The Aerodrome: A Love Story (16 page)

CHAPTER XVI

The Secret

SOMEHOW IN THE club that morning I was unable to join as readily as usual in the conversation and joking of my friends. I had walked to the club house slowly and found, when I arrived there, that one of the special policemen who had been present at the church had preceded me. He had already recounted what had happened and the discussion which was now proceeding was what I might have expected; yet I could neither join in it nor regard what was said as being at all appropriate. The action of the Air Vice-Marshal in shooting a woman was a source of considerable amusement to everyone. Promptitude and decision were what we expected of him, but in this instance the result could not but appear slightly disproportionate to the effort expended. "One old woman shot down in flames. Not so good!" people said; though at the same time everyone was aware that what might have been a dangerous riot had been wholly and entirely quelled; and, though most officers jested about the affair, most of them too felt both gratitude and relief at the fact that our authority in the village had been once more unequivocally demonstrated. The responsibility for anything that might be considered displeasing in what had happened was unanimously laid at the door of the Flight-Lieutenant. Of him no one had a good word to say, and indeed I could not see myself in what way his conduct could possibly be defended. And yet with the tone of this discussion I felt myself to be wholly out of sympathy. I could not help thinking that what had taken place was more important and, in a way, more significant than my brother officers believed. Whether this feeling of mine was due to my having known the Squire's sister in my boyhood or to my old friendship with the Flight-Lieutenant, I do not know. It may have been perhaps that I had sensed in the Air Vice-Marshal's own attitude something that gave me reason to suppose that he himself had regarded this affair by no means lightly. However it was, I know that during this conversation at the club I felt continually ill at ease, and found it difficult to express myself clearly when asked, as I was from time to time, for my opinion. It was true enough that the death of an elderly woman and the disgrace of a young man were little things when compared with the authority of the Air Force and the greatness of its aims; but something in the identity of this woman and this man disturbed me. Had I known by hearsay only of the event which had taken place, perhaps my feelings would have been different. As it was, I was almost superstitious enough to imagine some fatality that seemed to bind me to these characters from my past, so that I had not been able to avoid being actually present at scene after scene of violence and stress in which they had been the chief actors. And these scenes, however much I might consider myself a mere spectator, still strangely moved me. I remember thinking, oddly enough, that the Air Vice-Marshal himself would feel as I did on this point, and would have wished, if he had been weak enough, to escape the necessity of the action which he had taken I recalled the moment in the church when he seemed to have been on the point of shooting the Flight-Lieutenant, and how he had refrained from doing so. What had happened afterwards had happened suddenly and left him no choice but to act as he had done. Yet both the shooting and the refraining from it seemed to me now more significant than was apparent to the officers in the club who had not seen the Air Vice-Marshal's strained face or the blood staining the surplice. Before long I grew tired of their conversation and left the club house. I stood for some moments in the road beneath the black boughs of the chestnut tree that extended over the wall of the Rectory garden, uncertain whether to visit Eustasia or to return to my office. As I stood there I noticed with something of a shock the first signs of spring. The chestnut buds above my head were sticky and swollen with their load of folded leaves. Already along the river I knew that some of the willows would be out, and in the hedges the first migrant birds would soon be singing. I thought of what day of the month it was, and reflected that nearly a year had passed since the disturbing celebration of my supposed birthday. Now I had little or no curiosity either as to the exact date of this event or as to the circumstances which had attended it. As I walked up the village street I allowed my mind to dwell idly upon the past year, idly and without perturbation, for I felt secure in my loyalty and easy both in my work and in my pleasures. Indeed, I found myself in this way relieved from the perplexity of my thoughts about what had recently happened. I began to recall to my mind my interview with the landlord's wife and, though I could still feel within me the stirrings of the agitation into which that interview had thrown me, the sensation was now not unpleasant, for I seemed, even after this short space of time, to be looking back on myself as I had been in a vague and irresponsible boyhood, full of pain but without direction or significance. When I came to the pub I glanced across the wall and observed a few men standing inside the door waiting their turn to be served with drinks from the bar. Some of them turned their heads towards me, and I recognized one or two of my old friends, and realized more sharply than ever that they were friends no longer; for the interest I took in them now was solely concerned with their reactions to what had taken place that morning in the church. If there had been any hostile demonstration I should have had the pub closed; as it was the men were looking at me in a somewhat sheepish manner, and I conjectured that the Air Vice-Marhsal's action had been from a disciplinary point of view wholly successful. I had my revolver with me, and wondered for a moment or two whether to enter the pub, but I had decided not to do so and was on the point of passing on when I saw the landlord's wife come towards me past the group of men. She appeared to me at once as both older and less self-possessed than she had been at our last interview, and though for some weeks after that time I had avoided conversation with her, now I was by no means displeased to see that she evidently wished to talk to me; for I still retained for her the affection of my childhood, and did not fancy that she could reveal anything else to me that could disturb the serenity in which I lived. I stepped inside the gate to meet her and remember taking both her hands and smiling at her, for I was pleased to see her and, perhaps because I had grown so unused to the company of any people except airmen, did not notice at once that my gesture was insensitive and inappropriate. Her hands were limp in my hands, and her face wore a harassed expression that showed that she was in no mood for laughing. I dropped her hands and stepped back a pace, once more upon the defensive, for I fancied that the reason for her distress must be the event which had just taken place in church, and I was not prepared to discuss this with her. Perhaps she read my thoughts, since before speaking she shook her head as though to free me from some misconception. "It's Bess," she said. "She's in a terrible way, my dear." And she stood looking at me for some moments, while I found myself so profoundly and variously moved by her words that I was unable to make any reply. When she had first spoken it was as though I had been pierced with a sudden dart or shaft of pain and fear. The feeling was both involuntary and irrational; in a moment it was succeeded by an impulse, though the word is too violent for so lethargic a feeling, to be away from here, to be left alone. "What was to be done?" I wondered, and "What, in any case, could I do? Why must I be disturbed by women?" For a second I felt not unpleased that Bess was in some danger or trouble, and the thought presented itself to me that if together with a number of my other past friends she were to die, I should enjoy a greater peace of mind than I had at present. Then instantly and with a sudden overwhelming force, as though such ideas had never occurred to me before, I seemed to see Bess as I had known her a year ago, and I was conscious of nothing but terror and of a kind of tenderness that was the fiercer through being unconnected with any organized practice or theory by which I now lived. Apart from this feeling my mind was blank so that I listened as a child might listen to what was being said, without making any effort to show the landlord's wife by any comment or exclamation of sympathy how her words were affecting me. She told me that for some time past Bess had been tired and dispirited. This I was prepared to hear, since I had known that ever since the Flight-Lieutenant had left her she had been in a weak nervous state. I had seen her myself often with her eyes red from weeping, and I now recalled to mind how diffident had been her smile when I had seen her last. I felt my muscles contract as though I were shrinking from some source of pain when I reflected that the sight of this smile of hers had neither distressed nor displeased me. "But now it's terrible," the landlord's wife was saying. "You wouldn't know her. She's gentle and quiet as can be, and yet she isn't herself. It's as though she wasn't there. Oh, I can't explain. I can't tell you how sweet she is, and yet not in a way that I would have her so. She seems not to be there at all, and yet she talks quite sensibly, except sometimes when she seems to have something on her conscience and says she wants to die. And she does want to die, Roy. That's what's so terrible." She stopped speaking abruptly, and looked at me almost as though beseeching an answer to some question. I saw that she had suddenly wondered whether the information which she had given me about my relationship to Bess had been disregarded by me, and had I not been so deeply moved by her words and manner I should have smiled to think how totally she had misunderstood my reaction to her story. As it was I had formed in my mind a picture both of what Bess must look like now and of what she must be suffering. The distaste at being called in to deal with an affair which I considered no longer to concern me, even the agony of tenderness which I had felt a moment ago, passed clean from my mind. I began to think wholly of what could be done to cure or to alleviate a misery which I imagined to be even greater than any that I had felt myself; and I questioned the landlord's wife minutely, for I intended to take back as good an account of her condition as possible to Dr Faulkner, the chief medical officer of the aerodrome, whom I hoped to be able to persuade to visit her. I wished to see her myself, but was dissuaded from doing so, since it appeared that even the mention of my name was apt to distress her; and indeed it had already occurred to me that her illness might be due in part to a sense, whether conscious or unconscious, of the criminality of our relationship. I do not know how it was that now this thought aroused in me no feeling of resentment whatever; nor can I account for the fact that from this time onward I found myself capable of thinking clearly and distinctly of her, without any of those conflicting and irreconcilable feelings that I had had when I listened to the landlord's wife's first words. It was as though one uprush of pity and of tenderness had swept away the rest; yet now this pity and tenderness, too, had gone, leaving me only anxious to see to it that the best possible course of action should be pursued. Soon I left the pub to go to the aerodrome. I would return later, I said, and if possible would bring the doctor with me. Bess's mother was, I could see, pleased at having spoken to me, and before I left she smiled and complimented me on playing the part of a real brother to her daughter. For a moment I was shocked by this remark, so indifferent had I become to the existence of any kind of relationship that was not willed; but as I walked away I began to find a curious satisfaction in the words which she had used. For I felt now not only the impulse, but a kind of right to be of service to Bess, and, worried as I was about her condition, there was something pleasant in the thought that I was doing what I could to make it better. Seldom or never before when she had been in my mind had I been tranquil, but now I could think of her calmly and continuously, omitting nothing that I knew from the current of my imagination, and holding her dear in everything that I imagined. Now I demanded nothing from her, and was thankful for rather than convinced of my own right to give her anything of mine. Indeed, the service which I wished to render her was, in any case, a small one. Yet my desire to render even this small service filled me with so deep a joy that I could think consciously of hardly anything else but of the urgency of what I was doing and of this new-found and irrational happiness. For that my feelings were irrational there was no doubt. If I had been uniquely concerned with her state of health there was every reason for me to be sad. If I had suddenly decided that I was still in love with her I should have had still less reason to be pleased with myself. Yet the happiness was in me and was intense, more intense, I think, than any feeling which I had known, although it was intermingled with much anxiety and much deep-seated perplexity that the thought of its own novelty aroused. It was as though there had been something in me like snow and ice which were now melting and gradually revealing a landscape whose outlines I had not seen for some time and barely remembered. So I hurried on towards the aerodrome, eager to obtain an interview with the doctor as soon as possible; but before I could do so I was to receive more news to surprise me. My way to the doctor's house took me past the block of flats where Eustasia lived, and while I was still some distance off I noticed her standing in front of one of the ground-floor doorways, not looking in my direction, but staring up the road that led to the airfield and the big hangars. She was wearing a red costume which I had not seen before, and looked almost a stranger, I thought, as she stood averted, waiting perhaps for me, perhaps for her husband. Yet I had half a mind to go round by a different way, for I regarded my present business as the most urgent thing and had no wish to be distracted from it. But while I was thinking in this way she suddenly turned round and waved to me. I noticed when I approached her that there was an unusual brightness in her eyes and a more than usual warmth in her smile. She stretched out one hand towards me invitingly, and there was something frail and winning in the gesture. I thought that I had never seen her look so beautiful. "I've been waiting for you," she said. "Come in. There's