The Last September (25 page)

“But it’s you who’ve been cutting me.”

“But how? When? You’ve never once looked—Lois, you’re lovely but you’re so—”

“Look here, we can’t talk and dance.”

“Which does that mean you
don’t
want to do?”

She looked at a button of his mess coat. “Talk,” she said after a little contented interval. He slid his hand up her wrist, they danced on. The D.I.’s niece trailed past them, laughing at Daventry: they had a pool of space to themselves on the crowded floor. The pink room melted round, beatific and syrupy. He was closer than ever under the lovely compulsion of movement.

“You do dance divinely.”

“What?” he said, like the ghost of Daventry. Someone stopped the gramophone, they looked at each other, shocked. Something had made him absurdly unhappy: she would have liked to have comforted him.

“Let’s go out.”

“Won’t it be cold for you?”

“Gerald,” said she, discouraged, “don’t be an aunt.”

The wind whipped round the edge of the hut, ran through her hair at the roots and stung her ears—a sinister energy in this fixed and angular world, for one could not see anything moving. Gerald walked, unknown, beside her, up in the dark. “At one time,” said Lois, wrapping her wild skirts round her, “a girl would have died of this.”

“Cigarette?”

“Oh—will it light here?”

“I can light one most places.” So she bent over his hands, a cup of fire. There were two bright specks in his eyes—then the match whirled off and died on the dark. “I can’t think what you think has gone wrong,” she said.

“You were so queer that Friday. You’d been like part of me, the night before; then everything seemed— wrong. I daresay I was a brute; I oughtn’t to have— though as a matter of fact I’ll never be sorry … If you’d been just angry or anything … But you seemed to go right away: I didn’t know where I was. All lunch you were like a girl at a tennis club. Then you left me down there with them all to talk rot and went off with that beastly gramophone.”

“That
was not my fault—did you want me to listen to you talking rot?— Gerald, I didn’t realise you were resentful; I didn’t think you could be … I was waiting for you to write.”

“I began so many letters, I used half a box of note-paper. I couldn’t think what to say.”

“Still, you might have written.”

“But how?” he said candidly.

She could not remember, though she had read so many books, who spoke first after a kiss had been, not exchanged but—administered. The two reactions, outrage, capitulation, had not been her own. “You were hoping
I
 
would write?” she said, seeing light suddenly.

“You see, you had always been so understanding.”

“But Gerald, I should have thought you’d have been shocked if I’d—”

“Oh … Perhaps I would. But I wanted something to make things natural. I shall never forget what I felt in that armoured car. You will always be connected up in my mind with the smell of oil—Lois, do you think I am terribly introspective?”

“You know, you were tired.”

“Perhaps it was that,” he said, puzzled. “But bumping along back to barracks, and you going in again with that girl to that topping house… .”

“Do you think it’s a topping house?”

“It seems so to me.”

This new version of the changeable afternoon was a shock to her. It had gone on for him, too; doors that she had not thought of shutting and windows opening, the drone in the drawing-room, rain with a different importance. Might she perhaps have thought more about Gerald and wondered less? Splashing along the brown road to Clonmore she could now see the armoured car diminish—with Gerald its only nerve.

But she thought of the empty spare-room and how it avenged him.

“Marda’s gone, you know.”

“But she had just come to lunch, surely?”

“Gerald!
… Can’t you feel any difference between someone to lunch and somebody staying?”

“She hadn’t a hat,” said Gerald, after consideration.

“She went two days ago: she’s in Kent now.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gerald civilly. Feeling a strained, fierce pause he added: “She seemed awfully nice, I thought.”

“Don’t you wonder at all if I miss her?”

“I expect you must. I always miss visitors, though they’re a bother beforehand.”

“She hadn’t any beforehand—that seems so odd now.”

“Lois, you aren’t angry, then?”

“Oh?” Recollecting herself, she looked round the darkness vaguely. A couple were coming towards them; she put a hand on his sleeve to make him be quiet, his other hand came over it. They heard Daventry’s angry laugh, his partner’s feet ran stickily on the duckboards. Gerald and Daventry passed in the dark with, it seemed, a queer silent interchange.

“Mr. Daventry seems old to be a subaltern.”

“It’s absurd that he should be—all this peace-time bother. He had a company in France in 1916, later on he was acting-major. He’s a splendid fellow, I’m sorry you haven’t seen more of him. He won’t go about much, outside barracks. The fact is,” he added, apologetic, “he’s sick at being over here. It doesn’t seem to agree with him.”

“Do
you
really like it?”

“Oh, well, it’s a job. Though I rather see Daventry’s point—it doesn’t seem natural.”

They had come to the end of the huts—at the foot of a steep slope a wall, the top heavily wired. Under the wall a sentry inhumanly paced like a pendulum. The country bore in its strong menace. Gerald looked out at it, face blinking in and out of the dark faintly red with the pulse of his cigarette. She nursed her bare elbows, unconsciously shivering. He seemed at once close and remote, known and unpersonal; she understood why, up to now, she had searched for him vainly in what he said. He had nothing to do with expression. She put out a hand to where he was, shadowy and palpable. He threw his cigarette away, turned—and said nothing. The sentry passed.

They went back the way they had come, between the huts.

“Gerald, I
wasn’t
angry… .”

“No, you were wonderful all the time.”

“Don’t you understand—Gerald?”

“Understand? …
Lois!”

While they kissed, she heard, in the silence of their footsteps, someone moving about in a hut up the lines. The sound was a long way off, at the other side of a stillness.

“Your arms are so cold.”

“I’ve been so lonely.”

“They’re so cold.” He kissed them, inside the elbows. Later: “I like the back of your head,” she said with exploring finger-tips.

“I never thought you looked at me.”

“Gerald, I’ve been so … vacant.”

“I never thought you wanted me.”

“I—” she began. The soft sound of her dress in the wind became, by some connection of mood, painfully inexplicable to her—the pain was its own, from not being understood. “Gerald, your buttons hurt rather.”

“My darling—” he let her go, but still, above consciousness, held one of her hands solemnly. He said: “Shall you really be able to marry me?”

“I don’t know till you’ve asked me.”

“Don’t laugh—” he cried.

“Can’t you
hear
I’m not laughing?”

“Lois—” Something more was coming; she waited, hearing him draw a breath. “Let’s go back and dance,” he said religiously—”shall we?”

The hut was compact with movement: she stood in alarm, as before a revolving door in destructive motion. Now it was gone, she remembered sharply the smell of earth … David Armstrong leaned from his partner wildly and struck Gerald over the head with a red balloon.

Mrs. Rolfe had had an idea that the dance might well finish up with a cotillion. She was vague about cotillions, but towards this end she had distributed balloons, whistles that ran out long tongues when you blew them and streamers from striped cardboard batons with which dancers might hit one another over the head. Mrs. Vermont thought these things went better with fancy dress, but Denise said a rag was a rag at any time. The girls ducked and shrieked and waved their streamers over their partners’ shoulders. Denise, radiant in black with a trail of nasturtiums, was waltzing—affair of prolonged “hesitations”
—with Betty’s husband. She bit off a streamer, spat out a mouthful of paper and said, with a shiver of happiness—”Isn’t it marvellous, Timmy? I can hardly believe I’m awake!”

“Ra
-ther
!”
replied Captain Vermont, with blurred enthusiasm. He was being buffeted by Mr. Simcox and somebody’s sister.

“Betty’s been just too marvellous,” went on Denise.
— “Oh, Timmy, do have a shot at Reggie Daventry—there, with the girl in scarlet. He looks just too refined!”

But Timmy failed to find Daventry. “Betty’s
tons
the prettiest here,” cried Denise, ecstatic.

“Oh, come!” expostulated Captain Vermont, squeezing her waist. It gave him a warm, tender feeling to think how fond she and Betty were of each other.

“Tell me,” said Denise, as nearly as possible snuggling, “are we terribly reckless? Would this annoy the Irish?”

“They won’t know.”

“They have heaps of spies.”

“I say,
Sssh,
Denise, there are heaps of them here tonight.”

“Spies?”

“Irish—the Raltes and Co.”

“They’re different.”

“Still, they’ve got feelings.”

Denise sighed. “I could go on like this for ever.” But Captain Vermont rather thought he would like a drink. A balloon exploded. “Glory!” cried Mrs. Fogarty. So they burst four more to keep her amused.

“Is this like a bombardment?” asked Moira Ralte.

“No,” said Mr. Simcox.

If they were not careful, they would knock over the gramophone. Mr. Daventry thought it was time they did. It was time something happened. He danced the D.I.’s niece down the passage and kissed her with her head pressed back in the coats. She struggled, futile and slippery as a weasel. As he kissed again her face went stiff and she shut her eyes. When these opened, they were as shrewd as ever: still he did not know what she thought. The drums in his temples were now so insistent, he could not forget them even while he was dancing. She had dabbed herself over with White Rose. Her frizzy hair tickled his mouth as he bent close to her.

“Do you get kissed a lot?”

“Englishmen never could keep their mouths to themselves.”

“You won’t know yourself when we’re gone.”

“You should get back home while you can, the lot of you.”

“What would become of Uncle?”

“Did you like your whisky?” She put a hand up rudely to shield herself from his breath. This reminded Daventry, who let go of the common little hell-cat abruptly and walked away to the kitchenette, where he heard a siphon. Lois stood in the door, waiting while David got her some soda-water. But wouldn’t she try a little something? Just a little something to dance on—no? Daventry, standing back and tilting his drink about in his glass, stared at her feet with owlish ferocity.

“Sorry about your silver shoes, Miss Farquar.”

“There are some beautiful walks round here,” said David.

“Miss Farquar should float, not walk: she looks like a water-lily,” said Daventry, looking over her green frock with his discomforting eyes. “Come on and dance,” said David, taking her empty glass. Lois began to say she was keeping the next for Gerald. But: “Miss Farquar and I are hungry, we are going to find a sandwich,” said Daventry.

In the box of a dining-room plates of dishevelled sandwiches sat in unmasked electric light. There was no one there. Mr. Daventry, looking hard at her, put the palm of his hand to his left temple with a curious, listening air, as though to see if a watch had stopped.

“Chicken and ham,” he said, “tongue and turkey, they’re all cat, they say.” (“What shall I say?” thought Lois.) He looked at a chair with contempt, then sat down on it. “I don’t think I’ve met you before,” he continued.

“Perhaps you didn’t notice.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Daventry, looking into a sandwich. “No, I don’t think it could have been that.”

“Then it can’t be explained,” said Lois, and (she felt) glittered excitedly. He suggested the army of Wellington: buckskins. Looking up thoughtfully, he directed upon the wall just over her head his strained dark look that was almost a squint. “You live round here?”

“More or less—” She was startled to meet the dark look on a level. Hers was, he said, a remarkably beautiful country.

“I am afraid
you—”

He affably shrugged. Did that matter? He stared at her arms, at the inside of her elbows, with such intensity that she felt Gerald’s kisses were printed there. Was this a bounder?—She knew she had no criterion.

“Have a nice walk?” he inquired.

“Did you?” she countered.

“I expect so,” said Mr. Daventry, after consideration. “As a matter of fact, I am not quite at my best.” They looked hard at each other. “Nothing,” he said, “appeals to me.” She moved her arms nervously on the silk of her dress. For she saw there was not a man here, hardly even a person.