An Impossible Marriage

by Pamela Hansford Johnson

  Somebody murmured in my ear that the car had come; and, with the mysterious prescience of wedding-guests, they all came around us, sensing, though they had not been told, that we were about to leave them. They were around us, ready with their farewells; and then, as if a moment of time had been blotted right out, these farewells had been said, and everyone was gone, and Ned and I were alone.

  I said, ‘Poor Emilie! She was crying.’

  ‘People always cry at weddings. It’s part of the fun.’

  ‘She looked so lonely.’

  ‘Nonsense. We’re not going to Timbuctoo.’

  The car passed along familiar streets, through the familiar, unregarding crowds.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said. ‘I love you very much.’

  In the train we had a compartment to ourselves. He put his arm around my shoulders. We looked out of the windows. The reflected smoke of the train over the fields seemed to me like a file of azure angels soaring upwards with linked arms. I wished I could feel excited, but I was not excited at all; I was becalmed.

  ‘You are a frightful responsibility,’ said Ned.

  I asked him if he had enjoyed the wedding.

  ‘It all went so quickly one couldn’t really think about it.’

  I told him that I had felt this, too: we were unified by the mutual experience of experiencing nothing at all.

  ‘Not to look worried,’ he insisted.

  I assured him that I was not.

  We were to spend a week at Bournemouth. Paris was out of the question for the moment, Ned had told me, since things were not as bright as he had hoped; but if they looked up again, as they should do shortly, we might go abroad in the spring.

  The spring, I thought; I shan’t be there—and had been shaken and distressed for a moment at this invasion by an irrational denial so unpremeditated, apparently so obvious, that it had nearly reached the tip of my tongue.

  ‘We can go for longer in the spring, too,’ he had added. ‘I can’t leave the business for more than a week just now.’

  When Ned signed the hotel register and I saw my new name I knew a stirring of unease, and was glad; I did not want to be calm. It was wrong to be calm. But the unease refused to persist. Alone with him in the bedroom looking out on only half the sea (not the orange-scented vastness I had imagined), I kissed him and began to unpack. Ned sat on the edge of the bed and watched me. I felt his gaze lying along the nape of my neck and down my spine. My movements, I believed, were very neat, unflurried. He would be able to guess, from them, what an able housewife I should be.

  The curtains were still open, and beyond them was the black, patient, unharmful night. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ I said, ‘but I don’t feel in the least tired.’

  He came to me with a swiftness that suggested a spring. My nerves leaped. Ned laughed. ‘Darling, you’ve been reading books about monsters, and you are looking like a martyr. Come and have dinner, and don’t be silly.’

  I began to cry.

  ‘You are an ass,’ said Ned. ‘You are, you really are.’

  Chapter Two

  Those autumn days by the sea are clear in my memory, sweet, like new linen. They were Ned’s days and mine. In this brief certainty we loved each other.

  For the first time I understood that the waiting-time had been hard for him. His nature was direct and sensual; it was not possible for him to live happily, like some men, on the romantic promise of joy. Yet he treated me with a gentleness, a good humour, a selfless consideration that filled me with a gratitude I could not express; and despite Caroline’s warnings, which I had borne talismanically in my mind, he brought me quickly to the understanding of pleasure. I felt for a while as if the earth had steadied itself under my feet, as if I had grown taller, as if I should make no more mistakes.

  The weather was fine for us. The sun sparkled out all day from a white sky, and there were no shadows on the sea. We lay on the beach, went walking through the close and odorous pine trees, danced at night in the Pavilion. We were in high spirits and tranquil, hoping for nothing, because hope is only necessary when one is afraid.

  On the day before our return I told him I had some shopping to do.

  He got up. ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ I said. ‘You stay and finish your book.’ I explained that my purchases would be dull ones, and that I did not expect to be away for more than half an hour.

  What I wanted to buy I did not know, except that it had to be something heavy. I went into the ironmongery department of a large shop and considered the saucepans. I rejected aluminium and bought a big cast-iron one, suited to a family of ten.

  ‘Do you want it sent?’

  Certainly I wanted it sent, I told the salesgirl. (That was the whole object of my shopping.)

  ‘Where to?’

  I gave her my address.

  She said there would be an extra charge for postage. She asked me my name.

  And I could at last satisfy the small, persistent desire that had been nudging me since my wedding day.

  ‘Skelton,’ I said, ‘Mrs. Edmund Skelton. S-k-e-l-t-o-n.’

  Satisfaction ran through me like a warm drink on a chilly night. I saw my life simple, solid and plain; it seemed the right sort of life for me, and I was content.

  The early days of a youthful marriage are rather like a charade; a girl plays housekeeping. I went self-importantly about the new flat, doing the work so briskly and with such good will that by half-past eleven in the morning I usually found myself with the rest of the day on my hands. Unaccustomed to so much leisure, I hardly knew what to do with it. I did not feel like writing; I had, I told myself, dwindled into a wife, and proper wives should have no need to express themselves in verse. I read until my eyes ached, read the books of which Ned was fond and which he kept on the bedroom shelf: Scott, Conrad, Wodehouse, Kipling and, rather oddly, Joyce’s Dubliners. I wanted to become as much like Ned as possible, to share his tastes.

  Emilie intruded upon me little. It was as if the honeymoon, which, for the first time, had deprived her of me entirely, had set her free to find a new interest of her own. She had returned to the nonconformity of her youth and was centring her life around the Congregational Church, where there was a minister of exceptional personality and vigour. She had transferred to him something of the loving reverence she had felt for my father. He was, she told me, not only good but exceedingly clever; it pleased her that he should sometimes preach sermons ‘above her head’. He was a man of cultivated tastes, and was in the process of transforming the literary and musical into a centre of the arts remarkable by any standard. Emilie took me to a recital given there by William Primrose, and she sat through it in a state of entrancement, beating the wrong time to the music with her gloved hand for the best part of two hours. ‘Quite a musical feast,’ she told me afterwards, giving me her new, timid, uplifted smile.

  Ned was cheerful and, so far as I could judge, busy. He only played games on one day in the week. I heard nothing more of the temporary embarrassment that had prevented our honeymoon in Paris.

  One day, after we had been married for three months or so, Mrs. Skelton came to tea with me. I had not expected her, so had nothing but tea for her to drink. She drank it in a suspicious, lowered fashion as if it had been some exotic brew that no Englishwoman could really trust. She had been talking with her customary distaste of her husband (‘He has simply no conversation and never had’) and of Nelly (‘Why must she be so hopelessly unsmart?’), and now conversation was at a standstill. Her long body relaxed in an armchair, she sat with closed eyes. Then the eyes shot open; the pupils contracted. ‘Are you and Ned going to give me any grandchildren? It would be something to amuse me.’

  I told her he thought it would be better for us to wait for a while.

  ‘Why? What for? Much better to
have them while you’re young.’

  I explained that he wanted us to enjoy ourselves for a year or so before we were tied down; and also that he felt we ought to be on our feet properly first.

  ‘And aren’t you on your feet? Why not? How’s that business going?’

  I said I did not really know; I supposed it was all right. ‘Doesn’t he tell you?’

  ‘I don’t ask,’ I replied with dignity. ‘I feel that’s his life, and the house is mine.’

  ‘Parrot-talk,’ said Mrs. Skelton disconcertingly. ‘I suppose he told you that. If I were you I’d make it my job to find out.’

  This did not, however, disturb me. Ned was still in high spirits; we were having a good time. It was true that money seemed rather short, and that during the past few weeks we had gone less to the theatre and cinema; but I felt it was wise of him to be cautious, and that perhaps he had turned over a new leaf in being so. Caution had not seemed a conspicuous feature of his life till now.

  I was more concerned by Mrs. Skelton’s raising of the question of children, for I should have liked to have them. As I say, time was inclined to hang lavishly upon my hands. I spoke about this to Caroline, with whom I was having dinner one evening at the beginning of the New Year. Both our husbands were away—hers on some business abroad, Ned on a tour of Suffolk houses with a client who wanted to settle there.

  ‘My dear,’ said Caroline, ‘you have them if you can. Apparently I can’t. Anyway, I’ve had no luck.’

  She looked, for a moment, quite distraught; it was disturbing to see such a change in her.

  ‘But you haven’t been married so long,’ I said.

  ‘Long enough to be anxious in. Not that I’d be so anxious, but he is. He appears to see himself smothered with happy little ones, all smearing jam in his hair. And his kindly view is that I am barren.’

  She spoke to me more frankly than she had ever done, her need to talk, to be consoled by a responsive indignation, overcoming her natural evasiveness. Her husband, I gathered, could think of nothing but their childlessness, talk of nothing else. ‘I must admit I’ve wondered if it could be his fault, but honestly, darling, without being crude, no one could possibly think so.’

  Neither of us knew much about the problems of sterility.

  ‘It’s a mania with him. I tell him, give me a chance, I’m not twenty-one yet; but he says that if I were normal that would make no difference. I am beginning to feel,’ said Caroline, with something of her old, stoical airiness, ‘like a circus freak.’ She turned the subject abruptly and asked me how Ned was getting on.

  I told her he was getting on well. (I had that day, in fact, a special reason for thinking so.)

  ‘Does he let you have the boys and girls round?’

  ‘He would,’ I replied loyally, ‘only somehow I seem to have grown out of all that.’ I told her how much I missed him while he was away.

  ‘I wish I could say the same of mine. But when I know he’ll stalk in and instantly start peering at me, counting up the days, I can’t say my heart will beat with joy.’

  For all her desire not to speak of him further, she could not abandon the topic. She told me more about him than I had ever known; that his open and generous manner with his own friends was quite different from his manner towards hers; that his temper was unpredictable, and his bouts of sensuality even more so; and that he had the habit of compulsive and unnecessary secrecy. ‘When he gets his letters in the morning he snatches them up and runs off to read them in a corner with his back to me. It’s just like a squirrel with nuts. As if I care who the devil’s writing to him—even if I didn’t know they were mostly about his stamp collection! Does Ned let you read his letters?’

  I replied proudly that certainly he did; that when he went away he liked me to open them and to forward only those that seemed to me important.

  ‘What trust!’ Caroline remarked. ‘How lucky you are!’ She added broodingly, ‘A damned squirrel with damned nuts.’

  One of the letters I had that morning opened for Ned had given me great comfort and reassurance.

  Now I had never had a banking account of my own and, as Emilie had kept all our financial affairs in her own hands, was unfamiliar with the appearance of a bank statement. I had glanced without interest at Ned’s and had been about to put it aside for him, when my eye was caught by the figure that appeared to sum up his position; three wealthy-looking digits written in red ink. Well, I thought, my anxiety appeased, his mother is quite wrong. Everything is going splendidly.

  When he returned, relief had made me as light as air. I even felt inclined to be playful. The mood never, I felt, really suited me, but there were times when it charmed and amused Ned.

  ‘I want you to give me something,’ I said. I was sitting on the arm of his chair. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘No blind promises,’ he said cautiously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wondered if I could have a fur coat. I do feel the cold so much. It would only be a cheap one,’ I added hastily.

  He looked at me. ‘I would if we could afford it, Chris, but we can’t. You wait till we get out of the wood.’

  ‘But we’re not in the wood!’ I said triumphantly. ‘Darling, I’ve found you out. And I think we’re doing very nicely.’

  The expression on Ned’s face was curious. He asked me what I thought I had found out. Still playfully (when I think of myself now I shrink a little, for it is easier to endure the memory of having looked ridiculous yesterday than of having looked ridiculous in the delicate days of our youth) I went to the desk, took out the bank statement, put it on a cushion and presented it to him with the flourish of the herald who offers the glass shoe to Cinderella. ‘There!’ I said. ‘We have eight hundred and forty-two pounds seven shillings and five pence. Do you mean to say I can’t have a coat out of that?’

  He picked it up. For a moment he had lost all expression; he might have been sleeping with open eyes. Then his face reddened and seemed to swell. His mouth tightened.

  I was still holding the cushion. Ned knocked it out of my hands. ‘You imbecile!’ he said. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’

  I was scared and at a loss. ‘I was only playing.’ I thought he had meant the business with the cushion. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Why the hell should I be pleased?’

  ‘Because we’d got some money. It must be all right if we’ve got all that.’

  ‘Do you seriously imagine —’ he began. He stopped. ‘Yes, I believe you do. You are an imbecile. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  I begged him to tell me what was wrong. It was our first disagreeable scene since we had been married.

  ‘This isn’t money we’ve got. This is money we owe the bank.’

  I could not understand. Ned, in a quiet, patient, furious voice, explained to me the meaning of the red ink. ‘So you see,’ he concluded, it would have been damned odd if I had been pleased.’

  I saw it now. But while he had been talking I had felt, growing within me, the courage to counter-attack. I had had time to resent the way in which he had received my foolishness, the roughness with which he had spoken to me. I was no longer a girl whom he could flatter with the love of his maturity: I was his wife, and I would not be brow-beaten.

  ‘Then it’s a pity,’ I said, that you’ve let us get into this state.’ I walked to the far side of the room. I felt safer there.

  ‘Mind your own business!’ he said in a kind of astonished shout. He got up. ‘You stick to the house! When I want your advice on my affairs I’ll ask for it.’

  I told him not to talk to me in this fashion; I would not bear it.

  I thought he would follow me, but he did not. He said, in a softer tone, ‘It’s only that you can’t understand it, Chris. I’ve had bad luck. No one can help that.’

  ‘You could h
ave helped it; you were hardly ever at the office. You left everything to wretched people like Hignett.’

  ‘One has to go out after work.’

  ‘You weren’t going after it. You were playing silly games.’

  He sat down again. His hands hung between his knees. I wondered what he would say next.

  He said at last, in a strange, young voice, ‘I never wanted to go into the damned thing. I wanted to be a soldier.’

  Perhaps there would be a war for him one day, I said, and in a second was sorry, because, for the first time, I had sounded shrewish. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  He took no notice. ‘They always drove me the way they wanted—the lot of them.’ He paused. ‘I’m so tired. I feel dog-tired, Chris.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Struggle on. The bank won’t bother me for the time being.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ned,’ I said. ‘I’d help you if I could. I could always go back to work.’

  ‘I don’t want the family to know.’ He ignored my last suggestion; he had always refused to hear of it.

  I asked him if they would not be forced to help us in the long run, if our difficulties became too great.

  He shook his head. This was, he told me, his last chance. He held out his hand to me. We stood in silence. He looked really exhausted, the lines of his face grey and deep. I knew I had won a victory, but it brought me no pleasure. I had not wished to win victories, not over a lover. I needed to look up, to admire, to be tutored, to be led and comforted. Now I saw the shape of my marriage clearly, and wished to think of other things, so that my mind would be clear and fresh for the readjustment I should have to make.

  Chapter Three

  It makes us scared of life, aware of its disequilibrium, when we first realise that the moment of a cold truth is most likely to fasten upon us during an hour of contentment.

  After the quarrel over the bank statement Ned and I had somehow slipped into one of those pockets of mutual confidence which, in any ill-adjusted marriage, are apt to make their inexplicable appearances. He was sorry he had upset me and was more than usually eager to please me; I had been delighted to have him in so compliant and loving a mood, had been tricked by it into a new hope. We both knew the happiness of the body, were matched in our fevers and in the easy acceptance of sleep. Nothing was wrong there. Ned’s attitude towards sexual desire seemed to me compounded of cheerful matter-of-factness and a kind of reverent astonishment; his own pleasure appeared to afford him an unfailing source of delighted surprise. For my own part, I believed I had discovered the nature of love—that it was one part of physical pleasure to two parts of friendly conversation. It was a disappointing discovery, and I felt that literature had somewhat cheated me; but it was also a relief. This, then, was love: the problem solved. Anyone with a little sense could deal with love once he or she realised the essential simplicity of its composition.