Love, Again

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  Jean-Pierre began a spirited speech, in French. It could be seen from Stephen's face and from Sarah's — both of them being, as it is put at school, 'good at' French — that this was a speech to be appreciated as a performance in its own right.

  'Now look here, Jean-Pierre old chap,' said Stephen reproachfully, 'any minute now I'll start to believe you actually enjoy meetings.'

  At this communication from a past epoch Jean-Pierre only looked puzzled. Benjamin, a man of a thousand committees, signalled to Sarah, and then to Stephen and to Mary, leaning forward and holding them with his commanding look. 'It isn't strictly my business,' he remarked, 'but I do feel the situation would be significantly improved if there was in fact some kind of structured discussion. For instance, surely there must be a decision about finances?'

  'Naturally there must be decisions,' said Jean-Pierre, already mollified. 'And if I'd been given a chance to make a statement… it has been decided that we shall have Julie Vairon in Belles Rivieres next year. And very likely every year. Next year we shall have a month's run. Why not two months? It is all a question of the correct publicity.' And he bowed slightly to Mary.

  A silence. They were all contemplating a yearly commitment to Julie.

  Stephen's head was tilted back, and he was staring at the imperturbable blue of the Mediterranean sky with a stoic look. Sarah was thinking, Over my dead body. That's silly — you'll have forgotten it all by then. You'll probably even be thinking it was funny… well, if you do, it'll be dishonest.

  Henry was looking at Sarah as he said, 'I'll be free, I'll guarantee it.' His terrible insecurity made him add, 'I mean, if you want me.'

  Everyone laughed at him, and Jean-Pierre said, 'But naturally. I can give you that assurance.'

  'And I give you notice,' said Benjamin, 'that I am coming to Oxfordshire for your first night in August. I shall be missing your first night here.'

  'Missing the first night,' said Henry to him. A jest, but Benjamin actually said, quickly, 'I'm sorry,' saw it was a joke, went red, but preserved more than ever the look of a man determined not to be undone by seductive and dangerous ways. He said to Jean-Pierre, 'I shall be here next year, I can assure you of that.'

  Jean-Pierre understood that this was an important moment, in fact a guarantee of financial support. He got up, leaned across a littered table, put out his hand. Benjamin took it sitting, then stood up, and the two men formally shook hands.

  'We can discuss the details in Jean-Pierre's office,' said Benjamin. 'Let's say half an hour.'

  'Let's say half an hour,' said Mary.

  'I have to catch my plane,' said Benjamin.

  'There's plenty of time,' said Sarah.

  'There's time, but not plenty,' said Henry.

  Here, on cue, the chatter around the tables was blanked out by the screaming roar of three war planes, sinister, black, like some outsize prehistoric hornets out of a science-fiction film, shooting across the sky with the speed which announces, so briefly it is easy to forget they were there at all, that they are from a world of super-technology far from our amateur little lives.

  Now the players were appearing, yawning prettily. The circle was enlarged, and enlarged again to include everyone. Bill took a chair beside Sarah and enquired sulkily, 'It is true there will be a run in England?'

  'Two weeks,' said Sarah.

  'And I can't be there. If only I had known.'

  'If only any of us had known.'

  'But you will keep in touch, won't you? At least there's two weeks left of this run.' He was speaking to her like a peremptory young lover. Really, they might have spent the night together. Molly watched the two of them, puzzled. As well she might be, thought Sarah. And Stephen too. Because of Bill's closeness to his mother, he felt, as much as he saw, Sarah, but between Molly and Sarah was that gulf only to be filled by experience. Molly did not yet know that always, impalpably, invisibly, through the air rained down ashes that could be seen only when enough had settled — on her, on Stephen, on the older, on the ageing, ashes and dust dimming the colours of skin and hair. Sarah knew that this glossy young animal sitting beside her diminished her, leached colour from her, no matter how he flattered her with his eyes, his smile, enclosing her in streams of sympathy. Sarah saw Molly's serious, thoughtful, honest gaze turn from her to Stephen; the sun was not burnishing him as it did the young ones. He looked bleached, faded.

  Sarah said to Bill, knowing her voice was rough, 'I shall be going home in a couple of days.'

  'Oh, you can't, you can't do that,' said Bill, really upset. 'You can't leave us.' He might just as well have said 'leave me.'

  'Everyone is leaving us,' said Molly. 'Henry… Sarah… ' She hesitated, looking at Stephen. He was again looking into the sky.

  'I shall be here,' said Mary. 'And so will Roy. If Sarah is going, then we must be here.'

  'I have a month's leave due, remember?' said Sarah.

  Here Mary's raised brows remarked direct to Sarah that she couldn't remember Sarah's ever before insisting on due leave.

  'No, Sarah,' said Henry. 'Don't forget, I'll have to be over for the new auditions. I can fit it in the second week in July. And you must be there.'

  'You mean, no vanishing in July?'

  Henry smiled at her, and her heart tripped.

  'Such a wild, marvellous, blissful success,' remarked Mary, lazing in her chair in a way that contradicted her briskly efficient linen suit. Uncharacteristically lazed, she put her arms back behind her head, exposing tender patches of damp linen. She had the look of an animal offering vulnerable parts of herself to superior strength. Jean-Pierre sighed; she heard it, blushed, and looked upwards, like Stephen. One by one, they all looked skywards. Quite low down, a single hawk circled. Lower and lower it floated, until some rogue breeze blew it ragged and tilted up a wing. The bird rocked wildly to find balance, steadied, circled once on a thermal, and swerved off to the top of a plane tree, where it sat huffing out its feathers. It looked sulky, offended, and this made them all laugh.

  By now the cafe tables were filled with people in some way connected with Julie Vairon.

  'We have virtually taken his cafe over, poor Monsieur Denivre,' said Molly.

  'Il est désolé,' said Jean-Pierre. 'Guillaume,' he called to the proprietor, who was attending to customers a couple of tables away — Andrew, Sally, Richard, George White. 'Les Anglais ont peur que uous les trouviez trop encombrants.' Guillaume smiled, with exactly the shade of urbane scepticism appropriate. He said, 'Ça y est!'

  'Why Anglais?' enquired Molly, exaggerating her American voice. 'I'm not Anglais. Who is Anglais here — apart from the Anglais?'

  Here Bill said, in the roughest of Tennessee accents, 'I'm English, mesdames, messieurs, I am English to the last little molecule.'

  They laughed, but it was one of the moments, hardly uncommon, when Europeans and Americans occupy different geographical and historical space.

  The Americans were thinking, Molly — Boston. At least, that was where she lived now. Benjamin — West Coast, even if his accent could only be Harvard. Henry had been born in New York but lived, when he was at home — seldom — in Los Angeles. Andrew had been born, and lived, in Texas.

  But the Europeans were thinking, Molly — Ireland. Benjamin's antecedents could only have come from that culturally fertile region, sometimes Russian, sometimes Polish, the shtetl. Henry — the Mediterranean. Andrew? Scottish, of course.

  'Our American cousins,' said Mary to Sarah.

  'Our cousins,' said Sarah to Mary.

  Les Anglais all laughed, and the Americans laughed out of good feeling. Laughter was breaking out for no good reason, from all around the tables. The company's spirits were being lifted, borne on those currents that carry players and their minders towards the intoxications of the first night. The charm, the enchantment, the delightfulness of- well, of what exactly? — were slowly lifting them, seawater setting fronds of weed afloat, splashing dry rock, sending out invigorating ozone.

  Th
ey sat on, while Le Patron caused the waiters to bring more coffee, and the square filled with vehicles. Not only this town was crammed; so were all the little towns round about, from where coaches would bring people — were already bringing people, at ten in the morning — to become part of the ambience of Julie, her time, her place.

  Soon Henry departed to work out with the technicians the problems with sound, and Sarah, Stephen, Benjamin, Roy, and Mary went off with Jean-Pierre to his office. There finances were discussed, particularly Benjamin's — or rather the Associated and Allied Banks of North California and South Oregon's — commitment to the new plans. Stephen's as well, but as he pointed out, since he was an individual, he had only to say 'yes'. Money was talking. First things first. Money has to talk before actors can.

  Then Benjamin flew off to investigate his investment in the Edinburgh Festival. Jean-Pierre insisted they must decide how to get together a much larger committee to discuss next year's production in Belles Rivieres. Sarah, he trusted, would be part of it. So, he hoped, would Mr Ellington-Smith. Regular meetings throughout the year would benefit them all. All this went on until well after two. When they arrived on the pavement for lunch, it was observable that the players and musicians already preferred to be with each other, merging for their test that evening. Henry sat by Sarah. When she thought that this was the last time she would be with him in Belles Rivieres — it would if she had anything to do with it — such a feeling of loss took her over that she had to admit if she were not in love with Bill, then she showed all the signs of loving Henry. It occurred to her that to be with Henry was all sweetness, while being with Bill was to be angry and ashamed. What a pity, if it was her fate to fall in love so inappropriately, that it had not been Henry from the first.

  Henry returned from a reconnaissance in the late afternoon to say that crowds were already making their way up to Julie's house and that all the seats had been booked by mid-morning. He reported that several tastefully designed signs with arrows had been nailed to trees, saying in French and in English, 'One may stand in this place.' 'Please respect Nature.' 'Please respect Julie Vairon's Forest.'

  By seven the woods all around the house held a couple of thousand people, most of whom could not hope to do more than hear the music. There being no 'backstage', Stephen and Sarah, as authors, Henry, as director, went together to where the players stood waiting among the trees, to wish them luck.

  The three sat themselves in chairs right at the back, and this time Henry managed to stay seated through the performance. It was all wonderful! It was extraordinary! It was fantastic! These comments and a hundred others, in various languages, were to be heard all through the intervals, and the applause was unending. And then it was all over, and the company were down outside the cafe again, embracing, affectionate, mad with euphoria, in love and out of it, wild with relief. The brassy little moon, like a clipped coin, stood over the town, and resulting moonlight was satisfactorily moody and equivocal. Les Collines Rouges announced it would stay open as long as anyone was still up, and cars roared triumphantly around the little town. Jean-Pierre could not stop smiling. He had continually to rise and shake hands, or be embraced by prominent citizens of the area, for whom he was embodying all the success of the production. Midnight came and was past. Jean-Pierre said he had to get home to his wife and children. Henry went too, saying he must telephone his wife. He murmured to Sarah that he would be seeing her soon in London, with a look that brought tears to her eyes. Richard left, saying he was tired, looking at Sally but not saying goodnight to her. Soon after, Sally announced that this old woman was going to sleep. Sarah heard Andrew's low laugh, saw that he wanted to share amusement with her, Sarah, and, as she too got up, heard him say, 'Well, how about it, Sarah?' This was so improbable she decided she had not heard it. She announced that this old woman too had to sleep. Groans of protest that the party was ending. Bill leaped up to accompany her to the hotel door, there enfolding her in an embrace and murmuring that he thought of her as a second mother. She went upstairs white hot with love and with anger.

  She stood at her window, looking down at the company, and knew that this loss, the desolation of being excluded from happiness, could only refer back to something she had forgotten. Had she too been that child who had stood on the edge of a playground, watching the others? She had forgotten. Fortunately.

  And soon all this would have put itself into the past. Julie Vairon would never take shape in this way again, in this setting, with these people. Well, it was not the first time — rather perhaps the hundredth — that she had been part of some play or piece, and it had always been sad to see the end of something that could never happen again. The theatre, in short, was just like life (but in a condensed and brightly illuminated form, forcing one into the comparison), always whirling people and events into improbable associations and then — that's it. The end. Basta! But this event, Julie's, was not anything she had known before. For one thing, she had not been 'in love' — why the inverted commas? She was not going to make it all harmless with quote marks. No, there was something in this particular mix of people — that must be it — and of course the music… So Sarah talked aloud to herself, walking about her room, returning often to the window, where she could see how Stephen sat next to Molly, while Bill — but enough. She went to her mirror several times during the course of this excursion around and about her room, for an inspection that deserved to be called scientific. That a woman's interaction with her mirror is likely to go through some changes during the decades goes without saying but… someone should bottle this, she announced aloud to the empty room, visible over her reflection's shoulder (Woman Gazing Curiously into Her Mirror)… Yes, someone should bottle these substances flooding me now. They probably did bottle them. Probably potions were on sale in beauty shops and chemists: if so, they should have on the label the warning p o I s o N — in brightest red. It is not merely that I feel twenty years younger, I look it…

  Meanwhile she wrote:

  Dear Stephen,

  I simply have to write this letter, though letters being the tricky things they are and so easily misunderstood, I am afraid. Look, I really am not in love with you. Loving someone is one thing, but being in love another. As I wrote that it occurs to me that 'loving' can mean anything. But I really do love you. It is awful that I should have to spell this out. If it makes us both easier, I can say,

  Affectionately,

  Sarah

  P.S. I really cannot bear to think of our friendship being spoiled by misunderstandings as silly as this.

  This was not the letter she slid under Stephen's door on the floor above hers, for she thought, One can't say 'I love you' to an Englishman. Stephen would take to his heels and run. She tore up that letter and wrote:

  Dear Stephen,

  I simply have to write this letter, though letters being the tricky things they are and so easily misunderstood, I can't help feeling nervous. Look, I really am not in love with you. I know you think I am. I am very very fond of you — but you know that. It is awful that I should have to spell this out. If it makes us both easier, I can say,

  Affectionately,

  Sarah

  This was the letter she took upstairs, hoping she would not run into him.

  Next morning, very early, she woke to see an envelope sliding under her door.

  Dearest Sarah,

  I'm off. Unexpectedly got myself on an early flight, so won't see you today. But see you soon in London.

  With all love,

  Henry

  As she stood reading this, another envelope slid towards her feet from under the door. She cautiously opened the door, but it was too late: the corridor was empty, though she heard the lift descending.

  Dearest Sarah,

  I am so unhappy you are going and I may never see you again. You are a very special friend and I feel I have known you all my life. I shall never forget our time together in Belles Rivieres and I shall always think of you with true affection. Perhaps ne
xt year? I can't wait!!!

  Gratefully,

  Bill

  P.S. Please feel free to let me know if other productions of Julie are projected anywhere in Europe or the States????????? Why shouldn't Julie conquer New York? That is a lovely thought, isn't it?

  While she was drinking coffee at her window, the porter brought two letters.

  Dear Sarah,

  Before leaving the beguiling atmospheres and influences of Julie Vairon, but I am happy to say only temporarily, I feel I must tell you how much it has meant to me to be with you all, but particularly with you. The financial aspects of this enterprise will I am sure prove more rewarding than we ever anticipated, but it is not this that prompts me to write to you. You will, I am sure, find it improbable that I never even suspected the theatre could offer such rewards, though when I think about it, I enjoyed acting in a minor role in Death of a Salesman in the school theatrical group when I was a youngster. When I reflect that all this has been going on ever since and that I have had no part in it, I really can't forgive myself. And so, my dear Sarah — I hope I may call you that — I look forward to seeing you at Julie's first night in Oxfordshire.

  Until then -

  Benjamin

  Sarah!

  You won't know who this is, I suppose, since you are so obstinately gazing in the wrong direction. I am madly in love with you, Sarah Durham! I have not been so overthrown since I was an adolescent. (Yes, all right.)

  Somebody loves you I wonder who I wonder who it can be.

  Your secret lover

  P.S. I have always been crazy for older women.

  At first shock, this letter actually seemed to her insulting. She was about to tear it up, her fingers trembling, in order to deposit the fragments in the wastepaper basket, when… Wait a minute. Hold your horses, Sarah Durham. She carefully reread the letter, noting with satirical appreciation for her inconsistency the following reactions: First, the attack of false morality. Second, irritation, because she simply couldn't attend to it, when she was so beset with emotions. Third, the classic retort to an unwanted declaration of love, faintly patronizing pity: Oh, poor thing: well, never mind, he'll get over it.