No Truce with Time Read online

  There was a letter for her the next day. There was a letter the day after. Two days were missed; then came a long serial letter, dated at odd times : Sunday 6.0 a.m., Sunday 11.13 p.m., Monday 2.12 p.m.

  All that time she was seeing him at the club, at cocktail and at dinner parties. Though he had received by cable confirmation of his approval of El Santo, he had to submit a detailed report to his directors. He still needed to make daily trips into the country; trips on which she accompanied him as before. During those trips, during those talks, no reference would be made to the letter that had been delivered that morning or the previous night. Yet the fact that those letters had been written brought a change into their relations. They shared a secret; there was a bond between them. It was a situation that appealed to her. It was romantic, and unusual: the kind of thing that might happen to the heroine of a novel.

  She found herself looking forward to his letters; not merely because they were love-letters. They were amusing in them-selves; as comments on the daily routine, on their acquaintances ; they were personal and intimate, written direct to her; full of “Don’t you think so’s” and “Haven’t you often thought’s “; a talking out loud to her.

  As the days went by, the letters grew more intimate. He gave her glimpses of his life in England, pictures of his home and family. She became interested in his family through reading of it, in the same way that one grows interested in the minor characters in a novel. But it was in himself that her interest really grew. She wanted to know more, much more of him: what manner of man was this who had fallen in love with her so tempestuously, so unusually, so romantically? In particular she was curious to know with what women, with what kind of women, he had been in love before.

  “You’ve told me so much about yourself. But the really important things you’ve left untold,” she said.

  “What do you call the important things?”

  “The things that you yourself must have thought important. Being in love, for instance.”

  “I never was in love.”

  “You must have thought you were.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Often?”

  “Only once.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Little and dark and rather plump.”

  “How old?”

  “Twenty-one, twenty-four : I was never certain.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At Jersey, on a cricket tour.”

  “That sounds romantic.”

  “I thought so too, at first.”

  “Did it last long?”

  “In a kind of way.”

  “Please tell me.”

  The story had to be dragged out of him. It was something of which he was half ashamed, half proud: over which he was still resentful.

  They had met on the journey out. It had been rough, as only the Channel can be. When they were still in the Solent the old-fashioned steamer had begun to pitch. By the time that they struck open sea the bar was practically empty. Between those few who had remained the weather had struck a bond of kinship. It was a cheery party. She had been the cheeriest of them all. He had been amazed by her capacity to consume brandies and ginger ale without any apparent change of manner.

  She was staying at the same hotel, he found. Himself, he was staying there a bare three days. On the fourth morning their side was leaving to play Guernsey. He would have to dine with the team each evening, but they could see each other in the mornings. After dinner they could go and dance.

  They kept their promise. During that three days they were rarely out of each other’s company. They were bathing before seven in the swimming-pool. With huge appetites they tackled a three-course breakfast in the large dining-room that with its superb view over St. Helier seemed like the top deck of a super liner. On the sun terrace afterwards they raced each other with the crossword puzzle. She was not particularly interested in cricket, but she came down to the field to watch. He made no runs. But he laughed when she tried to sympathize with him.

  “I’m glad. I’ve longer to talk with you.”

  He had felt genuinely sad when the bar had closed on the last evening. She was such fun, so gay, so pretty. They were alone, the sister-in-law and brother who were chaperoning her having retired early.

  “I’m heart-broken at having to say goodbye,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “There’s no need to say that just yet. I’ve a bottle in my room.”

  An hour later he was gazing down at her with wondering eyes.

  “If anyone had told me three days ago that this would happen …”

  She laughed at that.

  “I could have told you that.”

  “You …”

  “Idiot. I fell for you at sight.”

  It was over two years since it happened. Yet an angry frown flushed his cheeks as he described the incident. He had believed so completely what she told him; accepting it as a literal truth. It was love at first sight, he had believed. The thing one read about in books : a miracle.

  “I was furious at having to go,” he said. “I’d have given anything to stay. But one can’t walk out on a cricket side. It upsets things for all the rest. And anyhow, we’d meet in London. She’d promised that. I never doubted that. Nothing like that had happened to me before. I was certain it must mean to her what it had meant to me. Even more perhaps. Hadn’t she known it before I had?”

  They had met in London. It hadn’t been easy to arrange things. He was still at Oxford. His parents expected him to spend his vacs with them. Moreover to conduct a love-affair in London was an expensive business when one was still at Oxford, and when the girl one was in love with lived with her parents. He hadn’t a great deal of money : a friend in Chelsea allowed him to use his studio. But he could not take her about in the way he wanted. It was because, he had suspected, the setting was so inappropriate that she became as the autumn wore into winter less and less ready to devote whole afternoons to him, readier to break engagements at an hour’s notice.

  “If only we could get away to the South of France,” he said.

  “Why don’t we?”

  “I’m not earning a living yet.”

  “What about your father?”

  He shook his head. His father was generous, always ready to give him money when there was a legitimate excuse. His father was too good a friend for him to lie to.

  She was furious when he told her that.

  “You wouldn’t tell your father lies on my account? And you say that you’re in love with me....”

  “It isn’t a question of that. It’s....”

  She interrupted him.

  “If you really were in love, you’d spin some story.”

  He tried to argue, tried to explain. But she refused to listen. He had hoped that she would spend the afternoon with him. But the moment the coffee arrived, she began to put on her gloves.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve got to hurry.”

  That afternoon decided him. The next time they lunched, he produced a brochure of the South of France.

  “What day would you like to start? And where would you like to go?” he asked.

  “You’ve found a story to satisfy your father?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes brightened. She began to discuss with animation the respective merits of Cassis and La Napoule. It was weeks since he had known her in this mood. Then suddenly her manner changed. He had offered her a cigarette, from a paper packet. Her eyes fell on it. She started, then fixed him with an angry stare.

  “I don’t believe you told your father anything. I believe you pawned your cigarette-case.”

  It came so quickly that he was off his guard. He flushed and stammered. She pounced on him.

  “So you did. I was right. You’ll not lie to your father, but you’ll lie to me. That’s all you think of me. No, no I’m not going to be treated like a tart: having young men ruin themselves on my account. Next time I see you I’ll expect to see that c
igarette-case too. Thanks for my lunch.”

  His eyes followed her hungrily as she walked across the restaurant, with slow rhythmed movement that made his nerves contract. He knew beyond doubt the stuff that she was made of. But she was in his blood.

  He had his cigarette-case with him next time they met. She made no comment, but when he asked her if she had any plans : “My plans can be your plans until half-past six,” she said.

  Through a long and shuttered afternoon she was affectionate, responsive, ardent, as she knew so well how to be: as she always chose to be when his patience had reached its tether. For days, for weeks, she could be capricious, cold, elusive. It’s no good, he would think. There’s no point in going on with this. I’m a fool, a coward. I’m making myself ridiculous. Then just when he would be on the point of breaking with her, she would become again all that he had despaired of finding her. He would return to Oxford in a daze : unable to believe that the change in her was not permanent. How could she who had been through that long afternoon so tender, so adorable, become cold and casual again? She had been testing him, that was all it was : making certain that he really loved her. It was proper pride and vanity that made her withhold herself till he had proved himself. With a breathless impatience two days later he would hurry up to London, only to find a message waiting him at the restaurant that she was busy, that she had had to go out of town.

  For eighteen months it had gone on like that: eighteen months of gathering exasperation, of gathering self-contempt, of a rage that could find no outlet; a rage that at the very last moment she would solace with a single glance, a glance promising the happiness he could not resist.

  With bitter clarity he recognized the skill with which she timed her returns of gentleness. She played with him. It was a game to her. He knew it. But he was helpless. He could not resist the certain knowledge that sooner or later she would pour for him the rich wine of pleasure.

  For eighteen months it had gone on : with her returns of gentleness wider spaced as she recognized how strong her hold had grown. It was as much as anything to break that hold that he had welcomed this trip to the West Indies. When the ship had sailed up the Thames, he had known himself to be waking from a nightmare.

  It was jerkily, disconnectedly, with hesitations, asides, digressions, that he told his story. With a pitying sympathy Mary listened. What a time he must have had, poor boy. She tried to console him; not with direct sympathy—he would have resented that: obliquely.

  “You mustn’t think all women are like that,” she said.

  “Haven’t I been learning that this last month?” he answered.

  There was fervour in his voice. And her eyes grew fond. He’s nice, she thought. Nicer than I expected. I’ve got to be kind to him, really kind. There are so many wounds to be healed. A young man’s feelings can be as sensitive as any girl’s. It’s absurd his being in love with me. He ought to be in love with someone like Mavis : as he would be very likely, but for me.

  Perhaps though, she reflected, it was better as it was. He was too young to marry. And Mavis was the kind of girl that only could be made love to in terms of marriage. She would be so ready to marry too : all the young girls here were: there were so few possible young men for them. And Barclay, with his nerves on edge, might make a wretched husband. Perhaps it was better for him to fall for somebody like herself, who was experienced, who would be tactful with him, who would restore his faith in himself, and his faith in women.

  It’ll be a convalescence for him, she thought. When he’s thoroughly healed, then I’ll ease him on to someone else, someone suitable, someone that can love him in the way he wants to be loved : in the way that a young man’s entitled to be loved: gradually, tactfully; without his knowing that I’m doing it. Only not yet, not quite yet, she added.

  With a happy conscience she read morning after morning the stream of letters, while January became February; with the rainy season definitely at an end, with Mardi Gras only a few days distant: Mardi Gras when the balconies would be hung with flags; when wild painted figures would cavort across the roadway, blowing on whistles, cracking whips, beating the air with harlequinade balloons : Mardi Gras when from dawn to dusk the whole town would be running “mask,” would run mad with carnival.

  5

  A telephone bell cut through the approaching somnolence of her siesta. It was early on the afternoon of Mardi Gras. She was curled up in a hammock, with a magazine. She rose reluctantly, resentfully. Who on earth could be disturbing her at this hour.

  It was Barclay, breathless and excited. He had never guessed that a carnival could be like this. It was thrilling, but he did not know what the half of it was about.

  “Do come and explain,” he pleaded.

  She hesitated.

  She had promised Gerald that she would stay at home, though the white community accepted the carnival as an institution and for ten months of the year exaggerated with pride its characteristic eccentricities, for the two months preceding it, the most alarming prophesies were made as to the excuses for terrorism that it might provide, in an island where the white community was small.

  Elaborate precautions had been taken—with Gerald, as usual, one of the chief organisers of the town’s defence. For weeks, he had been working on his plan.

  On large-scale maps not only of Rodney but of El Santo the various picket-points were marked with circles. Each township, each village had its own pickets, its own key-points. Gerald was to be fifteen miles away, at the old capital, Vieux Port, his office in the telephone exchange ; waiting to receive reports, ready to hurry assistance where it might be needed. He would be there till half-past six, when the streets were cleared. “Now, whatever you do, Mary,” he had concluded, “I do beseech you not to go down there after lunch. Go in the morning if you like. You’ll see all you want of the parade. But by the afternoon there is a risk of trouble. You will promise me that now won’t you?”

  She had nodded. She did not believe there would be any danger, but she promised readily, just as she had promised him the year before, and the four years before it. She had seen the carnival; and once was enough.

  Though she could hear the sound of singing, of music, of shouts and laughter from the town below, it was with a calm mind that she had stretched herself after lunch among the cushions in the hammock for the half-hour or so of reading with which it was her wont to precede the afternoon’s siesta.

  But then that breathless voice began to plead.

  “You will come, won’t you? I’ll get out my car. I’ll be up with you in fifteen minutes. What? You say I couldn’t get a car, that there wouldn’t be a garage open. What about your car, then? I could meet you anywhere you like. Only do come, do. You will? Bless you. As quickly as you can manage.”

  “As quickly as I can manage,” she had said. She had not realized it would take so long. She had not realized that the streets would be so crowded; she had not known there were so many people in the whole island of EI Santo, let alone Rodney. She had little more than reached the outskirts of the Savane before she realized that it would be safer and quicker to continue her way on foot.

  Quicker, possibly, but not safer, she was to decide a moment later.

  For six hours now the natives had been “running mask.” For the last three hours they had been spurring their energies with five cent rum. A band of men in skirts, their faces grotesquely masked, with white cotton stocking pulled over their arms, rushed up to form a circle round her, leaping and prancing, waving ballons, refusing to let her pass. The white masks with their scarlet grinning mouths, their high blue-tinted cheekbones, had the macabre fascination of a death’s-head mask. She was carrying a parasol. She tightened her hold of it, contemplating for a moment an attempt to beat her way out of the grimacing circle. She held back the impulse. That was the way that trouble started. It was against this sort of thing that she had been warned. She must keep her head. Join in the joke : laugh with them. Opening her parasol, she held it high above her head, wa
ving her other arm, mimicking the first steps of the polka.

  It was a huge success. The high-pitched cackle of a West Indian laugh ran in a circle round her, then dissolved as the marauding gang broke off in search of other prey, leaving her standing, dazed and frightened. I was a fool to come, she thought. Gerald was right. I should have known.

  The heat of the day was at its peak. It was the first time for months that she had been out at such an hour. The light refracted from the painted houses dazed and dazzled her. The stone-flagged sidewalks scorched through the thin soles of her sandal shoes. Her nerves flustered, her pulses throbbing, she hurried to the hotel

  His room was on the first floor. As he hurried her through it to the balcony, she took a quick glance round her, noting the neatness of his writing-table; the nickel and leather fitments of his dressing-case; noting also her own framed snapshot by his mirror.

  “Quick,” he was saying, “quick.”

  They watched in silence. Below them the fever of carnival thronged the streets. A single figure, masked and skirted, would leap like some mænad of the vengeance, cracking a whip, pivoting in circles, a pack of children running at his side shrieking in mimicry along the sidewalk. An organized band of some twenty figures, similarly dressed, marching in step and file, would celebrate a recent suicide in the high-pitched chant of a calypso :

  “Sophia went down to the River to dine,

  Wild, wild Sophia.

  Sophia mixed wine and iodine,

  Wild, wild Sophia.”

  A small band of drums and an accordion would squat on the sidewalk, to check casual revellers, luring them to dance; at first into an irresponsible clapping of the hands, of boundings in the air; later into the softer, subdued rhythm of the beguin : with the two dancers facing one another, the man’s hands on the girl’s hips, the girl’s arms about his neck; their bodies not touching, but swaying in a slow undulating rhythm, in a harmony so complete that they appeared to be not two bodies but one body; while the children in a circle round them clapped their hands, swaying in tune with the rat-tat, rat-tat-tat of the Congo drums.