William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (38 page)

He grew up to be a tall blond youth—relatively unspoiled in spite of his wealth—with an average mind and good intentions. Three years at a small Episcopal prep school across the river served to obliterate his fear of God, and he discovered that being a rich man’s son in a poor boy’s school was a social asset, so long as he remained a regular fellow. A wide mouth like his father’s kept him from being handsome, but he was attractive-looking, passably athletic and intelligent—no triple-threat man, yet endowed with enough of the natural graces for it to be unnecessary for him to make money his weapon. It was merely the badge of a mild superiority. He went off to the University, to study business, with an allowance of two hundred dollars a month, an unswerving faith, like all Virginia gentlemen, in whisky, and a need for sex which in him, he thought—as does every young man—was the most especially ardent and consuming in the world. In Charlottesville he found an acquaintanceship with alcohol easy enough, but one with women formidably difficult, and by the time he met Peyton, in the latter part of his sophomore year, his only sexual experience had been with an aging truck driver’s wife who yielded herself up to him, along with five of his fraternity brothers, one hot spring night in a car parked behind a roadhouse.

With Peyton his desire was not removed in him, only suppressed, and he accommodated himself to the frustrating ritual of college “love” with as little pain as possible. Or tried to. Peyton filled him with delight: there was a way she had—a morose, wry humor, vaguely bitter without casting a pall, and more intelligently aware of people than his own—which made him finally conscious of his real love for her; and her beauty, that someday it might belong to him—not like his Oldsmobile but as a spiritual possession unqualified, imperishable, and beyond need of upkeep or repair—caused him to ache with longing to his very soul. Their life became one big dance, a kind of sea of music through which restrained words of tenderness floated like the sparkle of stars; they kissed, pressed their bodies close, and Dick became both contented and dissatisfied: was this the kingdom of heaven, so happy, and so painfully fruitless? “Peyton, don’t you want—?” he’d say, and pause, and a tender desire would fill his heart, but he loved her and his was a protestant heart, and it rebelled.

Often, though, it was not these inequitable conditions of desire and decency which tortured him; it was Peyton herself. No one since his father had caused him such bewilderment, and occasionally he wondered—if and when they were married—how on earth he would handle her. He tried to determine what there was about him that she loved, or liked, or was fond of. She never said, “I love you,” but that, he thought, was a technicality. He quickly discounted his money; once, when they had started to become serious about each other, she told him to heck with your money—and he believed her, because in logical matters like that he knew she was completely frank and honest. It was these other things that bothered him; he had an orderly and methodical mind, one which found an emotional balance at a fairly early age, and sought meanings: how, then, to reconcile these rages—weird, wild and unreasonable, always when she had had too much to drink, and generally directed at him—with her placid normal moments when, arms about his neck, she called him Dickie boy and kissed his ear with her tongue, and the smell of perfume in her hair made him so weak he thought he’d collapse in his tracks? A hundred times during the past two years, leaving some debauch which beforehand had charitably been described as a “little party-party,” they found themselves alone, dizzy, miraculously safe after a frantic, moonstruck drive through the hills, woods—they hardly knew nor did it matter—where, parked amid thick deepening shadows, they felt each other, moist skin and hair, and were afraid to let loose their breath, so full were their lungs, such an unlovely, shuddering sound it would make. That year they played a song called “Racing with the Moon.” It came not from some steel tower miles away, but from the depths of the car itself, and it was played only for them. Cramped, they lay side by side on the slippery leather while the dawn whirled drunkenly above them in a steam of light and the exclusive invisible music drifted up from the floor, drums, horns, and violins that glowed mysteriously, like phosphorescence, and touched their thighs and arms with a pale invisible fire. It was all very frustrating.

But there were other times, just as passionate, just as memorable, but awful. These evenings began—often, too, at the fraternity house—with the same gay, innocent intentions and ended up in a welter of ugly words, tears, misunderstandings. He could never tell what mood governed her heart; at the most he came to learn that she was somehow deviously tied to her home, her father, and that a letter from him or news from her family was apt to make her remote and unapproachable, or worse—after they had drunk and danced together for hours—to topple her off the wrong side of that emotional tightrope upon which she seemed always so precariously balanced. Then she was abrupt and baffling. Afterward in the car she’d accuse him unreasonably of neglect (he who had not, as well as he could remember, taken his eyes off her all evening), of lacking sensitivity, of general barbarities and poverty of feeling: how, she asked, could she be expected to marry someone who took all this fraternity business so seriously, whose whole life was already one big cliché? “Goodness, Dick, I like a good time, I like to party, but how could you stand there and laugh at the jokes that silly Tucker girl made, that whore? … Dick, I just don’t think you’d be
gentle
enough, if we had children. …”

That sort of thing.

He’d suffer these abuses, knowing that they would be over soon, knowing that she would become tender and apologetic and kiss him. The fact that her bitter words did prick his modest self-esteem didn’t really shatter him; he had already arrived at an evaluation of his attitudes, his sensibilities, and if Peyton, in spite of these irrational moments of outrage and suspicion, still loved him for his positive characteristics—whatever they were—well, wasn’t that sufficient? She still confused him, but her moods contributed the seasoning to their romance, and gradually there became clear some of the qualities about him that she loved. It was partially that, being different, they complemented each other: in the midst of her wild outbursts he was aware that she yet knew he was strong and reliable, and that he would comfort her. Too self-respecting to be trampled upon, he still allowed himself to act as a sort of sieve for her emotions, knowing that, like him, she was tight and rather incoherent, and that she didn’t mean what she said about him at all.

So, whenever he was away from her, it was the happy times that he preferred to remember. They were together as often as their studies allowed, which is to say almost constantly—every week end and on Wednesdays and Thursdays and even Tuesdays, when Dick would make the long afternoon drive over the mountains to Sweet Briar. Their meetings were casually executed, in the manner of college boys and girls, and even nonchalant, to other eyes; but all this was pure pose, for alone they allowed their arms to envelop each other, and threaded the hot cloak of their desire with kisses and frank hoarse demands, which neither of them expected, or really wanted, to be fulfilled. Once again they drank, drove for endless miles on black-market gas, and found themselves high in the moonlit misty hills, dancing to the radio turned full blast, in bare feet racing with the moon which Vaughn Monroe had evoked for them in soft thoughtless bars of harmony, and which, from these heights so fat and pale and benign, seemed, like the music itself, exclusively theirs. …

Now, toward dawn, they were nearing home. The pint bottle between them was almost empty. They passed wide empty fields, more familiar farmhouses, a creek, sluggish beneath a thin film of ice, with an Indian name full of
k’
s and
q’
s. A grass-green light had fallen over the earth but all was still sleeping and quiet and motionless, except for a yellow flame which flickered briefly at a window, or a trio of ducks which arose from the marsh, flew as swiftly as the car for a time, and veered out over the river. To the east the morning star faded, then vanished, and they emerged from dark sheltering woods in an explosion of light; across the fields smoke curled up from kitchen chimneys: the day had become officially Sunday.

“I told him I was going to quit school.” Peyton had the hiccups and she paused to hold her breath while Dick counted nine. “There!” She took his hand again. “I told him I wasn’t going to take any more of her lousy money.”

“It’ll be O.K.,” he said, “don’t worry.”

“Maudie won’t be O.K. Oh, Dick.” She laid her head on his shoulder and he put his arm around her once more.

“It’s only a few more miles, honey,” he said.

They talked drowsily now, for neither of them had slept this night and only a short hour or two the night before. Yet their exhaustion was sustained by an undercurrent of excitement; it had been a tense and unsettling thing, what Peyton had gone through, but to people so young there is nothing final in disaster, the disaster itself often opening up refreshing vistas of novelty, escape or freedom. Dick had comforted her about Maudie: there was little else to be done about that except wait and see. In the meantime … In the meantime they had talked and talked—Peyton mostly—and because of the whisky, which had lulled and deceived their minds, their talk was repetitious and touched with a synthetic exaltation, and its sadness and its mood of fatality gave them a solemn sort of joy.

“And Daddy,” Peyton murmured. “Like I told you. It was terrible seeing him the way I did before we left. Oh, you should have seen him. Really you’ve never seen such a sight. He was so lost he was just slobbering all over me, saying that this wasn’t the end for us, to come back with him to Port Warwick.” She sat up abruptly, looking at Dick. “Imagine that! He was so completely lost, she had so completely shattered him, that I really believe he lost his mind for a minute. Imagine him seriously asking me to come back with him, with her!” She paused for a moment, pushed the hair back from her brow. “The poor guy. He’s such a dope. But I love him, Dick. I love him.” She hiccuped again, and fished about in her pocket and came up with Loftis’ ring. “Look, Dick, look what that old jerk gave me. Isn’t it pretty? You know what he said? He said—he tried to be funny——” She gave a little laugh. “It was so pathetic with his bandage falling off. I fixed it for him. He took off this ring and tried to make a joke. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘if that rich young scoundrel can give you the pin the least you can do is accept this small token of affection from a broken-down wreck like me.’ The dear. Oh, it was so pathetic … hic!” She sank back again, laughing helplessly, a small chain of indrawn breaths, linked by hiccups, that threatened to snap in fragments of hysteria. “Let me have a drink, sweetheart. To cure these.”

“Poor baby. A bloody fine thing,” said Dick.

“What?”

“All this.” He turned his eyes from the road; his face was flushed and scowling, and he was having trouble with his tongue. “All this. I mean … oh, what the hell. I mean, don’t quit school. Honey, we haven’t got much time. Uncle Sam’s going to get me. Let’s get married. Today. We’ll drive up to Maryland. Pop’s got a lot of ration coupons lying around. We’ll sleep a little first. Then we’ll drive up to La Plata and get married. Honey, I’ll take care of you for the rest of my life. Oh, honey, dammit …”

It was inconceivable that she wouldn’t be listening. She was smiling. She said, “It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so awful. Apologizing to me for that gruesome woman he’s been running around with all these years. To me! Why would he do that? As if I gave a damn. I wanted to tell him that it was a fine thing, only why didn’t he get somebody with a little sav … savoir-faire? Why would he apologize to me? I just guess he’s got to apologize to somebody.”

“Hey, how about it, darling?”

“What?”

“Going up to——”

“Oh, no, Dickie, not today.”

“When? If we put it off——”

“I don’t know.”

“When? Tell me when.”

“No, Dick. No! No! For God’s sake, can’t you see—— Oh, I’m getting so stewed … I’m getting——” She flung her head into his lap, squeezing his leg with her hand. He didn’t flinch but looked straight ahead and said nothing as the car plowed through the mist, the green ineffable morning. A wood of oaks and pines appeared, two plain pillars of brick flanking the entrance to a gravel road; they turned off here. Half a mile beyond stood the house, deserted and silent. They passed over a small causeway which spanned the pond. Somewhere among the whitewashed outhouses, which had once been slave quarters, a rooster crowed. Huge oaks arched over the driveway, and as they drove up, the car caused terror among a flock of geese, which fled their advance in clumsy haste, emitting honks of dismay.

“Harvey must be up,” Dick said, “I never saw such an energetic nigger.” Peyton didn’t answer, only raised her head a bit and let it fall again in Dick’s lap. Her face was as pale as death.

With coffee they revived themselves a little. Still tense and nervous, they were too tired to sleep. It was five o’clock by the kitchen clock, but the clock had stopped and they wearily figured between them, somehow, not caring really, that it must be nearly seven. There was no one in the house but themselves, the family having gone—as Dick had explained before—over to King and Queen County, to visit relatives. The house itself was weary and still, and nothing disturbed the quiet, except for the infrequent crackle of timbers that stretched like a man’s limbs upon awakening, warming to the dawn with a somnolent snapping noise as they had done each morning for nearly two hundred years. There was a musty smell about—the windows had been closed since Thursday—and they wandered aimlessly, not speaking, through the musty airless rooms, neither able to return to their conversation, nor to forget it. And it was as if their tension and their exhaustion—mainly Peyton’s grief and lostness, her despair—had begun to communicate itself to the house. Amid those ancient rooms which carried even to this day, along with the radio, electric lamps and modern chairs, a sort of minor squalor of ancestral piety—old canes carved from a hickory, many years dead, long before the war began, and a pulpit-sized, rat-chewed Bible, and antebellum novels still dusty and uncut in their cases, and faded Christian lithographs of the Apostles and the Ascension and a swooning Susanna—amid all these they wandered, bearing with them, like an anachronistic odor, their peculiarly modern despair. …