Return to Night (8 page)

“After what?”

She had no time to read the face which he turned to hers, and as swiftly averted. It might have expressed many things—incredulity, shame, even a mortal reproach. It gave her an unhappiness which pointed out to her her unfitness for this kind of research. All she could say was, “Well, never mind.”

In a voice which was quenched to an almost colorless flatness he said, “I don’t think I can remember anything else.”

“You don’t have to.” She spoke gently, and saw that there had returned to his face a kind of hesitant trust. “You told me all I wanted to know. I must go. Matron loathes cold coffee.”

“Just tell me one thing. Did I—behave badly, or anything? You know, the sort of thing I believe people do, shouting and swearing and being embarrassing about their pasts?”

“Not at all.” Here was comfortably familiar ground. Nearly everyone (except, curiously enough, the people with most cause for concern) asked this sooner or later. Suppressing the amusement which the word “past” had given her, she added, “Your brain just slowed down and you went to sleep.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I had it rather on my mind.”

She got up. He made a movement as if to follow; then sinking back again, and smiling up at her, said, “I’ve got cramp. Give me a pull.”

Good-humoredly she took his outstretched hand in both of hers; there was a good deal of him, and she did not want to be ignominiously pulled over. He got to his feet with a smoothness which did not suggest much muscular contraction, and stood for a moment looking down at her. He could not be much under six foot; one scarcely noticed it except at such close quarters. “Thanks,” he said. He picked up his coat, shook it perfunctorily, and put it on.

“The back’s covered in bits. Let me brush it, you’re not presentable.”

He stood there obediently while she did so, and forgot to thank her, as if he were used to it. When she had finished he searched his pockets, and produced the cigarette case which she had last seen lying on the Matron’s blotter. When opened, it proved to contain one cigarette, old and sad-looking. He made an apologetic face, and offered it to her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I only smoke at odd times.”

“If this is one of the times, for goodness’ sake have a fresh one.” She became aware of the fact that she could very well do with one herself. He accepted gratefully, turning out to be unprovided with matches as well.

When they had got back to the drive he stopped and said, “I’ll see you again.”

“I expect so.”

“Let’s not leave it so indefinite, though.” He reflected. “How about—could you come over to lunch?”

“I don’t think,” she said hastily, “I dare make any fixtures at the moment. I’m so busy, I shouldn’t be reliable.”

“That doesn’t matter. Give us a ring and come at a moment’s notice.” But his air of confidence, this time, was a little forced. She could understand it. The voice of the Matron came back to her: “Anything
she
does will be done very nicely, you can be sure.” She murmured vague platitudes about the work letting up perhaps, in a month or two; and saw his face register relaxation as well as regret.

“Never mind. We’ll manage something.” She saw that he meant what he said, and found that it gave her pleasure.
I can’t imagine why,
she reflected;
he’s so erratic and unpredictable, he’d soon become quite exhausting; I suppose it’s just the esthetic factor.

“I do hope,” he was saying, “I’ve not really put you in wrong with the Matron, keeping you here. In the surprise of actually meeting you, I’m afraid I only had room for one idea at a time. Had we better think up a story before you go?” He seemed quite serious about it.

“Oh, she’ll have started without me. There’s no nonsense about her.”

“I know. Poor old thing, isn’t it a shame? I think I shall give her a bottle of curious scent for Christmas, called
Black Limelight
or
Ecstase
or something… In a way, it was rather a shock. Suddenly meeting you, I mean. You see, actually, I’d become reconciled to the idea that I’d imagined the whole thing. I couldn’t ask about you, because—well, not remembering what you looked like, there seemed nothing to ask. I imagined you quite different, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry.” She laughed.

“It’s all right. I’ve got used to it now. In fact, I feel as if I’d remembered all along. It does seem odd, though, that I haven’t heard the nurses mention you, or anything. I’ve talked to them quite a lot and I thought I’d got the low-down on pretty well everyone. … Good Lord, I must be crazy. I haven’t asked you
now
what your name really is.”

“It’s Mansell.”

“
Is
it?” He looked, for an unguarded moment, positively stupefied. Recovering himself with headlong haste, he said, “You know, I do think I may have heard it, just vaguely, and forgotten again.”

Hilary was hideously conscious of blushing down to the neck.

“You know,” he pursued reflectively, “I think nurses are an interesting study, very. I mean, seeing life so much in the raw, as it were, you’d think they’d become frightfully understanding about human nature, wouldn’t you? I often think it’s curious how they’re not.”

The feeling of relief and well-being which swept over her quite startled her by its force.

“Well, they understand some aspects of human nature pretty soundly. And, of course, the brighter ones do gravitate more to the big places.”

“I suppose they must.”

They had come to the last bend in the drive. “The last part,” she said, “is just under Matron’s window. I think I’d better go up it looking busy and by myself.”

“You could say you were talking to an old patient. That’s what the nurses say.” He offered this information helpfully, without the least shade of irony.

“Well, good-by,” she said, and then suddenly at a loss, “I’m glad you’re getting on so well.”

“I’ll get on all right now.”

She was round the bend of the drive before the oddness of this valediction reached her; and, when it did, the likeliest thing seemed to be that she had not correctly heard.

I
T LOOKED LIKE BEING A GREEN CHRISTMAS
. Hilary, who had no accompanying superstition about fat churchyards, but on the contrary had seen many chronic invalids and old people killed by cold, welcomed the mild moist weather and the golden rags of autumn which quiet air left hanging on the trees. The place had become friendly to her, the blunt hills with their gray outcrop of stone-roofed houses, their meandering lines of dry walling, and the dips of soft misty space between their shoulders.

She and Lisa got on increasingly well. It was a relationship owing much to the mutual knowledge that either could seek privacy at any time without affront to the feelings of the other. The house was a newish one built round an old core; Hilary’s two rooms were almost self-contained, her sitting-room having its own glass door on to the garden, and, in one corner, a steep staircase leading into the bedroom upstairs. They need never have met except at meals, but with increasing frequency spent their evening together by the log fire in the hall.

Rupert Clare had gone from Czechoslovakia to Berlin. When Hilary asked for news of him, Lisa said, “He’s been to a number of theaters. His private letters are all opened and read, of course, so they consist almost entirely of items like that, at present. So do mine.”

They neither of them had any plans for Christmas. Hilary, whom a vast family gathering in Shropshire was eager to receive, could not leave her practice. Rupert, who was a Scot, was saving for the New Year the few days which were all he could hope for. The two women found in one another the excuse for decorating, saving their mail against Christmas morning, and such small follies which neither would have had the heart to pursue alone; and were mutually grateful.

On Christmas Eve, Hilary, coming in from an evening call, found in her sitting-room a huge pot of cyclamens growing in moss. The card attached to it turned out to be Julian Fleming’s. On the back, in a neat sloping fifth-form hand, was
Are you coming to the Hospital tomorrow?
She turned it over, wondering what it was that seemed odd; and realized that it was the mere fact of his possessing visiting-cards at all. Such adult accessories seemed, somehow, out of keeping. When she had defined the thought, she found that it annoyed her.

She had had two weeks of duty at the Hospital since their first meeting, and during each of them had encountered him there a little too often, it seemed, for mere coincidence. He always contrived to leave with her, and to drag out their progress through the gardens as long as possible. On these occasions, if he talked at all, it was about nothing, in particular, and as unself-consciously as if they had been meeting for years; he had a fund of local gossip, and a nice undergraduate sense of fun. When he dried up completely, which he frequently did without any warning, it appeared not to embarrass him in the least. She scarcely knew why she found these moments so irritating; it was in fact the contrast between his face in repose and animation. Its structure was emphatic, vivid, and clear, with a subtle flare in the contours that seemed made to express a brilliant intensity. As soon as he spoke again, it would all resolve into a pleasant, diffident adolescence.

That night it grew so cold that Lisa had to bring extra blankets out of store; and Hilary woke early next morning, her eyelids pierced by a pale dazzle in the air. The window was covered with a lace of crystals; when she had thawed a space clear, she found it was not snow that had fallen, but a deep branching hoarfrost. It clung to the grass like thick white fur. Lisa and Hilary stood on the porch, tasting the tingling air and looking at the white woods feathering the hills, and found it hard to go in to breakfast and the parcels beside their plates.

The frost held over, pure and crisp, into the afternoon. Walking on grass was like stepping on the friable icing of a birthday cake. The round of visits, to which she had looked forward as a nuisance spoiling the day, provided enchantment at every turn of the road. And it was all here yesterday, she reminded herself, in the form of a clammy and depressing mist. A few degrees’ drop of the thermometer, and the same trees and wet become intimations of immortality. Who was that idiot who used to say that the so-called sense of beauty depended solely on the recognition of biologically favorable conditions? It had been David; but it took her some moments to remember that.

She had nearly forgotten the Hospital too; a lapse which would have cost her all the ground she had gained with the Matron. Everyone who had the slenderest connection with the place got invitations to the Christmas-tree ritual at three in the afternoon, and for the doctors it was a
sine qua non.
Lisa had dressed two dolls, exquisitely, in brilliant peasant costumes. Hilary wondered, when she saw them, why Lisa had no child.

She parked her car, and went round to the steps. Before she could mount them, Julian detached himself from the porch and came to meet her. He had left his overcoat inside, but still had a thick woolen scarf thrown round his neck. It made him look very much the undergraduate.

Because she found herself unexpectedly pleased to see him there, she said conventionally, “Thank you so much for the flowers. They were charming.”

With the smile whose lack of self-confidence never ceased to amaze her, he said, “I’m glad if they were yesterday. You’re not telling me that today flowers could look anything but rather grubby and crude.”

“They’ll still be there tomorrow.”

“I wish I thought this would. The sun will be going down, by the time we get out of that racket.”

“I was thinking that, too.” She turned in the porch beside him, looking out. A buzz of conversation and laughter, and the shrill excitement of children already overwrought, came from inside. They stood for a minute or so in silence. Absently, it seemed, he broke off a sprig from a yew bush that grew beside the porch, and turned it over in his hand; then suddenly dragged it through his fingers, shredding off the bloom with a kind of painstaking and deliberate brutality. When he had finished, he snapped it across the middle, crushed it, and threw it away. Hilary found the little gesture irrationally disturbing.

“I daren’t be late,” she said. “But don’t let me drag you in.” She hoped that he would take the hint; she had no desire that they should make so public an entrance together.

He looked at his watch. “It’s only five to. Don’t let’s go for a minute.”

He spoke without insistence, but she paused for another moment, watching the garden glitter and the blue shadows lengthen, almost visibly, in the deepening sun. Julian said brightly, “Did I tell you, I found Matron that scent. Just the stuff. It’s in a little black bottle with an enormous stopper and it’s called
Nuit de Lesbos.
It’s on the tree.”

“Oh, Julian, how could you?” The name slid out without attracting the notice of either. “I’m sure it isn’t appropriate. What does it smell like?”

“Just like the specification. I think I must be there to see her have it. … Let’s not go in at all. Next time this happens, one might be in town. Or dead.”

He had spoken quite lightly and without significance; but it was the winter of 1938. Hilary felt as if, without warning, a tight hand had constricted her throat. With extreme flippancy she said, “Try and work up a bit of Christmas spirit. You’re being anti-social.”

“Yes, I know. Well, let’s go ahead then and have a simply wonderful time. We—”

He stopped, and turned round quickly. There had been a step in the hall; though the massive pitch-pine door, half-open, was in the way, she knew at once who was coming, and was amazed by her own folly in not having expected it.

“Hullo, dear,” said Julian, going to the inner door. “I’ve virtually arrived. A matter of instants.”

“Julian, you absurd boy. What
are
you doing, daydreaming out here? They’re just beginning. The Matron’s been asking where you are, and the poor little nurses look
most
hurt at being deserted.”

“By way of being thoroughly anti-social,” said Julian, “I’ve been detaining the guest of honor, as well.” He set back the door with an unnecessary little flourish. The two women were left confronting one another, an encounter for which only Hilary had been at all prepared. With the instant perception which at such times outpaces thought, she knew that Mrs. Fleming had supposed the remark about the guest of honor to refer to herself; and that Julian had just realized it too late. Everyone snatched up the situation with great social address.