“You’re not angry with me . . . for disturbing you?”
“Angry! Oh, my dear, I’ve been lying here, longing and longing to hear what you have just told me.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of you waiting, through what might have been a sleepless night.” He paused. “Now I am here, may I stay a little while and talk?”
“Yes, stay, stay. I am wide awake now. Shall I switch on the lamp?”
“No, dearest. I can see you clearly now.”
“And I can see you.” She gave a low joyful sigh. “Oh, I’m so happy. Do you know what I was half dreaming, just before you came in?”
“Tell me, dear.”
“That we were out in Kwibu together and that Uncle Willie . . .” she hesitated, then opened her heart, “that Uncle Willie was marrying us in the Mission church.”
“And so he will, dear Kathy.”
They remained looking at each other. His heart, swelling in his side, was a pain and a delight. With gentle fingers he began gently to stroke her arm.
“I am still thinking of our future,” she went on in a lulled, dreamy voice. “All settled. You and I together.”
Outside rain and hail kept drumming on the window, then came a flash and a crack of thunder. He shivered slightly.
“Dear David, you are cold. Please get a rug to cover yourself.”
“It is chilly.” A lump rose in his throat, yet he spoke reasonably, with calm moderation. “If you could share the counterpane, we could bundle—like they do in the Islands at home. There’s so much we have to say to one another.”
A moment later he lay beside her, but in the semi-darkness, fumbling to lift the counterpane, almost inadvertently, he had raised also the blanket and linen sheet that covered her. Her face was close to his on the pillow. At first she had turned rigid, lying so still he thought she had ceased to breathe, then he felt that she was trembling. Quickly he reassured her.
“Dearest, you know I don’t mean to distress you.”
“But David . . .”.
“I respect and cherish you more than anything in the world.”
Gradually, very slowly, she relaxed. The warmth of her young body came to him through her cotton nightdress. The rain hissed down the gutters and thunder rolled and echoed amongst the mountains. Half turning, he pressed his lips against her hair.
“David, this is wrong,” she said at last, in a breaking voice. “Please don’t let us do a wrong thing.”
“Darling,” he said, with deep conviction, “how could it be wrong? We are already one in the sight of Heaven.”
“Yes, David, but please let us wait, dear.”
“Don’t you love me enough?”
“Oh, I do—I do—so much that it hurts. But we’d be so sorry, after.”
“No, dear Kathy, love like ours is itself a forgiveness.”
“But David . . .”.
“And surely my—our mutual pledge makes this moment a sacred one.” He could feel the struggle within her. He murmured earnestly: “It cannot be wrong, dear, when in only a few days, almost a matter of hours, Willie will marry us.”
He took her in his arms, inhaling the scent of her fresh young skin. How thin and slight she was, how young, and how violently her little heart was beating against his breast, like a bird just captured and fluttering in its cage.
“No, David, dearest.”
Then, nature overcame, released her from conscience. Sighing, she put both her hands behind his neck and kissed him fiercely. “I cannot help it. I love you so much it’s . . . like dying.”
A consciousness of rectitude welled up in him. Whispering, he sought to still her trembling. Pure unprofane sex was no sin, a sanctification rather, almost an act of worship—that had been said recently, ecclesiastically, had it not?—in a court of law. Tenderly enclosing her, he readjusted his embrace, but with prayerful gentleness. How sweet at last to taste the slow pleasure, the mounting rapture, all in the odour of sanctity. Later, as he felt her tears on his cheek, he sighed, appeased, though still exalted.
“You are crying. But why, dear child?”
“I’m afraid for what we’ve done, David.”
“Was it not sweet for you too, my love?”
“Yes, it was sweet,” her voice stifled in the pillow. “But it was a sin, David, and God will punish us.”
“No, dearest. He knows. He will understand. And if you think it was just a little wrong, you know we will make up for it.”
She is different from her mother, he thought dreamily, as of a shadow passing before him. Mary had no regrets. Yet she too had turned religious, in the end.
“Don’t, dear,” he said soothingly, wiping her hot sad face with the cool entangled sheet. “Think of our work—of the happiness that lies ahead of us.”
“Yes, David.” Striving obediently to check her tears, she clung to him. “I am trying . . . thinking of you and me, David, in the little Mission church.”
Chapter Thirteen
At Zurich airport, striding to and fro between the flower stall and the newspaper kiosk that flanked the exit of the douane, Moray expanded his chest with a long deep breath, suffused by a new sense of the joy of living. The sensation was so strong he smiled involuntarily, and it was a proud smile. Often he had experienced a delightful consciousness of himself, but never before with such intensity as now. He had seen the Super-Constellation land, it could be no more than a matter of minutes before Willie appeared. Admittedly he was nervous, and for that reason, among others, had managed to persuade Kathy not to accompany him, explaining that for her so emotional a reunion was best conducted in private. In any event, she was still rather agitated, not yet quite herself. When he looked into her room before leaving for the airport, he had been concerned to find her kneeling in contrite prayer. But while he respected these tender scruples, they would pass. If he himself felt a twinge of compunction, he was sustained by the inner consciousness that he was at last on the way he had sought so long, loved for the vital decision he had taken, a man with a mission in life, soon to savour the joy of energetic action the thrill of enthusiasm, the sacred peace of duty accomplished. Rising early, he had squared his shoulders against the task ahead. Already the latest medical textbooks had been ordered by telephone, inquiries sent out as to tropical equipment, consideration given to the adjustment and settlement of his affairs. Looking back he now regarded the emptiness, the falsity, of his previous life with shamed and scornful self-contempt. But the future prospect exonerated him, filled him with the double anticipation of spiritual regeneration and the sweetness of continued love.
He paused abruptly in his promenading. Customs examination was over, the passengers of the big Trans-World plane from Luanda via Lisbon were filing through the glass doors, and there, at the end of the line, came a tall, emaciated-looking man with sloping shoulders, carrying a small blue airlines zipper bag, dressed in an open-necked drab shirt and a thin khaki service suit, the blouse with flat pockets suggestive of the war-time pattern. He wore no hat and his streaky sun-bleached hair had the same colour as his face which, lined and sunken, was of a withered yellow. But his eyes, though hollow in their orbits, were still youthful, almost unnaturally bright, and, meeting them across the crowd, Moray knew that, unmistakably, this was Willie.
They shook hands. Then to Moray’s relief—for despite his newfound faith in himself he had experienced a sudden wilting inrush of near-panic—Willie smiled.
“You knew me,” he said. “And I knew you, too.”
“Wonderful to see you again. Kathy is expecting you at the house. Was it a good flight? Have you had lunch?” In his excitement Moray almost babbled, there was so much he wanted to say, to explain, all in one breath.