The Young Desire It (37 page)

In the passionate sunlight he felt calmer, and regretted the way he had spoken to his mother. The sun on his head like a hand, burning through his hair; under the thin blue stuff of his shirt he could feel its prickling bite and pressure. To see the mare free, rolling on a patch of bare ground as though she knew she had a day of freedom, gave him a new assurance; he imagined the curve of the day up to noon and down the afternoon hours, seeing himself alone with Margaret, unrestrained by any compulsion save that of her presence, gladly obliged to look at her as though no increase of time were to drive a wedge between their bodily nearness.

I do not feel young, he thought, and yet I know I am. So is she. If we were only a little older, perhaps it would be…

He thought of her clearly, supposing that she felt the same helplessness, whose essential passivity made life seem to have run mad about them. Yet the way she had looked at him, and something else in her now, defied his understanding. He wished it had been winter; summer was too strong, and had a purposeful confusion in it. In winter, in those inspired August days, they had been so single in their mind, turned so much outward to one another, that conflict had no room in the happiness that crowded the hours. Now she was changed; from him she had turned into herself and her own being. The rage in her eyes was a fury of self-concentration like that of a woman being possessed bodily, with all her will and might, at the end of a long-denied desire.

He lifted the knapsack he had put down by the door, and slung the straps across his shoulders. Inside the kitchen, dark coolness touched his face; when he could see clearly he realized that no one was there. The woman's voice came to him from the depths of the house; the words were indistinguishable; after listening with stretched attention for a minute he let his breath out and was easier. The rise and fall of the tones had seemed calm, reassuringly normal, like Julia's heavy roll on the hard ground, like the motionless shadow of the twisted plum-trees. He sat down on a corner of the long table, waiting, still uncertain of what the Scotswoman thought of him now.

Presently they came in together.

‘What a time you take,' he said, pretending to be merry to conceal the joy and distress that each new sight of her touched in him.

‘Have y'everything you'll be wanting noo?' Mrs. McLeod asked him; and he answered, ‘Yes, everything' looking at Margaret. She was fastening the leather thong of a sandal across the bare instep of her right foot; her raised, bent knee, from which the edge of the red skirt fell down, was white in that dim light, and the skirt was as red as blood. The colour fascinated him. One long plait of hair brushed across her arm as she bent her head.

‘Off you go then,' the woman said, ‘and if ye're late home there might be no supper, jus' mind.'

She smiled at them, not as easily as she had been wont to do, and with a shadow of doubt in her blue eyes. They did not speak.

‘Eh, look at yon fire all out!' she exclaimed, and ceased to smile, and turned away to make it. Charles was surprised; it had not been lit. They called good-bye to her from outside the door, and her voice achieved cheerfulness as she warned them to mind the sun and snakes in the long grass.

When they were some way from the house, walking along a bridle-path by the bed of the trickling stream, he wondered aloud what was the matter with everyone.

‘It's as though we'd done something wrong,' he argued slowly, tracking down his thought. ‘My mother looks at me as your aunt does at you. Watching all the time—just as you watch a young puppy to see it doesn't hurt itself.'

She said nothing. The brim of her wide straw hat cast a shadow down her face, and in it her eyes flashed momentarily as she looked at him. The soft straw let in tiny points of light that lay like a powdering of stars on her skin. Once more, catching the movement of her eyes, he was aware of the tensity of some purpose he could not grasp.

‘What's the matter? Even you…'

Her hand touched his and was gone; sought it again and held it. He noticed how hot were her fingers.

‘Is it my fault, then? Have I done wrong?'

‘Wait,' she said. She seemed breathless. The shadow over her face contrasted so strongly with the light that when he looked he could not be sure of what he saw.

‘Am I going too fast?' he said.

‘No, go on. I'm all right.'

The narrow bridle-path would lead them with the trickle of the shrunken brook to where it joined another stronger stream, pouring its thread of water into the deeper current between high banks. Down that larger stream they were to go, to where it gathered into a broad pool, shallow above a floor of white sand, with deep water at the lower end where, over smooth rocks, it spread and fell and continued its course, glittering in the sun with no suggestion of the lovely coolness of its current. The thin brook they followed was one of its hill tributaries; its water was famous in that district, and for much of its course it lay in their land, meeting lower down the slow river in which Charles bathed. There was always green grass by it; and again and again, following its wanderings, you might come upon hollows in its rounded banks, worn deep by the hoofs of beasts going down to water between the enclosing trees.

But the big pool was higher up, and Charles knew that no one ever went there. It was his own place, and he had his own name for it; it knew his pale reflection as it knew the summer, and he could bathe there, naked and alone at his leisure, all day, scarcely aware of the cool tree shadows moving from west to east across the white sand beneath them; for the whole place was cool and in shadow, a haven in a scorched and burning land; from the lower edge, where the rocks were, arose the ceaseless ripple of the escaping water, quietly hypnotic and full of sleep in the smoky heat of afternoon, and at night melancholy and sweet, complaining in the vastness of night's silence like one lonely voice. Only then could be heard that strange rhythm, elusive, esoteric, deep-seated, intensely secret, that running water has for a continual surprise and mystification of the ear; the most haunting of all night sounds.

As they walked, apart now where the path was narrow, he listened for her step behind him; but the soles of her light sandals were soft, and made no sound in the red dust. He felt, while he could not see her, that she was there, urging him on, and he wanted sometimes to stop and look at her; but the heat was like a wave bearing them, too strong, too urgent now for pausing. Better to go on, he thought, and get this part of it over. Sweat lay warm on his forehead already, and prickled under his arms and on the backs of his hands.

‘Am I going too fast?' he asked again. ‘We're not far away now.'

He looked back over his shoulder. She was there, near as he had imagined her; when she saw him looking she shook her head. The fury of the cicadas steamed harshly on the still air, and above them, patterned by blue leaves, the hot, pale sky arched over the emptiness of day.

‘Listen,' he said, stopping abruptly. ‘That's the morning train going out.'

She too stopped, but not soon enough to save herself from coming against him. Her hand, lifted to protect her body, grasped his bare arm, and she looked up. He had never seen her look like that; her face was flushed and grave, with a frown darkening her grey eyes. He put his other arm about her, easing the strap of the heavy knapsack.

‘Smile,' he said, after they had looked at one another with a look like speech; and she tried, but could not, so that her face looked frightened and unhappy, as though she might cry. He had never had her as closely as this, and he was surprised at the firmness of her body within his right arm and against him, for her voice and her looks were soft.

‘Let us go on,' she said, waiting for him to release her. He felt her tension against him, even when he pressed back her head and kissed her mouth that returned his kiss urgently, even when her eyes were closed and she seemed eagerly to dream. So he moved away from her, and they walked on, breathless indeed now, and troubled anew by the terrible willingness of the flesh, and the mysterious purpose of its desire.

The thread of water on their right hand grew stronger, forming itself into little pools under the low banks, glittering mercilessly in the sun where rocks and the roots of trees thrust up and teased it. The sound of the train had gone, and once more they were alone. That rushing murmur of sound, with its memory of time and a world of humanity, must have thrust them together for those few moments; when it was gone and forgotten they could go on, thinking only of themselves, and silent still from the strange experience of that embrace. In some way he knew she had desired it; to him also it was like having drunk cold water and gained from it new bodily energy, to walk on through the blazing day. How much she had desired it he did not wonder; he had cause enough for thought in the memory of his own kiss's hard and solemn urgency; that was new, and seemed to have come from the new darkness of his inner sensations running downwards in a heavy current into his thighs and knees.

When at length they came out from among the trees, the full sunlight struck them like a blow from a giant hand. There was one field to cross; a sheep pad, almost hidden now because it had not been used that year, led them diagonally over, up rising ground where grasshoppers shot away from their path and sped furiously through the shaken air, unseen but audible. At the top of the rise, which had been a near horizon to them, they could look down over the silver grass to a fence, and beyond the fence to one more steep slope above which the bulging, motionless tops of trees showed against the sky.

‘There is the river,' he said. ‘Don't stop. It's too hot.'

They went quickly down the sloping ground, and at the bottom of the dry hollow he paused to help her through the fence, and got through after her. The wires were hot in his fingers, as though they had recently known the fire.

‘You'd never think,' he said breathlessly, as they fought up the last slope against the day, ‘that there—had been—any winter. Would you? February—is worse—even.'

She was in front. He put his finger-tips in the small of her back as once he had been taught to do, and felt the straining of muscles there as he helped her to climb. The trees climbed with them, on the other side; from the crest of the rise they could be seen, complete and perfect, solid green cumulus low above the thick white pillars of their trunks. There was a sly gleam of water visible through the twisting lower branches.

‘There,' he said gladly. ‘Down you go. Thank God.'

He could not pause at the shadow of the first trees, but must walk down to the edge of the stream. Looking into that limpid movement, cool in the green shadow, he forgot the day, and the fierce sunlight. It was dim there as it would have been in a room from which all direct light was shut. The heads of the low, thick trees met above the water; his own face peered back at him, green-white, and he looked through the mirrored eyes to the soundless stir and shift of the sandy bottom, where all sorts of small disturbances were for ever taking place. In the middle the current was strong.

At last he said, ‘Isn't this worth it? Isn't it?'

When she made no reply he looked round, for he wanted her to be with him in his sudden overwhelming relief and content. There she was, stretched out on the thin dry grass at the edge of the white sand. Her face was whiter than all; the hat brim, fallen loosely back, let him see it clearly now. It was sickeningly white, and the closed eyelids looked dark. He sprang up.

‘What is it?' He believed she had fainted.

‘I knew,' he muttered, putting his hand under her head. ‘I knew I shouldn't.' But she opened her eyes, and said she was all right again. He was on his knees beside her. The look of anger, or fear, or whatever it had been, was gone now from her eyes and mouth.

‘Don't look like that,' she said. ‘It's all right. I've been feeling like this—a long time. It's nothing.'

She sat up, but soon lay back again, never taking her eyes from him. The skirt, red in the shade like blood, lay across her thighs. He felt the stuff with his finger-tips. It was a kind of flannel, soft and dry to touch.

‘This is not the place,' he said quietly, ‘but we can stay here if you like.'

‘The pool, you said,' she reminded him. ‘No—we'll go there.'

‘It's not far. But rest now.'

He remained kneeling beside her, looking down, and while his eyes explored her still face, he thought how heavy her head had been on his open hand, how cool and alive the hair his fingers pressed.

Everything we say, he thought, seems like an empty pretence. Words now were only nervous sounds emptily concealing something. He had spoken last, and the brief phrases repeated themselves quietly in his mind, as meaningless and as measurable as a clock's ticking, but, like the sound of a clock, urgently suggesting something immeasurable. He wondered if she were thinking as he was. Her face was as still as sleep; only the trembling eyelids told him that if he spoke again she would hear. The full, pale curves of her lips were without shadow or movement. In her throat the cord of an artery rose and fell, heavily, slumbrously under the skin, as though it had a life of its own apart from the mute stillness of her face; and on each side the plaits of fair hair led him downwards with their unreal involution to the near-defined offering of her breasts, round and larger than he would have imagined them, and very proud. They too seemed to have a life of their own. He closed his fingers hard in the sand.

Some minutes passed without movement or speech. Beyond that sanctuary of shadow and sand and flowing water the day marched upward, leaving them alone; the air, dry and warm and sweet with the flameless burning of grass, shook without ceasing, as though in the grip of some huge, triumphant passion, and glistened afar off like water swimming above the earth. Everything took on unreal motion; the trees in the distance quivered from root to top as if in a moment they would dissolve and melt into the air; posts and rails trembled with the same illusion of movement as have objects seen under flowing water, and along the line of high ground the filmy grass, sucked upward by mirage, swayed unnaturally tall. But under those trees, whose rounded heads shut out all the sky, it was cool, and every outline, the girl's face, her ankles, her gentle hands, his own knees pressed upon the sand—all was clear and very real, like figures suggested upon an artist's canvas. The blue of his shirt, and the blood-red splash of her skirt, made bright colour in the cool green and white of that seclusion, walled in by the white tree-trunks and the rising ground behind.