CHAPTER XI
My husband sleeps easily; nothing ever disturbs him. I do not sleep. I huddle in bed, under a heavy eiderdown and four blankets that weigh me down like a body of earth. Despite socks and a hot water bottle, my feet and ankles are frozen. What is wrong with my circulation? As the cold presses in, so does the darkness; so do the trees. Their twigs scrape in an uneasy breeze. Before long, they will be tapping on the panes as they do in ‘Wuthering Heights’, and the ghostly shape of his first wife will loom at the foot of the bed.
This is not a comedy: it is a slow tragedy. Look now in the glass of my imagination and the life I have never had stares back and haunts me with what might have been, had I acted differently. I did not, and it is as a consequence that I find myself where I am, in a winter of frost and ice, of damp and draughts, of chilblains and aches. Stains spread down the walls, and blue moulds speckle shoes and belts. My mind is thick with mould. My life is thick with mould.
Truly, this is not a healthy house, engulfed by these dark trees. Thomas, I have told him on countless occasions, we must cut back the trees! The trees must be cut back! If only the trees could be cut back a little! I beg of you, on my knees! This one thing, this one small thing, to make me happy, to brighten my spirits. If you love me, if you did ever love me, Thomas dear, let the trees be cut back!
But, no. Thomas does not love me, and has never truly loved me. What he feels for me is gratitude and affection: a great deal of gratitude, and a considerable, comfortable affection. It is not love. I know this, I know what love is, I have seen it with my own eyes, lovers in the streets, hand-in-hand, each engrossed in the other, oblivious of anything else, their faces flaming. Gertrude, her husband and their baby – they stand in a triangle of flames. That is love, a white heat, a blazing fire! It is not gratitude, it is not affection!
When Thomas writes about love it is always about love lost, never about love that endures. He does not believe in love that endures because, for him, it never has endured and never will. I see that now. ‘You should not have married me – you should have married someone younger –’ but there was no one younger. No one had ever come close to asking me. I loved him and still do. Was I so wrong to hope that he would come to feel love for me? Is it possible that he does love me, but finds himself unable to express it? But if he loved me, he would let the trees be cut back. How circular my thinking is; every time it loops round to the same thing. The circles grow shorter, and tighten, and become a knot, and when I put my hands round my neck and squeeze I feel the pulse of constricted blood. Can one strangle oneself with one’s bare hands?
Leave him, Eva says. Leave him, Florence. But I cannot. I am too frightened. I do not have sufficient courage or independence of spirit to face the world, or to face myself, if I were to leave him.
This is my situation, then, and yet I cannot accept that my life is over. He has told me – Cockerell has told me, too – that I shall have plenty of money once he is gone. So in my mind, lying here in the cold and dark, I comfort myself by planning my after-life. On the morning after his death I shall burn his old shawl and laugh at his first wife as I do so, and then I shall set a team of wood-men to work, and calmly watch as one tree after another crashes to the ground. I shall have the chimneys swept. I shall clear the shrubbery and plant it with roses. I shall buy myself a motor-car and employ a chauffeur, and I shall ride in an aeroplane (giggling like a little girl as we loop the loop). Perhaps I shall buy myself a London flat, and attend theatres, and visit art galleries and museums! This is how I see myself in the summer months, in light summery clothes, in the summer of my life. But I do not intend to give myself up to frivolity; I intend to do good, quaint as that may sound in this modern age. If Life has any purpose, it must be to do good to others, and being well-off I shall do what I can to help orphaned children in the slums.
In the winters, I shall leave England and stay in the south of France, on the Riviera. The air is soft and balmy, and the sea a deep, turquoise-blue, as I am told it always is in the Mediterranean. There are no frosts here. The hotel gardens, which my room overlooks – I stand on the balcony and gaze at them in the early morning light – are full of palms and other tropical plants. I eat my breakfast in a dining room ornately decorated with mirrors and chandeliers, and make new acquaintances among the other residents of the hotel; we stroll along the promenade, and enjoy interesting intellectual conversations on safe topics. Every evening after dinner we play cards, or dance in the hotel ballroom. It is such a long while since I danced that I am a little apprehensive and self-conscious, but I soon get into the swing of it, as the phrase goes. Slowly but steadily my health improves. I forget my neck, and my nerves repair themselves. Fully restored, I return to England as the first daffodils are coming into bloom and the first leaves opening on the chestnut trees.
In this way my long existence in the depths of the countryside gradually recedes, taking on the quality of a dream. Emboldened, I write the story of a young woman who sacrifices herself by agreeing to become wife to a great writer, and whose story, in its turn, wins acclaim. Thus I reclaim my destiny. Thus my voice, my true voice, is heard at last.
Shall I go further? Shall I dare again to mention the word love? Shall I allow myself to believe that the fire of love will blaze within me, even at this late hour of my life, and that I shall marry again? With every fibre of my being I hope that it will be so. Indeed, when I try to picture the unknown man who will become my new husband, the kind, handsome face of someone very like Mr. Sherren comes mysteriously into my mind. It is not impossible, or so I persuade myself (drawing the back of my wrist across my lips and feeling the hardness of his lips on mine), that I may end up as Mrs. Sherren.
I know that all this is in abstract, a phantasm of a merely possible future among other possibilities. The present remains, and with it my scarred neck, which frightens me, my headaches, which plague me, and my domestic duties, which bore me. Above all, there is this long and hateful winter, hard as stone, cold as death, and in its train the terror that I am deluding myself and that I will never be entirely free; that either I will die first, or that, if I survive him, I will nonetheless remain here, in the same dark, icy house, with servants who despise me, and with his ghost and the ghost of his first wife for company.
Nothing changes in this vision. Even summer is winter; and I live a lonely life safeguarding his memory. After seeing his biography into print (having cut from it all references to Gertrude Bugler), I organise the transcription of his notebooks, negotiate with publishers over future editions of his works and answer letters from scholars and historians. In every detail I ensure that his study is maintained as it was on the day of his death. When visitors call, I lead them up the stairs and show them the hallowed place where he worked and brought into life his novels and poems. Behold the scene of Creation! Behold the paperknife, the pen, the ink-well, the draft of the last poem, unfinished – all exactly as they were on that fatal day! I shall change one thing only. The pages of the calendar will be turned to rest on the twelfth of January. If the visitors ask – I shall not tell them unless they ask, but if they do – I shall proudly tell them, ‘Yes, it was the most important day of the year for him, my birthday.’
I am not unaware that there is a certain heroism in the role of devoted widow, and that it is one which appeals strongly to the melancholic side of my nature. Many years ago in London, when I first met him, I used to go to the British Museum and ferret here and there for historical information on his behalf. My research concluded, and with little else to occupy myself, I would wander round the Museum, studying its various treasures. In one room there was – and probably still is, for all I know – a large stone bas-relief from Assyria on which four soldiers, wearing helmets and breast-plates, and with swords drawn, stand guard over the tomb of their emperor.
Picturing myself thus, I feel a warm glow. Yet who will be there to stand guard over my tomb?
PART FOUR
CHAPTER XII
; In the period after my last visit to the Hardys a sense of unreality began to overwhelm me. Life in Beaminster went on much as always, and yet every day brought me nearer to the moment when I would be on stage at the Haymarket. The time went quickly – the first performance was to be on April the eighth, but rehearsals were due to begin a month earlier – and I began to get anxious about things like clothes. One morning, having left Diana with Ernest’s mother, I took a train to Exeter and bought a skirt and cardigan, and a lovely elegant dress in emerald-green chiffon. I still remember the dress. The hem was quite high, not much below the knee, and it wasn’t the kind of dress anyone could possibly have worn in Beaminster, not in the nineteen twenties. I put it on to show Ernest; I twirled like a model and he whistled admiringly and said I would turn heads, but I could see from his face that he was a little uneasy. In hindsight I know why, and it wasn’t the hem length: he was worried that London would change me, that I would become someone other than the country-woman he had married, the woman who would be the farmer’s wife. There were times that winter when he seemed to withdraw into himself, and more than once I said to him: ‘You do want me to play Tess, don’t you?’ He always gave the same answer. ‘All I want is what you want, Gertie.’
It was a very cold and gruelling winter. Probably the really cold spell lasted for only a few days in February, but in my memory it seems longer. All round Beaminster pipes were bursting, and the edges of the stream that ran down Prout Hill crisped with white ice. When Diana and I went out with the pram, I used to pile so many blankets on her that only the tip of her nose stuck out. What kept me warm was the thought of the Haymarket.
Mrs. Hardy’s visit came on one of the coldest days of all. She arrived when I was about to give Diana her tea, and the cottage was in a terrible mess, with clothes hanging on the rack over the stove. I wasn’t a very good housewife, I’m afraid; I wasn’t then, and I never have been, but I was embarrassed that she should have seen it like that, although perhaps she didn’t notice. She was in an extraordinary, hysterical state, but very determined; she had come to bully me. It’s hard for me to describe what I felt immediately after she had gone. Stricken, I suppose; stricken. I was devastated. If all my hopes were a pane of glass, she had punched a hole in it. Ernest had come in only at the last moment and had missed what had happened, and when he put his hand on my shoulder and asked if I was all right, I burst into tears. I always made it a rule not to cry if Diana could see me, even when she was very little, in case I upset her, but just then I couldn’t help myself.
When I did manage to tell him, he was furious. ‘If only I’d been here! If I’d come back a few minutes earlier, I’d’ve told her where to go!’ – ‘It wouldn’t have made a ha’pennyworth of difference,’ I said, and I went upstairs and washed my face and wrists. The water was close to freezing, which helped; when I came downstairs again, I felt much calmer. Ernest was still very angry. ‘How dare she? What a nerve! Didn’t she even say she was calling?’ – ‘No,’ I said, ‘she just turned up.’
He didn’t believe the story that Mr. Hardy was infatuated with me, not for an instant; as for eloping, that was laughable. There had to be some other reason for putting me off. ‘Do you think they’ve got someone else lined up? I bet that’s it. What a low trick. They’ve offered someone else the part, someone famous.’ I sat down at the kitchen table and burst into tears again.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to write to anyone. Don’t write. There’s no need. Just write to her and tell her that you’re still doing it. Gertie? Look at me. Gertie!’
I looked at him. ‘Ernest, how can I?’
‘Course you can. You write and tell her. Or I’ll write for you.’ He took my face in both hands and smiled at me. ‘That’s settled, then. Agreed? I’ll write and tell her. The old bitch.’
‘But if the part’s already been offered to someone else –?’
‘They can only offer it to someone else if you withdraw from it. You’ve been offered it, you’ve accepted it. They can’t stop you. I think she’s got a nerve.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but if anyone’s writing, I’m writing. I’m perfectly capable of writing a letter. But it’s not a matter of writing to Mrs. Hardy, it’s a matter of whether I write to Mr. Harrison. Do you think the real reason may be that they think I’m not good enough? I don’t want the part if they don’t want me to have it. If they don’t think I’m good enough, I’ll withdraw.’
‘If they think that, they’re mad. Everyone knows how good you are.’
‘Do they?’
‘Gertie,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t make sense. Why would they have offered you the part in the first place if they didn’t think you were up to it?’
I wasn’t easily persuaded. Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Hardy had offered me the part out of kindness and then had changed their minds, or maybe Mr. Harrison had only agreed that I should play the part as a special favour to Mr. Hardy. I remembered how, at one stage, Mr. Hardy had mentioned the idea of Sybil Thorndike playing the part.
I heated the water for Diana’s bath, I bathed her and dried her and wrapped her up tight and carried her upstairs to her cot. I always loved settling her at night in those early months, singing to her and watching her slip off to sleep, however long it took. She was so small and vulnerable, and so utterly trusting, and as I watched her getting drowsy, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier, I began to think how precious this time was, and how it wouldn’t last very long, and that I needed to make the most of it while I could. Once she was sound asleep, I went back downstairs. Ernest was in an armchair, reading my scrapbook of newspaper reviews.
‘Look at these,’ he said. ‘Look. It’s nothing to do with your acting. You’re bloody brilliant; they all say so.’
‘Ernest,’ I said, ‘you don’t really want me to go away, do you? Honestly? You’d rather I stayed, wouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t. I want you to go and do it. And I’m going to come and see you.’
‘But how are you going to manage here?’
‘Gertie, we’ve been through all this a dozen times. We’ll manage very well. You’re not going for very long, are you? It’s not that long!’
I sat on his lap, with my legs over the arm of the armchair. ‘I don’t want you to have to manage.’
‘Gertie, you want to be up on that stage at the Haymarket. It’s what you’ve always wanted, what you’ve always dreamt of.’
I cooked some supper and we went on talking about it. Despite what Ernest said, I didn’t like the idea of him by himself every evening, tired after the day’s work, having to cook himself a meal, and I knew how much I would miss Diana. I also thought about Mrs. Hardy. I’d given her my word, and that was that, really; I couldn’t go back on it. Besides, if I didn’t write to Mr. Harrison, she would have done. That was what she’d said.
The next day I withdrew from the part. In my letter to Mr. Harrison I avoided any mention of Mrs. Hardy, and simply said that after a lot of consideration I had decided it was best for my family. Heaven only knows what he thought of me.
Telling local people was very hard. No one understood, and why should they have? Despite the temptation to explain what had really happened, I bit my tongue, at least at the time. Close friends and members of my family rallied round and did their best to console me, although my little sister, who had been going to keep me company in London, was very cross. While she was cross with Mrs. Hardy, she was also cross with me for being feeble. I said to her: ‘You have no idea what she was like.’
Mrs. Hardy wasn’t a well woman, and when I think of her now, it’s always with that horrible stole round her neck, and those strange lemur-like eyes. I should make allowances, but I do find it hard. She never bothered to consider the matter fully from my point of view, or maybe the truth is that she wasn’t capable of doing so; either she was cruel, or she lacked imagination. At the bottom of it all lies the fact that she did not like me; that is what I now believe. I still do not know w
hy she disliked me, but I am sure that lay at the root of it all, and I am afraid that, although I dislike disliking people, I did come to dislike her with a passion. It is very hard not to dislike people who dislike you. When, only a few months later, I happened to hear that ‘Tess’ was to be produced in London with another actress, not Sybil Thorndike but someone else, in the title role, as Ernest had predicted, I did feel bitter.
I never saw Mr. Hardy again. He died three years later, and had two funerals at the same time, one in Westminster Abbey, where they buried his body, and the other in Stinsford, where they buried his heart. I went to the heart funeral, and hated it from start to finish. I hated the thought that his heart had been cut out of him, it seemed such a barbaric act, and I hated Mrs. Hardy for agreeing to it. There wasn’t a proper coffin, only a little casket, and it was impossible when you saw the casket not to think what it contained. Someone had cut him open and dug out his heart – it was a piece of butchery. To make matters worse, a woman turned up in her hunting clothes, bright scarlet, and spattered with mud. She must have come straight from the hunt, and it seemed so disrespectful of her; he loathed fox-hunting, as I do too. During the service she was in one of the pews near me, and when it came to the interment she forced her way to the front, as if she knew him well and had a right to stand on the edge of the grave. The sight of her upset me terribly. That said, it was a very solemn and sad occasion. All the shops in Dorchester closed as a mark of respect. The service was taken by the Reverend Cowley, who had married Ernest and me.
Mrs. Hardy wasn’t at the heart funeral – she must have been up at Westminster Abbey. I think she felt guilty on my account, because some while later she arranged for me to play Tess at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, with a professional company. I met her again then, twice, and we were both extremely polite to each other. Of course, it wasn’t the first London performance of ‘Tess’, and although the reviews were good, if I’m honest they weren’t quite as good as they might have been. The other actors and actresses were great characters and I did love the bright lights of London, but I always knew that before too long I’d be pleased to be home in Dorset. Once I was back, I had most of my hair cut off. I was too old to have hair down to my waist, blowing this way and that in the wind. Very long hair is for girls, not middle-aged women. Diana didn’t recognise me for a moment, and I hardly recognised myself. How light my head was!
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