Do you know the feeling you have when you know something quite well and yet for the life of you can’t recollect it?
I had that feeling all the way down the winding white road to the town. It was with me when I started from the plateau overhanging the sea in the Villa gardens. And with every step I took, it grew stronger and – somehow – more urgent. And at last, just when the avenue of palm trees runs down to the beach, I stopped. Because, you see, I knew it was now or never. This shadowy thing that was lurking at the back of my brain had got to be pulled out into the open, had got to be probed and examined and nailed down, so that I knew what it was. I’d got to pin the thing down – otherwise it would be too late.
I did what one always does do when trying to remember things. I went over the facts.
The walk up from the town – with the dust and the sun on the back of my neck. Nothing there.
The grounds of the Villa – cool and refreshing with the great cypresses standing dark against the skyline. The green grass path that led to the plateau where the seat was placed overlooking the sea. The surprise and slight annoyance at finding a woman occupying the seat.
For a moment I had felt awkward. She had turned her head and looked at me. An Englishwoman. I felt the need of saying something – some phrase to cover my retirement.
‘Lovely view from up here.’
That was what I had said – just the ordinary silly conventional thing. And she answered in exactly the words and tone that an ordinary well-bred woman would use.
‘Delightful,’ she had said. ‘And such a beautiful day.’
‘But rather a long pull up from the town.’
She agreed and said it was a long dusty walk.
And that was all. Just that interchange of polite commonplaces between two English people abroad who have not met before and who do not expect to meet again. I retraced my steps, walked once or twice round the Villa admiring the orange berberis (if that’s what the thing is called) and then started back to the town.
That was absolutely all there was to it – and yet, somehow, it wasn’t. There was this feeling of knowing something quite well and not being able to remember it.
Had it been something in her manner? No, her manner had been perfectly normal and pleasant. She’d behaved and looked just as ninety-nine women out of a hundred women would have behaved.
Except – no, it was true – she hadn’t looked at my hands.
There! What an odd thing to have written down. It amazes me when I look at it. An Irish bull if there ever was one. And yet to put it down correctly wouldn’t express my meaning.
She hadn’t looked at my hands. And you see, I’m used to women looking at my hands. Women are so quick. And they’re so soft-hearted I’m used to the expression that comes over their faces – bless them and damn them. Sympathy, and discretion, and determination not to show they’ve noticed. And the immediate change in their manner – the gentleness.
But this woman hadn’t seen or noticed.
I began thinking about her more closely. A queer thing – I couldn’t have described her in the least at the moment I turned my back on her. I would have said she was fairish and about thirty-odd – that’s all. But all the way down the hill, the picture of her had been growing – growing – it was for all the world like a photographic plate that you develop in a dark cellar. (That’s one of my earliest memories – developing negatives with my father in our cellar.)
I’ve never forgotten the thrill of it. The blank white expanse with the developer washing over it. And then, suddenly, the tiny speck that appears, darkening and widening rapidly. The thrill of it – the uncertainty. The plate darkens rapidly – but still you can’t see exactly. It’s just a jumble of dark and light. And then recognition – you know what it is – you see that this is the branch of the tree, or somebody’s face, or the back of the chair, and you know whether the negative is upside down or not – and you reverse it if it is – and then you watch the whole picture emerging from nothingness till it begins to darken and you lose it again.
Well, that’s the best description I can give of what happened to me. All the way down to the town, I saw that woman’s face more and more clearly. I saw her small ears, set very close against her head, and the long lapis-lazuli earrings that hung from them, and the curved wave of intensely blonde flaxen hair that lay across the top of the ear. I saw the contour of her face, and the width between the eyes – eyes of a very faint clear blue. I saw the short, very thick dark brown lashes and the faint pencilled line of the brows with their slight hint of surprise. I saw the small square face and the rather hard line of the mouth.
The features came to me – not suddenly – but little by little – exactly, as I have said, like a photographic plate developing.
I can’t explain what happened next. The surface development, you see, was over. I’d arrived at the point where the image begins to darken.
But, you see, this wasn’t a photographic plate, but a human being. And so the development went on. From the surface, it went behind – or within, whichever way you like to put it. At least, that’s as near as I can get to it in the way of explanation.
I’d known the truth, I suppose, all along, from the very moment I’d first seen her. The development was taking place in me. The picture was coming from my subconscious into my conscious mind …
I knew – but I didn’t know what it was I knew until suddenly it came! Bang up out of the black whiteness! A speck – and then an image.
I turned and fairly ran up that dusty road. I was in pretty good condition, but it seemed to me that I wasn’t going nearly fast enough. Through the Villa gates and past the cypresses and along the grass path.
The woman was sitting exactly where I had left her.
I was out of breath. Gasping, I flung myself down on the seat beside her.
‘Look here,’ I said. ‘I don’t know who you are or anything about you. But you mustn’t do it. Do you hear? You mustn’t do it.’