Plot Synopsis (continued)
After
lunch, they innocently attend the cinema together, choosing to see "Love
in the Mist" at the Palladium. [Laura insists that they each
pay their own separate admission but Alec buys them tickets for the
upstairs balcony anyway. The trailer/preview before the main feature
is for a film titled "Flames of Passion" - advertised as: "Stupendous," "Colossal," "Gigantic," and "Epoch-Making."
Laura: I feel awfully grand perched up here. It was
very extravagant of you.
Alec: It was a famous victory.
Laura: Do you feel guilty at all? I do.
Alec: Guilty?
Laura: You ought to more than me, really. You neglected your work
this afternoon.
Alec: I worked this morning. A little relaxation never did harm to
anyone. Why should I always feel guilty?
Laura: I don't know.
Alec: How awfully nice you are!
The movie theatre's organ ascends from underneath the
floor, causing Laura to exclaim: "It can't be!" They share
a laugh together.
We walked back to the station together. Just as we
reached the gates, he put his hand under my arm. I didn't notice
it then, but I remember it now.
Laura: What's she like, your wife?
Alec: Madeleine? Small, dark, rather delicate.
Laura: How funny! I supposed she would have been fair.
Alec: And your husband. What's he like?
Laura: Medium height. Brown hair. Kindly, unemotional, and not delicate
at all.
Alec: You said that proudly.
Laura: Did I?
They share a cup of tea and fresh Banbury buns at a
corner table in the railway station's refreshment room before their
trains depart in opposite directions. He admits to being a social
idealist - combined with boyish, youthful enthusiasm for his occupation
in preventive medicine. Slowly and imperceptibly behind their very
understated British restraint and formality, the couple finds their
lives are transformed by their mutual attraction, with intense moments
of great tenderness, gentleness, and loving care:
Laura: Why did you become a doctor?
Alec: That's a long story. Perhaps because I'm a bit of an idealist.
Laura: I think all doctors ought to have ideals, really. Otherwise,
their work would be unbearable.
Alec: Surely, you're not encouraging me to talk shop.
Laura: Why shouldn't you talk shop? It's what interests you most,
isn't it?
Alec: Yes, it is. I'm terribly ambitious really, not ambitious for
myself so much as for my special pigeon.
Laura: What is your special pigeon?
Alec: Preventive medicine.
Laura: I see.
Alec: I'm afraid you don't.
Laura: I was trying to be intelligent.
Alec: Most good doctors, especially when they're young, have private
dreams. That's the best part of it. Sometimes though, those get over-professionalized
and strangulated...What I mean is this, all good doctors must primarily
be enthusiasts. They must, like writers and painters and priests,
they must have a sense of vocation. A deep-rooted, unsentimental
desire to do good.
Laura: Yes, I see that.
Alec: Well, obviously one way of preventing disease is worth fifty
ways of curing it. That's where my ideal comes in. Preventive medicine
isn't anything to do with medicine at all, really. It's concerned
with conditions, living conditions and hygeine and common-sense.
For instance, my specialty is pneumoconiosis...it's nothing
but a slow process of fibrosis of the lung due to the inhalation
of particles of dust. In the hospital here, there are splendid opportunities
for observing cures and making notes because of the coal mines.
Laura: You suddenly look much younger.
Alec: Do I?
Laura: Almost like a little boy.
Alec: What made you say that?
Laura (as the lyrical Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto plays
in the background): I don't know. Yes I do.
Alec: Tell me.
Laura: No, I couldn't really. You were saying about the coal mines.
Alec: Oh yes. The inhalation of coal dust...
They look intently into each other's eyes and the music
builds, as Alec recites various forms of lung disease and his idealistic
dedication to his medical profession. Their conversation comes to
an end when Alec's train bell sounds. Hastily, Alec initiates further
meetings ("Shall I see you again?"). They make plans to
continue seeing other, not by chance any more but in planned meetings
during Thursday rendezvous that eventually become less and less innocent:
Laura: It's been so very nice. I've enjoyed my afternoon
enormously.
Alec: I'm so glad. So have I. I apologize for boring you with long
medical words.
Laura: I feel dull and stupid not to be able to understand more.
Alec: Shall I see you again?
Laura (not answering his question): It's out on the platform, isn't
it? You have to run. Don't bother about me. Mine's not due for a
few minutes.
Alec: Can I see you again?
Laura: Yes, of course. Perhaps you'll come out to Ketchworth one
Sunday. It's rather far, but we should be delighted...
Alec: Please, please.
Laura: What is it?
Alec: Next Thursday, the same time.
Laura: No, I couldn't possibly.
Alec: Please. I ask you most humbly.
Laura: You'll miss your train.
Alec: All right.
Laura: Run.
Alec (extending his hand): Goodbye.
Laura: I'll be there.
Alec: Thank you, my dear.
Following their third meeting together (after meeting
a month earlier), they cheerfully wave to each other as Alec's train
departs. Laura ponders every action Alec may make as he returns home
- but then a wave of doubt sweeps over her as she struggles with
her romantic yearnings:
I stood there and watched his train draw out of the
station. I stared after it, until its tail light had vanished into
the darkness. I imagined him getting out at Churley, giving up
his ticket, walking back through the streets, letting himself into
his house with his latchkey. His wife Madeleine, will probably
be in the hall to meet him, or perhaps upstairs in her room, not
feeling very well. Small, dark, and rather delicate. I wondered
if he'd say: 'I met such a nice woman at the Kardomah. We had lunch
and went to the pictures.' And then suddenly, I knew that he wouldn't.
I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he wouldn't say a word - and
at that moment, the first awful feeling of danger swept over me.
(The steam from her arriving train hisses at her.)
In the train compartment on the trip home, she guiltily
wonders about the other passengers, squirming and averting her eyes
when she senses that a clergyman across from her may perceive her
sinful blushing:
I looked hurriedly around the carriage, to see if
anyone was looking at me, as if they could read my secret thoughts.
No one was, except a clergyman in the opposite corner. I felt myself
blushing and opened my library book and pretended to read.
Tormented, she buries her frustrated longing and vows
never to see Alec again. She blames herself for neglecting her obligations
at home when she returns and finds that her child has been hurt in
an accident:
By the time I got to Ketchworth, I'd made up my mind
definitely that I wasn't going to see Alec anymore...I walked up
to the house quite briskly and cheerfully. I'd been behaving like
an idiot admittedly, but after all, no harm had been done. You
met me in the hall. Your face was strained and worried and my heart
sank.
Her young boy was knocked down by a car on his way
home from school and suffered a "slight concussion." She
hovers over his bed, terrified and imagining being punished for straying
from society's conventions and neglecting family responsibilities:
I felt so dreadful, Fred, looking at him lying there
with that bandage round his head. I tried not to show it, but I
was quite hysterical inside, as though the whole thing were my
fault, a sort of punishment, an awful sinister warning.
An hour or two later however, Bobbie felt better and "reveled
in the fact that he was the center of attraction." In front
of the domestic hearth fire while Fred stolidly works on another
crossword puzzle, they discuss options for Bobbie's future - a career
in the distant navy or in a nearby office where she can "see
him off on the 8:50 every morning." Suddenly, Laura spins around
and confesses her rendezvous with Alec, but her kindly, unquestioning
husband is more interested in his crossword puzzle than in her. He
misunderstands her worries about her new acquaintance:
Laura: I had lunch with a strange man today and he
took me to the movies.
Fred: Good for you.
Laura: He's awfully nice. He's a doctor.
Fred: A very noble profession.
Laura: Oh dear.
Fred: It was Richard the Third who said: 'My kingdom for a horse,'
wasn't it?
Laura: Yes, darling.
Fred: Yes, well I wish to goodness he hadn't, 'cause it spoils everything.
Laura: I felt perhaps we might ask him to dinner one night.
Fred: By all means. Who?
Laura: Dr. Harvey. The one I was telling you about.
Fred: Must it be dinner?
Laura: Well, you're never at home for lunch.
Fred: Exactly.
Laura: Oh Fred (laughing)...
Fred: Now what on earth's the matter?
Laura: It's nothing...oh Fred...
Fred: I really don't see what's so frightfully funny.
Laura: Oh, I do. It's, it's all right darling. I'm not laughing at
you. I'm laughing at me. I'm the one that's funny. I'm an absolute
idiot. Worrying myself about things that don't exist and making mountains
out of molehills.
Fred: I told you when you came in that it was nothing serious. There
was nothing to get into such a state about.
Laura: I do see that now, I really do (more elated laughing).
The next Thursday, a dutiful Laura rationalizes a fourth
meeting with Dr. Harvey, and then realizes how melancholy she feels
by his unexpected absence:
When Thursday came, I went to meet Alec, more as
a matter of politeness than for any other reason. It didn't seem
very important, but after all, I had promised. I managed to get
the same table, I waited a bit but he didn't come. The ladies'
orchestra was playing away as usual. I looked at the cellist. She
had seemed to be so funny last week. Today she didn't seem funny
any more. What a pathetic poor thing. After lunch, I happened to
pass by the hospital. I remember looking up at the windows and
wondering if he were there, or was there something awful that happened
to prevent him turning up. I got to the station earlier than usual.
I hadn't enjoyed the pictures much. It was one of those noisy musical
things that I'm so sick of them. I'd come out before it was over.
As I took my tea to the table, I suddenly wondered if I'd made
a mistake - that he'd meant me to meet him there.
At the train station, Laura is amused while watching
the banterings and adolescent flirtations of the British working-class
relationship between the hostess and the station guard. The 5:40
bell rings to warn of her approaching train, and she is worried and
desperate that Alec is failing to show:
As I left the refreshment room, I saw a train coming
in, his train. He wasn't on the platform, and I suddenly felt panic-stricken
at the thought of not seeing him again.
Suddenly, Alec races toward the station, as frantic to
see her as she is to see him - the poignancy of the moment is loudly
underscored by Rachmaninoff's concerto, drowning out his explanation
for being late. It is at this juncture that they both realize they have
fallen in love. She rushes with him under the tracks to the door of his
departing train, her face beaming:
Alec: I'm so glad I had a chance to explain. I didn't
think I'd see you again.
Laura: Enough said, now go quickly, quickly.
Alec (on board the moving train): Next Thursday?
Laura: Yes, next Thursday.
Alec: Goodbye.
Laura: Goodbye.
Alec: Thursday. Goodbye.
For their fifth meeting (in six weeks) on a Thursday,
they first attend the Milford Cinema and sit in the balcony a second
time. They view a humorous cartoon of loveable Donald Duck, exhibiting "his
dreadful energy and his blind frustrated rages." When the main
picture "Flames of Passion" begins (a film fantasy that
will work its magic upon them - especially upon Laura who lives a
life of romantic fantasy), Alec warns of the fresh stimulation of
their emotions which will result:
It's the big picture now. Here we go. No more laughter.
Prepare for tears.
[Screen credits reveal that the fictitious film is "Based
on the Novel 'Gentle Summer' by Alice Porter Stoughey." In parallel
fashion, Laura's imagination is highly-charged and passionate, while
the reality of her brief encounter is more commonplace and low-key.]
They leave the theatre, stand outside, and then decide to go to the
park - an invigorating interlude in a naturalistic, but drab setting
(the first time they break away from their emotionally-constrained,
stunted environment). In the Botanical Gardens, where boys sail boats
on the lake and white swans swim on the water's surface, they rent
a boat for the day, even though the boats are "covered up":
It was a terribly bad picture. We crept out before
the end, rather furtively, as though we were committing a crime.
The usherette at the door looked at us with stony contempt. It
was a lovely afternoon. It was a relief to be in the fresh air.
We decided we'd go to the Botanical Gardens. Do you know, I believe
we should all behave quite differently if we lived in a warm, sunny
climate all the time? We shouldn't be so withdrawn and shy and
difficult. Oh Fred, it really was a lovely afternoon. There were
some little boys sailing their boats - one of them looked awfully
like Bobbie. That should have given me a pang of conscience I know,
but it didn't. I was enjoying myself, enjoying every single minute.
Alec suddenly said that he was sick of staring at the water and
that he wanted to be on it. All the boats were covered up, but
we managed to persuade the old man to let us have one. He thought
we were raving mad. Perhaps he was right. Alec rowed off at a great
rate, and I trailed my hand in the water. It was very cold but
a lovely feeling...
Alec admits his lack of rowing experience and advises
that she steer their directionless rowboat: "And unless you
want to go round and round in ever-narrowing circles, you'd better
start steering." They let the flow of the water take them along
its course, until they figuratively and physically bump into a man-made
barrier under a stone bridge (a symbol of the narrow obstacles in
their repressive environments and private lives). |