An End and a Beginning (28 page)

Her body moves, her nature speaks. One foot crosses the other, and he watches, not the feet, but the dress's movement, the upward movement, the beginning of the leg's journey. She turns, stretches, it is only the heat of the fire, but in a moment he knows how far the leg reaches. The curtains are drawn, and a moon is up. He does not see it, cannot look that way. There is only one way of looking in this silence-wrapped room. The candle is so close, burning in his eye, how long will it last? It will go, the darkness will come. Another will not be lit. He watches her entwined hands, he waits for any movement, a movement is the only necessary word. So near, so very, very close, and before so very far away. At the tops of mountains and in the depths of abysses, in clefts of rock and in the middle of oceans. “My arm feels so long, I could touch her now.”

The sheer presence of each other in chairs is yet the barrier of iron. The candles will not burn for ever, and the clock's hands will reach a figure after which it will be impossible to follow it. The flames will die down, the grate blacken. The room will force them out. When a coal dropped with a clatter to the open hearth they both jumped, as though from the sound of a gunshot. He knows that every movement is towards the door, the darkness, the long broad staircase, the long dark passage to other rooms. He sees her close and open her eyes.

“He says that he will not stay long.”

“He says that my husband will follow me over here.”

“He says that years ago he would have loved to run away from me,” and out of the hidden words comes the sudden smile that he lights on, and holds with his own eyes, and remembers that the candle must soon splutter out.

“She said yes in the wood, when I held her, and when I kissed her.” The very words seem to put out the candle, blacken the fire, send the clock's hands whirling. “God! I just can't believe it's happened. I can't. I can't.” And the room is full with a bed, heavy with a bed; he closes his eyes, dreams.

“What were you thinking about?” she asked. He did not answer. He hadn't actually heard, as though the words themselves had slipped out, velvet soft, crawled to the chair on which he sat.

“What were you thinking about, Peter?”

“Nothing,” he said, “nothing,” like the word had lain on the tip of his tongue all this silent hour, only waiting to drop. And as if to make sure that it had landed, he repeated, “Nothing.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“Only of myself, dear. Only of myself.”

“The candle won't last long,” he said, dumb in a moment, he could not think of anything else to say and now there was no need to, only to look again as she rose to her feet and came towards him. She knelt down and took his hands.

“Forget Desmond,” she said.

She did not look at him as she said it, and did not wait for an answer. She crossed the floor and went out. He heard the door close behind him.

“I could cry out, I feel so happy,” the very words spoken aloud in the room seemed to propel him from the chair. The next moment he was leaning on the mantelpiece, watching the now guttering candle. After a while he blew it out and left the room. He stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“I can go to hers, or she can come to mine,” he thought, and slowly climbed the stairs and made his way to the room.

Owing to the coldness of the night the housekeeper had lighted a fire in his room, and this burned brightly as he entered. He did not bother with the light. Slowly he undressed, got into the bed, and waited.

“I wonder if she really loves me. I wonder if she always did?”

The words carried him forward, upwards like chariots. He lit a cigarette; he counted the ticks of his own clock.

“Last night was a horror.”

“Yesterday I was so ashamed.”

“The day before I felt so bloody lonely, so out of it. I've hated nothing but myself since ever I came out.”

He lit another cigarette, he drew up his knees, looked towards the window, the door. He listened. No sound.

“Christ, suppose even now, just suppose it was still only a dream,” and in a moment he was lying on an ice-shelf. “No. She wouldn't do it, she wouldn't do it, she——” the cigarette falling from his fingers, reaching down for it, as the door opened, and she came in.

“Sheila!”

She came slowly across the room and stood in front of the fire. Even before she raised her arm he was standing beside her. “Let me,” his mouth at her neck, pressing, pressing, and his hands moved. Every movement will last a lifetime, as he feels first at the shoulder, as he dreads to unfasten, and as he unfastens, as the cloth moves, as he drowns in each moment and as he rises up, as the cloth shuts out grave and tree, monk and field, mouth and knife, ship and sea, cell and hole, as the cloth so slowly falls on a long journey, as she stands there in the willed innocence of an act, for him the only woman on the living earth. As the breasts leap from a prison, and as he bends and kisses them, and as he sees them pink-flowered at their peaks through almost grass-dry eyes, as he holds and lifts and feels a firmness and a softness, and a curious blind thrust of the woman at his side, as he kneels and draws downwards, the cloth inching and inching, until he is on his knees before her, and a thousand dreams in his hands. The lighthouse is full of lights, and the oceans are full of sounds.

“Oh Sheila! Sheila!” His fingers live only when she shuts her eyes.

“It is his need,” she thought, “but it is nothing else.”

She feels a pressure of a head on her belly, a sudden movement of his hands at her thighs that makes her think of something curling, a snake, a piece of rope, a wire. She feels a menace in his fingers, and in a sudden silence. She feels his muscles taut, strung like a bow. She opened her eyes and slightly turned her head to look into the fire.

Peter ran his hands up and down her body's length, and when he looked again the world had dwindled to a waiting harbour. He carried her to the bed. Their heads vanished beneath sheets.

“Say nothing,” he said, and there was nothing to say.

“Give me your hand.” She gave it.

“Hold me tight,” he said.

“
Tight.
” And she held him tight, and pressed his head to her childless breasts.

She ached for a response, for a feeling, a single word.

“Hold me,
tight,
” he said.

“I am holding you, dear, I
am.
”

“Tighter.”

He felt her smile upon his face. “I could drown,” he said, his mouth at her ear.

“Drown,” she said, and laughed at his happiness.

“Did you dream about me every night in all those fifteen years?” she asked, pressing his fingers where the pain was sharpest, sweetest, warmer than blood.

“Or did you just dream of all those others you talked about?” And knew the answer before he gave it, was seized by a sudden passion to push the nipple into his mouth. Later she felt something go, fall away, and he was heavy upon her, and he was sated, and he was happy. No longer lonely, no longer afraid. It pleased her, it filled some nameless emptiness of her own nature. And then he was sleeping. She drew away, turned on her side, but not to sleep. She watched the darkened window, and out of it seemed to draw thoughts of her own life, the trodden yesterdays.

“We could have been happy, but he didn't want the child. I stayed too long. It would have held us together, I'm sure it would have made us both happy. I still love him, in spite of everything.”

And all she could think of were the countless mornings when she had knelt down and polished her husband's boots. “I would have done anything for happiness, anything.”

She wept softly into the hands that pressed so hard against her face. “I would have been happy there. I always hated this house, always.”

“Are you awake?”

“I'm awake,” she said, “I've never been asleep. Have you?”

“Yes, I dropped off. I wish it would last forever.”

“I'm glad,” and she felt his hand again, his heat, but remained motionless, not turning, not wanting to, holding her breath for a moment, hurriedly drying her eyes, knowing what must come, what he wanted, what she would give.

“Take my hand,” he said, and again she took it.

“Sheila.”

“What?”

The steel fingers banded about her arms, the intense shock of another strength, another pressure. “Nothing. Nothing.”

“Aren't you happy?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I'm content.”

“
Happy?
”

She smiled and said nothing. “He's like a child,” she thought, “just a big, cold child.”

“Why don't you want to say anything about Desmond, Sheila?” he asked.

“
Now?
” and burst out laughing, and pressed hard upon the hand that lay between her thighs. “
Now?
” And laughed, and went on laughing.

“They never understand.
Never
,” she thought. “Try to be happy, dear, try to be happy,” she said.

The light came even as they slept. Nothing is visible of the man save one bare arm, and a sight of the tautened neck, the head clear of the pillow and hanging downwards, as though pressed and held by the peace of exhaustion. The neck is strong, browned, shadowed by beard, the bare arm seems to cover both woman and bed, the fingers of one hand reach the end of her pillow. The woman's eyes are partly open, as though peeping, a drawn-up arm might be protecting the breast it covers, the limbs of both seemed piled, twisted under their twisted sheets, unnatural, ugly in their gesture. The bed sags. A candle has fallen into the open hearth, the fire is out. The light creeps in. The peeping eyes open wider, look upwards, startlingly, as though this room and house were strange, never-before seen, never-before lived in, as though some hand had entered it during the hours of blindness, had altered it, for as the eyes widened the head moved, and slowly came up and clear of the pillow. The woman looked about the room. She heard the snores of the man. She heard a gaggle of geese, a rustling in trees, the distant neigh of some dreaming horse. She turned her head and looked at the man below her. What blindness of trust in the back thrown, hanging head, the long hairy neck exposed to the light, the glimpse of strong chin and wide trembling nostrils, the eyes so tightly shut they might be sealed, the hair that seemed reaching for the carpet. And like a log across her body the weighted arm. She leaned over and looked at him, she eased the weight of the arm, twined the fingers of his hand within her own, reached out and down and looked at the lost, peaceful, and happy man, and the child and the youth that lay hidden within him.

“Poor Peter. Poor unhappy youth. He's never grown up,” and suddenly seems to see him far back in a tiny house, and the tall woman whose pressure can hold him to a knee. “He never really grew up. I wonder what he'll do. A man now. All his best years in that frightful place. What a horror. I could have lived three lifetimes with his brother and never have learned why he hated him so much. Was there some hurt, some sin?”

The tips of her fingers were stroking his neck, climbing to his chin, crossing his jaws, circling his nose, gentle on his eyelids, stroking his forehead, exploring through his hair, then working downwards again until finally the weight of neck and head were resting in her clasped hands. Slowly she drew him up out of his sea and dream, and he opened his eyes and smiled at what he saw; the dream has no end, a heavy hanging breast warm at his cheek.

“It's light, dear, it's morning, but I don't know what time it is, the clock's stopped, we never wound it up.”

He kept this smile, he said nothing. “It's late, did you have a good sleep, dear?”

He drew her down again, he hadn't heard, it did not appear to matter.

“I think I heard Winifred moving about in her room,” she said.

His mouth hard pressed to her own, he eats the words.

“Listen, dear,” she said, under his hand, against his shoulder, and he whispered in her ear, “A word will spoil it.”

He turned her over on her back as the sound of approaching feet was heard outside. “It's only Miss Fetch, I told you.”

The footsteps drew nearer. “It's all right, dear, it's all right,” she said, and held him down.

The machinery of another day begins to grind. Miss Fetch woke when the clock told her. She rose, washed and dressed, knelt, and said her prayers. This was the real beginning of the day, the knee to the hard wooden floor, the closed eyes and a sudden fugitive hope. When she left her room she banged the door after her, and stood for a moment as though enjoying the resounding thunder through the house. She came slowly down the passage, and she knew they were in the room together long before she reached it. Only Miss Fetch would have been surprised had she not stopped to listen. Whispering voices were not new at Rath Na. She had heard them in other rooms, coming to her like signals of the helplessness and perilous nature of flesh. She stood outside this door with her hands clasped tight against her apron, she endeavoured to listen, she listened.

“It's only Winifred.”

“Yes,” she thought, “it's only Winifred, it's only me,” and walked past the door and down the stairs, and seemed to hear, as if for the first time, the loud creak of one stair and then another. She walked noisily to the kitchen. She began her work. She lit the fire, she started to gather the breakfast things. Her brow knotted with a sudden problem. Always in the old days she took up an early tea to everybody in the house.

“She'll expect it, she'll have to have it. Two cups of tea, and yet I hate going up.” A delicate matter, and she sat down to think it out.

“I knew all along she'd come here on account of this man. You can't blame
him
, poor devil, I don't suppose he had a place to go to when he came out. She's going to have a long talk with me to-day.”

Miss Fetch smiled.