A Man of Forty

by Gerald Bullet

  Adam comes and goes, on this occasion, without hearing a word about Mary Wilton. David is busy telling himself that it would be the height of stupidity to give a second thought to the girl. He repeats the injunction at intervals throughout the, week-end. But he knows, he knows, that he’ll meet her again : that’s the delicious deadly poison at work in his blood. With this hope, this anxiety, this bitter-sweet preoccupation, he hasn’t much attention to spare for Adam’s mercurial discourse; yet he manages, somehow, to conceal the fact, always contriving to supply, just in time, the appropriate laugh, comment, question, contradiction. No one—except, I think, Eleanor, who is a great deal fonder of David than he knows—is aware of the effort it costs him to do the civil thing.

  I see Adam as a very breezy, volatile, charming, exasperating young man. Something less than a year ago he was a political doctrinaire, an enraptured idealist with an easy and beautiful solution of every human problem. Today, as David knows all too well, he’s an industrious debunker of politicial idealism, and of any other kind of idealism that comes his way. And tomorrow he’ll be something else. And always, always, he is superbly confident in his own opinions, and blandly forgetful of ever having entertained any others. With his large exuberant egoism, he now takes the same generous pleasure in hating and despising his fellow-men as he used to take in flattering them with prospects of a shilling-in-the-slot Utopia. “ It’s fascinating, Adam,” says David, “ to hear you growing up.” Adam raises his eyebrows, ready to laugh at what’s coming. “ You’ve been growing up at the top of your voice, ever since I’ve known you.” “ Good old David!” says Adam. For it’s one of the charming things about Adam that he’s always ready to be amused by other people’s jokes.

  Now the Hinkseys and Mary. They come to lunch in due course, and the Bromes pay them a return visit, Eleanor staying behind to be with Paul, as ever (but it’s her own fault, largely). In a month or two the families are on superficially easy terms; and David gets into the habit of inventing excuses for running the car into Chiselbrook, or elsewhere, and taking in Radnage Hollow on the way home. Sometimes, for the sake of variety, he’ll go to Radnage first. And so the complication begins.

  Part II

  The Flood

  § 1

  Boxed up in the house, watching the rain, David was conscious of a mounting fever. Boxed up in the house with Lydia, Eleanor, Paul : not to mention Mrs. Bayne, who came from nine till five, most days, to char for them. It rained pretty continuously for five days. Trees dripped, gutters splashed, watertanks overflowed, the lawn grew greener, the sky was sullen, and the rain came slanting from the west. At first one could rejoice. Good for the crops. Good for the garden. Just what we want. But that view of rain wasn’t really native to David Brome. It was something he had adopted with his new life, and he couldn’t keep it up for long. Underneath was the desperate feeling he had had as a small child, when rain meant that he couldn’t go out to play with the other boys.

  That, precisely, was his situation now. He couldn’t get out. He couldn’t get away from Lydia, Eleanor, Paul. He was fond of them all, in an exasperated resentful fashion. He was fond of them, and sick of their company. Even the company of Paul, who had the preposterous charm of his years. With Paul, civility was not enough. One had to be friendly, lively, gay; or Paul would feel that something was wrong. And to be obliged to be friendly, lively, gay, was a gross tyranny of circumstance. David could not bear to disappoint Paul, still less to rebuff him. If Paul came along and said : “ Shall we pretend to be shipwrecked?” or “ Shall we have a game of school?”—in that confiding casual manner he was beginning to affect—it was more than David was capable of, to deny him. Even if he hedged, it gave him a pang. I suppose I’m a fool about the child, he sometimes thought. But it was true what they said, so tritely. To have a child, a son, it was like having another life. A full, free, innocent life, a life immune from the torture of desire and the knowledge of mortality, a life in which one’s own ecstatic childhood was renewed. David could remember enough of his own childhood to know that being a child isn’t all honey. Miseries and fears, as well as joys, are acute. But there was something, a freshness, a virgin sensibility, call it what you like; something that was now lost, or deep buried under a load of adult misgiving, selfconsciousness, responsibility. And that something, whatever it was, lived so visibly, so audibly in young Paul, that one could—yes, one positively could—at chance moments recapture it and feel seven years old again. Was that Peterpanism, the impulse to escape from manhood? Was it a symptom of protracted adolescence, and a little ridiculous at his age? Anyhow, it was above all things important that Paul should be happy. Now’s his chance; it’ll never come again. Now he lives in a simple, wonderful, endlessly exciting world; and a world which is to a large extent plastic under the fingers of his fantasy. Let him be happy while he can; for the night cometh, forty cometh, when no man can be happy. What damned nonsense, said David. Really, David, he said, you make me sick with your whining self-pity. Here you are, with an assured sufficient income, a devoted wife, an enchanting little son, a pleasant occupation, and you can think of nothing better to do than complain of the rain and yearn—yearn is the word—yearn like a greensick minor poet for paradise. And by paradise you mean Mary Wilton, a girl young enough, nearly, to have been your daughter.

  These self-admonitions got David nowhere. The fact remained that Mary was in his mind and his blood. He could think of nothing else. He could feel nothing else, except at a remove. He could feel, at a remove, that Lydia was beginning to guess something. She knew that he was somehow absent from her; and this knowledge confirmed the secret fear which she had so carefully, at much cost, been ignoring during the greater part of her married life. She suspected herself of being a dull woman; it surprised her to be liked, and her response was nearly always unsure, suspicious reserve alternating with gushing acquiescence. There was effort in all she did, effort and a determination to make the best of everything. David was vaguely aware of this fact about her. Easy does it, easy does it, he kept saying; but he dared not say it aloud. He wanted everyone to be easy, so that he could do as he liked without being tormented by the knowledge that he was hurting someone. He was hurting someone now, he was hurting Lydia, by his abstraction, his silence, his visible discontent tempered by occasional jocular outbursts that deceived nobody except perhaps Paul. Not Lydia. And not (he began to think) Eleanor. They did not, these two, know the precise form of his trouble, his commonplace trouble, (all men are alike, he said, but I’m more foolish than most), though Lydia must surely have some idea. He stared at the rain, the everlasting drip, and felt Lydia watching him, reading (was she?) his thoughts. Sometimes he thought her quite unaware of his condition, and resented her obtuseness. Sometimes he felt his mind and heart nakedly exposed to her sight, and resented that, too. And even his resentment was halfhearted, because complicated by a sense of he pain, her pain which he felt, which he was the cause of, which he wanted to relieve but could not. The only way he could protect Lydia from pain was by not wanting Mary; and his wanting Mary was a fact beyond his control, the cardinal fact of existence. For how long the cardinal fact? For ever, said his heart. And to call the answer absurd (as he did, when he remembered to) somehow made it none the less convincing. He could theorize about it at a distance, but in Mary’s presence, real or imagined, he believed in nothing but Mary. She haunted him—her sea-blue eyes, her amused voice, her young proud profile. Darkness and light were in her; dark brows and lashes, cold-serene eyes, sanguine skin; in the curve of the nostril a hint of delicate disdain, in the lips a candid friendliness.

  So he remembered her, a hundred times a day, and so he found her when, the rain ending at last, his car carried him to where she was.

  “Hullo!” she said. “ Do you want Gaffer? He’s out riding.”

  “ No, I want you,” said David. He spoke lightly, with a pretence of banter. “ I’ve come through floods to find you.”

  “The roads are pretty bad, aren
’t they?”

  “Bad but beautiful. I nearly got drowned.”

  “It’s a marvellous morning,” said Mary, staring across the fields.

  “Yes,” said David, with his eyes upon her.

  It was a marvellous and a strange morning, with unexpected water lying in the fields, overflowing the ditches, streaming across the roads, and everywhere reflecting the sky, so that it was as if the sky itself had been spilt over the green and brown earth. In this wide world of mirrors, whose glassy brilliance met and married with the softer light falling from above, David breathed freely and forgot his chains.

  Her glance came back to David. “ Aren’t you coming in? Joyce is at home.” She named her grandfather’s young wife with easy indifference, yet contrived to give the remark the flavour of a small joke.

  “Is she?” David smiled, for no reason.

  “She’ll be delighted,” said Mary.

  “No, she won’t. Not in the middle of the morning. It’s an impossible time. I’m really on my way to Chiselbrook.”

  “I see,” said Mary. “ You’re taking a short cut.” Her smile was mischievous, even (he thought) conspiratorial. It was apparent to him that she had grasped the situation. It was apparent, too, that she liked him.

  “Let me take you for a ride.”

  “In the American sense?”

  “Not exactly. But I’m sure you’ve some shopping to do in Chiselbrook.”

  “You can do it for me,” she said. “ I’ll give you a list.”

  “Will you come as you are,” said David, “ or do you want to put a coat on?”

  She gazed at him consideringly, with a faint ironical smile. “ Well, I could come, couldn’t I?”

  His easy manner became difficult to sustain. He was afraid to speak, lest he should betray how much this meant to him.

  Yet, with difficulty, he did speak : “ You could. It’s an idea worth considering.”

  “Come and talk to Joyce while I’m getting ready.”

  Trembling, painfully happy, he followed her into the house, and, facing Joyce Hinksey, am I a boy (he thought) that I should feel like this?—it’s preposterous!

  “Tom’s out riding,” she said. “ I expect Mary told you.” Her manner conveyed, not pointedly however, that she knew he had come to see neither Hinksey nor herself. Joyce was in the early thirties, rather less than half her husband’s age. Not altogther unpretty, he thought; very practical and kindhearted; and perhaps more sensible than sensitive. But he liked her; she couldn’t help not being Mary.

  “Yes,” said David. “ How is he? And how are you?”

  He was at home with Joyce Hinksey. There was something sisterly about her. She was reassuringly matter-of-fact. He didn’t in the least mind her being able to read him; and he liked and admired her for letting him know this fact without word or hint. Perhaps she was not so insensitive, after all. Although he had time, just time, to think this, and to feel a sudden brief gratitude towards her, he was only dimly conscious of Joyce’s existence, and she dropped into oblivion as soon as Mary reappeared, ready for her outing. They walked to the car, and entered it, in silence. Did he imagine, or was it true, that something deeper than understanding, more vital than thought, already palpitated between them? As the car began moving he stole a glance at her and then caught her eyes upon him.

  For five minutes he drove without speaking. Then he said, not looking at her : “ Where shall we go?”

  She made no answer. He glanced towards her and repeated the question.

  She faintly smiled. “ Does it matter?”

  There was shyness in her voice, but no confusion. Confession, but no confusion. He dared not believe what he heard. Yet he believed it. That hint of teasing, of gaiety, was gone. She was serious : serious and quiet. The car climbed a hill and descended into a valley road running between unhedged fields. At the bottom a deep broad stream lay across the road. Within a yard of this stream he stopped the car, and sat for a moment listening to the gurgle of the water and the beating of his heart.

  “I doubt if we can cross that,” he remarked.

  The words meant nothing. They fell into the silence and were lost. David half-turned to her. She sat staring ahead, gravely and beautifully serene. He watched her covertly, trying to read her mind. Her stillness gave colour to his sense of being out of time, enchanted. Yet she was alive; she was flesh and blood, and no dream. For one instant he was divided against himself. Did she know, did she feel, what he felt? She filled his senses, but her mind was dark to him. Was it possible she didn’t know, or guess? He tried to think of words to say. You’re very beautiful. Your eyes. Your everything. I love you. I want you. But he could say none of these things. He fought shy of them.

  He touched her hand, very tentatively; and she glanced at him, again with that sweet, faint smile. He leant forward and kissed her, quickly and shyly.

  So it was done. Done and finished. For an instant of flatness he felt defeated by her curious neutrality. Her lips had neither answered nor refused him.

  With an air of slightly sardonic detachment he remarked : “ I suppose you’ve grasped the fact that I’m in love with you?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.” Stubbornly insistent he said : “ Did you know that, or didn’t you?”

  She answered, with a smile : “ The idea did cross my mind.”

  My God, he thought, we might be discussing the weather! Suddenly exasperated, he seized her by the shoulders and looked angrily into her eyes.

  “Does the idea interest you? Or doesn’t it?”

  She put an arm round his neck and drew him nearer, offering her lips. Kissing her, feeling himself annihilated and reborn in her young, warm, wordless passion, he abandoned himself to the illusion of first love.

  When they drew apart from each other, to look and to wonder, he saw that she had suddenly become more real to him, more human, a person in herself : no longer a vision only, projection of a dream. Her beauty had still the subtle impenetrable strangeness that was her personal essence, the quality of her difference; but that other strangeness, that hint of distance, was dissolved.

  He said shyly, on a note of genuine surprise : “ You do, then, like me ... to some extent?”

  “To some extent,” agreed Mary, smiling.

  § 2

  He arrived home late for lunch, without having been within five miles of Chiselbrook. Lydia met him, at the gate, with drawn face and glistening eyes.

  “I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “Why?” There was irritation in his voice.

  “I thought you must have had an accident.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t think things like that,” he said, with exasperated patience. “ It makes me feel like a dog on a lead.” He wished, too, that she could contrive not to look haggard, a haggard child. It sharpened his sense of guilt, and ruined her looks. “ Am I so very late? It’s not one o’clock yet.”

  “I thought you knew we’d be having an early lunch.” She caught his look of incomprehension. There was an almost pleading light in her eyes—her rather childlike large eyes set in a gipsy-brown face—but meeting with no response in his it suddenly went out, leaving darkness, resignation. “ But I see you’ve forgotten.”

  Knowing he had somehow hurt her, and afraid of hurting her still more, he put on a frowning mask. “ What have I forgotten?”

  “You’ve forgotten what day it is. You’ve forgotten we were going to town.”

  “Not at all,” he said lamely. “ Of course I haven’t forgotten.” But he had; and for an instant his mind was blank. Then, just in time, he was able to say : “ It’s our wedding-day.”

  To forget that, he argued with himself, was something that might happen to anyone, after so many years of marriage. It was like forgetting a birthday. You remembered the week or the day before; then on the day itself it somehow slipped out of mind. It was just a lamentable coincidence that it should have happened on this of all days, this day on which a strange new danger
ous and beautiful life had begun for him.

  Seeing Lydia’s shut, unanswering face, he said : “ Isn’t that what you meant?”

  “Yes. That’s what I meant.”

  Ah, yes, but there was something else. He remembered that too. Somewhere (where had he put them?) he had two theatre-tickets for today’s matinée in town. The annual celebration. Lydia set much store by celebrations; and David, forgetful though he might be, enjoyed her pleasure in them, was touched and charmed by the cosiness and homeliness of sitting with her in a theatre, the two of them like a pair of children, waiting excitedly for the rise of the curtain. For Lydia was like that : it was her special and most endearing quality. Though with strangers and acquaintances she could put up a bluff of sophistication—and sometimes, alas, with David too she did this—she was at heart simple, unspoiled. She loved fun, and the simplest uncostliest kind of fun was enough to make her eyes sparkle. The dullness and flatness, the fits of anxious industry, these, David knew, were self-protective devices, spells to inhibit feeling, to justify her existence, to help her to forget what she no longer dared to remember. David knew this or guessed it, but could not always remember it in time to suspend judgment or stifle irritation.

  “I hope you haven’t waited for me,” he said, following her up the path to the house.

  “The children have had theirs,” Lydia answered.