black hoop thing that porters carry on their shoulders, who used to be a fixture of the place? The emptiness is eerie. He paces for a while, then sits down on one of the benches; the new varnish with the sun on it is hot and gummy to the touch. Beyond the tracks the grass is sere and ticks faintly in the heat.
Beyond that again the broad reach of the river is a whitish-blue drift throwing off fish-scales of platinum light. The silence buzzes. Down on the track a ragged grey crow hops jerkily from sleeper to sleeper, looking for something, does not find it, gives a disgruntled croak and flaps away. The surge of heedless happiness that rose in him as he drove along the lanes has all subsided now. He has shattered the sunlit surface of the day, like a clumsy gardener putting his foot through a vegetable frame to the humid tangle of things beneath. He gets up from the bench and paces anew, more agitatedly this time.
He is prey again to the fear that his marriage is failing. There is nothing definite he can point to, as that big red hand points towards the jakes, only over the past year he has been aware of an increasing vagueness, an increasing insubstantiality, in his life with Helen. Something is fading, becoming bleached and dry. Does she blame him for the miscarriage? He does not see how it could have been his fault but maybe in some way it was. He cannot be sure; he cannot be sure of anything. The fact of the lost baby, the non-fact of it, is a tiny, desolate presence always between them, getting in the way. Sometimes when Helen looks at him it is as if she does not know who he is. He feels he is retreating in her sight, like a man standing on a railway platform, being looked back at from a window as the train pulls out, slowly at first, then gradually gaining speed. He imagines her turning from the window and settling herself on the plush seat, smiling at the other passengers in that unfocused way that she does, and taking up a magazine, and him already growing distant in her mind—
Suddenly, as if the thought had conjured the thing, the real train comes shuffling into view down the line, one of the newfangled models that run on steam, the big imperial-blue engine with the black cow-catcher and the carriages after it, scarlet with gold piping around the doors and windows, all shimmering in a silky veil of heat-haze rising from the track. On time, for once!
—And yet, an hour ago, when she came stumping comically on her knees over the bed to him and seized his face and pressed it against her breasts and laughed her tigerish laugh, surely he was wholly there, wholly himself, flesh and blood and solidly present in her arms?
What casuistries they are capable of, even the simplest-minded among them, what fine distinctions and discriminations they devise! This is what we never cease to marvel at, the mountains they make out of the molehills of their passions, while all the time their real, their savage, selves are crouched in hiding behind those outcrops, scanning the surrounds for danger or opportunity, for predators or prey.
When the train draws to a stop Roddy Wagstaff is the only passenger to get down. Tall and slender and slightly stooped, Roddy has the aspect of a film heart-throb of a former time. He wears narrow fawn slacks sharply pressed, and pale-tan, slip-on shoes, and a white shirt that fairly shines in the sunlight, the collar open over a loosely knotted yellow cravat. His caramel-coloured hair is parted at the side and carefully arranged in a casual sweep across his brow. He has green eyes and a phthisic pallor. A white linen jacket is folded over one arm, and he carries a slim pigskin suitcase, old but good, which for some reason adds a touch of the sinister to his appearance. When he sees who is there to meet him a delicate frown concentrates itself between his rather close-set eyes. He casts a dubious glance at Adam’s rust-coloured trousers and the three inches of ankle showing below the turn-ups.
Beyond that again the broad reach of the river is a whitish-blue drift throwing off fish-scales of platinum light. The silence buzzes. Down on the track a ragged grey crow hops jerkily from sleeper to sleeper, looking for something, does not find it, gives a disgruntled croak and flaps away. The surge of heedless happiness that rose in him as he drove along the lanes has all subsided now. He has shattered the sunlit surface of the day, like a clumsy gardener putting his foot through a vegetable frame to the humid tangle of things beneath. He gets up from the bench and paces anew, more agitatedly this time.
He is prey again to the fear that his marriage is failing. There is nothing definite he can point to, as that big red hand points towards the jakes, only over the past year he has been aware of an increasing vagueness, an increasing insubstantiality, in his life with Helen. Something is fading, becoming bleached and dry. Does she blame him for the miscarriage? He does not see how it could have been his fault but maybe in some way it was. He cannot be sure; he cannot be sure of anything. The fact of the lost baby, the non-fact of it, is a tiny, desolate presence always between them, getting in the way. Sometimes when Helen looks at him it is as if she does not know who he is. He feels he is retreating in her sight, like a man standing on a railway platform, being looked back at from a window as the train pulls out, slowly at first, then gradually gaining speed. He imagines her turning from the window and settling herself on the plush seat, smiling at the other passengers in that unfocused way that she does, and taking up a magazine, and him already growing distant in her mind—
Suddenly, as if the thought had conjured the thing, the real train comes shuffling into view down the line, one of the newfangled models that run on steam, the big imperial-blue engine with the black cow-catcher and the carriages after it, scarlet with gold piping around the doors and windows, all shimmering in a silky veil of heat-haze rising from the track. On time, for once!
—And yet, an hour ago, when she came stumping comically on her knees over the bed to him and seized his face and pressed it against her breasts and laughed her tigerish laugh, surely he was wholly there, wholly himself, flesh and blood and solidly present in her arms?
What casuistries they are capable of, even the simplest-minded among them, what fine distinctions and discriminations they devise! This is what we never cease to marvel at, the mountains they make out of the molehills of their passions, while all the time their real, their savage, selves are crouched in hiding behind those outcrops, scanning the surrounds for danger or opportunity, for predators or prey.
When the train draws to a stop Roddy Wagstaff is the only passenger to get down. Tall and slender and slightly stooped, Roddy has the aspect of a film heart-throb of a former time. He wears narrow fawn slacks sharply pressed, and pale-tan, slip-on shoes, and a white shirt that fairly shines in the sunlight, the collar open over a loosely knotted yellow cravat. His caramel-coloured hair is parted at the side and carefully arranged in a casual sweep across his brow. He has green eyes and a phthisic pallor. A white linen jacket is folded over one arm, and he carries a slim pigskin suitcase, old but good, which for some reason adds a touch of the sinister to his appearance. When he sees who is there to meet him a delicate frown concentrates itself between his rather close-set eyes. He casts a dubious glance at Adam’s rust-coloured trousers and the three inches of ankle showing below the turn-ups.