The Dangerous Years (31 page)

The four men set off at mid-morning, so fully equipped that nobody would have questioned their purpose. Joan had not seen these last-minute preparations, however, nor was she there to watch them go, or to observe the silent comment of one of the outdoor staff, an ancient Swiss peasant who left his smallholding in the higher reaches of the valley, to work during the winter season at the hotel. His remark consisted of a calculated pursing of his pallid lips, a lift of the eyebrow, and a well-aimed spit.

There was nothing in the prospect to justify this scepticism. The sun shone down serenely, on a world at last grown peaceful, the storms forgotten. All angularities were smoothed over, and the landscape lay quilted, even the summits of the mountains being draped, and their fangs hidden. The English climbers made quick progress over the unsigned expanses approaching the small, steep valley which they had planned to attack, their goal being a ledge only some five thousand feet above an escarpment
that curved round to overhang the moraine of a small glacier opening on the main valley. It was child's play, that job, as John had explained. And the guide had nodded his head, thinking of the pay at the end of the day, or to-morrow midday when they returned after a night in the hut round the turn of the ledge. He was satisfied with the physical stamina of the three Englishmen. But he cast an eye from time to time at the placid mountains, shining in the sun like great cats basking.

At the head of the small valley, the party paused, and roped themselves together.

“This is the life,” cried John Boys, to the others. And they responded in kind, convinced that they were on top of the world, or at least about to be so, as near as could be in a short day's trial. “This is the life,” repeated the younger of the three Englishmen, who was a mathematician of rising reputation. But his utterance at that moment was an example of mathematical opposites.

The scene at the rink was one of Breughel-like activity. Most of the guests were out, for the surface had already been cleared, with the snow banked up round the clearing, making it a shallow saucer of delicate blue chinaware. Its glazed surface quickly became scored over with opaque lines, which the sun's fingers picked out, changing them to threads of rainbow beauty. Various too were the garments of the skaters, who flashed about like hummingbirds, their physical exhilaration driving them on to more and more ambitious efforts.

The movements, the skill, the patterns of visible fugues, woven by crimson, blue, white, yellow-clad humans, acted like music on Joan's mind, and she shared fully the excitement of the child who was almost beside himself with glee. He showed an astonishing mastery, compelling attention from strangers, who watched his tiny figures of eight, and the cunning with which he wove patterns round the steady progress of Joan, who skated with a
Dutch taciturnity, ignoring the imp who was decorating her progress with an Ariel-like gaiety.

All was laughter, happy trickling laughter in the sun, with the roof of the mouth deliciously cold, the air sucked in through nostrils dilated with appetite for this new medium, this atmosphere that must have sustained the morning of the gods. Joan found herself singing as she sped along, leaning forward into the certain future, a future shining, crystalline, infinitely valuable. She leaned upon it, so confident was she under the influence of this drugging, over-charged air, which she could almost grasp in her fists, to feel it crackle like gold-leaf. “Oh, Adrian!” she cried, from time to time when he drew near enough, in this dream-motion, for her to see his face, and the ecstasy with which he was calculating his own movements; or more believably listening to the outside prompter directing those movements from the wings of this dream-theatre of light, “Oh, Adrian!” And that was all she could say.

This circle of human activity lay surrounded by silence. The hotel and its out-buildings stood blanketed deep in the new-fallen snow. The town was hidden by rising ground and a ridge of pines, one of which had been blown over by the recent storms, and now rested in the arms of its neighbours, under long scarves of frozen snow and icicles. The few people who had ventured off to practise ski-ing, were swallowed up in the vast immaculateness, their voices negligible, their movement diminished. Silence was paramount, almost a visible presence.

The sunlight gradually moved round, along the southern heights, and once Joan paused to note the effects of this gradual sweep of the fire of heaven. She saw it pick out a gully running off at right-angles into the northern wall of the valley, making what had been a black scar suddenly open into a coloured pathway that rose steeply and turned round an escarpment of the
mountain, to be lost at the beginning of a deep ledge that went round the abrupt angle of this natural bastion. The ledge suddenly shone, seeming close, yet also unattainable because it was so remote, so lonely. ‘What a view from there!' she thought, as she pointed it out to Adrian, who had glided up, and now hovered like a gull beside her, his arm in hers, quivering with nervous energy and preparation for taking flight again. “Look, Adrian! Would you like to be up there?”

“
I am
up there! I am up there! I am everywhere. lean go where I like, Joan. I can see more than anybody in the world. I'll tell you about it. Wait until we get home. I can hear everything I see!” He hugged her so wildly that he nearly brought her to the ground. Both laughed with delight, and once again the dance began, the fugue of impossible loves and insane certainties. Off they went.

It might have been an eternity later that Joan returned to the same spot, and paused once more to stare at that distant ledge, fascinated by its remoteness, as it rested in the horizontal glare of the sun's beams. It must have been there for ever, and it appeared to her fancy to be telling her so, speaking to her across the silence, and the vast tracts of unbroken snow.

The silence deepened, if that were possible. The dome of the sky flickered from time to time, with a shudder of light that sent over the monotonous blue a momentary illusion of fire, of frozen fire. Joan watched this, and she felt a slight chill, as though what she had noticed were a veil of ice-crystals, some of which had detached themselves, invisibly, and struck her flesh. She looked round, suddenly anxious about the boy. But there he was, in mid-flight, his figure leaning on nothingness, at an angle of forty-five, or so it seemed, coursing over the rink. There was nothing to worry about. He must be as warm as toast.

Still she remained watching, hypnotised by that prospect
in the cleft of the alps. She was about to move on, when she noticed a tiny puff of what appeared to be vapour rise from the summit of the height above the ledge. Where, a moment before, the outline had been diamond-cut, it was now obscured by a tuft of whiteness that rose from the white surface. It licked upward, a tongue of ice, and relapsed. After a pause, it repeated the movement, rising a little higher, and twirling round before subsiding; a lovely, innocent play.

Joan wanted to call Adrian to observe this with her, but he was away at the other end of the rink, joining hands with a woman who had been trying to attract him for some time; one of the vestals who had worshipped after the impromptu recital in the
salon
of the hotel.

Joan turned back to the tiny drama in the heights. For the third time the flurry of whiteness rose, hovered, coiled and cork-screwed, lingering still longer before falling back, as though baffled in its miniature purpose.

She waited for it to happen again. But some moments passed with no sign. The ice-peak, with one facet of bare rock, stood like a jewel against the blue. She was about to move again, feeling the chill of inaction, when she saw that thin line of rock widen a little. At the same time, the misty tongue licked up again, perhaps a shade firmer than before, and less lazy in its movement as it coiled on itself, to subside. Joan had already begun to glide on, but she stopped herself, fascinated by that tiny drama in the distant heights. Adrian was making towards her again, after another round of the rink. She waited for him to approach, and held out her hands as he eased down, gliding to rest beside her.

“Come along, Joan!” he cried, “what are you so …”

But before the boy could expostulate further, the universal silence was broken by a strange rumbling. It was very remote, but its reverberations penetrated through the ground. Joan suddenly felt cold, and shuddered. She
turned Adrian round to face the mountains, pointing with her gloved hand.

“Look, Adrian, look!”

They stared, and most of the other skaters stopped also, to watch the distant drama. The peak above the ledge was now hidden by a veil; it might have been fog, or snow blown by an up-draught. The streak of rock grew still wider. Then, with a faint murmur, which the awe-stricken humans could now locate, the mist around the summit plunged down, grew, darkened. It was the birth of an avalanche. The rumbling continued, and the billowing mass rolled slowly down the mountain-side. It reached the ledge, and the ledge was no more. It paused there for a few moments, then was seen to be spreading below that feeble obstacle, gathering resources and filling the whole of the tiny valley. Long after it had come to rest, the growling rumble continued. But at last even the sulky aftermath of sound died away, and the panorama lay as before, sun-drenched, crystalline.

Joan felt the boy clinging to her, his hands urging her into motion again. But she stared at the place where the valley had been, and the ledge. Nothing would appear to be changed to a person looking casually: but she had been watching with a close attention, compelled by a wayward curiosity tinged with fear. She did not trust that gentleness, softness, or the reluctance with which the distant gesture had begun and ended.

“Come along, Joan!” cried Adrian, “there's nothing to see now!”

She looked down at him, and saw the avid excitement in his eyes, impersonal and self-absorbed. It filled her mind with a momentary repugnance. She was frightened. The confidence with which she had set out froze. She could feel the chill of it in her bones and flesh. She wished John were with her; and she wished it so desperately that her hand and arm went out, appealing to the empty
world of whiteness, and the distant mountains. Adrian laughed with pleasure, thinking she was reaching out to come with him. At that moment, the bell from the hotel clanged over the snow, summoning the guests to luncheon. Those who could hear it began to trickle back, and Joan, dragged by Adrian, joined the procession.

The defeat of Mary Winterbourne's plan to accompany Tom Batten to America, and to assist in the repair both of his self-respect and his worldly fortune, set her thinking with an obstinate determination. She would not be beaten. The letter from Joan gave her additional strength, though her passion was now so ripened by indulgence that she needed no support.

“Look, darling,” she said to her lover next morning, before leaving his room, “it's a superb day. Why not borrow your brother's car, or the little one which Mrs. Batten uses, and take me out to the country? We could drive down to Chartres and see the cathedral. I've never been there. I'd love it. And it would give us a chance to talk things over. Something has to be done. I'm not content for us to drift along, hoping for the best. I'm too proud of you, Tom, for that. Too proud of you, my love.”

To prove her words, she returned to the bed, having drawn back the blind, and kissed him tenderly. The scar across his face stood out in the bright light, and she touched it with her hand, then hid it with her lips. This self-abandonment was still novel, with only faint echoes from a similar self-surrender many years ago. She welcomed it, with a nun-like fervour, after her long service to the duties of widowed motherhood. Children grow up, and go away, she thought (with that under-mind
which is half-instinct), but Tom is mine, and will cling to me. I shall have him for the rest of our lives. I pray God I may go first this time. I could not face that loss twice.

She sealed this reflection so passionately that Tom was taken aback. He sat up in bed, lifting her with him, and studying her with a curiosity that was already half-way to common-sense.

“Gently, Mary. You give me too much, you know. I'm not worth all this, I assure you: I've not been used to it. I don't know what to say, or do. That's a fact, Mary. Look here, why have you come so late in my life? That's what disturbs me. I've nothing to bring you.”

“Tom, I won't allow you to say that, or even think it. I'm selfish and determined to have my way. Life is going to be very different for you from now on. We'll do everything together; and you'll see if we don't make a success of it. Why not? I'm well off. This setback about the child and the American tour closes only one outlet. There are dozens of possibilities, so long as we are united. I will never leave you, Tom. Never! Never!”

He rubbed his eyes, and shook his head.

“I hope you're right, Mary. My life has not been a triumphal procession since I gave up the Service, I can tell you. But you know all about that. I suppose those years in the Flanders' mud did something to my generation. I may have been a bit too old for it too. It rusted the mainspring, perhaps. But I'm not making excuses for myself, or the many thousands of chaps who seem to be drifting along ever since the Armistice. It's probably not even true. Most people, after all, settle down to mediocrity. But cut along, Mary. This damned subterfuge again. I hate it. Why can't our relationship be normal? Surely we deserve a little security of that sort, at this time of life? I feel this business is smirching you all the time. I hate it. I'm a conventional sort of fellow: brought up that way.”

He stared ahead, hopelessly, his mouth set. Then he turned to her impulsively, where she sat on the edge of the bed, fastening her dressing-gown before making the now customary flight to the floor below.

“But I can't give you up, Mary. You've wound your way into my soul, I think. An odd thing for a chap to say. But by God, it's true enough. A man and a woman can't live as we've lived, and give as we've given, just lately, without it meaning something, without it tying them together for the rest of their lives. We may have done wrong in the eyes of the world. I'll acknowledge that. But now I'll fight for you and be damned to the rest. That's what it is, Mary. It's a primitive sort of business. Back to the old cave-man, I suppose. But I love you. I love you. It's as simple as that; body and soul. Oh, for God's sake, what are we to do?”