Читать книгу This Above All - Eric Knight - Страница 15

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As they left the train she felt that events had caught her in a trap. The words went in a mental roundelay:

I’m trapped now. There’s no escape. I’ve trapped myself.

She hardly felt the tug of ocean wind at her skirts as she watched the porter putting the luggage in the taxi. It seemed as if everyone were racing with malicious speed: the porter slamming the cab door behind them, the driver whirling the cab through spaces of empty airiness that were seaside resort streets. She had only impressions of bleak, wind-washed gray fronts of Victorian houses.

The cab was charging at gleeful speed along a lonesome Esplanade, with monotonous rows of iron lampposts. The lampposts had their backs turned coldly and were gazing out to the crashing sea.

With the telescoped time of a nightmare the cab was at a place. The brass plates said “Channel Hotel.” She had only time to breathe once, to see gray stone walls, a potted palm at each side of the door, and then the uniformed boy had the luggage and was racing with fearful speed up the four steps.

Her heels were clicking on tiles, going soft on carpet, clicking again on tiles. She heard him speaking to the man at the counter. It was a horrible conspiracy of a world of men. She watched a woman come through the door, look at them quickly, and go to the lift. She put out her hand as if for support.

He turned as he felt the touch. He saw the woman with the trim figure standing in the lift. A few days ago, standing here, he had mentally disrobed her.

“All right,” he said, curtly. “Let’s get the lift. It’s waiting.”

“No, please. Wait a moment.”

He looked at her, and saw her face an ashy splotch in the interior dimness.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Aren’t you well? Can I get you a drink?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s it. Can’t we have a drink?”

He took her arm and walked to the lounge. They sat in the chairs. She sat, unfeeling, unmoving, until she saw the glass before her.

“Drink that down,” he said.

She drank, and sat on the edge of the chair, staring at the dazzle of light that was the window. She drew a breath and lifted her head.

“All right,” she said. “Now.”

She rose, and he walked beside her. The lift raced upward. They were walking down a lonesome corridor. The boy was unlocking the door. They were inside alone. She saw him flick his hat toward a bed and hated him for it. She went to the window, turning her back to him and the room, and stared out. She heard his voice.

“Ah, there’s my bag. They’ve been keeping it here for me.”

She stared out to the ocean, staring at it but not seeing it. She heard him speaking again.

“It isn’t a bad room at all, is it?” he said, casually.

She did not move. She drew a breath and began speaking.

“It’s really a very nice room—sunny and everything. And it looks out over the Esplanade, although we should be able to get a good room. The place is practically deserted. And twenty-two shillings a day is high enough for bed and breakfast. Isn’t it twenty-two shillings they said? I wonder if he thought I was really your wife. He couldn’t have. I didn’t have a wedding ring on. I should have got one—at the sixpenny bazaar. You couldn’t tell them from real for all intents and purposes ...”

He heard only the sound of her voice, gabbling quickly. He blew out his breath and then got up. He went to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Stop talking,” he said. “What do you really mean behind all those words?”

“I don’t mean anything.”

“Of course you do.”

“All right, I do, then. I’m just wondering.”

“What?”

“I’m wondering just what I’m letting myself in for. That’s all—and I have a right to wonder it if I want.”

“You do. You’re a free agent. You have a right to do anything you want.”

She did not answer.

“Look here,” he said. “I don’t want any agony for anyone. If you feel that way about it, we can pack right up and get out again—or you can alone if you wish. If you’ve changed your mind—just say so, that’s all.”

“That’s cowardly,” she said. “Putting it up to me.”

“Well, what the hell ...”

“I don’t want to be asked. I want to be told. You’re the man. Take the responsibility of decision!”

“Oh, hell,” he said.

He went and sat on the bed. She stood with her back to him, staring from the window. Then at last she came, quietly, and sat beside him.

“You misunderstood me,” she said. “I don’t want you to say I can go if I want. A woman doesn’t want that. I want to be told that everything else in the world could happen, anything in the world—but above everything else you didn’t want me to go—wouldn’t let me go—couldn’t keep the world going round if I did go. That’s what I meant.”

“One can’t say that.”

“I suppose not,” she said.

Then she laughed and got up quickly.

“How silly of me,” she said. “Wondering about being here. And I’m here, aren’t I? Shall we unpack?”

“I’ve nothing much to unpack,” he said. “I’ll have to buy a few things.”

“I see,” she said.

She went back to the window.

“Then how about going for a walk? It’s such a nice day and ...”

He looked up at her. His mind lost itself in indecisions. Then a fragment of memory caught him.

“A very nice day?” he asked.

“A very, very nice day,” she said, turning, slowly.

“Well, if it’s a very, very nice day,” he said. “That’s different.”

He picked up his hat from the bed, and when he turned he saw that she was smiling. He smiled in answer.

“Shall we explore?”

He held out his arm.

“We’ll explore,” she said, taking it.

They went along the long, carpeted hall. The place was deathly quiet with the silence of unoccupancy. It seemed, in that quietness, an act of rudeness to ring for the lift.

They went down the steps, and across the lobby. The uniformed boy and the small man behind the desk watched them go. They came into the sunshine, and it made them blink. They marched along the Esplanade, past the ornamental lampposts, past the benches where no one sat.

“I know what it is,” she said, suddenly. “It’s like being at the seaside in winter—no one here, the Esplanade stretching emptily for a mile, everything all to yourself. Just like winter—only the sun’s shining. Have you been at the seaside in winter?”

“No, I haven’t. Have you?”

“Oh, yes. It’s much the nicest time to be here—although this is very nice. It’s much nicer like this—without any crowds.”

“Oh, much nicer,” he said.

They went along steadily until from the hotel their figures were dots, far up the vanishing perspective of the Esplanade.

That afternoon they walked east, far out to the place where the promenade became a road, to where the road became a path going up to the cliffs. They bent their knees, climbing steadily, up to the top where the breeze blew strongly and evenly.

They spoke about the smell of the sea—the strong odor of rotting kelp and spray. They sat by the cliff edge, watching how the waves below in the bay came like tiny eddies, creeping with a synthetic sort of time and space of their own.

Only faintly, up there, could they hear the boom of the waves as they struck the looming chalk face. As humans they became small and chastened by the vastness of far horizons.

She hugged her knees and spoke, her voice small in the great spaces.

“I’m sorry I was so ratty,” she said.

“There’s no need to be upset,” he told her.

“Not really—only—you see, I ran into my aunt.”

“You what?”

“My aunt.”

“Your aunt! Where?”

“At the hotel. Did you see the woman in the lift—she went up alone when we went to get the drink.”

He stared at her.

“You mean to say that woman—the rather trim one in the tailored suit—that’s your aunt?”

She nodded.

“Isn’t it incredible, that of all the places we could pick, she’s at the same place for some unearthly reason?”

“No, it isn’t incredible,” he said. “It’s strangely just and trite, that’s all. I never knew of anyone who—who went away for a secret holiday—as we have, who didn’t run into someone he knew. It never fails.”

She nodded, slowly.

“Well, I say,” he said. “Did she see you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Perhaps she didn’t.”

“She did.”

“Well—by God. We can’t go back there, then.”

She lifted her head.

“Why not? I’m not going to run away from Iris or anyone else!”

“But if you meet ...”

“We won’t. I know Iris. She’ll move immediately and pretend she hasn’t seen me, and save it all up for some opportune occasion.”

“But if you do meet, what’ll she think?”

She lifted her head.

“Iris,” she said, “has no right to assume anything wrong about my conduct, no matter what the circumstances are, or what the exterior evidences might lead anyone to conclude.”

He looked at her, sitting proudly and calmly. Then he thumped his knee in laughter.

“Oh, my Lord God,” he said. “I never heard anything so beautifully illogical in my life. So beautifully and proudly and magnificently illogical. Let us return to the hotel with those brave banners going on before.”

He took her arm and they walked back to the town. They had dinner at the hotel. They were the only ones in the dining room. The old waiter stood at attention near their table. The place was so silent that there was a self-consciousness to talking.

They could feel only the lonesomeness of the place, the emptiness of the room, the forlornness of themselves.

After dinner they sat on a bench on the deserted Esplanade, and watched the clear light drift away.

The sunlight that had left the place went marching across wide oceans to new shores, going west, across a new continent, over far plains, into ranges of mountains and dry, sun-baked lands.