Anna Kavan - The Parson

In the meantime, with darkness falling earlier and earlier, to get through the long evenings at The Hope Deferred was becoming something of a problem. Along the coast was a picturesque town, half seaport, half holiday resort, to which Oswald sometimes drove her to dine and dance. But these occasions were not very successful, except in depriving him of the last shreds of moorland magic. His appeal was purely an outdoor one. In a crowded room full of dressed-up people, he might have been any fair, handsome young officer home on leave.

Dancing with him, she noticed his unblemished skin, which, at close quarters, had almost the rosiness of a baby’s under the tan. And that slightly sinister witch-look came on her face, her lovely large lustrous eyes gleaming with a jeering malice. So this was her magician — this rosy, healthy young man! There was nothing even unusual about him, apart from an odd, chanting voice, and a touch of strangeness, which she now saw as a mere manifestation of northern outlandishness, no longer at all attractive.

When her own world called to her suddenly, as she’d known it would, loud and clear, she was astounded by her surroundings, looking about as if she’d just woken out of a long sleep. She’d been existing all this time in a tranced euphoria of exercise and fresh air. Now, abruptly, she was awake again, in her proper self, eager to get away from the barbarous north. Her spirit seemed to have gone on ahead already to her own luxurious sphere; exasperating that she had to stay behind, with her body.

She wanted to charter a plane on the spot. As this was impossible, and, hearing that a cruising liner was due at the little port in a day or so, she hurriedly booked a passage and sent a cable to her lover to say she was coming back.

But she didn’t tell Oswald until they were out on the moor, having lunch in the sun, which was still almost hot at noon. They sat in a sheltered hollow, a shallow bowl surrounded by sunken rocks against which they could lean. While they ate their hard-boiled eggs and drank coffee out of a thermos, the two ponies, tethered nearby, contentedly nosed and nibbled the fine, feathery, fading grass, the same colour as Coffee’s tail. Rejane waited till the meal was over and Oswald was collecting the scraps of eggshell and paper, as he always did, before telling him about her arrangements. She saw the young man start violently, as if she had struck him. He dropped his hands, which fell and hung loosely at his sides, while he stood rigid and silent, his face twisted as if in pain.

What on earth was the matter with him? He’d known all along that they would have to part soon. Gazing at him, watching him stare past her with unseeing eyes, Rejane was slightly irritated by this excessive reaction.

To Oswald, who had for some time been in a state of suppressed nervous tension, her announcement came as the final blow. His dream vanished abruptly. Suddenly all his old unpleasant feelings came back — the loneliness and the grievance and the being left out. Now everything was going to be just the same as before. The great love he’d identified with his dream-radiance had failed him. Rejane had failed him. He had adored her. And she’d just made his love ridiculous. He couldn’t have explained what he meant by this — his ideas were all confused. He knew only that he felt badly let down.

A devastating sadness overwhelmed him, made more unbearable by his surroundings. That he should have to suffer like this, here, on his beloved moor, struck him as a horrid refinement of torture. How far away already seemed the first happy days when he had displayed its beauties… far away and belonging to a time already dead. It now seemed to him that those early days of happiness had led inevitably to his present sorrow; which would in its turn bring him to a still darker state.

*

Rejane was growing increasingly impatient with his silence and gloom. She was sorry now she’d told him she was going. She’d done so only because it seemed unkind to spring her departure on him at the last moment, which confirmed her conviction that kindness was usually a mistake. She should simply have packed up and gone, without giving him any warning.

Now, if she wasn’t careful, he would insist on making a tragedy out of his own feelings, which would spoil everything for her. She couldn’t stand other people’s emotions, and had no intention of putting up with the gloom Oswald was radiating, like a cold fog. Her interlude had been such a success so far that she was determined it shouldn’t end in his stupid depression — she must get him out of it somehow… Suddenly standing up, she went to him, and, with a gesture surprisingly spontaneous and natural, took his limp hand in hers, thinking as she did so what a good actress she would have made.

The unexpectedness of this broke through the isolating walls of his misery. So thoroughly was he convinced that she was out of reach, physically most of all, that astonishment overcame all his other feelings. Incredulously he looked down at her slim, by no means incapable, hand, holding his own. Her face was hidden, she stood beside him as if hiding behind her dark hair, whispering shyly, in her little-girl voice, words he could barely catch. He mustn’t rush her… she hadn’t forbidden him to hope… seemed to be what she was saying.

Without stopping to consider whether he was justified in taking her seriously, he at once clutched at this unreliable straw she had thrown him. Perhaps, when he came home next time…?

She didn’t answer immediately; and, a faint doubt creeping into his mind, he imploringly asked, ‘May I kiss you — just this once?’ — surely he could believe her if she said yes. ‘Do you mind?’

She did mind, in that part of her that always had to remain inviolable and aloof, in perpetual opposition to the other urge that made her deliberately go on attracting men, taking new lovers. But, seeing that it was necessary, she murmured consent, hiding behind her hair, keeping up the pretence of shyness, and consoling herself with the thought that, long before the army disgorged him again, she would have forgotten his existence. Already he seemed a little unreal, almost a dream figure, so soon to be left behind, with his world, for ever. It was like being kissed by a ghost.

The kiss, which Oswald had hoped would confirm his trust, affected him in a way as disturbing as it was unexpected. In the midst of his reverence, he was seized by a passionate impulse; immediately afterwards experiencing a sort of revulsion, reminded of those hated dancing partners of the past. At the same time, an outrageous, though not apparently unfamiliar, thought slid, snakelike, through his head. Some part of him seemed to know already that Rejane despised his restraint and that, if he’d made love to her weeks ago, she would have surrendered — that indeed she’d expected this. But he’d never admitted to knowing it consciously, and would not admit it now, telling himself that the idea was not in accordance with the facts. She’d always kept aloof from him, distant and virginal — it was monstrous to think of her as being like those over-sexed women out East who had tried to seduce him. And yet that strange revulsion he’d felt as he kissed her…

Appalled and confused, he refused to think any further, but stooped to finish his interrupted task.

Since he still remained silent and preoccupied, Rejane looked around for a new distraction. Her eyes fell on the ponies, placidly waiting near; and, in another of her inspired flashes, she asked what would become of Coffee after she’d gone.

She couldn’t have chosen a better diversion, for the man was as fond of horses as he was experienced with them. But, before he had time to answer, a dramatic picture appeared in her imagination, and she announced that Coffee must be set free to return to the moors.