I said in the most normal voice I could manage, “I’ll go and fix you some coffee,” and I tried to slip past him to the door.
He grabbed my wrist, twisted my arm behind my back so fiercely that I screamed, and shoved me away from him. I screamed again, tripped, fell across the bed.
“Scott—”
“You shut your mouth or I’ll kill you.”
I saw now that it was useless to be calm or attempt to talk rationally. He was far beyond all words of love and comfort. There was nothing I could do for him. All I could do was get out.
If I could.
He took a step toward the bed. I somehow managed to roll away from him over to the far side, but that was very difficult, because my limbs felt like lumps of lead. He began to talk, but at first I could not hear him because the blood was pounding so fiercely in my ears, and then when he raised his voice and I did hear him I wished I could have gone on being deafened by my own terror. He said I wasn’t to give him orders because he was the one in control; he was the one who gave the orders and dealt out the punishments. He said he hated everyone who hurt him, but that was all right, that was fine, because hatred kept a man alive. It was love that killed him.
“Do you hear what I’m saying?” he was shouting at me. “Why don’t you answer? Can’t you hear?”
“Yes, I can hear.” I wanted to leave the bed, but I was afraid to stir in case any movement triggered some uncontrollable force in him, so I stayed motionless and listened to him talking about how love destroyed people, how women destroyed men, how women had to be punished, had to be beaten back, had to be smashed down, had to be …
I put my hands over my ears.
“No, you listen to me!” He was on top of me in an instant, wrenching my hands aside. “You listen to me! I’m going to teach you a lesson, I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget, I’m going to …”
I didn’t think he could possibly be capable of intercourse. What terrified me was what he would do when he found himself impotent.
By this time my thoughts were no longer flashing through my mind in inarticulate images, but rapping out short sharp messages in words. Had to distract his attention. Couldn’t think how. He wouldn’t notice. He couldn’t see anything. He could barely see me. He was only seeing symbols. He was drowning in his own darkness, suffocating in his own blood.
He was cursing again as he struggled with his clothes and found he had lost control over his fingers. The zipper on his fly jammed, snapped free, then jammed again.
Mustn’t display panic. Mustn’t display fear. Terror would only turn him on.
“Darling, you’re so sexy when you’re like this!” I said. “But wait—don’t bust the zipper. Here, let me fix it for you.”
His hands automatically relaxed, leaving his body unguarded. I hit him as hard as I could, and then in a flash I was running, running, running, out of the door, down the stairs, lots of stairs, running, running, running across the hall, falling against the front door, scrabbling with the lock, and all the while he was running and shouting behind me, running, running, running with his demonic unnatural speed, and then the door was open and the night was dark and wet and cold, and I was running, running, running in my bare feet down the road, until suddenly there were bright lights and huge buildings and moving people and I was in Knightsbridge and a cab was cruising past and I shouted and it stopped and I fell inside.
“Where to?” said the driver, bored.
I whispered, “Anywhere. Just go.”
He drove off. We circled Hyde Park Corner three times, but before we could embark on our fourth orbit, I knew where I wanted to be.
Ten minutes later, outside Kevin’s Chelsea mews I was ringing the front doorbell with a trembling hand.
X
“Have a little Irish whiskey, my dear,” said Kevin. “You’ll love it after the first few hair-raising sips. No, don’t keep on saying how late it is and how awful you feel about bothering me and what the hell can Charles be thinking. Charles is asleep and very unlikely to wake up, I don’t give a damn how late it is, and I adore being bothered by beautiful women in distress. One gets so little of that kind of excitement at my age. … Did Scott kick you out?”
“I ran away,” I said, and broke down, my body shaking with sobs, the tears streaming down my cheeks, the Irish whiskey spilling from my glass.
Kevin said, “That’s better. That’s much more natural.” I felt his arm slip around me as he removed the glass from my hand. Then he said, “Let me get you a sweater and some socks. You’re very cold.”
I went on crying, but by the time he returned I had controlled the sobs and was wiping away the tears.
“Here you are,” said Kevin. “Put these on and then wrap yourself in this blanket. I’ll make you a hot drink.”
He disappeared again, and clumsily I pulled on a pair of gray socks over my bare feet. That took some time, because my fingers were so stiff. Then I struggled into the thick blue sweater and huddled myself in the woolly blanket just as Kevin reappeared with a mug of dark sweet tea.
We sat for a while on the couch. Very slowly I began to feel warmer. Sipping my tea, I stared at the typically English faded elegance of that comfortable living room, the antiques lying casually around as if they had grown out of the floor decades ago, the jumbled collection of books on the shelves by the fireplace, the scattered papers on the desk, and on the table a Waterford crystal vase filled with yellow roses.
“ ‘And the roses had the look of flowers that are looked at,’ ” I thought, and suddenly realized I had spoken Eliot’s words aloud.
“Ghastly, aren’t they?” said Kevin. “Charles keeps on buying them, but I think their plastic splendor gives the room an air of total unreality. … Do you feel any closer to reality yet, or do you still feel as if you’re struggling in a nightmare?”
“I’m feeling better. But …”
“But everything’s still a nightmare? Tell me about it. A nightmare shared is often a nightmare pared down to manageable proportions. Besides, since I’ve never liked Scott, I’m unlikely to be either disillusioned or shocked.”
“This’ll shock you.”
“Oh, good. I’m so tediously difficult to shock. It makes life so dull. Shock me.”
I talked in disconnected sentences for some minutes, and when I broke off at last to look at Kevin, I saw he was indeed shocked.
“Kevin …”
“Yes. Sorry to be so blank. I was just trying to think. You realize, of course, that he’s an alcoholic?”
“But, Kevin, that’s what so extraordinary! He’s not! He has complete control over his drinking habits!”
“My dear,” said Kevin, “if that’s true, why are you here?”
“But this was just an isolated occasion!”
“Do you seriously believe this has never happened before?”
I thought of Scott talking of the abrupt termination of his affair with the librarian. I remembered him saying, “I got into bad trouble in the navy.” I heard him confessing that he had given up casual affairs when he had found himself unable to face them without alcohol.
I couldn’t speak.
“You can bet this wasn’t the first time,” said Kevin, “and you can bet it won’t be the last, unless he and alcohol part company for good. God knows I’m a heavy drinker, but at least I don’t make life intolerable for myself and the people around me by my drinking. Are you going back to him?”
“Oh, but I must!” I started to cry again. “I’m going to help him … save him—everything depends on me!”
“No, Vicky. Everything depends on him. My God, I hate to have to say this, but I’m going to have another drink. How frightful! I think I must be scared by you displaying all the symptoms of the redeemer complex. Don’t get hung up on redemption, Vicky. It’s a dead-end street.”
“But I love him!”
“Yes, that seems obvious, but what’s not so obvious is why. I can’t really believe you’re hung up on re
demption. You don’t strike me as being a masochist who falls in love with a man not in spite of his imperfections but because of them.” Kevin sighed, added some soda water to the Irish whiskey in his glass, and returned to sit beside me on the couch. “In some ways you remind me of your father. You pick the great love of your life, and he or she—let’s think of Scott and say he—turns out to be very buttoned up emotionally and not good at expressing his feelings. However, that doesn’t faze you, because you have this very American attitude than anything damaged can be fixed. You take on the job of fixing the damage—of course it’s an exercise in power—and then you have the shattering experience of discovering that you’re not such an effective Mr. Fixit as you thought you were. Result: unhappiness, disillusionment, and grand passion on the rocks. Am I depressing you? Okay, try this alternative theory on for size: it’s not love you feel for Scott, but guilt. You feel compelled to make amends for your father’s mistakes.”
“Oh, but …”
“No? Then let’s make the theory even simpler and say this whole affair of yours is just one big act of rebellion against your father.”
“Kevin …”
“Yes, home truths are loathsome, aren’t they? Or am I perhaps very far from home?”
“You couldn’t be further away. Scott’s the only man I’ve ever really been able to relate to.”
“What a diabolical coincidence. And what a diabolical phrase ‘relate to’ has become! Nowadays it seems to cover everything from a limp handshake to an orgasm, but of course we’re hardly talking about limp handshakes here, are we? A pity. I only wish we were.”
“We’re not just talking about orgasms, either. Look, Kevin, why I love Scott doesn’t matter …”
“Okay, I give up. You want to go back to him.”
“Yes.”
“When he’s sober.”
“Yes.”
“And only if he swears to give up liquor for good.”
“Yes.”
“So be it. I’ve no right to meddle any further. Now, let me get the guest room ready for you—you must be exhausted.”
I stopped him making up the bed. Crawling under a pile of blankets, I lay awake shivering for a long time, but at last the shivers stopped, my eyes closed against the dawn light, and I somehow managed to rest.
XI
“I’m sorry,” said Kevin, “but I’m not letting you go back to that house on your own. I’m sure that by now he’ll have reached the stage where he’s more interested in throwing up than in behaving like a psycho, but I’m taking no chances. I’m coming with you.”
We were sitting by ourselves in the dining area of the old-fashioned kitchen. Charles, whom I seemed fated never to meet, had left for his office long before I had dragged myself out of bed at ten o’clock. I was feeling calm but was unable to eat.
“More coffee?” said Kevin.
“Thanks.” I watched him reach for the coffeepot. The far side of middle age had made Kevin look less of a maverick and more like a distinguished man of letters. His hair, long at the nape of the neck but carefully trimmed, was the purest shade of white, and although he was much heavier than in his younger days, he had retained his trick of making casual clothes look elegant. His accent, formerly a curious mixture of Eastern prep school and Broadway theater, now leaned heavily toward the BBC. He wore glasses but kept taking them off, as if he suspected they made him look too elderly, and waving them around vaguely while he talked. The performance only added to his unexpected new air of distinction.
“We’ll take a cab,” he said as we left the house. “I’ve only driven once in this country, and it was a disaster. I have this incurable urge to drive on the right.”
I could barely smile. I could think only of Scott. Anxiety gnawed at the pit of my stomach.
When we reached the house, I could hardly fit the key in the lock, and Kevin had to help me open the front door. We stepped into the hall. The housekeeper was vacuuming the living room upstairs, and the normality of the noise came as an immense relief and gave me the courage to tap on the library door.
“Scott?”
There was no answer. We looked at each other.
“My God,” said Kevin, “is it possible that he was able to get himself to work this morning?”
Scott came out of the library. He was freshly shaved and immaculately dressed, and when I realized the supreme effort he must have made to master his appearance, I felt the tears spring to my eyes. He looked very ill. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was bleached of color. He made no effort to speak, but merely stood looking at me, and the wordlessness of his pain drew me instinctively toward him.
“Scott … darling … we thought … we wondered …”
I saw him swallow, but still he was unable to speak. I turned to Kevin.
“It’s all right now,” I said. “Thanks so much for everything.”
Kevin just said, “Call me later,” and left quietly. The front door closed behind him.
The first words Scott said were, “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t go on.”
“Darling, I’m not leaving you. I’m not.”
“I couldn’t live if I didn’t have you, I’d rather die. I wanted to die this morning when I realized what I’d done. I don’t deserve to live. I do such terrible things.”
“Shhh.” I took him in my arms and stroked his hair as he clung to me.
“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” he said. “I thought it was all over. I even ran the bath and got the razor ready. …”
“Come and sit down.”
We went into the library and sat down quietly on the couch. Far away, as if in another world, the housekeeper continued to vacuum the living room.
“Scott,” I said, “you must have help. Will you please see a doctor?”
He nodded vigorously. “I’ll get some pills. They’ll help me over the first few days. I’ll never drink again, never, I swear it.”
I kissed him and held him close. “I wasn’t just referring to the liquor. I want you to have help in handling all those violent feelings that are buried inside you.”
He looked puzzled. “So long as I don’t drink, I have no violent feelings.”
“Scott, alcohol isn’t a creative force. It doesn’t manufacture these violent feelings out of the blue. They’re there all the time, but you keep them locked up. All alcohol does is open up your mind and let them out.”
He sat thinking about this. Once he put his hand to his forehead as if his head was hurting so much that thinking was difficult, but he never complained of feeling ill. Finally he said, “Well, perhaps. Yes, maybe. But the cure doesn’t lie with psychiatrists. It lies with me. Once I’ve repaid my father what I owe him, I’ll be at peace with myself and then all my violence will be a thing of the past.”
There was a slight pause. Then I said, “I think your father would have felt long ago that he’d been repaid. I think he would have wanted you to look after yourself now. If you were to talk to a doctor …”
“A psychiatrist, you mean.”
“Yes. A psychiatrist. It’s not that I think you’re crazy—”
“I’ll bet that’s exactly what you think. And after last night, I don’t blame you, either.”
“It’s not that I think you’re crazy,” I said again, as if he hadn’t spoken. “But I do think you’re living daily with too much pain, and why go on suffering when maybe, just maybe, a doctor could help alleviate the distress? Isn’t seeking help at least worth a try?”
“Well, I’ll do anything you want, of course,” he said. “Anything at all. If you want me to see a psychiatrist, I’ll see one.”
I was very much aware that he was consenting to see a doctor for all the wrong reasons. I took a deep breath and made a new effort to reach him.
“You’ve got to want to be cured, Scott,” I said. “If you don’t, a psychiatrist can’t help you.”
“I do want to be cured. I’ve spent my whole postwa
r life trying to cure myself by the only method which is ever going to be successful.”
We seemed to be going round and round in circles. With reluctance I decided I had no choice now but to be very blunt indeed.
“There’s something you should understand,” I said evenly. “If you can’t control this violence, you won’t be able to keep me. I used to think nothing could ever come between us, but that was just me being arrogant and thinking I was some kind of superwoman who could fix anything if she tried hard enough. But I’m not a superwoman … and I’m not a masochist, either. I loathe violence and I won’t stand for it in my private life. I think you should know that. It’ll help you to believe me when I say that if you ever try a rerun of that scene last night—”
“I promise you,” he said, “I swear to you that last night’s scene will never, never, never happen again.”
“I know you’ll give up liquor. I’ve every confidence in you as far as that’s concerned.”
“Then you can relax. You’ve got nothing else to worry about.”
I was silent.
“I’ll see a psychiatrist too, of course,” he said after a pause, “but not here. I’ll wait till I’m back in New York. I wouldn’t trust a European psychiatrist to relate to my American background.”
This I could understand. I thought of the psychiatrists I had seen years ago in London, and remembered how foreign they had all seemed. I had felt quite unable to communicate my feelings to them.
“All right,” I said. “Fair enough. Wait till you come home.”
He kissed me, and I held him close again as I stroked his hair. For a long while we were silent, but at last, I heard him say in a low voice, “And now I want to say something about Sebastian.”
Sins of the Fathers Page 79
