Unfinished Portrait
Page 24
She said again:
‘I’m so dreadfully sorry for you.’
He got up again.
‘You don’t understand. You needn’t be sorry for me … I’m a rotter. I feel a cur. I couldn’t be decent to you. I shall be no more use to you and Judy … You’d better cut me right out …’
She stared …
‘You mean,’ she said, ‘you don’t love me any longer? Not at all? But we’ve been so happy … Always so happy together.’
‘Yes, in a way – a quiet way … This is quite different.’
‘I think to be quietly happy is the best thing in the world.’
Dermot made a gesture.
She said wonderingly:
‘You want to go away from us? Not to see me and Judy any more? But you’re Judy’s father … She loves you.’
‘I know … I mind terribly about her. But it’s no good. I’m never any use doing anything I don’t want to do … I can’t behave decently when I’m unhappy … I should be a brute.’
Celia said slowly:
‘You’re going away – with her?’
‘Of course not. She’s not that kind of a girl. I would never suggest such a thing to her.’
He sounded hurt and offended.
‘I don’t understand – you just want to leave us?’
‘Because I can’t be any good to you … I should be simply foul.’
‘But we’ve been so happy – so happy …’
Dermot said impatiently:
‘Yes, of course, we have – in the past. But we’ve been married eleven years. After eleven years one needs a change.’
She winced.
He went on, his voice persuasive, more like himself:
‘I’m making quite a good income, I’d allow you plenty for Judy – and you’re making money yourself now. You could go abroad – travel – do all sorts of things you’ve always wanted to do …’
She put up her hand as though he had struck her.
‘I’m sure you’d enjoy it. You’d really be much happier than you would be with me …’
‘Stop!’
After a minute or two she said quietly:
‘It was on this night, nine years ago, that Judy began to be born. Do you remember? Doesn’t it mean anything to you? Isn’t there any difference between me and – a mistress you would try to pension off?’
He said sulkily:
‘I’ve said I was sorry about Judy … But, after all, we both agreed that the other should be perfectly free …’
‘Did we? When?’
‘I’m sure we did. It’s the only decent way to regard marriage.’
Celia said:
‘I think, when you’ve brought a child into the world – it would be more decent to stick to it.’
Dermot said:
‘All my friends think that the ideal of marriage should be freedom …’
She laughed. His friends. How extraordinary Dermot was – only he would have dragged in his friends.
She said:
‘You are free … You can leave us if you choose … if you really choose … but won’t you wait a little – won’t you be sure? There’s eleven years’ happiness to remember – against a month’s infatuation. Wait a year – make sure of things – before bursting up everything …’
‘I don’t want to wait. I don’t want the strain of waiting …’
Suddenly Celia stretched out and caught at the door handle.
All this wasn’t real – couldn’t be real … She called out: ‘Dermot!’
The room went black and whirled round her.
She found herself lying on the bed. Dermot was standing beside her with a glass of water. He said:
‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
She stopped herself laughing hysterically … took the water and drank it …
‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘It’s all right … You must do as you please … You can go away now. I’m all right … You do as you like. But let Judy have her birthday tomorrow.’
‘Of course …’
He said: ‘If you’re sure you’re all right …’
He went slowly through the open door into his room and shut it behind him.
Judy’s birthday tomorrow …
Nine years ago she and Dermot had wandered in the garden – had been parted – she had gone down into pain and fear – and Dermot had suffered …
Surely – surely – no one in the world could be so cruel as to choose this day to tell her …
Yes, Dermot could …
Cruel … cruel … cruel …
Her heart cried out passionately:
‘How could he – how could he – be so cruel to me? …’
8
Judy must have her birthday.
Presents – special breakfast – picnic – sitting up to dinner – games.
Celia thought: ‘There’s never been a day so long – so long – I shall go mad. If only Dermot would play up a little more.’
And Judy noticed nothing. She noticed her presents, her fun, the readiness of everyone to do what she wanted.
She was so happy – so unconscious – it tore at Celia’s heart.
9
The next day Dermot left.
‘I’ll write from London, shall I? You’ll stay here for the present?’
‘Not here – no, not here.’
Here, in the emptiness, the loneliness, without Miriam to comfort her?
Oh, Mother, Mother, come back to me, Mother …
Oh, Mother, if you were here …
Stay here alone? In this house so full of happy memories – memories of Dermot?
She said: ‘I’d rather come home. We’ll come home tomorrow.’
‘As you please. I’ll stay in London. I thought you were so fond of it down here.’
She didn’t answer. Sometimes you couldn’t. People either saw or they didn’t see.
When Dermot had left, she played with Judy. She told her they were not going to France after all. Judy accepted the pronouncement calmly, without interest.
Celia felt terribly ill. Her legs ached, her head swam. She felt like an old, old woman. The pain in her head increased till she could have screamed. She took aspirin, but it was no use. She felt sick, and the thought of food repelled her.
10
Celia was afraid of two things: she was afraid of going mad, and she was afraid of Judy noticing anything …
She didn’t know whether Miss Hood noticed anything. Miss Hood was so quiet. It was a comfort to have Miss Hood – so calm and incurious.
Miss Hood managed the going home. She seemed to think it quite natural that Celia and Dermot weren’t going to France after all.
Celia was glad to get back to the Lodge. She thought: ‘This is better. I mayn’t go mad after all.’
Her head felt better but her body worse – as though she had been battered all over. Her legs felt too weak to walk … That and the deathly sickness made her limp and unresisting …
She thought: ‘I’m going to be ill. Why does your mind affect your body so?’
Dermot came down two days after her return.
It was still not Dermot … Queer – and frightening – to find a stranger in the body of your husband …
It frightened Celia so much that she wanted to scream …
Dermot talked stiffly about outside matters.
‘Like someone who’s come to call,’ thought Celia.
Then he said:
‘Don’t you agree that it is the best thing to do – to part, I mean?’
‘The best thing – for whom?’
‘Well, for all of us.’
‘I don’t think it’s the best thing for Judy or me. You know I don’t.’
Dermot said: ‘Everybody can’t be happy.’
‘You mean it’s you who are going to be happy and Judy and I who aren’t … I don’t see really why it should be you and not us. Oh, Dermot, can’t you go and do what you want to do, and not insist on tal
king about it. You’ve got to choose between Marjorie and me – no, that’s not it – you’re tired of me and perhaps that’s my fault – I ought to have seen it coming – I ought to have tried more, but I was so sure you loved me – I believed in you as I believed in God. That was stupid – Grannie would have told me so. No, what you have to choose between is Marjorie and Judy. You do love Judy – she’s your own flesh and blood – and I can never be to her what you can be. There’s a tie between you two that there isn’t between her and me. I love her, but I don’t understand her. I don’t want you to abandon Judy – I don’t want her life maimed. I wouldn’t fight for myself, but I will fight for Judy. It’s a mean thing to do, to abandon your own child. I believe – if you do it – you won’t be happy. Dermot, dear Dermot, won’t you try? Won’t you give a year out of your life? If, at the end of a year, you can’t do it, you feel you must go to Marjorie – well, then, you must go. But I’d feel then that you’d tried.’
Dermot said: ‘I don’t want to wait … A year is a long time …’
Celia gave a discouraged gesture.
(If only she didn’t feel so deathly sick.)
She said: ‘Very well – you’ve chosen … But if ever you want to come back – you’ll find us waiting, and I won’t reproach you … Go, and be – be happy, and perhaps you’ll come back to us some day … I think you will … I think that underneath everything it’s really me and Judy you love … And I think, too, that underneath you’re straight and loyal …’
Dermot cleared his throat. He looked embarrassed.
Celia wished he would go away. All this talking … She loved him so – it was agony to look at him – if only he would go away and do what he wanted to do – not ram the agony of it home to her …
‘The real point is,’ said Dermot, ‘how soon can I get my freedom?’
‘You are free. You can go now.’
‘I don’t think you understand what I am talking about. All my friends think there should be a divorce as soon as possible.’
Celia stared.
‘I thought you told me there wasn’t – there wasn’t – well, any grounds for divorce.’
‘Of course there aren’t. Marjorie is as straight as a die.’
A wild desire to laugh passed over Celia. She repressed it.
‘Well, then?’ she said.
‘I’d never suggest anything of that kind to her,’ said Dermot in a shocked voice. ‘But I believe that, if I were free, she would marry me.’
‘But you’re married to me,’ said Celia, puzzled.
‘That’s why there must be a divorce. It can all be put through quite easily and quickly. It will be no bother to you. And all the expense will fall on me.’
‘You mean that you and Marjorie are going away together after all?’
‘Do you think I’d drag a girl like that through the divorce court? No, the whole thing can be managed quite easily. Her name need never appear.’
Celia got up. Her eyes blazed.
‘You mean – you mean – oh, I think that’s disgusting! If I loved a man I’d go away with him even if it was wrong. I might take a man from his wife – I don’t think I would take a man from his child – still, one never knows. But I’d do it honestly. I’d not skulk in the shadow and let someone else do the dirty work and play safe myself. I think both you and Marjorie are disgusting – disgusting. If you really loved each other and couldn’t live without each other I would at least respect you. I’d divorce you if you wanted me to – although I think divorce is wrong. But I won’t have anything to do with lying and pretending and making a put-up job of it.’
‘Nonsense, everybody does.’
‘I don’t care.’
Dermot came up to her.
‘Look here, Celia, I’m going to have a divorce. I won’t wait for it, and I won’t have Marjorie dragged into it. And you’ve got to agree to it.’
Celia looked him full in the face.
‘I won’t,’ she said.
18 Fear
1
It was here, of course, that Dermot made his mistake.
If he had appealed to Celia, if he had thrown himself on her mercy, if he had told her that he loved Marjorie and wanted her and couldn’t live without her, Celia would have melted and agreed to anything he wanted – no matter how repugnant to her own feelings. Dermot unhappy she could not have resisted. She had always given him anything he wanted, and she would not have been able to keep from doing so again.
She was on the side of Judy against Dermot, but if he had taken her the right way, she would have sacrificed Judy to him, although she would have hated herself for doing so.
But Dermot took an entirely different line. He claimed what he wanted as a right and tried to bully her into consenting.
She had always been so soft, so malleable, that he was astonished at her resistance. She ate practically nothing, she did not sleep, her legs felt so weak she would hardly walk, she suffered tortures from neuralgia and earache, but she stood firm. And Dermot tried to bully her into giving her consent.
He told her that she was behaving disgracefully, that she was a vulgar, clutching woman, that she ought to be ashamed of herself, that he was ashamed of her. It had no effect.
Outwardly, that is. Inwardly his words cut her like wounds. That Dermot – Dermot – could think she was like that.
She grew worried about her physical condition. Sometimes she lost the thread of what she was saying – her thoughts, even became confused …
She would wake up in the night in a condition of utter terror. She would feel sure that Dermot was poisoning her – to get her out of the way. In the daytime she knew these for the wildest night fancies, but, all the same, she locked up the packet of weed killer that stood in the potting shed. As she did so, she thought: ‘That isn’t quite sane – I mustn’t go mad – I simply mustn’t go mad …’
She would wake up in the night and wander about the house looking for something. One night she knew what it was. She was looking for her mother …
She must find her mother. She dressed and put on a coat and hat. She took her mother’s photograph. She would go to the police station and ask them to trace her mother. Her mother had disappeared, but the police would find her … And once she had found her mother everything would be all right …
She walked for a long time – it was raining and wet … She couldn’t remember what she was walking for. Oh, yes, the police station – where was the police station? Surely in a town, not out in the open country.
She turned and walked in the other direction …
The police would be kind and helpful. She would give them her mother’s name – what was her mother’s name? … Odd, she couldn’t remember … What was her own name?
How frightening – she couldn’t remember …
Sybil, wasn’t it? Or Yvonne – how awful not to be able to remember …
She must remember her own name …
She stumbled over a ditch …
The ditch was full of water …
You could drown yourself in water …
It would be better to drown yourself than to hang yourself. If you lay down in the water …
Oh, how cold it was! – she couldn’t – no, she couldn’t …
She would find her mother … Her mother would put everything right.
She would say, ‘I nearly drowned myself in a ditch,’ and her mother would say, ‘That would have been very silly, darling.’
Silly – yes, silly. Dermot had thought her silly – long ago. He had said so and his face had reminded her of something.
Of course! Of the Gun Man!
That was the horror of the Gun Man. All the time Dermot had really been the Gun Man …
She felt sick with fear …
She must get home … she must hide … The Gun Man was looking for her … Dermot was stalking her down …
She got home at last. It was two o’clock. The house was asleep …
She crept up the sta
irs …
Horror, the Gun Man was there – behind that door – she could hear him breathing … Dermot, the Gun Man …
She daren’t go back to her room. Dermot wanted to be rid of her. He might come creeping in …
She ran wildly up one flight of stairs. Miss Hood, Judy’s governess, was there. She burst in.
‘Don’t let him find me – don’t let him …’
Miss Hood was wonderfully kind and reassuring.
She took her down to her room and stayed with her.
Just as Celia was falling asleep she said suddenly:
‘How stupid, I couldn’t have found my mother. I remember – she’s dead …’
2
Miss Hood got the doctor in. He was kind and emphatic. Celia was to put herself in Miss Hood’s charge.
He himself had an interview with Dermot. He told him plainly that Celia was in a very grave condition. He warned him of what might happen unless she was to be left entirely free from worry.
Miss Hood played her part very efficiently. As far as possible, she never left Celia and Dermot alone. Celia clung to her. With Miss Hood she felt safe … She was kind …
One day Dermot came in and stood by the bed.
He said: ‘I’m sorry you’re ill …’
It was Dermot who spoke to her – not the stranger.
A lump came in her throat …
The next day Miss Hood came in with rather a worried face.
Celia said quietly: ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’
Miss Hood nodded. She was relieved that Celia took it so quietly.
Celia lay there motionless. She felt no grief – no pang … She was just numb and peaceful …
He had gone …
Some day she must get up and start life again – with Judy …
It was all over …
Poor Dermot …
She slept – she slept almost continuously for two days.
3
And then he came back.
It was Dermot who came back – not the stranger.