He breathed the more easily for knowing that they were leaving. But for that he would have had to hand in his resignation and get away to fresh fields himself. It would be impossible to live in daily contact with her now, having witnessed what he had witnessed. There are things that should not be seen.
He asked after her; it was like devouring his own heart. He didn’t, after all, need their answers, he could see her plainly enough moving through her sunless days, the shell of Annet, silent, secluded, drained deep in unhappiness, surviving her loss because she must. Life can’t just stop. Their version softened the picture, made it more encouraging. They offered him a sad little greeting from her; he did not believe in it, but he could not imagine why they should make it up.
Only after they had left did it occur to him that they regarded him as blessedly safe, as one who would be good for her, as the means of turning their perilous liability into a tamed, respected, domesticated schoolmaster’s wife. They wanted him to take her off their hands, and provide her with the halo of a real wedding ring.
Oh, no, he thought, not me. I’ve drawn back into my depth. I’ve given up. I know when I’m licked. On Annet’s plane of love there are precious few of us can operate with dignity, and, God help me, I’m not one.
And Jane came. Jane came oftenest. She was as off-hand as ever, didn’t make any great fuss of him, didn’t try to tell him he’d done anything heroic when he knew he’d done something stupid and short-sighted, of which he was ashamed. She told him that Regina, shocked beyond words in her respectability, but surely in her heart, too – for there was a heart somewhere under all the crust of offices – had taken up her roots for a while and gone abroad.
‘And the Becks have got a cottage somewhere down south – Cambridgeshire, I think. They hope to be in before Christmas.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘they told me. It’s the best thing they could do, for Annet and themselves.’ He hesitated over what he wanted most to ask, but it came out of itself before he was aware: ‘Have you seen Annet?’
‘Yes,’ said Jane, giving him one of those slightly disconcerting looks that had once made him speculate on whether she had designs on him, but now only warned him that she was probably making allowances for him.
‘She’ll live,’ she said shortly, before he could feel himself forced to ask. And as quickly she looked up again, herself startled by the brusque sound of it. ‘Not being flippant about it,’ she said crossly. ‘I meant it literally. She will live – a hundred per cent, some day. Well, ninety, say. Which is more than most people manage. She’s far too positive and alive ever to have wanted to die, no matter what debts she conceived she owed and was willing to honour. If you think the stuff she has in her can be battered out of shape by this or any other experience, my boy, you can think again. Don’t worry about Annet. And don’t feel sorry for her. But don’t kid yourself, either,’ she added honestly, ‘that you’ll ever get her, because I don’t think you will. Sorry, but there it is.’
He didn’t say that he agreed with her, or that he had already withdrawn from the field and acknowledged defeat. He didn’t say that he was just becoming reconciled to the idea of setting his sights, some day, on a less impossible target. There was only one Annet, now and forever out of reach; but in his new humility he was prepared to listen respectfully to the small, dry voice deep within him, assuring him that he could think himself damned lucky if some day he was able to settle for someone like Jane.
When he came out of hospital and returned to Fairford it was already November. The Hallowmount withdrew itself at morning and evening into mist, shrouding the Altar and its ring of decrepit trees. He wondered if the small, unaccountable ground-wind had abandoned, until next spring, its nightly ascent by the old paths to the old places where Annet had vanished for a while into her secret world, and whether the reverberations of her tragedy had already seeped away like spilt blood into that already saturated soil.
He had found new lodgings in Comerford, and he began to assemble his belongings in preparation for the move. He was in the hall one evening, digging out his windjacket and climbing boots from the cupboard, when the knocker rapped gently to announce a visitor.
Tom dropped his boots and went to open the door. Miles Mallindine looked at him across the threshold, composed, dogged, dignified, with a handful of late roses. In the sheltered garden close to the river they bloomed until Christmas unless discouraged.
Not everyone knows when he’s beaten. Not everyone can recognise when he’s out of his class. There was – wasn’t there? – an obligation. In pure kindness someone ought to warn him.
‘May I come in? Mrs Beck said I could drop round tonight.’
He was in already. He had a very unobtrusive way of moving, that took him where he wanted to go, even against opposition, without actually looking aggressive or even noticeably determined. And he held the roses as one neither embarrassed nor ashamed at displaying his intentions. He wasn’t smiling; sieges like the one he was contemplating are no joke.
‘Oh, of course! Annet’s in the study, doing some typing for her father, I think.’ Never had she been so gentle with his pretensions, or so willingly segregated herself behind the clacking of the keys, over his interminable notes.
He let Miles go halfway across the hall, and then he couldn’t let him go the rest; not without a word of caution, at least, because he was heading gallantly in full armour for a sickening fall.
‘Miles—’
Miles halted and turned, surprised and wary, brown eyes wide. The curled lashes arched towards his brows. Faint colour came and went in his thin, shapely cheeks. He looked like his mother; Eve disarmingly young and apparently vulnerable, but already, beyond mistake, a dangerous person.
‘Miles, I shouldn’t. There’s nothing there now for you. The best’s gone.’
‘I know,’ said Miles, not retreating a step.
He was doing this badly, but he couldn’t stop now. The detachment they had so considerately restored to him he was endangering again, but at least this was between himself and Miles, man to man again with no witnesses.
‘She won’t want to look at any man, not for a long time yet. And even if she ever does, what she’s got left to give—’
‘I know,’ said Miles, honestly, ruefully, even gratefully, but without the slightest intimation that it made any difference.
It was something in the voice that made Tom pause. He caught the maturing intonations of patience and forbearance, and turned with the sudden shock of recognition to confront himself. Here we go again, he thought. You were going to save Annet, weren’t you? You, without a clue to what went on inside her, or what she was capable of! Now you’re setting out to save Miles, and just about as likely to find him in need of it, and just about as well-equipped to make a hash of it. How do you know what he has it in him to do? Just because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and been forced to own it, does he have to give up, too? Wake up and stand by for a shock: you can be outdone!
He drew back into silence, carefully, respectfully, and looked at the whole set-up again. But what future was there in it? Next week Annet was going with her parents to Cambridgeshire, and if there was one thing certain it was that they’d never come back to Comerford.
Well, next year Miles was going to Queens’, wasn’t he? Not that the issue depended on such small, convenient accidents as that, he thought, studying the boy’s courteous, wary company-face. There was nothing here now for Tom Kenyon, no. But might there not be something for Miles Mallindine? Some day, if his patience held out?