Wheels within Wheels

by Alec Waugh

  “I think life is lonely.”

  She looked at him pensively: half-opened her mouth as if she were going to speak: then changed her mind.

  “As soon as I heard who you were, I insisted on your being asked here. I meant it when I said that that wasn’t going to be the last time we saw one another.”

  There was a pause. He did not know what reply to make that would not be either obvious or coy.

  “I’m so tired of young people,” she went on. “They haven’t an idea in their heads, any of them. Not one original idea. They’ve had certain opinions put into them at college; and they retain those opinions. You know what they’re going to say before they say it. Not that they want to talk, when they’re with a girl. They want to have a good time: to go places, in cars, with pint flasks on their hips. It’s fun; of course it is. But sometimes one wants rather more than that. I do, anyhow.”

  She spoke in a mood he understood. He too had felt that way; had seen himself surrounded by ready-made opinions: a ready-made way of life. He felt sorry for her. It was uncomfortable to feel that way. He would have liked to lead her out of that way of thinking, into another way. But since he had not found that way himself, how could he? Her father was the man, not he, who could have led her. But all that her father could do would be to produce ideas that to her would seem bromidic.

  “You’re different,” she went on. “You’ve thought things out for yourself. You don’t just echo other people. That’s what I like so much about you. You’ve had the courage to be yourself. There isn’t anyone else around me who has. And I’ve got to have some one like you. That’s why I’ve got to see a lot of you. I’m going to, aren’t I? We’re going to see each other plenty, aren’t we?”

  There was in her eyes the puzzled, appealing look of a child; but her mouth was set with the resolve of a woman who knew what she wanted, and meant to have it. One side of Shirley’s nature was moved by the youthfulness and the appeal of her; the other, the weaker side, was fascinated and at the same time repelled by the inner strength. He was frightened: at the same time thrilled, by the sense of fear; in the same way that he had been in the war. He felt alive, vividly, miraculously alive.

  • • • • •

  He was to feel alive in just that way during the weeks when he was to be Julia’s companion constantly: at dances, at tea parties: on the golf course: in the swimming pool: at the country club: at picnics along the Mississippi to Fort Jackson, at the elaborate Sunday dinners at Mrs. Maine’s when the family sat down to the table at three and did not rise till five. No friendship had fascinated him so much.

  His parental side was touched by her reliance on him. The schoolmaster side was absorbed by watching the growth and flowering of an alert intelligence. He lent her books; studied her response to them, explaining to her the points that she had overlooked or misunderstood. He guided her through the mazes of literature and history. Whenever he was not with her, he would find himself thinking of books to recommend to her: of periods of history to suggest to her; of arguments that would explain points they had discussed. He was absorbed in her education as a don becomes absorbed in a favourite pupil. There was all that to their relationship, and that was much. But it was not all.

  Hour after hour in the company of a young and vivid girl involved more than mental stimulus. Shirley had the good sense to realize that. “I’ve got to be careful not to make love to her,” he said to himself in the beginning. Later on: “I must be careful not to let her see I’m dying to make love to her.” Then, later: “I can’t stand this any more. I must go out of her life before she realizes: before everything gets impossibly involved.”

  He did not love her, fond though he was of her. He was not in love with her, profoundly though she attracted him. It was just the strain of being in her company that was too great. His blood grew hot when she was near. He had to clench his fists to prevent himself from touching her. She was lovely, and cool, and slim. It was beyond the power of a human being to stand calm-blooded at her side. “I’ve got to go,” he thought.

  He could solve the problem as he had solved, or rather, evaded, so many others: by a ship upon high seas. And there was a ship, he noticed, sailing for Curaçoa. Years back, he had lingered through a sun-soaked autumn in the high hills south of Sourabaya. It would be interesting to compare the Dutch East with the Dutch West Indies.

  “Julia,” he announced one day, “I’m going away on Friday.”

  They were on a picnic; half way between New Orleans and Fort Jackson. They were lying side by side on their stomachs on a high green levee with the broad brown river turgidly swirling past them. The sun was shining, mistily, over a grey-blue mist-hidden sky. From below them, out of sight, came the voices of the other picnickers.

  “You’re going away! Where?”

  “Curaçoa.”

  “For how long?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “For a long time possibly?”

  “Possibly.”

  She looked him steadily in the face. He had expected an outburst: surprise, tears, pleading, recrimination; but not this quiet interrogation. It was infinitely more formidable.

  “Why are you going?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “When did you decide?”

  “I’ve been thinking for some time I ought to be making another trip somewhere.”

  “I see.”

  Her eyes did not waver.

  “What kind of trouble are you in? Is it debt?”

  “I’m not in trouble.”

  She said nothing. He waited for her to speak. It was she usually who filled their pauses. But she remained silent, looking at him. For the first time in her company he felt ill at ease. “This is ridiculous,” he thought. “She’s only a child.”

  “I went to Java when I was going round the world,” he said. “I saw a certain amount of the Dutch colonial system. I was … well, it would be amusing, I thought. After all … the West Indies….”

  He was stammering; not expressing himself clearly; repeating himself; uncertain of his thought; baffled and disconcerted by that direct, steady gaze. “It’s absurd to be upset by a child,” he thought: “someone who was in the nursery when I was in the trenches.” But the confident, explanatory sentences would not come.

  “It won’t do,” she said. “That’s not the reason why you’re going. You’d better tell me the real one, hadn’t you?”

  Her quiet power irritated him; as his own incompetence irritated him. If she wanted the truth then she could have it.

  He spoke brutally, abruptly.

  “If you must know, it’s because you’re too infernally attractive.”

  The serious look went from her face; her eyes brightened, and grew wide.

  “Darling, does that mean that you’re in love with me?”

  He was not in love with her. She was sweet and supple and he wanted her. But for certain feelings there are only certain words.

  “Yes, yes, if you must have it.”

  “Darling, if you knew how I’d been longing to hear you tell me that!”

  She had lifted herself upon her elbow. In her white throat a pulse was throbbing. The sharp points of her breasts were stretched against her blouse. Her head was flung back. Her lips were parted. “I must keep my head,” he thought. “Whatever happens I must keep my head.”

  “Silly,” she said, and her voice trembled. There was a rich note in it that he had never heard before. “Don’t you realize that I’m crazy about you too?” As she spoke, she leaned towards him. His arms were about her suddenly. Her face was lifted under his; her mouth was a cool fountain against his thirst; a sudden fire along his veins. His hands tightened on her shoulders. They were soft and firm and rounded. They bent back beneath his urgency. Pliant, with a yielding strength. His eyes were closed, the breath wavered in his throat. “I mustn’t,” he thought. “I mustn’t. She’s a child. It would be a sin. She doesn’t know what fire she’s playing with.”

  His arms
relaxed their hold on her. But instead of falling back from him on the coarse rough grass, she had nestled herself within his elbow, her head tucked against his shoulder. She had taken his hand; was playing with the fingers; and,

  “Darling,” she was saying, “if you knew how I’ve been longing for this moment. I thought it would never come. I thought you didn’t care about me. I’ve cried myself to sleep night after night. But it’s all right now. Darling, I’m so happy.”

  His mind dazed, his blood still fired, he listened to her, half comprehending. “This must stop. This can’t go on,” he thought. “I shouldn’t have done that. It isn’t fair to her. I must stop this, now; then go away.” But it was hard when his hand was held in hers; when her fingers were running caressingly over his; when her head was cradled in his shoulder; her hair brushing against his cheek; with the scent of carnations rising from it; with the warm smell of the earth beneath him and the sun shining on his face, the brown river swinging to the crescent city. It was not easy but it must be said.

  “We are going to have such grand times together,” she was saying. “We are, aren’t we, John?”

  Taking her hand in his, he shook it in the way that a parent shakes the hand of a child it is instructing.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “I’m not that kind of person.”

  “How do you mean, you’re not that kind of person? I should have thought you were very much that kind of person.”

  She laughed mischievously; so that he could not help joining in.

  “Idiot. I meant that I’m not a boy; who goes out on petting parties.”

  “I never thought you were. If you were, I shouldn’t have any use for you.”

  “I mean that I’ve got to be serious or nothing.”

  “Darling, that’s what I mean you to be: serious, that’s to say. The first time I saw you I said ‘I must see him again to make sure if he is the man I mean to marry.’ The second time I said to myself, ‘Yes, it’s all right. He is.’”

  • • • • •

  It took Shirley a considerable time to realize that Julia was serious. He had never pictured himself in terms of marriage; and consequently had never imagined that anyone else would think of him in terms of it. He had, in his opinion, nothing to offer a woman of his own class. He had no wish for a woman out of any other. He had inherited the American view that man was the provider. He had failed to adopt the democratic American view that one woman was as good as any other. He believed in breeding; in human beings as in blood stock. He would not want his children mothered by the granddaughter of a Hamburg dockhand. He had abandoned along with his ambitions, the thoughts of marriage that are concerned with ambition. He saw himself as the full stop to a sentence; the end of a line. Since he had lost faith, he had no right to perpetuate himself. He had in consequence never sought out when he was younger the company of such young women as, had he stuck to his career, his family would have welcomed. Romance, which for him had been casual and intermittent, had been confined for the most part to casual encounters on ships, and in such light-hearted pleasure grounds as Deauville, Cannes and Venice. It was for this reason that he had fought against his gathering attraction towards Julia. He was not a person to be taken seriously, whereas she was.

  The fact that she had taken him seriously, demanded on his part an entire readjustment of his plans and values. His first thought was, “But this is hopeless. I’m not the kind of person that she wants. She should be marrying someone of her own age; someone with the future ahead of him; the future they are both to share. Someone like….”

  And there he paused. He began to wonder whom it was that she should marry: choosing and discarding one by one the various young men of her own world, that her own world would class as eligible. With each one of them there was something wrong; some mental or physical deficiency. In this way or in that they were obtuse, brutal, weak, uncouth. It was easy enough to assemble a collection of qualities, characteristics and abilities and say “That’s the right husband for her.” But that would be to create an imaginary, an ideal man. Such a man did not exist; or if he did, one did not meet him.

  A woman had not so much to say “I want somebody like this” as to make her choice among the half-dozen or so men who were available. Which was why later marriages were often happier than earlier ones. In an early marriage a girl tended to imagine that her lover was the ideal and was shocked to discover that he was not. A woman marrying later chose the least unsuitable with the resolve to make the best of it; often to discover that the object of her choice was less deficient in qualities than she had feared.

  The problem, Shirley decided, was not so much was he the right person for Julia as was there available anyone that would be better. Looked at from that point of view the question was very different. Shirley knew well enough what were his deficiencies as a husband for a young American girl. But he had certain definite things to offer: he had health, he was strong and fit, he was reasonably good-looking. He knew how to wear his clothes, he talked well. He was intelligent. He could make himself agreeable at a party. He played golf and bridge reasonably well. He had a good seat upon a horse. He would be, that was to say, a credit to her socially. He would fit in well. He had nothing tangible to offer in the way of position. To be Mrs. John Shirley would confer no honour. His income was not large. It sufficed for him. But it could not support a wife and family. She would have to rely upon her own resources. They were considerable, however, and should increase. They were ample, certainly, for a reasonably organized existence. And in the organization of that existence he would certainly be of considerable use to her.

  He was not a child; he had learnt much of the art of living. He knew the things money could and the things it could not buy. He had the European’s contempt for American display; for the reduction of all things to that lowest common denominator, a dollar basis. He could discourage her from the extravagances by which so many American fortunes were dissipated. He would be able to guide her there, as he would be able to guide her across others of life’s passages; better, very likely, than those who would be too busy furthering their own careers to bother themselves over a woman’s problems; a danger that was responsible for so many divorces, so many discontented wives.

  He did not love her; not in the way that Hollywood pictured love. Nor, probably, did she love him in that way. They were attracted by one another, they had the kinship, the confederacy of revolt. It was because he was “different” that she had turned to him. But such an attraction, such a kinship, might be a better basis for marriage than the devouring, possessive, idolizing passion for which youth craved. It might be that he would make Julia a better husband than the eager youths who watched the tapping of tape machines, whose lives were limited by the rise and fall of stocks; who were preparing their blinkered advance upon the large villas, the large cars that represented twentieth century success.

  • • • • •

  In his first thoughts he considered the problem solely from Julia’s point of view. It was, he considered, the more important point of view. Marriage was far more a woman’s business than a man’s. To a man it was more often than not something to be taken in his stride. If a woman was happy in her marriage, she should be able to make her husband happy. Whereas a man’s happiness in marriage, because it might occupy so small a part of his attention, might leave a woman in her profounder instincts—a man’s profounder instincts being expressed in his career—foiled and discontented. In his own case, since he had no career this did not quite hold good. His personal life was his whole life in the way that a woman’s was. And for him marriage would be as much a reversal of a routine as it could be for any woman. It would mean an end of vagabondage; a return to the conditions of formal life; a reacceptance of life itself, since parentage was an affirmation of one’s belief in life. He would have a new setting and new interests. To what extent was he fitted for, to what extent would he welcome, such a setting and such interests?

  To his surprise, he found himse
lf excited by the prospect. He had a feeling of life starting afresh; combined with a sense of emptiness of the life he had led before. He felt, the last thing that he expected to feel, that he had refused to believe people did feel outside the page of women’s magazines, that he had a chance to make something of his life at last. “Saved by a good woman’s love,” he scoffed. But it was true, none the less.

  • • • • •

  It was not, however, without much hesitation, much deliberation, much testing of the ground to see if it would bear his weight that he allowed himself to accept the situation. He spoke laughingly to her; but the matter of his talk was serious.

  “Being married to me isn’t going to be a children’s dance,” he warned her. “It’s not a party that you can come to when you like and leave when you like. Once married to me you’ll have to stay married.”

  “Darling, that’s why I’m marrying you.”

  “It’s no good your coming to me in three years time and saying, ‘I’ve fallen in love with such a heavenly man. Divorce me, please.’”

  “Angel, I’d not want to be saying that.”

  “It won’t be any use your saying it, if you do.”

  On that point he was resolved. He was not going to make a modern marriage. He was not going to form the mental corollary to the wedding service: “As soon as either of us is tired, we’re free to go.” He had no use for the American ideal of chivalry by which men allowed themselves to be divorced the moment their wives showed a preference for some other man. He believed those moments of infatuation which hysterical women described as “the real thing” were transitory, and had only to be ignored to die. If he was going to marry, it was to accept marriage whole-heartedly. He did not mean in four or five years time to find himself back where he was now, with the encumbrance of a child or children who had no real home and would start life handicapped.

  It was this resolve that carried him through the two interviews with Julia’s family: with old Mrs. Maine and Hugh. They were each in their way difficult. His interview with Mrs. Maine came first. She sat very stiff and erect in her high-backed chair, with her little grey shawl about her shoulders, and the grey worsted of her knitting between her fingers. She knitted as she talked, the bones clicking like staccato syllables. There was something very purposeful and relentless about the ceaseless industry; something hypnotic about the movement of the needles. One watched, fascinated. As one fell under the spell of her movements, so did one fall under the spell of her arguments. The one helped the other. One found oneself agreeing because one was too drowsy to protest. Shirley remembered how, as a boy, he had given way to her persuasiveness. He felt very much like a boy now as he sat there listening while she talked.