The Beautiful Visit (30 page)

I entered my gate, and then stood listening until I could no longer hear the cab. It was a clear night with a frost; my feet sounded sharply on the paving stones. ‘It will be fine,’
I thought and longed for the next day.

I put the roses in a glass of water; they seemed soft and darker, but they were not dying. I lay in the dark trying to imagine his face, but I could only remember his eyes; his eyes and his
voice matched each other with an immense kindness, perhaps an affection for me. Affection, I thought, must be a very rare thing between people, since I had lived all this time without it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The next morning I said I would be out all day, and went before my mother and sister had time to inquire or disapprove. I went straight to the place where we had had chocolate.
I was early, but he was there. We drank coffee. I remember he smiled and said ‘I have not seen you in the morning for nearly four years.’

‘And I look the same?’

‘No, entirely different. You do not look the same for ten minutes together. When I have tried to remember your face, a hundred faces appear, a hundred expressions, each of them part of
you. If I see you for a whole day I shall put some of them together. Am I to see you for the whole day?’

‘If you like.’

‘Oh, I should like,’ he replied solemnly. ‘Shall we go to the country? Walk and have lunch and come back when the light goes? Do you think you would like that?’

‘Yes.’

He stared at me a moment in a penetrating manner, then said, ‘You
don’t
think you would like it; nevertheless,
I
think you will. I’ll risk it and look at you
carefully now and then to see which of us is right.’

We took a cab and drove to Marylebone. I had never in my life gone anywhere so simply and suddenly, and there was, I discovered, a delicious sense of freedom, of lack of responsibility about it.
I think he must have planned the day before we met, as we caught a train immediately on our arrival at the station. He stopped at a bookstall, and asked whether I wanted to read in the train. When
I said that I didn’t, he bought a bunch of black grapes in a round basket. He selected an empty first class compartment and handed me into it.

In the train we ate grapes, and he asked me a little about my home. At first I did not want to tell him, fearing he would be bored; but he had, as I had already partly discovered, a great talent
for listening, for making everything I said seem absorbing. I told him about my mother, and the death of my father. I explained about there being very little money, about my wanting to work in a
library, and about minding children instead. Then I again suddenly felt that everything I had to say was dull and fell silent.

‘You should write,’ he said. ‘You observe things very well.’

‘Is that the most important thing about-writing?’

‘No, not really. But I think it is for women who write. Observation is their strong suit. They seldom write out of their pure imagination.’

‘Do men?’

‘Oh dear. Perhaps
they
don’t. But perhaps they observe more what one does not expect them to observe. And sometimes they use their imagination. Or mix the two more
cunningly.’

‘Do you write?’ I asked.

‘No, not really. Everyone writes a little at University,’ he added almost apologetically.

‘Do you always live in Scotland?’

‘No, not all the time. I like it best there.’

I wanted to hear about it.

‘It was a castle,’ he began, ‘but now it has degenerated into a mere house. Fires, and battles, and countless men who could not leave well alone, have so altered it, that only
from one aspect does it still resemble a castle. It stands on a very green hill – the turf is so unnaturally green that there is a story to account for its greenness – and there are
peacocks and red deer and wild daffodils and, of course, a ghost.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘Oh yes. Not very often. It only comes when there is some crisis in the family. Some crisis or festivity. It is quite indiscriminate. It comes into the dining-room after the women have
left the table and always sits on a special chair which is kept for it. The Ghost’s Chair. Once when I was small I wanted to sit on it and my father was very angry.’

‘Does it, does it speak?’

‘Oh no. It simply listens and then goes away.’

He went on to tell me more about his house, and as I listened I watched his face, so that I should not again forget it. He had that very fair skin which flushes easily; a large and rather bony
nose; blue eyes not in any way remarkable except sometimes for their expression; and a high broad forehead with the skin very white where it stretched over the bones. Then I saw that he was
watching me, and turned to the window in some confusion, wondering whether, even now, I should remember his face. We talked easily by then, as though we knew each other much better than we did;
only halted occasionally by some little shock of ignorance in each other, some taste, some phrase, some feeling that we had not encountered before.

We arrived and had lunch at an hotel. It was not a very good meal (things being bad by then in the way of food) but I do not think we noticed it very much. After lunch we walked. It was a fine,
still afternoon, with no wind, and a large orange sun shining flatly on the tall bare trees. We walked up a cart track and then along a chalky ridge fringed with beeches. Their elegant leaves lay
thick on the ground, pink and brown; our feet shuffled sharply among them. Below us the country seemed a mysterious and endless purple haze. After some time we came to a gap in the line of trees
where several had been felled, and Ian proposed that we sit on one. We had not spoken for a long while. His voice startled me out of my private thoughts, and I wondered whether he had been bored by
or disapproved my silence.

‘ – For a little while, unless you will be cold,’ he was saying.

I shook my head and we sat on a smooth tree trunk.

‘You look deliciously flushed,’ he said. ‘You like it?’

‘You were quite right. It is lovely.’

‘It is very good country for this purpose,’ he said. ‘One can come here easily, enjoy it, and go away again without regret. You do look happy.’

‘I should like to do this again. The moment I am happy I start worrying that it will be the last time. Then I think perhaps it is whatever I am doing that makes me happy, and worry about
being unable to do it.’

‘Perhaps you are not often happy.’

‘That is my fault, isn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily, and in any case not entirely. It is not easy to be happy now.’

‘How long will the war last?’

‘I don’t know. Some people say a few months and some say much longer. I don’t know. I think it must end soon if we are any of us to retain our sanity.’

‘Is it – is it very frightful?’ I asked. I had never dared to ask anyone before.

He turned to me and I saw the anguish in his face.

‘Much worse than you can imagine. We all behave most of the time as though it were a boyish nightmare, an heroic tragedy, but it is long past human enduring. It is really that. More
frightful than any creature can stand. Each single thing is too loud, too bloody and frightful for the nerves and heart and brain of anyone in their senses to bear. Many of them die of it,
stretched till they break by the impossible demands made on them. But most of them will return, and God knows how they will manage to live with the people who were not there. There may not be
another war, but this war ends more than war. To me, it seems to end almost everything. Unless,’ he added, ‘unless this war creates another species inured to its exigencies. I suppose
it may do that.’

‘Is it all like that?’

‘No. I suppose not. It is only like that where I am. Don’t believe what people say. Don’t believe the books that will be written, the papers that are printed, the men who were
not there. Believe me. It is the only thing I know.’ He looked at me and then said, ‘Perhaps not the only thing. I do not really want to talk about it. And I do
not
want to
distress you.’

‘You haven’t distressed me.’

‘You look unutterably distressed. He paused. ‘You cannot imagine how glad I am to have met you at that theatre,’ he continued. ‘You cannot possibly imagine it. I had
thought about coming back for so long and then when I came, it seemed a kind of solitary marking time, painful and pointless; until I saw you again. I had ceased to make any plans with my time; to
use it at all. I walked by that theatre, and then went back to buy a seat at random.’

‘But we had a box.’

‘Yes, but that was afterwards. I got that while you were changing.’

‘Have you no friends in London?’

‘Nobody I could bear to see. I don’t want to sound pathetic. Of course there are people; relations, and a few odd friends left if one looked hard enough for them. I did at first, but
then I had nothing to say when we met. It cuts you off, this business, you know. When I saw you, you looked so unhappy, so thoroughly in despair that you seemed more cut off than myself. I thought
then that perhaps we are not so very different from the people at home. I had always imagined you as I used to see you – in large contented houses, surrounded by numbers of happy confident
people. I used to think of you like that.’

‘I only stayed with the Lancings for two weeks. I have not been there again,’ I said.

‘You were happy then?’

‘Yes. Oh yes. I didn’t expect to be, but I was. And then I have no cause, no reason, to be unhappy as you have. It isn’t the war with me, at least I don’t think it is.
It’s just that – well that I go on living and I didn’t see the point of it.’

‘Once you think like that you are lost. Most people don’t think it so young. It does not usually cross their minds at your age.’

‘But it is dreadful,’ I persisted, wanting him to admit it.

‘Of course. The war acts for me as a kind of safety valve. One is inclined in war to wonder what is the point of all these people dying? You have reached the stage where you wonder what is
the point of all these people living.’

I’m afraid I don’t think it often of other people,’ I said. ‘I did think it of my father, when he was dying. I wondered about him then. But generally other people do seem
to me to find some reason or contentment in life. It is only I who failed.’

‘You are failing less – today?’

‘Perhaps.’ I did not want to pursue the matter. ‘Once I sat in a wood with Rupert,’ I said. ‘He was very frightening about life, and I did not much understand what
he said.’

‘He was probably showing off.’

‘No . . . Perhaps he was. I think he meant to be kind.’ There was a slight pause.

‘Many men,’ he said, ‘many men need a kind of affectionate passion, but you, more than most women, seem to me to need affection, passionately, passionately.’ When he
finished speaking I found myself shivering violently. I pressed the palms of my hands together in a vain effort to stop. I turned to him to ask him whether – but one could not ask any such
thing. I wondered desperately whether I should ever stop shivering. Then he held out his arms, I threw myself into them; and for the first time in my life I wept bitterly about nothing, and
everything I knew, before someone else.

For a long time I wept and he did not speak, but held me, bent over me silently, stroking my head a little, until gradually I ceased weeping and lay quietly in his arms. Then he said:
‘Shall I give you my handkerchief?’ and after a moment gave it me.

‘I haven’t cried for a long time,’ I said.

‘No,’ he replied reassuringly.

I did not feel I need say any more. I felt light, exhausted and incredibly relieved. After a while, I made some slight movement, and instantly he released me. The sun had disappeared, I noticed;
the sky was grey and pink; there was no sound except a bird rustling about the trees; the air smelled dry and cold. I gave him back his handkerchief.

‘Are you ready to go?’ –

‘Yes.’

‘It will soon be very cold.’

He pulled me to my feet and we walked back across the ridge, on down the cart track, where we could see the very end of the brilliant swollen sun sliding away. It was already cold, and we walked
fast down the track corrugated with frozen ridges. I slipped a little, he put out his hand to steady me and I asked, ‘Why are there cart tracks up here?’

‘Charcoal burners most probably,’ he answered.

On the station platform there was a crowd of soldiers. They all looked incredibly overloaded with rifles and kit; they were pink and panting, very young, and rather self-consciously noisy. An
officer stood alone at one end of the platform. He was making entries in a large black notebook and I saw Ian begin to raise his hand as we passed, and then lower it again.

‘What are they doing?’

‘A draft. Going to London, and then on, I should think. We’ll go the other end.’

We made our way back past the officer again. His luggage was polished like toffee, I noticed. He shut his book, and stuffing it back into his breast pocket, began slowly to walk behind us
towards the men. They ceased shouting to each other, but shuffled noisily with their kit, each man trying not to look at us, at each other, or the officer. Somebody muttered something and there was
a burst of suppressed laughter. Ian walked faster until we had reached the other end of the platform.

We sat alone in the train, opposite one another, watching the country pass our windows. He leaned forward and said: ‘I had meant to give you tea, but then I thought we should catch this
train. So now I want to take you to my house in London. You shall have tea there.’

‘Yes.’

All the way in the train I sat, cold and peaceful; contented just to be sitting in a train, with him opposite me; to be moving together in the freezing fading light to his house. All my life,
everything contained in my experience, seemed so past and done that it might have belonged to someone else. I knew all about it, without caring in the least. I was not unhappy, not ashamed; I had
no mother, no sister; I knew nobody, I was not young or old, or afraid or beautiful. I had no plans and nothing to remember or forget; I was utterly contained in each moment, so that when it
slipped and I lost it, there was another isolated moment, another little separate time alone with him in the train. Sometimes I looked at him, and he gave me a small steady smile. Sometimes I felt
that he observed me as I sat with my face turned to the window, but this no longer frightened me: I felt almost as if he were I, and I he. I
wanted
to be him, I realized. Perhaps
he
had no past and no future; perhaps his heart was suspended as mine; perhaps I saw with his eyes and lived in his mind. All the pity I had felt for myself I had given him to feel for me. Then the
affection he had felt for me, was, perhaps, also exchanged. Suddenly I wanted to lean forward and say, ‘My dear, my dear, my very dear Ian.’ I leaned forward . . . but perhaps he was
not mine at all, not my dear; but only kind, and without any object on which to bestow his kindness.