Free The Doll by Daphne du Maurier Page B

will be a moon,’ she sighed, ‘and trees murmuring, and a brook rippling.’
    ‘I will slay some animal for your breakfast,’ he cried, his voice breaking, ‘and we’ll roast it over a roaring fire. You can wear the skin to protect you from the bitter cold.’
    ‘Don’t forget it’s June,’ she said quickly, ‘and we shall only be on Berkhamstead Common.’
    ‘How wonderful you are, darling!’
    ‘Am I?’
    The Austin Seven bumped along the country roads.
    In the evening they came to a wild stretch of heath that could be no other than their destination.
    ‘We must not pitch our tent too close to the road,’ he said. ‘I want to feel that I’m alone with you, miles from civilisation, with nothing around us but the tangled gorse.’
    ‘How shall we ever get the car over the rough ground?’ she asked.
    ‘We will leave it near the road, and we’ll strike inland towards those trees. I’ll carry the tent on my back.’
    ‘You look like a prehistoric man, passionate and savage,’ she told him.
    ‘I feel it, my darling.’
    It was dark before they had found a suitable camping-ground, and the tent was hoisted with difficulty. It had a queer list to starboard, and looked like the relic of a past age.
    ‘We are like nomads,’ she said vaguely, her mouth full of potted meat. It was cold, and she wished she had a warmer coat.
    ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he said, trying to break the neck of a ginger-beer bottle. He had forgotten the opener.
    After supper they sat outside the flapping tent, waiting for the moon that never came. Large clouds scurried across the sky.
    ‘Darling,’ he whispered, ‘to think we have waited seven years for this. At last we are alone together, really alone. I couldn’t have waited any longer.’
    ‘No, nor could I. Isn’t this the most romantic thing that’s ever happened?’
    They sat for a few minutes more.
    ‘I think I’ll go in the tent,’ she said.
    She disappeared, and he stood outside, smoking a cigarette.
    His legs shook and his hands trembled. ‘This is the most beautiful moment in my life,’ he thought.
    A sudden gust of wind blew at his hair. There was a patter in the trees, and a large cloud, hovering overhead, seemed to burst swiftly and silently.
    ‘Darling,’ she called softly.
    He tiptoed inside. Another gust of wind blew across the heath, followed by the sheeting rain.
    Two minutes later the tent fell in.
    The grey dawn crept into the sky. The battered remains of white canvas fluttered hideously in the wind, like the torn rags of some long-dead explorer. A young man hammered at the pegs with the undaunted perseverance of the very great.
    His clothes were sodden, his shoes were pulp. His bride, crouched in the fork of a tree, watched him with dull eyes. At last he admitted defeat, and kneeling in the comparative shelter of a gorse bush, he kept up a monologue that sounded like a chapter from James Joyce.
    And the rain fell and the wind blew. Once a still small voice spoke from the fork of a tree.
    ‘Darling,’ it said, ‘I believe we’d have been happier at Bournemouth, after all.’
    Two figures stood side by side on the edge of the London road.
    ‘I tell you it was here we left the car,’ he repeated for the twelfth time. ‘I remember this patch of stones.’
    ‘I’m sure it was further back,’ she said; ‘there was a broken tree stump.’
    ‘Well – wherever it was, it’s not there now. It’s been stolen; that’s all.’
    There was a sharp note of irritation in his voice. It is not every man who spends his wedding night in a gorse bush. And now the car was gone, and in it their two suitcases – nothing remained to them but the clothes they wore.
    ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘this is a calamity that has been sent to test us.’
    He said so-and-so, and so-and-so.
    She looked about her vaguely.
    ‘I don’t see how they would help us,’ she told him. ‘Besides, I don’t see any. No, darling, the only thing to do is to smile and be