The Secret Journey (47 page)

‘Sometimes,' she said, ‘sometimes I went out of a night, and Desmond often wondered where I went, but I never told him. Only once did he ask me directly.'

‘Where did you go? Sheila, where did you go? I know you used to go out. People used to talk about it. Even the men on the railway talked to each other about it.'

‘Perhaps at that time I wasn't fully aware of what I'd really done. When one's whole life has been free, irresponsible and quite aimless, without hope, conviction or purpose, one is a little bewildered when one realizes that suddenly one has ceased to move, to grow, to think, to believe, to wonder. One doesn't realize for a long time that freedom has ended. One can't understand. Then I realized I was actually married. I was chained at last. Here in this large city, hemmed in by walls, bricks, slates, people, conventions, ideas. I was at last a prisoner! I was saved! I was saved from myself. I had found a rock to which I could cling. I was a mystery—he an unknown quantity. Here was a meaning to life, after all. People doing things, men working, women working, night and day, eating, sleeping, seeing. Everything became orderly, chaos vanished. Existence had a purpose. One was beginning to grow.' She paused for a moment, then continued:

‘He knew—your brother Desmond knew, and now I know too—that he loves me deeply, passionately, with all the simple faith of a child. But I didn't know. Why didn't I know? Because I didn't know my own self. That lonely, senseless, mean, selfish life from which I ran away had blocked the way to all understanding. But that's not all, no, that's not all. When one decides to break away from that which is rooted and strong, and seemingly impossible, and one does break away, one pays for it. And I have paid. Yes, paid. Oh, Christ! When I think of it. But it's nightmarish. I won't—I refuse to talk about it any longer. Here I am just beginning to grow—to grow, and do you know what you have done? Do you realize, Peter my dear boy, what you have done? You have frightened me. You have awakened something in me that has hidden itself so deep down, has lain there so long, that I never, never realized that it did lie there—that in my deep self it was actually living, only waiting for some hand to touch it, some breath to stir it into being again. You have made me afraid again. I know it was you, your voice, your feelings, your lips, your hair, oh, everything about you, that made this sleeping thing suddenly burst into flower. Now I am afraid—not of you, or of Desmond, but of myself. I can't trust myself—it's like being in the middle of some desolate desert. Something in me is dead, voiceless, empty. I can strike and find it hollow. My past won't let me alone. It dogs me everywhere. I am ashamed, miserable. I can't help myself. Peter! Please! Please! Don't mention running away, please, not yet.'

He released his hold upon her, sat rigid and stared out over the darkened waters. ‘Now she is afraid! God! Is she just fooling me? And yet, I could get money. Yes, I could get money from that fat, greasy bitch.'

‘If I got money would you come away with me? Oh, Sheila, don't you see that you are the most beautiful person in my life? Have you no pity, only for yourself?'

‘Go away? Would I? That is being ruthless. And I know full well what that word means. I learned it well. But here one can't be ruthless. This is a different world. Peter, don't you think I owe a certain duty to your brother? Have I to go on and on hurting people, humiliating myself, confronting myself with my own emptiness? How can I run away now? And when you have put all this behind you—what you call the misery and monotony of Gelton behind you; when you have shut your ears to what you called that frightful sound—you know the sound I mean—what then? Have you thought of that? Aren't you thoughtless and impossible, and even a little indifferent? Don't you ever think of how sacred that life must have been at home with your brothers and sister, your father and mother? Do you ever ask yourself what you will really do when you have put all this far behind you? You are eighteen, you are intelligent, you love me. You want me to fly away. One has to have wings first, and one must grow them. Listen: in ten years you'll be indifferent, in twenty you'll hate me. Just think of that. I am just turned thirty-three now—you are just a boy. I can understand your ruthlessness, your indifference, even your egotism, for that is what it really is, isn't it? Isn't it the voice of your own youth?' She gave a sigh.

‘In the two years I have lived in this city I have seen many youths just like you, lost, helpless, blowing about in the wind in this large city, and I have seen them working too. Every one of them teaches me something, every face, every smile, every frown, every barefooted child, every starving woman, every miserable thing that rings their lives around, upbraids me, scoffs, torments me. I set foot in this strange world, and at first I thought I had fallen into some forest among wolves, into some jungle among wild beasts. But time passed, things changed, pictures changed colour, voices changed sound, all the daily life of Gelton changed meaning. I don't know what made me marry your brother. Perhaps I was mad at the time, but I seem to have just flung my whole life and future at him. And we were married. At first I hated him, loathed him for his ignorance, his arrogance that mocked this very ignorance, his narrow-mindedness, his extreme selfishness. Then gradually I learned what a rock he was—and then I knew why I had run off with him. I wanted to cling to something, and here was a solid rock. I wanted to be taken out of myself, and here was a strong hand. I wanted to live, and here was a living being, passionate, earnest, ruthless, mine. Here was one whom I now find sly, dishonest, more ruthless than you could ever be, for you are at the mercy of your feelings and your intelligence. He is not. He is a solid block. He pushes himself along, not by the ordinary routes, but the hardest one. And he is going to climb right to the top.' She stared out over the water.

‘He soars on illusions, they apply the power to push this solid block up the hill. He has turned his back on everything, as you hope to do, but he knows where he is going and you do not. Don't you understand, Peter? Don't you? I do love you, really. But be patient. Be patient. You will when you understand me better. When two people from quite different worlds meet for the first time they are awkward, tongue-tied—they cannot comprehend one another for a long time. Why! You are crying. Oh, my dear Peter.'

She tried to lift his head, to take his hands away from his face, but she could not move them. It was as though they were welded there. She could not move them. And he felt her hot breath upon his face.

‘Don't touch me! Don't touch me!' he mumbled through his fingers. ‘You are only fooling me.'

All trust, all hope, all kindness, all faith, ran amok in him. He wanted to shout, to scream aloud how she had soiled his trust, his real love, his beautiful dream. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, to shake the life out of her—to strangle that mocking voice. Yes, it did mock. She played on his feelings, she touched all that was most sensitive in him, the fruit and essence of his love for her were sinking in the quagmire of his discovery. She lied to him—she only pretended she loved him.

‘Peter! Dear Peter! Forgive me! Please! Don't be angry. Try—try to understand.'

‘Don't touch me.' He lifted his hands away from his face and looked at her, and she felt his cheeks wet and smeared with tears and the warm sweat of his own hands. She sensed the hurt in him, she could sense it in that sudden withdrawal. He drew his body farther away, until at last he was alone on the other end of the seat.

‘Don't come near me! Don't! I can't trust myself. Oh, Sheila!'

In the darkness his face, so white, looked like a splash of light. His lips trembled, the salt tears smarted his eyes.

‘It's you who are the coward,' he flung the words at her like a whip, ‘you! You are afraid of him: even as you are afraid of yourself. I do love you, Sheila, honestly, with all my heart. I am
not
a child. Do you understand? I am not some silly boy,' and he stamped his anger into the cold, wet sand. ‘Why shouldn't we run away if you say you love me? Why shouldn't we? Mother! Does she care for my feelings, when I was shut away seven years, and she knew—she knew that I was ashamed, disappointed, angry with myself, because I couldn't be what she wanted. She knew I was waiting all that time for her to say “Come out of it! Come out of it!” But she didn't, and now I'm out and I'm free, and there's you—and there's all that dirt behind. Don't you see, Sheila? Aren't we in the same boat? Aren't we both trying to run away from what we hate?'

‘It is easy for you, but not for me. You're different. I'm a woman, and a woman can only see all around her traps, traps. Don't you see? She is trapped by feelings, by considerations. It is willed that her own hand shall shut the door against her own deepest nature, that she shall betray herself. I am bound. You do not understand the significance of that. How can you? For there is something in a woman—so deep, so hidden away, so swathed and smothered, that no man can see it. But when a woman loves out of her own true, passionate self, then and then only does she reveal it. You don't understand now, but you will. You are like a mirror to me, for until you came I had never realized my own cold, barren—oh, my own emptiness. But you are full, yet from the fullness you learn nothing. That is right and just. A time will come. You can't force that which will not be forced. So, please, my darling boy, understand me. I am not thinking of myself. I am not pitying myself. You see, I am only human like yourself. Come!'

She drew nearer to him, but he would have moved even further but that he was now crouched over the very end of the seat.

‘Leave me alone,' he shouted. ‘Leave me alone.'

He couldn't believe it. He was walled in by doubt, by rage. It seemed impossible. It seemed mad, crazy, cruel. That she should have loved him and then let those lies fall from her lips. Lies. All lies. She was taking advantage of him. She was laughing behind his back, pulling faces over his shoulder. She was tormenting him and gloating over it. The lies poisoned her very breath. He hated to look at her—and despised himself for the very rage he could not will himself to control. And he thought of all he had said to her, of how trusting, generous, he had been. He had ransacked every feeling, he had surrendered everything to her because he loved her. Now she lectured him, now she pitied her own past, now she laughed at his years, taunted him with her own. He sank even lower upon the bench, as though his own musing dragged him down, down. Suddenly he looked up. Sheila was standing before him. Her face showed neither anger nor hurt. It revealed nothing. It was wooden, expressionless, and once more those eyes had that peculiar hard and lightless look. She bent down and pressed her face upon his hair. He did not speak. He sat quite motionless, his eyes resting upon her bare throat, and now, like a sudden unconscious and brutal curiosity, following that white line until it stopped where the lapels of the blue coat came together, stopped and sensed and felt what lay hidden behind it. That lovely white skin he had touched, those lovely breasts upon which he had laid his head.

She heard the thumping of his heart, and she allowed him to draw her down upon the bench. She lay there, white-faced, tense, eyes wide open, staring into the clear sky. She heard the rumbling of those waters in her ears. She saw his face lower itself to meet her own, and putting her arms behind his neck she drew him down upon her.

They spoke now by silence, the one looking at the other, and understanding, and divining the meaning behind this voiceless surrender. It grew darker still, the wind came up suddenly, salt-laden, passing over their heads. They were one with this indisputable silence and serenity. They were enveloped in the grandeur and serenity of the scene.

‘Dear Peter.'

‘Don't you see how I love you, Sheila?'

‘Ssh!' she whispered, and stopped his mouth with her gloved hand. ‘Ssh!'

‘I must go now,' he said. He turned the sand out of the turn-up of his trousers and got up from the bench.

‘Yes. It's late! Come, let's go!' She took his arm and they hurried along the beach. Their steps were soundless, the sand seemed plastic, even flesh-like to the tread. A mist had begun to rise upon the river. The dark surface of the water became illuminated, and looking south, they saw many lights which seemed to throb upon the water.

They were back in the cobbled street. It was half-past ten. Everything was shrouded in silence, that silence that falls upon a city with such dramatic suddenness, as though with the coming of darkness all the desperate life that peopled it now scurried away into hiding—into holes and corners, behind walls and fences. Gelton was masked. They came out of the cobbled street just as a car was coming down the road. It was a late car journeying citywards, and it was almost empty. They boarded it, climbed the stairs, and sat huddled together in the back seat, she shivering with the cold, he still warm and throbbing from that scene upon the deserted bench. Hardly had they made themselves comfortable than the tram stopped and the conductor called up, ‘Next stop Stage.'

They went downstairs again. The tram went on, leaving them isolated on the cold, uninviting concrete of the pavement.

She began to laugh. ‘How silly we've been, Peter darling. Kiss me,' and she pouted her lips and smiled a most puckish smile. ‘You see how far we've travelled. We've explored oceans and seas and countries and continents, and we've forgotten about things at home. Did you get that job you were telling me about?' She put her mouth to his ear. ‘Tell me, little boy, aren't you glad you gave up that ship? Didn't you jump when your mother said stay? Didn't you realize that her weakness was a very advantageous one?'

‘What do you mean?' he asked, looking astounded. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Oh, Peter! Peter! You say you love me and you don't see what I mean. Oh!' and she looked disappointed at once. ‘Oh, Peter. You are such a silly, you know. I know you better than you know yourself. I can see right through you.'