Читать книгу Smith - Warwick Deeping - Страница 19

Table of Contents

Three golden days in October. They could not have been more fortunate in the weather or in their lodgings, and when Keir slipped out of bed on that Sunday morning and pulled up the blind, he found that the sea was visible, a pearly, flickering sea. A friend of his at Kingham who had recommended him these lodgings had assured him that the landlady was not a liar. Keir stood there for a moment with an untidy head of hair, and his eyes at gaze.

“Fine day, kid.”

He was conscious of Sybil stirring in the bed, and both sound and movement were seductive.

“What’s the time, Keir?”

He looked at his watch on the dressing-table.

“Just after seven.”

“We needn’t get up yet. Come back, Keir.”

He was aware of her smiling at him, and of her hand turning the bed-clothes back. The whiteness of it seemed to open like the petals of a flower. He lowered the blind and slipped into the bed. Her warm, soft body pressed itself against his.

“Oh, Keir.”

“You’ll be tired.”

“Oh, no, I shan’t. Besides, does it matter?”

When the little struggle was over, they fell asleep again.

They spent the morning wandering along the sea-front and sitting on the beach. It was an idle, happy, desultory day, with the sea in an innocent mood, and Keir picked up flat pebbles and played at ducks and drakes. He made one stone leap seven times on the surface of that calm sea, but when Sybil tried her hand at the game, her stones plunged and sank.

“They won’t skidder for me, Keir.”

He looked at her with the benevolence of the young male.

“It’s not your job.”

He was happily obsessed by the youth and the sex and the silk of her. She was still so fresh and strange to him; she had both roused and assuaged the sweet anguish of sex. The illusion of her strangeness lasted for him through those three October days, and remembering them in later years, he would wonder at the thing called love. It was like a plant from which the beautiful petals suddenly fell, but if you had patience and pity, it would put forth other flowers that were less vivid, but more deeply scented and enduring.

“Come on, can’t loaf all day.”

He dragged her up, feeling himself very much man and her man.

“Where are we going?”

“To see the old town.”

They discovered that part of Hastings that still fished and smelt of tar and spread nets on the shingle and hung its tackle in queer black wooden towers. They explored the old town, and Keir was interested in the timber-work of some of the old houses. They climbed up to High Wickham and wandered over the grassy slopes and sat down close to the cliff.

“Funny to think that France is over there.”

He sat with an arm round her.

“Perhaps we’ll travel some day, kid. I don’t see life as all Kingham. How do you say: ‘I love you’ in French?”

Sybil didn’t know, so he kissed her.

On the Monday they took seats in a motor-coach and drove to Winchelsea and Rye, returning by the upland road past Brede Broad Oak. Sussex was deeply green and preparing for the golden festival of her oaks. They had glimpses of the blue sea, and Keir sat with his arm round his young wife. It was the end of the season, and they had the back seat of the coach to themselves.

He said: “I shall remember all this, Syb. It’s been wonderful, hasn’t it?”

She snuggled up against him, and her face had a dreamy, tender tranquillity.

“Wonderful, Keir; I’m so happy.”

“Same here.”