For Love Alone

by Christina Stead

  “I was thinking about you—last night.”

  He put his arm through hers and looked down kindly at her. “I wish you were free and we could see each other in the evenings.”

  “Yes, but we can now. I get home late, no one notices.”

  “They don’t keep a watch on you?”

  “Oh, no.” She hesitated and looked at him. “I don’t seem to belong there any more.”

  “I was thinking of you all last night,” he said.

  “That’s silly,” she said. “Just thinking of each other. What’s the use?”

  “All people like us, homeless, are silly.”

  They walked on looking at houses. He would point at one, saying: “You ought to live there, perhaps.” But it became too late, they could no longer go and ask for rooms and she suddenly saw that at this hour she could not go with a man and ask for a room. All this time, they had said nothing about her letter, though her timidity and low feelings and his tenderness referred to it. Now he said: “I liked your letter.”

  “I liked yours, too.”

  They walked farther and turned back. At the turning of City Road, where he must take his way home, he left her. She took a tram to the Quay. He went home thoughtfully and quietly, thinking about her. Could she do anything for him? She was so awkward and weak. She put herself out for him. He believed it was “against the law of the herd” for women to make declarations, but she had done it for him. It was refined pleasure such as he had not yet had, and the letter had marked a stage for him, too. He could never go back to the intimate, confiding belief he had had in women before; now he could dominate them. He saw that his understanding, that he had thought dried up, could develop through his experience with women. He now knew he would never feel love, that time was over. People loved in adolescence, as they wrote poetry; it was soon over, it was over at twenty. But in some belated adolescents, such as virgins, it persisted.

  It amused him to go out with Teresa sometimes in the next few weeks and talk in the gentle, off-hand way he had acquired. She asked nothing about his life, merely speaking of what had happened on the last walk, and waiting for him to suggest another. He met Teresa in various moods, sometimes casual, almost rude, overbearing, sometimes kind and affectionate; she could not understand him and began to dread meeting him, even though these meetings had become the whole reason for living through days and nights.

  Jonathan lived in a dream. He was beginning to part from his friends, pack his trunk of papers; friendships that had pressed too heavily on him were lifted, criticism blew over him; he was not afraid of Clara and Teresa, they became slight acquaintances whom he would never see again. Many years might have flown past before he set eyes on any of them again. He intended never to return. He thought he had solved his “sexual problem”, too. He now for the first time understood what sophisticated love-writers were talking about. He saw a new life for him. But sublimation, too, was a way of cheating the poor. Did rich men sublimate? He was so absorbed in this and in pottering round an office downtown where he did work with a friend to get experience—for no pay, of course—that he did not notice a certain strange, subdued and soundless fuss at home. One Saturday afternoon, in midwinter, in July that is, as he lounged into the passage of his home, he met his father and mother dressed in their best; his mother, he saw with astonishment, actually had a pair of white kid gloves on, perhaps the first she had ever worn since her marriage.

  “Where to?” He turned her round with affected admiration, looked at the white kid gloves. “Who’s getting married? Oh, you great big beautiful doll!”

  Smiling stiffly with embarrassment, she withdrew her hands sharply and dusted her gloves. “White kid soils so easy, stupid.”

  “Where are you going?” He smiled quizzically.

  “Never mind, we’ll tell you when we come back,” said the mother. Mr Crow was saying: “Come on, Attie, we’ll be late, you spent an hour fidgeting and—your mother curled up her hair!”

  “You’ll be attending funerals next.”

  Jonathan heard the silence of the house; it was swept, clean, silent.

  “Come on, Holland’s waiting,” said the father, referring to one of the two lodgers they had upstairs.

  “Oh, it’s Holland?” He let out a roar of laughter. “And is he going to bring the blushing bride here? It’s the first time Mum ever weakened.”

  “Let me go, Johnny,” she said, tugging away the skirt he had been holding playfully. “You’ll tear it.”

  “Is Eddie going too?”

  “Your brother Eddie’s going,” said the father jovially, and the mother stiffly assented.

  Jonathan looked at them both, his eyes opening, and he cried: “You’re going to Eddie’s wedding?”

  “Yes, son, that’s what it is. Now you’ve guessed. Now let us go. We weren’t going to tell you till it was all over, knowing you would take it funny, perhaps. But he wheedled us into it, and there we are!”

  Jonathan threw himself in front of his mother and put his arms firmly round her. “You’re not going.”

  “Come along now, Johnny, come along now,” said the father warmly. “What business is it of yours, I don’t see. Mum and I made up our minds to go through with it, since he was so set on it, and here we are.”

  “You can go,” said Jonathan. “I won’t let Mum go. You know how she got him. You go, but Mum has no right there. It’s blackmail. Take your hat off, Mum, and sit down.”

  “Let up,” said the father. “What good can it do now? It’s all over—or will be if we don’t hurry. And Mr Holland’s waiting. He’s best man. It isn’t fair to keep them waiting.”

  “Mum’s not going,” said Jonathan firmly, pushing his mother into the best room and making her sit down on one of the crochet-covered chairs. “Listen, Mum, that woman’s two years older than Eddie, she’s been his mistress for years, waiting for him to marry her. I went and told her he’d never marry her and that must have got her dander up, now she’s done it to spite us. If you go, you’re just playing her game.”

  The mother looked angrily at the father, who twisted his black moustache, and said: “What’s done can’t be undone. What do you want to bring tears to your mother’s eyes for? You shouldn’t have said that. Now bear up, Mum. Give us a smile, go on. Dry those tears.”

  Jonathan said coldly: “You go with Holland, it’s all settled. But I won’t let my mother meet that woman, and I’ll never speak to Eddie again. I told him what she was. She’s getting herself off on him now that she’s shopworn and getting too old. She’s shopworn on the shelf. Do you think I didn’t follow her up? Let him have his rag and bone and hank of hair, but I’ll never acknowledge the marriage and I’ll never set foot here while he’s here.”

  The mother sat rigid, sullen in the chair. Jonathan turned to her and said: “I’m warning you now, Mum, if you go to the wedding, I’m leaving the house today. It’s that daisy or me.”

  She unbuttoned one of her gloves and rebuttoned it.

  “Eddie wouldn’t marry a woman like that, Jonathan!”

  “I know all about that, what Eddie wouldn’t do,” he said sharply. He went and opened the front door. “Go on, Dad, there’s Holland in front of the gate. I see Mum’s washed the veranda and done the steps for the bride. I won’t let you go, Mum,” he said fiercely as she advanced, sorry to miss a wedding.

  “Eddie’s my son too,” she said firmly. “And was before you, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan smiled nastily, unpinned her hat, pushed down her hands when she put them on his chest, took the pins out of her hair and let her grey hair fall down her worn old face and neck.

  “You do look a sight,” he said, laughing grimly. “Fit for that kind of a wedding, I’d like to see you turn up like that.”

  “You’d better go, Dad,” the mother said. “Johnny’s set on making a row, and perhaps he’s right—I ‘arf thought myself. And if she’s that kind of woman—” but Mr Crow ran down the white steps and joined Holland, who was beckoning and s
howing his wrist-watch. Jonathan closed the door.

  “Sorry to be a spoil-sport,” said Jonathan angrily, “but I meant it. If that drab comes here, I’m off, and for good. You won’t see me again.”

  “What do you want to be so mean for, and just before you’re going away for years from us, too.”

  He shut the door of the best room, picked up her hat and gloves and, going down the passage, aimed them at the kitchen table.

  “I hope you’ll never speak to that woman,” said Jonathan. “She copped a sucker. You’re just as weak as he is. Have you seen her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t she an old woman?” he said savagely. “Ugly, worn, thin old hat-rack. You could see she’s on the shelf and he was her last hope.”

  The mother sat down and began twisting up her hair.

  “She doesn’t look so old!” she said nervously. “I’m an old woman. I wouldn’t say she is.”

  Mrs Crow, with her mouth full of pins, raised her eyes secretively to him; a faint gleam of satisfaction crept into her face. When she had finished, she said: “Well, you are a tartar, aren’t you? You’ve certainly got a will of your own.”

  “I’m through,” he said suddenly, seizing his hat. “Now you’ve done this, you can take the consequences. I’m going down to the pub. You’ll see me when you see me.”

  “Johnny!” she cried sternly. “You come back ’ere, where do you think you’re going like that, in a temper, and leaving your mother with that kind of language. You come right back ’ere.”

  “You sit and wait for the happy pair,” he said. “I’m going to get drunk.”

  “‘Ave you got the money?” she said cruelly; then she looked at the clock. “Well, it’s all over now. No good cryin’ over spilt milk, they’re man and wife.”

  “Congratulations,” said Jonathan. “Mum, give me a bob, darn it, I’ve not got a penny to get away on my own for half a day.”

  “It seems to me you go out pretty often on your picnics,” she sneered, putting her hand in her purse.

  “As a beggar,” he said. “I’m always accepting hospitality. Ugh! How glad I will be to leave this damned town behind me and all my friends and the whole mess! I hate it here. I’ve been a mendicant here. Give me the money and let me go, I’m begging from you too, but from you I’m not ashamed. I cannot dig, to beg I’m not ashamed. Ta-ta. Expect me when you see me.”

  He went out, clacking the back door, and hurried down the passage.

  “‘E always ’ad such a will,” said the mother to herself. “‘E’ll make ‘is way, of that I’m sure.” She looked at the clock, got up, and smoothed out the white gloves given to her by Eddie. “What Eddie’ll say I’m sure I don’t know, I don’t know what Dad’ll say! That poor boy is a fair terror. You must do this, I won’t let you do that! ‘E’s got a backbone, at any rate.” She looked round the tidy kitchen. “I’ll tidy up a bit. I’ve no doubt they’ll stop by to persuade me to come to ‘ave a bite, Dad and Eddie—and ’er.” She arranged the folds of the curtain. “The place certainly looks like a new pin, it does me credit. I don’t believe what the boy said, what does ‘e know about such things? ‘E’s just took a dislike to ’er and ‘e says anything, as ‘e always will. She’s no great shakes, but what’s done, is done.”

  21

  Love Is Feared: It Dissolves Society

  This affair Jonathan wrote, boiling hot, to his confidante, Teresa. What a shame, what a swindle, and what cowardice on Eddie’s part, to allow himself to marry a woman without love! And Jonathan’s parents who lent themselves to the farce, the official union in holy matrimony of two persons who were now indifferent and would soon hate each other.

  Is that a way to get beyond the reach of penury? Is it a way to improve the lot and character of women, to allow them to put over the old fraud of marriage and a hearth, a man to keep them, a legal meal ticket? But I am sure that if she had loved him passionately, my mother and father, Holland and the others would not have been anxious for the marriage at all; it is because marriage binds up their game and any kind of love dissolves it. Love is feared: it dissolves society, it’s unpopular, and it’s very rare. That is why they put over this ritual, because it keeps society together. And what society? The erotic fraud ought to fall to pieces. As for me, I stick my hands in my pockets now and look on. It took me a while to reach this state of beatitude—for indifference and contempt is the only beatitude I know. I was going to quit the house, but now I have laid down a rule, if he comes, I go, so I suppose they will keep him and the woman he’s taken out a licence for. Perhaps you don’t see eye to eye with me. I was in a lather, as you see. I forgot, you are a woman, perhaps that makes a difference? But could you want to imprison yourself in marriage? Well, forget it, anyway. It was just a flare-up. But it goes from bad to worse, I am more and more unhappy—odd word, that, can one be unhappy who never was happy?—and the shaking my dust from my feet can’t come too soon for me.

  I don’t mind taking their money. I have no illusions, I’m the ideal merchant in dull impartiality, I’m a down-at-heel déclassé, risen from the ranks, with no axe to grind, no canoe to paddle, and no song to sing, a piece of wood that they can hew and carve. They don’t know whether they detest me or laugh at me, my perversity is theirs. I’m their dream, the average man, that statistical fiction, a conveyor-belt intellect—but no danger from me. And this is my only use, I’d say, since I’m indifferent to everything and can’t be fooled, I’m a good sieve to strain facts through to others. The world’s a mart of chicane, cheat and compromise; “idealists” go surrounded by their own brass band and don’t know it. I don’t cling to the old, either. The old for the most part is a mess of conventions and private interests held together by the cement of L.C.D. needs. My ideal? To live without illusion; in brief, that means without love, doesn’t it? That’s my reason for existence, not to be duped like the great nor like the petty. This came to me in my third year after several years of aimlessness and personal despair, I might say, I felt at first that since I had always been supported by the state, I ought to do something for it.

  It seems I’m getting a reputation as a wit, at least Cooper told me so, but I don’t know how, it’s just my undeviating common sense, for nothing can distract me, neither Atlanta nor her golden ball. As for men of genius, I suspect they start trouble to satisfy their instinct of pugnacity, like big-fisted young drunks running down George Street West on Saturday night and challenging every mick and dago to a fight. This makes them unreliable, their instincts are big within them, they might run amok any time to satisfy them, they have a limitless adolescence. I grew up before my time—where was my youth? I am not enceinte with any instincts. I am austere. The state likes that kind of man—and why not? He’s a worker. He doesn’t cry for superfluity. Or am I just a brain sensualist and want to be a theory-taster all my life? Maybe it’s sublimation of the love instinct after all. But let it be. I like it this way!

  Teresa cried over this letter. She thought feverishly how to console him. She created a design as long as the dining-room table, a panel in seven sections, in colours, the design of his life. She called it the Legend of Jonathan. All the pictures were in draughtsmen’s colours. The panels were about nine inches by eleven and in each the central figure was Jonathan: first as a child selling newspapers; second as a child looking in a window of toys; third as a boy of thirteen wearing a striped sweater, a second and ghostly boy looking at him from a high Gothic tower; fourth as a youth, hesitating before the philosophers in a colonnade, that is, pictured as hesitating before a green forest into which many paths entered; fifth as an academic youth, loaded with prizes and laurel crowns, and bowed down, looking at a bird soaring up in a cloud; sixth as a man, alone, before the giant figure of a naked woman, while loves and women, naked, young, peered at him from the innumerable members of the statue; and seventh as Ulysses, afloat on an ocean on which the innumerable curled and dark-blue waves were the locks of a woman’s hair, the woman far off, half Pega
sus, leaping into the sky; and all these were pictures of incidents Jonathan had talked about, his sorrows and longings, while the last two were a picture of what Jonathan said was his present loneliness. She had a little skill in drawing, a wooden, naïve, but energetic skill, like a vigorous man talking in a foreign language, strangely, upside down and yet so full of ideas that even aesthetes listen to him. Like this was the strange drawing and underneath were titles, invented by the girl, “Jonathan as a child must work for his bread”; “Jonathan, though he works, cannot have the toys children long for”; “Jonathan, looking from the school window, wishes he could play football”; “Jonathan is afraid of the colonnade”; “Jonathan is crushed by honours”; “Jonathan desires womankind”; “Jonathan sets out for the unknown”.

  It was quaint, laborious. She delivered it to the house one evening at nightfall and said to the man who opened the door that the university had sent it, but did not hear from him whether he received it or not.

  She kept seeing Miss Haviland and heard from her when he went to dinner with his old classmates and when he saw Clara, Elaine, Tamar, on last outings. He wrote to Teresa at last, a few lines, about a fortnight before he sailed, arranging to meet her at lunch time, near her factory; a postscript said: “By the way, did I ever mention that I got that drawing? Too bad, you shouldn’t take so much trouble over me.”

  She went out and spent a lot of money on a green felt hat with a cockade. She saw them smile when she wore it to the office, and an odd, sallow young man who was fond of chatting with her, came in suddenly and hissed: “Violetta, for God’s sake, throw away that awful hat.” Mad with shame, she really did throw it out the window of the factory, into the vacant lot, and he laughed. During the lunch hour, she waited near the factory, not knowing where to meet Jonathan, and when she came back at two, with hanging cheeks and lids, she found a telephone message on her desk: “Mr Crow rang up to say he took the boat to Mosman and clean forgot his appointment with you.” This, with the green hat, told everyone the story. She looked at herself in the glass and saw how pale and ugly she was.