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Back Hurry on Down Save as PDF
Chapters (14)
  1. Introduction by Nick Bentley
  2. HURRY ON DOWN
  3. I
  4. II
  5. III
  6. IV
  7. V
  8. VI
  9. VII
  10. VIII
  11. IX
  12. X
  13. About the Author
  14. About the Cover

Actually, he found afterwards that he could remember nothing, in detail, about the two hours they had spent on the water. Nothing except, oddly, Veronica’s handbag, which lay on the floor of the boat. It was of a rather distinctive shape, square and chunky, with a clip that looked like a coiled golden serpent. Each time he swayed forward, letting the wet pole slide down between his hands for its hook to bite into the gravel, his eyes focused on the handbag as it lay beside its owner’s feet, like a dog, quietly and trustfully, wishing only to hold and carry things for her, and to give up its secrets at the touch of her hands.

The funny thing about what happened afterwards was the naturalness, the ease, the absence of any fuss or strain. He had always, when he allowed himself to think about it, assumed that if ever they became lovers, it would be as a result of some ‘significant’ and purposely built up scene, a matter of formal declaration and overt discussion, or, at the very least, the outcome of some period of obvious and mutually communicated tension. But this, the actuality, was upon them silently and with no sense at all of anything to be done, consciously or sternly, no stepping over a threshold. It was merely as if they had been looking at one another through plate glass, and, being momentarily dazzled, had closed their eyes, and opened them to find that the hard, trans­parent barrier had dissolved with air.

They knew it before either of them spoke. They knew it as they walked between crumbling stone walls in the straight, golden rays of the sunset; as they sat, with glasses in their hands, at a stained wooden bench, not speaking, but thinking to each other.

At last he said, foolishly:

‘Time to be getting back, I suppose.’

She put her glass down, quietly and peacefully, and said, ‘You know, don’t you?’

‘Know what?’ he said, still foolishly, but calm, not hating himself.

‘That we’re not going back,’ she said.

‘No, we’re not going back,’ he repeated. ‘Not to-night. We’re here, and we’re together, and happy, and we’re not going back.’

‘Go and arrange it,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here and wait. Don’t be long, Charles.’

He got up to go and arrange it.

‘Please don’t be long,’ she said again.

‘Look out of the window,’ he said. ‘That’s me coming back already.’

He went and arranged it.

VII

VII