Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [102]
"Get up on the roof, you people, or stay on the porch, just make yourselves at home," came from downstairs. "There's a pair of binoculars on the table there--er--Hugh's... I won't be a minute."
"Any objection if I go on the roof?" Hugh asked them.
"Don't forget the binoculars!"
Yvonne and the Consul were alone on the flying balcony.
From where they stood the house seemed situated half-way up a cliff rising steeply from the valley stretched out below them. Leaning round they saw the town itself, built as on top of this cliff, overhanging them. The clubs of flying machines waved silently over the roofs, their motions like gesticulations of pain. But the cries and music of the fair reached them at this moment clearly. Far away the Consul made out a green corner, the golf course, with little figures working their way round the side of the cliff, crawling... Golfing scorpions. The Consul remembered the card in his pocket, and apparently he had made a movement towards Yvonne, desiring to tell her about it, to say something tender to her concerning it, to turn her towards him, to kiss her. Then he realized that without another drink shame for this morning would prevent his looking in her eyes. "What do you think, Yvonne," he said, "with your astronomical mind--" Could it be he, talking to her like this, on an occasion like this! Surely not, it was a dream. He was pointing up at the town.
"--With your astronomical mind," he repeated, but no, he had not said it: "doesn't all that revolving and plunging up there somehow suggest to you the voyaging of unseen planets, of unknown moons hurtling backwards?" He had said nothing.
"Please Geoffrey--" Yvonne laid her hand on his arm. "Please, please believe me, I didn't want to be drawn into this. Let's make some excuse and get away as quickly as possible... I don't mind how many drinks you have after," she added.
"I wasn't aware I'd said anything about drinks now. Or after. It's you that have put the thought into my head. Or Jacques, whom I can hear breaking--or should we say, crushing?--the ice down below."
"Haven't you got any tenderness or love left for me at all?" Yvonne asked suddenly, almost piteously, turning round on him, and he thought: Yes, I do love you, I have all the love in the world left for you, only that love seems so far away from me and so strange too, for it is as though I could almost hear it, a droning or a weeping, but far, far away, and a sad lost sound, it might be either approaching or receding, I can't tell which.
"Don't you think of anything except of how many drinks you're going to have?"
"Yes," said the Consul (but wasn't it Jacques who'd just asked him this?), "yes, I do--oh my God, Yvonne!"
"Please, Geoffrey--"
Yet he could not face her. The clubs of the flying machines seen out of the corner of his eye, now seemed as if belabouring him all over. "Listen," he said, "are you asking me to extricate us from all this, or are you starting to exhort me again about drinking?"
"Oh, I'm not exhorting you, really I'm not. I'll never exhort you again. I'll do anything you ask."
"Then--" he had begun in anger.
But a look of tenderness came over Yvonne's face and the Consul thought once more of the postcard in his pocket. It ought to have been a good omen. It could be the talisman of their immediate salvation now. Perhaps it would have been a good omen if only it had arrived yesterday or at the house this morning. Unfortunately one could not now conceive of it as having arrived at any other moment. And how could he know whether it was a good omen or not without another drink?
"But I'm back," she was apparently saying. "Can't you see it? We're here together again, it's us. Can't you see that?" Her lips were trembling, she was almost crying.
Then she was close to him, in his arms, but he was gazing over her head.
"Yes, I can see," he said, only he couldn't see, only hear, the droning, the weeping, and feel, feel the unreality."I do love you. Only--" "I can never forgive you deeply enough": was that what was in his mind to add?