by David Lodge
A sudden sickness and fatigue swamped her, and she felt incapable of facing the long, painful inquest that would start in a few minutes—incapable of sustaining any longer the intolerable labour of love.
It was a dazzling Saturday afternoon, and the park was full of contented people: children stood knicker-deep in bliss, stroking the paddling-pool as if it were some great tame animal; attendant mothers soaked in the sun; lovers were prone and entranced on the grass. But to her the heat was oppressive, stifling.
‘Let’s sit down. I’m hot,’ said Mark.
They sat down on hard, knobbly ground, sparsely covered with grass, in the grudging shade of a withered tree. Mark took out a cigarette, and began to smoke. Clare stretched out flat, but he remained sitting upright, one arm locked behind him. It was not a position anyone could maintain comfortably for long, and it seemed to Clare that he was deliberately refraining from lying down beside her.
‘Pretty hot,’ he said.
‘Mm,’ she grunted, closing her eyes against the glare. After a pause he said:
‘I dropped in on Father Courtney this morning.’
‘Courtney?’ How long was this fencing going to continue. She was impatient for the heavy swing of blunt, simple statements: ‘I’m sorry’—‘I was a bitch’—‘It was my fault’—‘I love you.’
‘You remember the Dominican. Student Cross.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I told him I wanted to join the Order.’
Clare remained supine, her eyes closed, paralysed by an utter confusion, a sense of the inadequacy of any reaction. Not for a second did she doubt the truth of what he was saying, but to gain time she licked her dry lips and croaked:
‘You what?’
‘I want to try my vocation, Clare.’
Suddenly, like thunder following lightning after a breathless pause, it hit her; she turned over on to her stomach and wept bitterly.
‘Clare,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t.’
He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she felt already in his touch the conscious, prudent reserve of the religious; remembering the sensitive fingers that had once tuned her body like a fine instrument, her soul howled with the sense of loss.
‘Clare! Clare, what’s the matter?’
She felt she had been tactically outwitted, and she hated him for it. How to answer his question? He had never asked her to marry him, he had never even said directly and seriously ‘I love you’, he was not bound to her in any way explicitly. But he knew—surely he must know?
‘Nothing. Nothing’s the matter with me.’
‘I know that we’ve become very attached to each other since I came to live with your family. But I don’t think things have gone so far between us that—’
‘Oh, you don’t, don’t you. You don’t think. That’s just the trouble—you don’t think—about other people’s feelings.’
‘I do, Clare. Of course I didn’t go and see Father Courtney without thinking hard about our relationship. And I mentioned it to him.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well, it sounds rather callous …’
‘He said I must cheerfully accept the sacrifice?’
‘I suppose it boils down to that … Look, I’m terribly sorry, Clare. I had no idea … I didn’t realize you cared so …’
She twisted over on to her side, and glared fiercely at him, knowing that this was what she shouldn’t do, that she was humiliating herself, that her face was red and puffy and ugly.
‘Then it must have been two other people that have been kissing on our front porch for the last nine months. It obviously wasn’t you and me.’
Mark avoided her eyes. It was the first time she had seen him really abashed.
‘I’m sorry, Clare. I am really.’
There was a hot silence. The sounds of summer—crickets, bees, the distant shouts of children—were like heavy objects being moved around in her head. She tossed restlessly under the heat, as if under too many blankets. ‘Hell is other people’ Mark had once quoted to her. No, Hell was things, when people fell out. She remembered another hot day, a baking play-ground, and the chafing of a rough wool habit. Things waited till your defences were down, and then turned on you, all together. If she had taken her stockings off, she felt she might have managed the situation with dignity, but as it was, racked by physical as well as emotional misery, she felt she might become insane at any moment.
Mark sat stolid and silent. She was torn between a desire to hurt him, by releasing the hate and resentment which had been steadily accumulating inside her ever since he had casually annexed her mind and body, and a craven reluctance to precipitate their separation. Reason told her that it would be less painful to remove the bandage with a sharp tug, even if it broke the skin, than to peel it off slowly. But she cherished even the pain that Mark caused her.
‘Tell me, Mark, did you ever love me?’
‘I don’t know how to answer that, Clare. I know that sometimes I used to say “I love you” in a light-hearted way … But I think you realized that I was never using the words seriously.’
‘Yes; you were always very careful.’
‘But I felt less affection and respect for you when I said it then, than I do at this minute, when I can’t honestly say it. It was just part of the routine. Pretty despicable I know.’
‘Yes.’
‘But I can’t be true to the old evil in me, and be false to—whatever may be potentially good in me now!’ he cried. ‘Don’t you see that, Clare?’
The pain in his voice gave her a measure of satisfaction, but she didn’t answer. She knew the part for which she was cast was that of the self-sacrificing heroine, encouraging the man she loved in his spiritual aspirations; but she withheld the words of sympathy and understanding. There was a point where self-sacrifice became dishonesty and dishonour.
‘I realize now that I’ve hopelessly misunderstood you, Clare. I’d say I’d marry you tomorrow, but I know that it would be an insult, now you know the kind of worm I am.’
‘All right, say it. Marry me tomorrow.’
‘Now, Clare, you don’t want—’
‘How would you know what I want? I want you, and I don’t care how humiliated I am in the process. D’you understand that? I despise you, and I despise myself for needing you, but I do need.’
She sagged back on to the ground again.
‘Clare, you frighten me. What have I done to make you feel like this? I just don’t understand. I’m not worth it.’
‘I, I, I. What have I done? D’you know, I think you’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met.’
‘You’re probably right, Clare.’
‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘You’ve got one foot in the seminary already. When do you go? Next week? I don’t suppose Father Courtney will want to expose you to the temptations of the World and the Flesh a day longer than necessary.’
‘On the contrary, he turned me down.’
In spite of herself, hope leapt within her.
‘Why?’
‘He said I wasn’t ready. He said a lot of rather hard things, like you. Such as that I was trying to use the priesthood as an escape from my personal frustration, that I was dramatizing my own situation, that I was proud and vain, that my idea of Catholicism was up the creek. And so on. He said to go away and come back and see him in a year’s time.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Just as he said. Wait for a year.’
‘And in between?’
‘I’m going back home.’
‘To Blatcham?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you detested it.’
‘I did. Probably still do. But it’s no use running away from it. Must try and change it. No real hope of doing that of course. But I must make a gesture …’
‘Don’t you like living with us any more?’
‘Of course I do, Clare. That’s just the trouble. I like it too much. It’s too easy to be a good Catholic in your home. It�
�s no real test. But my own home …’
‘So you’re going back to “save” Blatcham?’
‘Not Blatcham, of course. That’s a kind of bourgeois Sodom and Gomorrah. But my parents perhaps. After all, Mother was a Catholic once … I don’t know.’ After a pause he continued: ‘I haven’t much real hope. But I feel a certain obligation to make amends. For just running away from what I didn’t like, instead of trying to change it. It’s a kind of disloyalty. I mean, I’ve often spoken to you about how I hated the loneliness of my childhood—how warm and rich I found your family life. Well, that’s true, of course, but after all, I would be a different person if I hadn’t had that sort of childhood. I am what I am, and I wouldn’t want to change my identity—nobody does when it comes down to it.’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘I want to go tonight. I think it would be best.’
Was that all then? Well good-bye, it’s been nice knowing you, I’ve enjoyed running my hands up and down your spine, it was so nice of you to give me my faith back, we must keep in touch, I do hope you have a nice life, cheerio.
‘Clare. Say something.’
‘What do you want me to say? Go in peace?’
‘I suppose I do.’
‘Well I’m not going to. You don’t seem to realize that you have certain obligations to me, a certain loyalty owing to me. From the very first time you took me to the pictures, you started to change me, shape me in your own image, make me like you. Now I’m like you, you’re like I used to be. It’s like a see-saw: one side goes up, one side goes down. That’s me gone down I suppose. I suppose we were once dead level, but I don’t especially remember it. There must have been a time when we didn’t quarrel, when we were just content to be together. Wasn’t there?’
‘I don’t know, Clare.’
‘Oh go away! Go on; what are you waiting for? You want to go, don’t you?’
‘Do try and be reasonable, Clare. Let me take you home.’
‘Oh sure—go home looking like this.’
‘Well, I can’t leave you here in this state.’
‘What’s stopping you?’
They glared at each other, hot and miserable.
* * *
Damien mopped his brow, but decided not to remove his jacket, as he was wearing braces. He had been watching Clare and Underwood for some time, but without much of interest developing. When she threw herself down on the grass, he had expected Underwood to take advantage of the situation, but he sat upright and apart. There must be something wrong. They both looked very glum. Was she in trouble, like the Higgins girl? It wouldn’t surprise him.
The thought of this possibility gave him some pleasure, as he visualized the consternation of the Mallory household, their rude awakening to the snake in their bosom. He would enjoy taking charge of the situation, compelling Underwood to marry Clare, showing her that he could still be charitable in spite of the past.
But perhaps she was already as hardened as the little trollop in his own house. He smiled to think how accurate his suspicions had been in that direction. As he fingered the black, transparent things hung up to dry in the bathroom, he had scented sin. He had thought of Doreen’s absences every night, the front-door banging in the early hours of the morning, the whine of a car drawing away from beneath his window. And there was something about the girl, with her contemptuous mouth and lolling posture, something strong and indefinable, like a smell, the smell of a bitch on heat. He had begun to keep track of her movements, to eavesdrop and observe. Last night he had been rewarded by overhearing a quarrel between Doreen and her mother. Doreen was pregnant by her employer. His heart beat faster now, as he recalled the conversation. He heard again Doreen’s rapid, flat speech.
‘What d’you mean, you didn’t know? What d’you think we do till two in the morning—play tiddly-winks?’
And Mrs Higgins’s defensive whine:
‘I don’t know what your father would have done if he was alive. I’ve tried to be a good mother to you … What does he say?’
‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘He’ll have to marry you now.’
‘I’ve told you, Mum, his wife won’t divorce him. The old cow. We would have been married long before otherwise.’
‘Well, he’ll have to pay for its upkeep. You can have him up in court.’
‘Mum, are you mad? I went into this with my eyes open. And it was mostly my fault that this happened. If he wants to help—well and good. But I’m not going to turn against him just because of an accident. I’ll go away somewhere and have the baby. There are places you can go.’
Doreen had walked out into the dark hall suddenly, and seen him walking back up the passage away from the kitchen door. She had called up the hall:
‘Your ears are flapping, Mr O’Brien!’
Damien flushed at the memory, and shook himself out of his reverie. Mark and Clare were still in the same position. Something was definitely wrong. But there was no point in staying, as he couldn’t get near enough to overhear their conversation. The paint on the seat was hot to his palms as he pushed himself up. He began to stroll round the park, observing the lewd behaviour of the couples lying on the grass. It was a shocking sight to see innocent little children chasing a ball among their hot desires, burning like dangerous flowers in the grass, each couple shameless and oblivious, weaving around themselves a tight cocoon of lust and indifference to others. Damien donned his dark glasses. He deliberately left the path and picked his way through the sprawling limbs, his head erect, and eyes slanting in all directions. He felt himself to be a kind of recording angel; it seemed necessary that someone should see all this who was aware of its sinfulness, of its stench in the nostrils of God. With a thrill of triumph he spotted a youth’s hand under a girl’s skirt; but her low, appallingly pleased giggle hollowed out his solar plexus. He would never be unmoved by a woman’s lust.
* * *
‘Well, what a surprise to meet you here, Clare!’
Turning over, she looked up at Damien’s dog-face, and then sat up quickly, trying to repair or disguise the ravages to her appearance caused by the emotional racking she had just endured. She was rarely pleased to see Damien, but at that moment she could cheerfully have driven red-hot nails into his ugly wedge of a face.
‘Where is your usual escort?’ asked Damien, smiling and showing his crowded, carious teeth.
‘He—Mark you mean?—he had to go back. I like it here. I thought I’d stay for a while.’
He stood over her, his black suit and ugly, smiling face contributing to a vague impression of evil. But she had to sit there fighting to regain her composure.
‘You look flushed. Are you sure it’s wise to lie in this sun without a hat?’
‘I’m quite all right, thank you, Damien.’
‘It seems a long time since we had a chance to talk alone.’ His pale, piggy eyes scrutinized her.
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. I think so. You have been very much in Mark Underwood’s company, have you not? You will be thinking of a more permanent relationship soon, no doubt.’
His impertinence infuriated her. All the hell of the afternoon, and now this odious cousin of hers had to come poking his sharp nose into her private affairs.
‘If you don’t mind, Damien, I think that’s my business, and I wish you’d leave me alone.’
‘Very well, Clare. I only thought I might be able to help.’
Help? What the hell does he mean, help? She watched his black, angular figure move at a sedate, clerical pace, across the grass. But her thoughts seemed to get lost in the heat. She was beginning to feel dizzy. Time to go home. Home? O God, no, not while Mark was there, and the others. Where then? The pictures? Yes, the pictures. It seemed, as her mother would have said, ‘a crime’ to waste a beautiful afternoon in a stuffy cinema, but she might be able to shed her troubles there for a few hours. And it might worry Mark if she didn’t come back till late. Perhaps he wouldn’t leave. That was unk
ind of course, but so what?
She sat up, and, taking out her compact, powdered her face lightly and combed her hair. She stood up, a little unsteadily, and smoothed her frock. Then she set off across the shimmering grass, towards the dank, smelly, but mercifully cool ‘Ladies’.
Emerging once more into the glare, she put a hand to her throbbing head, and decided that she must have a cup of tea. She found herself hurrying unnecessarily, weaving her way through the groups of people that drifted along the narrow paths, side-stepping the large and opulent prams that were moored to benches where smug mothers sat knitting and staring, dodging the children who chased each other in and out of the grown-ups’ legs. She forced herself to dawdle. She paused outside the wire cage of a tennis court. The sweaty exertions of the players, the movement of their pale, hairy legs, their breathless staccato shouts of ‘Oh, well played!’ and ‘Just out!’ occupied her for a few minutes. Then she moved on. Across the bumpy, threadbare putting-green, clots of people moved slowly from hole to hole, children eager and competitive, adults bored and tolerant. A group of Teddy-boys in full uniform emerged from the keeper’s hut, incongruously equipped with golf sticks and little white balls. A monumental granite drinking-fountain towered up, with battered, insanitary metal cups hanging from it by chains. A little boy stretched up, struggling to work the plunger. Clare stopped and held him up while he drank. When she thought he had had enough, she put him down, and he ran off without a word.
She had never done this before. She had never really been out alone. Before she met Mark she had very rarely gone out except to the school or church.
Mark. It wasn’t long before the pain of loss began to penetrate the anaesthetic of crowds, of other people’s activity. What was to happen, what would happen tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that—what on earth could fill the vacuum that yawned in front of her?
