The Revolt of Aphrodite (32 page)

It was late when we arrived, hush-hushing down the white avenues towards the strange house, where every light seemed to have been lit and left to burn on in tenantless rooms; who went round and turned off all those lights, and at what time? The lake had frozen iron-stiff and here a great fire of oak-logs sparked and hissed in the centre of it, near the island; several dozens of muffled figures skirred about it on skates. There was even a coloured marquee with fairy lights where some were drinking steaming coloured drinks—
presumably
hot lemonade, since it was past the drinking hour, and even considerations of Christian charity could not be expected to sway the habits of mind of lazy bureaucrats and publicans. Nevertheless it was a grateful and heart-warming scene in this desolate property to have a few villagers amusing themselves. From time to time would come a pistol crack from the ice, and a fissure would trace itself with soft rapidity, like someone running a stick of charcoal across the
whiteness
. Shrieks and laughter greeted these warnings. Baynes shook a sage head and muttered something like “It’s all very well, sir, but a few minutes’ thaw and they’ll all be in the drink.”

The car drew up, the doors opened. The hall and all its galleries were hung with dusty bunting left over from other festivals; there were a few servants about, engaged on unobtrusive tasks, but not many. Yet from the light and the decorations you would have said that Benedicta expected a great company to descend on us. No such thing. Moreover she had gone up already. No glittering cars
disgorging 
madonnas in evening gowns, no monocles glittering, no sheen of top-hats.

I mounted heart-beat by heart-beat. The bed she lay in was like some fat state barge with its squat carved legs and damascened wings of curtain drawn back and secured with velvet cords. The light fell upon the book she was reading, and which she closed with a snap as I entered the room. The child lay in a yellow cot by the
chimneypiece
—a small indistinct pink bundle, thumb in mouth. We stared at each other for a long moment. Though her regard was sad, almost humble in its directness, I thought I could detect some new quality in it—a new remoteness? She was like some great traveller who had come back finally after many adventures—come back to find that his experiences overshadowed the present. Sitting at the foot of the bed I put my hand upon hers, wondering if she were ever going to speak, or whether we should just sit like this for ever, gazing at each other. “The snow held us up” I said, and she nodded, still staring into my eyes with her sad abstracted eyes. She had made herself up carelessly that evening, and had not bothered to take the make-up off; the pale powdered face looked almost feverish in contrast to the thin scarlet mouth. “You know” she whispered at last “it’s like coming back from the dead. It’s so fragile as yet—I hardly recognise the world. So tired.” Then she took my hand and placed it upon her forehead saying: “But I am not feverish am I?” She trembled as I embraced her softly and went on. “But you know there is something else to be got over now between us. It’s very clear. How patient can you be?” She drew down her frowning brows over those wide-awake eyes and stared keenly, sternly at me. Then she pointed at the cot in the corner. “Have you seen?” To temper the ominous intensity of this
monologue
I crossed the room and stared dutifully at the child. She had turned sideways upon an elbow now, and her concentrated gaze held a strange hungry animal-like quality. She resumed her full voice to say—with a sort of dying fall. “He has come between us now, don’t you see? Perhaps for ever. I don’t know. I love you. But the whole thing must be thought over from the very beginning.”

Over and above the numbness I felt only a sudden rage; like a wild boar I could have turned to rend the world. Benedicta gave a sob, a
single sob, and then all at once was smiling again: a smile disinterred from forgotten corners of our common past, full of loyalty and
fearlessness
. She shook two pellets out of a bottle. They tinkled into a shallow glass which she held out for me without a word. I filled it from the tap in the bathroom. She watched them froth and dissolve before drinking the mixture; then, putting down the glass, she said “The main thing is that I am really back at last.” A church bell
began
to toll from the nearby village, and the clock by the bed chirped. “I must feed it” she said—it seemed to me strange the use of “it”. I turned away, muttering something about going downstairs to dine, and then crossed the room with a sudden purposeful swiftness to take up the child. I left her sitting crosslegged in the armchair by the bed, holding “it” to her breast, absorbed as a gipsy.

Downstairs the grizzled Baynes was waiting for me; he had organised my dinner, knocking up a couple of servants from the deeper recesses of the kitchens. I could see he was dying to question me about Benedicta but resisted the impulse like the perfectly trained servant he was. I settled down to this late repast with a sense of anticlimax, but to put a good countenance upon it all—the long solitary table I mean with its coloured candlesticks, the absence of Benedicta—I made some rough notes for a speech I would soon be having to deliver to the Royal Society of Inventors.

Afterwards I betook myself to the log fire in the hall; and while I was sitting there before it, half asleep, I heard the traditional
cannonade
upon the front-door knocker, followed by the shrill pipe of waits whose voices were raised quaveringly in a painful carol. It was a welcome diversion; I went to the front door and found a small group of village children standing in a snow-marked semicircle
outside
. Their leader held a Chinese lantern. They were like robins, pink cheeked and rosy. Their infant breath poured out in frosty tresses as they sang. I sent Baynes hot-foot for drinks, cakes and biscuits, and when the first carol ended invited them into the warm hall with its big fire. It was bitterly cold outside, and they were glad to huddle about the blazing logs with small bluish fingers extended to the flame. The teeth of some were a-chatter. But the warm drinks and the sweet cakes soon restored them. I emptied my pockets of small change, pouring it into the woollen cap of their leader, a
tough-looking 
peasant boy of about eleven: blond and blue-eyed. As a parting gesture they offered to sing a final carol right there in the hall and I agreed. They began a ragged but full-throated rendering of “God rest you merry, gentlemen”. The house echoed marvellously; and it was only when they were halfway through the melody that I saw an unknown figure stalking in military fashion down the long staircase; a tall thin woman with grey hair, clad in a white
dressing-gown
, which she clutched about her throat with long crooked fingers. Her narrow face was compressed about a mouth set in an expression of malevolent disapproval. “You will wake the child” she repeated in a deep voice. She came to a halt on the first landing. “Who are you?” I said. The waits came to a quavering halt in mid bar. “The nurse, sir.”

“What is your name?”

“Mrs. LaFour.”

“Can you hear us upstairs?”

She turned back without a word and began to remount the
staircase
. There was nothing for it but to disband the carol-singers and wish them goodnight.

When I reached my room some time later it was to find pinned to my pillow one of Benedicta’s visiting-cards; but there was no message on it. I slept the sleep of utter exhaustion—the kind of sleep that comes only after a prolonged bout of tears; and when I woke next morning everything had changed once more—like the shift of key in a musical score. A new, or else an old, Benedicta was sitting on the foot of the bed, smiling at me. She was clad in her full riding outfit. Every trace of preoccupation had vanished from this smiling reposed face. “Come, shall we ride today? It’s so beautiful.” The change was breath-taking; for once it was she who leaned down to embrace me. “But of course.”

“Don’t be long; I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

I hurried to bathe and dress. Outside the country snowscapes were bathed in a brilliant tranquil light. There was no trace of wind. Occasionally a tall tree let fall a huge package of whiteness which
exploded
prismatically on the roofs of the house. And now even the house itself seemed suddenly to have woken up‚ to be full of a purposeful animation. There was a servant actually humming at
her dusting; the hall tables were piled with telegrams and packages. This was more like it. The horses were at the door sneezing white spume. Benedicta was giving some last-minute orders to Baynes about lunch. “Julian rang to wish us everything, and so did Nash” she cried happily as she pulled on the
close-fitting
felt hat with its brilliant jay’s feather. She seemed to have restored, with a single smile, a hundred lost familiarities. It was hardly conceivable.

We set off briskly, swinging across the meadows in the snow; though we were upon the path of a traditional ride well known to us, the snow had baffled boundaries and we were forced to work from memorised contours, munching across this abstract whiteness into woods whose trees had become wedding-cakes. And everywhere, as if developed mysteriously from a secret print, we could study the footmarks, trace the movements, of animals which were normally invisible: cuneiform of hare and squirrel and fieldmouse scribbled into the snowcarpet. A whole geodesy of the invisible life which
surrounded
our own. The shallow ford was frozen, and I dismounted to lead my horse, but with her customary rashness she forced her own mount through revelling in the crunching ice under its hooves. We rode westward towards the Anvil following the long intersecting rides formed naturally by the firebrakes, now outlined and
demarcated
clearly by the contrasting snow and forest. Once towards the top of the Anvil we turned along the down, and here the going
became
riskier. A rabbit-warren could have spelt a heavy fall or a broken leg for a horse. But Benedicta defied sweet reason; she turned her flushed face to me and laughed aloud. “Nothing can happen to me any more, now that I have told you the truth, how we must separate. You see, it has freed me to love you again. I am
immune
from dangers today.” And she set herself into a breakneck gallop across the white surface leaning ever closer into the drawn bow of her horse’s neck. So we came at last without mishap to the little inn, the Compasses, whose clients, dazed by the bounty of this winter sun in a windless world, were standing about in the snow outside the tap room to drink their brown beer. We tethered at a
convenient
hitching post and joined them for a few moments to drink hot lime and rum. Benedicta’s arm was through mine, pressing softly
against me, as we leaned against the fence. “They put me in a huge canvas jacket like a burnous, with long sleeves to wrap around one; it was always when I wanted to write to you. I felt so safe in there. The canvas was heavy—you couldn’t poke a needle through. I felt so safe, just like I feel today. Nothing can happen.”

“When do we separate? Do you want to divorce me?”

She frowned and reflected for a long moment; then she shook her head. “Not divorce” she said. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain. I wouldn’t like to lose you because of many reasons; the child must have a father, no? And then from the point of view of….” She stopped just in time; perhaps she caught a glimpse of the expression on my face. If she was about to say “the firm”, it would have been just enough to make me lose control of myself.

I replaced the glasses on the gnarled counter and paid for the drinks; we remounted and moved off, more slowly now, more soberly. Benedicta’s eyes were on her own white hands holding the reins.

“If I stay here until spring you could come at week-ends.”

“I suppose so.”

“It’s only the sleeping business I can’t manage; I’m still a little fragile, Felix. Ah but you understand everything—there isn’t any need to explain to you. Come, let’s gallop again.” We broke once more into this breakneck pace, swerving down the long rides, hurling up petals of snow behind us. “I shall leave tomorrow” I called across the few feet which separated us—our labouring horses were neck and neck.

She turned her bright smiling face to me and nodded happily. “Now you understand I have confidence in myself. Tomorrow, then.”

The city seemed exhausted and deserted by everyone, abandoned to the snow; not less the rows of empty offices in the Merlin Group’s offices. The heating had been turned off or frozen and for a few days I had to content myself with an electric stove trained upon my feet. My secretaries were on leave, as were the servants in the Mount Street house. I had my meals at the club, often staying on as late as I
could in the evening, spinning out time with a game of billiards. The late-night ring of footsteps on the iron-bound roads…. But yes, Benedicta sometimes rang, full of afterthoughts and moribund
solicitudes
; one could feel the heavy ground-swell of the resistances licking the sunken rocks—the steep seas of Nash’s little pet, the unconscious. He at least was in town, in bed with a cold; I dined with him once or twice, taking care to admonish him when I did. “Theology is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” I had read it somewhere among a friend’s papers. I also spent some time on the Koepgen scribbles which yielded their linear B after prolonged scrutiny, thunderous aphoristic flights like: “A great work is a successfully communicated state of mind—
cosa
mentale
”
and “The poet is master of faculties not yet in his freehold possession—his gift is in trust. He is no didact but an enjoiner.” Crumbs, I said to myself, crumbs! And we talk about nature as if we were not part of it. I could see the influence here and there of a writer called Pursewarden. Nor could I interest Master Nash very much in such lucubrations. “You see, my good Nash, reality is there all the time but we are not: our appearances are
intermittent
. The problem is how much can we swallow before closing time?”