After Sunday lunch at the Dog and Duck, Myrtle and I strolled back over the fields to my cottage. It was a regular thing – I saw to that.
On Sunday mornings she came out on her bicycle, looking fresh and elegant and lively. Sometimes she found me washing up my breakfast pots in the scullery, where I had been keeping an eye open for the flash of her handlebars coming up the lane; sometimes she found me having a bath under the pump, which provoked a blushing, sidelong glance and the remark: ‘Darling, I don’t know how you can stand that cold water’; and sometimes she found me just ready for a bit of high-toned conversation about reviews in the Sunday newspapers.
‘Darling, I’ve brought you this.’
It might be anything that had caught her fancy, a tin of liver pâté, or a book of poems by T. S. Eliot. This time it was a bunch of freesias. I should have received a tin of liver pâté much more warmly, a book of poems by T. S. Eliot much less.
Then we set out for the Dog and Duck. The cottage was two miles from the nearest public-house; but over the fields, choosing gaps in the hedges and jumping narrow brooks, we could get to the Dog and Duck in twenty minutes. Neither of us had any inclination to exhaust ourselves in the labour of cooking lunch.
The stroll back was singularly pleasurable. It did not take too long. Also it gave our lunches time to digest, and brought to our notice the beauties of nature.
As we had been his regular customers for over a year, the pub-keeper shared his lunch with us; and his wife, to please either him or us, cooked it superbly. Myrtle and I drank two or three pints of beer apiece while waiting for it: Myrtle would have drunk more, but I thought it would not be good for her. Then we sat down to slices of roast beef, red and succulent in the middle and faintly charred at the edges; apple pie with fresh cream liquid enough to pour all over it; and cheese, the unequalled, solid, homely cheese of the county.
We walked very slowly at first, for we both took a pleasure in digestion. We patted our stomachs and sighed at the prospect of the first hill. The country rolled gently, and there was a second hill to climb before we came in sight of the cottage. If I happened to belch, Myrtle gave me a ladylike look of reproach and I begged her pardon. I took her by the hand.
At the top of the first hill we looked around. It was a heavenly afternoon. The sun was shining. It was only the end of February and we could feel its warmth. The rime on the naked hedgerows had melted, and drops of water glittered like the purest glass on twigs and thorns. The sky was covered in a single haze of milky whiteness; and the tussocks of grass, wilted and brown and borne down with water, caught heavily at our feet.
‘How I long for the spring,’ said Myrtle in a far-away tone. Her voice was lightly modulated and given to melancholy.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say: ‘Yes, and when it’s spring you’ll be pining for summer.’ It was true: she had a passion for hot weather. But had I said it she would have looked hurt. Instead of speaking, I glanced at her. What I saw was entirely pleasing. The sooner we reached the cottage the better.
Myrtle was modestly tall and very slender. She was wearing grey slacks and a cerise woollen sweater. Her breasts and buttocks were quite small, though her hips were not narrow. She was light-boned, smooth and soft. There was nothing energetic or muscular about her. She walked with a languid, easy grace – I walked with a vigorous, over-long stride and perpetually had the impression that she was trailing along behind me.
Myrtle felt me looking at her, and turned her face to me. It was oval and bright with colour. She had round hazel eyes, a long nose, and a wide mouth with full red lips: her hair was dark, her cheeks glowed. She smiled. Then she turned her head away again. I had no idea what she was thinking. I was thinking of one thing only, but Myrtle might easily have been thinking about El Greco – equally she might have been thinking about the same thing as me.
Whatever she was thinking about, whatever she was doing, Myrtle preserved a demeanour that was meek and innocent – especially meek. Sometimes I could have shaken her for it, but on the whole I was fascinated by it.
With a demeanour that was meek and innocent, Myrtle had two characteristic facial expressions. The first was of resigned reproachful sadness; the other was quite different, and only to be described as of sly smirking lubricity. As her face was both mobile and relaxed, she could slip like a flash from one expression to the other, naturally, spontaneously and without the slightest awareness of what she was doing.
We walked down the first hill, and this seemed to me an opportunity for moving a little faster. I was not as relaxed as Myrtle. However, she comfortably took her time, making a detour to cross the brook by a plank. Two horses, their coats shaggy with moisture, raised their heads to look at us. The brook was high with spring water, and the weeds waved in it sinuously. I put my hand on Myrtle’s waist.
As we climbed the opposite hill Myrtle called to the horses, but they sided with me and paid no attention.
At the top of the hill we always paused and sat on a gate for a few minutes. It was a sort of ritual, and to me it seemed a thoroughly silly sort of ritual. Below us we could see the cottage. No sooner had I settled on the top bar than I was ready to leap off again. But Myrtle always took her time, and as she went by atmosphere I could never tell how long it was going to be. It was at such moments that I sensed the great gulf between our temperaments: Myrtle went by atmosphere and I went by plan.
My plan was lucid and short. There, shining in its cream-coloured wash, small, intimate, isolated from everything, was the cottage. I felt as if my skin were tightening. No doubt I had a hot fixed look on my face.
Suddenly Myrtle slid down from the gate and quietly made off beside the hedgerow.
‘What on earth?’ I began, jumping down.
She stooped, and I saw that she was picking some celandines she had spied on the brink of a ditch. She held them up, glistening in the sunshine.
‘What are you going to do with those?’
Myrtle’s face promptly took on a distant unconcerned look, as if she were going to start whistling. I laughed aloud at her, and grasped her to me.
‘Darling!’ I cried. I kissed her cheeks: they had a soft bloomy feel.
I slipped my hands down from her waist. She struggled away from me.
‘We’re in the middle of a field, darling,’ she said.
It was my turn now. I am too direct to look lubricious. I took her firmly by the hand. ‘Come on, then,’ I said. And down the hill we went, in the plainest of plain sailing.
Whatever she was doing, Myrtle preserved a demeanour that was meek and innocent. She preserved it to perfection as I finally turned back the sheets for her. Yet, meek and innocent though her demeanour was, virginal and ladylike, anything else you may be pleased to call a nice girl, it was more than Myrtle could do, not to take a furtive sideways glance at me. I caught her.
I have said that Myrtle had two characteristic facial expressions. As a result of her furtive glance she managed to wear both of them, resigned, reproachful, sad, sly, smirking and lubricious, all at once.
Some time later we were just finishing a short rest. Idle thoughts floated vaguely through my mind. A spider was spinning down slowly from the corner of the room. Nameless odours stirred under my nose. A crow’s wings flapped past the window. I was sweating profusely, because Myrtle insisted on having a lot of bedclothes. It occurred to me that there is a great division of human bodies, into those which feel the cold and those which do not. Myrtle and I belonged one to each class. How many marriages, I meditated, had been ruined by such incompatibility? Marriage – my thoughts floated hastily on to some other topic.
Myrtle was wide awake. I thought she was probably thinking how a cup of tea would refresh her. Suddenly I heard the sound of a car coming up the lane. We never expected to hear any traffic go by the cottage. It was approaching at a moderate speed, and I thought I recognized the sound of the engine. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window.
I was just too late to see it pass, so I flung down the sash and put my head out. Again I was just too late.
‘Who was it?’ said Myrtle.
‘It sounded like Tom’s car.’
‘What was he doing here?’
I shrugged my shoulders. I had my idea. There was a pause.
‘Don’t you think you ought to come away from the window, darling?’
‘Why?’
‘You’ve got nothing on.’
‘All the better …’ Out of respect for her delicacy I closed the window with a bang that drowned the end of my remark.
She was smiling at me. I went over and stood beside her. She looked appealing, resting on one elbow, with her dark hair sweeping over her smooth naked shoulder. I looked down on the top of her head.
Suddenly she blew.
‘Wonderful Albert,’ she said.
I may say that my name is not Albert. It is Joe. Joe Lunn.
Myrtle looked up at me in sly inquiry.
I suppose I grinned.
After a while she paused.
‘Men are lucky,’ she said, in a deep thoughtful tone. I said nothing: I thought it was no time for philosophical observations. I stared at the wall opposite.
Finally she stopped.
‘Well?’ I looked down just in time to catch her subsiding with a shocked expression on her face.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘you’ll have to wait again for your tea.’
‘Ah …’ Myrtle gave a heavy, complacent sigh. Her eyes were closed.
In due course we had our tea. Myrtle felt the cold too much to get out of bed, so I made it. She sat up and put on a little woollen jacket: it was pretty shell pink to match the colour of her cheeks. Her eyes seemed to have changed from hazel to golden. We held an interesting conversation about literature.
I felt a slight check on me when I held literary conversations with Myrtle, because her taste was greatly superior to mine. I wrote novels, and when she brought to light the fact that I had no use for long dramas in blank verse, I felt coarse and caddish, as if lust had led me to violate a creature of sensibilities more delicate than I could comprehend. Secretly I thought she was invariably taken in by the spurious and the pretentious, but this I put down to her youth. She was only twenty-two.
It grew dusky outside while we finished our tea. As we settled down again, the firelight began to glow on the ceiling. A wind was rising in the branches of the elm trees across the road, furiously rattling the bare twigs against each other. ‘If only we could stay here,’ was what we were both thinking from time to time; and at first sight it was not obvious what prevented us. Certainly it was not obvious to Myrtle at all. It was with difficulty that in the end I persuaded her to get up.
‘Come along, darling,’ I said. I was thinking how necessary it was for us to get back to the town, she to her parents’ home, I to my lodgings. Atmosphere did not indicate to Myrtle that this was the case.
‘It’s so cold outside, I shall die,’ she said, hopelessly.
I bent down and kissed her: she put her arms round my neck. I could not resist it.
At last we were dressed and ready to go. I drank the remainder of the milk.
‘I know you need it, darling,’ Myrtle said in a subtle tone that I could not quite place.
A final glance round the living-room, at the dying fire and the empty flower-vases, and we went out into the darkness. There was a moment of nostalgia, as I turned the key in the door. We felt impelled to say something foolishly sentimental, like ‘Goodbye, little home’.
On the journey back our spirits rose again. We pedalled cheerfully against the wind, our lamps flashing a wavering patch on the road ahead. We had good bicycles, with dynamos to light the lamps. Myrtle said she was tired, and sometimes I tried to tow her, but it was too difficult an operation mechanically.
The lights of the town came into view, looking particularly bright in the cold, wintry air. In the distance lighted trams passed each other slowly. The roads on the outskirts were lined with trees, and there were big houses far back from the road: this was the way into the town which did not lead through the slums. Big lamps swayed over the tramlines: in their light I could see Myrtle’s eyes glowing. I put my hand on her shoulder.
At a cross-roads we parted. It was our convention that it would be indiscreet to go to each other’s house. With our bicycles leaning against the small of our backs we embraced fervently. At this time on Sunday night there were few people about, especially when the wind was icy.
‘When shall I see you again, darling?’
Myrtle shivered, and looked woebegone.
This was always an apprehensive moment for me. It sometimes happened that I already had an evening booked in advance: Myrtle was certain to light upon it. There was nothing wrong about it, but she made it only too plain that she was wounded. I could never think how to explain and reassure. She had all my love: I wanted no one else: she had no cause to feel a moment’s jealousy. Yet she was wounded if I disclosed that there was one evening when I was not free. And somehow I wanted that evening to myself, that evening and possibly one or two more. It was the moment when I sensed another great gulf between our temperaments.
On this particular occasion, I had arranged to go out for supper on Tuesday evening – Myrtle and I lived in the social stratum where the midday meal is often called lunch instead of dinner, but where the evening meal cannot properly be called dinner and so goes by the name of supper.
‘When shall I see you again, darling?’ I waited with my fingers crossed.
‘Not tomorrow, of course.’ Then in a melancholy tone: ‘And I’ve promised to go to the dressmaker’s on Tuesday …’ Her voice trailed off, and returned with surprising briskness. ‘Wednesday.’
I kissed her. Relief multiplied my fervour by about fifty per cent. Myrtle looked sad. We arranged to telephone each other, and parted.
As I cycled fast down my own road, I felt as if I were borne on a stream of the purest, most powerful emotion. It almost seemed to lift the bicycle off the ground. Everything seemed entrancing, permeated by the atmosphere of joy – the prospect of a hearty supper that my landlady would have waiting for me, of a hot bath that I needed, and of the blessed sheets of my own bed. Myrtle, Myrtle. The sting of cold air on my forehead, the strange brilliance of the streetlamps, the bare trees waving in the shadows.
I put away my bicycle and slammed the garage door. I was thinking of Myrtle, and I looked up at the sky. There were stars, sparkling. I was feeling happy and I had left Myrtle looking sad. Why, oh why? I am an honest man: one of my genuine troubles with Myrtle was that I could never tell whether she was looking unhappy because I would not marry her or because she was feeling cold.