Don't Look At Me Like That

by Diana Athill

  “Listen, she started off bang with, ‘You’re having an affair with Meg—don’t try to lie to me.’ Jesus, what a fool I was—the most banal sort of spy story technique. It was so sudden, I didn’t have time to think how could she know. Of course if she’d begun by saying, ‘Leo saw you in a restaurant’ I’d have said what of it and so on, but she was too cunning for that. I just blurted out, ‘How do you know?’—I could have killed myself for it the next moment….”

  “Did you say it has all been a great torment for you?”

  “Of course I didn’t. I think I said I’d felt terrible about Roxane, but that’s true, you know that—we both have. And I did promise her it was over because what the hell else could I do? I had to get out of there somehow.”

  “Did she tell you she was going to write to Daddy?”

  “No, the bitch. She told me afterwards, when she’d done it. She said, ‘I felt I had to do it for Meg’s own good.’ Oh darling, I thought I was going to murder her. I ought to have murdered her. I didn’t know if he’d write to you or come up and see you, and I kept on imagining … Oh Meg!”

  It was then that the first chill struck. Until that moment the relief of having him back had wiped out his ten days of silence, but now I thought, “So why did you wait so long before getting in touch with me? You could have telephoned from the office.” I thought it, but I didn’t say it, not until later. The marvellous completeness of his presence was still making me feel that we had reached a conclusion: that unhappiness had come to an end and that now something different must be beginning. I was afraid of making him say anything which might threaten this—and I am glad I didn’t, because at least we had the whole of that night unspoilt.

  He had, of course, meant it seriously when he promised Mrs. Weaver it was over. This is not my guess, he told me so the next morning. Guilt towards Roxane had always been worse for him than it was for me because he had to live with her and to lie to her (and besides, whatever it was they had together, they had it). He had been having his cake and eating it far more than I, but it was more of a strain for him. We were both good at shutting our minds, but it is harder work when what you are shutting your mind to is physically present in front of your eyes nearly all the time. Dick must often have had moments of wanting to end the situation, and the shock of discovery jolted him into a decision. “And I kept thinking,” he said, “that anyway you must hate me for getting you into this mess. I thought that you’d be so sickened by the whole thing that you wouldn’t want to see me again.” Perhaps that was true. He may have tried to persuade himself of it during those ten days. Chiefly, though, he was trying to use our being found out as a way of escaping back into an uncomplicated life. It hadn’t worked because he had missed me too much and had needed too desperately, as I had needed, the relief of being together. But Dick’s first reaction had been to choose escape from me, not from Roxane. Nothing different was going to begin.

  PART FIVE

  17

  Everything about that spring and summer when I was twenty-five was horrible, except for my work. That went well, because in June I was given the job which made me fashionable: a luxurious edition of Ronald Firbank’s novels to illustrate. To begin with it was to be in black and white, but an American publisher came in on it, and then two from the Continent, so finally I was allowed to use colour and it was a lovely job. The publishers entered my illustrations in a competition which was supposed to be important, and they won an award, so that a double-page spread of them was reproduced in Graphis. After that the fashion magazines began to want me and one of them started to use the odd kind of fashion-drawings I could do: no one else had drawn clothes in that way before, though one or two have started to do so now.

  If I had not had something to do which I could do well, and which I liked doing, and which took up much time and thought and energy … No, when I think of what it would have been like without my work I “fade away.” But even so it was more a matter of “How terrible it would be without it” than “What a joy it is to have it.” It happened that people wanted what came easily to me, and there can’t be any great satisfaction in doing what comes easily. Pleasure, yes (thank God), but not pride. Perhaps if I had been a real painter …

  For the rest, there was more loneliness than before because Dick and I were so afraid of rediscovery that we could never go anywhere together, and he was able to come to the house only about once every six weeks; and there was more guilt because I had the problem of “tapering off” Roxane so that Mrs. Weaver would be satisfied that I was obeying her orders.

  I had to give the impression of being increasingly absorbed in my London life. When Roxane suggested meeting for lunch I had more often to tell her I wasn’t free, and when she invited me to Oxford I had to be going somewhere else. I can lie easily when it seems to be necessary, but Dick used to tell me that I was neurotically unable to rebuff people, and he was right. I felt the unease of guilt more strongly when I was withdrawing from Roxane than I had done when I was meeting her as though “normally” before Mrs. Weaver wrote her letter. It was stupid. Although I had not enjoyed meeting her on a basis of deceit it was more painful to make her think I was no longer fond of her and to know that she was seeing me as someone who dropped old friends for new and more “glamorous” ones. Her humility should have made it easier, but instead it made it worse.

  “It’s dreadful what a bore I’m becoming,” she said during one of our rare lunches. “No, don’t be silly, of course it’s true. Look at your life compared with mine, nothing but house and children.” When she said that, I had an absurd impulse to say, “Can I come up next weekend?” but I told myself that she did have the children (and she had Dick, for heaven’s sake!) so she couldn’t be seriously harmed by the disappearance of a mere friend—particularly a friend who was secretly an enemy. And I don’t suppose she was much harmed because there can be a satisfaction of superiority in learning that other people are less good than you thought: it is even possible that she was less harmed than I was.

  * * *

  The slow break with Roxane was worse than I had expected, but seeing my parents again was not so bad. It had seemed after my father’s visit as though I could never bear to look at either of them again, but I had to, and soon. My father left me alone for a fortnight and then telephoned, and gratitude for his forbearance made it necessary to say that I would spend the next weekend with them. I felt stronger by then, anyway, because Dick had come back. Trying to imagine what we would say to each other, I saw that it was impossible for us to say anything, so I wrote them a letter. Of course I wanted to come, I said. I was grateful to them for not hating me when they so much hated what I had done. I knew that I was not in a position to make conditions, but still I was going to make one. “You must believe that the whole thing is over now and nothing we could say would make it not have happened, or could make me know anything about it that I don’t know already. I understand what you feel and why you feel it, and I couldn’t understand better however much we discussed it. So either decide that you can’t bear me because of what I’ve done, and I will stay away, or else keep silent about it, and I shall come home.”

  The sheets on my bed still smelt of Dick while I was writing that letter, yet when I posted it I felt not that I was posting a lie but that I had stated a truth. Whatever was happening between Dick and me—whether it was “over” or “not over”—my parents’ intervention was irrelevant, so the lies in the letter expressed a truth.

  I caught the train which connected with the bus so that we would not have to endure the drive from the station. When I came into the house my mother emerged from the kitchen to meet me, then veered away and hurried up to her bedroom from which she came down ten minutes later, red-eyed and brave, talking about a man in the village who had been arrested for poaching. I talked about my work (how pleased she would have been at any other time at my volunteering so much information!); my father talked about the village fête; I offered to clip a hedge, I asked my mothe
r to help me cut out a skirt, I made some pastry—anything to exclude vacuums. From time to time my mother would look desperate, her eyes swimming and her mouth pulled crooked, but I was prepared to walk straight out of the house if she began on the forbidden subject, and she knew it: I hadn’t realized before how much difference there is between a threat which you hope will work and one which you will certainly carry out. My father was scrupulous. He would never break a promise and he had no impulse to punish, only to strengthen. When people protest at the hypocrisy of family life and the way in which so much is never said, I suspect that they have never been in such a situation. My parents wanted me to go on being their daughter and I didn’t want to wound them more than I had done already, so what better way of dealing with the matter could there have been? And form influences content: behave as though something hasn’t happened and it begins to feel as though it hadn’t. By my third visit there was almost no strain in behaving normally, except for an increase of emotion as I left as though they were seeing me off into something dangerous. My parents did with me what I used to do with Roxane: they clamped down on feelings and slipped into gear for “having Meg at home,” and it worked.

  “I don’t care what you say,” said Lucy when I reported on the first weekend. “They really are marvellous.”

  Adam couldn’t understand this. “But what in this is so marvellous?” he said. “You talk as though they were forgiving Meg for some very terrible thing and she has only loved a man. Nothing in that is so terrible, so why are you surprised that they are not more angry? I think it is that they love her and it is only because they are all English that they are not saying, ‘Poor Meg, poor darling, we know how you feel.’”

  * * *

  So it was, and went on being, as though nothing had happened. I had loved—still loved—a man, which was supposed to be the climactic event in my life, and it had made no difference to my getting up in the morning, waiting for buses, working, meeting people, coming home to bed, being lonely. I had learnt that the man was not worth loving and it hadn’t stopped me loving him. I knew that other men could love me and I didn’t care. I had betrayed Roxane and she didn’t know it. I had shocked and wounded my parents and we no longer admitted it. I existed, it seemed, surrounded by some neutralizing substance: anything which touched this substance was diminished to triviality, became impotent, lost its power to produce effects. If I saw that a choice was a wise one I didn’t therefore become able to make it; if I knew an action was right I didn’t therefore become able to take it. I didn’t believe anything with conviction, because belief became as trivial and ineffective as everything else once it had touched the substance. And because of the inertia which comes with depression, when I talked to someone at a party his attention would wander, he would be keeping an eye out for someone more attractive. I might as well not have been there.

  18

  The only person on whom I continued to have an effect was Jamil. Soon after Dick and I had slipped back into our new sparse version of our old routine, his girl, Norah, telephoned me at the studio, a thing which she had never done before. “Oh no!” I thought when I heard who was calling. I was unable to think of her without embarrassment and pity. Since my father’s visit whatever ambiguity there may have been in my attitude towards Jamil had evaporated. His desire had become truly unimportant to me; it was only his affection I had been clinging to—and not even that, very much, now that Dick was back—but what would that matter to Norah if she realized that he was in love with me? He always insisted that she knew nothing about it and I had been careful to keep out of the way when she was there (and Roxane had never guessed about Dick and me: deceiving and being deceived were easier than I would have supposed). On the other hand I had seen less of Jamil than usual recently, and had thought of him hardly at all, and for Norah to become suspicious just when I happened to be giving her no cause would be the kind of trick life plays.

  She spoke curtly, asking me to meet her in a pub on the way home. “Of course,” I said while my mind was going, “Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord!” It would be like Norah to want to “have it out,” and the mere sound of her voice emphasized how unlike me it was. “What a bore she is,” I thought, and at once felt ashamed. I always knew in Norah’s company that I failed to be serious about politics from frivolity rather than from conviction, and now I was going to know something as bad, if not worse, about myself and love.

  She was waiting for me, her dark hair in its invariable plait hanging awkwardly over the hood of her duffle coat. She was not plain but she must have forbidden herself to be interested in her own handsomeness because the way she dressed and walked almost concealed it. It was always a surprise to see her on the way to the bathroom from Jamil’s room, with her hair loose and a soft expression on her face. Adam and Lucy said that she was a passionate girl and was probably very good in bed, and I supposed she must be. Much as he depended on her kindness and much as he admired her seriousness, Jamil would not still have been making love to her after all this time if it had given him no pleasure.

  She was looking pale and worried, and began at once with, “It’s about Jamil.”

  Steadying myself, I said, “Why, what’s up?”

  “Did you know that he’s decided to give up architecture?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Relief was welling up, with a shred of pique that I wasn’t ahead of her in this knowledge—I forgot for the moment that I had seen little of him for some weeks.

  “Well he has, and it’s not just another of his whims. He says he can’t stand it any more and he’s written a letter to the college. I know because he showed it me so that I could correct the spelling—you know how hopelessly he spells. I managed to make him promise not to post it for three days, but I’ve never seen him so determined.”

  “But he’s always going off on enthusiasms—what is it this time? I’m sure it won’t come to any more than the others.”

  “It’s not an enthusiasm—that’s what’s worrying me. It’s a sort of black mood. He’s been having to do something which bores him and he’s so bad at being bored, he can’t endure it. He’s been a spoilt little rich boy all his life, never having to do anything he disliked—that bloody mother of his!” Norah’s voice became venomous. “It’s a miracle he isn’t ruined through and through. It’s the result of imperialism, of course—how can a people develop a sense of responsibility if they’re run by a foreign power for generations which fosters all their worst elements? You know what used to happen at his school, when exams came round? He just had to pay someone to see the papers in advance—they all did it, it wasn’t his fault. So now as soon as he comes up against something that bores him … I’ve been arguing with him, and he says yes of course, he knows Egypt needs all the trained people it can get, but he’s going to write plays in colloquial Arabic for the people—he can’t even speak colloquial Arabic. He’s become sort of mad, and I don’t know what to do. That’s why I phoned you.”

  “But if you can’t persuade him, how can I?”

  Norah blushed painfully, but without turning her face away as I would have done. She went on looking straight at me and spoke almost defiantly. “Because he takes more notice of you than he does of me.”

  I thought I would be unable to keep my eyes on hers, but I did it. Could I have acted on Dick’s behalf as she was acting for Jamil? Swallow pride, expose failure, and turn for help to someone he loved out of the genuineness of my concern? I hoped so, but I wasn’t sure. Meanwhile I must convince Norah that she was making a mountain out of a molehill, and at the same time convey my respect for her.

  “But he minds about you far more than he does about me or Lucy,” I said. “If you can’t persuade him, we can’t.”

  “I’ve proved that I can’t, but you might be able to.” To my relief it appeared that we were not going into the reason why I might be able to.

  “Then I’ll try, of course. But I expect it’ll turn out to be just another fancy and he’s over it by now. And anyway, would it
matter so much if he did give up his course? It would be silly now he’s so far on in it, but his family is rolling and they aren’t the kind of people to cut a son off.”

  “Oh Meg!” exclaimed Norah. I thought she was exasperated by the frivolity of my attitude—and no doubt she was—but she went on to explain the conditions under which a student from abroad was allowed to stay in England. Jamil couldn’t stay here unless the Home Office was satisfied that he could support himself and not become a charge on the state, and under Egypt’s currency restrictions his parents couldn’t send him money unless he was a student. “If he gives up his course he’ll be kicked out.”

  “He could get a job.”

  “Not without a labour permit, he couldn’t. They don’t give permits unless an employer can prove that he can find no one else with the qualifications he needs—and what qualifications has Jamil got?”

  “But there are scores of people from abroad who have been here as students for years without studying a thing.”

  “They can wangle it if they can get money from home, but he won’t be able to. And they get washing-up jobs and so on, being paid out of petty cash so it doesn’t show—that’s what Jamil thinks he’ll do, he’s got romantic ideas about outwitting the Aliens’ Department, but it’s crazy, it never lasts, they’re bound to catch him in the end.”

  I was sure Norah was telling the truth but I was unable to take her seriously: it was too absurd that someone’s private life should be completely at the mercy of the laws of this or any other state. There would surely be ways of getting round it when it came to the point—if it came to the point, and it probably would not. But I could see now why Norah was so agitated. It must be possible to get round the laws, but they were a real threat. It was not only Jamil’s future or Eygpt’s need for specialists that she was worrying about, but the possibility of losing him.