‘And you could never, never tell. And one thing we learned, the informer was never the one you suspected, always someone else. People denounced because they owned someone else too much gratitude. A tubercular employee was taken in and petted and supported by his employer; and he kept a diary from the day he entered the house, for five years, of the daily doings of his employer, and wrote a statement so twisting all the facts that the Gestapo took the whole family. A pathetic young woman abandoned and betrayed, kept as a servant with her child many years by a decent, conservative family, denounced the daughter of the house of whom she was jealous. Denunciations poured in—they were infinite. One of our chief services was in the post office, opening letters and sending them on again and getting messages in time. We destroyed some, you couldn’t destroy all. They’d come in again; poison-pen manias developed. And you couldn’t help everyone. Some had to perish. Again what Clapas so bitterly and brutally called the blood bank.’
Emily exclaimed, ‘What a brute he is! I hate him. You’ve seen as much and you aren’t like that!’
Suzanne said simply, ‘I don’t know what I’m like. I should like to be in another world where I would not have to ask myself, where society was interested in the future and not this post-mortem and this preparation.’
Emily took her hands, ‘And I couldn’t live through it. We must escape. Excuse me, I’m not as brave as you. I couldn’t stand this test. I should give in.’
‘No one knew until they had to; and then most were able to meet this test.’
‘I could not! Perhaps—but no—oh—what a dreadful dilemma! What a cruel party!’
The Trefougars waited longer than the rest, the man because he had taken a great fancy to Stephen and the woman to see Emily, for she had come to her when it got late and begged her to let her stay, ‘I am so miserable and afraid. Let me stay with you and confide in you. This place is a desert of friendship and Johnny just laughs at me.’
Emily was annoyed and flattered; she invited them to stay to dinner. She had been anxious to see Stephen alone for a few minutes to rehash the conversations they had separately had, to tell in her breathless, detailed way all the Resistants had said to her, to get comfort from his manly views. At the same time she was puzzled by the Trefougars. Violet she thought happy and devoted to Trefougar and yet Violet was dazzled by ‘Mernie’s bedroom-eyes’ as Stephen called them, his drooping, delicate, insinuating manner. The Trefougars complained bitterly about their expensive way of living and small pay; and yet that afternoon Johnny Trefougar had described a magnificent Italian car he had just got through diplomatic priority and paid just on three thousand pounds for. The car would be delivered shortly; and then the Trefougars intended to take a trip to the south of France where the food was better and there to buy a villa. You could get villas now if you had connections. Violet was expensively dressed; yet they said they had hardly enough to eat.
For dinner they had two bottles of wine and Violet drank rather a lot considering the whiskies that had gone before. After dinner, when Christy had gone upstairs to study with Madame Suzanne, who had dined with them, Johnny went off with Stephen to his study to drink more whisky while the wife went upstairs to Emily’s workroom on the top floor. There they had a drink and Violet, after twisting her handkerchief and behaving very nervously, burst into a flood of miserable confidences. Johnny was now drunk and would get drunker; it was the beginning of a four-day binge. He left her for three and four days at a time and was often brought back by the police. The car made it even worse. Now he could get away from her to Rouen or Dieppe or Marseilles, Toulon, all the low and dreadful murder hotels, old-fashioned but dangerous dens of vice, and if he had little time, there were some just outside Paris, where thieves, prostitutes, drunks and drug-fiends gathered.
‘Oh, you can’t be right; he doesn’t look like that,’ exclaimed Emily.
She stared at the poor, thin, elegant woman in front of her. Violet was now weeping: she trembled from head to foot. Emily listened on with widening eyes as the misery was related.
‘Last time he went away he had over three hundred pounds in his pocket and came back penniless. The police brought him back. He was beaten from head to foot, his clothes torn; he said he had been robbed. Yet he only enjoys himself away from me in the thieves’ dens where I couldn’t go and in the company of young, strong sailors, or drug-sellers or low blackskins and such horrible people, always caricatures, never real people. And every time he is robbed. He was robbed when we were in North Africa, robbed in Honolulu, robbed in Singapore of all we had. That’s one of the reasons we’re so dreadfully poor.’
‘But the car?’
‘Oh, a friend got it, it’s almost a present. But there’s the upkeep. And I can’t think what it will be like after he’s used it for a few of his dreadful absences. And I never know if he will come back alive. And when he comes back, he weeps, he cries for the people he’s left, for those animals. He blames me for tying him down. He says he hates me; he’ll kill me; he’ll do anything to get back to them.’
‘But how does he hold his job?’
‘Oh, they’re very good to him. In London they warned him. Of course, he’s charming, you can see. He’s fascinating, especially to men. Some of his family are very high-placed. You know they put up with almost anything if a man keeps up appearances. And he can. You’d never guess, would you? You see he never gets drunk in good society. That’s why he goes off to those hellish dens. “I want the stink of crime and filth in my nostrils,” he says. And then he gets so drunk, for he can’t drink, that the first prostitute, or criminal or thug who comes along robs him and there he lies for days together, in some bunk crawling with lice, starving, until someone finds him. Oh, he comes back in such a state. And now this afternoon, this evening, when I saw him drinking, I am terrified, I hardly dare go home. He’ll be raving mad by the time he gets home. You’ve no idea how he’s able to hide it. And then as soon as he’s in the house he locks the door and begins to scream and curse. We can’t keep any servants of course.’
Emily wiped away the tears of the unfortunate woman and took her trembling hands on her breast. She begged her to stay there that night, not to go back;
‘We’ll keep him somehow. We’ll see that he doesn’t get into the hands of such desperadoes.’
She wailed, clinging to Emily, ‘Oh no, no, no, then he’d kill me. He’d know I’ve been telling you; and his pride is so ferocious, so Spanish, so violent, he’d kill me at the mere thought that anyone knew.’
Emily argued that a lot of people must know, since there had been scandals in so many places. His family knew.
‘But he always prides himself on being able to carry it off and impress people, especially new people, with his cool head and his manners—’
Emily murmured, ‘So he does. I’m astonished, stunned. But you know he doesn’t show the slightest sign of drunkenness now. Well, perhaps he’s a little excited, but considering—well, that’s far from drunk. He’s not more excited than I am in hearing this story. I’m thunderstruck. I don’t know what to do.’
Emily was full of dread for the poor woman. ‘You’re in danger, don’t go home. We’ll say you’re sick, had to go to bed.’
Violet broke away from Emily, ‘No, no. He needs me. Perhaps if I’m there he won’t go. If I’m not, he’ll go certainly. He’ll stop at some place on the way home and that will be the end of him for days. He’s been warned several times by his chief No, no.’
She seemed scared beyond reason, ‘Oh, he loves me, he loves no one but me, in his own way. It’s just his temperament, his savage moods. Don’t give me away. He’d kill me.’
Emily promised she would not and again begged the woman to stay with them. Violet sat down, taking Emily’s hands in hers—Emily shrank back, not being of the clutching kind of woman, but she kept her hands there to help. Violet said, ‘Oh, I’m naughty; I’m hysterical, forgive me. I said too much. I betrayed him. Don’t betray me. It comes on me, almost like a lo
nging, as the longing for honors comes on him. It’s being so long alone and tight-lipped and having to save our faces before everyone and yet knowing that everyone knows—or will soon know something worse. I run ahead of trouble sometimes. I want you to like us not to hate us, if there’s a scandal. Don’t shut me out. You’re sympathetic, you’re a writer. If the worst comes, at least I can come to you.’
Emily’s great heart swelled. She thought, Oh, heavens and I was on the point of sending this poor sufferer home, of saying we had guests to dinner. This is a lesson, never to refuse an appeal for help. We don’t know.
She felt ‘ashamed, bitterly ashamed’ as she said to herself, already composing what she was to write later in her Journal of Days under the Sun. To think she had never guessed what this smooth, nervous, elegant woman had been living with; daily horror. She thought to herself, and wrote it later, ‘I’m so smug, so satisfied, so happy with my darlings, such a real success as a woman, that the human race is just a passing show to me. Clapas is right. All writers care about is their work. But we ask more of a mechanic. We expect him to save the human race via socialism. Oh, my God, save me from being a philistine in my old age.’
While she had been thinking and composing these reflections, Violet had dried her eyes and now said in a strange voice, more distant, almost hateful, ‘Why do I say he loves me? He hasn’t been near me three times in seven years! Where are my children? I had one baby which died because he stifled it with a pillow; he was jealous. I must be the only love in his life, he loved me so passionately. He is beautiful but a monster. I am afraid of him. I sat at home frozen with terror like an ice-maiden, in an icefield in a glacier. Frozen to death, freezing—and it will always be so’(her voice rose higher) ‘always be so—sitting cold as ice till they bring him home to me dead from some den of vice. If you knew the dreadful cold—’
Emily exclaimed, ‘Oh, this is dreadful, appalling. I can’t stand it. We must do something for you. What? Say something. You must have thought out a hundred things.’ i cannot escape. I’m ruined. He ruined me. I don’t even dare touch another man or woman. Think of what kind of people are in those places? And the poisoned liquor they give him will turn his brain; it’s turned already.’
Emily went out on to the landing to make sure that Christy was not there, that no child was there to hear this sufferer. When she returned, Violet had recovered somewhat. She turned to Emily with a faint smile, ‘And you see I must go out every day or have people at home and pretend that we are a loving young married couple. When he dies or when he kills me—’ her voice wavered again, then she became morbid and in the end began to weep quietly, ‘our friends and our chief will hush it up, the scandal will never reach the papers; and they will say, Who would have thought it, such a happy couple? No, no one but you will ever know the truth. I will have to keep up the comedy for ever. I want you to know the truth. Oh, it is terrible to think of dying there alone, him killing me and no one knowing what I have suffered, he’s too charming to get the death penalty in any circumstances. It will turn out I am to blame. Five years later some other woman will begin to live in this hell.’
Emily heard the men moving downstairs. She was frightened and had not made up her mind what to do. Had she better consult Stephen now? For it was this night that Violet was afraid of, ‘Most of all this night, it’s a premonition, it’s precognition, as if I had lived through it all before and knew exactly what is going to happen.’
‘Oh, don’t go—or go anywhere but home.’
Violet said stormily, ‘No. If he wants to kill me, what is there to hope for anyway? I loved him. He was the love of my life. Let him kill me. There couldn’t be another one. I’ll just look into his eyes tonight and if I see it coming, and I think I’ve seen it coming, if I see that look in his eyes, I’ll lie quietly, sit quietly, I’ll say to myself, I always knew it, I’ve always heard in my brain since I was a little girl, that awful strangled yell—’
Emily got up and took her by the arms, ‘It’s madness. You’re going to your death.’
‘Yes, I am. He needs me. Leave me alone.’
They went downstairs, Violet tranquilly, Emily stony with her unaccustomed feelings. Violet was charming to her husband and Johnny was sweet, almost tender to her. Violet smiled kindly to them and when she held out her hand to say goodbye, she murmured, ‘Oh, thank you so much, we have enjoyed it so much,’ in quite the ordinary way, nor did she give Emily any but a casual glance.
Emily seized Stephen’s arm, led him into the sitting-room and threw herself suddenly into his arms, ‘Stephen, oh, Stephen, I have heard such a story! Listen, quickly. Perhaps we will have to save a life tonight. Can you get the car out? Listen!’ She told the tale. Stephen was puzzled. ‘I spent the whole evening with him and he seemed neither drunk nor crazy; very sensible. Is she crazy?’
Emily said of course, Violet was tormented; but anyone would be.
They discussed it. ‘It’s a dreadful mystery,’ said Emily.
They sat there for a long time going into details, worrying; and at last they took the car and rode out to Auteuil where the Trefougars at that moment lived and, having found the house, they rode round it for a while. There were lights in the house, windows were open, but no sounds were to be heard. Should they knock at the door? Perhaps she was already dead? Or were they drinking, thinking or—a word that rhymed, said Stephen.
‘Can you believe her?’ said Stephen.
‘Could she invent a story like that, even half of it?’
After some time they passed the same two bicycle police they had passed before. The police looked back at them. They decided to drive home and telephone. When they got home they had not the courage to telephone. Supposing a murder had taken place? They had been seen near the house and they were the first to telephone—and at that hour? Emily said they would telephone first thing in the morning.
She slept badly and when she thought Stephen was awake, she said, ‘We didn’t do our duty.’
They had got out in one of the streets, to come nearer to the house on foot. Coming down one of the streets, Emily heard a man shout from the third storey of an apartment house, in English.
‘He-elp, He-elp! Murr-der! Murr-der!’
Three doors away a policeman was standing at an immense carved door leading into a courtyard. He was talking amiably to the woman concierge.
‘Shouldn’t we tell him?’ said Emily.
‘He can hear it as well as you. I didn’t hear it.’
They rode home. On the way home Emily began to laugh and said, ‘That makes two murders tonight on our heads. Or do you suppose the streets ring with murder now, just the memory of the stones, the walls and doors? And supposing it’s some hashish dream?’ She began to laugh helplessly. ‘Oh, what a world. It’s funny and terrible.’
In the night, she said to Stephen whenever she thought he was awake, ‘No, it wasn’t fancy. It was real. Someone was killed in that house tonight, that other house. We didn’t do our duty. That’s why these things occur. It’s collusion. We’re all collusionists. That’s why they can take place. That man who chopped up little boys in Hanover, everyone in the house knew. Even that was collusion. And all those cops about. But they collude too. And Violet—oh, we should have gone in. Because what she said about precognition, a feeling of having lived through it before, which is a warning, she explained to me, one part of the brain is functioning faster than the other—that was terrifying. I hear her voice now. It’s running through my head.’
‘Take an aspirin and go to sleep. We can’t help it. Their friends are guilty, not us. Their friends, the officials know.’
‘Supposing we’re the last people to see them alive.’
‘What about the maid?’
‘Violet said Johnny had told the maid to take the evening off.’
‘Oh, Lord. Just like the stories.’
In the end, Emily took several tablets and slept heavily till past eight o’clock. Stephen had got up, got the boys off, and st
arted the house going. Emily put on her dressing-gown before she remembered. She seized the telephone and called the Trefougars. The maid said that Mr Trefougar had already gone out and Madame was still in bed. She was not well. Emily asked if the maid had seen Madame. Yes, the maid took her tea.
‘How is she?’
‘She’ll be getting up soon.’
The maid was calm and correct. Emily said to Stephen, I’m baffled. Unless that maid plays along with the husband.’
Stephen shouted, ‘Quit building up your usual devil stories and get to work. And don’t first of all write a brief history of all the criminals in your life or your journal, or study Latin and French and algebra to keep up with the kiddies; or socialism or write squelchy letters to my mother—work, damnit. We spent enough time with lunatics and other sandwich-snatchers.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m writing an article for Vittorio, all right it isn’t economic, but I’ve got to have some reason for living.’
I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist Page 41