the quiet, efficient traveller, the same Mrs Scudamore that had left Baghdad less than a week ago. Only Joan herself knew of that astonishing, that almost frightening change that lay behind the facade.

The train, as she had said, had come just at the right moment. Just when those last barriers which she herself had so carefully erected had been swept away in a rising tide of fear and loneliness.

She had had – as others had had in days gone by – a Vision. A vision of
herself
. And although she might seem now the commonplace English traveller, intent on the minor details of travel, her heart and mind were held in that abasement of self reproach that had come to her out there in the silence and the sunlight.

She had answered almost mechanically the Indian's comments and questions.

‘Why not Memsahib come back for lunch? Lunch all ready. Very nice lunch. It nearly five o'clock now. Too late lunch. Have tea?'

Yes, she said, she would have tea.

‘But where Memsahib go? I look out, not see Memsahib anywhere. Not know which way Memsahib gone.'

She had walked rather far, she said. Farther than usual.

‘That not safe. Not safe at all. Memsahib get lost. Not know which way to go. Perhaps walk wrong way.'

Yes, she said, she had lost her way for a time, but luckily she had walked in the right direction. She would have tea now, and then rest. What time did the train go?

‘Train go eight-thirty. Sometimes wait for convoy to come in. But no convoy come today. Wadi very bad – lot of water – rush through like that. Whoosh!'

Joan nodded.

‘Memsahib look very tired. Memsahib got fever, perhaps?'

No, Joan said, she hadn't got fever – now.

‘Memsahib look different.'

Well, she thought, Memsahib
was
different. Perhaps the difference showed in her face. She went to her room and stared into the fly-stained mirror.

Was there any difference? She looked, definitely, older. There were circles under her eyes. Her face was streaked with yellow dust and sweat.

She washed her face, ran a comb through her hair, applied powder and lipstick and looked again.

Yes, there was definitely a difference. Something had gone from the face that stared so earnestly back at her. Something – could it be smugness?

What a horribly smug creature she had been. She felt still the keen disgust that had come to her out there – the self loathing – the new humility of spirit.

Rodney, she thought, Rodney …

Just his name, repeated softly in her thoughts …

She held to it as a symbol of her purpose. To tell him everything, not to spare herself. That, she felt, was all that mattered. They would make together, so far as was possible at this late date, a new life. She would say, ‘I'm a fool and a failure. Teach me, out of your wisdom, out of your gentleness, the way to live.'

That, and forgiveness. For Rodney had a lot to forgive. And the wonderful thing about Rodney, she realized now, was that he had never hated her. No wonder that Rodney was loved so much – that his children adored him (even Averil, she thought, behind her antagonism, has never stopped loving him), that the servants would do anything to please him, that he had friends everywhere. Rodney, she thought, has never been unkind to anyone in his life …

She sighed. She was very tired, and her body ached all over.

She drank her tea and then lay down on her bed until it was time to have dinner and start for the train.

She felt no restlessness now – no fear – no longing for occupation or distraction. There were no more lizards to pop out of holes and frighten her.

She had met herself and recognized herself …

Now she only wanted to rest, to lie with an empty, peaceful mind and with always, at the back of that mind, the dim picture of Rodney's kind, dark face …

And now she was in the train, had listened to the conductor's voluble account of the accident on the line, had handed over to him her passport and her tickets and had received his assurance that he would wire to Stamboul for fresh reservations on the Simplon Orient Express. She also entrusted him with a wire to be sent from Alep to Rodney.
Journey delayed all well love Joan
.

Rodney would receive it before her original schedule had expired.

So that was all arranged and she had nothing more to do or to think about. She could relax like a tired child.

Five days' peace and quiet whilst the Taurus and Orient Express rushed westwards bringing her each day nearer to Rodney and forgiveness.

They arrived at Alep early the following morning. Until then Joan had been the only passenger, since communications with Iraq were interrupted, but now the train was filled to overflowing. There had been delays, cancellations, confusions in the booking of sleepers. There was a lot of hoarse, excited talking, protests, arguments, disputes – all taking place in different languages.

Joan was travelling first class and on the Taurus Express the first-class sleepers were the old double ones.

The door slid back and a tall woman in black came in. Behind her the conductor was reaching down through the window where porters were handing him up cases.

The compartment seemed full of cases – expensive cases stamped with coronets.

The tall woman talked to the attendant in French. She directed him where to put things. At last he withdrew. The woman turned and smiled at Joan, an experienced cosmopolitan smile.

‘You are English,' she said.

She spoke with hardly a trace of accent. She had a long, pale, exquisitely mobile face and rather strange light grey eyes. She was, Joan thought, about forty-five.

‘I apologize for this early morning intrusion. It is an iniquitously uncivilized hour for a train to leave, and I disturb your repose. Also these carriages are very old-fashioned – on the new ones the compartments are single. But still –' she smiled – and it was a very sweet and almost child-like smile – ‘we shall not get too badly on each other's nerves. It is but two days to Stamboul, and I am not too difficult to live with. And if I smoke too much you will tell me. But now I leave you to sleep, I go to the restaurant car that they put on at this moment,' she swayed slightly as a bump indicated the truth of her words, ‘and wait there to have breakfast. Again I say how sorry I am you have been disturbed.'

‘Oh, that's quite all right,' Joan said. ‘One expects these things when travelling.'

‘I see you are sympathetic – good – we shall get on together famously.'

She went out and as she drew the door to behind her, Joan heard her being greeted by her friends on the platform with cries of ‘Sasha – Sasha' and a voluble burst of conversation in some language that Joan's ear did not recognize.

Joan herself was by now thoroughly awake. She felt rested after her night's sleep. She always slept well in a train. She got up and proceeded to dress. The train drew out of Alep when she had nearly finished her toilet. When she was ready, she went out into the corridor, but first she took a quick look at the labels on her new companion's suitcases.