When Hilary awoke, the plane was coming down. “Paris,” thought Hilary,as she sat up in her seat and reached for her handbag. But it was not Paris.
The air hostess came down the car saying, with that nursery governessbrightness that some travellers found so annoying:
“We are landing you at Beauvais as the fog is very thick in Paris.”
The suggestion in her manner was: “Won’t that be nice, children?” Hil-ary peered down through the small space of window at her side. She couldsee little. Beauvais also appeared to be wreathed in fog. The plane wascircling round slowly. It was some time before it finally made its landing.
Then the passengers were marshalled through cold, damp mist into arough wooden building with a few chairs and a long wooden counter.
Depression settled down on Hilary but she tried to fight it off. A mannear her murmured:
“An old war aerodrome. No heating or comforts here. Still, fortunately,being the French, they’ll serve us out some drinks.”
True enough, almost immediately a man came along with some keysand presently passengers were being served with various forms of alco-holic refreshments1 to boost their morale2. It helped to buoy3 the passengersup for the long and irritating wait.
Some hours passed before anything happened. Other planes appearedout of the fog and landed, also diverted from Paris. Soon the small roomwas crowded with cold, irritable4 people grumbling5 about the delay.
To Hilary it all had an unreal quality. It was as though she was still in adream, mercifully protected from contact with reality. This was only adelay, only a matter of waiting. She was still on her journey—her journeyof escape. She was still getting away from it all, still going towards thatspot where her life would start again. Her mood held. Held through thelong, fatiguing6 delay, held through the moments of chaos7 when it was an-nounced, long after dark, that buses had come to convey the travellers toParis.
There was then a wild confusion, of coming and going, passengers, offi-cials, porters all carrying baggage, hurrying and colliding in the darkness.
In the end Hilary found herself, her feet and legs icy cold, in a bus slowlyrumbling its way through the fog towards Paris.
It was a long weary drive taking four hours. It was midnight when theyarrived at the Invalides and Hilary was thankful to collect her baggageand drive to the hotel where accommodation was reserved for her. Shewas too tired to eat—just had a hot bath and tumbled into bed.
The plane to Casablanca was due to leave Orly Airport at ten-thirty thefollowing morning, but when they arrived at Orly everything was confu-sion. Planes had been grounded in many parts of Europe, arrivals hadbeen delayed as well as departures.
A harassed8 clerk at the departure desk shrugged9 his shoulders and said:
“Impossible for Madame to go on the flight where she had reservations!
The schedules have all had to be changed. If Madame will take a seat for alittle minute, presumably all will arrange itself.”
In the end she was summoned and told that there was a place on a planegoing to Dakar which normally did not touch down at Casablanca butwould do so on this occasion.
“You will arrive three hours later, that is all, Madame, on this later ser-vice.”
Hilary acquiesced10 without protest and the official seemed surprised andpositively delighted by her attitude.
“Madame has no conceptions of the difficulties that have been made tome this morning,” he said. “Enfin, they are unreasonable11, Messieurs thetravellers. It is not I who made the fog! Naturally it has caused the disrup-tions. One must accommodate oneself with the good humour — that iswhat I say, however displeasing12 it is to have one’s plans altered. Aprèstout, Madame, a little delay of an hour or two hours or three hours, whatdoes it matter? How can it matter by what plane one arrives at Casab-lanca.”
Yet on that particular day it mattered more than the little Frenchmanknew when he spoke13 those words. For when Hilary finally arrived andstepped out into the sunshine on to the tarmac, the porter who was mov-ing beside her with his piled-up trolley14 of luggage observed:
“You have the lucky chance, Madame, not to have been on the plane be-fore this, the regular plane for Casablanca.”
Hilary said: “Why, what happened?”
The man looked uneasily to and fro, but after all, the news could not bekept secret. He lowered his voice confidentially15 and leant towards her.
“Mauvaise affaire!” he muttered. “It crashed—landing. The pilot and thenavigator are dead and most of the passengers. Four or five were aliveand have been taken to hospital. Some of those are badly hurt.”
Hilary’s first reaction was a kind of blinding anger. Almost unpromptedthere leapt into her mind the thought, “Why wasn’t I in that plane? If I hadbeen, it would have been all over now—I should be dead, out of it all. Nomore heartaches, no more misery16. The people in that plane wanted to live.
And I—I don’t care. Why shouldn’t it have been me?”
She passed through the Customs, a perfunctory affair, and drove withher baggage to the hotel. It was a glorious, sunlit afternoon, with the sunjust sinking to rest. The clear air and golden light—it was all as she hadpictured it. She had arrived! She had left the fog, the cold, the darkness ofLondon; she had left behind her misery and indecision and suffering.
Here there was pulsating17 life and colour and sunshine.
She crossed her bedroom and threw open the shutters18, looking out intothe street. Yes, it was all as she had pictured it would be. Hilary turnedslowly away from the window and sat down on the side of the bed. Es-cape, escape! That was the refrain that had hummed incessantly19 in hermind ever since she left England. Escape. Escape. And now she knew—knew with a horrible, stricken coldness, that there was no escape.
Everything was just the same here as it had been in London. She herself,Hilary Craven, was the same. It was from Hilary Craven that she was try-ing to escape, and Hilary Craven was Hilary Craven in Morocco just asmuch as she had been Hilary Craven in London. She said very softly toherself:
“What a fool I’ve been—what a fool I am. Why did I think that I’d feeldifferently if I got away from England?”
Brenda’s grave, that small pathetic mound20, was in England and Nigelwould shortly be marrying his new wife in England. Why had she ima-gined that those two things would matter less to her here? Wishful think-ing, that was all. Well, that was all over now. She was up against reality.
The reality of herself and what she could bear, and what she could notbear. One could bear things, Hilary thought, so long as there was a reasonfor bearing them. She had borne her own long illness, she had borneNigel’s defection and the cruel and brutal21 circumstances in which it hadoperated. She had borne these things because there was Brenda. Then hadcome the long, slow, losing fight for Brenda’s life—the final defeat .?.?. Nowthere was nothing to live for any longer. It had taken the journey to Mo-rocco to prove that to her. In London she had had a queer, confused feel-ing that if only she could get somewhere else she could forget what lay be-hind her and start again. And so she had booked her journey to this placewhich had no associations with the past, a place quite new to her whichhad the qualities she loved so much: sunlight, pure air and the strangenessof new people and things. Here, she had thought, things will be different.
But they were not different. They were the same. The facts were quitesimple and inescapable. She, Hilary Craven, had no longer any wish to goon living. It was as simple as that.
If the fog had not intervened, if she had travelled on the plane on whichher reservations had been made, then her problem might have beensolved by now. She might be lying in some French official mortuary, abody broken and battered22 with her spirit at peace, freed from suffering.
Well, the same end could be achieved, but she would have to take a littletrouble.
It would have been so easy, if she had had sleeping-stuff with her. Sheremembered how she had asked Dr. Grey and the rather queer look on hisface as he had answered:
“Better not. Much better to learn to sleep naturally. May be hard at first,but it will come.”
A queer look on his face. Had he known then or suspected that it wouldcome to this? Oh, well, it should not be difficult. She rose to her feet withdecision. She would go out now to a chemist’s shop.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
refreshments
|
|
| n.点心,便餐;(会议后的)简单茶点招 待 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
morale
|
|
| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
buoy
|
|
| n.浮标；救生圈；v.支持，鼓励 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
irritable
|
|
| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
grumbling
|
|
| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
fatiguing
|
|
| a.使人劳累的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
chaos
|
|
| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
harassed
|
|
| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
shrugged
|
|
| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
acquiesced
|
|
| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
unreasonable
|
|
| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
displeasing
|
|
| 不愉快的，令人发火的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
spoke
|
|
| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
trolley
|
|
| n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
confidentially
|
|
| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
misery
|
|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
pulsating
|
|
| adj.搏动的，脉冲的v.有节奏地舒张及收缩( pulsate的现在分词 )；跳动；脉动；受（激情）震动 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
shutters
|
|
| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
incessantly
|
|
| ad.不停地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
mound
|
|
| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
brutal
|
|
| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
battered
|
|
| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |