‘You see, I think we both had agreed that we were not in love with each other for always, but we were both young, and so we might as well get all the fun we could. And then, three days before he sailed, he suggested that we get married.
I had had proposals from nearly every soldier I had been at all kind to, just as all the other girls did, and so I wasn’t surprised much. I told him I had other men friends and I knew that he knew other women, but neither of us bothered about that. He told me he expected to know women in France and that he didn’t expect me to be a hermit while he was gone. And so we met the next morning and got married and I went to work.
‘He called for me at the canteen while I was dancing with some boys on leave, and the other girls all congratulated us (lots of them had done the same thing), only some of them teased me abut being a highbrow and marrying an officer. You see, we all got so many proposals we hardly listened to them, and I don’t think they listened to us, either.
‘He called for me and we went to his hotel. You see, Joe, it was like when you are a child in the dark and you keep on saying, It isn’t dark, it isn’t dark. We were together for three days and then his boat sailed. I missed him like the devil at first. I moped around without anybody to feel sorry for me: so many of my friends were in the same fix, with no sympathy to waste. Then I got dreadfully afraid I might be going to have a baby and I almost hated Dick. But when I was sure I wasn’t I went back to the canteen, and after a while I hardly thought of Dick at all.
‘I got more proposals, of course, and I didn’t have such a bad time. Sometimes at night I’d wake up, wanting Dick, but after a time he got to be a shadowy sort of person, like George Washington. And at last I didn’t even miss him any more.
‘Then I began to get letters from him, addressed to his dear little wife, and telling me how he missed me and so forth. Well, that brought it all back again and I’d write him every day for a time. And then I found that writing bored me, that I no longer looked forward to getting one of those dreadful flimsy envelopes, that had already been opened by a censor.
‘I didn’t write any more. And one day I got a letter saying that he didn’t know when he’d be able to write again, but it would be as soon as he could. That was when he was going up to the front, I guess.
I thought about it for a day or two and then I made up my mind that the best thing for both of us was just to call the whole thing off. So I sat down and wrote him, wishing him luck and asking him to wish me the same.
‘And then, before my letter reached him, I received an official notice that he had been killed in action. He never got my letter at all. He died believing that everything was the same between us.’
She brooded in the imminent twilight. ‘You see, I feel some way that I wasn’t square with him. And so I guess I am trying to make it up to him in some way.’
Gilligan felt impersonal, weary. He took her hand and rubbed his cheek against it. Her hand turned in his and patted his cheek, withdrawing. (Holding hands! gloated young Robert Saunders.) She leaned down, peering into Gilligan’s face.
He sat motionless, taut. Take her in my arms, he debated, overcome her with my own passion. Feeling this, she withdrew from him, though her body had not moved.
‘That wouldn’t do any good, Joe. Don’t you know it wouldn’t?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I know it,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘I’m sorry, Joe,’ she told him in a low voice, rising. He rose and helped her to her feet. She brushed her shirt and walked on beside him. The sun was completely gone and they walked through a violet silence soft as milk. ‘I wish I could, Joe,’ she added.
He made no reply and she said: ‘Don’t you believe me?’
He strode on and she grasped his arm, stopping. He faced her and in her firm sexless embrace he stood staring at the blur of her face almost on a level with his own, in longing and despair. (Uhuh, kissing! crowed young Robert Saunders, releasing his cramped limbs, trailing them like an Indian.)
They then turned and walked on, out of his sight. Night was almost come: only the footprint of day, only the odour of day, only a rumour, a ghost of light among the trees.
5
He burst into his sister’s room. She was fixing her hair and she saw him in the mirror, panting and regrettably soiled.
‘Get out, you little beast,’ she said.
Undaunted, he gave his news: ‘Say, she’s in love with Donald, that other one says, and I seen them kissing.’
Her arrested hands bloomed delicately in her hair.
‘Who is?’
‘That other lady at Donald’s house.’
‘Saw her kissing Donald?’
‘Naw, kissing that soldier feller that ain’t got no scar.’
‘Did she say she was in love with Donald?’ she turned, trying to grasp her brother’s arm.
‘Naw, but that soldier said she is and she never said nothing. So I guess she is, don’t you?’
‘The cat! I’ll fix her.’
‘That’s right,’ he commended. ‘That’s what I told her when she sneaked up on me nekkid. I knowed you wouldn’t let no woman beat you out of Donald.’
6
Emmy put supper on the table. The house was quiet and dark. No lights yet. She went to the study door. Mahon and his father sat in the dusk, quietly watching the darkness come slow and soundless as a measured respiration. Donald’s head was in silhouette against a fading window and Emmy saw it and felt her heart contract as she remembered that head above her against the sky, on a night long, long ago.
But now the back of it was towards her and he no longer remembered her. She entered that room silently as the twilight itself and standing beside his chair, looking down upon his thin worn hair that had once been so wild, so soft, she drew his unresisting head against her hard little hip.
His face was quiet under her slow hand, and as she gazed out into the twilight upon which they two gazed she tasted the bitter ashes of an old sorrow and she bent suddenly over his devastated head, moaning against it, making no sound.
The rector stirred heavily in the dusk. ‘That you, Emmy?’
‘Supper’s ready,’ she said quietly. Mrs Powers and Gilligan mounted the steps on to the veranda.
7
Doctor Gary could waltz with a level glass of water on his head, without spilling a drop. He did not care for the more modern dances, the nervous ones. ‘All jumping around — like monkeys. Why try to do something a beast can do so much better?’ he was wont to say. ‘But a waltz, now. Can a dog waltz, or a cow?’
He was a smallish man, bald and dapper, and women liked him. Such a nice bedside manner. Doctor Gary was much in demand, both professionally and socially. He had also served in a French hospital in ‘14, ‘15, and ‘16. ‘Like hell,’ he described it. ‘Long alleys of excrement and red paint.’
Doctor Gary, followed by Gilligan, descended nattily from Donald’s room, smoothing the set of his coat, dusting his hands with a silk handkerchief. The rector appeared hugely from his study, saying: ‘Well, Doctor?’
Doctor Gary rolled a slender cigarette from a cloth sack, returning the sack to its lair in his cuff. When carried in his pocket it made a bulge in the cloth. He struck a match.
‘Who feeds him at table?’
The rector, surprised, answered: ‘Emmy has been giving him his meals — helping him, that is,’ he qualified.
‘Put it in his mouth for him?’
‘No, no. She merely guides his hand. Why do you ask?’
‘Who dresses and undresses him?’
‘Mr Gilligan here assists him. But why—’
‘Have to dress and undress him like a baby, don’t you?’ he turned sharply to Gilligan.
‘Kind of,’ Gilligan admitted. Mrs Powers came out of the study and Doctor Gary nodded briefly to her. The rector said:
‘But why do you ask, Doctor?’
The doctor looked at him sharply. ‘Why? Why?’ he turned to Gilligan. ‘Tell him,’ he snapped.
The rector gazed at Gilligan. Don’t say it, his eyes seemed to plead. Gilligan’s glance fell. He stood dumbly gazing at his feet, and the doctor said abruptly: ‘Boy’s blind. Been blind three or four days. How you didn’t know it I can’t see.’ He settled his coat and took his derby hat. ‘Why didn’t you tell?’ he asked Gilligan. ‘You knew, didn’t you? Well, no matter. I’ll look in again tomorrow. Good day, madam. Good day.’
Mrs Powers took the rector’s arm. ‘I hate that man,’ she said. ‘Damn little snob. But don’t you mind, Uncle Joe. Remember, that Atlanta doctor told us he would lose his sight. But doctors don’t know everything: who knows, perhaps when he gets strong and well he can have
