Giant's Bread

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  ‘Like you when you were a little boy at Abbots Puissants,’ said Nell, smiling.

  ‘Did I say that? I don’t remember. Well, then the night before the wedding he can’t bear it any more, and he steals away from the palace and down to the market and wakes up the old Jew and says he must have back his hat and his pipe. He’ll give back everything he got in exchange. The old Jew laughs, and throws down the hat, torn across, and the pipe, broken, at the prince’s feet.

  ‘He’s broken-hearted – the bottom knocked out of his world, and he wanders away with them in his hand, till he comes to where the doll mender is sitting with her feet tucked up under her, and he tells her what has happened and she tells him to lie down and sleep. And when he wakes in the morning there are his green hat and his pipe, mended so beautifully that no one could tell they had been mended.

  ‘And then he laughs for joy, and she goes to a cupboard and pulls out a similar little green hat and a pipe, and they go out together through the forest, and just as the sun rises on the edge of the forest, he looks at her and remembers. He says, “Why, a hundred years ago, I left my palace and my throne for love of you.” And she says, “Yes. But because you were afraid you hid a piece of gold in the lining of your doublet, and the gleam of it enchanted your eyes and we lost each other. But now the whole world is ours and we will wander through it together for ever and ever.”’

  Vernon stopped. He turned an enthusiastic face upon Nell. ‘It ought to be lovely, the end … so lovely. If I can get into the music what I see and hear … the two of them in their little green hats … playing their pipes … and the forest and the sun rising …’

  His face grew dreamy and ecstatic. He seemed to have forgotten Nell.

  Nell herself felt indescribable sensations sweep over her. She was afraid of this queer, rapt Vernon. He had talked of music before to her, but never with this strange exalted passion. She knew that Sebastian Levinne thought Vernon might do wonderful things some day, but she remembered lives she had read of musical geniuses and suddenly she wished with all her heart that Vernon might not have this marvellous gift. She wanted him as he had been heretofore, her eager boyish lover, the two of them wrapped in their common dream.

  The wives of musicians were always unhappy, she had read that somewhere. She didn’t want Vernon to be a great musician. She wanted him to make some money quickly and live with her at Abbots Puissants. She wanted a sweet, sane, normal, everyday life. Love – and Vernon …

  This thing – this kind of possession – was dangerous. She was sure it was dangerous.

  But she couldn’t damp Vernon’s ardour. She loved him far too much for that. She said, trying to make her voice sound sympathetic and interested:

  ‘What an unusual fairy story! Do you mean to say you’ve remembered it from ever since you were a child?’

  ‘More or less. I thought of it again that morning on the river at Cambridge – just before I saw you standing under that tree. Darling, you were so lovely – so lovely … You always will be lovely, won’t you? I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t. What idiotic things I am saying! And then, after that night at Ranelagh, that wonderful night when I told you that I loved you, all the music came pouring into my mind. Only I couldn’t remember the story clearly – only really the bit about the tower.

  ‘But, I’ve had marvellous luck. I’ve met a girl who is actually the niece of the hospital nurse who told me the story. And she remembered it perfectly and helped me to get it quite clearly again. Isn’t it extraordinary the way things happen?’

  ‘Who is she, this woman?’

  ‘She’s really rather a wonderful person, I think. Awfully nice and frightfully clever. She’s a singer – Jane Harding. She sings Electra and Brunhilde and Isolde with the new English Opera Company; and she may sing at Covent Garden next year. I met her at a party of Sebastian’s. I want you to meet her. I’m sure you’d like her awfully.’

  ‘How old is she? Young?’

  ‘Youngish – about thirty, I should think. She has an awfully queer effect on one. In a way you almost dislike her, and yet she makes you feel you can do things. She’s been very good to me.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  Why did she say that? Why should she feel an unreasoning prejudice against this woman – this Jane Harding?

  Vernon was staring at her with rather a puzzled expression.

  ‘What’s the matter, darling? You said that so queerly.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She tried to laugh. ‘A goose walking over my grave, perhaps.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Vernon, frowning. ‘Somebody else said that just lately.’

  ‘Lots of people say it,’ said Nell, laughing. She paused and then said: ‘I’d – I’d like to meet this friend of yours very much, Vernon.’

  ‘I know. I want her to meet you. I’ve talked a lot about you to her.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t. Talk about me, I mean. After all, we promised Mother no one should know.’

  ‘Nobody outside – but Sebastian knows and Joe.’

  ‘That’s different. You’ve known them all your life.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I didn’t say we were engaged, or tell your name or anything. You’re not cross, are you, Nell darling?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Even in her own ears her voice sounded hard. Why was life so horribly difficult? She was afraid of this music. Already it had made Vernon chuck up a good job. Was it the music? Or was it Jane Harding?

  She thought to herself desperately:

  ‘I wish I’d never met Vernon. I wish I’d never loved him. I wish – oh! I wish I didn’t love him so much. I’m afraid. I’m afraid …’

  2

  It was over! The plunge was taken! There was unpleasantness of course. Uncle Sydney was furious, not, Vernon was forced to confess, without reason. There were scenes with his mother – tears – recriminations. A dozen times, he was on the point of giving way, and yet somehow or other, he didn’t.

  He had a curious sense of desolation all the time. He was alone in this thing. Nell, because she loved him, agreed to all he said, but he was uncomfortably conscious that his decision had grieved and disturbed her, and might even shake her faith in the future. Sebastian thought the move premature. For the time being, he would have advised making the best of two worlds. Not that he said so. Sebastian never gave advice to anybody. Even the staunch Joe was doubtful. She realized that for Vernon to sever his connection with the Bents was serious, and she had not got the real faith in Vernon’s musical future which would have made her heartily applaud the step.

  So far, in his life, Vernon had never had the courage to set himself definitely in opposition to everybody. When it was all over, and he was settled in the very cheap rooms which were all he could afford in London, he felt as one might who had overcome invincible odds. Then, and not till then, he went a second time to see Jane Harding.

  He had held boyish imaginary conversations with her in his mind.

  ‘I have done what you told me.’

  ‘Splendid! I knew you had the courage really.’

  He was modest, she applauded. He was sustained and uplifted by her praise.

  The reality, as always, fell out quite differently. His intercourse with Jane always did. He was always holding imaginary conversations with Jane in his mind, and the reality was always totally different.

  In this case, when he announced, with due modesty, what he had done, she seemed to take it as a matter of course, with nothing particularly heroic about it. She said:

  ‘Well, you must have wanted to do it or you wouldn’t have done it.’

  He felt baffled, almost angry. A curious sense of constraint always came over him in Jane’s presence. He could never be wholly natural with her. He had so much he wanted to say – but he found it difficult to say it. He was tongue-tied – embarrassed. And then suddenly, for no reason, it seemed, the cloud would lift and he would be talking happily and easily, saying the things that ca
me into his head.

  He thought: ‘Why am I so embarrassed with her? She’s natural enough.’

  It worried him … From the first moment he had met her, he had felt disturbed … afraid. He resented the effect she had on him and yet he was unwilling to admit how strong that effect was.

  An attempt to bring about a friendship between her and Nell failed. Vernon could feel that behind the outward cordiality that politeness dictates, there was very little real feeling.

  When he asked Nell what she thought of Jane, she answered:

  ‘I like her very much. I think she’s most interesting.’

  He was more awkward approaching Jane, but she helped him.

  ‘You want to know what I think of your Nell? She is lovely – and very sweet.’

  He said, ‘And you really think you’ll be friends?’

  ‘No, of course not. Why should we?’

  ‘Well, but –’

  He stammered, taken aback.

  ‘Friendship is not a kind of equilateral triangle. If A likes B and loves C, then C and B, etcetera, etcetera … We’ve nothing in common, your Nell and I. She, too, expects life to be a fairy story, and is just beginning to be afraid, poor child, that it mayn’t be, after all. She’s a Sleeping Beauty waking in the forest. Love, to her, is something very wonderful and very beautiful.’

  ‘Isn’t it that to you?’

  He had to ask. He wanted to know so badly. So often, so often, he’d wondered about Boris Androv, about those five years.

  She looked at him with a face from which all expression had died out.

  ‘Some day – I’ll tell you …’

  He wanted to say – ‘Tell me now,’ but he didn’t. He said instead:

  ‘Tell me, Jane, what is life to you?’

  She paused a minute and then said:

  ‘A difficult, dangerous, but endlessly interesting adventure.’

  3

  At last, he was able to work. He began to appreciate to the full the joys of freedom. There was nothing to fray his nerves, nothing to dissipate his energy. It could flow, all in one steady stream, into his work. There were few distractions. At the moment, he had only just enough money to keep body and soul together. Abbots Puissants was still unlet …

  The autumn passed and most of the winter. He saw Nell once or twice a week, stolen unsatisfactory meetings. They were both conscious of the loss of the first fine rapture. She questioned him closely about the progress of the opera. How was it going? When did he expect it would be finished? What chances were there of its being produced?

  Vernon was vague to all these practical aspects. He was concerned at the moment only with the creative side. The opera was getting itself born, slowly, with innumerable pangs and difficulties, with a hundred setbacks owing to Vernon’s own lack of experience and technique. His conversation was mostly of instrumental difficulties or possibilities. He went out with odd musicians who played in orchestras. Nell went to many concerts and was fond of music, but it is doubtful if she could have told an oboe from a clarinet. She’d always imagined a horn and a French horn to be much the same thing.

  The technical knowledge needed in score writing appalled her, and Vernon’s indifference to how and when the opera would be produced made her uneasy.

  He hardly realized himself how much his uncertain answers depressed and alienated Nell. He was startled one day when she said to him – indeed not so much said as wailed:

  ‘Oh, Vernon, don’t try me too hard. It’s so difficult – so difficult … I must have some hope. You don’t understand.’

  He looked at her astonished.

  ‘But, Nell, it’s all right, really. It’s only a question of being patient.’

  ‘I know, Vernon. I shouldn’t have said that, but you see –’

  She paused.

  ‘It makes it so much more difficult for me, darling,’ said Vernon, ‘if I feel that you’re unhappy.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not – I won’t be …’

  But underneath, choked down, that old feeling of resentment lifted its head again. Vernon didn’t understand or care how difficult things were for her. He never had the faintest conception of her difficulties. He would, perhaps, have called them silly or trivial – they were, in one sense, but in another they weren’t – since the sum total of them went to make up her life. Vernon didn’t see or realize that she was fighting a battle – fighting it all the time. She could never relax. If he could only realize that, give her a word of cheer, show her that he understood the difficult position in which she was placed. But he never would see.

  A devastating sense of loneliness swept over Nell. Men were like that – they never understood or cared. Love, that seemed to solve everything. But really it didn’t solve anything at all. She almost hated Vernon. Selfishly absorbed in his work, disliking her to be unhappy because it upset him …

  She thought: ‘Any woman would understand.’

  And moved by some obscure impulse, she went of her own accord to see Jane Harding.

  Jane was in, and if she was surprised to see Nell, she did not show it. They talked for some time on desultory things. Yet Nell had a feeling that Jane was waiting and watching, biding her time.

  Why had she come? She didn’t know. She feared and distrusted Jane – perhaps that was why! Jane was her enemy. Yes, but she had a fear that her enemy had a wisdom denied to her. Jane (she put it to herself) was clever. She was, very possibly, bad – yes, she was sure Jane was bad, but somehow or other one might learn from her.

  She began rather blunderingly. Did Jane think that Vernon’s music was likely to be successful – that is to say successful soon? She tried in vain to keep a quaver out of her voice.

  She felt Jane’s cool green eyes upon her.

  ‘Things getting difficult?’

  ‘Yes, you see –’

  It tumbled out, a great deal of it, the shifts, the difficulties, the unspoken force of her mother’s silent pressure, a dimly veiled reference to Someone, name not given, Someone who understood and was kind and was rich.

  How easy to say these things to a woman – even a woman like Jane who couldn’t know anything about them. Women understood – they didn’t pooh-pooh trifles and make everything out to be unimportant.

  When she had finished, Jane said:

  ‘It’s a little hard on you. When you first met Vernon, you had no idea of this music business.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ said Nell bitterly.

  ‘Well, it’s no good going back to what you didn’t think, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Nell felt vaguely annoyed at Jane’s tone. ‘Oh!’ she broke out. ‘You feel, of course, that everything ought to give way to his music – that he’s a genius – that I ought to be glad to make any sacrifice –’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t think any of those things. I don’t know what good geniuses are, or works of art either. Some people are born with a feeling that they matter more than anything else, and some people aren’t. It’s impossible to say who’s right. The best thing for you would be to persuade Vernon to give up music, sell Abbots Puissants, and settle down with you on the proceeds. But I do know this, that you haven’t an earthly chance of getting him to give up music. These things, genius, art, whatever you like to call it, are much stronger than you are. You might just as well be King Canute on the sea shore. You can’t turn back Vernon from music.’

  ‘What can I do?’ said Nell hopelessly.

  ‘Well, you can either marry this other man you were talking of and be reasonably happy, or you can marry Vernon and be actively unhappy with periods of bliss.’

  Nell looked at her.

  ‘What would you do?’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh! I should marry Vernon and be unhappy, but then some of us like taking our pleasures sadly.’

  Nell got up. She stood in the doorway looking back at Jane who had not moved. She was lying back against the wall, smoking a cigarette, her eyes half closed. She looked a
little like a cat, or a Chinese idol. A sudden wave of fury came over Nell.

  ‘I hate you,’ she cried. ‘You’re taking Vernon away from me. Yes – you. You’re bad – evil – I know it, I can feel it. You’re a bad woman.’

  ‘You’re jealous,’ said Jane quietly.

  ‘You admit then, there’s something to be jealous of? Not that Vernon loves you. He doesn’t. He never would. It’s you who want to get hold of him.’

  There was silence – a pulsating silence. Then, without moving, Jane laughed. Nell hurried out of the flat, hardly knowing what she was doing.

  4

  Sebastian came very often to see Jane. He usually came after dinner, ringing up first to find if she would be at home. They both found a curious pleasure in each other’s company. To Sebastian Jane recounted her struggles with the role of Solveig, the difficulties of the music, the difficulty of pleasing Radmaager, the still greater difficulty of pleasing herself. To Jane, Sebastian imparted his ambitions, his present plans, his future vague ideas.

  One evening, after they had both been silent after a long spell of talking, he said:

  ‘I can talk to you better than anyone I know, Jane. I don’t quite know why, either.’

  ‘Well, in a way, we’re both the same kind of person, aren’t we?’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘I think so. Not superficially, perhaps, but fundamentally. We both like truth. I think, as far as one can say that of oneself we both see things as they are.’

  ‘And you think most people don’t?’

  ‘Of course they don’t. Nell Vereker, for instance. She sees things as they’ve been shown her, as she hopes they are.’

  ‘A slave of convention, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, but it works both ways. Joe, for instance, prides herself on being unconventional, but that makes just as much for narrowness and prejudice.’

  ‘Yes, if you’re “agin” everything irrespective of what it is. Joe is like that. She must be a rebel. She never really examines a thing on its merits. And that’s what damns me so hopelessly in her eyes. I’m successful – and she admires failures. I’m rich, so she’d gain instead of lose if she married me. And being a Jew doesn’t count against you much nowadays.’