Lover's Leap (11 page)

That drove her back at once into her habitual hardness. ‘Not a bit,' she said. ‘The diagnosis is based on observation, not on theory. But it's a favourable symptom, Philip. I think you may pull through in the end.'

I paused at the door. ‘Where has Rose gone?'

‘Don't ask me, Philip. Stick to your good resolution.'

Her moral tone irritated, me again. ‘But I do ask you.'

‘Then I shan't tell you.'

‘You think you have the right …?'

‘I know I have. Rose asked me not to, if you must know.'

She turned away as if to dismiss me. On my way to the front door I saw a letter for Rose lying on the hall table. It had been readdressed and told me what I wanted to know. It was to her parents in the country that she had gone.

I came straight home. My long, desultory walk with all its mental suffering, the desperate visit to Rose, the shock of finding her gone, and lastly the bitter encounter with Jennifer had exhausted me, and I sat here, idle in my chair, smarting still at what Jennifer had said. Why had her
words touched me so deeply? Had they roused a sense of guilt in me? No, on the contrary it was their monstrous injustice that had stung me. What right had she to say what she had said? After all, she had seen Rose and me together comparatively seldom, though recently more than in the past. Her notion that I demanded of Rose more than I gave is flagrantly untrue; in fact, my fault lies in exactly the opposite direction. I have given too much, I have given all, suppressed every wish that was not hers, thrown overboard all personal pride, sacrificed my very personality and lived so entirely for her that, now that she is gone, I have nothing left to live for. Is it any wonder that Jennifer's grotesque perversion of the truth should sting me as it does? Well, I hope that what I told her about herself stings her just as keenly. But I don't suppose it does. Jennifer is really rather stupid, I think, and certainly not capable of much feeling.

For half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half I sprawled in my chair with my eyes shut. After a while my fury against Jennifer exhausted itself: it ceased to matter what she said or thought. My mind had become empty: I had no capacity left for feeling. Then I opened my eyes and stared at the things about me. Everything I saw seemed changed. It was as if I were looking at these familiar things for the first time. Their old significance was gone: they had become more real, or less real, than before, and I scrutinized them with a detached curiosity. My mind turned idly to Rose and, at the thought of her, at once turned away: it was too tired to face the emotional complications which she represented. Then carefully, tentatively, with that kind of curiosity with which one touches a bruise to try over the pain once more, I approached the thought of her again, let her name into my mind, repeated it again and again until it ceased to have any meaning. Who was this Rose? Was there any such
person? Rose! Rose? It was like striking the note of a broken piano which produced no sound, no answering vibration. Don't think of her, don't disturb her, in case she wakes and becomes real again. That would be unbearable. Mechanically I took up a book that lay within reach, opened it and turned the pages; and for twenty minutes, perhaps, I read without understanding a single word. Then I threw it aside: I had suddenly realized that I was very hungry.

It is a mistaken notion that severe emotional strain takes away the appetite. On the contrary it is so physically exhausting that at last the body cries out for food and drink.

What I couldn't face was to go out and expose my quivering nerves to the attacks of the seething crowds of men and things. I got out of my chair and went to the window: three or four cabs were waiting in the square below. I took my hat: and stick and went downstairs. Enclosed in one of them, as if in a narrow, dim box, I should be able to reach my familiar restaurant without too much suffering.

Outside the restaurant I bought a paper. A paper or a book, as most people must have discovered at one time or another, is an effectual barrier against the outside world. The restaurant was nearly empty and, thank God, my favourite corner was unoccupied. I settled myself there, ran a greedy eye over the menu and ordered. I also ordered an anaesthetic, a bottle of Burgundy. Then I plunged into my paper, devouring everything, politics, finance, society gossip, racing news with the same indiscriminate and uncritical interest, like a child who has just learned to read and reads for the sake of reading, or a man who whiles away an hour at the cinema, mildly titillated by the changing scene, however futile. Then, when the food and drink came, I gave myself up to them with a single mind, aware only of the sensual pleasure and the gradual physical restoration. By degrees the wine spread a warm soothing
numbness through mind and body. I had become proof against my miseries: it was as if I saw them but no longer felt them. They stood, it seemed, at arm's length, watching me but no longer able to touch me.

The immunity was such a relief that I determined to make sure of it, and when I left the restaurant I bought a flask of brandy at a pub, drove home and finished it during the next hour. That turned out to be a mistake. I am not sufficiently adept in the ways of drunkenness, and I soon found that so far from fortifying my resistance the brandy destroyed it. I had soon crumbled into a state of maudlin prostration. I crept to my bed, lay down on it as I was, and dissolved into tears.

Next day. I awoke this morning to that horrible experience familiar to people in adversity, the recognition of the cold, relentless presence of affliction. But I was better able, now, to face it. The drink I had taken last night, though it had let me down at the time, had given me what I might otherwise not have had, a night's sleep. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past seven, three quarters of an hour before my usual time for getting up. But I couldn't lie in bed: I was filled, now, with an urgent desire to act. I would follow Rose to her home in the country and have it out with her. I was sure that if we talked, talked honestly enough, thoroughly enough, everything would come right. That conviction, I see now, was not based on common sense but on the fact that Rose had become so much a part of me that I could not imagine life without her. That Rose might live, and live more happily, without me was a possibility I couldn't, and still cannot grasp. The mind cannot believe or even understand a fact that is vehemently denied by the feelings. One believes to be true what one wishes to be true, and I could not help believing still that, if only we could get to the bottom of our misunderstanding, we would escape from it at once
and all would be well again. If only I could find the right words, I felt sure I could make her realize that she really loves me still. But if, in spite of that, she held stubbornly to her delusion, I would throw myself on her mercy, tell her that I couldn't live without her: that at least would convince her.

I jumped out of bed, went into my sitting-room and got out a railway guide. There was a train at ten o'clock.

It was a bright October morning and, as the train ran out of London, even the jerry-built suburban terraces looked beautiful with their shining windows and newly washed pink roofs,, The suburban trees, the elms and poplars, marvellously alive and mobile, were fluttering their thousands of little yellow sequins like birds fluttering their feathers.

As the train emerged into the open country the scene grew more and more magnificent. The land was ablaze with autumn. I sat with
The Times
unopened on my knee and watched the gorgeous show glide past, and, as I watched, my heart was soothed and refreshed. I sat there without a thought, without a wish, drinking it in. Somewhere, in some remote corner of my mind, I knew I was hurrying towards Rose and towards the encounter on whose outcome hung all my happiness, but for some time I kept that knowledge out of focus and lived in the moment.

I changed at Beresford for the Downchurch line. Across the clean, breezy station, full of sunshine and shadow, I saw the Downchurch train waiting in its usual bay. A fluttering plume of steam jetted from its engine. I recalled sharply how Rose and I had paced those platforms on our way to or from her home. I chose a carriage, got in, shut the door and leaned out of the window, taking a long breath of the sweet, sharp air. ‘When I get back to this station this evening,' I thought, ‘all will be happily settled.'
But no sooner had the thought occurred than something forced me to return to it and consider it seriously. Was it really so certain? A sudden fear shot through my mind. I ceased to lean from the window and sat down in my place.

And now that for the first time I brought my sense of reality to bear on this desperate expedition, I began to see how futile and how ignominious it was. As the train started I began to look back with disillusioned eyes on the five months of our engagement. I admitted to myself now that after the first blissful month, the happiest month of my life, Rose had begun to try to escape from me and I had begun to cling to her. Yes, I had used all sorts of secret ingenuities to bind her to me; and I knew now—I suppose I had always known but had not dared to recognize it—that the more I clung the more she rebelled. How badly I had treated the poor girl: I had grabbed at her like a greedy child grabbing at something that has taken its fancy. Ah, but hadn't she started it? Hadn't she first treated me badly? Yes, she had. Undeniably she had. What had I done that she should go back on me like that? If I had had any self-respect I would, of course, have let her go. But I loved her too deeply by that time to care about self-respect. My only desire was to keep her at all costs. I cringed and grovelled. I meekly swallowed all those rebuffs and snubs and scoldings which were provoked, it seemed, not by anything I had done but by her own bad temper. How much better it would have been if I had snarled back, turned on her and told her to pull herself together and control her temper. But I had no impulse to do so, and without the impulse, without the irrepressible urge of anger one can't retaliate. Yet it seems that to turn the other cheek is not always the best policy.

The train rattled on towards the coast, but I was so deep in thought that I had forgotten where I was going. I recalled how I had determined to shake off my old nature, my carefulness, diffidence, inertness, and grasp at
what I desired. And at the very first attempt I had succeeded. I had charged, as it were, and captured Rose. How was it that after that first success I immediately dropped back into my old self, dropped in fact even lower than before? Useless to try to understand. For the first time I felt ashamed of myself for my utter subjection to Rose. I had grovelled at her feet, and when she kicked me I had grovelled still more abjectly. And now what was I doing? After having received my severest thrashing I was hurrying to her to grovel and ask for another.

That thought woke me to reality. I glanced at the flying country. We were now only two stations from Downchurch. In twenty minutes I should arrive, in another twenty minutes I should reach her home, and then it would no longer be a matter of dreaming and wool-gathering but of cold fact. I imagined her disgust when I turned up, my vain attempts to pour out my wretched rigmarole of explanation, argument, abject supplication, and her refusal to listen to me. What a weary, hopeless business. What fatuity, what ignominy!

The train was slowing down. We were going to stop at Saltdyke, a small marshland village two miles from the sea. The train stopped; and automatically, without any struggle or hesitation, I rose from my seat, opened the door and got out.

I stood on the breezy platform feeling like a man newly arrived in a foreign country. A whistle sounded, the train drew slowly out of the station, and I stood watching it recede and diminish, its heavy plume of smoke sagging over its left shoulder. It seemed to me that it was taking with it the load of shame and misery from which I had escaped. Had I pulled myself together and acted boldly, or was this another example of my inertness and cowardice? I didn't know and I didn't care. All I knew was that I had reached a turning-point. As regards our problem, everything was
changed henceforward. I had sickened at last of floundering in the emotional swamp, the loving and hating and hoping and fearing, in which I had struggled during all these weeks. As if by accident I had struck solid ground, pulled myself out, and now stood looking about me. The bond that had tied me to Rose had stretched and broken. It was as if, at the moment I rose to get out of the train, our cable had parted and I was no longer in tow. Yes, the train, the fast vanishing train was drawing away from me across the marsh, leaving me to myself. I turned away, left the station and walked out into my new world down the straight road that divided the marsh and joined the station to the village a mile away—the village that was the only feature in the flatness ahead of me which stretched to the low ridge of sand-dunes marking the coastline.

Its trees, mounded above the low red roofs and enclosing its square church tower in cushions of yellowing foliage, rose bright in sunshine, a solitary oasis upon the level marsh. But when I looked to the right and left and behind me, beyond the station, I saw that there were other oases, villages and farms, each sheltered by its grove of poplars and willows. It was an empty world. The cows and sheep stood motionless in the reclaimed meadows: not a movement, not a sound except for the small birds that uttered little sharp cries like the clinking of coins as they dived from tuft to tuft of the low growths that bordered the road. As I neared the village, roof detached itself from roof, tree from tree. A street opened to receive me. A woman crossed from house to house: two cows emerged slowly on to the road, followed by a boy. A wagon full of sacks stood by a storehouse whose crane overhung the road: as I passed it there was a rattle of chains and I looked up and saw, high up in the second story, an open door in which stood a man covered with white dust. The inn lay at the far end of the village, looking across two miles of marsh to the sand-dunes.

I went in. The stone floor of the passage and the bar parlour was scrubbed so clean that I hardly dared to step on it, and the table to which the landlord brought me bread and cheese and a pint of beer was scrubbed to the likeness of old ivory. One or two labourers with pint mugs on the bench beside them sat eating their lunches, cutting their cheese with their clasp knives. They and the landlord regarded me with a curiosity that was friendly and totally undisguised. They asked me where I came from, what I did, why I had come to Saltdyke, and received the information that I painted pictures as if they considered the job as respectable as their own. I found myself wondering why I had ever lived in London, and when I left the inn and started to walk to the sea I told myself that it was a place to which I would certainly return: it had already become necessary to me.