The Lonely Unicorn: A Novel

by Alec Waugh

He shut away all thought of the dark years that must follow the passing of that first enchantment and fixed his mind on the sure pleasures that awaited him. How wonderful, after all, marriage could be. To return home at the end of the day and find your wife waiting for you. You would be tired and she would take you in her arms and run cool fingers through your hair, and you would talk together for a while, and she would tell you what she had done during the day, and you would tell her of whom you had met and of the business you had transacted, and you would bring your successes and lay them at her feet and you would say: "I made so much money to-day." And your words would lock that money away in her little hand—"All yours," they would seem to say. Then you would go upstairs and change for dinner, and when you came down you would find her standing before the fire, one long, bare arm lying along the mantelpiece, and you would come to her and very slowly pass your hand along it, and, bending your head, you would kiss the smooth skin of her neck. And could anything be more delightful than the quiet dinner together? Then would come the slow contentment of that hour or so before bedtime, while the warmth of the fire subsided slowly and you sat talking in low tones. And, afterwards, when you were alone in the warm darkness to love each other. Marriage must be a very fine adventure.

The next day brought with it its own problems, and on this Saturday morning in early autumn the white mist that lay over the roofs of Hammerton was a sufficient object of speculation. Did it veil the blue sky that adds so much to the charm of cricket, or a grey, sodden expanse of windy, low-flying clouds. It was the last Saturday of the cricket season. Roland was, naturally, bound for Hogstead, and there is no day in the whole year on which the cricketer watches the sky with more anxiety. In May he is impatient for his first innings, but as he walks up and down the pavilion in his spiked boots and hears the rain patter on the corrugated iron roof he can comfort himself with the knowledge that sooner or later the sun will shine, if not this week, then the next, and that in a long season he is bound to have many opportunities of employing that late cut he has been practising so assiduously at the nets. In the middle of the season he is a hardened warrior; he takes the bad with the good; he has outgrown his first eagerness; he has become, in fact, a philosopher. Last week he made seventy-two against the Stoics and was missed in the slips before he had scored. Such fortune is bound to be followed by a few disappointments. But at the end of the season a wet day is a dire misfortune. As he sits in the pavilion and watches the rain sweep across the pitch he remembers that only that morning he observed the erection of goal posts on the village green, that the winter is long and slow to pass, that for eight months he will not hold a bat in his hands, that this, his last forlorn opportunity of making a century, is even now fast slipping from him.

The depression of such a day is an abiding memory through the grey months of January and December, and, though Roland had had a fairly successful season, he was naturally anxious to end it well. He was prepared to distrust that mist. He had seen many mists break into heavy sunshine. He had also seen many mists dissolve into heavy rain. He knew no peace of mind till the sky began to lighten just before the train reached Hogstead, and he did not feel secure till he had changed into flannels and was walking down to the field on Gerald's arm, their shadows flung hard and black upon the grass in front of them.

It was a delightful morning; the grass was fresh with the dew which a slight breeze was drying; there was hardly a worn spot on the green surface, against which the white creases and yellow stumps stood in vivid contrast. An occasional cloud cut the sunlight, sending its shadow in long ripples of smoke across the field.

"And to think," said Gerald, "that this is our last game this season."

But for Roland this certainty marred the enjoyment of the blue sky and the bright sunshine. "This is the last time," he repeated to himself. For eight months the green field, so gay now with the white figures moving in the sunlight, would be desolate. Leaves would be blown on to it from the trees; rain would fall on them. The windows of the pavilion would be barred, the white screens stacked in the shelter of a wall.

After his innings he sat beside Muriel in the deck-chair on the shaded, northern terrace. But he felt too sad to talk to her and she complained of his silence.

"I don't think much of you as a companion," she said. "I've timed you. You haven't said a word for ten minutes."

He laughed, apologised and endeavoured to revert to the simple badinage that had amused them when Muriel was a little girl in short frocks, with her hair blowing about her neck, but it was not particularly successful, and it was a relief when Gerald placed his chair on the other side of Muriel and commenced a running commentary on the game. Roland wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Occasionally a stray phrase or sentence of their conversation percolated through his reverie.

"What a glorious afternoon it's going to be," he heard Muriel say. "It seems quite absurd that this should be your last game. One can't believe that the summer's over. On a day like this it looks as though it would last for ever!"