Purposes of Love

by Mary Renault

  “This is interesting,” said Jan. “Go on.”

  “Well I suppose my real reason for coming here or if I was just making it up was to find out whether my personality really existed or if I was just making it up.”

  Jan looked round at her. “My dear girl,” he said, “don’t make me laugh.”

  “You know what Anstice used to say—”

  “No?” He turned his face up to hers, vivid with interest. “A friend of yours? Tell me about her.”

  “Jan! You practically lived with her for a week in Germany last year.”

  “Oh. Oh, of course. Not practically, angel. Pure theory, I swear to you. My God, yes.”

  “Why did you really take her all that way up the Rhine with us, Jan? It was because her elbows were double-jointed, wasn’t it?”

  “Certainly not. I can look deeper than a woman’s elbows, I hope. She believed in the Great Pyramid, as well.” He lifted his wet shoulders from the grass, shrugged them in vague discomfort, and deposited them in her lap. “Well, go on about you.”

  “She used always to be talking about my detachment.”

  “So she did. I could never make out why it annoyed you so much.”

  “I used to imagine I was concealing that. It was because I liked saying that to myself, and when she said it I knew it wasn’t true.”

  “It’s true within limits, I think.”

  “Exactly. And I haven’t the least idea what the limits are. All these years at home I’ve spent wrapping myself up in a sort of spurious tranquillity. Without dust and heat, you know. I enjoyed it, too. I used to think it was the result of having arrived somewhere. Then one day it occurred to me that it was the result of not having started out.”

  “You’re severe with yourself,” he said, thoughtfully.

  “Why not? So are you, on your own lines.”

  Jan’s head moved a little on her knee, but he said nothing. Vivian pulled a leaf, twisted it in her fingers, and said slowly, “You see, what Anstice thought about me was so much what I used to think about Father—before.”

  Jan looked away. “A little severe on him, too, perhaps,” he said in a hard voice. “Aren’t you?”

  “I dare say.” She tore the leaf down the middle and threw the pieces away. “I haven’t the right to be severe on anyone. I’ve experienced nothing myself, except at second-hand. No one would think—” She stopped.

  “You mean,” said Jan distantly, “that Mother died in her dressing-room at Wyndham’s with people weeping over her in about half the European languages. Quite.”

  “Oh, well, that’s—nothing to do with it, really.” She found she had been moving a hand towards him, and took it quickly back again. “Anyhow, the point is that I was right. I know that now. The detached person was something built up, like a face for the films, except that I was my own audience. Now I have to start again. It’s interesting, though it’s uncomfortable.”

  “I see. I thought something of the kind might be happening, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for your knowing so much about it. Do you like Mic?”

  “I haven’t the least idea,” said Vivian, whose train of thought this sudden swerve had jolted. “He’s hardly the sort of man you can summarise when you’ve met him once, is he?”

  “No,” said Jan, with an emphasis born of his own thoughts, “he isn’t. I mean, he’s another person who’s too good at seeing through himself.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “One of the few people I know who doesn’t regard his own limitations as the coping-stones of a completed personality.”

  Vivian laughed to herself. “He’d never make a nurse.”

  Jan had not listened. His brows were drawn together in a thick soft bar. “It’s the only thing one can respect, of course,” he said. “It’s a pity.”

  “What is?”

  “Nothing, really. It’s a pity your lousy hospital can’t pay him more, they’re getting a good brain dirt cheap. Go on telling me.”

  “It’s hard to put over to anyone outside. I don’t think I can.”

  “Do the physical horrors upset you?”

  “No. One faints, or retches, or whatever one does, the first time, and that’s that. It’s the purely childish things that get under my skin. The social survivals. Like being forced to wear a hat when you go out.”

  “Are you forced to? Good Lord. I wondered why you did.”

  “Because Florence Nightingale did. Nursing began as a reform movement, you know. Like the Church of England. It’s curious how they tend to reach a certain point and then petrify. Thank God, at least we have an advancing technique to keep abreast of. We’re one up on the C. of E. that way.”

  “You know,” said Jan, “you rather disconcert me. I’ve learned to shed a certain amount of lumber, I suppose, but I should think twice before I committed myself to a thing like this. I suppose, to be even with you, I ought to join the Army.”

  “I hardly think—” began Vivian seriously: but imagination suddenly stirred, and she laughed so much that Jan complained of sea-sickness and got up.

  “What about collecting the faun?” he reminded her.

  On the way back they talked books, in reaction perhaps from a conversation, for them, more than usually personal. Vivian had not had time lately for much reading, but between them they had supplied enough ideas to take them as far as the High Street without noticing. As they tramped up Mic’s echoing stairs they were flinging at one another far-fetched parallels between Huxley and Voltaire. They were on their most common ground, all their resemblances displayed, their contrasts submerged; falling unconsciously into the same phrases, gestures, inflections of voice. Mic, who had been painting in the bedroom, came out, said “Hullo,” smiled, and seemed to flicker down like a fire in a shaft of sun.

  The floors were finished and dry, and there were a few packing cases to sit about on.

  “You’ve hung the pictures,” Vivian said.

  “Yes.” It was his politest monochrome. “I did it in the morning. Do you like them?”

  “Very much,” said Vivian with truth. They turned out to be, after all, a set of costume designs for the Casse-Noisette Suite; very pleasant and new to her. Over the mantelpiece there was a photograph of Dolin in “Hymn to the Sun”. It loosened Vivian’s tongue a little; she was excited by ballet, but rarely had an opportunity of seeing it. Mic replied very civilly to all her questions, revealing preferences and aversions similar apparently to her own; but the contact was sparkless, and they soon left the subject, which was, in any case, a little lost on Jan. He never went to ballet. Music was one of his fundamentals, and to disturb one’s perception of it with visual interferences was, to him, an incomprehensible blasphemy, though he never said so.

  The faun was standing under Dolin, looking much at home.

  “Thank you for looking after him.”

  “I liked having him,” said Mic nicely. It was all very pastel and under-emphasised, even her own feeling of meanness, as if she were taking something that really belonged to him.

  “Bed come yet?” inquired Jan.

  “Only the mattress.”

  “We’ll sit on that, and watch you paint. These boxes have too many damned splinters.”

  “I’ll have to go soon,” Vivian said. She had another hour, but was not enjoying herself.

  “My dear chap,” Jan urged her, “talk sense. You haven’t had any tea. Mic, my sweet, finish your sunset-effects and we’ll go and find some.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have time, thanks. But”—he turned to Vivian—“do stay and have a cigarette before you go. It seems all there is in the place to offer you.”

  “Thank you,” said Vivian. Cheered by the prospect of detaching Jan, and unwilling to advertise the feeling, she sat down on the mattress, which was certainly an improvement on the packing-cases. The only other furniture in the room was a new whitewood chest of drawers, and a battered trunk in the window.

  “I’ll unpack for you while you fi
nish.” Jan pulled out a drawer, sniffed the new wood with enjoyment, and threw back the lid of the trunk, displaying the very orderly arrangements inside. “Save time.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind.” said Mic over his shoulder. He was stroking a fine line of water-green, with great speed and accuracy, along a stone-coloured panel. He had slim long-boned hands which had a fluency of their own and seemed, somehow, to evince an independent enjoyment of their skill. To Vivian, their vitality only served to underline the uncommunicativeness of his face. “Those are things I need, and I’d like to find them again. I know your unpacking.”

  “Why the hell you don’t keep a card-index for your socks and pants,” said Jan, rummaging, “I can’t think. Excessive neatness is a psychological disease. It comes of not having made enough mud-pies when you were little. Broadly speaking. These are the bird-photographs, aren’t they? Mind if Vivian looks at them?”

  “Of course not.” Mic flicked his brush to a point. “You know none of them are any good.”

  “If you mean they don’t contain anything recognisable as a bird. But as landscape-studies some of them are lovely. You knew that too, that’s why you stopped bothering to get the birds in focus.” He produced a smile which he reserved for people he liked when they were being difficult. Vivian saw Mic’s unresponsive face thaw a little; but his smile disconcerted her more than his reserve, it was so unlike his laugh of yesterday, and accompanied, it seemed to her, by so much weariness. He put down his painting things, came over, and tipped the contents of the folder into her lap.

  “But these are beautiful,” she said. “Why did you bother with the birds? They do look rather like bits of paper floating about, but they don’t matter.”

  “They never let you get up to them.”

  “Shouldn’t try,” said Jan, firmly. “‘He who catches joy as it flies—’”

  “Kisses, not catches,” said Vivian. “Don’t be illiterate.” She shuffled the photographs together, and picked up the folder. It contained one more, which Mic, as he emptied it, must have overlooked. She slid out her hand, and exclaimed applaudingly.

  “This is the best I’ve seen of him. It’s got just that—how did you manage it? I can never keep him still long enough.”

  “Which?” said Mic, idly. He had been looking out of the window. “Oh, that. That’s a misfire. It was trying to be a gannet till Jan came lurching across the lens.”

  “Sorry,” Jan said. “Didn’t know you were taking it.”

  Mic balanced the print on his thumb and forefinger and flipped it across to Vivian. “Any use to you? They’ll all get thrown out some time in the moving, I expect. There isn’t room in a place this size to harbour junk.”

  “Oh, thanks, if you don’t want it.” Vivian tossed it aside with the hurried naturalness of an actor concealing a muffed cue. Before she spoke she slid a secret glance at the folder to be sure that the negatives were there, and caught Mic’s eye as she did it. They both looked away quickly.

  Jan, in delighted concentration, was stirring the green paint with a piece of stick.

  “It makes patterns,” he explained.

  Damn him, thought Vivian, resentment suddenly possessing her: it’s a perpetual insult that anyone should ask for so little assistance in being happy. Thou shalt enjoy the Lord thy God, and thy neighbour as thyself. Why do we tolerate it? She turned unconsciously towards Mic, as if in search of an answer; but his attention was elsewhere.

  It makes all the classic forms,” murmured Jan to himself and anyone concerned. “But it’s too thin for anything romantic.”

  I wonder, Vivian thought, why that profile should look so sensational on him and matter so little to me. He was hunkered on the floor with no more attention to dignity than a savage over a cookpot, yet contrived somehow to retain the serious grace of a young Marcellus taking auspices.

  “Look.” He twirled the stuff into an ascending spiral. “There’s a lyric of Catullus exactly that shape. No, it’s gone.” The viscous mass had settled, leaving only a few concentric rings. “Landor,” he said. “One of those terse quatrains. See, Mic?”

  “You and your patterns.” Mic got up. “Get yourself a microscope. You’ve a vicious taste for illusive syntheses.”

  “Of course they’re elusive. So’s everything worth bothering with.” Jan rose, pulling Vivian with him. “God, I am hungry. Come on, dears, tea.” Collecting them each in a casual arm, he steered for the door.

  Mic removed himself, with a jerk so sharp that Vivian felt it from the other side.

  “Use your wits, Jan,” he snapped. “I can’t eat in public in this state. I’m not coming; I told you.”

  “We’ll wait while you change,” said Jan. He looked sobered but spoke, to Vivian’s surprise, very nicely. He was not tolerant of irritability as a rule.

  “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Vivian?” Mic picked up his paint pot again. “I do rather want to finish this while the light holds.”

  “Of course. It’s going to be very effective. Good-bye.”

  “We shall meet in the hospital some time, I expect.”

  “I expect so. No, don’t bother to come to the door.”

  Jan had found some brown paper and proceeded in his own fashion to pack the faun. As he fiddled with the string Vivian saw that he was occupied with thoughts of his own. There was a cloud on his face, more like remorse than anything she could remember seeing there before.

  They had crumpets for tea and talked of a great many things, but not of Mic.

  -5-

  THE NEAT PINK THEATRE-nurse said, as she scraped out the jam-dish, that she preferred to work for Mr. Scot-Hallard. He was quick, she said; too quick, added her little black eyes as they swept the tea-table, for any of you.

  It saved no time to speak of, suggested stout Collins as she rang irritably for more jam, when he threw a tray of instruments on the floor. But this did not happen, said the theatre-nurse—snicking it in like a scalpel—when he was given the right ones.

  Vivian listened unmoved. These subcutaneous hostilities were as normal as their breath, evolutionary weapons with which the strong manoeuvred for precedence, and the weak fought off the slur of inferiority. Her own contribution was to the effect that Sir Bethel was nice, and it was restful to hear please in the theatre sometimes.

  Colonna Kimball put her elbows on the table and—seeming to toss her personality across it like a bright paper streamer—said that Sir Bethel was the perfect knight, a lamb among the ladies and a lion in battle. She, personally, would rather be disembowelled by a lion, provided it brought a good anaesthetist, than by Little Beth; it would be over more quickly.

  The theatre-nurse, who was four months senior to Colonna, explained that one appreciated Sir Bethel’s technique when one had more experience of theatre work, and engaged herself in conversation with an equal. Colonna turned to Vivian, who was sitting beside her.

  “Why do you say things! Which would you prefer for anyone belonging to you, Beth or Scott-Hallard?”

  “Scott-Hallard, of course,” Vivian surrendered wearily. “He’s a first-class operating machine. But I like Beth.” Sir Bethel was the oldest and gentlest of the honorary staff. She had seen the patients who returned to the wards shocked and collapsed after his long fiddling operations; but she had seen them on the wards, warmed and made hopeful by the old man’s loving courtesy, while Scot-Hallard would have run them over like an index file. She could not sharpen her wits, as everyone else did, on Little Beth.

  “I think you foster lame dogs to get confidence.” Colonna, when the time was not auspicious for courting, was always ready to break a lance on the object of desire. “It’s a subtle form of inferiority complex.”

  “I expect it is.” said Vivian placidly. “I distrust power because I’m unfitted for it.” (She should have said efficiency, she supposed, but power came easier, thinking of Scot-Hallard’s broad head and great square hands.) “By the time I’m middle-aged no doubt I’ll have inflated my fears into a ph
ilosophy.”

  “Or accepted power. That’s more likely if you go on in hospitals.”

  “I shan’t do that,” said Vivian with certainty.

  The general conversation, she found, had branched off meanwhile into a new channel. “Ever so interesting to talk to,” the theatre-nurse was saying. “When I took up the things for biopsy we had quite a chat. More like a varsity boy, I thought, than the type you generally get in the Path. Lab. here.”

  “Not much life about him, though.” Her friend took another bun.

  “He may be a bit quiet. But that’s often the way with a boy that thinks and reads a lot.”

  “He looks a pansy, I think.” Fat Collins patted a galvanised wave back into her cap.

  “We all know what your type is, Collins.”

  “Go on Frere, you think you know a lot.”

  “Know, you’d be surprised what—”

  Vivian out in the passage, dropped the swing door on the mounting crescendo.

  “Are you overworking, or what?” Colonna overtook her. “You of all people. Collins can’t help being a nymphomaniac, it’s just a matter of hormones.”

  “I’m due back on the ward.”

  “No you’re not, for seven minutes. Don’t blackleg. Come to my room while I change. I’m on at five-thirty too.” Colonna had been off duty, and was in mufti. She wore, as she always did, man-tailored clothes of a cut that would have looked flamboyant on a man, but which she succeeded somehow in subduing to her personality. Her suit and suede brogues were pale grey, her shirt navy, and her tie bright scarlet. While she removed them with the speed acquired in hospital she contrived to make love to Vivian tacitly, expertly, and with finesse that made it the merest running commentary to the conversation. In the intervals that allowed of thought, Vivian decided that she enjoyed Colonna not altogether in spite of this, but because she eluded classification. Colonna, by all laws of literature, ought to have been plain, heavy, humourlessly passionate and misunderstood, pursuing in recurrent torments of jealousy the reluctant, the inexperienced and the young. She ought to have behaved like someone with a guilty secret. But Colonna, it appeared, accepted her own eccentricities much as she did the colour of her hair, though as a source of more amusement. She was, as Vivian knew quite well, vain, selfish, and without social conscience; a shameless and deliberate poseuse; dressed like Byron in the evenings and like a chorus boy during the day; and was, in fact, by the standards of almost any society impossible. But she enjoyed life, did what she set out to do gracefully and well, had a sense of humour, and, whatever other liberties she took, knew how to refrain from handling one’s personality. It was the last virtue which, today, made her company a pleasure which Vivian did not feel like refusing.