Thunder on the Left (1925)/Chapter 10
IN THE bathtub Phyllis wondered, for the first time in her life, whether she was "literary." She sat soaping her knees and revelling in coolness that came about her waist in a perfection of liquid embrace. She found herself—perhaps because her eye had fallen on the volume in the den, while she and George were bickering—thinking about Shakespeare. Now, in an intimate understanding that many an erudite scholar has never attained, she perceived what the man with a beard was driving at. The plays, which she had always politely respected as well-bred women do respect serious institutions, were something more than gusts of fantastic tinsel interspersed with foul jokes—jokes she knew were foul without understanding them. They were parables of the High Cost of Living—the cost to brain and heart and spirit of this wildly embarrassing barter called life. The tormented obstreperous behaviour of his people was genuine, after all: they were creatures in a dream, like herself; a dream more true than reality. She could have walked on in any of the plays and taken a part without sense of incongruity. She felt as if she were a phantom in one of the pieces: a creature in the mind of some unguessable dramatist who had mysteriously decided to make a change in the plot. She thought how she and her friends had sometimes sat through Shakespeare matinées, subconsciously comforting themselves with the notion that real people don't behave that way.
Why, Bill, you poor old devil (she said to him), how you must have suffered to be able to write like that. It made her feel quite tranquil by comparison. But of course her own particular absurdities had special kinks in them that were unique: even He would have been surprised. But he would have understood.
A soft flow of air had begun to move after the storm. The big maple tree, just outside the bathroom window, was gold-plated in the dropping sun. The window was above the bath and the ripple of those gilded leaves reflected a gentle shimmer into the porcelain tub. Her shiny knees were glossed with pale green light. Shakespeare would have liked that. She fished for the soap, which slipped round behind her like a young thought.
I suppose that as long as I was 99 and 44⁄100 pure I never could appreciate him. But I don't know whether I altogether enjoy people who understand so well. That's the trouble about George: he's getting weirdly acute, poor soul. Now, Mr. Martin: he looks divinely sympathetic, but I don't think he quite. . . . People wonder why one always confides in those who don't understand. But of course! To confide in people who do is too terrible. Giving yourself away—yes, exactly: you no longer are keeper of your own gruesome self. That's why the Catholic notion is so sound: confession to God is nothing at all, you know He doesn't care. But to confess to a priest . . . golly, that must take courage.
She lay down for one last lustral wallow, closing her eyes with a calm sensation of new dignity and refreshment. The cool water held her in peaceful lightness, lifting away whatever was agitated and strange. For a moment body and spirit were harmoniously one, floating in a pure eddy of Time. I feel like a nun, she thought. She rose, trickling, threw the big towel round her shoulders, and studied herself in the long mirror. Really, I'm not much more than a child, she mused happily, admiring the slender, short-haired figure in the glass. Or perhaps I feel like a harlot . . . a courtesan, nicer-sounding word. Discarding the towel she struck a humorous parody of the Venus Aphrodite attitude, and then felt a little shocked. She could feel her cheeks warming. She remembered George's coarse remark when they saw the statue. "It's no use," he said. "Two hands can't do it. Any one as timid as that needs three." She sang a little refrain, trying different tunes for it. She couldn't remember whether she had heard it, or just made it up:
When William went away?
The soft flutter of maple leaves outside the window was like a soothing whisper. From the other side of the house she could hear the click of croquet mallets and balls. Time for the children to have their supper, or they won't be finished before the others get here. Thank goodness it was cooler, Lizzie wouldn't be so harassed. Wrapping her silk kimono round her, she looked out of the window. Lizzie's flag was still flying. With a rough delicacy of her own, the cook did not like to run out her private washing on the family line, so she had strung a cord from the kitchen door to a branch of the maple tree. There, floating like a hoist of signal buntings, were Lizzie's personalia: all the more conspicuous for her mistaken modesty. They were indeed (it was George who had said it) like a string of code flags: a blue apron, a yellow shirt, a pair of appalling red breeches. George always wanted to know to whom Lizzie might be signalling with these homely pennants. They are a kind of signal, Phyllis thought. A signal that life goes on, notifying any other household within eyeshot that here too the humble routine of kitchen and washtub and ironing board, of roof and meat and sleep, triumphs in the end over the wildest poet's dream. Shakespeare would have relished them, and been pleased to see these bright ensigns hoisted so frankly in the yellow air.
Dressed in a gauzy drift of white and silver, she paused at the cushioned bay windows by the head of the stair. Her body enjoyed that mixed feeling of snug enclosure and airy freedom which is the triumph of feminine costume. Even her inward self shared something of this sensation: within the softly sparkling raiment of thought she was aware of her compact kernel of identity—tranquil for the moment, but privately apprehensive and alert. On the oval grass plot Martin was playing croquet with the children. Janet, nicely adjusting two tangent balls with a bare brown foot, gave them a well-aimed swipe. Phyllis heard the sharp wooden impact and Martin's cry of good-humoured dismay as his globe went spinning across the turf, leaving a darker stripe on the wet lawn. It bounded over the gravel and into the bushes, right by the corner where she had first seen him. She watched him chase it, lay it on the edge of the turf, and drive it back. How graceful he was! He raised his head with a little unconscious lift of satisfaction as he watched the ball roll where he wanted it to lie.
A film seemed to have been skimmed from her eyes. Perhaps it was that level stream of evening light: the figures moved in a godlike element of lustre: every motion was perfect, expressed the loveliness for which life was intended, was unconscious and exact as the movements of animals. They were immersed in their game as though there were no past, no future: she felt she could watch them for ever. Martin's face, gravely intent, bent over his ball. She saw the straight slope of his back against the screen of shrubs. The mallet clicked, there was a sharp tinkle as the ball went through the middle hoop, touching the little bell that hung there. How can any one look so charming and yet be so hard to talk to?
Through the scooped hollow of the dunes, catching tawny sparks from the sand, violet dazzles from the sea, the cleansed radiance of sunset came pouring in. The children's bare legs splashed in brightness as though they were paddling; honey-coloured light parted and closed again about their ankles, the wet shadows dripped and trailed under their feet. The house, growing dusky, was a dyke stemmed in the onset of that pure flood. It caught and held as much darkness as it could; the rest went whirling out. As if in answer to the little croquet bell, the old clock in the hall whirred and jangled six hoarse clanking strokes. They eddied a moment and then were whiffed away by the strong, impalpable current that seemed to be sweeping through. You could tell, by the dull sound, that the gong was rusty. No wonder, a house by the seashore, empty so long.
After the cough of the clock silence came up the shaft of the stairway. Not themselves alone, but the house too, had its part in everything. She could feel its whole fabric attentive and watchful, and wondered how she could have been heedless of this before. A house of ugly pattern, with yellow wainscots and fretsawed mantels and panes of gaudy glass: but she guessed now, what one can only learn under strange roofs, how precious houses are. And how wary they have to be, fortresses against fierce powers, sunshine, darkness, gale. Life has flowed through them: clocks have chimed, logs crumbled, stairs creaked under happy feet. These whispers are all they have to treasure: if you leave them alone too long they get morbid, full of sullen fancies. She remembered herself, visiting that house as a child, once seated at this same window, watching others play croquet . . . was it memory, or only the trick of the mind that splits the passing instant and makes one live it twice?
"Come, children!" she called from the window. "Time for your supper."
She went slowly down the stairs. Be calm, be calm, she said to herself; this too will pass; this isn't Shakespeare but only the children's supper time. But the flow of her blood warmed and quickened as water grows hot while you wait with your hand under the bathroom faucet. On the landing, where a shot of sunlight came arrowing through from the sitting-room window, she waited to adjust a slipper. She could hear them on the gravel outside. If he came in now he would find her just so, gilded and silvered like a Christmas card. But their voices remained on the veranda where the children's meal was laid. She could not afford to wait long. Now, now, were a few precious moments. This was a dream: and dreams must be recorded at once or they vanish for ever.
She heard one of them sneeze. It was Janet: she knew all their sneezes and coughs by ear. Yes, they probably have caught cold, bathing in that storm. And they have to sleep outdoors to-night, too: on the porch, because of this infernal Picnic. It's much colder; the thermometer must have dropped twenty degrees. She hurried to get the sweaters from the cupboard under the stairs.
They were sitting at the veranda table, with milk and bread and jam. Mr. Martin was in the fourth chair. He looked as though he too was ready for supper.
"Well, chickabiddies, did you have a good bathe? I hope you didn't catch cold. Here, put on your sweaters."
They looked up at her gaily. Their upper lips were wet and whitish.
"How pretty you look!" exclaimed Janet.
She had meant to toss him a brief, clear, friendly little gaze; an orderly hostess-to-pleasant-guest regard; but this from Janet startled her. She could see that he was holding her in his eye, meditating the accuracy of Janet's comment. She did not feel ready to face him.
"Thank you," she said lightly. And added, "Wipe your mouths after drinking."
"He says that's a milk moustache," cried Rose, gesturing to the visitor. "It makes you healthy."
Phyllis made a clucking reproach with her tongue.
"You mustn't point. It's not polite to say he. Say 'Mr. Martin.' Jay dear, after supper run and put away the mallets. I've told you, I don't know how often, not to leave them lying on the lawn. . . . Oh, not you, Mr. Martin. Janet'll do it after her supper."
But he was up already and gone to get them. I suppose this perpetual correcting sounds silly to him, she thought. But how can I help it? George never disciplines them.
"It makes him hungry to watch us eat," said Sylvia. "He wants some supper."
"He's joking with you. We'll have ours by and by."
She followed him into the garden. As she put her crisp silver slipper on the tread of the veranda steps she saw how the foot widened slightly to carry her weight. How terribly I'm noticing things. Something flickered at the corner of her eye: she suspected it was Lizzie, at the pantry window, trying to attract her attention. A throng of trifles jostled at the door of her mind, tapping for admission. Probably the ice has given out, after such heat. Well, then, they'll have to do without cocktails. I can fix the sandwiches to-night when everyone's in bed. If it turns chilly there won't be enough blankets. Nounou won't be back until late, I must get the children started to bed before. . . . I won't think of these things.
He had put away the croquet implements.
"Thank you. We've just time for a little stroll before the others get here.—I hope you'll like Mr. and Mrs. Brook. They're extremely nice, really, but a bit heavy."
"Perhaps they eat too much." He said it with the air of one courteously offering a helpful suggestion.
She had wanted, wanted so to be alone with him: she had a desperate feeling that there were urgent things to be said, and now she could utter nothing. Her mind ran zigzagging beside her, like a questing dog, while she tried to steer their talk into some channel of reality. Her thoughts kept crowding massively under her uneasy words, pushing them out before they were ready, cutting into her speech like italics in a page of swarthy Roman type.
"We all eat too much in hot weather, I dare say. Oh, if I could only write him a letter I could make him understand. He's so sophisticated, I suppose the quaint things he says are his way of making fun of me. Why did I suggest our walking like this? You can't see a person's face when you're walking side by side. And if we go round the path again, Lizzie will get me from the pantry. Let's sit down on the bench."
"It's wet, it'll spoil your pretty skirt."
Skirt! . . . What a word for this mist of silvery tissue she had put on specially for him. . . .
"So it is. Well, let's see what the storm has done to the roses."
The little walk under the trellis was flaked with wet petals.
"Poor darlings, there's not much left of them now. If Shakespeare was here I should feel the same way. Speechless. Why, he's like a god: lovely to think about, impossible to talk to. He doesn't give anything, just absorbs you: you feel like a drop of ink on a blotter. I have a horrid suspicion that the ice has given out, you mustn't mind if your cocktail is warm."
He kept looking at her in brief glances. Each time she met them it was like getting a letter in some familiar handwriting but stamped with a strange postmark.
"Are they better cold?"
I give up, I give up. It's no use. I can't even think. There's some sort of veil, mist, between us. He is a kind of god. He's brightness, beauty. Every movement he makes is a revelation and a question. How can I speak to him when all I want is to love him. There's nothing earthy, nothing gross about this. It's lovelier than anything I ever dreamed of. And if I tried to tell any one it would sound like tawdry farce. . . .
Dimly she divined what lay between them, what always lies between men and gods, making them such embarrassed companions—the whole of life, the actual functions of living; the sense of absurdity (enemy of all tender beauty); trained necessities for silence, that darken the intuitions of the soul.
It's as impossible as—as the New Testament. I feel like Christmas Eve: there's a new Me being born. You can't have a Nativity without pangs. And not even any one to bring me frankincense and myrrh. . . .
She stopped, picked one of the late rosebuds, and put it in his lapel. She checked a frightened impulse to tell him that she named the baby Rose because it was her favourite flower and she looked so like a rosebud when she was born. This was courage, because to say it would have carried on the doomed conversation one paragraph farther in safety. To any one else she would have said it. But now she spoke shakenly, from far within.
"You're not easy to talk to—Martin."
His face changed, he looked less anxious. He took her hand. She found herself not surprised: it seemed entirely natural. She felt his fingers lace into hers. Just as Janet does, she thought.
"I get frightened when people talk to me," he said.
She looked at him, worshipping. The bad spell was broken. Instantly she felt they could communicate. He was frightened too—the precious! Over his shoulder she caught sight of the little old-fashioned weather vane on the stable, a gilded galloping horse with flowing tail. Always racing in blue emptiness and never getting anywhere. Like Time itself; like this marvellous instant, so agonizingly reached, that could never come again. No one who knew her in her daily rote would quite have recognized her then as she looked into his eyes. She was completely herself, born again in innocence, in the instinctive yearning for what she knew was good. The unknown ripeness of woman woke for an instant from its long drug of peevish days, small decisions, goaded nothings. Humbled, purified, bewildered, she saw the dark face of Love, the god too errant for heaven and who suffers on earth like a man.
"Martin, I love you."
"I love you too," he said politely.
Beyond the stable she heard the sound of the car.