The Olivia Curtis Novels by Rosamond Lehmann

Author:Rosamond Lehmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

It was then the time began when there wasn’t any time. The journey was in the dark, going on without end or beginning, without landmarks, bearings lost: asleep? … waking? … Time whirled, throwing up in paradoxical slow motion a sign, a scene, sharp, startling, lingering as a blow over the heart. A look flared, urgently meaning something, stamping itself for ever, ever, ever … Gone, flashed away, a face in a train passing, not ever to be recovered. A voice called out, saying words—going on, on, on, eternally reverberating … fading out, a voice of tin, a hollow voice, the plain meaning lost, the echo meaningless. A voice calling out by night in a foreign station where the night train draws through, not stopping …

There was this inward double living under amorphous impacts of dark and light mixed: that was when we were together … Not being together was a vacuum. It was an unborn place in the shadow of the time before and the time to come. It was remembering and looking forward, drawn out painfully both ways, taut like a bit of elastic … Wearing …

There were no questions in this time. All was agreeing, answer after answer melting, lapsing into one another: “Yes” ; “Yes, darling”; “Yes”—smiling, accepting, kissing, dismissing … No argument, no discussion. No separate character any more to judge, test, learn by degrees. He was like breathing, like the heart beating—unknown, essential, mysterious. He was like the dark …

Well, I know what it is to be in love all right … What happened to the person I was beginning to know before—going home that time, going to dine with the family at Meldon? … Suddenly, the connection snapped … I remember him well: agreeable, easy-mannered, with a kind of classflavour to his flirtatiousness and wit; friendly: and then not friendly: hostile, obstinate, on his guard … Does being in love create a new person? Did I know him then, and not now? Have I swallowed him up? Vénus toute entière … No, no! Nobody could say Rollo was a victim … Could they? … Except that he’s a bit weak and in a muddle …

Beyond the glass casing I was in, was the weather, were the winter streets in rain, wind, fog, in the fine frosty days and nights, the mild, damp grey ones. Pictures of London winter the other side of the glass—not reaching the body; no wet ankles, muddy stockings, blown hair, cold-aching cheeks, fog-smarting eyes, throat, nose … not my usual bus-taking London winter. It was always indoors or in taxis or in his warm car; it was mostly in the safe dark, or in half-light in the deepest corner of the restaurant, as out of sight as possible. Drawn curtains, shaded lamp, or only the fire. …

In this time there was no sequence, no development. Each time was new, was different, existing without relation to before and after; all the times were one and the same.

The telephone rang in the morning.

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