The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic) (11 page)

He was growing colder and colder, but he still didn’t move, weariness and discomfort mingling in one vast, all-embracing grievance, heavily tinged with self-pity. Surely he was at least entitled to the privacy of his own room. Longing to shut himself in there and go to sleep, he dimly saw himself as being like some hunted animal, persecuted by men and by its own kind, wanting only to crawl into its lair, unmolested and unobserved.

*

A moment later, the back door opened, releasing a stream of yellow light, not quite bright enough to reach across the courtyard to where he was standing.

‘Oswald?’

The young man heard his sister’s voice call his name, but, in his abnormal state, saw no necessity to answer – she belonged to the hostile conspiracy against him. In silence he watched her looking round, not seeing him yet, peering from inside the door, evidently reluctant to come out into the cold in her flimsy, short-sleeved dress. It was one she often wore in the evenings, with a full skirt and a flowery pattern of roses. He had seen it dozens of times without taking much notice, and had no idea why it now inspired in him an irrational annoyance. That she changed only at night because the concession to gentility pleased their mother didn’t affect his irritation at seeing the big, quiet, serious girl wearing a dress more suited to somebody frivolous and lively.

Why can’t she see she’s just making herself ridiculous? he thought, as if this was why he didn’t attempt to communicate with her. But then a more natural impulse made him step forward, moving his chilled body with difficulty, his legs stiff, his feet clattering on the cobbles like lumps of iron.

‘So it’s you.’ Vera’s voice sounded both curious and censorious. ‘What are you doing out here? Why don’t you come indoors?’

He could tell that, even before she’d really seen him, she knew something was wrong, and he longed to get into the house without having to talk to her. But her tall figure in the absurd, full, flowery dress almost filled the doorway and left him no room to pass. Still locked in a silence too difficult to break, he advanced into the light and, planting himself in front of her, stood there without opening his mouth: while she stared at him in amazement, exclaiming, ‘Heavens! What’s happened to you? Has there been an accident?’

To Oswald, her gaze seemed to jump out of her eyes – he could feel it running all over him from head to foot, investigating, with eager stealth and speed, every defect in his appearance, noting it in some invisible inventory, from which she would later deduce the whole story of his adventures. Her furtive, avid manner of conducting this swift examination was immediately, immensely repulsive to him. To avoid looking at her, he lowered his own eyes to the cobbles; which at once became identical mounds of sand, strongly lit on one side by theatrical sunset light, in a desert where he was wandering, nameless and lost. Then he was astonished to see, in a trough of darkness between two of the dunes, a tuft of dry, withered grass growing; and at once he was himself again, everything sprang back into its true perspective.

But what on earth had gone wrong with him? Why was he seeing things as they were not? He felt, for a second, really alarmed by his alien thoughts and illusions, which seemed outside his control and liable, at any moment, to escape from his skull (if they hadn’t done so already) in the form of actions equally uncontrollable. The shock made him pull himself together. When Vera asked again, ‘What’t the matter? What’s happened to you?’ he replied clearly and firmly: ‘Nothing. Nothing’s happened. Except that I slipped and fell down ...’

There was an infinitesimal pause, during which he realized that he couldn’t possibly hope to get off so lightly. He would have to say something more, offer an explanation.

‘You know what the place is like inside,’ he said with difficulty, dangerously skirting the fringe of forgotten events. ‘How dark and slippery it is ...’

Closer than this he dared not go, already feeling the heave of some intolerable thing, struggling to break through into consciousness. Clenching his fists with the effort of not knowing what it was, he hurried on. ‘I don’t want Mother to see me like this.’ His sensation was of having come to the very edge of a frightful precipice, from which he’d stepped back only just in time. Thinking more of this than the words, he’d already said, ‘After all the fuss this morning she’s bound to imagine the worst’, before the remembered echo of his own brutal voice speaking then silenced him abruptly. It was hopeless to expect Vera’s co-operation. She always had been against him, and now he’d given her real cause for resentment.

The last thing he expected was to hear her say kindly, ‘You look dead tired. Why not go straight up to your room? I’ll keep Mother out of the way and bring you something to eat after she’s gone to bed.’

He glanced at her with instinctive distrust but softened at once, seeing on her face a forgotten look of secret complicity, with which as children they used to help one another out of their various scrapes, in league together against adult authority. It brought him a sudden swift warmth, a glimpse of the golden glow of perpetual sunshine lighting that happy childhood world he had shared with her.

‘Thanks, V. That’s jolly decent of you.’ Without knowing it, he fell automatically into the idiom of that innocent, carefree, lost period; immeasureably more lost to him than yesterday – the thought shot, cometlike, through his head, trailing dangers at which he refused to look. He looked at his sister instead, and, noticing the goose-flesh of her bare arms, was momentarily touched.

But childhood’s radiance was already fading. And now her hungry, expectant glance extinguished it altogether and alienated him afresh. Though she asked no questions, her curiosity was to be felt, all the more noticeable because it came out of her silence and sympathy. Her eyes kept turning towards him, full of hateful inquisitiveness, and of a mute urgent appeal of some sort, incomprehensible to him – it was no concern of his. All that concerned him was their curiosity, which seemed to delve into him, searching about for his secrets in a way that was dangerous and repulsive, though he was too tired to know just where the danger lay.

Becoming exasperated in his exhaustion, with a sense of giving up the struggle, he thought, I simply can’t stand those flowers another second, allowing his irritation to swamp everything. Then he pushed past the offending dress and went into the house, through which he could have found his way blindfold, hurrying up the back stairs in the dark, and along the familiar passages to his room, where he thankfully shut himself in.

The large, cold, bare room, though it had always been his, was oddly impersonal, scrupulously clean and tidy, his few simple possessions grouped neatly and with a sort of unconscious pathos, as if ready for instant departure from a temporary encampment, where he would not stay long enough to justify any attempt at comfort.

It was the sanctuary for which he had longed, and for a moment its severe plainness had a restorative effect. But this soon wore off, and he became aware that something was wrong, making him restless and uneasy. He’d shut out of his mind the obscure threat of Vera’s curiosity as he shut the door; but something infinitely more disturbing had entered with him. Though he didn’t know what it was, deep within him his unacknowledged shame was making itself felt – suddenly the austerity of the room seemed to reproach him. He felt he defiled it in his filthy clothes. With loathing, he tore them off, bundled them up together.

But then he didn’t know what to do with them, he was at a loss. His instinct was to destroy the things; he’d have liked to push them into the kitchen stove. But he was afraid of meeting his mother or sister if he left his room, and that there would be more questions. As he stood there in his pyjamas, holding the bundle, his fair, fine, disordered hair made him look a boy, his face touchingly young, tired and bewildered.

Asleep, almost, on his feet, he was at his wits’ end, unable to evolve the simplest plan. Finally, in desperation, he threw the bundle across the room and fell into bed, unconscious even before his head was on the hard pillow.

*

Oswald never stirred when his sister came in a little while with a tray of food. She looked at the handsome, blond young fellow lying there, lost and drowned in sleep, dead to the world, and saw that he was not to be roused. As she was going out again, she noticed the bundle of clothes on the floor; and her face, which had been muted and rather sad, sharpened in that curiosity her brother found so repulsive. She stooped to investigate, pulling the bundle open a little; then, still with the same hungry, inquiring expression, took it away with her, closing the door softly so as not to disturb the sleeper.

It would have taken a far louder noise than that of a door to wake him just then. Sleep was his vital need, and he had to have it. It was his one possibility of escape from an insupportable situation. If only he could go on sleeping until he was back on duty again and his troubles were over, was his last thought, as he had the impression of hurling himself deliberately into the black abyss opening to receive him.

In the morning, instead of coming fully awake as usual, in possession of all his faculties, as at the sound of a ghostly bugle, he woke reluctantly, climbing laboriously and against his will out of the dark gulf where he had lain without moving the whole night long. If only he need not wake but could remain there, ignorant and innocent, as he’d been in his sleep! But it was no use wishing, already he was back again in his life. Before he’d even opened his eyes, he felt the events of yesterday lying in wait for him. He remembered, and pressed his eyelids together to shut out the light, unwilling to face the shame of existing.

However, the intervening hours of sound sleep had fulfilled their function, removing the actuality of Bannenberg a little from him. The guilty horror was slightly less immediate; he could think of it now as he could not have done before.

Yesterday he had refused absolutely to admit that passion had made him act like a wild animal. Now, though it was still torture even to glance at the fact, he saw that, if ever he was to be reconciled to himself, he would have to accept the truth and learn to endure it. He even saw dimly that this might be possible. Eventually. But not yet. The thing was too recent. The memory too agonizing, too raw.

Even the partial recognition, which was all he could so far achieve, had already, during these first waking moments, filled him with such sick self-disgust, such distaste for living, that he didn’t know how he was to go on. How could he bear his existence, through all the years stretching ahead? If only he could have stayed asleep! But the black abyss, into which he had plunged last night, now seemed quite out of his reach, not to be attained until it closed over his head for ever. And what a long dreary time of misery he would have to live through first!

As it had to be lived through, because he had to remain alive, he must forget about what he had done. He took this for granted, as if he couldn’t possibly be required to face life in full consciousness of his guilt. He couldn’t endure it, no man could, it would not be expected of him. So, as a temporary expedient only, he again thrust the memory of Bannenberg out of sight, down into the deepest depths of himself. He did it because he must, if his life must go on.

He looked round the room, instinctively seeking some well-known reassurance that had always been there before, but today, when most needed, was unaccountably not forthcoming. An indefinable air of estrangement about the walls and the familiar objects around him transformed him into a stranger in their midst. He was no longer at home here. Oppressed by his reluctance to start the day, to take up the burden of living again, he was still lying in bed; and this unprecedented sloth made him feel even more of a stranger to himself, and to all around him.

Because he’d just ceased to remember yesterday with any distinctness, at first he didn’t think of his clothes. But when he noticed that the bundle had gone, the shock roused him effectively. Jumping out of bed, he looked quickly around, making sure that the things were not anywhere in the room; then, hurriedly, automatically, he started to dress, his mind all the while gripped separate in apprehension. He couldn’t ask himself why he was so disturbed by the bundle’s disappearance without reviving his guilty shame, of which he was now aware only as the numbed pain of an internal wound, bearable as it was, but liable to become agonizing again at the least touch – at a glance even. It must at all costs be shielded, hidden; his whole being seemed to turn inwards and close round it protectively, to keep it secret. Nobody must know about it, or even guess it was there.

He knew the bundle was somehow connected with this shameful secret wound. Could it lead to its exposure? His obscure dread was that it might in some way betray his secret. What a fool he had been not to lock his door against Vera’s detestable curiosity, for of course she must have taken the things. Full of animosity towards her, the moment he was ready he ran downstairs, knowing he’d find her in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, before their mother came down.

*

The first thing he saw there when he opened the door was the missing garments, clean and pressed, hanging neatly over the back of a chair. Unprepared for this, he was taken aback, and stood staring, while Vera explained, without leaving the stove, how she hadn’t disturbed him the night before but had brought down his clothes to clean them while their mother was out of the way.

Oswald thanked her uncomfortably, thinking that no one could have been kinder, more helpful. Why wasn’t he grateful? Why did he still feel unfriendly? Dimly he perceived that it wasn’t only that he distrusted Vera – he didn’t want the contact of friendliness with her or with anyone. He who had always been sociable and warm-hearted, was shut off alone, in the dark enclosure of himself. He wondered at it a little without understanding, feeling isolated as he had never been.