Love, Again

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  She sat smiling at the thought of Henry. It was that smile put on a woman's face by delightful thoughts of past lovers. Let it stay for a while, she was praying — to her own inner psychological obscurities, presumably? — for when Henry was gone, a black pit was waiting for her; she could feel it there, waiting for the very moment that smile left her face.

  And then there would be Stephen. That would remain. That was for life. But while she sat smiling, in his house at that very moment it was likely that an unhappy man sat at a window, thinking, I cannot endure this life, I cannot endure this desert. It was ten o'clock. Dinner would be over. Probably Elizabeth and Norah would have gone off somewhere, as they usually did.

  She telephoned and got Elizabeth.

  'Oh, it's you. I'm so glad you rang. I was just going to ring you. I do hope you approve of the arrangements. Of course, we can't put up the whole cast in the house. But the hotel is pretty comfortable. We thought that you and Henry and the new girl — Stephen says she's very good — and we have room for a couple more. Perhaps that young woman who can't keep her hands off her camera? How does it sound to you?'

  'We are very lucky to be staying in your lovely house.'

  'I don't know if we shall always be able to put people up.

  I mean, when we do real operas. But it is fun having you people around. And it will cheer up Stephen.' And now a pause, while Sarah waited for the real communication. 'Poor Stephen does seem most awfully glum.'

  'Yes, I think he seems to be worried about something.'

  'Yes.' Since Sarah did not seem inclined to offer anything more, Elizabeth said, 'It's probably his liver. Well, that's what I tell him.' And she gave her jolly laugh, which was like a notice saying Keep Out. Then, having behaved exactly according to expectation, typecast as a no-nonsense sensible ex-schoolgirl, she rang off with 'See you tomorrow, Sarah. How nice. I do look forward to it all so much. And the garden is pretty good too, seeing that it's August.'

  A woman of a certain age stands in front of her looking- glass naked, examining this or that part of her body. She has not done this for… twenty years? Thirty? Her left shoulder, which she pushes forward, to see it better — not bad at all. She always did have good shoulders. And a very good back, compared — long ago, of course — to the Rokeby Venus. (There are probably few young women of the educated classes whose backs have not been compared, by lovers blinded by love, with the Rokeby Venus.) Hard to see her back, though: it was not a big mirror. Her breasts? A good many young women would be pleased to have them. But wait… what had happened to them? A woman can have had breasts like Aphrodite's (after all, at least one woman must have done), and the last thing anyone thought of, looking at them, was nourishment, but they have become comfortable paps, and their owners wonder, What for? To cradle the heads of grandchildren? Surely the right time for these paps was when she was a mother. (What is Nature up to?) Legs. Well, they weren't too bad now, never mind what they were. In fact her body had been a pretty good one, and it held its shape (more or less) till she moved, when a subtle disintegration set in, and areas shapely enough were surfaced with the fine velvety wrinkles of an elderly peach. But all this was irrelevant. What she could not face (had to keep bringing herself face to face with) was that any girl at all, no matter how ill-favoured, had one thing she had not. And would never have again. It was the irrevocableness of it. There was nothing to be done. She had lived her way into this, and to say, 'Well, and so does everyone,' did not help. She had lived her way into it, full of philosophy, as one is supposed to do, and then the depth charge, and she was like one of those landscapes where subterranean upheavals had tumbled to the surface a dozen strata, each created in vastly different epochs and kept separate until now, revealing mountains made up of rocks red, olive green, turquoise, lemon, pink, and dark blue, all in a single range. She could sincerely say that one of the strata, or several, did not care about this ageing carcass, but there was another as vulnerable as the flesh of roses.

  'I tore my body that its wine could cover Whatever could recall the lip of lover… ' well, what else?

  Yet Henry was in love with her. And Andrew. Bill had been, in his way. What were they in love with? And here she could not suppress the thought: In a group of chimps, the senior female is sexually very popular. Better look at it like that.

  In the — fortunately — dimmish light into which she moved this or that part of her anatomy, her body looked tender, comfortable, her arms of the kind that go easily round those in need of arms. Joyce, for instance. That poor little grub, before she had grown into a young woman, was ready at the hint of an invitation to curl up inside arms that were nearly always Sarah's. Where she at once put her thumb in her mouth. Even now, anyone with eyes had to see that invisible thumb forever in her mouth. The world is full of people, invisible to anyone but their own kind (it takes one to know one), who live with their thumbs in their mouths. Sarah knew what had knocked the thumb out of her own mouth: the need to bring up two young children with little money and no father for them.

  Henry? A father if there ever was one. Perhaps to Henry she was the good mother. Everything about him proclaimed that what he had had to fight his way out of was something as focused as a demented female cat (driven mad, of course, by circumstances and therefore in no way to blame), who is capable of biting her kittens to death, or walking finally away from them, or killing them with kindness. Something obdurately hostile had set him in a trajectory away, until he had turned to face it at last, taking into his arms the child — himself — like a shield… thoughts of Henry shuttled in her head, mixing and matching likenesses, coincidences, memories, creating the invisible web that is love, visible — sometimes for years — only in glances like caresses or silences like hands touching.

  Sarah looked in the mirror.

  It was time for:

  I think I heard the belle

  We call the Armouress

  Lamenting her lost youth,

  This was her whore's language…

  There are two phases in this illness. The first is when a woman looks, looks closer: yes, that shoulder; yes, that wrist; yes, that arm. The second is when she makes herself stand in front of a truthful glass, to stare hard and cold at an ageing woman, makes herself return to the glass, again, again, because the person who is doing the looking feels herself to be exactly the same (when away from the glass) as she was at twenty, thirty, forty. She is exactly the same as the girl and the young woman who looked into the glass and counted her attractions. She has to insist that this is so, this is the truth: not what I remember — this is what I am seeing, this is what I am. This. This.

  But the second stage was still some weeks away.

  Sarah looked in the mirror, flattering what she saw, censoring out what could not be flattered, and she thought of Henry and allowed herself to melt with tenderness. But the tenderness was a tightrope, with gulfs under it. She might allow herself to dream of Henry's embraces, but at once her mind put her situation into words, and it was the stuff of farce and merited only a raucous laugh. A woman in her mid-sixties, in love with a man half her age… imagine how she would have described that aged twenty. Or even thirty. (She could see her own young face, derisive, cruel, arrogant.) No use to say, But he is in love with me. He wanted to be in bed with her, certainly, and if he did come into her bed it would be passion, most certainly, but — she faced this steadily, though it hurt quite horribly — with him there would be, too, curiosity. What is it like having sex with a woman twice my age? And was she going to say to this lover, 'I haven't slept with a man for not far off twenty years? A space of time which seems nothing at all to me (you will have heard, of course, how time accelerates with the years, and might even have experienced the beginnings of this process), but to you it will seem very long, almost two- thirds of your life.' Not even she — whose careless frankness in matters of love had more than once done her harm — would say that to a man. Yet she would be thinking it: It is twenty years since I held a man in my arm
s. For the first time in her life she would ask to have the light off, while knowing there would be that moment — this went with his character, which was impulsive, impetuous, and sensual — when he would switch on the light to see this body he wanted. And — who knew? — perhaps the ageing body would turn him on. (What turned people on was, obviously, not easily predicted.) But did she want that? Really? She, who had been (she now saw, with astonishment at what she had taken for granted) so confident that she had never felt a second's anxiety about what a man might see as he caressed, kissed, held… where was her pride? But the thought of his arms banished pride; she had only to think of the look in his eyes, the immediate sweetness of their intimacy… she wanted him, all right, everything she could imagine, even if the experience was bound to include the moment when the light went oh and that quick — because tactful — and curious stare encompassed her body. And even now she could not prevent herself muttering: It's a damn sight better than most bodies you see around… these violent exchanges with herself were wearing her out. She kept almost dropping off to sleep from the excessive dragging fatigue of conflict, and yet she was as afraid of going to sleep as she had been in Belles Rivieres, because of what she would find in her sleep.

  The company assembled in the theatre area to see the new amenities. Five hundred chairs crammed the space where people had stood or strolled or sat on grass. The great trees, the shrubs under them, the flowers massed around the stage, the grass, seemed surfeited with that summer's sun, and Julie's face and Molly's and Susan's, as Julie, appeared everywhere. The new building, just finished, could only dismay on a first viewing. Well-used buildings seemed inhabited: you enter welcoming or neutral rooms and spaces. While the exterior of this place seemed concerned to make as little of a statement as possible, was surrounded by screening shrubs, some newly planted, the interior was bleak, grey, echoing, and each room was a vacuum.

  In two hours' time would be the dress rehearsal, and the company would have to act with confidence, though they had not performed in this setting before, but they assured each other the experience in Belles Rivieres would see them through and the new players would find themselves supported. And it was only a rehearsal, with an invited audience. At seven everyone went to the big house, where Elizabeth and Norah had a buffet supper for them. The two women stood behind tables in a room that could have given hospitality to players and musicians any time during the last four centuries. They were enjoying this role of theirs, serving the Muse, or Muses. They wore smart dresses under aprons, explaining the amenities of the house, playing both hostess and servant, while welcoming so many people and serving food adapted to this hot evening. They did not say why Stephen was absent. The host was not there.

  Sarah was waiting for him. So was Susan, for while she stood chatting nicely over the plate she was eating from, her eyes sped continually to the big doors behind Norah and Elizabeth, which admitted girls bearing more dishes from the kitchens, or to the big door leading out to the garden. Not until the meal was nearly over did Stephen arrive. A small and unremarkable door to the interior of the house opened, and he stood there, an authoritative presence, though he had meant, it seemed, to appear unnoticed. Susan sped him a look over her plate and, when she was sure he had seen her, let her lids fall, with an effect of obedience. Stephen sent Sarah a glance like a wink, but then looked long and sombrely at Susan. He picked up a plate, was filling it with this and that, but absent-mindedly, and then Susan was beside him.

  Sarah stood across the room, a glass of wine in her hand, and watched the scene. She was so pretty, that girl… lovely… so young… just imagine she takes it all for granted. Just look at her: she intends to shoot arrows into every part of him, and yet at the same time she is full of uncertainty and forcing herself to stand her ground, looking up at him. If he addresses one rejecting word at her she'll melt away. Well, make the most of it, my dear one, Sarah addressed Susan, or Julie, in a wash of emotion that made her want to embrace Susan and Stephen together, as if they were all here to celebrate a marriage or sing an epithalamium… what nonsense that she was so afflicted by these disproportionate emotions. She turned from watching the pair and found Henry beside her. He had been watching her watch Stephen, for now he muttered, and there was no joke about it, 'I'm getting jealous of Stephen.' Her abasement before youth was such that she at once thought, He is in love with Susan, and daggers of ice splintered in her heart, but then she saw it was not so and could have wept with delight, because it was she, Sarah, he was jealous of. And so she laughed, far too much, and he said, put out, 'I don't see why it's so funny.'

  'So you don't know why it is funny, no, you don't know why it is so funny,' she derided, her face six inches from his, as Susan's was from Stephen's. He grimaced, as if from a mouthful of unexpectedly sour food, and said 'Sarah,' reproachful and low. They stood beside each other, just touching. Bliss, well mixed with every kind of regret, was making itself available in unlimited quantities. At that moment Sarah was not envying the girl who stood admiring Stephen with looks that said, whether she knew it or not, 'Take me, take me.' Well, everyone had a bedroom on the same floor. It was inconceivable to Sarah that Henry would not come to hers that night, while she knew he would not, because his wife would soon be here.

  Then it was time to go into the evening sunlight for the dress rehearsal. The cast disappeared into the new building, Henry with them.

  Stephen and Sarah walked together towards the chairs, now filling with the audience.

  He quoted, 'When a man is really in love he looks insufferably silly.'

  She said: 'But: Love is the noblest frailty of the mind.'

  'How kind you are, Sarah.'

  'It has not occurred to you that since I am in love, and quite appallingly, I am trying to cheer myself up?'

  'I've already told you that I am so much of an egoist I only care about your being in love because I have a companion in misfortune.'

  'He that loveth is devoid of all reason. But: One hour of downright love is worth a lifetime of dully living on.'

  'Do you believe that, Sarah? I don't think I do. The way I feel now I'd give a good deal to be dully living on.'

  'Ah, but you're forgetting: the poet was talking about love. Not grief. After all, it is possible to be in love without wishing you were dead.'

  'I suppose I was forgetting that.'

  He went off to see the new building in use, and she sat down discreetly at the back, keeping an empty seat for whoever would choose to sit in it. Just behind her, a pink mallow spread branches where flowers perched like silk-paper butterflies. Beside it grew a yellow rose. All around spread the lively green of the lawn. It was all so charming, so balanced, so English, this setting for the new production. But Julie could never have prospered here in this sun, on this soil. And here they could not expect what no one had planned for in France: the hundreds crowding up through the pines, and the turkey oaks and the cedars and the olives and the untamed rocks, like spies or thieves — the effect that had given Julie Vairon in France its special charm.

  It began. The four young officers in their glamorous uniforms (there were three extras now, justified and paid for by success) stepped up onto the stage, where the two women waited. But these were not the mother and daughter of a few weeks before. This Julie seemed to flash and flame. Sally had not put on the flesh she needed to be the stately matron. The scarlet dress had been taken in, and she had been padded out, but she was tall, quite slender, and this gave her admonitions and exhortations to her daughter an edge of rivalry, for it was impossible to believe the young officers did not find her as attractive as her daughter. Interesting, but not what had been intended.

  Otherwise it all went on as before. Paul courted Julie to the accompaniment of the insipid ballad. Sylvie Vairon wept as her plans for her daughter were swept away by passion. The cicadas were absent, but a thrush sang from a hawthorn as the lovers fled. Then, the south of France, because the programme said it was. No, there was no doubt Julie did better
on that warm red soil, in the southern forest. It was not that the tale became bathos, though these sad loves had to balance on that edge, rather that the English setting itself seemed a criticism of the girl. In the south of France, Martinique was only a thought or a sea's breath away, but here it was a tropical island, with associations of Captain Cook and South Sea hedonism (never mind that it was the wrong ocean), and Julie and her mother could only have the look of misplaced Victorians, just as the sentimental ballad at once earned appreciative laughter because of associations that had nothing to do with Julie. Who in this audience had not had grandparents or great-grandparents (remembered perhaps because of yellowing sheet music in a drawer or 78 records) attentive around a piano where some young lady played the 'Indian Love Lyrics' or 'The Road to Mandalay'? In Belles Rivieres the girl was at odds with her society, certainly, but she was a not too distant cousin of Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Genlis, a daughter of George Sand; but here the passionate girl had to evoke comparisons with the Brontes, though their lives seemed for ever shrouded in grey rain. This audience was not lost in the tale like the other audience, crowding in the forests where the story had happened, the sounds of the river filling pauses in the music when the cicadas did not.

  Henry slipped into the seat beside her and at once muttered, 'It's a flop.'

  'Nonsense,' said reliable Sarah. 'It's different, that's all.'

  'Oh yes, you can say that. My God, it's different.'

  During the third act a calm northern twilight distanced the tale, the unearthly insinuations of Julie's late music filled the spaces between the trees. Somewhere close, blackbirds sang goodbye to the day. The moon, in its last quarter, rose up over the black trees on a high arc, a mildewed wafer with a decayed edge, but as they turned away from the sun, it was a golden moon, only a little asymmetrical, that shone conventionally on Julie's death. Then starlings swooped squealing about the house that held up its many chimneys dark into the sequined sky, and Henry said — but he was feeling better — that he was going to claim extra money for unforeseen stage effects. 'And danger money too,' he murmured, his lips at her ear, and for the space of a second they were in the place of sweet intimacy that knows nothing of grief. Then the applause began, enthusiastic but not wild, as in France.