Cousin Rosamund

by Rebecca West

  But Rosamund did not come to my marriage. I got no answer to my invitation until late on the night before my wedding, when I was roused from my sleep by the telephone-bell and took down a long and loving telegram sent from Colombo, saying that she and Nestor were on their way to Australia and would be travelling for three months. Surely, in that Arabian Nights world, they could have broken their journey and chartered a plane to bring them to London and back. A diamond bracelet came from Carrier’s. I could not understand.

  I had Oliver. I buried my face against his shoulder and he grunted sleepily, and I said, ‘It is Rose.’ But he did not hear. I had Oliver, and all my dead, Papa and Mamma and Richard Quin, but not my living. Mary was still with me but what had been without a flaw was spoiled; and I had never had Cordelia. And as for Rosamund, perhaps I had never had her either. The next morning I was wakened by Oliver’s kisses and I stared into his eyes and said, ‘You are all I want, I do not care for Rosamund any more.’

  His hands released me. ‘Oh, my dear, that sounds sad.’

  ‘Why should it sound sad that I want nobody but you?’

  ‘We want nobody but each other but that does not mean turning people away. Rosamund, that is the girl you told me that you had loved, when we were at Barbados Hall. You have not spoken of her since then. But I could see you loved her a great deal. Not that it is easy for a man to understand about women loving each other.’

  I feared a question in his voice. ‘Oh, I am not a Lesbian,’ I said. ‘That has always seemed so queer to me, all homosexuality does, like a song Kate used to sing to us when we were children. Let me see how it went…. I can’t remember.’

  ‘I hope you can,’ said Oliver. ‘I gather you were brought up in a very strange way, but it really seems remarkable that your nurse should have sung you a song that has since seemed to you a satisfactory comment on Lesbianism.’

  ‘I remember it now, “He cut his throat with a lump of cheese, and…” It went on like that, always the wrong instrument.’

  ‘It seems so to us. You are made to be loved as a woman by a man, but I always knew that, even when I was not free to love anybody else. I used to notice how after you had played a concerto you used to smile at the conductor and the orchestra in a way that made a remote reference to love.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I cried.

  ‘You did indeed. The reference was prim and stately, but it was there. You would not have smiled like that at women anyway. But talk of Rosamund. I can’t bear this thing of throwing people away, of turning them from the door, of stopping to care when one has once cared.’ His body became harsh and taut in my arms. ‘It is too like Jasperl. Tell me about Rosamund. I am on her side.’

  ‘I cannot be bothered,’ I said. ‘It is so long a story. It goes back so far.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Just at this time, in the early morning, the sea gets up a little and the waves slap the rock.’ We were quiet and listened. The windows looked west, and on the sky we saw the dilute reflection of the sunrise. The water lapped and was still and lapped again. I put my hand on his heart and felt the pulse. The two beats delighted me beyond all reason. ‘It is so long a story, it goes back so far,’ he repeated. ‘Rosamund was brought up with you then?’

  ‘Not from the first,’ I said. ‘She lived with her mother, who was Constance, who was my mother’s schoolfriend, and her father, who was my mother’s cousin. He was a horrible man. Beautiful and slender and very fair, he looked like somebody living in the eighteen twenties, he might have been a Lake District poet that had been invisible and so never got written about. He put on a horrible Scotch accent, like a Scotch comedian. He played the flute better than anybody I have ever heard.’ I paused. I could not tell Oliver how Cousin Jock had stood in the street outside our house in Lovegrove while my mother died. It was strange, I was lying naked in bed with him, but I did not know him well enough for that. ‘He was a horrible man,’ I said lamely. ‘He made quite a lot of money but he made them live in a dreadful street, almost a slum, and they had evil things in their house.’

  I remembered Rosamund’s studied nobility, that did not flinch when the forces of hell smeared her house with filth: how she had stood unmoved when the curtains were torn down from the windows and trodden into the filth, and dirty water had been thrown over the sheets.

  Oliver said, ‘What sort of evil things?’

  ‘You know. You know.’ I said the word shyly to the stranger. ‘A poltergeist.’

  ‘Oh, that. There was just Rosamund and her father and mother in the house? No other children.’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Then I suppose it was she who was working it.’

  ‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ I pulled myself away from him and sat up. ‘You must not think that of Rosamund. She would not have done that, and nobody could have done it. It was beyond anybody’s power to produce the things I saw.’

  ‘You saw them?’

  ‘Yes. Three huge iron saucepans going round and round a clothes-line high in the air, and a big preserving-pan, done up in newspaper, because it was winter. And when we were picking up some curtains something twitched them out of our hands. And when Mamma and Constance had tea the forks and spoons flew round the room.’

  ‘You saw that?’

  ‘Yes, yes. As I see you now. And Rosamund did not do it.’

  ‘Did it go on for a long time?’

  ‘I don’t remember hearing exactly how long it had gone on, I only saw it once. You see, we had been in Scotland and had just come down to live in South London, because Papa was made editor of a local newspaper, and Constance did not ask Mamma to come and see her, because she did not want her to see the poltergeist. But she could not bear not to send us Christmas presents, so then Mamma knew it was all right, and we went over to see them. And the poltergeist was dreadful, it threw a poker through the window at us when we went to the door. And at first Rosamund was out in the garden, and we went out to find her, and we played with some rabbits she had, and a hare.’ I stopped then. Really I could not tell him about the hare. Another time, perhaps. ‘But we went back into the house, and as soon as we were all four of us in one room it stopped.’ I looked timidly at him to see if he understood the wonder of this. I could not describe how the packet of salt on the kitchen mantelpiece that was overturned voided its contents in a thin white trickle which spread out in a fine spray and fell on the hearthstone. I had told Rosamund that I would never speak of that.

  ‘There may be something wonderful in that,’ said Oliver.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Someone who had been practising a fraud may have liked you so much that they could not bear to be anything but honest.’

  ‘It was not that! It was not that at all!’ I cried.

  ‘Why do you hate to think it might be that?’ he asked. ‘It is not a great sin for an imaginative little girl to play at being Puck, and it would be a lovely thing if such a little girl met a playmate who was so good and honest and trusting that she felt it was a shame to take this darling’s money.’

  ‘That would be a pretty story,’ I said, ‘but it was not true. And yet? And yet? Can I have forgotten? I only think I remember those saucepans circling round and round the clothes-line, and being joined by the preserving-pan tied up in newspaper?’

  ‘I think you only think you saw them,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘But she seemed so honest. And we knew her very well. You see, after that Cousin Jock was terrible to Constance and Rosamund, and they had to leave him, and then they came to live with us, there was always room in our house. They both sewed beautifully, they did needlework for shops. And then Rosamund became a nurse, she always wanted to be a nurse, she nursed Cordelia when she had a breakdown after she found out that she was no good as a violinist.’ I paused. I could not tell this stranger about that either. I hurried on, ‘We loved Rosamund so, she was so beautiful and she was so good, she bore things with us and took the sting away.’ I paused again. Neither could I tell this stranger ab
out my fortune-telling and my responsibility for Queenie’s crime. ‘She was Richard Quin’s special love. He could not have loved her if there had not been something wonderful about her, could he?’

  ‘I would think that she must have been very good stuff for him to choose her,’ said Oliver. ‘There was something extraordinary about your brother.’ He looked out of the window over the sea to the far mountains, the still rosy sky. ‘I can imagine you seeing visions in your nursery, with him about.’

  ‘They both belonged to heaven,’ I said, and then was shaken by doubt and anger. ‘But did she? Did Rosamund? She was in love with a young doctor when she worked at a hospital, a doctor named Robert Woodburn. I know she was in love with him because of the way she looked when she spoke of him. She need not have spoken of him at all had she not wanted to have his name on her lips. I remember her lying on the lawn, putting a blade of grass between her teeth, wanting just to lie and do nothing, but being forced to tell us about him. But he was poor, and she did not marry him. Then she married this dreadful man Nestor Ganymedios, who is horrible to look at and is not honest and is cruel and squalid and spends money in a way that is like vomiting and is a sort of racial wastepaper-basket. Think what that means. She must be with him as I am here with you. But he is rich, she must have married him for his money. Sometimes I think there must be some other reason, when we saw her after her marriage she persuaded me that she was still good. But if she did this she can never have been good. And why else did she not come to our wedding? At least she can afford to do anything.’

  ‘Here, take my handkerchief, it is bigger.’

  ‘I cannot think why men’s handkerchiefs are so much bigger than women’s,’ I snuffled. ‘But, you see, she must be ashamed, her marriage must be wrong, and if it is wrong it must all have been lies, she cannot have been what we thought her,’ I cried furiously. ‘Looking back, I am not sure now if she ever cared for anything more than eating honeycomb and cream. She even talked of that when she was saying goodbye to Richard Quin.’ It came back to me as a chill memory that Richard Quin also had spoken of that honeycomb and cream. Of that too I could not speak to this stranger. I wept even more than I had to, to cover up my reticence.

  ‘My dear, do not cry,’ said Oliver, ‘you cannot need to cry like this. If this woman meant all this to you and to Richard Quin, she cannot be what you fear. There is just a part of the story which is missing. Did your mother like her? She was a shrewd woman.’

  ‘Yes, Mamma liked her. And, yes, Mamma was never wrong. She looked after Mamma when she was dying. She was very good to her.’ I dried my eyes. ‘And yet. And yet. It is a little thing, I should not think of it. And yet. It took a very dishonest person to be dishonest with Mamma. Every single word she poured out, every single vehement movement she made, indicated that dishonesty was not what she wanted in her world, and everyone was in her debt, they should have felt obliged to take her terms. But I remember her lying to Mamma, quite unnecessarily. It was when Papa had gone away and left us with very little money. That is a long story too. I will tell you someday. But anyway Mamma was worried in case we thought she might not have kept back some money from my father and Rosamund told her that we were all frightened at being without money, and that I specially had worried because I was not sure if I could be a musician, because there might not be enough money, and I could not see how I was to earn my living if I was not a pianist. But I had felt nothing of the sort. It was a lie, and I wished Rosamund had not made us lie to Mamma. It could have been done some other way.’

  ‘But, Rose, it was not a lie,’ said Oliver.

  ‘It was a lie,’ I said. ‘I had the courage of ignorance.’

  ‘You poor child,’ he said. ‘Oh, that poor little brute, the infant Rose whom I shall never know! What a lot of things about ourselves that happened before we met we shall never be able to tell each other! Mostly because it is too much of a sweat.’ I blushed guiltily. ‘But this is something I know about the infant Rose which you do not know. You were frightened to death by your poverty and insecurity. Rose, you have only been married for a little over a fortnight. Twice you have cried out in your sleep that there would never be enough money for the Athenaeum, that you were not good enough to get a scholarship, and that your Papa was gambling away all your money, and you would have to work in a factory or as a servant and people would turn you out and you would starve. And each time I have woken you up and made love to you. Oh, my poor little Rose! But you see your Rosamund was not lying. She told the truth.’

  I whispered, ‘Don’t let me forget this. Remind me of it if I lose faith in her again.’

  ‘I will. Rose, believe me, there is a gap in this story which may be filled in, or may not. But it is there. Now, come and swim. The water will be cold but it will feel so new, and the kingfisher may be flying about where the stream comes out among the red rocks.’

  ‘But she does not want to see us. I cannot get over that.’

  ‘Yes. She evidently does not want to see us. I will not pretend to you that I think there is any reason but her own decision that kept her from coming to our wedding. But for that decision there may be some compelling reason. My dear, there is no use trying to force the locks that are made of mind and soul. Come and swim in this cold morning sea, come and get born again.’

  I did not try to reject Rosamund any more. But it was long before I felt in need of her; not, certainly, during the two months of our honeymoon, when all time, all space, was crowded by our love. The earth, the sea, the sun, the sky, and light itself were all our accomplices. We walked on the hill and the hot air tingled with sharp scents of the pines and the herbs underfoot; at noon we sat on the gritty heights of the ruined fortress and looked down on the wide sea, white under the noon, and the horizon was tense as a stretched bow; in the market, cool under a sanctuary tent, walled in by the honey-coloured stone houses, the fish lay silver and rose and dappled on the slabs, the meat was crimson, the vegetables were green and purple and red, the flowers were white and scarlet and blue and gold, the women sat by smirking like the midwives of creation; on the beaches brown bodies were supple, and at last their primary purpose was known to me, but was still a secret. At any hour of the day we swam, our skins encrusted with salt; if I ran my lips along his arm or mine I could taste the sea; there was no hour when it was not good to make love, but when the night fell there was a special harmony between creation and our state. It was so strange that this new ecstatic life ran parallel with the life I knew. There was a piano in the villa, of course we could not have gone there had there not been one, and I practised for my autumn season in a dream, yet competently, perhaps more aware of error than I was before, more confident that in my body I possessed an extraordinary machine. When we went back to London I would take a train and travel to a provincial town and play at a concert and be wholly absorbed in my music, with that absorption which I now saw proved music, and any art, to be a miracle for it is miraculous that man, born with the power to engender for himself an intoxicating excitement, should not have been satisfied with sex and should have set about, he, the created thing, patently not the divine creator, inventing another form of excitement, and should have made what could compete, what could tempt away the attention. But then I took my train back to London and there in our little house I found, still caged and at my command, this curious, resourceful, enveloping, renewing joy, the archetype of pleasure, the primal model. My wonder that there was not nothingness but existence was now infinitely increased, as I walked down the street and looked about me at the houses and the people I was filled with astonishment. Now I knew how extraordinary existence was, how stupendous its contrast with nothingness.

  I was right in fearing that I had lost Mary, or at least I had lost some part of what had been between us. She had not gone away for a holiday at all, but had stayed in London and spent all her time furnishing her strange new house, which was indeed the strangest house I ever saw in London, so that she was installed there when Oliver and I re
turned. She had taken nothing from our house, though I had told her she could have what she liked, except the furniture and pictures which had been in her own room. I felt a chilly disappointment. I thought she had specially liked the clock in our drawing-room. It was as if what had been shared in our common life had had no value for her. I felt again the suspicion that she had been glad when I told her I was going to marry Oliver, because it gave her an opportunity to flee to her solitude which she preferred to me. When we met it was all right, she still loved me. She said, ‘Oh, how happy you are, you look as if you had been printed by a new process that got in all the colours!’ It was a surprise to her. I think she thought it possible that I might have decided during my honeymoon that I did not like being married, and made my way home. I think that she was only able to be glad that this had not happened by practising the sort of dichotomy that is often to be seen in the Protestant relatives of Catholic converts who would prefer them to remain in their new faith because it makes them happy, while regarding Catholicism itself with disapproval. This was not altogether pleasing to me, as I imagine the analogous position is not pleasing to Catholic converts; but I was in a worse position than they are, for they at least can explain their position by theological discussion, whereas I could not make the smallest reference to the essential factors which made me happy with Oliver. I could not explain to Mary that when Oliver and I were lovers it was as important as music; and it was nearly as impossible to explain to Cordelia that Oliver and I were of some importance, not, I mean, that we were important musicians, but that we were as important as other human beings are, for the reason that they are human beings. She gave a dinner-party for us on our return, wearing an exhausted expression, as if I had got into difficulties rashly swimming in a rough sea and she had had to go out and rescue me and had used the last drain of energy in dragging me up the beach. Frequently she spoke as if she had made the marriage, though there was not the faintest reason she should think so. She treated Oliver with notably less respect than she had shown before, often turning away from him before he had finished the end of a sentence; he must be not of the worth she had supposed since he had married me. Yet she too loved me, she like Mary was delighted that I was happy, she gave me not one wedding-present but several. She spared nothing to make this dinner-party, as I think she would have described it, brilliant. I am one of the people (and it is proof of the inarticulateness of the human race of which I am complaining that I do not know whether this is a rare or a common condition) to whom getting married had been as important an event as being born. But of my two sisters, who were my only living relatives, one carried in her mind inadequate pictures of a marriage, the other a distorted image of it; and I was unable, for reasons common to all mankind, to correct their misapprehensions. We cannot talk about our loves, we cannot talk about our own souls. It is remarkable that human intercourse is not more painful than it is.