The Aerodrome: A Love Story (8 page)

eyes. It was clear to us that the marriage would have to be a secret one. The Rector's wife would undoubtedly be opposed to it, I thought, since she had always agreed with the Rector as to the advantages for me of a Civil Service career. Bess's father and mother, though I fancied that they would not object to me as a son-in-law, would shrink from offending the Rector's wife and her friends, the Squire and his sister. Yet every objection that could be made to the marriage by our friends or our relatives seemed to me selfish, merely conventional, lacking in understanding, or short-sighted. I felt fully able to take on myself the responsibility for any step which we might take together, since the responsibility was presented to my mind in the form of extreme and confident delight, in the face of which both the village and the aerodrome itself seemed hardly stable things, but malleable to my own desires. I began to be infected with Bess's positive enthusiasm for the secrecy of the thing, not so much because I believed that there was romance in secrecy, but rather because I saw a kind of liberation in avoiding the obligations, the conventions, the manners in which I had been brought up and which now for me, perhaps owing to my present lack of security, seemed buried in the ground with the body of the man whom I had thought to be my father. So we talked and talked, and finally lay still in each other's arms, exhausted not by passion but by the resolution we had taken and the novelties which we anticipated. There seemed no more to be said, and I was listening to the larks in the air and watching the head of a bluebell nodding above Bess's head when we heard the sound of steps and whistling approaching us along the hedge. We sat up quickly, smiling, as we brushed down our clothes and, looking to the left, saw the Flight-Lieutenant walking slowly towards us, with his eyes fixed on the ground. He was carrying a small cane with which from time to time he switched off the heads of bluebells in the hedge. His lips were pursed together as he whistled a dance tune, and the sunlight striking him in the face flashed back from his tight yellow curls. I had not spoken to the man since the Rector's death, and had seldom thought kindly of him; but now, knowing that he could help us, and watching the grace and beauty of his bearing which in the past I had so admired, I began to feel for him some of the affection which I had felt before the dinner party. Bess squeezed my arm. "Ask him now," she whispered, and I shouted out to him. He raised his head, looked at us calmly, and gave an ironical salute. "Beg pardon," he said, "if I'm intruding." I laughed, and replied: "Not at all. We want you to help us." He walked forward slowly and sat down next to Bess. "Anything within reason," he said, patting her on the arm. "What is it? Advice on birth control? Or what?" Bess giggled, and I said "No". The Flight-Lieutenant was looking at me coolly, as though this were the most ordinary conversation. "The fact is," I said, and for a moment felt an unreasonable embarrassment, "the fact is that we want to get married." There was no change whatever in the expression of his face. "What on earth for?" he said. Bess looked at him quickly and, I thought, with distaste. I laughed again and said: "Never mind what for. We do. That's all, and we want you to help us." "But it's absurd," he said, turning his head slowly towards Bess. "Why, you could have lots of men." He glanced at me and, for the first time, smiled. "You could do all right, too." Then he turned back to Bess. "Do you really want to?" he asked. Bess spoke timidly. "Of course I do," she said. "We've just decided." The Flight-Lieutenant unclasped his hands from his knees and lay back on the ground. He held his cane to his shoulder and, pointing it upwards, squinted along it as though it were a gun which he was aiming at the sky. There was a long silence until I said: "Well, what about it?" He did not change his attitude, and I began to tell him our plan and to ask whether it would indeed be possible to get married without the usual formalities if I were to sign on for training at the aerodrome. At this he sat up and began speaking as though the subject had for the first time become interesting to him. "Joining us," he said, "isn't at all a bad idea. You'd pass the medical exam all right, and it would be a pretty good show to get away from the old women in the village while the going's good. As for the marriage business, if you really think that sort of thing important, I can fix it up for you in no time." Bess and I looked at each other, and I fancied that I saw a trace of timidity or hesitation in her eyes. This I attributed to her modesty. We both smiled. The Flight-Lieutenant was staring down at his boots from which he was removing mud with the point of his cane. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I could do the whole thing for you myself. Meet your new vicar." He looked towards me and winked one eye. I had no idea about what he was speaking, and listened with increasing surprise as he continued. "I've just been transferred to the religious department," he said, "and when we occupy the village I'm going to be the padre. It's a funny sort of idea, but someone's got to do the job and, apart from the office work, it only means getting on my hind legs every now and then and making a kind of speech. In a way it'll be rather fun. As far as your business is concerned it fits in very well. I've got all the qualifications, and could marry you tonight if you like. Though I still think you're fools." At first I could hardly believe my ears and, when it became apparent that he was speaking the truth, my first feeling was one of horror at what I could only regard as the desecration of the church in which I had so often heard the Rector speak. I can hardly tell now how it was that this feeling of horror so soon passed away and I began to think of the Flight-Lieutenant's appointment as slightly amusing and certainly convenient. The disclosure at the dinner party had seemed to sever some of the ties that had connected me with my childhood. Subsequent events had continued the work, and now the resolution which I had made had cut me off, or so I thought, completely from the past in which I had grown up. I laughed, and looked at Bess. "Why not tonight?" I said. The Flight-Lieutenant continued to stare at his boots. A quick expression of irresolution passed over Bess's face. She looked at me coaxingly and said: "Let's wait till tomorrow." She blushed as she spoke and, although if we had been alone I should have begun to argue with her, I found the look in her eyes infinitely appealing and was suffused with a kind of tenderness that slowed up the rapidity and damped down the ardour of my desire to have everything settled at once and, as I imagined, for ever. I nodded and said, "All right, tomorrow then", and the Flight-Lieutenant said: Til bring the papers that you'll have to sign." We all rose to our feet as though we had reached a decision to conclude some long and difficult debate. I should like to have had some more words with Bess alone, but the Flight-Lieutenant seemed wholly unaware of my state of mind and was evidently determined to accompany us wherever we went. We walked through a couple of fields and then back to the pub by the main road. None of us said much, and only the Flight-Lieutenant appeared wholly at his ease. I thought of mentioning the funeral and the Air-Marshal's speech, but said nothing either. From time to time I thought with delight and trepidation of the decision which we had taken. Then the presence of a third person seemed hardly to matter, and I looked urgently and inquiringly at Bess to see whether she was feeling as I felt. As usual on these occasions she was staring at the ground, with a remote and almost secretive smile upon her face. I thought of my love surrounding her like a cloak and of her walking forward sweet and unconscious of it. We arrived at the pub and found the landlord outside, dressed in his best suit, and smoking a pipe. He raised one hand to greet us, wholly unaware of the subject of our recent discussions, and began to speak slowly and ponderously of the regulations governing the marketing of pigs. He spoke at length, ending most of his sentences with the words "There's not a question of it", and taking little or no notice of his auditors. The Flight-Lieutenant made no attempt to pretend that he was paying attention to the landlord's words. He scratched with the point of his cane on the top of the low wall in front of the pub. I looked over his shoulder and saw that he was inscribing the first words of an obscene song. Finally he turned abruptly and walked away up the hill towards the aerodrome. The speaker paused and removed his pipe from his mouth. "Seems he knows nothing about pigs," he said, and was prepared to resume when I took advantage of the interruption to press Bess's hand and to move away myself. "See you tomorrow," I said, and she smiled at me quickly, and then looked down at the wall where the Flight-Lieutenant had been writing. I walked towards the Rectory, feeling now that the house was entirely strange to me. My head was full of plans, and I hardly thought of the discourtesy I had shown to the Air Vice-Marshal and to the Rector's wife.

CHAPTER VIII

The Impulse

NOT LONG AFTERWARDS I was sitting before a large fire in an upper room of the Manor. At my elbow was a small table covered with bottles, glasses, and spoons; and in the hot heavy air, thick with the smell of medicine and of disinfectant, nothing moved except the long flames flickering in the grate. From time to time I stared across the table to the big bed with its spotless white sheets and pillows which I had just seen smoothed by the Squire's sister. Lying in the bed on his back, with his knees tucked up, was the unconscious Squire, breathing slowly and heavily. His face appeared curiously small and pale, with the skin dragged back from the bones; and his body, too, under the bedclothes, seemed to have lost importance. I was reminded of a skinned rabbit as I watched him anxiously to see if he would wake, and I counted his deep breaths, not certain whether or not they were becoming less regular. I felt pity for the unconscious figure, and at the same time less noble feelings--a certain fear that he would die and that it would be discovered afterwards that I, while left on watch, had neglected some elementary precaution; a certain exasperation at the fact that now, when my mind was so busy on other things, I should be hurried from a funeral to a deathbed. For after leaving Bess I had got no farther than the Rectory gate before seeing the Squire's butler, Wilkinson, running up the drive, his head bare of the bowler hat which as a rule distinguished him from everyone else in the village. The carefully oiled lock of hair which usually lay stuck above his left eyebrow was falling over his nose, and he looked ridiculous as he came puffing and blowing (for he was a big man) towards me. While still some distance away he had managed to call out to me: "The old Squire, Mr Roy, the old Squire, he's failing fast"; and then, after just turning his large soft eyes on me, he had trotted on cumbrously up the village street. I had wondered what his errand had been, and I reflected now with some shame that my first feeling, after the initial surprise, had been one of exasperation. As I thought of this I looked quickly across at the body on the bed as if its unconsciousness could pardon me my lack of consideration and my preoccupation with my own affairs. The great eyebrows jutted into the air. The breathing was still thick and heavy, and this was the one sign of animation. I wished now that after meeting the butler I had come straight to the Manor instead of going on to the Rectory partly to obtain further information and partly, I was compelled to admit, to avoid for the moment the distress and the disturbance which I imagined that I would find in the Squire's home. I had entered the Rectory quietly and had stood uncertain, as though waiting for something, on the stone flags of the hall. What with the information which I had just received and the decision which I had reached that afternoon, I had forgotten that the Air Vice-Marshal would still be at our house, and had not immediately recognized his voice when I heard the sound of conversation in the sitting-room to the left of the front door. The door had been slightly ajar and I had paused with my hand outstretched to open it, for I had been surprised at a note of anger in the voice of the Rector's wife. "Surely," she was saying, "it is shameful to gloat over it. What harm could he possibly have done you?" The voice of the Air Vice-Marshal was cool and precise as he replied. "You are doing me an injustice. We do not gloat over things. I was merely observing that those who have been my enemies tend to die out, usually as a result of their own weakness or incompetence, while / survive them. You can hardly expect me to feel distressed." Then there had been a pause, and again I had been on the point of opening the door when I was arrested by a new note, almost of tenderness, in the voice of the Rector's wife. "You do not speak much," she was saying, "of your friends." The reply came immediately on the conclusion of her sentence. "They have had a way of either denying or avoiding their obligations." The Rector's wife had spoken again. It was as though she were meditating aloud. "And if one of them," she said, "should attempt to make up for the past..." Although I had no idea of what was the subject of their conversation, I was repelled by the coldness in the Air Vice-Marshal's voice as he replied: "It is a thing which I have never seen done." I had pushed open the door then, and had seen him standing with his back to the window, almost at attention and yet in appearance so sure of himself that there seemed to be nothing stiff in his attitude. He made no sign of recognition as I entered the room, and I looked from him to the Rector's wife who was leaning from her chair towards the fire, stretching out, as I had so often seen her do, one hand towards the red coals. She had smiled, and then her face had taken on a look of gravity. "You had better go to the Manor at once, Roy," she said. "Florence has just been in. He's very ill. Hardly likely to get through the night. He's been asking for you." I had made as though to leave the room, but before I did so the Air Vice-Marshal had taken two or three steps towards me. I was, for some reason, surprised to see him smiling. "Good-bye, my boy," he said. "I may not see you again. I've just rung for my car and shall leave tonight. Remember that if I can do anything to help you, I shall be glad to do so." I had stumbled over my words of thanks. Though previously I had been repelled by almost everything which the man had done and said, now I felt myself attracted to what appeared to be his power and the small amount of cordiality in his voice. Or perhaps my feelings were the result of a sudden realization of how useful to me, in the plans which I had just made, this offer of assistance might be. We shook hands and I had felt, I remember, unaccountably elated as I went down the drive to the Manor; though as soon as I had entered the hall I found myself caught up into an atmosphere in which it was impossible to think of myself. A maid and a nurse were crossing each other as one walked to the kitchen, the other to the foot of the stairs. Tears were streaming down the maid's face; her back was a little bent, and there was something furtive in the way she walked. The nurse's manner was firm, determined, and spiritual. Evidently, I had thought, the Squire is very ill. His sister had stood facing me, very erect, very pale, and with a look in her eyes which had rather surprised me. It was as though the approach of death had exalted her with feelings more active than resignation, almost as though she were welcoming this occasion as one for which she had herself fully prepared. She had advanced to meet me with outstretched hand, and it was only the low tone of her voice that made her appear different in manner from a hostess welcoming an expected guest. Her voice was very quiet. "Come upstairs, Roy," she had said. "Perhaps he will recognize you", and she had taken me by the hand and led me to the old man's room where, after she had smoothed the pillows and poked the fire, she had left me alone, instructing me to ring the bell if the Squire should regain consciousness or if there should be any marked change in the regularity of his breathing. As I sat there now before the fire, waiting for the old man to wake or else to die, I thought often of his sister and of how his death would be to her what the loss of his land had been to the Squire himself. Except for the short period of time in which the Squire had been on military service abroad, the two had spent their lives together, and though the old man, in his illness, had blamed himself for having so attached her to him and had hinted at some happenings in the past in which he imagined himself to have acted unkindly towards her, I had seen in the relations between the two nothing but mutual gratitude and the most devoted friendship. But, though I thought of the loss which she would have to undergo, I was not greatly moved by the thought. I was chiefly sorry, I think, to be reminded of death, and was not much grieved at the knowledge that it was the Squire who was dying. I admired him, but he seemed to have little now for which to live. I remembered, not without satisfaction, that he would not be there to oppose, as he would certainly have done, my entry into the Air Force and my hurried marriage; nor was I at this time ashamed, as I should certainly have been a day or two before, by the selfishness and inhumanity of my way of thinking. Indeed, I began to feel constrained and irritated in the hot still air, and wished that the body on the bed would do something else than breathe so loudly and unnaturally. Occasionally a kind of choking stop, succeeded by a snore, would come in the monotonous sound; then I would turn, almost with relief, to the bell, ready to ring it. There would be a short pause and the heavy breathing would be renewed. I stretched my legs out in front of me, and sat with closed eyes, counting the breaths. Suddenly I heard the bed creak and the breathing stop. I turned round and saw that the Squire had moved, and that he was lying on his side facing me, his mouth wide open and in his eyes a look of distress which was caused, perhaps, by the effort which he had made to shift his position. I rang the bell immediately, and went over to the bed relieved that something was happening, but frightened, too; for, if the breathing had been unnatural, the appearance of the dying man's face was more unnatural still. The eyes glared at me hopelessly; the mouth kept opening and shutting, in an effort to breathe or to articulate words; and when the mouth was shut the lips quivered in a way that I found not pathetic but horrible. I noticed particularly three white hairs on his imperfectly shaven chin. He at length gasped out some word which may have been my name, attempting at the same time to move his hand beneath the bedclothes; and there was something in this gesture which immediately dissolved in me those feelings of repulsion and exasperation which only just before I had felt and had hardly noticed that I was feeling. I knelt down on the floor and, folding back the bedclothes, took his thin hand in mine. His twitching mouth seemed to be attempting a smile, and for a short moment the look of horror and dismay passed from his eyes. He spoke in a deep guttural voice, most unlike himself: "I have something to tell you", and I remained kneeling on the floor, looking into his tortured eyes and his writhing mouth; for he seemed dreadfully harassed by the thought that he would not have the time or else the strength to say what he wished. He suddenly pronounced the words "Your father", and then fell silent again with a look of concentration on his face and the breath pouting his lips. It at once occurred to me that he was not speaking of the Rector, but was about to reveal to me something connected with my real father, whose name he might even know. I listened eagerly, but was aware at the same time that my eagerness was by no means so intense as it would have been only a few days before. Was this the effect just of the tired and dying face in front of me, or had I become, I wondered, habituated to a kind of isolation from the roots of my childhood? Was I prepared even to enjoy this isolation? The Squire spoke again, this time in a much softer voice. He said the one word "Florence", and then looked at me gravely as though either expecting an answer or else watching the effect of some important announcement. I began to think now that his mind must be wandering, and that no disclosure was to be made. I looked at him with rather less sympathy though I pressed his hand and smiled into his unresponsive face. His eyes were watching me closely while his mouth, over which he had no control, pitiably writhed and pouted. I heard the door open and, looking round, saw his sister enter the room. She came quickly to the bedside, stood beside me and gently laid one hand on the forehead of the dying man. I saw him turn his eyes upward and fancied that, though he could see and feel his sister's hand, he could not, having focused his eyes on me, make out her face which was farther away from him. She began to move her hand, stroking him over his eyes and nose; and suddenly I felt the grip of the old man's fingers tighten on mine, and saw that he had kicked out his legs convulsively. There was a sharp cry of pain, and I observed with horror that he had fixed his teeth in his sister's hand. For a short moment she turned towards me with an appealing and frightened look, and then began to pull at her arm in an effort to release herself; I saw the muscles on the old man's jaws bulge as he tightened his grip. His last strength seemed to be put into this horrible and insane action; but what was more horrible was what happened next. The expression on his sister's face suddenly changed so that her first look of terror and pain was replaced by one of frantic anger. Her lips hardened, and she bent right over the body, hissing into its ear: "You would, would you?" Then, with her disengaged hand, she began to slap the Squire's face. For one moment, I think, he may have recognized his sister, for across his eyes there seemed to pass a sudden look of surprise. Then both his legs were drawn up and, as he released his grip on the hand, his breath came in a long rattle through his throat. His head lolled back and, though I had never seen this happen before, I had no doubt that he was dead. I turned towards his sister, and my face must have expressed both shame and indignation. She was looking at me oddly, but soon put her hands in front of her face, and began to make a soft sound that might have been sobbing or else the beginnings of hysterical laughter. I led her to the chair in which I had been sitting, and then stood back from her; for, after what I had seen her do, I shrank from touching her and had nothing in me with which I could comfort her. One action had revealed what I could never have suspected, a deep hatred for the man to whom she had, to all appearances, sacrificed her life; and, though I felt some pity for her in her present distress, I could not help feeling horror also and bewilderment. I looked at the body on the bed and looked away again quickly. For relief my mind turned fully to my own plans for finally separating myself from the influences and characters which had surrounded me up to now, and which I saw now to have been quite other from what I had imagined them to be. They had been symbols to me of security and peace; but I had learnt that they could represent neither of these qualities. What I had thought to be solid, rounded, and entire, now seemed to melt into frightful shapes of mist, to dissolve into intricacies wherein I was lost as though I had never been. At this intricacy I felt no wonder, but only bewilderment; and