Let Me Alone Page 6

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna, looking at her.

  Sidney Reeve was about her own age, strong, dark, with short curly hair like a boy. Her eyes were bright, quick, with a glassy clearness almost amber-coloured, like the eyes of an animal. There was altogether a rather animal suggestion about her pointed face, but pleasant, the face of a very intelligent and sensitive animal. She was certainly no fool. And the irregularities of her face were rather pleasing: the curious slant of her black eyebrows, and the upward lift of her mouth. It gave her an air of detachment, as though she watched everything with a quizzical, slightly mocking expression.

  ‘How is it you’re not with the others?’ Anna was moved to ask.

  ‘You haven’t got quite the monopoly of unpopularity,’ Sidney answered, with the flicker of a one-sided smile.

  There was something sharp and cool, refreshing about her. Anna was interested. Sidney could smile with keen young real amusement, and a spice of cynicism.

  ‘Come up to the village and have tea with me,’ Sidney suggested, suddenly, almost as if giving an order.

  Her manner was perfectly assured; assertive even: but underneath was a sensitive shyness, a hint of deprecation.

  ‘Very well,’ Anna agreed.

  They walked up the road together. Anna was slightly taller, more graceful altogether, more delicate. Sidney, with her cropped curly head and her short white tunic swinging over her sturdy knees, was like some foreign soldier youth. She moved with a steady buoyancy, but with just a trace of swagger, of conscious challenge. She was bold too: she led the way into the room where the other girls who had played in the tournament were sitting at tea with their friends, celebrating the occasion. The girls disliked her. A self-conscious movement of distaste passed over the youthful faces, a sneering look, an instinctive withdrawal. There were whispered comments ‘Sidney Reeve! Anna-Marie!’

  Sidney strode on into the room, making for a corner table, taking no notice of anyone. She might have been miles away from any criticism; but all the time, Anna could tell that she was extremely, even painfully aware of the hostile faces, and yet somehow glorying in the situation.

  They sat down and ordered their tea.

  ‘Did you enjoy the tennis?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘Yes, it was fun,’ said Anna.

  ‘But you’re not very interested in games, are you?’

  ‘No. I think they’re a waste of time. Pointless and boring.’

  ‘More boring than other things?’

  ‘Well – yes!’ said Anna, smiling.

  Sidney too smiled. She spoke in a low, deep, rather gruff, rather stiff voice, but very intent, and her intelligent eyes rested upon Anna with a certain intensity. She was somewhat repressed by her surroundings, by the consciousness of the inimical faces in the background and her determination to be unaware of them. But there was a sort of urgency in her behaviour. She was trying to make some contact with Anna.

  Anna liked her. She was interested and stimulated.

  ‘Why haven’t we known each other before?’ she asked.

  Again the other girl smiled her sharp, one-sided smile, rather vinegary.

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly easy to know you. You’re usually so very obviously otherwise engaged.’

  She spoke with sarcasm, not really bitter, but mocking; subtly, definitely derisive.

  ‘You mean with Rachel?’

  ‘Yes, with Rachel,’ she said, jeering a little, and accenting the name.

  There was an uneasy pause. Anna was trembling on the verge of resentment. But for some reason she couldn’t really feel angry with Sidney and her peculiar mingling of effrontery and diffidence: her assurance and her naive, hidden, wistfulness.

  ‘Hadn’t you better go to her now?’ said Sidney ironically, her thin cheeks flushing. ‘She’ll be expecting you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna, and instantly stood up. ‘I think I will go.’

  Sidney watched her, with a bold and mocking stare. Then she smiled rather irresistibly, and Anna smiled back reluctant.

  ‘Good-bye for the moment,’ Anna said.

  ‘For the moment,’ repeated Sidney, still smiling.

  She watched her across the room and until the door closed behind her.

  Anna went off with a feeling of pleasure. Pleasure to be going back to Rachel. Pleasure to have got away from Sidney, and yet pleasure at having talked to her. Sidney was intriguing. But she made Anna feel uncomfortable. She had that bright, mocking cynicism that challenged her in some way. Sidney was irritating, almost aggressive; but also there was that curious farouche sort of nervousness about her. And her attractive, one-sided smile that you couldn’t quite trust in, and which promised so much; which, perhaps, was the token of a rare inward warmth. There was nothing easy about her. She was sharp, and stinging and stimulating and would need living up to; she would keep you on your mettle.

  Anna felt again, as she had already felt, that Rachel was making her soft, almost victimising her. She was not standing on her own feet. And it seemed to her that Sidney, with her very quick amber eyes had discerned this and was mocking her.

  Anna wanted to be friends with Sidney, but Rachel monopolized all her attention. She felt herself in a quandary. It was not easy to break away from Rachel. She did not really want to lose that warm, glorifying passion of tenderness the big, vivid woman was capable of. For her, Rachel was still the goddess, powerful, benevolent, full-limbed, mysterious with a strange power of exaltation and a luxuriant physical magic. Rachel was the goddess-woman to whom she owed her passionate loyalty and gratitude and devotion.

  But then she had to reckon with the influence of Sidney, pulling her, pulling her in another direction. Pulling her away. That was what Sidney was doing all the time, under cover of her ironical indifference, pulling her away from Rachel. Trying to force a new liberty upon her. To take away from her the deistic protection of Rachel’s benevolence.

  ‘I admire Rachel enormously,’ she heard the deep quiet, humorous voice of Sidney asserting. ‘I’m fond of her too. But only in homeopathic doses. I can’t stand much of her at a time. She’s too rich for me, too rich for my blood.’

  Anna felt that she was laughing at her and her relations with Rachel. Hard, clean-cut, sharp-tongued, bracing, mocking Sidney, without gentleness or mercy; Sidney with her gruff voice and her curious wild charm; how strange a rival for the goddess!

  But a formidable rival the sturdy, dark girl was. She had a poisoned dart of power against Rachel in her boyish body. The power to make the ripe, glorious woman a little ridiculous.

  Like a goddess, Rachel appeared beside her, a rich, golden goddess in all the glory of maturity, with a gorgeous, almost voluptuous fullness. Sidney brought out the goddess-ship, the strange physical goddess-ship of Rachael, by contrast with her own youthful, sharp-outlined simplicity, her own hardness.

  This was what she tried to do. And it made Anna uncomfortable. The overflowing, soft femininity had always been a little repulsive to her. Now it became also a little absurd, a little embarrassing. She could not bear the warm glisten of tenderness in the big, hazel eyes; or the large, soft, white hands that touched her yearningly with a mysterious soft urgency, possessive. The whole semi-physical spell of the goddess-ship of Rachel had become abhorrent to her.

  She gave more and more of her time to Sidney. Rachel said nothing; she would not compete or complain. She had, very much, her dignified pride. But she looked at Anna with darkened eyes, as much as to say that though she would not reproach her the default was bitter.

  She watched Anna at first with a kind of hopefulness: on her soft, warm face, and in her hazel eyes was an expression of tender, rather pathetic expectation. She could not believe that she had lost her battle. She was the goddess; the mystery. How should she fail to conquer?

  Yes, Rachel was used to looking upon herself as a goddess. But suddenly her divine right was questioned; and by this young limb of a Sidney. Sidney to win a victory over the goddess, to steal away an adorer! What a humilia
tion!

  Rachel did not like it at all. And presently a flame of indignation was lighted in her large eyes. The tenderness, the melancholy softness, died out, and indignation took its place. She left Anna alone.

  Anna was glad to get out of the temple, to get away from the spell of the fascination and the mystery, out into the fresh air. But she went out with something added to her by the mysteries; a strong conceit in herself, the nightmare pushed well away into the background.

  She very quickly became intimate with Sidney. The intimacy which had budded between them at their first conversation blossomed rapidly into a sort of romantic friendship. There was nothing emotional about their relationship. But a frankness, a freshness, an almost man-to-man breeziness, very free and easy. They teased one another and sharpened their wits upon each other. But there was a good deal of romance in their friendship. The mockery, the intellectual strife between them, did not diminish it. The romance surrounded them like a force generated between them, so that the world around them seemed brighter, and gayer and fuller. So that whatever they did together was interesting and amusing. Sometimes they played childishly fantastic little games with the surface of life. And sometimes they talked seriously and with a sense of importance.

  ‘I’m sorry we’ve missed the war,’ Sidney said to Anna soon after the armistice had been signed.

  Anna was surprised. The war had not meant anything to her except an excuse for tedious restrictions. Ever since she had left Mascarat, Europe had been at war. She knew no other world.

  ‘Why?’ she asked, her clear eyes watching her friend. ‘It’s been a horribly unpleasant business.’

  ‘But how exciting!’ said Sidney. ‘Don’t you realize what a wonderful atmosphere there’s been in England all these four years? The change and excitement and all the old things coming to an end. I should have loved to have been in the thick of it all. And instead of that we’ve missed it – missed it by about two years.’

  That was like Sidney; that energetic interest in events, that desire for experience. Anna was different. She wanted to appreciate things, to understand them, but all in the abstract, so to speak, without actually experiencing them. And for that reason she was more interested in Sidney as an intelligence than as a personality. Sometimes that militant quality in Sidney, that aggressiveness, alienated her. It jarred upon her.

  But Sidney, for all her assertiveness, looked upon Anna with a kind of fascination. In spite of the teasing and the mockery and the man-to-man attitude, Sidney had subtly but definitely put herself in the humbler role. There was that curious hint of deprecation in her manner even while she mocked and swaggered. And a disguised, faithful devotion in her bright, clever-animal eyes.

  ‘You really are extremely intelligent,’ she said to Anna. ‘Far more intelligent than I am.’

  She was all devotion as she said it, and under the black, tilted eyebrows the amber-coloured eyes looked out soft with a peculiar romantic affection. But the next moment she was laughing again, laughing her sharp ironic laugh and swaggering off with the same derisive, detached expression as before; mocking herself and Anna and the whole world.

  Proud and diffident Sidney, with her protective aggressiveness, and her cynicism, and her admiration for the other girl which must always be hidden away. She had a burning attachment to Anna. And yet she was not quite sure that at the same time, in some portion of her brain, she didn’t despise her a little. Or perhaps pity her; which was much the same thing.

  Anna was going to Oxford in the autumn; to Somerville. She and Rachel had decided it between them, and Lauretta had been persuaded to agree. At the end of the Easter term Anna had already passed the necessary examinations and was eager to go. But she had to wait till the autumn. So a restlessness came upon her, a feeling of suspense. The summer months lay before her like an empty interval, pleasant enough, but without much significance. She was restless.

  Spring was already well on the way. A clear sky, with blue shadows on the low hills that had taken the place of mountains in her life. A few bright leaves poking up, and mauve and yellow heads of crocus in the grass.

  Anna was in her bedroom, trying on a hat that had just come by post. Lauretta was generous with presents of this kind. Casually, Anna stood in front of the mirror looking at the hat which was made of fine straw with an uneven brim and a little fringe of softly curling leaves. She was not very interested.

  ‘Pull it down more at the side,’ said a voice from the door.

  Anna looked up in surprise, and saw, leaning against the door which she had left slightly ajar, a handsome, large-eyed girl of about eighteen, smartly dressed, and somewhat haughty in her sophisticated assurance: Catherine Howard.

  Anna did not care for her. But of late she had been vaguely aware of her, coming and going on the outskirts of her daily life. A sort of mutual, subterranean recognition had passed between them.

  And now, on this spring morning, Catherine stood at the door of her room as she was trying on the hat. As usual, Anna rather resented her. She wanted to send her away. But Catherine came in calmly, as if by right; and as if by right, she touched the hat with her long, firm fingers, adjusting it over Anna’s smooth hair.

  ‘There. That’s better,’ she said. And she made Anna look again at her reflection.

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna grudgingly.

  She glanced from her own mirrored face to the face of the other girl. Catherine might have had southern blood in her, her big brown eyes were liquid with the soft haughtiness of the south. She was very confident and superior. Yet she followed Anna about a good deal, seeking her out. She even came to her room like this, unwelcomed, as if wanting something from her.

  She was proud and superior. But even so, she followed Anna about.

  ‘You have nice clothes, but you don’t know how to wear them. You don’t take enough trouble over your appearance,’ she said.

  Then she went away, leaving Anna faintly irritated, faintly amused, and with a just perceptible stirring of interest in her mind. She was beginning to be interested in Catherine. But she thought very little about her, being so preoccupied with Sidney.

  They had become something more than friends, these two; so that they were only happy when they were together. If one went out of the room, the other was always impatiently waiting for a chance of going after her. It seemed that they only lived to be together.

  Nevertheless, it was with Catherine that Anna went to the dance. It was really the most foolish affair. A dance was being held at one of the big houses in the neighbourhood, and some of the elder girls had been given leave to go. Then suddenly there was a suspected case of infectious illness, and permission was withdrawn. Nobody from the school would attend.

  Anna was lounging over a book when she heard the news. Her face darkened. The outing, which had not interested her before, now became attractive.

  ‘Ridiculous, treating us like babies,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve a good mind to go all the same.’

  She looked up, and met the large, brilliant eyes of Catherine fixed upon her. For some reason, that bright regard filled her with a febrile irritation.

  ‘Yes, I will go!’ she exclaimed petulantly, as if in protest against authority. But really it was Catherine’s wide brown stare against which she was protesting.

  ‘Why not? I’ll go with you,’ said Catherine, in a matter-of-fact tone. She smiled a curious secretive smile, lifting the corner of her lip in secret triumph or scorn.

  Anna knew that she was behaving foolishly. That it was only her restlessness that had moved her to the irritable impulse. She did not want to go to the dance at all. But she had to see the thing through. If only to assert herself against Catherine’s large-eyed haughtiness, she had to go. The other girl roused her to such a pitch of unreasonable irritability.

  Anna spent the evening wondering why she had come, and what Rachel would have to say when she heard of the matter; for they could not hope to conceal it. She was rather rude to Catherine. But Catherine smiled her s
ecretive smile and seemed quite content.

  ‘Why on earth did you want to come on this mad expedition?’ Anna asked her, with a good deal of antagonism in her voice and expression, a hint of offensiveness.

  ‘For the same reason as you did, I suppose,’ replied Catherine smoothly.

  Anna watched her in her handsome, rather tense, rather aggravating self-confidence, with suspicion and bewilderment. She could not understand what it was about Catherine that acted upon her as such an irritant. Whether it was the way she moved about the lighted room in bold, challenging triumph, enjoying the illicit occasion; or the peculiar mock-meekness in her large brown eyes when she looked at Anna, as at a superior.

  ‘It’s really rather absurd at our age to be treated like children in the nursery,’ Catherine said. ‘We ought both of us to be up at Oxford.’

  And she went on to talk about some verses that Anna had written and which Rachel had sent to a friend of hers, a publisher at Oxford. It was possible that he might decide to publish them.

  Anna looked at her more amicably. Was it possible that this proud, accomplished, independent creature admired her? Yes, there was admiration in Catherine’s eyes, an incongruous, almost servile admiration behind the insolence. And Anna could feel, under the haughty, indifferent manner, the will of the other girl reaching out towards her. She was flattered. It gratified her, in spite of her irritation, that she could make Catherine admire her.

  But the next day she was all irritation again. She simply couldn’t conceive why she had gone to the dance. She hadn’t enjoyed herself in the least. The whole incident seemed inexplicable and stupid.

  In the middle of the morning Rachel sent for her. Anna went into the study where she had once spent so much of her time. It seemed quite natural to be there again. Rachel was sitting at the bureau. As usual, she was dressed in bright colours; a loose tunic of vivid blue over her skirt, with long, very full sleeves heavily embroidered – something like an elaborate priestly vestment.