Happy Valley (16 page)

Happy Valley bathed itself in a stream of excess-reality, as the great hoofs came out of the screen almost beating upon its face that, upturned, open-mouthed, demanded no answers to questions, only a statement of energy. He’s going to kill her, they said, or no, he can’t, that man behind the tree, that boy with the gun will shoot, oh, oh, yes. That boy with the gun who would populate the life of Mrs Schmidt for another week as she washed the separating
machine, kneaded dough, or lay beneath her husband on a feather-bed. These figures would assume almost a normal, an everyday proportion of washing-board or butter-pat while maintaining their dream texture, that kept them apart in substance, and so ideal. Tie her on the horse and send her out across the desert till your mouth was dry as a cigarette, and those big prickly pears that tore her dress. Arthur Ball, biting his nails, wondered if Emily Schmidt, who was a good smell, that ball of a handkerchief that smelled so good, would faint tied to a horse, the day Gladys fainted in geography and they put her out on the porch, and under the prickly pear an old man sitting, a swaggy in rags, would take Emily down from the horse and dip her handkerchief in a water-can. Arthur Ball put out his knee and encountered the thigh of Emily Schmidt. The old man sponged her face with a handkerchief.

It’s interesting, said Vic, to think of all that desert. It must be Texas, she said.

For a moment she forgot it was not Ernest, and not an educational film that demanded the sort of remark you made to Ernest, who was so good, and that asthma. She sat up a bit straighter. She had not meant to do this. That night she could not get him to bed and he had to stay all night in his chair with three or four pillows behind. You can’t say I’m not a good wife to Ernest, she said, love Ernest, and this, God, you got to do something all the same, sit down there and listen to Belper talk about industry.

What’s up? said Hagan in the dark.

Nothing.

Thought there was something up.

No, she said.

She relaxed again. He put his arm round her. You had to do something, she said, whatever he did, not care, sitting in the dark and that music and your head, it must have been the drink, but you meant it like that, hell you cared what. She sighed, or his arm squeezed out the breath, as she leant against him, and his shoulder was rather hard.

Like it? he said.

Yes, she sighed. I love the pictures, don’t you?

He began kissing her neck. She put up her shoulder as a kind of protest that only held on to his face and she could feel his lips distended in the hollow she had made. There was plenty of her that, without the corset she had left off, flowed into his hand, like standing under a tree and having apples fall right into his hand, or melons, only melons didn’t grow on a tree except in a story, and what was that. She began to wriggle as the Indians rode down the gulch. Of course it was a gulch.

I can’t bear it, she squealed. I can’t bear Indians.

Would you like to step outside? he said.

Look at their knives!

You haven’t got to look, he said.

He twisted round her face. That was a bit of cheek, she felt, and perhaps not so dark that someone would not see. She felt his tongue on her mouth. You could not help it, she sighed. The darkness was heavy with arms. You could not help it, she sighed.

He’s going to get killed, she said weakly.

He said something between his teeth. The way some women carried it off, born with a sort of ventriloquist’s gift,
would shout from behind the door to the grocer while, and most of them like that, and it was damned uncomfortable in this bloody seat that got you no closer, like an eiderdown, like two, bundled up into a ball, or cleft, and you thought you knew all about the eiderdown when suddenly you didn’t, and she wasn’t born yesterday, hanging on like that to your mouth, which she didn’t learn in school from a pair of spectacles, would soon be over, shooting them down right and left with his arm round a girl, shoot ’em down and they went over like ninepins, if you were lucky, in spite of leaning against your shoulder, it was a different matter near the equator, sailing into those Indians, help help, they cry, and the sheriff’s men, come here Mr Sheriff, have you in court and come over all innocent at the judge, in a circle ending with lights.

That was a lovely film, she sighed. I shall always remember that, she said.

All films are the same to me.

No doubt, she said.

She shrugged her shoulders, getting up, walking out. All the same. Going down the street she began to hum. I wonder when bluebirds are mating, she hummed. Her hips brushed up against him as they walked.

It’s going to rain, she said.

Let it, he said. I don’t care. Do you?

I don’t want to get wet.

They were all the same. Call the tune and leave you to whistle it. Oh no, mister, don’t touch me, brushing up against you like a cat.

You’re not going in yet? he said.

His voice sounded a bit hoarse.

Yes, she said.

She walked along and she felt that she had Poise.

You oughtn’t to go in yet, he said.

Down in the lane by Everetts’ he got her up against a paling fence, so that she could not get away, did not want to get away, as struggling, her arms went out, and her hands were going up and down his back as if they did not know where, did not want to settle. You would have thought he was strangling her, the way her breath came into his mouth. He pinned her up against the paling fence with his knee between her legs.

Now d’you want to go in? he said.

She hung on to him, her breath coming fast. Saying something incoherent, or perhaps nothing at all.

God, she said. We’re crazy, she said. In this lane.

Who in blazes cares about that?

I’m the schoolmaster’s wife, she said.

Then she began to extricate herself. He might have known. Saying this and that, she was.

You mustn’t think I’m like this, she said. Because I’m not.

Oh hell. What’s the use of talking?

You’re very impatient, she said.

What’ve I got to expect from that?

I said you’re very impatient.

He knew she was smiling at him, the way you do know when someone is smiling in the dark. Then she began to move away. He could hear her heels going over on the stones. He waited there for a bit, he was irritated, he was
smiling, feeling sort of let down, before he went into the main street.

Vic Moriarty had got home, out of breath, to a siphon and glasses on the table that were a memorial to more than the pleasures tasted in the glass. Her bosom went up and down with ease, because she had left her corset off. But she didn’t feel giddy any more, had taken herself in hand, what could she have been thinking of, she said.

The cyclamen stuck up straight in the lustre bowl. Queer the antics of that flower. Anyone would think it had its ears back. Bitchiness in a flower.

Or a bitch up against a fence, pressing into you, it gave you goose-flesh now, and Ernest in bed, was not like that, you said, was not and nobody believed it true, Ernest perhaps, with veins on his hand that nearly burst, and suppose your gown tore on the fence, or splinters sticking in, it might go septic, his breath said why not, ugh, and the leaves funny with that flower, because Vic loves flowers, pottering about the garden, he said, Ernest pottering in slippers she embroidered with a pricked finger, and then his arms you couldn’t help it, being the schoolmaster’s wife, you said.

She jostled the glasses viciously on the table and went into the bedroom.

Is that you, Vic? Ernest sighed.

Yes, she said.

Where you been?

Mr Hagan took me to the pictures.

Poor Ernest. But I can’t help being being, whatever I am, and what am I, creaking the bed, and that smell of asthma powder as he turns.

The pictures was lovely, she said. It was about a ranger. And he was in love with the daughter of the sheriff. It was in Texas, you see. And there was another chap called, called…I forget. Anyway it doesn’t matter. Well, this chap insulted the ranger with a whip. About the girl. It was a double insult, you see. And he was also in league with the Indians. And…

The bed groaned, snored. Vic Moriarty sat down on the chair and began to draw her stockings off.

It had begun to rain. The sound of rain on the iron roof gave you a feeling of isolation, something in the hollow sound, as if you were contained in this hollow and hung in space. Oliver Halliday and Alys Browne. He leant against the mantelpiece, silent now. He ought to be going, he felt. I have been here an hour or two, talking, she has laughed, sitting there on the couch, we have both laughed, and it has been very pleasant but unsatisfactory. And now we have exhausted all those pleasant, unsatisfactory things, and are silent, waiting for something essential that does not, perhaps will not come. It is like this with Hilda. I have never spoken to Hilda using anything but the outer convention of words. We look at each other, hoping for something that does not come, it is now too late. And Alys, it is going to be like this, there is no reason for anything else, I come here to talk or to drink afternoon tea.

She sat up straight on the sofa. Her hands were in her lap. Now that he had stopped talking she waited, not conscious of time, though it was late, with a tautness in her ears, any renewal of sound would shatter the membrane, she thought. She sat bolt upright. She had no connection with anything else. The silence made her feel like that, or the hour, as if twelve o’clock robbed your body of its awareness and tightened up your mind, making it function more acutely inside the insulation of the flesh. The rain kept coming down on the roof, regularly, then broken by a wind. He was standing there by the mantelpiece. It will happen soon, she said. She felt that she had lived only in preparation for this, that she had not dared to formulate, resisting because of many things, but conscious all the time of the trend her life was taking.

Alys, he said.

She did not answer him. She sat there on the sofa, very straight, with her hands in her lap. Her face was a bit drawn, as if she were trying to restrain emotion, like him restraining for years something he did not need. Then it began to come awake. For weeks it had been happening, he felt. And now he wanted to give expression to this, he had to. He went and got down beside her, put his face in her lap, against her hands, resting his face in her lap.

Alys, he said, I love you. It isn’t anything else. I’ve tried to reason with myself and make it something, something it isn’t at all. You were a sort of intellectual quantity that I didn’t get anywhere else. That was all I wanted. Like a lot of other illusions I’ve had for years. I’ve wanted something else. I haven’t known what I wanted. I don’t think many of
us do. Except very occasionally by a sort of intuitional flash. Sometimes it’s a physical or material solution, sometimes it’s spiritual, sometimes it’s both. All of a sudden you know.

Yes, she said. Yes.

She moved and her hands touched his face, deliberately touching his face. She bent down. She wanted to touch him with her face, with her body.

Yes, I know, she said.

The rain was still coming down on the roof, a grey, infrequent sound of rain, that was no longer isolation, as in the hollow of the darkness their bodies touched. They existed in a kind of mutual agreement of touch, for which speech could find no expression, only the language of touch. After a groping with words you discarded these, and everything was suddenly explicit without.

She wanted to give him more than this. She wanted to give him everything, so that there were no barriers, and even more than that. She could not give him enough. She went into the other room, she took off her clothes, lying there in the intimate darkness, listening to him undress. She could hear him breathing. His belt as it hit the end of the bed. Her fingers moved on the sheet, almost a gesture of resistance before the intrusion of the unknown. In her room that had grown accustomed to the sounds of silk, a drawing on and off, or the brushing of hair, the feminine cadences of these, the masculine burr of leather had an altogether foreign tone.

Then he drew back the sheet and he was getting down beside her into the bed. She held her breath, conscious of a second shock, first the sound of leather, and now the notion
of a stranger getting into her bed. For it was not Oliver, the man she had talked to in the sitting-room, acquainted with his features, the accent of his voice, his form in a grey suit. This was a different person. Like the touch of cold water. She did not know. She did not want. She was afraid. And perhaps he would realize that she was holding her breath for all these reasons, because she was afraid, and that was why her heart worked like an engine inside her, banging away against her side.

He was touching her again, his arms, his whole body, now their mouths were exchanging breath, resistance gone. Now she was no longer afraid. It was Oliver again, this man with the unprotected body against her own, and she must bring herself closer to his, she could not bring herself close enough. She wanted him. They wanted each other. Her whole body seemed fragmentary with the tenderness that she could not give him in the measure she wanted to give. She felt she must cry out in little gasping breaths, forcing her love into his mouth. And nothing mattered now. No longer situated in the pattern of circumstance that was Happy Valley, they drifted almost unconsciously through a dark silence in which their united bodies were a luminous point.

Then the clock began to tick. He thought it was probably an alarm clock, that voluminous tick, and getting up to go to a lecture across the water, you lay in bed and frowned at the tyranny of time, at your own obedience not to time, but to a full-faced aluminium clock. At nineteen the clock was not even a symbol of time, was something personal, animate. But now you got up, symbols or not, you just got
up. He drew back the hair from her face. She lay there, did not move, her arms curled loosely round his waist, the confidence of possession in her arms. He touched her face with his lips in the dark, that was no dark, that was Alys Browne, but no dark.

Well, he said, it’s time.

Back to the inarticulation of words, he felt the inadequacy of his voice.

Mm, she said. I was almost asleep.

You’ll be able to go to sleep.

Yes, she said. I suppose.

It’s late.

He got out and started to put on his shirt.

Why didn’t we before, Oliver? she said.

It wasn’t the right moment.

It was a long time.

Of course it was a long time. But you don’t regret it? he said.

No, she said. That is, regret what? What were you saying, Oliver?

Nothing, he said. Go to sleep.

Her voice, sleep-sheathed in the darkness, fell back on to the pillow.

I’m tired, she said. The sitting-room, did we put out the light?

Then she was asleep, or almost, her arms moved as he bent, were a pressure of recognition as he bent down to her face. He would leave her now, without any feeling of regret, for he would come again, always come, she would be here, she would expect him, they would expect each other, not
in words, but in waiting. There was no need to say you will come again, it was a necessity that you should.

Like waking to sleeping, he felt, when he stood outside on the porch. There were stars through the intermittent rain, and a cool breeze, and soon the rain would stop altogether. I have been asleep, he said. It is like waking. And I must remain awake, or at least conscious, conscious in one person of the whole. The others are asleep, perhaps will never wake. You go up on to a high hill and look down at them asleep. If you could go down among the sleepers and open their eyes, touching them with your hand, and hear their sigh as they turned, the sighing of people who slowly waken. Hilda stirring in sleep. I had forgotten Hilda. Of course. He began to fill his pipe. I ought to feel sorry, but there is no regret, which is perhaps a perversion of the moral sense, if finding yourself is a perversion, because this is what I have done. He lit his pipe, light fanned on his face, then the bud of light on his pipe’s bowl. The world makes its demand, I shall run away from myself because of Hilda, I shall close my eyes. This is the world. This is Happy Valley. This is also not the world. I stand here, and it is cool, the stars are cool, and the rain which will soon stop. It is a long time since I have really been conscious of these things, felt their significance, conscious of the many rivers, the Delta of the Nile, water flowing into one water from the North Sea to the Pacific, no longer constrained by maps, and the people walking with upturned faces, looking for something that they do not find in themselves, always with faces upturned. I must remain conscious of these, he said. This is the world. There is a mystery of unity about the
world, that ignores itself, finding its expression in cleavage and pain, the not-world that demands I shall run away from myself, that I too shall be a creature of cleavage and pain walking with my eyes closed.

He walked down the hill. I am being apocalyptic, or just plain romantic, he said. He went along and he did not think of much, he was tired, physically tired, but his mind was without qualm, rested on its certainty. The glow of his pipe went down the hill alone.