Mary Olivier: a Life Part 101

The little lamb, lying on her back with her mouth open, making that funny noise: "Cluck-cluck," like a hen.

Why can't I dream about something I want to happen? Why can't I dream about Richard? ... Poor Richard, how can he go on believing I shall come to him?

VII.

Dear Dr. Charles, with his head sticking out between the tubes of the stethoscope, like a ram. His poor old mouth hung loose as he breathed. He was out late last night; there was white stubble on his chin.

"It won't do it when you want it to."

"It's doing quite enough.... Let me see, it's two years since your mother had that illness. You must go away, Mary. For a month at least. Dorsy'll come and take care of your mother."

"Does it matter where I go?"

"N-no. Not so much. Go where you'll get a thorough change, my dear. I wouldn't stay with relations, if I were you."

"All right, I'll go if you'll tell me what's the matter with me."

"You've got your brother Rodney's heart. But it won't kill you if you'll take care of yourself."

(Roddy's heart, the net of flesh and blood drawing in a bit of your body.)

x.x.xIII

I.

Richard had gone up into his own flat and left her to wash and dress and explore. He had told her she was to have Tiedeman's flat. Not knowing who Tiedeman was made it more wonderful that G.o.d should have put it into his head to go away for Easter and lend you his flat.

If you wanted anything you could ring and they would come up from the bas.e.m.e.nt and look after you.

She didn't want them to come up yet. She wanted to lie back among her cushions where Richard had packed her, and turn over the moments and remember what they had been like: getting out of the train at King's Cross and finding Richard there; coming with him out of the thin white April light into the rich darkness and brilliant colours of the room; the feeling of Richard's hands as they undid her fur stole and peeled the sleeves of her coat from her arms; seeing him kneel on the hearthrug and make tea with an air of doing something intensely interesting, an air of security and possession. He went about in Tiedeman's rooms as if they belonged to him.

She liked Tiedeman's flat: the big outer room, curtained with thick gentian blue and thin violet. There was a bowl of crimson and purple anemones on the dark oval of the oak table.

Tiedeman's books covered the walls with their coloured bands and stripes and the illuminated gold of their tooling. The deep bookcases made a ledge all round half-way up the wall, and the shallow bookcases went on above it to the ceiling.

But--those white books on the table were Richard's books. _Mary Olivier--Mary Olivier. My_ books that I gave him.... They're Richard's rooms.

She got up and looked about. That long dark thing was her coat and fur stretched out on the flat couch in the corner where Richard had laid them; stretched out in an absolute peace and rest.

She picked them up and went into the inner room that showed through the wide square opening. The small brown oak-panelled room. No furniture but Richard's writing table and his chair. A tall narrow French window looking to the backs of houses, and opening on a leaded balcony.

Spindle-wood trees, green b.a.l.l.s held up on ramrod stems in green tubs.

Richard's garden.

Curtains of thin silk, brilliant magenta, letting the light through. The hanging green bough of a plane tree, high up on the pane, between. A worn magentaish rug on the dark floor.

She went through the door on the right and found a short, narrow pa.s.sage.

Another French window opening from it on to the balcony. A bathroom on the other side; a small white panelled bedroom at the end.

She had no new gown. Nothing but the black chiffon one (black because of Uncle Victor) she had bought two years ago with Richard's cheque. She had worn it at Greffington that evening when she dined with him. It had a long, pointed train. Its thin, open, wide spreading sleeves fell from her shoulders in long pointed wings. It made her feel slender.

There was no light in the inner room. Clear gla.s.sy dark twilight behind the tall window. She stood there waiting for Richard to come down.

Richard loved all this. He loved beautiful books, beautiful things, beautiful anemone colours, red and purple with the light coming through them, thin silk curtains that let the light through like the thin silky tissues of flowers. He loved the sooty brown London walls, houses standing back to back, the dark flanks of the back wings jutting out, almost meeting across the trenches of the gardens, making the colours in his rooms brilliant as stained gla.s.s.

He loved the sound of the street outside, intensifying the quiet of the house.

It was the backs that were so beautiful at night; the long straight ranges of the dark walls, the sudden high dark cliffs and peaks of the walls, hollowed out into long galleries filled with thick, burning light, rows on rows of oblong cas.e.m.e.nts opening into the light. Here and there a tree stood up black in the trenches of the gardens.

The tight strain in her mind loosened and melted in the stream of the pure new light, the pure new darkness, the pure new colours.

Richard came in. They stood together a long time, looking out; they didn't say a word.

Then, as they turned back to the lighted outer room, "I thought I was to have had Tiedeman's flat?"

"Well, he's up another flight of stairs and the rain makes a row on the skylight. It was simpler to take his and give you mine. I want you to have mine."

II.

She turned off the electric light and shut her eyes and lay thinking. The violent motion of the express prolonged itself in a ghostly vibration, rocking the bed. In still s.p.a.ce, unshaken by this tremor, she could see the other rooms, the quiet, beautiful rooms.

I wonder how Mamma and Dorsy are getting on.... I'm not going to think about Mamma. It isn't fair to Richard. I shan't think about anybody but Richard for this fortnight. One evening of it's gone already. It might have lasted quite another hour if he hadn't got up and gone away so suddenly. What a fool I was to let him think I was tired.

There will be thirteen evenings more. Thirteen. You can stretch time out by doing a lot of things in it; doing something different every hour.

When you're with Richard every minute's different from the last, and he brings you the next all bright and new.

Heaven would be like that. Imagine an eternity of heaven; being with Richard for ever and ever. But n.o.body ever did imagine an eternity of heaven. People only talk about it because they can't imagine it. What they mean is that if they had one minute of it they would remember that for ever and ever.

This is Richard's life. This is what I'd have taken from him if I'd let him marry me.

I daren't even think what it would have been like if I'd tried to mix up Mamma and Richard in the same house.... And poor little Mamma in a strange place with nothing about it that she could remember, going up and down in it, trying to get at me, and looking reproachful and disapproving all the time. She'd have to be shut in her own rooms because Richard wouldn't have her in his. Sitting up waiting to be read aloud to and played halma with when Richard wanted me. Saying the same things over and over again. Sighing.

Richard would go off his head if he heard Mamma sigh.

He wants to be by himself the whole time, "working like blazes." He likes to feel that the very servants are battened down in the bas.e.m.e.nt so that he doesn't know they're there. He couldn't stand Tiedeman and Peters if they weren't doing the same thing. Tiedeman working like blazes in the flat above him and Peters working like blazes in the flat below.

Richard slept in this room last night. He will sleep in it again when I'm gone.

She switched the light on to look at it for another second: the privet-white panelled cabin, the small wine-coloured chest of drawers, the small golden-brown wardrobe, shining.