Return to Night (21 page)

“I? My dear, I didn’t operate on you. I wasn’t even assisting.”

“Yes, I know all about that. ‘A couple of hours’ delay in diagnosis, with the rapidly increasing intracranial pressure’”—he had given, it seemed unconsciously, a colorable imitation of Sanderson’s teaching voice—“‘but in the case we have here, early recognition of the signs, drowsiness, falling pulse rate-er-depression of the respiratory center’—or something like that. He didn’t bother to tell me any of it, of course, just threw it away upstage to a couple of students he’d brought in to admire me. I was only exhibit A, I didn’t have to say anything. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“But there was nothing to tell. Considering the training I’d had, if I hadn’t recognized the condition I shouldn’t have been fit to be at large. Fancy your picking up all that stuff.”

“I’m a quick study. … You must have realized, the first time I met you, that—that I didn’t remember. I’d rather have known.”

“It wouldn’t have been natural to tell you. One just doesn’t go telling patients that sort of thing.”

“Patients?” he said, looking away.

“Now you’re being silly. One has to stick to the rules, even with one’s friends. Besides, in my job it’s—well, it’s good form to take things in one’s stride. Being dramatic about them is just as much not done as it would be in your job to have a real operation on the stage.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve seemed to be theatrical.”

“Oh, Julian, don’t be so infuriating.” She turned round to him, laughing, though she did not feel like laughter; but he had looked away again. “I only mean that in the nature of things we’re bound to see it in different proportions. Wouldn’t you rather I thought of you as a friend of mine than as a successful diagnosis? I hardly remember it, now, except incidentally as the way we happened to meet.”

“I understood you the first time, you needn’t keep saying it. I realize you must be pretty well used to saving people’s lives and not getting thanked for it. But I’m not so used to being one of the people.”

“Well, but as far as that goes I—” She stopped; she had been about to say, “I did get thanked for it.” It was making things no easier, she found, to know what was on his mind, for she could think out no possible means of meeting him half way. “You did thank me, several times. It’s so long ago, you’ve forgotten. Shouldn’t we be moving? It’s uphill all the way back.”

“How could I have thanked you, when I never knew?” He paused; some strong internal strain had sharpened the outlines of his face. His mouth had straightened; he looked, for moment, older than his years. “Please don’t think hardly about it. You must have, of course. But people—You see, Mother’s done everything important for me, all my life. My father was no good. He walked out on her, quite soon after I was born. She’s never told me that, but you know how one picks things up, out of the air. When he was killed he hadn’t been home for two years, I do know that much. Not since my christening; and he was in France or Flanders all that time, so he must have done something else with his leaves. I don’t know who the woman was. I think she was on the stage. She must have been. It’s the only explanation that seems to fit everything.”

“I’m sorry,” said Hilary helplessly. She too was convinced; it was a theory that agreed with her own observation of Mrs. Fleming very well.

“She wouldn’t like to think I knew this. She’s always been careful to say the right thing about him to me, but I think I’ve known ever since I remember. One just does. … What I think is, that when this business happened—last year, I mean—well, thinking it over, I suppose the idea of my owing my life to someone else while she stood around doing nothing, I suppose It was more than she could take. So she side-stepped it in her own mind, the way people sometimes do. There’s something about it in psychology, isn’t there?”

The effort of speech, now that it was over, was making him breathe as fast as if he had been running. To Hilary it had been scarcely less painful. She said, “But of course. You were ill, you had a long convalescence. It was very sensible of her not to keep rubbing it in that you’d been in danger. Very likely Mr. Sanderson advised her not to; it often has a bad effect.”

She was pleased with this improvisation, till she saw his face, and knew that he must have his own reasons for skepticism, which he could not declare. She felt no further capacity for bitterness about it, and only wished that Sanderson had kept his panegyrics to himself.

She said, “Besides, you’re looking at it in the wrong way, and giving it a quite false importance. When people are worried to death, their minds don’t work along the ordinary tramlines. After it’s over, they want to forget everything and everyone connected with it. And so they should. Your mother’s been charming to me, in any case.”

“That’s not the same thing. You know what I mean.”

“You don’t know yourself. Tell me about that ferret you used to have.”

“My God, do you have to treat me like a child?”

“I’m sorry. But you’re being a bit difficult, you know.”

“I suppose I could have gone about it better. I wanted to tell you—well, for several reasons. You see, in a way, I knew. In a different way. But now it’s—it’s everything, and I don’t know what it is I remember.”

“Stop trying. You’re meant to forget, it’s part of the healing process. All that matters is that it’s turned out all right.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, “it’s turned out all right.”

A long way off in the village below, a church clock chimed seven. He stood listening, it seemed with a strained attention, to the sound, as if it had been a signal which, when it ceased, would have to be obeyed. The last of the bell strokes died, slowly, away. He turned round to her, with failure in his face. She read in his eyes a hopeless appeal to her to help him out, mixed with shame at having made it, and with a reproach for her refusal, of which he was also ashamed. She turned away, feeling a primitive contempt which her civilized conditioning partly hid from her and which her love and knowledge translated into pity, so that the humiliation she felt seemed centered only on herself. Revenging her unhappiness with a stubborn withdrawal, she set herself to admire the view.

“I forget if I ever told you about this man Chris Tranter, the one I’m going to stay with in town, he’s rather an interesting type, I think you’d like him. He …” The voice ran on, quick and constrained, with a surface of pleasant naturalness which was not quite that of life. She listened, acutely and horribly conscious of every false intonation, without taking in a word of the matter it conveyed. In another minute or two, when he could think of nothing more to say, he would stop and she would have to reply. Somehow they would have to keep it up all the way home.

“He has the most extraordinary system of working,” Julian was informing her. “He goes to bed quite early, about nine, and sets his alarm for two a.m. Then he …”

The rest was lost in an interruption. Hilary had been vaguely aware, for some minutes, of footsteps on the path above them, and of loud cheerful voices which earlier had been raised in song. Now the evening peace, surrounding their small island of tension, was split by a burst of laughter, of the kind that accompanies a rude joke between men who are primed to appreciate it well. The tail of her eye told her that Julian had faced abruptly toward the sound. Turning herself, she saw its authors coming into sight between the leaves; an average pair, whom she placed at once as coming from the aircraft factory, some of the city importations of whom there were many in the skilled engineering grades. Their walking-out clothes had a touch of East End nattiness. They were not outrageously drunk, and were making their way down the uneven slope with a large-minded carelessness, rather than actual unsteadiness of gait. Their lapels were conspicuously decked with white satin rosettes, causing her to remember that the church they had passed on the way had had a good deal of confetti outside it. Evidently, these wedding guests had prolonged the feast on their own account. It was plain that, so far, their amusement was purely of their own provision. With the normal instinct of a woman anxious to let well alone, she turned away.

The movement brought Julian within her view. He was staring past her, tense and rigid with anger. His face was drawn with it, and looked almost gray. She felt sorry for him, but her own stretched nerves mixed the feeling with impatience. People should not lose their sense of proportion so openly. She thought, with a tart humor,
He could congratulate himself that it isn’t more inconvenient.

It was at this point that the good companions perceived that they were not alone. To them the discovery brought neither embarrassment nor displeasure. The taller of the two, who had the kind of face one associates, for vague reasons, with a passionate support of League football, nudged his friend, who was rather undersized, waggishly in the ribs. The friend looked disapproving. He was evidently one of those people who develop, at a certain stage, a solemn anxiety about the proprieties. The fact that, unprepared for the nudge, he had almost tripped over, seemed to appeal to the large man as a joke good enough to share. He looked round in the hope of friendly acclamation, and, considering Hilary first, emitted one of those luscious, appreciative noises, something between a whistle and a tomcat passing the time of night.

Hilary interested herself in the landscape. That would, no doubt, have been the end of it, if the large man had not in that moment caught sight of Julian’s face. It suggested, to his simple train of thought, interrupted spooning, the perfect essence of comedy. He giggled, winked, made a kissing-noise, nudged the small man again, and seemed about to wander on.

“Just a minute,” said Julian.

He had spoken in so suppressed a voice that even Hilary had not heard it clearly; she could only pray that it had not reached its object. She was furious. It seemed unthinkable that he could contemplate adding anything to what had happened already. She directed, full at him, the freezing stare she had had ready for the wedding guests in case of need. He did not see it; and would, she perceived, have ignored it if he had.

The large man had heard, and expanded visibly. He viewed himself as the proud exponent of a sense of humor, boundlessly superior to people who couldn’t see a joke; and also (for he had reached the euphoric stage) as a man who could, if necessary, look after himself. He made the kissing-noise again.

Julian took a step forward.

“Be quiet,” said Hilary viciously, under her breath. “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you see they’re drunk?”

“Yes,” replied Julian aloud. “Naturally I can see it. If you’ll walk on a little way, I’ll attend to this myself.”

He had spoken with the crisp air of good breeding than which, when consciously applied, nothing is more offensive. She scarcely knew whether to be more exasperated by his tone, which though assumed with conviction she knew to be grossly histrionic, or by the request to walk on, which suggested something in a novelette. In almost incredulous embarrassment, she remained rooted to the spot.

He had certainly achieved his effect. The large man was impressed, and resentful. He became, in his own sight, a responsible guardian of democracy. Striking an attitude, he remarked in a refined drawl, “Di-da-di-da.”

Julian walked up to him leisurely. The little man, who had probably drunk rather less, looked from one to the other with growing concern, and pawed at his friend’s sleeve. “Come on, Ted,” he muttered. “Don’t want a row. Got to get back.”

Ignoring him, Julian addressed himself to Ted, who was about his own height but considerably thicker.

“Look here. This isn’t a parking-place for drunks. Would you kindly go out the way you came?” After reflecting briefly, he added, “And if you want to vomit; or anything, do it in the bushes somewhere, will you, not on the path.”

A dark-red suffusion made visible progress across Ted’s square face, beginning at the neck. He thrust his chin forward. “’Ere, ’ere, that’ll do. Who are you calling a drunk? Chuckin’ your weight about. We’ve as much right to the path as what you ’ave. Corstruth. Get along home, that’s what you want to do, and get your ma to wipe your pretty nose. Chuckin’ your—”

In narratives where this kind of thing happens, the heroine is as a rule scarcely aware, when the first swift blow is struck, of seeing the hero move, Hilary was aware of it all too clearly. The rather inexpert uppercut seemed to travel to its goal through an endless suspension of time. It arrived, however, a little too soon for Ted, whose reflexes were slightly under par. It was just as well, since Julian was giving him at least three stone.

Hilary had little mind for such calculations. Through the thudding of blows, the tread of shifting feet, and the grunting breaths of the combatants, she was aware chiefly of violent nausea. She had never seen men fighting before. The spectacle was made no pleasanter by the fact that Ted was too drunk, and Julian too angry, for such long-term considerations as avoiding punishment. A cooler student of form might have inferred that Julian had at some time undergone a school routine of boxing-instruction which had lain fallow for years, while Ted (who looked about thirty-five but was probably younger) had been a passive patron of the heavyweight ring and, occasionally, of all-in wrestling. They slithered about in the uncertain light, on the muddy surface of the path, while the small man maneuvered round them, reproducing involuntarily the movements of a referee.

It was not till Julian jerked his head sideways just in time to avoid a swinging right, that she remembered his injury of last year. The fear that mixed itself suddenly with what had been, till now, her unqualified disgust, added a final touch of wretchedness to everything.

At this point, more by luck than judgment, Julian managed to plant a straight left on Ted’s nose. She watched, sickened, a dark trickle make its way down into his mouth. He lost what remained of his temper, along with his head. His face, what with its expression and the blood, acquired a menace which made her stomach feel packed with ice. She had thought, a moment before, of simply walking away. Now she observed that Julian’s left eye was puffing up. Ted had noticed too, and was doing his best to hit it again. Presently he succeeded, and the eyebrow above it began to bleed.