The Aerodrome: A Love Story (2 page)

opposite him, her hands folded in her lap and a look of placid contentment spread like butter over her somewhat fiat face. On the Rector's right hand sat the Squire's sister, a tall thin woman with most remarkably clear grey eyes. She was greatly interested in charities of all kinds. Opposite her was the Flight-Lieutenant, and I can remember now how extraordinarily handsome he seemed to me when the Rector rose to speak. The candlelight was caught and twisted in the tight curls of his yellow hair. His jaw was thrust rather further forward than usual as he held the stem of his wine glass between two fingers of his right hand and explored the liquid with his keen eyes. The Squire was sitting next to him and had just been discussing with me, whom he faced, the prospects of our village cricket XI for the coming season. When he spoke of village sport or of church affairs the old man's deeply pitted eyes took on a look of confidence and persuasive kindliness, though at other times his eyes would waver or seem to withdraw from the face into a kind of ghostliness. People said that since the building of the aerodrome he had never been the same. Now he seemed to me very old, amiable, but in weak health. The Rector tapped on the table and cleared his throat. His wife, leaning towards me with a smile in which I seemed to detect even then some sorrow, said: "Listen, dear, to your father. He has something important to say." I turned my head quickly and saw most vividly the candlelight gleaming on the mahogany table, the glasses and the hands. Then I looked up at the Rector's pale face which was made more pale still by the black beard which he had grown, so I had been told, to cover a scar from a wound which he had received when fighting as a young man in his country's service. His eyes were so piercing as to seem fierce, although he was in reality, as I well knew, the gentlest of men. "With your permission," he began in his clear mild voice, "I will make a few observations on the occasion of our young friend's coming of age." "Hear! Hear!" said the Squire, and I caught his eye looking gravely on me. The Flight-Lieutenant flipped the edge of the table with his finger-nail. "We are doomed," he said, and then made a face at me. His behaviour was deemed by the others eccentric, but not unpardonably so. The Rector continued. "But first of all I must, in fulfilment of a resolution which I have made with myself, give you, who are all close personal friends' (here he glanced rather timidly at the Flight-Lieutenant), "some news which you ought to know and which will, I feel sure, surprise you, although it need, I think, distress no one." He paused again, and the Flight-Lieutenant leaned across the table towards me. "That's all he knows about it," he whispered, and winked. "Sir, sir!" said the Squire. The Rector proceeded, not having heard or not noticing the interruption. "Twenty-one years ago to this day," he said, "a little stranger, a baby, came to this house. We gave this little friend of ours the name of Roy, and we have kept him with us ever since." Here I observed that the Squire's sister was looking at me with approval, but I felt too disquieted to smile at her. I could feel a pressure of blood at my wrists and a rush of blood to the heart, though what could have caused this premonitory turmoil, unless it were the curious note of hesitation in the Rector's voice, I should not have been able to say. I paid hardly any attention to the Flight-Lieutenant who had pronounced in an audible whisper the words: "About as silly a name as could be found." The two ladies looked sternly at him, but the Rector continued as though he had heard nothing. "It is indeed twenty-one years ago to the day when this stranger, now as I think you will agree with me a fine young man, first visited us; but it is not the fact that this day is his birthday. Indeed the lady whom he has called 'mother', and I, who have been proud to bear the name of 'father', cannot say on what day of the year he was born. We are not, you see, his parents, however much we may love him as though he were our child." "This is monstrous," shouted the Flight-Lieutenant, jumping to his feet. "It makes no difference at all." The Rector turned his penetrating eyes upon the interruptor. "So these are the manners of the aerodrome," said the Squire's sister. "They are certainly not ours," while her brother, his face already somewhat flushed with wine, grew redder, thumping the table, and said in a gruff voice, "Down sir!" as though he were addressing some domesticated animal. Only the Rector's wife preserved an expression of unbroken placidity. As for myself, I was filled with such a deep inner perturbation that I hardly observed the general embarrassment. "Who am I then?" I said, and the Flight-Lieutenant made another face at me and then sat down. The Rector continued, still in a somewhat hesitant manner, but almost as though no interruption had taken place. "This little stranger," he said, "was in very deed and truth a stranger. He was found in a basket lying at the top of the village at about the place where the main road now is. At that time the aerodrome and the main road itself were in course of construction. A good woman, now the wife of our village publican, brought the little child to us, trusting that we would welcome it out of charity. Of its parents nothing, naturally, was known. It may indeed be considered possible that at least one of them was a person from another district, perhaps even from another county, employed temporarily on the construction of the aerodrome. But in this we can be guided only by the purest conjecture. "Now by a most strange coincidence, so strange even that in it I have often seemed to detect the hand of Providence, my wife was returning that very evening from a six months' stay abroad, whither she had been forced to go for the treatment of a serious illness. To cut short a long story, we decided to bring up the child as our own, and so we have done. He is sitting with us tonight, respected and loved, if I may say so, by us all. His education, though it has been given him at home, is, I think I may say, a sound one. His athletic capabilities are well known. His character, though undeveloped, seems likely to develop on sterling lines. Roy, my dear fellow, I raise my glass to you. And though, as truth demanded, I have had to inform you that we are not your real parents, trust me, my boy, that you can rely upon us as though we were indeed what you have called us." There was some applause at this, and the chairs slid back as guests rose to drink my health. The Flight-Lieutenant remained seated. His lips were compressed in a smile that had no warmth in it. His voice too was cold. He said: "Though this particular subject is, we all know, not of the least importance, it is a fact, is it not, that for the last twenty-one years you have been telling lies? May I ask what is your authority for this?" He spoke in a remarkably quiet voice, and yet the intensity with which he spoke seemed to command among his audience something almost of respect; although anger and embarrassment very quickly supervened. I saw that the Rector's eyes were blazing with anger and that his hands were trembling. "Have the goodness now to drink your friend's health, sir!" he said. "If you want my authority for the care I have taken of him, it is love, sir, justice, sir, and pity." The Flight-Lieutenant sprang to his feet. "To Roy!" he said and, draining his wine before any of the others had so much as raised their hands from the table, he flung the empty glass over his shoulder. It broke into fragments against a picture of a Greco-Roman sculpture of the huntress Diana. Then he crossed the room quickly to the window and, jerking back the curtains, displayed a view of the sky and many stars shining there. "Love!" he shouted through the window, "Justice! Pity! Oh, very good indeed, sir!" Then he turned and ran out of the room. I followed him, with all my thoughts so confused as not to know whether by following him I intended to extract from him an apology, to sympathize with him, or to pick a quarrel. As I left the room I saw the pale perplexed faces of my guardians and of their guests. No doubt but that the party had been wholly unsuccessful. I reached the front door and the garden path, but soon heard the sound of the Flight-Lieutenant's motor bicycle as he went away from me up the hill that leads to the aerodrome. Then I followed slowly to the top of the village, and spent the rest of the evening in the pub. Not that I felt anything but gratitude to my benefactors, but merely that I lacked assurance. Now I was sitting in the mud.

CHAPTER II

The Confession

"O LAMB OF GOD, have mercy upon me! Root of Jesse, hear my prayer! O Light, guide me! O Way, lead! O Truth, purify me! O Lamb, wash me in thy blood! O Dove, O Branch, be not far distant, I beseech thee!" The words were thrown through the still thin lips above the jutting beard, as though each word were swung like a hammer to descend finally on some anvil inside or outside the mind. The Rector's head was tilted backwards, his chin resting on his clasped hands as he knelt in prayer at the little desk in the alcove at the far end of his study. His eyes stared upward to where a religious picture hung on the wall, dim to see except where running irregular blobs or stains of firelight spread across it, like the effects of stones flung into an obscure pool. But the Rector seemed to be looking at something beyond the plunging light and the indistinct figure of a man with bent knees attempting to hold up a cross. His eyes, and indeed his whole body, with no tremor in his clasped hands were motionless, except for the small movement in his lips through which the words came emphatically and without hesitation as though he were some delicately adjusted machine, now perfectly fulfilling the task for which it had been designed. I stepped back quietly on the soft carpet away from the rigid kneeling figure of my guardian, for I shrank from interrupting his devotions by squeezing past him to the door which was close by his right elbow. So I moved back again to the window through which I had entered the house, and, though I disliked occupying the position of an eavesdropper, I shielded myself with the curtain, fancying that I should have only a few minutes to wait before the prayer was ended, and the Rector would retire to bed. On my return to the house from the meadow I had found the lights out and the front door locked. Although it was likely that they had left the back door open for me, I decided that a quicker way of entry was through the study window, the fastening of which I knew to be broken. And, since I was still somewhat embarrassed at the thought of my own part in the unsuccessful dinner party, I had entered the room as quietly as I was able, not wishing to encounter my friends until the next day. Now I did not care to run the risk of making a noise by opening the window again from the inside, but considered it best to wait where I was, even though I was trespassing on another's intimate thoughts. I could have had no suspicion at the time of how intimate they were. So I remained uneasily listening, with my eyes straying from the tense kneeling figure to the fire flickering at his back at the far end of the room, the curtain that covered the window next to the one where I hid, the large writing desk in the centre, and beyond it the rows of theological volumes which filled all the wall space opposite me. The words came in a steady uninterrupted stream and, if it had not been for the fervour and intensity with which they were uttered, would have sounded like the recitation of some lesson learnt by heart. "Where is the hyssop, O Lord God?" he was saying. "Where is the hyssop to purge me? My sins are a river. They are great boils, O my Healer, corruption, God, and running sores. I am become a stench, my Saviour, and a place of howling. But thou, O Lamb, can"st take away the howling and make it calm. Thou can"st put frankincense in my nostrils, frankincense, O thou Righteous One, and cassia, so that all my transgressions may be even as a sacrifice and as a windless calm." I observed that, although the night was cool, great drops of sweat were standing on his forehead, and yet his words were pronounced more calmly as he continued: "Lamb, let me tell you again my sin. Every year I have told it to you, and every year you have listened to me. You have understood. You have not been unduly vexed, O Most Merciful. And this is the twenty-second year. Listen again then, I beseech you. Hear thy servant, O Holiness. Give ear, O Most Mighty, O Prince of Peace." Here he unclasped his hands for a moment and paused. When he continued he seemed to me to be speaking more rapidly but with less agitation. "I was thirty years of age, O Unchangeable One," he said, "and had just completed my course of study at the Theological College. My great friend Anthony (O, let him be a saint in thy sight) was with me, and thou knowest, Lord, of what plans we two made together for the furtherance of thy Kingdom on earth, that thy Will be done. Lamb of God, let me remind thee of Anthony. Thou knowest, Lord, his rough and honest face, his great intellectual gifts, his lack of any kind of nervousness, his spiritual integrity. Light of the World, what wonder was it that he was preferred to me and given the offer of this living, of this house, O God, of this pleasant heritage in which to do thy Work? And what wonder was it that she who is now my wife (Guard her, O Keeper! Save her in her goings in and in her comings out!), what wonder was it that she should have preferred his love to mine, even though, before she met him, she had pledged her troth to me, to me thy most unworthy servant? Were these occasions for pride, O Most Humble One? For backbiting, Magnificent? Thou knowest my sin. Pride, O God, Deceit, Saviour, Malice aforethought, thou Blameless One, Covetous-ness, Disloyalty, and, O Spotless, at the end, Murder." He stopped speaking and seemed to shake his head as if in nervous relief at having uttered his last difficult word. I saw his hands clasp and unclasp, and in involuntary horror at the scene at which I found myself a witness I stepped forward a little from my place of concealment. Whether or not I should then have revealed my presence I do not know. I had perhaps some such idea in my head, but quite possibly I should still have shrunk from inter-rupting with my ordinary presence a mood of such agony that it seemed not to belong to my previous ex-perience either of the man or of the place. But whatever resolution I had was driven out of my mind by the new sight which I saw as I stepped from my hiding place. For, from behind the curtain that covered the window next to mine, I saw another head protrude. It was wearing a night-cap, and at first this unfamiliar article of clothing together with the expression on the face pre-vented me from immediately recognizing my mother or, I should say, the Rector's wife. Her face was very pale and her thin yellow hair was drawn up under the night-cap, baring a greater expanse of white forehead than that which she showed when dressed and ready for the day. Rarely did she reveal in her expression any feeling at all beyond placidity and contentment, but now her eyes were narrowed, and she was staring at her husband with a look that seemed to me to show no pity or distress, but something more like triumph, and something too of contempt. Perhaps I had made some noise, so great was my astonishment both at her presence at all and at her appearance, for she turned her head towards me, smiled as though she were welcoming me to some pleasant and normal scene, the breakfast table perhaps, or a Sunday School treat, and pressed her fingers to her lips. Then she withdrew again into her hiding place so that I could see nothing of her but three gleaming finger nails on which the light flickered, as she held with an unseen hand the heavy folds of the curtain. "Thou, O Lord," said the Rector, "who hast told us that whosoever looketh after a woman to lust hath already committed adultery, when was the beginning of my treachery, when did I murder first? Was it that shameful notion that my mind so instantly and indignantly rejected, the notion that came to me on the Manor lawn, when we were playing croquet, and I saw Anthony's beautiful head laid close to the head of my betrothed, close to the handle of the croquet mallet, God, and the shining hoop beneath, and the cedar protecting them from the sun? Lion of Judah, I thought then of blood, and I was horrified. I drove back the thought like iron into the ground of my mind, but in the terror and fury with which I drove it back there was still something tremulous, My Saviour, something delicious. O have mercy upon me, Most Merciful! Pity me, Supreme! O, after thy great goodness, shine upon me, the filthy one, the abomination." Here I saw that he let his head fall upon his forearms while his thin bent back was shaken with sobbing. This lasted for some moments, but when he began to speak again his voice was very much calmer. "Let me be exact, Righteous One," he said, "and admit with shame that even now, after twenty-two years of contrition, of tears, of repentance--even now these unholy thoughts stir me: with loathing, yes, God, (for I am a sink) but also with a kind of fascination. Purge this from me, Redeemer, that I may be clean. This is my desperate wickedness, and, Lord, thou knowest it. Lord, let me begin." He took a deep breath and continued unhesitatingly, as though he were reading a narrative from some novel or newspaper. "Perhaps, thou best Inquisitor, it is not of consequence when first the thought came to me of killing my friend. The thought came. It was rejected. It came again. It persisted. Both on the croquet lawn and in other places I was filled with unreasoning jealousy. Pride, of a most perverse character, drove me into hatred when Anthony was preferred to me and given the parish, this parish, my God, which I had so long coveted. As though each corner of the world is not filled to overflowing with thy work to do! As though I were worthy to pick and choose, Christ, among thy vineyards! And I kept my hatred against my brother close covered in my deceitful heart. I congratulated him fervently on his new appointment. I smiled into his winning eyes. I accepted thankfully his suggestion to accompany him on a mountaineering holiday, and, even as I accepted, the thought came to me that would afterwards be translated into most dreadful action. At that time, too, I most distinctly remember, I thrust away the thought as a temptation of the Evil One, but I thrust it away gently, as a soft and cherished thing. God, do I delude myself when I think that even then I might have been, not guiltless, thou knowest, but not so wholly stained, if only that scene had not taken place on the night before our departure? "You saw it all, Most Holy One of Israel. You were in the moon. You were behind the trees. You were above the blackened grass. You were with me as I hid at the corner of the veranda in the heavy smell of the tobacco plants. You saw them, Saviour, in each other's arms, and you heard the whispered words that I could not hear, for they were removed from me. In perfect uprightness, Redeemer, you watched most mercifully over your own children, over me, too, Stainless, and my black heart. "It was then that I became resolved to sin by murder. Not without qualms, thou knowest, not without groanings and beatings of the breast. In my arrogance I calmed my conscience (thy voice, Great Friend) by fancying myself to be an instrument of justice, claiming actually righteousness for myself, O Light of Humility, Meek King. Lord, you say: 'It is I that will repay.' Lord, you do repay. "Let me pass over quickly, God, my journey to the mountains. You know what turmoil was in my heart as the train carried me north and I gazed across the carriage at my friend who was sitting opposite me. He was reading a work of light fiction and from time to time setting the book down on his knees while he smoothed back his hair, inspected the countryside or smiled at me. Then I smiled back and began to foretaste the pains that were to come. But I was resolute, O God of Battles. Even then I knew that I should return alone. "I will not tell you now, my Saviour, of our first evening at the hotel, our apparent gaiety and of the discussion which we had over the wine about the fulfilment of your holy work on earth. By then I was wholly corrupt and spoke, I remember, with particular fervour of a certain reredos in which were depicted white doves ascending from and descending into a chalice of wine. But next day, O Splendour, among the mountains, could I not then, in the gentle sunshine among the towering heights, emblems of your mercy and enormous power, could I not then have repented? When I looked from high down upon the farms and cottages of the plain, the mild cattle in the fields, the sheep on slopes below me, might I not then have heard thy voice which never, O Hound, never for one moment, I know, had ceased to pursue me? God, I was deafened by my blood and by the roaring of my pride. "O Infinite Compassion, we ate our sandwiches together within a thousand feet of the summit. By this time the wind had veered round and the sky was becoming overcast. I looked hungrily at the gathering clouds, since in dirty weather an accident will always seem more credible to outsiders who, in most cases, are ignorant of the real dangers of climbing. " 'I don't like the look of the weather,' Anthony said. He had a crumb at the corner of his mouth. " 'We'll risk it,' I said. 'It's not going to come to much.' "Then he looked doubtful, but I was the leader and he trusted me. Saviour, my friend's goodness, his evident confidence in me, added to my fury. I was lightheaded and laughed, but my heart was frozen. We went on together without ropes till we came to the eastern arête. You know the country well, God. It is a difficult climb, and was very difficult then when the storm was gathering and the cloud already beginning to drift down to us from the summit and to sweep past us in skeins and rivulets between the hills. But I still laughed, as though my excitement was in the climbing, and Anthony, though he was obviously puzzled, would not, I knew, refuse to follow me. "I knew the place where I would do the murder. There is a small ledge, Saviour, with fingerholds where a man may stand spreadeagled against the rock-face at the top of the arête. From the ledge there are holds high up that can be reached and from them it is easy work to the ridge above; but if once one loses one's footing on the ledge there is nothing but rock so smooth that one can hardly scrape one's nails upon it. "I reached the ledge and stopped to take breath. I could see Anthony below me and could see that he thought this climb foolhardy, though he was determined to follow me. 'It's not far now,' I shouted, and he smiled grimly. Then I reached for the high and difficult holds; but then they seemed easy to me. I swung myself off the ledge and found at once the crack for my feet. It appeared a matter of moments before I was at the top of the arête, listening to Anthony who called 'Nice work' from below. I looked back, and now the damp cloud came pouring down on us, so that I could see Anthony's shape, which seemed somehow magnified, but could hardly make out the expression on his face. 'Hurry!' I shouted. 'It's going to be nasty for a bit.' "I braced myself against the rock