The Tunnel Page 16

  “But of course,” she would say kindly, “you can see the whole thing’s impossible. It’s been fun, seeing you again and talking to you, but when you think about it again, really think about it, is what you ask practical? In the light of events, I mean?”

  That was the way to talk, to explain; as though he were a child. Sympathetically, understandingly, and with a sweet smile. Patience, all the way through.

  “You’ve been killed twice,” she would say. “Once during the war, and once when your car was smashed at the tunnel, just down the hill here. Now is it sensible to keep trying?”

  She had forgotten what his face looked like, even though it had been only this morning when she had seen it again. She would study it this time, search it for signs of maturity.

  The bedroom door opened soundlessly, and once again she began the long journey through the black, clammy hall. She moved lightly on the balls of her feet, like a wraith, she thought, smiling indulgently at her fancy. Past the half-open door of the old bathroom; her fingers found the smooth wood of the heavy balustrade and she moved dreamily down the curve of the staircase. One Natalie was upstairs, asleep in bed; the other went out to do battle for the gentle sleeping one.

  Outside at last, she breathed deeply of the icy air and walked swiftly, darting from shadow to shadow for the fun of it. This was the way soldiers moved in darkness and moonlight when they attacked at night.

  The pavilion lay at the rise of the hill, just before it began to slope toward the orchard on one side and the railroad tracks on the other. It was a nice place to sit in the summertime, a simple wooden affair of platform and railing, shaded by a tall maple that now loomed leafless, noisy with creaking boughs. Natalie perched on a railing and waited. It was too cold to take off her coat. He would have to guess about the dress; no use to humor him by risking pneumonia.

  It was strange, now she thought about it, that she wasn’t frightened.

  She felt almost protected and warm, as if the sun were beating down on her heart. Something friendly would meet her here, someone who put her best interests above his own. Someone she loved.

  No, she corrected herself; someone she had loved. Yet her mind persisted in calling the love a thing of the present; her mind reached out joyfully in welcome to the footsteps in the crackling snow that now approached the pavilion by the same route she had come. She got off the railing and stood, impatiently, eagerly, smilingly, for the greatest wonder she had ever known was coming, and then she could wait no longer; she jumped the two steps to the ground and ran, with arms outstretched, to the tall figure on the path.

  Trev held her close. His voice was tight and strained with worry.

  “Nat. Why?”

  He had caught her completely unaware, but she didn’t care. Bob would never come now, with Trev here. She couldn’t act. She couldn’t think. She hadn’t planned what to say to Trev. She would have to say something; give some reason why she had wandered out to the summer pavilion in the dead of night. Time; time to think, time to plan.

  “I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “I just—wanted to. I—couldn’t sleep.”

  His lips were against her hair; he held her as though he would never in the world let her go.

  “You gave me a turn,” he said shakily. “I thought you were walking in your sleep. I thought … never mind.”

  “You followed me.” It was an accusation.

  “Of course I followed you! Why wouldn’t I? I was lying awake and I heard you and I followed you! Did you think I’d let you sit out here all night?”

  Natalie began to cry soundlessly; air forced its way through her lungs in great shaking gasps.

  Trev picked her up and carried her to the house. He was strong and outraged. But he wouldn’t ask her why again. He would wait for her to tell him. She gave herself up to weariness and clung to him.

  In the middlemost part of the tunnel the walls are dank and the water drips. Once in a while a beam of light shoots through the ceiling, but it doesn’t mean you’ve come to the end. If you had to stay in the tunnel forever, you would go mad.…

  If everyone else on the train went mad and you stayed sane, then you were the mad one. To save yourself, you must save the world!

  That was the law of the tunnel.

  Chapter 27

  Natalie wrote swiftly now, covering page after page with her neat handwriting. When she came to the end of her report on the happenings to date, she laid down her pen and sat back in her chair. Memories were crowding upon her, memories of the year with Trev, the first year of their marriage, before they had come back to live in the Sherrett house, before Trev had gone back to the mill.

  Natalie searched for a word to describe her marriage that year, and the only word she found that came close to it was complete. She had thought she knew everything there was to know about Trev, and she worshipped everything she knew. Seen in retrospect, that year had been the happiest of her life, the most satisfactory in every way. She and Trev were like every newly married couple in the world; they needed no one but themselves, everything they did together was fun. The simple mechanics of living—cooking breakfast and dinner, shopping for groceries, cleaning house—all those things were rare and delightful. They had laughed so much. They had talked so much. They had loved so surely. They had looked forward to years and years of the same.

  Yet when they spoke of the future, they referred to it happily as “when we settle down.” That meant that every day was going to be charmingly the counterpart of the day before, with no sudden orders to snatch them out of one city and dump them helter-skelter into another. In June of 1945 women were no longer afraid, terribly afraid, of enforced and dangerous separation; there was a feeling that if your husband was not on active duty in June, 1945, he probably wouldn’t be in July. Of course, there was always a definite chance, but the odds were greater against it. Besides, you were used to the war by then and were no longer as afraid as you had been, but only expectant of the worst. Expectance of the worst was a kind of charm, an amulet, that you wore on a chain around your neck. It kept you from digging in too much, or making too many close friends, or taking too much for granted. You didn’t put in too much time and work on the place where you happened to be living, because you might have to move on before you finished.

  The Army had sent Trev to Seattle and Natalie had followed him out a few weeks later. She found him fascinated and awed with the northwest, which he had never seen before. On Sundays they drove in their shaky second-hand car to the Cascades, where the incredibly tall, gaunt pines commanded dignified silence from the land.

  “It’s the first time in my life,” Trev said solemnly, “that my ears popped going up and down hills.”

  “These aren’t hills,” Natalie laughed, “they’re mountains. Do you want to be a westerner, darling? Then don’t belittle Snoqualmie Pass.”

  “Belittle? How could anybody, Nat? Hey, the damn radiator’s boiling again.”

  When that happened they would pull over to the side of the road, leaving the car to cool off, and explore. Once they found a bridge of rocks over the rushing current of Green River. Natalie, skipping across like a little girl, lost her footing and fell in. She stood in cool water up to her hips and roared with laughter. Trev wouldn’t pull her out till he’d snapped her picture.

  “I’m all wet,” she moaned. “Trev, for heaven’s sake …”

  “There’s an extra pair of slacks in the car,” he told her, grinning. “I thought something like this would happen.” By the time they got back to the car her flannel skirt, partially dried by the sun, had shrunk to a point above her knees. “Never mind,” Trev said. “You can use it for skating next winter.”

  They toured the Seattle waterfront on foot and ate fish and chips in a whitewashed shed near the museum. “There’s so much air,” Trev marvelled. “It’s so fresh and clean and blue and white. You get a feeling there ought to be guys in buckskins strolling around.”

  “A fourth-generation business suit,”
Natalie said sagely, “isn’t so far removed from the frontier at that.”

  The house and Mother Sherrett were far away. Before Nat’s eyes, Trev seemed to grow more easygoing, less bound-round by rules and restrictions of manner and speech. He took to talking to everybody, asked questions like a small boy, ran up their narrow stairs at night, shouting for her as he came. He insisted on going swimming every night before dinner.

  “There’s so much water here,” he said, “you can’t waste it.”

  They swam in the choppy waters of Lake Washington and in the breathtaking frigidity of Puget Sound. They played tennis on public courts. Occasionally they rented a sailboat and joined the straggling fleet of wheeling Stars and Flatties. They grew brown, salt sprayed and strong.

  By a miracle, Natalie found an apartment on the third floor of a remodeled house, not too far from the Lake. The last tenants, who were Navy, had started to make a cozy little place of the dismal two rooms, but a transfer had interrupted them in the middle of it. Exactly half of the living-room walls and ceiling had been painted a neat blue; the other half was the old dingy brown. Natalie, clutching her amulet, left it that way; she bought a vacuum cleaner and a scrubbing brush and worried when Trev even wanted to hang a picture on the wall.

  “It’s bad luck,” she said. “They might send us back to Washington.”

  “What about your vacuum cleaner? Wasn’t it bad luck to buy that?”

  “That’s different,” said Nat. “It’s planning for the future. We’ll need it when we settle down.”

  She unbent also to the point of buying new white curtains for the bedroom and a new cotton spread for the bed.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go back to Washington, although Washington was in travelling distance of Kenwood. It was only that she wanted to stay in one place for a while. When they returned, as they inevitably must, the return would be permanent. It never occurred to her that they’d actually live in the Sherrett house, with Trev’s mother. Natalie thought in terms of a cottage somewhere near, containing modem furniture thoughtfully acquired, flower pots on the window sills, and a part-time maid. She wanted to begin from the beginning, because that was the way to build a marriage. She wanted to shop, and plan, and save. She wanted them to have their own friends and their own life, and surely, she thought, that was not so much to want. The only barrier was the war, but that would be over soon.

  The day of the Japanese surrender, Natalie waited at the bus stop for Trev. When she saw him swing off, the tears rained down her face, and she ran to him.

  “Now,” she whispered against his military blouse. “Now, oh, Trev.”

  Yes, she thought ironically, musing before her small desk, with the manuscript neatly piled before her. Yes, they had had an idyllic year. They had been just like anybody else, with the same privileges, the same desires, the same small joys.

  And then they had settled down.

  The vacuum cleaner, not such a good make as Mrs. Sherrett’s, had been relegated to the attic of Mrs. Sherrett’s house. For months after they came home, Natalie insisted on considering it the nucleus of their future small, uncluttered house. She thought they would add to the vacuum cleaner from time to time—a chest of drawers, a coffee table, a lamp. But they never did.

  Their final trip across the continent was really the last time they were together and alone. Trev was excited about the mill, talked constantly about its expansion and modernization.

  “Mother will be a big help,” he said almost fatuously. “She knows more about it than I do.”

  “Me too” something inside Natalie whispered. “I can be a big help too. Let me be a big help.”

  So she told him about Mona.

  “I know a wonderful designer,” she said. “If you’re very good, I’ll introduce you to her sometime. From the samples you’ve shown me, I’d say you could use someone who can think up more than bitsy sprigs of flowers.”

  “Say!” said Trevil. “You’re pretty pert, aren’t you? Who is this amateur you want me to hire?”

  Mona Desmé was no amateur, Natalie told him; she was original and experienced. “She’s also beautiful, witty, and charming. She was my best friend at school. You’d have to pay her thousands, probably, but she’d be worth it.”

  She was really pleased with the inspiration of Mona. Trevil would soon see that he had no reason to be skeptical.

  Natalie now shuddered at her own naïveté. Trevil certainly had soon discovered that very thing, too well. Natalie had practically signed her own death warrant on the train that day. (Hadn’t Trev said some such thing about his commission in the Army?) She remembered they had been coming through the round, humped hills of western Montana, the hills that always reminded her of elephant backs. Hills they were, no more than hills; they had left the mountains behind.

  They arrived in Kenwood at tea time. Tea time couldn’t have suited Mrs. Sherrett better. She waited for them before the fire; she was beautifully gowned in pale lavender and her hair was piled smoothly on her aristocratic middle-aged head. She stretched out her arms to them, the arms that had embraced death so many times, not yet to herself.

  “Children,” she said. “Welcome home.”

  They were instantly children, glad to be allowed in for tea with the grownups. She had given them, she said, the suite in the north hall. There were two bedrooms and a connecting bath; the rooms were perfect, in much better taste, Natalie thought, than hotel rooms; and here you had the added privilege of roaming the house and grounds. At first they had used only one of the bedrooms and had referred to the other as their “guest room.” But as they lived more and more in Mrs. Sherrett’s antique world and less and less in their own, one room became known as Natalie’s and the other as Trev’s. Natalie often felt guilty when Trev came to call on her, and still more guilty when she realized her guilt.

  Weeks later they were still in the house. Trev said he didn’t see how they could leave. “Mother’s lonely and I don’t think she’s very well, Nat. There’s room for us here, and that’s more than most people have. We’re lucky. Very lucky, in fact—” A second honeymoon, where her wedding night was clear in her memory again.

  Yes, they were lucky; they were shot with luck. They were in clover. Mother knew best. She could advise Trev about the mill, and she could advise Natalie about her clothes. She could advise Natalie about friends, drinking, and the need to introduce a grandchild into the family circle.

  So the settling down became a matter of listening to the trains, of listening to Mrs. Sherrett at the dinner table, of listening to rain on the windowpanes, of listening to Trev and Cam whimsically playing chess. Of listening for the clink of a poison pill as it struck the bottom of the coffee pot.

  Trev was breezy no longer; he spoke only to those to whom he had been introduced; he told her to throw away his red-and-white-checked mackinaw; once again his manner grew cultured, polite, and faintly bored. The day he told her he was letting his mustache grow again was the day Natalie realized the vacuum cleaner would probably be her single housewifely possession.

  It was then; yes, just about then, that she began to remember it was time for Bob to come home again, too. Whatever goes up must come down. Everything must have a beginning, but its end may be the end of you.

  Chapter 28

  The front doorbell rang, startling Natalie out of her preoccupation. There was only one person it could be, at this early hour of the afternoon, and that was Sarah Olessa. Sarah was always darting around the countryside doing little errands and making little calls. Never a sick old lady that didn’t see Sarah’s honest face at least once a week, and if Sarah needed a ball of twine or a box of thumbtacks, she made a special trip to the village to get it. Sarah had time for running around because she was so organized. Her house was as neat as a pin, her meals were always served on time, and they always consisted of, for dinner, soup, meat or fish, potatoes and a vegetable; lemon pudding was Sarah’s dessert specialty. The food was good but unflavored.

&n
bsp; Sarah could, she said, cook with her hands behind her back. While she waited, Natalie pictured Sarah stirring at her pots with her large white teeth firmly clenched to the spoon handle. It was Sarah’s pitiful boast that all the day’s groceries were in her house before nine-thirty in the morning.

  “Hello,” she called from the other side of the closed bedroom door. “May I come in?”

  “Of course,” said Natalie. “Sarah, darling.”

  They kissed. Sarah’s cheek was cool, wet, and healthy. Today she wore a heavy tweed suit under a stiff trench coat, with unbecoming brown brogues on her feet. Her hat was felt, and black, perching above the twisted bun at the back of her head. From her gray eyes shone the knowledge of good deeds done, with yet more to accomplish.

  Natalie sighed. Sarah carried a neat little basket covered with, of all things, a bit of snowy linen. Sarah had something in that basket, probably a nice jar of calf’s-foot jelly; but for the red cloak and hood which Beth invariably wore in Little Women, Sarah might indeed have been that noble member of the March family.

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “Never mind making faces at me. I’ve brought you something to eat. Not that there isn’t enough food in this house, but Trev says you won’t swallow any of it to speak of.”

  Natalie was touched in spite of herself. Women like Sarah always thought that food would solve the difficulties of the world, even difficulties of the spirit. She should have had six children to bring up on her saltless, pepperless, herbless diet; but she had none, thereby supplying herself with time to call upon the ill. Mentally or physically ill, it made no difference to Sarah.