The Charioteer (42 page)

He was sitting awkwardly on the floor, doing the kind of job for which it is natural to kneel, or squat on the heels. Suddenly he felt run to a standstill under the accumulated weight of the day’s wretchedness. He struggled to his feet, the foil still in his hand, its lightness coaxing his wrist and the heavy boot dragging at his foot. The guard rang dully as he let it fall.

Laertes, you but dally, I pray you pass with your best violence; I am afear’d you make a wanton of me. …

Laurie walked over to the window-seat. The curtains were gone, only the blackout stuff was left. He went and switched off the light. Now the night sky glimmered behind the damson-tree, and as his eyes cleared of dazzle, the stars appeared.

“You mustn’t worry any more, Spud.”

There would be frost soon on the pane. Laurie pressed his forehead to the icy glass and shut his eyes. He didn’t know why memories which had lain with his mind’s lumber for so many years, waking no more than a dim nostalgia, should return now to charge the present with so unbearable a weight of longing. On a stricken field littered with the abandoned trophies of his lifetime, he remembered a victory which had once seemed beyond the furthest reach of the most secret aspiration. But he only said to himself that he must have someone to talk to.

He put on the light and looked at his watch. His mother had only been gone fifteen minutes. Mrs. Joyce was a great gossip; half an hour would be the least.

He went down to the telephone, called Trunks, and waited. There might be a raid on somewhere, he thought, it might take an hour. He found he had got hold of a loose bit of trimming on the chair-arm and was pulling it off.

He had made it a personal call; he didn’t want to hear voice after voice saying that Mr. Lanyon couldn’t be found. There were women’s voices outside, already, at the gate. But they were village voices, and passed on.

“Have they answered yet?”

“No. Will you try again, please, it’s urgent.”

“The line has been busy but I am trying to connect you.” A bit of wire many miles off crackled and whispered.

“Hello, Spud.”

Laurie’s heart jerked violently, then steadied like a car settling into top gear.

“Hello, Ralph. How on earth did you know it would be me?”

“Never mind. Where are you speaking from?”

“Home.”

“Well, Spud, how is it? Not madly gay?”

“Well, so-so. Everyone’s out; back any minute, I expect.”

“Spud, relax. Forget it’s a telephone. We’re on our own. Loosen up, and tell me about it. House packed up?”

“Yes; I’ve been doing my room.”

“How long had you lived there?”

“About fourteen years.”

“God. Oh, Spud, about the dog. If you want to bring him away, I think I can fix him up at the Station for a bit.”

“Thanks. I expect he’d have liked it. He’s been liquidated, only they forgot to tell me.”

“What? What happened?”

“He was getting on a bit. I had him all the time I was at school He was eleven.”

“Spuddy. I’m very sorry.”

“I’d rather have seen to it myself, that’s all. You can give them sleeping pills first, then they don’t know.”

“What time is this wedding?”

“Two.”

“Village church, I suppose?”

“Yes. It’s his church. Great-Uncle Edward’s had an attack, so he won’t be coming.”

“Oh? Your mother very upset?”

“Well, he was giving her away. It’s a good job I’m here, isn’t it?”

“
What?
Oh, no, Spud, nonsense. No, they can’t make you do that.”

“No one’s actually making me. But it’s hardly a job you can hand over to the churchwarden, when it comes to the point.”

“Spud, why the hell didn’t you let me come with you?”

“I can’t think, now.”

Almost as he spoke, he heard the sound of the front door shutting, and voices in the hall.

“Spud, can you hear me?”

“Sorry, here comes the family.”

“All right, Spud. Don’t worry, good night. I’ll be seeing you.”

Laurie started to say “I’ll be back by—” But the line had died.

A few minutes later, he remembered the unfinished job upstairs. But it was almost suppertime. In the end he bundled everything back in the cupboard again. It would have to be tomorrow, after all. He hadn’t meant to take the second night’s leave if he could catch the four-forty; but if he missed it, it couldn’t be helped.

At ten o’clock, Aunt Olive remarked on the busy day they had had; told Mrs. Odell that she
must
have an early night; then blushed a congested dark red and changed the conversation. After this Laurie and his mother sat up for another twenty minutes, painfully discussing family friends and the war news. Aunt Olive seemed anxious to leave them together; but they both clung to her company, which must have pleased her, Laurie thought.

Later, when he was ready for bed, he raked out the fire, and opened the blackout. The stars looked frosty; it was too early for the moon. It would have been cheerful to keep in the fire, pull up the mattress to it and read; but his mother would have been shocked to find no windows open, when she came down to say good night.

When he heard her, he got up from the bed where he had been sitting and moved out into the room. She walked straight on toward the bed and did not see him until he spoke.

“Not in bed yet, dear?” On any other night she would have said “I came to tuck you up,” but tonight she didn’t say it. She felt his dressing-gown and said, “This is so thin, darling, don’t catch cold.”

He put his arm around her waist and kissed her, trying to think of absolutely nothing. “God bless you, Mother dear. Be very happy.”

“Laurie darling; you must … you
will
try to get on with him, won’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“All these years, all the time you were little, I’ve thought of no one but you.”

“I know, dearest. Of course, I know.”

“You must never repeat this to anyone, but Colonel Ramsay asked me to marry him, when you were at school. But I didn’t like the idea of giving you a stepfather when you were just at the difficult age. Now I’m not young any more; and next year, or the year after, when you want to get married, I should be all alone.”

“Mother. I don’t want to get married. If that’s all, I … I don’t think I’ll ever want to. It’s just something I feel. If you don’t want to go through with it, I …”

“
Darling,
but of
course
I do! Whatever put such an idea into your head? At this stage, too.”

“Sorry, dear. It’s only that …”

“You must never say such a thing to me again, it’s not kind, it’s very silly indeed.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean it.”

“I don’t suppose you remember your father, now?”

“A bit here and there. Not very well.”

“I wasn’t unhappy with him, you know, till I found out how he was deceiving me. You know, dear, a woman gets, well, used to being married. I haven’t told you, but sometimes I’ve been rather lonely.”

Once she had come to see him in hospital, before the bone infection had gone down. He had been in great pain but hadn’t wanted to tell her; he had lain watching the clock when she wasn’t looking, and praying silently, “Go away. Please go away.” He withdrew his arm, now, gently and as if by accident, and said, “Well, you be happy, dear, God knows you deserve it.”

“I’ll have your room all ready for you; all your things, and the books put out.”

“I’ll have to stay somewhere near a library, for a bit. You can’t read much in hospital. Don’t unpack the books yet, I might have to send for them.”

“Don’t stay away too long, darling.” He felt that she had dreaded his early arrival in her heart, and was relieved.

He said, “There’s going to be a frost tonight,” hoping that she would go. He had used his leg a good deal, doing odd jobs and climbing the hill; even with the altered boot it had been too much.

“Laurie, darling. Don’t go quite away from me.”

There was space behind him, he could turn his back to the little light there was; he had been right not to stay in bed, trapped against the wall. “If ever you need me,” he said, “ever, wherever I am.”

“But, darling, I shall always need you, just the same as ever.” He had made her doubts too articulate; she would escape from him now. “What am I doing,” she cried, “keeping you up in the cold, just out of hospital? Good night, darling, we shall all be so busy tomorrow, try to sleep well. Good night.”

The light from the door grew narrow behind her, turning to a strip, to a line, to a memory drawn on a slab of darkness. Now he could see that the faint glimmer they had been standing in came partly also from the stars.

In the old days, if one slept downstairs, after the house was quiet Gyp would get cautiously out of his basket, and one would hear his claws on the flags in the hall. He would put his nose to the crack under the door, and make a faint whistly snuffle till it was opened. For a big dog, he took up very little room.

Laurie fell asleep between two and three in the morning. The moon had risen by then, and frost was growing up the window-glass, opening pointed leaves and flowers to the light.

For the last hour he had tried to think of nothing, and in the end had almost succeeded. But nature abhors a vacuum, and it was impossible to empty the mind entirely. So at last he thought of what was next to nothing, the recollection of a dream, which tomorrow need not be remembered. A cold pool of moonlight trickled over to where he lay; but by then he was out of reach, his eyes pressed down on the pillow, and one arm thrown over it in a gesture which, even in the relaxation of sleep, looked abrupt and possessive.

In the morning, as soon as he was awake, it became increasingly like getting ready for a general inspection, except that he himself had been promoted to C.S.M. Almost before he had time to brush himself down, his mother was being dressed by Aunt Olive and people were arriving. Relations whom he felt he had seen quite recently, and who seemed to him very little changed, exclaimed with wonder at not finding him still a schoolboy. Others asked him if he was on leave. Suddenly they all began disappearing; in what seemed no time at all the house was empty even of Aunt Olive; there was only a stray caterer’s man arguing with Mrs. Timmings, and then the car was at the door. Hurrying upstairs he nearly fell, recovered with his heart in his mouth, precipitated himself into his mother’s room after a perfunctory knock, and came face to face with her in her wedding dress.

“How do I look, darling?”

“You look lovely. Everyone who doesn’t know will think I’m your brother.”

For a moment united as one, each was silently begging the other, “Take it quickly, take it lightly, God forbid we should go through that again.”

Softly and musically, the clock in the hall struck two. Time is, time was, time is past.

“We must go.” She made a little movement toward her ivory-and-gold prayer-book.

“No,” he said. “You have to keep him waiting.”

Her hand in its pearl-gray glove, resting on his arm, looked small and naïvely formal, the hand of a Du Maurier child who has watched fans and trains from the top of the stairs.

“… not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly …”

Laurie gazed at the line of little gray buttons that ran down the back of his mother’s dress. He was glad, after all, that he had come, that circumstances had presented him with no excuse. She had needed him, a thing which in his hurt pride and abandonment he had forgotten to expect. He couldn’t think, indeed, how she would have managed without him.

“… and, forsaking all other, keep thee only to her, as long as ye both shall live?”

In a round, announcing voice, Mr. Straike said, “I will.”

The full realization of his physical presence hit Laurie like a blow. He stared at the floor and reminded himself that he was in church. But church had become a smell of hassocks and furnace coke and, ubiquitously, of Mr. Straike. It was an extension of him.

“Wilt thou obey and serve him, love, honor, and …”

Oh, God, make her say no.

“I will.”

He heard Aunt Olive behind him give a satisfied sigh.

“Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?”

“I do,” Laurie said. Now that it had come he could feel nothing at all, except a proud determination to do it properly. He took a measured pace forward and handed his mother to Canon Rosslow to hand to Mr. Straike. He fell a pace back again. With a dry, empty relief, he realized that this was all. He had spoken his line; he could get back into the chorus. There was his place ready for him, beside Aunt Olive in the corner of the front pew. He moved toward it.

Aunt Olive put away her handkerchief, and seemed to cross an invisible threshold to festivity. The moment the psalm had started she nudged him and whispered, “Beautiful.”

She had been very kind to his mother. He nodded sociably.

“You did
very
well,
most
correct and dignified.”

He made a deprecating face, and applied himself to his prayer-book; but she was touching his arm.

“Just look
quickly,
dear, and tell me who—”

He looked quickly, being sure that she wouldn’t let him alone till he did. It was a big church, and the bride’s friends sat with plenty of elbow-room. The parishioners, with the modesty of country people, had left several empty pews in the middle. Laurie had no trouble in following Aunt Olive’s eye to the stranger in the seventh row.

He was singing from the book, standing very straight and correctly, as if he were at ship’s prayers, and not looking about him. But he must have felt Laurie turn, for their eyes met at once. Ralph’s narrowed in a brief smile, then returned to the page. Laurie became aware of Aunt Olive’s expectancy; he whispered, “Friend of mine.”

“
Very
nice,” said Aunt Olive, nodding vigorously.

The psalm ended. Laurie, who would never pray on his knees again, leaned forward and covered his face.

“… and forgive us our trespasses,” muttered the congregation; a drowsy, absent-minded sound like the sound of scuffling feet. Laurie looked down through his fingers at a piece of oak smoothed by the hands of six generations, and, the terms of his self-deceit forgotten, thought, I ought not to have sent for him. He knew that he had refused to expect this result, only because that would permit him to make it certain.