Let Me Alone Page 17

  In sight of the gay shops, a sudden resolve came to her. She bought a small travelling case and things for the night, took a taxi, and drove to a quiet hotel where once, for some reason, she had stayed with Rachel Fielding. She engaged one of their best rooms, one with a private bath. She did not think at all, but at the very bottom of her mind, like a stone, lay the knowledge that she could never go back to River House. She did not examine it, or notice it particularly: but all the time, as she busied herself with the hot water and with her hair and clothes and complexion, this certainty lay like a small weight, stony, sunk to the bottom of her consciousness.

  Having had no tea, she was hungry, and went early to dinner. The bright table, the good food, the efficient service of this meal, in the preparation of which she had taken no part, all gave her pleasure. She ate slowly, with deliberate enjoyment, appreciating each detail.

  Once the thought of the evening meal at River House came to her. She remembered the tough Welsh-rarebit, or the watery macaroni, or the poached eggs, or the scraps left over from mid-day, which usually composed it. Then the whole thing passed from her mind. She would not think of it again.

  After dinner she debated whether to go out. But it was wet and cheerless. So she sat in an armchair in the lounge, near the big fire, looking at illustrated papers. She felt strangely peaceful and content. When anyone spoke to her, the waiter or the maid, she answered pleasantly, with a mildly smiling face, quiet but almost gay. At ten o’clock she went to bed.

  In her bath she began to think of Sidney, who had left Haddenham and was now living with a woman friend who owned a kennel of spaniels, somewhere in the Salisbury Plain region. Sidney wanted to start dog-breeding on her own account. Some letters, short and unsatisfactory, had come from her since Anna’s marriage. Their relationship seemed to have come to an end; though no decisive deathblow had been struck. Now Anna had an impulse towards her again. She must see her, talk to her. The remembrance of Sidney’s affection came back to warm her. Together with the unreasoning faith she had put in the other girl. Once more she felt that Sidney could be her salvation – if she chose.

  As she got into bed she continued to think warmly of Sidney. She would go to her the very next day.

  Anna slept soundly and well. In the morning, she woke up warm and comfortable and happy. What happiness to be quite alone in a room which no one had the right to enter uninvited! What happiness simply to be free! Everything pleased and delighted her. She took a simple, childlike pleasure in the soft carpet, the clean roughness of the towel on her body, the wintry sunshine outside the windows. Her face seemed to grow softer, and rounder, as she dressed, more innocent. Her mouth took on a gentle, bland curve, half smiling to itself. And she was going to Sidney.

  She would not think of Matthew or of River House. All the time, on the floor of her consciousness, lay the small stony weight that stood for these unpleasant things. But she did not attend to it. Her thoughts would not turn that way. Like a string of ants circumventing an obstacle, her thoughts circled round that stone, calmly ignoring it. She did not think of the future, or of anything at all far away. It seemed that her mind would only consent to occupy itself with immediate things; her breakfast, her appearance, the coming journey to Sidney.

  She made no effort: but everything arranged itself as if by magic. No bother, no delay, not a single hitch. Soon she was in the train, hurrying through the country again. Though she scarcely knew how she had left the hotel.

  It was a bright, frosty day, brilliant even. Anna sat in her corner of the carriage and watched the sunlit landscape slide past: calm, friendly, and bright it looked to her, but unsubstantial as the décor that fulfils its subsidiary purpose in the main scheme of a ballet. They could have no reality, those fields and houses that passed ceaselessly before her eyes. They existed merely as details in the backcloth of the scene; the scene of reunion with Sidney.

  In the early afternoon she reached her destination. Everything was curiously still. There was a silence about the place, an enchantment. The grey old houses of the village stood cool and mellow in the thin air, and somehow lonely. Hills curved up, green and vacant, against the blue, vacant sky.

  She asked her way, and walked on, down the empty village street, past a ramshackle old inn with a swinging sign of wrought iron. She had to traverse a flat, yellowish field. Some youths were playing football at the far end, a ragged fringe of people stood about, watching the game. All was strange and remote. A strange, dream atmosphere of quietude and suspense hung upon the still air. The drumming feet of the players made a sound like wings beating.

  She came to the house, which stood back among trees. The last yellow leaves were crisping underfoot, there was a good smell of wood-smoke drifting slowly, like a nostalgia, from the back of the house.

  A handsome, vigorous woman of perhaps thirty-five came to the door. She had soft, bright hair, turning grey, and smoothed very neatly behind her small, round ears. Her reposeful face radiated a certain contentment. She looked well-established and happy.

  Anna told her name and asked for Sidney.

  ‘She is in the shed, I think,’ said the strange woman, pointing, and smiling agreeably. Her handsome, athletic figure looked well in the good coat and skirt.

  Anna gave her back a frank smile in return. ‘I’ll go and find her,’ she said.

  She started towards the shed which stood in the trees, away from the house. She was conscious of the woman watching her as she went, though she did not look back. She felt slightly perturbed for some reason. A faint breath of discomfort had blown upon her enchanted mood, loosening the warmly peaceful spell.

  Anna went into the shed. Sidney turned round in the shadowy place and stood watching as the door opened. Her vivid, animal eyes were wide with astonishment, her black brows questioningly tilted.

  ‘Anna-Marie!’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I’ve come to see you. At last.’

  Sidney had been brushing a dog; the bright, black, satiny creature squirmed on the box in front of her, under her restraining hand. Anna noticed the strong, brown, capable hand, as it held the animal down. She remembered the touch of that hand, affectionate and cool and solid. Sidney was dressed in a smock, with leather gaiters on her legs, which gave her a clean farmer’s boy look. It was a look which Anna did not know. Sidney was straight and stiff. Her beautiful amber eyes seemed quenched in the dusky shed. She did not say anything.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ said Anna, coming near. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say to me?’

  She held out her hand. With a graceful slouching movement Sidney reached out and touched it. It was strange to feel again the touch of the firm, rather square-tipped fingers. Just for a moment they rested on Anna’s hand: then slipped coolly away.

  ‘I must hang on to this creature,’ said Sidney. ‘Otherwise he’ll be off into the blue.’ She looked down at the crouched, sleek-coated spaniel. The black body of the dog was tense as a coiled spring, bursting with energy and life.

  Anna looked on uneasily. She felt disappointed. They were like two strangers together. She did not know what to say.

  ‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’ she asked again, rather plaintive. She looked at Sidney with a pale, strained face.

  ‘Yes – in a way,’ answered Sidney, reluctant. ‘And in a way – no.’

  She looked down at the dog which was beginning to jerk in sharp, nervous spasms, trying to escape. The droop of her head, the lounging, downward grace of her body was curiously painful to Anna, the suggestion of concealment and reservation where all had been open loyalty. The fine, V-shaped point of hair on the nape of her neck was heartrending. Anna felt a wave of melancholy, the air of the shed was permeated with a vague, general sadness. She drew it in with her breath: down, down it sank, travelling through all her veins, down to the bottom of her heart.

  She knew this was the end. But she must make Sidney look at her. Sidney must raise her head.

  ‘Why not altogether glad?’ she aske
d, dejected.

  Sidney looked up at her unwillingly. Her eyes were troubled. She seemed changed, a little bit coarsened, in her farmer’s smock. The least little bit brutalized. As if contentment, and her passion for animals and for the country, were beginning to deaden some bright spark in her. It was a grief to Anna to see the wane of that keen, shy fineness that she had loved.

  Sidney released the dog. Like a glossy black bolt it shot off, out through the open door, into the yellow afternoon of winter sun.

  ‘I’ve got used to things now,’ said Sidney. ‘I’ve got my life here where I’m happy. I don’t want you to come and break everything up for me.’

  She looked at Anna with glazed eyes, the amber-brightness filmed over with distress. Her face was colourless, unhappy and constrained.

  ‘Aren’t you being rather unkind?’ asked Anna. But her voice was weary and low, without expression. She looked wan in her disappointed sadness, as she gazed at Sidney. She knew it was all over.

  ‘Unkind!’ exclaimed the other, a flash of emotion going over her face. ‘Unkind! It’s you who have been unkind all along.’

  ‘I – in what way?’ Anna hardly understood what Sidney was saying. The words meant nothing to her. She simply stood looking at Sidney, abstractedly, in her grief. Sidney turned her head aside. Once more the fine, dark, arrow, head of hair was visible on her pale neck. Then she looked at Anna again. The amber-coloured eyes held the blue-grey eyes, across the shadowy shed. So they took a final, secret, protracted farewell of one another, silently, over the dim space, while their voices murmured without significance.

  ‘You never came to see me. You never wrote properly. You never explained. I thought you had forgotten,’ came the voice of Sidney.

  ‘I couldn’t help it. Everything was against me. I couldn’t get away,’ Anna answered wearily, blank, like a somnambulist.

  Sidney flashed at her, fiercely, and accused her.

  ‘Why did you marry the man?’ she cried, almost brutal in her accusation. ‘Why? Why?’ And accusing, she frowned at her, savagely, with a certain desperation of frustrated love. Anna winced at her violence. But she felt herself numb, numb. The noise of words meant nothing. And Sidney’s very bright eyes flashed at her with passion, a passionate reproachfulness like coals of fire.

  ‘You could have stopped me,’ said Anna softly. ‘You could have prevented the marriage.’ And to herself she kept repeating: ‘You. You. Only you.’ She did not know if she had spoken the words aloud.

  ‘How?’ asked Sidney. A trace of the well-known mockery was in her tones. ‘How could I have stopped you?’ She stared at Anna. Her eyes had a strange yellowish brilliance, distracted, mocking, with the queer process of animalization at work underneath.

  Anna was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly:

  ‘How? – well – I don’t know how.’ She stared gravely at Sidney. ‘But you could have done it. Just as you could still prevent my going to the East – even now – if you wanted to.’

  Sidney said nothing. She seemed to be reflecting. Suddenly she made the slightest movement with her hand, her eyelids fell once, and lifted, flickering, over her bright eyes. Anna’s heart bounded in her breast. She almost woke out of her numbness. Then Sidney stiffened again. She seemed to close up again in stiffness. Her face went neutral and blank. But in her eyes, which had changed slightly, there was a glaze of finality. She had decided against Anna. Anna knew it. And her heart fell back numb as her hope left her. The numbness took possession of her heart, and left her without power or animation, hopeless.

  ‘But you don’t want – do you?’ she murmured involuntarily, hopeless, like a condemned person. A faint, sick smile came from somewhere to the corners of her mouth.

  Her face was pale and submissive, with a strange, painful acquiescence, as though the will had been destroyed in her. So she looked at Sidney, as if hypnotized. There was the slight smile on her mouth. Sidney frowned darkly, with black brows. She leaned a little to Anna; but her spirit held back, relentless.

  ‘It’s too late now – isn’t it?’ she said, in a voice that made Anna tremble.

  ‘Too late!’ Anna repeated, with narrowing eyes. She gave a curious laugh, almost of derision. ‘Yes. I’ll go away.’

  But as she moved, with her face averted, to go out of the shed: as she passed in front of Sidney: Sidney moved too, in her farm-boy’s smock, and followed her. Anna brushed through the webs of sunshine, under the trees. At the edge of the spinney, near the lane, was a gate which she must pass. Here she paused, hesitating, and Sidney paused beside her.

  Anna found nothing to say. She stood abstracted, looking downwards at the yellow leaves spangling the ground.

  ‘Good-bye,’ said Sidney, with her mannish intonation. ‘Good-bye, Anna-Marie. I’m sorry – sorry! But you’re the one responsible. You’ve made things go this way.’ She smiled a thin, subtle smile, like a wild creature’s, but inexpressibly wistful. The old wild, shy charm was still alive in her, attractive, so attractive, in spite of the coarsening smock. Her slouching, animal grace made Anna tremble, under the numbness.

  ‘Good-bye,’ whispered Anna, smiling a little. But she was quite hopeless.

  Numb and mesmerized she felt: there was no strength in her. What refuge was left when Sidney repudiated her! Sidney had been her last hope, her ultimate tower of strength. Sidney had abandoned her. Where could she go? What should she do? She was as if destitute. And for her destitution there could be no relief. Hopeless! She did not know where to turn, how to behave. She was quite numb, quite without any will, resigned to her fate. She knew her fate was sealed. Only she felt lost, like a small, helpless animal, astray in the world. There was no strength in her.

  CHAPTER 11

  ANNA wept as she walked away from Sidney, through the deserted village, past the inn with the wrought-iron sign. How dismal the place had become! She was cold and tired. The sun was almost gone. The hills crouched like animals, dark and unfriendly, the sky had a bleak, forbidding emptiness, the very houses looked desolate. She wished she could cease to exist.

  And in a way, her existence had come to an end. She felt so numb, so aimless. What was she to do? The world seemed vast and dreary. And there was no place for her in it. Of what avail to go hastening from point to point across the surface of the world, when everywhere was the same dreariness, the same vacancy! She thought of Matthew, and it seemed like the thought of some strange nonentity, not of a man at all. She thought of Blue Hills, and of River House, and a distant shudder went through her blood, under the chilly numbness.

  She could not bear to think of the world in which she must live. She could not bear to think of going back to Matthew, or to Lauretta, or even to London. She could not believe that she would be obliged to do one of these things.

  Nevertheless, it was necessary to make a move in some direction.

  A train arrived, after a long wait, and carried her away – whither was quite unimportant. With the surface of her mind she knew the train’s destination, knew that she would have to change at such and such a station. But the knowledge was quite external: she did not appreciate it.

  She sat quite motionless in the cold, empty carriage, her hands clasped together on her lap. On her face was a grave, thoughtful look. But she continued to be at a loss. She continued to feel dazed, as though she could not appreciate her circumstances. The cold numbness was upon her, like a prolonged hypnosis. And through this deadening heaviness she perceived vaguely the moving countryside, the coming and going of stations, the figures of men like trees walking.

  Then suddenly she woke up. With one gesture she threw off the numbness, some sort of feeling came back to her. She realized that she had been in the train a long time. She wanted to get out of the train. She wanted to come back to life.

  A station was approaching. She looked out of the window and saw that it was Oxford.

  In a flourish of renewed vitality she collected her things and descended to the cold, noisy, lighted platform. Darkn
ess had quite fallen. Possibly it was late. The lights appeared flaring and unsteady.

  All was now simple and straightforward to Anna. It was night, a brightly-lighted Oxford, and stars frostily shining, and people going about the streets. She took a taxi and drove through the frequented streets in the lamplight, and was deposited at Catherine’s abode.

  And the first person to open the door was Catherine, with a dark cloak over her evening dress. She was just going out somewhere, and had a brilliant, by-gone look. Like a beauty of some by-gone century she looked, in her long, dark velvet cloak with a gold gleam beneath. Her large, heavy eyes were dilated, staring at Anna. Her mouth made a scarlet, crooked line on her face. Her skin was cleverly painted, and she was really brilliant, in a dashing, slightly disreputable, masquerading style. Some of the artificiality and the decorative recklessness of old Venice about her; and also the modern defiant hardness. She greeted Anna effusively and put her arm round her, there in the cold street, speaking in a clear, penetrating voice that made people look round. A young man who seemed to be with her watched without surprise.

  ‘I’ve just been thinking about you; and now you appear on my doorstep. Anna-Marie, you amazing person! What are you doing here? You must come to the party with me!’ cried Catherine, and her eyes flashed in the darkness.

  ‘I’ve no clothes with me.’

  ‘You shall wear one of my dresses, Annik.’

  ‘Are you sure you want me? Do you want me to come?’

  ‘Yes, Annik, you must come. I want you.’

  ‘Do you really – really?’ said Anna. But she was already inside, she followed Catherine up the stairs into her room.

  ‘Choose your dress. Choose!’ cried Catherine, throwing dresses on to the bed. Anna looked on in bewilderment till she became still again. Then the two girls laughed.