The Great Lover

by Jill Dawson

  ‘Ha! It’s no, then! Is it my Poems? Do you find them so vile, so laughable, so beastly and unnatural that you must refuse my proposal for fear of befouling yourself by connecting with my name?’

  ‘No, no, that’s not it. Rupert, you seem so–unwell, I’m frightened for you. I had no idea that my–my confession about Henry Lamb would bring you to this. We have always been honest with one another…’ she is standing up now, attempts one hand on my shoulder, her scarf unravelling and flicking between us in the wind ‘…and I have always understood how much you loved Noel…Couldn’t you be a little happy for me?’

  ‘Happy? Happy for you? When you want to sully your life by mingling it with these detestable buggers? Lytton, James, the fucking Blooms buries, the lot of them. Jews and buggers! I wash my bloody hands of you.’

  This feels good. At last–saying what I feel. I stride off, away from her, and she is a only a bright blue dot, tiny as a forget-me-not, on the green hills. It’s as bracing as a dip in the Granta. Oh, if only the cloud in my head would lift, I could taste the real pleasure of this, of finally, finally, uttering exactly what I long to. Goddamn buggers the lot of them.

  God burn roast castrate bugger and tear the bowels out of every last one of them.

  I’m on the train, then, and Lytton and Ka and James somewhere else, and Lamb too, and only Gwen and Jacques in the seats opposite, glancing at me all the time in that frightened, pathetic way they both have, as if they want to offer me bromide and tea, or strap my arms to my chest. In between these kindly injunctions I sleep. In sleep Lytton appears to tell me how he orchestrated the whole thing: You needed taking down a peg, Brooke old man. ‘Of course I invited the creature (Lamb) to Lulworth and left the others to go out on walks with him so that the whole disgusting, unbearable, sickening nightmare could happen right under your nose. I knew you were a virgin after all. What splendid sport!’

  I open my eyes and meet Gwen’s anxious gaze. ‘I loathe Lytton!’ I tell her.

  Gwen and Jacques start in alarm, and Gwen reaches for her flask, enquiring if I’d like brandy. ‘You’re crying, dear,’ she says very softly, as she leans towards me and, ridiculously, fetches my own handkerchief from my pocket and dabs at my face as if I were a child.

  The brandy burns my throat and makes me cough and we roll through tunnels, and in the black window beside me my own face appears, striped with white lines and fields and rabbits running through it. ‘Where are we going? Where is Ka?’

  ‘She–she left, Rupert. She was very upset. I think you–perhaps you were a little cruel to her.’

  ‘Was I? Where are we going?’

  ‘We’ve made an appointment for you with Dr Craig in London. We’ll take you there. And we’ve telegraphed your mother. She says you’re to come to Cannes with her at once.’

  ‘Does she indeed? And is Ka coming with me? I’ve asked her to marry me, you know.’

  ‘Yes, we do know,’ Gwen says, with a quick glance at the carriage door as if someone might open it. She says nothing more but dabs at my cheeks again, which are surprisingly wet.

  ‘Are we to be married then, Ka and me? Is it agreed?’

  ‘No, dear.’ And Jacques begins telling me in great detail about this man, this Dr Craig, and how renowned he is, how he has helped others–why, Virginia Stephen, he thinks, has been to see him.

  Mentally, then, I compose a letter to Virginia. ‘Let me implore you not to have, as I’ve been having, a nervous breakdown. It’s too unpleasant.’

  ‘Poor Virginia,’ I say out loud. ‘What tormented and crucified figures we literary people are!’

  This at least raises a smile from Jacques. ‘I’ve heard Dr Craig is excellent,’ he assures me.

  I tell them both about an incident at Holy Trinity in Rugby three Sundays ago. In the afternoon there is first a choral service, then a children’s service, then a service for Men Only. Two fourteen-year-old choirboys arranged a plan during the choral service. At the end they skipped round and watched the children enter. They picked out the one whose looks pleased them best, a youth of ten. They waited in seclusion till the end of the children’s service. Then they pounced on their victim as he came out, took him each by a hand and led him to the vestry. There, while the service for Men Only proceeded, they removed the lower parts of his clothing and buggered him, turn by turn. His protestations were drowned by the organ pealing out whatever hymns are most suitable for men only. Subsequently they let him go.

  ‘He has been in bed ever since with a rupture,’ I announce.

  Gwen materialises again in front of me with the handkerchief. Now I see that for some reason it is she who is crying.

  ‘Hush, dear…’ I tell her fondly, and the train slices through the pink of the neat little English hills on their perfect drawing-room scale; just like the blade in a bacon-slicer.

  Rupert is sick. He’s not here. After New Year he was taken off to somewhere in France by his mother, but everyone at the Orchard is talking about it, and Kittie tells me with great excitement that she heard Mr Ward talking to Mr Raverat about it, and she gathers that Rupert had a nervous breakdown and began cussing and wandering the clifftops of Dorset like a madman–as she says this, she’s glancing sideways at me all the time, as if she expects me to slap her–and had to be taken to the famous Dr Craig for his stuffing treatment.

  We’re in the kitchen with the wax kettle on the stove. I wonder hopelessly how to hide the trembling in my hands as I hold the kettle; the shaking in my shoulders as I turn my back on them, reaching for the candle moulds. I knew something was very wrong that night out by Byron’s Pool. Should I have done something? Stayed with him in his room, despite his telling me to go? Have I failed him once again, despite all my best intentions? What, what on earth could I have done?

  ‘They all break down in the end,’ Kittie says cheerfully. ‘Writers, I mean. This doctor makes them drink milk and stout and stop writing. Stopping writing is the only cure.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ I reply, so fiercely that three moulds topple over. I’m trying to teach Kittie and Lottie how to make candles. Lottie, being a diligent girl, is applying herself to the task; Kittie’s tongue keeps up steady work of another kind.

  ‘Stopping writing–oh, and drinking the blood of bullocks or something–is the only cure,’ Kittie repeats, undeterred, ‘but Love is the cause. I heard he asked Miss Cox to marry him and she turned him down! But why would our handsome Mr Brooke choose Miss Bespectacled Cox with the fat behind when he could have Miss Olivier or, well, anyone at all?’

  ‘Here–put the muslin over the spout,’ I tell her, a warning in my voice. ‘The wax is melted enough–can’t you see it there floating on top of the water?–so now we can tip it into the moulds. Here, Lottie, get the first cast ready. We need both of us to lift the kettle–it’s heavy.’

  ‘And there was another young woman came asking for him the other day. Did you see her, Lotts?’ Kittie is not in the least put off. She slaps her hand over mine on the handle of the kettle, but carries on, ‘Miss Phyllis Gardner. Came on a bicycle. Long red hair. Shameless, she was. She showed me a sketch she’d made of him and asked me, “Do you know this gentleman?”’

  This gives me a stab of fury to almost take my breath away. ‘Hold the kettle, will you? I can’t do it on my own–put your back into it, Kittie!’

  Another young woman, asking after him. Another young artist with modern ideas who thinks he belongs to her.

  ‘And were it a good likeness?’ Lottie wants to know.

  ‘The sketch? Not bad at all. Easy to see it was our Mr Brooke. Had his nose, you know, fine and straight but with a sort of little snub at the end. He’s made another conquest, no doubt, but I told her he was away “convalescing”. I thought that was the best word for it.’

  ‘Oh, where in God’s name can Betty be?’ I burst out, my voice ringing in the kitchen. She was sent on an errand an hour ago to fetch the meat from Tommy, who has been flat on his back with a broken ankle and una
ble to make deliveries. As if in answer to my lament, Betty appears at the kitchen door, just as the three of us are struggling to lift the kettle and direct the spout towards the moulds. She hurries to help by steadying the candle casts so that the wax pours in the right place and does not end up all over Mrs Stevenson’s table. I notice some hot, honey-coloured blobs dripping on her hands and marvel that she makes no response, nor snatches her hand away. I soon learn why: her mind is entirely elsewhere.

  ‘I’ve an announcement to make,’ she says, glancing up shyly at Kittie, but avoiding, I think, my eyes. ‘Me and Jack. You know Jack? The boy who works at the Mill? Jack and me. He asked me–he asked me—Oh, Nell, do say you’ll look well on it. He wants us to get married!’

  The kettle is nearly dropped as the girls crowd round Betty to kiss her and shriek with excitement. The room is full of commotion and it falls to me–as ever–to remember that Mrs Stevenson is only in the apple loft on the floor above and can hear every word.

  ‘Ssh, ssh now, girls, the wax is hardening–this is not the moment to neglect the task completely!’ I cry.

  ‘Oh, do say you think it a grand idea, Nell–please,’ begs Betty.

  I pull her towards me and kiss her cheek. I feel her pounding heart under her apron and regret my selfishness, my own foolish woes. But the wax is cooling and will form badly if we don’t attend to it now. ‘Of course I do!’ I say. ‘That’s fine, fine news. Father would have been very proud of you. Now help me, won’t you?, or the candles will be spoiled and we’ll have to start all over again.’

  Her hair smells of the silky hot beeswax, the melting flavour of our childhood, and I believe my instinct for guessing at Father’s feelings might, on this one occasion, be true. Jack is the good, steady sort and his family is kind, even if they are not Methodists and do have some funny traditions. Yes, of course I’m glad for her, for she will stay in Grantchester now and be part of another family, with a new mother and a father and even new brothers and sisters. Perhaps my prayers–the bargain I struck–are being answered after all? To live in Grantchester, near the millstream? That’s surely a life, a life for a girl with Betty’s inclinations and dreamy, well-meaning nature?

  It’s only in bed that night that I’m able to let my mind run on and think of what Kittie says about Rupert. Could it really be that easy to go quite mad like that–and for what? Because Ka Cox turned him down. This seems an easy explanation, but not a true one, because what I saw in him that night by Byron’s Pool was already glittering in his eyes, and I know he hadn’t asked her to marry him then. How do people break down? And do they mend again? Can this stuffing cure really work? I realise I know nothing about madness, if that’s what it is. I don’t understand at all, and it frightens me. The mood I felt crackling in him that night, the look in his eyes, did it seem like madness to me?

  I think back to that time in his room, going over and over how he appeared. One moment his face was lit up with some of its old naughtiness; the next he was serious, and somehow frail. But there was that moment when his words were mumbled and the edges of him seemed to be blurring, softening. He did not seem to know that his face was shining wet, that he was crying. As if the very boundaries of him, of his face and his body and being, were melting. Yes, that’s it. Rupert was melting, like a candle, down to a liquid nothing. Thinking this, I’m oddly comforted. For after all, after today, didn’t we see how the wax hardens again and takes up fresh shapes? Maybe that is what the London doctor will bring. Maybe, God willing, that is what will happen to darling Rupert.

  Ka is like having black beetles in the house. I put down carbolic powder. That did not work. The Ranee took me to Cannes to cure me of my madness and I wrote to Ka, over and over, and arranged for her to meet me in Munich. That did!

  Meeting with Ka in Munich was achieved after much wrangling and conniving, for Mother had to be deceived at all costs. By then I was desperate. I wrote and wrote. I pleaded, I begged her. Give up Lamb, I said. In Cannes the Ranee was at her most magnificent and frightening. I was afraid, truly afraid, of Mother’s strong, womanly powers, no doubt about it. Such awful scenes, with Mother always restless for facts, always suspicious, with a nose for…what? The word I wanted there, the one I paused over, was ‘erotic’. Yet it’s true. Mother has an extraordinary skill for sniffing out my every erotic thought. No wonder I felt so invaded, so trespassed upon!

  Once I managed to convey to Mother that I hated her, hated Cannes, the sea, and I reduced her to a crumble, and it wasn’t good at all. A Pyrrhic victory. It’s beastly hurting people, especially the Ranee, who looks to me for so much now that Father and Dick have both gone. Thankfully she put it down to my sickness and telegraphed Dr Craig, who repeated the advice: no writing, more stuffing. I put on a stone, became as fat as a baby. Of course, it was the Ranee’s money I needed. How to get to Munich without it? I told her I was meeting Dudley and she caved in, finally, and was generous, too, and I felt worse than ever.

  So, enfin, there were those nights in Munich with Ka, and that put an end to all desire. I had Ka at last, and that did the trick, like a colossal dose of bromide. I realised in the first glow of tumescence that it was a terrible mistake. I didn’t pause–that would have been impolite–I ploughed on, gave up my prolonged chastity to plunge into the abyss of Ka’s body and show her a little more than the Apollo-golden-haired version of me, show her the true horribleness of my nature. I thought of Denham only briefly, how lustful he was, how immoral, how affectionate and delightful, and wondered whether I could, after all, put the thing through with a woman. But the image of Denham, the one touch of his that made me shiver so much I was frightened…I used that to blank out Ka’s anxious expression, and her little, tough, brave ‘Oh’ as I entered her. Afterwards she said she was willing to give up Lamb and marry me. My misery was complete.

  I sat up all night, sweating in a fever. (Perhaps it was the word ‘marry’.) I could not tell if it was sickness of the body or mind or soul but it felt like all three. There was a dark little cave in one part of my brain, and I knew that inside it there was someone or something that I wanted badly, so badly, but couldn’t quite see or reach. A feeling so infuriating and frustrating that I wanted to tear my hair and scream.

  Kind Ka sat beside me, concerned, warm, hoping to infect me with her calm, but it was no good. I told her strange things that night, cracked open the contents of my vile brain and spilled them before her, trying to find this one good patch, this little nugget. But it remained out of reach.

  The idea that I was recovered from my breakdown began to fly from her understanding. As the morning light crept through the green gloom of the room I remembered only Father’s death and the futility of it all, green and foul and reeking of disappointment. Nothing will come of nothing–and nothing, worse than nothing, is who I am.

  She told me she pictured our children: a son, she said, and sobbed. She lay naked as she said this, her hair spread on the pillow, pince-nez on the lace doily on the table beside her, along with the hotel-room key–the number was twenty-six, I remember –and the unwritten postcards of Munich and the emerald green beads that Ka always wears. Her goodness made me feel worse. We had tried the irrigator and the syringe that I had ventured with Elisabeth with more success. It made an awful mess. But I hoped it had worked. I was sad that Ka had not seemed to enjoy the experience much, and I remember writing to her, later, when we thought she might be pregnant, to try to establish what, in any case, a woman should expect:

  The important thing, I want to be quite clear about, is, about women ‘coming off’. What it means, objectively–What happens. And also, what you feel when it happens. Have you (I’d like to hear when there’s infinite leisure) analysed, with the help of that second night, the interior feelings you were yet dim about the first night (at Starnberg)?

  Oh, yes, there was a second night, despite everything, more than one–a second honeymoon, in fact, a month later. I did, in some dim place of pride in my man’s soul, believe that I came
a little nearer to achieving it, this rapture that women, too, are supposed to experience. I saw perhaps a small sign of it in Ka.

  Perhaps not. Undoubtedly I am as useless a Lover as I am everything else. A Fabian, a Socialist, a Poet, a Son. The Ranee plainly accused me of the latter, writing in a letter: ‘Why are you so unsatisfactory? Is it my fault?’ And this because I begged her to give me the money to travel for a year, to escape. Ka says she will give it to me, she has her inheritance, but I don’t want her money, that is too cruel. I want to go to America and to the South Seas. The Ranee is against it. She thinks my scholarly efforts should come first, but that was before we heard the results of the Fellowship. Oh, yes, my marvellous Webster essay that I risked my health for rather failed to perform. Fellowship went to some other chap. Seems a long way away now, and of tiny importance.

  The only good thing is a poem I managed to write in Munich. ‘A Sentimental Exile’. I cabled the editor of the King’s magazine from the Café des Westerns: ‘A Masterpiece is on its way.’ Of course I instantly regretted that, when it was only in fact a silly, quickly written thing that might amuse.

  And yet, as I arrive back in Grantchester, in a cab from Cambridge station, ‘Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room’ echoes in my head as I glance up at the Orchard from my banished position as ex-tenant, then turn sorrowfully towards the gravelled approach of the Old Vicarage instead. Who was I thinking of when I wrote those lines? It wasn’t Florence Neeve.

  (‘Hypersensitive and introspective,’ the good Dr Craig said I was.)

  There are sounds of laughter, and people arriving on the road behind me, and I turn quickly and see that the servants are arriving back from somewhere, all dressed in their church clothes, with hats on and flower buttonholes. Could it be? Yes, it is! Nell. In fact, the two Golightly sisters: Betty and Nell, glorious Nell coming into view in a blush pink dress, with rice confetti on her shoulders. Rice. Confetti. Flowers. Church clothes.