by Alec Waugh
The night porter in Gordon’s apartment was fast asleep.
‘Don’t let’s disturb him,’ Faith said.
They were out of breath by the time they had reached the seventh floor. It was panting and laughing that they turned into each other’s arms.
‘My sweet,’ she said. ‘My sweet, my very sweet.’
There was so much between them to be said. But they had to be lovers, before they could be friends: it was through loverdom, through that deluding ecstasy, whose momentary knitting of what is in the nature of their beings separate, can make two people fancy themselves one person, so that they speak out of their hearts, thinking themselves to be exiles that return to one another. It was not till later, with the first need of each other eased, that they could begin to talk.
‘Darling, I’ve been so unhappy,’ she said, ‘so wretched.’
‘Do you think I haven’t been?’
‘If only we could have been lovers.’
‘We could have understood then.’
‘I thought you would understand. I was so unhappy. Roger was kind to me. He knew there was something troubling me. But I couldn’t explain that. And I so wanted to. I wanted someone I could talk to about myself. Darling, you can understand that, can’t you?’
‘I can understand that.’
‘I thought: anyhow, Gordon will understand. I’d so looked forward to seeing you, to being comforted by you. And then you came. And you scolded me.’
He did not ask her to consider the shock her confession had caused him.
‘I thought you’ld be different,’ she said. ‘I thought you’ld understand. You’ve said in your books that women can be in love with more than one man at once.’
He did not answer. He knew that ordinarily it was like that: that one touched one side of a woman’s nature; that no one person could suffice for any other person. But this one time he had thought it had been different. In his case it had. He had avoided Gwen.
‘I thought you’ld understand,’ she said. ‘That’s why I wanted you to see him, so that you would understand. He was so lovely. I wanted him yet I didn’t want him. I wouldn’t have run away with him. But I couldn’t bear to feel that I’ld never see him again. Do you remember that night when we said we’ld run away together to Tangier?’
‘Am I likely to forget?’
‘I thought of him when I got back to my own room that evening.’
‘That evening?’
‘It seemed so final. I didn’t know what I might not be saying good-bye to. I thought: I’ll die if I never see him again. I cried myself to sleep.’
She said it calmly. Lying back, her arms crossed behind her head, one knee raised and crossed upon the other. He sat at her side looking down at her. She was so lovely. A few moments ago she had seemed his so completely.
‘You meant to go away with me, though.’
She nodded. ‘We could have had such a sweet time,’ she said. She sighed softly. ‘We’ll have it one day. Promise me that. We’ll have it one day, won’t we?’
He did not follow her thought at first. Surely she must have realized that there could be no talk of an elopement now.
‘I was so sad that morning when I went away to Paris. I thought if only we could have some little while together, just a month. But never mind, I thought, we’ll have it some day.’
‘You thought that when you were on your way back to Roger? When you had given me up for Roger!’
‘I never gave you up for Roger.’
He looked at her puzzled. ‘But it was because Roger needed you that you were going.’
‘He wouldn’t always need me. No marriage lasts for ever, I told myself.’
‘Would it have been in that way that you’ld have married me?’
‘Darling, I don’t know.’
Then suddenly he had a flash. ‘Did you ever really mean to marry me? When you said Roger would forgive you, didn’t you really mean that you’ld come away with me for a little, then go back to him and manage to get forgiven?’
‘Darling, I may have done.’
And even now that was what was in her mind. ‘A little time together.’ She had never had any intention of breaking up her life. She had known Roger would forgive.
‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘saying “If only I was twenty-two?”’
‘Yes.’
‘Was that because at thirty you thought you might be saying good-bye to youth in saying good-bye to me, when at twenty-two you’ld have known you wouldn’t be?’
‘Darling, don’t ask me questions.’
His arms were close around her now. They were fond and gentle; as his voice was fond and gentle. If he were not fond and gentle with her now, he could never forgive himself. He had failed her once. He would not fail her now. Tomorrow he would go out of her life for ever. He must be tender with her now. ‘Did you miss me when you got back to America?’ he asked.
‘Desperately.’
‘You know that when I came out here it was to ask you to run away with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You knew that I should ask you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ever think of coming?’
‘Yes.’
‘You decided not to?’
‘Fate decided that. Fate sent him.’
‘You mean you found that you loved him more than you loved me?’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Not that. I was never in love with him. I never loved him. But he did settle things. All those weeks I was wondering whether I would stay with Roger or go with you. Then he came.’ She paused. ‘It was a curious piece of reasoning,’ she said. ‘But I asked myself whether I was being unfaithful to you or whether I was being unfaithful to Roger. I decided that it was to Roger. So I felt that I must stay with Roger.’
He kissed her. Somehow the misery of her confusion must be annihilated. That cheating ecstasy must once more create the illusion of their oneness for each other.
‘My sweet,’ she sobbed, ‘my sweet.’
Never in all their nights of loving had he loved her so completely. Never had she given herself to him more completely. Never had she spoken with a completer freedom. In the intervals of love, with his arms about her, she talked quietly out of her heart’s depth, telling him of all that had taken place within herself, exploring herself. There were times when it seemed to him that it was not Faith Sweden that was speaking to him through the half-lit room; but the spirit of woman freed at last from the long bondage of man’s idolizing; that this was what at heart woman had always been; what she had always wanted to be; that now at last she was allowed to be; that woman was rational as nature was; that one only misunderstood her because one imagined her to be mysterious; in the same way that people imagined the Chinese, who were the simplest people in the world, to be mysterious. This is my medicine, he thought; I must drink it to the end. No woman will ever be able to hurt me again by the time this night is over.
When at last a pause in her talk lengthened into sleep, he still stayed with his arms close round her. He loved her so. And the knowledge that this body so loved and held so close had been another’s was a pain that went deeper than vanity and possessiveness; that was a protest against ‘the spite of heaven.’ He had said months back at Villefranche that he could never love wholeheartedly again; for were this love to end, and love again to come into his life, he would love in the foreknowledge that love was transient. He would never love as he had loved Faith again. At the back of his mind would be the knowledge that the woman who had sworn to follow you to the far earth’s end, might at that very moment have her heart torn by the knowledge that that vow would be separating her from another man; that the same hour which would see you eager with triumph would see a woman crumpled into a tear-stained pillow for that other’s loss. He would never wave farewell at a station platform and expect to see, after no matter how short an interval, the person he had taken leave of. He would assume the possibility of infidelity. He would love with re
servations.
And yet looking at that loved body within his arms, there was not in his heart one trace of anger. He had failed her as much as she had failed him. They had each asked of the other things they had not got to give. He never wanted to see her again. If he heard she was on her way to London, he would catch the next boat to Yokohama. But he would always love her. She would always be in the background of his life, colouring his thoughts.
Brooding so, he lay beside her; till the illuminated hand on his clock grew indistinct in the lightening day. He shook her gently. ‘You must be going home,’ he said.
She stirred, rubbed her eyes. ‘I suppose I must’; she began looking for her clothes.
New York never slumbers. There are more cars or fewer cars along its streets, different windows may be shuttered. But there is always a blaze of lights, a stir of life along its sidewalks. You could not have told what hour of the day it was, as Gordon drove back from Fifty-third Street.
In the curtained bedroom dusk still lingered. He switched on the electric light. Under its hard glare the room in which Faith and Gordon had been lovers, seemed peculiarly forlorn. The bed still bore the impress of her body. The pillow was scented with a mingling of oranges and jasmine. On the dressing-table was the comb she had drawn hastily through her hair. That mirror had been for a moment the repository of her beauty. On the table lay a crumbled sandwich. There was her glass, a quarter empty. In the ash-tray were pink-edged cigarette ends. He supposed that he must start packing.
He had not asked anyone to see him off. He disliked the dramatics of arrivals and farewells. On this morning, as on every other morning, he walked to the drug store on Thirty-fourth Street for his twenty-five cent special. There were the same girls chatting across their muffins, swapping wisecracks with the white-coated attendants. At the door he exchanged his usual joke with the cashier about buying up all her stamps; across the road he ordered a basket of yellow roses, pencilled across the card: ‘For always.’ When the little manager told him that he would be having green orchids soon he said that would be fine and that he’ld be looking in for them in a day or two. He went quickly on with the affairs of packing. By ten o’clock he was through with it. He was beyond sentiment as he took his last look at the room which had been so personal to him for a while and was to become, already had become, one of the dozen standardized apartments through which Miss Cowen would achieve an illusion of stability for her flitting life. He was beyond the conventional ‘last moment’ thoughts, as the taxi rattled him westwards to the French Line docks. He did not say to himself: this is the last time, the very last. He just thought: I hope they haven’t muddled about the cabin. They hadn’t. It was central; and he had it to himself. He pushed his way through the thronged corridors along the crowded promenade to the upper deck. The sun was shining. He found a sheltered place out of the wind. The towers of Manhattan looked very lovely in that amber light against that blue expanse. Pressmen were busy photographing a beflowered typist who had defeated all America for speed and accuracy upon a Remington and was now on her way to challenge Europe. A troupe of acrobats were posing against the taffrail. The siren hooted. A bell-boy came along the decks beating upon a gong. The white-covered way disgorged its crowd of visitors into the customs shed. The siren hooted again. The engines began to purr. The crowned summit of the Empire State wheeled outwards. They were away.
It was the first time that Gordon had ever seen the skyline of Manhattan. He had sailed by night. He had arrived in fog. He had read so many descriptions of its grandeur and magnificence. But somehow, as the Lafayette drew farther and farther towards the sea, Manhattan with the East River and the Hudson River running past did not seem either magnificent or grand; it seemed with its jagged line of turrets like the fabric of a children’s castle. One could see all round it. It was a very little casket for his heart.
The wind freshened as he stood looking. He felt cold and went down below. The ship was very empty now that the crowd of visitors had gone. There were only five people in the smoking-room. One of them was asleep. Three of the others were perched on stools before the bar. They were drinking cocktails; so the bar had opened then. They were past the three-mile limit. Now that he was in a place where he could order a drink he felt no wish to. It was only prohibition that made drink dramatic. The French who had no drink restrictions were never drunk. As soon as the eighteenth amendment was repealed there would be an end of the gin-drinking débutantes. Now that he could drink, he did not want to. He was very tired. He realized suddenly that for thirty-six hours he had not slept. He went below. As he opened his cabin door he stopped. He thought for a moment he was in the wrong state-room. The impersonal room that he had left looked like a conservatory. Then he remembered. This was the way New York said good-bye to you: with flowers, with books, with cards, with telegrams; as the Tahiti ans hung wreaths of tiare about your neck, as at Sydney they flung paper streamers from the decks. He looked at the names on the flowers, and in the cartons of flowers. On the books there was a little packet with a cigarette case, in black and silver, with Faith’s name written in her sloping left-handed scrawl. She had sent him that before the reconciliation of the previous night. She had always known, he supposed, that she could get him back.
He began to open the telegrams. ‘Come back soon,’ they said. The last one was from Omaha. ‘Bless you,’ it said. It was signed ‘Joan.’ ‘One day,’ he thought, ‘I’ll find her somewhere.’ He felt very tired; with the yellow messages scattered upon his pillow, he fell asleep.
As always on his arrival at London he drove straight to Adelphi Terrace. Stanley’s welcoming of him was as unemotional as it had ever been.
‘There’s a telegram for you,’ he said. ‘I haven’t opened it.’
It was from New York; from his agents there. It said that the serial rights of ‘These, Our Women’ had been sold for five thousand dollars. He handed it across to Stanley.
‘You’ll be able to do quite a lot of travelling with that.’
‘I’m not sure that I want to travel. I’m thinking of staying here a while. How’s my last novel doing?’
‘Fifty per cent, better than anything else of yours.’
Which was like the irony of things, thought Gordon. You wrote a book to please one person in complete indifference to everybody else and somehow the many others found something in it personal to themselves.
‘What are your plans?’ said Stanley.
Gordon looked beyond Stanley’s head towards the river; symbol of change, symbol of survival, fluctuant and changeless, it flowed muddy brown towards the sea.
‘I’m going to write a novel,’ he said, ‘about two brothers. One will stay at home in a Dorset village all his life; the other will travel about the world. At the end of their lives they’ll meet. They’ll ask each other what they’ve made of it: what’s been important in it. They’ll find they’ve both the same story in essentials to tell each other.’
‘You won’t find an American editor giving you five thousand dollars for the serial rights of that,’ said Stanley.
‘I want to write it, though.’
‘And your other plans?’
‘What other plans?’
‘I thought you might be thinking of getting married.’
‘Not that!’ he said it so emphatically that Stanley laughed.
‘Now don’t start talking like one of the characters in your novels.’
They both laughed. There was a twinkle in Stanley’s eyes.
‘You’ll marry one day,’ he said.
‘I suppose I shall,’ said Gordon. He paused. ‘But there are certain women, you know, who depoetize all other women for you.’
‘I could take that in two ways,’ said Stanley.
‘I meant you to.’
Villefranche
Summer 1931.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © ALEC WAUGH 1931
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ISBN: 9781448201075
eISBN: 9781448202393
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