‘Take her back! Take her back!’ said the voice within him that always pleaded for her; ‘take her back, and let things go on as they used to! She is no different now from what she was; she was always like this, only you didn’t know it! Can’t you re-establish the relationship on the basis of truth? Truth is antiseptic, it will cleanse and heal the wound, and then when she behaves in character you won’t be angry, because you know what makes her tick! You were in love with a false Deirdre, created by your imagination; aren’t you man enough to love the real one, now that you know her faults? She loved you, knowing yours—women are more realistic than men——’
‘But she didn’t and doesn’t love me, that’s just it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because she told me so in a dream.’
‘A dream! What sort of evidence is a dream?’
Then followed a part of the record that George was altogether too familiar with—the pros and cons of the dream. But hadn’t her subsequent behaviour verified it, hadn’t Mrs. Buswell’s hints and ultimate outspokenness confirmed it?
Without Mrs. Buswell he would have given in, for every time that he forgave Deirdre (and in his heart he forgave her seventy times seven) he felt so much better physically and mentally, so nearly restored and integrated, that sometimes he would snatch up the receiver and start to dial her number. ‘Darling, I’m quite all right: do come round now!’ Mrs. Buswell was never present when he committed these extravagances, but her invisible presence restrained him from fulfilling his intention. Regretfully he put the receiver back.
It was the vision she had given him of reciprocal affection dominating, softening, yes, and even sweetening, physical love. Physical love, she must know all about it, a working woman who had had two husbands. But she insisted on reciprocity: she didn’t think that love was healthy without it. ‘But surely, Mrs. Buswell’ (so he argued with her shade), ‘unselfish, unrequited love is the noblest of all emotions? The love that religion itself enjoins on us—the love that expects no return?’ But she wouldn’t have it. ‘God himself,’ she said (in these imaginary conversations), ‘wouldn’t expect us to love Him unless He first loved us.’
On Saturday the telephone didn’t ring; the morning passed and still it didn’t ring. At lunch-time when people are most likely to be in, George rang Deirdre.
‘Welcome 9191.’
‘Hullo, darling, does that sound more like me?’
A pause, some readjustment at the other end, he couldn’t tell what.
‘Yes, it does, it does sound more like you.’
‘Well, what about coming round to see me? I’m not catching now. You could even kiss me if you wanted to.’
‘Of course I want to, but. . .’
‘But what?’
‘Well, I’m engaged this afternoon.’
‘Then come at drink-time.’
‘Yes, if I can manage it.’
He had brought himself to the point of not expecting her when Deirdre came.
‘Darling, of course I’m glad you’re better but I should be gladder still if you hadn’t been so cruel to me.’
‘Cruel to you?’ George repeated, when, after some hygienic holding back their kiss was over. But his conscience smote him: he had been cruel, or had meant to be.
‘You said you were too ill to see me, but I think you were shamming.’
‘If you had come to see me you would have known I wasn’t.’
‘To begin with, perhaps. Then you said you didn’t find it convenient to speak to me—such a nasty way of putting it.’
‘Mrs. Buswell said that.’
‘I don’t care who said it—it came through your mouthpiece, and all the time I was in agonies, wondering what was happening to you.’
‘You were having a bathe when I was worst.’
‘You couldn’t expect me to stay indoors all day, George dear, just because you had a tummy upset. And you’ve always said you wanted me to enjoy myself.’
‘Oh, don’t let’s bicker,’ George said. ‘You’re here now, that’s the great thing.’
‘Yes, in the end you sent for me, just as if I was some sort of call-girl.’
‘Oh, what nonsense you talk.’
‘It isn’t nonsense at all—you’ve changed towards me. You don’t love me any more.’
‘What?’ said George, and his heart missed a beat.
‘You don’t love me any more, that’s why I’ve done what I’ve done.’
‘What have you done?’ asked George, and a nameless terror clutched him.
‘First tell me you’re truly sorry, and then I might not do it.’
‘But you said you had done it.’
‘Well, I have and I haven’t. If you said you were sorry and were really nice to me——’
George took her in his arms.
‘—then I might change my mind. But I don’t think I shall, because, you see, I know that you don’t love me.’
‘I do love you, I do love you!’
‘No, or you wouldn’t have played me up like you did. That’s why I decided——’
‘What did you decide?’
‘I oughtn’t to tell you because it has to do with someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘Now you’re asking.’
Sounds came from the kitchen—it was Mrs. Buswell, his ally, come to cook his supper.
Something stiffened in him.
‘Of course I’m asking, and I wish you wouldn’t treat me like a child.’
‘It was only because I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Hurt away,’ said George. ‘You can’t hurt me more than you have hurt me these last few days.’
‘Don’t you think I can?’
‘Just try.’
‘Well, darling, since you must know, though you can’t say I haven’t warned you, it’s Rupert.’
‘That man at the party?’
‘Don’t call him that man, darling, he’s very well off and very nice to me. He said he’d like to——’
‘Well?’
‘See a lot more of me. Don’t misunderstand me—we’re just great, great friends, that’s all.’
Mrs. Buswell, in the kitchen, was making quite a clatter. George released Deirdre and got up shakily.
‘Then go to him,’ he said.
Deirdre turned her large eyes on him, those eyes that stained with blue the intervening air, and suddenly he saw the fear behind them. ‘You don’t mean that, treasure, do you? You don’t really want me to go to Rupert?’
‘You can go to hell for all I care.’
‘Oh, but sweetie-pie, you wouldn’t like that, would you? You wouldn’t like to hear me sizzling, because you would be there, too, because in a way, you know, you seduced me—it wasn’t nice of you. And I’ve been with you all these years, as everybody knows. If you send me to Rupert——’
‘I’m not sending you.’
‘If you let Rupert have me——’
‘It was your idea, not mine.’
‘Well, you’ll be lonely, won’t you? You won’t find another girl to make things as easy for you as I have. You’re shy, you know—you haven’t much self-confidence with a girl when it comes to the point.’
George said nothing.
‘And you know you’ve messed my life up—the best years of my life. You’ve trailed me around and put a stigma on me—Rupert won’t like that.’
‘But you said he wanted you to go to him.’
‘Yes, darling, he does, but I don’t want to—not very much, that is. Of course he loves me and I could get to love him——’
‘Well, why not?’
‘Because I love you better, oh, much better.’
What a racket Mrs. Buswell was making in the kitchen!
‘You don’t love me,’ George said. ‘You told me so yourself.’
‘I told you so? I never. You must have dreamed it.’
‘Well, if I did, it’s true, and you must go now.’
‘Go? Go where
?’
‘Out of this flat.’ And taking her arm George began to propel Deirdre to the door.
‘Oh, but how can you be so cruel? I haven’t anywhere to go to—only my own rooms, that you pay for. Oh, what shall I do? It wasn’t true what I told you about Rupert—he doesn’t want me, and I don’t want him. I only said it because you were so unkind to me.’
‘Get out of here, get out!’
‘How can you turn me away like this, when you’ve been so fond of me and done so much for me? You’ve always been so good and generous——’
‘Get out—get out!’
The door shut out the sound of Deirdre’s sobbing. George sat for what seemed a long time, looking at his knees, then round the room, then at his knees again. Like everyone who has taken violent action he was unable to comment on it.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ he said, hardly knowing whom he was going to see.
‘She’s gone,’ said Mrs. Buswell.
‘I thought she went half an hour ago.’
‘No, she didn’t, she stayed on the landing, outside the door. She rang once or twice but you didn’t hear and I wouldn’t let her in—I said you were resting. Of course she didn’t dare to use her key. I should get it back from her, if I was you. You never know. She’s gone now.’
‘Oh, dear, Mrs. Buswell.’ The ‘dear’ might have been for her, or part of the exclamation. ‘What do you think about it all?’ Somehow he took it for granted that she knew what had been happening.
‘I say good riddance to bad rubbish.’ She looked with compassion at his working face. ‘Don’t take on, sir, she’s not worth it.’
George wasn’t so sure; he didn’t know how to feel, and it seemed incongruous, disproportionate, almost incredible that the emotional experience of three years could be ended by one small act of violence, lasting only a minute.
Much later in the evening, after Mrs. Buswell had gone, he went to the telephone and dialled a number.
‘Can I speak to Mrs. de Sole?’
‘Speaking. But who is that?’
‘George Lambert, Délice.’
‘George? I didn’t recognize your voice.’ Would his voice never be the same again? ‘You are a stranger. Well, when can we meet?’
‘Could I come round and see you now, or is it too late?’
‘It’s never too late to mend. I’m not clairvoyante, but I suspect you want to tell me something.’
‘Don’t be hard on me, will you? I’ve just been rather hard.’
‘On yourself, no doubt.’
‘No, on someone else.’
‘Well done, I congratulate you. But you won’t find me hard—I shall be softer than silk, snow, swansdown, anything you can think of.’
A HIGH DIVE
The circus-manager was worried. Attendances had been falling off and such people as did come—children they were, mostly—sat about listlessly, munching sweets or sucking ices, sometimes talking to each other without so much as glancing at the show. Only the young or little girls, who came to see the ponies, betrayed any real interest. The clowns’ jokes fell flat, for they were the kind of jokes that used to raise a laugh before 1939, after which critical date people’s sense of humour seemed to have changed, along with many other things about them. The circus-manager had heard the word ‘corny’ flung about and didn’t like it. What did they want? Something that was, in his opinion, sillier and more pointless than the old jokes; not a bull’s-eye on the target of humour, but an outer or even a near-miss—something that brought in the element of futility and that could be laughed at as well as with: an unintentional joke against the joker. The clowns were quick enough with their patter but it just didn’t go down: there was too much sense in their nonsense for an up-to-date audience, too much articulateness. They would do better to talk gibberish, perhaps. Now they must change their style, and find out what really did make people laugh, if people could be made to; but he, the manager, was over fifty and never good himself at making jokes, even the old-fashioned kind. What was this word that everyone was using—‘sophisticated’ ? The audiences were too sophisticated, even the children were: they seemed to have seen and heard all this before, even when they were too young to have seen and heard it.
‘What shall we do?’ he asked his wife. They were standing under the Big Top, which had just been put up, and wondering how many of the empty seats would still be empty when they gave their first performance. ‘We shall have to do something, or it’s a bad look-out.’
‘I don’t see what we can do about the comic side,’ she said. ‘It may come right by itself. Fashions change, all sorts of old things have returned to favour, like old-time dances. But there’s something we could do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Put on an act that’s dangerous, really dangerous. Audiences are never bored by that. I know you don’t like it, and no more do I, but when we had the Wall of Death——’
Her husband’s big chest-muscles twitched under his thin shirt.
‘You know what happened then.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t our fault, we were in the clear.’
He shook his head.
‘Those things upset everyone. I know the public came after it happened—they came in shoals, they came to see the place where someone had been killed. But our people got the needle and didn’t give a good performance for I don’t know how long. If you’re proposing another Wall of Death I wouldn’t stand for it—besides, where will you find a man to do it?—especially with a lion on his bike, which is the great attraction.’
‘But other turns are dangerous too, as well as dangerous-looking. It’s being dangerous that is the draw.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’
Before she had time to answer a man came up to them.
‘I hope I don’t butt in,’ he said, ‘but there’s a man outside who wants to speak to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I think he’s looking for a job.’
‘Bring him in,’ said the manager.
The man appeared, led by his escort, who then went away. He was a tall, sandy-haired fellow with tawny leonine eyes and a straggling moustache. It wasn’t easy to tell his age—he might have been about thirty-five. He pulled off his old brown corduroy cap and waited.
‘I hear you want to take a job with us,’ the manager said, while his wife tried to size up the newcomer. ‘We’re pretty full up, you know. We don’t take on strangers as a rule. Have you any references?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then I’m afraid we can’t help you. But just for form’s sake, what can you do?’
As if measuring its height the man cast up his eyes to the point where one of the two poles of the Big Top was embedded in the canvas.
‘I can dive sixty feet into a tank eight foot long by four foot wide by four foot deep.’
The manager stared at him.
‘Can you now?’ he said. ‘If so, you’re the very man we want. Are you prepared to let us see you do it?’
‘Yes,’ the man said.
‘And would you do it with petrol burning on the water?’
‘Yes.’
‘But have we got a tank?’ the manager’s wife asked.
‘There’s the old Mermaid’s tank. It’s just the thing. Get somebody to fetch it.’
While the tank was being brought the stranger looked about him.
‘Thinking better of it?’ said the manager.
‘No, sir,’ the man replied. ‘I was thinking I should want some bathing-trunks.’
‘We can soon fix you up with those,’ the manager said. ‘I’ll show you where to change.’
Leaving the stranger somewhere out of sight, he came back to his wife.
‘Do you think we ought to let him do it?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s his funeral. You wanted us to have a dangerous act, and now we’ve got it.
‘Yes, I know, but——’ The rest was drowned by the rattle of the tro
lley bringing in the tank—a hollow, double cube like a sarcophagus. Mermaids in low relief sported on its leaden flanks. Grunting and muttering to each other the men slid it into position, a few feet from the pole. Then a length of hosepipe was fastened to a faucet, and soon they heard the sound of water swishing and gurgling in the tank.
‘He’s a long time changing,’ said the manager’s wife.
‘Perhaps he’s looking for a place to hide his money,’ laughed her husband, and added, ‘I think we’ll give the petrol a miss.’
At length the man emerged from behind a screen, and slowly walked towards them. How tall he was, lanky and muscular. The hair on his body stuck out as if it had been combed. Hands on hips he stood beside them, his skin pimpled by goose-flesh. A fit of yawning overtook him.
‘How do I get up?’ he asked.
The manager was surprised, and pointed to the ladder. ‘Unless you’d rather climb up, or be hauled up! You’ll find a platform just below the top, to give you a foot-hold.’
He had started to go up the chromium-plated ladder when the manager’s wife called after him: ‘Are you still sure you want to do it?’
‘Quite sure, madam.’
He was too tall to stand upright on the platform, the awning brushed his head. Crouching and swaying forty feet above them he swung his arms as though to test the air’s resistance. Then he pitched forward into space, unseen by the manager’s wife who looked the other way until she heard a splash and saw a thin sheet of bright water shooting up.
The man was standing breast-high in the tank. He swung himself over the edge and crossed the ring towards them, his body dripping, his wet feet caked with sawdust, his tawny eyes a little bloodshot.
‘Bravo!’ said the manager, taking his shiny hand. ‘It’s a first-rate act, that, and will put money in our pockets. What do you want for it, fifteen quid a week?’
The man shook his head. The water trickled from his matted hair on to his shoulders, oozed from his borrowed bathing-suit and made runnels down his sinewy thighs. A fine figure of a man: the women would like him.
‘Well, twenty then.’
Still the man shook his head.
The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley Page 70