The Lost Life Read online

  It is mid-afternoon. The day is still and sunny, with the hint of a chill. She has been to see a country house nearby, but there are only so many gardens and houses that you can admire before your attention starts to wander. And besides, she was alone (apart from the owner who kindly allowed the visit), and these things are best seen with a friend, preferably a special friend. It is then the flowers glow and the lawns sparkle. But she was alone, and not wearing a watch had lost track of time, and weary of gardens and lawns and old estate houses she excused herself and strolled back along a well-trodden walking track that took her back into town. And she felt quite the native returning in this manner. No, she didn’t need a lift, she’d told the owner, and no, she didn’t need directions home — all of which impressed him. Yes, she felt quite the native. The sheep bleated and the cows looked up from time to time from their munching, and she felt at home. Except she wasn’t. And she knew she wasn’t. Her friend, for whom she’d crossed land and sea and time, was in London, at work. She was in the country, and bored with country houses, with their estates and gardens. Would this be the way of things? She, always the woman who must be tucked away in some quaint country town in a foreign country, waiting on visits from her friend, who must not say a word of her except to those to whom he is close enough to confide in? And even those friends close enough to confide in, she was sure, no matter how much their loyalties would always be with her friend, would always see her as his stuffy Boston lady. Stuffy, over-refined. Like one of those women from Mr James whose observations always bear the imprint of a provincial intelligence. One look at the long, bony nose and beady eyes of Mrs Woolf and she was convinced that this was exactly what she thought of her. The whole bunch of them for that matter. She, Miss Hale, forever judged and forever found wanting; refined, polite and dull, only ever tolerated — perhaps indulged, at best — because she was Tom’s special friend, and, therefore, must be tolerated. It was no way to live, and who were they to judge, anyway? And how could anybody put up with those eyes and those silences that would inevitably follow anything she said in conversation, unless, of course, her friend came to her rescue. Which would set everybody off, and then they’d all be talking. The conversation would continue. She would be forgotten. She, the stuffy Boston lady, forever tucked away in some quaint little town … It was only at this point that she’d realised that she was clutching a handful of crisp autumn leaves and a brown stem that she must have snatched from a bush along the way. She’d compressed them in her fist to such a degree that the leaves were crushed and the stem had dug into her palm (or perhaps this had happened when she snatched the leaves from the bush), leaving a small cut with a red smudge around it. Only then did she feel the sting. She’d stopped, and looking down at her palm and the blood asked herself when this ridiculous business had started. Is this, indeed, the way it would always be? As much as she might have commended herself on being quite the native when she left the estate she’d just visited, walking back to town was another matter. Thoughts about the way things would be, about the pattern that was emerging, had made her ratty (not a word she often used) and restless — and, yes, far from home.

  Besides, as much as she tried to ignore them, thoughts of Catherine surfaced at odd moments during the day. Catherine and this young man of hers. Now back in the house and finding it still and quiet, she assumes, and is relieved to assume, that it has simply been cleaned, tidied and left. She assumes that the house has been arranged and left undisturbed for much of the day. Her aunt and uncle are, presumably, still away visiting friends, and although she contemplates calling out just to see if they might be in, she sees no need. After the ratty and irritable finish to the day, she needs peace and rest.

  When she goes upstairs and takes the connecting door through to her cottage, she is aware of the soothing quiet of the place and is thankful for it. Distant, occasional birdsongs from the high street outside the window filter through into the ordered tranquil rooms. But nothing much more.

  It is only as she is about to drop her cardigan onto the chaise longue under the window in her bedroom that she hears something that doesn’t belong. And at first she doesn’t recognise the sound, only that it doesn’t fit in with the neatness and calmness of the place and that it is an intrusion. But what? Then it returns, louder this time, and she knows right away that this sound is coming from the small bedroom next to hers, just on the other side of the stairs that lead down to the lounge room of the cottage. It is muffled but quite audible, the sound of someone groaning, or gasping, the way one does when experiencing deep pain, or, perhaps, deep pleasure. And instantly, as she quietly sinks onto the chaise longue, she knows who is behind that door, no more than ten or twelve feet from where she is sitting.

  And, as much as a voice says don’t listen, as much as a voice says don’t stay, just rise and leave as quietly as you came, she stays, and the sound draws her in. And the more she listens, the louder it becomes, whether it is because she is listening more intently or because it is louder and because that small second bedroom (which may, at some stage, have been a maid’s room) is so close, she doesn’t know. But it grows and grows in volume. Until it fills the air and it is as though some dreadful act of violence is taking place in the next room. Murder. Strangulation. Heaven knows what. Then it comes again, louder still. And, as much as she wants to be gone now, as much as she simply does not wish to hear any more, and as much as she now feels an intruder in her own house, and as much as a voice inside her tells her that such sounds are beneath the lady, she stays, for she is in the sound’s thrall. This thing, this thing that is going on in the next room, has her in its thrall, and as much as the angel of her better nature counsels her to go, the beast of temptation holds sway, and she knows as she sinks further into the long chair that the lady has made her choice. And the sound seems to grow even more, if that is possible. It is a woman, or was once a woman. For this young woman, Catherine, is making old, old sounds, sounds that existed long before houses and estates and trimmed rose gardens. Long before sweet music, stained-glass windows that glow with a touch of heaven, or even fine, uplifting words that allow us to rise above it all, for it is a sound that goes back beyond words. It is a sound that takes her back to the age of the grunt and the moan. And this is what draws her in — as the elevated will, with longing and disgust, look upon the animal they imagine they once were. This is what has her in its thrall, this sound of the thing itself taking place in the next room. This is it. The wordless swamp to which lovers go. But, even as she utters the word ‘swamp’ to herself, the shudder that passes down her spine also carries with it the thrill of a shiver. This is the thing that takes young couples out to the sheep paddocks where only the animals can hear and look upon them. This is the thing that announces itself through the grass stains on the skirts of young women strolling back hand in hand from the paddocks with the young men who led them there or whom they led.

  Then, there is a louder gasp, a gasp of pain, surely. For she felt it. She felt it as surely as if she were in that room, the room where, right now, two people are entering that world of shared knowledge and experience that she has never entered and which she knows she never will. There are, she has told Catherine often enough, different kinds of love, and Miss Hale and her friend have chosen theirs. And she asks herself once more: was it an accident that she came home early or was it on purpose? Or did she do it ‘accidentally on purpose’? And did she seek to brush with this knowledge and experience that is open to any local girl, and which she might readily find in a sheep paddock on any summer evening, but which will never be hers because it must now remain beneath the lady and beneath her friend? And, because of this, did she come back to hear the sound of knowledge being acquired and exchanged? And just as she submits herself to this relentless questioning, telling herself not to be shocked (from the moment she sank into the chaise longue she knew that all shock was mere pretence, for she had come here to be shocked), just as she was telling herself not to be revolted because she had
come here to be revolted, and just as she was telling herself not to pronounce any of this beneath the lady (for the lady had come to fall), there is an extended gasping sound, the kind of gasp that is emitted when someone is hit by a pain so sudden it takes their breath away, and her brain stops. Her brain is numbed, as if having felt the experience along with Catherine. And the sound goes on and on, seemingly without end, a sound that is beyond caring who or what hears, a sound that may as well be coming from a sheep paddock as a room. And Emily Hale is there. She, too, is emitting it, this sound that doesn’t care who hears because it comes from so long ago — before music, manners and fine words. And when it fades, when the sound subsides, Emily Hale, too, physically feels her body collapse with the dying fall of the sound in the next room, feels her back, stomach, legs and chest sigh into welcome rest. Her head drops, the imagined pain lessens, and she listens.

  Her ears strain, but there is nothing. Only silence. A deep, almost lush silence. A restful silence, she imagines. The silence that, well, lovers fall into when they have finished their love-making. The moment of languid ease that paintings of lovers choose to depict, the moment after the brutality of the love-making is over and done with. This is that silence. The silence that poems and novels give you, when you know something momentous has taken place, when two people, two halves have come together briefly, and rest separately afterwards. No, not separately. Possibly they are holding hands. Perhaps they are still locked in embrace. She can only imagine the scene in the room. And she dwells on the many possibilities, for the quiet calm that hangs in the air is the kind of calm that calls forth contemplation and speculation. And even though she is shaken throughout her whole body, she remains perfectly still, albeit sunk, into the chaise longue, her thoughts floating on the now calm air. She could almost doze off into restful sleep herself. And so she stays in the thrall of this all too welcoming silence much longer than she knows she really ought to. But as much as a distant voice tells her that she has stayed too long, and dwelt much too long in its thrall, she stays on. And on, taking it all into her.

  But at some point it also occurs to her that it is an unnerving silence, one which, it strikes her, is even more frightening than the sounds she has just borne witness to. More frightening because the silence — and there is now something unnatural about it — cuts her off, excludes her from the thing taking place in the next room. Until now she had heard the gasps, and felt the rest. Until this silence, that is, which has cut her off from the thing and rendered whatever is now going on in that room an utterly private experience as apart from a ‘felt’ one. But of course she knows she felt nothing and emitted no sounds, only imagined pain and imagined pleasure. She no more felt any of it than she would a printed kiss. She no more felt any of it than she would the softness and moist warmth of written lips. And somehow, at this moment, that’s not enough. And as she lifts her head and takes in the pervasive silence, which has now returned to the house, she is feeling what she at first takes to be envy. Envy that this young girl, who is the same age that she was when she stood in that long-ago Boston garden, has taken this knowledge into her, and that all she, Emily Hale, will ever know of it is the sound of knowledge being acquired and becoming experience.

  But slowly, in the continuing quiet, something different, reassuring, almost comforting, comes to her. For when she tries to imagine herself where this young Catherine now is, and the sweet, smiling face of her special friend where this young Daniel is, she can’t. It would destroy them. She knows this. It is impossible. No, after these last few minutes (or were they more — she has lost all track of time?) she cannot now imagine herself in that room, and perhaps she has never been able to imagine herself like this. What we become is what we are, and what we were always going to be. And what she was back there in that long-ago Boston garden is what she is now. So when she imagines herself in their place she can’t. Or won’t. They are, presumably, naked. Visible to each, completely naked … no, it is impossible. She cannot conceive of herself naked before her friend, or he suffering the indignity of being naked before her. It would destroy them. It is beneath her, but, more importantly, beneath him. No, she could never conceive of herself in that room (and she is relieved that Catherine has chosen the spare room with its single, maid’s bed and not hers, otherwise she could never sleep in her own bed again) where love of a certain brute kind has just been exchanged. She could never conceive of it, and nor could her friend. And if the accident of returning early has taught her anything, it has taught her this.

  But while she is absorbing all of this, she is also aware that this silence, this sleep into which the house has fallen, presents another problem. The problem of leaving without being heard. For her footsteps, the opening and closing of the door that leads back into the house, will surely be amplified in the silence. But, at the same time, she knows she must leave, and that she must not forget her cardigan, for it will show Catherine that she has been here and heard everything. But, as she is reaching for it, as she is about to make her exit, the door of the next room (which is directly opposite the chaise longue and of which she has a clear view because her door is open) bursts open with an eruption of laughter.

  Daniel, like some indolent child of the aristocracy, has just, in the manner of dismissing the staff, ordered the ‘maid’ back to work. But Catherine has no sooner burst into laughter than she opens the door and the laughter stops. She thinks she must have imagined it. That her guilt has conjured up Miss Hale. But she’s not a vision, a product of the imagination, guilty or otherwise. It’s her, all right. And she’s just sitting there, on the other side of the stairwell, under her wide bedroom window, on the … what do you call it?…chaise longue, directly in front of her, no more than ten or twelve feet away, as surprised at the sudden appearance of Catherine as Catherine is surprised at the sudden materialising of Miss Hale.

  One look in her eyes and Catherine (who has mercifully remembered to throw on her loose everyday working dress) is convinced she has made a dreadful mistake. That she has completely misunderstood everything. That Miss Hale informed her of certain facts about the house being vacant the day before purely in the line of duty, things that she, as casual domestic staff in the service of Miss Hale, ought to know, and that was that. But she, Catherine, hadn’t left it at that, had she? Catherine had concluded from all this exactly what she wanted to conclude, and, in the process, had got things dreadfully wrong. One look at Miss Hale’s eyes, and she is convinced of this. These are Miss Hale’s rooms, after all. But she has had the presumption to treat them as her own. Like those servants in romping stories that get up to all sorts of high-jinks when the master’s away, but who are inevitably found out, and in the most flagrantly compromised manner. How could she? How could she get it so wrong? These are Miss Hale’s rooms and she has soiled them, as surely as she has soiled the sheets. What on earth had she been thinking?

  Catherine stands stock still in the doorway. Daniel, thank goodness out of view, lying naked on the tiny single bed and having heard the guillotine come down on Catherine’s laughter, has immediately concluded that the lady is back. Absurdly, but reflexively, he pulls a sheet over him (which Catherine catches from the corner of her eye, and which almost, against her will, causes her to burst into yet more laughter), and turns his face, frozen in apprehension, to the doorway and to Catherine. They are two children caught out while up to no good — or caught out in the execution of some prank they have mutually agreed upon. They are suddenly aware of their nakedness. Expelled from the brief paradise of having a room of their own. Catherine, motionless in the doorway, everything, arms, legs, hands, perfectly still (as if she were modelling the scene), staring directly back at Miss Hale.

  It is, Catherine imagines, like one of those childish games when two people stare at each other and the first to blink loses. And she is convinced it will be her because she is so clearly in the wrong for having taken advantage of Miss Hale’s rooms in the most unforgivable way, for having broken her trust so
completely. And she is about to drop her chin to her chest and find some words to say, although she is not sure she can speak at all at the moment. But, unbelievably, it is Miss Hale who breaks first. Miss Hale who blinks, whose gaze shifts down to the floor. An odd gesture of what? Of dismissal, that she can’t bear to look upon her any more? That the very sight of Catherine is distasteful? It might be, but something in the way her body slumps tells Catherine that it is not distaste or dismissal. Something in the lady’s slumped posture tells her otherwise. And she doesn’t need to think too long on what this lowering of the eyes means. For, Catherine is thinking, haven’t we all done precisely this? Haven’t we all lowered our eyes in admission … of what? Of guilt? Yes, that’s it. Haven’t we all done this? Yes, yes. Only Catherine had never thought she’d see the eyes of Miss Hale lowered in such a manner. But this is precisely what has just occurred, and in Miss Hale’s gesture Catherine reads apology. And in reading apology she also reads that permission was always granted, and that she hadn’t got things dreadfully wrong. That she hadn’t soiled Miss Hale’s rooms as surely as she had soiled the sheets. That Miss Hale is not the sort who just comes out and says things, and that Catherine had understood her instructions perfectly.

  An odd sense of power accompanies the realisation. And, once more, the word ‘virgin’ occurs to Catherine as she contemplates the slumped figure of Miss Hale in front of her. Miss Hale, who has loomed larger than life through her summer, but who now has never looked so small. Again, the word ‘virgin’ comes to her. And this is where her sudden sense of power comes from, for Catherine holds in her hands the testimony (a rolled-up bed sheet with a visible small red smudge) that she, Catherine, has had the experience — whether it brought pleasure or was simply something to be endured in the end, for the pleasure and the pain are not the point — she, Catherine, has had the experience that has haunted Miss Hale all these years. Something Miss Hale has sought out, in one way or another, all these years. Not just the act, but the completion of a moment left suspended. And for a while it must have seemed that ordinary love (and it was perhaps the ordinariness that would have been bestowed upon her, not the act itself, that mattered) might have come Miss Hale’s way. But it wasn’t to be. No, her friend, instead, had bestowed upon her a ‘different’ kind of love.