The Goose Girl and Other Stories (10 page)

‘My God!' he exclaimed, ‘you mustn't do that! Stand up, stand up, Elizabeth!'

‘Yes,' she said, obeying him. ‘Yes, Roger. Why did you call yourself Roger? Roger Fairfield?'

‘I found the name in a drowned sailor's pay-book. What does that matter now?' Look at me, Elizabeth!'

She looked at him, and smiled.

His voice changed, and he said happily, ‘You'll be the prettiest seal between Shetland and the Scillies. Now listen. Listen carefully.'

He held her lightly and whispered in her ear. Then kissed her on the lips and cheek, and bending her head back, on the throat. He looked, and saw the colour come deeply into her face.

‘Good,' he said. ‘That's the first stage. The adrenalin's flowing nicely now. You know about the pituitary, don't you? That makes it easy then. There are two parts in the pituitary gland, the anterior and posterior lobes, and both must act together. It's not difficult, and I'll tell you how.'

Then he whispered again, most urgently, and watched her closely. In a little while he said, ‘And now you can take it easy. Let's sit down and wait till you're ready. The actual change won't come till we go down.'

‘But it's working,' she said, quietly and happily. ‘I can feel it working.'

‘Of course it is.'

She laughed triumphantly, and took his hand.

‘We've got nearly five minutes to wait,' he said.

‘What will it be like? What shall I feel, Roger?'

‘The water moving against your side, the sea caressing you and holding you.'

‘Shall I be sorry for what I've left behind?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘You didn't like us, then? Tell me what you discovered in the world.'

‘Quite simply,' he said, ‘that we had been deceived.'

‘But I don't know what your belief had been.'

‘Haven't I told you?—Well, we in our innocence respected you because you could work, and were willing to work. That seemed to us truly heroic. We don't work at all, you see, and you'll be much happier when you come to us. We who live in the sea don't struggle to keep our heads above water.'

‘All my friends worked hard,' she said. ‘I never knew anyone who was idle. We had to work, and most of us worked for a good purpose; or so we thought. But you didn't think so?'

‘Our teachers had told us,' he said, ‘that men endured the burden of human toil to create a surplus of wealth that would give them leisure from the daily task of bread-winning. And in their hard-won leisure, our teachers said, men cultivated wisdom and charity and the fine arts; and became aware of God.—But that's not a true description of the world, is it?'

‘No,' she said, ‘that's not the truth.'

‘No,' he repeated, ‘our teachers were wrong, and we've been deceived.'

‘Men are always being deceived, but they get accustomed to learning the facts too late. They grow accustomed to deceit itself.'

‘You are braver than we, perhaps. My people will not like to be told the truth.'

‘I shall be with you,' she said, and took his hand. But still he stared gloomily at the moving sea.

The minutes passed, and presently she stood up and with quick fingers put off her clothes. ‘It's time,' she said.

He looked at her, and his gloom vanished like the shadow of a cloud that the wind has hurried on, and exultation followed like sunlight spilling from the burning edge of a cloud. ‘I wanted to punish them,'
he cried, ‘for robbing me of my faith, and now, by God, I'm punishing them hard. I'm robbing their treasury now, the inner vault of all their treasury!—I hadn't guessed you were so beautiful! The waves when you swim will catch a burnish from you, the sand will shine like silver when you lie down to sleep, and if you can teach the red sea-ware to blush so well, I shan't miss the roses of your world.'

‘Hurry,' she said.

He, laughing softly, loosened the leather thong that tied his trousers, stepped out of them, and lifted her in his arms. ‘Are you ready?' he asked.

She put her arms round his neck and softly kissed his cheek. Then with a great shout he leapt from the rock, from the little veranda, into the green silk calm of the water far below …

I heard the splash of their descent—I am quite sure I heard the splash—as I came round the corner of the cliff, by the ledge that leads to the little rock veranda, our gazebo, as we called it, but the first thing I noticed, that really attracted my attention, was an enormous blue-black lobster, its huge claws tied with string, that was moving in a rather ludicrous fashion towards the edge. I think it fell over just before I left, but I wouldn't swear to that. Then I saw her book, the
Studies in Biology,
and her clothes.

Her white linen frock with the brown collar and the brown belt, some other garments, and her shoes were all there. And beside them, lying across her shoes, was a pair of sealskin trousers.

I realised immediately, or almost immediately, what had happened. Or so it seems to me now. And if, as I firmly believe, my apprehension was instantaneous, the faculty of intuition is clearly more important than I had previously supposed. I have, of course, as I said before, given the matter a great deal of thought during my recent illness, but the impression remains that I understood what had happened in a flash, to use a common but illuminating phrase. And no one, need I say? has been able to refute my intuition. No one, that is, has found an alternative explanation for the presence, beside Elizabeth's linen frock, of a pair of sealskin trousers.

I remember also my physical distress at the discovery. My breath, for several minutes I think, came into and went out of my lungs like the hot wind of a dust-storm in the desert. It parched my mouth and grated in my throat. It was, I recall, quite a torment to breathe. But I had to, of course.

Nor did I lose control of myself in spite of the agony, both mental and physical, that I was suffering. I didn't lose control till they began
to mock me. Yes, they did, I assure you of that. I heard his voice quite clearly, and honesty compels me to admit that it was singularly sweet and the tune was the most haunting I have ever heard. They were about forty yards away, two seals swimming together, and the evening light was so clear and taut that his voice might have been the vibration of an invisible bow across its coloured bands. He was singing the song that Elizabeth and I had discovered in an album of Scottish music in the little fishing-hotel where we had been living:

I am a Man upon the land,

I am a Selkie in the sea,

And when I'm far from any strand

I am at home on Sule Skerry!

But his purpose, you see, was mockery. They were happy, together in the vast simplicity of the ocean, and I, abandoned to the terror of life alone, life among human beings, was lost and full of panic. It was then I began to scream. I could hear myself screaming, it was quite horrible. But I couldn't stop. I had to go on screaming ....

She Has Given beauty a new category, he thought, for she appears to be edible. She is the word made fruit, rather than flesh, and with sugar and cream she would be delicious. Her neck would taste like an English apple, a pippin or nonpareil, and her arms, still faintly sunburnt from the mountain snow, of greengages.

‘How old are you?' he asked.

‘Nearly nineteen,' she answered, ‘and I'm very mature for my age. We had lectures on all sort of things at Lausanne. Really up-to-date lectures on genetics, and Cocteau, and the ballet, and—oh, everything!'

‘And what's your opinion of Cocteau?'

‘Well, I don't think the lecture on him was a very good one—what are you laughing at?'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I never pretended to know
much
about him, did I? But I do know who he is, and what he is, and that's something.'

‘It's a great deal.'

‘Then you shouldn't have laughed at me.'

‘You make me feel light-hearted: that's the trouble.'

‘You mustn't be light-hearted about the match, or everybody will be furious. A Rugby International is very serious.'

They stood idly, in a moving throng of people, in the cold sunlight of March in Edinburgh. If they should step over the sharply drawn line between light and shadow, into the shadow of the tall stand, the darker air would be as cold as January. But the several thousands of people, hearty and red of cheek, who were streaming into the ground to see a match between England and Scotland, thought their northern climate could not be bettered. They brought their own warmth, a genial excitement, a general euphory that made men's voices ring louder and more kindly than usual and girls look vivid and pretty though they were not.

Latimer, when he woke that morning after a night in the train, had had no expectation of watching Rugby football. His mind had lately been occupied by a domestic issue of the greatest importance, and he had come unwillingly to Edinburgh on business that could not
be postponed or delegated. For nearly two hours he had argued stubbornly with an elderly and cantankerous Writer to the Signet who, having got his way with most of the disputed clauses, became suddenly jovial, insisted on taking Latimer home with him to a luncheon-party of ten people, and there persuaded him, easily enough, to go to the match. There were seats for all of them, but in different parts of the stand: two quartets and a pair.

‘Latimer,' said the crusty old man, mellowed now by food and a second glass of port, ‘you're an Englishman and England's going to be beaten. But you're my guest, so we'll need to provide you with pleasure of some kind. You'll take Corinna, and sit with her . . .'

‘Oh, look!' she exclaimed, catching his arm and pointing to an ancient victoria, a shabby survival of carriage-days, that on creaking wheels rolled slowly towards them. It was drawn by a thin brown horse with enormous chestnuts depending from the inner faces of its large flat knees, and the cabman, in a greenish bowler and a short fawn-coloured coat, was small and old, pale of cheek but pink of nose, with a long unhappy upper lip. Three young men, who had done themselves too well at lunch-time and now regretted their extravagance, got hurriedly down, embarrassed by the attention they had attracted, and after quickly paying the cabman went off to their seats. The cabman, sour and dispirited, sat with the reins loose in his hands, and made no move to turn and go. The brown horse hung its head, and the pale sunlight showed the dust that lay thick upon the faded blue upholstery of the old carriage.

‘Isn't it heavenly?' said Corinna.
‘How
I wish we could go for a drive!'

‘There's nothing to prevent us,' said Latimer.

‘There's the match. Uncle Henry would be livid if we missed it. We can't miss the match, can we? But it would be fun!'

‘You can look at footballers every winter for the rest of your life; but cabmen are dying out.'

‘So a carriage-drive might be an historic occasion?'

‘It might.'

‘You don't want to see England beaten. You're trying to escape.'

‘That may be the reason. Or it may be the light-heartedness I spoke of before.'

‘We can't really go, can we?—Oh, he's driving away! Shout to him!'

‘Cabby!' shouted Latimer.

‘Where to?' asked the old man as the carriage tilted, the springs protested, they got in, and dust rose from the stained blue cushions to meet them.

‘I don't think it matters.'

‘Drive to the Castle,' said Corinna, ‘and stop on the Esplanade. There'll be a view to-day.—Oh, isn't this the most wonderful thing that's ever happened?'

‘I'm not quite sure how it did happen. I'm not sure if it should. Do you think, perhaps, that we ought to go back? Your uncle—'

‘Must we?' she asked.

She had leaned heavily against him as the cabman wheeled abruptly on to a main road, and an antic fear had momentarily possessed him that he could not refrain from taking her into his arms and embracing her, regardless of the many latecomers to the match, now hurrying past on either side, who were already looking over their shoulders with amused or curious glances at the ancient carriage and its occupants so strangely going the wrong way. The impulse had seemed, for an instant, beyond control, and very properly it had frightened him. Only forty-eight hours before he had been sitting at his wife's bedside, his hands gripped fiercely by hers in her recurrent torment, and in his anxiety he had offered to the future all manner of extravagant bargains if she and her baby should survive their peril and their pain. For Latimer was in love with his wife, a lively black-haired girl, and the composure of his love was alarmed, as if a volcanic pulse had shaken it, by so urgent and unruly a desire to close with a young stranger. His conscience was perplexed, and over its surface ran the ruffle of fear lest he make an exhibition of himself. It was bad enough to be seen riding in a victoria, absurdly seated in an absurd vehicle trundling away from the football-ground that everybody else was moving towards; but to be caught embracing a girl, a lovely and seemingly edible girl of eighteen, under the bright intolerant sky of Edinburgh—oh, madness! Disaster shook its panic finger, goblin-eyed.

Out of his fear, then, he suggested going back, but when Corinna reproachfully asked, ‘Must we?', he looked at her lips, become suddenly childish, and the blank disappointment of her gaze; and brusquely commanded his emotion. It was trivial enough, he found, he could rebuff it. As firmly as if fear had been a ball in a squash-court bouncing to his forehand, he drove it from him and said confidently, ‘I was only thinking of your uncle—of my rudeness to him—but we shan't be missed, I'm sure. And you can see an International next year.'

‘I've been taken to football matches ever since I can remember, and to go for a drive instead . . .' She turned and waved her hand to three small boys who whistled derisively from the pavement-edge. ‘They're jealous,' she said. ‘Everybody is jealous of us. Look at that deadly-dull
woman leaning out of a window! Oh, what dull lives people lead! There ought to be more horses in a town, they smell so beautifully.'