I sent Michael his cheque to an address in London he gave me, and he thanked me for it in a brief formal note. That was the last I’d heard of him, to this day.
7
WE DIDN’T STAY long in Orotava, after Michael had gone. It seemed as if he had left something of himself behind him; something that confronted and reproached me at every turn and every hour of the day. Although I never discussed this with Elizabeth, I know she must have felt as I did, because of an otherwise cryptic passage in a letter she wrote at that time: ‘Oh yes, believe me, the living have their ghosts, too. And they’re much more intimate, much more boldly aggressive, than the other kind. They don’t appear palely behind window-panes or in the distance, on the edges of battlements. They come right into the room and push you out of the chair you meant to sit down in. I met one of them myself, only the other morning. It was raining, and I thought I’d like to try how one of the unoccupied bedrooms in this hotel would do for a workroom; it has a view of the sea and lots of light. But, as soon as I’d opened the door, there he was, the possessive phantom. I couldn’t see him, but his presence was as solid as a human body. “You keep out of here,” he told me. And I did! I think we’d better move from this place soon. I only hope he won’t follow us!’
After we left the Islands, we stayed for a while in Lisbon, where it was too hot; and at Funchal on Madeira, where it was cloudy. Then we returned to Paris. In September, The World in the Evening was published. Its reviews were much as I’d expected—plenty of admiration, a few outbursts of personal spite, and some of the condescension which is usually shown toward the successful by the young—but both I and Elizabeth were astonished by its sales. So were her publishers, and one member of the firm wrote her a not very tactfully worded letter to say so. ‘You’d think,’ she told Cecilia, ‘that they were actually a little shocked to find I’m acceptable to the vulgar palate. I’m no longer caviare to the general, it seems; so perhaps, horrible thought, I’m not caviare at all but some cheap imitation dish!’ The book sold very well in the States, too; and, in due course, Sarah sent us a favourable notice clipped from her local newspaper. ‘Everybody on the campus is talking about it,’ she wrote, ‘and I’m afraid I let myself bask a little in your reflected glory. I’m terribly ashamed to say that I haven’t read it yet, myself, because I’ve been so beset with activities and concerns, but I’m planning to do so during the Christmas vacation. I know that will be a real treat for me and a richly rewarding experience.’
‘Oh dear, I do wish she wouldn’t read it!’ Elizabeth said to me. ‘It isn’t that I’m ashamed of it, exactly. With all its faults, it’s the best I can do. And I don’t suppose Sarah will be shocked. But, somehow, when I think of her taking it up to her little room, and polishing those plain honest spectacles of hers, ready for the rewarding experience—Oh, Stephen, I feel so small and artificial! What will she think of Terence and Isabel? What will she make of my subtleties and clever complicated sensations? And yet—I have to be what I am. If one’s going to abase oneself before the simplicity of people like Sarah—beautiful and wonderful as it is—then one just has to stop writing altogether. Or else be a Tolstoy. And I’m not sure I’d want to be like him, even if I could.’
*
The excitement of getting the novel published, and the interviews and correspondence it involved, tired Elizabeth very much. She seemed almost always to be tired, that autumn. The doctor told her to rest, and do as little travelling as possible. But neither of us wanted to stay in Paris for the winter; and so, in November, we moved down to St Luc.
‘I’ve never cared especially for the South of France,’ Elizabeth wrote to Mary Scriven, ‘but it seemed to be the only place we could go to, now. The walls of my life are steadily closing in around me. I daren’t venture too far from civilization. In my present state, I must resign myself to staying within reach of competent doctors, ambulances, drugs, hospitals, and all those other dreary medical conveniences.
‘And this little town in certainly charming. I like it much better than St Tropez or St Raphael, and it isn’t too primitive, as the smaller places are. I love the steep terra-cotta hills (Oh, if only I could climb them!) and the silvery light in the olive trees, and the crowding yellow houses of the port, which look as if they were being herded down the narrow valley to the sea, and the boats and the fishing-nets and the fishy-winey-garlic smells, and the rock-pools full of magic treasures, under the cliffs. But you know this country, of course. You can picture it for yourself.
‘Our villa is in the newer part of St Luc, to the east, on the big bay. It’s quite comfortable, modernish, with hideous stencilled designs on the walls—Stephen is painting them over—a large cheerful living-room opening on to a terrace from which there are steps down to the beach, a dining-room, two bedrooms, a small absolutely useless entrance-hall, which we’ve crammed with extra chairs and fussy tables belonging to the former owners, and an adequate bathroom and kitchen. Along with the kitchen, we’ve inherited a cook named Virginie, a pious horse-faced dolorous woman who rolls up her eyes like one of the mourners around the dead Christ in an El Greco painting. Her bouillabaisse and her omelettes are delicious beyond belief.
‘And, just think, the villa actually is ours—the very first house we’ve ever owned! It was amazingly cheap, and Stephen insisted on buying it, saying that it was really time we established a base. I feel that, too. In these days, it’s good to have one, as a symbol of security. Let me never forget, though, that it’s only a symbol. It’s built, quite literally, on sand. And I must prepare firmer foundations inside myself, against the night of the great tide—’
(This was the last in the series of letters that Mary Scriven sent me, when I wrote her after Elizabeth’s death. It wasn’t until later—the spring of 1936, when I visited England and saw Mary in person—that she gave me the three others that followed it. ‘I hadn’t the heart to send them to you,’ she told me, ‘so soon after it had happened. At first, I thought I’d better burn them, but then it seemed to me I hadn’t the right to do that. After all, they do really belong to you. I know they’ll hurt you, Stephen, but I’m sure you ought to read them.’)
The first of these three letters was headed ‘Our eighth wedding anniversary’, which fixed its date at February 6, 1935:
‘Mary, I feel I must write this to you at once. I don’t want to lose a moment. Because, you see, this morning, the realization came to me, not in a vague apprehensive way but vividly and with a kind of terrible prosaic matter-of-factness, that I may quite possibly, even probably, die this year. Millions of people are going to die this year, all over the world, and I shall probably be one of them. There are no words which can convey to you how horribly strange this seems. I thought I had faced and accepted the probability, long before this. But it seems that I hadn’t.
‘Yes, it’s my heart, of course. The old village pump. The noise in my ear is getting steadily worse. If I’m in a crowded street, or if, for any reason, I get excited, it becomes really loud—louder than the loudest drum-beat in a symphony orchestra. I feel as though my head, and sometimes my whole body, were throbbing in time with my heart-beats. If I stand up too long, I turn giddy; and, once or twice, I’ve actually lost consciousness. Not, thank God, when Stephen was in the room, and anyhow only for a few moments. Sometimes I can feel my heart battering against my breast, as if it were fighting to get out. Ah, that’s horrible!
‘But much worse than this is the fear. I’ve had attacks of that, and it’s almost unbearable, even when you’re prepared for it and remind yourself that it’s just a symptom of the disease. With me, it takes the form of fearing to be alone. It’s completely illogical and unreasonable. I haven’t found any way to overcome it, yet. But I shall. I must.
‘Nevertheless, I’m working a good deal, nowadays—in short spurts, so as to conserve my energy. There are several stories I want to get finished; I daren’t plan anything longer. I’ve had to invent a whole new method of working—rather like those techniques for red
ucing the number of physical movements made by an operative in a factory. I have to race along at top speed and yet remain perfectly calm.
‘Oh, Mary darling, every instinct urges me to destroy this shameless letter. But I shan’t. I shall send it to you. As I can’t tell any of this to Stephen—that would be unforgivable, since he has to live with me, poor darling—I turn to you, as I know you’d wish me to. Between you and me, there should be no pretences. And, please remember, this is only a description of a state of mind. Another day, another mood.’
*
The second letter must have been written more than two months later, toward the end of April:
‘What you wrote—that long wonderful letter—made me ashamed of myself. That’s why I’ve been such an eternity, answering it. You didn’t mean to make me feel ashamed, I know, quite the opposite. But you did. In my selfishness, I hadn’t realized that what I wrote would give you so much pain. And then your offer to leave everything and come out here to be with me—that made me cry with gratitude. I nearly, nearly said Yes. But it would have been utterly wrong, Mary darling, I know that now. If you were here, you couldn’t help me in the way you do at present. And there’d be secrets between us and doleful womanly weepings in corners, and Stephen would have to be told. I simply couldn’t bear that. We’d turn this place into a hell of gloom within twenty-four hours.
‘That’s why I sent you that telegram, saying No. Did it sound cold and distant and ungrateful? I fear it may have.
‘Since I wrote last, I’ve had more ups and downs than there are in the Alps. The most extraordinary thing—and my doctor confirms this—is the way in which my whole outlook on life is transformed when the heartbeats get slower. He says that the change probably occurs somewhere between forty and thirty-five beats to the minute. When the heart is functioning fairly regularly, around forty, I’m quite my usual self. I’m absorbed in my work and in Stephen, and I stop worrying about the future. But then, when I drop to thirty-five, I’m immediately reduced to a bitter venomous invalid, cursing Fate.
‘When I’m in this mood and Stephen is with me, I have to keep biting my lips to stop myself from complaining to him. And, Mary, there are moments when I almost hate him, just because he’s well. No—that’s an exaggeration. The worst I ever feel, with him, is envy. But I do sometimes hate the young vital people I see on the beach. I shouldn’t grudge them their little hour of health and strength, I tell myself—and yet I want to spoil it, like some evil old witch. I want to make them aware, just for one instant, of their latter end. I want them to suffer fear, and smell the smell of death. Yes, God forgive me, I do. There are some girls here, Americans, who seem to be the most perfect imaginable examples of insensitive, unthinking, grabbing youth. And I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!
‘Don’t let this disgust or horrify you, Mary. I wouldn’t dare to describe such feelings if I didn’t have them under strict control, even when I’m at my lowest. And, today, they’re as unthinkable as a cloud would be, in this stainless sky. The sun is shining as warm as summer, the sea is sparkling like joy itself, and we’re going to picnic at our favourite rock-pool. Yes, at this particular moment I can honestly say that I’m perfectly, utterly happy.’
One of those American girls was Jane.
Her name was Jane Armstrong, then. The Armstrongs were a wealthy Pittsburgh family, and Jane had inherited some money of her own; just enough to make her even more independent than she was by nature. This was the second year she’d come to Europe, with no chaperone but a friend called Shirley, of her own age. These two had gathered around themselves a group of men and girls, Americans mostly, who were their playmates and hangers-on. They had rented a villa near ours, and all crowded into it somehow; and their housekeeping disturbed the whole neighbourhood. They went from house to house, borrowing glasses for their parties; they burned their food so that you could smell it a quarter of a mile down the beach; and the night would resound with their yells of dismay and roars of laughter when the water-heater flooded or the plumbing got stopped. They had a phonograph which played Sophie Tucker and Rudy Vallee and the Blues; and they sang while they danced. Then you would see them tearing out across the sand to the water and swimming for the diving-raft as if they were being pursued by sharks. After these frantic spasms of activity, they’d lie oiled in the sun for hours, or drink cocktails on their terrace under a big red umbrella.
It was Jane’s friend Shirley who approached me first. I was lying alone on the sand at the bottom of our steps; resting after several hours of carpentry and painting—for our villa still needed a lot of fixing up. Shirley came straight over to me with the air of a girl who never feels the least embarrassment about accosting males and asking them for anything she wants. Her self-assurance was explained and excused by the cuteness of her nose, the blueness of her eyes and the fluffiness of her hair. Probably she didn’t often attract anyone very violently, but she would attract almost any man just a little bit, and that was all that was necessary for her everyday purposes. ‘We need a fourth for tennis,’ she said, not wriggling or grinning too much, but doing a good deal with her eyes, ‘and I thought you looked like you could play. Can you?’ I was mildly flattered, and took note of the fact that she was interested in me. I wasn’t going to get off to a bad start by playing tennis with them, however. If I did, I should only make a fool of myself: these beach tramps all played like professionals. Instead, I resolved to show off my diving, next time they were all in swimming. And I did. And that was how I got to meet Jane herself.
I think she would have stood out in any kind of a group—and, in fact, she proved to me that she could, under all sorts of circumstances, later. This wasn’t because of her appearance, although that was pretty sensational; or because of her brilliance, although she could be quite startlingly funny; or because of any indefinable quality like charm or warmth. If she had been an actress, you could have said that she had perfect timing; but that would imply a deliberately created effect—and, in all the years of knowing Jane, I never once suspected her of trying to create one. No, the timing was instinctive. It was just that she had, so to speak, a rhythm that was different from other people’s. Her remarks and actions came in, as it were, between the beats, so that she was continually causing little diversions: making you wait an instant to see how she’d react. Thus, she didn’t usually lead the group. She was much more likely to go off alone in the opposite direction. When, for example, everybody else had decided to swim, she’d take a walk in the town or simply stay on the shore. And this wasn’t bitchiness or obstinacy: she merely couldn’t help being different. The others liked that; it fascinated them. I believe all of them sincerely liked Jane—except, maybe, some of the girls when they were temporarily suffering from sexual jealousy. She was so independent, and so good-humoured, and she seemed to be having such a fine time without any particular assistance from anybody.
Needless to say, I didn’t make these observations right away. At first, I couldn’t think of anything but the way she looked; I thought I’d never met anyone who was so physically attractive. It was her skin, chiefly. There was a kind of golden bloom on it which you almost never see except on the bodies of idealized nudes on semi-pornographic wall-calendars put out by business firms. Jane’s skin had an all-over richness, so that any one bit of it made you feel as if you could imagine her whole body naked. And this meant that the more clothes she wore, the more exciting she became.
I don’t remember much about our first three or four meetings. We were never alone together during any of them, and yet the other people seemed quite shadowy. The one who stood out most clearly was Shirley. She actually talked to me a lot more than Jane did; in fact, she made quite a play for me. But it would seem to me as though she were really speaking for Jane. Shirley would tell me that my accent was cute, or that my crawl-stroke was dandy, or that she just loved tall men—and, meanwhile, Jane would be looking at me with lazy amusement in her eyes, as if she thought these compliments were as corny as all
hell and yet, at the same time, somehow approved of them. As for me, I flirted with Shirley, every bit as cornily, and kept right on looking at Jane. We understood each other perfectly, I felt. I think I knew from the very first what was going to happen between us.
We didn’t even have to make a date. An evening came—it can’t have been more than a week from our first meeting—when Elizabeth was extra tired and had supper in bed. I told her I was going for a walk on the beach, to make me sleepy.
The villa where Jane lived showed no lights; and yet I walked straight toward it, instead of passing it along the edge of the water. It was as if I already knew that I’d find her there. Jane was sitting in a steamer chair on the terrace. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘what are you doing here, all by yourself?’
‘The others went to a movie. Garbo in Queen Christina. I saw it years ago, back home.’
‘Want to come for a walk?’ ‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Good,’ Jane said. This was about an hour later, while we were lying together on the sand, still naked, on the leeward side of the remains of an old rowboat which sheltered us from the very slight night breeze. We had walked a mile or so along the shore, to where there were no more houses; and ours was the only chain of footsteps, trailing off into the distance, inky-black in the moonlight.
‘What do you mean—good?’ I asked her.
‘Well, wasn’t it?’
‘Gosh, yes. Marvellous.’
‘I really meant, it was good the way it happened. Don’t you think it was?’
‘Of course I do.’ I wasn’t sure just what she wanted me to say. ‘It was all so—simple.’
Jane laughed out loud. ‘Because I’m such a pushover?’
‘Jane—you know I didn’t mean that! After you’ve been so sweet to me—’
‘You’re very polite, aren’t you, Stephen? It’s kind of misleading … When I first met you, I—well, I’d never have thought you had it in you—’
The World in the Evening Page 24
