The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic) (6 page)

When her own world called to her suddenly, as she’d known it would, loud and clear, she was astounded by her surroundings, looking about as if she’d just woken out of a long sleep. She’d been existing all this time in a tranced euphoria of exercise and fresh air. Now, abruptly, she was awake again, in her proper self, eager to get away from the barbarous north. Her spirit seemed to have gone on ahead already to her own luxurious sphere; exasperating that she had to stay behind, with her body.

She wanted to charter a plane on the spot. As this was impossible, and, hearing that a cruising liner was due at the little port in a day or so, she hurriedly booked a passage and sent a cable to her lover to say she was coming back.

But she didn’t tell Oswald until they were out on the moor, having lunch in the sun, which was still almost hot at noon. They sat in a sheltered hollow, a shallow bowl surrounded by sunken rocks against which they could lean. While they ate their hard-boiled eggs and drank coffee out of a thermos, the two ponies, tethered nearby, contentedly nosed and nibbled the fine, feathery, fading grass, the same colour as Coffee’s tail. Rejane waited till the meal was over and Oswald was collecting the scraps of eggshell and paper, as he always did, before telling him about her arrangements. She saw the young man start violently, as if she had struck him. He dropped his hands, which fell and hung loosely at his sides, while he stood rigid and silent, his face twisted as if in pain.

What on earth was the matter with him? He’d known all along that they would have to part soon. Gazing at him, watching him stare past her with unseeing eyes, Rejane was slightly irritated by this excessive reaction.

To Oswald, who had for some time been in a state of suppressed nervous tension, her announcement came as the final blow. His dream vanished abruptly. Suddenly all his old unpleasant feelings came back – the loneliness and the grievance and the being left out. Now everything was going to be just the same as before. The great love he’d identified with his dream-radiance had failed him. Rejane had failed him. He had adored her. And she’d just made his love ridiculous. He couldn’t have explained what he meant by this – his ideas were all confused. He knew only that he felt badly let down.

A devastating sadness overwhelmed him, made more unbearable by his surroundings. That he should have to suffer like this, here, on his beloved moor, struck him as a horrid refinement of torture. How far away already seemed the first happy days when he had displayed its beauties ... far away and belonging to a time already dead. It now seemed to him that those early days of happiness had led inevitably to his present sorrow; which would in its turn bring him to a still darker state.

*

Rejane was growing increasingly impatient with his silence and gloom. She was sorry now she’d told him she was going. She’d done so only because it seemed unkind to spring her departure on him at the last moment, which confirmed her conviction that kindness was usually a mistake. She should simply have packed up and gone, without giving him any warning.

Now, if she wasn’t careful, he would insist on making a tragedy out of his own feelings, which would spoil everything for her. She couldn’t stand other people’s emotions, and had no intention of putting up with the gloom Oswald was radiating, like a cold fog. Her interlude had been such a success so far that she was determined it shouldn’t end in his stupid depression – she must get him out of it somehow ... Suddenly standing up, she went to him, and, with a gesture surprisingly spontaneous and natural, took his limp hand in hers, thinking as she did so what a good actress she would have made.

The unexpectedness of this broke through the isolating walls of his misery. So thoroughly was he convinced that she was out of reach, physically most of all, that astonishment overcame all his other feelings. Incredulously he looked down at her slim, by no means incapable, hand, holding his own. Her face was hidden, she stood beside him as if hiding behind her dark hair, whispering shyly, in her little-girl voice, words he could barely catch. He mustn’t rush her ... she hadn’t forbidden him to hope ... seemed to be what she was saying.

Without stopping to consider whether he was justified in taking her seriously, he at once clutched at this unreliable straw she had thrown him. Perhaps, when he came home next time ...?

She didn’t answer immediately; and, a faint doubt creeping into his mind, he imploringly asked, ‘May I kiss you – just this once?’ – surely he could believe her if she said yes. ‘Do you mind?’

She did mind, in that part of her that always had to remain inviolable and aloof, in perpetual opposition to the other urge that made her deliberately go on attracting men, taking new lovers. But, seeing that it was necessary, she murmured consent, hiding behind her hair, keeping up the pretence of shyness, and consoling herself with the thought that, long before the army disgorged him again, she would have forgotten his existence. Already he seemed a little unreal, almost a dream figure, so soon to be left behind, with his world, for ever. It was like being kissed by a ghost.

The kiss, which Oswald had hoped would confirm his trust, affected him in a way as disturbing as it was unexpected. In the midst of his reverence, he was seized by a passionate impulse; immediately afterwards experiencing a sort of revulsion, reminded of those hated dancing partners of the past. At the same time, an outrageous, though not apparently unfamiliar, thought slid, snakelike, through his head. Some part of him seemed to know already that Rejane despised his restraint and that, if he’d made love to her weeks ago, she would have surrendered – that indeed she’d expected this. But he’d never admitted to knowing it consciously, and would not admit it now, telling himself that the idea was not in accordance with the facts. She’d always kept aloof from him, distant and virginal – it was monstrous to think of her as being like those over-sexed women out East who had tried to seduce him. And yet that strange revulsion he’d felt as he kissed her ...

Appalled and confused, he refused to think any further, but stooped to finish his interrupted task.

Since he still remained silent and preoccupied, Rejane looked around for a new distraction. Her eyes fell on the ponies, placidly waiting near; and, in another of her inspired flashes, she asked what would become of Coffee after she’d gone.

She couldn’t have chosen a better diversion, for the man was as fond of horses as he was experienced with them. But, before he had time to answer, a dramatic picture appeared in her imagination, and she announced that Coffee must be set free to return to the moors.

This time she could congratulate herself on having got him out of his black mood, so that her interlude could continue peacefully to its conclusion, for his interest was really aroused.

He’d already considered the matter, knowing he would be left with the animal on his hands, and had decided that Coffee should stay at his home, where there were stables and paddocks unused since his father’s time. Now he forgot his troubled preoccupations, trying to explain that, once a pony had been trained and ridden, it couldn’t go back happily to its wild state; that it wouldn’t know how to forage for itself, and would be ostracized by its former companions, because it bore the smell of servitude, which they hated.

Needless to say, he was wasting his time; Rejane refused to listen. In her head was the romantic picture of Coffee flying off to the wilds, free as air – nothing could change it. Oswald didn’t want to oppose her, and felt unequal even to the attempt. It occurred to him that Coffee would probably be forgotten, anyhow, in the excitement of her departure.

*

Superficially, calm and friendliness were restored. But neither of them had much to say, and, by mutual consent, they started back to The Hope Deferred earlier than they usually did.

To Rejane the moors were already unreal, outside the reality of her own world. The great pale waste, its purple and gold extinguished, looked phantasmal to her, huge and lonely, with the hummocks of distant tors hunched on the horizon. She’d had more than enough of it, and didn’t want to look.

However, the ponies having plodded and scrambled up a long rise, she was confronted by the steep slope down to the valley, floating below in the last luminous light of the sunset, with its farms in their trees, water flashing bright in the folds of the moor beyond. The little lost valley caught her eye for a moment with its gemlike delicacy and brilliant clearness, in miniature there. It had the fragile look of something about to vanish, the almost-bare trees ghostly looking in their few yellow leaves. At ground level, dusk was already thickening, while the treetops still shimmered ghostlike in sunset gold. Suddenly, as she looked, the valley sank out of sight, all its toylike brightness put out as the sun disappeared and the lumpish tors heaved themselves up all round it in startling significance, huge and uncanny, the gloomy dark masses of moorland standing out menacingly.

Suddenly then, at this first moment after the sun had set, she shivered, feeling frost in the air. The cold seemed to leap upon her like some wild animal. She had a brief moment of superstitious fear, feeling for the first time the power of the hostile north, feeling this country as her enemy – she wouldn’t be really safe from it until she was on the ship. Her one desire now was to get away. She had a positive craving for the noise and bustle of cities after the silence and emptiness of the north – if only she could be gone, and all this left far behind and forgotten!

Now up came Oswald to ride at her side, a bit subdued, but protective as ever in his knight-errant way, to guard her from her own superstitious fears. Odd how he always seemed to sense what she was feeling.

‘Chilly?’ He now put out a comforting, helpful hand, to turn up her coat collar. Then, evidently thinking that conversation was called for, he began telling her about the ancient castle fortress of Bannenberg, to which the old halflegendary kings were supposed to have gone, after receiving magical warning of their approaching end. An echo of his musical lilt could be heard; but his brilliant eyes brooded over her, filled with melancholy and misgiving. She got the impression that he was talking to reassure himself almost as much as her.

And, being sensitized just then, whether she liked it or not, to northern influences, she had an instantaneous impersonal vision of him as a man bom to a certain tradition of nobility and honourable service, now lost to the world. Finding no one and nothing to serve with the nobility in him, he was rejected, left isolated and unfulfilled. He’d dedicated his knightly service to her; that was why his need for contact with her was so urgent. It was more than being in love with her – something more compelling. His life, almost, depended on loving her. She alone could save him from being rejected, cast out.

All this she saw in an instantaneous flash, as if from outside herself, immediately afterwards thinking, from
inside.
Why couldn’t he save himself? Why should he expect
her
to save him? It seemed presumptuous, as if he were making use of her as a means to an end. At the same time, she was gratified because at last she possessed his secret; which meant that the man himself was no longer in the least interesting – anyhow, she’d finished with him already as she had with everything here. She was about to send Coffee cantering on, leaving Oswald behind, when she changed her mind, and continued to ride beside him.

She’d never been to Bannenberg, or wanted to go, always avoiding the places that tourists went to. But now she suddenly said she must see the final resting-place of the old kings before she left the country – it would make a suitable expedition for her last day here.

Oswald had already planned in his head a sentimental tour of their favourite places, hoping they might have a softening effect at the end, and at once started protesting. Bannenberg was much too far for the ponies; even by car they could only just get there and back in one day. And wouldn’t she have a lot to do then? Surely she wouldn’t want to spend the whole day in the car? What about her packing?

No longer susceptible to the north or its influences, she cared nothing for the horrible country, simply regarding it with extreme repugnance. But she had her reasons for wanting to go on this trip, and was quite determined.

They came down to the little cluster of dwellings, which seemed huddled together as if for warmth in the dismal twilight. And, the whole length of the village street, Oswald continued his argument: it was too late in the season for Bannenberg, which could be approached only by a lonely coast road, liable at this time of the equinoctial gales to be swept by high tides and rendered impassable. Only a year ago a section of the cliff had collapsed, and with it part of the castle, carried away by the rough seas that incessantly battered the wild, exposed coastline.

Rejane was hardly listening, he hardly seemed real. Only, occasionally, in the dusk, her eye caught the ghostly white gleam of his hair, falling forward as he leaned towards her, talking with spectral emphasis and persistence; till at last, to her relief, the lights of The Hope Deferred came in sight. Its bright windows looked hospitable and cheerful; it seemed the one point of life and light in all that dreary cold desolation.

With a charming smile for the youth who ran out to take Coffee’s bridle, she slid from the saddle and hurried in, into the warm; Oswald, like winter personified with his white head, closely pursuing.

*

Now, under the lights, he could see the inflexible look he’d known all the time must be on her face, against which no words or actions of his could prevail. But, obsessed, he insisted on finding an atlas and showing her Bannenberg, the northernmost headland of his northern country, like a signpost, pointing straight to the Pole.