Then, for another second, as Humphrey looked both relieved that the truth he had suddenly learned was not to be discussed and intrigued as to the identity of this ‘friend’, Alice felt a sense of panic; as if all at once, driving along a dry, straight road, she had skidded into a ditch. ‘A friend?’ ‘Him.’ For God’s sake, what was she talking about? She didn’t have anyone coming to dinner and if she had she would never have spoken of ‘a friend’. Coyness had never been one of her failings. She would have given a name, or said ‘someone I met’ at such and such a place; he’s this, or that, I wonder if you know him. You’re going mad, she told herself, as it occurred to her that in all her years of keeping up a front she had never actually told a lie. She had simply let people gather what they would and if what they concluded wasn’t how matters really stood, that was their lookout and nothing to do with her. Now, all at once to start inventing things—and to start without intending to—oh, that was to invite disaster. That was truly to unleash the wolves of pity. Already she could hear them in the distance, howling in the cold and the night. That is really pathetic, they were howling, when you start telling lies. That’s the beginning of madness. You always liked to think you were in control of your fantasies. But now …
We’re going to get you, the wolves howled, as Alice stood there in the Brompton Road, talking to Humphrey. We don’t care how long it takes. We’ve caught your scent and now—now you’ll never escape. A friend! Him, indeed! Oh, you poor, poor thing.
And from then on, try though she might to get a hold on herself, Alice realised that her fantasies were controlling her.
The trouble was compounded by the fact that Humphrey, having caught his brief glimpse of the truth, even though he had lowered his eyes almost immediately, couldn’t help but sneak the occasional glance to make sure that he had seen what he had, and that he hadn’t been imagining things. It was a sneaked glance that took the form of a telephone call three times a week as opposed to his former once a week; and of his constantly bringing up the subject of the friend, and Him, as if to reassure himself that even if all the rest of Alice’s life were a fantasy, this at least was true, so one still didn’t feel sorry for her. All right, she might be poor, she might be cold, she might, often, be hungry; but she did, for all that, have a friend.
He meant well, Alice was certain; it was his way of telling her he cared for her. Also, he felt guilty about being her oldest friend in London and her most constant employer, and never having realised until now just what her situation was. However, because she hadn’t introduced him to the truth, so to speak, when it had suddenly popped up, and because she had shown herself determined to keep her mask up, he felt it incumbent upon him to let her know he would respect her secret. That he would continue to take her mask as her real face. And that to prove how thoroughly he understood she didn’t want to be pitied, while being extra solicitous, he would show his solicitude only by endlessly referring to and making jokes about that one aspect of her life that didn’t seem to him to be sensitive.
The first time he phoned her after their meeting in the street he said ‘How did your dinner with Him go?’
‘Oh, very well,’ Alice laughed. ‘He’s really very nice.’
Two days later:
‘How’s Him?’
‘Fine. We went to the theatre last night to see …’
And a week after that:
‘Him?’
‘Well, thank you. Well. We’re going to Brighton for the weekend.’
And after that, of course, she was lost. She had to make up where they had stayed in Brighton and what they had done there; and she had to accept the fact that while Humphrey, in his discretion, would never tell anyone what he had guessed about her finances, he would, almost as if to relieve himself of the tension that his silence imposed upon him, tell everyone he knew who also knew Alice about the existence of, and the part played in Alice’s life by, Him.
‘Good Lord, did I tell you?’ she could almost hear him saying over the phone. ‘Alice has got herself a friend. No one’s allowed to know who he is—he’s just known as Him—but she seems to be seeing a great deal of him. I think it’s wonderful. I mean, she must have had a fairly lonely life, since Bill left. Oh, I know she’s always been quite comfortable’—this said very quickly, to uproot any seed of doubt that might have been planted by his reference to loneliness—‘but even so. And with Derek away …’
That, for example, to Jim. Then Jim, she had no doubt, would tell Richard. Then Richard would tell Penny. Then Penny would tell Laura. And Laura, having called Humphrey to have the news confirmed, would call her and boom down the phone, ‘Alice, what’s this I hear? You’re having it off with some bloke? Well, I do think you could have told me. But now listen; who is he, what does he do, and he’s not a Syrian, is he? Because having been married to a Syrian for twenty years I can tell you …’
So it had turned out.
‘No,’ Alice had laughed. ‘He’s not a Syrian, Laura. He’s not even an Egyptian, a Moroccan or a Libyan. He’s just …’
‘Well?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t tell you. Not just at the moment.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. What a lot of nonsense. What’s his name, at least?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t even tell you that at the moment. Let’s just say he’s called—Him.’
‘Him,’ snorted Laura. ‘Him. Well, I shall just phone Humph back and pump him some more. He obviously knows more than he’s letting on.’
‘Oh no, he doesn’t,’ Alice said. ‘No one knows anything. Now please, forget about it and I’ll tell you more when I can.’
‘Well, I think you’re being bloody unfair,’ Laura boomed. ‘Christ, how do you get a man in London nowadays? I wish I knew. Him! Well, you’re very lucky, that’s all I can say.’
Yes, Alice thought. I am. Lucky Alice, who has a mysterious friend. Lucky Alice who doesn’t have to be pitied, because she has a beautiful flat, interesting friends, and Him.
At the end of three months the fantasy was so out of control that not only had Alice come to believe in the existence of Him, but even when she reminded herself that Him didn’t exist she couldn’t help but be pleased, like a gleeful child with a secret, that she had invented him. She was not only going mad, she told herself in the mirror every morning; she was enjoying going mad.
Stop it, she told herself, as she said sorry to someone she couldn’t go out to dinner tonight; she was having dinner with Him. (And oh, how she would have loved to go out to dinner! She hadn’t had a decent meal in a week.)
Stop it, she told herself, when someone asked what Him did, and she said, deciding it was time to flesh out the portrait just a little, ‘Oh, he imports and exports things.’
And stop it, stop it, stop it, she told herself at the beginning of December, when someone remarked to her that she was looking very pale and fragile, and that she really should go away for a holiday, and she replied that in fact just as soon as Him had some time off, they were going away somewhere hot.
But she couldn’t stop it and every morning as she lay in bed with the blankets pulled around her, feeling like a cold little sparrow that has fallen out of its nest, she planned what she was going to do with Him today, what she would tell Him and how she could bring up the subject of a holiday with Him. And though she felt like a cold little sparrow, a sparrow whom the cold had rendered grim and songless and wasted, when she did conjure Him up she also had the illusion of warmth. It might have been the type of warmth one is reputed to feel just before one dies of exposure. All the same, she couldn’t help welcoming it and basking in it; and when she woke every morning, and started rummaging through her imagination searching for Him, she would look forward to that moment in five minutes, ten minutes time when, lost in her fantasy, she did feel what would probably be her only glow of the day.
Alice loved her integrity and she couldn’t have lived without it; that idea that while she wasn’t particularly talented or intelligent herself, she
could do her bit for art, for beauty, for—above all—truth. And though obviously she could have got a job that paid her properly—as she could have sold the flat, moved back to the States, or applied to Bill for funds—she was certain that had she done so she would soon have ended up drinking too much, contemplating suicide and being many times more unhappy than any lack of heat or food could make her feel. If one didn’t at least attempt to stand on the side of the angels then there was no standing anywhere on earth.
Nevertheless, for all that love and for all that it was her choice to live as she did, the image of Him became ever more irresistible; and the more irresistible it became, the more she told herself that not only was this madness going to end in disaster, but that Him, even if, or precisely because, he didn’t exist, was not on the side of the angels at all, but was instead entirely on the opposite side; on the side of ugliness, untruth, and the Devil. Him had no time for art, she told herself as she snuggled up to him; Him had no time for doubt, questions, or the suffering of mankind. Him cared for money, expensive cars, handmade suits and good food; and Him’s idea of a good time was to stay in some luxurious hotel in the South of France, to eat his meals in a restaurant that Michelin recommended and to drink a wine that cost over a hundred pounds a bottle.
It was so tawdry, so infantile, so clichéd, this picture she had of her self-confident, dynamic lover; and here, too, the more tawdry, more infantile and more clichéd it was, the more she found it attractive.
So, she told herself as, looking at her watch, she saw that she could at last turn the heating on, it would continue; until, when the disaster struck, she lost Him. How she would react then she had no idea. Maybe in her humiliation she would hardly notice his passing. Or maybe, by then, she would be so mad that she would mind his passing more than her humiliation; and it would be her being abandoned that finally allowed the beasts of pity and self-pity to spring at her throat, rather than her being exposed as a woman who had gone crazy. At that stage, however, she supposed, it would hardly matter what unleashed the creatures; and though she had no doubt she would survive even their attack, she would emerge so torn from her mauling that apart from being an object deserving of, or anyway demanding, compassion, she would practically have ceased to exist at all.
The Alice whom everyone knew and liked, the plucky little Alice who was the friend and confidante of writers, painters, refugees and the eccentric would, to all intents and purposes, have disappeared.
*
These reflections on her madness, her situation and her imminent demise were the form that Alice’s daily battle against feeling sorry for herself took. A battle she always came nearest to losing around seven thirty in the evening, before she went out to eat with friends, could bring herself to turn the heating on if she was having friends over, or, if she was alone, could force herself to go into the kitchen and, depending on her finances, prepare herself a bowl of lentils, a plate of pasta, or a small vegetable stew. Once she had made that move, though, the enemy tended to retreat. And tonight, since her current financial situation was comparatively so brilliant that she had felt able to run to not just a steak and kidney pie, a fruit salad and a bottle of red wine for her guests, but also a bottle of whisky, it didn’t so much retreat as seem to leave the field altogether. No doubt her victory was made more complete by her decision, with the heating on, to have a small glass of the scotch she had bought; and by her being conscious, as both warmth and whisky had their effect, that the smell from the oven was really quite good. Still the reason wasn’t very important. The main thing was she was going to have a bright and drunken evening with two of her best friends, was going to meet someone new, and would go to sleep looking forward to the day ahead.
She was feeling so very contented with her lot, indeed, that, by eight o’clock, with the table set, the wine uncorked and her hands starting to turn from purple to pink, when she just thought of Him she did so with a feeling of pleasure. Far from being conscious of eventual disaster, she was amused by this story that had so taken hold of her, and couldn’t help thinking that if she was careful she might get away with it indefinitely. It didn’t have to end in tears, she told herself as she poured another small whisky; and even if it did, she might still be able to make a joke of it. After all, if it had been absurd of her to invent Him, the reaction of some of her friends to the invention had been no less absurd. There had been Laura, who had become quite jealous at the idea of Alice, little orphan Alice, having an affair with a mysterious businessman. There had been Irish Tim, who had first been published thanks to her efforts and seemed to think that this exempted him from having to pay for the typing that she did for him thereafter. He had become all sentimental when Alice had mentioned in passing that Him had proposed to her and, that while she probably wouldn’t, she might just accept him and go off and lead a comfortable life in what Tim called the straight world. ‘You can’t,’ he told her, taking her hand. ‘I won’t allow you to sell yourself for a few thousand a year.’ And one famous evening just over a month ago, there had been a whole group of mainly fellow expatriates who had fairly erupted with indignation when, someone having pressed Alice as to when and where she and Him were going off on their long-delayed vacation, she had, as out of the blue as ever, chirped: ‘Oh, we’re off in two weeks time, to Can-Cun, in Mexico.’ ‘To Can-Cun?’ Jean had roared and wrinkled her nose. ‘To Can-Cun?’ Lidia had squeaked; and ‘To Can-Cun?’ David had muttered. ‘But you can’t,’ she’d been told. ‘You’ll hate it,’ she’d been told. ‘It’s an awful Miami-type resort town full of dreadful people spending too much money.’ In fact, so violent and ludicrous had been the reaction of half the people at the gathering (the other half hadn’t heard of Can-Cun, didn’t know where it was or what it was like, or didn’t care where she went, even though they really disapproved of anyone flying off for two weeks in December to lie in the sun, and of Alice’s doing so in particular) that at first she had been tempted to confess her invention there and then. Commenting that for a group of people who prided themselves on their simplicity, it was astonishing how many of them just happened to have been to the particular helltown that Can-Cun apparently was. Then, however, she had decided that in a couple of days she would simply spread the word that after all she wasn’t going to be able to go to Mexico, as Him had to fly off to Japan on business. She was sorry not to go: she would have enjoyed making the trip in her imagination. As she would have enjoyed the lies and the excuses she would have had to make for returning as pale as she had been when she had left. But aside from the fact that she might be caught out if all those people had already been to her chosen destination and that she would have to stay shut up in her flat for two weeks—not a prospect that attracted her at any time of the year, but particularly not just before Christmas, when she tended to be invited out to dinners and parties almost every night—she was afraid that if she did insist on going and telling her friends, as she would, that she had had a wonderful time, they would consider her such a renegade that she would end up despising them. And that she wouldn’t like. No, it was better to cancel the trip; to think her friends merely ridiculous; and to accept the extra invitations that would be forthcoming from Laura and Lidia and everyone else to stop her feeling too downhearted. ‘I mean, I’m sorry you haven’t had a holiday, because you really do look as if you need one,’ Lidia would, and did, squeak. ‘But on the other hand, I can’t tell you how glad I am you didn’t go to Can-Cun. I mean, honestly Alice, you’d have hated it. You can’t imagine. It’s hell.’
Humphrey and Jim alone of the people she had told she was going to Mexico had not expressed their disapproval; had, on the contrary, told her they thought she was very lucky and, God, envied her going off like that. And it was because they had, that Alice had vowed that when she did have a little bit of money they would be the first people she would invite to dinner. Not, moreover, she had told herself, just a dinner of pasta and salad; the usual dinner she made when she had friends over, telling them that she was
a hopeless cook, and pasta and salad were all she could manage. No, she would really pull out the stops for them; and if she couldn’t run to a steak and kidney pie—her speciality—she would at any rate attempt a roast chicken.
They would have such a pleasant evening.
*
As, when Humphrey and Jim and Gianfranco turned up at around eight-twenty, they proceeded to have. It would have been better perhaps if she had made the roast chicken, because by the time they had had a few drinks, and she remembered to take the pie out of the oven, it had dried up; and though all three of her guests declared it to be delicious, she could see that it cost them a certain effort to eat it; and she nearly choked on her little portion. Moreover, it would have been better perhaps if she hadn’t had those two whiskies before anyone arrived, since she was so far ahead of the men by the time the meal was half over that she hardly knew what she was saying, and was becoming increasingly uncertain as to what to make of, and how to act towards, Jim’s friend Gianfranco. However, neither of these circumstances lessened the pleasure of the evening for her. And by the time Humphrey, at only ten-thirty, said he really must be going, as he had to make an early start the following day, she was flying so high that not even a faint suspicion that had come to her, nor a more than faint feeling that her wings were out of kilter could bring her down to earth. If anything, they made her fly higher still, albeit in an unbalanced way.
She had assumed, when she had phoned Jim and invited him to dinner, and he had said that he would love to come but he had an Italian friend staying with him for a month or so, and would it be all right if he brought him along, that this friend was—well, a friend; a boyfriend, or a lover, or something of the sort. And dear, discreet Humphrey, who knew half the truth of her life, hadn’t disabused her when she had called him to see if he could come too and had mentioned that she had just invited Jim and—what’s his name? Ginacarlo? Gianfranco?
The Man Who Went Down With His Ship Page 11