As in a dream she could hear them the other side of the room, but why wake? Mary was a slut, a little fox-coloured wench out of some restoration comedy. Hermione had always known Merry was like that. Or wasn’t she? Delia had asked Merry to see her, Merry then being wistful (when wasn’t she?) and saying, “poor Mary Dalton wants friends, new life, that terrible contretemps with” (whoever it at the moment was) “and all her frail spirituality threatened.” American women were like that, so good that they couldn’t, wouldn’t see. Delia was like that and Hermione was half like that but she wasn’t going to let her sterilized New English-ness do her out of the show. It was, all told, a damn good show. A very good damn show. Sleep with her arm above her head and listen if she wants to for what she hears is nothing, a sort of sweep of swallow wings, the swallows of her redemption, the swallows of her freedom. Of course if Darrington (she called him Darrington so often in her thoughts) knows I’m awake it will be a little awkward. Swallows sweeping, sweeping but what god had sent her this, this clue of her redemption? It was better than being dead. Death was a freeing but this was better, this death in life, this ghost in life, this life in death. O Delia, delicious Delia you have only a half-knowledge, this is the true knowledge, the white-half of my knowledge reaches up, up to the sun of its attainment and my roots rooted fast here, here in the present, here in this mire. My husband wasn’t like yours (or like pre-war Captain Trent) an officer and a gentleman but I’m glad for that for if he had been he would have gone off at once and my life would have been so clearly on the rails, a poor unhappy and good woman. I’m now none of those things. I had that child. . no. I will talk of it. You Delia never had a sign of one. O delicious and beautiful sterile lovely goddess, beautiful in your goodness as I might have been if God hadn’t given me this mystic knowledge that I’m already O so comfortably out of it, dead simply like the boy who looked at the books, whom I couldn’t, didn’t dare to comfort. Florient. Perhaps she’d do next. People, faces, people, ghosts. They’re lying in the mud in France, in Flanders and I’m in a warm bed. Warm bed. I know you all. I feel the wind over your faces and I know the mud about your feet and Jeanne d’Arc was the same, white lilies, white lilies are growing from the trenches, there are lines and lines of lilies across France. Lilies are flowering across France and some few (some very few) in London. We see our death. We take it. We find our grave, O trench wide grave, O bed here narrow enough grave and this other whose smile was for a moment almost the jasmine-white of the redeemed, changed and crept from her bed, crept from her redemption, crept from her fate. Could thou not watch with me one night? Or was it one hour? Anyhow, anyway it worked either way for they had only just “got” poor Trent. Who was he anyhow with his own fiery and self-chosen crown. Trent’s crown dripped red roses, bombs, the English. All wrong but it wasn’t the deed it was the motive and his roses were red roses dropping, dripping over her, over her. He had sent Merry back to Hermione saying Hermione would be kind, “I like that woman.” He said he liked her, a woman, he said he liked her, told her she was beautiful, not with the charm of Merry but staring at her and now they had him. A tight place in London. There were tight places, it seemed, in London and lilies grew up and up and the room was full of their glamour. Across the room, there was a mud bog but filled with nothing, seeds fallen by the roadside. Some fell by the roadside. Some fell upon good earth. Trenches were good earth and the seed fell there and grew and grew and grew. Some brought forth sixty, some thirty, some hundred. A hundred. 1900. Hundred. 1800. Hundred. 1700. Hundred. What was hundred? 500. But you thought of 500 as B.C. Numbers held charm, power, you could think in numbers. 500 B.C. wasn’t so far away. She might have lived it yesterday, it was nearer than to-morrow. All this means that I’m still listening. .
5
One didn’t marry. One did stunts. That was it. That was right. For what had her marriage been, all told? Certainly not a marriage. Racing about Italy and being called Signora, nobody ever thought she was married anyway. Some people were like that. Never got the credit for anything. Anyway Mrs. Darrington and a pension. But he wouldn’t die now. He wouldn’t die now. They didn’t die when they were cast by the roadside. Darrington was dead now. He wouldn’t die. There was no white flower any more to be hoped for but what was this? What was this? “Darling. You’ve slept late.” Someone was kissing her, brushing her face like a nosing puppy. Who was that? Late and far there had been sounds of flutes, olives and olive silver Sirmio so this was somewhere else and someone else but it couldn’t be anywhere else. It was Italy. Open my heart and you will see. It wasn’t anywhere else. There was a plum tree that shed its flower as the irises raised their trumpets, their horns of gold. Gold and fleurs d’or semées. Flowers of gold were strewn upon her banner but they had taken it. Soldiers were fighting and her banner was lost. “Why don’t — you — get — up?” O if now she opened her eyes, she would remember and she wouldn’t remember for she would never open her eyes, was dead simply. “Open your eyes, open your eyes.” “How sweet you look Jerrold, where’s” (for she had never really forgotten) “Mary Dalton?” She sat up and made pretence of wakening though really now she thought she had been asleep, dead-drug of sleep, such sleep as she had not hoped for this side of the grave. “This side of the grave. Isn’t that Landor?” “What precious?” “Fields of asphodel. . something or other this side of the grave?” “I don’t know, why do you ask that?” Darrington had arranged her tray for her as he knew she liked it. O if now he would go, this perfect hour had come, an hour that flowers with the old flowers, the wild cyclamen, the wild olive spray she plucked to wind with it. This is us, she had said, you and me, you the cyclamen, me the olive. “Do you remember that little wreath I made and for fun put it on a round stone and said Hermes, Hermes.” “I remember your saying Hermes and the round stone. How could I forget it?” “I don’t know. It seems — seems — right” (but did it?) “to forget things now.” This was wonderful. She had died simply. Mary Dalton was gone, not even a scarf, a lavender scarf that she could make an excuse to come back for. “Why did Mary go before I got up?” O this is marvellous. I don’t care that she’s gone or that she was with him. I am, it is evident, a most immoral woman. Signora, most little signorissima. Signora. Signorina. “Do you remember how they would always issimo us, you and me.” “They liked us.” “Yes. They liked us.” She liked them too for a moment, drawing them back, drawing them up to the top of the pond of filth, the mire where they had lain, regrettable, dishonourable little souls, hers and his, disreputable and regrettable. “I’m glad it’s over.” “Over? God in heaven what do you mean over?” Hermione sipped her tea. She hadn’t slept so well for months, this side of the grave she had slept, slept, slept. “I’m glad the party and the raids over—” “And my leave, precious?” “O Jerrold—” She could talk like that. She could balance the fine cup (one of their relics) and dispassionately look at Jerrold. “I saved that cup for you. Wouldn’t give it to Merry.” Hermione looking at Jerrold, believed this. There was seriousness, a look she had almost forgotten, some deep root somehow of love, some devotion. Had she regarded his love too lightly? He was younger. His love had been that rapture of some wild young thing and she had liked him, loved him because he was wild and didn’t do the right thing and hated his family and wouldn’t (in the beginning) take a commission as his gov’nor was simply after family kudos. He had hated them, held out against them for they had tried to spoil his writing, hadn’t wanted him to write and perhaps she had mis-judged Jerrold. “I never seem to see you any more.” He was looking at her, his eyes were clear and cool enough in that half-light. The room was dim with a clear blurr of darkness and Jerrold in his uniform, just shaved, fresh, right, somehow the right lover if not the quite-right husband. Husband. Husbands. “Why did we ever get married?” “Well there was no particular reason for it but it saved my life, precious.” “Saved your life?” “I mean I would have been pitched in sooner if I hadn’t been.” “That’s so. That’s why we got married.” There was a reason for everything. “And I couldn’t have stood going back to America and I couldn’t have endured people being horrid though they were anyway.” “They always are horrid.” This was someone else. Something had flowered in the night. Jerrold’s hands were cool, his eyes were wide and undeviating. “I’m sorry dear, for all the hurt I’ve brought you.”