A Man of Forty

by Gerald Bullet

  Mary’s question. And now Lydia’s. Women are like that, aren’t they? Tell a woman you love her, and if she’s interested she’ll hardly wait to be kissed before asking what you are going to do about it. We’ll keep two servants, she says, and live at So and So. No children for the first year, and then we’ll have three at two-year intervals. Central heating a sine qua non. You love me? Fine. When do we start? This kind of thing is apt to take the wind out of a man’s sails, especially a man like David Brome. David’s not bluffing ; but he is, I’m afraid, a romantic, and he hasn’t thought his position out to the last detail. He loves Mary, and must tell Lydia so. He loves Mary and must have Mary : that’s as far as he has got. And so—

  David winced. “ There’s only one thing I can do. I must go away.”

  “For good?” asked Lydia.

  He did not answer. To leave his wife and child, and start life again with someone he had known only a few weeks—he could do this, but say it he could not.

  “I see,” said Lydia.

  Her voice took an unexpected turn, and in an anguished glance he saw that she was crying. He took a step towards her. She moved angrily out of reach, half-saying, half-sobbing : “ Don’t touch me!” Her voice ended on a squeak. The sight of her, childish and forlorn, helplessly crying, angrily struggling for control, made David want to unsay everything and offer her comfort. But he stood there in silence, hating himself, and almost hating Mary for having destroyed something that had been so long in the making. Or was it not yet destroyed?

  “I ask only one thing,” said Lydia at length. “ Please go quickly. Go tomorrow.”

  “If you wish it, Lydia. But Adam’s coming. Had you forgotten?”

  “Adam? We can put him off. Tell him why. Why not? People have got to know.”

  “Very well, Lydia. If you’d rather. But, you know,” said David, “ we have… one has ... I mean, nothing is settled yet. We’ve made no definite plans.”

  Lydia, dry-eyed, looked at him with a curious twisting smile.

  “It frightens me to hear you say that, David.”

  “Frightens you. What does?”

  She turned her face away. “ I’m going to bed. Good-night.”

  “But, Lydia! Do you mean “—he hesitated—” you’re afraid I’ll go away?”

  “No, David. I’m afraid you won’t go away.”

  He stared. “ I don’t think I understand, quite.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t go away,” she repeated. “ And then I shall have to go through this all over again.”

  § 6

  Paul woke out of a dream to hear footsteps coming upstairs. He cocked his head half an inch from the pillow, and listened.

  “Is that you, Mummy?”

  No answer. The steps came nearer.

  Paul was not frightened. Not yet. But a spasm of anxiety went through him. He knew his mother’s step, even on the stairs ; and he guessed that she was on her way to the big bedroom. He knew that he had awakened into the mystery called the middle of the night; and he had had strange dreams, which he chose not to remember. The effort not to remember his dreams made his eyes smart and the skin of his face tight and tingling. If he could coax her into the room, make her speak to him and touch him, all would be well. But he did not really expect that. What he expected, arguing from past experience, was to be told to go to sleep. By making a fuss, by confessing himself frightened (but he wasn’t frightened), he could make her come in and give comfort; but lately he had grown shy of exercising that power, and secretive, moreover, about the fact and form of his night-fears. It was an adventure, and probably a sin, to be awake at all at this fabled hour of the night : the smell of danger was in it. Darkness was all about him, but it was his own darkness and friendly, the darkness of shut eyes, very different from the other kind. This darkness was like being inside a smooth cylinder, or like floating over a range of round black hills, or like almost anything you chose to think of. It was warm and safe and very private. By thinking, you could see all manner of shapes and colours in it; and by unthinking, you could stop seeing them : this, above all, was what made it good. If Mummy came in he would open his eyes and brave that other, that outer darkness : till then he would sit in himself, with windows shut and blinds drawn.

  But, meanwhile, she had not so much as answered him.

  His small warm body held itself tense under the bedclothes. As the unanswering silence lengthened, till it was as much as ten seconds long, he screwed himself up yet tighter, and his toes clutched and tautened the legs of his pyjamas. He still held his head stiffly off the pillow, so that both ears should be uncovered and listening. And, as he listened, memory with lightning speed gathered in the tale of her good-night to him. Back from the theatre, back from her lovely treat, she had found him only just going to bed. She had found him, moreover, being “ naughty,” refusing to brush his teeth, refusing to drink his hot milk, refusing to do anything that Eleanor told him to do : and all for no reason except to postpone the moment when the light would be put out and he left alone. Lydia’s arrival had changed all that. The world was normal again, or nearly so ; and Paul’s lurking anonymous terror was for a moment placated. The sight of Lydia returned was too good to be true, but this was still not quite the Lydia he looked for—and had looked for for many days and weeks. She hugged him with a violence that matched his own mood. But her smile, when she remembered to smile at all, was not quite her own : it was something put on, like a false face, and the dim half-thought had flashed into his heart that the person hiding behind it was perhaps not Mummy at all, but a stranger dressed up in her body. Not hers that fixed grimace, that glittering brightness, that too patient effortful voice. And here he was, awake in the night, calling to her, wanting reassurance, though he didn’t know why.

  “Mummy, is that you?”

  “Yes, darling. What do you want?”

  She spoke wearily, pausing at his half-open door.

  “I only wanted to know,” said Paul, with dignity.

  She noticed the distance in his voice, and felt a pang for it. But she was locked in her grief, in her grievance, and couldn’t come out of it to talk with her son. He’s all I’ve got left, but for how long? she asked herself bitterly. How many years before he finds a woman to displace me with? Perhaps ten. Perhaps fifteen. Men are all alike.

  “Go to sleep, there’s a good boy,” said Lydia.

  It was in his mind to ask her to come in and say good-night again. But pride held him back. It doesn’t matter, he said to himself. I’m seven and I can manage very well. This was a formula in frequent use, but tonight that genial boast had an unaccustomed cold ring of independence. Desolate in his pride, he answered nothing. He turned over and put his face into the pillow. He might have said, as he had sometimes done on other such occasions : Come and sit on my bed, Mum. In that wheedling, half-comical tone that used to make her laugh. And, if she hesitated or temporized, he would have said, clinching the matter : Come o-o-o-n, there’s a good girl! And she, in the old days, would have answered, with that funny dove’s croon of a laugh that she sometimes had : Oh, very well—just for two little minutes, mind! But now, such words couldn’t or wouldn’t be said between them ; and so there was nothing, nothing at all, to make her linger, or to help him forget the dream he had woken up with.

  Lydia went on to her room, and Paul lay quiet in the darkness. In the real darkness now, for he lay on his back with eyes wide open, saying I will explore this large forest this mountain this river so ancient in the days in the nights of the bell is so blue; and the lids fell, soft as petals, and the voice that was and yet wasn’t himself ran pattering on, like very small rain, in a wide world of soft grass, under saffron skies, where presently a star appeared, a daylight star that came shining through a cotton-wool cloud, and then was an eye, and then was a woman’s face, and then was a gate in the wall which suddenly confronted him. He opened the gate and went in, leaving the gate to swing on its squeaky hinge. And the noise grew louder, and different, and
again there were footsteps coming upstairs.

  He shot up to the surface of sleep and called out, unthinking :

  “Is that you, Mummy?”

  “No, it’s me,” said David.

  To keep the conversation going, Paul asked : “ Is it time to get up yet?”

  “No,” said David. “ I’m only just going to bed.”

  “Are you going to bed in the big bedroom, with Mummy?”

  “No. Not tonight.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “Because it’s very late, and Mummy’s asleep. And now you must go to sleep. Good-night, old chap.”

  “Good-night,” said Paul indecisively. “ I say, Dad!”

  “Well, what is it now?”

  “I like talking in the dark, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but it’s time for sleep now. Good-night the apostle!”

  “Good-night the parent!”

  This long-established pleasantry, their private invention and monopoly, comforted the child but not the father. David went to his dressing-room, where he was to spend the night, himself feeling like a lost child. That he must cut himself off from Paul, as well as from Lydia, seemed the most cruel nonsense. It was a betrayal of the child’s trust : however one looked at it, it was that. And that he would no doubt continue to see Paul at intervals made no appreciable difference. Infrequent tolerated meetings, bewildered dutiful self-conscious meetings carefully arranged on neutral territory, these were no substitute for the warm everyday taken-for-granted friendship that united them now. That bond, that living tie, he by his act would sever. So be it : he accepted the necessity. And already, having one foot in the future, he felt a sort of guilt that he should have allowed himsejf to talk with his son, the son whom he was resolved to betray. Betray? But isn’t that rather melodramatic? he asked himself. The little fellow will get on well enough. He’ll have his mother : she’s a good mother. And Eleanor too, he’ll have Eleanor. It’ll make no real difference to him whether I’m here or not, once the first strangeness has worn off. But—the apostle Paul : why did I twist the knife in my wound like that? In future, for the few days that remain, I must keep out of his way, or poor Lydia will resent it, suspect me of competing for him.

  David slowly undressed and got into bed, where he lay watching the procession of his thoughts. So it’s come to this! My God! Afraid to talk to my own son, lest his mother should be angry! Nor did the thought of Mary solace him. Her, the occasion of it all, he fended away from his mind, lest her lovely image, symbol of all joy, should be contaminated by the pain and ugliness of this night. Moreover, remembering Lydia’s drawn face and desperate eyes, he could not for shame take joy in Mary. It was as if, even at this moment, Lydia were jealously watching him, listening to his thoughts. Lydia was everywhere, like the nursery version of God. Thou, Lydia, seest me.

  Part III

  A Sunday in June

  § 1

  Into this situation came Adam Swinford. For he was not put off. Before David could decide whether to put him off or not, the time for doing so had gone by. In making his one great, clear-cut, ruthless decision, David seemed to have spent himself : the minor alternatives that presented themselves were too much for him. So Adam came, pink-cheeked, wide-eyed ; confident and debonair; the world was his oyster. He came and was received by a distracted David ; a Paul who nursed an unspeakable secret; a vaguely expectant Eleanor (though what it was she expected she didn’t know); and lastly, and from an infinite distance, Lydia. He came bringing a little bag of cares which he might or might not open to the sympathetic gaze of David. But its weight was trifling; only now and again did he remember it; the present moment, if it gave him pleasure, was all he concerned himself with, ninety-nine days out of a hundred. It was no habit of his to meet trouble half way.

  Should he or shouldn’t he tell David about Lily Elver? That taking little piece. He had not in the least intended to go on seeing Lily. She was not really his cup of tea at all. What happens after a party, specially a party like the Buckrams’, isn’t evidence. Nevertheless, he had gone on seeing her. No style. A common little thing. Yet there was something infernally attractive about her. She adores me, he said : there must be something in her. I mean to say, it suggests there’s something we have in common, or else… anyhow, for whatever reason, she did adore him, it was pretty clear ; and it would have been impossible, short of sheer unkindness, to head her off from coming to his rooms again. Besides, he hadn’t wanted to. The morning after that first night he wished it had never happened; felt uneasy, nervous ; wondered what he had let himself in for. If she had telephoned then she would have had a cool reception. But she didn’t. She waited three days ; and by then, by the end of three days, Adam was already beginning to think that it might be rather fun if… his eyes took on a bright intent look. His pulse quickened. And when her call came he smiled, congratulating himself on having made no move to get into touch with her. He answered her in a kindly but somewhat casual and drawling voice. It wouldn’t do to seem eager : it would give her ideas.

  He was hard put to it not to seem eager, however, when he saw her again in the flesh. She was no beauty. You couldn’t call her that. But she was young, fresh, alive : alive with a spontaneous gaiety springing from the heart. Her little affectations were so transparent that they somehow made her seem more natural than ever. A child of nature she certainly was : never a one more so. A natural wanton, said Adam. Innocent and very sweet. Innocent but not tiresomely so. By no means. I’m in luck, he concluded ; but the situation, his thoughts ran on facetiously, is one that calls for much care in the handling. Her nose, the way it turned up, showing the nostrils, there was something curiously eager and animal about it. It was touch and go whether he would be repelled by it or inflamed. Now he was the one, now the other. But the repulsion was infinitesimal, and in fact added a sort of sting to his desire. That streak of what he called commonness too, even that, somehow, rather to his surprise, added a spice to the affair. He was a little ashamed of her; he would have hated his friends to know, uncensorious though they were; and the necessity for secrecy, which kept him from enjoying her as honestly and innocently as she enjoyed him, at the same time kept him eager—or for a while did so. Lily became a habit.

  She was certainly convenient : he had no taste for celibacy. At first, by way of epilogue to their embraces, she wanted tenderness, endearments, talk; but she soon learnt not to expect that kind of thing. She was indeed wonderfully adaptable. She never asked, on leaving him, when she should come again ; she knew that at the moment he wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. She let him forget her if he could, kept out of his way (but not too far out of it), and, except for that one telephone call, always left the initiative to him, or at least did her best to make it look as though she did so. When she wasn’t chattering too much, saying things that made him too conscious of the gulf between them, it was pleasant to have her dropping in, pleasant to be within reach of her soft easy mouth, her bronze-glinting eyes, her sweet little squirrel-snout so cheeky and inquiring : very pleasant, and very handy, provided she came only when sent for, and provided none of one’s friends turned up and put one to the pain of having to acknowledge her. So far, that awkwardness had been avoided, though there had been one or two narrow shaves. If such encounter did occur, he could not (not quite—he was not tough enough) treat her as socially non-existent, as you treat butlers and bootboys; and he felt that this was rather to his credit; it showed, didn’t it, that there was nothing really snobbish about his attitude. On the other hand, people who didn’t happen to think her as pretty as he thought her (or had at first thought her) would notice her lack of shall we say culture and what-not, and would raise their eyebrows at this lapse of taste on the part of one whose taste hitherto, he flattered himself, had always been impeccable.

  What he was half inclined to confide to David on this visit was that Lily, of whom David, so far, had never heard, by behaving so conveniently and remaining desirable (at least on one level), was
willy-nilly establishing something like a claim on him. He would have denied and she (for reasons of policy) would have disavowed the claim, had it been stated : but there it was, unacknowledged and undefined, making a small sore spot in Adam’s semi-consciousness. This is all very well, whispered a cautionary voice in him; it is very well indeed, this wenching and wantoning; in its way nothing could be nicer. But some day in the not so distant future you’ll want to get married, won’t you?—you’ll want to see your unique self extended in children, won’t you?—and then this Lily of yours, poor impossible little creature, is going to constitute a difficulty. Pack her off and let her marry someone of her own type? Yes, of course, if she will. But suppose she cuts up rough, makes trouble, tries—well, it’s possible—some species of blackmail? A spiritual blackmail, call it. Poor she is but proud; no gold-digger; rather aggressively independent; not the kind of girl you can frankly fob off with an honorarium. So what? It was a problem; and if Adam had been in the habit of troubling about problems of the future he would have been troubled now. As things were, he was just sufficiently aware of it, looming ahead, to make it an excuse for talking things over with David. From David, a slowcoach, but a rock of imperturbable common sense, he would get sagacious advice and (he hoped) moral support. But he had not yet decided to tell him anything.

  After breakfast on Sunday David took him for a walk, leaving the women and child at home. It didn’t need a sharp eye to see that something had gone wrong in the household, but Adam was only moderately curious about that : not because he lacked curiosity, but because he could imagine no major crisis supervening in a marriage so long established as David’s. And it was David’s manner rather than Lydia’s, David’s effortful geniality punctured by moments of nervous watchfulness or moody abstraction, that set him mildly wondering what was up. Lydia’s behaviour, since his arrival, had been unexceptionable. A more interested observer would perhaps have found something mechanical in her smile of welcome, her polite questions, her table manner; but it was not in Adam’s character to pay close attention to a woman of her age when a younger one was present, and her facade of friendliness served its purpose to perfection. To David it was lamentably unconvincing ; and concluding that Adam had seen through it he felt that an explanation was called for.