A Sea-Grape Tree

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘Don’t talk such rubbish,’ he said indignantly. ‘As if I’d pretend you were anybody else! As if I’d want to!’

  ‘You said it was a long time since—you know—a girl in your bed.’

  ‘So it was. What’s wrong with saying that? D’you think any old tart would have done as well? Louis would have combed the islands to bring me a selection if I’d said the word. There’s plenty of pretty girls in Port of Spain—black, brown, white, all shades. Oh, what am I to do with you? You are so silly.’ He shook her; then relenting, patted her. ‘Now what is there to cry about?’

  ‘I’m not. If I were, it would be for happiness.’

  ‘Aha! Happiness is out for keeps, remember.’ But she said soberly: ‘What a marvel it is. Simply a marvel. From the first moment of seeing you it started.’

  ‘That evening you got so drunk?’

  ‘I didn’t—I wasn’t, I never am. You were …’

  He drew her again into light-hearted flirting, teasing her sweetly as if all time was theirs to play in. A double echo pierced her once again: the voice of Ellie, wistful, evoking so much more than she could dream of: ‘I used to hear them laughing together. It sounded so nice.’ She spared a thought, unenvious, drained of rancour, perturbation, for Sibyl Anstey, acknowledging, with compassion, her claim to be recognised, respected, in the world which something of Johnny’s essential self inhabited; into which she too had now gained entrance: adorable pagan world, ravishing young man, with the god-like gift of laughter preserved intact beneath the shell he had built round himself.

  As if catching her train of thought—no more than a kind of shimmer in her mind—he said:

  ‘But you must see I’m extremely resistible. I can’t think why you permitted all those liberties.’

  ‘Not with a view to therapy, I promise you—like you know who. I think it was chiefly curiosity—like you in reverse. I wanted to see if I could stop you smiling.’

  ‘Don’t you like my smile?’

  ‘It was so formal—it put me in my place. I wanted to see if there was anything—for me—behind it. But I don’t mean to criticize your teeth, they’re absolutely splendid. A pleasure in themselves.’

  He took a pocket mirror from her bag and had a look at them. ‘They’re OK,’ he agreed. ‘God knows what I’d do if they started to crumble. Do you think a complete set in gold would be attractive? But you’ve hurt their feelings. I’ll never smile at you again.’

  ‘You won’t be able to help it. Oh, darling Johnny!—how can we face Elbe’s party? Everyone will see what’s happened, it must be obvious. Will Staycie think we look a mortal treat?’

  ‘I shan’t be coming to the party.’

  In the ensuing pause the future surfaced, menacing, like the snout of a shark breaking through smiling waters.

  ‘No,’ she said under her breath. ‘No, we couldn’t bear it, could we? But how shall I get through it? And Ellie will be so sad.’

  ‘It can’t be helped. I’ll see quite enough of her after you’ve gone.’

  ‘After I’ve gone … What will you do?’

  ‘Go on much as usual I suppose. Swim. Play chess. Go fishing. Eat. Drink. Sleep.’ With another attempt at lightness, he added: ‘Lead a chaste life.’

  ‘Will you miss me?’

  He did not reply; swallowed; and after a pause said:

  ‘And you? What about you?’

  ‘You mean, shall I miss you? At the moment I don’t see how I can bear to leave you. It seems as if you had become my life.’

  He made a quick gesture of negation; then said stiffly:

  ‘That chap you’ve mentioned—are you—do you still want to marry him?’

  She said slowly: ‘All I think I want now, is to find out why?—what happened? Obliterate the enormous query. It’s been like being blocked by a huge fallen tree that I couldn’t move; the torn up roots sticking up in the air like snakes, the earth bleeding and full of dying crawling things. What do you do with a blown-down tree you’ve known and loved for a long time? You can’t replant it. You have to cart it away. I could not think how. The very idea seemed too hopeless to conceive. But now … I seem to have stepped over it, thanks to you.’

  She thought: most of all she would like to look back and see … that chap withered, blasted, while she ran off laughing: but Johnny would be shocked by such vindictiveness, perhaps. Indeed he appeared to be striving towards strict impartiality, if not last-ditch masculine solidarity by remarking reasonably:

  ‘I expect you’ll forget all that when you see him again.’

  ‘I don’t ever want to see him again. Except, as I said, to ask why?’

  ‘Well, he’ll probably be able to give you a satisfactory answer.’

  ‘Do you hope he will?’

  He said, with stubborn detachment: ‘Oh! … what I hope he’ll say or do! … I simply want you to be happy.’

  Mastering her urge to say querulously: That’s no way to talk, she attempted an equal reasonableness.

  ‘What would you call a satisfactory answer? “Some unforeseen crisis arose and I couldn’t help myself”? “My wife had a nervous breakdown”? “One of the children broke his leg”? “I found I didn’t love you any more”? “I’ve fallen in love with someone else”? … One of these things, or none of them, might be true. Or else that he suddenly had to go abroad—on a job.’

  He said with a flicker of curiosity: ‘What sort of a job?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s a journalist—freelance now; and he’s special correspondent for a weekly you wouldn’t have heard of. That’s what takes him abroad now and then, he says. Sometimes I do wonder what he’s up to. Whether he’s in Intelligence.’

  ‘A spy, you think he might be.’

  ‘Some sort. It would fit in with something in his character that mystifies me: his way of looking you particularly straight in the eye, and at the same time making a sort of complicated—verbal—sidestep which only strikes you as odd when you think about it afterwards.’

  ‘A bit unreliable,’ he suggested. Then, after a pause: ‘Of course I can’t possibly judge, but it seems a bit unfortunate that you ever got mixed up with him.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said mournfully. ‘It was a mistake. I’ve only myself to blame for making it—and for sticking to it. He always swore—I really thought he meant it.’

  ‘Meant what?’

  ‘That he couldn’t do without me. He’s a very brilliant man—and attractive—and the opposite of dull. When we first met he was pretty well the top, non-queer, slightly disreputable glamour­-boy in circulation. Perhaps you don’t realise how scarce they are on the ground these days. Girls have to look around … I was very flattered when he fell in love with me. After a time we had rows, but we always made it up. I promised him—he made me promise—to wait till he was free.’

  ‘To marry you, you mean? You were to be married as soon as he was free?’

  ‘That was the idea—was what he said in the beginning. But there was always something insuperable cropping up to prevent him getting free. Then he’d say wait, please wait, trust me—and I did. Then the subject rather faded out … and I got into the habit of telling myself it was better as it was—better not to be always together. It made promises and trust and general good behaviour more difficult, so more worth striving for, more—morally important. And then, it meant he wouldn’t get bored with me—he’s very prone to get bored: that our times of being together would stay vital, and fresh and stimulating. About six months ago he said suddenly: “The elastic’s stretching, you know, it’s stretching. Soon it will have no stretch.” I said, did he mean he was getting sick of me, and the situation? He said no, never, but he felt I was withdrawing. I said, nonsense, but the time had come for him—for us, to change the set-up, once and for all.’

  ‘What did that mean?’

  ‘Decide to be together—
or decide to part. He said he knew which it must be—we must be together—but I must give him time. He went away and I didn’t see him for some weeks but I felt quite calm and confident: can you imagine such idiocy? Then he came back as loving as ever, more so, and said, that was it, he’d burnt his boats, he’d told his wife, he had no doubts. He expounded this beautiful plan … It all sounded so solid, so taken care of … Then he went away again—for a fortnight. He said he had lots of things to settle. We were to meet—at Bristol! I went on moving like a sleep walker: I see that now, looking back. There was the strangest feeling all the time that nothing was quite real—that I was in a web. You know the rest.’ He nodded, looking severe. She added: ‘I’ve come to the conclusion he never intended to get free. It was part of the game—part of the dangerous fun. I expect he was playing it with others besides me: his wife perhaps: God knows who else: someone, or something I don’t know about.’

  He seemed so sunk in meditation that she asked presently: ‘Have you been listening, Johnny?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been all ears.’

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  He shrugged his shoulders, glanced at her, looked away again: ‘Nothing. I make nothing of it.’ His voice expressed profound distaste.

  ‘This sort of—rather nightmarish disaster does seem to happen to people nowadays … Perhaps we’re all in a web.’

  ‘That I can believe,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you said something … About millions of people being homesick before long. Is that the sort of thing you meant?’

  ‘More or less. In a sense.’

  ‘And Ellie said: the heart of the world is broken. That’s another way of saying it: not your way, of course, you have no use for hearts.’

  His smile was strained and bitter. He took both her hands and looked at them attentively.

  ‘Well, what am I to do? Tell me.’

  ‘How can I tell you?’

  She ventured tremblingly: ‘You don’t like being irresponsible, you said.’

  He said, as if cornered: ‘You should get married, I think, and have a family.’

  ‘Oh … you think so.’

  ‘Someone boring perhaps, who wouldn’t mind you nagging.’

  She turned impetuously towards him, grasped him by both shoulders crying his name with desperation. They stared into one another’s eyes.

  ‘Sweetheart, no,’ he said at last. ‘It wouldn’t do. How could it? I’m just an accident in time.’

  ‘Don’t say that! You’re all my meaning now. Don’t laugh at me.’

  ‘I’m not—I don’t.’ His voice sounded strangled.

  ‘Why are we here together? Why did you bring me to this place? What have we been proving, ever since we met?’

  He shook his head, as if baffled.

  ‘That we belong together. That we accept all of one another. When I go away I take you with me, I stay here with you, you know that, don’t you?’

  He nodded, heavily sighed.

  ‘We must think, we must think,’ he said; not: ‘I must think’, as before.

  ‘Besides, I’m going to have a baby.’ He stared at her, speechless; and she added roughly: ‘Yours of course.’

  ‘How can it be “of course”? How can you know?’

  ‘I don’t, but I do know. I’m certain. Last night while you were asleep I said to myself: “Now I’ve started a baby.” Didn’t it occur to you? It ought to have.’ He looked rueful. ‘Don’t look so worried. It did occur to me. Have you heard of calculated risks? I took one.’

  ‘Oh, you are reckless …’ He sounded aghast, admiring.

  ‘Are you pleased?’

  ‘Very pleased. I mean, I will be, if—’ The colour, that flush of carmine, showed vivid in his cheeks.

  ‘I told you, it isn’t “if”. Shall you want me to let you know how I get on?’

  ‘I should jolly well hope so. What do you suppose?’ he said indignantly again. Then suddenly his features altered, he looked pinched. ‘Were you proposing—what are you proposing?’

  ‘What are you suspecting?’ Once more an intimation brushed her, as if from some far back memory or knowledge of a dangerous area contained in him. He lit a cigarette and shot her a look that might have been apology or mistrust. ‘That I’ll make a shotgun marriage as soon as I get home? You wouldn’t like it, would you, if I came hurrying back here, pregnant, to be made an honest woman of?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Some private train of thought caused him to shake his head, then shake with a spasm of silent laughter. He took her hand up and said quietly: ‘My dear girl, you don’t suppose I’d let you go through it by yourself? I shall come to you. I shall come to England.’

  ‘You will?’

  ‘Of course. I shall come and look after you.’ He lifted his head and stared towards the horizon as if, at last, the incentive he had been awaiting had appeared—his face open now, serene, washed with the light’s air-and-water radiance. She disengaged her hand and laid it on his heart, imagining—or not imagining—that she could feel its turbulence like an alarum in her breast; scarcely daring to look at him; suppressing her own uprush of wild anticipation, hope, fear … sudden anguish.

  ‘Not out of … a sense of duty?’ she ventured.

  ‘Don’t be such an idiot.’

  ‘And you won’t suspect I’ve trapped you?’

  He burst out laughing. ‘Or the other way round? Let’s say we’ve trapped each other.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say it must be got rid of.’

  ‘Good God!’ He looked quite disgusted.

  ‘I’ve never had an abortion, but most of my girl friends have.’

  ‘What bad company you keep.’

  He half meant it: he was inclined to think such goings-on repellent, squalid. She must be careful not to shock his sensibilities. Her eyes filled, as she looked at him, with happy tears: she saw him not only as the man she loved but as the symbol of a rare, perhaps a disappearing species: a man with uncomplicated sources of sexual pride and confidence. His restored potency delighted him of course: what was unfamiliar in her experience was his simple male pride in, and satisfaction with, the proof of his fertility. Lost in wonder, she told herself that the child was already wanted, welcomed; that she was now esteemed and cherished not only for herself but as the bearer of the child. Next moment he said solemnly:

  ‘Will you marry me, Anonyma?’

  ‘I will.’

  Silence.

  ‘Now I must take you back,’ he said.

  As if at a given signal a wave, then another, another, running rapidly from nowhere shivered the bay’s placid improbable crystal, dissolved against the boat, lifting it free from its bed of sand. ‘Quite a commotion,’ he murmured. ‘Must be a passing steamer.’ He started the engine and they glided out to sea. Turning for a last look at the scalloped shore, the bamboo thicket, the waterfall, she saw that another figure had appeared beside the still discernible white cow: a tall slender negro youth, in rags, his head and features sculpturally modelled, motionless, holding, as if it were a ritual staff of office, a long bamboo pole. He seemed to have something on his head, worn casually askew: was it a wreath of leaves and flowers? But the distance widened; next moment this surprising sun-dappled figure had disappeared.

  On the return journey, thoughts of Ellie’s awful party loomed. She would not, explained Johnny, expect him to be present. It was to be a slap-up all-embracing do: everyone would be there, including Tony de Pas and Jackie and her crew. But round about midnight she was to slip away and come to the hut. He had something to give her. After that, he and Louis would start off on a fishing expedition, in a proper boat with oars. He would be gone all night, probably next day. Midnight would strike farewell.

  ‘But not goodbye for long, Johnny? You do mean it. We’re not mad, are we?’

  ‘I do mean it, we’
re not mad.’

  ‘But supposing—’

  ‘Supposing nowt. Just wait. Trust me. I’ll be coming.’

  ‘We’ll write.’

  ‘Of course.’

  But his smile and his voice seemed not altogether to include her, and she said ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ he said, ‘where it would be nice to live. Do you like Norfolk? I love the coast of Norfolk. Or Yorkshire? It’s just an idea,’ he added, turning to her with a bright vague smile.

  Just an idea: he was not really questioning her. They were not mad, she repeated inwardly, not sentimental, infantile, romantic. She had come out of the maze in which she had for so long wandered, following love’s objects and experiences along blind alleys and bogus turnings. As for him, who had labelled himself an accident in time, release from time’s grave had been accomplished. They stood together in a green open country.

  Louis was waiting on the shore to greet them; and, leaving him in Louis’s hands, she ran on wings across the sand, up the rock terrace between towering bushes of hibiscus. Pausing a moment half-way up to get her breath, she watched a humming bird—incredible, flashing, whirring emerald artefact, not out of nature, pendant against a swag of blossom and intently probing, two inches from her nose.

  Princess came drifting down, beautiful in a magenta bodice and full blue and purple skirt, carrying the lamps to the bungalow a little earlier than usual. This time her smile was radiant.

  ‘You look wonderful, Princess—all in your best.’

  ‘Yes Mistress, yes I wait upon the partee. Maybe we make you nice one lei tomorrow for your journee. Maybe I bring my babee to bid au revoir.’

  ‘Yes, do Princess, I’d like to see her.’

  ‘I think maybe you like take her back wid you to England.’

  ‘I think not, Princess. England is cold, not always sun. She would get sick.’

  ‘But you plenty shawls, you keep her warm.’

  ‘Don’t you want her yourself, Princess?’

  ‘Not too much wan’. I will have all babies I wan’, too many.’ She looked dissatisfied. ‘Why not you have babies?’