by Francis King
Hugh, too, was satisfied, leading impossible expeditions, heroically showing young boys how to die, winning medals and mentions and articles in the daily press. Of course, there was the danger; comradeship; ambition surfeited. But something more, something added. A craving as formidable as Lucy’s. (What was it? Was it this that made people say that they were ‘wonderful people’? Was it this that won the war? Impossible to tell. But it was there, urging them, thrusting them forward, mastering them.)
When Hugh was to be decorated and given a new command some friends gave a dinner for him. He arrived for it from the Front, dusty, tired, grimy. There were too many speeches, too many courses, too much to drink. And always, at the other end of the table, he saw Lucy, sitting next to a Cabinet minister, superb in emeralds. His head ached.
Then afterwards, as he put on his coat, an acquaintance came up to him, talked for a while, and said, in the course of their conversation: "Sad about poor Eckworth, wasn’t it?"
"Eckworth? What do you mean?"
"Didn’t you hear? You must have heard."
"No."
"Cut his throat with a razor. It was in all the papers. Horrible business..."
"But why?"
Shoulders were shrugged, eyes raised. They talked of other things.
But in the car Hugh thought again of Eckworth, who had been at school with him. One of his letters, the last, was still in his wallet now. He had written this:
"... So Maurice and Tony and John were all killed in that last offensive. This eternal T chekov play is driving me mad. Am I to be left like the old servant in The Cherry Orchard? I can’t tell you how horrible it is to see one’s contemporaries go off, one by one, to be killed—and still I toddle along to the Foreign Office, see the latest Shaw play, read S. N. G.’s new book. If the others resented it, it wouldn’t be so bad. Or if I was in discomfort—on a minesweeper, on the land, anywhere. I can quite see why so many of us pacifists volunteer for dangerous jobs. You see, no amount of principles can remove that feeling of guilt—the utter humility of the thing, the abjectness. Often I feel like throwing the whole business up and putting on a uniform. But would that be an answer? I mean, if I believe that war is wrong—if I would rather die than kill a fellow human being... And so it goes on, the interminable conflict, with oneself, within oneself. I’m boring you, I expect. Forgive this letter..."
And now he had killed himself. The taxi drew up, Lucy got out. How cold it was! How his head ached! Slowly he walked up to his room and stretched himself out on his bed, in soundless, intolerable anguish, one hand twisting the sheet. For the first time, he cursed the war...
Then Lucy came in. "Tired, dearest? I bet you are. But you were wonderful—wonderful. Your speech ... Oh, you can do anything—anything! It’s all yours—the whole world."
And she lay down on the bed beside him, her cheek touching his.
The war over, he came home, no longer a subaltern but a general, and went to Hampshire and wrote his first book. It was a time when ‘revelations’ and ‘exposures’ were becoming popular; and though he had never written with this in mind, only telling the truth, the brutality of it all, the picture of men who were no longer men but beasts, the incisive presentation of his own personality, all this made for success. The press published angry letters from ‘Cui Bono’, ‘Ex-officer’, ‘Mother of Six’. A liberal M.P. misquoted a paragraph. Someone tried to throw a stone through the London flat, but mistook the number. Begging letters, angry letters, laudatory letters arrived by post. A critic wrote in a Sunday paper: ‘A book for the discriminating few’. And it sold twenty-five thousand copies.
General Sir Hugh Weigh was becoming a cult.
It was soon after this that the first of Lucy’s many disorders began. She had always tended to hypochondria, seeing doctors, taking medicines, submitting to diets. But with the war this had suddenly ended. Perhaps she had been too busy looking after the bodies of others to interest herself in her own.
One night, long ago, out in India, when Hugh was working, on the veranda alone, late at night, she had suddenly appeared to him in a flowered wrap, her face white, her lips trembling. He had thought she was asleep.
"What is it?" he asked, thinking she had had some nightmare.
But mutely she drew aside the folds of the wrap to show her naked body underneath. "Feel," she said. "Feel here. There’s a lump. It hurts." Her fingers rested on one breast.
He touched it, experiencing, even at the moment, an ashamed thrill of pleasure. Beneath it the acetylene lamp inked great shadows. "But there’s nothing," he said. "Nothing at all." Again he touched that softness.
"Oh, don’t lie!" she exclaimed, drawing away. "I’m not a child. It’s cancer."
"Of course it’s not cancer. I promise you, Lucy. Don’t worry, dearest... But to-morrow you can see the doctor—to reassure you—"
"There you are!" she cried. "The doctor! So you know! So you’re hiding it from me! You want to pretend—"
"Lucy, what is the matter—?"
"Oh, it’s horrible, horrible! This’ll mean an operation. I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!" Convulsed, shaking with tears, she clung to him.
"There, there, my dearest! It’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing. There’s nothing the matter with you."
He carried her back to bed, quieted her, gave her a sleeping-draught.
The next morning she said nothing about it all.
In Switzerland something similar happened. She was brushing her teeth at night while he waited for her in bed, when suddenly she gave a short scream. "Look, Hugh, look!" she cried, when he appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. With a horrified forefinger she pointed to the wash-basin.
"What is it?"
"I’ve just spat some blood. I’ve only just seen it." In the basin was a trickle of saliva threaded with scarlet.
"But that’s only your gum bleeding," he reassured her; thinking: "She’s so suggestible. It’s because she saw that consumptive."
"No, no! It’s not my gum. It’s from my chest. All to-day I’ve felt blood in my throat. But it wouldn’t come out." Touching her flushed cheek she said: "I think I’ve got a temperature. You know what that means, darling?"
"What nonsense!" he exclaimed. "It’s your imagination. Here—let me get the thermometer—"
"No, no! Forget about it. Let’s pretend it hasn’t happened. Let’s pretend there’s nothing the matter—right to the end. I don’t want to be an invalid—a tie to you..."
This decided him. "You’re going to see the Hofrat tomorrow morning," he said with great firmness. (They had made friends with the German principal of the sanatorium.) "If you’ve got this thing—"
"Oh, no, no!" She backed against the wall in terror. "Don’t say it! Please don’t say it! I— I’m so frightened, dearest. It’s such a horrible illness..."
This time nothing, no sleeping-draught, no soothing words, could put her to sleep. But the next morning the Hofrat laughed jovially: "A few scars—nothing else. Perfectly sound. Your wife has too much imagination." And as though to insult her he even refused a fee.
Perhaps her hypochondria had been a sort of prescience: perhaps she had known all along that she was doomed, so that she took each symptom, each trivial malady, as the beginning of that final disintegration. Or perhaps there had been in her some morbid craving so that, without knowing it, she had desired to suffer. In that case one can understand why, with the coming of the war, her hypochondria abruptly ceased; for the war would have satisfied that morbid craving with wounds, amputations, sickness; she would no longer have desired some cataclysm within herself, for the cataclysm was there, in others.
She behaved very differently when it was the real thing, when death was really upon her. There were none of the tears, the hysteria. Hugh came home one day from Aldershot, tired and knowing nothing; and as usual she dined with him, asked him about his day’s work, talked of the garden, accompanied him to
the children’s nursery. But when, late that night, he climbed into bed and touched her body she drew away with a sigh, a light sigh, inexpressibly mournful.
"What is it, dearest?"
"Hugh—I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you seriously. I’ve got to have an operation, soon, in a week or two."
He knew, even at that moment, that there was no reason to argue with her as he had always done on those other occasions. The bed suddenly felt cold and immense, a curtain bellied out-wards in the wind. "But I never realized—" he stammered. "Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t even know you were ill."
"I didn’t want to frighten you. But to-day I saw the doctor. He says it’s serious. I haven’t really been well since Judith was born." She spoke in a flat, conversational voice, resting on her elbow in bed, her hair coiled in two plaits.
In this same tranquil way they continued to talk for a long time, Hugh shivering with the cold or the fear he felt. He could not bring himself to caress her, though at that moment, in the glitter of winter moonlight, she seemed more beautiful than she had ever been, her breasts and arms gleaming like mountains of snow, her body giving off a subtle perfume.
Then, after many minutes, she slowly sank on to the pillow, turned away from him, and fell asleep. She breathed evenly.
That was the beginning. Much followed afterwards, as each faculty, each member, rebelled. Finally, her brain was attacked; it, too, would have to be probed and lopped and scraped by the knife. And then she, who had been dying with such infinite resourcefulness, suddenly broke down. "No, no, dear," she pleaded when he went to see her in the nursing-home before her operation. "I can’t bear it—not my brain. There’s something—I mean, do you really think that one has a right to do that sort of thing? Amputation’s bad enough: a balance is upset—one ceases to be wholly oneself; one becomes spiritually lopsided. But this—! This is far, far worse. I may not be the same when I wake up. I may not think or feel the same things. I may be someone quite different. There are things that are sacred; there are things that are better left alone... Oh, I do believe this! It’s not that I’m simply a coward. Having suffered so much ..." Clutching at his coat, sobbing, trying to raise herself from the bed, she screamed: "Take me away from here! Don’t let them do it! I’d rather die! Take me away!"
But the doctor came in and gave her an injection. And she fell asleep, smiling. And for six hours they explored what lay within her skull.
It is impossible to say how close is the link between the corporeal and the spiritual. In some bodies, devoured, eaten away, corroded, the flame of the spirit blazes brighter. In others it gutters, goes out, relinquishes the shell that is cracking about it. With Lucy body and spirit disintegrated together. Almost, but not entirely. There was still her terrible stoicism. But stoicism is not enough, as anyone who has lived with an invalid knows. There must be something more: and this something Lucy simply did not possess. She was incapable of letting go, of relinquishing things: and the art of letting go is the art of being an invalid. She still had desires, she grew more, instead of less, possessive. As the things which were truly hers and hers alone—her faculties—deserted her, she craved what belonged to other people, to her husband, her children, her servants. She wished to live on their sensations, vicariously, through them.
And because they would not have this her voice grew plaintive, she read letters left in empty rooms, listened at doors, probed for secrets, made scenes. It was impossible not to pity her. If only she had given up, if only she had relaxed her devouring grip on life.
Often, when Hugh came back from town, she was waiting for him, her face ravaged, propped on a couch, waiting, doing nothing.
"Where did you go, darling?"
"To the Club."
"What did you do there?"
"Oh—I don’t know. The usual things. You know what one does at the Club."
"No—I don’t."
"Dined, drank a little, talked a little. That was all."
He was marvellously patient with her. Picking up a paper from the table he began to flick over the pages. But she would not let it rest.
"Darling?"
"Yes."
"You don’t think I’m very suspicious, do you? You’re not offended?
"Of course, I’m not offended."
"You do see that I ask these questions because I love you so much? Now that I’m ill I’m so terrified of losing you. You do see?"
"Yes. I see."
"It’s so horrible not being able to go out with you any more... But you do still love me? Darling, you do still love me?"
"Of course, I still love you."
"Don’t say it like that, darling. Say it nicely. Say ‘I love you’."
"I love you."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"I don’t disgust you?"
"Lucy, my dear, what a thing—"
"I don’t disgust you—the bandages, smell, everything?"
"Of course not, my dear."
"You’re speaking the truth?"
"Of course I’m speaking the truth."
Like a formal incantation the conversation was prolonged infinitely.
But he was lying. That evening he had spent in a small restaurant in Greek Street with a girl he had met in the tube. Later, he had gone to her flat. There had been other evenings, in other restaurants, in other flats, for months and months, long, long before Lucy’s illness.
When a habitually truthful person lies, without shame, without scruple, then the person to whom the lie is told must stand condemned.
But Lucy was, in a sense, already condemned. And he continued to lie to her.
Tiggs had been Lucy’s ally in the days before the war; he continued to be her ally till the end. He had grown immensely stout, he had eczema, he soiled the chairs, he suffered, poor dear, from empyrema. (So Lucy said, who was never at a loss for a medical term.) All day he sat with her, on the same couch, in her bed, curled up against her body, his dry nose resting against her breast: and all day she fed him off her plate, on grapes, on chocolates that friends had brought: and all day she talked to him. "Doesn’t Tiggsie want to go out and chase rabbits?" (Tiggsie had never caught a rabbit in his life.) "Doesn’t Tiggsie-Wiggsie want to play in the garden? Does Tiggsie love his mummy so very, very much? Does he? Won’t Tiggsie leave his little Lucy?"
To Hugh this seemed like a criticism of his own visits to London, his games of golf, his walks with the children. And soon Lucy had another ally—Miss Thompson, her new companion, who spoke ever so ‘nicely’, and cut out pictures from the Tatler, and powdered her face a dead white. She was about thirty-five, with a chin which suddenly collapsed into landslides of goose-flesh. And unlike Tiggsie she had a voice.
Mutely, maternally, she adored Lucy: and perhaps from jealousy hated Hugh and the children. When they came in from a walk together and were met by her in the hall their enquiries after Lucy were always answered: "She’s as well as can be expected—poor dear!" Then there was a shake of the shoulders, a toss of the head. "She’s such a plucky person—no complaints, no grumbling. Goodness knows, she’s got enough to worry her." Saying this, Miss Thompson would leave them, creaking upstairs in patent-leather shoes over which bulged fatty ankles.
When Hugh went to see Lucy in her room, Miss Thompson, ‘Tommie’, was always there, listening under the pretence of filling hot-water bottles or emptying bed-pans. Her face was set in a cynical smile so that he found it impossible to be tender or even affectionate because this woman seemed to see all his actions as a pretence.
She always said "Sh!" when she passed the children, whether they were making a noise or not. She complained that the servants stole groceries, cheeked her, spied on her. And when, finally, Lucy had to have two nurses she insisted on staying in the room with them, all day, all night, sleeping in a chair by the bedside, because she refused to believe that they would care for her poor darling as she
had. In the end, because the nurses complained so much, she had to be ordered to leave and go to her own room.
Goodness knows what she insinuated to Lucy. Goodness knows how she troubled those last few months of consciousness. She brooded over the house, an obese Fury, against whose corseted waist clanked a bunch of keys.
When the end came and nothing more could be done, when all that could be cut away had been cut away, when the body had been purged and stimulated, injected and drugged, then the doctors shrugged their shoulders, took their hats from the hall, and gave up. But first they told Hugh.
He decided to leave Lucy in ignorance of her doom: she was convalescing after her last operation, still in great pain. But whether Miss Thompson told her, or whether she had the supposed clairvoyance of those who are going to die, she knew as soon as he entered the room.
"It’s the end, isn’t it?"
"My dear, what do you mean? Dr. Swan is most hopeful—"
"Oh, Hugh, don’t lie to me!" She laughed as she lay back among pillows, Tiggsie nestling against her. "It is the end, isn’t it?"
There was no use in prolonging the deception. " Yes," he said with a queer, abrupt gesture of anguish. "Yes. They can do nothing more now." Then kneeling beside her bed betook one of her hands, ringless now, because the fingers had grown too thin, and bent over it. "Oh, Lucy! Lucy dearest! My poor Lucy!"
She watched him for a while, in surprise, in amusement, while with the hand that he was not holding she stroked Tiggsie. Then suddenly she pulled away: "Oh, stop it, Hugh! What’s the use? I’m so sick of it all. I’m sick of pity, and medicines, and the smell of formalin. I’m going to get up."
"But my dear Lucy—! You can’t—"
"Oh yes I can. If I’m going to die, I’m not going to sit in bed and wait for it. At the moment I feel perfectly well—perfectly well. I’m going out into the garden."
And after much argument she had her way. She put on a flowered silk dress and a large yellow straw hat and went out on Miss Thompson’s arm. She looked old, and she was rouged like a harlot. When the children came up to her she smiled distantly: and when, not having been told, they said: "We’re so glad you’re feeling better now," she only inclined her head with strange condescension.
