Let Me Alone

CHAPTER 7

SO they were engaged, and Matthew bought her a ring, a cluster of small diamonds, good but unimpressive. He was not well off. Anna did not care much for the ring. The small, bright stones had a way of arranging themselves into an impudent little face that winked up at her questioningly: rather reminiscent of the viola faces. Fortunately, the violas themselves had stopped flowering for that year. However, she wore the ring, and soon got accustomed to seeing it winking there on the third finger of her hand. It was as if she had always worn it. It meant nothing particular to her.

Matthew was not an exacting lover. He was away most of the time, appearing at Blue Hills for week-ends. It was understood that he devoted himself a great deal to his mother. When he was with Anna, he was not exigent. He made no demands upon her. Curious the way he asked for nothing from her. He seemed quite content just to follow her about, and to see her wearing his ring on her finger. He made no physical advances. She often wondered what she would do if he showed signs of becoming passionate. But nothing of the kind occurred, beyond an occasional rather inept embrace; and even that seemed curiously vague, almost abstract. And he would go on so calmly afterwards, so exactly as if nothing had happened, that Anna sometimes felt uncertain as to whether she had been kissed at all.

It was very reassuring to her, this apparent indifference of Kavan’s to the physical side of the question. If he had shown any signs of wanting to make violent love to her, she would have fled away in repulsion. It really horrified her, the thought of physical advances from him. He was such a very queer fish. So far from warm-blooded human attractiveness, with his odd, round, meaningless head, and his neat, sharp-toothed smile, and his dissociation from himself. As if he were only half a human being. She shuddered at the thought of physical intimacies with him, as at something shocking and unnatural. At first, she was constantly on the alert, watching for any advance, ready to fly off at the slightest sign.

But no, he didn’t seem to want that any more than she did. She even felt that he would actively dislike any demonstration of warmth from her, would shy away from it as from an indelicacy. And this reassured her. Gradually she went off her guard. She seemed to relax. The taut apprehension of her nerves gave place to a sort of drowsiness and acquiescence. The acute nightmare of insecurity removed, she was left inactive, energyless, and submissive.

She drifted along vaguely, indecisive. A heaviness seemed to have fallen upon her. She didn’t want to think, to make any effort. She wanted to be left alone.

Lauretta looked on all the time, brightly approving, but watching with a sharp, merciless eye for any backsliding. Like a keen little hawk, she was always on the look out for the first sign of defection on Anna’s part. She was not going to let her escape. She didn’t intend her well-laid schemes to go awry.

‘You must start thinking about your trousseau,’ she said brightly. She had reverted, these days, to her earlier manner of patronizing, artificial gaiety. She was playful and a little arch towards her niece, deliberately ignoring Anna’s unresponsiveness. Only, from the middle of the smiling, roguish, ageing face, the relentless hawk eyes peered out sharply, destroying the illusion of innocuousness.

This mention of the trousseau shook Anna out of her lethargy. Just for that moment she saw with lucidity, saw that she could not possibly marry this strange man. He appeared quite impossible, incongruous, repulsive in every way. She couldn’t imagine how she had drifted into this situation with him. A kind of panic took possession of her. She must, must escape.

But then, most deadeningly, her old heaviness came back. She simply hadn’t the energy to fight. She looked at her aunt’s smiling, implacable face with its faint network of lines and its faintly sagging, thin mouth, and her spirit quivered and died. It was so easy to let the engagement drift on; so hard, so desperately hard to open battle with Lauretta. And there was still plenty of time. Later on, she could make a stand.

But just one effort that lucid moment was able to prompt in her. She went off by herself and wrote a long letter to Sidney, telling her all that had happened. When she had finished it and dropped it herself into the letterbox, she gave a sigh, half reckless, half relieved. For she felt that in some obscure fashion she had shifted the responsibility of her fate, transfered it in some occult way to Sidney. Sidney should decide now. Sidney could save her from Matthew, if she wished: and if not — then, let be. She shrugged her shoulders with unconscious fatalism.

The reply came in due course, and proved disappointing. Sidney seemed distant — not unfriendly, but immensely remote. Over this letter Anna suffered bitterly. After their old precious intimacy, their complete understanding of one another, it sounded harsh and unsympathetic. Sidney seemed entirely out of touch with her, incredibly far away. All she did was to urge Anna to come and see her. No sympathy, no understanding at all. Just a few abrupt sentences, ending up ‘For God’s sake don’t marry this man without seeing me first.’ A hard, heartless creature Sidney seemed to have become, forgetting so soon the wonderful romantic affection that had united them so closely and so long. Of course it was quite impossible for Anna to visit her. She tore up the letter.

But it had served its purpose. It had sufficed, somehow, to absolve Anna from the responsibility of herself. She had given Sidney the opportunity of holding her back from Matthew, and Sidney had not held her. Hence the fatalistic attitude on Anna’s part; mingled with a faint, unexplained, childish feeling of resentment. She was disappointed in Sidney. Disappointed and hurt. Sidney’s apparent coldness, and her remoteness, and the absence of sympathetic phrasing in her letter, made Anna feel injured. She was almost inclined to throw herself upon Matthew immediately-just to spite Sidney.

And it was such a relief to escape the perpetual goading pricks of Lauretta’s enmity, the horrible pricking irritation of her malicious displeasure. It was a blissful relief to have established even a temporary truce; like the end of a long illness. Later on, Anna could fight it out, if necessary.

There was plenty of time. She would let things slide for a bit.

But after all, there wasn’t so very much time. Kavan only had four months in England. About the middle of November he had to sail for Rangoon. They were to marry before he sailed. At first, the marriage was planned for the very last moment, a day, or perhaps two days, before the boat left. But then Lauretta began to urge an earlier date. In her frivolous, charming, girlish manner was concealed an inflexible purpose. She made no direct suggestion. But half a dozen times a day, by subtle insinuation of voice and gesture, she would hint at the inadvisability of delay. To tell the truth, she was a little doubtful of her hold over Anna, should the girl prove recalcitrant.

Finally Lauretta took a definite line. She announced that she would be leaving for the Riviera earlier than usual. Her husband’s health was made the excuse. He was to be got away to the south as early as possible. By the beginning of November the house would be shut up.

Anna knew that pressure was being put upon her. She felt herself being borne down; by the hidden, cold determination of Lauretta, and the strangely soft, stupifying obstinacy of Matthew Kavan. And she was allowing herself to be borne down. She even almost welcomed the pressure. With half her mind she wanted to be persuaded. She seemed to cling to the security of the world’s approval, to the things which represented familiar security to her. She wanted to marry Matthew because that was the safe thing, the normal thing, the thing that was expected of her and which promised security and approbation. She was frightened of the other side, the unknown streak in her. It was the old craving for normality coming out again.

She found herself in a bustle of shopping, dresses to be tried and chosen, presents coming, letters to answer: Lauretta always close, terribly close, watchful and important, and Matthew rather distant and unreal, but also watchful, also important in his strange fashion. Sidney had faded to nothingness. There was no longer any world outside Blue Hills. Only this close world of Lauretta and Matthew, and the half-intriguing, half wearisome business of choosing and buying.

October came, and the arrangements for the wedding were almost complete. It was to be a quiet affair, just a few friends, and lunch afterwards at Blue Hills; but all very nice, very correct. Lauretta was not sparing expense. Everything seemed to be running smoothly. She was not quite sure of Anna, but nearly. The girl was quiet and rather blank in her manner, her face palely absent, like a sleep-walker. It was as if her face went about independently, doing duty for her spirit while it was away somewhere, upon its own affairs. Always the pale blankness in her face. Lauretta was rather nervous of what might happen if the spirit suddenly returned and found out what had been going on.

The wedding preparations ran into their final stages. Everyone was busy and excited. But there was a peculiar lack of enthusiasm evident, even the excitement seemed artificial; there was an undercurrent of cold-bloodedness in it all that was rather disheartening.

Only Matthew seemed perfectly happy, in his queer complacency, sitting about, rather silent, and watching Anna. Socially, he was not very adept. In a crowd he was rather ineffectual, rather insignificant. But perfectly self-possessed, peering from one face to another with his blank blue eyes, smiling the neat little smile above his small teeth, and occasionally putting a word in — generally the wrong word, be it said. And yet, he was not noticeably inadequate. He was just sufficiently personable to carry off his conversational deficiencies. He was always quite nicely dressed, even rather smart, in the satisfactorily conventional way. And he sat about, looking agreeable and ready for anything, with the winsome little smile covering his silence. So he got away with it. People eyed him approvingly in the main.

The marriage was to take place on a Thursday. Matthew was staying Wednesday night at an hotel in the district, not at Blue Hills. There was, apparently, some rule of etiquette that debarred him from spending that particular night under the same roof as his prospective bride. But he came to the house for dinner and to spend the evening.

Anna watched him attentively when he appeared. She wanted to see what it was she was letting herself in for so calmly.

The man was presentable enough in his dinner-jacket and his impeccably white shirt front. He looked quite a gentleman. Yet the way he moved, keeping his shoulders stiff, and the way he listened and smiled attentively, even rather assiduously, to the person to whom he was talking, was all a little uncomfortable and odd. She wished that his head were not quite so round, not quite so much like a smooth, dark ball bobbing up and down. It had — she could not help thinking it — a foolish and somehow unnerving look. The covering of hair appeared so very dry and dead and insentient. So much more like a stiff covering than a living, growing part of a human body.

And when he came over to speak to her, she was conscious of a slight shrinking. He was such a very peculiar creature. Such a surprise packet still, after all. And she was going to marry him. She was going to spend the rest of her life with that strange round head, those blue, glass-bright eyes. It seemed ridiculous. She wanted to laugh at the idea.

‘What a lovely frock,’ Matthew said to her.

She was wearing a new dress of heavy silk stuff with a small, intricate pattern running across. The rich, darkish material made her face, and her bare arms and shoulders, appear somewhat fragile and immature. The contrast between the sophisticated, opulent stuff and the straight, slight, virginal body had the effect of emphasizing a certain defencelessness, a vulnerability in the pale girl. She looked younger than her nineteen years: almost like a little girl dressed up in somebody else’s evening clothes. But Matthew watched her, smiling complacently. It seemed as if he did not think of her at all. He did not even seem to think about her in relation to himself. It was hard to believe that he realized her in any way. So that she almost ceased to realize herself. And yet he stared at her with his bright blue eyes; as if he would stare her out of existence altogether.

Anna scarcely heard what he was saying to her. She sat with her hands in her lap, feeling far away. What had she to do with this man, with this situation? She knew that all the people in the room were thinking about her, and looking at her: that she was the centre of interest for the moment. This made her feel rather important. But nothing more — nothing in the world. Matthew sat on, and inclined his shoulders towards her, and beamed upon her. Why? — what was it all about?

She wondered when it would be time to go to bed. Her head felt empty and light. Without a thought in her head, she sat and waited for the time to pass. At last the clock struck eleven, and Matthew went away, off to his hotel.

Lauretta came to Anna’s room for a last-night talk. Her slightly theatrical sense of the appropriate demanded an intimate little midnight conversation. She wanted to play the part of the wise, understanding, experienced woman of the world enlightening and encouraging the timid neophyte. She wanted Anna to be in a state of hesitant trepidation: then she would talk to her, so tactfully, so beautifully. The sentences formed themselves in her mind as she came along. She went into Anna’s room, and found the girl in one of her queer, hard moods.

‘Our last night together, dear,’ said Lauretta, with somewhat over-emphasized affection, smiling her charming smile.

The tone in which she spoke revealed vast implications of sentimental posturing, a whole liturgy of artificial emotionalism. Anna lifted her cool grey eyes, undeceived, half-derisive, towards her aunt, half clouded with heavy indifference.

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling coolly. ‘My last night at Blue Hills. What a relief for you.’

Lauretta started and frowned, shaken rudely out of her histrionic glow. But she clung to the skirts of her role.

‘Whatever makes you say that?’ she asked, falsely smooth. ‘Surely you can’t imagine that we want to get rid of you, you foolish child!’ She kept smiling; but her smoothness was costing her an effort.

‘Of course you want to get rid of me,’ said Anna bluntly.

Lauretta made a quick, irritable movement of her hands, clenching them. The rings flashed in the light, spinning swift webs of brilliance.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said, on an edge of sharpness, looking away.

Anna laughed rudely.

‘You know perfectly well you’ve forced me into this marriage,’ she retorted.

Lauretta was shocked and offended. In a way, she was even a little alarmed. She was always rather defeated by that insolent hardness that came out occasionally in the girl and was so uncomfortably reminiscent of James Forrester. It put her out of action for the moment.

‘How can you say such a thing?’ she exclaimed, clasping her hands in agitation.

‘But you know it’s true,’ said Anna, staring at her in a way that was highly disconcerting. There was neither anger nor resentment in her eyes, nor heat of any kind. Nothing but a cold, insulting perspicacity, like an affront.

Lauretta was deeply offended. But she dared not reveal her feelings, just then. She quailed too much before Anna’s disquieting inheritance from James Forrester. Nothing is so upsetting as a resurrection.

‘Of course you mustn’t marry Matthew against your will,’ said poor Lauretta. ‘It’s not too late even now.’ She glanced round at the packed luggage, all in readiness for the following day.

‘Oh yes, it is. Much too late. You’re quite safe now,’ said Anna, smiling coldly. She looked callously, even brutally, at her aunt. ‘You’ve got me nicely landed.’

Lauretta’s rings span distracted little rainbows in the air. She was really horrified by Anna’s remarks — not merely offended, but horrified. There seemed to be something so heartless and repulsive about the girl just now; unnatural. And it really was rather shocking the way she spoke, so coldly and tauntingly, with the insolent perspicacious look on her young face, inhumanly direct, as though some mitigating skin of illusion were missing. And Anna intended to be shocking and brutal and repulsive. The more repulsive the better. It was the dark, alien strain in her blood urging her to a curious perverseness. Lauretta couldn’t stand any more of it.

‘You’re tired and overwrought,’ she said, as soothingly as she could manage. ‘You’ll feel quite different in the morning after a good sleep.’ And she went away, her charming part of womanly adviser and confidante unacted.

Anna got into bed and lay staring at the wall. She was glad that she had behaved brutally to Lauretta. A little demon of perverseness made her smile even now. But the hard mood was not quite genuine, all the same. There was more indifference than hardness in her heart. She wanted to escape, to break loose from Matthew and from everyone, to run away and be by herself somewhere. She wanted to want these things. But she couldn’t. No, she really couldn’t want her freedom or anything else. Not actively. A horrid dead-weight of indifference crushed her down.

The next day was blustery, with great clouds lurching across the sky, and occasional vicious onslaughts of cold, grey rain. Next, the sun swinging out into a torn fragment of pale-washed blue, and the wet paths drying quickly in the high wind, puddles gleaming like grey, dropped mirrors. Then the clouds closing up again over the pallid blue, and the fierce, chilly rattle of the rain once more.

Anna went up to her room when it was time to dress, feeling cold and unnatural. It seemed strange to be changing one’s clothes in the middle of the morning. The dress in which she was to be married was a plain affair, straight and parchment-coloured; not really a wedding-dress at all. It would do later on for afternoons. She was soon ready. The sky darkened, and rain came hissing down, hissing like steam against the window-panes. Her light dress seemed out of place in the rainy twilight. She sighed. For the pale dress was so incongruous: it made her feel more and more unnatural, like a victim. Surely, in some way, she was being victimized. And yet, really, in her heart, she felt nothing at all. There was a blank indifference in her heart.

She went downstairs, a restless ghost in her pale clothes, feeling lost. The corners of the rooms were darkly shadowed, there seemed to be no one about. Outside, the rain fell angrily, but with declining power. The sky was lightening.

Anna went from room to room, opening and shutting doors, peering through the obscurity at the familiar places. But now she seemed to see it all strangely, from the angle of her approaching departure. Her light skirt rippled in the draught — how unsuitable it felt to her.

In the dining-room, the servants had already begun to prepare the big table for the lunch party. No edibles as yet, but the best table-linen, the most delicate glasses, the brightest silver, all gleaming with a chaste pure white gleam, and a glitter of facetted glass like sparks rising in the dimness. Some white flowers were stirring as she opened the door and the curtains blew about. It was all rather desolate. She shivered, thinking of funerals, and of her father. She felt so cold, so empty. And everything seemed meaningless and far away. The indifference — the horrible indifference.

It was clearing up outside. The room brightened slowly. Anna stood still, staring at the brightest thing in the room: a bright globe of glowing green, like a huge drop-emerald. She did not realize it at first. What was it? Looking more objectively, she recognized a bottle of bright green liqueur, forgotten and temporarily abandoned on the sideboard. She took hold of it, feeling the slight, velvety stickiness overlaying the cold, brittle smoothness of the glass. Without thinking much, she tilted it, and the green stuff ran out quickly, quicker than she had expected, up the long, tube-like neck of the bottle, and filled the glass. It was a surprise to find that it flowed so quickly, the sticky, heavy-looking stuff. She drank it up, rather disliking it, the burning, sharp-sweet taste of it. But it was hot. She felt warmer afterwards

‘Anna! What have you been doing?’ Lauretta scrutinized her closely. But there was no time for talk. They had to start for the church.

Anna sat in her corner of the car watching Heyward Bland, who was going to give her away. He had got himself up very smartly for the occasion, very spruce and correct, with a white flower in his buttonhole. But the fuss and excitement made him rather irritable. Catching her eye he smiled in a forced fashion and patted her chilly hand. Then he coughed and cleared his throat irritably. He seemed stiff and pompous beside her, and she disliked his proximity. However, he was doing his best to be friendly.

There was an undignified dash across the churchyard to the shelter of the porch. It had stopped raining, but the squally wind was still driving cold flurries of water from the dripping branches. Lauretta was frowning, worried about her beautiful dress. The Colonel looked more irritated than ever. Anna laughed and ran up the path, avoiding the puddles. A sort of recklessness had come over her. She felt like some other girl, quite detached. Perhaps it was the liqueur which had gone to her head.

They went into the church, and the first thing she saw was Matthew, standing in the aisle, waiting for her. She smiled at him, almost gay, in her new recklessness. Matthew smiled back, very faintly and constrainedly, in return; she could see that he was put out, even annoyed, by her frivolous air. It was evidently a serious moment for him.

Feeling dashed, she took her place beside him. His solemnity made her uncomfortable. Was it possible that this ecclesiastical rigmarole had genuine significance for him? She noticed how dry and close the hair was on his head; as though it had no sap in it, no life of any kind. He did not look at her, though she knew he was aware of her regard. Obstinately he turned his stiff profile, and refused to look. They moved up towards the altar.

The church was new and rather ugly and bare, with a look of being strictly utilitarian and hygienic. There was something rather mean about the red brick, and the stumpy pillars, and the rows of cheap wood pews; proletarian. Lauretta’s expensive flowers looked both haughty and forlorn. On one wall someone had started to paint a biblical scene, life-size, all in drab browns and greys and a muddy-looking olive-green. There was a boat in it, and improbable, woolly-headed, conventional waves. It was supposed to represent Peter walking on water. The place was bitterly cold.

Anna shivered as she knelt in the bleak church, in front of the altar. Her dress was much too thin, there was no protection in the pale stuff. Only her head felt hot; and in her mouth the hot, bitterish taste of the liqueur still lingered like a satirical comment. The clergyman read out some words, and Matthew Kavan repeated them, distinctly, with a certain satisfaction, relishing them. Then it was her turn. She stumbled through her part, watching the ugly, life-sized figures on the wall, the men with their curly beards and dirty-coloured clothes. The painter had, in a strange way, managed to suggest in all the faces a meanness, a vulgarity, something petty and sordid that belonged essentially to English twentieth-century industrialism. It made Anna think of factories, and long grey streets of little houses, and backyards with dingy washing hanging out, and a smell of fish frying. All of which she particularly loathed. In reaction, she felt a sudden stirring towards Lauretta, who represented the other side of the picture. But she could never be friends with her. There had always been an impassable barrier between her and Lauretta. Higher and higher it had grown, topped with barbed spikes of resentment and enmity. And now she was going to leave Lauretta for good. Strange, to be going away. But she was glad, very glad, to make her exit. She had had enough of Lauretta. How far she had grown already, through the years, from the child whom Lauretta had visited at Mascarat, and impressed and bewildered and patronized with her fluttering charm. Life, the express train, had got into its stride already.

She glanced sideways at Matthew, who was kneeling beside her, hiding behind his neat brown profile. But Matthew seemed perfectly unreal: so inhuman. Ridiculous that he thought he was being married to her!

Matthew, the surprise packet, was kneeling beside her, touching her. But there was no contact between them, no possible connection. The strange being, how remote he seemed. Unreal, he seemed to her, just a shape and a colour and a queer round, hard head, like his own effigy moving about the world. But he was thinking about her. She could feel in him, underneath his attention to what was going on, a preoccupation with herself, a disapproval. He disapproved — she could feel it — of her wandering thoughts, of her lack of solemnity, of her failure to be impressed by the moment. As she knelt at his side, pale and grave and abstracted, she could feel his irritable thoughts playing upon her, in spite of his devout concentration. He wanted to be serious and devout. To appreciate the solemn occasion. But some other instinct kept his thoughts, under his superficial attention, sliding out persistently to the proud, aloof girl beside him. He almost hated her for her distracting influence. But he could not keep his thoughts away.

When it was all over and the book had been signed, the whole company emerged again into the windy daylight.

It had cleared up a bit, the wind was harrying the clouds like an angry dog, a shred of blue sky suddenly appeared over their heads.

‘Happy is the bride whom the sun shines on!’ cried Lauretta gaily.

And sure enough, a chilly radiance came spilling down from the heavens, spilling palely over them as they stood. The half-stripped trees bent and strained and swung above them. It was Lauretta’s great moment. Her triumph. But the wedding guests had a sense of flatness as they moved off in groups, back to their cars. The wedding had been, for no very definable reason, something of a fiasco. A chilly sort of affair.

And the wedding-breakfast, or the lunch-party, or what ever you like to call it, with its cold lobster mayonnaise and coldly gleaming, pale wines, was not much better. Although it was all so expensive and conscientiously festal. Everyone felt secretly a little relieved when it was over.

And then the good-byes had to be got through. All the women kissed Anna. She had changed into her travelling clothes, and stood with Matthew at the front door, all in brown, looking rather like one of the lost brown leaves that were blowing about everywhere. There was a crowd, and a confusion of good wishes. Lauretta’s turn came last of all.

‘Good-bye!’ cried her girlish, trilling voice, for the last time. ‘Good-bye!’ She put her arms round Anna and kissed her, in her slightly theatrical way. She even managed to squeeze a tear from one of her bright eyes. There was a spark of real warmth in her heart, nevertheless.

Matthew looked on, rather obliterated. Anna stood still.

‘Come along, my dear,’ said Matthew, at the door of the car.

There was the beginning of an uncomfortable pause while everyone waited for Anna to make a move. Lauretta gave her the tiniest push. The girl went forward, gazing about with clouded, cold-grey eyes, like the sky: at one with the cold, unfriendly, uncongenial sky. For a moment she seemed quite lost. Then she got into the car and sat down. Matthew got in after her, the door banged, and they drove off in a thin keening of farewells.

They were to drive to London in a hired Daimler. Matthew did not possess a car of his own.