Or anything at all, wondered what this is for, as touching with the fingers the breast and thighs, these instruments of languor and passion, wondered for what if not, if not, what you did not like to think, and thought, watching for people to recognize, like Mrs Moriarty, you knew at once, he knew because riding into town, did not say Mother is going home, but take me, I want this, I want to feel. She twisted her fingers in the sheet. Sidney Furlow, she said with contempt. She wanted to throw a bomb into all this, to destroy, or tear a sheet. Lacking the means, you lay back, were a Furlow, which was nothing, or as good as nothing, or a name and a house and occasional paragraphs in the papers. This was not power, like fire that swept down the gully, or you pressed your feet into its sides, felt the wind move. This is what I want, she said, and the other, say take me, when his voice fell, saw he was afraid. He is afraid, of me afraid. There is something contemptible about a man afraid, and at the same time desirable, you want to possess this fear in a human body, his arms when he danced, but above all the body which you know is so much masquerading strength. Breaking a horse, he laughed to see it stand cowed, feeling it tremble between his legs. Hagan, she said. It had a rough, clumsy sound in her mouth. She found herself thinking of Roger Kemble. That was the difference perhaps.
Somebody speaking in sleep was a long way off.
Sidney Furlow got out of bed and put on her fur coat, felt the soft voluptuousness of fur against her neck. Mrs Furlow had paid a lot, not so much for the sake of the fur as for the privilege of paying a lot. But there was also something of the swings and the roundabouts in Mrs Furlow’s attitude, take my daughter, take my mink, it was something like that. We shall settle this, Sidney said. It gave her some satisfaction to say it between her teeth, in the dark that was sleep, her mother asleep, and her father, skipped over that, walked down the passage towards air, she must have air. The coat was heavy. She had burnt it once with a cigarette. She moved inside it, her body, as if she were something apart or withdrawing from the contact of fur when she slipped out on to the verandah. You could smell the frost. She began to shiver. She felt at once hot and cold, certain and afraid, it was always like that. Inferiority Furlow, Helen said, inferiority damn, that made you break the mirror at Helen’s feet, shiver it cold on the floor, and Helen laughed, because she was a whore, or a whore slipping out in fur between the trees. She could feel in her hair the twigs, the plum-trees. If you were a whore to want the not-want, feel the boughs of trees, press yourself against a tree, was hard and sterile a tree. The plum-trees bore fruit about once in three years. Not even this in bed you lay, waited, speaking words the dark heard, Hagan said, a whore in tulle or a fur coat. Mother said, always remember who you are, as if you could remember and forget at once. What if I am a whore, she said, what if I want something in the place of nothing.
She walked and felt the grass sharp against her legs, twigs pause in her hair, slip, she was walking beyond trees, would walk up and down till light, she knew where it came beyond that hill, where you looked for light when you could not sleep. In the stable something stirred chaff, a cat perhaps, or mice. The sleepy sound of chaff that fell beneath rafters. She was very remote from this, and horses feet mounting out of a well, up and up, they came up the hill with no body, she looked out to attach some form to a sound.
Getting off a horse was the chime of steel, a voice. He was getting off a horse. Hagan stood on the gravel. She knew. She held herself against a door, very flat, heard the horse shake itself free of the bit.
What, he said, brushing with the saddle, she felt the flap brushing her side, what the devil? You! he said.
Yes, she said. I couldn’t sleep.
He went on into the saddle-room. She stood holding her coat.
You ought to go back to bed, he said.
His voice not intent on the present, she felt, was not on her, his head bent, was thinking. She dug her nails into a crack in the door.
Yes, she said. I ought.
Hagan, she wanted to say, now, as she heard him go down the hill, as if she did not exist. Something heavy in his step, was not there, was gone.
She ought to go back to bed, trail across the yard a coat, not more, that was softly remonstrative against the skin. It was still not morning, not anything, to lie, Sidney Furlow in bed. She pressed her mouth into the pillow, soundless, conscious of sheets that had grown cold.
Thinking you have not slept is almost as good an excuse as not having slept for complaining about the toast. She felt awful, her head. Her eyes were heavy, dark about the lids.
This toast is awful, she said. It’s soft.
Ask for some more, said Mr Furlow.
Mr Furlow sat in the rustle of yesterday’s paper and the scent of marmalade. He felt at his best at breakfast, which they ate at half-past eight, because it salved Mr Furlow’s conscience to eat his breakfast early if not to do anything else. It was a matter of principle, like eggs and bacon as a standing dish and kidneys or something else besides. And the men would go out to work. They were Mr Furlow’s men. He sat with his back to the log fire. He was very satisfied.
Sidney crumbled a piece of toast, conscious of the warmth of the room, suspended in this, a sort of cloud. She wanted to close her eyes, to protest against the solidity of the furniture and her father’s composure as he passed up kidneys into his mouth. Coming into the dining-room, she had kissed him on the cheek. You did this, it was eightthirty, and a kiss, and Father asking you how you slept. To cut it out of the succession of days there was nothing you would have missed. Father’s face smelt of soap. It made her feel dirty. She wanted to cry. The fire sizzled, a damp log.
Your mother’s got on to the telephone, he said.
It was not a reproof. Mr Furlow was really too far immersed in the complaisance arising from kidneys to feel anything like a reproach. Besides, he liked to sit with Sidney, sometimes alone, to know that she was there, physically at least. They understood each other, he felt, not that he would have admitted this to his wife, not that he would have been able to explain the nature of this understanding, or even on what it was based. Mr Furlow avoided explanations as savouring of intellectual enterprise. But it was there, this understanding, all the same.
He looked at her over his glasses and said:
How about some kidneys, pet?
It was his contribution to the relationship.
No. I feel like lots of coffee, she said.
It made her look down into the cup, this glance. She was ashamed. Father sitting in his chair, was a chair, it was like loving a chair, a habit acquired over a space of years. At the seaside once, they sometimes went to Terrigal, she trod on an anemone and crushed it into the rock. Then she crushed two or three more. It gave her a sensation of mingled pity and horror watching the shreds of jelly on the rock. She stirred her coffee. She was afraid of thinking like this.
Mrs Furlow came into the room. Something about her slapped right into the atmosphere, upsetting any equilibrium at once. For Mrs Furlow was perturbed. She was twisting her wedding-ring.
The most terrible thing, she said.
Mr Furlow shielded his plate with his hand. He objected strongly to being upset. There was a helpless protest in the shape of his hand.