The Collected Short Fiction Part 25

'I should be delighted to lend you a frock. We're much the same size and much the same age, so that the same style should suit us, and all my clothes come from England. We're quite a dressy party here at night.'

'Thank you very much, but I've got several dresses. I've been wearing them ever since I've been in Sweden,' Margaret added, unkindly once more. 'I hoped things up here would be more informal and that I should get two or three days of mountain walking.'

'Not days,' said Mrs. Slater gently. 'It's by night that we walk the mountains here. We don't wear special clothes for it. It's our way of life, so to speak, our destiny. Nothing special about it for us. It's why the wood was put here in the first place.'

'What do you mean by "wood"?' asked Margaret. 'Which wood? There are trees as far as the eye can see, and almost all Sweden seems to be made up of them.'

'Round the Kurhus is a wood,' said Mrs. Slater, 'with paths in it, paths everywhere, paths that have been there for hundreds of years. You saw me following one. It is a Jamblichus wood.'

'I'm sorry to be rude, but I think that name sounds like Alice in Wonderland.'

Mrs. Slater smiled faintly. 'I always thought it was more like Edward Lear,' she said.

'How can you tell, with all these trees, where your particular wood begins and ends?'

Mrs. Slater looked down at the stone flooring of the terrace. 'If I were to suggest that, with all these trees, it perhaps has no beginning or ending at least in your sense of the words you wouldn't believe me.' Then Mrs. Slater added softly, and as if interrogating her own heart, 'Would you?'

'It would mean an awful lot of walking, for some of these older people.'

'You are right,' said Mrs. Slater, looking up at Margaret, and again speaking firmly. 'A time comes when people can go no further. In the end, the paths just lose themselves among the trees.'

Really it all was like the Alice books; the Alice books and no others. Margaret thought so more and more. It was one thought that helped to keep out other thoughts.

'I've eaten far too much tea.' Curiously enough, she had; despite everything. At least she had if life at the Jamblichus Kurhus (an unconvincing name in almost any language, she would have thought), if life at the Kurhus followed any sort of normal order. 'What time's dinner? I take it that there is dinner?'

'We follow the customary scheme of things. Perhaps we value it all the more,' said Mrs. Slater, courageous to the last. 'Dinner is described as from eight, but most of us are very punctual. You are sure you have a frock? I hope you will share my table?'

'I should be delighted,' said Margaret. 'Thank you.'

Margaret wanted both to stretch her legs in the sunshine and mountain air and to examine for herself Mrs. Slater's alleged wood, where she suspected she would find nothing very special. But she did not want Mrs. Slater to come with her. In fact, a further thing she wanted very much, was simply to get away from Mrs. Slater. She thought of escaping by going up to her room as an excuse, and then running off into the forest, but this might be made difficult by the fact that the only public exit from the Kurhus seemed to be that on to the terrace. Moreover, she felt in her bones that she would never evade Mrs. Slater of all people, merely by dodging her round the bushes, as if they had been two schoolgirls. Mrs. Slater would be the first to cry caught any day.

Mrs. Slater insisted on showing Margaret some of the large dress ill.u.s.trations in Vogue, making, on the different garments, comments which were detailed and long-winded, but which struck Margaret as academic, where Mrs. Slater's own needs and circ.u.mstances were concerned, and as rather creepy when applied to her own supposed case.

'You would look gorgeous in that,' Mrs. Slater would breathe out earnestly; pointing at something fleecy with her dark red forefinger and pushing the something almost into Margaret's face, while Margaret gazed out at the slopes of green descending from the terrace and ascending another mountain ridge, ten, twenty, or thirty miles off, it was hard to guess how many.

'If I lived your life, I'd always wear nice things,' said Mrs. Slater. 'I have excellent taste.'

Margaret had often heard women of sixty or seventy talking for hours in just that way: weighing every detail; speculating, wistfully or cattily, about how this or that garment would suit this or that common acquaintance; at once identifying with and envying Margaret herself, when she happened to be at their disposal for the purpose. The half-dream, half-contest seemed to keep innumerable women not happy, but certainly alive, even through senility. It must serve a purpose, but Margaret did not find it even pathetic. She found it a spun-out makeshift (the very words were significant) which symbolised the worst aspect of being a woman. But everyone lived on makeshifts. Look at Henry, his lumbering toys and his social anxieties!

'What colour do you find suits you best?' asked Mrs. Slater.

'This colour,' said Margaret, pointing to her legs. 'That colour': pointing to the wilderness of leaves.

The others on the terrace had stopped eating and drinking. In any other community, half of them would by now have fallen asleep.

'Forgive me, please,' said Margaret. 'I should like to wander about a little before dinner.' She rose. No one seemed to take any notice; even to glance at her.

'I'll show you round,' said Mrs. Slater, scrambling together her papers. 'There are things that need to be explained.'

'It's very kind of you, but I'll take my chance.' Margaret had a bright idea. 'Like a famous Swede, I want to be alone.'

'Mrs. Slater was not to be silenced conclusively, 'Just as you like,' she said, 'but remember: it is not like going for a stroll in England.'

The differences, Margaret at first thought, were that here there were no litter, no structures, no advertis.e.m.e.nts, no noise of cars and aeroplanes and radios, and, above all, no people. Man had presumably planted these trees and tramped out these paths, but he had done nothing else. It was, indeed, very unlike a wood in Cheshire.

When Margaret had descended from the terrace, she had by instinct avoided the green tunnel from which Mrs. Slater had originally emerged, and, crossing below the terrace, had entered the other one, which for a few yards ran beneath the wall of the Kurhus itself. Margaret could hear the swill and clatter of the kitchen; and as well as these things, the chatter of the staff, which harmonised with them. After the silent terrace, the cheerful sound came as a relief. But it was audible for only a minute or two; nor was the Kurhus building visible for longer than that through the forest.

And almost immediately, the fat, beaten path reached a nodule whence it unwound into a dozen or more rabbit runs among the trees. It was as if at this point the withdrawal of man had left small animals to continue his work. The paths, though very narrow, seemed definite, but it was impossible to know which to choose. All were compelled to wind continuously, as they pressed forward through the irregularly planted trees. Already, after only a few hundred yards from the terrace, there was a real danger of being lost. It struck Margaret as an ideal area for going round and round in a hopeless circle, as the lost are well known to do, owing (she had heard) to almost everybody having one leg shorter than the other. It was not at all the sort of situation she had contemplated as having perhaps lain behind Mrs. Slater's rejected offer of guidance. She had visualised something far more fanciful.

She selected a path almost at random, and began to weave about among the trees. The path, however narrow, was un.o.bstructed: there was no question of pressing through bushes, or pushing aside branches. Even the surface was comparatively smooth. It was almost as if the vegetation had been cut back, but Margaret saw that there was no sign of this. It seemed rather as if it had never grown across the path; just as weeds never take root in water that is constantly traversed by boats. Margaret perceived at once what this implied: the little paths must be in continuous use, as Mrs. Slater had said. It was a further confirmation of Mrs. Slater's entire improbable thesis about the insomniacs.

Margaret stopped. There was a steady, rustling, pulsation in the thick undergrowth between the trees; and a whirring and flapping among the leaves overhead that would rise and fall suddenly, like a very irregular line on a graph. To judge by the sounds, there might have been condors among the branches and anacondas among the bushes. Margaret, in fact, was unsure what might not really be there: were there not still wolves and bears in Sweden, and, probably, many more varieties of reptile than in Britain? The brush was here as high as her elbows and dense enough to conceal anything short of an elephant. It was a second situation that she had not thought of when dismissing Mrs. Slater's offer.

She walked on. The narrow shafts of sun struck down like spotlights in a theatre, she being the princ.i.p.al actress; the wider cataracts descended like a benediction in an Italian painting, she being the saint. But in many places the trees were so thick that the sunlight penetrated only as a flickering radiance, suggesting a different and brighter world above. After a time, and quite suddenly, the underbrush almost ceased and the little tracks traversed dunes of pine needles.

Tracks, not track. Even through the underbrush had run several transverse tracks. Out here, many intersecting paths could be seen simultaneously, which was rea.s.suring, because, at the worst, and if one knew one's direction, one could cross the open ground, but disconcerting too, as suggesting that the entire forest was a maze.

Margaret was in many ways enjoying herself, but she realised that she would have to go back. She regretted that she had so little equipment for pathfinding. She had been feeling regrets of that kind almost since she had first arrived in Sweden. But it was so difficult to know what one could do. All the possibilities seemed ridiculous. Her mother had not let her even be a Girl Guide.

Margaret felt, in any case, that woodland techniques, though important in themselves, were very secondary to something else... She had words for it, she had long had them, though they were negative words: what was needed was the rejection of so many of the things that her husband, Henry, appeared to stand for. The thought had roamed about her brain and body for years, like a germ in the blood, always poisoning her content. In this Swedish forest, a far and lonely place by comparison with most other places she had known, the unrest flared up and momentarily put her off balance. She attempted to make her usual answer to herself: tried to enter into Henry's point of view, to make proper allowance for the fact that he was far from a free agent. He was hardly more a free agent than the people were at the Kurhus, according to Mrs. Slater's tales, and according to the evidence of these teeming little rabbit-runs through the woods. All the same, she felt that it was up to a man to be more of a free agent than Henry was. It was not that she herself especially wanted to blaze trees and utter bird-calls. It was rather that the forest symbolised something that was outside life certainly outside Henry's life and her own. And not part of Henry's inner life either, though it apparently was part of hers, if one could judge by what she felt now.

Margaret took a small pull on herself. Henry must be broadly right and she broadly wrong, or life would simply not continue as it did, and more and more the same everywhere. The common rejoinder to these feelings of rebellion was, as she knew well, that she needed a little more scope for living her own life, even (as a few Mancunians might dare to say) for self-expression. But that popular anodyne never, according to Margaret's observation of other couples, appeared in practice to work. Nor could she wonder. It reduced the self in one to the status and limits of a hobby. It offered one lampshade making, or so many hours a week helping the cripples and old folk, when what one truly needed was a revelation; was simultaneous self-expression and self-loss. And at the same time it corrupted marriage and cheapened the family. The rustling, sunny forest, empty but labyrinthine, hinted at some other answer; an answer beyond logic, beyond words, above all beyond connection with what Margaret and her Cheshire neighbours had come to regard as normal life. It was an answer different in kind. It was the very ant.i.thesis of a hobby, but not necessarily the ant.i.thesis of what marriage should be, though never was.

Margaret could again hear the sounds of the Kurhus kitchen. A girl there was singing. Margaret stopped and listened for a moment; which, as she reflected, she would probably not have done had she been able to understand the words. The song had some pure existence and beauty, which understanding of the words, while possibly bringing something else, would have destroyed. Listening to the talk in the intervals at Halle concerts, Margaret had suspected that too much understanding of musical theory can be similarly destructive. And so often people said to her that when they travelled abroad they wanted really to meet and know the local population; in the same sort of way, as far as possible, as they met and knew their fellow English. They spent hard evenings learning languages for the purpose or in the hope. Margaret realised that this was not her idea at all. The song of this girl was precisely akin to the song of the forest: if one worked at it, one would cease to hear it. In fact, now that Margaret came to think, she realised that she had been unconsciously disengaging the song from the loud clanging of pans in which, properly speaking, it was submerged. She had been hearing only the song, and nothing of the mechanism that, objectively, almost overwhelmed it; and a.s.suredly put it in its place. So it had been in the forest. One had to lose the noise of the mechanism, not least the ever-deafening inner echoes of it. One had to dispel practicality. Then something else could be heard if one was lucky, if the sun was shining, if the paths were well made, if one wore the right garments: and if one made no attempt at definition or popularisation.

Margaret perceived with surprise two practicalities: she had been walking for an hour and a half, far longer than she had supposed; and from the clear ground where the rabbit-runs were all visible at once, she had returned without giving a thought to her route. Blazing trees could not be the only ciphering. Losing one's way was largely an act of intention.

All the same, Margaret had virtually to scamper into her dress with the velocity of a child. Not only was the terrace deserted, but there was the beginning of a crowd in the hall, as she hastened through. They were arrayed in half-festivity; the counterpart of half-mourning. As usual, Mrs. Slater had spoken aright. What was more, Margaret observed that her huge bed had not been 'turned down'. It was the first hotel of that standing where she had encountered such an omission.

Margaret stood for a moment naked in the evening sunlight, finding her silhouette more pleasing than she had found it for some time; then scrambled into a stone-coloured garment in hard silk, the best she could do for Mrs. Slater, whom there could be no hope of eliminating.

'Look,' said Mrs. Slater. 'There are the other two Englishwomen.'

Few could have told to what nation they belonged. They resembled two very ancient, long-neglected, near-to-death bushes; which now put out each year only a few half-hearted leaves in the entire ma.s.s. One felt that at any moment, a branch might quietly drop off, or the entire bole split and subside.

'Mrs. Total and Mrs. Ascot,' expounded Mrs. Slater. 'I used to be able to play games with them, but no more. I do wish you were here for longer, Margaret. You can imagine how alone I am.'

'Is there really nowhere else you could go?'

'The other places are even worse.'

There was more conversation at dinner, in a variety of tongues; and more at the end than at the beginning. Undeniably it was as if they were all working up to something, even though they did it in a careful and hypochondriac way. None the less, those who had sat alone on the terrace, sat alone in the dining room also. It was merely that some of them spoke from time to time across a void, and that certain of the couples appeared more in touch. Also there were more people in the dining room than Margaret had until then seen in the Kurhus. Certainly the better spirits could not be attributed to liquor, because there was none. Margaret was accustomed to hotels where before one dined, one had several drinks at the bar, sometimes in advance of one's husband. Occasionally one met people there. Infrequently, they were quite interesting. She realised that here there was seldom anyone new to meet. She was surprised that no one other than Mrs. Slater seemed concerned to meet her. Possibly it was the language difficulty.

'Drink is absolutely forbidden?' She feared that again she was tending merely to bait poor Mrs. Slater.

'Nothing is forbidden,' replied Mrs. Slater, in a very English way. 'If we don't smoke or drink, it's because we've all learnt better. When you can't sleep, the consequences of drinking are indescribable. You do know that the physiological function of alcohol if soporific? For us, it would be like an impotent man taking an aphrodisiac.'

Margaret especially disliked Mrs. Slater's occasional shafts of modern frankness. Besides she had always understood that it was exactly what impotent men did do.

'Of course it's entirely different for you,' said Mrs. Slater. 'I am sure that if you were to stay longer, something could be arranged with the doctors. I myself shouldn't mind your drinking all you wanted.'

'Doctors!' said Margaret. 'I hadn't realised that there were doctors.'

'Oh yes. Though of course they're no use to us. There's no cure for our condition.'

'Then why are they here?'

'Old people, like Mrs. Total and Mrs. Ascot, can't settle down unless there are doctors about. And I am sure it applies to foreigners too. Don't you think it applies to most people today, whatever their age? They must all have doctors, be the cost what it may.'

'I suppose I should have expected doctors,' said Margaret. 'Where are they now? Have we seen one?'

'The surgery is on the very top floor The kirurgi, as it's called in Swedish. There are two doctors on duty at all times, night and day, in case there's a crisis. You will help yourself to rodkl from the bowl?'

They were seated by a window, outside which summer night was falling.

'What sort of crisis is commonest?'

'I'm afraid our most frequent crises are sudden mania and sudden death. For this reason, the doctors have to be fairly young and strong. The same applies to the male staff in general, as you may have noticed. With insomnia, there is often a quick snap. The strain can be borne no longer. That is still another of the reasons why we have always been made to live apart. The provincial mental hospital finds many of its recruits here, but few of its so-called cures. You'd hardly believe it, but even there people like us don't sleep. And as for our dead, there is a special place for them in the wood: not easy to find unless you know where to look. Even after death, it's the same old story of exclusion. But I fear that all this is hardly the way to make you extend your visit. I know only too well that instead of arousing love and pity, as one might hope, the facts do just the opposite. We poor folk are doomed to eternal self-sufficiency, whether we like it or not. So eat up your mort, Margaret, and take no notice of all these gloomy thoughts.'

Margaret decided that, in fact, she did not feel as gloomy as she should have done. Mrs. Slater still wallowed too much; and Margaret's main feeling about the Kurhus as a whole was acute and ever-growing curiosity, reprehensible though that might be. She felt mildly stimulated by a community so entirely novel and unpredictable, however unconvivial. Besides, her experience in what Mrs. Slater called 'the wood', had perceptibly shifted the four points of her inner compa.s.s. Life's terms of reference had changed... Conceivably, she reflected, as Mrs. Slater helped her to a crumbling wodge of efterrattstarta, the unaccustomed liberty and isolation would have gone a little to her head, wherever she had found herself; but the real wonder lay in taking only one short step and lighting upon an entire world so different. These people round her might, in a sense, be outcasts, as Mrs. Slater said. Quite possibly, they suffered; looking at them, it was hard to be sure. What Margaret did know was that the Kurhus had already recharged the battery of her life, rewound the spring. After long inertia, she was again, mysteriously, on the move.

'Cream?' enquired Mrs. Slater, holding high a silver boat. 'Or as the Swedes call it, gradde?'

On the move once more, and so soon after starting, Margaret could not be expected to think about how to stop.

'Why do you smile?' asked Mrs. Slater.

'I'm so sorry,' said Margaret. 'It must have been something in my own thoughts.'

'No, there's no coffee,' said Mrs. Slater. 'As everybody knows, the physiological consequence of coffee is wakefulness. But in your case it may this time be just as well that there is none. Because if I were you, I should go straight to bed.'

'But I don't feel in the least like sleep.' Margaret spoke without thinking. At the Kurhus, even new cliches were needed. 'Oh, I've said the wrong thing. I do apologise.'

Mrs. Slater gazed back with fishy eyes.

'Even if you don't sleep, stay in your room.'

'Why?'

'At night we walk. After dinner, we begin; and many of us walk till dawn. It is not a thing for you to see.'

'Mrs. Slater,' began Margaret.

'Sandy, if you don't mind.'

'Sandy, of course,' Again Margaret smiled. 'Sandy, if what you say is true, I'm very sorry for you all, but you can't suppose that I could come here, and listen to what you've told me, and not want to see for myself? It may be wrong of me, but I just can't help it.'

'I suppose it's natural,' said Mrs. Slater, 'and I've known it often. With the world what it is today, I imagine we're lucky that people aren't brought in buses to stare at us, like they used to stare at the lunatics in Bedlam. I expect it will come to that in the end, though they won't get the local people to drive the buses for them. We're unlucky, and on the unlucky is a curse. I warn you, Margaret. The local people know and are right.'

Margaret looked down at the gay table mats.

'Since you're warning me, please tell me exactly what you're warning me of. What could happen to me?'

But Mrs. Slater was entirely unspecific. 'Nothing good,' was all she said. 'Nothing that you would wish. I am speaking to you as a friend.'

It was very unconvincing. Margaret even wondered whether she was not being merely warned against making undesirable acquaintances. It was difficult to decide what to do.

The dining room was rapidly emptying. All seemed to be quiet once more. The diners were leaving in silence; almost stealthily, Margaret thought. It was nearly dark, but the air was still faintly crimson from reflections of the sunset.

'Tell me,' said Margaret, 'what happens in winter, when the snow is on the mountains? They talk a lot about that in Sovastad.'

'We suffer the more,' replied Mrs. Slater. 'We sit all night and wait for the spring. What else could we do?'

'All right,' said Margaret. 'I'll stay in my room. And tomorrow I think I'd better go somewhere else.'

'Please don't go before you have to,' pleaded Mrs. Slater. 'You'll be all right. You'll sleep since you've had no coffee. There is nothing to keep you awake. You'll have an excellent night.'

The big hall was lit, though only rather faintly, by pretty lamps, in which the bra.s.s nymphs on both sides of the staircase gleamed and flickered. A well-built elderly man whom Margaret had noticed dining by himself stood in a far corner, apparently musing. There was no one else to be seen. Mrs. Slater once more put her hand on Margaret's arm.

'I'll see you to the door of your room,' said Mrs. Slater.

'No,' said Margaret. 'Let's part here.'

Mrs. Slater paused.

'You won't forget your promise?'

'It wasn't a promise,' said Margaret. 'But I'll not forget.'

Mrs. Slater withdrew her hand, then held it out as if to bind Margaret in a pledge. But all she said was, 'Then, good night.' Bravely she added, 'Sleep well.'

'See you in the morning,' said Margaret, wondering if she would, and if these were appropriate words. Was it possible that at this moment Mrs. Slater was preparing to 'walk'?

A middle-aged woman, perhaps eight or ten years older than Margaret, but still noticeably beautiful, descended the staircase in a costly-looking fur coat, although the evening was very warm, tap-tapped across the white, tiled floor, and went out into the darkness.

Mrs. Slater went up the staircase without once looking back at Margaret. She disappeared down a corridor which was not Margaret's corridor.

Margaret had intended herself to go up almost immediately, having delayed for a moment only from anxiety to avoid a bedroom colloquy with Mrs. Slater; but on the instant she was alone, the elderly man in the corner of the hall advanced towards her and said, 'Forgive me, but I was bound to overhear what Mrs. Slater, a dear friend of us all, was saying to you. There is little conversation here, and most that is said, is heard not by one alone. You would be mistaken altogether to accept Mrs. Slater's sad view of our curious community. There is, I a.s.sure you, a different side to us. We are not sad all the time. You felt that yourself when you walked this evening in our wood.'

'Did you see me there?' asked Margaret. 'What you say is quite true.'