by Nina Bawden
I cycled out of the town, sleeping and empty in the early morning, and along the road to the village. The mist cleared a little as the road climbed out of the valley. It was autumn and going to be a berry winter; the hedges were already black and bare. In the fields beyond the hedges they had started the ploughing and in the distance the wooded hills were dim and blue. When I was a child we had lived in a cottage on the farm where my father had been cowman. I had cycled to the grammar school in the town on so many mornings like this one that now I felt a sudden, sentimental regret for a time when life had been full of possibilities and there was no thought of failure. It had been like that, or almost like that, until I had got the university lectureship I had coveted for so long and then life had become ordinary and dull and everyday. I had reached out for the star and there was nothing in my hand but dust. I felt a surge of immense compassion for the boy who had thought the world lay at his feet and had grown to discover that it lay instead at the feet of people like Geoffrey Hunter.
I was only escaping from the reality of the moment and perhaps not even that. Because what was happening now, and what had happened when Emily spoke to me on the telephone, did not seem to be real at all.
At the beginning of the village I passed a boy on a Fordson tractor, bumping uncomfortably in his slow-moving seat. He was about fourteen; as I passed him on my bicycle he called “Good morning,” and grinned at me with embarrassed pride and a swagger of his shoulders.
The main street of the village was quiet; the Georgian houses, tranquil and asleep. I propped my bicycle against the kerb, took off my trouser clips and rang the bell of Emily’s house. I wished suddenly that I had been able to come in a car; the bicycle made me feel like an errand boy.
Emily came to the door. She was wearing a woollen dressing-gown which was too big for her and her face was tired and looked rubbed out at the edges. She smiled at me stiffly.
She said: “Tom, it was wonderful of you to come. I’ve made some coffee.”
We went into the little morning-room at the front of the house. There was a freshly-stoked fire and the room was littered with crates of empty bottles and ash trays that had not been cleared after the party. The air smelt frowsty and the cold daylight was pitiless to Emily’s white face. She stretched out her hands to the fire and the fingers were cramped and bloodless at the knuckles. She looked unhappy; I wanted to comfort and reassure her, but I could think of nothing to say. I kissed her and she held me tightly for a moment. Then she said, with embarrassed formality:
“You must be frozen, Tom. Sit down and I’ll give you some coffee.”
She fussed with the coffee tray like a shy hostess after a heavy-footed dinner-party. Her hands were shaking and when she gave me my cup she smiled brightly and uneasily as if I were a stranger she was afraid to talk to.
I gulped at my coffee and it scalded my throat. I said: “You’d better tell me what happened.” I felt a million miles away from her.
She looked all of her thirty-five years; she turned her back on me and walked to a chair by the window, feeling slowly for the arm before she sat down, like an old woman.
She sat facing me, her hands folded, in her lap. She said: “Tom, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I would never have told him. Only I thought he knew.”
“Didn’t he?”
“I’m not sure, now. I thought he did know. It wasn’t until afterwards that I thought it might be just a guess. I think David did say something to him—but nothing sure. It was because Geoffrey was acting so oddly that I thought he must know.”
She twisted the dressing-gown cord tightly round and round her fingers and then jerked it away, leaving white marks across the back of her hand.
They hadn’t gone to the golf club. The party had died soon after we had left. Emily had seen the last of the guests into their car and gone upstairs to have a bath. There had been no sign of Geoffrey but she had not been particularly disturbed, assuming that he had gone into the study to work.
He had come into the bedroom when she had finished her bath and was sitting at the dressing-table, brushing her hair. She saw him, in the looking-glass, standing by the door. Her first thought was that he was ill; she had never seen him so white. She asked him if he was sick and he didn’t seem to hear her. She was suddenly and inexplicably afraid; she got up from the dressing-stool and crossed the room. She touched his arm and he started violently as though he had not noticed she was in the room. He stared at her as if she were a stranger.
He said: “How the hell did Parry find out?”
Emily said: “For a moment I couldn’t think what he was talking about. Then I remembered what you had said. So I told him, without thinking, that I supposed David had seen us together. His expression changed then—before, he’d looked angry and now, quite suddenly, he looked just curious. He said: ‘So it was true about you and Harrington?’ I told him yes, that it was true. I think that I was still a little drunk. I said that I loved you and that I wasn’t sorry.”
She flushed defiantly, and said: “Was it stupid to say that?”
I said: “No, not stupid. Just adorable.” But it couldn’t have sounded very convincing and there was disappointment on her face. I said quickly: “What happened then?”
She sounded weary, a little as if the fight had gone out of her.
There had been a row and it had gone on and on interminably. They had talked, she said, in cliches. Everything that had been said was a platitude from a third-class romantic novel. In the beginning she had been exalted, almost happy because there was no more hypocrisy or deceit; it was a relief to be able to say that she was proud and pleased to love me. Then the reaction had set in. And the inevitable sentimentality.
She said: “I hadn’t thought about Geoffrey for a long time. Not as a person. He was my husband and I was concerned for him and fond of him. And suddenly I began to see him more clearly, as if he were not my husband but an ordinary, pathetic human being. I was sorry for him. Not because he loves me or because he needs me, but because he is so vulnerable where his pride is concerned. Of course I’d known the scandal would worry him because of the election, but I hadn’t really thought it would matter so very much. It was just one of Geoffrey’s dreams of grandeur. It wasn’t until we had been talking for about two hours that I knew just how important it was to him. These things matter so much more to him than to other people. The idea that he might lose his seat meant that the whole world had crumpled beneath him. Do you understand, Tom?”
She looked at me with a white, baffled face. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that it wasn’t the most important thing in the world that something should go wrong for Geoffrey when most things, up to now, had gone right for him. That he was not a pathetic figure just because he was so much more sure than other people that he ought to succeed in everything that he had tried to do. But at that moment there was something much more important to say.
I said it. “Darling, what do you want me to do?”
She looked at me with wonder as if she could not understand my question. She said: “Please, Tom, take me away.”
I suppose it was something that I had been expecting and dreading ever since the telephone call. Of course, to her, it would seem to be the only outcome and I had known, always, that if we were ever found out it was what she would expect me to do. But for the last hour I had shut my mind against the knowledge. Perhaps I had been hoping for a miracle.
I didn’t look at her. I said: “Darling, I can’t. You know I can’t.”
She didn’t say anything and I stumbled on in a kind of panic, knowing that the things I was saying were sensible enough, but that they must sound, to Emily, like the shabby reasoning of fear. I said that Nora trusted me, that she depended on me and that there was the child. That it was unthinkable that I should ever leave her; that I couldn’t support her if I did and that I was responsible for her. And that, to Nora, if I left her, the thing that would hurt her most would be the shame of the neighbours’ gossiping. I was sud
denly immensely moved by a wave of protective affection for her; I thought of her with guilt and pity and a kind of love.
When I had finished I knew that Emily had not understood at all. She said, in a shocked voice: “But do you love her. Tom?”
I said: “Darling, not in the way that I love you. But that isn’t the whole of it, is it?”
She got up from her chair, stumbling awkwardly over her long dressing-gown and looked in the box for a cigarette. The box was empty and I found a squashed packet in my trouser pocket and lit one for her. The small movements helped us both over the embarrassment of the moment. Then she said:
“Poor, poor Tom. What a hideous, awful mess for you.” She tried to smile at me, and I felt a swine.
I said helplessly: “Emily, do you hate me?”
She shook her head and this time she smiled without any effort. “Of course not,” she said. “Why should I hate you?”
She crouched on the sofa beside me and stroked my face. I took her hand and held it.
Geoffrey said, from the door: “Good morning, Tom.”
I dropped Emily’s hand as if it were red-hot and then felt ashamed and would have taken it again. But she got up swiftly from the sofa and moved to the fireplace where she stood, turned away from both of us, warming her hands before the fire.
The skin of his face was smooth and pink from shaving. He was wearing an old Etonian tie and an expensively shabby sports coat. His flaxen hair was sleekly brushed, he was an English gentleman dressed for a day in the country. He looked calm, rested and slightly amused. I got up from the sofa because I didn’t like him looking down at me any more than his natural advantage in height made inevitable.
He looked at Emily. He said: “Dear, is there any coffee left?”
There was a silence while Emily poured out a cup of coffee and Geoffrey settled himself comfortably in a chair and lit a pipe with what appeared to be genuine composure. I did not look at Emily. I felt wretchedly like a small boy on the mat in the headmaster’s study. The silence went on and on.
At last Geoffrey looked up from his coffee. He said: “Well, Tom, you’ve got yourself into a charming little scrape, haven’t you?”
His voice was soft and tolerant and almost kind. It put me more in the wrong than any display of anger would have done. There was no possible answer. For a moment Geoffrey waited politely for me to speak and then he said:
“Emily tells me you love her. Do you?”
I loved her more than I had ever loved anyone or anything in my whole life, but it was impossible to say so at this moment and to this man.
I tried. I said: “I love her very much.” It sounded stiff and inadequate and remarkably false.
He examined the bowl of his pipe as if he were unwilling to watch me make a fool of myself.
“Of course if you love her, it makes it all the more serious,” he said. “It’s gone on for some time, I believe.”
“Almost a year,” I said.
He looked at me with sandy-lashed, light eyes. “I see.” He spoke with the slow deliberation of a judge. I remember that all the time he was speaking I looked at his hands, at the long, beautiful fingers holding the coffee-cup and the pipe.
“Of course,” he said, “I’m not disputing your love for my wife. That would be presumptuous of me. But I have been married to Emily for eleven years. This isn’t the first time that I’ve had to get her out of a scrape of this kind. So you must forgive me if I am a little cynical about her attitude towards you. It is not that she is promiscuous, you understand, merely that she has a very affectionate if undiscriminating nature.”
Emily was sitting hunched up on a hassock in front of the fire, her head turned away from me, and he smiled in her direction like a kindly uncle smiling at a wayward but well-meaning child.
“You must realise,” he said, “that while you have been in love with my wife you haven’t had any responsibility for her. I imagine, therefore, that quite a lot of your pleasure has been at my expense. Do you really think, Tom, that if I were willing to divorce her, you could make her happier than I have done? After all, I am not only a comparatively rich but also a complaisant husband.”
His smile held all the confidence in the world. I felt no guilt at all, only impotent anger. I would have liked to hit him and I suspect, from the amusement in his eyes, that he knew how I felt.
He waited. Then he looked at Emily’s averted head. “Perhaps I am misreading the situation? Perhaps you don’t want to marry her?”
Emily said, before I could speak: “Tom can’t leave his wife.” She did not turn her head and in the droop of her shoulders and the dead tone of her voice there was pathetic and complete acceptance and submission.
“Nora knows nothing about it,” I said.
He made a monosyllabic, judicial sound in the back of his throat.
“I am glad,” he said, “that you have some notion of responsibility. Emily has none. I tried to explain to her what your attitude would be but once she gets an idea in her head she is not very amenable to advice.”
Emily began to cry in a quiet, choked way. I had never seen her cry before and I stood, like a fool, and watched her. Geoffrey did not move. He lay back in his chair looking at her speculatively and without pity. When I could bear it no longer I went over to her and put my hand lightly on her shoulder. She twisted round on the hassock and leaned her head against my thigh.
Geoffrey said heavily: “Harrington, I don’t think this is in very good taste in the circumstances, do you?”
It was intentional unkindness posing as anger. Emily got up as if he had struck her. Her face was burning.
She said: “Geoffrey, I didn’t think it was possible to dislike anyone so much. Tom, I am terribly sorry to have dragged you into this.”
She crossed the room and sat by the window, staring out into the street that was washed, now, by a pale and showery sun. The mist had gone and there was a nursery-blue sky with puffs of cotton-wool cloud.
Geoffrey looked at Emily and then he gave me a wry, man-to-man smile. He said: “I suppose I should apologise for my last remark. But you must allow me some atavistic feelings.”
I had never felt so helpless. I think that I tried to stammer out some kind of apology and vindication, but it sounded pretty weak and unconvincing and Geoffrey listened to me with one eyebrow raised.
In the end, he said: “How are you going to explain all this to your wife?”
It was like a blow in the stomach. I said: “I hadn’t thought—is there any need for her to know?”
Geoffrey looked surprised. “No, I suppose there isn’t any need. It would be gratuitous cruelty.”
He waited for a moment as if he were expecting me to say something and then he said: “She’ll be wondering what has happened to you, won’t she?” He got out of his chair. “I’ll wait for you in the hall,” he said.
He went out of the room and closed the door carefully behind him. Emily turned from the window and held out her arms. Her face was wet as she kissed me.
“Darling,” she said, “I didn’t think he’d behave like this. It was horrible for you.” Her concern was completely genuine, she was untouched by any kind of humiliation or resentment.
I said: “Emily, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” There was nothing else I could say. We were both whispering like punished children.
I said: “He didn’t seem to me like a man who was very deeply disturbed.”
She looked bewildered. “I don’t understand, Tom,” she said. “Perhaps it was just an act. He’s very proud—he wouldn’t let you know that he was upset, would he?”
I didn’t think that Geoffrey had been putting on an act. He had been enjoying himself too much. But there was no point in saying so.
She clung to me, her fingers digging painfully into my upper arm. “Tom,” she said. “don’t stop seeing me, will you? I couldn’t bear it, it would be impossible.”
I had never seen Emily as a suppliant before and it disturbed me. Perhaps if I ha
d said then that we must make an end of it it might all have worked out differently. But I hadn’t the courage. Just then I would have needed courage, not because I loved her, but because she needed me.
I said: “Darling, of course we’ll see each other somehow. Don’t worry.”
I kissed her and then she said: “Go along now, Tom. I’ll write to you.”
Geoffrey was standing in the hall by the open front door, looking appreciatively at the sky.
“Looks as if it is going to be a decent day,” he said.
I went out on to the pavement and he followed me, standing beside me while I put on my trouser clips. My front tyre was flat again and I pumped it up.
Then he said: “You know, Tom, I’m really very sorry for you. But these things happen to the best of us from time to time. You mustn’t feel too much of a bastard.”
I am quite sure that he did not mean to patronise. It was just that he was so very sure of himself and so safe.
He said: “I think, for all our sakes, that it would be better if you didn’t see Emily again. Oh, I don’t mean that you should avoid each other, that would be absurd and it’s not necessary anyway, but you should not make any further arrangements to meet. After all, this is a small town and the society we live in is even smaller. It wouldn’t do you any good in your job if there were any scandal and university appointments aren’t easy to come by.”
I wondered if it was advice or a threat. I was an undistinguished lecturer and lecturers are easily replaced. Geoffrey had a finger in most local pies and the Vice-Chancellor was a friend of his.
My mouth was dry. “I am not prepared to promise anything,” I said.
He grinned in a cold and angry way. “I think you’ll have to make up your mind,” he said.
“You think you win all along the line, don’t you?”
He said: “Come now, Tom. We’ve been fairly amicable so far, haven’t we? You’re getting off pretty lightly, you know.”
I got on my bicycle and rode off down the street, conscious that it was an undignified kind of departure. He called after me as if this were an ordinary, social parting: “Give my love to Nora, Tom.”
