Lonely Road (2 page)

And there was a man standing by the corner on the pavement. It was very quiet in the little street, and I said to him: “I didn’t drop my apple.” Because when we had broadsided to a standstill I found I had it undamaged in my hand, and it was fragrant in the stuffiness of the saloon.

He said: “What’s that?”

And I said: “I didn’t drop my apple.”

In the dim light he walked slowly towards the window at my elbow. “You didn’t ought to drive like that,” he said heavily. “Where d’you want to go to?”

I sat there staring at him for a minute. I could go anywhere I liked, because I had had the car filled up in Plymouth. Three hundred miles. I could go on the run and get right away, if that was any good.

“London,” I said at last. “I should be there by dawn.”

He said: “You want to go through Totnes for that. That way.” And he pointed to the other road.

I jerked my head towards the road that I was on. “Where does this go?” But I knew. It went home. And I knew that if I went the other way that night it would only be because I was afraid to go back and be alone.

“Slapton,” he said.

I nodded. “That’s right,” I said. “That’s where I want to go.” I backed the car a little and then swung her forward over the pavement of that narrow street and went gently up between the houses for fear that I should wake the sleeping people of the town, and over a bridge across a river and so out into the moonlit country where I was alone again.

I shall always be alone. It seemed to me then that I was back in the little town that I had left that afternoon, and
although I suppose that these things must have happened earlier in the day I cannot expunge them from the sequence of my memories of the night. I think they may have happened to me that afternoon. I only know they happened to me that night.

There was a sunset in the room. There must have been, because there is no other light that could have given to her face and throat the warm glow, translucent, that was spreading slowly downwards as she leaned forward to scrape the ashes from the grate. It was early in April, and it was a Wednesday, because that was her free day. It was just after tea. I remember that because she had given me tea in her little room; the teapot and the large, blue-rimmed cups with oranges on them were still upon the table. I don’t know why there was a fire, or how there could have been a sunset at tea-time on that day. But there was. No other light could have given to her the warm colours that I remember, and I remember them so well.

We stayed there like that for a long time in silence. I had said all that I had to say; I leaned back in my chair and watched her playing with the poker till the fire glowed in the bars with a fierce, destructive efficiency that was foreign to that room. I knew what was coming to me, and as I sat there I can remember thinking that one should just take what little pleasures one can get and let the big ones go, the policy of small profits. And so I sat quiet in her room while she would let me, watching the play of the light upon the soft, straight hair that ended at her neck, and the grace of her movements. I have these things still, so that I saved something after all from the disaster of that afternoon.

And presently she looked up at me. “I’m so frightfully sorry,” she said quietly. “You do know that, don’t you? I never knew you cared for me like that a bit. Or not so much. I thought we were—just friends.”

My time was getting short, and at the thought I stirred a little in my chair. “Well, we weren’t,” I said. “That was just my cunning. You ought to have seen through that.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. You’ve been so quiet about it. Honestly, I never knew that you were thinking about me in that way. Or I’d have let you know before—that it wasn’t any good.”

I nodded. “I know you would.”

She laid the poker down and turned to me. “It’s been a wonderful thing to hear you say this,” she said simply. “For me. It means a lot to a girl to hear what you’ve said to me. I’m only so frightfully sorry that I can’t play up.” She paused, and turned again towards the fire so that she gave me back her profile. “Of course, I know that you could make things different for me—with all your money. I suppose you’d be able to give me all the little bits of things I’ve wanted all my life”—her voice dropped a little—“things that I’ll never be able to afford. But that’s not everything—is it? You wouldn’t want me to marry you for that?”

I roused myself. “No,” I said quietly. “I wouldn’t want you to marry me for that.” It wasn’t true, but it sounded as if it was the right thing to say.

“And there’s nothing more to it than that,” she said.

I winced a bit at that one. I suppose everyone likes to picture himself as a Lancelot, though God knows I ought to have outgrown that by now. And while I was recovering I said:

“You’re quite sure about it? You know you can have as long as you like, to think it over.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t be any good. I’m most frightfully sorry—for myself as well as you. But if it was ever going to be different, I think one’d know.”

“I suppose you would,” I said.

I would willingly have spun out the Indian summer that remained to us. I would have liked to have sat on for a little longer in the room with her, but there was nothing left to stay for. And so:

“I expect it’s time I went away,” I said.

She came with me to the door. “There’s such lots of other girls,” she said quietly. “Malcolm, you won’t go worrying about this? It’s not worth it. You’ll find somebody else”—she
did not say “with all your money”—“and then you’ll probably be glad it wasn’t me.”

I turned to her and laughed. “You don’t want to worry about that,” I said. “This happens to me every eighteen months. There’s only another seven or eight months to go before I start again. I run pretty regularly to schedule.”

She eyed me a little wistfully. “I wish you didn’t live alone.”

I laughed. “I’m not going to—not next winter, anyway. I’ll pay some sweet young thing a salary to come and live with me.” I think that reassured her a little, because she was smiling when I went away. We succeeded in making a joke out of what might have been a most embarrassing affair, and so it is that my last memory of her is of her laughter.

All that night her laughter followed me along the winding roads that stretched brilliantly in front of me and eddied into dust behind. I remember that there was a bridge. I stood there for a moment staring down the stream, and as I stood there listening to the rippling of the water it seemed to me that here was a pause in my journey, a little time when I might be alone. I had left my hat somewhere, and a wind came down the river lifting the hair upon my forehead and blowing coolly in my face. My mouth was dry and parched. And so I went down the bank a little way until I reached the gravel spit where the cattle went down to drink. I had an apple with me in my hand, and as I stooped to drink I thrust it deep into the pocket of my ulster to be safe. I can remember that the water was very cool and sweet upon my face, dipping it up and drinking from my hands, and the moon most infinitely clear. Beyond the bridge the Bentley loomed silent by the roadside, a dark mass pierced by the brilliance of the red tail-light. It was very quiet by the stream.

I left the water and went and sat down upon a hummock of grass on the bank, and as I went I shivered. And I remember that I was concerned about myself because I was feeling cold; I wrapped my coat more closely round me and thought I must get back to the car. I thought that I must be very careful now and look after myself very well, or I should be ill again. That,
I suppose, is one of the last tenets of the bachelor, but for three months I had forgotten it. But now, from now onwards, I said that I must be very careful and look after myself, because there’d be nobody to do it for me. And that amused me a little, and I remembered being amused by it before.

And so I went back to the car upon the bridge, fingering the apple as I went; I swung the door open and got in and we moved away down the lane. And as we went the lights by the roadside loomed and swung, so that each standard as we passed it threw a beam of light into the car, gleaming upon the white and silver of the young woman’s dress beside me. I forget her name now, but she was a wombat, a little brown furry animal that Joan had wished on to me because she thought I ought to have a wife.

In the front seat Joan sat impassive by Stenning; beyond their heads the street shone glimmering in the rain. We were in Baker Street. I knew that neither of them would dream of turning round and that it was up to me to get on with it, and make the most of my opportunities. It was quite a nice wombat; I wish I could remember its name. And so I talked to it about the play that we had seen—
Lilac Time
. A good dinner, a play like that, and then a nice long drive in the narrow back seat of a warm saloon, in the dark. It should have worked all right.

Stenning was in the game. He took his right-hand corners normally because I was sitting on the right-hand side, but on the left-hand ones he swung her round as if he was road-racing on a dry road in the summer. And after the second or third of those I found that she was snuggled in against my shoulder with my arm round her, and there was Schubert in the car. And she said:

“They’ll look round.” I can remember her little whisper in the darkness as she raised her face to mine.

“Not unless you scream,” I said. “And I don’t think that would be a very good idea, myself.” And true to programme I bent and kissed her, because it’s perfectly absurd for a man like me not to be married, with all my money. And true to
programme, she whispered: “You did that because you know I daren’t scream.”

And as I held her in my arms I knew that here was a termination of the matter, and that Joan had failed. I had set a new mainsail on
Runagate
before I came away, and I was worrying whether I had left enough slack in the clew to allow for the shrinkage of the wet weather. I wanted that sail for racing, and it wouldn’t do to have the shape all spoilt. I knew that I oughtn’t to be thinking about that sail with the wombat in my arms; that I should have been giving my whole attention to the job in hand. And I wasn’t.

The lights dipped and swung as we ran out into the suburbs. It was warm and comfortable in the saloon, and the wombat seemed to fit my shoulder pretty well. She was very quiet after a bit, and I was worried about the sail and not sorry not to have to talk. And presently I realised that she was asleep. Asleep, with my arm round her and her head on my shoulder. I have never had a girl like that before or since. If I hadn’t been a bloody fool I should have married her, I suppose, but I was much more worried about the sail.

And presently I took my arm from her, and stopped the car, and got out by the roadside. It was where the road ran not far from the sea; the rain had all gone and left a dusty road; there was a bright moon on the tumbled water and a sound of surf. And as I crossed the field I had a great desire to get where I could see the surf running up the dim line of the beach; on a night like that it would be silvery beneath the moon, with little flashes of bright fire where it drained. All my life I have lived with no other thought than to satisfy my own desires; at that moment I wanted above all things to see the surf breaking on the beach beyond the field, and so I pressed on across the grass.

And presently it seemed to me that I came to a place where the field petered out in sandhills that ran down to the beach, and the line of the surf perhaps two hundred yards away. There was a vessel there anchored very close inshore and black against the moonlight, not quite opposite me but a little way along. From the set of her one-pole mast she might have been
a Thames bawley of about fifty tons, or she might have been like the smacks that I have seen in Rotterdam. I only saw her silhouette. There was a dinghy drawn up on the beach opposite her; the surf was very low. And the surf was as I had known that it would be; it was running up the sand around the boat all silvery in the moonlight, with little flashes of bright fire where it drained.

I moved forward down a valley of the sandhills to where the girl was standing with her back to me. She was dressed in some dark manner, black or blue, and she was staring at the boat and at the running surf, as I had done. And I came quietly through the deep sand till I was very close to her, fingering my apple, and I said: “That would make a dry-point. Achaersen could do it, but he couldn’t get it into the Academy, could he?”

She swung round on me. “You should have stayed up by the lorry. It’s no good your trying to get on board yet. There’s half a dozen carpet-sweepers to come off.” And then she said: “Is Peter coming down?”

I didn’t understand what she was saying; I was tired, and I was very lonely. I had nothing but my apple. “You’re wrong,” I said. “I’m not going to sea to-night. I’m tired. I think I’m going home”

She leaned forward suddenly and stared into my face, and I can remember a look of great anxiety, of terror, as she stared at me

“Who are you?” she exclaimed. “There’s something wrong. You’re not the man who was here before. You’re English.”

I nodded. “I’m a sojourner,” I said, “as all my fathers were.”

I drew my apple from my pocket, because she looked a friendly sort of girl who would be nice to me, up to a point, and I wanted to show it to her and tell her all about it. But she drew back and stood there staring at me, quite still, and it seemed to me that she thought that something terrible was going to happen in a moment.

And then she said, very quietly: “Oh, don’t.”

And then it seemed to me that I was down upon my face in
a little lapping noise of water and a smell of burning, and somewhere about me there was the beating and tumbling of a sailing vessel in irons in a light wind. And somebody bent over me and said:

“He isn’t dead.”

And presently they turned me over, and there was a splash of water on my face. I stirred and opened my eyes, half blind with pain. I was lying in a slop of blood and water on the deck. I would have sat up then, but Wallis, leading seaman, pressed me down upon the deck and whispered: “Keep down, sir.” And then the snotty came crawling back along the bulwarks with another pannikin of water.