Absent in the Spring (16 page)

She retraced her steps, making a slight detour so as to encircle the rest house. In that way she would eke out the time and run no risk of that strange feeling of agoraphobia (if it had been agoraphobia).

Certainly, she thought with approval, the morning had gone very successfully. She had gone over in her mind the things for which she had to be thankful. Averil's marriage to dear Edward, such a solid, dependable sort of man – and so well off, too; Averil's house in London was quite delightful – so handy for Harrods. And Barbara's marriage. And Tony's – though that really wasn't quite so satisfactory – in fact they knew nothing about it – and Tony himself was not as entirely satisfactory as a son should be. Tony should have remained in Crayminster and gone into Alderman, Scudamore and Witney's. He should have married a nice English girl, fond of outdoor life, and followed in his father's footsteps.

Poor Rodney, with his dark hair streaked with grey, and no son to succeed him at the office.

The truth was that Rodney had been much too weak with Tony. He should have put his foot down. Firmness, that was the thing. Why, thought Joan, where would Rodney be, I should like to know, if I hadn't put
my
foot down? She felt a warm little glow of self approval. Crippled with debts, probably, and trying to raise a mortgage like Farmer Hoddesdon. She wondered if Rodney really quite appreciated what she had done for him …

Joan stared ahead of her at the swimming line of the horizon. A queer watery effect. Of course, she thought, mirage!

Yes, that was it, mirage … just like pools of water in the sand. Not at all what one thought of as mirage – she had always imagined trees and cities – something much more concrete.

But even this unspectacular watery effect was queer – it made one feel – what
was
reality?

Mirage, she thought, mirage. The word seemed important.

What had she been thinking of? Oh, of course, Tony, and how exceedingly selfish and thoughtless he had been.

It had always been extremely difficult to get at Tony. He was so vague, so apparently acquiescent, and yet in his quiet, amiable, smiling way, he did exactly as he liked. Tony had never been quite so devoted to her as she felt a son ought to be to his mother. In fact he really seemed to care for his father most.

She remembered how Tony, as a small boy of seven, in the middle of the night, had entered the dressing-room where Rodney was sleeping, and had announced quietly and unromantically:

‘I think, Father, I must have eaten a toadstool instead of a mushroom, because I have a very bad pain and I think I am going to die. So I have come here to die with you.'

Actually, it had been nothing to do with toadstools or mushrooms. It had been acute appendicitis and the boy had been operated on within twenty-four hours. But it still seemed to Joan queer that the child should have gone to Rodney and not to her. Far more natural for Tony to have come to his mother.

Yes, Tony had been trying in many ways. Lazy at school. Slack over games. And though he was a very good-looking boy and the kind of boy she was proud to take about with her, he never seemed to want to be taken about, and had an irritating habit of melting into the landscape just when she was looking for him.

‘Protective colouring,' Averil had called it, Joan remembered. ‘Tony is much cleverer at protective colouring than we are,' she had said.

Joan had not quite understood her meaning, but she had felt vaguely a little hurt by it …

Joan looked at her watch. No need to get too hot walking. Back to the rest house now. It had been an excellent morning – no incidents of any kind – no unpleasant thoughts, no sensations of agoraphobia –

Really, some inner voice in her exclaimed, you are talking just like a hospital nurse. What do you think you are, Joan Scudamore? an invalid? a mental case? And why do you feel so proud of yourself and yet so tired? Is there anything extraordinary in having passed a pleasant, normal morning?

She went quickly into the rest house, and was delighted to see that there were tinned pears for lunch as a change.

After lunch she went and lay down on her bed.

If she could sleep until tea time …

But she did not feel even inclined to sleep. Her brain felt bright and wakeful. She lay there with closed eyes, but her body felt alert and tense, as though it were waiting for something … as though it were watchful, ready to defend itself against some lurking danger. All her muscles were taut.

I must relax, Joan thought, I must relax.

But she couldn't relax. Her body was stiff and braced. Her heart was beating a little faster than was normal. Her mind was alert and suspicious.

The whole thing reminded her of something. She searched and at last the right comparison came to her – a dentist's waiting-room.

The feeling of something definitely unpleasant just ahead of you, the determination to reassure yourself, to put off thinking of it, and the knowledge that each minute was bringing the ordeal nearer …

But what ordeal – what was she expecting?

What was going to happen
?

The lizards, she thought, have all gone back into their holes … that's because there's a storm coming … the quiet – before a storm … waiting … waiting …

Good Heavens, she was getting quite incoherent again.

Miss Gilbey … discipline … a Spiritual Retreat …

A Retreat! She must meditate. There was something about repeating Om … Theosophy? Or Buddhism …

No, no, stick to her own religion. Meditate on God. On the love of God.
God
… Our Father, which art in Heaven …

Her own father – his squarely trimmed naval brown beard, his deep piercing blue eyes, his liking for everything to be trim and shipshape in the house. A kindly martinet, that was her father, a typical retired Admiral. And her mother, tall, thin, vague, untidy, with a careless sweetness that made people, even when she most exasperated them, find all kinds of excuses for her.

Her mother going out to parties with odd gloves and a crooked skirt and a hat pinned askew to a bun of iron grey hair, and happily and serenely unconscious of anything amiss about her appearance. And the anger of the Admiral – always directed on his daughters, never on his wife.

‘Why can't you girls look after your mother? What do you mean by letting her go out like that! I will
not
have such slackness!' he would roar. And the three girls would say submissively:

‘No, Father.' And afterwards, to each other, ‘It's all very well, but really Mother is impossible!'

Joan had been very fond of her mother, of course, but her fondness had not blinded her to the fact that her mother was really a very tiresome woman – her complete lack of method and consistency hardly atoned for by her gay irresponsibility and warm-hearted impulsiveness.

It had come as quite a shock to Joan, clearing up her mother's papers after her mother's death, to come across a letter from her father, written on the twentieth anniversary of their marriage.

I grieve deeply that I cannot be with you today, dear heart. I would like to tell you in this letter all that your love has meant to me all these years and how you are more dear to me today than you have ever been before. Your love has been the crowning blessing of my life and I thank God for it and for you …

Somehow she had never realized that her father felt quite like that about her mother …

Joan thought, Rodney and I will have been married twenty-five years this December. Our silver wedding. How nice, she thought, if he were to write such a letter to me …

She concocted a letter in her mind.

Dearest Joan – I feel I must write down all I owe to you – and what you have meant to me – You have no idea, I am sure, how your love has been the crowning blessing …

Somehow, Joan thought, breaking off this imaginative exercise, it didn't seem very real. Impossible to imagine Rodney writing such a letter … much as he loved her … much as he loved her …

Why repeat that so defiantly? Why feel such a queer, cold little shiver? What had she been thinking about before that?

Of course! Joan came to herself with a shock. She was supposed to be engaged in spiritual meditation. Instead of that she had been thinking of mundane matters – of her father and mother, dead these many years.

Dead, leaving her alone.

Alone in the desert. Alone in this very unpleasant prison-like room.

With nothing to think about but herself.

She sprang up. No use lying here when one couldn't go to sleep.

She hated these high rooms with their small gauze-covered windows. They hemmed you in. They made you feel small, insect-like. She wanted a big, airy drawing-room, with nice cheerful cretonnes and a crackling fire in the grate and people – lots of people – people you could go and see and people who would come and see you …

Oh, the train
must
come soon – it had got to come soon. Or a car – or
something
 …

‘I can't stay here,' said Joan aloud. ‘I can't stay here!'

(Talking to yourself, she thought, that's a very bad sign.)

She had some tea and then she went out. She didn't feel she could sit still and think.

She would go out and walk, and she wouldn't think.

Thinking, that was what upset you. Look at these people who lived in this place – the Indian, the Arab boy, the cook. She felt quite sure they never thought.

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits …

Who had said that? What an admirable way of life!

She wouldn't think, she would just walk. Not too far away from the rest house just in case – well, just in case …

Describe a large circle. Round and round. Like an animal. Humiliating. Yes, humiliating but there it was. She had got to be very, very careful of herself. Otherwise –

Otherwise what? She didn't know. She hadn't any idea.

She mustn't think of Rodney, she mustn't think of Averil, she mustn't think of Tony, she mustn't think of Barbara. She mustn't think of Blanche Haggard. She mustn't think of scarlet rhododendron buds. (Particularly she mustn't think of scarlet rhododendron buds!) She mustn't think of poetry …

She mustn't think of Joan Scudamore. But that's myself! No, it isn't. Yes, it is …

If you had nothing but yourself to think about what would you find out about yourself
?

‘I don't want to know,' said Joan aloud.

The sound of her voice astonished her. What was it that she didn't want to know?

A battle, she thought, I'm fighting a losing battle.

But against whom? Against what?

Never mind, she thought. I don't want to know –

Hang on to that. It was a good phrase.

Odd the feeling that there was someone walking with her. Someone she knew quite well. If she turned her head … well, she had turned her head but there was no one. No one at all.

Yet the feeling that there was someone persisted. It frightened her. Rodney, Averil, Tony, Barbara, none of them would help her, none of them could help her, none of them wanted to help her. None of them cared.

She would go back to the rest house and get away from whoever it was who was spying on her.

The Indian was standing outside the wire door. Joan was swaying a little as she walked. The way he stared annoyed her.

‘What is it?' she said. ‘What's the matter?'

‘Memsahib not look well. Perhaps Memsahib have fever?'

That was it. Of course, that was it. She had fever! How stupid not to have thought of that before.

She hurried in. She must take her temperature, look for her quinine. She had got some quinine with her somewhere.

She got out her thermometer and put it under her tongue.

Fever – of course it was fever! The incoherence – the nameless dreads – the apprehension – the fast beating of her heart.

Purely physical, the whole thing.

She took out the thermometer and looked at it.

98.2. If anything she was a shade below normal.

She got through the evening somehow. She was by now really alarmed about herself. It wasn't sun – it wasn't fever – it must be nerves.

‘Just nerves,' people said. She had said so herself about other people. Well, she hadn't known. She knew now. Just nerves, indeed! Nerves were hell! What she needed was a doctor, a nice, sympathetic doctor, and a nursing home and a kindly, efficient nurse who would never leave the room. ‘Mrs Scudamore must never be left alone.' What she had got was a whitewashed prison in the middle of a desert, a semi-intelligent Indian, a completely imbecile Arab boy, and a cook who would presently send in a meal of rice and tinned salmon and baked beans and hard-boiled eggs.

All wrong, thought Joan, completely the wrong treatment for my sort of case …

After dinner she went to her room and looked at her aspirin bottle. There were six tablets left. Recklessly she took them all. It was leaving her nothing for tomorrow, but she felt she must try something. Never again, she thought, will I go travelling without some proper sleeping stuff with me.

She undressed and lay down apprehensively.

Strangely enough she fell asleep almost immediately.

That night she dreamed that she was in a big prison building with winding corridors. She was trying to get out but she couldn't find the way, and yet, all the time, she knew quite well that she
did
know it …

You've only got to remember, she kept saying to herself earnestly, you've only got to remember.

In the morning she woke up feeling quite peaceful, though tired.

‘You've only got to remember,' she said to herself.

She got up and dressed and had breakfast.

She felt quite all right, just a little apprehensive, that was all.

I suppose it will all start again soon, she thought to herself. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it.