Anna Kavan - The Parson

When he merely asked angrily what she was staring at, she felt defrauded. It seemed most unkind, most unfair. Driven by her desperate desire for the information he cruelly seemed to deliberately withholding, she asked him how he’d got into such a mess — anyone would think he’d been in the sea. All her pathetic yearning was in her eyes as she put this leading question, begging him to save her from a lifetime of feeling inferior to other women.

But he thought she was searching for his secret wound with those imploring eyes, which to him were importunate, impudent and intrusive — intolerably spying. His secret was locked inside him, safe as long as it was left alone. But if she kept on peering and prying, something might come to light; which was unthinkable. He shuddered at the possibility of his raw, wincing wound exposed to her indecent inquisitiveness. She ought not to have even suspected its existence. No longer seeing her as his sister, who shared precious memories of the past, he wanted to thrust her away, slash her out of his sight. He had to hold himself in, clenching his fists as he stood, biting his lips, without saying a word.

Each enclosed in a private obsession, the pair confronted one another like figures under glass domes who could never possibly come together. The girl had no way of knowing that the fair, fine-looking, soldierly young man before her was imprisoned in a very dark place where he couldn’t even see her. But she at last realized from his attitude that he would never tell her the things she was dying to know. It seemed to her a callous disregard of her urgent need; base ingratitude, after she’d worked half the night on his clothes. She was stung into an attempt at retaliation.

I suppose you quarrelled with your girl-friend, and that’s why you looked so glum last night. Did she push you into the water?’ Half frightened by her own audacity, feeling she was going too far, she couldn’t quite bring off the sneer.

Her brother still didn’t speak, merely giving her a long, stem, frigid, outraged look, as if to oppose her obscene curiosity with his eyes, until he’d extinguished it.

Unable to meet that cold, blue, insulting stare, she turned back to the stove. But, the next moment, seeing him on his way to the door, she called after him, feeling goaded: ‘You’re going to her now, aren’t you? Crawling back like a smacked pup… it’s disgusting… you might at least wait till after breakfast…’, her voice expiring in an undignified sob.

But he was no longer aware of her, or of what she was saying. He had moved with instinctive decision, knowing only that he must get away from her and from everything here. This had become his one aim and object, and he kept on, deeply preoccupied with his inner need to avoid all contact, along the flagged passage and into the yard, not giving Vera a thought. While she stood, crushed by the final affront of his going without a word, as though she were beneath his notice, tears overflowing her eyes unheeded, hearing the coachhouse door open, the car start up and drive away.

When her mother called to her from another room she didn’t answer, but, angrily drying her eyes, thought with indignation, Off he goes, and leaves me to do all his dirty work as usual. Now she would have to cope with the old lady, pacify her, invent some plausible excuse for Oswald’s behaviour.

Yet she didn’t really resent it particularly, for in this he was only exercising his masculine privilege, as was to be expected.

NO more conscious of where he was going than of the distress he had caused his sister, Oswald drove for a time in a curious, neutral, blank state. When he suddenly noticed the moor, all very bare and grey, stripped to the bone for winter, under the leaden and lowering sky, it was with a shock like surprise. Why was he on this road — the road to The Hope Deferred?

While he slept, that part of him which was concerned with his adjustment to life had decided he must not see Rejane again; and, consciously, he’d made up his mind to telephone an excuse for not coming to say goodbye in person. Now, at first, he thought merely that he’d had to escape from his home, where there was no peace, no security for him. Yet, even as he felt the appropriate bitterness, he knew that his was not the real explanation — his thoughts seemed not to be what he was really thinking.

Having perceived this, he went on to perceive that the same principle applied to everything, outside as well as within him. Even the moor he’d known and loved all his life appeared changed and unreal. Even his army career, which had been more important than anything to him, had become an illusion; and what was left of his world he couldn’t imagine. His vague impression was that it had collapsed, and that he was lost in the debris, the general debacle.

When he saw the familiar double drive and the hotel ahead, he realized all at once that he’d been drawn here helplessly, with no say in the matter. He had, simply, to see Rejane. Nobody, nothing else really existed; it was her absence that made his world seem unreal, for she was his only reality.

Pulling up sharply a little way from the entrance, he sat for a moment, motionless, while this sank in. In all the world, she alone was real and had definition. Everything else was illusion. And she was about to leave him. He sat as if stunned. Then, collecting himself quickly, glancing about to see if he’d been observed, he hurriedly left the car and went into the building.

His thoughts and emotions were all in chaos. He couldn’t tell whether love or hate was making his hand shake so that he could hardly open the door of her room, though his training in discipline kept him very correct and calm outwardly, his magnificent soldier’s figure almost at attention, as he stood before her.

After his conduct, and the general nightmare of yesterday, she had neither wished nor expected to see him again. But now she was in such high spirits because she was going back to her own world that nothing mattered; nothing could affect her happiness. She gave him a radiant smile of pure joy because she was leaving him and all this gloomy northern interlude for ever. She even said, ‘I’m glad you came over to say goodbye.’

She seemed even more beautiful than he’d remembered. In spite of his disillusionment and the efforts he’d made to destroy his love, her beauty still held him enthralled. The sound of the word goodbye caused him an anguish so acute that it wrung from him the exclamation, ‘How could I possibly not have come?’ His eyes burned fever bright, and, as he spoke, he extended his arms curiously in a tortured movement, as if he were on the rack, of which he knew nothing, only amazed by the note of open avowal he heard in his own voice — so it was love, not hate, in the end.

He watched her, bemused; he was as though mesmerized by her loveliness, which her happy excitement increased by the faintest flush, so that she had the perfection of a pale rose. The very air about her seemed scented and full of light. He took deep breaths of the perfume he loved; and, as though it were intoxicating, or possessed magic powers, a remarkable change came over him. His splendid body seemed to come more alive, the expression more animated on his handsome young face. All of a sudden, he really had that officer-in-a-crack-regiment’s air of light-hearted assurance and of carrying all before him, which had always belonged to his aura but previously been in abeyance. Suddenly smiling and debonair, he proposed to drive her to catch the boat-train, sweeping aside arrangements already made with such smiling confidence that she looked at him in surprise.

Emerging briefly from her dream of departure, she coolly and shrewdly surveyed the young man who was directing the hotel staff with this new sort of aplomb, as if he expected to be obeyed by everyone to the end of time. This was as he should always have been. Yet to her at least there was something faintly unnatural about the performance; it was not quite convincing. He was giving orders about her things, smiling and irresistible, as if to the manner bom. But his brilliant blue eyes had a crazy sparkle, and, with the lock of whitish hair falling between them, in spite of all his correctness, he looked strange — wild and reckless, feverish; almost a bit demented. She could see through this reckless wildness to the helpless despair beneath. At the back of his crazily glittering eyes was the pathos of a blank lost look, which told her she had nothing to fear from him. As far as she was concerned he was finished — his day was done. He was only a sort of phantom to her from the past; no need to believe he was real for an instant. Back she slipped into her happy dreaming again, already far distant from him, as, with queer, smiling, unnatural ease he escorted her from The Hope Deferred for the very last time.