Henry Green - Back

Both instinctively looked back to find whether they were being followed, but all they saw was the red mound of light rubble, with the staircase and chimney lit a rosier red, and, as they turned again to themselves in the garden, the briars wreathed from one black cypress to another were aflame, as alive as live filaments in an electric light bulb, against this night’s quick agony of the sun.

Then, before he knew what she was about, she had put her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

“There,” she said into an ear. “That’s for coming down.”

But he put his hands behind her head, pressed her kissing mouth harder on his own. The night, on its way fast, was chill, and now he had again that undreamed of sharp warmth moving and living on his own, her breath an attar of roses on his deep sun-red cheek, her hair an animal over his eyes and alive, for he could see each rose glowing separate strand, then her dark body thrusting heavy at him, and her blood dark eel fingers that fumbled at his neck.

She cruelly spoiled it. She took her sweet lips off his.

“Was it like that?” she asked, as though nothing had happened.

He made to grab her up to him once more. But she twisted away.

“Was it?” she repeated. He did not realize that she was aiming at Rose.

Then, in the position she held, half in, half out of his arms, and so close that the one eye in his line of vision was in the outer corner of its socket to watch him, he saw it catch the dying sunset light around, and glow, as if she had opened the eye hole to a furnace.

He made another clutch at her, but she broke away completely. He was left, so that his arms hung at his sides, and he could not speak, paralysed, for an instant, as Mr Grant.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said, annoyed with herself. He did not move, or speak.

“It’s too cold to sit. We’d best go back,” she said.

So they walked home in silence. In the dark she took his arm once more, pressed close. But he said and did nothing at all. He couldn’t even feel.

When they got home in the dark, Nance found she had left her key behind. They were obliged to ring the bell. They heard pattering footsteps. Then Mrs Grant flung the door open.

“Oh so it’s you,” she said, in an accusing voice. A lock of grey hair lay unexpectedly over her forehead. “He’s had a bad turn,” she went on, almost wailing suddenly, “he’s ever so ill, my darling is, come quick,” this to Nancy, for she chose to ignore Charles. “Where could you have got to? I don’t know how you could.”

As the two women hurried upstairs, Miss Whitmore called out to Summers, “Wait there. Don’t go,” she said.

He was still absolutely dazed by the scene he had had with this girl, and it was not until Charley got into the living room, and was faced by a chair overturned, that he knew there was disaster in the wind, because the whole house had always been completely neat.

So that, on top of everything else, he began to dread what was due.

Then just as he was putting the chair to rights, a car drove up.

It was the doctor.

As Charley opened the door the doctor said, “What’s this?”

“Don’t know quite,” he replied, ashamed.

“How’s that?” the man asked, obviously despising him, as, in his turn, he hurriedly climbed out of sight into an upstairs deathly silence. Charley re-entered the living room, sat down, put his hands on his face.

The worst part was he could hear nothing, nothing at all. The eyelids burned over his eyes, and were as red as that sunset. Now that he could begin to think, he wondered if this whole affair wasn’t another Dot Pitter. Then he saw he was useless on account of his being so slow. That time, in the office, when he put his face against hers because she was crying, had led to his call on Nance, which had caused him to take Dot down to Jim Phillips, which, in its turn, had pushed him on here to Nance. “Oh Rose, Rose,” he cried out in himself, not noticing that he did this without having real regret, “Oh, why did you?” He began to cry, in his self pity seeing himself again with his hands, like a monkey’s, hung up on the barbed wire which had confined him within the camp.

He felt a touch on his shoulder. It was Nance. She’d come back so quietly he hadn’t heard. He sprang away, went to stand by the blackout.

“You shouldn’t distress yourself,” she gently said. “It’s all my fault.”

His mind came back to her kissing him. He thought she was referring to this. He said not a word.

“It was me decided we should go off out,” she went on, thus disclosing that she missed the point. “You warned me, and I didn’t listen,” she added.

She could not think how she was to tell him what Mrs Grant wanted. Because, while the doctor was starting his examination, the old lady had requested her to get Charley to stay over, to have a man in the house. And, after the manner he took her innocent kiss, Nance feared that Charley might accept this invitation as being from herself, for a certain purpose. Then she thought she saw this was the one way she could make him spend the night.

“I want to ask you something,” she said, shyly, a bit of a martyr. He did not reply, or turn round.

“Don’t go back to London this night,” she asked, in a wheedling sort of voice. “You’ll hardly catch the last train now,” she explained. “You lie up on the sofa in this room. Maybe it won’t be too bad,” she said, to go as far as she dared.

She saw his back stiffen, as she imagined in refusal.

“Be a sport, Charley dear,” she pleaded. “You don’t have to be at work tomorrow.”

He thought this must be it. He could not believe she’d ask this if she didn’t mean to visit him later.

“Oh all right,” he answered, and blew his nose.

“Why, that’s sweet of you,” she said, with a great feeling she was laying up trouble for herself, and how the one point was, that it would be in a good cause. “I’ve got to go back to them,” she excused herself. “And when we’re a bit quieter, I’ll see if I can’t knock you together a bite of supper. Now don’t forget, you’re to stay on, you know. Don’t you go wandering.”

When he turned about to thank Nance, to discover he did not dare hope what in the expression on her face, he found she was gone. So he sat down again. He could not tell quite what to make of it. But he knew what he wished.

Then he found the cat at his feet. It glared so directly into his eyes that he had to look away. The moment he did this, it jumped on his lap, lay heavy, and began to purr carrying its cargo of kittens. He stroked the animal, much, if only he had known, as the girl had kissed him an hour or so ago, though without the jealousy she had felt.

He noticed his fingers were brushing hairs off the cat’s back, and raised the hand to sniff his nails. Then he wanted a good wash, but didn’t like to move because of the creature on his knees. Oh, he felt, she could never have kissed me if it wasn’t to lead somewhere, human beings don’t play games like that with one another, Dot hadn’t been up to anything even, it was only he’d been too slow, as Nancy said. Then what had he rushed away for, just now, he asked himself, when she twisted out of his arms? And, because she’d asked him to stay over, he had no idea at all, he could not imagine.

But what a night to choose. Wasn’t it just like his luck the old man should have another bad turn, exactly when his own affairs promised better? Then, with surprising intuition, he supposed that one crisis in this life inevitably brings on another, that she wouldn’t have kissed him if Mr Grant had not been having a relapse (even if they neither of them knew), nor, and here he fell unwittingly on the truth, would she have asked him if it hadn’t been for the now doubly serious illness. All the same, so to speak in spite of himself, he began to have hopes.