An Impossible Marriage

by Pamela Hansford Johnson

  I could not forbear to point out that I had instituted it. ‘Well, if it pleases you ...’ he said with a false, indulgent smile. ‘We all have our little vanities.’

  In order to subdue mine, he sent me to an hotel in Kensington on an errand that could as easily have been run by Hatton. ‘I don’t like the messenger carrying jewellery,’ he said; adding illogically, ‘Money’s different.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I had to take to one of our clients some earrings Mr. Fawcett had had valued for her. It was half-past four when I left the hotel, and I had been told that I need not report myself back to Mr. Baynard that day. It occurred to me to pay a surprise call upon Ned.

  I had been to Ned’s office once or twice. Now, as I went in, I was greeted by Hignett, his clerk, a thin, smart young man, with a counter-jumper’s air and a neck slightly awry.

  ‘Out,’ he said.

  It was the one word. I looked at him in astonishment. Hignett had not, on previous occasions, been wanting in the courtesy I felt it natural to show to the future wife of an employer.

  ‘Mr. Skelton’s out? Will he be back soon?’

  ‘Not today, if I know him.’

  I looked about me. The office was neat as usual, but had a curiously deserted air. There were few papers about. The typist was painting her nails. She gave me an eager smile. ‘Gorgeous weather, Miss Jackson! Makes you want to be on the river.’

  I asked Hignett where Ned was. To my further astonishment I saw him indulge in a slow, histrionic grin exaggerated in its smugness.

  ‘I’m not in the secret, don’t think it. Perhaps he’s on the river.’

  ‘He can’t be!’ I was indignant.

  ‘Or playing games. Bats and balls, that’s what it is. What a nice life! It would suit me. Suit us all, wouldn’t it, Jessie? ‘This was to the typist.

  I felt indignant and ashamed. I did not know what to do. I was too young to rebuke him and too scared. Besides, rebukes were Ned’s business. But I promised myself I would tell Ned about it later. ‘Please tell him I’ve called,’ I said, if he does come in.’

  If ifs and ands were pots and pans,’ said Hignett. ‘Oh well! Do my best for you. Ta-ta,’ he added, as he opened the door for me.

  When I told Ned that night how I had hoped to surprise him at work and how insolent the clerk had been, his face tightened. Master Hignett,’ he said distinctly, is under notice to go. He’s been sacked. This was his last day—hence the milk in the coconut.’

  I asked why.

  Because he’s lazy as mud and wants too much money.’ He paused. And look here, Chris, I don’t want you dropping in and out.’

  I was bitterly hurt. Why on earth shouldn’t I call on him? I demanded. For one fantastic second I imagined that the typist Jessie might be his mistress and that he was afraid of me finding it out.

  Because woman’s place is in the home, my girl, and mine is on the job. Also, because I say no. And that should be enough for you.’

  We began to quarrel; I could have cried with mortification. Then, adroitly, Ned turned the whole thing into a joke. I found myself laughing at him, at Hignett, at myself. He held me tightly, talking into my hair. You come when you like, silly, only there’s nothing to see. And half the time I’m out taking people over houses. But of course you can come. I was only joking.’

  He knew well enough that I should never again call there uninvited—and I knew it, too. I had been snubbed. He had had his way. But my nerves were too tender for me to pretend to myself that I had had other than a triumph.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A night or so later Ned and I were walking across Richmond Green. It was ten o’clock. We had been quarrelling since seven about nothing in particular, and Ned had made me cry. We had had a reconciliation almost as violent as the quarrel itself. He walked with his arm around my shoulders and his face was young and appeased. The aftermath of quarrels always had this calming effect upon him; it was as though every worry and weight in the world had fallen from his shoulders, making his step so light that he hardly bent the grass as he trod. For me, however, these aftermaths were an appalling confusion of spirit. They made every nerve in my body twitch and sting. They raised the beat of my heart. I was always afraid, after these scenes, to eat or drink.

  It was a mild night. A harvest moon, rust-red, hung in an indigo sky powdered over by the river mist. The lights shone in the windows round about, between or behind the curtains. One window was rose-coloured. I fancied that behind it there existed some mysterious achievement of peaceful love, secret and content, and I longed so much to be in that high room that my eyes filled again. Once, later in my life, at a time when I was very unhappy, I found myself in the National Gallery before an Italian landscape of prussian-blue distances that stretched far away behind a little Abraham and Isaac playing out their minuscule drama in the foreground; and I felt the same aching desire to step through the picture frame, to walk and walk away into that undiscovered country till I was lost from everyone’s sight, that I felt that night on Richmond Green to step through the rose-coloured window and be lost for ever in the peace awaiting me there.

  Ned did not speak. He was too deeply wrapped in his own kind of contentment. A street lamp shone on his imperious, bird-like face, carving it out upon the dark. His hand moved down my breast, my nerves leaped, and I heard myself say in a voice full, confident, that did not seem to be my own, ‘I can’t marry you.’

  His hand continued to move upon me, rhythmic, affectionate. ‘You’d have to give back all those kettles and table-mats.’

  I mean it,’ I said. Dear Ned ‘—for I was pierced with compassion for him, though not at all afraid—’ I can’t marry you.’

  His hand rested. I knew he had heard me.

  Don’t be silly,’ he said. He drew me on.

  I began to tell him, quite coherently, that I was very, very sorry, but that I knew we should be unhappy. There was time to draw back, and we must do it.

  Still we walked on. I was a pig tonight, I know,’ he said. I upset you more than I meant to. But it’s been a strain for me, all these months, and I can’t help taking it out of people. When we’re married it will be all right.’

  I’m not going to marry you,’ I said.

  At last he stopped. He faced me. He had a mild, bewildered air, as if awakened suddenly, by some sound of innocent portent, from a peaceful dream.

  Don’t be silly, Chris. I’ve told you I’m sorry. But you know as well as I do that we love each other. You do love me?’

  I took the common refuge of childishness. Yes, I did love him, I said, but not in that way; not as he loved me. I loved him, he was dear to me, but I had realised that I was not ‘in love’ with him.

  That’s a bloody thing to say,’ he said slowly, still with the same bewildered look.

  I felt within me an absolute authority, and it was very strange. It was not in the least disturbed by the pity that rose in me granular and hot, like sickness. I said nothing.

  Ned said restlessly, Let’s go back and have another drink. It will seem different indoors. We shall stop talking nonsense.’

  But I would not go in. We walked down to the towpath. The orange moon was doubled in the river; the reflection hung from it like a fob from a watch. Above it a golden cloud burned golden and still, the charred edges smouldering upon the thick dark blue of the sky.

  It’s beautiful,’ Ned said, holding me tightly to his side, his thigh against mine. ‘Isn’t it?’

  I nodded.

  He told me that he loved me, more than he had ever hoped to love. He needed me; I was good for him, I would help him, I should be able to make him as I wished him to be.

  We sat down on a wooden bench.

  Don’t, Chris, don’t,’ he said. ‘Please stop now.’

  The air had turned chilly. I was gla
d of his nearness and his warmth. My need of it weakened me a little. We won’t see each other for a week. I want to think. We can put the wedding off for a little while to see how we feel.’

  ‘Idiotic!’ he cried angrily. For the first time real doubt entered into him. He pressed me to assure him of my love, to tell him I had simply been trying to punish him for his bad treatment of me, for his quarrelsomeness. I know I deserve it, Chris, but, damn it, I’m doing my best to make it up to you.’

  It all seemed so easy. No, I insisted, it wasn’t that at all. I had simply seen quite clearly that we could not be married—’ so soon,’ I added, out of the weakening. I told him we must stay away from each other for a while.

  And then he shocked me, for he put his head on my shoulder and began to cry. I had never seen a man cry before. I had believed that never to cry was a discipline of male life as obligatory as not striking a woman. My pity was flooded with alarm and contempt. What sort of a man was he? I did not know then that in love men and women are much the same; they are jealous in the same fashion, they live the same kind of fantasy life, they are moored to love in the same way by its fetiches: the tree in the lover’s street, the light in the lover’s window, the odour of the flesh, the special secret smile, the fleck upon the finger-nail. Nor had I realised that only in the most profound, the most matured love, is it possible for a woman to honour a man for his tears.

  When we are young it is impossible for us to believe that we may be passionately loved. There is no magic for us in our own image; only our own desire is real. It seems strange to me now to realise how blind I was to the reason for Ned’s crying, which was a perfectly simple one. I believed he was playing out a distasteful charade in the hope of winning me back. I could not, or perhaps did not want to, believe that he was sincere. For even if life with Ned had shaken my faith in my belief that I should only be happy with a master (mastery and bullying were dangerously equated in my mind by now), I still could not endure the thought that I was destined to be the strength of any man, lonely and angry above his head while he brought his sorrows to my lap.

  I stood up. Ned sat quiet, dejected, hands hanging at his sides. He took out his handkerchief and passed it over his face. He said, ‘Where are you going?’

  He ran to catch me up.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Don’t come with me.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  I told him, with all the force of this curious authority, that he must not follow me. I did not wish it.

  Why he did not I still cannot be sure; but I think there is a kind of authority unpremeditated, unselfconscious, that few people in any state of stress are able to resist. I ran along the path, and the moon ran with me.

  ‘Where are you running to, darling?’ a man’s voice called, idle and amorous.

  I ran on. After a while I stopped, breathless, and looked back. There was no sign of Ned. I pictured him sitting there still, on the wooden bench by the river. I walked easily, calmly, on towards the station. Ned had kept our tickets. I had to buy another one for myself.

  I sat in the train. My head felt light and empty; emptiness was pleasant. It would be rather like this in heaven, I thought—that quiet place where nobody felt intensely about anything at all.

  ‘Stuffy night,’ said the only other traveller in the compartment, an elderly man, small, Jewish, in a fawn trilby hat.

  Ordinarily I was afraid of advances by strangers. That night I was worried by nothing. Even if I had been, it would have been unnecessary; he simply wanted to talk. He was a natural talker. He told me he was in office supplies. I told him I worked in an office.

  Did I like it?

  Not very much.

  What did I want to be?

  The train rattled over the points. Smoke blew back-wards in a gust of fresh, wet silver. The moon raced alongside.

  I wanted to write, I answered him.

  ‘You’ll need paper for that,’ said my new friend practically. He had an earnest, good face. ‘I can let you have it at cost.’ He gave me his card. ‘Carbons, too.’

  The train stopped at Clapham Junction and I got out. He was going to Victoria.

  For twenty years I have bought paper from his firm; he is dead now, and his son has taken over. It is an odd reminder of that night with Ned at Richmond, the night when I gained my false freedom, when I was sure enough of myself to walk away and make him stay where he sat, powerless to follow me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For a week I avoided him. I would not speak to him on the telephone. I read his letters, the most obsessive he had ever written me, not touched at all now with his affectionate, rather condescending irony, and I was unmoved.

  Meanwhile Emilie, to whom I had said nothing, but who guessed that there was trouble between us, did not rejoice. A month or so ago she would have been delighted to see my marriage checked; but now, with the house sold, the flat rented, her own room in the mansions half furnished, she was terrified of any breakdown in our practical arrangements. She would not know which way to turn. I think she saw herself evicted in the street, a pathetic figure crouched on a heap of packing-cases, no roof over her head. Her anxious, timid, forget-me-not gaze followed me, seeking, imploring reassurance.

  The week was up. I answered Ned’s call.

  ‘Well?’ he said roughly. He was afraid. I heard fear in his voice.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You ought to know. We’re getting married today week, and that’s that. I’ve given you your head; now show a bit of sense. I’ll be round tonight.’

  I told him I was not ready.

  He was silent for a minute. Then he said, ‘Look here, then: we’ve got to break this damned silly ice, I suppose. Let’s meet at some place of public entertainment ‘—he gave this phrase a portentous sarcasm—’ where we can’t row, and then see how we feel afterwards.’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed.

  He said he would take me to dinner at a restaurant in Leicester Square; it was a place far smarter than any to which we normally went. ‘Eight sharp.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And, Chris’—his voice was coaxing—’ wear the yellow frock, the one I like.’

  I dressed myself very slowly and carefully. I did not yet know what I was going to say to him, except that I must find a way of telling him once and for all that we could not be married. There would be a terrible scene; and I felt I could endure this more calmly if I looked my best. I bought myself a little spray of slipper orchids (it would mean only a bun and a cup of coffee for lunch on two days of the following week) and had my hair waved. I could not help feeling a little excited now about going to so smart a place to dine. Even Caroline was never taken here.

  He was waiting outside for me, very stiff in his dinner-jacket, a red flower in his lapel, his fair hair glossy under the row of coloured lamps. Coming forward, he kissed me on the cheek. ‘You look nice.’

  I thanked him.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Chris. I think you’ve done enough to me.’

  His eyes momentarily clouded over, as if he were thinking of some point in the future. I believed that if I were to take him back (which I had no intention of doing) he would revenge himself upon me in some way for having exerted power over him; the thought of this, for a second, was not displeasing. Even at a cost to myself, I should have liked to see him back on his pedestal.

  We went downstairs into the big, hot, glittering room. He had booked a table by the dance-floor. `If there’s a damned cabaret one may as well be able to see it.’

  He ordered the most expensive food for me; I could not touch it. All the time I was pretending to eat he watched me. I could not bear to meet his eyes, for they were lonely and frightened. We were frightened of each other. Meanwhile, he drank a good deal.

  I have never kno
wn Ned drunk : that was not the word for it. His speech, his gait, were never affected. But having had too much to drink gave him an air of what, in a woman or even in a man of regular features, I should have called beauty. It blanched all colour from his skin, making his eyes and his lips darker; it smoothed away all lines; it made his flesh appear transparent, delicate as glass. It made him sit very still. Always economic of gesture, he now seemed hardly to move at all, and this very immobility made him impressive.

  We had finished our perfunctory meal. We had been talking little, and always idly, talking about the flat, the wedding, as if they were realities. It did not seem strange to me that we should be doing this. We had to talk about something, and anything would do.

  He said at last, ‘Well?’

  Dear Ned, dear Ned,’ I replied, it’s no use.’

  ‘I don’t understand you. I don’t understand you at all.’ I said he must have realised that for a long time things had not gone well with us.

  We have rows,’ said Ned. The best people do.’

  It’s worse than that. I’m not happy. I never can be, with you.’

  He spread his small hands on the table. The veins shone blue as flax through the fine skin.

  I took off my ring and pushed it across to him. He fitted it on his little finger, stared at it, polished up the emerald with his sleeve. Then he grasped my hand, and forced the ring back on to it. He said, with quiet violence, ‘I won’t look a bloody fool for your sake!’

  He stared at me, the lashes sticking out around his eyes. He was trembling.

  ‘We don’t care what other people say.’ I believed this. That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it matters! Chris, for God’s sake, you’ve got to stop it. You’ve got sense. You know as well as I do that girls do get upset before their weddings—it’s common enough. You love me. You’ve said so. And I’ll turn myself inside out to make you happy. I’ll do anything. But don’t ‘His voice faded; he cleared his throat. Don’t go on with this. You must marry me.’ He looked down at the cloth. There’s nothing for me without you.’