Lover's Leap (12 page)

Indeed it was as if not only the inn, the village, but the whole of the little world into which I had dropped an hour ago, as if by accident, had come to me in answer to an inner necessity. Soon the marsh gave way to shingle beds. Once the sea had swept these flats, and, where the sea had been, small wiry plants had rooted themselves in the arid shingle, Stone Crop, Restharrow, Sea Poppies with long seed pods like rats' tails, and Bugloss holding up on withered stalks flower-heads parched to dry husks by the salty winds of autumn. Here and there a holly-bush, a mere hump of close-packed prickly leaves, leaned away from the prevailing winds, its seaward side stripped and burnt by the brine to a grey hunched shoulder, all its growth streaming obliquely to leeward like dark green flame. Each sign of life showed life at its hardiest, its starkest, its most strenuous. The road died into the shingle before it reached the sand-dunes and I plunged through deep beds of pebbles, that rattled and shifted under my feet, into the deeper and looser sand of the dunes. I staggered up their sliding slopes. The sharp rushes that crowned their crests, like a
growth of coarse hair, stabbed through my stockings, and soon I had gone sliding and plunging down to the narrow beach where the bright blue-grey sea was climbing towards high tide.

Under the shelter of the dunes it was as warm as summer and I lay full-length on the warm sand, staring up into blue sky. After a while I sat up. The waves came hurrying peacefully to shore, yawned up with an infinite leisure and burst with a soft crash to a ridge of seething snow that glided, wasting as it glided, up the glassy sand. To my right a wooden groyne ran out into the sea. The incoming waves boiled about its almost submerged end and, nosing along it, struck each of the great baulks that supported it and burst to a shower of crystals in the sun. The sunshine and the dancing water tempted me to bathe, though the bathing season was long since over. In the world I had left this morning only fanatics bathed in October. But it seemed to me, and the idea was something more than a frivolous fancy, that to bathe now would be to initiate myself into this newly discovered world.

I stood up and began to undress. After all, if when I had undressed it felt too cold, I could dress again. There was no one to see me, no one to laugh at my cowardice. But even when I had pulled off my shirt and stood stark naked, the air was not cold. Its touch was soft and fresh on my skin. I ran to the groyne, climbed on to it and began to walk, like a tight-rope walker, along its narrow edge, and when I had reached the end I climbed on to the great flat-topped baulk and stood looking down into the heaving water. The thought of the plunge sent a shiver through me, so I pulled myself together and dived at once.

Good God, how cold it was! It was as if a gigantic hand had caught me a stinging slap on the chest and belly and knocked all the breath out of my body. It was like jumping into a bed of stinging-nettles, a cauldron of boiling soda-water. I swam like fury for the shore, but before I was in
my depth a desperate courage came to me and I turned and swam parallel with the beach, striking out for all I was worth. When I had no breath left I landed, landed into a warm summery air, and ran with leaden limbs along the beach to my clothes. But I was far too wet to dress, so I paused to strip the water off my body and legs and then ran to the groyne and back again to where I had landed, till the heavy numbness thawed out of my legs and arms. When I was almost dry I dressed and set off for a brisk walk along the sands. I felt as if I had put on clothes for the first time: I was aware of my tingling body inside the clothes as a thing apart from them. The dip into that icy water had been not only an initiation and a baptism; it had washed me clean of the past. I had become my own master: I could live without Rose.

But what depths of sadness that thought held. That it should be possible for me to go on my way without her, without Rose who had meant the whole of life to me! It stripped life of all its tenderness and beauty, leaving only the grim, indestructible skeleton. I thrust the thought behind me, closed my ears to her name, that single syllable whose sound raised echoes and vibrations in every nerve of my being. No, I must not think of Rose, though it seemed now that, even if I did, the thought of her could no longer drag me back into my old, wretched self. For that self had burnt itself out: it had exhausted all my capacity for loving and suffering and had died for lack of fuel. I had no longer either the desire or the power to feel deeply. And what a relief it was to be done with emotionalism. For that was what it had been: not healthy sensibility, but a morbid disease of the emotions. Yes, I was sick of it all; sick of my old self and sick of Rose. Was this, then, the result of love at first sight which old Etherton had warned me against? Was it inevitable that the ecstatic moment when I saw Rose, that lovely, unforgettable vision, in the doorway of the Ethertons' drawing-room, should be the prelude to
this utter emptiness? A sudden sigh caught my throat and lifted my chest, but it was a sigh not of despair but of resignation, a sigh for something ended. I had come to an end, but also to a new beginning. This clean, bare, briny world, the serenely heaving sea, the expanse of yellow sand stretching miles ahead, the bright, sparkling autumnal air were gradually filling my emptiness with a broad, quiet satisfaction. The tide was receding. Already a wide glassy ribbon of wet sand lay scrolled along the coast. I looked at my watch. I must be getting back to Saltdyke to catch the train.

For the first time since my arrival I was faced by the fact that I had to return to London. I had forgotten all about London. It seemed that I had left it years ago and the thought of returning to it filled me with horror. It seemed to me now a cruel, hostile town: to return to it would be exile, for every tie with London was snapped. This place, not London, was my home now; and as I made for the village I determined I would call at the inn and enquire if they could put me up. More and more my heart became set on the inn. I would return to London to-night, pack up my clothes and painting materials, shut up the flat and return here to-morrow. I was so anxious to be certain that this plan could be realized that I began to hurry furiously and, once I was on the solid road, I ran till I was within half a mile of the village.

The landlord was surprised at my request. They didn't take visitors, he said; they had no rooms for them. I told him that if only he could make room for me I would stay for at least two months, and that seemed to appeal to him. He went to consult his wife and, as a result, they showed me a little bedroom which they used as a spare room for their own friends. It was too small to work in. Hadn't they an empty attic or some place I could use as a studio? They glanced at each other. Well, there was the tea-room, a large room where they provided teas for people who came
for the day in the summer. I could have that, of course. It wouldn't be very comfortable, but I could always have a fire. There was a big fireplace. It was an upstairs room: one window looked across the village, the other over the marsh to the sea.

The moment I was shown into it I knew it was the room I had been hoping for. At the first glance I had taken possession of it and it of me. My one thought now was to go to London and get back as quickly as possible, and I started for the station, telling my hosts that I would return to-morrow afternoon.

Two months later. How little time has to do with the periods of one's life. I knew Rose for six months, but into those six months is packed the significance of years. And these three months I have spent in this inn—these three austere, fruitful, patient months—have been a lifetime in themselves. The moment I arrived here the whole organization of my life was changed. When I was in London the pivot of my existence was Rose. I felt myself complete only when I was with her; and so my well-being hung upon her movements, was distracted by hopes and fears, anxieties and schemes. After the burst of energy produced by our first happy weeks, my work dropped into the background and became a thing of fits and starts. Before the end I had almost ceased to be able to work at all. My days were broken into small fragments, meetings and partings, comings and goings, the endless and desolating variety of a life clogged and dislocated, thrown out of gear. But as soon as I came here, all distraction and all variety vanished. My days dropped into the blessed monotony that governs all existence in these remote places where one day follows another with no more variety than that provided by the weather and the seasons. What an unspeakable relief it was to be freed from the weary responsibility of planning my days. For in this simple, inexorably appointed order of life
I was free to turn all my energies to work, and work became the passionate centre of my existence. For as soon as I had yielded my outer life to this benign, monotonous routine, my inner life broke out into a marvellous activity. I have never before worked with such gusto. After meals or the walks I took over the marsh or along the coast, I hurried, impatient and excited, to the tea-room which is my studio. As I opened the door and saw again the room which has become so absolutely my own and my unfinished picture on the easel, I seemed to be returning to a dearly-loved friend, to an unchangeable Rose who was waiting for me with open arms.

I remember one day in particular when, having shut the door, I stood considering the picture as if it were some miraculous growth like a rare, half-opened flower, a thing with a life of its own, more beautiful than anything I myself could create. The problems and difficulties that had faced me at first had solved themselves, all but a lack of coherence in the top corner on the right, and, as I stood looking at it, I realized what was needed. Yes, I had managed to express the idea I had set out to express, that particular relation of intersecting planes and transparent colours which had seemed to me so exciting and so satisfying. The idea had been suggested by something seen in my bedroom looking-glass—a section of wall, wardrobe and half-open window. I took up my brush and palette and soon I was lost in my work. The picture and I became a single purpose, a process as natural and inevitable as the slow unfolding of a flower.

But it was not only my work and the undisturbed routine that kept me contented. It was also the pleasant company in which I lived. After the first fortnight I had ceased to be a stranger and had become part of the life of the inn. I no longer had my meals alone in my studio, but in the kitchen with the landlord and his wife; and in the evenings I sat in the tap-room with the small company
that frequented it. One or two of them used to enquire about my pictures and would sometimes ask to see them. They had no preconceived ideas of what a picture ought or ought not to be. Ancient or modern meant nothing to them, and the qualities in my work that alarmed and shocked Mrs. Etherton and others of my friends, they accepted without surprise or prejudice. Before long I was as happy and at home among them as ever I had been with my friends at the Café Royal or at the Ethertons'.

How far away in time and space these London friends had become. They came and went in my mind like the people of a dream, and London too had faded to an unhappy dream-memory. After my first fortnight at Saltdyke the weather broke. Wind and rain drove in from the sea and swept the marsh. I was roused in the night by the rattling of my window and the spray of rain on my face. I leapt from bed to shut the window and then lay listening to the gusts of rain spattering the panes like a devil's typewriter, and the wind bludgeoning the walls and roof till it seemed that the inn rocked like a ship at sea. Once the wind swept the sea clean over the sand-dunes and the marsh was bright for a week with standing lakes of salt water. But storms and floods did nothing to spoil the place for me: they merely brought to it that fiercer and more austere beauty which I had divined under its autumnal aspect. Now the crouching hollies and all the wiry little plants that held to the shingle were at grips with the briny storms over which in the end they would prevail.

It was nearing Christmas when I returned to London for a single night to take some finished pictures to my dealer and replenish my stock of materials. I knew that I was strong enough now to bear the pain that London with all its associations with Rose would cause me. For I was no longer defenceless: I had rebuilt my life into something wiser and sadder, and wisdom and sadness are powerful protectors. The journey and the visit would be a trial of
strength from which, I knew, I should emerge intact.

The ghost of Rose was waiting for me, sure enough, in Beresford station, but there its power was slight, for later memories—the memories of my arrival there on the fateful morning and my two transits when I returned to London in the evening and again to Saltdyke next day—eclipsed it. It was only when I reached Victoria that her presence became potent. At that point I stepped into a dream-world. London was no longer real. I stared at streets, houses, shops, expecting them to grow real to my stare, but they eluded me, refused to develop into the solid reality I had once known. They were ghosts, fragments of a dream haunted by the ghost of Rose. At any moment they might tremble, grow blurred, and fade into the reality of Saltdyke; and I walked among them in a trance, possessed by a kind of numbness, an apathy across which shimmered a vague emotional agitation like the faint purl of a breeze on still water. Yes, I kept telling myself, my depths were safe: this ebb and flow of sensibility troubled only the surface. Unless I were to meet Rose! That would be terrible. The very thought frightened me. If I caught sight of her, I decided, I would turn away at once and shut out the vision. She had become for me so entirely a thing of the past that it was almost unbelievable that she was here, in this town, moving about in her usual orbit; even now at this moment, perhaps, opening the door of the house in Woburn Square and pausing for a moment before descending the steps.

I checked myself. I must not picture such things in case I should call her out of her ghostliness into reality. It was after five when I began to make my way towards my flat. The quickest way would have taken me through Russell Square within sight of her flat, so I avoided it, both for fear of meeting her and to keep clear of the too familiar scenes. I had not had much lunch and, seeing an A.B.C. shop a few yards ahead of me, I went in for a cup of tea.