‘I don’t have one,’ said Lewis apologetically. ‘But we can go into Dr Goldsborough’s office. I’m on duty here, actually; I mustn’t be away too long. However, things seem to be quiet. If you’d like to come with me?’
He led the way to Goldsborough’s office, gestured to the one armchair, and sat himself at Goldsborough’s desk. Very quietly he moved Goldsborough’s tin of blackcurrant pastilles behind a pile of papers, and then palmed it and put it into a drawer. If this man did turn out to be a potential benefactor it would not do to display these modest domestic appurtenances.
‘What are you working on now?’ he asked.
‘Still Mérimée. But I wanted to discuss your book. I’ve been teaching from it this term. My students have been really appreciative of your ideas, Dr Percy. I was wondering if I could persuade you to come over and lecture to them?’
He taught, Lewis vaguely remembered, at a rather exclusive girls’ college in Massachusetts. He was obviously younger than he looked, although he had the assurance of a mature, even a middle-aged, man. The decorum had purpose behind it. The ‘Dr Percy’, he imagined, was merely a tribute to his own rapidly greying hair. Even the thought of how shabby he must look to this polished creature could not dim his amusement, his surprise. He had not given any attention to his book since the day he had swept his free copies out of sight and into the back of a cupboard. It had aroused very little comment in England but had had a surprisingly kind reception in the States. This he had put down purely and simply to American generosity in these matters. He had thought of working on a second volume – had in fact made fairly full notes to that effect – but more pressing matters had intervened. Nothing had come of it, although it was not for want of time. He had all the time in the world. But he was pleased to have his book remembered. Indeed, he was extraordinarily pleased. He felt as if he were looking at an old photograph of a smiling face. How kind Americans were, how charming! As to the strange proposition put to him, there was no hesitation: he instinctively and immediately rejected it.
‘Mr Millinship …’
‘Howard.’
‘Howard. This is very nice of you. I count your invitation as the most enormous compliment. But I can’t possibly accept. I’ve never given a lecture in my life, and I’m certainly too old to start now.’ The minute he said this he realized how ridiculous it must sound. But it was true, he did feel too old to learn anything.
Howard Millinship looked pained, as if he had made a tactical error, framed his question badly, been deficient in courtesy. One vellum-coloured hand consulted his beard, his moustache. His mouth was childlike, Lewis saw, rosy and soft. How he must hate it for interfering with the seriousness of his demeanour! Yet he was impressive, for all his very real hesitations. He was impressive because he knew his place in the world, and had always known it, just as he had always known what to wear, what to eat, and whom to marry. Despite his youth he had a married, settled look, and even wore a wedding ring, an un-English custom. And he had the manners of another age; he was a young man from the pages of Henry James or Edith Wharton. In comparison Lewis felt immeasurably but not unpleasantly old, able to examine the stranger with curiosity, with indulgence, suddenly wanting to know all about him. He was so exactly like a character from a novel that Lewis could not bear to see him go.
But the American had no intention of going. Clearing his throat, as if to erase whatever he had erroneously done before, he started again.
‘Perhaps not this year. I understand you have your commitments here. But if you could see your way to coming in a year’s time? Or two years’? We would be most happy to welcome you.’
Lewis smiled at his earnestness, the earnestness of the young, with their infinite trust in the strength of their own intentions.
‘You see, Howard, I really don’t know that I can commit myself that far ahead. And I think you’d better not count on me, you know. I’m not really a teacher. Well, you must take my word for that,’ he said kindly, as Howard Millinship showed signs of springing to the defence. ‘You need a certain amount of conviction to be a teacher, or so it seems to me. I’m not sure that I have enough convictions. I’m really only good at things that require rumination, like reading and writing. I’m not what you’re looking for, really.’
‘We could offer you a house, of course,’ Howard Millinship went on, exactly as if Lewis had not spoken. ‘You could give one lecture or fifty. Or maybe just classes – our students, after all, might not be up to your standard. Literature, it seems, is on the wane. We’re in a very beautiful part of the country,’ he added. ‘If you came in September you’d see the trees changing colour. I think you’d enjoy it.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Lewis, amused and touched by such assiduity. He had little intention of doing what the American suggested. He had never wanted to teach, felt too humble to have opinions to order. And it was not his ideal, never had been. Transparency! What he wanted, what he needed, was some kind of interval in his life, away from the staleness of habits and obligations that bound him fast. Since everything was changing around him he began to crave change for himself. Yet it seemed impossible, for the simple reason that he had no idea of what he could change into. This was the central problem. With it, or preceding it, or at any rate intimately connected with it, was the fear of what would have to go if he did change. If his present self were to be sacrificed, was there not a tremendous risk that there might be nothing left? In what circumstances could this process – perhaps necessary, even overdue – take place? It must be tentative, experimental, cautious, and invisible. The forging of a new self could not be rushed. What he needed to do was to live somewhere, somehow, with none of the old props around him, no library to clock into, no house to return to, but also no simulacrum of a family, no distant wife, distant daughter, distant mother-in-law. He felt a surge of impatience as he thought of them, crammed into that house, uttering their constant lack-lustre demands, always on the verge of rancour. Stifling! If it were not for his daughter … But the little girl, who was growing to resemble her mother, would not be ready for him for many a long year. Suddenly he did not see why he should spend the intervening time alone, or waste it on people who did not, would never, love him. If he could make a home for them in America, might not his daughter want to live with him there? And would it not be an ideal solution, to welcome her to another country, a country which he imagined as a sort of paradise? Suddenly he felt a pang of pity for Tissy and for Mrs Harper, for their fatal lack of joy. It would be terrible if this inheritance were to be passed on to Jessica. His mission was to save her from everything that was prudent, watchful, careful, secretive, as she would indeed become if she stayed for ever in that house. If it had to be America, then so be it. However he did not think that he could face this on his own, in his present state. The self that he inhabited was so diminished, so nearly beaten, that it must be cast off before he could be the person that America demanded. He shook his head in amazement at the rapidity of the day’s events.
‘Howard, all I can give you is the vaguest of promises – I can’t yet set a time. Does that sound ungracious? If it does, I’m sorry, truly sorry.’
He expected, after this, to be turned down flat, but Howard Millinship smiled and held out his hand. An agreement in principle was all that he seemed to require, but Lewis saw, too late, that this must at some time be implemented. The success of his mission brought about an almost visible relaxation in Howard Millinship’s person. Oddly enough, this made him look older rather than younger. He now looked like a fairly well-worn thirty-year-old, with a not unattractive hardness about him. One day he will be formidable, thought Lewis. He is half-way there already.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.
‘At the Stanhope Court Hotel. As a matter of fact my wife is waiting for me to call her. She said she wouldn’t go out until I did. I expect she wants to do some shopping. She likes to go to the Scotch House.’
‘Use this telephone,’ said Lewis. ‘A
nd why don’t you both have dinner with me? I’m free this evening, if you haven’t anything planned.’
‘I’m sure we’d be delighted,’ said Howard Millinship. ‘Jeannine would like to meet you. My wife is French,’ he said. ‘She read your book too. She loved it. I always tell her she’s cleverer than I am.’
He made the call, was evidently pleased with what he heard, and issued the invitation for dinner. Then he turned to Lewis with a rather younger look on his face, domestic rather than professional.
‘Where would you like to go?’ asked Lewis. ‘Do you know Meridiana? It was very popular a few years ago. I used to take my wife there before we were married.’
‘Meridiana’s fine. We were there last year. What time shall we meet you?’
‘Eight o’clock? Not too late for you?’
‘We’ll see you then. Thanks a lot. Goodbye, Dr Percy.’
‘You must call me Lewis,’ said Lewis, to whom the American now appeared familiar, almost like a young relative. He felt like Howard Millinship’s uncle. That was no bad thing, he reflected. A teacher is a sort of uncle to his students. And if he were to be a teacher, as it now seemed likely … He shook his head. He still did not see how it could be done.
He took the bus home. When he reached his street it was as though he had been away from it for a very long time. Curiously, he noted its charm, its strangeness, as if he were returning to it from abroad. In much the same way, and for much the same reason, it appeared smaller, humbler, even a little pathetic. Such innocence! White roses overhung the pavement from a bush that was almost a tree. Everywhere the gardens were luxuriant, proudly displaying flowers not normally praised for their beauty, purple rhododendrons, violet irises. Pansies in plastic boxes adorned every sill. Through the wide windows, each one backed with a sofa, he could see past French doors into further gardens. He remembered moving the sofa so that Tissy could sit there, where it caught the afternoon sun. He could almost smell the chocolate on her breath, could almost see her slight figure in its wide skirts as she glided out of the silent room. And if all this were to go? At first it seemed quite literally unthinkable. But he succumbed to what he felt was the pathos of the street, all unaware in the evening sunlight, as if it were the pathos of leave-taking. The street would remain, but he would go. Where he would go was as yet unclear to him, and he found himself unable to bring anything into focus. It was simply that matters would be painful for a while, for between leave-taking and arrival there is a vast area of doubt.
Tissy could have the house, he decided. She could bring up his daughter there. Mrs Harper could sell Britannia Road and move in with them. They would have enough to live on: he had heard that property in this area was now worth quite a lot. He had never touched the money his mother had left him, and now he regretted not having paid it more attention, investing it, or doing something clever with it. But in the division of the spoils that money could be his, at least for a while. He had no idea what he would do with it. He only knew, with infinite misgivings, that it was time to go. As he turned in at his own gate he pulled a flowering yellow rose – his own – towards him and inhaled deeply. Its honeyed sweetness spoke of pleasure, ardour, happiness. Not yet, he thought. But one day, perhaps.
15
The woman at the next table had brought her dog with her, a tiny animal that nestled timidly in her lap. This was not altogether pleasing to the waiters, who were nevertheless disarmed by the obvious wealth and glamour of its owner. She was dressed in black, with a glittering motif on her left breast; her hair was drawn severely back from her face and she smoked a long thin cigarillo, waving its smoke impatiently away, as if the cigarillo were being smoked by somebody else, an importunate companion perhaps. She appeared scornful, uninterested in the process of eating and drinking, only reluctantly present, conscious of the favour bestowed, and famously bored, or at least giving the impression of being so. Across the table a bulky man, in an expensive suit, seemed wary of her, although he appeared to be pouring out a rational yet pleading explanation of something Lewis could not catch. He was making no impression, Lewis reflected: the woman was not interested. He wondered what it would be like to be married to such a woman, to have to beg for her attention, to be relegated somewhere beyond the dog, whose quivering frame was being caressed by a firm red-nailed hand. It occurred to him that he might not marry again, an idea which he had been doing his best to avoid. The process seemed too arduous, and anyway he appeared to have been disqualified by his one, or one and a half, experiences. Even with Emmy, he thought, he would have failed, although he knew that the failure would have been Emmy’s as much as his own. Women seemed more restless these days, less attracted by the prospect of settling down. In many ways his view of marriage still went hand in hand with the image of the silent sunny room he had just left, with a figure gliding out of the door to attend to something peaceable, domestic. He knew that he was fatally old-fashioned, and that this ideal did not appear to coincide with anybody else’s. Besides, with his real wife living once more in his house, and himself in America, the image would remain unrealized in any future that would be left to him. Where would he live in the vacations? He supposed that he might take Pen’s advice and look for a small flat somewhere. His wants were simple; he spent virtually nothing. He still had his mother’s money, and a little that had been left him by his father; together they would cover the purchase of a flat and also Tissy’s needs for the coming year if she chose to go on seeing him as a regular source of income. What he would do between now and his projected departure – still unreal in his mind – he had no idea. He supposed he would have to get down to the work he had neglected for so long and try to make it palatable to the young. He would have a lot to prepare.
His reluctance was occasioned not so much by the enormous prospect of leaving home and every kind of routine as by the incongruous thought that he could not face so vast an upheaval, was almost comically averse to making further efforts, without some sort of interval in which he might repossess himself, shed his disappointments, and begin again to be a person capable of directing his own life. That life had so far been so overshadowed with concerns that normal expectations had been banished as if by edict or decree. He felt elderly and at the same time unused. What he needed, quite urgently, was the faint stirring of pleasure, and, in addition, the increase of pleasurable occasions. The spring had been long and cold, perfectly matching his mood of disappointment, resignation. Only in the last two days had the sun shone and the temperature approached something that was normal for early June. And this evening was beautiful, voluptuous, bringing with it thoughts of happiness. How the change was to be achieved, if indeed it were ever to take place, was quite unclear to him, as was the whole idea of a future that would have no connection with the past. He was only thirty-eight, he thought. He was only half-way there, with the prospect of years ahead of him. However unfledged he still felt himself to be he had accumulated a certain amount of experience, although none of it had been particularly rewarding. His education would seem to have been faulty. At the same time he was no longer the idealistic creature whom he vaguely remembered as a boy, when he had truly believed that everybody meant what they said. The old Lewis Percy, the Lewis Percy who had wanted to be a character in a book and who had not managed to be one, had bowed out long ago. Something new would have to be fashioned from the ruins, something that would be just as authentic. He began, dimly, to perceive the need for new ideas, and for a rediscovery of some sense of self-esteem, without which, he knew, no one could survive. This last, he was sure, he would forgo at his peril.
Howard Millinship, in another immaculate suit, stood before him with an extravagantly beautiful woman by his side. Both smiling, they revealed identical sets of perfect teeth, which, in the woman’s case, were emphasized by the oval of her face and a fall of long brown hair. She looked devastatingly self-possessed, with an assurance beyond her years. She wore a dark blue silk blouse, a white silk skirt, and white stockings and shoes. She was
very impressive, thought Lewis, rising to his feet, fantastic by academic standards. Everything about her seemed devised in a spirit of luxury, from the gold chains round her neck to the small brown hand now extended towards him. Still smiling, she seemed perfectly at ease while Howard Millinship performed the introductions. Surely she could not be smiling at the prospect of a dull evening with a complete stranger? Surely her life was so arranged as to provide her with more adequate pastimes? But perhaps her whole day was so filled with diversions that she could tolerate such an encounter with equanimity. It was only dinner, after all, and the restaurant was up to the standard she was entitled to expect.
‘My wife, Jeannine,’ said Howard Millinship, who did not seem to think it unlikely that he had won such a prize.
‘How do you do?’ said Lewis. ‘It’s very good of you to come at such short notice.’ They appeared so exotic, so protected from the exigencies of real life as he knew it, so divorced from ideas of wear and change, that he felt their company to be something of an honour, as if they were minor deities from a world outside his own, just passing through on a tour of inspection. His hand, as he held it out, seemed to be made of a cruder material, more subject to the process of ageing, than the slim cool hands he clasped in greeting, releasing them reluctantly, as if they might have conferred on him the gift of everlasting youth, if only he had been able to retain them in his own.
‘It had to be,’ she said. ‘We leave tomorrow.’ And having performed her social duty, a duty condensed into merely meeting him and greeting him, she let her attention wander, and was soon distracted by the other diners, her amazing, perfectly regular face composed to receive appreciation. Even the woman with the dog was interested, a further shade of disdain added, in tribute, to features which Lewis had thought impressive enough before this impeccable creature had entered his sights.
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