Dangerous Ages

Neville, at five o’clock (Nature’s time, not man’s) on the morning of her birthday, woke from the dream-broken sleep of summer dawns, hot with the burden of two sheets and a blanket, roused by the multitudinous silver calling of a world full of birds. They chattered and bickered about the creepered house, shrill and sweet, like a hundred brooks running together down steep rocky places after snow. And, not like brooks, and strangely unlike birds, like, in fact, nothing in the world except a cuckoo clock, a cuckoo shouted foolishly in the lowest boughs of the great elm across the silver lawn.

Neville turned on her face, cupped her small, pale, tanned face in her sunburnt hands, and looked out with sleepy violet eyes. The sharp joy of the young day struck into her as she breathed it through the wide window. She shivered ecstatically as it blew coldly onto her bare throat and chest, and forgot the restless birthday bitterness of the night; forgot how she had lain and thought “Another year gone, and nothing done yet. Soon all the years will be gone, and nothing ever will be done.” Done by her, she, of course, meant, as all who are familiar with birthdays will know. But what was something and what was nothing, neither she nor others with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of life, but still they are not ready to depart.

They all turned up at The Gulls, St. Mary’s Bay, in time for lunch on Mrs. Hilary’s birthday. It was her special wish that all those of her children who could should do this each year. Jim, whom she preferred, couldn’t come this time; he was a surgeon; it is an uncertain profession. The others all came; Neville and Pamela and Gilbert and Nan and with Gilbert his wife Rosalind, who had no right there because she was only an in-law, but if Rosalind thought it would amuse her to do anything you could not prevent her. She and Mrs. Hilary disliked one another a good deal, though Rosalind would say to the others, “Your darling mother! She’s priceless, and I adore her!” She would say that when she had caught Mrs. Hilary in a mistake. She would draw her on to say she had read a book she hadn’t read (it was a point of honour with Mrs. Hilary never to admit ignorance of any book mentioned by others) and then she would say, “I do love you, mother! It’s not out yet; I’ve only seen Gilbert’s review copy,” and Mrs. Hilary would say, “In that case I suppose I am thinking of another book,” and Rosalind would say to Neville or Pamela or Gilbert or Nan, “Your darling mother. I adore her!” and Nan, contemptuous of her mother for thinking such trivial pretence worth while, and with Rosalind for thinking malicious exposure worth while, would shrug her shoulders and turn away.

Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her depth. They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday. The only one who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big white limbs in tumbling waves on the shore; Rosalind, whom she disliked; Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious.

“You wonderful woman! I can’t think how you do it,” Rosalind was crying to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splashing waves. “But fancy their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get cramp and sink. I’m no use, you know; I’m hopeless; can’t keep up at all.”

“I shan’t trouble you, thank you,” Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice shook a little because she was getting chilled.

“Why, you’re shivering,” Rosalind cried. “Why don’t you come out? You are wonderful, I do admire you.⁠ ⁠… It’s no use waiting for the others, they’ll be ages.⁠ ⁠… I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three. I never knew such a family.⁠ ⁠… Come and sit in the waves with me, it’s lovely and warm.”

“The fact is, I sleep very badly. Not particularly just now, but always.⁠ ⁠… I thought.⁠ ⁠… That is, someone told me⁠ ⁠… that there have been wonderful cures for insomnia lately⁠ ⁠… through that new thing.⁠ ⁠…”

“Which new thing? Sedobrol? Paraldehyd? Gilbert keeps getting absurd powders and tablets of all sorts. Thank God, I always sleep like a top.”

“No, not those. The thing you practice. Psychoanalysis, I mean.”

“Oh, psycho. But you wouldn’t touch that, surely? I thought it was anathema.”

“But if it really does cure people.⁠ ⁠…”

Rosalind’s eyes glittered and gleamed. Her strawberry-red mouth curled joyfully.

“Of course it has.⁠ ⁠… Not that insomnia is always a case for psycho, you know. It’s sometimes incipient mania.”

“Not in my case.” Mrs. Hilary spoke sharply.

“Why no, of course not.⁠ ⁠… Well, I think you’d be awfully wise to get analysed. Whom do you want to go to?”

“I thought you could tell me. I know no names.⁠ ⁠… A man,” Mrs. Hilary added quickly.

“Oh, it must be a man? I was going to say, I’ve a vacancy myself for a patient. But women usually want men doctors. They nearly all do. It’s supposed to be part of the complaint.⁠ ⁠… Well, I could fix you up a preliminary interview with Dr. Claude Evans. He’s very good. He turns you right inside out and shows you everything about yourself, from your first infant passion to the thoughts you think you’re keeping dark from him as you sit in the consulting room. He’s great.”

Bulls, even, Gerda was called upon to face, in the wake of two unafraid males and a reckless aunt. What young female of twenty, always excepting those who have worked on the land, and whose chief reward is familiarity with its beasts, can with complete equanimity face bulls? One day a path they were taking down to the sea ran for a while along the top of a stone hedge, about five feet high and three feet wide. Most people would have walked along this, leading their bicycles. Nan, naturally, bicycled, and Barry and Kay, finding it an amusing experiment, bicycled after her. Gerda, in honour bound, bicycled too. She accepted stoically the probability that she would very soon bicycle off the hedge into the field and be hurt. In the fields on either side of them, cows stared at them in mild surprise and some disdain, coming up close to look. So, if one bicycled off, it would be into the very jaws, onto the very horns, of cattle. Female cattle, indeed, but cattle none the less.

Then Kay chanted “Fat bulls of Basan came round about me on either side,” and it was just like that. One fat bull at least trotted up to the hedge, waving his tail and snorting, pawing and glaring, evincing, in short, all the symptoms common to his kind.

So now if one bicycled off it would be into the very maw of an angry bull.

“You look out you don’t fall, Gerda,” Kay flung back at her over his shoulder. “It will be to a dreadful death, as you see. Nobody’ll save you; nobody’ll dare.”