She smiled.
He felt that some sort of concealed crisis was at an end. Perhaps she’d had a pain…
“Been to any good movies lately?” he asked cheerfully.
“One or two. But I haven’t properly started my winter season yet.”
“We ought to have done one together,” he said. “Two fans like us. What a pity we never fixed it up.”
“Yes, what a pity. … Tom and I have such different tastes.”
“I should think you had a good many different tastes?” he ventured, feeling a little reckless (but really she was a nice woman—could be trusted not to moan).
“A good many.” Her eye twinkled faintly.
He plunged.
“I’ve wondered …” He stopped. He was being an idiot. He felt obliged to go on: “It seems funny, though I don’t know why—I mean you and him … I don’t really mean that … I mean … You seem so different. …”
“Yes. I know. Why did I marry him. …”
She bent her head in her hands, considering. (She was not like others, who had popped out with an explanation before you’d thought of asking for one.)
“I must think,” she said.
And with a sharp return of memories long-buried, she saw herself, fourteen years ago, in the first year of the war, a dreamy young woman with awkward, unmanageable limbs, and that face that was not, but might have been, like that of the Luini Madonna with the full, pale, delicate lids, the parted hair, the mysterious lips with upward-curling points in the Medici print on Father’s study wall. And she saw Tom—Tom, muscular and well set up, not heavy, in the uniform of the Royal Naval Reserve—coming ashore from his mine-sweeper one summer afternoon, leaning over the gate and very politely asking Father the way to the golf-links; and Father, ever hospitable, straightway inviting him to tea. And after he had gone, feeling very happy; and after that seeing him nearly every day: waiting on the beach for him; walking with him on the chalky downs, up to the Fort and the wire entanglement, up to Tennyson’s Monument; picnicking in the heathery part, high above the sea (she could feel and smell the heather now, taste the strawberry jam in the sandwiches, see herself pick a chance white spray and give it him—“for luck”; blush to hear him vow he’d keep it always. … Where was it now?) She saw herself following him round the links with his clubs hour after hour contentedly; having a lesson from him one day, and being so hopeless, and he so patient and encouraging. They had laughed a lot at some of her shots.
She remembered her beating heart when he had said good-bye, ordered to the North Sea; her anxious heart that winter; how she had waited for his letters and kept them in a locked attaché case to read and to re-read till the folds fell to pieces. She remembered how he had never failed to come for a day at least, on each short leave, to visit them; how his return had grown to be her only beacon, as the war went on and Father got weaker. She saw him being gentle with her father, giving him an arm up the steps, along the village street. Together they had watched him in the last year of the war, narrowing his life down week by week, uncomplainingly, shuffling ever more feebly to the final armchair and rug, the Bible, and herself or Tom reading aloud to him from the works of Sir Walter Scott. And Father had said, very soon before he died: “He’s a good man, my dear. He’ll look after you”—with these words sanctioning an engagement that had never assumed the definite pre-marital status of an exchange of vows and rings. And he had looked after her. He had come down the moment he got her wire and made all the funeral arrangements; and taken her afterwards to his mother for consolation; and hunted for a job that would enable them to marry at once; and by that time, of course, she had known it was all a mistake; and all the same, of course, she had married him.
“But then,” she said aloud, following the train of her unspoken thoughts, “I was so packed full of unspent, undirected emotions when I was young, that I’d have married almost any one.”
She tried to weight the blame, to sort the early truths from the distortions of memory, the prejudices, the frigid judgments of the present: to see Tom as he was, not his reflection in the diminishing mirror of unkind habit.
“I was very fond of Tom,” she said. “We had some happy times at first.” She recalled times of being very close to Tom in tenderness and companionship: the time he had shown her his boyhood’s collection of birds’ eggs, and wondered if he wouldn’t take it up again; the time he had put his head down on her shoulder and whispered to her how bitterly he minded not having been able to go to the University … other times. … “It was lovely to have a person of one’s own—you know. I felt important and proud, being a married woman, and I determined to help Tom get on. I did help him—at first.” (Given him incentive and confidence, helped him to become the efficient machine she now disdained.) “Then I had a baby, and it died—” She stopped short, painfully wishing her words unsaid: for that really did sound like asking for pity. It was real sob-stuff—just the sort of thing to engage the unthinking sympathies of a good-hearted normal young man. “Tom minded very much,” she added. “But by that time I dreaded producing something like him—or his mother—or like me. I didn’t want a child. I thought perhaps it was just as well.”
He looked at her and was silent—grateful to her: for she was tiding them both over that distressing confidence of hers—deliberately sparing him, he supposed, some expression of condolence.
“It was a shame to marry him,” she cried. “I used to know it was a shame. I used to remember it every day.” (Tell herself, every day, she’d cheated him of all he’d hoped for, starved his domestic virtues of their food.)
“Tom’s so nice. …”
“Awfully nice,” he agreed quickly. (A decent old bounder, genial and warm-hearted; a joke in the office—but they liked him all right.)
What unexpected force was this, she asked herself, driving her irresistibly to spend her last moments with the man she loved in wiping the dust, the mould, grey and corrupt accumulation of years, with care and tenderness off the portrait of her husband? It was inevitable. Truth, which she must obey, was lifting her to its own incorruptible heights.
“I was brought up to believe in matrimony,” she said, “and monogamy, and pure womanhood waiting for pure love to come and lead it off to a pure home. A spade was called—anything except a spade. I was a very slow developer. By the time I started to wake up and think for myself, it was too late: I’d lost my chance. I don’t mind paying for being dishonest, and for swallowing all the ready-made sentimentality and hypocrisy. I can laugh at myself for being so easily taken in, and kick myself for being so muddled and spoon-fed and sluggish: and that’s some comfort. The pity is, to have harmed for life a person who trusted you.”
He had found her speech difficult to follow, disturbing in its kind of matter-of-fact despair: but the last words came home to him with startling force: for he too had wrought harm where he had been trusted. He had damaged Oliver for life, so Oliver had told him. So he said gravely:
“Yes—I know.”
But it would take a good deal, surely, he thought, to harm a tough-hided old hippopotamus like Uncle Tom.
“I expect it’s all right, really,” he said, vaguely but earnestly. He wanted to reassure her, tell her she was taking it all too seriously, reproaching herself unnecessarily. It was really very upsetting—though refreshing—to find her taking all the blame. And to divert the subject from the personal to the general plane (for she looked so very intense, sitting bolt upright and staring in front of her), he added, as man to man:
“Then you don’t believe in marriage?”
That made her laugh.
“In marriage? Oh, yes! And in bachelors and spinsters. And in having a hundred lovers, or one, or none. And in everything else you can think of, according to individual wants and capacities. … Oh, what would Tom say if he heard me? Tom’s a man of principle.”
And she thought to herself: �
�After all, one can never get away from one’s husband.” One asserted one’s personal importance with such extravagant anxiety, saying to oneself: “In spite of outward bondage I am free.” But it was not so. The edges got worn away, and independence slithered out.
“Freedom for the individual,” he murmured, remembering discussions at Oxford.
“Freedom. … Yes, I suppose so. Nobody interfering with anybody else’s life. That’s why I—what I like about you—you’d never let any one manage your life for you, would you? Not even somebody you loved. … Oh, Hugh! …” (What joy to say his name at last!)
She laid her hand on his, and he took it quickly, nervously, and squeezed it. Now, she told herself, she could say anything to him. She was so filled with the truth that she could not err in judgment; need not draw back, qualify, regret her reckless words.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “When I first saw you, it flashed on me I’d seen you before. It was in a cinema the first night you arrived. You didn’t see me. …” He listened to her, watched her, looking solemn and boyish. “The next time—that time you came to tea—I wondered again. Your face seemed so familiar. But I know now why. Though I’d never seen you before, I recognized you at first sight. You were the person who was going to mean so much to me.”
He bent his head, was silent. This should be classifiable, he thought, as a tight corner; yet for some reason he did not feel embarrassed. Something in her manner convinced him she expected nothing of him. But he wished to goodness she would realize the truth about him.
“You know, you’re all wrong about me,” he said earnestly. “I’m simply hopeless.”
She smiled, shook her head, looked dreamy.
“I shall think of you …” she said.
He wished, he told himself, really wished he could be helpful. He was going away for ever. And she would have to stay. He was distressed for her.
“It’s simply rotten for you,” he said, blushing, “having to stay here—when you hate it so. I wish you hadn’t got to. I wish you could have the sort of life you liked. …”
She opened her eyes wide.
“It’s all right,” she said, smiling radiantly. “It doesn’t matter. You mustn’t be sorry for me. I can’t bear to be pitied.” (Really, he thought, she was extraordinarily nice). “I can stand anything. I’m very tough.”
And she thought: there was something in her that was not herself; something that seemed to prevail even beyond her own resources—an inheritance of strength, of endurance, of a religion that had no faith or hope. “You’ll be like your mother,” Father had often said, smiling or shaking his head. Her mother had been in her grave these many years; the photograph was lost, and the features had vanished from memory, and there remained of her only the image of the fashion which had surprised her childish eye—the fringe and the hourglass figure, high collar, cloth buttons, and bustle. But she would be like her mother. … Yes, as one grew older, it happened thus. The moulded contours, the animal impulses, the flesh and blood of youth might differ from generation to generation; but, beneath, endured a portion of the shape and structure, the bone of one’s ancestors.
He was getting up. Now she must let him go.
“Well, I’m afraid I really must be off,” he said.
He held his hand out.
“Good-bye, Hugh,” she said. “Be happy. You’ve promised, remember.”
“Yes.” He grinned.
“Love some one. Marry her.”
“Oh, I’ll never marry,” he said gaily.
“No?”
“Never find anybody to stick me.” (Any woman would find him out in two twos—his nothingness.) “Not for more than a month or two.”
“I think somebody might. …”
They smiled at each other; and he thought again what a good sort she was. He was quite glad she’d taken a fancy to him. “Well, good-bye.”
She did not answer this time, and for a full moment their eyes met. There was something more, he felt, he ought to say. He would really like to say it; but what was it?
“I’ve told you the story of my life,” she said. “That’s a thing I’ve never done before. You must forget it.”
“No, I won’t do that,” he said soberly.
Perhaps that was part of it: he would not forget her. He was sure of that. She had impressed, affected him. He liked her. He looked at her helplessly.
She led him out into the hall and opened the door; and he wrung her hand once more, ran down the steps, waved and was gone.
It was over.
It had not been loss, but gain—as she had purposed.
The Parish Ladies could never point fingers, hold their sides, whisper behind their hands. With her integrity, she had dealt them their death-blow, and was free of them for ever.
She had told him all … and nothing.
It could not have been better, she told herself … feeling her agony rise … it could not have been a more satisfactory parting.
She looked along the lamp-lit street and shut the door … then opened it again, left it open.
Tom would be home, very soon, now.
Part Seven
The end of November. The gale came shrieking across the common from the sea, driving straws, leaves, papers down upon the town. The swollen clouds heaped themselves across the sky from end to end; down came the rain. Those abroad in the streets leaned, struggled in tortured attitudes against the wall of wind, straining to place one foot before the other—suffocated, battered, blinded. Then all at once a lull; bruised light tore a way out; ached, pallid for a while between the stormy rifts—faltered once more and fainted. Wind roused with a roar from its caverns, whipped the rain again, rallied a million million stinging arrows, slapped them in rattling volleys on the windows.
She could not bear the groaning voice in the wind. She went to the kitchen, needing to see Annie.
“What a gale, Annie.”
“Yes, madam. Think of the poor sailors. …”
She asked herself again where Annie had learnt her punctilious and respectfully elegant mode of address. It was not in the North that one was taught to call one’s employer “Madam.” It must be Annie’s romantic imagination: setting a flourish as of stately homes upon the simple annals of the bourgeoisie.
“What have you got there, Annie?”
She had her back turned, was stooping down with a saucer of milk. A small black object was before the stove: a very wet kitten.
“It’s a little stray, madam, but it looks quite clean.”
She straightened herself with difficulty, leaned against the table. They watched the tiny creature curved over the white rim—deep, already, in a voluptuous lapping trance.
“I opened the door, and there it was on the step. It means luck, you know.”
She smiled, but briefly, mournfully. What was the matter with Annie lately?
“Annie, I thought you might make an apple pudding for Mr. Fairfax to-night. You know, one of your special ones.”
“Very good, madam.”
No more. No lighting of the eye, no resolution to excel herself to-night in apple puddings. Her voice was flat—bored, almost. Was it possible that she had acquired some secret grief or grievance?—even Annie? Was she going to give her notice? She bent down again with the milk-jug.
“You’re shockingly thin,” she murmured. “Have some more, my piccaninny.”
As she raised herself and turned away, Grace decided that it was no fancy but a fact that for a long time now Annie had been trying to avoid her eye. She looked tired, had lost her colour.
“Annie, are you feeling ill?”
“Not at all, madam.” Her tone was wary, almost sullen. She looked attentively at Grace under her eyelids: the picture of guilt, thought Grace, astonished. No child, or puppy, conscious of inevitable impending retribution could have looked more
stubborn, more stricken, more composed.
“You don’t look very well.”
“I’ve had a little indigestion. … It’s this kitchen.” She looked resentfully at the stove. It was quite painful, quite shocking, to hear Annie suddenly turning against her kitchen. What could it mean?
“Would you like to see a doctor?”
“No, I’d never see a doctor. I don’t believe in doctors …” she said defiantly.
What a lie! She adored doctors. Next to consulting one herself, she enjoyed nothing more than the ceremonious—but conversational—ushering of one into the sick-room. She must be in a thoroughly bad temper. Perhaps her friend had jilted her.
“Well, I’m sorry. …” Grace turned to leave the room. Annie burst into loud sobs.
“I won’t deceive you, madam,” she cried. “To tell you the truth, I’m in trouble.”
“Are you really, Annie?” said Grace blankly. The phrase brought back Vicarage days, Rescue and Prevention Bazaars, Parish tongues wagging, her father shaking his head. But Annie could not mean that? … Yes, she meant that.
“I knew I’d have to break it to you. … I said to myself: ‘She’ll never catch on.’ You’re not very sharp, are you? …” After several sobs she added “Madam …”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Annie.”
She was conscious that she was not saying what was expected of her. Annie was awaiting immediate dismissal.
“I’m very sorry indeed to have brought this on you. You and Mr. Fairfax—always so good to me. How ever will you manage? …” Sobs choked her.
“Why, I couldn’t manage without you, Annie.”
“If you could see your way, then—to let me stay on till near my time. It’s many months yet. I must earn … I haven’t any home. …”
“Of course you’ll stay, you silly, silly, Annie. …” Grace came blindly and stood beside her and put her arm round the broad, plump, heaving shoulders. Tears that had strained in vain for many weeks to find release, started from a heart grown rigid with its pangs—poured down her face. Annie was laying on her the last load of the futile misery of existence, and she could raise herself no longer. Cruel Annie had broken through her last defence [to be as stone before the world, to tell no one “I also suffer.”]
A Note in Music Page 18
