by Francis King
Before he went he showed me the new pyjamas he had bought for the nursing-home. "Feel them. They’ve a most lovely texture." His wan enthusiasm heartens me.
Will he die? Will he recover? I do not know. Presentiments mean nothing. I often thought that I should be killed in the last war. But I cannot help sharing his melancholy.
"Take care of yourself," I say, watching him settle himself in a first-class carriage, with the Spectator, the Criterion, and the London Mercury. "Take care of yourself. I shall ring up the nursing-home to-morrow. I’m sure all will go well."
He smiles distantly, almost coldly, sinking down into his seat and folding his blue-veined hands. "Don’t bother to wait."
"But I’d like to."
Silence. He looks out of the other window, his head turned away from me, at some men on the line. The heat is oppressive.
Then: "Good-bye, good-bye." The train moving, coach by coach, drawing him away, jerking beside the unimpeachably blue river until it reaches a hazy distance and is lost.
I feel suddenly sick.
July 8th, 1937
Last night there was thunder—on the right. What sort of portent is this?
I lay awake for hours, head aching, sweating, naked, without bedclothes. Was it an attack of malaria? Or only the heat? I thought all the time of what S. N. G. had said to me. I was wrestling with devils.
July 9th, 1937
Throughout this morning I have said: "I must ring up the nursing-home." But something prevents me—a fear which makes my heart thump, my scalp tingle. I keep on putting it off—‘after I have finished this article’, ‘after my bathe’, ‘after lunch’. This is cowardice.
It reminds me of when Dennis was killed: and I dared not go down from the balcony...
From SHIRLEY FORSDIKE, Barbizon, France, to Sir HUGH WEIGH, Dartmouth
July 15th, 1937
MY DEAREST,—It has happened! A letter has come from you! Oh, such a cold, disapproving letter—but a letter none the less. To-day I left my room where I have been brooding all these days and went for a drive in the Forest of Fontainebleau. This is the first time that I have been out of the garden since coming here. Your letter has done this. And now as I write, late, with Mother and all the guests asleep—all except the young Dutch couple on honeymoon who quarrel and do not turn out their light—I touch this one sheet of notepaper over and over again, I put my lips to it, because you, too, have touched it, your hands have rested there. Do not laugh at me for this: rather pity me. A letter is all that I have of you—a cold, disapproving letter.
If I could die! If I had the courage! But something prevents me—the certainty that some day, somehow, I shall be of service to you, that you will call me, that you will accept this love of mine. It is this that keeps me alive: it is only this that makes each day bearable—these days of summer, long, serene, but void, empty, like the smile on a dead face. (You see, I am being literary. ‘Like the smile on a dead face.’ But how else can I express this ache, this void? I cannot write over and over again: ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you’.)
Plato was it who said that we all go through the world seeking a twin soul? I think I believe that. I feel as if you had been torn from me—as if we had been sundered. And this one half must always cry out for the other; must always hunger for it; must always bleed: for nothing can heal it, nothing, till the halves be one. Why should I only be so certain of this—that we are halves, twin-souls? Why should I only bear the ache? We belong to each other, inseparably. Claim what is yours: return to me what is mine.
...I came here to France because I was ill. Nothing could be diagnosed, the doctors were puzzled. Should I have said to them then: I am starving, I am bleeding to death? Would they have believed that? But it is true, true.
Your letter: I have read it over and over again. When I went for my drive this afternoon, alone, in a horse-carriage, I kept on opening my bag, taking it out, looking at it, each time as though I expected some miraculous change, so that what was formal and cold might be tender, might be loving. And each time my eyes filled with tears. You should not have written to me like that. I had rather you had been angry: this coldness freezes, kills.
You write: ‘Be reasonable. No sane person could have sent such a letter.’ No sane person! But are we ever sane when we are in love? And is it unreasonable, extraordinary, for me to love you? Is it strange that I should say to you: ‘Take me, I am yours’, when you are a god. What else can mortals do? What else but this—to dedicate themselves? ‘I am yours’: what else?
A book has just appeared here in France, called Pitié pour les Femmes; it has caused a stir, my mother has lent it to me. You must imagine a writer, Costals, a libertine, cynical, degenerate, a brute: yet to this man two women are willing to concede everything—because they have read his books. Understand: they have not met him. Yet they love him, as I love you. And they are starved—starved of all true companionship. While I—I could have been married over and over if I had wished it.
Does my love seem strange then? Costals is amoral, a cowardly degenerate: but you—you are noble, ascetic, good! There is nothing strange here. There is nothing mad in my wish to give myself to you. I am pouring my precious ointment on your feet. Oh, do not spurn it! Do not spurn it!
It is growing very late. Again I am weeping—as I always weep when I write to you. The young Dutch couple have turned out their light. If you knew how lonely I feel! If you would answer this—tenderly, gently! If I knew that you accepted my sacrifice! That would be sufficient.
You must forgive the reproaches in this letter. They are unworthy of you. I must learn the complete resignation—to resign everything, even my grief—to make it all yours. I am not afraid of doing that. I put my soul into your hand. Do what you will with it, my dearest, for I am yours, yours only. Yours always. Even this intolerable anguish is yours, these tears.
I shall put out the light now. I shall try to sleep.
SHIRLEY.
PART II
PHANTOMS
WHEN Hugh Weigh first met Lucy Korrance at a dance at the Collector’s bungalow (he ripped the train of her evening-dress and she was angry with him) it was said that she was ‘wild’. For one thing, Mrs. Meakins, her aunt, had a story of how on their last visit to England she had spent a night on the river at Oxford with an undergraduate—and without a chaperone (Mrs. Meakins being the chaperone provided); and for another she had an irrepressible sense of humour. On one occasion at a dinner party, she offered a raw young subaltern a concoction of vinegar and epsom salts with the words: "Do try this liqueur. It’s supposed to be terribly, terribly old." "Hm, excellent," he murmured to the giggled derision of Lucy and her friends. But the more stuffy of her mother’s guests thought that she might be going too far...
Such were her idiosyncracies: and it was these, rather than certain more formidable traits—a tendency to lose her temper, be self-willed, strike the native servants—that really worried Mumsie. (Lady Korrance was always Mumsie to her girl: to her husband she was Memsie.) But everyone knew that she was young; she would learn; she would grow up.
Lucy had one other characteristic—one more endearing, conventional; she was a snob. There was the occasion when her father had just been promoted and a dinner was given in his honour. After the ladies had gone into the drawing-room, Mrs. Meakins, who was pleased with her sister and wished to show it, said: "Tell me, dear. I suppose a knighthood goes with this new job?” and the then Mrs. Korrance, being habitually untruthful, replied: "Well, really, Beatrice, I haven’t thought about it." Then her voice tinkled upwards in nervous laughter and she added: "In any case I don’t care a ha’penny whether I’m Lady Korrance or not."
It was at this point that Lucy intervened. "I do," she said staunchly. "I shall be proud to be the daughter of Sir Basil Korrance." And she blushed in anticipation.
People agreed that this was the right spirit.
Mumsie repeatedly asked the young subaltern to bridge, tennis, and dinner; Papa, when he carved, gave him the breast and wing; and Mrs. Meakins contrived to ‘leave the young people alone’—as far as propriety permitted.
It was in the garden that the first step was taken. "I just exist for my garden," Mumsie was in the habit of saying to enthusiastic visitors, as though she identified herself with the half-dozen coolies whose lives were devoted to its irrigation. It was certainly beautiful, flowering at the centre of parched roads, maidans, compounds. "It’s like England," Mumsie would also say on occasions; and this was the highest praise that anyone could bestow. There were lush lawns with sundials, bird-baths, and statuary; there was a sunken garden; there was even topiary, Fantastic monsters, created out of the mind of one of the Indian gardeners. And all this was irrigated by a delightful stream which sloped artfully, made sudden waterfalls, trickled into pools, and at intervals was spanned by bridges of wood. This stream—but the coolies knew where the water came from.
Hugh and Lucy strolled over the lawns, she twirling a parasol of vivid green. From her wrists dangled bracelets, lockets, charms, which tinkled as she walked. She was, as Mrs. Meakins put it, "a lovely girl". Hair piled on to her head in auburn turrets, swelling enbonpoint, thighs moving firmly under rustling silk—these were the tastes of that era. Hugh approved.
"Do you ride?” she was asking. "I mean, do you find the time?"
"Oh, yes."
"Would you come riding with me? Susie’s nearly sixteen—Papa’s promised me another—would you?" This was the way she spoke, jumping from one thought to another, tripping here, slurring there. The parasol swung in an arc.
"That would be delightful."
"Oh, good! Couldn’t we ride for miles and miles—I mean, right into the jungle—Papa won’t let me—but if you said..."
At that moment they came to one of the wooden bridges. How cool the water flowed! How clear! They both looked down, hands moving along the rail. Fingers met, momentarily. When they walked on, descending the little incline of the bridge, Hugh gallantly helped her. Slipping one arm round her waist, he pressed upwards that fine embonpoint.
"You brute! You utter beast!” She pulled away, tears of rage filling her eyes. The wide-brimmed hat quivered.
"But really—"
"Don’t talk to me! Don’t touch me!"
Over the smooth lawns she darted. The dress fluttered, the bracelets tinkled. She clutched her hat. Then she had disappeared.
Hugh stood on the bridge, gazing ruefully at his own reflection, dapper, dashing almost, buttons gleaming, teeth gleaming, hair gleaming with fixative. "Damn it," he thought. "Damn it. So she was frigid. So that was it. The little fool!" He felt enraged with her. He would like to smack her face. Any opposition annoyed him; with women he was used to having his way.
Then suddenly he decided: he would go and see Andrée. Andrée would understand. Dear Andrée!
But Lucy wept.
Hugh had ‘had’ his first woman when he was seventeen. He, S. N. George, and two other school friends had visited Paris for a week: in Paris he fell. Later, in retrospect, he never romanticised the incident as so many people do. It was a beginning; and that was all. He was too truthful to romanticise his lust. His abnormal sexual energy was expended on women just as his abnormal physical energy was expended on hockey, polo, tennis; and in either case without the expenditure he felt ill. But there was no romance there, no sentimentality.
For his school-friends, on that visit to Paris, it had been sufficient to drink absinthe in a Montmartre café where the sexes danced together—women mooning round in each others’ arms, men swaying together. But to him this had merely seemed trivial: he had outgrown his adolescence. So that when, one evening, the others had set out, believing this to be Life and Sin and all the things that had been rigidly excluded from the tradition of Dr. Arnold, he complained of a headache and stayed at the hotel.
Later, after they had gone, he began to walk the streets with a perseverance which marked all his activities. He walked Les Gobelins quarter, because that was where the hotel was: had he known Paris better he might have seen the absurdity of this locale. It was raining as he explored those endless terraces and squares, to which clung, like a film of moisture, the gentility of a down-at-heel bourgeoisie. No one seemed to be out that night—only a cat that whisked through his legs, then stopped, returned, and pressed voluptuously against him. Far away, in the mist, there was asthmatic coughing. Lights blurred as though he were seeing them through tears.
For two hours he walked, hands deep in his pockets, the moisture gradually seeping through his clothes. Sometimes he thought of the promised satisfaction—the warmth of it, the mastery. But more often he thought only of how best to succeed in his search, without any consideration of what would follow. The most important thing seemed not to release his energy but to find a woman. The means had superseded the end.
Footsteps clattering down an area, the sound of a woman singing, a church clock striking. The clammy touch of a lock of his own hair on his forehead. A desire to yawn. The ache of delayed realisation. This was all.
Then suddenly, as he strode along, head bowed, coat collar turned up, some syllables of French, murmured timidly from under a lamp-post. He shot round, smiling with relief, gesturing with one hand, oblivious that he was standing in a puddle.
Over her head she held a newspaper to keep her hair dry, a bony Jewess, pitiably thin, with a gold-stopped smile and a low forehead covered in a sort of rash. Her fur gleamed with pin-points of rain, her hands were large and clumsy. She smelt of wet clothes.
In her room her teeth chattered: and even when she was naked she grotesquely tried to warm herself after the fashion of cab-drivers—swinging her skeleton arms and slapping her flesh.
In their embrace she suddenly called out in impatience, because she was cold: “Viens! Viens, petit garcon!” But he, because he was preoccupied and in any case did not know the idiom, did not hurry.
It was only later that he realised.
After that, few weeks passed without a repetition. But he was now becoming fastidious. Just as when he had first learnt tennis he was content to play with anyone, however bad, so at first he had pumped himself into drabs, syphilitics, inebriates. But later he was less easily satisfied.
It was when his regiment was sent to India that he met Andrée. He had an accident, riding into a heap of gravel on his motor bicycle and taking the skin off his face, when her father, a Eurasian jute merchant, had driven past in his carriage and seen him. He had almost hurried on, being naturally squeamish. But then his benevolence asserted itself. Grey, with the peculiar greyness of dark complexions, he drew up and got his Indian servant to drag Hugh on to the back seat. Once there, Hugh bled on to the dusty cushions, moaned, muttered, “This is very good of you, sir”; quite failed to realise that Mr. Da Costa was ‘not known’ at the Club, and fell asleep.
The next thing that happened was to wake up to an excited circle of woman, Mr. Da Costa’s family, some sending for the doctor, some cautiously attempting to remove his clothes in order to attend to his wounds, all of them talking. Andrée alone stood apart, watching him. He never forgot that gaze.
When the doctor arrived he was horrified to see Hugh sprawling on one of the many unmade beds that littered every room of the house, and hurried him off to the hospital. The Da Costas were not even thanked for their trouble. But the next morning, in spite of the doctor’s warning, “They’re awful people,” and the doctor’s wife’s, “Th
e dirt they put up with!” Hugh called on them. And Andrée was there.
She was fifteen, precocious as many children are who have spent their lives in the plains, plump as few are. She could not even be termed pretty: she bit her nails, her teeth were irregular, her face seemed to be all cheeks. But her body was young and strong, with breasts and buttocks that were far too large for their age, and feet that were far too small.
The first thing Hugh noticed about her was the way her black hair was screwed into two little knots. “Pig-tails”, she called them; and he had corrected, facetiously, “Piglet-tails”. But when they were in the garden together he got her to undo them and ran his fingers through the thick strands. Like a cat she at first rubbed herself against him; then she pulled away, impatiently.
A few days later, a child now, in a white linen frock and sandals, she climbed a tree and dared him to follow her. At the top, scrambling from one branch to another, she ripped her skirt, disclosing a brown thigh. He touched her, and she did not move away. They stayed in the tree.
There was no opposition from her family. It never seemed to occur to them that Hugh might one day marry her. Obviously this was a thing which did not happen—an impossibility, given the society in which they lived. But they were honoured that he should pay her visits, send her flowers, buy her confectionery. Fortunately they were without sexual morality.
And just as they excluded, as a matter of course, all possibility of marriage, so Hugh did also. Apart from all incompatibilities, he was too realistic. He knew that for the moment Andrée was delightful: he loved her animal smell, the way in which she curled up in bed at his feet, her childish tears. But in five years, ten years—he could not bear to think of it. She would be like her mother and her twelve sisters—obese, clumsy, seismic, with a dry wheezing which one took to be laughter.