No Truce with Time Read online

  She was thrilled, but shy : with a bride-like first-time feeling. And at that it was a first step, somehow. It was different, altogether different, from those truant trips, a kind of joke. It was an excitement of another order, this waiting in a still hotel.

  Different, exquisitely different. There was a sense of space; of leisure; away from the cramped cabin, away from the clock’s warning on the wall. Barclay himself was different. There was the same electric current in the pressure of his hands upon her shoulders; but there was no longer that hungry haste. There was a new gentleness as he took her in his arms : a new-strength, like a runner at the start of a long race, sure and confident, running with a long stride within his power. His words in her ear were no longer a confused succession of jumbled phrases.

  “To be alone with you, really alone with you, without interference: this is the hour I’ve been longing for, praying for, dreaming of, from the first moment of our meeting. I’ve watched you, oh so often, at the club, in your house, at this or the other party. You’ve looked so beautiful, but so remote. If only I could have you to myself, I’ve thought: really to myself. It maddened me. I could have borne it if you hadn’t been so beautiful. But you were. If you could only know how beautiful you are. I’ve only had to close my eyes to see you: a hundred shapshots of you in this and the other frock: on that and the other balcony: each different, each the same. So lovely, every one of them.”

  Warmly, tenderly, the long river of sentences wound on : like a litany intoned before an altar: a long impassioned worship.

  And his wooing of her that too was an act of adoration, the paying of a tribute: an exquisite mingling of caresses, now soft, now fierce, as though her body were the keyboard of a many-toned piano from which his hands and lips struck rhythm after rhythm, now calm, now turbulent; now low and quiet; now, in sudden contrast, a series of crashing chords. Her nerves were a stringed instrument; strings that vibrated as he struck from them chord after responsive chord, in a melody that like Eastern music seemed always on the brink of some final passage; music of heightening suspense, with each rhythm, just as it seemed to have reached the final notes, supplanted by some other, some new rhythm with its own melody, its own special harmony; melody after melody, rhythm after rhythm, blending into one another, a series of climaxes approached then turned from; so that when finally the climax came, a crescendo of mounting scales, of towering notes, crashing to one final chord, it came, that climax, not only with ecstasy, with fulfilment but with the shock, so long had it been delayed, of sudden shattering surprise.

  Shuddering, she lay within his arms.

  “Darling,” she whispered. “Darling.”

  There was a pause, a blessed pause; a darkness that was lit with rapture; a vacuum that was weighed with memory; a silence that was loud with echoes; a peace, a blessed peace; a death that was an intenser living. Then once again that voice in her ear was whispering its long litany, once again in payment of their tribute his hands were moving over her limbs and shoulders; his lips, binding her with a chain of kisses, renewed their act of adoration. Once again, vibrant and responsive, an instrument beneath his touch, she writhed and shuddered as melody ran into melody, rhythm supplanted rhythm.

  “Darling, it’s more than I can stand. Darling, you’re killing me,” she sobbed.

  It was a six days’ honeymoon; a honeymoon as unlike the conventional idea of a honeymoon as any honeymoon could be.

  From the moment that in the half-light of dawn he stepped into the empty passage till late at night she heard the click of a turning handle she did not see him. There would be notes, innumerable notes, dated not by the day, not by the hour of the day, but by the gap since they had said goodbye, by the distance to their next meeting: in the morning, “four hours since “; in the evening, “six hours before “: short little five-line notes; comments hour by hour on what he was doing, thinking, feeling; a setting of questions to which no answer was expected : notes continuing through the day the conversation that the lightening of the sky had broken. There would be those notes, but apart from them nothing to suggest that there was any such person in Barbados as Barclay Ashe: nothing to suggest to Anne that her companion was not leading a life similar in every detail to her own.

  They would meet, she and Anne, every morning in the garden, to find the two young Americans waiting under the shade of an umbrella. There would be lazy discussions over cigarettes as to how the morning should be spent; discussions that would be interrupted by frequent arrivals of small white-coated boys to announce that Mrs. So-and-So was on the telephone for Mrs. Montague: interruptions that would be greeted with histrionic groans of “Aren’t we ever to be allowed to see you two?”; groans that would be countered by Anne with a flirtatious It’s as well we have some dull things to occupy our time ” : discussions that would end invariably with nothing done, with no decision made, no shop visited, no hairdressing appointment fixed, with a sudden glancing at a watch, a “Good heavens, do you realize that it’s eleven?”, a hurried ordering of a car, a driving to the short wide pier of the Aquatic; to a lazy floating in the sea with the sounds of foxtrots drifting from the clubhouse; a changing back into dry bathing-things, a sipping of long cool planter’s punches in the shadow of the restaurant: with time drifting away in talk that was three parts laughter, with Mary herself barely listening, joining in the laughter out of sheer light-hearted-ness, her thoughts following her memory, reliving the moon-drenched hours of the night, her imagination picturing the hours that lay ahead.

  How many hours of sleep, of real sleep, did, she have during those first four days? The brief afternoon slumber of the siesta; snatched moments in cars and cinemas; unexpected fadings out of the conversation on the beach; odd quarters of an hour here and there. But did she on any one occasion have ninety minutes of unbroken sleep ? She could not remember if she had. Yet she never felt tired, never limp. I’m a gyroscopic top, the thought, maintained by pace.

  Once she and Anne lunched with the two Americans. Once they motored over to the Crane late in the afternoon, to bathe. For the most part there were lunch and dinner dates with friends; dates that Anne refused to break. They had to be circumspect, she said. They could not go back to El Santo with nothing to relate except a series of tourist expeditions with a couple of New York tourists. Half the point of the trip was the lustre it lent to one’s return. How silly they would look if they could not give letters of introduction to the people here. But whatever parties they might go to, whatever houses they might visit, whatever happened, or did not happen, this at least must happen : the Americans must be there on their return to drive them along the coast, to an empty beach, to phosphorous-shot water, to a rug spread under the palms, to a thermos of rum-punch.

  “It’s like something in a book, meeting two boys like that whom one’s never seen before, who know nothing about one, whom one’ll never see again. It’s the kind of thing one doesn’t expect to have happen to oneself.”

  Mary smiled to herself as Anne dramatized the situation. They were the first Americans Anne had known. She was as speculative over them as a school-girl over her first beau. What were they really like? Were they like the Americans in films? All that drinking and those petting parties. They were certainly fast workers, weren’t they? “Look at the way they got to know us. You weren’t there, you didn’t see. You were talking to Barclay. What about him, by the way? Have you seen him since? You haven’t? No, nor’ve I. Don’t you think we ought to? Mightn’t it look rather strange? After all, he’s quite a friend of ours; particularly of yours. Didn’t you tell me he was staying at our hotel? Won’t people say when we get back, ‘You must have been pretty busy if you hadn’t time to spend one afternoon with Barclay’ ? Don’t you think we should ask him to do something with us? Just one thing; a swim or something. We could ask the boys as well. I don’t see why we shouldn’t. It might be amusing to see them together : to compare them, I mean; the English and the American. They’ve got me puzzled. They really have.”


  She paused : a pensive, speculative expression on her face.

  “If they were Frenchmen I’d say they were being very subtle. I’d say they were conducting a calculated, delayed campaign, postponing everything to the last day.”

  The last day: a day of which each detail was a deathless memory, from the moment of the day’s beginning with the click of the handle as Barclay left her.

  It was close on dawn that she heard that click : so close that she had risen from her bed, had moved over to the balcony, to sit there in her long wicker chair, watching the morning break. It was the first morning she had done so. On other mornings when Barclay had left her she had collapsed into a heavy slumber from which she had stirred reluctantly at the rattle of a teacup at her side.

  It was fresh and clear-eyed, however, that on this last morning she had watched the morning break. Sleep had come to them the night before, unbidden and unexpected. Unwatched, the minute hand of the clock had moved through the darkened hours. It had been after half-past five when, stirring with her shoulder cramped, her eyes had fallen on luminous hands that in another quarter of an hour would have become indistinct.

  Barclay had laughed when she awoke him. “How furious I should have been if this had been the last night instead of the last but one,” he said.

  She was glad as it was, however; glad that on this last morning she could sit rested and refreshed, watching for the first time the flowers and shrubs in the garden below grow clear; her thoughts warm with the memory of love.

  It was the first time since her arrival that she had been alone; tranquilly alone. Was it really only five days since she had walked for the first time down that pier at the Aquatic? Was it less than a hundred hours since she had sat here that first night, waiting? Ninety hours? It seemed ninety centuries. As though it were another woman that had waited there. As in a sense it was. She was a new person now, woken and aroused. She had never known that she could be like this. I’m in love for the first time, she thought.

  Her eyes grew tender. She barely saw the flowers and shrubs taking their shapes below, was scarcely conscious of the sun rising from the sea, of its first mild rays falling on her face, the noises of a West Indian day about her: the barking of dogs, the honk of horns; the sing-song chatter of the gardeners, their eternal “man, man, man ”; the sirens of the liners in the bay. She was in a reverie: a dream.

  As all that day she was in a dream.

  It was through the mist of a dream that on the terrace afterwards she sat with Anne and the two Americans, discussing the morning’s news, resolving that this last morning they must set themselves seriously to the task of shopping: in a dream that she drove to Bridgetown to lunch in a modern American villa built on a Spanish plan. It was in a dream that she sunbathed on the marbled flanking of the pool, that she savoured the contrast of spring to salted water, that at lunch she recognized the difference between a house run on American and English lines : the stressing of iced water, the crisp salads; the coolness of the papaia with which the meal concluded: in a dream that later in the day she listened to Anne’s restlessly planned tactics for the evening.

  “This is the last night. I must find out what they’re really like. I must be alone with Eric; properly alone. Now listen; when we go out to bathe, after we have bathed I want you to complain about the mosquitoes, say you’re being bitten, say you want to go back to the car, take Arthur with you: leave me alone with Eric.”

  It was in a dream that she listened and replied.

  With the mind’s eye, with memory’s eye, she was picturing the moment, fifteen, twelve, nine hours distant, when she would hear the rattle of that handle: when once again those arms would be about her, those burning words against her ears, that restless mouth pausing in the hollow of her arm. Imagination inflamed by memory made of that long day, made of each hour, each minute of that day, a wooing. It was as though all that day she were actually in his arms, vibrating to his touch, to that long melody of courtship that ran rhythm into rhythm in a succession of exquisitely delayed, exquisitely advanced responses, each rhythm drawing nearer to a final harmony.

  As the day passed, the tempo of that rhythm heightened.

  It was in a dream that that night at dinner—a very formal dinner with eighteen places—she expressed the conventional opinions on the sugar quota, on the temper of the labourers, on the composition of the West Indian cricket side, on the unofficial proclivities of the Administrator at El Santo : in a dream that she drove under a moon now at its full along the coast; that she heard herself saying, “These mosquitoes drive me mad. Why don’t we drink our cocktails in the car?”; that in reply to Anne’s petulant “Oh, but it’s much cooler here “she had risen to her feet, hauling her American to his, with a “Let us anyhow drink our drink in peace.”

  The moment they were seated in the car he turned to her. interrogatively ready, if she gave the sign, to pounce.

  She shook her head.

  “No, no,” she said. “I’m sorry, but please no.”

  To her relief he was not insistent. He almost seemed to be relieved; as though he had made his pass not because he had particularly wanted to, but because he had felt it was expected of him.

  “Let’s have a drink, then. To soothe my disappointment,” he said cheerfully.

  It did not need much soothing. He started to explain himself, in a prolonged, rather metaphysical discussion, lost the threads of his own argument, then burst out laughing.

  “That’s better,” she said. “We have more fun drinking.”

  A remark that started him on another metaphysical discussion, to the effect that drinking and love-making were the same thing in the last analysis: an attempt to feel at one, at ease with another person.

  “Sitting here sipping rum, we’re just as much in tune with one another as we should be if …”

  “And this way we aren’t half so worried by mosquitoes.”

  “You’re darned right there. There’s no chaperone like a mosquito. Do you know the story about the girl from Kansas....?”

  She did, but she laughed as though she were hearing it for the first time. It was through a dream: that she heard her laughter, through a dream that she watched the minute hand of the clock ticking its way through the forty-five minutes that surely must be all that Anne could need for her investigation : through a dream that she walked back from the car along the beach, looking for Anne, not finding her where she had left her, shouting for her, receiving at first no answer, finally hearing a call from a part of the beach nearer to the car, from which she was surprised that her first call had not been heard.

  There was a petulant expression on Anne’s face, a petulant intonation in her voice.

  “I hadn’t expected you quite so soon.”

  On their return Anne sat silent in the corner of the car; while Eric had both his hands upon the wheel. Something must have gone wrong there, thought Mary.

  It was through a dream she thought it: through a dream that she walked up the stairs with Anne, that on the landing they exchanged what was on Anne’s side a very brusque goodnight : in a dream that she sat on the balcony in her dressing-gown.

  Of all that day her memory, her imagination, had made a courtship, a weaving of melody into melody, so that now through every nerve and vein the mounting rhythms were rising, note by note, to their final harmony; so that when at last she heard that click it was as though the final chord had struck within her.

  Leaping to her feet, she flung herself into his arms.

  It was like nothing she had ever known : a drowning and a release; a cancelling and a summoning; the response through every nerve of every faculty of sense. She sighed within his arms.

  There was a smile on his face as he looked down at her, just such a smile as appears on a victor’s face at the achievement of a long-won-to triumph.

  “Didn’t I tell you that you had no idea of what love was?” he said.

  9

  It was a new story that opened for them after that. It
had been fun before : an adventure, an escapade. It was that still: but it was much more than that. It was glamour. It was romance: it was life in capitals. Before, it had been the flavouring of a dish: now it was the dish itself. It was not a back-cloth any longer: it was the play. It was not the relaxation to her life: it was her life.

  She was with him even when she was not with him, remembering, planning, weaving imaginary conversations. As she drove into Rodney in the morning, her friends noted smilingly that her lips were moving. “Look at Mary, talking to herself,” they’d say. But she was not talking to herself. She was talking to Barclay. “Darling,” she was saying, “such an amusing thing happened yesterday, I must tell you....” Or, “Darling, I was wondering whether we could not plan....”

  He laughed when she tried to explain just how different it had become.

  “That’s why I was so mad to be alone with you, to have you to myself: so that I could make you love me.”

  There was pride in his voice; pride in his achievement; pride and gratitude and adoration.

  “I used to be so miserable,” he said, “knowing what a dream it might be. It was a dream, of course; a lovely dream. But it could be so much more. If I miss this, I felt, I’ll never have lived. I was so terrified of missing it.”

  But what about me? she thought. Suppose I’d missed it. Suppose I’d never known. If I’d missed it now, would I have had another chance? Never: of course I wouldn’t. I’d never have really loved. I’d never have really lived. I never knew what this could be. But now that I do know …

  “Darling,” she whispered, “we’ve not got to let this slip : now that at last we’ve found it. We must find ways : we must run risks if need be. If one’s brazen enough, one’s safe,” she argued. “No one could believe that there could be anything so open.”

  She ran risks all right: ran risks with open eyes. They would sit out dances in his car. In the afternoons, after Gerald had left for his office, missing her siesta, she would drive out to one or other of the island’s beaches, Case Pilote, Grande Anse, or Cace Navire, waiting there in the shadow of the palms till she saw round the bend of the bay the white prow of his launch, the signal to swim out into the bay to join him. Late at night when she had heard from the far end of the balcony the steady rumble of a snore, she would hurry down to the garage, drive along out the road to where a grey-green Chrysler would be waiting