Читать книгу This Above All - Eric Knight - Страница 14

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The countryside was a moving tapestry of rare perfection. The time of the harvest was near. The unusually glorious summer had brought all green things to a rich fullness.

Already the Land Girls of the new war were getting in the hay harvest. In unmown fields the daisies stood white and the sunlight lay warmly over the land.

The telephone wires dipped and dipped in hypnotic rhythm beyond the window as he watched this wealth of August. Then he heard her voice.

“Please say you’re glad to see me,” she said.

There was an edge of tears to her tone, but he felt he could not turn his head.

“I am,” he said. “You should know I am.”

She looked down at the floor of the compartment.

“I’m not being silly,” she said. “But I would like you to say something to buck me up. After all, it’s upsetting—being sneaky and getting on the wrong train—and I ... I ...”

His head rang with a curious aching. But he was repelled by his own self-pity. He turned from the window in a surge of anger against himself, and kneeling before her he lifted her chin with his hand.

He looked into her eyes, steadily. Now, close to her, he could see the light, flecked sunflower patterns in the center of the gray-blue irises. The whites of her eyes were unmuddied. He shifted his too-close gaze to her hair. It was smooth, honey-colored. He lifted her cap and set it aside.

“I’ve never seen you with your cap off before,” he said.

Her hair was drawn back simply from a center parting to the knot at the back of her head.

“Honey top,” he said.

He touched her hair with his hand.

“Real?” he said.

She nodded, and her eyes were half-tearful.

“In a fake world,” he said, “where nearly everything is brittle and false! It’s real—and you’re real, Prudence. You’re very real. So much realer than I am.”

“I’m not. I’m a fearful person. And a coward, and so much afraid.”

“Now, now,” he said. “You’re the realest thing—right at this moment, one of the few things I believe in. You mustn’t mind if I am often less than you.”

“You’re not less. I couldn’t like you if you were.”

“I like you, too.”

She nodded, slowly.

“You tell the truth,” she said. “And for that—you may kiss me.”

Clive took her face between his hands and kissed her. And then, as he knelt there, the door opened with a harsh grating sound. He saw the conductor, a seedy man with mustache adroop as if wet with tea drops.

“Whoops,” the conductor said, as if he had stepped into an occupied bathroom. He turned and rapped on the glass.

It was a comedy exit, and they burst into glad laughter.

“It’s all right,” Clive said. “Come in.”

The man came in, averting his eyes exaggeratedly.

“Sorry to interrupt yer, sir. But I’ve got to punch your tickets.”

Clive rose, and they began to fumble for the tickets. The conductor stood, waiting, his eyes lifted to the ceiling.

“And she’d never ’ad ’er ticket punched before,” he quoted, quietly, as if to himself, but knowing they could hear him.

He looked down at the tiny squares of cardboard.

“One for Leaford,” he chanted. “And one for Pompey! Good old Pompey!”

He handed the tickets back.

“Different objectives, but the same path,” he chanted. “Must be friends, eh?”

The cheerful griminess of the man enveloped them.

“Of course. We’re very good friends,” Prudence said.

He waved his hand at them with a sort of pushing motion.

“I knew it the moment I saw yer,” he said.

Clive found a florin and held it out to him.

“Could we keep this compartment?”

The man cocked a finger, half in salute and half in a conspiratorial gesture.

“See what I can do. I’ll be right back.”

When he came back he knocked at the door. He slid it aside and put a card against the window.

“Private, reserved,” he said. “ ’Gainst the rules—but we have so little business these days.”

“Well, tell us about business,” Clive said. “How is it?”

The man shut himself inside with them and leaned against the door.

“To sum it up in a word, sir ...”

“Think of that,” Clive said.

The man grinned, appreciatively.

“Well, I’ll leave yer,” he said. “It’s all right—you know, I was in the last war meself. I know how it is.”

“How is it?” Clive said.

“Glad you asked me, sir. Since you ’ave, I should say that amor longa est, and tempus fudgits. Latin, that is, as undoubtedly you both recognize. Used to say that to me old woman when I was on leave. She wasn’t me old woman then. Just engaged—that was all.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, sir. Well, ’ere I stand, wasting your fudgiting tempus. Good-by, sir. And thank you. And—good luck.”

“Good luck to you, too,” Clive said.

The man paused by the door.

“I’ll—pull down your blind,” he said, in a sort of mock reproof.

He did so, and then he was gone. Prudence sat on the edge of the seat, looking into infinity. Clive, opposite her, looked up at the pictures above the luggage net. There was a photo of Llandudno, one of the Menai Bridge, one of Fountains Abbey. He cleared his throat, and he saw the focus of her eyes come to him. He smiled.

“You know,” he said. “They’ve had those there for years—ever since I was a kid. They must be permanent—like the Magna Carta or the Dover cliffs.”

She did not answer.

“Cheerful bloke, the conductor,” he said.

She did not answer, still.

“What’s the matter?”

She shook her head.

“Yes,” she said. “He was cheerful. Only ...”

“Only what?”

“Only—you can’t understand. But—this was the first time in my life I’ve been included in a look of bawdiness.”

“Oh, come now. He wasn’t bawdy.”

“You don’t see it. A man couldn’t. Only—all my life until now, I’ve always been looked at as if I were a china vase. Nice to look at—but that’s all. And then, all of a sudden, I’m looked at as if I were—what?”

“A thunder mug,” he said, curtly.

“You’re not helping. No, as if suddenly I’m something utilitarian, hot and alive—and naked—with all my insides visible from the outside. You wouldn’t know what I mean, unless you’d been a girl all your life until ...”

“Don’t let it worry you. He meant to be friendly.”

“I know—but the way he pulled down the blind and shut the door ...”

“He meant to be friendly, I tell you. Can’t you understand? The warm, gregarious, friendly understanding of the common man—or have you no touch with common man? He meant it generously—his offering to you. Friendliness!”

She put out her hand and touched him.

“You don’t see what I mean.”

“Well, what do you mean?”

“Don’t be angry. It doesn’t matter.”

She sat back and looked through the window. Then she turned and smiled at him.

“You mustn’t mind me. Be a little patient. If I take myself seriously—that’s part of me and don’t dislike any part of me.”

He stared through the window without answering.

“Closing the door,” she said. “Don’t you see, Clive? There are so many doors shutting behind me just now—and sometimes I want to stop it all for a while. Not to go back, because the doors shut permanently and you can’t go back. I know I want to go on—only sometimes I get a bit breathless and I want to say: ‘Stop—just a moment. Hold the world still, please—just long enough for me to get a little bit used to being where I am.’ ”

He wrinkled his forehead and stared at her.

“No,” she said. “You’ll make lines come.”

Slowly he smiled, and then lifted his forefinger.

“Listen,” he said.

She lifted her head, and looked from side to side.

“What is it?”

“The world,” he said. “It’s stopping. And it isn’t going to move again until you say: ‘I’ve got my breath. I’m used to being where I am. I’m utterly bored with being where I am. I want it to go on again.’ ”

She looked at his eyes, and he winked.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “That’s one of the nice parts about it. I never thought that when you had a man of your own he could say such simple things and make you feel so wonderful inside. That’s a part of it I’d never imagined. And you do it so well. Is it because it’s really you—or because you know how to handle women?”

He shook his head and put his finger to his lips in dumb motion.

“Everything’s stopped,” he said. “Even clocks. Even my mouth.”

He closed his eyes and lay back, feeling now the gentle rhythm of the train, the swaying, the train-smell, the endless jazz beat of the wheels on the rail joints, and the clacking at the points. He opened his eyes when he heard her laughing.

“It’s all over now,” she said. “You mustn’t mind me. Poor Niobe, weeping over her departed maidenhood.”

“You said maidenhood, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

She came and sat beside him.

“It’s over now,” she said. “And he was truly a nice man—the conductor. It was nice of him to include me with the living people instead of keeping me out with the china vases. Even if I’m a thunder mug. They’re very useful, you know—and much more indispensable than vases—and very human.”

“Oh, very.”

“He was a nice conductor. I see what you mean now. He made it all human and sad and yet happy—just the opposite of the man at the hotel who made it all grimy.”

“Let’s keep that smudge out of it.”

“It’s like vegetable, animal, mineral. All my life until now it’s been a useless sort of vegetable life. Now I’m animal. That doesn’t sound nice.”

“It’s all right. When we’re planted we’ll damned soon take up the mineral phase of existence.”

“And tempus does fudgit—and the world won’t stop and let you examine your fears. So—on to the next door! Because ...”

Her eyes went round the compartment.

“... We’re getting better at it. At least we have luggage this time, darling.”

“You do. All I have is a bag in a hotel at Leaford.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“If you like.”

“I like.”

He looked at her bags.

“You have some other clothes?” he asked.

“Some.”

“You could change here,” he said. “Then when we get off—you won’t be in uniform.”

“What’s wrong with the uniform?”

“Nothing. But you’re a sergeant—and in my army life I’m a lowest private. Every time I see the stripes I feel at a psychological disadvantage.”

“That isn’t it. Why do you hate the uniform so much?”

“I don’t hate it, I tell you. Only—I’d like to think for a few moments, sometimes—that there isn’t any war.”

“I see,” she said, slowly.

She opened a grip. She looked in it, turned to him and then smiled.

“Please don’t watch.”

“Why not?”

“Well—I’m not used to it. Or—it doesn’t matter. You keep your eyes open if you want to. Only I do wish I had some nice things.”

“What do you want?”

“If you were a woman you’d know.”

She took off her tunic and unhooked her skirt.

“Here I go, practically on my honeymoon and——”

“And what?”

She stepped from the skirt in a flurry of motion.

“All her life a girl wonders and imagines. How it will be, and where it will be, and what it will be. I suppose every girl plans it, and you think of a beautiful lounging robe and—and—well, you know what one would think of. And then, here I am, caught ...”

“... With your trousers down.”

“What an expression!”

“Do you know, you have very pretty legs, my dear?”

“Thank you, sir. You can say nice things.”

He rose from his seat. She clutched the dress toward her and turned, holding out one hand.

“Please—don’t.”

“You’re very pretty, too.”

“I know, darling—but—please look out of the window. They say the countryside has never been so beautiful as this year. Look at that.”

“Why should I?”

“Oh, I’ve got no nice underclothes with me, darling. And I’m mad enough to bite a parson, because I have such wonderful ones home, and I left them all behind to be Spartan and businesslike for the duration. Please look out of the window, and then, when I’m dressed, I’ll tell you. And you turn round and be no end surprised, and tell me how pretty I look out of uniform.”

He stared at her and then smiled.

“All right,” he said.

He sat beside the window and looked at the dipping wires. Soon he was caught in an induced hypnosis, and he felt his head nodding in answer to the pattern of movement. His mind seemed very far away when he heard her voice.

“Now, darling.”

He turned to look at her. His eyes were dulled by the brightness of the daylight beyond the window. The compartment seemed dark. Then, like a fade-in of the cinema, he saw her emerge—first just a slimness in a dark-blue figured dress. There was a wide-brimmed hat set back from her head. It framed the wash of her hair, and her face beneath was a pale smudge. His mind ricocheted and a fragment of it was thinking: “Laurencin was right. I never saw how she meant it until now.”

“Well?” she said.

Her voice wakened him again. He moved his lips. He wanted time to think. This girl—now she was like a stranger—a taller, cooler, slimmer stranger than the girl in the bulk of a uniform.

The train was clicking on. He grasped at a feeling that this was not new. All this had happened, exactly as now, once before. Long, long ago it had been.

Why should one have such odd sensations? Of course it hadn’t happened. What quirk of the mind made one feel as if it had? This was the only time it had happened. And yet—there was still the sensation that he was reliving a cycle of incidents all over again. It had happened, exactly like this. She had turned. She had said, in exactly the same tone: “Well?”

And he had said—had said ...

“You’re—you’re very pretty.”

“Thank you, sir. You remembered well.”

He rose and took her hand.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “You shouldn’t have asked me to say it, because it’s left me nothing to say of my own accord.”

She disengaged his hand and sat down by the window. He sat opposite her.

“You’re very beautiful,” he said, slowly.

“That’s nice,” she smiled. “Before I’ve only been pretty; but now I’m beautiful. It’s all progressing very nicely, isn’t it?”

She sat opposite him, primly like a child in a Sunday-school seat. It was as if, in some feminine-childish way, she was tremendously pleased with herself.