The Sandcastle (33 page)

Chapter
Twenty

WHEN
Mor awoke it was cold. He turned in bed and W looked towards the window. A very
white dim light. It was early morning. No need to get up yet. Then as he turned
again to settle down, the memory of last night spread through his mind like a
crack. He sat up in bed and held his hand to his face as if to prevent great
cries from issuing forth. He must see Rain very soon, immediately after
breakfast, sooner. Last night she had been mad. If he had been less drunk
himself he would have realized it and would have left her alone at once. He
looked at his watch. Ten to six. He lay back on the pillow. There were still
hours to wait. Then he found out that he could not stay in bed. He was in too
great an agony. He began to get up and to dress, stumbling about searching for
his clothes. He had a violent headache.
When he was dressed, he wondered what to do. It occurred to him that Rain might
have been painting all night and might still be there in the masters’
dining-room. But on reflection this seemed very unlikely. He sat for a while on
the edge of his bed. The time was now five past six. He swung his legs and lit
a cigarette. The time opened in front of him like an appalling steam-filled
abyss. How could he wait so long? He walked about the room, keeping his
footsteps silent. He began to think about his wife.
Then a thought came to him, a thought which he had had last night, but which
had been overwhelmed by the violence of the events. He crept downstairs,
carrying his shoes with him, and went into the dining-room, where his
writing-desk was. He opened the drawer of the desk where he had hidden the two
draft letters which he had written, the one to Nan and the other to Tim Burke,
announcing his intentions. The letters were there, but Mor could see at once
that they had been moved from their original place. He stood for some time in a
melancholy daze looking into the drawer. Nan must have found them. That
explained the desperation which had driven her to make such a dramatic
sacrifice of her own wishes.
Mor closed the drawer and sat down on one of the chairs beside the dining-room
table. The house was cold and very silent with the death-like abandoned silence
of the early morning. He felt sick in his whole body as if ripped by
innumerable wounds. He sat for a few minutes listening for a sound, but there
was nothing to be heard. Then he decided he must go out into the road. He crept
into the hall. At the front door he put his shoes on, donned an overcoat, and
went out, closing the door quietly.
He began to walk along the pavement. The morning was exceedingly still and
pale. He was reminded of the day of Nan’s return when he had come out into this
appalling morning air, and such a feeling of catastrophe overwhelmed him that
he had to bite his hands. Today there was no rain, but the sky was pure white,
covered over absolutely with an even sheet of cloud. When he reached the main
road he wondered what to do. A car went by, desolate and portentous upon the
empty road. He decided that he would go to Brayling s Close and wait outside
until they were stirring. If he did not at least come near to where Rain was he
would fall down faint at the pains that were eating his heart.
He remembered that his bicycle was in the school. In his agitation of last
night he had left it there, and had come home on foot. He walked through the
school gates, his feet crunching loudly on the damp gravel in the midst of the empty
gardens. He found his bicycle lying on the grass where he had thrown it. The
Riley was gone. He wheeled the machine as far as the entrance to the drive.
There was no point in making haste. No one would be up yet at the Close. He
might as well spin out the time between into some sort of motion and activity.
He began to wheel the machine up the hill, and then turned into one of the
suburban roads which led past his own house to the fields. He thought he would
go by way of the fields. He wanted to be in the open and in that kinder
solitude to collect himself.
As he came down the road he saw a figure approaching him. It seemed familiar.
Then as it came nearer he saw that it was the gipsy whom he and Rain had first
seen in the wood, and who had come to shelter under his porch with such strange
results. Mor felt an immediate thrill of fear at seeing the man. The gipsy was
walking on the opposite pavement with a slow loping stride, and carrying on his
shoulder a bundle wrapped in a sheet. He was making for the main road. Mor
thought at once: he is going. The man did not look across at him, though he
could hardly have been unaware of the appearance in so empty a scene of another
human figure. Mor wondered about him, wondering if he was right in thinking
that he was deaf. The man passed, and disappeared from view, turning to the
left into the main road. Mor walked on pushing his bicycle.
He passed his own house. Then suddenly a sense of great urgency came over him.
Why had he been dawdling like this? He must hurry. How could he have endured to
delay? Why had he ever left Rain at all on the previous night? He was by now at
the beginning of the path across the fields. He jumped on to his bicycle and
began pedalling vigorously along the path; and as he rode the blanched coldness
of the morning was becoming softer, and a slight almost imperceptible glow was
spread through the air, to show that behind the thick expanse of cloud the sun
was rising higher.
Demoyte’s house, as Mor saw it from the fields, looked dead, surrounded still
by silence and sleep. He turned sharply where the path came up to the wall, and
rode along the narrower track beside it until he could turn into the drive. He
dropped his machine near the gate, and walked forward on to the circle of grass
which lay before the front door. The curtains were pulled in Demoyte’s bedroom.
Their faded colourless lining closed the window like a dead eye-lid. Mor stood
for a while looking up. Then he went forward and tried the front door. It was
locked. He looked at his watch again. It was only six-thirty. Rain must be
sleeping. She would surely want to sleep late after her exertions of last
night. If he could have got into the house he would have lain down outside her
door.
He began to walk round to the garden at the side of the house. He wanted to
look up at her window. The lawn was covered with a glistening sheet of dew in
which his steps left clear footprints behind. He walked silently across the
lawn, looking up at the corner window. Here too the curtains were still drawn.
The house was asleep. He must wait. Now that he was so near to her he felt more
tranquil. All would yet be well. He would make it so. The strength which all
along he had lacked was in him at last, as if he had been touched by a wand and
made invincible. He stood there, and his gaze wandered into the sky where a
rift had appeared in the clouds and a streak of very pale blue was to be seen.
A sharp breeze was blowing. He drew his overcoat more closely about him. He
would have liked to lie down on the grass, only the dew was too thick.
Several minutes passed. To warm himself a little he turned to walk a few steps
along the lawn, his chilled hands thrust deep into his pockets. Then his eye
was caught by a movement in the house. He looked up and saw that in one of the
library windows Miss Handforth was standing and watching him. She stood very
erect and motionless. It seemed to Mor that she must have been there a long
time. She seemed like an apparition. He stopped and looked up at her. He hardly
expected that there could be any communication between them, so far away did
she seem. So they looked at each other for a moment without any sign.
Then Miss Handforth undid the window and pushed up the sash. In a loud clear
voice, without leaning out, she said, ‘She is gone.’
Mor looked down at the grass, at the dew, and at the marks in the dew of his
own footsteps. With bent head he began to walk very slowly back towards the
front door. When he reached the door he found it open and came into the hall.
Miss Handforth was standing on the stairs.
‘Is Mr Demoyte up yet?’ Mor asked.
‘He’s in the library,’ she said, and came down the stairs and disappeared in
the direction of the kitchen.
Mor mounted the stairs very slowly. It seemed an effort to lift each foot. He
opened the library door, and saw Demoyte sitting at the round table near the
window. He was in his dressing-gown. The curtains were all pulled well back and
the morning light filled the room, warmer now, turning to a weak sunshine.
Mor took a chair and sat down on the opposite side of the table. He did not
look at Demoyte. There was silence for a moment.
‘Oh, you fool, you fool, you fool,’ said Demoyte in a tired voice.
Mor said nothing. He leaned his elbows on the table and began rubbing his eyes
and passing his two hands over his brow.
‘What happened?’ said Mor at last.
‘Nothing happened,’ said Demoyte. ‘She went on painting for two or three hours
after you left her. Then she came back here and packed all her things, and went
away in the car.
Mor turned towards Demoyte. The old man looked ashy grey with his sleepless
night. Behind him near the wall Mor saw a square of colour. It was the
portrait, which stood on the floor, ropped against one of the bookcases. Mor
did not let himself look at it. ‘Is she coming back?’ he asked Demoyte.
‘No, of course not,’ said Demoyte. ‘She said she was going straight to France,
but not to her own house. Then probably to America.’
Mor nodded slowly. He was looking down again, at the floor between his two
feet. One foot tapped rhythmically without his will.
‘When did she go?’ he asked.
‘About two hours ago,’ said Demoyte. He turned suddenly on Mor, and his anger
shook him so that he had to hold on to the table. ‘Why did you leave her? Why
did you leave her for a single moment? You must have willed to lose her!’
Mor did not look up. He could feel the table trembling between them. ‘It was
inevitable,’ he said dully.
‘Coward and fool!’ said Demoyte. Nothing was inevitable here. You have made
your own future.‘
Mor put his head down upon the table for a moment. He raised it to say, ‘Will
we see her — again?’ His voice did not have the cadence of a question.
‘Do not deceive yourself,’ said Demoyte. ‘I shall never see her again. You may
meet her once more by accident in ten years time at a party when you are fat
and bald and she is married. Would you like some coffee? I’ll get Handy to make
us some.’ He rang the bell.
‘Did she leave any message for me?’ Mor asked.
‘She left something,’ said Demoyte. He got up and went to the desk at the far
window. ‘Here it is.’
He brought a large plain envelope and put it into Mor’s hand. The envelope was
unsealed. In an agony of apprehension and insane hope Mor drew out its
contents. It was a sketch. He saw at once what it was. It was the sketch which
she had made of him on the first evening when he had come and found her
painting, and had sat with her and Demoyte, the evening when she had begun to
fall in love with him. She had never remembered to show him the sketch. He
looked at it now. She had said that it might have betrayed that she was
beginning to love him. He saw upon the paper a young man with a strong twisted
humorous face and curly hair, head thrown back in a rather proud attitude, a
thick pillar of neck, a hand raised as if in dispute. It bore some resemblance
to himself. He laid the sketch down on the table. Nothing was written upon it.
‘Was this all?’ he asked Demoyte.
‘Yes.’
Miss Handforth knocked and came in. She had interpreted the bell and carried a
tray with black coffee and a bottle of brandy. She laid it down between them
and went away without a word.
Mor mixed some brandy with the black coffee and drank it. He turned now to look
at the portrait. He got up and walked across the room to study it more closely.
Demoyte followed him. They looked at it a while in silence. Rain had changed
the head a great deal. At first sight it seemed as if she had spoilt it. The
fine sensitive lines which had built up the quiet musing expression which Mor
had liked so much had been covered over with layer after layer of tiny patches
of paint. The head stood out now solider, uglier, the expression no longer
conveyed by the fine details, but seeming to emerge from the deep structure of
the face. Mor was not sure whether he liked it better. He turned away. They
both went back to sit at the table.
‘Well,’ said Demoyte, ‘we’ve each of us received a picture of ourselves.’ He
poured out some more coffee.
‘I suppose I ought to go back,’ said Mor. ‘Nan will be wondering where I am.’
He said this without thought, automatically. towards him. ‘You
Demoyte pushed the bottle of brandy towards him. ‘You will take on the
candidature, of course?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘I will do that now. Nan won’t resist it any more. She’ll
abide by what she said last night’
‘If you drop this plan,’ said Demoyte, ‘if you let her cheat you out of that
too, I’ll never receive you in this house again. Never. I mean that.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Mor. ‘I shall go ahead. I shall go ahead now.’ He
drank some more brandy. He got up to go. He found that he still had his coat on
with the collar turned up.
Demoyte rose. ‘Aren’t you going to take this?’ He indicated the sketch which
still lay on the table.
‘No,’ said Mor, ‘you keep it for me. I should like it to be kept here.’ He
turned away from it.
He got as far as the door. ‘By the way, sir,’ he said, ‘could I ask one thing?’
‘Yes,’ said Demoyte.
‘You remember you offered to help us to send Felicity to college if it were
necessary? Does the offer still stand?’
‘Of course,’ said Demoyte.
‘Thank you,’ said Mor. ‘I may be glad to accept it. Perhaps I could discuss
this with you later.’
‘Do as you like,’ said Demoyte. Good-bye.‘
‘Good-bye,’ said Mor. He felt a desire to say ‘I’m sorry,’ but kept silent,
lingering at the door.
‘Come and see me in a few days,’ said Demoyte.
‘Yes,’ said Mor. He left the room. The last he saw of Demoyte, the old man was
leaning on the edge of the table, looking gloomily towards the portrait.
Mor went out of the front door and found his bicycle. The sun was shining now,
pale yellow, through a white haze. A steady stream of traffic was passing both
ways along the main road. Mor decided to return home by the road and not by the
fields. He got on to his machine and began to pedal slowly towards the hill. He
felt extreme weariness. His headache had not left him. There was a buzzing in
his ears and the brandy which he had drunk seemed to make his limbs weighty.
The wind was against him.