Then, and only then, when he’d stepped outside himself accidentally, as it were, did he know completely what it meant to have found her. And how completely he was bound to her, heart to heart.
Then he blinked, and sighed, and suddenly smiled broadly at her.
“Now – do you know what?” he said. “I feel shy, I don’t know what to say.”
She looked away, thinking it embarrassed him to be stared at; but in fact he was hardly conscious of it, and after a second he went on: “Did you do it again after you left me there on the beach? I mean, did you find anyone else?”
Without thinking of it they both began to move gently along the road, as if they had exhausted for the time being the psychic potentiality of that one spot. It was easier to talk, too, because they did not have to look at each other, but instinctively each of them sought the other’s hand and clasped it tightly. She answered him in such a low voice that he had to lean close to her to hear it.
“No…I never did after that, because I didn’t need to, you see, I’d found you; and then lost you immediately… I had to make myself again falsely, to pretend all day long, month after month. But I never did it again.”
“No…I believe you, my love! You see, I
can
believe simply and honestly! Oh Elizabeth, tell me something else: do you think that in this love of ours there’s anything
real
? No, I don’t mean real: I mean realistic, I mean worldly. If I were to write about it, to write it down like a story, would it look – I don’t know – improbable? Fanciful?”
She smiled at this, but it may have been his expression she was smiling at, for he looked almost childishly anxious as he said it.
“Why don’t
you
know?” she asked. “But just because it’s extravagant and unlikely doesn’t mean it’s not true. I don’t know, I haven’t the least idea about it. It doesn’t matter either, does it? It’s just happened now, like this, instead of after we’d known each other for a long time, that’s all. It would have happened anyway. But it doesn’t matter – it doesn’t matter – it doesn’t matter. What is realistic anyway?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t feel the world to be true. I don’t know if it
is
true, so I don’t know how important it is; politics, war, trade, business, crime, are they a sort of dream, because that’s how I see them, or are they vital – real – true – important? Am I deluding myself? And us, Elizabeth, are we part of the world, or are we outside it?”
“No! We’re outside it! Politics and business and war don’t concern us at all, any more than if we were on another planet. But it’s hard for me to say that, it’s harder now than it was on – on the beach. I said then – I can’t remember, I think I said about politics that it was matter, it was completely earthy, and I’m not matter at all, so of course it’s not real… now it’s harder. I don’t know so clearly because I’ve been, all this time when I thought I’d never see you again, I’ve been denying myself, I’ve been copying the world so earnestly and moulding myself to it – to pretend that – if the real part – my soul – if it shrank, if it grew colder and smaller and finally died – I could pretend that the false part was true, when I had nothing else; and so I’d last a bit longer. And I pretended it so completely and so fully that now you’ve come and the – my soul can be true and live again – but the false part’s strong, it’s grown hard, hard to break – so it’s – it’s difficult… oh Matthew! “
She had been speaking haltingly, uncomfortably, but now she broke down and wept, and shook her head helplessly and turned to face him, making awkward movements with her hands before flinging her arms round his neck and holding him tightly.
His concern was all for her; but he could not help thinking, as he led her gently to the side of the road and the shelter of a great elm that stood there, how the strangeness – the unworldliness – of their meeting was never so poignant as when their bodies were pressed so closely together.
She cried so passionately and so freely that it began to worry him a little, and, noticing that the gate in the hedge nearby was unfastened, he said to her “Elizabeth – Elizabeth – listen, love! – come and sit down in the field, come on; it’ll be quiet in there.”
It was quiet enough in the road; but he hated the thought that a car might come past, or a man on foot or on a bicycle, to disturb them.
Once inside the field, he made her sit down beside him, and leant back against a clump of hazel saplings. The hedge was thick and still. The field sloped gradually upwards in front of them, ending on a ridge about a hundred yards away where a clumsy wire fence separated it from the next. Outlined against the grey sky on the other side of the fence was a dilapidated hut, made of corrugated iron and roofed with tarred felt. He wondered what it was for; it was too big for a pig-shelter, and not close enough to any farmhouse to be much use as a chicken-house… It was just about big enough for a man to live in on his own, if he had few possessions. Next to it a dead tree lay on the ground, with one great thick bare branch thrusting up against the sky. Matthew was fascinated by this little group of apparently useless things, as he had been fascinated by the rubbish in the car-park near the beach. Something in the way the light played on them or in the way they were grouped reached down deep into his unconscious memories and stirred his heart as if it were a dream, giving him the tormenting hint that nothing short of rapture was awaiting him if only he could penetrate the secret they symbolised.
But
no
– he suddenly realised with a powerful start of surprise that the secret of those dreams and memories was here beside him, now.
His arm was around her shoulder, and he pulled her close to him, trying to make sense of it. And he thought it would only make sense if when he looked at her – when he kissed her – he would be unconscious of her, and conscious only of that subterranean life-force that welled up with a tumultuous, enigmatic joy, overflowing his heart, when he was alone in front of things like this field or the sky over the houses near the beach.
He hugged her closely with his left arm and caressed her burning cheek with his other hand, trying to soothe her sobs; but she still cried, not responding in the least, sitting tensely against him.
“Speak! Speak to me Elizabeth!” he whispered. “If it’s all breaking down and coming apart, this false life of yours, then it’s to the good – never forget that your soul is real, and so is mine, and that we’re not part of the world! We can’t be defeated, my love! It was impossible that we should not meet and love each other – it’s impossible for us to lose it – you are the source of my life, and I am the source of yours, and there’s nothing stronger than us in the earth or the sky – oh, believe me, Elizabeth! Believe me! Hush, now, and look at me – look up at me – that’s it – dry your eyes, and stop crying, my love; be still, now, rest your head against me, like that; that’s right, be calm, and speak to me if you want to, and I’ll listen.”
She shook her head numbly and leant it against his shoulder again, but she was not crying. Once or twice a sob shook her chest, but otherwise she was still. And Matthew went on, thinking aloud, half dreaming:
“I can’t be aware of you and aware of the world at the same time… it’s a different kind of consciousness, different eyes I see you with. I don’t just see: you, a girl aged – what are you? twenty-two, the daughter of a priest, who lives in the country, who works – I don’t know what you do – I don’t know at all… for all I know you might be married. Because you’re not in focus when I look at the world, that’s what I mean; you’re not, and nor is anything else that’s sublime… and that’s a word you don’t hear nowadays, isn’t it! I don’t think anyone’s used that word seriously for years and years, but the sublime
exists
and from time to time I see it – anywhere… and you contain it, love does – I am beginning to love you now, Elizabeth, because every second I grow more conscious of you: you’re driving the world out of me! “
There was an idea tormenting him, and he couldn’t stop until he had articulated it; but what it was, he didn’t know. He went on, letting his voice find its own way:
“I’m losing sight of the world, thank God, I’m going blind… and the summit of hope and the end of desire will be when I’m blind and deaf, and
alone
, driven by one raging motive with everything else forgotten – if you’re blind you can’t see illusions: so put your eyes out! If you’re deaf you can’t be distracted by lies: so stop your ears up! and I am blind, deaf, alone with my
one lust
which is love, and it en gages every bit of me, I am driven, possessed, pure at last, at peace – yes! peace! Driven and obsessed, at peace! Do you understand that? Oh, why do I ask that? Yes, of course you understand, and it’s only because you and I are brother and sister, with one soul, that I feel like this at all. Now I’m beginning to feel it for the first time…it’s breaking into my heart, flooding into my soul, as if dykes are bursting, walls crumbling, under the weight of it… what is it? Love, I call it, and lust. The object of it – whatever it is – is you; you, your slim body and your hard intent soul; they’re mine! And it’s the ache of it, too, Elizabeth, it’s like the longing for home when you’re a small child away from your parents, but far fiercer and deeper than that because I’m more impatient now, I’m stronger than I was; the longing has more worldliness to overcome before it can sweep cleanly into my soul – but it does sweep into me, and now I know where my heart is: it’s where this bitter pain is most intense! … How is it happening? why, why, in God’s name, does it hurt? I thought it hurt when it was unrequited, but no! There are no obstacles now, there’s no distance between us here; so why does it ache? It does, though, intolerably, and I think – think! I don’t think any more! I am – I dream – it is the eternal world speaking through me now! I
know
, then, that no love can exist without this ceaseless longing and pain, it’s at the heart of love, it is love’s life… All these vague longings, these unrealised sadnesses, this – alienation that makes everything we do trivial and commonplace – they’re only a premonition of pain, and the pain is love –”
She had been sitting absolutely still while he spoke. He was struggling to remain in control of his voice: he had a vivid sense of being spoken through rather than of speaking himself, and the flood of emotions was almost too strong for him. But suddenly she sat up and put her hand to his lips and silenced him.
She leant across and they kissed, almost savagely. Matthew felt his flesh shake with a force that transcended sexuality altogether; for while sex scorched the flesh and set it burning, this pierced straight through him like light through glass, making him like crystal at the blaze of noon; and he sensed the physical world around him straining to burst, as a bud breaks, into that state of being which she had named morality.
How long the sense of it lasted he had no idea; at length they drew back gently and faced each other. On her cheeks were the marks of tears, and her hair was tangled; the sleeve of her white raincoat was stained with green where it had crushed the grass. Around her hands, and around the flesh of her neck, he discerned – if not with his eyes, then with some other sense – a wild, tender, will-to-touch that moved him inexpressibly, like music; and his hands joined hers, and they kissed again. Plainer and plainer every second it came to him that his flesh and hers were not going to be kept apart; if it had not been sex that stirred him a moment ago, it was now; and she, for her part, pressed her body more urgently against his with every moment.
But then she broke away, quite suddenly, and sat away from him, her eyes bright and disturbed.
“Matthew,” she whispered, “to go beyond it now – to go beyond it – to transcend it – what would we have to do?
Answer me
honestly, and remember that I asked!”
Immediately the answer came to his lips: “We’d have to – to stop completely, now, take our hands away from each other and agree never to touch again, never to let sex into us – no: we can’t help it when it does come but we’d have to act like brother and sister: our kisses would have to be chaste, and we’d each of us have to understand the sex impulse when it came in the other, understand it calmly and lead it away… earth it… that’s what we’d have to do, if we wanted to get any further!”
She nodded, slowly at first, and then enthusiastically; and the look on her face, as her eyes met his, was intense and happy.
“Matthew, dear, that’s what I’ve thought too! But you will remember, won’t you, what I said? That I asked, and you answered?”
“Yes,” he said, and laughed; “oh yes, I’ll remember. But now, my sweet – sister, I’m burning from head to toe with it, with lust, I mean, now that I’ve put you out of my reach completely!” And he laughed again, out of pure joy.
“Well, we’ll have to start now. Get up,” she said, and she sprang to her feet and gave him her hands, “stand up now, and kiss me, as you said, chastely; and we’ll go on, down the road.”
He stood up, holding on to her hands, and leant forward to kiss her. As their lips met he felt suddenly conscious of the entirety of her body, the body he’d just renounced, and he knew with a violent certainty what her breasts would feel like cupped in his hands – what her thighs would feel like, with his lips pressed into them – and exactly how
hot
it would feel to enter her; and the knowledge that the momentous landscape of her body was at that very instant in his arms made his heart surge: but no, he had renounced it, and there was a reason for it, a good reason, which was that the struggle against his flesh made him a little stronger, a little more tense. He opened his eyes, and saw that she was thinking the same, and they smiled.
“Give me your hand,” he said as they walked slowly back to the gate. “Brothers can hold hands with their sisters; there’s no sexual meaning in holding hands. Oh, I love you, Elizabeth!”
“Perhaps one day we could go into the desert, if sex is wearing us down, or maybe even if it isn’t,” she said; “the sun would burn sex out of us, and we’d be completely naked, hermits, with hair down to our waists, burnt black; and we’d appear in front of travellers, the two of us, holding hands, almost inhuman we’d be, and they wouldn’t be able to tell if you were a man or if I were a woman; and we’d say nothing to them but just vanish back into the desert like mirages…”