Of course they’re going ahead!‘ said Mor. ’Or does Evvy think the school ought to be in mourning? Yes, I know it’s Tuesday. Will you come - or shall we send an excuse? It’s perfectly easy to get out of it now.‘
They came to an open glade where the trees drew back to circle an expanse of mossy earth and short grasses. Mor recognized the place, with the dull revolving sadness that he now felt continually when he was in the presence of his wife.
‘I shall come, I think,’ said Nan. ‘We’d better go on making life as normal as possible - it’ll keep us from fretting too much. I even let Evvy persuade me into saying a few words. I just hadn’t the strength to say no. He said something very short would do.’
‘You’ll answer the toast!’ said Mor. ‘I’m so glad.’ But he was not glad, he thought, any more about anything connected with Nan. He felt as if he were talking to someone who was already dead, but who didn’t yet know it. He felt such intense sadness at this thought that he would have liked to ask Nan to comfort him in some way, but with the impulse he remembered that this too was impossible. Nan was the one person who could not ever give him ease for the pain that was in him now.
They passed by Prewett’s house. It had an empty abandoned air, doors and windows left open, silent of boys.
‘I wish Felicity would cheer up a bit and not be so wretched.’ said Mor. He had to talk to stop himself from thinking.
‘She got a bad cold down at the sea,’ said Nan. ‘I found her wandering about in her bathing suit late one evening. She hasn’t been well since.’
As they reached the gravel path behind the Library a sound was to be heard of cheerful voices, laughter, and singing, and when they emerged on to the playground they saw the crowd of boys waiting with their hand luggage near the entrance to the drive. A charabanc had drawn up and some of the boys were climbing in. In the background, beyond School House, a few private cars could be seen drawn up on the grass, their doors wide open, being loaded with suitcases, tennis rackets, cricket bats, and other paraphernalia. The mass of those who were not yet called for stood by in a joyful chanting crowd to wave away the departing ones. On this day all feuds were forgotten, and the most puny and unpopular boy in the form would get a warm unanimous shout of farewell, heartening and misleading to his parents, especially if the latter arrived to fetch him in the latest Bentley or the oldest Rolls.
The charabanc had filled up, and began to move away amid shouting and waving. A dozen boys ran after it down the drive, pushing it while it crawled slowly from the asphalt to the gravel, and then pursuing it as it gathered pace, to escort it as far as the gates. Hands were flapping out of every window. The charabanc disappeared into a cloud of dust and cheering. Meanwhile the crowd in the playground were dancing a Highland reel, accompanied by human voices imi tating bagpipes, while through the windows of echoing and empty classrooms a few late lingerers leaned out to shout to their friends or to unwind, contrary to Mr Everard’s most explicit wishes, long rolls of lavatory paper which undulated in the wind like streamers.
‘Let’s go round the other way,’ said Mor. He looked on the scene with revulsion.
‘Don’t be silly, Bill,’ said Nan. She drew him firmly on across the playground towards the drive, keeping close to the wall of Main School. A group of reelers removed their capering for a few steps to let them pass.
Good-bye, sir, happy holidays!‘ called one or two voices.
‘Good-bye, good-bye, happy holidays!’ came the echoing cry from the rest of the crowd.
Mor felt that he was anonymous. He was just one of the masters. He felt almost annihilated by the presence of so much happiness. ‘Good-bye,’ he said, ‘happy holidays to you too.’
They turned along the drive. As they neared the gates a car passed them slowly. The window came down and the small head of Rigden came out, bobbing violently as if it were on a spring.
‘Good-bye, sir,’ cried Rigden. ‘Good luck - and see you next term!
Rigden’s parents, who knew Mor slightly, could be seen waving within, anxious now to escape and to avoid any last-minute courtesies. The car reached the main road and joined the endless procession of fast-moving traffic, London-bound, flying away into the world that lay outside St Bride’s at an increasing pace as Rigden’s father, who was a very successful barrister, stepped hard on the accelerator.
Mor and Nan turned into the suburban roads of the housing estate. In a minute or two they had reached their own house. Felicity met them at the door.
‘Any news?’ she said. Her eyes had grown big and blood-shot with intermittent weeping and continual expectation.
‘No,’ said Mor. ‘Did anyone ring?’
‘No,’ she said, and went back to sit at the foot of the stairs.
Nan said, ‘I’ll make some coffee. Then I really must do that ironing. What are you going to do, Bill?’
Mor was going to see Rain at Brayling’s Close. He said, ‘I’ll go down to the Public Library on my bike - and then I’d better go back into school and do various jobs.’
‘Must you really work today?’ said Nan, staring at him from the kitchen door. ‘I thought holidays had started.’
‘I’ve told you a hundred times,’ said Mor, ‘holidays don’t start for me at the end of term.’ He went into the drawing-room. Now that the weather was cool it seemed a tiny room, hideously crowded with objects and jumbled with colours and designs. He loathed himself.
‘Don’t sit in that draughty place, darling,’ Nan was saying to Felicity. ‘Come and have your coffee.’
Felicity said, ‘I don’t want any coffee. I’m going to lie down for a while.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Nan, ‘you’ll only start crying again if you lie down. Why not wash all your underclothes now while the water’s hot? I’ll leave out the ironing board, and I can iron them for you this afternoon.’
Felicity made no reply, but walked upstairs with a heavy tread and closed the door of her room.
Nan brought in a tray with coffee and biscuits. They sat looking out of the window. The garden was damp, and tousled by the wind.
‘The autumn is coming,’ she said. ‘It’s strange how early you can see it. As soon as the phlox comes out you know that the best part of the summer is over. Then you can soon expect the falling leaves. You remember how pleased Liffey used to be when the leaves began to fall? She would go on and on chasing them about the lawn in such an idiotic way. Then when you had raked them together in a heap she would charge into it and scatter it and you would be so cross.’
‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘I remember.’ He finished his coffee quickly. ‘I must be off now,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back for lunch.’
Nan got up and followed him into the hall. ‘I think I’ll just look in on Felicity,’ she said. ‘The child will make herself ill with this grieving.’
Mor left the house. He took his bicycle, started off in the direction of the Library, turned sharply back down another road, and joined the dual carriageway near the brow of the hill. Then he sailed swiftly down the other side towards Demoyte’s house, the wind pressing upon his cheeks and jerking at his hair. The clouds came low over the road ahead of him, which went straight on into the far distance, an arrow pointing towards London. The wind was fresh and carried a smell of the countryside. Mor threw back his head. He existed still, he, Mor, and could do what he would. In a minute he would see his dear one, whose presence would dispel all horror and all grief. Already the splendour of it touched him, driving the blackness out of his flesh - and all things began to fall into place again as preliminaries to a life of renewed truthfulness and love. By the time he reached the door of the Close his heart was light.
He went straight into the drawing-room, where he found Rain sitting with Demoyte. They were a great deal together in these days. When Mor came in, Rain jumped up and ran to seize the sleeve of his coat, while Demoyte looked on with a sombre expression.
‘This place is turning into a madhouse,’ said Demoyte. He began to gather up hi
s books preparatory to leaving the room.
Don’t go, sir,‘ said Mor.
‘Don’t give me that stuff,’ said Demoyte. ‘I’ll be in the library, if either of you wants to see me, which is unlikely.’
As soon as the door closed, Mor picked Rain up violently in his arms and held her as if to crush their two bodies into one. It seemed as if such an embrace must surely mend all. He set her down at last, protesting and laughing a little.
She led him to a chair, in a way that was now familiar to him, and sat on the ground before him to interrogate him. He had little to tell her.
‘How was it this morning?’ asked Rain.
How could he tell her how it was? This morning he had suffered to extremity. This morning he had been a liar and a traitor. But now he could scarcely remember these things - as perhaps the blessed spirits when they enter paradise very soon forget the horrors of purgatory which seem to have been a dream until they vanished altogether from the memory.
‘This morning was all right, said Mor. He had already told her that there was no news of Donald.
‘Mor,’ said Rain, tugging at his knees, ‘you haven’t - said anything to Nan yet?’
This was the question which Mor had been dreading. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Will you - soon?’ she asked. Her look of tender anxiety made Mor cover his face.
‘Rain,’ he said, ‘I can’t give this blow to Nan just now, just when we’re so worried about Donald. We must wait a little longer.’
‘Mor,’ said Rain, ‘I cannot wait. I know this impatience may be very tiresome or wicked. If it’s wicked, it hardly adds much to the sum of what we’ve already done wrong. But I think we should tell Nan the truth now, even if it is a bad moment.’
‘Why now?’ said Mor. ‘Or are you afraid I’ll change my mind?’ He held her by the chin, and looked into her eyes. He had never known before what it was to converse with someone, reading their eyes the whole time. Angels must know each other in this way, without a barrier.
‘Not that!’ said Rain. ‘Yet I am afraid of something, I don’t know what. I want to bind you to me.’ Her small hands gripped his wrists and tried to shake him.
When Mor saw her intensity and her determination, he felt deep gratitude. He drew her towards him. ‘So you shall, my dearest,’ he said. ‘But you must leave this other matter to me. Now tell me about something else. Have you worked on the picture again?’
‘No,’ said Rain, ‘I haven’t touched it. I feel far too rotten to paint. It’s no good, but it’ll have to stay like that’
The picture had been taken from the easel and was leaning against the wall in the far comer of the room. They both looked at it. It seemed now to Mor a little less good. He even thought he saw dimly what Bledyard had meant. The colossal strength of Demoyte’s over-sized tyrannical head was not really present in the picture - though many of his traits were present, especially a musing thoughtfulness which Mor had not often seen in him, but which he was ready now to believe to be one of his most fundamental moods. It was a gentler and more pensive Demoyte that the picture showed - but also one that was less strong. However, there was no doubt that it was a good portrait.
I’m sorry,‘ said Mor. ’I hate having stopped you from painting.‘
‘Nothing could stop me,’ said Rain, ‘except for a moment!’
‘You know this awful dinner is on Tuesday?’ said Mor.
Rain shuddered. ‘Your wife won’t be there, will she?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mor, ‘but that won’t matter.’
Rain jumped to her feet. ‘I can’t come to the dinner if your wife is there,’ she said, ‘I can’t.’ She was almost crying.
‘Darling,’ said Mor, ‘don’t be foolish. It’ll be awful, but it’s just something we must get through. It’s no madder than everything else is at the moment.’
‘You must tell her at once!’ she said.
‘Rain,’ said Mor, ‘leave it to me, will you?’
Rain was suddenly in tears. He embraced her. ‘I can’t,’ she kept saying, ‘I can’t go to that dinner, I can’t‘
Stop this nonsense,‘ said Mor, ’you must come to the dinner, of course.‘ He added, ’Anything may have happened by then. I may have told Nan everything. As for the dinner, if she doesn’t know the worst she won’t attack you, and if she does she won’t come. So stop crying.‘ But somehow Mor did not believe that he would have told Nan by next Tuesday. There was some date by which he would have told her. But it was not next Tuesday.
Rain sat down on the floor again and went on crying. Mor stroked her hair. He felt a strange diminution of sympathy. He loved her. Now he made her grief. But soon he would make her happiness. Meanwhile, it was he who was to be pitied, he who had to act the murderer and the traitor. Her grief was that of a temporary deprivation. His was a grief for things which would never mend again once they were broken. There would be a new life and a new world. But that which he was about to break would never mend, and he now knew he would never cease to feel the pain of it. Inside all his happiness this pain would remain always intact until his life’s end. He continued to caress her hair.
Chapter Eighteen
IT was Tuesday. The opening date of the chemistry exam had come and gone, but Donald Mor had not come home, nor had any news been received which might provide the slightest clue to his whereabouts. Mor had not told Nan that he intended to leave her. It was the day of the presentation dinner. Rain was to be present, of course; and Nan had not changed her mind either about coming or about replying to the toast.
The dinner was to take place in the masters’ dining-room at St Bride’s, and its organization had for some time now been producing alarm and confusion among the school staff who were rarely called upon to stage manage anything more magnificent than a stand-up tea for Speech Day. The masters’ dining-room, like so many things at St Bride’s, was misnamed. No one at that institution ever dined in that room or elsewhere, since the relevant meal was known, not at all inappropriately, as supper - and in fact the room in question was not normally used for eating in at all, but had become the meeting place of the Board of Governors, the Sixth Form Essay Society, and the Games Committee. To transform this grim chamber into the setting for a festive scene was not likely to be easy. Great efforts had however been made, inspired largely by the ubiquitous Hensman, whose enthusiasm was the more touching as he was not to be present at the dinner, since after much discussion it had been decided that only senior masters were to be invited in addition to the Governors.
Mor was in evening-dress. This was, for him, an extremely rare experience, and he felt very odd. He had bought himself, especially for the occasion, a soft white evening-shirt to replace the errant carapace by which he had been tortured in the past; but he still felt at wearing these unusual clothes an intense discomfort which was caused partly by general embarrassment and partly by the discovery that he must have grown stouter since the last occasion. The trousers met, but only just. Fortunately the old-fashioned jacket could be left unbuttoned. For all that, he thought that he looked well, and he reflected sadly that it would, if things had been different, have been a pleasant jest to show himself to Rain in this disguise. This thought shocked him by its lightness, and he turned quickly back to his griefs. He was in a state of increasing disquiet about the fate of his son. His imagination had begun at last to be busy with visions of Donald bitterly resolving never to return, Donald suffering from loss of memory, Donald suffering from hunger and despair, Donald derelict, Donald dead. These fears, by a strange chemistry of the afflicted spirit, slightly eased his other tensions by making it the more obvious that nothing could be told to Nan until after the reappearance of the boy.
The company was supposed to assemble at seven-thirty in the Common Room which adjoined the masters’ dining-room. Dinner was to be at eight. Mor had made arrangements for a taxi to call for Nan just before half past seven, and to go on to fetch Mrs Prewett. Rain was going to bring Demoyte over in her car. Mor hims
elf had intended to get dressed much earlier and go over to schoel to offer his assistance to the staff and make sure that everything was quite ready in the dining-room. However, his dressing had taken longer than he expected, and it was nearly seven before he reached the scene. He peered in through the dining-room door; and then entered, whistling with amazement for the benefit of Hensman, who was standing by hoping to see signs of shock.
The room had certainly been transformed. The green leather armchairs were nowhere to be seen, and neither was the ponderous roll-top desk which was usually slanted across one of the corners, nor the massive deal cupboard whose contents were unknown since the key had been lost some years ago. Instead of these, three slim Regency tables, which Mor recognized as belonging to Prewett, decked the side of the room, adorned with flowers, and a fine sideboard had appeared to fill the space on one side of the mantelpiece. Of the upright chairs, the more deplorable ones had vanished, to be replaced by some imitation Chippendale, also Prewett’s, which did not harmonize too badly with the set of Victorian chairs which were the normal inhabitants of the room. The long oval table, usually covered with a length of green baize, was draped now in a silvery damask cloth which reached almost to the ground, and upon it a thick array of silver and glass in the light of some of the candles which Hensman had experimentally lighted. From the mantelpiece the bulbous and inexplicable brass ornaments had vanished, to be replaced by flowers - and above the mantel, surmounting all, was hung the portrait of Demoyte.