For Love Alone

by Christina Stead

  Under her door was his well-known envelope in his well-known writing, the very same that had appeared regularly on the mantelpiece at home for years, but now how strange it looked with her new address; tender, thoughtful, beautiful, just as if he had thought about her in her room as he wrote the address. It was as if a lamp had been lighted in London for her, and she felt that her home was here now. “Where he is, there is my country,” thought Teresa, putting the envelope on the table, taking off her things and putting water on to boil. She changed her shoes, brushed her hair, looking at herself in the mirror, all the time thinking of Jonathan’s affection and keeping back the pleasure of opening his first London letter. Then she sat down, smiling, slit the envelope, saw that his new address, Malet Street, was on the paper; and read:

  DEAR TESS,

  Yes, I think it is better to be frank too. Gene Burt turned up this morning, just when I was puzzling over your note and his opinion is like mine, tell the truth even if it hurts. Here it is then. I do not love you, I never did and I feel no affection for you. I am willing to be a friend, and if this suits you, it suits me, but if not, let’s cry quits! There is nothing to understand in me, I am just a “plain ordinary” academic hack with his way to make and not much chance to make it, except in the rut. Believe me when I say this—there is nothing to admire in me.

  As to where you “stand”—this is a strange expression and indicates that you have hoped for much more than I had ever imagined. As far as I am concerned, you do not “stand” anywhere and am afraid you have made a great mistake. Come and visit me if you wish—though not for a few days, for I have moved with my landlady as you can see. It was only decided this morning when she agreed to take the servant Lucy with her, for the sake of the child. I stuck to my point and she gave in. She made the excuse that the reason she had not wanted to do so was the child, though what that shrimp could eat! But my rent is assured to her in any case and I have promised to get a fellow at the Union or elsewhere for any vacant rooms. She offers me a fine ground-floor room with a garden view in the back for only a guinea a week, dirt cheap, as you know, and I may as well take it. So, in a word, I am very comfortable, happy, you need not worry about me. In a few days, come and have tea with me; that is, if you can take me the way I am. If not, then not and so be it—Amen says,

  JONATHAN CROW.

  “Good,” said Teresa, putting the letter down gently. “Good. All right, I’ll take it decently.” A little later, when she went out to get something to eat at the nearest teashop she was surprised to see her face so white in one of the olive-lighted mirrors. She felt as if she were walking on the points of her toes. She was suffering and yet she felt lightsome, she heard a faint little singing. The whole thing was a surprise. A face pale as death was no more a fiction than The Kiss; it was all true. For some reason, she now thought, “We should go through a bit, know what things are really like before we criticize artists.” She ate, noticed people looking at her and knew it was because she was so white. She went back, pulled a book from the bookcase (the room was sublet by an artist away in France) and found it was a book of alphabets. She took the pen and ink and began carefully practising the half-uncial alphabet. All the time she kept up a busy conversation with herself. “Well, I lost the gamble. That’s the result of patting all your eggs in one basket. Everything is true. Cats like catnip, chickens fly the coop, dogs bark up the wrong tree, you should keep at least one egg in your hat. I made a holy show of myself. He’s perfectly correct. I’m a fool. Who could love me? Do I love myself? Then why should he? It’s coming it a bit thick, it’s shooting with the long bow, to expect other people to love me. I tried to impose on him with my ranting and travelling and romance. Poor boy! I hunted him with love and couldn’t help him out of a hole. He’s looking for a woman and I disappointed him. I can’t help it. So much the worse for you, says nature. So much the worse for the woman who can’t get a man. I don’t care, says nature, die, then. There are lots of other women, plenty for my purpose. Too bad, eh? She put sixpence into the lottery and expected the great prize, she lost—now we must have tears. Not at all. I won’t cry. I’ll do what I have to do, I’ll work. I’ll get away to France. He won’t see hair nor hide of me again. Heavens! We take a chance and if we lose, it’s not fair! The usual thing. Well, Fate, you and I played a long game, you won, that’s all. Someone has to win, isn’t that funny, I never thought of that before. I’m a fool. A fool and her folly keep open house. Naturally, I will die. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ The pretty creature stinted and cried: ‘Ay! Thou wilt fall backward.’”

  Feeling the tears rush into her head, she pushed back the book and began to walk up and down the room, thinking quickly. Honourable suicide, thought Teresa, perfectly wideawake and more rational than usual during the night, is a brave death whereas impulsive bloody suicide is a coward’s death. Here for years I’ve been thinking of myself. I’ll work myself to death. In that way it will take me months and I’ll be able to do something for people, I’ll have the time. Her memory and reason raced at top gear, but she kept running over the much-masticated phrases of his letters of the past years, and their whole conversation of the past two days, scrutinizing every word, the ground they had covered, closer and closer, like someone who had lost a purse and goes back and back over the same ground, by morning light, at evening hours and late at night, hoping to see what was fallen and was lost. What phrase had she lost of his, what look of hers, that had changed the course of events? Something must explain this mysterious man. Melancholy, distrust, even hate in him, she could understand, because thwarted and twisted love would explain it all, or lust, as he would put it; but why did he change from jolly to cold and from kind to cruel in a moment? Why did he advance and retreat, talking about sordid sexual affairs and then pitying humanity, in one breath? She searched through their talks, looking for the clue. Some things she rejected. She threw aside without looking into it the talk about Burton’s rape, this was a schoolboy’s scurrility; she threw aside some anecdotes about the old woman, Mrs Bagshawe, this was a mere bad habit of gossip he had got into, living in low company in Bloomsbury; and a quick, tart question of his, like “What’s wrong with homosexuality, anyhow?” and “What’s wrong with self-abuse?” remarks put in to shock her, silly, pointless things that any pert boy might say. What was wrong with their natural disaccord; each wanted the other for years and now he had rejected her, and at once. She must have displeased him. She knew that she was sad-looking, frail and sick, that she looked paler still because she used no lipstick or powder, but wasn’t he always inveighing against girls made up and girls dressed up, wasn’t he always miserably sorry for poor sick girls who had worked in shops? Nevertheless, she knew how poor she looked and she knew she ought to be rejected for this, if only their friendship had not been on another plane, the commerce of ideas and a mutual help in their lovelessness. She passed the night in wild excitement, as if in the wild dawn of an uninhabited planet.

  In the morning she got up, dressed, had a little to eat in the teashop and went at once to Miss Portfoy’s. By the one chance in a hundred, the job in the City was still open, three girls had been sent there and rejected. She hastened downtown at once, blundering into wrong buses since she did not know the way, and the little streets of the City are hard to find, but she reached the building, a large modern place built of Dutch tiles and steel and hidden away in a maze of streets, not far from London Bridge. In an hour she had reached there, was in, was out again, walking down the streets in a state of surprise. She had got the job and was free for a week to amuse herself. She would start work on the following Tuesday morning. She telephoned Miss Portfoy and had the day before her. She knew no one. She went to Chalfont St Giles, Harrow-on-the-Hill, and Richmond in Surrey, on the three succeeding days, not sleeping at all on the two nights in between. In the days, forcing herself to observe the country, strange and antique as something on a tapestry, in the fresh air, she still, without forgetting Jonathan, seemed to live; in the evenings s
he walked round the streets and near-by squares of Bloomsbury in the thickening air, noting the direction of streets, learning the buses she must take to work, looking in more sordid streets for rooms to let, where she could cook for herself, walking to famous places like Piccadilly and Charing Cross; and towards the end of her walk, she would come back by Marchmont Street where Jonathan had lived until a few days ago, or by Malet Street, where Jonathan lived now in a new life unknown to her. She pictured him in the life he found comfortable and happy, reading, musing, with her quite forgotten, resigning himself for the time being to his solitude and of course with his eye and ear out for a woman who would love him. When she reached home, she read, practised her alphabets for no reason, and when she got into bed, the strange orchestra with fifes and tympani began to beat, which had been getting louder and more furious each night. Through the sounds and the open mouths of this orchestra whirled the broken and blurred images of Jonathan and herself in their eternal maddening conversation, that had lost its clue; whole paragraphs of his letters stood bodily in front of her eyes, repeated so often that they had become incarnated, and again she heard the story of Burton, of the policeman, and the happenings at the opera, his singing about “Lucia”, Lucy the maid shivering on a bench in the park somewhere, Jonathan going through London pitying beggars, buying meals for hungry women—one brilliant world of Jonathan blowing in a storm of sunshine and bitter fog—and the rigmarole of her buffoon Odyssey torn out of privations of which Jonathan knew nothing; this last thought she hastily put away, ashamed of all she had done, because every hour of it was only a stronger proof that she was a detestable thing, an ugly, rejected woman, distorted and lost. She was lost. It was enough to know this once. No sooner had she settled this than the figures, the conversations, the tympani would whirl up again—and she would cry to herself: “But why? But why?”

  The third day, she went downtown, climbed the Monument, took a bus, climbed the tower of Westminster Cathedral and at the top met a little French girl in blue who was busily identifying every landmark in London from a large map she held with difficulty against the breeze. This girl, named Francine, lived in Bloomsbury in a “ladies’ club” not far from Teresa and spoke little English. She was petite, vivacious, sharp, a false blonde, with charm and a quick temper, a delightful person. They came part of the way home together. After leaving her, Teresa felt a twinge of conscience. Poor Johnny! He had invited her to tea and she had been so rude as to leave him without a reply. She ate again in the teashop and hurried home to write him the couple of lines that would show the poor soul that she was not resentful. She walked slower, climbed the stairs slowly, reached her room and sat down at the bare table for a long time. She got down the pen and ink, wrote: “Dear Jonathan, I am sorry,” held the pen for a long time staring at the paper, got up, paced the room, and could write no more. I ought to, she thought, but I can’t.

  This night, the fourth night, nevertheless, she slept soundly and in the morning had more courage. The week-end passed, Monday, her last free day, and she still could not bring herself to write the letter to Johnny; it seemed an impossible task to do what she had done a thousand times. She went to the movies, roamed the galleries at the British Museum, looked round for a rental library, anything to escape the temptation which was haunting her and the fear which sickened her.

  When she got back from work the next day, a lovely warm May day gilding smoke-blackened house faces and jutting cornices that were already home to her, there were two letters for her lying on the table in the hall. The middle-aged woman in a Paisley dress who ran the house hovered with bent back in the background as she took them. She had already recognized one, with a terrible emotion, the other was from Francine Bernard. But what could Jonathan be saying? She tore it open and tried to read it as she went upstairs. What he said was:

  It occurred to me this morning that you wanted my typewriter to type applications on. Unfortunately, I’m using it just now for my work, but if you want to write a letter, come round any time, morning or evening, I’m in most times except at meal times. How goes it? Still the same spirit of adventure? Any jobs in view? Don’t forget to let me know how you’re getting along, you know I’m always interested. If free, anyhow, come Friday at eight-thirty, I’m free then. As ever,

  JOHNNY.

  She read it calmly, trying to crush down the joy she felt that he had called her back. She read it several times and sat thinking. He was sitting too, in his fine room, with his servant to wait on him, and he missed her. She thought of him with more caution and wondered what he would do if he did not get an answer. Would he care at all? Wouldn’t he just let it drop for ever, out of pride? If she did not go to see him today or tomorrow, she would go on Friday she knew, because the ban had been lifted. She sat there in the dusk dreaming over him and his odd ways. He was too offhand. It was a bit too much to pretend that nothing at all had happened. But a curious smile crept into her face; was he a little shallow, flighty? The temptation to turn such a defeat into a victory was too great. She would see him, would take care; and take care, Johnny! She wrote him an enthusiastic letter about her well-paid job in the City and her new French friend, Francine, and mentioned the trips she had taken into the country and elsewhere. When she went down to post the letter, the smiling bent woman was hovering, bobbing about the hall-way again.

  “A young man called for you when you were out this morning, he asked if you were in. I told him you had gone to work. He told me not to tell you, but I thought I would,” the woman ended softly, estimating the girl’s emotions, as she watched.

  “Ah? What was he like?”

  “He had a black hat, he wore spectacles, a dark young man.”

  “Ah, thanks,” said Teresa, smiling involuntarily, and walked out. But in the street a thought struck her, why did he write the note about the typewriter, when he knew she had a job already? Just idleness—or an excuse?

  29

  Regular Nights

  Jonathan opened the wide green door himself and stood back for her to enter the polished hall. A fine staircase ran upwards. The second of two oak doors was Jonathan’s. As they came across the hall, the swing-door opened to allow Lucy, the friendly maid, to appear for a moment. Then she shrank back.

  His was a lofty, large back room painted dull soft green and full of green shadows from the garden and the neighbouring trees. A high window took in sky and tree-tops. The room was furnished in dark wood with bookcases. A cabinet in the wall enclosed the wall-bed.

  He saw that her lips were darker. She had used lipstick, for the first time. He hid a smile and coldly congratulated her upon getting a job so soon, when there was so much unemployment about.

  “Pure luck,” she said. “Amazing, unheard-of luck. Imagine that the man himself only arrived in London last week. From New York. He really looked for a Colonial because he thinks the local English despise Americans.” Soon he knew all about the office and about her trips to the country. She stirred him out of his sloth. He felt uneasy at her activity, wanted to go where she had been. He had never been to those places in his three years in London, he lacked companions, she must go with him and show him the country. She had enterprise. She flushed with joy. “With pleasure, Johnny,” she cried. He had never seen her so lively, her expression had surely changed. The lipstick? Women are funny cattle. Or because he had brought her back to him? He smiled slowly and sat down facing her, leaning back comfortably in a large arm-chair, his boot on his knee. She sat with one arm on the table, in a straight chair, playing with the finger of one of her gloves, and babbled about the partners, Quick and Axelrode, with whom she worked. Quick lied for his partner over the telephone. His partner, for instance, seemed to be mixed up with some women. Teresa had never considered honesty as anything but an absolute law, a command from which there was no appeal. Now, said she, she began to wonder if, moral questions aside, there wasn’t a greater plasticity of mind required for lying. A dominant race, for example, did not lie, because it had the whip;
a weak race lied, the old lied, timid children lied. Only the strong, the powerful, those in the saddle, did not lie, or rather, they need not, but they did, just whenever it suited them—for example, secret diplomatic documents.

  “I have been a child and thought as a child,” said the girl. “I cannot now condemn liars wholesale.” She mused: “Yet, when I was a child, and of course, we used to talk about this at school, being obsessed with moral problems like all children, I used always to say I’d lie to spare people’s feelings, in other words, even then I recognized a law higher than the absolute honesty.”

  “New man, new morals,” thought Jonathan. “How womanish.” But he smiled. “The law of perfidy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Convenient!” said Jonathan.

  “And I realized another thing this morning, in the office,” she said. “Whatever I want to do, becomes a higher law with me. I am a very moral being, you see. For the first time I understand what is meant by calling puritans and the like, English people, hypocritical. Of course, they are not hypocrites, it’s the singular corset of Protestantism, which forces them to invent religious law even when there is none, don’t you think?”