Anna Kavan: Let Me Alone

Her opportunity came finally on a bleak February day when the sky was grey and ugly and a scattering of snow powdered the empty flower-beds. Anna was recovering from a mild attack of influenza, and Rachel sent her into her private room to keep warm.

The room was fairly large, and not in the least suggestive of school or school-life. It was the room of a woman of the world, a woman of taste who was not bound by the ordinary shibboleths. Rachel had arranged the room as she wanted it, for her own self. And the result was in keeping with her personality. It was richly coloured and not too tidy: pleasantly warm, and smelling faintly of cigarettes and flowers. There were hyacinths growing in a bowl on the table, and on the floor, standing about three feet high, a scarlet azalea in full blow, a solid mass of blossom.

Anna lay on the sofa, reading and looking about her. Outside the day was cold and dreary beyond words. But she did not look out of doors. Instead, she looked at the room, at the cheerfully blazing fire, and the pure, vivid scarlet of the azalea. She saw the shelves of inviting books, the scattered cushions, the soft-toned Persian rugs, the handsome tapestry hung behind the door, the huge twisted candlestick of white and vermilion lacquer, standing on the floor and holding a candle as thick as a man’s arm, the delicate, sophisticated grace of the Queen Anne bureau, the barbaric-looking gold embroidery flung over a chair, the haphazard sprinkling of semi-precious objects, bowls and ornaments and carvings of carnelian and agate and onyx and ivory and jade.

She was surprised and fascinated. Some repressed craving for beauty in her began to stir towards life.

‘What a nice room this is,’ she said to Rachel Fielding.

Rachel only smiled at her. Throughout the morning, she kept coming in and out, hurrying about with her quick, eager walk, leaning slightly forward as if in an excess of eagerness, a very busy goddess indeed.

But after lunch she came in and shut the door after her with a definite sneck which seemed to shut out all the rest of the world.

‘There! I think I deserve a little rest now,’ she said, and sat down quite close to Anna.

The room glowed like a jewel in the dull breast of the day. They seemed shut away there, together, in absolute seclusion in the bright, warm room. Anna felt a little uneasy; rather alarmed at being shut up alone with the bright-eyed, assertive woman in her dark velvet dress — the goddess woman. She sat up on the sofa, very straight against the cushions, with her fine, slender brown hands motionless in her lap, and her head well up; on the defensive.

Rachel took a cigarette from a cedarwood box, and lit it.

‘Does it shock you to watch me smoke?’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’m a very unprofessional sort of school-marm really.’

She blew out a fine stream of smoke, and smiled very winningly at Anna, as at an equal.

‘I like it,’ said Anna quietly.

She sat still, watching the thin, bluish feather of smoke curl upwards from the cigarette. It was blue as it left the cigarette, and greyish when Rachel blew it in a soft, cloudy stream from her red mouth. There was rather a long silence.

‘Well, how do you like us all?’ Rachel asked suddenly, darting her quick, hazel eyes at Anna above the smoke. But she saw that Anna was confused, and immediately altered the form of the question.

‘How do you think you will like being at Haddenham?’

Anna was relieved. She could answer that, all right.

‘I like it much better than Lausanne. Oh, very much better,’ she answered, and her mouth gave a little smile.

But she couldn’t help wondering, rather, what it was all about; what Rachel was getting at. A sort of misgiving lurked in her grey-blue eyes. And she sat up very straight and still, such a suspicious, haughty soul in her thin girl’s body.

‘What is it? What is the matter with you?’ Rachel asked her, with her soft, Madonna-fondness.

She threw away her cigarette and knelt beside the sofa, taking Anna’s hand caressively, covering that small, reluctant hand completely with her own large, soft, white hand. It was evident that she really loved Anna at that moment, was carried away in a muse of pitying Madonna-love. She really wanted to help her.

‘Why are you so suspicious? Why do you want to drive me away? What is it that frightens you?’

The questions dropped from her soft mouth with a gentle, crooning sound. Anna looked in wonder at the big, short-sighted hazel eyes peering close into her own. Hitherto the world had been united to repress her, to insult and humiliate her, to make her feel ashamed and unimportant. The world had made her feel an outcast, a dweller in outer darkness. She had known what it was to sink lower and lower, till there seemed no place for her in all the universe.

Now the opposite was happening. This vivid, splendid woman was trying to raise her up, to save her from the bitterness of the insults she had received, to restore to her the pride and beauty of herself. And suddenly it seemed as though a light had fallen upon her: as sometimes in the mountains when all the sky was threatening and gloomy with dark cloud, a slender ray of sunshine would come through, unexpectedly, brightening the sad earth.

‘I thought everybody must despise me; because I’m different, somehow. I don’t know why —’ Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

Rachel looked into her eyes for a moment, and her face seemed to go softer, warmer, melting away in a fusion of pitying love. She took Anna in her warm arms.

‘Poor little foreigner. Poor little lost girl,’ she murmured, very low, as if speaking to herself.

Anna relaxed against her, feeling that something new and wonderful had happened, changing the whole aspect of the world. It was the first time since the day of poor Miss Wilson, almost the first time in her life, that anyone had embraced her with real affection. Her heart grew lighter. But at the back of her mind, a faint, ironical self-consciousness would not be banished entirely, so that she was glad when Rachel released her and sat back again on her chair, a little way off.

But what a dominant will the full, queenly woman had! She had an almost uncanny power to make Anna feel confident and strong. The smooth head of the girl poised more surely. She was coming back to herself.

Then Rachel began to talk, not emotionally now, but very kindly, with a subtle flattery of intimacy, and a certain matter-of-factness that banished all alarms.

‘Things have gone wrong with you,’ she said. ‘You’ve lost yourself a bit. But it doesn’t really matter very much. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong, nothing that we shan’t be able to put right. The great thing is not to be afraid.’

Anna sat still, listening, and at the sound of those confident and consoling words, the nightmare, the threatening nightmare that had crept into her daily life, began to slink away. She looked out of the window, and saw the trees, rank upon bare rank, naked and motionless against the naked winter sky. Only by some freak of the wind, a single tree, a young chestnut, a tall sapling on which the dark buds were already distinguishable, blew strongly to and fro with a slow, even motion, like the rolling of a boat at sea. And ever after, through her stormy life, the recollection of those comforting words must be associated with the stormily swaying tree, swinging and rolling against the motionless background of the other trees which the wind left untouched.

‘You must never be afraid of anything,’ said Rachel Fielding. ‘Always remember that with your intelligence you can do anything you like. There is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle. The world is there for you to do as you like with — not the other way round.’

‘But why is it that I feel so much alone? So cut off from everybody? As though I can never come near?’ Anna asked, after a pause.