The Collected Short Fiction Part 43

The Real Road To The Church (1975).

But was that the true meaning? Le vrai chemin de l'eglise? The overtones of symbolism and conversion seemed clear enough, but Rosa still rather wondered whether the significance of the phrase was not wholly topographical. One could so easily read far too much into the traditional usages of simple people.

Probably all that was meant was the simplest and directest route (and perhaps the ancientest); the alternative to the new (but no longer very new) and metalled main road that wound along the borders of properties, instead of creeping through them. Though by now, Rosa reflected, all roads had begun to barge through once again, and no longer went courteously around and about. Very much so: that, she thought, was symbolic, if anything was. Of everything: of the changed world outside and also of her own questionable place in it. But when one began to think in that way, all things become symbolic of all other things. Not that that was in itself untrue: though it was only one truth, of course. And when one admitted that there were many truths existing concurrently, upon which of them could one possibly be thought to stand firm-let alone, to rest? Almost certainly, the simple people who used that phrase, gave no thought at all to its meaning. It was a convention only, as are the left hand side and the right. Conventions are, indeed, all that s.h.i.+eld us from the s.h.i.+vering void, though often they do so but poorly and desperately.

As a matter of fact, Rosa was s.h.i.+vering now as she stood in the living-room of La Wide (if living-room it could yet be called) and thought about the tone in which Mrs Du Quesne, her newly found home help with the aristocratic name, had spoken. Nor was it only Mrs Du Quesne's name that seemed to echo breeding. Rosa had read many books during those years she spent abroad; read them mainly, as it had since seemed to her, while waiting for men to keep some appointment or other; and Mrs Du Quesne had brought back Tess of the D'Urbervilles to her, though Mrs Du Quesne was far, far older than Tess had been permitted to be.

Rosa's convent French, though presumably reinforced during the year or two she had lived in Paris (but always with men who were English), was of little avail in understanding the island tongue: not so much a patois, she gathered, as a hybrid, a speech half-Latin and half-Norse. At one period, Rosa had lived in Stockholm with an actual Swede (far and away the worst year of her life-or more than a year: it had all ended in her breakdown), but the language of Sweden (and never would she forget the pitch of it) seemed to have nothing whatever in common with the language of Mrs Du Quesne and her friends. If Mrs Du Quesne had not mixed in equal parts of very clear English, Rosa could hardly have employed her. There were not many left who spoke the local tongue at all; but that was a factor which strongly inclined Rosa to employ, and thus, perhaps, aid, those who did. Any resulting difficulty or sacrifice she fervently justified to herself.

Rosa was fairly well aware that it was the more oracular remarks which Mrs Du Quesne and her friends left in their natal hybrid, nor could by any reasonable persuasion be induced to anglicize. She suspected, indeed, that just now she herself had gone somewhat beyond persuasion that was reasonable. She was sure she had begun to croak, when her gullet had suddenly dried around what had been her voice; and that she had pounded several times upon the Du Quesne kitchen table (except that neither table nor kitchen were the words they all used). When it came to the choice, no doubt important in its way, between one three-letter was.h.i.+ng powder and another, Mrs Du Quesne spoke plain advertisers' English; but her warnings, or at least admonitions, deeper and more personal to Rosa and her place of abode, were as masked as the gurglings of any ancient oracle. And everyone else in the kitchen that was called something else kept quiet when Mrs Du Quesne said these plainly important things. Probably those sitting around at Delphi fell silent in like circ.u.mstances.

And there could be no doubt at all about La Wide having been unoccupied for years and years before she, Rosa, had bought it. The very first thing she had thought when she had set eyes on it had been, It must be haunted, but it had not so far in her occupancy seemed to be so, and the first twelvemonth was almost over, albeit a casual visitor might not have thought it from the state of the rooms.

The fact that the little structure had been so cheap as to be within Rosa's means had also made her suspect that trouble went with it. She had not been so unsophisticated as not to think of that. But during the year she had realized that on this point the answer might lie elsewhere.

The explanation, she had come to suspect, lay in the present social categorization of the island population. First, there were the few immensely old families, who dwelt in crumbling chateaux, within weedy moats. Second, there were the tax refugees from the British mainland: sad, very loud-voiced people in once-fas.h.i.+onable clothes, who seemed not to have houses at all, but to reside always in not quite compatible bars and restaurants, never truly drunk, never truly sober. Third, there was the great residential majority: the prosperous growers, their suppliers and agents. These lived in new or rehabilitated bungalows or houses, frantically compet.i.tive, each with all the others. Finally, there were the few real natives or aboriginals; and they had so diminished in number under the weight of all the others, or of the times in general, that they no longer needed more than a proportion of the cots and crofts built for them, mostly in the solidest, most enduring stone. The first three groups would not have considered La Wide, and the fourth had no need of it. The end of the tomato boom was said to be imminent, but in that event, those who trimmed and watered it would migrate not to La Wide but more probably to the Antipodes.

Moreover, La Wide was to be reached only by a b.u.mpy and neglected track running uphill between hedges: difficult for a baby carriage, impossible for a saloon car. It was, in fact, this track that had initiated the dark talk from Mrs Du Quesne and her group; Rosa having expressed concern about the difficulty Mrs Du Quesne might find in making her way during the season of winter wet that once more lay ahead. (Rosa had arrived the previous October, but then, and right through that winter, there had been no Mrs Du Quesne in her life.) Rosa, still s.h.i.+vering, sank upon a chair by the small fireplace as she thought about what had been said; though, as far as she was concerned, but slenderly understood. I am far too sensitive, she thought, for the five hundredth or one thousandth time; though words had never been necessary to frame the thought. She was in such distress (surely, this time, without full justification) that she might have gone on to think I am mad, and thus derive some faint, familiar comfort from the implication of non-responsibility for what happened to her and of escape, but instead was struck by the idea that, in this case, the word "sensitive" might require to be applied in a new meaning.

Dennis, fifteen years ago, had said at first that he thought she might be "a sensitive", and indeed claimed that it was one reason why he was "interested in her". He always professed a special concern with such things, and could certainly talk without end about them, though perhaps without much meaning either. He had, however, quite soon found an Indo-Chinese girl who was far more of a sensitive, and was believed, in so far as you could believe anything about Dennis, to have started living with her instead. Already, Dennis had explained to Rosa that being "a sensitive" had nothing at all to do with being "sensitive" in the ordinary meaning of the word. Rosa had thought this just as well in all the circ.u.mstances, and had summoned resolution to exclude all notion of herself owning any special psychic status. She had hardly thought about it again until now. If I am sensitive in that way, she thought, then the Du Quesne lot may have sensed it. Whenever she visited Mrs Du Quesne's abode, which she had found herself doing surprisingly frequently, she discovered a small crowd of kindred and affinity mumbling their confused lingo in the non-kitchen. "The Du Quesne lot" were fast becoming an over-wise chorus in the background of her own life: and perhaps edging towards the front of it.

Though it was already the end of October, there was no fire in the grate. This was partly because it was so difficult to get coal. Apparently the tomato-houses required almost all that was imported. The previous winter, Rosa had frozen for as long as eight or nine weeks before she had obtained a supply by making one of her scenes in the merchant's office. She had then received a whole ton, almost immediately, carried by a pair of youths in half-hundredweight sacks all the way up her lumpy lane from the road: which made her wonder whether coal was really so short, after all. Quite probably it was one of the many necessities only to be procured by such as she through resort to degrading devices. Rosa was unsure whether she did not prefer to endure the cold. Then she reasoned with herself that winter had of course not even begun, and that even autumn was less than half gone. She rose, went through to the back room, her bedroom and boudoir, removed her sweater, glanced in the looking-gla.s.s at the reflection of her bust, as she always did, and put on a thicker, chunkier sweater. The room was rather sad and dark, because the single window was close to the bank of earth which rose behind almost perpendicularly. Probably the room had been intended for "the children", while Father and Mother slept in the room adjoining, which was now Rosa's unfinished living-room; and all had lived their waking lives in the remaining room, into which the outer door led, and which had now become Rosa's kitchen and scullery only. Rosa entered this kitchen and scullery, and started to slice up materials for a meal.

But that day it was her first meal her mother could possibly have called "real", and it had the effect, with the coffee that followed it, of concentrating Rosa's perceptions. Mrs Du Quesne had left her with much to be surmised, but the facts, or rather the claims, were clear, even though the overtones and explanations might not be.

It had begun when Mrs Du Quesne, in a friendly way, had been answering one of the others who had apparently enquired for details as to where Rosa resided. "Ah," the other woman had blurted out, "it is there that they change the porters." Patois or hybrid the tongue might be, but Rosa could understand that much. "What porters?" she had enquired, her mind full of French railway stations. There had been a pause and a silence, and then something evasive had been said, though doubtless kindly meant. "No," Rosa had cried, the scent of mischief full in her nostrils. "I want to know. Please tell me." Mrs Du Quesne then said something much firmer, and perhaps in a less kindly tone; and soon Rosa was beginning to lose control, in the way she now regretted. So, in the end, Mrs Du Quesne did tell some of it, out of resentment or out of necessity. Mrs Du Quesne explained certain aspects of the matter, while the others inserted quiet or excited comments in their vernacular.

All over the island, Mrs Du Quesne had said, all over the island when one knew, were these paths: "les vrais chemins de l'eglise". It was the way one went to one's church-when one knew. Several other things were said that Rosa had not comprehended. There was another pause and then the nub of the matter was hinted at: by these paths one also went to one's grave. Along these paths one's body was borne; and not only did such a path find its way past La Wide, so that each time the burden must pa.s.s within inches of Rosa's front door, but La Wide was also one of the places where, as she had heard already, "they changed the porters". Great significance seemed to be attached to that. And everyone made it clear that to make one's last journey by any other route was most inappropriate. Words were used to describe the consequences which, though few, were impressive, so awed and reluctant was their utterance, so charged the silence that followed them. Rosa had no precise idea what these words meant, but they had made those dead who were unquiet, almost visible and tangible in Mrs Du Quesne's homestead.

"But," Rosa had, in the end, cried out, "but I have never heard anything." She thought that at this point she had actually clutched at Mrs Du Quesne's sleeve.

"No," Mrs Du Quesne had replied, very simply and memorably. "Until now you hadn't the knowledge." And everyone was again silent after she had spoken.

Rosa could not see how that could possibly make any difference. Either these dreary corteges went past, in which case she would have surely seen at least one of them in a whole year; or they did not, and she had somehow missed the whole point.

"And whatever happens," said Mrs Du Quesne rather loudly, "if you do hear, don't look." Everyone continued silent; not one of them even nodding.

And what was more, she had learned nothing further. There had been some more talk, either in the difficult tongue, or else merely silly. Soon, Rosa had stalked out.

Now she looked around at the half-completed repainting and the miscellany of furniture brought from her room in London. It had been costly to move, of course, but it was certainly not true that it would have been cheaper to buy new furniture on the island. New furniture might have been more agreeable and more appropriate, but it would finally have emptied Rosa's financial store. As for the painting, she had set about doing it herself for the same reason, and because she thought it would give her something to do before she started looking for a thing that was better, but had been surprised by the physical effort involved, and, some time ago, had desisted until she had more strength. By now, she had ceased to notice the result for most of the time, though at this moment she did notice it. Properly, as she well knew, she could not afford even Mrs Du Quesne, but truly she could not do everything, and Mrs Du Quesne also provided a certain company-cheerful and confident company for much of the time. Besides, Mrs Du Quesne cost very little.

That, indeed, was why it had been possible to employ her, when a woman requiring the open market rate would have been out of the question; but at this moment it struck Rosa for the first time that Mrs Du Quesne's cheapness was like the cheapness of the house: slightly unnatural. Unaccustomed cheapness is something that takes much explanation in the world around us. It occurred to Rosa that perhaps she, Rosa, was beginning to regret having come at all, and that all these new difficulties and apprehensions were, as Dennis used to say, "projections". Nothing had been more familiar to Rosa than the sensation of early regret for almost every step she had ever taken; but this time she had thought that she had evaded the demon, even though perhaps by also managing to evade herself, for nearly a whole year. Where just now Rosa had undoubtedly been frightened, the notion that her external alarums had emanated, as so often, from inside her, left her merely depressed.

She looked at her reflection, though only in the gla.s.s of the sitting-room window. The light was just right for the purpose, and even the grime helped to define her image. Certainly it was all the definition she wanted. She had always found life to move by contraries, usually petty ones, though sometimes not; and, as often before when she had been depressed, now found herself surprised that she looked as well as she did. She had long ago learned that it was when she had been feeling more confident that the sight of her appearance came always as something of a shock. Life evens things up or down; in small matters and in large (even though Rosa would have hesitated to distinguish between the two). Now she felt quite pleased. Her figure was still noticeably good, or at least well proportioned; and the thick, chunky sweater was in her right style. Even her face was still pretty, she thought, beneath the grey hair. At least she had the decency to keep her grey hair short: but then there had been a man who positively liked, and chose, short grey hair-though that, for better or for worse, had been when her own hair was neither, but carroty and rather long. Still, long grey hair always looked greasy and witch-like; and at once she thought anew of Mrs Du Quesne, though Mrs Du Quesne's hair was not grey at all, but quite black. And my skin is amazingly good for my age, Rosa thought to herself. (She had long ago made a decision to defer talking to herself for as long as she could.) She attempted a smile, though she knew it could only be a bitter one, at least for the most part. But it proved to be not so much a bitter smile, as a timid and frightened smile. She was smiling like a shaky adolescent. And then the image in the dirty window lost shape and ident.i.ty. Rosa turned away, once more depressed.

She took down her coat from one of the pegs at the back of the door on to the lane and set out for a walk. It was a respectable and even an expensive coat. Rosa still spent far more on clothes than on "the home"-or, indeed, on anything else that was in the least optional. And they were ladylike, conventional clothes that she picked, though simpler than the convention, because she had taste. Though her adult life had so far divided into two phases, neither of them especially ladylike, she had felt from first to last that her appearance must always show what she really was. And now that she had entered upon a third phase, this limbo at La Wide, she divined that her appearance was almost all she was left with. It was something that need never fail her while she had two pennies to rub together, and had mercifully little to do with the quite independent aspect of her naked body, provided that she did not allow her grey hair to grow long and greasy, or her hands to go too far in the direction of, say, Mrs Du Quesne's hands. With determination, she would be able to do something with her appearance until the last day came . . . She twisted her mind away from the thought of the morning's conversation.

Rosa was winding her way along the cliff path, high and narrow above the autumnal billows (they are as grey as hair, thought Rosa); steeply up and vertiginously down, both billows and path. Rosa walked not fast but steadily: the cliff path ran for many miles, and was exceedingly wild and beautiful, recalling what the cliff paths of England were, the coastguard paths, well within living memory. The ascents and descents, beyond either the powers or the will of the ordinary visitor, meant little to Rosa; but then the beauty and the wildness meant little to her either, and the windblown cliff flora, the jagged, streaky geology, nothing at all. All these different things entered her awareness only vaguely. Almost every day, she went slowly on and on, in her good clothes; pa.s.sing others, persons from the car parks behind, and men with guns, without acknowledgement of any kind, without one half-step aside, a.s.suredly without a smile. "She looks just like a ghost," the women said, not understanding that she might conceivably have been one. "Didn't she look pale?" enquired other women rhetorically of their bored husbands. Rosa was one whom the weather affected little. "She looks like a mad-woman," the bored husbands would sometimes reply. "Perhaps she's searching for something," a girl might interpose more sympathetically. And the crus.h.i.+ng answer would come: "Most likely searching for her wits".

Rosa had thus walked for miles along the cliff path almost each day during all but a year, but now she soon began to feel tired and settled herself on a rough bench. She sat staring out to sea for possibly half an hour; letting the heavy waves erode her misery and break up her despair. Then a figure in black appeared on the path in the opposite direction to that from which she had come. A tall elderly man struggled forward against the wind. As he drew near, Rosa saw that he was in clerical dress, without an overcoat, and with his big black hat in his hand. His white hair was spa.r.s.e and windblown. He stopped in front of Rosa and she looked up. Her first thought was: a sensitive face.

"Good afternoon," said the man. "I believe you are Mrs Hughes."

"Yes," said Rosa. "I am."

"You have bought the little house at the place where they change the porters? At least I a.s.sume that you have bought it."

"Yes," said Rosa. "I admit it."

"You are seeking peace?"

"Aren't we all?" The cheap words had sprung to her lips on some volition of their own.

"Yes, Mrs Hughes. Indeed, we all are. Indeed."

Rosa said nothing. She felt that any words she could find would be likewise unworthy of her; would show her in an unjust light. It was a long time since she had conversed with any "educated person".

"Perhaps I might sit beside you for a moment?"

Rosa nodded and, as one does, drew the skirt of her coat more closely to her.

"And what was your life before you came here? If you care to speak of it, of course."

"For the last eight years, I was a secretary. Then the manager sent for me and told me I was past being a secretary with that company, but that he had arranged for me to be transferred to the handling side. I said No."

"I am sure you were wise," said the man. "And what happened to you before the last eight years?" Both of them were staring straight ahead across the pulsing, empty sea.

"Before that I was seeing more of life."

"Did you prefer that?"

"No," replied Rosa. "I disliked both times," and, when he said nothing, she spoke again. "Who are you?"

"I am the curate in charge of your parish. I too am retired, but I come here every autumn in order to permit your rector to rest. He is very elderly, even more so than I am, and, alas very infirm indeed, as I expect you know."

"No," said Rosa, once more defiant, as always when confronted with any kind of official demand. "I don't go to church."

"Possibly not," said the man. "But then you have no need to."

"I wonder how you know," said Rosa, cheaper than ever, and misunderstanding.

"You already live in a holy place."

"What's that?" asked Rosa, her heart in a sudden vice.

"I myself should not dare to live there."

"Tell me," said Rosa, with all the stolidity she could muster. "What exactly is there that I should be afraid of?"

"It is not a matter of anything to fear in the usual sense. It is a spiritual matter."

"As how? I don't know about such things."

"Oh," he said. "Where were you educated?"

"In a convent," she replied, more quietly. "But I've long ago forgotten everything I was taught."

He replied in a murmur, as if to himself. "I can hear the beating of your heart."

But having said that, he said nothing more, while Rosa sat waiting, almost peacefully, for whatever might befall.

"I come here daily," he said in the end. "I like to contemplate the immensity. There is a lack of immensity in the world. Do you find that also?"

"Yes," said Rosa. "I suppose I do. But I don't look very much for it. I don't look very much for anything."

"It is perhaps odd," he continued, "that we have not met until now. I believe that you too walk along the cliff."

"Yes," said Rosa. "And I may have pa.s.sed you without noticing. I do that often."

"I think I should have noticed you" he said, as if seriously thinking about it.

Rosa noticed that upon the grey sea was now the beginning of a black shadow.

"This," she remarked, "is when my mother would have said 'The days are drawing in'."

"Yes," he replied. "Soon we shall have to light the lamp before tea-time."

A sea bird descended from the blackening clouds, screaming and searching.

"You haven't told me," said Rosa. "This thing about changing the porters. People seem to keep talking about it. It sounds rather pointless to me. And, anyway, it doesn't happen. I've been there nearly a year and it hasn't happened yet, as far as I know."

"Perhaps you have not known what to look for and to listen for. The porters are changed very quietly. No one speaks. No one grumbles. Surely you have not been given the impression that they go by shouting, like a trade union march?"

"I have to admit," said Rosa, taking the plunge, "that I never heard about it at all until this morning, and then only from my char, if that is what I should call her. She said the great thing was if I did hear anything, not to look for what it was."

"It is a disturbing sight for those unaccustomed to death and the hereafter: which is most of the world around us, as I need hardly say. I think that you are one, Mrs Hughes, who could not only listen and look, but kneel and touch with impunity."

"Do I really want to?" asked Rosa, turning to him completely for the first time.

"Oh, yes, indeed, Mrs Hughes," he replied. "To kneel and to touch are the proper practices of the pilgrim. That must be one of the things you have temporarily forgotten."

"As with saints and relics and so forth?"

He smiled at her for the first time.

"But what should I get out of it?" She blushed. "No, I don't quite mean that. What I mean is why me? Why should I be supposed to do it more than another?"

"Because, Mrs Hughes, your whole life has been a quest for perfection. You have always been concerned only with perfection, and as in this world there is no perfection, you are sad. Sadness can be a very special-shall I say, concession?"

"I am sure the nuns used to tell us it was a sin."

"As with so many things, it depends upon what kind of sadness it is."

"Do you know," said Rosa impulsively, "I'm not sure that you haven't changed my entire afternoon!"

"Where you now live," he replied, "there was for centuries a shrine with an image; and before that, probably on the very same spot, another image, very different and yet in important ways just the same; and, before that-who knows?-perhaps the G.o.ddess herself, in propria persona, if you will permit the words. Needless to say, no one could behold the G.o.ddess herself in her grove and continue to live. That is possible only when the divine is provisionally mediated into man."

"For a clergyman you seem to take stock in an awful lot of different G.o.ds."

"There is only one."

"Yes," she said. "I see that too. At least I do now. You seem to make me understand things that I never understood before. And yet you don't say anything that's in the least new."

"Daily life is entirely a matter of the pattern men and women impose upon it: of style, as the artist calls it. And the character of that pattern is very important, as day follows day. None the less, reality lies far behind, and is unchangeable: is ritual, in fact. It was of reality, I suspect, that your charwoman was speaking-perhaps gossiping. Reality is often dangerous, so she was cautioning you to avoid it."

"And you?"

"I advise you to advance towards it. When you hear the faint sounds I spoke of, throw open your door and see what there is to see. Fall upon your knees and stretch out your hand, as I said. And of course be prepared for a big change; something indescribable, unpredictable."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," said Rosa slowly.

"Few have. My general reputation in the parish is that of a complete visionary. I am said to go around upsetting people. Not that many care one way or the other." On the instant, he rose to his feet. "But now I must return to them. I am very glad indeed to have met you, Mrs Hughes." As he could not lift his hat, he waved it vaguely around. She had a few seconds in which to examine his full face closely.

"I understand almost nothing you have said, " Rosa repeated. "And yet you have made me feel much better. Thank you."

She would have gone after him along the cliff path, had he proposed it, but he did not. He merely bowed slightly and strode rapidly away. For a minute or so in the dusk, she could see his long black shape flickering and capering like a sc.r.a.p of burned paper blown along by the wind, but soon he was no longer visible.

A heavy raindrop fell upon the back of her left hand. She looked up. The sky was now really black, with a blackness that was not entirely of the oncoming night. There was nothing to do but make the best speed possible homewards. But though she scuttled along more swiftly than for a long time, she failed to glimpse the shape ahead of the man who had been speaking to her. The visibility was so poor as to make the rough path almost dangerous; and when Rosa at last re-entered La Wide, her good clothes and she herself were saturated more completely than ever before in her life, save perhaps once, that day in the Bois de Vincennes, of all places, with Dennis. People looked down their noses at the Bois de Vincennes, but when the rain began, it had proved astonis.h.i.+ngly wild and shelterless. Then Rosa recalled that she was wrong. The man with whom she had shared a soaking had not been Dennis but Michael: vile, b.l.o.o.d.y, deceitful, dear old Mike.

There was no electricity at La Wide. For lighting she depended upon lamps, exactly as her new acquaintance had said; and the oil supply for them had been another of the wearing nuisances which she hoped that Mrs Du Quesne would be able to deal with better than she had. At least, she, Rosa, would not have to listen to the supplier's patronizing comments upon her backward and impoverished existence. But now, before lighting a lamp, she stripped off all her clothes in the almost total darkness and flung them about the floor.

Dennis, Michael, Oskar, Ted, Tom, Frank, Gwyn, and Elvington: those were some of the names, and what comic names they were! Rosa ignited a pair of lamps, then lined the men up in her mind. It was possibly the first time ever that she had deliberately done so, and, perhaps for that reason, some of the names had no proper faces, and certain other faces that she saw, peering and intruding from the darker areas, had no names. And after those days, during her years of respectable and responsible business life, there had been virtually no men at all; a.s.suredly none with power over her. She took out an unused bath towel and rubbed herself vigorously. Then she put on another sweater and a pair of trousers, which she seldom wore; and over them her thick winter dressing gown. All these things felt pleasantly new, one after the other. The dressing gown she had had cleaned during the summer, so that it smelt impersonally of chemicals. The file of men had soon vanished; without even being dismissed. It was as if on their own they had marched away into life's battle and failed to return.

What had happened to them: to them as individuals? It was another thought upon which Rosa had seldom dwelt. In almost every case, her final and consuming idea had been simply to get away, and to drag her sagging heart away also. She had sought to avoid all thought of the man's continuing existence. And then when another man had appeared, it had been even more important not to reflect much upon the past. All she could now recollect was that Elvington, poor weak American boy, had destroyed himself with the contents of a killing bottle, though not on her account, but whole years later; and that big, fat Oskar had been actually killed, Scandinavian-style, in a fight, and a fight that was at least partly about her. Afterwards she had collapsed completely, very completely; and had had to be fetched back to England "under sedation" (and as cheaply as possible) by her half-sister, Judith. Frank was supposed to have perished in a car smash outside Bolton, where he had, at rather long last, found a job of some kind. It was her room-mate, Agnes, who had told her that, and professed herself willing to swear to it; but one could not rely upon Agnes even when she probably wished to speak the truth. Agnes had also said that Frank had been married only a week before the accident . . . All the rest of them were quite possibly still alive. Rosa wondered how many of them would reach Heaven, and how many of their respective women, and what would happen to them all then. She was still not seeing them standing in a line, as they had been doing, ten, twenty, or thirty minutes ago. Rosa had often noticed that such inner visions come upon one apparently unsolicited; soon vanish; and can by no effort be recaptured. She uncrossed her legs and said out loud: "We control nothing of importance that happens to us."

She realized that she had not yet rubbed her hair, except to prevent it actually dripping upon her dry clothes. The new towel was soaking wet and quite unsuitable. She took out another new towel, leaving but one more on the pile. Seated on a hard chair, she rubbed away at her head, feeling active and effective. Then she had to consider what to do with two wringing wet towels, and several very humid garments. It really was not cold enough to justify the lighting of a fire. Rosa felt so full of vigour that she almost regretted this. She settled for ranging the wet objects upon strings which she stretched round the room. Fortunately, several pegs and hooks had been left behind in odd places, to which the strings could be tied; but the total effect was unconvincing, and more than a little eerie. There were new shadows, some of them vast; and intermittent small s.h.i.+ftings and flappings. I feel penned in by wet vampire bats, thought Rosa; but, as a matter of fact, the feeling was far more alarming than that, and far less specific.

"This is my hour of trial," said Rosa. "It is like nothing that has gone before." She realized that she was disregarding her strong resolve not to soliloquize out loud before she positively could not help herself. Perhaps, she thought, but did not say, this is where I cannot help myself. She closed her eyes, to shut out the big, frightening bats. She crossed her arms over her bosom, placing a hand upon each opposite shoulder. She started to breathe very deeply and regularly: formally terminating the period of short gasps and panting that had attended her scrambling rush for home, and the self-pummelings and retchings that had necessarily followed. Soon she found that her crossed arms weighed upon her lungs, so that, while mysteriously glad that she had pa.s.sed through that position, she fell away, letting her hands fade in her lap.

There were clocks, one of which struck the hours and the half-hours; there was a cricket, which, so late in the year, activated itself for astonis.h.i.+ngly long periods; there were the two lamps, in which the oil burned evenly away.

"This is amounting to a wake," said Rosa to herself, as the clock suddenly struck ten. "Not to mention a fast."

Her limbs had become a little stiff, but she was surprised that things were not far worse. She had felt herself to be slightly exalted ever since her conversation on the cliffs, and this unreasonable restlessness seemed to confirm it.

AH the same, she moved to a more comfortable chair. "Why ever not?" she enquired vaguely, and once more aloud. She noticed that the rain had stopped. Perhaps it had stopped hours ago.