there were bounds to this suspended freedom in which Mansie walked beside his brother, and they were reached when in musing over Helen he remembered with quickened pulses the savour of her kisses and the contact of her body. It was as though a peril had sprung up at his side, and he would glance quickly at Tom, terrified for a moment lest Tom had guessed his thoughts. And, his eyes still hypnotically fixed on Tom, on the left leg jerking out, hanging in the air for the fraction of a second and returning a little uncertainly to the ground, he would think, ‘There’s no turning back after this. We must get married when Tom is well again.’ It seemed in a sense their duty to Tom, an acknowledgment of the greatness of his misfortune. Yes, if they were to treat this business idly it would be a wanton insult to Tom. They were bound together now, and as soon as Tom was well again they would announce their engagement and get married. Of course while Tom was ill they could not even announce their engagement: Helen agreed with him there. But what if Tom were never to get quite well? What if his leg were to jerk like this for the rest of his life, or even for the next five years? They couldn’t postpone their marriage for ever! After all, it wasn’t as if Tom’s illness was their fault. The position was unfortunate, certainly; it was a problem. Well, there was no use in worrying about it at the moment. Tom would be all right again, no doubt, in a few months. Ridiculous notions that came into one’s head!
Yet the idea of marriage disturbed Mansie, and particularly since he had begun to suspect that Jean and Brand were thinking of it too. For being married to Jean would be no joke; she would take it in deadly earnest and she would make Brand take it in deadly earnest too; she would stick to him through thick and thin; ‘till death do us part’; it absolutely scared you. No, when you thought of Jean marrying, you saw that marriage wasn’t a bed of roses by any means; it was a very serious business, almost terrifying, like joining the army. And yet it attracted you in a queer way too: burning your boats. Well, if Helen and he did that, surely that would wipe off everything. Tom could have nothing to complain of, surely, after that.
Mansie had only one really uncomfortable moment during those promenades. As they were walking through the recreation park one evening, whom should they meet but Helen. When she saw them she started visibly and seemed to be looking round her for something to hide behind, and in her confusion she actually remained standing where she was. Mansie stopped too, equally at a loss, and mechanically raised his hat. A fine figure he cut, standing there with his hat in his hand! Yet what could a fellow do in the circumstances, but simply lift his hat? Then Helen abruptly walked on, and putting his hat back on his head again Mansie followed Tom, whose left leg he saw jerking busily in front of him. Mansie fell in by his side without speaking: an unfortunate business. Tom’s face was red, and all at once he exclaimed furiously as though nobody else were there: ‘The common bitch!’ And he brought down the point of his stick with a grinding crunch on the gravel of the path. The blood rose quite slowly into Mansie’s cheeks; he felt as he had done at school when he was reprimanded before the class, felt like a schoolboy who must patiently let his face grow redder and redder and look more and more foolish without being able to answer a single word. Yet he did not resent what Tom had said; on the contrary he felt on Tom’s side; there was a secret between them now from which Helen was shut out and with which she had no concern; and in any case what right had she to fling a fellow’s hair into the sea like that! He would never be able to tell her how Tom felt, of course. Would have to put her off with some story or other.
Tom made no further comment on the incident, and their evening walks continued undisturbed. Bob Ryrie sometimes joined them, and then Mansie walked along with a still greater feeling of detachment; it was as though Tom were completely taken off his hands, and anyone passing might have thought that Bob was the solicitous brother and Mansie merely a friend good-naturedly keeping him company. Of course Brand never volunteered his society; to bother about illness was beneath him, didn’t come within his scheme of things, hadn’t anything to do with Socialism; yes, to him Tom was just a chap that would never be of any use for the movement. Bob was far more of a Socialist at heart, though he couldn’t argue your head off like Brand. A queer fish to think of getting married to. It would be a dashed funny marriage. But if Bob couldn’t spout all sorts of theories, he could make Tom talk, and that took some doing. Tom liked his company, cheered up like anything when Bob appeared. Jean, of course, pretended not to notice, never even thanked the fellow; but Bob was never given the credit that he deserved. And walking along Mansie listened to Bob drawing Tom out, telling funny stories, or discussing last season’s football form; and for a little they were all happy.
SIXTEEN
THE FIRST FEW weeks after Tom’s return from hospital passed in a Sabbath calm. All the life in the house seemed to slow down with the slowing down of Tom’s bodily movements, bringing a compulsory relaxation in which even anxiety for the future was lulled to sleep, a sleep which had to be watched over with bated breath, as one watches through the protracted crisis of an illness. It was a tension which consisted in a deliberate avoidance and postponement of tension, and it demanded somewhat the same effort that is prescribed in exercises for completely relaxing the muscles of the body.
Yet although in this Sabbath-like daily communion with her son, serene as the dawn of a new dispensation, Mrs Manson drank comfort as from a fount that had been sealed for many years, and although the thought that he might never get better did not enter her mind, often she gazed at him with sudden alarm. True, Tom’s slowness had something restful, something deliberate and leisurely, as though he were quietly reflecting on what he should do next – as he had been doing, for instance, before he got up a minute ago from his chair and walked over to the window to look down into the backyard and up at the sky, where the white June clouds were floating. And it was pleasant to see with what contentment he enjoyed his ease in bed every morning, like a good boy who has been told that he must lie still; and when he got up the leisurely care with which he put on his clothes was pleasant too, he so obviously enjoyed it. It gave one quite a sense of ease and order to see him spending such a long time on everything; on shaving, for instance, and knotting his tie, and brushing his hair. Yet even when that was done, and he had put on his waistcoat and jacket, even then he was not finished. For then he would sit down to a new occupation he had found, one that he kept to the last and seemed to enjoy most of all. Seated erect in his chair by the fireside he would take a little file from his waistcoat pocket and carefully file and polish the nails of his hands, which, after their long idleness, were nearly as white and smooth as Mansie’s. And it was when he was busied in occupations as harmless and reassuring as this that Mrs Manson would gaze across at him in sudden alarm.
The days of a sick man who is able to walk about, dress carefully and attend to his appearance, have something of an aristocratic seclusion and spaciousness. His infirmity may confine him to a pair of small rooms, but for the spatial freedom that he is denied, Time, Time in which he can do nothing at all if he chooses, richly recompenses him, translating itself into a new and more satisfying, because more amenable, dimension of space. And so when, instead of madly rushing through the far-stretching temporal vista represented by a day – in a fury to reach the end of it, as most people seem to be – one travels at one’s leisure and by easy stages, it is a form of luxury, a privilege that one cherishes, an aristocratic privilege. For when there is abundant time for everything, it becomes a matter involving one’s personal dignity that everything should be done without haste and planned in due sequence. And although at bottom all Tom’s watchful deliberation, which kept him from ever making a sudden movement, was caused simply by the necessity never to lose a beat of that internal ticking to which he was listening all the time, and which was merely the non-arrival of the pain that he dreaded and hoped would never return, the deliberation of his movements gave him genuine pleasure, the pleasure of being master both of them and of such an abundance of time. And besides, in moving with this controlled slowness one cancels, one makes merely accidental, the fact that one could not move more quickly, no matter how hard one tried. It may have been this that Mrs Manson divined when she glanced at him with that look of alarm.
In the afternoon, if it was fine, they went out for a short walk. Like everything else that Tom planned, the hour for setting out was carefully chosen; it was the dead time between the dinner rush and the dismissal of the schools, when very few people were about. Keeping to the quiet side-streets they would walk slowly along, conscientiously enjoying their constitutional, meeting little but