Anna Kavan - The Parson

This time there was no danger, apparently; Rejane was looking at him with evident interest. But his practical self had come uppermost, and, determined to persuade her before his mother interrupted them, he said coaxingly, ‘Do stay a bit longer and let me show you something of the real moor.’

She’d already made up her mind to stay, but she said nothing yet. It amused her to watch the delicacy with which, not presuming to touch her, by way of emphasis he laid the tips of his fingers gently on the book she was holding. And his northern voice was fascinating when he was being intense, with its queer singing undertone and extraordinary flexibility; unimagined depths of softness were in it now, almost a coo. She smiled to herself faintly, though she still said nothing.

Her silence was beginning to seem hopeful to him. Now, suddenly, in the midst of his pleasant excited feelings, came one so singularly inappropriate that it distracted him for the length of time he took to wonder why in heaven’s name a danger signal should have gone up in his mind, as if warning him not to go any further. He forgot about it at once, and went on with his pleading: ‘Don’t be frightened away by the fog. Look, it’s lifting already!’

The world outside was in fact reappearing, though minus a dimension, as if made of water, frequented only by the ghosts of things as they were under the sun. Looking back at Rejane, he hoped wildly that she would say yes. The calm magnolia-mask of her face did not change, nor did her jewel-dark eyes, their fluttering fans of lashes long and soft as a sable paintbrush. Unkindly keeping him in suspense, only at the very last, when they’d both heard his mother’s approaching step, she gave him a slight, smiling nod.

Unconscious of any unkindness, he was overwhelmed by a wonderful thrill of joy he could hardly conceal, and in a warm, vibrant voice said to the old woman coming into the room, ‘You must help me describe our moors — we can’t have people going off without appreciating them, can we?’

His mother was a little bewildered by these rapid developments. She’d have liked to keep the son she adored to herself, for a time at least. But whatever he wanted was right, and she wanted it too. Though slightly overawed by the beauty and obvious wealth of this new acquaintance, she was ready to make friends, accepting Rejane as she’d have accepted a Hottentot, had Oswald wished it; for he was her idol, and his will was law.

SO the improbable relationship started between the young officer and the guest at The Hope Deferred, the unworldly devoted mother hovering very much in the background. The young man was supremely happy. The situation was just what he wanted, exactly what seemed needed for his happiness. At last he could get rid of that awful sense of being isolated and injured. His dream at last took a definite shape and he knew what he wanted, which, of course, was Rejane.

As if the forces of nature really were on his side, there was no more fog or rain, no more thundery heat, but a long sequence of brisk, bright autumn days, just the weather he liked best, when the moors looked their best. And, as this fine weather seemed sent to compensate for the bad summer, Oswald believed that his former unlucky period had been succeeded by one more fortunate, when virtue would be rewarded instead of penalized, according to what he’d been taught.

Uplifted by a mixture of pride, happiness and excitement, he drove Rejane to lunch at his home. He was aware, as he had not been for a long time, of the sheer joy of being alive, and of the beauty of the day and of the world. It gave him intense pleasure to drive through the pale, thin, autumn sunshine, with her sitting beside him, as serene and lovely as the sky itself, talking as easily as if they’d been old friends. It seemed to him that everyone they passed on the road — most of them people he’d known all his life — must be envying him and admiring his companion.

Out of his pride a more elusive feeling grew up which he couldn’t have named. It made him regard her rather as though she were a royal princess who had been entrusted to his care. When, after gazing at the enormous view, floating in floods of luminous sunshine, she exclaimed, ‘How lovely it is here!’, at the same time lightly touching his arm, a tremor of deep emotion went through him. He longed to press her hand to his lips, but found that he derived even more satisfaction from not doing so, proud to feel himself trusted, looking at her with respect and profound devotion. At the same time, something impelled him to wonder how much of the beautiful day would be left to him if she were not there. He realized suddenly, almost with alarm, that his own heightened enjoyment was due to her presence, and to the unspoken intimacy that seemed to be growing between them.

*

They drove at first through a sheltered valley where summer still lingered, a sprinkling of yellow leaves hardly noticeable in the dense green of the big trees, oaks, ashes and elms. Towards midday the sun was still strong, and they passed whole families round the scattered farmsteads, bringing in the last crop of the season.

Then, as the road climbed up to the moors, the softer characteristics of the landscape gradually vanished, widening stretches of heath alternating with rough, dry-walled fields, until all cultivation ceased. Here, on the higher more exposed ground, the bracken was turning gold, and, from thickets of slighter trees, birches and aspens, leaves came spinning down in golden showers.

Soon a sea of silence, sunshine and solitude stretched around them in every direction to the tors, bunched spectrally on the horizon, the undulating expanse of heather and pale, plumy grass breaking out here and there in sprays of purple and golden brown. Trees became fewer and fewer, there were more and more outcroppings of pale granite: and to this sunlit desert the sudden brilliant flash of water came startlingly, like a vision. Ghostly looking yet monumental, the distant tors seemed to float in the sky; while lesser, nearer masses of stone and boulders were strewn about everywhere, some quite near the road, their pockets full of delicate little ferns and cushions of emerald velvet moss. Always climbing, the road grew rougher and narrower, finally reduced to a stony track, along which the powerful car — hired for the duration of Oswald’s leave — swayed and jolted uneasily. It was quite impossible to keep up any speed.

Rejane looked about, rather amazed to find herself so far outside civilization, though Oswald had already explained that he lived near the last village of all, beyond which there were no roads, and that this one came to an end at his house.

‘Nearly there,’ he now told her, smiling and reassuring.

There was something oddly comforting in the way he seemed to watch over her all the time, always watchful for her wellbeing, standing guard over her, with perfect correctness and old-fashioned courtesy — courtliness, rather — surrounding her with his warm masculine kindliness and protective devotion, which was really rather charming. And there was something else about it, more important to her than charm.

*

Her pleasing unaffected façade, the pretence that all her beauty and wealth made her no different from other people, concealed the implacable underside of her character, and an obsession with self that was truly phenomenal. Some lingering narcissism left over from her solitary childhood had combined with the universal admiration she’d received later to create in her mind a glorified self-image. With a part of her, anyhow, she half believed in herself as a kind of superior being, almost as though she possessed supernatural powers. The real power, of course, was the power of her money, as her rational self knew quite well. But she’d played all her life at being a queen or an enchantress in secret, so that it almost seemed true. Oswald’s reverential attitude was important because it played up to this unreal reality and made it seem more like truth. She’d never before met anyone who flattered her dream-self as he did, so that she really felt she belonged on a pedestal or a throne. To feel his male deference paying tribute to her all the time, with a sort of knightly chivalry, was immensely gratifying to her obsession.