I sat down on the bunk. My eye hurt, but not much; Michael’s blow hadn’t landed squarely. Now he was mopping with his handkerchief at his bleeding mouth. He looked so hurt and young that I felt suddenly, keenly touched. I held out my hand to him, as you do to a child or a dog. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Michael looked quickly at me and evidently saw that I meant it. He came over to me; and, all at once, his body folded as if with exhaustion and he fell on his knees, burying his head in my lap. It was such a childlike movement that I didn’t pull away or feel embarrassed. And when his shoulders started to shake with crying, I found myself quite naturally stroking his hair.
‘Oh, Stephen—’ I could barely understand what Michael was saying in the intervals between his attacks of sobbing: ‘I love you—never mind anything I said just now—I do love you so much—’
I kept silent. Gradually, I felt him calming down; and presently he looked up at me. ‘Aren’t I a bloody idiot?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Will you forget I said those things?’
‘I’ve forgotten already.’
‘You know why I said them, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I think I do.’
‘Because I love you. Do you believe that?’
‘Yes, Michael. I do believe it.’
‘Oh, Stephen,’ Michael smiled at me with a kind of childlike sadness, ‘why can’t I make you love me? I still believe I could, if I got the chance. You know, we could have such marvellous times together. We could go to places you’ll never go to with Elizabeth. When two men stick together, they can do anything. And I’d stick by you all my life. With a woman, you’re never really free. They always tie you down, in one way or another … And Elizabeth doesn’t even need you as much as I do. She can get herself another secretary. That’s all you are to her, now, isn’t it? No, Stephen—no, don’t be angry with me. Let me say it once, won’t you, when it’s the truth? You ought to be with me. I deserve you. She doesn’t. She doesn’t appreciate you. No woman would. I don’t believe a woman ever looks at a man, properly. Elizabeth doesn’t see how beautiful you are. Don’t laugh—you are beautiful. I think you’re the most beautiful person I ever met—’
‘Michael, stop! You’re just talking nonsense, now. I know you mean it—or; at least, you think you do. And I’m not pretending that I’m not glad that you feel this way about me. I am. Whatever names people may call it, it’s still love—and any kind of love is wonderful. I believe I love you, too; in quite a different sort of way. And I certainly think you’re beautiful. Anyone would have to admit that … Only, Michael, you must understand this: as far as you and I are concerned, anything more is absolutely out of the question—’
Michael was sitting back on his heels, now, and looking at me with a smile that was radiant and sweet and slightly silly. I realized that he wasn’t listening, any more, to anything I said—only to the tones of my voice. After all this emotional excitement, he seemed to have passed into a kind of euphoric daze.
‘Come on,’ I said, gently but firmly, as one talks to a friend who is drunk, ‘Let’s go to bed. We don’t want to miss that much-advertised sunrise, do we?’
Later, when we’d extinguished the bicycle-lamps and climbed into our separate bunks, we lay silent for a long time. I was still wide awake, I found. But now I felt a different kind of tension. My heart was pounding as I admitted to myself what it was that I wanted to do. And I was going to do it. My brain was working quickly, like a crooked lawyer preparing a case in advance for his criminal client. I rationalized my shameless physical itch, transforming it into a big noble generous gesture, a gift of princely charity from myself, who had everything, to Michael, who had nothing at all.
At last, when the case was prepared, I cleared my throat and said softly: ‘Michael, are you awake?’
‘Yes—’ Michael answered at once, and I could hear the eagerness in his voice. ‘What is it?’
‘Don’t you feel sleepy?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘Neither do I … We may as well stop trying.’
‘You mean, you want to talk?’ Michael’s tone was excited and questioning.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Of course.’ He laughed, a little. I was certain, now, that he understood.
*
Just before dawn, we climbed up to the summit of the cone. It was a rough but easy climb, over the huge mess of broken stones. Sulphur vapour was fuming out of their crevices; the air reeked of it. If you turned a stone over, the earth was so hot that you couldn’t touch it with your hand. Herr Knauer had told us to try holding a lighted match to one of the vapour-holes. When you did so, all the others began to steam more violently. There was one place where we could hear, or thought we could hear, the underground roaring of fire.
The sun was coming up out of Africa, which lay behind a long cloud-bank on the horizon, and dawn was breaking over the vast ring of the ocean. The other island peaks rose up, pink-lit, above a thick layer of grey cloud which looked like ruffled feathers on a bird’s breast. Far away down below, we could see a few lights sparkling in the houses of Orotava. They still lay deep in darkness.
Looking down into the crater was a disappointment. I’d expected something more than this not very deep hollow, with less vapour coming out of it than was leaking from the sides of the peak.
‘Herr Knauer says it hasn’t erupted properly for hundreds of years,’ I told Michael. ‘A few of the smaller craters on the plateau have blown up, that’s all.’
‘Don’t you wish it would, now at this moment?’
‘No. Of course I don’t.’
‘I do. I think it would be wonderful.’ Michael laughed excitedly. ‘Imagine the whole mountain bursting wide open, and a great blast of fire shooting straight up into the air for thousands of feet, like you see in the old prints of volcanoes—’
‘But we shouldn’t see it.’
‘I know, but’—Michael looked at me with shining eyes—‘it’d be such a perfect ending.’
‘An ending? Why do you want one?’
‘Oh, I don’t, really. I was just talking a lot of nonsense, because I’m so happy. I only meant, I wanted to stop Time from going on, somehow—that’s all.’ Michael caught hold of my arm and gave it a squeeze. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t feel the same way, Stephen. Because I know you do. I was afraid you didn’t, until—what happened last night. But now I’m sure. You don’t even have to tell me—’
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t bear to look at his face, shining with beautiful silly joy in the sunrise. I felt horribly trapped; and for the first time I fully realized just what it was that I’d done to Michael. It was as if I’d written him a cheque for a thousand pounds and been caught without one penny in the bank. I almost wished that the Pico would blow up with the two of us.
He seemed not to notice anything wrong, however. The sheer stupidity of his happiness dismayed and irritated me; for it was really a kind of selfishness that made him so unaware of what I was actually feeling. When he had taken his photographs and we were ready to leave the summit, he started to glissade down a steep slope of loose shale, digging his heels into it as if it were snow and slithering downhill in a cloud of black dust and flying pebbles. He was shouting and laughing like a schoolboy, and the noise he made seemed a violation of the silent morning. Or so I felt as I watched him, in my guilt.
We got back to Orotava late that afternoon. We were tired and footsore of course, and we took hot baths and had drinks before supper. In my bath, I played half-heartedly with the idea of getting to Elizabeth first and giving her some more or less expurgated account of the situation. But I couldn’t bring myself to face that: I had delayed doing it too long, already, and now it was too late. Whatever was going to happen, must happen. I couldn’t prevent it.
The meal began with Elizabeth’s telling us how the dog belonging to the gardener’s boy had been killed that morning by a truck, and how the boy, in his fury against all automobiles, had started
to scatter broken glass over the road outside the house. Elizabeth and Herr Knauer had talked him out of doing this. Although she didn’t say so, I knew that it was Elizabeth who had really persuaded the boy, for he adored her.
Then I began to describe our trip, making a lot of the view from the top of the Pico and the sunrise. In the midst of this, Michael, who had been drawing hard on his cigarette and nervously working his jaw muscles, suddenly exclaimed: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Stephen—Elizabeth doesn’t want to hear all that! Why don’t you tell her what’s happened?’
Perhaps Elizabeth had been expecting some such outburst. At any rate, she didn’t seem surprised. But I saw her eyebrows draw together for an instant in the quick sympathetic way they always did when she sensed pain. She was extraordinarily sensitive to it, and I had often made her wince by joking about an injury or an illness, simply because I didn’t have enough imagination to feel the suffering involved, as she did. Then, after a moment, she asked quietly: ‘What’s happened, Michael?’
‘Stephen knows what I’m talking about,’ Michael said. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘He’ll tell you.’
Elizabeth looked at me, and I knew now for certain that she wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t afraid, either, of what might be going to happen. ‘Yes, Stephen,’ she said, ‘I think you had better explain.’
‘It’s nothing, Elizabeth. Really. Just a lot of nonsense.’
‘So you won’t tell her?’ Michael challenged me.
‘No, I won’t. There’s nothing to tell. And I won’t have Elizabeth upset like this—’
‘You’re an awful coward, aren’t you, Stephen? But I don’t care—I can speak for both of us … Elizabeth, this is going to be hard for you to understand. But it’s the truth, and you’ve got to believe it. I’m in love with Stephen. And he’s in love with me.’
‘No, Elizabeth!’ I exclaimed in a panic. ‘It’s a lie. Don’t listen to him.’
‘But I must listen to him, Stephen,’ Elizabeth told me gravely, ‘since you wouldn’t tell me any of this yourself. Let him say whatever he has to. Let’s be frank with each other. ‘We’re all friends, or have been.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Elizabeth,’ Michael said. ‘I hope you believe that?’
‘Of course I believe it, Michael. And love ought not to hurt anybody—if it really is love.’
Michael looked at her suspiciously. ‘I don’t think I trust you,’ he said. ‘You’re still pretending not to understand. Listen—I want Stephen to come away with me. To leave you, for good. Isn’t that plain enough? How can you sit there and talk about love? You ought to hate me. You know you do hate me, underneath all this talk. I’m your enemy.’
‘Oh, Michael dear,’ said Elizabeth, impulsively reaching across the table and taking his hand, ‘I’m sorry—’
Michael pulled it quickly away from her: ‘What do you mean, you’re sorry?’
‘It must hurt you so, having to say all this.’
‘I don’t want your pity,’ said Michael angrily. ‘You feel very secure and superior, don’t you? I suppose you think this is just a silly schoolboy crush? Quite different from your wonderful mature marriage—which isn’t a marriage at all—’
‘Michael,’ I said, jumping to my feet, ‘any more of that, and I’ll throw you out of the house—’
‘Before you do any more pitying,’ Michael told Elizabeth, ‘you’d better know this: Stephen and I have been to bed together.’
‘Elizabeth—’ I gasped. ‘It isn’t—’
‘Do you deny it?’ Michael shouted at me. ‘Go on—deny it! Let’s hear you. You see, Elizabeth, he can’t! He can’t, because it’s true—’
‘Elizabeth,’ I said imploringly, ‘Listen to me. He’s building this up into something completely different. It isn’t true. At least—not in the way you think—’
Elizabeth looked at me. ‘How do you know what I think, Stephen?’ she asked, very quietly. Then she turned to Michael. ‘Do please believe me,’ she told him gently, ‘I didn’t mean to sound superior. And I wasn’t being insincere, when I said I was sorry. I am. I am, truly. You’re the only one whose feelings matter, just now. What Stephen or I may feel isn’t important. Because, you see, Michael, I’m afraid it’s you who has to face the truth … Stephen isn’t going away with you.’
‘I suppose you think you can stop him?’
‘No, Michael. I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t try. And I couldn’t do it, anyway, if he really wanted to go. It isn’t a question of whether he loves you or not. Perhaps he does, in his own way. But he won’t go away with you. I can tell you that.’
‘You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ said Michael, defiantly.
‘Oh, Michael—that isn’t it, at all. Do I really seem so arrogant, to you? No—it’s just that I know him so well. The reasons why Stephen wouldn’t leave me for you—or anybody else—certainly aren’t ones that I can be proud of. They’re actually quite humiliating—or would be, if I hadn’t lived with them for so long … No, Stephen, don’t interrupt me: I haven’t finished yet. There’s one more thing I must tell you, Michael. It may help later, though you won’t believe it now. Even if Stephen did go away with you, you two would never be happy together. I know that, too.’
Michael looked slowly from her face to mine. The violence was going out of him, together with his confidence. ‘Stephen,’ he said at last, ‘is all this true—what she says?’
‘Yes, Michael,’ I said, avoiding his eyes.
‘You won’t come with me?’
‘But, Michael—I never said I would. We never even discussed it. You know that. You must have worked the whole thing up in your imagination, until you believed it. But I never gave you any reason to think—’
‘You don’t really love me at all, do you, Stephen? No—you needn’t answer. It’s pretty obvious.’
There was an awful, empty pause.
‘I see—’ Michael’s voice trembled a little, though he tried hard to control it. ‘You were right, Elizabeth. I wish I hadn’t said all those things to you. But I expect you’ll forgive me. You seem to be good at forgiving people—’
I didn’t hear any more, because I couldn’t bear to listen. I felt I couldn’t stay in that room with them another moment. Mumbling some excuse or other, I left them and ran out of the house, across the garden, and through the doorway on to the road. Running at first and then walking, I pushed through the darkness, blindly following the unlighted lanes that wound up and down the hillside. I must have walked for nearly three hours, until I was so tired that I was ready to go back, even though it meant facing Michael and Elizabeth again.
I found Elizabeth still up, and reading in the sitting-room. Some people, when they’re worried about your absence and waiting for your return, will pace the floor fidgeting and smoking and then, when at last they hear you outside, will grab up a book and pretend to have been reading all the while, just to show that they didn’t care. But Elizabeth was quite incapable of such play-acting. I knew that she’d been making herself really read and attend to what she was reading. That was part of her extraordinary self-control.
‘Oh, there you are, Stephen,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad. I was beginning to get anxious.’
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘He’s gone.’
‘You mean, he went out, too?’
‘No. He’s gone away. Herr Knauer phoned for a taxi, and he drove down to the port. He was in plenty of time to catch the midnight steamer.’
‘He left—just like that?’ I asked, stupidly.
Elizabeth looked at me, with a faintly ironical expression. ‘What else did you expect?’
I came over and knelt down beside her chair, putting my arms around her. ‘Oh, darling,’ I said. ‘Will you ever be able to forgive me?’
Elizabeth kissed me on the cheek. Her tone was thoughtful and sad: ‘It isn’t very difficult for me to do that, Stephen. I’m not even sure that there’s anything for me to forgive—or o
nly in the most conventional, French kind of way. How idiotic their use of the word “deceived” is, isn’t it? As if anybody ever really was—’
‘Don’t, Elizabeth!’ I exclaimed. ‘Please don’t talk like that! I’m so terribly ashamed.’
‘Are you, Stephen?’
There was something in her voice that pulled me sharply out of my wallowing, confessional mood. ‘You know I am,’ I said, reproachfully. Elizabeth smiled at my tone, but she didn’t seem really amused.
‘You’re ashamed because you’ve been caught out, and made to look silly. You’re ashamed of the way Michael behaved this evening. Be honest, Stephen—isn’t that it? Are you really ashamed of how you behaved to Michael? Do you know what he said to me, just before he left? He said: “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to believe in anyone again.” That’s a dreadful thing to make somebody say—even if it isn’t true.’
‘My God—isn’t there anything I can do to make it up to him for this?’
‘No, I don’t think there is. Not directly. Certainly not now.’
‘What’s the matter with me, Elizabeth? What makes me behave like this? Am I so completely rotten?’
‘Don’t be silly, Stephen. Don’t talk like that. Now you’re just enjoying feeling wicked.’
‘If only I could see where all this started. What did I do wrong? I ought to have come straight to you, of course—as soon as I knew how Michael felt. You certainly warned me. Did you guess, right from the start?’
‘I wasn’t sure.’
‘Of course, I encouraged him. I know that. I admitted it to him, myself. I suppose, really, I was flattered—’
‘Stephen, you know the Shakespeare sonnet that begins: “They that have power to hurt and will do none—”? Well, darling, you have the power to hurt. Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know it! Of course you do … What I’m trying to say is that it would be so much better if you’d realize that and be frankly vain about it—even ridiculously vain. At present, you’re not nearly vain enough—you still feel in some mysterious way inferior—and that makes you cruel. You can’t resist using your power. You have to keep proving to yourself that you’re attractive.’
The World in the Evening Page 22
