by Alec Waugh
It had now become something altogether else; but what had it become? Rhya at the temple, with his shaved head, his bare right arm and saffron robe had been a shock to her, and a lesson too. He had become a new person and so must she. He had ceased to be a playboy; she had had a gun drawn at her, for no better reason than that one day she would be his wife. The drawing of that gun was a symbol, as much as the wearing of that saffron robe, of the duties, responsibilities and privileges that this new life held for her. What would happen in this new life to the spontaneous attraction each for the other that had linked Rhya and herself? For weeks now it had been overlaid. They had been concerned with practical considerations; they had been chaperoned and supervised. Had that attraction each for the other withered as an unwatered flower?
She remembered reading a collection of short stories with the title Why They Married. The choice of a life’s partner was the most important decision of one’s life: and yet how casually one made it: if indeed one made it at all, if circumstances did not make it for one. Nine times in ten marriage was something that you drifted into. There was a point in a love affair, so she had read, when you could draw back. That point once passed, circumstances took control.
It was what had happened in her own case. At each stage of the way, there had been no feasible alternative. Where could she have acted differently? A year ago Rhya had been for her a figure in the public Press; the last person she had expected so much as to meet. By tonight she would be his wife, a future queen, under conditions which were opposed to everything for which—by training, taste and temperament—she stood. She almost envied the veiled Moslem woman being carried in a box to meet a stranger. That seemed a more natural destiny than hers.
The room was light. She supposed she should be getting up.
2
Lila saw, four places ahead of her in the long file moving up the stairway to the reception room, Angus Macartney’s slim back and sleek dark head. She wished she had an arm long enough to stretch over the intervening shoulders and run her fingers through his hair. It was eight days since she had seen him. It had begun to seem like eight weeks. This interval had lasted long enough. She’d have to put him out of his misery, and herself too. She had started to get bad-tempered. Perhaps tonight.
The file moved slowly forward. For Angus the ceremony had a mystic meaning; he was not a Buddhist, yet when the time came for him to pour the lustral water, he would have the same sense of dedication as Elizabeth of England’s peers, when they took their oath of allegiance in the Abbey. The Prince looked very dignified in his scarlet and black robe and the silver and gold turban; on his bride’s face was a soft, tender look, but her chin was strong. He prayed that she might be the right wife for Rhya. The Crown Prince would need the right wife as much as the right friends.
Angus’s turn had come. He was handed the short syringe, rather like a long, old-fashioned fountain-pen filler, and pressed the bulb. The water trickled out and dripped through the outstretched fingers on to the bowl of roses. The scent of the roses was delicate and fragrant. Angus’s lips framed a prayer, ‘May I never fail in my trust to you.’
He turned to move away, and he saw Lila. Their eyes met; she smiled, mockingly. The tranced mood in which he had climbed the staircase vanished. His heart began to thump. He felt tense and taut. He waited at the end of the room for her to join him.
‘Do you realize it’s eight days since we’ve met?’ he said.
‘As much as that; oh, surely not.’
‘Eight days.’ His eyes were bright. There was a gleam of anger in them. She noted it with delight. She looked at his hands, at the long thin fingers that were so strong; that could be so fierce and yet so gentle. Eight days, as though she didn’t know. Eight days; it was too long, much too long.
‘When do I see you?’ he was demanding, ‘I’m going off my head. Eight days.’
‘Perhaps that is rather a long time.’
‘It is to me.’
Didn’t he think it was to her? Best let him not know how much. Her toes curled inside her shoes. How much more could she stand? Ah, but how much more could he stand. That was the point; he needed her more than she needed him; or at least he must believe he did.
‘What about tonight? What are you doing between six and eight?’ he said.
‘I’m not quite sure. I may …’
‘If you aren’t sure, that means you can’t be doing anything that matters. I’m going back to my office. I’ll be there till five. Then I’ll be in my flat till eight. Ring me at one or the other. You’ve got to, do you see?’
His voice was threatening. In memory she could feel herself go limp as the fingers gripped her, as they held and shook her, shook and shook nil she was dizzy, till suddenly his hands moved along her shoulders, closing behind her head, fastening in her hair, lifting her face under his as he moved closer.
‘I’ll try,’ she said.
‘You’d best succeed.’
She watched him move away with a slow smooth stride; such rhythm, such power in those limbs, such youth, such force. No wonder he could master her at times. Yet she was the dominator. He was hers, hers, hers.
3
It was five o’clock. Annetta and Rhya were alone at last. She had scarcely seen the house that morning. She longed to see it, but she was tired, desperately tired. ‘I’d like to rest,’ she said.
‘I too.’
Her clothes had been moved from Aunt Ladda’s compound and unpacked. Her brushes and her manicure set laid out on her dressing-table; her dresses hung up in the wardrobe; her bottles arranged on the glass shelves in the bathroom. That was one of the blessings of this country. No lack of servants; silent, unobtrusive servants who did their work and vanished; always present when you needed them, never in the way when you did not. She took a slow inclusive glance about the room. It was an old house with high rooms and windows; with fans instead of air-conditioning; with a large wide lacquer bed and lacquer screens. The pervading colour scheme was dark green and gold. This was her bridal room; here would be spent the hours on which would depend the success or failure of her marriage. There were emotions she knew appropriate to this moment, but she could not summon them. She was too tired: she took off the heavy ceremonial clothes and laid them on the long rattan chair. The bathing-room was modern in that it had European fittings, but its tiled floor was a step below the level and the huge traditional jar of water with a wooden cover and a dipper stood in the corner. She splashed herself with water, soaped herself, splashed herself again; refreshed and half-restored she went back into the bedroom; a light silk dressing-gown lay over a chair. She put it on. On the bed a single sheet was turned over a cotton cover. She pulled it back and stretched herself upon the bed. It was hard and cool. A box of cigarettes was at her side. She took one out and lit it. She drew the smoke into her lungs. There was a tap on the door: ‘Can I come in?’
He was wearing black Chinese trousers and a light silk pyjama jacket. His hair, half-grown since it had been shaved at the monastery, looked like a crew-cut that was in need of immediate attention.
‘I’ll be glad when your hair’s grown,’ she said.
‘Don’t you think I shall too.’
They laughed, an easy, cosy laugh. ‘Can I have a cigarette?’ he said.
He lit one and stretched himself beside her. They smoked in silence. The room was in half-darkness through which the light of their cigarettes glowed as they drew upon them.
‘How little I thought when I tore up that ticket to Drury Lane that we’d be here like this today,’ he said.
She did not answer. It was so exactly what she had been thinking twelve hours earlier.
‘Do you remember what you said when I tore it up?’
‘Very well.’
‘And have you forgotten what you said later, a lot later, after we’d gone upstairs?’
‘I’ve not forgotten.’
‘I wonder if you could guess what I was feeling when I drove back that night from Highgate;
it was all so perfect that I was afraid of spoiling it, by trying to repeat it.’
She smiled. That was so very nearly what she herself had thought when she had stood at the window, looking over London, at the roofs and chimney stacks and high trees of the heath. May nothing ever happen to spoil the memory of this, she had thought.
‘Then I got back to my flat,’ he said, ‘and there were your pink-tipped cigarette stubs in the ash-tray; there was a smear of lipstick on the pillowcase; I lifted it against my cheek and there was your scent on it. I’ve got to see her again, I thought. I slept with that pillow under my head so that I should wake with your scent in my nostrils.’
‘You woke very early. I was still asleep when you rang up.’
‘I’d been awake for ninety minutes before that; wondering how soon I could ring up; not wanting to wake you, afraid that you might have left the house before I did. I felt very guilty.’
‘You needn’t have. It was high time that I woke up.’
Across ten months she could remember her puzzled, jumbled waking: the confused questions to herself. What have I done? Where am I? mingled with the excited thought, It’s him.
‘I felt very nervous that night,’ he said.
‘Nervous, you?’
‘I was terrified that it might go wrong. It’s always best when a thing goes wrong the first time; then it goes right the second; because it went too deep, or rather that it was meant to go too deep to go right the first time. When it goes very right the first time, it may be because it is something shallow, the seed on stony ground, and it goes wrong the second time. If it goes wrong the second, it never goes right again. I was so relieved when it went so very right that second time.’
‘You never told me about that.’
‘I had so much else to tell you.’
She was glad he had not told her. It would have hurt her, reminding her of what she wanted to forget, his so wide experience. She could hear it calmly now.
‘I was thinking of that second night this morning,’ he said, ‘when I woke up early.’
‘So you woke up early too.’
‘I had to see today break, hadn’t I? I lay there thinking over everything, the past, the present and the future. That second night seemed a happy omen.’
‘In what way an omen?’
‘Because it was an exception, it broke the rules; by breaking the rules it set a precedent; we’re beginning a second honeymoon; by all the rules it should be an anticlimax. What would the average person say if he was given this as a hypothetical case; a couple who have an unconventional honeymoon which is suddenly interrupted; they are separated for two months, when they meet again they have to behave as though they were practically strangers, putting their emotions away into cold storage.’
He talked lightly, laughingly, as though it were a joke but her heart warmed towards him in a way that it had never done before. That he should have felt like this, that he should have thought just this. We really are one person.
‘Everything is different this time. Everything is official now, where before everything was unofficial. Before we were just ourselves, now we have duties and responsibilities. We were private persons, now we are public figures. Wouldn’t nine people in ten say it’ll be a ghastly failure, or rather that this honeymoon as a honeymoon will be: that we’ll keep looking back nostalgically to that first honeymoon. That’s why I called that second night in London a good omen: it broke the rules, it set a precedent. This second honeymoon is going to be even better than the first.’
She sighed. How well he understood her own confusion; how foolish her doubts seemed now. She was utterly at one with him, more even than she had been in Switzerland. He stubbed out his cigarette and turned towards her. At last, she thought, at last.
4
Two miles away Angus paced his flat. He had been waiting for two hours now; the champagne in the Frigidaire was chilled to freezing-point. The canapes had begun to wilt. Seven o’clock. She would not be coming, They dined at the Residence at eight-fifteen. No time to get here and back. Once she had come unannounced. ‘I’ve twenty minutes, make the most of it.’ She had said it imperiously, but with a proud acceptance of their need each for the other. It had been the most exciting experience of his life, but that had been at the very start, before she had become difficult, evasive, exigent. She only came nowadays when every circumstance was propitious. Seven o’clock; too late, she would not come now. Yet he could not leave till eight in case she telephoned. He had said until eight, so he must stay. She might have some explanation; she might want to make a date for the next day.
He looked at the clock resentfully. Hurry, he adjured it, hurry. In what a different temper he had been looking at it an hour earlier, beseeching the hands to dawdle so that when she did come they would have longer time together; but now that she would not come, he prayed for them to hurry: let eight o’clock come quickly, so that he could leave this flat and all the torture that it held for him. The telephone and the clock, the warders of his prison.
In her bedroom at the Residence, Lila lay back among her pillows watching the telephone, picturing Angus striding up and down his flat, flinging himself angrily into his long chair, picking up a book, trying to read it, tossing it away; switching on the radio, trying one station then the next; listening for a moment, then turning it off altogether. She measured his frustration by her own. Her body ached. She had only to lift the telephone and her thirst would be assuaged: ten seconds, the lifting of a piece of metal, the dialling of a number, then that breathless voice, and then within ten minutes …
She drew one knee across another. She remembered how his eyes had smouldered, how his fingers had tightened, how his voice had thickened. She recalled the sleek black hair, the bristles at his neck; how she had longed to run the palm of her hand slowly over it, her sharp nails closing; she remembered the supple movement of his limbs as he had walked away. If only she had a magic wand so that she could will him here beside her.
Better though to picture him striding up and down that room, his hope subsiding and his anger mounting; cursing her, longing for her. He was her slave, utterly. At any moment she could raise him from those torments of anger and despair into a heaven of gratitude and ecstasy. She had only to lift that piece of metal. She rose, walked over to the mirror, turning before it slowly; what power she possessed: only four years ago she had been the ugly duckling. Those little fools. What they had missed. Seven o’clock. He’d have despaired by now, giving it up as a bad job: but he’d said eight o’clock. He’d have to wait until eight o’clock in case she telephoned with some excuse, some plan for the next day. How good to think of him waiting there.
She went next door and ran a bath: this was one of the few houses in Karak—was there indeed another one?—where you could wallow in tepid water. She scattered a handful of crystals and watched the water cloud; the air grew scented. Poor Angus in that lonely flat. She lifted her toes above the water, remembering how he had fondled them. She dressed slowly. Half past seven. Should she call him now? Put him out of his misery, make some excuse, say something, make a definite promise; a promise that she would keep? She hesitated, then shook her head. She had endured enough herself, let his impatience itch a little longer. Half past seven. Dinner was at quarter past eight. There were no guests. Normally she would have gone down to the annex drawing-room for a cocktail. But not tonight. She did not want to talk; to be distracted from her thoughts, from her sensations. She wanted to picture Angus, angrily striding up and down his room, or slumped dejectedly in his chair. What a bitch I am. No, but she wasn’t really. It was as bad for her as it was for him. She was only doing this so that later it would be better for them both. He would be grateful this time tomorrow. She made no attempt to read. She found on the radio a programme of dance music. She turned it low, as an accompaniment to her thoughts. She watched the minute hand move round; at last it reached the twelve. She rose to her feet. That’s that, she thought.
She switched of
f the radio. What was he doing now, what would he be doing this evening: the British Club or a movie, or would he drive out to see his father? How ill was his father? Was he exploiting that illness in the game that they were playing? She hesitated, then stepped towards the telephone. Was he still in his flat: or had he stamped out of it at the instant on the hour? She lifted the receiver, dialled the number; a moment’s pause, the ringing tone. It went on ringing. She waited for thirty seconds then hung up. So he had flung out of the flat as soon as the hour had struck, or hadn’t he? Had he gone earlier: at seven or a quarter past knowing that it was now too late, that she would not come; had he shrugged thinking, I can’t be bothered? She frowned. She wished she knew. She ought to have called earlier, after her bath. Had she overplayed her hand, strained his patience beyond the breaking point? If she had, she must put it right. Early tomorrow she would ring him up; make a date for the afternoon, settle the overdue account, hers as well as his; her eyes brightened picturing how it would be; in detail after detail; she flushed, her blood inflamed by the memory of a new-found audacity. ] half did last time, tomorrow I really will, she vowed.
In a fury of despair Angus drove through the night. The fabric of his entire existence was in shreds. What point had anything? Lila had used him as a stepping-stone; discarding “him when he had served her use. He was nothing to her, he knew that now; because of her he had behaved disgracefully to Blanche, who cared for him, who was fond and loyal, who had done nothing to deserve such treatment. He was neglecting his business, he was seeing none of his friends because he had to keep his diary clear in case Lila at the last minute might have a minute free; and all the time there was this niggling worry about his father. He had thought back so often over those two interviews with Forrester; over what his father had said that first time and the added interpretation that Forrester had put on it the second. Did his father belong to a group that was employing agents provocateurs to goad the Communists into premature and foolish action? If that were so, what was he doing waiting hour after hour for a telephone bell when he should be trying to solve the mystery? That afternoon when he had poured the lustral water over the Crown Prince’s hands, his heart had swelled with loyalty; he had vowed the allegiance of a lifetime; then he had turned and there was Lila; all thoughts of his future sovereign had vanished from his mind and heart; he had ceased to be a dedicated liegeman; he had become a pathetic slave, bound to the whims of a futile playgirl who had not in her empty head one thought outside her own immediate pleasure. How contemptible in him.
