‘More coffee, ma’m,’ she called, her face free of the blue surrounds, and Miss Vaughan’s hand twitched violently, and the cup shook, and she looked at the girl, held the cup in the air.
‘Thank you,’ Miss Vaughan said, and waited.
The girl hovered and smiled, ‘A little sun today,’ she said.
‘I see there is,’ Miss Vaughan said, not seeing, but listening.
‘You haven’t been crying, Miss Vaughan?’ and in a moment Mr Blair was there, looking at her, studying her, looking at her eyes, red eyes, perhaps thinking, ‘Poor Miss Vaughan.’
The traffic rolled by, people passed the window, but the High Street was no longer there, and she saw only the sea, a vivid blue, a faint, thin ration of sun today for Garthmeilo. That’s what the girl said to her, ‘A little bit of sun today.’ She hadn’t noticed it, smelling only the sea, hearing the roar of it. It came through the window, washed about her table. The clock in the cafe chimed, she heard it, and was back in the world again. She got up and made for the door, and the girl came violently from behind the curtains and followed her to the door, opened it, and gave her an expensive smile. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ The Blue Bird was glad of any business, even with half cups. Miss Vaughan said nothing and closed the door behind her, and made her way back to the offices of Blair and Wilkins.
She glanced in at the hairdressers as she passed, but the row of helmeted women seemed of little interest to her. She thought of Cartref, her room high in the sky, she thought of the closed door, and the silence. She thought of the darkness, lying in it, alone, happy. She thought of Mrs Gandell. At half past eight that very morning, and a changed atmosphere. The Gandell smile too big, and too sudden; the very attentive Jones. The woman to woman moment, a mountain of flesh bending, an arm wavering in the air, all ready to fall, sisterly, on a sisterly shoulder. The expression on the big face, the concern in the voice, the womanly whisper, the confidence.
‘Have you been crying, Miss Vaughan?’ Mrs Gandell said.
‘Stupid woman,’ she thought, expecting the same questions, the well used ones, the worn words.
‘Hope you’ve had a good night, Miss Vaughan,’ and getting the answer, and being ‘so glad,’ and the trousered shadow at her side, bending, crawling, echoing the hopes, hearing the words again. ‘So glad, so glad.’
Miss Vaughan once thought of Mrs Gandell as a large child, happy, and laughing, and singing, under balloons.
‘Poor Mrs Gandell. Poor Mr Jones.’
She turned the corner, suddenly stopped. People passed by and she did not see them, a voice said ‘Good morning,’ but she did not hear it, and then she went quickly on to the office, and knew that she was getting nearer and nearer to her day. The day she lived. Ten yards away she heard the rattle of the typewriters, and then entered, glanced at the girls, saw they were doing their duty, heard the quiet giggles as she passed, and held her head high in the air. There were always moments when one could make the world wait. Mr Blair accepted the bank receipt, and the stamps, without a word, and she sat down. She heard Mr Wilkins talking excitedly with a client in the next office, but it was merely a noise in the ear. Mr Blair sat well back in his chair, his face hidden behind a long parchment document. And still Miss Vaughan waited, and said nothing, and watched the clock. She opened her handbag, felt the little brown paper parcel inside it, gave a little sigh, and closed it again. Mr Blair hummed to himself as he read, and she watched the document come lower and lower, so that at any moment the Blair features would be visible. And she still thought of the day, of rainbows that could shine in even the darkest and most foreboding sky, heard the sea sing, saw the shore widen and widen, become golden and more golden.
She thought of the Colonel, tall, distinguished, twirling moustaches as he came out of the dark house, then slowly down the drive; saw the big white gate, watched him look back at the shadowed pile, then walk on and stop abruptly, and turn again. ‘I hope he’s not forgotten to lock his father in,’ she thought, and saw him, bent at ninety, a shining pink dome, a mass of hair at the ears, and seemed to see them clearer now, winding and winding remorselessly about the bone. In which room was he locked? She wondered about that, wondering until she was tense, about the man, about the room. She heard the closing of the big white gate, and hoped that the Colonel would not be late. He had been last time; kept her waiting nearly an hour, so that she had to have her lunch quite alone, sat on a sand dune, waiting, watching, a figure over, the horizon, and soundless steps all the way, and, like she, sensing the soft, flesh-like feel of the shore after the rain. Behind her spectacles Miss Vaughan’s eyes were shut tight, and all she heard was the tiny crackle of disturbed papers. Mr Blair had finished his reading, and now lay the document down, looked at his watch, and said to her. ‘Take any rings, Miss Vaughan, up to one’clock, and then go to lunch.’
‘Yes, Mr Blair.’
He brushed lightly against her as he passed. She heard the door close. She took out the mirror, carefully studied herself, put it back in the bag, and got up, just as the two girls left their own chairs, and rushed to get their coats and hats. She passed them without a word, and went out and stood on the pavement edge. The girls followed, smiled at each other.
‘There she goes,’ Nancy said.
‘She’s still a silly old bitch,’ Mair said, and made a mad rush for Penrhyn Terrace, but Nancy still stood there watching the departing figure in her red suit, and her little black hat, the red raincoat swinging on her arm. ‘Poor Colonel,’ she thought, as she set off for the Blue Bird Cafe. Miss Vaughan herself had left the High Street, and turned her feet in the direction of the sea. Her step lightened, her pace slackened, the breeze was strong, salt-laden, her nostrils quivered, the breeze teased at her hair. She ambled, rather than walked. Perhaps this time it would be the Colonel that had to show patience, understanding. The cold wind came upon her in waves, she glanced quickly at the sky. She looked at her watch. It was only a quarter past one. She hoped the Colonel would be there. She crossed the bridge, descended to the shore. She stood quite still, her eyes scanning the distant horizon. She closed her eyes, watched him come, felt him come. She opened them again and the shore widened, lengthened, was suddenly vast. She went on, moving inwards towards the sea, and outwards from it. Distance diminished her. She stopped again, looked slowly round. And knew that these were the best days. She was alone. Sea and shore and sky had shut off the world. Her pace increased, she swung her bag with a certain abandon, and she fixed her gaze upon a horizon that now advanced, and now receded, and thought once more of the ship, an anchor fathoms down, her captain silhouetted against a hopeless horizon. She must certainly talk to the Colonel about it. And again she hoped, willed him to be there, and went on, winding her way in and out of the dunes, then moving outwards again towards the living water. The horizon was still there, on which there was still no shadow and no man. It drew her on and on. How close she had been to man and ship, a whole night through, cradled in darkness. She had cried in her dream. And what she had drawn from sleep still lived in her head. She sat down again, opened the bag, took out the packet of sandwiches, pondered for a moment or two, then put them back again, rose, and cried in the wind. ‘I wonder where he is,’ and begged him to come, tall over the horizon, leaping and bounding towards her. He lifted the weight from the day, and her step lightened and slowly murdered the distances. Once she looked back by the way she had come, but only the once.
There was a man in the dunes, hidden, low in a low place, flat upon his face, his chin resting on cold hands, and he was shadowed only by the smashed keel of a rotting boat. But she did not see him.
For a full hour, after the door banged, after the outer gate had closed, after the whistling had died in the air, Mervyn Thomas had not moved, but sat stiff and hunched in the chair by the fire that Jones had lighted. His sister was not there; she was at Hengoed, deserts away, and he did not think of her. That was part of yesterday, and he was still here, in the house that was silent, locked in the room. Once he had risen, made staggering movements towards his open study door, had stopped dead on the threshold, staring within as though this room was strange, never before seen, and he a visitor there. And he looked at the book-lined shelves, the half filled wastepaper basket, the untidy desk, and the book that lay on it, and he knew that if he went in and opened it, dead words would fall from the pages that he held. He had returned to his chair, pausing a moment before he reseated himself. It, like the room, would lock him in. He sat again, his fingers kneading at the cloth of his trousers, and he accepted the rack of his own obsession. The room itself appeared to have widened, the walls heightened, a ceiling ascending. And the moment he closed his eyes there was a man in the room. He heard this man speak, laugh, heard his heavy footsteps as he paced up and down. ‘Colonel? What Colonel?’
It made him think of Jones, and, thinking of him, he suddenly hung his head. It made him rise up abruptly to stand away from both chair and fire, made him turn towards the window, where the light lay, as he stood fully erect, staring down at himself, his hands reaching to shoulders, and then coming slowly down, all the way to his feet, as he swept away the very skin and feel of the lackey from Cartref. An emanation, a revulsion, the remnants of his nature, of his respectability crumbling, an aura of horror, and the words out of the man with a tight mouth, a mean mouth.
‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘oh no,’ into a room in which the very breath of his visitor seemed yet to hang in the air.
‘Colonel who?’ he cried.‘Who?’
And shouted, ‘Liar. Liar.’
He sat down, he embraced himself. ‘I don’t believe it.’
And Miss Vaughan was thought, and then was flesh, alone, lost, sad, moment to his moment, dream to his dream.
‘I will follow her to the shore. I will speak to her. I will watch for this Colonel,’ and saying it, he knew what to do. He wanted to, dreaded to, dared to. He walked straight from the room and went upstairs. In the bathroom he washed and shaved, changed his clothes, put on a clean collar, then sat down at his dressing-table, and carefully combed his hair. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. Was he too good? Too bad? Was he a fool? The obsession rose, raced again. Again he brushed at the grey-black hair, a moment of uncertainty, an indeterminateness that slowed both hand and brush, which finally fell from his hand. He closed his eyes, refused to look at the man in the mirror. Hesitant rising, he was again hesitant at the door. Then he walked out and hurried down to the hall. He went into the garden, walked its length and back again, then once more returned, to stand by the tree where yesterday he had seen his sister stand, her head turned from the house that was home. He looked up at it now, and it seemed to him as though he had never lived in it, his study, and his life there had never been. As he retreated his steps he thought he heard his own father speaking to him.
‘You will always be the man in the corner, Mervyn. Always.’
He took his overcoat and hat from the stand and put them on, walked to the door and opened it, gave a final glance at the sitting-room fire, and left the house. There was a bite to the wind, and he drew up the collar of his coat, made more secure the Homburg on his head, thrust hands deep into pockets, and, head down, hurried away from house, and street, and road, and there was the bridge to be crossed. The wind struck sharper still, and he smelt the sea before he saw it. And the figure on the sands walked up and down. When he reached the middle of the bridge he paused to clutch at the rail, looked both right and left. The waters smashed below, he looked up, he looked round again. A day for closed doors and windows, and coals to fires. A strange day to meet a Colonel. He continued his journey. Would she be there? Wouldn’t she? And him, that man, would he, too, be there? Thomas wondered, Thomas hoped. Words moved upon his tongue, but never left it, and unspoken they yet propelled him forward, and as he moved he thought of ‘the Colonel’ and he dreaded him, and he hated him. He wished he was absent, gone, dead. Suddenly his feet touched shore, and he began to walk slowly along, and after a while sat himself down. Silence arched the world. He felt in his pocket for a pipe, but it wasn’t there, and he said under his breath, ‘Damn!’
‘Every Wednesday,’ they said, ‘Every Wednesday.’
He lay flat upon the sand, he stiffened, and then relaxed. He turned over on his back, stared up at the sky. When he shut his eyes it was suddenly dark, and darker again, and darker than that. The wind was cold, it clawed at his hair. He got up again and went on.
‘I am walking out of my life,’ he thought. ‘I am walking out of my life,’ he said. Sea against wish, shore against hope. There was no one there. He thought he saw a distant figure approaching, and he went down on his knees, hid behind tufts of grass. Was it her? Wasn’t it? It came nearer and nearer, but it was only a low-flying bird, mastering the wind, the only living thing, supreme in the emptiness. He went on with bowed head. Once, and how vividly he remembered it, he had stolen into the hotel, crept up the stairs, stood outside her door, listened. And he had spoken to her, and she had even answered back. The scene was vivid in his mind, then, quite suddenly, a man named Jones had blotted it out. Jones was there. He couldn’t remember where Mrs Gandell was, and it had never mattered. And he was hidden at the top of the stairs, and Jones was clearly visible at the bottom. Thomas sat down and listened.
‘Come down, man of God.’
And he had not answered.
‘I’ll swear I locked this door before I went out,’ he heard Jones say, noticing a thickened speech.
‘He’s drunk,’ Thomas said to Thomas. ‘He’s drunk.’
He remembered the loud creak on the stair.
‘I said come down, man of God,’ and Thomas came slowly down.
‘You must have come through the wall, Minister. I’ll swear I left this door locked.’
Jones leaned against the wall, but now came out, pressed hands to his hips, watched Thomas descend, got close to him, looked up into the florid features. Jones smiled.
