Love, Again

by Doris May Lessing Little Dorrit

  She was greedy for sweet things, wanted to eat, had to stop herself if she didn't want to buy a complete new wardrobe.

  Words that had the remotest connection with love, romance, passion, she believed twisted the same nerve as that weakened by music, so that phrases or words or stories she normally would have found stupid brought tears to her eyes. When she was able to read at all — for it was hard to concentrate — she nervously watched for them, these places on the page, able to see them coming half a page before, and she skipped them, forcing her eyes to bypass or neutralize them.

  She bought beauty products which a sense of the ridiculous forbade her to use. She even thought of having her face lifted — an idea that in her normal condition could only make her smile.

  She began to make a blouse, of a kind she had not worn for years, but left it unfinished.

  Sometimes a conversation, apparently without any intention by her, acquired sexual undertones, so that every word of an exchange could be interpreted obscenely.

  But worst of all was her irritability; she knew if she could not outlive it, she was heading straight towards the paranoia, the rages, the bitterness, of disappointed old age.

  Stephen cut short his visits and came to London to see Sarah. They walked about and around streets and parks and even went to the theatre. They left some comedy at the first interval, saying that normally they would have enjoyed it.

  Susan had written to him. It was a love letter that offered everything. 'I shall never love anyone as I love you.'

  'I swear it's that damned music,' said Sarah.

  'I was hoping it was because of my intrinsic qualities. But I suppose it does make things easier to stick a label on them.'

  This was the same need to snap and snarl that so often possessed Sarah.

  'Sorry,' said Stephen, 'I simply don't recognize myself.'

  A week later she telephoned him at his home and at first thought she had got the wrong number and had reached someone whom she had awakened. She could hear breathing, and then a mumbling or muttering which could be his voice, and she said, 'Stephen?' Silence, and more difficult breathing, and he said, or rather slurred, her name. 'Sarah… Sarah?' 'Stephen, are you ill? Shall I come?' He did not answer. She went on talking, even pleading, urging, for a long time, but while he did not put down the receiver, he did not answer. She was talking into silence, and her own voice was sounding ridiculous, because she was making the reassuring optimistic remarks that always need an interlocutor similarly cheerful to carry conviction. At last she felt he was not listening. Perhaps he had even gone to sleep, or walked away. Now she was full of panic, like a bird trapped in a room. She had the number of the telephone in the kitchen at Queen's Gift, used for domestic matters, but there was no reply. She sat for a while in indecision, feeling that she ought to go to him at once, but telling herself that if he had wanted her to come he would have said so. Besides, why did she always assume he had no one else to turn to? In the end she took a taxi to Paddington, then the first possible train, then a taxi to the house. She asked to be put down outside the gates, for her sudden uninvited appearance at the house itself would seem too dramatic. The great gates had been newly painted glossy black with gold touches, like the 'highlights' hairdressers use to enliven a hair-do. She went in through an unobtrusive little door in a brick arch at the side. This was like an allegory of something, but she could not think what. In her present condition, signs and symbols, portents and presages and omens, comparisons apt and silly, formed themselves out of a voice overheard in the street, a dog barking, a glass slipping out of her hand and smashing loudly on a hard surface. Her irritation at this unwanted and insipid commentary on everything she did contributed to her bad temper. Now her heart was racing, for she was possessed with the need to hurry, while she felt her trip here to be absurd. There seemed to be no one about. Posters for Ariadne on Naxos were everywhere, and Julie's face was nowhere. Of course: they were trying out this opera. A small cast and delicious music, Elizabeth said. Where was Elizabeth? Not in the vegetable garden, nor with the horses, nor anywhere near the house. And what would Sarah say when she did find her? 'Look, Elizabeth, I had to come, I was worried about Stephen.' (I am worried about your husband.) Elizabeth must at least have noticed that Stephen was — well, what was he at this moment? Worse: he was much worse. After wandering about for some minutes, feeling like a thief or at least an intruder, she saw Stephen sitting on a bench by himself, in full sunlight. He sat hunched, legs apart, hands loosely dangling and folded between them, like tools he had forgotten to put away. His head was lowered, and his face was dripping sweat. A hundred yards away stood the great ash tree, James's friend. Under it was a bench, in deep shade. She sat down by him and said, 'Stephen… ' No response at all. Right, she thought, this is it: I know this one, I've seen it before. This is the real thing, the Big D (as its victims jocularly call it when not in its power), it is the authentic hallmarked one-hundred-percent depression: he's gone over the edge. 'Stephen, it's Sarah.' After a long time, at least a minute, he lifted his head, and she found herself the object of — no, not an inspection, or even a recognition. It was a defensive look. 'Stephen, I've come because I'm worried about you.' His eyes lowered themselves, and he sat staring at the ground. After another interval, he said, or mumbled, in a hurried swallowing way, 'No use, Sarah, no good.' He was occupied deep within himself, he was busy with an inner landscape, and did not have the energy for the outside world. She knew this because she sometimes underwent a much less total version of this condition. She was absent-minded, heard words long after they were spoken, felt them as an intrusion, had to force herself to pay attention, and then spoke hurriedly to get the irrelevance over with. At meetings at The Green Bird, in conversations with colleagues, she had to make herself come up out of depths of an inner preoccupation with pain actually to hear what they said, then frame words appropriate for an answer. But at least she could do it, and she was getting better. Stephen's state was worse by far than anything she herself had known, and the panic she felt deepened.

  What should she do? As a beginning, get him into the shade. She said, 'Stephen, get up, you must get out of the sun.' He seemed surprised, but her hand at his elbow prompted him up and then, slowly, to the cool under the ash tree. His clothes were soaked with sweat.

  What he needed was someone to sit by him all day and all night, bring him cups of this and that, cool drinks, tea, a sandwich of which he might perhaps eat one mouthful, while she — or someone — talked, saying anything to remind him he was in a world with other people in it, and these people did not all live in a world of suffering. No one performed this service for her, but then she was not and never had been anything like as ill as he was now. Her mind approached carefully, and in controlled terror, the thought that if the pain she felt was a minor thing compared to what he felt, then what he felt must be unendurable. For she had often thought she could not bear what she felt.

  She went on sitting there beside him. She wiped the sweat off his face. She felt his hands to make sure he was not now chilled by the coolness under the tree. Sometimes she said, 'Stephen, it's Sarah.' She made casual and even random remarks, trying to keep his exterior landscape in place: 'Look, the horses are racing each other in that field.' 'That's going to be a pretty good crop of apples.' He did not look at her or respond. Not a hundred yards away was where she had seen him walking and talking with the neighbour Joshua. Now, that was Stephen, surely? That was what he was? A competent and serious man in command of his life? Again her emotions reversed, and she felt ridiculous being here at all.

  After a couple of hours she said, 'Stephen, I'm going to get you a drink.' She went to the kitchen, directed there by women's voices. Shirley and Alison were making pastry tartlets for that evening's Ariadne on Naxos. They wore scarlet plastic aprons too small for their ample bodies. These two amiable, infinitely wholesome and reassuring women worked on either side of a table where heaps of flour, dishes full of eggs, and bowls of butter cubed in
to ice water made a scene of plenty, and they were giggling because Shirley had flour on her cheek, and Alison, trying to wipe it off, had brushed it onto Shirley's plump golden plait.

  'Oh, sorry, Mrs Durham,' said Shirley. 'We're just being silly today.'

  'I'd like to take Mr Ellington-Smith a drink,' said Sarah.

  'All right. What? Orange juice? Apple juice? Pineapple juice? James likes that. Mango juice -1 like that.' And Shirley broke again into giggles.

  'Oh, Shirl,' said Alison, 'I'm going to lock you up if no one else does. Help yourself, Mrs Durham. It's all in the big fridge.'

  Sarah chose orange juice, thinking vitamin C was good for depression.

  'Do you know where Mrs Ellington-Smith is?'

  'She and Norah were around not long ago. I think they went upstairs.'

  As Sarah left she heard the two young women start up again: giggles and teasing. It occurred to Sarah she was thinking of them as if they were two new-laid free-range eggs; and that she didn't want to know if one was a single parent and the other looked after an invalid mother.

  Stephen had not moved a muscle. She said to him, 'Stephen, please drink this. You've got to drink in this weather.' She set the glass down on the bench, but he did not take it; she held it to his lips, but he did not drink.

  She said, 'I'm going off for a little, but I'll be back.' She had to find Elizabeth. If not her, then Norah. It was mid- afternoon. She went up the steps at the front of the house, where Henry had stood looking after her on that last morning, and into the hall, and then into the room where the company had had their buffet meals, and through the room where the family ate informal meals, and then into the back part of the house, not to the main staircase, but the one where she had seen Stephen's James stand to gaze out at the tree as if it were a friend. She went on up past that landing to a room that Elizabeth used as an office. She had to force herself to knock, because she was afraid of Elizabeth: not her anger, but her incomprehension. And what was she, Sarah, going to say? 'I'm worried about Stephen — you know, your husband.' And what would Elizabeth say? 'Thank you so much, Sarah. It is kind of you.'

  No reply. She heard voices. Yes, they were Elizabeth's and Norah's voices. It occurred to her that not only Elizabeth's office but her sitting room and her and Norah's bedroom were up here. She had never been into these rooms. There was a wide corridor with rooms off it, a pleasant corridor with old-fashioned floral wallpaper. It was dimly lit from a skylight and from the tall window halfway up, or down, the stairs. The scene was domestic, intimate.

  She stopped halfway along the corridor. The strength was going from her legs. She leaned against the wall. Elizabeth and Norah were laughing. There was a silence, which Sarah was hearing as Stephen might, then more laughter, loud and conspiratorial, and the two voices were talking, and they went on in an intimate murmur, not from the office, or the sitting room, but from the bedroom. It was no use saying that Elizabeth and Norah often laughed, that women like laughing and make occasions and excuses to laugh, that often these two seemed like schoolgirls, enjoying babyish jokes. They laughed again. A small cold horror was invading Sarah, because she was hearing it through Stephen's ears. It sounded suggestive and ignorant and even cruel. But of course they were not laughing at Stephen. They were probably laughing at some small silly thing. They lay in each other's arms on the top of the covers, because of this hot afternoon, or side by side, and they laughed as the two women downstairs giggled at the flour on Shirley's hair. But the laughter hurt, squeezed her heart, as if it were her they mocked… if so, fair enough; she was a traditional figure of fun. Why did she take it for granted they did not ridicule Stephen? Perhaps they did. Stephen had said he avoided this part of the house when he knew Elizabeth and Norah were up here.

  They must not, absolutely must not, find her here. She crept down the stairs. She stood on the back steps, making and discarding plans, such as that she would put Stephen into a taxi and take him back to London. She walked slowly through the heat towards the ash tree. When she turned a corner, a brick pillar tapestried with variegated ivy, she saw the empty bench and the untouched orange juice, where she had put it.

  She called once — 'Stephen' — in a low voice. Then she went fast, half running, along paths, past fields, looking for him, thinking, I'll see him now… I'll see him when I get to that tree. But the benches they had sat on were all empty, and the glade where the shooting lesson had gone on did not now have a post sticking up in the middle. It was only a sunny hollow patched with shade from old trees. It was much later than she had thought, getting on for five. Soon the evening's audience would start arriving. She thought she might write notes for Elizabeth and Norah and leave them with the girls in the kitchen. Like this?: Dear Elizabeth, I came down because I was worried about Stephen. Perhaps you should… Or: Dear Norah, please don't be surprised I am approaching you and not Elizabeth, but I cannot help feeling that she…

  In the end she walked out through the big gates, then along the road, caught a bus and then a train home.

  That night she rang Stephen. Never had she felt more ridiculous and she had to force herself to do it. It was because on the one hand there were all those acres, the house, his life, his wife; there were his brothers and friends everywhere, his children, their schools, where he had himself been… against this mesh, this web, this spread and proliferation of responsibilities and privileges, she had to offer only: let me bring you here and look after you. But this sensible offer did not get made, because when he answered his voice sounded normal. It was slow, certainly, but he did not mumble, or lapse into interminable silences. He understood what she was saying and assured her that he would look after himself. 'I know you were here today. Did you come to visit me? If I was rude, I am sorry.' She told herself, Perhaps I am exaggerating it all.

  Two days later Norah rang to say she was telephoning for Elizabeth: Stephen had killed himself, making it seem an accident while shooting rabbits. The rabbits are very bad again, you know. They got into the new garden — the Elizabethan garden — and ate everything to the ground.'

  Sarah went down for the funeral service, which was in the local church. Several hundred people crowded church and churchyard. It occurred to her that Stephen and she had never discussed what they did or did not believe, or what he felt about religion, but this scene was certainly in key with what he was: the old church — eleventh century, some of it — the Church of England funeral service, these country-living people, some of whose names were on the church walls and the gravestones.

  She went back to the house for the usual drinks and sandwiches. Every room she went into was crammed, including the kitchen, where Shirley and Alison were at work, both tear-stained. She glimpsed the three boys — pale and sick- looking — across a room, with Norah, but otherwise did not see one face she knew. There was a heavy, gloomy, and even irritable atmosphere. Let's get this over with. Condemnation. These people had passed judgement on Stephen and found him guilty. Sarah was accusing them of letting him down. She did not like them, or what she saw of them today. These are people — that is, the English upper classes — at their best at balls, formal occasions, festivals, when dressed in ball gowns and tiaras, the men handsome in their uniforms and their rows of medals and orders. But funerals are not their talent. They wore clumsy dark clothes and were graceless and uncomfortable in them.

  When the crowds began to thin, Elizabeth asked Sarah into a gloomy room that had a billiard table in it and, on the walls, every kind of weapon, from pikes and arquebuses to World War I revolvers. Elizabeth stood with her back to racks holding shotguns and rifles, with a glass of whisky in her hand. She looked heavy and commonplace in her black. She probably kept it at the back of a cupboard just for funerals.

  She was blazing with anger, her cheeks scarlet, her swollen eyes glittering.

  'Do sit down, Sarah,' she commanded, sitting down herself and at once getting up again. 'I really am sorry. You are such a cool and collected person… ' She did not say this as
if she thought these were qualities to be admired.

  'Well, actually I am not.'

  'I'm not saying you're not upset about Stephen. I know you were fond of each other. Oh, don't think I mind. No, I don't mind about all that. I never did. What I mind is — it's the utter damnable irresponsibility of it.' Here she collapsed into a chair and energetically blew her nose, wiped her eyes and then her cheeks. But it was no good; the drops that scattered everywhere were distillations of pure rage. 'While the boys are young they'll believe it was an accident. But they are already wondering, I'm sure. It's very bad for children, this kind of thing.' Again she blew her nose. 'Oh, damn it.' She took out a comb, a compact, lipstick, from a black leather handbag as solid as a saddle and good for many funerals yet. She began to make up her face, but tears oozed again, and she gave up. 'We had an agreement. We made promises to each other. This place is a partnership.'

  While it did not seem that Elizabeth needed more than a listener, Sarah attempted, 'But, Elizabeth, don't you see? He wasn't himself.'

  'Of course I see it, but… ' Here she sat silent, sighing, contemplating (for the first time in this commonsensical life of hers?) the possibility that people could be in states of mind where they were not themselves: it was not a mere figure of speech.

  From outside came the sound of cars driving away, the slamming of car doors, the gravel crunching under feet, loud and cheerful voices. 'See you next week.' 'Will you be at Dolly's?'

  'What am I going to do now? Oh yes, I know what you are thinking — that I have Norah. Yes, I do have Norah, and thank God for that. But I can't run this place all by myself, I can't.' And now, overtaken by what sounded like incredulity, she let out a yelp, and down flooded the tears. 'I'm not saying I am going to give up; I don't believe in reneging on responsibility. Oh bloody hell, I can't stop crying. I'm so angry, Sarah, I'm so angry I could… '