The Rose and the Yew Tree

Because, as I pointed out to her, we had got to go through the rest of our lives together …

She couldn’t, she said, throw everything over like that. Her husband, she knew, wouldn’t consent to let her divorce him.

‘But he’d divorce you?’

‘Yes, I suppose so … Oh Hugh, can’t we go on as we are?’

No, I said, we couldn’t. I’d been waiting, watching her fight her way back to health and sanity. I hadn’t wanted to let her vex herself with decisions until she was once more the happy joyful creature Nature had created her to be. Well, I’d done it. She was strong again—strong mentally and physically. And we’d got to come to a decision.

It wasn’t plain sailing. She had all sorts of queer, quite unpredictable objections. Chiefly, it was because of me and my career that she demurred. It would mean a complete breakup for me. Yes, I said, I knew that. I’d thought it out, and it didn’t matter. I was young—there were other things that I could do besides schoolmastering.

She cried then and said that she’d never forgive herself if, because of her, I were to ruin my life. I told her that nothing could ruin it, unless she herself were to leave me. Without her, I said, life would be finished for me.

We had a lot of ups and downs. She would seem to accept my view, then suddenly, when I was no longer with her, she would retract. She had, you see, no confidence in herself.

Yet, little by little, she came to share my outlook. It was not only passion between us—there was more than that. That harmony of mind and thought—that delight in mind answering mind. The things that she would say—which had just been on my own lips—the sharing of a thousand small minor pleasures.

She admitted at last that I was right, that we belonged together. Her last defences went down.

‘It is true! Oh Hugh, how it can be, I don’t know. How can I really mean to you what you say I do? And yet I don’t really doubt.’

The thing was tested—proved. We made plans, the necessary mundane plans.

It was a cold sunny morning when I woke up and realized that on that day our new life was starting. From now on Jennifer and I would be together. Not until this moment had I allowed myself to believe fully. I had always feared that her strange morbid distrust of her own capabilities would make her draw back.

Even on this, the last morning of the old life, I had to make quite sure. I rang her up.

‘Jennifer …’

‘Hugh …’

Her voice, soft with a tiny tremor in it … It was true. I said:

‘Forgive me, darling. I had to hear your voice. Is it all true?’

‘It’s all true …’

We were to meet at Northolt Aerodrome. I hummed as I dressed, I shaved carefully. In the mirror I saw a face almost unrecognizable with sheer idiotic happiness. This was my day! The day I had waited for for thirty-eight years. I breakfasted, checked over tickets, passport. I went down to the car. Harriman was driving. I told him I would drive—he could sit behind.

I turned out of the Mews into the main road. The car wound in and out of the traffic. I had plenty of time. It was a glorious morning—a lovely morning created specially for Hugh and Jennifer. I could have sung and shouted.

The lorry came at forty miles an hour out of the side road—there was no seeing or avoiding it—no failure in driving—no faulty reaction. The driver of the lorry was drunk, they told me afterwards—how little it matters why a thing happens!

It struck the Buick broadside on, wrecking it—pinning me under the wreckage. Harriman was killed.

Jennifer waited at the aerodrome. The plane left … I did not come …

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_de683b10-a62b-5bb9-8dc5-5bed061338fb)

There isn’t much point in describing what came next. There wasn’t, to begin with, any continuity. There was confusion, darkness, pain … I wandered endlessly, it seemed to me, in long underground corridors. At intervals I realized dimly that I was in a hospital ward. I was aware of doctors, white-capped nurses, the smell of antiseptics—the flashing of steel instruments, glittering little glass trolleys being wheeled briskly about …

Realization came to me slowly—there was less confusion, less pain … but no thoughts as yet of people or of places. The animal in pain knows only pain or the surcease of pain, it can concentrate on nothing else. Drugs, mercifully dulling physical suffering, confuse the mind; heightening the impression of chaos.

But lucid intervals began to come—there was the moment when they told me definitely that I had had an accident.

Knowledge came at last—knowledge of my helplessness—of my wrecked broken body … There was no more life for me as a man amongst men.

People came to see me—my brother, awkward, tongue-tied, with no idea of what to say. We had never been very close. I could not speak to him of Jennifer.

But it was of Jennifer I was thinking. As I improved, they brought me my letters. Letters from Jennifer …

Only my immediate family had been admitted to see me. Jennifer had had no claim, no right. She had been technically only a friend.

They won’t let me come, Hugh darling, she wrote. I shall come as soon as they do. All my love. Concentrate on getting better, Jennifer.

And another:

Don’t worry, Hugh. Nothing matters so long as you are not dead. That’s all that matters. We shall be together soon—for always. Yours Jennifer.

I wrote to her, a feeble pencil scrawl, that she mustn’t come. What had I to offer Jennifer now?

It was not until I was out of the hospital and in my brother’s house that I saw Jennifer again. Her letters had all sounded the same note. We loved each other! Even if I never recovered we must be together. She would look after me. There would still be happiness—not the happiness of which we had once dreamed, but still happiness.

And though my first reaction had been to cut the knot ruthlessly, to say to Jennifer, ‘Go away, and never come near me,’ I wavered. Because I believed, as she did, that the tie between us was not of the flesh only. All the delights of mental companionship would still be ours. Certainly it would be best for her to go and forget me—but if she would not go?

It was a long time before I gave in and let her come. We wrote to each other frequently and those letters of ours were true love letters. They were inspiring—heroic in tone—

And so, at last, I let her come …

Well, she came.

She wasn’t allowed to stay very long. We knew then, I suppose—but we wouldn’t admit it. She came again. She came a third time. After that, I simply couldn’t stand it any longer. Her third visit lasted ten minutes, and it seemed like an hour and a half! I could hardly believe it when I looked at my watch afterwards. It had seemed, I have no doubt, just as long to her …

For you see we had nothing to say to each other …

Yes, just that …

There wasn’t, after all, anything there.

Is there any bitterness like the bitterness of a fool’s paradise? All that communion of mind with mind, our thoughts that leapt to complete each other’s, our friendship, our companionship: illusion—nothing but illusion. The illusion that mutual attraction between man and woman breeds. Nature’s lure, Nature’s last and most cunning piece of deceit. Between me and Jennifer there had been the attraction of the flesh only—from that had sprung the whole monstrous fabric of self-deception. It had been passion and passion only, and the discovery shamed me, turned me sour, brought me almost to the point of hating her as well as myself. We stared at each other desolately—wondering each in our own way what had happened to the miracle in which we had been so confident.

She was a good-looking young woman, I saw that. But when she talked she bored me. And I bored her. We couldn’t talk about anything or discuss anything with any pleasure.

She kept reproaching herself for the whole thing, and I wished she wouldn’t. It seemed unnecessary and just a trifle hysterical. I thought to myself, Why on earth has she got to fuss so?

As she left the third time she said, in her persevering bright way, ‘I’ll come again very soon, Hugh darling.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t come.’