She straightened up suddenly and must have caught a strange look on my face. She stopped her prattle and asked me if I were worried about something. She said, was it this impending prosecution for dangerous driving? She was so sorry it had occurred after their wedding. No, I said, I scarcely thought of it; and made an excuse and left her.
I was only at the top of the stairs when the telephone rang, and Helen called me back. Someone wanted me.
It was Alexandra. She was in London unexpectedly. She had been to my flat and had eventually got my address from Ralph Diary.
I licked dry lips. Perhaps love and mental unbalance are nearer together than one supposes. ‘ Darling, how nice of you to ring me,’ trying to give it a society tone so that Helen, receding towards the kitchen, might think it a casual call.
At least no one could accuse Alexandra of being slow. ‘Are you not alone?’
‘No. But it doesn’t matter.’ Sweat had broken out on my neck; I desperately looked for an excuse to delay a meeting, while knowing that it couldn’t be decently delayed any longer.
‘I’ll be here till Thursday. I could come down to Winchester if that’s any help.’
‘No. I’ll be in London tomorrow. Where will you be?’
‘Well, from twelve o’clock I’m free. Shall I come to your flat?’
‘Yes. If you could, that would be marvellous. But I shan’t be in London much before one. Could we meet at three?’
‘Yes. At the flat?’
‘Yes. I’ll be there.’
‘You’re all right, darling? This awful thing hasn’t got you down?’
‘Well, it’s been pretty grim, but I think I’m coming out of it. And you?’
‘Wanting to see you. It seems a year.’
‘It is a year,’ I said.
Chapter Five
The converted paraffin lamp with the pink glass globe had been one of Harriet’s last purchases. I had never seen it fronded in this way before. It was bisected, lined, decorated with fine brown hairs which gave it the appearance of having been scrawled over by an artist. Alexandra moved her head and the lamp became a piece of Victoriana again. Harriet must have had a vulgar streak to buy such things, though I had never noticed it while she was alive. In a way she had hypnotised me into accepting her sense of values.
‘Oh, my love,’ I said, ‘ how beautiful you are. I’d forgotten. You look so young.’
‘Not so young, in seven and a half years I shall be thirty.’
‘In a hundred years it won’t matter. But it matters desperately how lovely you are now.’
‘Morris …’
‘And we’ve lost a month. Sweetness has been wasted on the desert air.’
‘Morris, listen, darling—’
‘Don’t speak. Don’t let’s talk yet. The libretto isn’t important if you’ve got the music.’
The Venetian blinds half pulled made curious stripes across the carpet. The stripes were not at all like prison bars. It was strange that Harriet had insisted on having both blinds and curtains. Or was that not unusual? I turned my back on the subject. Alexandra’s lashes kept fluttering but she did not open her eyes. Magnified, they too would make shadows on a carpet.
‘I came over,’ she said, ‘because my father was in London and Jackie said it was a good chance to meet him halfway. She paid my fare.’
‘And today?’
‘Today Daddy’s at Greenwich. He won’t be back until late.’
‘Oh, my darling, it’s been such a long time.…’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Well, it’s true.…’
‘Then there’s no need to repeat it. Morris, you must have had a really terrible time.’
I thought: I didn’t kill Harriet for this, but it’s worth murder to possess her. But I mustn’t think that; I mustn’t think it. The two facts must live in different parts of my mind, separated for ever by an unbreakable wall. If I once equate the killing of Harriet with the gaining of Alexandra, then the relationship is damned.
‘Morris,’ she said gently.
‘Yes?’
‘You’ve never been like this before. I don’t understand.’
‘Like what?’
‘As if you’re trying to convince me that you love me. You’ve talked about it—something you’ve never done before—and not quite naturally, almost like dialogue. Even your love-making …’
‘Hasn’t it been right? Not for you? Why, for me—’
‘Oh, right in that way, of course. But it’s been in a passion. No gentleness.’
‘I’ve waited so long.’
‘But last time in Paris it was much longer.’
‘I’m sorry. I wanted to eat you up.’
She took my face in her hands. ‘Darling. I want to be eaten. But by a gourmet.’ As I made an irritable movement she hastily added: ‘Please—I knew I would put it badly. But before …’
‘Yes?’
‘Before, we sought something in each other. There was a sort of mutual gratitude and warmth and discovery, as well as passion. This time—for the first time—I think Harriet has come between us.’
I kept my face very still. ‘Darling, what can you mean?’
‘I think it was a mistake for me to come here. This is—her home.’ As I sat up she went on again: ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have said it. But it’s too soon to come here.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ I said shortly. ‘ For me it’s only a relief that she’s no longer here.’
She put her finger to my lips. ‘Don’t say that. It’s bad.’
‘Bad?’
‘Well, bad luck. Anyway, I liked her. And I think you did. Her accident cleared the way for us, but I’d hate to feel that we were glad of it.’
‘I’d hate to be hypocritical,’ I said.
She looked at me, frowning a little, but said no more.
Afterwards we went out to dinner and tried to talk of other things. She had been to the play in Paris again and thought it much improved. She asked me about my writing, but this very shyly, for we had hardly ever discussed it and I think she felt she was again on Harriet’s ground. The one thing in both our minds was not mentioned until it was almost time for her to go.
I said: ‘ We can meet tomorrow?’
‘No, I must spend the whole day with him. Friday, though … I could change my plane time and leave late.’
I said: ‘Very soon there won’t be any need for this secretiveness. We shall be able to marry.’
‘When?’
‘It’s only five weeks.…’
‘… In the eighteenth century of course they never bothered. Six weeks was considered adequate mourning time.’
‘I think we ought to wait another month.’
‘Yes. But before Christmas.’
‘Before Christmas we’ll come out into the open. Perhaps a week or two the other side …’
‘There’s no reason why we shouldn’t come out into the open now,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to hide.’
Repentance is a lifelong process, and this is the beginning of the journey. That done, that thought over, that prayed for … a true act of contrition. But for what was I sorry? Was I sorry to be free? If I was not sorry to be free, how could I repent the act that had freed me? And adultery was equally a sin in the eyes of the Church, along with murder. Could I repent my earlier adultery with Alexandra? If not, how could I begin the long process of spiritual salvation? What was even more fundamental, did I really believe that spiritual salvation lay at the end of it?
‘Morris,’ she said.
I put my hand over hers and smiled the lie into the brilliant candour of her eyes. ‘Give me time, darling. This has been a pretty big shock to me. Bigger than I ever thought.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
What else, I wondered, could she see? All her perceptions were acute. It would have been better to have told her the truth from the beginning.
‘What time on Friday?’ I said.
Rhesus Boy was to go into rehearsal next week, and this Thursday there was a preliminary assembling of the cast to read it through. Mary Arlett was taking the lead, as she had done in the original production, and we had got Peter Jollif for the name part. Isabel Chokra was designing the sets and the dresses, and she had come along this afternoon to get an idea of the size of the stage and the shape and colour of the players, so we sat together in the dusty auditorium.
The play read badly. I had never wanted it revived, and sitting listening to the words one had written four years ago one now realised precisely why. The wit in Widow’s Peak was bitter and cynical but in its lines were grainy truths that prevented them from ever becoming cheap. It would perhaps never be a great play, but it would wear well. When its full time was run on the stage and it had been filmed, it would be done on television and by countless amateur societies in provincial towns and villages where would-be actors were eagerly waiting to try their skill and show their sophistication. After that, with luck, it might even be revived on the professional stage again. Rhesus Boy on the other hand had brittle cynicism and little else. It was full of manufactured laughs. With a practised eye you could see everything coming: the inverted situations to create surprise, the sophisticated reaction—which in fact was as predictable as the conventional one—and the characters like puppets dancing to the down-beat theme.
But there was worse than this. Rhesus Boy had an ailing and complaining wife, who had constantly berated him for his infidelity. When I wrote this part Harriet was not ailing and I was not unfaithful. Now it seemed like a horrid prediction from life. Even some of the lines could have been applied to us.
I got hot and sweaty at the thought of this being seen in the West End. When Ralph came in near the end I told him I would like to withdraw it. He looked aghast.
‘Withdraw it! You must be crazy, Morris. This is all set for a big hit. It’s much more in keeping with the times now than when it was written!’
‘I don’t like it. Anyway … anyway, now that I see it I realise how much I borrowed from Waltz of the Toreadors.’
‘Nonsense. That’s a purely subjective judgement. If you applied it universally most of Shakespeare’s plays would never have been produced. This is a very funny, intelligent play. What do you say, Isabel?’
‘I like it it’s—frivolous but full of good lines. I think you’re being hypercritical, my dear. Wait till you see it in production!’
‘I’ve already seen it once!’ I said gloomily.
‘Yes, and how near it came to success even then,’ Ralph said, ‘Morris, take my word for it, take my judgement for a change. You’ve had a pretty bad time recently, and it must colour your feelings still. But this is going to be good, there’s no doubt of it! Anyway, the contract is signed.’
After it was over I gave Isabel Chokra a lift back to her flat and she asked me in for a drink. It was always queer to see this essentially English young woman living in a flat decorated in the style of a Far Eastern civilisation. Carpetless polished floors, cushions of brilliant Thai silk on low settees, a miniature temple in ivory on an ebony table. Her flat-faced, smiling, intelligent husband was not home, and she mixed me a stiff whisky that seemed to go right to the tips of my fingers.
‘Morris,’ she said. ‘ You must not grieve too much.’
‘Oh … Oh, that … It’s not just grief so much as—as puzzlement Isabel, as to why it had to happen. You know, I can’t relate it to any scheme of things.’
‘I think, my dear, where one cannot understand one can only—accept. Don’t let it spoil your career as a playwright. It mustn’t just at this time, when you are at the peak of your career. Perhaps, as a good Buddhist, I shouldn’t urge you to ambition; and yet I can’t bear the thought just at present of all your talents being blunted by your loss.’
‘Do you think it likely?’
‘I hope not. But you and Harriet were so much to each other. She was so much of an inspiration. I know how you must feel.’
‘I don’t think I shall ever write quite the same sort of play again, Isabel. There are certain primary experiences that change one.… Can Buddhism explain this sort of happening?’
‘I find it a very comforting way of life. It seems to answer so many questions that would otherwise be unexplainable. Of course—’
‘Perhaps sometime I’ll ask you to explain what has happened to me.’
She smiled and patted my hand. ‘ Oh, I’m a tyro, Morris. For that you would have to turn to Bina or one of his friends. You must realise I am not intellectual. My ways are artistic. I appreciate life through my senses, which isn’t the way that would have appealed to the Master at all. But it takes all sorts to make a world and we have to do the best with the talents given us until the next time.’
Going home was always difficult now. Even though I had gradually got rid of Harriet’s personal possessions, the place was still decorated and furnished after her image. Even Alexandra’s visit had done nothing to change it. She had, as usual, been right: I should never have invited her here, we should have met at a hotel.
When I let myself in this evening it was just on the edge of twilight when it would have still been ostentatious to switch the lights on. It had been about this time of day when Harriet and I had first seen the flat seven months ago. In the interval had been all the excitement and interest of buying curtains and furniture, of seeing the place altered and repainted, of our first meals here, of settling luxuriously into the heart of London after living frugally in a suburb. Often on Saturdays we would go to the Portobello Road together. She adored pawing over old things and hunting out bargains, and, though I was personally less interested in this, I was always fascinated by the people who went there and who would have provided good copy for Hogarth or Goya. On the table now were the pair of fine Chelsea candle-sticks she had bought on our last visit. We had borne them home in triumph in the new white car, and then we had tried them out in various places in the room to see where they looked best.
I was not sure whether I could go on living in this flat after I married Alexandra; it would certainly not be fair to ask her to come here unless the place were completely changed.
I walked across the living room and sifted through the afternoon post that Mrs. Snow had taken in for me. For a successful playwright there seemed to be a never-ending post-bag. People sent begging letters, actors and actresses wrote for jobs, struggling writers sent in their typescripts.…
A footstep sounded in the bedroom.
I knew instantly that Harriet was there, just as she always had been when I came home to this flat. Harriet was in there just as she had always been, and today she was looking for her shoes. But I’d cleared them all out, given or thrown some of them away. The piled drawers were empty now, their contents in two suitcases under the spare bed. And her suits, her frocks, her coats …
The footsteps were coming this way. The rather firm tread, decided, dominant, but uneven today and slower than usual.
A tap and the door opened. Tim Dickinson.
‘Hullo, Morris. Sorry to butt in like this. Your daily woman let me in and I said I’d wait.’
I looked at him, licked my lips.
‘Did I give you a shock?’ he said. ‘ Sorry. I couldn’t find soda water for my drink so I was pottering about in the kitchen.’
I knew exactly where the sound had come from.
‘The soda water,’ I said, ‘ should be in the cupboard where we usually keep it. Here.’ I turned, glad to hide my face, glad to bend to force the blood back. I got the soda out and poured myself a drink.
He limped across and helped himself. ‘ Thanks.’
‘Did you want to see me professionally or is this a social call?’
‘Couldn’t it be both?’
‘Of course … What’s the professional part?’
‘This dangerous driving charge. You’ve heard nothing yet?’
The shock of the footsteps was still working its way out. I told him of the policeman’s c
all.
‘Hm … Not unexpected, really.’
‘In fact,’ I said, ‘there was some point in his questions. The man in the Mini was right. It was Harriet who was driving.’
He turned glass in hand, frowning at the glass.
‘Come again.’
I explained what had happened. He did not speak for quite a minute.
I said: ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Well, if it’s true I don’t exactly appreciate having been taken in.’
‘Harriet wanted to tell you, but I felt, once the decision had been made, it would be better to stick to it.’
‘It never does to make a monkey of the law.’
I shrugged. ‘ Well, I’m prepared to stand in for her and pay up. What more is there to it than that?’
He sat down slowly and stretched his stiff leg along the length of the emerald-green velvet settee. ‘I’m surprised that Harriet didn’t tell me. We talked on the telephone three or four times after the accident. It wasn’t like her to keep back a thing like that.’
‘I think she was embarrassed. This susceptibility to alcohol was growing on her. She valued your opinion of her and didn’t want to damage it.’
He said thoughtfully: ‘Her susceptibility to alcohol.’
‘You must have noticed it.’
‘I noticed changes in her. A loss of poise, of stability. Sometimes I wondered, Morris.’
‘Wondered what?’
‘Whether worry was at the root of it. That or a persistent undermining of self-confidence.’
‘Worry about her health?’
‘Not necessarily. About you, more likely.’
‘Why me?’
He sipped his drink, eyebrows and nostrils flared. ‘Well, this … affair you had in Paris. Did she know of it?’
‘What the hell d’you mean?’
‘He said pacifically: ‘Look, I don’t want to tread on your private life. Every man is entitled to a fling now and again, and it’s really none of my business. The only reason I mentioned this was in seeking an explanation for what you call Harriet’s sudden susceptibility to alcohol. It can happen that way, I assure you—worry, anxiety, lack of confidence.’
After the Act Page 16
