Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone

She made no effort: but everything arranged itself as if by magic. No bother, no delay, not a single hitch. Soon she was in the train, hurrying through the country again. Though she scarcely knew how she had left the hotel.

It was a bright, frosty day, brilliant even. Anna sat in her corner of the carriage and watched the sunlit landscape slide past: calm, friendly, and bright it looked to her, but unsubstantial as the décor that fulfils its subsidiary purpose in the main scheme of a ballet. They could have no reality, those fields and houses that passed ceaselessly before her eyes. They existed merely as details in the backcloth of the scene; the scene of reunion with Sidney.

In the early afternoon she reached her destination. Everything was curiously still. There was a silence about the place, an enchantment. The grey old houses of the village stood cool and mellow in the thin air, and somehow lonely. Hills curved up, green and vacant, against the blue, vacant sky.

She asked her way, and walked on, down the empty village street, past a ramshackle old inn with a swinging sign of wrought iron. She had to traverse a flat, yellowish field. Some youths were playing football at the far end, a ragged fringe of people stood about, watching the game. All was strange and remote. A strange, dream atmosphere of quietude and suspense hung upon the still air. The drumming feet of the players made a sound like wings beating.

She came to the house, which stood back among trees. The last yellow leaves were crisping underfoot, there was a good smell of wood-smoke drifting slowly, like a nostalgia, from the back of the house.

A handsome, vigorous woman of perhaps thirty-five came to the door. She had soft, bright hair, turning grey, and smoothed very neatly behind her small, round ears. Her reposeful face radiated a certain contentment. She looked well-established and happy.

Anna told her name and asked for Sidney.

‘She is in the shed, I think,’ said the strange woman, pointing, and smiling agreeably. Her handsome, athletic figure looked well in the good coat and skirt.

Anna gave her back a frank smile in return. ‘I’ll go and find her,’ she said.

She started towards the shed which stood in the trees, away from the house. She was conscious of the woman watching her as she went, though she did not look back. She felt slightly perturbed for some reason. A faint breath of discomfort had blown upon her enchanted mood, loosening the warmly peaceful spell.

Anna went into the shed. Sidney turned round in the shadowy place and stood watching as the door opened. Her vivid, animal eyes were wide with astonishment, her black brows questioningly tilted.

‘Anna-Marie!’ she said.

‘Yes. I’ve come to see you. At last.’

Sidney had been brushing a dog; the bright, black, satiny creature squirmed on the box in front of her, under her restraining hand. Anna noticed the strong, brown, capable hand, as it held the animal down. She remembered the touch of that hand, affectionate and cool and solid. Sidney was dressed in a smock, with leather gaiters on her legs, which gave her a clean farmer’s boy look. It was a look which Anna did not know. Sidney was straight and stiff. Her beautiful amber eyes seemed quenched in the dusky shed. She did not say anything.

‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ said Anna, coming near. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say to me?’

She held out her hand. With a graceful slouching movement Sidney reached out and touched it. It was strange to feel again the touch of the firm, rather square-tipped fingers. Just for a moment they rested on Anna’s hand: then slipped coolly away.

‘I must hang on to this creature,’ said Sidney. ‘Otherwise he’ll be off into the blue.’ She looked down at the crouched, sleek-coated spaniel. The black body of the dog was tense as a coiled spring, bursting with energy and life.

Anna looked on uneasily. She felt disappointed. They were like two strangers together. She did not know what to say.

‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’ she asked again, rather plaintive. She looked at Sidney with a pale, strained face.

‘Yes — in a way,’ answered Sidney, reluctant. ‘And in a way — no.’

She looked down at the dog which was beginning to jerk in sharp, nervous spasms, trying to escape. The droop of her head, the lounging, downward grace of her body was curiously painful to Anna, the suggestion of concealment and reservation where all had been open loyalty. The fine, V-shaped point of hair on the nape of her neck was heartrending. Anna felt a wave of melancholy, the air of the shed was permeated with a vague, general sadness. She drew it in with her breath: down, down it sank, travelling through all her veins, down to the bottom of her heart.

She knew this was the end. But she must make Sidney look at her. Sidney must raise her head.

‘Why not altogether glad?’ she asked, dejected.

Sidney looked up at her unwillingly. Her eyes were troubled. She seemed changed, a little bit coarsened, in her farmer’s smock. The least little bit brutalized. As if contentment, and her passion for animals and for the country, were beginning to deaden some bright spark in her. It was a grief to Anna to see the wane of that keen, shy fineness that she had loved.

Sidney released the dog. Like a glossy black bolt it shot off, out through the open door, into the yellow afternoon of winter sun.

‘I’ve got used to things now,’ said Sidney. ‘I’ve got my life here where I’m happy. I don’t want you to come and break everything up for me.’

She looked at Anna with glazed eyes, the amber-brightness filmed over with distress. Her face was colourless, unhappy and constrained.

‘Aren’t you being rather unkind?’ asked Anna. But her voice was weary and low, without expression. She looked wan in her disappointed sadness, as she gazed at Sidney. She knew it was all over.

‘Unkind!’ exclaimed the other, a flash of emotion going over her face. ‘Unkind! It’s you who have been unkind all along.’

‘I — in what way?’ Anna hardly understood what Sidney was saying. The words meant nothing to her. She simply stood looking at Sidney, abstractedly, in her grief. Sidney turned her head aside. Once more the fine, dark, arrow, head of hair was visible on her pale neck. Then she looked at Anna again. The amber-coloured eyes held the blue-grey eyes, across the shadowy shed. So they took a final, secret, protracted farewell of one another, silently, over the dim space, while their voices murmured without significance.

‘You never came to see me. You never wrote properly. You never explained. I thought you had forgotten,’ came the voice of Sidney.

‘I couldn’t help it. Everything was against me. I couldn’t get away,’ Anna answered wearily, blank, like a somnambulist.

Sidney flashed at her, fiercely, and accused her.

‘Why did you marry the man?’ she cried, almost brutal in her accusation. ‘Why? Why?’ And accusing, she frowned at her, savagely, with a certain desperation of frustrated love. Anna winced at her violence. But she felt herself numb, numb. The noise of words meant nothing. And Sidney’s very bright eyes flashed at her with passion, a passionate reproachfulness like coals of fire.

‘You could have stopped me,’ said Anna softly. ‘You could have prevented the marriage.’ And to herself she kept repeating: ‘You. You. Only you.’ She did not know if she had spoken the words aloud.

‘How?’ asked Sidney. A trace of the well-known mockery was in her tones. ‘How could I have stopped you?’ She stared at Anna. Her eyes had a strange yellowish brilliance, distracted, mocking, with the queer process of animalization at work underneath.

Anna was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly: