The Romantic | Page 9

bad enough she would stop thinking about him;
she would stop caring. She didn't want to care.
* * * * *
"Charlotte--when I die, that's where I'd like to be buried."
Coming back from Bourton market they had turned into the churchyard
on the top of Stow-hill. The long path went straight between the stiff
yew cones through the green field set with graves.
"On the top, so high up you could almost breathe in your coffin here."

"I don't want to breathe in my coffin. When I'm dead I'm dead, and
when I'm alive I'm alive. Don't talk about dying."
"Why not? Think of the gorgeous risk of it--the supreme toss up. After
all, death's the most thrilling thing that happens."
"Whose death?"
"My death."
"Don't talk about it."
"Your death then."
"Oh, mine--"
"Our death, Jeanne."
He turned to her in the path. His mouth was hard now, but his eyes
shone at her, smiling, suddenly warm, suddenly tender.
She knew herself then; she knew there was one cruelty, one brutality
beyond bearing, John's death.

IV
John had gone away for a week.
If she could tire herself out, and not dream. In the slack days between
hay-time and harvest she was never tired enough. She lay awake, teased
by the rucking of the coarse hot sheet under her back, and the sweat
that kept on sliding between her skin and her night gown. And she
dreamed.
She was waiting in the beech ring on the top of the field. Inside the belt
of the tree trunks a belt of stones grew up, like the wall of the garden. It
went higher and higher and a hole opened in it, a long slit. She stuck
her head through the hole to look out over the hills.
This was the watch-tower. She knew, as if she remembered it, that John
had told her to go up and wait for him there; she was keeping watch for
him on the tower.
Grey mist flowed over the field like water. He was down there in the
field. If she went to him he would take her in his arms.
She was walking now on the highway to Bourton-on-the-Hill. At the
dip after the turn shallow water came out of the grass borders and ran
across the road, cold to her naked feet. She knew that something was
happening to John. He had gone away and she had got to find him and
bring him back. She had got to find the clear hill where the battleship
sailed over the field.

Instead of the ship she found the Barrow Farm beeches. They stood in a
thick ring round a clearing of grey grass and grey light. John was
standing there with a woman. She turned and showed her sharp face,
the colour of white clay, her long evil nose, her eyes tilted corner and
the thin tail of her mouth, writhing. That was Miss Lister who had been
in Gibson's office. She had John now.
Forms without faces, shrouded white women, larvae slipped from the
black grooves of the beech trunks; they made a ring round him with
their bodies, drew it in tighter and tighter. The grey light beat like a
pulse with the mounting horror.
She cried out his name, and her voice sounded tragic and immense;
sharp like a blade of lightning screaming up to the top of the sky. A
black iron curtain crashed down before her and cut off the dream.
Gwinnie looked up over the crook of her knee from the boot she was
lacing.
"You made no end of a row in your sleep, Sharlie."
* * * * *
She had dreamed about him again, the next night. He was walking with
her on the road from the town to the Farm. By the lime kiln at the turn
he disappeared. He had never been there, really.
She had gone out to look for him. The road kept on curling round like a
snake, bringing her back and back to the white gate of the Farm.
When she got through the gate she stepped off the field on to the low
bridge over a black canal. The long, sharp-pointed road cut straight as a
dyke through the flat fields, between two lines of slender trees, tall
poles with tufted tops.
She knew she was awake now because the light whitened and the wind
moved in the tree tufts and the road felt hard under her feet. When she
came to the village, to the long grey walls with narrow shutters, she
knew John was there. He came down the street towards the canal bridge.
A group of women and children walked with him, dressed in black.
Dutch women. Dutch babies. She could see their