Free Fall (8 page)

Here?

Not here.

And even by the time I was on the bike by the traffic light, I was no longer free. There was a bridge over a skein of railway lines among the smoky huddles of South London and the traffic lights were a new thing there. They sorted the traffic which went north and south beside the lines from the dribble that tried to pick a way round London, east and west. They were so new a thing in those days that an art student like myself could not see them without thinking of ink and wash—ink line for the sudden punchball shape, wash for the smokes and glows and the spilt suds of autumn in the sky.

No. I was not entirely free. Almost but not quite. For this part of London was touched by Beatrice. She saw this grime-smothered and embossed bridge, the way buses heaved over its arch must be familiar. One of these streets must be hers, a room in one of these drab houses. I knew the name of the street, Squadron Street; knew, too, that sight of the name, on a metal plaque, or sign-posted might squeeze my heart small again, take away the strength of my knees, shorten my breath. I sat my bike on the downward slope of the bridge, waiting for a green light and the roll down round to the left; and already I had left my freedom behind me. I had allowed myself the unquiet pleasure of picturing her, taken the decisive step of moving toward. I sat, waiting, watching the red light.

There was a large chapel that rose among the houses perhaps a quarter of a mile off in the smoke and the feelings
I had thought seared out of me, stirred as if seeds had burst their cases. Make an end and these feelings die at last. But I had not made an end. Sitting there, I could feel all the beginnings of my wide and wild jealousy; jealousy that she was a girl, the most obscure jealousy of all—that she could take lovers and bear children, was smooth, gentle and sweet, that the hair flowered on her head, that she wore silk and scent and powder; jealousy that her French was so good because she had that fortnight in Paris with the others and I was forbidden to go—jealousy of the chapel-deep inexplicable fury with her respectable devotion and that guessed-at sense of communion: jealousy, final and complete of the people who might penetrate her goodwill, her mind, the secret treasures of her body, getting where I if I turned back could never hope to be—I began to scan the men on the pavement, these anonymities who were privileged to live in this land touched by the feet of Beatrice. Any one of them might be he, could be he, might be her landlady’s husband or son; landlady’s son!

Still the traffic lights said stop. I became aware that the roads were filled with a jam of traffic—so the lights could break down then. We were held up. There was still time to turn round and go away again. A few days and the feelings would sear themselves out. But even as that possibility presented itself I knew that I should not go back; felt myself get off the bike, lift it on the pavement and wheel it under the red light.

Courage. Your clothes are clean if cheap; your hair is cut and combed; your mug if ugly is carefully shaved and slightly scented with a manly scent as in the advertisements. You have even cleaned your shoes.

“I didn’t ask to fall in love!”

I found I was fifty yards on, still pushing my bike along the pavement though here the road was free. I was under a huge hoarding which was flourishing beans and red cheeks ten feet in the air. My heart was beating quickly and loud, not because I had seen her or even thought of her, but because in the walk along the pavement I had understood at last the truth of my position. I was lost. I was caught. I could not push my bike back again over the bridge; there was nothing physical to stop me and only the off-chance of seeing Beatrice to push me on. I had cried out aloud, cried out of all the feelings that were bursting their seed-cases. I was trapped again. I had trapped myself.

For to go back is—what? Not only all that has gone before, but also this added: that I had seen her pavements and people, invented an addition in the landlady’s son, was far worse off than when I started. Going back would end somewhere—in Australia perhaps, or South Africa—but somewhere it would end in one way only. Somewhere a man would accost me casually.

“Did you ever know a girl called Beatrice Ifor?”

Myself, with reeling heart and straight, painful face:

“A bit. At school——”

“She’s——”

She’s what? Become a Member of Parliament. Been canonized by the Catholic Church. Is on the hanging committee.

“She’s married a chap——”

A chap. She could marry the Prince of Wales. Be queen. Oh God, myself on the pavement. Queen Beatrice, her secret plumbed and known, but not by me——

I was addressing the beans.

“Does everyone fall in love like this? Is so much of their love a desperation? Then love is nothing but madness.”

And I do not want to hate her. Part of me could kneel down, could say as of Ma and Evie, that if she would only be and meward, if she would be by me and for me and for nothing else, I wanted to do nothing but adore her.

Pull yourself together. You know what you want. You decided. Now move towards that consummation step by step.

They were coming out of the training college already, I could see them, fair heads and mousy ones, giggling and laughing in flocks, tinkling their good-byes and waving, so girlish and free, the thin ones, tall ones, dumpy ones, humpy ones, inky ones, slinky ones, gamesy ones and stern ones with glasses on. I was in the gutter, sitting my bike, willing them to die, be raped, bombed or otherwise obliterated because this demanded split-second timing. And, of course, she might not come out at all—might be—what the hell did you do in a girls’ training college at half-past four on an autumn afternoon? The crowd was thinning out. If she saw me first so obviously sitting my saddle in the gutter and waiting, the game would be up. Had to be accident, I had to be riding when she saw me; so I pushed off and balanced along with circus slowness, half-hoping now that the crisis was at hand that she would not come out and my misbehaving heart would be able to settle again, wobble wobble heart and bike and she appeared with two others, turned and walked away without seeing me. But I had rehearsed this too often in my bed for my heart and swelling hands to let me down. The whole thing was mechanical, fruit of terrible concentrated thought and repetition. I rode casually, one hand in my
pocket and the other on my hip, look no hands, swaying this way and that. She was past and behind me. Startled I looked back, grabbed the handle-bars, braked and skidded to a stop by the pavement, looked back brazenly as she approached, grinned brazenly in immense surprise——

“Why, if it isn’t Beatrice Ifor!”

So they stopped all three while my rehearsed prattle left her no chance of moving off without being rude; and those other two, those blessed damozels, they were in the freemasonry of this sort of meeting and moved on almost immediately, waving back and giggling.

“—was just cycling past—never dreamed—so this is the training college, is it? I come along this road a lot or shall do in the future. Yes, a course. I prefer cycling between the other place and the other place—no buses for me. Can’t stand ’em. Course in lithography. Were you going back to your digs? No. I’ll walk. Can I carry? Are you enjoying it here? Is the work hard? You seem to be thriving on—yes. Look. I was going to have a cup of tea before I ride the rest—how—oh, but you must! One doesn’t meet—and after all these months, too! Lyons. Yes. I can leave the bike——”

There was a small round table of imitation marble on three iron legs. She was sitting on the other side. I had her now for whole minutes, islanded out of all the complexities of living. By sheer hard work and calculation I had brought this about. There was much to be achieved in those minutes, things noted down and decided, steps to be taken; she was to be brought—oh, irony! a little nearer to a complete loss of freedom. I heard my voice babbling on, saying its lines, making the suggestions that were too general to be refused, the delicately adjusted assumptions
that were to build up into an obligation; I heard my voice consolidating this renewed acquaintance and edging diplomatically a trifle further; but I watched her unpaintable, indescribable face and I wanted to say—you are the most mysterious and beautiful thing in the universe, I want you and your altar and your friends and your thoughts and your world. I am so jealousy-maddened I could kill the air for touching you. Help me. I have gone mad. Have mercy. I want to be you.

The clever, unscrupulous, ridiculous voice murmured on.

When she got up to go, I went with her, talking all the time, talking an attentive, amusing—oh, the calculated stories! pleasant young man into the picture; erasing the other Sammy, so incalculable, insolent and namelessly vicious. When she stopped dismissively on the pavement I accepted this as if the sky was not reeling round me. I allowed her to go, attached to me by a line no thicker than a hair, but at least, if one could not say that she had swallowed the fly, it was still there, dancing over the water; and she, she was still there—she had not flicked her tail and vanished under weed or rock. I watched her go and turned to my bike with something accomplished—a meeting with Beatrice in the privacy of a crowd, a contact re-established. I rode home, my heart molten with delight, goodness and gratitude. For it was good. She was nineteen and I was nineteen; we were male and female, we would marry though she did not know that yet—must not know that yet, lest she vanish under weed or rock. Moreover there was peace. For she would be working at her books tonight. Nothing could touch her. Until the next afternoon—for who knew what she would do that evening?
Dance? Cinema? With whom? Nevertheless the jealousy was to-morrow’s jealousy and for twenty-four hours she was safe. I surrounded her with gratitude and love that came out strongly as a sense of blessing, un-sexual and generous. Those who have nothing are made wild with delight by very little. Once again as at school I yearned not to exploit but protect.

So my tiny thread was attached to her and I did not see that with every additional thread I myself was bound with another cable. Of course I went back next day, against my better judgment but with a desperate impulse to move on, to hurry things up; and she was not there, did not come. Then I spent an evening of misery and hung about the next day all the afternoon.

“Hullo, Beatrice! It looks as if we are going to meet quite often!”

But she had to hurry, she said, was going out that evening. I left her on the pavement with Lyons like an unvisited heaven and agonized as she vanished into the infinite possibilities of going out. Now I had ample time to consider the problems of attachment. I began to appreciate dimly that a thread must be tied at both ends before it can restrain anything.

Facetious.

“Hullo, Beatrice! Here we are again!”

When we were sitting at the marble-topped table my plans began to come apart.

“Did you enjoy yourself last night?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Then, out of the unendurable compulsion to know; with heart beat and damp hand with plea and anger——

“What were you doing?”

She was wearing, I remember, a suit, grey, some sort of smoothed flannel with a vertical stripe, alternately green and white. She had a blouse on beneath it with some throat and chest showing. Two fine gold chains fell down the glossy skin and vanished into the treasury. What was there at the end, between the Hesperides? A cross? A locket with a curl of hair? An aquamarine to shake and glimmer there, a perfection secret and unattainable?

“What were you doing?”

The contrast between the formal suit, the masculinity of the lapels, the neatness of the waist—and the soft body that sat in it—don’t you know what you do to me? But there were changes, too, a faint hint of pink now over each cheekbone and under the long lashes a level look. Suddenly the air between us was filled with comprehension—understanding on the small-change level. This was not worded, did not need to be. She knew and I knew; but still I could not keep the fatal word back. It vibrated in my head, was unstoppable as a sneeze, came out with fury and contempt and pain.

“Dancing?”

The hints of pink were definite now. The round chin lifted. The thread stretched and broke.

“Well, really——”

She lifted off the chair, took her books.

“I’m late. I must go.”

“Beatrice!”

I had to run after her as she walked along the pavement. I hung by her, walking sideways.

“I’m sorry. Only I—
hate
dancing—hate it! And the thought of you——”

We were stopped and half turned to each other.

“
Were
you dancing?”

There were three steps up to the front door, curved iron railings descending them on either side. Neither of us had the right vocabulary. She wanted to tell me, that assuming what she sensed was correct then I still had no right to insist on knowing. I wanted to cry—look how I burn! There are flames shooting out of my head and my loins and my heart! She wanted to say: however I may have half unconsciously appraised you as a mate—and of course you seemed impossible, only slightly amended by your recent behaviour—however much I have exercised my normal function of female living and allowed you to approach thus far; nevertheless, the rules of the game should have been observed; whereas you have broken them and affronted my dignity.

So we stood, she on the lower step, I, hand on the rails, red tie blown by my own violence over my right shoulder.

“Beatrice! Were you——?”

She had such clear eyes, such untroubled eyes, grey, honest because the price of dishonesty had never been offered to her. I looked into them, sensed their merciless and remote purity. She was contained in herself. Nothing had ever come to trouble her pool. If I held out my hand, desperate and pleading, inarticulate and hot out of raw youth and all the tides that bundled me along, what could she do but examine it and me and wait and wonder what I wanted?

“Were you?”

Indignation and hauteur; but both scaled down because the thread had been after all so hair-thin and to make much of the offence would imply that I had threatened her freedom.