Thunder on the Left (1925)/Chapter 16
GEORGE stood uneasily on the landing, halfway up the stair. The house seemed over-populated. Upstairs was a regular dormitory, he thought angrily: all down the long passage he could hear the stealthy movement of people going to bed: doors opening cautiously, reconnoiterings to see whether the bathroom trail was clear. And the ground floor was worse: Joyce in the sitting room filled the whole place with her presence. He could not stay in the hall, the dining room, or the porch, without being in sight or hearing of her sanctuary. Against his will he lingered on the thought of her there, the small ugly chamber transfigured by her intimacy. Even the dull brown wood of the door was different now, it thrilled him with unbearable meaning, his mind pierced through it and saw her loveliness—perhaps tormented like himself with farcical horrors. It was unbearable to think of her going away into the dark nothing of these empty hours, uncomforted. Why couldn't he go and tuck her in like one of the children? She seemed to him just that, a frightened child who had somehow crept into his arms. She was there, divided from him only by that senseless panel. He imagined her prostrate on the couch in a quiver of silent tears; she, exquisite, made for delight, whose pitiful reality had shaken his solid, well-carpentered life into this crazy totter.
My God, he reflected, I thought I had got beyond this sort of thing.
There was a creak at the stair head; he saw her above him, shadowy against the bay window. In her translucent wrap she was delicately sketched in cloudy brightness, young and firm of outline. So the door had been mocking him. With a twinge of self-disgust he shrank, stumbled down the stairs, tiptoed out and took refuge at the far end of the garden.
A splinter of light drew him to the table under the pine trees. The jug and glasses, left there since lunch time; mutely pathetic, as forgotten things always are. There was still a heeltap of tea in one of the tumblers, he drank it and found it sirupy with sugar. It's a mistake, he thought, to eat sweet things late at night: they turn to sour in the morning. Night is the time for something bitter.
In the house, yellow squares flashed on and off. Downstairs, he could see Joyce's shadow against the blind. At the other end of the building, in the gable, the spare-room window went dark. Martin had slipped off to bed rather oddly after their game. In the embarrassment of Joyce's momentary dizziness he had simply gone, without a word. George found himself thinking that much of the evening's difficulty was due to this bumpkin stranger. He was probably well-meaning, but either with his idiotic pleasantries or a silent smirk of censure he had a gift for blighting things. There was nothing about him that you could put precise finger on, but he had a way of making one feel guilty. How queerly, too, he had looked at Joyce.
The evening was changing. The air had shifted toward the northwest; suddenly, over the comb of the overhanging dune, a silvery spinnaker of cloud came drifting. It was like a great puff of steam, so close and silent it frightened him. For an instant, passing under the moon, this lovely island of softness darkened the night to a foggy grey. It was something strange, a secret between himself and the weather, encouraging his silly wits not to be afraid of the desperate magic of fancy, the fear and tenderness hidden in men's hearts.
He turned again toward the house, and saw that now Joyce's window was black. She was there, at rest; he blessed her being in that little room. He had thought of it only as opening into the main thoroughfare of the house; but it was open, too, into the garden and freedom. What did the door matter! She was there, shining. He could speak to her. He imagined her voice, her trembling husky whisper, when she heard him at the sill. Why is kindness always whispered, while anger is so loud? How delightful if people shouted "I love you!" as though it were an insult. Glorious, to stand under the window and halloo it at her, watch the house rouse with scandalized life! Ah, what friends we might have been if they hadn't made us whisper. Why did they force us to be lovers?
Then he remembered—the accurate circumstantial memory of the householder. The window was screened. To speak to her through a wire mesh—intolerable. Besides, it might only make matters worse. He could never tell her his own joy, and might merely smirch hers. They might only struggle dumbly in the grotesque antic of spirits whose moods cannot mingle. The moment had passed. Life had gone by him, while he was fretting over paltry trifles, and left him a drudge. There was nothing to do but go indoors and work on the booklet. How exciting that brochure would be, what marvellous advertising, if he could really tell what summer was like at the Island. Why, the company would have to run special trains. The very aisles would be packed, people sitting on up-ended suitcases, if they knew that this dangerous coast was the place where Temptation really broke through . . . where the old Demiurge laid his cards on the table. It would become a Resort—yes, an asylum for lunatics, people ridiculed by transfusions of the moon. How a poet might write it, telling the colour of that world. Warm tawny flanks of sand hills, sprawled like panthers. The sun a coal of topaz, veiled in white flame that sheeted the whole summit of sky. Light so fierce one never looked upward. Wherever one turned was a burning and a glitter; the air was a lens and gathered all its rays into one stream. Always one's knuckles were sweet with salty smell. Repressed thunder yawning in the blue elixir of the afternoon: deep, deep afternoon, penetrated with lawless beauty. The small sorry whisper of the wind sang it in the keen scimitar grasses; smooth beams of driftwood, faded by the sea, felt it; the sandpipers, drunk with it, staggered on twiggy legs. Bronzed thighs and shoulders, shining in the green shallows marbled with foam. . . .
The transitive billow of cloud slipped away beyond the roof; again the strong resinous air was clarified, streamed with gracious light. His mind almost smiled at his fatuity: the sentiment did not graduate into an actual smile, but spent itself in a tiny whiff of self-deprecation through his nostrils. He stretched upward, raising his arms, standing tiptoed, feeling the calf-tendons tighten and coolness in his fingers as the blood sank. His hands met a low limb that reached across his head. He gripped it and chinned himself. There was good animal satisfaction in feeling the quiver in the biceps, the hanging weight of his body. Well, we're not done for yet, he said to himself. No, sir, not yet. He capered a few dance steps on the silky floor of needles, and pulled out his pipe. . . .
She was coming. He saw her coming, swiftly across the lawn. No, not swiftly; evenly was the word; unquestioningly; as he had always known she would come. His mouth was open to warn her of the croquet hoops, but she passed surely among them. When he saw her face, he knew this was something not to be spoiled by words. Her face was enough.
In that unreasonable glamour she was pure fable: the marble (Oh, too cold, too hard a word) come to life. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire; he knew only that there is some answer to the gorgeous secret: the secret that the world is in conspiracy to deny No, not to deny; more cunning than that: to admit and pass heedless on. There was meaning in everything; significance in the shapes of things. The black plumes and pinnacles of the trees were fashioned exactly so, could never have been otherwise.
They were away from rooms and roofs. They were on the beach; the tide was far ebbed, they ran over mirrors of sand, they were in sparkling black water milder than air. Still there were no words; their white bodies gleamed in silver, laved in snowy fans of surf. They were just themselves, chafing impediments were gone; nothing was between them and they wanted nothing. They ran, breathing warmly, to burrow in the powdery cliff, where the acid smell of sharp grasses sifted down from the dunes. They lay in a hollow of sand; she curled against him, nestled smoothly close, he could feel her thrilling with small quivers of joy. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire; only peace.
Everything else they had ever known had been only an interruption. This had always been happening, underneath. It was the unknown music for which their poem had been written. They were quit of the pinch of Time, the facetious nudge of Custom. Quietness was in them, satient like fresh water in a thirsty throat. Here was the fulfilment men plot and swink for: and how different from crude anticipation. What could there be now but pity and kindness? Here was triumph: Man, the experimenting artist, had created fantasy above the grasp of his audience, Nature. Like any true artist, he must always play a little above his audience's head.
"Now I'm going to tell you the truth," he said happily, and waited a moment for the luxury of her voice.
She was silent. He turned to look; her face was anxious.
"Why is it," he said gently, "that when you announce you're going to tell the truth, people always expect something disagreeable?"
Then he knew that the sand was chill and gritty. A breeze was blowing, the light was dim and meagre. This was not the glad forgiving sun but the cold and glassy moon.
"No, no!" she cried. "You must never tell the truth in a dream. If you do . . . it happens."
"But this was a lovely truth," he began. A window snapped into brightness beside him, just above his head. Phyllis was looking from the pantry.
"George! What on earth are you muttering about out there? Come in and help me cut sandwiches."