An Impossible Marriage

by Pamela Hansford Johnson

  My heart lurched. It is never easy, when one is in love, to face mysterious pieces of paper; when one is also young, it is abominable. In later life we sometimes have the sense to glance at our findings with half-shut eye and half-shut mind, and destroy them before we have formulated a theory. We have learned, in fact, the superiority of uncertainty to certainty. But this day, holding in my hand the note Emilie had discovered in her idle pryings, I felt as if I were waiting for a bomb to explode. I was sick with fear of the future, as if one part of my life had come abruptly to an end long before I had begun to prepare myself. The note looked as though it had been folded and refolded many times. I saw one word— ‘Beloved’. Then another—‘unbearable’. Stiffening my shoulders, drawing a deep breath, I read the rest. It was a short letter, undated, a letter of passionate reproach, to my young standards rather indecent. It was signed ‘W’. It was obvious enough that the writer had been Ned’s mistress.

  Even if he had not mentioned Wanda to me, I should not have been silly enough to imagine that I was the first girl with whom he had been in love; and I think I had been aware enough, in the sensible but unexaminable depths of my thought, that not all his love-affairs were likely to have been as innocent as mine. But his behaviour towards me had been decorous as Leslie’s, and so I had allowed the ridiculous idea to germinate that perhaps (this was a favourite phrase of my mother’s) he had ‘kept himself’ for the girl he meant to marry.

  Now that I knew he had done no such thing I felt betrayed: and I knew a rage of jealousy so swamping that for a second it was like the onset of some physical illness. For I envied Wanda the loss of innocence that made it possible for her to write with such violence. She made me look small to myself, young, silly, laughed at behind my back. She had taken advantage of me: by being ‘bad’, she had made herself far more attractive than I, who was ‘good’. How unfair! How sneaking! I wished I, too, were wild, beautiful, disreputable—for I knew she must be all these things. My innocence seemed to mark me out like a dunce’s cap, and I hated it.

  I sat down on the stairs, folding the horrible letter smaller and smaller, till it was dirtier and more seamed than ever. Why had he been carrying it about with him? When had it been written? I jumped to the conclusion that he must still be seeing her, this dark Helen (Thomas Wolfe supplied the phrase, and by doing so became my enemy) who was trying to lure him back.

  Hearing a door open, I jumped up and raced upstairs to my bedroom. I put the thing on the dressing-table and covered it with the lid of the powder-bowl, so that I should not be able to see it. As I lay face downwards on the bed I thought I heard it uncurl and rustle about in its prison.

  Emilie tapped and coughed. ‘Christine.’

  ‘I’m working,’ I said, on a high, airy, strangled note.

  ‘Dear, I had to let you know. After all, I am responsible for you.’

  ‘It’s not important,’ I shouted.

  Emilie came in; I had just time to sit up. ‘He’s so much older than you—’

  ‘It’s not important, I tell you. It’s all old history.’ I did not believe this.

  ‘Do think what you’re doing, dear! I’m sure you’re too young to marry yet awhile.’ She looked excited and hopeful.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly!’

  ‘That’s rude, dear,’ said Emilie, with the same mild inflection she would have used had I reached across her at the table. She went on.

  ‘You needn’t say anything to him. But you ought to know.’

  I did not mean to say anything to him. I had steeled myself not to. When he came the next evening my manner was light and gay. I accepted his first kiss and avoided a second. I kept the conversation on the general plane, imparting to it a disarming sprightliness. Considering I had wept most of the preceding night and at intervals during the day (thank heavens it was a Sunday, as I could not have indulged myself so healingly at the office), I felt I was doing well. But I could not have been.

  ‘Will you stop whatever game you’re playing?’ he said to me. ‘You won’t deceive a pussy-cat. What’s wrong?’

  I drew out the note and thrust it into his hands, assuring him incoherently that I had only glanced at it (because it had happened to be lying face upwards), that I didn’t know what it was all about, that I didn’t in the least care, that I couldn’t think why men didn’t prefer decent girls, that if he preferred this kind I wouldn’t dream of standing in his way, that I was sure Wanda had been the right person for him really, that she was undoubtedly charming though not quite the type I was used to knowing myself, and that the whole affair was entirely trivial and none of my business.

  ‘Ah, don’t be silly,’ he said. As I tried to move away he gripped my arm, holding me at his side. With his free hand, he uncrumpled the note and stared at it. ‘Oh, that. Where did you get it?’

  ‘It fell.’

  ‘Fell? Where from?’

  ‘Out of your mackintosh.’

  ‘No, it didn’t. Don’t be an ass. You wouldn’t go poking about, so I suppose dear Emilie did. I didn’t know I’d got the thing: I thought I’d lost it.’

  ‘So you’re still seeing her. But, darling, I honestly don’t mind. I’m like that. After all, one’s civilized—’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said Ned, still regarding the note.

  ‘—though I don’t think being civilised necessarily means behaving like a prostitute—’

  ‘Stop it, Chris, stop it. Stop it, darling. Stop it, silly.’

  ‘And if you want to see her—’

  Tearing the note across, he threw it into the hearth.

  ‘Look here, Chris. I told you I had to get rid of Wanda before I even began taking you out. I had this, and a couple of dozen like it, from her in February and March. Then she stopped. This was the last. I stuck it in the pocket of my mack and forgot about it. And as I sent said mack to the cleaners at the end of March, and then forgot it, and then they lost it, and I finally got it back at the beginning of last week, it should be perfectly clear even to you that I have not been seeing Wanda and don’t want to.’

  I do not know why I instantly accepted the story of the missing mackintosh—perhaps it was because I so much wanted to accept it. (It was lucky that I did, for surprisingly enough a chance remark of his mother’s, six months later, proved it to be true.)

  The flood of my relief swept away the old unease at the way Ned would speak of other women— ‘get rid of her’, ‘not been seeing her and don’t want to’ —and I flung my arms around his neck.

  ‘Idiot,’ he said, ‘idiot’ —kissing me. But he was not content until he had made me apologise for my suspicions, had reduced me again to tears, had asked me wasn’t I ridiculous, wasn’t I childish, didn’t I lack faith in him, didn’t I deserve to be sent to Coventry, to be left alone till I had more sense, to be shaken till my teeth rattled—and had made me answer yes to all these things. The reconciliation was exquisite, but I tried not to think about it too closely, for in it was an element of something slightly shabby. I knew I had behaved stupidly: but I knew also that I had behaved as most girls of my age would have done, and that his eagerness to put me still more deeply in the wrong was somehow a disquieting augury for the future.

  ‘But she was your mistress,’ I managed to say, for a moment dragging myself away from him.

  ‘If you want to put it like that.’

  ‘How can one put it?’

  ‘Darling, you must be more sensible. I’m thirty-two. You can’t imagine I’ve lived like a monk.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘And there’s no one but you now, and never will be. You know that? Don’t you? Come on, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me you know it.’

  I told him.

  ‘Now tell me again.’

  I wanted to ask him what she looked like, ask h
im to describe her beauty for me; but the scene had turned into one of those which, however engulfing in their delights, may suddenly fill the participants with an instinct to bring them to an end. So I did not ask.

  That night, as I undressed for bed, I caught sight of Look Homeward Angel, lying with some other books on the dressing-table. I took it up, ran downstairs with it, and locked it in one of the sideboard drawers. I could not bear the sight of it.

  This had been our first significant quarrel. The second, however, was far more grave and infinitely more my own fault. This is the one I do not find it so easy to write about.

  The idea was put into my mind by Mrs. Skelton. It was near the end of June, and for several weeks Ned had been noticeably silent about the progress of his business. Once or twice, when I rang up his office, I failed even to find him there. It appeared that he was spending a good deal of time playing tennis and squash, both of which, he told me when I cautiously mentioned the subject, were a help in his kind of enterprise. You got to know the right kind of people.

  One evening, when I arrived at Maddox Street for dinner with the Skeltons, I found only Mrs. Skelton at home. Her husband was away, inspecting a country property, and Ned was unusually late.

  I asked his mother how she thought things were going. She gave her huge, Gallic shrug, poured herself another drink. ‘Don’t imagine my son talks to me. He may talk to his father, but I doubt it. If he did, I’d be the last to hear.’

  I persisted: was Ned doing well? I had been worried.

  ‘Has he ever done well at anything?’ she demanded rhetorically. ‘No staying-power. Nor has his father. We’d be in the gutter if it weren’t for Finnigan.’ This was a new name to me, and I did not question it. I learned later that it was the name of Horace Skelton’s head clerk.

  ‘No staying-power,’ she repeated, ‘no self-confidence. Selfish. Bone-selfish.’ She leaned back as if in satisfaction; the lids, violet-ribbed, shell-shaped, shut slowly down upon her large, full eyes. ‘You’ll have to take him in hand.’ She shrugged again. ‘Not that it’s likely to be any good. Tell him to do one thing and he does the opposite.’

  Now it struck me that the most clever thing I could do to help Ned was to take advantage of this countersuggestibility. I wanted him to succeed; I wanted us to be married as quickly as possible, for at the back of my mind I was frightened to risk a long engagement. Also—this on a pettier level—I wanted an engagement-ring. There had been some comment from Mr. Baynard that I was not yet wearing one: but when I timidly mentioned this to Ned he replied with unexpected and dismaying surliness, ‘I didn’t know I had to spring a ring right away.’ The phrase stuck in my mind. I hated him for using it; it had a touch of brutishness and vulgarity which re-awakened all my doubts. But I loved him—and I did want the ring.

  Chapter Ten

  The most dangerous of all our plans are the ones we formulate right at the backs of our minds and leave to grow there, like water-cultures. They are the plans we never examine until we put them into practice. The moment they are exposed we realise our hideous recklessness. We realise the damage we have done.

  It was a hot summer night, sticky and airless. Ned had taken me to a cinema near Victoria Station, saying he had had a hard day, his feet were sore, it would be cooler inside than out.

  The film was not a very good one, but it passed the time. We sat in the back row of the almost-empty circle. Ned had his arm around me. Now and then he drew me hard against his shoulder. Sometimes I guessed that he was watching my face in the light from the screen.

  I do not know why, at that particular moment, the mischief should have begun to work in me irresistibly. My cheeks felt hot, and my heart was beating. It was the moment for that bold stroke which had presented itself to me little by little, without my volition; the stroke I had not dared to contemplate in full consciousness, the stroke by which I believed I must gamble, if I were to help him, if I were, like the wife of Abraham Lincoln, to be the making of him.

  In the row in front of us a couple rose and went out. Then a woman by herself, a dozen seats away. We were alone in the circle.

  The culture in the dark jar, like a piece of human brain, like the white of a cauliflower, was gorged—full grown.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking—’

  ‘What?’ His hand closed upon mine, caressed it. ‘Darling. My darling.’

  For an infinitesimal space of time I felt myself fall: too late now to grasp, to clutch, to be saved. I said airily (and I can hear my own voice now, the precise pitch of it, the precise inflection), ‘You know, I haven’t the slightest faith in you. I don’t believe you’ll make your business work. I haven’t any faith at all.’

  I meant: Darling, I have faith in you; I’d trust you always; I beg you to justify it, my darling, please; but that was what I actually said.

  And when I had said it, I went, for a second, stone-deaf. I did not hear thunder. I felt it. His hand was still on mine, but the pressure of the fingers had relaxed.

  I waited for him to say angrily, ‘Haven’t any faith? I’ll show you, then. I’ll make you take that back.’

  He said nothing.

  Two faces filled the screen—a man’s, a girl’s. They were talking passionately, but I did not know what they said.

  My hand was free, hot from his pressure, suddenly cold in the air. ‘Pins and needles,’ I said.

  He said, ‘Come on’, pulled me up. His voice was flat and harsh, thick with contempt. ‘Come on.’

  I followed him out of the circle, into the hot plush passage, down some stone stairs with EXIT in red letters at the bottom and a draught that rushed up to meet us, out into the street. He had not spoken.

  I said, ‘Darling, you mustn’t think I mean—’

  ‘If you haven’t any faith in me, that’s that. Come along, will you?’

  He walked so fast that I had to run a little to keep up with him. I was sick with misery and fright. I wanted to tell him what my ruse had been, but was ashamed to because it would sound so ridiculous. ‘I didn’t mean it seriously,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you meant.’

  ‘You must know how I’m longing for you to get on—

  ‘It sounds like it.’

  We were at the bus-stop.

  ‘Here’s yours coming,’ he said. I won’t see you back, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Ned, I must talk to you!’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  I began imploring him to forgive me: he stood with his face averted. The bus came up.

  ‘I won’t catch this one—’

  ‘Yes, you will. Go on.’ He pushed me on to the step. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Ned!’ I shouted it to him, for he was already walking away.

  ‘Move along, miss, will you?’ the conductor said. You’re holding everyone up.’

  I sat out my nightmare in the bright and sickly light, seeing and not seeing the joggling row of tired faces, white as fishes. A child cried miserably because it was so long past his bed-time.

  This could not be true—that I had lost Ned. Not for one silly phrase. Not for one silly, romantic, childish idea. I had been a fool, but I had not been wicked! I was so much younger than he was: he must take that into account. Perhaps he was following on another bus. He could not let me go like this, could not. For such a little thing. He would follow me, catch up with me, scold me, laugh at me, forgive me, and it would be all right again.

  I was in an agony of remorse, for I knew I had, after all, done a wicked thing, not merely a silly one. I had watched the idea germinate in its wickedness, swell up, come to fruition. I had bitterly hurt him. My fear was hallucinatory.

  Somehow I left the bus, walked down St. John’s Road, past the bright and empty shops, up Battersea Rise to the sprinkled lights of the Co
mmon. I listened for his hurrying footsteps and I heard them, but when I turned he was not there. Far off, a train whistle drew a razor-slit across the night.

  In bed I cried hysterically, cried because I had no father and mother to help me, because I could not talk to Emilie, because I was suffering this pain alone. I cried because I was an orphan, choosing this sentimental reason because I was too weak and scared to cry for the real one. It seemed to me, when I awoke fitfully again and again during that horrible night, that all the world should pity me because I had no father and mother. I was angry with them because they had died. What right had they to die?

  Chapter Eleven

  Have you and Ned had a quarrel?’ Emilie asked me at breakfast. ‘You look so puffy. You look as if you’ve been crying.’

  I was early at the office. I sat by the switchboard, waiting for him to ring. He did not. Well, I thought desperately, let him sulk. He’s just being beastly.

  It was a busy day; I do not know how I got through it. I remember that Mr. Baynard was happy because his sister had given birth to a girl. ‘Such a funny little thing, Miss Jackson. You should see her; her face is no bigger than my watch! Uncle, she’ll call me—Uncle Percy.’

  I had no lunch. I went into the rest-room of a big shop and wrote Ned a letter—a calm, sensible letter of dignified apology, with a touch of lightness at the end. It was very long, perhaps too long. But I had no time to rewrite it. I posted it and felt better.

  He did not reply.

  On the third day I made a miserable confession of the whole affair to Emilie, because there was no one else. She understood nothing.

  ‘Fancy him making all that fuss about a silly little thing! You let him sulk, if he wants to. He ought to be ashamed of himself. He’ll come round in time, and if he doesn’t you’ll be better off without him. If he’s going to make you miserable over trifles, your marriage will be quite impossible. You can think yourself lucky you’ve found him out in time.’

  Her face gleamed. She hoped she would now have me to herself, have company, until she died. Not for months had she shown less sign of melancholia. Indeed, she bought herself a new summer hat—mauve, for half-mourning.