Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
When the mule was laden, he came out of the house to lock the door, and she was standing where she had stood that morning on the terrace when she had told him the contents of the telegram, and
the rush of feeling that he had had for her then recurred. He turned away quickly to lock the door: in the morning he had been silent because he had felt restricted by other people – now, at
least, he was restricting himself – and he tried now to stiffen himself with this difference.
They walked behind the mule to the port, facing a young moon that lay couched in little clouds like a young beauty on a bed of feathers. The man spoke to his mule, but they were silent until
they met Julius who was waiting for them. He wore a spotless shirt and his bleached and tufted hair had been smoothed, his face was solemn but discreetly decorated by a little smile of
excitement.
‘I have commanded quail – small roasted birds. Ho! that’s a good way to carry a cat. I should think you’d be desolate to part with it, wouldn’t you?’
‘She’s very sad about it,’ he said firmly before she could answer Julius.
Dinner was a great success. He found their combined company charming: Julius drank four bottles of orange and the kitten crunched up so many quail bones that it had not even energy to swear at
other cats. After dinner she gave Julius the watch: he was very impressed and told her about the kitten. Then he rushed away into the restaurant and came back with a roll of white paper.
‘I am also presenting you with this.’
It was an elaborate and spirited picture of marine life – drawn in indian ink with a remarkable assurance and care. In the corner it had ‘With love from Julius Lawson’ written
in red ink. At the top it had ‘Some Life in the Red Sea’.
‘I drew it this afternoon. It is quite the best of my collection. You did say you were interested in marine life?’
‘Yes: it’s beautiful.’
‘Five of the specimens are not accurate: I haven’t seen them, so they are simply how I thought they would look from their names.’
She admired it again.
‘You haven’t noticed the chart of depths.’ He showed her the side of the picture which was neatly ruled out with fathoms marks deepening down the picture. ‘Nobody is
swimming out of their depths, you see. I think many painters would forget to do that.’
She thanked him very solemnly and he relaxed. ‘It is not a slipshod affair – you could easily have it put in a frame, and hang it on a wall if you have one.’
She rolled it carefully up again and promised to frame it when she got home.
When the time came for them to board the caique, he became very silent. He hopped to and fro off the boat like a small bird, helping them to stow their smaller belongings. Finally he shook hands
with Emmanuel, and bowed his thanks for the splendid dinner, and when Emmanuel said rather awkwardly: ‘I didn’t know what you would like, so would you choose something for
yourself?’ and gave him a hundred-drachma note, he looked at it with awe and muttered: ‘Fifty weeks’ worth of pocket money! I am speechless with gratitude at your
munificence.’
When she said goodbye he clung to her with a sudden intensity, hugged her and whispered something, but the engine had been started and he had to go. He jumped back on to the quay, his eyes
blazing with sad excitement, and shouted: ‘Come back! Come back!’ and not knowing they said, ‘Yes!’ Then they were cast off and chugging away and leaving him looking much
smaller – a small boy – and forlorn.
They were settled on a hatch amidships: there seemed to be several passengers – all Greek – crouched about the boat among boxes of fish and jars of wine, who talked quietly to one
another and called to a second boat that was leaving with them. He and she had been looking at Julius; now he turned to see her face which was still turned towards the shore: she looked grave,
almost stern, but he felt her give a little inward sigh: he asked: ‘What were you thinking?’
Still looking she answered: ‘I was just trying to accept our departure. I mean – we’re leaving the island
now
; it is a moment. And yet, years from now, we may have
difficulty in remembering it.’
He was about to deny this – since leaving the island meant so much to him – but the essential truth of what she said was undeniable. Years hence, he would remember something of what
he had felt while they left the island, but he would not remember exactly what this moment was like – it would all be lost in the ashes of other experience. So he said nothing.
They chugged gently out of the small harbour, and then increased speed. Behind them the island loomed in mountainous bulk above the lights of the port which gradually became diminished until
they were like stamens at the heart of an enormous flower. Ahead was dark sea and, above, a midnight sky crowded with stars. Voices had lowered in the boat – the other caique remained a
constant distance from them. The kitten lay inert in the sling she had made from a cotton head-square. She said: ‘You know, Julius has changed this cat’s life. Will they let me take it
into England?’
‘There is a quarantine, I think. We’ll have to think what to do.’
They were sitting on the hatch: suddenly she said: ‘Now we have left the island.’
‘Then we must be in the boat.’
She smiled; then yawned and answered: ‘I think I will be asleep in it.’
He made her a pillow of his coat and covered her with her own. The kitten, let out of its sling, stretched, yawned, and lay down round her neck. ‘Young creatures,’ he thought;
‘they have both simply had enough of the day.’ She put up a hand to him and said: ‘You have been so kind: you’ve changed it for me so that I see one isn’t entirely
alone – one does meet people from time to time.’
He took her hand, and knowing what she did not know, he kissed it. She said drowsily: ‘Nobody has ever kissed my hand before,’ and seemed really, he thought, as they say, to fall
asleep. He had time to put her hand back under the coat, and that was all. The kitten lifted its head, and moved itself closer to the shelter of her neck, and they were both gone.
He thought that he wasn’t tired: he had imagined himself talking to her for hours: but now this did not seem a deprivation, she was there, herself, and he could see it. He lit a cigarette,
and watched the island recede to a blurred murmur of lights and no outline against the sky. They had left it: soon, he would be leaving her – it was all a matter of departure. Where was he
going? This was a question all of one’s life. They would arrive, leave the boat, and go – to what? For some long time he tried to understand what any arrival had meant in his life
– the cigarette was finished: he made a pillow of her bag – slippery and hard for his head. He was tired, tired, tired: the boat throbbed with his tiredness – on and on –
getting nowhere, although the sea was all round him and he knew that they were travelling upon it. He looked at her – rapt and attentive to her sleep – and the kitten – its head
curled, curved into her neck – its eyes slits of concentration upon the matter in hand, and wanting to join them in this if nothing else, he lay down. He looked up at the stars, and thought:
‘They can bear to be there all the time: I can hardly bear to be here at all.’ He put his hand on the kitten’s back which lay against her shoulder, and shut his eyes . . .
CHAPTER VIII
1
ALBERTA
I
N
the boat I seemed to wake up suddenly – and completely. It was very cold and grey, with mist and still water round
us; all rather ghostly and unreal, and that may have been why I started to think about home, and to imagine myself there. I thought of unhitching the white gate and walking round the weedy curved
drive to the front door which is always open in summer and looking up at the house – the stone which is the most beautiful warmed worn grey, and the wistaria and blowzy roses and cracked
white paint on the window sills with Serena’s tennis shoes drying a toothpaste white on one of them: waiting to look, and walking up the steps into the hall which is the size of an ordinary
room and somehow cold even in summer with all its doors and the staircase. The dining room and the drawing room doors are open and the baize door leading to the kitchen is hitched back, but the
door of his study is shut, and the thought of opening it and finding his study exactly as it has always been, but without him, is one which I cannot bear. If I go past the baize door and along the
stone passage and out of the garden door by the kitchen it will only be to walk round the back lawn to his study window, because perhaps if you look in at a room through a window you half expect to
find it empty. And there is everything – his glass-fronted bookcase, his desk covered with papers and presents like ink wipers that we made him as children, the photograph of our mother in a
silver frame with blue velvet inside, the leather armchair and the long battered sofa with the springs broken at one end, the coconut matting and the black woolly rug in front of the fireplace
which we used to use for bears, and the really horrible jar with metal snakes writhing round its outside that he will keep pampas grass in – he said it was the kind of jar that was made for
pampas grass and anything nicer would have been a waste – and the coat rack next to the door which Aunt T. had put there to remind him to wrap up when he went out, and the dark green
wallpaper that he couldn’t afford to change, and the unfortunate lampshade that a parishioner made him for a Christmas present which he said it would hurt her feelings not to use, and his
First Aid box with two divisions, a large one for children and a small one for animals, and the funny smell like stamp albums with a touch of moth balls thrown in . . . every single thing is there
as it seems always to have been ever since I can remember – only when I go back to it now, although I can see him sitting in his chair and looking up when he sees me and just smiling without
saying a word – he won’t be there – and now I have to go back and the feeling of dread that I woke up with on the boat has grown and grown until I don’t know how to bear
going back.
This is hopeless. It isn’t as though I’ll ever have to do it again, because we shall have to move to make room for a new vicar. The others have had this ever since he died: it is
what Aunt T. would call morbid and it is where Papa would say ‘Courage, Sarah’ in his firmest voice . . . Oh dear, at least I
know
what he would say perfectly well, and from now
onwards I must just say those sort of things to myself. It
is
better having written it out; partly, I suppose, because I can see how silly it looks. It is no good going back in the wrong
way; I must be firm and calm and helpful to poor Aunt T., because Humphrey isn’t practical, and Clem isn’t calm and poor Uncle Vin is in the middle of a film so I don’t suppose he
can be very helpful. And Mary and Serena are too young. I simply must be my age, as Jimmy would say.
This morning I tried to thank Mr Joyce for everything: it was after we’d left the boat and staggered ashore with all the suitcases and the kitten. We went to a small café and had
bread and coffee as we both felt pretty cold and empty: the kitten kept escaping and of course it doesn’t understand in the least about traffic. The sailors gave it a garfish out of one of
the fish boxes – they are a very long, thin fish with an intellectual expression – and it ate it like somebody typing very fast down a long line. The food seemed to make it frisky which
was most unfortunate. I was beginning to despair of its control when Mr J. said: ‘We’ll have to get it a basket: we’ll try and buy one on our way in to Athens,’ and it was
then that I tried to thank him. The trouble was that trying to say something I really meant and felt simply made me want to cry. He was very patient and sympathetic about it; which nearly made me
laugh; for a moment, with his face blue from not shaving and circles under his eyes and a bar of smudge across his forehead, he looked like a clown – funny, and somehow terribly sad at the
same time – but of course I didn’t tell him that. In a way I’ve got to love him – not like Papa, of course, but a feeling of considerable affection, and I have a feeling
that, unlike Papa, he
minds
his age, so that although with Papa or someone of my own age I could have said: ‘You look like a clown, my dear X,’ with Mr J. this would be wrong.
Papa used to say that I was not nearly sensitive enough to people’s feelings, so that is another thing to start remembering. In the taxi driving into Athens to the same hotel where he said we
would be sure to find the others, he suddenly asked me to say goodbye to him then. He said he hated airports and collective farewells and anyway it would probably be raining in London which made
everything worse. So we solemnly said goodbye: we shook hands and then kissed each other’s faces: ‘Like French Prime Ministers,’ I said, and at first I thought he hadn’t
heard, but then he said not in the least – they never stopped shaving. Then he offered me help of a practical nature: he said if I found that there was a money crisis at home, I must tell him
because financial help was his long suit and he looked both bitter and kind when he said it. I thanked him and he said: ‘Now there is nothing more that we need underline; let’s look for
your basket.’ We found it, and came here, and now I’ve bathed and changed out of island clothes and am waiting to hear the plans which Jimmy is out making apparently, and the dread of
the journey home keeps bouncing towards me and away again – it has just come back like a tiresome ball that seems both unerring and silly; there is a considerable difference between knowing
what to do and actually doing it, I suppose one spends most of one’s life in this gap?
2
LILLIAN
I
WOKE
late with the telephone ringing, and as I propped myself up to answer it I saw the turned-down bed that had not been
slept in beside me. It was Jimmy, sounding harassed.
‘I’m at the Air Terminal, we’ve a problem on. This plane leaves tonight at six thirty. If they catch the boat – and it seems to be the only one – that we caught
yesterday, they can’t possibly arrive in time. I tried to call the island before I came here this morning, but I can’t make any sense out of what they say. They should have gotten the
cable by now, but what difference will that make? Should I cancel today’s plane, and try to get two more seats for tomorrow?’