Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

But watching him with that same fierceness, still, that same air of remote and unbreakable pride—certainly without fear, either for herself or him. Almost angrily, in fact, or contemptuously; and as if impatient, too, for him to be done with it, to get it over with. You could feel her thinking—“Come on, come on, we’ve had enough of this now, you’ve shown off enough, let’s get down off this wall and go home”—! But all the while, too, her own steel-like delight in the speed and danger, as if that gleaming perpendicular wall, for her, was something more precious than life itself.

It was coming to an end, however. The boy had whipped off the black handkerchief, had tucked it away quickly, was circling downward and slowing, the bursts of sound from the exhaust becoming irregular and intermittent—and now he was out on the floor again, and the girl, in her turn, was spiraling beautifully down the wall, slower and slower, the silver wings pointing downward, the fierce head held proudly back. In less than a minute, without any fuss, she had joined the boy in the center of the floor, they were stacking the motor-bikes for the night, and the people beside us were getting up to leave. Down below, the curved door in the wall of the Drome had been opened from outside, and the assistant had come in, bringing a wooden mallet. The girl went out first, without saying a word—the boy just pausing to say something to the assistant, then following. Our ten golden minutes were over.

“Well”—Paul said as we went down the narrow stairs—“was I right?”

“You were right. Words fail me. A pair of nonpareils. Why they’re incredible! And how exactly like you to find them!”

He chuckled.

“Yes—it was a bit of luck.”

“But tell me—why was there no applause?”

“Isn’t that funny? There never is any. Not a scrap. You know—I fancy it’s because people are really dazzled, really overcome—do you think it could be that—?”

“It may be—it may be. I certainly was …!”

Outside, the fair was closing up for the night. The merry-go-round had been darkened, lights here and there were being turned off, the last few stragglers were drifting across the littered playing-salts. Shadows moved on the curtained windows of the gypsy wagons and caravans—the fair-folk were going to bed. Beside the huge green lorry which was the power-plant, the night watchman sat in a wooden chair on the grass—he was reading a paper by the light of one naked bulb, stuck in the side of the lorry, and keeping an eye on his throbbing motors. Cables ran from the lorry across the grass to the merry-go-round, the Drome, the various wagons—we stepped over them carefully, deciding to walk home by way of the river.

The boy and girl were nowhere in sight.

II.

Of course, we both saw them again, and not once but many times. How could we possibly keep away from them? We couldn’t, and didn’t. We became addicts, sitting through performance after performance—we took parties of friends—we went, in short, over and over again, returning willy-nilly to that delight as the drunkard returns to his bottle. Paul took along his camera, naturally, and got dozens of remarkable photographs—and how many sketches he made goodness knows. At the end, we knew those two lovely creatures absolutely by heart—as you usually know only those people you love. And all this time, right to the end, they both remained just exactly as superb and beautiful and inviolable as they had seemed at the beginning.

That is, as far as the performance was concerned. And in fact, the effect was actually heightened by what we found out about them—it added an element of the dramatic to know what we knew, and to know why they behaved as they did. How much more, too, if we could have known how it was destined to end, and how soon—! But that was impossible, of course, and nobody guessed it; and meanwhile it was quite enough for us to watch day after day the girl’s savage and contemptuous indifference, and the angry pride which so enhanced her beauty, and counter to this, the boy’s calm and cool and patient courage, the quiet courage of the one who knows that he can wait longest.

A start was made when Paul decided to ask them to Sunday tea, and did so, and they accepted. They were surprised, but they were also delighted. They came, and it was a huge success, and—as Margaret told me afterwards, for I was unable to go, much to my sorrow—they behaved beautifully, simply beautifully. Somehow, nobody had quite expected them to have much in the way of manners—an assumption which was quite unfounded, of course, and which collapsed instantly and startlingly when it came out, almost at once, that the boy was the son of a north-country vicar! A gentleman, in fact, and the girl a lady! Margaret was relieved; and Paul was amused; and everybody, as usual, had a good time. And lots of interesting things came out. They were both twenty-two, and had been married less than a year. The boy had spent a few months in New York—it was there that he had learned his stunt-riding, while working as a mechanic for the Wall of Death at Coney Island, or some such place. And he had decided that he would come back to England and be the first to introduce it there. With the money he came into from his mother on his twenty-first birthday, he bought the rights and plans for the first Drome of Death in England, therefore, and had it built at Southampton—and only a week before, at Southampton, he and his wife had given their first performance. All the money had been spent—it was a close thing—and they would be dependent on what they could make, but they were confident. And so on.

It was noticeable—Margaret said—that it was he who did all the talking. But a little nervously, and constantly turning to his wife, as if half afraid of some shadowy criticism or disapproval. The girl said practically nothing. She was perfectly self-possessed, and quite amiable, but she made it evident that she preferred to listen—now and then turning toward her husband, Margaret thought, an expression that seemed perhaps just a shade skeptical. Especially of his exploits—when he was telling of his previous exploits. Not that he boasted at all—not in the least. Apparently he had in fact been extremely modest about it. But it was when he was telling of his winning the Isle of Man trophy, and the race from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, and a few other such things, that Margaret first noticed, as she put it, what looked almost like a curl of the lip, and an angry flash of light in the girl’s eyes. It was odd, and a little disconcerting. And moreover, it seemed disconcerting to the boy.

But that was all, no further light was shed on it at the time, and it was not till a few days before the fair left town, and took the road for Folkstone, that the thing really came out.

And all through a package of cigarettes—and the fact that I had to call at the jeweler’s for my watch, which I had taken to be cleaned. The jeweler’s shop was at the end of the High Street, just beside the cliff, and above the playing-salts; and seeing the fair, and having nothing to do, I went down. Except for one or two of the penny gambling stalls, the fair was not officially open in the morning, and therefore now it looked a little deserted. Nobody about—only a few children. But when I came to the Drome of Death, there, sitting on the edge of the red plush dais, dangling his blue-trousered legs, was the boy, all alone, and the minute he saw me his eyes lighted up with recognition, and he smiled.

“I imagine you’ve seen me before,” I said.

“Many times. You’re a friend of Mr. Nash, aren’t you? I think he spoke of you.”

I admitted this, and said that I was sorry I had been unable to come to the tea, and to meet his wife and himself, and I complimented him on the show, at which he was pleased, and then he asked me if I wouldn’t sit down, and I did. But it was when I offered him a cigarette that he really showed his pleasure—he fairly beamed at me.