The Innocent Moon (49 page)

*

At the end of the week Bevan and the seldom-speaking Archie Meek were tired of walking for its own sake. Time was short, and soon Bevan must be back in Fleet Street. The two wanted to visit Chartres, of which Bevan had read and dreamed. As they walked up the valley road they decided to take the train to Chartres on the morrow. At their decision Phillip felt slightly tremulous: his fate was imminent!

He had bought a Michelin motoring map in Arudy, and followed their route on it during the midday rest at Castet. As they lay beside the river he worked out that the distance to Argelès Gazost was about fifty kilometres from Laruns, where they were proposing to sleep that night. Thirty miles from Laruns, the road rising in
virage
after
virage
to about 6,000 feet, zigzagging about and then down again. It would be hard going if it were to be done in a day, even with the May nights being comparatively short. Irene or Barley would be able to advise him of the best route to take. He folded the map and put it back in his breast pocket.

“You’re very quiet, Phillip,” remarked Bevan. “Are you still going to do your Excelsior stunt, you mad nature-lover, you?”

“Ah,” said the other man, in one of his rare epigrammatic remarks. “Cherchez la femme, what?”

*

They reached the town of Laruns and took three rooms for the night in a small auberge. While the others were upstairs, Phillip,
not wanting them to know where he was going, showed the written address to the patron, who after consulting his wife led him outside and pointed to a house on the hillside, painted pale blue and white.

As Phillip was crossing the square he noticed a woman walking in front, a black beret on her head, and a mass of fair curls on the shoulders of her tweed coat. Could it be Irene? He walked faster, his nailed boots slipping on the stone-paved street, the iron tip of his staff tapping at every double step. The woman turned round, stood still, looked at him and said laughingly, “I knew it was you, I recognised your footfalls!”

“I thought it was Irene, with her hair grown thicker somehow! Barley, you’ve changed! You’re a young woman, or should I say young ma’m’selle?”

Her face, which had gone faintly pink when they met, was now pale. He thought she seemed somehow to be so much more mature than her mother. Irene was appealing, rather helpless; but this grown-up girl was self-contained. As they walked to the villa on the hillside he noticed how light on her feet she was, how she walked in step with him, how quick she was and yet not nervously eager as he was on too many occasions. He took her arm, saying, “Barley, I can’t quite believe I am here with you! The last time I saw you, you were a cygnet, now you are a swan!”

They walked on lightly. “Mummie will be surprised, although after your postcard we have been expecting you, P.M. Where are your two friends?”

“I left them at the auberge. They’re going on by train to Chartres tomorrow.”

“And you’ll stay with us! I am glad!”

“As a matter of fact, Barley, I had planned to walk to Argelès Gazost tomorrow.”

“But you can’t, P.M. The Col d’Aubisque is closed until July.”

“Oh, I’ll get there.”

“You can’t get there. The Corniche is blocked. It’s a narrow track above precipices, in places cut through tunnels in the face of the rock. The road has to be cleared every midsummer. I’ll take you up and show you as far as La Gourette, if you like. But no farther. It’s beautiful there now the gentians are coming out.”

They went on in silence. Then he said, “I must get over,
Barley. It’s a matter of—well, importance—to someone else. And to me, in a way.”

“Look, P.M.” she replied, her forehead wrinkled, “your two friends are going to Chartres. You can stay with us for a day or two, and then go to Argelès by train. Or I’ll walk there with you, by road, if you like. I know the way.” She gave him a quick glance and went on, “You did not tell me that Annabelle and the Selby-Lloyds were coming to Argelès!”

She said this in such a matter-of-fact voice that he was shaken. They entered the gate of the blue-and-white house. How had she known about Annabelle? He felt apart from her, and said to himself that he would not stop long, when she continued, “You ought to come and stay here. Do you ski? Then I’ll teach you. Bring Rusty and Moggy, and the Norton, and stay with us! Hullo, Mummie!”—her voice was joyous—“look who I’ve found!”

“Darling!” cried Irene. “How lovely to see you again!” to Phillip. “So you’ve come at last! How well you look! Barley said you would be here today, she woke up and said, ‘He’s coming today, I know he is!’ Do come in, you’re just in time for tea.”

When he had told Irene of the walk and of the others’ plans, she said at once, “There’s a room for you tonight, if you like, for as long as you care to stay.”

“He’s booked a room at the Hirondelle, Mummie, and says he’s leaving tomorrow.”

“What energy, P.M.! Now I’ll see about tea——”

He sat on the window seat with a view of the peaks and listened to Dvorak’s
New
World
Symphony
on the gramophone. Barley sat beside him, still, composed, arms folded, feet stuck out.

After tea Irene said, coming to sit on the other side of Phillip, “You breathe much too quickly, P.M. And too shallowly. Barley and I practise the Mazdaznan deep-breathing, and find it makes all the difference in our lives. All harmony depends on how one breathes. But you are smiling your sad smile, perhaps I am talking too much?”

“One of my lungs is patched, Irene. They said it was from mustard gas in the war. It was tubercular, but tests say it is all right now. The scars remain, of course.”

“How silly of me to give you advice, P.M. Do forgive me! I had no idea, do believe me, otherwise I should never have spoken like that!”

“I am glad you did. As a matter of fact, I have done exercises,
off and on, but never stuck to them. A young cousin of mine, who is an athlete, told me the same thing. Perhaps that’s why my thoughts are so often jumbled.”

“Have you noticed how Barley breathes, always very slowly? I’ve brought her up like that, to learn to be still, to rest. A
guru
in India was my teacher. What is it, darling, twelve inspirations to the minute?”

“Sometimes eight, Mummie. By my stop-watch.”

“I must be nearly thirty!”

“I know, P.M. I’ve been listening.”

When her mother went out of the room, Barley said, “Go by train to see the Selby-Lloyds in Argelès, then come back here, why not?”

“I rather want to walk there.”

She looked at him steadily. “It is Annabelle, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Then please don’t go, P.M. I know it will be no good for you. Please believe me. I
know
, just as I knew you were coming today.”

He got up saying, “You are right, but if you knew all the circumstances——  Well, I think I ought to be getting back to the others.”

She placed herself before him and the door. “Please don’t hide yourself away from me like this, Phillip! The Selby-Lloyds are no good for you. I could see it all the time in Devon.”

He made for the door and she seized his arm and made him face her. “Please listen to me. I’ll explain about Annabelle. You will think me a dreadful tittle-tattle, but I am your true friend. I know it’s not good manners to talk about other people, but I don’t care. I know that Annabelle is attractive, but she does not understand the real you. You are not your real self ever with her, are you?”

“I don’t feel my ‘real self’ with you now, as I used to, anyway!”

Irene came into the room holding out a photograph album. “No, Mummie, please, Mummie!”

“Let P.M. see, darling. There’s some of Devon he hasn’t seen. There’s a man at the kitchen door wanting to sell me a salmon. I won’t be long,” as she went out.

He saw the snapshots as flat surfaces. There were the sands, and the rocks where first they had had tea; himself with beard; Drunkards’ Cottage with Moggy on the wall and the Norton
leaning against it with a flat back tyre; himself on the shaggy cob Queenie had hired, without first telling him; Irene going in to bathe; Barley on a rock in Cornwall—he looked at a new and better edition of Barley in a black bathing dress about to dive, a slim figure with mass of hair, firm high breasts and long smooth legs. He stared at it, knowing that she was watching him intently.

“H’m.”

“H’m,” she mimicked.

“And here is the original, sitting beside me.” Without premeditation he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re a nice girl, Barley.”

“Mind you don’t forget,” she muttered, through her teeth, as she leaned over to take the album from his hands.

“No, I want to look at you!”

She drew in a slow, deep breath and sat very still.

“Please trust me, P.M.!”

“I do trust you, Barley.”

“Please don’t go to Argelès. I’m not just selfish, asking you that.”

“I wonder if you
really
understand?”

“More than you do, I think sometimes.”

He turned a page to see more of this new and very confident person. There she was on skis; in jodhpurs and short jacket, hatless, sitting on a bullock with wide horns—one of the white bullocks which in pairs drew heavy-wheeled carts so slowly along the roads, by a beam secured to their horns.

“That’s a
joke
!” she cried, covering the photograph with her hand.

“Can you play the bagpipes?” he cried. “I can! Listen!”

He played
The
Campbells
are
Coming,
and she sparkled with laughter. “That’s awfully good! Where did you learn that?”

“In a scarlet fever hospital, when I was a small boy in a London suburb.”

“What else can you do?” she asked, delight in her face.

“Nothing much. I want to look at these snapshots. Are there any of you as the Puma Cub?”

“They’re in another of Mummie’s books. Most of them without a stitch on! I’ll show you one day.” She added, “If you like.”

“I would like.” He turned the page. “What a varied life you lead, Ma’m’selle Barlee! Sailing—beach picnic parties—prawning—diving—posing—I say, you look jolly nice, you know!”

“Shut up!” she cried, placing her two hands over the page, while her bright eyes stared at him.

“Let me see you when you were young!”

“I refuse!” she grinned. “Even for you!” she added, with a bold glance. She pouted her lips at him and scowled. The scowl left her face. He stared at her deliberately.

“I can stare
you
out!” she said.

“All right, try!”

Her face was composed, her wide-spaced blue eyes unwinking. He saw how the mass of pale yellow hair grew beautifully away from the candid brow; the curve of cheek—she was a nice girl, she was a lovely girl—he pulled her to him, and kissed her. Her lips were hard, she resisted, she turned her face away.

When she faced him again her face was pale, its beauty gone.

“Be my friend,” she said. “I am all your friends.”

“Damn ‘friendship’,” he said, roughly. “That’s the word I used to say to Annabelle’s mother, when she wanted to kiss me. I almost hated her for it. In the end I gave in. I was in love with Annabelle all the time, but couldn’t stick it. Now you know the truth. I must go.”

“No, you mustn’t!” she replied, looking at him steadily. As though it were being twisted out of her, she said, “I can’t love you in the ordinary way.”

O God, what an idiot he was! Spica’s very words! Pleading for “friendship”! Once again he had made a fool of himself, by responding—always out of key—to non-existent feminine “love”. What was the matter with him? In love one moment with Annabelle, and a moment later, with Barley. He was a skitterer, in love with love.

“You see, I’m no good. I’m going!”

“No!” she said, holding his hand. “Mummie will be back in a moment.” She spoke in a low, scarcely audible voice, her face was pale, but resolute. “Wait till I’m eighteen. Then I will love you in the way you want me to. I promise! I’ll never change. I can’t change. Mummie is coming now. Please don’t go yet,
please
.” She leaned over, and gave him a rough touch on his cheek with her lips. “I love you truly,” she muttered, her face turned away so that he saw only the mass of fair hair.

When Irene came into the room she did not look at them directly, but went to re-arrange a curtain before saying lightly, “Bring the others and cheer us up at dinner, won’t you, P.M.? We couldn’t think of you coming all this way, and not doing the
honours, could we, darling? Why, you look as though you have seen a ghost, P.M.!”

“Thank you very much, Irene, but I rather think my friends have already made arrangements for tonight.” He could not bear the idea of what Archie Meek might say to him afterwards, in his slightly cynical way. “They’re going away tomorrow,” he added lamely.

“Well, if he must go, we ought not to try to persuade P.M., darling. There’ll be plenty of time after tomorrow, won’t there?”

“Yes! You must come back! Promise?” cried Barley, on her feet and standing before him. Her eyes held him. Her back was turned to her mother. “
Please!
” she whispered, looking at him. She was radiant. He smiled at her, while a warm and happy feeling flowed into him.

Irene said, “I must put the fish in the ice-house,” and left the room. He put his arm round Barley’s shoulder, and stooped to touch her cheek with his. He kissed her. He stood apart, wondering what he really felt. He kissed her again on the cheek, and drew back again to look at her. She held his hand. They stood looking at one another until Irene returned, when they moved apart.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind about dinner, P.M.?” she said, ruffling Barley’s hair.

“I think he ought to be with his friends, since he promised them, Mummie.”

“You funny baby, you,” said Irene, kissing her. “Very well, we won’t keep P.M., if he must really go, baby. You’ll come back, won’t you, P.M.?”

“Yes,” he said, putting an arm round each, feeling that of all people he had known they were the most charming. He drew them to him, and kissed each on the cheek, and then again, rubbing his nose in Barley’s bright hair and laying his cheek again against hers for a moment. Then he walked down to the square, feeling clear and simple and calm.