‘Don’t wish me happiness, Mary darling. That I have already. But do wish your silly Liz some sense.’
Elizabeth was quite right in telling Mary Scriven that I accepted the situation ‘so trustingly’. I would have been amazed and bewildered if I had read that letter then. The idea that our relationship would present any kind of a problem to Elizabeth had never, as yet, occurred to me. I was convinced that she always knew exactly what she was doing; that she had mastered the whole art of living. I expected her to take complete charge.
I suppose I still regarded marriage as a kind of game. I thoroughly enjoyed my part of it, my role of husband. I loved it when waiters would ask me if ‘Madame’ wanted this or that. I used to get into conversations with the proprietress of the hotel, simply for the pleasure of being able to say ‘my Wife thinks—’ or ‘when my Wife and I were out yesterday—’ But it wasn’t quite real. I didn’t entirely convince myself. And when Elizabeth said ‘my Husband has decided—’, I wanted to laugh out loud; it sounded so crazy and funny and wonderful. It was as if the Monsieur-Madame front which we presented to the outside world were just a protective device (perhaps what Charles Kennedy would call ‘a camp’) to prevent anyone from suspecting that we two had discovered a new, unnamed kind of relationship.
For that was how it seemed to me. It wasn’t merely that we were quite different from what I thought of as ‘ordinary’ honeymoon couples. That was obvious. We were quite different, also, from those much-advertised couples of ‘great lovers’ whose high-pressure emotions intimidate mankind, generation after generation. Paolo and Francesca, Romeo and Juliet, Mr and Mrs Browning—why had they all made such a terrific fuss? Because they were so busy churning up their sensations, so busy being ‘in love’, that they could never relax. Love seemed to me, then, like a huge wave pouring through the world, flooding everything. The frantic, noisy lovers struggled and splashed about in it, half-drowned. Elizabeth and I, alone, had found the secret of riding it without the slightest effort. No—more than that. We didn’t even have to ride the wave. We were part of it.
I didn’t, of course, feel this all the time. But I had moments of feeling it—several of them—every day. There was that morning, for example, when we visited the Père La Chaise cemetery, and saw Wilde’s tomb, and Chopin’s, and the wall against which the Communards were executed. It was a grey day, with gusts of rain; but I wasn’t depressed by the weather or awed by the dead. Elizabeth told me about the young Communard—a boy of fourteen—who asked permission to run home and give his watch to his mother, before he was shot. The officer in command was sorry for him and said Yes, thinking that of course he wouldn’t come back. But the boy returned five minutes later, out of breath from running, thanked the officer politely, and took his place in front of the firing-squad. My eyes filled with tears, but I was trembling with joy. For the boy wasn’t dead, Chopin and Wilde weren’t dead; they were alive, like Elizabeth and I, within the wave of love. Within the wave, every action had its own sanction and beauty: Chopin writing the Nocturnes, Wilde waddling after the street-boys, even the officer giving the order to fire. As long as I myself was within the wave, I should always know this. And it seemed to me, then, that I should be able to re-enter it whenever I pleased, throughout the rest of my life.
What was Elizabeth feeling, that morning? I suppose my mood communicated itself to her, to some extent—I had described it to her as best I could—and she must have partly shared it. But for her it was different. In A Garden with Animals, the most autobiographical of her novels, she gave her version of the scene. Here, the lovers are in a museum in London. The story is told from the viewpoint of Laura, the heroine:
‘Looking at Oliver, she thought: Yes, to him it’s alive, all of it. He simply doesn’t see what’s dead, what’s left—these sherds and broken implements and mummy-cases, these fossils and time-stained stones. He sees only what we all ought to see, and can’t: the live hand that made them, the live brain that imagined them, the throbbing self that formed this covering shell and then slipped out of it, leaving it in our hands. And oh, said Laura to herself, if I could be like that! But I can’t. I believe in museums because I’ve got one of my own. Sooner or later, we all start our dismal private collections … There, right before her in her mind’s eye, was the glass case containing the tiny horrible little dried relic which was all that Gurian had left for her.’
‘The character of ‘Gurian’ in A Garden with Animals is an easily recognizable portrait of Mariano Galdós, the ’cellist. Elizabeth had scarcely mentioned Galdós to me at that time—the subject must have still been too painful for her to speak of—but later she told me a great deal about him.
Elizabeth first met Galdós in Florence, in 1921. At that time, he had quite a reputation, and was on holiday after a successful series of concerts in France and Italy. The impression I later got from his photographs was of a rather undersized man in his late thirties, with a pale heavy pouchy face; scrubby and balding in a typically Latin manner. But I was prejudiced against him, naturally. To be fair, I would have to admit that the photographs were mostly snapshots or badly printed newspaper portraits, and that he must anyhow have had very compelling, vivid dark eyes.
In the novel, Elizabeth writes that ‘Gurian’ had ‘the art of starting a friendship right in the middle—a friendship, that is to say, with a woman. It wasn’t that he began by making love to her. Oh no, he was far subtler than that. He contrived to suggest that you and he had long since passed that point. Rather, he made you feel as if you were meeting an old lover again after an absence of months or years—made you wonder if, perhaps, the relationship might not be renewed.’
It was hard to say just what Elizabeth meant by this passage. Indeed, she was trying, in it, to describe something which is practically indescribable; something which could only be conveyed in glances and tones of voice. She did, however, tell me one thing about her meeting with Galdós which was curious, even if it wasn’t subtle. They were eating at a restaurant with the friends who had introduced them to each other. They talked German, partly because the friends were Germans, partly because Elizabeth spoke German fluently and didn’t know much Spanish. (Galdós could speak German because he had studied for some years in Dresden as a young man.) At the end of the meal, Elizabeth wanted to light a cigarette. Not wishing to interrupt the conversation by asking the others for matches, she half rose from her chair so as to reach over and take some from an unoccupied table nearby. At this, Galdós produced a lighter from his pocket, saying, as he did so: ‘Bleiben Sie liegen’, ‘stay lying down’, instead of ‘Bleiben Sie sitzen’, ‘stay seated’, which was obviously what he had meant. It was what the intellectuals of those days delighted in, ‘a Freudian error’, but the two Germans either failed to notice it or were too polite to make any comment. Elizabeth got the point at once, however. Galdós had involuntarily said ‘Bleiben Sie liegen’ because he had been imagining himself and Elizabeth lying side by side in bed together, after making love. She looked quickly at him, startled, amused and intrigued. He looked back at her without embarrassment, smiling slightly. And that was how it began.
Their relationship was unhappy, almost from the first. Galdós was a difficult, arrogant creature, vain and cowardly and given to hysterical self-pity. It was some time before Elizabeth knew that he was married, and that he took cocaine. Galdós was separated from his wife, but he would get maudlin fits of repentance in which he declared that she was the only woman who really mattered to him. The cocaine he managed to conceal from Elizabeth for a long while. When she found out about it, he got defiant and sniffed it publicly in a café, exclaiming against her English prudery. She left him, then. But abject telegrams and letters followed her, and she came back. Galdós got seriously sick. He broke his contracts and appeared less and less often in public. He begged her for money and she gave it to him. He became pitiful and shameless. In his rages, he would have liked to beat her, but he wasn’t strong enough. Finally, at the beginning of 1926, he di
ed of pneumonia in Rome. Elizabeth nursed him until the end.
If I had known all this at the time of our honeymoon I suppose I would have been terribly jealous—jealous of Galdós because he had made Elizabeth feel and suffer in a way which made my hold upon her seem slight and insecure by comparison. But I would also have understood her much better than I then did. I would have understood what I only learned to appreciate much later, her incredible capacity for loyalty. There was, no doubt, a good deal of masochism in Elizabeth’s character. Perhaps she corrected her own kind of arrogance as a creative artist by abasing herself in her relationship with Galdós. But, over and above this, I think she wanted desperately to be needed. Galdós needed her, and that was sufficient.
When I realized that all this had happened so shortly before we met, I could see Elizabeth’s consent to our marriage as a gesture of almost desperate optimism in the face of experience. And she admitted this frankly in A Garden with Animals. Laura, after her experiences with Gurian, feels that she has got to make Oliver ‘come true’, as she puts it. ‘Because, if he didn’t—if it was all a lie, a dream—then that proved something too terrible to contemplate. If Oliver wasn’t true, then nothing was true. Then there was no God.’
I could never possibly have suspected any of this from Elizabeth’s behaviour while we were in Paris. Indeed, she seemed to me to be so entirely relaxed, so completely in command of the situation, that I felt obscurely frustrated. I wanted to know her in some deeper way that I couldn’t exactly define. Something eluded me. This, of course, was really what made being with her so continuously fascinating for me. I was watching her all the time, with the feeling that I daren’t withhold my attention for an instant, lest I should miss some hint, some clue. It was as if I was waiting for a signal.
The last evening before we went back to London, while we were sitting at a café on the boulevard, I became suddenly aware that Elizabeth was watching me, with an unaccustomed kind of intentness. ‘What are you looking at?’ I asked her.
‘Oh, nothing, darling—’ She smiled vaguely. ‘I was just wondering if you—No—’ She broke off, laughing. ‘If I were to say it, it would sound too silly—’
‘Elizabeth, that’s not fair! Now you’ve got to tell me.’
‘Very well, then … I was wondering, darling, if you’d had a nice honeymoon.’
I fairly gaped at her. ‘But—don’t you know I have? Nice—my God, what a word!’ Then, looking into her eyes as I tried to see behind what she had said, I added: ‘Haven’t you?’
‘Of course, of course, darling … But that isn’t quite what I meant—’ Elizabeth reached out and took my hand. ‘What I mean is—well, you must so often have pictured to yourself—long, long before we ever met—when you were a boy at school —how, one day, you’d get married and have a honeymoon. Didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know. I thought about sex and love, an awful lot, but—’ I started to laugh. ‘I suppose I thought of marriage as the end of everything. I thought that, by the time that happened, I’d be quite old. A lot older than I am, anyhow.’
‘Yes—I suppose that’s how men always feel … Poor Stephen—you’ve aged quickly, haven’t you? Your youth is over already.’
‘But, Elizabeth, I don’t think that now. You know I don’t. How could I? I was just a silly kid—’
‘You really don’t, Stephen? You don’t feel in the very least bit—trapped?’
‘Elizabeth!’ I was really alarmed. ‘Is that how you feel?’
‘I—?’ She shook her head slowly. She was still smiling, but now she looked sad. ‘Oh, Stephen—’ she sighed, as though my question had made her aware of some enormous misunderstanding between us. Then, after a pause, she said: ‘I think perhaps we’re in too much of a hurry, darling. We want to know everything about each other, instantly; and it’s so painful that we can’t, isn’t it? But we mustn’t try so hard. We must be patient, mustn’t we? We must just accept what we’ve got, and wait … This is something worth waiting for, isn’t it, Stephen?’
‘Yes—oh my God, yes—’ I said. ‘It’s wonderful—and the waiting’s wonderful—I mean—’
Then the wave of love burst suddenly over us, sweeping away all my doubts and frustrations and anxieties and leaving me speechless. The traffic roared and tooted with love, the faces of the people on the sidewalk were transfigured, and the lights of the boulevard blazed with joy. This time, Elizabeth certainly felt it too. Her face shone with it. She looked so beautiful that my throat contracted until I was almost strangling, and I had to drink a glass of wine at a single gulp.
‘I know, darling,’ she said quietly, stroking my hand as if to soothe me. ‘I know—’
And so we returned to London.
On the train, I started, for the first time, to feel badly about Sarah. I suppose I had been repressing this feeling throughout the past two weeks. Now I found that I was actually dreading our meeting. Perhaps Elizabeth was dreading it, too. I didn’t want to ask her. I didn’t want to face the situation until I was forced to.
We arrived back in the evening, after dark. Sarah met us at the station and kept up a bright chatter all the way to the house, in the cab. When we entered, there was a kind of Christmas banner inscribed with the word ‘Welcome’, hanging across the hallway. Then Sarah took us upstairs, to show us how she had made room for my clothes in Elizabeth’s drawers and closets. ‘And I had them bring up your favourite armchair,’ she told me, ‘so that you’d feel quite at home’.
It was all horribly touching and embarrassing. As soon as Elizabeth and I were left alone—Sarah had told us Goodnight very early, with a coy emphasis on our need for privacy—I said: ‘You know, we shall have to get out of here as soon as possible.’ Elizabeth couldn’t disagree, but she asked: ‘How on earth are we going to explain to Sarah? We can’t hurt her, Stephen. I couldn’t bear that.’ ‘Leave it to me,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of some excuse.’ But I had no idea how I was going to manage it.
I ought to have known that I wouldn’t have to worry. Later, I felt ashamed that I hadn’t known, because my anxiety showed a lack of faith in Sarah’s understanding. The next morning, she called me down to our old flat. ‘Stephen dearest,’ she told me. ‘I need your counsel.’ She had a letter in her hand. ‘This arrived a few days ago,’ she continued, as she gave it to me. ‘Perhaps it will be simplest if you read it.’
The letter was written from Philadelphia by an old friend of Sarah’s named Hannah Duke; she had been to see us, some years earlier, during a visit to England. Hannah told Sarah that there was a position open for a Dean of Women at a small Quaker college in Ohio. Several of Sarah’s friends had agreed that she would be just the right person to fill it, if she cared to do so; in fact, the job was hers for the asking. They would all be very happy to see her back in the States. There were a couple of English Quakers on the faculty as visiting professors, whom she already knew, so she wouldn’t be entirely amongst strangers. Hannah finished her letter by asking Sarah to reply right away. If she decided to accept the post, she would have to sail within the next month.
Sarah was watching my face, as I read this. ‘Well, Stephen,’ she asked, when I had finished, ‘what do you think?’
‘What do you think?’ I asked, playing for time. I felt as guilty as if I had planned the whole thing myself, and I couldn’t look Sarah in the eyes.
‘I? Well—I hardly know what to say. I’m sure I don’t know why they should want me. I’ve never done anything quite like this before. I couldn’t imagine anyone less suitable—’
‘Nonsense!’ I interrupted, rather too heartily. ‘You’d be splendid. Why, you could run America single-handed, let alone a bunch of girls! Of course you could … But that’s not the point. Do you really want to go?’
‘Well—I should feel sad, leaving England. It’s become a second home to me … But this certainly seems like a splendid opening, doesn’t it?’
‘Aunt Sarah—it’s no use if we aren’t going to discuss this frankly.
You wrote to Hannah Dukes, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, Stephen dear.’ Sarah gave me a sly smile. ‘Of course I wrote her. I write her quite often, you know.’
‘And you just happened to mention that you were thinking of returning to the States, and did she know of a job for you?’
‘Well, I didn’t put it as directly as that. But I suppose I did speak of the possibility, yes—’
‘And so Hannah made enquiries? That must have taken a good deal of time. In fact, you must have written to her quite soon after you knew that Elizabeth and I were getting married. The very next day, perhaps?’
‘I don’t remember the exact date.’
‘Aunt Sarah,’ I said, forcing myself to put my arm around her shoulders, though I felt quite physically sickened at the falseness of the gesture, ‘what makes you think we don’t want you here?’
‘Stephen! I never said that! It’s only that—well—we must be realistic. Things are different now. You have your own life and obligations to think of. I know you’d never be anything but sweet and unselfish and kind to me. And Elizabeth too, bless her heart. But my duty here is ended. Your darling Mother would have been the first to admit that … Besides, America is my home. I’ve been very happy here, but I think I should like a change. And we shall see each other from time to time, shan’t we? You’ll be coming over, of course?’
‘Yes—as a matter of fact, we’ve talked about it already.’ (This was a lie.)
‘Then you see—? This won’t be a real separation, will it? Oh, I’m sure everything will work out beautifully. I feel as if it was meant to happen … I’d better send a cable to Hannah, right away—’
That was the first stage of Sarah’s leaving. The others that followed it were progressively more and more painful. Sarah was extra bright and brisk, as she made her preparations. I felt as though I were watching her bravely getting ready to go to hospital, to die of an incurable illness. I was miserably guilty because I longed for the illness to be over. I longed for her to leave. Elizabeth suffered nearly as badly as I did. ‘Oh, Stephen,’ she said, ‘why does everything have to have a price? Why does Sarah have to pay for our being together? When she’s such an angel—I almost wish she was a fiendish old dragon of a mother-in-law, so we could hate her and fight her.’
The World in the Evening Page 14
