CHAPTER IX
A few days after meeting Caroline, I drove up to the Laurentians in my second-hand car to see Catherine and Sally. I felt tense and unnatural, and half-way up I even began to feel hostile. This fixation I had on Catherine had endured so long it had become a part of my life. There was no sense in pretending it had not frustrated me. There was no sense in pretending that there had not been moments when I had felt angry with Catherine for not having dismissed me outright. On that journey to the Laurentians I came as close as I ever did to criticizing her. Why this acceptance and non-acceptance of me? Had she, perhaps without knowing it, thought of me as a kind of insurance policy? It was no use my remembering that she had introduced me to other girls in her time with Jerome, or that she had urged me to regard her as a friend and live my own life. With her in my mind I had been unable to love any other girl I met, even though I had desired several.
These feelings melted away the moment I saw her, for what I saw was a small woman with an older face, a withdrawn face, a small, plumpish body still beautifully formed, a woman who had once lived a full rich life now living a circumscribed one, a woman who once had loved a lusty husband now living only for her child. I thought: once again she has gone over a frontier ahead of me.
Sitting on the porch we talked quietly of various things, and her initial coolness, her initial factualness, made me feel rejected. She told me Jerome had left her with a small annuity, that she intended to put this cottage on the market, and that she hoped to get a job in the fall.
“I probably won’t be strong enough to work whole-time at anything,” she said. “But I must make some extra money. Daddy and Mummy took us in when I broke down, but Daddy’s health is failing and he can’t live much longer, and it’s impossible to try living with Mummy. She bosses Sally and she still resents me even though she doesn’t know it. When Daddy goes she’ll want to be free. In her heart that’s what she’s always wanted.”
Looking down the lake where Jerome had paddled and talked of his childhood, knowing that this would be the last summer either of us would see this panorama, I had to resist the impulse to ask Catherine to marry me. I was not earning a big salary, but it was more than twice what I had ever expected at Waterloo, and it would be just enough to support us at present prices. But of course there was still Jerome.
“I suppose you saw him when he came home?” I said casually.
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
Her face was a mask. “That’s an impossible question for me to answer.”
“Jack Christopher told me he’d been wounded.”
“That’s true, but he didn’t take it seriously. You know Jerome in things like that.”
“I was talking to Arthur Lazenby,” I said, “and Arthur told me Jerome was disgusted with the communists.”
Catherine breathed heavily and I thought I saw a little flutter in her chest.
“I always knew he’d be disgusted with them when he got to know them,” she said. Then a moment later: “But – I don’t know what to say, George. He’s involved. That’s the only way I can put it – he’s involved so deeply nobody can touch him. It wasn’t like two strangers meeting. It was” – she lifted her hands and dropped them – “it was frightening, and yet it wasn’t frightening. Both of us seemed to be hypnotized.”
“Lenin used to talk about dead men on furlough.”
“Did he?” she said. “Did he?” She gave a soft laugh. “I don’t suppose he spoke of dead women on furlough, too?”
I felt blasted, isolated, cut off and almost annihilated by this sentence, and for a time neither of us spoke.
Then, forcing myself to sound factual, I said: “This Spanish war will soon be over. Will Jerome come home then?”
“How do I know? Somehow I doubt if he will.”
“Do you want him to?”
“How can I answer that, George?”
I looked at that small figure reclining in the chair, the face older not because it was lined but because it reflected now an inner discipline that made it almost formidable.
“Some things seem clearer now,” she said. “I think I told you once that the trouble with Jerome and me was that we loved each other too much. It was something I said when my emotions were so confused I could hardly think. But now I’ve found out it’s true – we loved each other so much we exhausted each other. Everyone wants to be happy, and so much of happiness depends on not being tired. We both demanded from each other more than was possible. Do you know that line of Rilke? ‘Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other’? A marriage based on that kind of love could last. But one like Jerome’s and mine –” We talked of other things for a while, and finally I asked her if she knew that Norah Blackwell was dead.
“The poor, crazed girl,” Catherine said. “I can pity her now, but not because she’s dead. No, I don’t pity her for being dead.”
I remembered what Jack Christopher had said about Catherine’s heart beginning to fibrillate, but she looked so well it was unreal to me that her life should be in danger. I had noticed her movements, and certainly they were slower and more deliberate than I recalled them. I had noticed that she kept off her feet more than she used to, but her figure was as beautifully curved as ever, her skin was still soft and creamy, her hair still sable with that suggestion of lightness. To me she had never been more attractive as a woman than she was then. There seemed a greater depth in her, a greater – long ago I spoke of that singular force which I called, for lack of a better word, spiritual. I felt more of it in her now than ever before, I felt it emerge from her and reach me.
“George,” she said simply, “since Jerome went away and since I broke down, I’ve had to ask myself some hard questions. While Jerome was here and we were happy I pretended the future didn’t exist. I lived in the moment – from day to day. I drew on his strength. Now” – she smiled as though to protect me – “you mustn’t mind this, George, but I must say it. Now my problem is a very simple one. Somehow I must contrive to live long enough to enable Sally to grow up.”
This shocked me so much that I felt my color change, and Catherine laid her fingers over the back of my hand.
“You mustn’t mind me putting it like that. I don’t expect to die for a long time yet, but I do know that my reserves have been reduced. Sally is what I must live for now. Poor little girl, she’s the bigger thing that gives her mother a reason for existing.” Then her face changed, she smiled and was beautiful: “Now don’t think I go around in the glooms because I don’t. I’m getting a lot of fun out of hundreds of things. I’ve begun painting and I love it. Soon – who knows? Perhaps I’ll stop worrying about Jerome.”
That night after Sally went to bed, Catherine came to me with a letter.
“I’d like you to read this, George. I got it over a year ago, and it’s from Jerome’s foster-mother, Mrs. Martell. I met her only twice, for he was afraid or ashamed to visit them, but I wish she’d been my mother and not his.”
I picked up the letter, which was bulky but written in a very fine script with an old-fashioned pen, and this is what I read:
Dear Catherine, I know that what he has done to you is cruel, and I do not understand how God will easily forgive a man who deliberately leaves his wife and child, but that Jerome himself is cruel, that I do not believe. He was a good boy always, and when he grew up in our house we thanked God for him every day of our lives. If you had seen the poor little thing the morning we found him and the look in his eyes you could never be bitter against him for anything he did. Grieved you could be, but bitter, no.
It was the war, Catherine dear, coming on top of that awful thing that happened to him as a little boy. The day he came home from the war was the most awful day Mr. Martell and I ever spent, and it was the day we were sure would be our gladdest. We went down to meet the troopship and I, big fool, had my arms full of daffodils because his first poem had been about daffodils and it wasn’t a bad poem either,
much nicer than the poems which are so famous today and nobody reads for beauty or gladness, but Jerome was hardly back in our little house before he turned on us and told us we had raised him on myths and old wives’ tales and by that he meant our religion, and he told my poor husband that the reason he drank was that it was only when he was drunk that he could believe that everything he lived for was not a fake. My husband was never drunk, Catherine! Jerome’s language that day was so awful I shudder to remember it, but what right had I to complain, and what could I say, for what did I know of war? He was only nineteen years old and he had been through those awful things, and poor Mr. Martell and I could not even imagine how fearful they were. That night we wept bitterly.
Mr. Martell was wiser than I, and he said to me the next day, “Goodness and mercy we thought would follow us all the days of our lives, but it cannot follow anyone if he tries to live his life through somebody else. Jerome must find his own path now.” This was too deep for me, Catherine, for wise though Mr. Martell was, I know we never tried to live our lives through Jerome, we were just proud of him, and later on when he was a doctor we were so proud and happy to think that the little boy we had found in a railway station, our little boy, was a wonderful doctor helping all kinds of people in a great city. No, I do not think we tried to live our lives in Jerome, I think we just loved him and wanted him to be happy, and dear Catherine, when he married you we were so happy we thanked God once more for his goodness, for you were the perfect wife.
Some day he will return to you, Catherine dear. That I know. To you he will come back, but not of course to me, for now that Mr. Martell is gone, I hope and pray that I will soon follow him. I am Scotch as you know, and we Scotch are lonely, sentimental folk, and I love that old Scotch song Mr. Martell enjoyed so much, The Land O’ the Leal and sometimes I sing to myself those lines about wearin’ awa like snaw when it’s thaw, because that is what I am doing now, just wearin’ awa as though all were a dream. Since my husband’s death nothing seems real, only the times I remember and the great hope I have that soon we will meet in perfection, and sometimes I think Mr. Martell may even be lonely in heaven, though of course I know that is silly, for he won’t need his socks darned there, and he won’t need somebody to clean the spots off his Sunday clothes, and all the little things I so liked doing for him, he won’t need them at all.
Pray for him, Catherine dear, and do not be too proud to pray for yourself. Pray that your belief in him will endure, for I know you must believe in your heart that in his heart he is a good man still. Pray that he may discover the peace he seeks, and that he will find God before it is too late because that is what he really seeks, for if he finds God he will find himself, and then he will find you. One of these days this dream will end and we will all meet in the bosom of God. You must not mind if I talk like this, for it is an old woman’s weakness and some day you yourself will be an old woman and will know what it is like. It is like talking to yourself so much of the time.
I hope I am not just talking to myself now, Catherine dear, when I repeat to you a sentence from one of my husband’s sermons which has helped me many a time. My husband was not a very good preacher because he had a weak voice and never believed people would be interested in what he had to say, but I always loved his sermons because usually he would say something in them I had been thinking myself, and then it would be said and I would know it was true.
This thing he said was one of the most familiar sentences in the Bible, simply this – “It comes to pass.” That was his text. But the way my husband spoke it the old words sounded quite new and different, for he spoke them like this – “It comes – to pass!” That is, it comes, in order to pass.
I put the letter down and was unconscious of my own body as I stared over the lake to the empty hills. I heard Catherine’s voice beside me.
“That was the last word I had from her. Six weeks later she died.”
Catherine went inside with the letter and left me staring across the lake to a wilderness half-obscured by a purple twilight. I thought of those two gentle, loving little people I had never known. Had the ocean rolled over them as though they had never been?
Catherine returned, and sensing my thoughts, she said: “I envy those two people. They were born knowing that nobody can be equal to his destiny if he’s alone. But they believed in God, so they weren’t alone. I envy them, George, I envy them. I wish I could believe in God.”
“I’ve often wondered if you did.”
“I do and I don’t. I think it’s this wretched heart of mine that makes it so hard for me to believe in Him. I used to pray and pray when I was a child, pray to God to make me better and like everyone else. And yet there are times when I’m aware of Him.”
For a long while neither of us spoke and it grew dark. Stars looked very bright in the silence, the total silence, of that northern night. I sat and thought; I sat and desired Catherine so intensely I could hardly endure it. Never had I loved her as I did then, and I did not understand until much later – though she did – that this feeling of being able to love her properly was to some extent connected with the change in her condition. Circumstances of many kinds had reduced her. Now at last – for I, too, was growing up – I could believe within myself that I was her equal.
Suddenly I heard myself say: “Catherine, please marry me.”
She was so calm that I’m sure she had anticipated my question. I felt her hand close over mine, her small, soft hand with the long, lovely fingers.
“Oh George!” And then: “Dear George, it would be better if you hated me.”
“Don’t say such things.”
“Even if I were in a fit mental state to marry anyone, I wouldn’t dream of letting you marry me. You’re still young.”
“We’re the same age, practically.”
She smiled: “Yes, in the actual number of years we’ve lived. No dear, you must find yourself a real wife who’ll be able to give you children and take care of you properly.”
Overwhelmed by emotion I took her into my arms, the first time I had done so since we were children, and for an instant she melted against me and I cried out with emotion. Then she stiffened, she turned away her head, she pressed her cheek against my breast, she withdrew and sat down in silence.
“Catherine, I love you! I can’t love anyone else but you. I’ve tried. I’ve tried and I can’t.”
I saw her breast lift and fall, her hands came up and covered her face, then she dropped her hands and sat still.
She said very quietly: “I’m sorry, I’m so terribly sorry. I’ve done to you what Norah Blackwell did to Jerome. Almost what he’s done to me. I knew better and yet – oh George, how can people hurt each other like this?”
“Is it Jerome? Is it still him?”
“Perhaps. How do I know? Oh George, I – this has been like a bereavement. More than that, it’s – I can’t make decisions. I’ve made so many and I can’t make any more. Living with Jerome I let him make them and then I was left – just Sally and me and my bad health and – I can’t make another decision, I can’t.” Then she said more quietly: “I’m going to say something I hope you’ll never find the necessity of saying.”
I had been kneeling by her chair and now I got up and sat in my own.
“I’m tired of love,” I heard her say. “I’m exhausted by it. All of me, body and soul. Now I’m beginning to be free of it, and how can I face it again?”
I looked dumbly at the shadow of her form in the chair in the dark and she knew what was in my mind.
“George dear, I know what you want and I want it too. Don’t think I don’t. But I wasn’t talking of sex a while ago, I was talking of love. Sex is so easy. It’s so very, very easy. But you love me and I love you. And I’m not equal to love.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I hope you never do, dear. Now I’m going to say something which will probably shock you. A year ago I went to bed with a lonely man I didn’t love. I thought it might help but
it didn’t. I came home and thought of the verse in the psalm: ‘Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.’ I knew then there is no easy escape from loneliness. I’ve been wounded, George. Perhaps I’ll heal. If my health were normal – yes, I’m sure I’d heal. But I’m not equal to love now, and you are, so you must find somebody else.”
And a little later she said: “It’s funny, not really believing in a God who cares and yet believing in the soul. Yet it’s all each of us is left with, finally. If I were stronger I could forget that, but I must live for that, too. For that besides Sally. For that until I get so tired I can’t. Does this make any sense? Can’t you see, George? I’m still a fairly young woman. I know from the way men look at me I’m still a desirable one. I know from the way I feel I’m still full of desire myself. But” – she stopped, and then she said with complete calm – “I also know that I haven’t long to live.”
I think I wept but I’m not sure, nor does it matter. A little later I drove back to town with the image of her face haunting me, with the feeling of her body melted into mine so warm and close that the night throbbed. I remembered Jerome in his canoe going down the river to the sea, and my thought that at last he had reached the sea and was out of sight of land in his canoe. Now I, too, was at sea and I thought of that vast reservoir of emotions and memories on which every fragile human life floats until the depth becomes a Mindinao Deep so profound he cannot plumb it. And I realized something else: that Catherine had been trying to tell me that love, sought as an escape from the burden of the self, turns rapidly into a captivity. “Very well,” I said aloud, “very well.” And I knew then – or thought I knew, since nobody can know in advance how he will actually feel – that perhaps I had at last grown up. If loving Catherine meant captivity, then I wanted it.
Watch that Ends the Night Page 37
