The Sandcastle (11 page)

‘What’s happened now?’ said Miss Carter. She sounded alarmed. The car was
tilting towards the river.
Mor ran round the back of the car. He looked at the other back wheel. A section
of the bank had given way under it, and it hung in mid-air above the water. The
Riley seemed to be resting now upon its back axle, straddled across the bank.
‘Get out of the car,’ said Mor.
‘No, let me try again,’ said Miss Carter.
‘Get out,’ said Mor, ‘at once.’
She got out and joined him. When she saw the position of the back wheels she
gave a gasp of distress.
‘I am
extremely
sorry,’ said Mor. ‘This is all completely my fault. But
apologies aren’t much use. The thing is to decide what to do.
‘Supposing,’ said Miss Carter, ‘we were to wedge something under the inside
back wheel, and you were to push hard from behind, we might get her to jump
forward.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mor. ‘We’d have to raise the axle somehow. The car is
tilted too much already.’
‘Suppose we jacked her up,’ said Miss Carter, ‘and got her on an even keel and
then lowered her slowly again.’
‘We wouldn’t be able to jack her up,’ said Mor. ‘The jack would just sink into
that muddy ground. Anyhow, as we lowered her she would just sink into the same
position.’
Miss Carter was worried, but by no means distracted. She was thinking hard.
Before Mor could stop her, she was crawling underneath the Riley.
Don’t do that, Miss Carter,‘ said Mor sharply. ’With the car tilting like that
it’s not safe.‘
Miss Carter emerged. Her knees and the hem of her dress were covered in mud.
She had thrown her shoes and stockings away into the grass.
‘I wanted to see what exactly the axle was doing,’ she said. ‘In fact it’s
resting on a stone. What I suggest is that we put something large and firm
underneath the other wheel, and then dig the stone away. Then the car will be
resting on three wheels again.’
‘It’s no use,’ said Mor. ‘What we need now is a tractor.’
‘Well, let’s try this first,’ she said firmly, and already she was running away
into the wood. Mor followed her. He felt nothing now except an almost physical
distress about the car.
Miss Carter soon found a flat mossy stone and Mor helped her to carry it back
towards the river. It was very heavy. Mor took off his coat and rolled up his
sleeves. They began to introduce the stone underneath the wheel. It became very
muddy and slippery in the process.
‘This is a crazy proceeding,’ said Mor. He squatted back on his heels and
looked at his companion. Miss Carter was very flushed. There were patches of
mud on the dark red of her cheeks. Her dress was hitched up, and one knee and
thigh were embedded in the muddy ground. She looked like something from a
circus.
‘We must be careful,’ she said, ‘to see that the stone is tilting from the
inside of the car outwards. Then when it takes the weight the car won’t slither
any farther towards the river.’
Mor sighed. He could not desert her. He helped her to complete the operation.
‘Now,’ said Mor, ‘the question is, how are we to dig out the stone from under
the axle without the whole thing coming down on top of us?’
‘We’ll use the starting-handle,’ said Miss Carter. She was not calm, but intent
and fervent. She fetched the starting-handle from the back of the car.
‘Give it to me,’ said Mor. ‘You keep clear, and don’t whatever you do get into
the car. When it does rest on three wheels again I’ll try to drive it out.’
Mor got into the Riley for a moment and engaged the hand-brake and the first
gear. Then he went behind the car and lay down close to the wheels. He could
see the inside back wheel touching the stone which he and Miss Carter had put
in place, and the axle resting upon another stone nearer to the river bank. He
reached underneath with the starting-handle and began to undermine the stone on
which the axle rested, digging hard at its base. Miss Carter came and sat near him,
almost invisible in the long grass.
It was easier than Mor had expected to undermine the stone. Perhaps, after all,
he thought, this mad plan will work. He felt the stone give slightly and begin
to sink. In another moment it would be clear of the axle and the car would be
resting upon its three wheels. Mor gave a final dig and drew sharply back.
With a roar of grinding tyres and tearing undergrowth and crumbling stones the
Riley lurched over madly towards the river. Mor saw it rise above him like a
rearing animal. He rolled precipitately back into the grass and came into
violent contact with Miss Carter’s knees. They both staggered up.
‘Are you all right?’ she cried.
Mor did not answer. They ran forward to see what had happened to the car.
Another large section of the bank had given way, and the car had slid down and
was now balanced with one back wheel and one front wheel well over the edge of
the bank. Below it the river, foaming and muddy with the recent avalanche,
swept on its way carrying off long reeds and tufts of grass and broken blossoms
of meadow sweet.
‘Hmmm,’ said Mor. ‘Well, now I think it’s time to go and get the tractor.’
‘It’s too late for the tractor,’ said Miss Carter in a steady voice.
Mor looked. Then he saw that it was indeed too late.
‘It’s going to turn right over into the river,’ said Miss Carter.
They watched. Very very slowly the big car was tilting towards the water. There
was a soft gurgling sound as pieces of the river bank descended and were
engulfed. Mor took Miss Carter by the arm and drew her back. There was a
moment’s pause, during which was audible the steady voice of the stream and the
buzz of the surrounding woodland. The car was poised now, its inside wheels
well clear of the ground, its outside wheels biting deep into the soft earth
half-way down the bank. Then slowly again it began to move. Higher and higher
the wheels rose from the ground, as the roof of the car inclined more and more
sharply until it stood vertically above the water. Then with a grinding crash
of buckling metal and subsiding earth the car fell, turning over as it went,
and came to rest upside down with its roof upon the bed of the stream.
The moment immediately after the crash was strangely silent. The woodland hum
was heard again, and the murmur of the stream, now slightly modified as the
water gurgled in and out of the open windows of the Riley. The stream was very
shallow, and the water did not rise above the level of the windows. The reeds
were swaying in the warm air and the dragon-flies darting among the sharp green
stems. Everything was as before, except for the dark gash of the broken bank
and the spectacle of the Riley lying upside down in the middle of the river,
its black and sinister lower parts exposed to the declining sun.
‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Carter.
Mor turned to comfort her. He saw that she was starting to cry.
‘My poor Riley,’ said Miss Carter. And she wept without restraint.
Mor looked at her for a moment. Then he put one arm round her and held her in a
very strong grip.
In a moment Miss Carter recovered and disengaged herself quickly from Mor’s
hold. Mor offered her a handkerchief.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘all we can do now is go and find a garage with a
breakdown unit and let them deal with this scene. In fact the car isn’t badly
damaged - it’s just a matter of pulling it out. It’ll need a crane, but it
won’t be difficult. I suggest you go home now in the bus, Miss Carter, and
leave me to arrange the rest. I’m deeply sorry about this, and needless to say
I’ll pay all the bills. You go home now and have a good rest. I’ll see you as
far as the main road.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ said Miss Carter in a tired voice. ‘I’m not going to
leave the car. You go and find the breakdown people. I shall stay here.’
‘I don’t like leaving you alone in the wood,’ said Mor. He thought of the
woodcutter.
‘Please go,’ said Miss Carter. ‘I’ll stay here. I’d much rather stay with the
car.’ She spoke as if it were a wounded animal.
Mor gave up trying to convince her. It was clear to him that she really wanted
him away. He turned back on foot along the grassy bridle path, and as he passed
the clearing he saw that the man had gone. He passed through the white gate,
and almost at once was able to hail a car which took him to a nearby garage.
Less than half an hour later a small lorry mounted with a crane conveyed him
once more to the river, ripping the ferns and the branches on either side as it
bumped along the track.
Miss Carter was standing knee-deep in the water beside the Riley. When she saw
them coming she scrambled out. She came straight up to Mor.
‘Listen, she said, ’please go home now. It wasn’t your fault, this thing. It
was all my fault for taking you away. Please go home. Your wife will be very
worried.‘
‘I must wait and see that everything is all right,’ said Mor.
Miss Carter put her hand on his arm. ‘Please, please go,’ she said. Please,
please, please.‘
At last Mor allowed himself to be persuaded. The breakdown men seemed to think
that it would not be difficult to lift the Riley; and Miss Carter seemed
intensely anxious for his departure. So in a little while Mor turned away and
went back alone to the road. When he came in sight of the ford he saw that
there was someone there. It was the man from the clearing, who was standing
with the water covering his shoes and lapping round his trouser ends. When he
became aware of Mor he moved on a step or two into the deepest part of the ford
and stopped again, but without looking round. Mor watched him for a moment.
Then he turned and began walking in the other direction along the road. It was
not long before he met a car which was able to give him a lift as far as the
main road. There he caught a bus.
As the bus conveyed Mor along the noisy road towards the outskirts of the
housing estate he felt as if he were emerging from a dream. It was only a few
hours ago that he had risen from Evvy’s lunch table. What world had he entered
in between? Whatever the region was, Mor thought, in which he had been
wandering, one thing was certain, that he would never visit it again. At this
reflection he felt a mixture of sadness and relief. He looked at his watch. It
was after eight. Nan would indeed be worried. He ought to have telephoned her.
But somehow it had not occurred to him, so completely insulated had he been by
the strange atmosphere of that other world. He shook himself and looked to see
the familiar streets appearing. He got off the bus and began to walk quickly
past the rows of semi-detached houses towards his own.
As Mor came to the corner of the road where he lived he suddenly paused. A
familiar figure had come out from under the shadow of a tree and was hurrying
to meet him. It was Tim Burke.
Tim came up to Mor, took him by the wrist, and turning him about began to lead
him quickly back the way he had come.
‘Tim!’ said Mor. ‘Whatever is it? We can’t talk now. Look, I must get home. I’m
in an awful fix.’
‘You’re telling me you’re in a fix!’ said Tim. He took Mor’s arm in a wrestling
grip and began to urge him back along the road. ‘I had to wait there, I wasn’t
sure which way you’d come. I don’t want Nan to see me.’ They turned down
another road.
‘What is it, Tim?’ said Mor, freeing his arm. They stopped under a tree.
‘Nan rang me up,’ said Tim.
Mor thought, of course, it hadn’t occurred to him, but naturally Nan would have
rung up Tim to ask why he was so late. ‘What did she say,’ said Mor, ‘when you
said I hadn’t been with you?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Tim.
‘What?’ said Mor.
‘I didn’t say it,’ said Tim. ‘I said you’d been with me most of the afternoon
and that just then you’d gone over to the committee rooms and that you’d been
delayed and you’d probably be back a bit later.
Mor put his hand to his head. ‘Tim,’ he said, ‘for heaven’s sake, what put it
into your mind to invent all that?’
Tim took hold of the hem of Mor’s jacket. ‘I saw you down at the traffic lights
at Marsington,’ he said, ‘in a car with a girl.’
Mor leaned against the tree. It was a plane tree with a flaky piebald bark. He
pulled a piece of the bark off it. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid your Irish
imagination has carrried you away a bit, Tim. That was just Miss Carter, who’s
painting Demoyte’s portrait. And in fact I
would
have been with you this
afternoon if it hadn’t been that the car broke down.’
Tim was silent. All this isn’t quite true, thought Mor. Oh God!
‘Tim,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. You’ve acted very kindly. There’s been a horrible
muddle today, all my fault.
‘You’re not angry with me, Mor?’ said Tim. ‘You see, I
couldn’t
just say
you hadn’t been there. I had to do my best. I had to try to think what to do.’
He was still holding on to Mor’s coat.
‘That’s all right, Tim,’ said Mor. ‘You acted very well, in fact. It’s been all
my fault. But there won’t be anything like this again. We’d better just bury it
quietly and not refer to it any more. I’m deeply sorry to have involved you in
this. And thank you for what you did.’ He touched Tim’s shoulder lightly. Tim
let go of his coat.
They looked at each other. Tim’s look expressed curiosity, diffidence, and
affection. Mor’s look expressed affention, exasperation, and remorse. They
began to walk back along the road.
When they got to the corner, Tim said, ‘Have you talked to herself yet about
that thing?’
‘No,’ said Mor, ‘I will soon though.’
They stood for a moment.
‘You’re not angry?’ said Tim. ‘I tried to do the best for you.
‘How could I be angry?’ said Mor. ‘It is you who should pardon me. You did very
well. And now we’ll not speak of it again. Good night, Tim.’
Mor turned and began to walk slowly along the road that led to his own house.

Chapter
Seven

ALREADY
the light was leaving the earth and taking refuge in the sky. The big windows
of Demoyte’s drawing-room stood open upon the garden. A recurring pattern of
bird-song filled the room, not overlaid now by any human voices. In the last
light of the evening Rain Carter was painting.
It was the day following the disaster with the Riley. The breakdown men had in
fact managed to right the car fairly quickly, and towed it to the garage. The
engine was badly jolted and drenched with water, but there was no serious
damage to the car except for a certain buckling of the roof. The garage had
promised to restore it, almost as good as new, in a short while.
Rain, however, was not thinking now about the Riley. Nor was she thinking about
William Mor, although that was a subject which had preoccupied her for a while
before she retired to bed the previous evening. She was completely absorbed in
what she was doing. Early that morning Rain had found herself able to make a number
of important decisions about the picture, and once her plan had become clear
she started at once to put it into execution. A white sheet was laid down in
the drawing-room on which the easel was placed, together with a kitchen table
and a chair. Paints and brushes stood upon the table, and the large canvas had
been screwed on the easel. Enthroned opposite, beside one of the windows, sat
Demoyte, his shoulder touching one of the rugs which hung behind him upon the
wall. Through the window was visible a small piece of the garden, some trees,
and above the trees in the far distance the tower of the school. In front of
Demoyte stood a table spread with books and papers. Demoyte had been sitting
there at Rain’s request for a large part of the afternoon and was by this time
rather irritable. During much of this period Rain had not been painting but
simply walking up and down and looking at him, asking him to alter his position
slightly, and bringing various objects and laying them upon the table.
Demoyte was dressed in a rather frayed corduroy coat and was wearing a bow tie.
This particular capitulation had taken place the previous morning after
breakfast when Rain had said sharply, Don’t think me eccentric, Mr Demoyte, but
these are the clothes I want to paint you in‘ - and had laid the very garments
on the chair beside him. Demoyte had made no comment, but had gone at once in
quest of Miss Handforth to tell her exactly what he thought of this betrayal.
Handy had informed him that needless to say she knew nothing about it and
surely he knew her better than to imagine she would give information to that
imp or make free with her employer’s clothing. Demoyte had pondered the outrage
for a short while, made a mental note to give Mor a rocket when he next saw
him, changed into the clothes in question, and felt immensely better and more
comfortable.
Rain, surveying now at leisure the object placed before her, could hear her
father’s voice saying, ‘Don’t forget that a portrait must have depth, mass,
and
decorative qualities. Don’t be so fascinated by the head, or by the space, that
you forget that a canvas is also a flat surface with edges which touch the
frame. Part of your task is to cover that surface with a pattern.’ What Rain
had lacked was the motif of the pattern. But this had lately occurred to her,
and with it came the definitive vision, which she had been seeking, of
Demoyte’s face. The old man’s face, it now seemed to her, was of a withered
golden colour, like an old apple, and marked with the repetition of a certain
curve. Supremely this curve occurred in his lips, which Rain proposed to paint
curling in a slightly sarcastic and amused manner which was highly
characteristic of him. It appeared again, more subdued, in his eyebrows, which
met bushily above his nose, and in the line made by his eyes and the deep
wrinkles which led upwards from their corners. The multitudinous furrows of the
forehead presented the same motif, tiny now and endlessly repeated, where the
amusement was merged into tolerance and the sarcasm into sadness.
Rain had chosen as part of the background one of the rugs which, as it seemed
to her, spoke the theme again. In some obscure way this patterned surface
continued too to be expressive of the character of the sitter, with his
passionate interest in all-over decoration. Rain selected a noble Shíráz, of a
more intense golden shade, not unlike the colour in which she proposed to paint
the old man’s face, and wherein the curve occurred again, formalized into a
recurrent flower. This rug, which was the same one which Rain had been studying
when William Mor first beheld her, she had persuaded Demoyte to move,
exchanging its position with another one so as to have it in the picture. He
had done this with many complaints.
Rain was aware of the dangers of her plan. She was not especially worried at
the possibility of depth and space being sacrificed to decoration. That was a
risk which had to be run in any case - and she found in practice that if she
thought about decoration first, and then forgot it and thought about depth, the
thing would usually work out. It was rather that this particular motif,
combined with the colour scheme which seemed to be imposing itself, was a
somewhat sweet one and might soften the picture too much. To counteract it she
would rely upon the sheer mass and strength of the head - that would be her
most difficult task - and upon the powerful thickness of the neck. The hands
and the objects upon the table would have to play their part too, especially
the hands. Rain did not yet see this very clearly. The treatment of the window
was also to some extent problematic. She was tempted to paint the trees in a
stylized and curly manner, but suspected that this was a false instinct.
Something different must be done with the trees, something rather austere. What
she could not bring herself to sacrifice was the idea of putting in the
neo-Gothic tower of the school in the top left-hand corner, rising into the sky
with a fantastic flourish. The sky itself would be pallid, cooling down the rest
of the picture, so far as was consistent with a strong light in the room.
Demoyte himself would be looking back, away from the window, his glance not
quite meeting that of the spectator.
‘It’s time you stopped that now, missie, said Demoyte. ’There isn’t anything
like enough light to paint by.‘ He shifted restlessly about in his chair. He
particularly resented being kept there when Rain was not painting him but
painting a piece of the rug. Rain had told him when he complained that ’all the
colours belong to each other, so the rug looks different when you are there.
‘I know,’ said Rain abstractedly. She was wearing her black trousers and a
loose red overall on top, the sleeves well rolled up. ‘It is too dark. My
father would be cross seeing me painting now. I just want to finish this tiny
square.’
She had filled in in very considerable detail one small segment of the rug in
the top right-hand half of the picture. The rest of the picture was vaguely
sketched in with a small number of thin lines of paint. Rain, following her
father, did not believe in under-painting. She painted directly on to the
canvas with strokes of colour which were put on as if they were to stand and to
modify the final result however much was subsequently laid on top of them. Rain
also followed Sidney Carter’s system of painting the background first and
letting the main subject grow out of the background and dominate it and if
necessary encroach upon it. In particular, she recalled her father’s dictum: ‘A
little piece of serious paint upon the canvas will tell you a lot about the
rest. Put it on and sleep on it’ Rain hoped that the following day she would be
able to construct, from the small and finely worked segment of rug, a great
deal more of the rest of her picture.
She laid the brush down. It was too dark now. Demoyte began to get up. ‘Please
wait a moment,’ said Rain, ‘just a moment more, please.’ He subsided.
Rain came forward and studied him, leaning thoughtfully across the table. The
hands. Much depended on that. The hands must be another mark of strength in the
picture, shown solid and square, somehow. But how exactly?
‘I don’t know what to do with your hands,’ said Rain. She reached across and
took one of Demoyte’s hands and laid it across the top of one of the books. No,
that wouldn’t do.
‘I know what to do with your hands,’ said Demoyte. He captured the one that was
still straying about on the table and lifted it to his lips.
Rain smiled faintly. She looked down at Demoyte, not studying him this time.
Now it was quite dark in the room, although the garden was glowing still.
‘Have I given you a bad day?’ she said. She did not try to free her hand.
Demoyte clasped it in both of his, stroking it gently and conveying it
frequently to his lips.
‘You’ve kept me sitting here in one position and an agony of rheumatism for the
whole afternoon, that’s all,’ said Demoyte. ‘Let me see how much you’ve done by
now.’ He lumbered over to the easel. Rain followed him and sat down on a chair
to look at the canvas. She felt exhausted.
‘Good God!’ said Demoyte. ‘Is that all you’ve done, child, in the last two
hours? You’re still on that square inch of carpet. At this rate you’ll be with
us for years. But perhaps that’s what you want-like Penelope, never finishing
her work? I wouldn’t complain. And I can think of one or two other people who
wouldn’t complain either.’ Demoyte leaned on the back of Rain’s chair and
touched her dark hair. His enormous hand could cup the back of her head in its
palm. He drew his hand slowly down on to her neck.
‘The picture
will
be finished,’ said Rain, ‘and I shall go. I shall be
sorry.’ She spoke solemnly.
‘Yes,’ said Demoyte. He fetched another chair and placed it very close to her
and sat down, his knee brushing hers. ‘When the picture is finished,’ he said,
‘you will go, and I shall not see you again.
He spoke in a factual voice, as if requiring no reply. Rain watched him
gravely.
‘When you go,’ said Demoyte, ‘you will leave behind a picture of me, whereas
what I shall be wanting is a picture of you.
‘Every portrait is a self-portrait,’ said Rain. ‘In portraying you I portray
myself.’
‘Spiritual nonsense,’ said Demoyte. ‘I want to see your flesh, not your soul.’
‘Artists do paint themselves in their sitters,’ said Rain, ‘often in quite
material ways. Burne-Jones made all his people look thin and gloomy like
himself. Romney always reproduced his own nose, Van Dyck his own hands.’ She
reached out and drew her hand in the half darkness along the rough cord of
Demoyte’s coat, seeking his wrist. She sighed.
‘Your father, yes,’ said Demoyte, ‘he taught you many things, but you are
yourself a different being and must live so. Here I prose on, an old man, and
must be forgiven. You know how much at this moment I want to take you in my
arms, and that I will not do so. Rain, Rain. Tell me instead, why do you think
artists make their sitters resemble them? Will you paint me to resemble you?
Would such a thing be possible?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Rain, ‘whether it shows a limitation, if we want to see
ourselves in the world about us. Perhaps it is rather that we
feel
our
own face, as a three-dimensional mass, from within - and when we try in a
painting to realize what another person’s face is, we come back to the
experience of our own.’
‘You think that we feel our faces as if they were masks?’ said Demoyte. He
reached out and touched Rain’s face, drawing his finger gently down over the
outline of her nose.
Miss Handforth came noisily into the room and switched the light on. Rain sat
quite still, but Demoyte jerked awkwardly backwards, jarring his chair along
the floor.
‘Deary me!’ said Miss Handforth. ‘I had no idea you two were still in here, why
you’ve been sitting in the dark! Mr Mor has just come, I sent him up to the
library, because I thought you were upstairs.’ Miss Handforth strode across the
the room and began lustily pulling the curtains. The garden was dark.
‘I wish you wouldn’t enter rooms like a battering ram, Handy,’ said Demoyte.
‘Leave all that and go and tell Mor to come down here.’
‘Do you want all that stuff left here, or am I to clear it up every night?’
asked Miss Handforth, indicating the white sheet, the easel, and the other
paraphernalia.
‘Please may it remain here for the moment?’ said Rain.
‘You propose to take possession of my drawing-room, do you?’ said Demoyte. ‘The
whole house stinks of paint already. Go on, Handy, go away and fetch that man
down from the library.’
When Mor had walked towards the front door of his house on the previous evening
he had still not been sure whether or not he would tell his wife the whole
story. The interference of Tim Burke seemed to complicate the picture.
Frankness on Mor’s part would now be an exposure not only of himself but of his
friend. Yet it was not this that moved Mor so much as a feeling that Tim’s lie,
added to his own, made of the whole thing something far more considerable in
appearance than it really was. There was something about the way in which Tim
had said, ‘I saw you in a car with a girl,’ which made Mor suddenly see the
situation from the outside; and seen from the outside it did look as if it were
something, whereas seen from the inside it was of course nothing, nothing at
all. So that, it seemed obscurely to Mor as he walked back, to tell Nan the
truth would really be to mislead her. There was no way of telling the story
which would not make Nan think that there was more to it than there was. So, in
a way, it was more in accordance with the facts to let Nan think that nothing
had occurred. For nothing