Love Again

by Doris Lessing

  Had Sally been ill? She was so much thinner and could be observed smiling much more than was natural. Richard Service had been replaced by another master printer. Why had Richard left? they were asking. Sarah had got this letter from him. ‘I’m sorry, you must replace me. I am sure I don’t have to spell out why. If it weren’t for my three boys this would be a very different letter, I assure you. Best wishes for the success of Julie in England.’

  Mature ladies are expected to put their troubles under their belts and get on with it.

  As for the new Julie, she was a lithe, tawny-skinned girl with black eyes. She had not been at the first audition, otherwise she must surely have been chosen.

  ‘This one’s a bonus,’ said Henry. ‘She’s a gift. And any minute now we’re going to forget that Molly was pretty good.’

  Stephen did not come until the end of the first week, with ten days to go before opening, and he sat beside Sarah, who asked, ‘Well?’ and he replied, ‘Not very.’

  The cast, knowing that here was their rich English patron, their host for the English run, put everything into the rehearsal. Susan and David, then Susan and Roy Strether (reading Andrew’s lines because he hadn’t yet arrived), then Susan and the new master printer, John Bridgman, a likeable middle-aged man who, when not acting, was a bomb disposal expert, all broke each other’s hearts, according to script.

  Sarah sat by Stephen and wondered how he would seem to Susan. A large, serious, self-contained man, he sat calmly in his chair, wearing a greenish linen suit which said discreetly that once, probably some time ago, it had been shockingly expensive, and shoes not made for hot pavements. The trouble was, Sarah had ‘internalized’ him. It was hard to see him as others must. When she did, she was impressed. He was a handsome fellow, this Stephen, sitting there with his arms folded, intelligently watching those fevered scenes.

  She asked, ‘And what do you think of Susan?’

  He said, grimly, but with every consciousness of the absurdity, ‘I think I lost my heart to Molly.’

  She exclaimed, ‘You’re cured.’

  ‘“If you are mad, then be mad all the way…” What song is that? It keeps ringing in my head. This psychological stuff I’m reading, I’m sure it isn’t their intention, but it licenses you for folly. What I believe in—well, I certainly used to—is to keep a stiff upper lip, but after reading a few pages I begin to feel I’d be lacking in respect for the medical profession if I got over it without their help. If to understand it better is getting over it…I’m told that what I am experiencing is buried griefs surfacing, but, Sarah, I don’t have any shut door and behind it a bleeding doll. What I have in my house—well, in my home, then—is visible all the time. What’s buried about that?’ His face was a few inches from hers, but he wasn’t seeing her. ‘I keep looking at the words—you know, they are pretty glib with words: grief, sorrow, pain, heartache—but I know one thing: they don’t know what they are talking about. Anyone can write grief, pain, sorrow, et cetera, and so on. But the real thing is another matter. I never imagined anything like this existed…do you suppose it will come to an end some time? Every morning I wake—in hell.’ At these melodramatic words he looked hastily around, but no one was noticing them. ‘I found myself thinking this morning, What is to stop this going on for the rest of my life? You keep assuring me it won’t. But what about all the old people? There’s an old man on the estate. Elizabeth visits him—she’s very good about that kind of thing. I went in her place once when she was off with Norah. He is depressed, she says. What a word! They are just bloody miserable, more like it. As far as I can make out, a lot of them just die of grief.’

  The rehearsal was over. In front of them were Susan and Henry, facing each other. He was explaining something. They were alike, slim, lithe, beautiful creatures, with glossy black locks, dark expressive eyes, standing like dancers in a moment of rest. They will very likely fall in love: he’s in the mood for love. (With an effort, she stopped the tune taking over her thoughts.) Just as I am. Chemical.

  Henry went off and Susan stood prettily there, hands linked in front of her, apparently oblivious to the rest of the world. Slowly she relaxed out of her dancer’s pose and began to stroll away. Sarah played her part. She called to her, introduced her to Stephen. Stephen looked down at the girl from his height. Every inch of him said, On guard! She gazed devotedly up at him.

  Sally came past. So recently a large handsome black woman, she was positively thin, and her skin had lost its shine. Certainly not one of those who never notice what goes on, she took in everything about the man and the girl in one rapid glance, and her brief smile at Sarah paid homage with moderately good grace to human folly. Her face fell back into sadness, but she put on another smile, this time a patient one, because Henry had intercepted her in the act of taking sandwiches out of a bag. ‘Sally, you’ve got to have a proper lunch. We can’t have a thin Sylvie. I’m sorry, but go and eat pasta and cream pie.’

  Mary, who had been deputed to do this, led Sally away.

  ‘Love,’ remarked Sally generally, as the two went off, ‘is a many-splendoured thing.’

  Stephen went too; he did not feel like lunch.

  Sarah heard ‘Sarah’ breathed in her ear. Her heart at once melted, and then she and Henry were on the pavement outside. It was too hot to eat, they agreed, and strolled off down the canal path. They made jokes: it was their style. Henry was setting himself to entertain her. ‘Very good at this,’ he muttered, disparaging his talents, as he always had to do, and she laughed at him. They talked nonsense while the heat soaked London through and through, and people in bright clothes idled about, enjoying themselves. The hour of the lunch break disappeared. And I, too, have been in Arcadia, she said to herself, not caring how ridiculous it was. Perhaps one has to be past it to have earned the entrance ticket to Arcadia.

  Henry was off to Berlin tomorrow morning. He was to do a production there next year, and it had to be discussed. They jested that she would go with him, and then there was a moment when it was not a joke. Why not? They both wanted it. But as it became a possibility, and then a plan, constraint entered, because arrangements had to be made and other people involved. Still, they parted after the rehearsal agreeing they would meet in the hotel in Berlin if it was too late to get onto the same flight. When she rang a travel agency, her elation subsided. For a woman of her age to share a room with a man of his would cause comment. Two rooms would be needed. When the agency rang back, it was to report that the two preferred hotels would not know until tomorrow if there would be rooms. They could always arrive in Berlin unbooked, take a taxi, and drive from hotel to hotel; but if they were not on the same flight, then…By now an irritable gloom had taken possession of her. All this was a million miles from Arcadia. She found it hard to ring Henry with all these problems and, when he was not in his room was both relieved and desolated. Instead of doing all the energetic things necessary to get herself to Berlin tomorrow, she decided to wait for his call from Berlin. She needed to hear his voice, his cry of ‘Sarah!’—which, she knew, would make it possible for her to get to Berlin.

  No sooner had she sat down to wait than the telephone rang. It was Anne. ‘Sarah, I’m terribly sorry, but you have to come over.’ ‘I can’t come now.’ ‘You must, Sarah. You have to.’ And she rang off before Sarah could protest further.

  It was a large family house in Holland Park. In the garden, still full of a weak sunlight, Joyce’s sisters lolled almost naked in deck chairs. They looked like two pretty young greyhounds. Sarah’s relations with Briony and Nell could best be described as formal: formalized around discussions about Joyce, rituals of presents, and invitations to the theatre. They had complained that their aunt believed she had only one niece. They were clever girls, who had done well, sometimes brilliantly, at school and then university. They were both in good jobs, one in a bank and the other as a chemist in a laboratory. Neither was ambitious, and they had refused chances of promotion which would have meant hard work. They we
re now in their mid-twenties and lived at home, saying frankly, and often, why should they leave home, where everything was done for them and where they could save money? They were both ignorant, being products of a particularly bad period in British education. Either girl was capable of saying with a giggle that she didn’t know the Russians had been on our side in the last war, or that the Romans had been in Britain. Among things they had never heard of were the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Mongols, the Norman Conquest of Britain, the wars with the Saracens, the First World War. This had turned into a game: if Sarah happened to mention, let’s say, the Wars of the Roses, they would put on loopy smiles: ‘Something else we don’t know; oh dear.’ They had read nothing and were curious about nothing except the markets in the cities they visited. To please Sarah, Briony had said, she had tried to read Anna Karenina, but it had made her cry. These two amiable barbarians scared Sarah, for she knew they were representative. Worse, an hour in their company had her thinking, Oh well, why should anyone know anything? Obviously they do perfectly well knowing only about clothes and having a good time. Enough money had been spent on their education to keep a village in Africa for several years.

  Sarah went up to the top of the house, where Anne had a little sitting room. When she saw Sarah, she sighed, then smiled, stubbed out a cigarette, remembered that Sarah was not a patient, and lit another.

  She came to the point at once. ‘Are any of these yours?’

  On a table was a magpie’s litter. A large silver spoon. A silver picture frame. An amber necklace. Some old coins. A little Victorian gold mesh bag. An ornate belt that looked like gold. And so on.

  Sarah indicated the necklace and the picture frame. ‘Joyce?’ she asked, and Anne nodded, expelling smoke into a room already swirling with it. ‘We found this cache in her room. The police are coming in an hour to take away anything that isn’t yours.’

  ‘She’s not going to get rich on that lot.’

  ‘You mustn’t leave anything lying around, Sarah. And your credit cards and your cheque books and anything like that.’

  ‘Oh, surely she wouldn’t…’

  ‘She forged my signature last week on a cheque for three thousand pounds.’

  ‘Three thousand…’Sarah sat down.

  ‘Precisely. If it were thirty or even three hundred…And no, I don’t think it is a cry for help or any of the things those stupid social workers say. She lives in such a dream world she probably thinks three thousand is the same as three hundred.’ Her voice cracked and she coughed, then lit a new cigarette. She poured herself juice from a glass jug and waved her hand in an invitation that Sarah should do the same. But there was no second glass.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We sorted it out with the police. They were wonderful. Then we lectured her. Only afterwards did it occur to us that what we were saying amounted to: Next time don’t try for such a large sum—you know, if you’re going to be a thief, then at least be an efficient one. Because if she’s on drugs she’s going to steal, isn’t she?’

  She laughed, not expecting Sarah to share it. Sarah thought her sister-in-law looked more than tired; she was possibly even ill. Pale hair fell about a gaunt face. That hair had been smooth and golden and shining. Like Joyce’s.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘What can we do? Hal says I should give up my work and look after her. Well, I’m not going to. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane.’

  Sarah got up to go, taking the things that were hers.

  Then Anne said in a low, intense, trembly voice, ‘Don’t think too badly of me. You simply don’t know…you have no idea what it is being married to Hal. It’s like being married to a sort of big soft black rubber ball. Nothing you do makes any impression on it. The funny thing is, I’d have left him long ago if it hadn’t been for Joyce. Silly. I thought she’d get better. But she was a write-off from the start.’

  Sarah kissed her goodbye. This was not exactly their style, but Anne was pleased. Tears filled her already inflamed eyes.

  ‘How are your two?’

  ‘Why—fine. I had letters this week from both of them. And George rang last night. He might bring them all over for Christmas.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Anne dreamily. ‘That’s how it should be. You just take it for granted—they are both fine and that’s the end of it. You don’t think of them all that much, do you?’

  ‘Recently I’ve been so…’

  ‘Quite so. Better things to think about. But I spend my time worrying. And I always feel guilty when I’m with you, because you took the brunt all those years. The fact is, I’d have had to stop working if you hadn’t coped. The fact is, I’ve failed with Joyce.’

  On her way out through the garden, Sarah saw the two deck chairs were empty. It occurred to her that the two healthy daughters had not been mentioned. Briony and Nell had taken to saying, ‘Oh, don’t bother about us, please. We’re only the healthy ones. We are a success. We are viable.’

  The musicians had arrived. Sarah and Henry sat side by side behind their trestle table, which was loaded with prompt books, scores, polystyrene cups stained with coffee, and the faxed messages from all over the world that show business cannot do without for half a day. She was determined to feel nothing at all when the music began, but a sweet shaft winged straight to Sarah’s solar plexus, and she turned wet eyes to meet Henry’s.

  ‘Did you know there were philosophers who said music should be banned in a well-run society?’ she asked.

  ‘All music?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I have spent the weekend with the headphones clamped on. Anaesthetic. Just in case I wasn’t drunk enough…when I was a kid I learned to use it as an anaesthetic…listen.’

  The flute held a long note while the counter-tenor chanted against it, ‘bent’ the note up half a tone, and held it while the voice followed.

  ‘Do we really want to sit here crying like babies?’ said Sarah, and he said, ‘We have no alternative.’ He jumped up, ran off to adjust the players’ positions, ran back to his chair, moving it so it was nearer to Sarah’s.

  ‘This music-less utopia—suppose someone sings just for the hell of it?’

  ‘Off with their heads, I suppose.’

  ‘Logical.’

  Suddenly Henry accused, ‘You didn’t telephone.’

  ‘Yes I did. You were out.’

  ‘I was waiting all weekend for you to turn up.’

  ‘But I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘I left the name of the hotel at the theatre.’

  ‘I didn’t know. And why didn’t you ring me?’

  ‘I did. You were out.’

  ‘I was sitting waiting all weekend…’ But there were the two hours or so with Anne. She said, ‘I needed to be encouraged.’

  ‘But you know that—’

  ‘You really have no idea why I needed to be encouraged?’

  ‘But perhaps I need to be encouraged.’

  ‘You do.’ Her laugh was only for herself. She loved him because he did not know what she meant. Or pretended he didn’t.

  Then he said, ‘And I was relieved you weren’t there, as well as being so…drunk.’

  ‘I know. Me too.’

  Then he said, unexpectedly, ‘I am a very married man, Sarah.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘You did?’ He mocked her and himself. ‘And you actually do know that I have a little boy?’ And laughed at himself again.

  She laughed, while all the Atlantic swirled between them.

  ‘Sarah, I tell you that nothing, nothing ever, has meant as much to me as my little boy.’

  ‘Just what has that got to do with…’

  ‘Everything,’ he said miserably.

  Across the hall, actors and musicians wrestled, hugged, and generally played the fool, as they must, to release tension.

  Sarah bent forward and kissed Henry on the lips—a valedictory kis
s, but he could not know this. It told them both what they had missed that weekend.

  ‘My family will be coming to see Julie. In Queen’s Gift.’

  ‘I’m sure we will all have a lovely time,’ she jested, but he said miserably, ‘I don’t think so.’

  Then, on the same impulse, Sarah and Henry leaned back in their chairs, giving every indication of enjoying all that jolly horseplay. Their bare arms lay side by side, touching from wrist to shoulder.

  In the afternoon, Susan came to Sarah to ask if Stephen (‘you know, Mr Ellington-Smith?’) was coming to rehearsals that week.

  ‘I’ll find out for you,’ said Sarah, putting on her comfortable aunt manner.

  ‘I do hope he comes,’ murmured the girl, with a touch of spoiled-child petulance that went well with her general style, today emphasized by lively bunches of black curls tied on either side of a pale little face.

  Sarah telephoned Stephen and said that Julie was missing him.

  ‘Are you relaying a message?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Does she fancy me?’

  ‘Your instincts are supposed to be telling you that.’

  ‘I’ll come anyway. I miss you, Sarah.’

  On Tuesday Andrew walked into the hall, straight from the airport. He flung down a suitcase, saluted Henry, and then came to Sarah. He sat by her, all focused energy. For six weeks he had been in the hills of southern California, where they were shooting a film about immigrant Mexicans, he being an American small-town cop. He could not look more alien than he did in this soft, shabby, amiable English scene.

  ‘I suppose you are going to thank me nicely for the flowers?’

  ‘I suppose I would have done, at some point.’

  He put a sheet of paper in front of her. ‘Hotel. Room number. Telephone number. I’m giving you this now because of course we won’t be alone for five minutes. Ring me, Sarah?’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Not that smile, please.’ With a salute that he made rakish—it would have done well in Restoration comedy—he was off to join the others. This was the day Act Two would be put into shape.