She moved, turning her face towards him, and said in a different, a rational voice:
“Why didn’t you tell me, Gerald? Couldn’t you trust me? That’s what hurts so.”
She knew that he was smiling in the dark.
“Ah, why not? You’d have been so glad to assist me, wouldn’t you, if I’d appealed to you? You’d have been charmed to give my little affair your patronage. ‘Poor dear,’ you’d have said to yourself, ‘he does so depend on me. He can’t even manage his love affairs without me.’ Wouldn’t you, now? Didn’t you try to, in the summer?”
She was silent, hurt. But he was right, she acknowledged secretly. She recognized the attitude as her own this summer.
He went on, steadily, holding her hand in his:
“I was foolish enough to want to try for something on my own. I needed to prove to myself that I could be acceptable—as an individual—apart from you. I wanted Clare’s feeling for me at first hand—not just as a reflection from your relationship—which is what’s generally considered, isn’t it?—as much as I can possibly expect.”
“I didn’t know you minded …” she murmured. “I thought you generally hated everybody.”
“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s difficult, living always with a person, to be perspicacious.” He pressed her hand. “Perhaps I wanted to spite you a little, too. However, as I said, it had its roots in unreality, so it was bound to fail. And anyway, she much prefers you. She said so in her last letter. So you see, you’ve scored again, as usual.”
She put her arms round his neck and held him.
“Do you mind dreadfully?” she whispered.
He had tried for something for himself—and failed. It was unbearably pathetic.
“It’s galling to one’s self-esteem,” he said, lightly. “However, there it is. You must forgive me, because all it comes to is … that I find I do depend on you. I do need you—only you.” His voice shook. “So you can feel quite safe. I shan’t rebel again.”
“Don’t put it like that,” she said. “You make me feel so ashamed. I’m afraid I’ve always been a very jealous character. It was such a shock—to feel like that about you. You’ve never made me jealous before.”
“And you’ve always made me jealous.”
“Oh, Gerald! …”
“He’s always been between us. … Hasn’t he?”
“I suppose so,” she whispered. “I got the proportions wrong. I did love him so. You never helped me to forget him. You would never let me talk of him—or even cry about him—in a natural way. Even though when we first met you knew I was sore and raw and aching for him.”
He had driven the poison inwards, to feed upon and corrupt the healthy body of their relationship.
“I know,” he said; thinking how, even after all these years, he had been compelled to ask Clare about him, had gloated and suffered over the hints she’d dropped. “I wanted you for myself, because of myself. I’m a diabolically jealous character, too. However, I never got more than a little bit of you, I know, and never shall.”
“You have, Gerald. You must believe it. I need you too, permanently. Jimmy’s unreal too. At least—I must make him so. …” She went on slowly: “It’s quite true poor Jimmy wasn’t what you’d call a fine character. He had every vice, and … he didn’t care for me nearly as much as I for him.” She stopped, overcome by the pain and the truth of her words. “I suppose Clare told you …” she whispered. “It’s good for me, of course. It’s the truth. But I wish she needn’t have. …”
“It was my fault,” he said, gripping her hand again. “I asked her. She was very reluctant. She hardly said anything.”
One would not have expected Clare to have such scruples. It must be that she had forgotten Jimmy; or else it was true, what one had long ago suspected: that she had been in love with him herself.
But Jimmy had died, poor boy, many years ago; had been killed in the war, like George and all the others. That had been his end.
She sat up, sighed, leaned against his shoulder.
“You make me feel very unconceited,” she said. “I sometimes think, Gerald, you’re my only enemy.”
“Do you wonder?” he said. “You pleasant, popular woman.”
“You unpleasant, unpopular man. … We suit each other, don’t we?”
“Yes. Yes.” He sighed.
After a silence she said:
“But you will go on writing to Clare?”
“There you go again! Not I. You’ve spoilt it all.”
“Do you … have you still got a little passion for her, darling?”
He smiled.
“Hardly even a little one—so long as I don’t set eyes on her.”
“I’ll see you don’t. … But she was lovely, wasn’t she? … Did you write her some nice little poems?” (And, waiting for his answer, a worm of jealousy writhed again, irrepressibly.)
“Just some appropriate trifles. They pleased her. You know the sort.”
“Tell me some.” (For he liked to recite his little compositions.)
“There was one that came off a little better than most:
Sunlight you are, but shadow I;
Fetters I wear, but you are free:
Sing, laugh, the more, the more I sigh;
Let me love you, but love not me.”
“Very neat,” she said, thinking: No wonder Clare had been pleased. It was very … Clare had never had anything to put up with. … That’s why she’d kept her looks, her youth. … The worm wriggled dreadfully. … She said quickly: “It rather expresses her. Him too—Hugh, I mean. Don’t you think so?” Very secretly, she told herself she must not think about Hugh in this silly way any longer. Sometimes of late—yes, it must be acknowledged—Hugh had appeared in day-dreams—mingling with the other, and wearing his face. … She was a person of most undisciplined imagination. She must try really hard. …
Through mists of drowsiness she saw them both, brother and sister, two bright heads, far away for ever.
“They were an attractive pair. …” So far out of sight they were, the past tense had already claimed them. … “That was a happy day, wasn’t it?” But very far. … They would not go there together again and feel enchantment. “Really, you know, he had the nicer character. He’d feel sorry, I think, for making havoc … but she was quite unscrupulous.”
He murmured absently:
“The female of the species …”
The worm ceased from its agitation. He was not thinking about Clare’s beauty any more.
“The gale’s died down,” she said. “Thank goodness, David won’t get religion to-night. Look at the moonlight on these roofs! What a lovely night!”
“A Lapland night,” he said.
And he sat on in silence beside her; thinking that soon he would go down and heat up the soup that he had told Florrie to leave for her in a saucepan; thinking that if the final relinquishing of all that one had wanted could continue to be so graceful, so simple and serene as now it seemed; if one could go on holding one’s wife’s hand in peace and weariness, and never be made jealous, never be enraged by her any more—then age might lose its sting, the grave its victory.
But this would not be.
Saturday afternoon of mid-December. The football crowd streamed one way across the common, the whippet-racers another, their curving, knife-pared hounds quivering on the leash. The pale blue sky was cloudless from end to end, the air windless, soft and chilly.
It was one of those late autumn days when, above purple hedges in the country lanes, the tree-trunks are disembodied, stand up ethereally in shining essence—shapes built of intersecting shafts of coloured light and shadow.
Seeing them in her mind’s eye, gazing over the vast and treeless space of brownish grass, Grace walked across the common with her husband. He had foregone his game of golf to ta
ke her for a walk this fine afternoon. She had not been well.
They came to the end of the path, at the far end of the common, where iron railings divided it from the last suburbs. All was quiet here, deserted. The sound of the town came muffled to the ear.
“I must rest,” she said. “Let’s sit down.”
“There’s nothing to sit on,” he said anxiously.
“The ground,” she said.
She took her hat off. He spread his burberry doubtfully—but there was no arguing with her—and they sat down on it side by side, their backs against the railings.
Presently he took his hat off. It was a risk; but the sun was really very pleasant.
When she looked at him, she laughed.
“We look very bank-holiday,” she said. “It seems so funny to see you sitting on the grass.”
The incongruity of Tom in relation to the rural, the picnic, had always been marked.
“Too stout these days to get down so far and up again,” he said, encouraged by her smile. (For lately she had been so low, so silent, had had such shocking neuralgia.) “I’ve put on weight again this year, you know. Can’t seem to be able to stop.”
“Give up weighing yourself,” she said. “And then it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t you mind?” he said.
There was something so timid, so wistful in the question, that she felt touched—sorry to have exhibited her indifference to his appearance.
“Only if you do,” she said gently.
“Couldn’t you restrain Annie in the matter of soups?”
“I can’t restrain Annie in anything. She’s going to have a baby.”
He was incredulous, then correctly horrified; but not for long. Soon, it was plain, he was permitting himself to think as regards her lapse, rather lewdly, rather admiringly, “Good for Annie!” and as regards the consequence of her lapse, that it was rotten bad luck. And he commended Grace’s decision to extend the hand of pardon. It would cause talk, he said; but, everything considered, if Grace didn’t mind, he didn’t. Annie was a necessity.
After a silence he said timidly:
“Is that what’s been on your mind, Gracie?”
She paused before answering, pityingly:
“No, Tom.”
She would have liked to be able to say yes—give him the satisfaction of cheering her.
“I thought it couldn’t be that. … I do wish you didn’t get so down in the mouth, Gracie. I suppose it’s …”
He stopped. He knew that she would never let him help her. She did not give him credit for any perception, any understanding.
“It’s just being run down, I think, Tom.”
“You ought to have a change. You wouldn’t like to pop off again … by yourself, I suppose.” He swallowed hard, added firmly: “I’d gladly pay your expenses.”
And he looked away, dreading to hear her greet the proposition with breathless eagerness. He had never been able to forget the sharp, egotistical insistence of her manner over that confounded holiday. Her one thought then had been to get away from him. She had not shown the slightest interest in his plans, the slightest regret at the prospect of the separation. It had been a pill.
But she said, in the same gentle, resigned way—which was worse than sulks, it made him feel so wretched:
“No, Tom. I don’t need a change. Besides, I don’t want to go away from home.”
It occurred to her that this must be the first time she had referred to the town as home. A childish obstinacy, a sentimental loyalty to the Vicarage had always prevented her. But now she said it deliberately, adding:
“I don’t want to leave you.”
Just to stay where she was was best. Never again would she be able to go away alone for a summer holiday. To be alone would be too sharp a pain, too haunting a contrast. Nothing would be nothing now, instead of the illusory expectation of the whole fullness of life: as if herself were great with all creation. Never again would she be dissolved, poured through the universe with the insubstantial elements of light and colour, reunited with the component forces of vital energy. Rhythms that had stolen on her senses, informed her person, would be lost now in the nerves’ sick jigging, heart’s jagged beat. The perpetual want, creeping and coiling across her life in a harsh and dirty growth, like ivy, little by little would choke the living pores, and batten on the ruin of her. How could she save herself now?
But her words, her tone consoled him: made it easy to say:
“Well, I’m sure I don’t want you to go. It was damned awful this summer, dragging around alone.”
The resentment of months rose in his voice—and a chokiness, a tremor that he could not suppress. He wanted to cry, to complain and be comforted.
“Was it awful, Tom? I’m so sorry.”
She had never asked him for a precise account of his trip. He had bluffed to her, assured her he had had a topping time; and she had left it at that, secretly recognizing the false enthusiasm of his manner—she admitted to herself now—and unwilling to let him undeceive her openly. She said:
“I’m afraid I guessed, Tom. But I didn’t want to think about it. It made me seem so wicked—to have been so happy myself.”
She felt him wince at this. She said: “We won’t think about it any more. I was on a wild-goose-chase. It won’t ever happen again.”
Now what did she mean by that, he wondered. She was always saying things he could not follow. But he would not ask her to explain. Instinct told him the answer, if any, would be painful and disturbing: and the last thing he wanted was to probe deeper: only to cover up again roots dangerously exposed. In another minute he’d be blurting out—that thing he was trying so hard to put out of his mind, to dismiss as an improbable and distressing dream; that incident which had been a fraud, a failure, a mistake, from beginning to end.
He said:
“It won’t ever happen again in my case either … I can promise you that.”
His voice, sheepish, weighty, and ambiguous, might have made her wonder; only she was not listening. She failed to note that her husband had confessed intimacy with a prostitute; had expressed remorse; had vowed her future constancy. She was thinking how strange it was that she was able to keep her secret from him—that she would know in a minute if he had anything to conceal. No doubt, men were more honest and transparent than women.
He lit a pipe and leaned back, his anxiety relieved, his sense of guilt appeased. Now he could indulge in something of the purged, unburdened feeling of confession, without the general upset attendant on it. He sighed comfortably.
“It’s jolly here,” he said. “Peaceful. Almost as good as the country.”
“What a shame to miss your golf!”
“Oh, I wasn’t keen on golf to-day.”
But she knew it had been a genuine sacrifice.
“You’re a kind man, Tom. You deserve a better wife.”
“I’m quite content with the one I’ve got.” He put an arm round her, self-consciously, and said with a jocularity that trailed off suddenly into a return of the chokiness:
“We rub along together all right—don’t we?”
They really did, he thought, when all was said and done: as well as most.
“Yes, Tommy.”
And all at once the grey future appeared before her in a reconciling sunset light. Be nice to Tom, she told herself. “Resolve to make the best of him. Do this for Hugh’s sake.” (How easy, how consoling, if Hugh cared what one did! …)
A yellow mongrel terrier, wearing his ears briskly askew, came bustling along the path. Grace put out a hand to him. He hastened up to greet her. Beneath his towsled fringe his eye was bright and liquid. After a few moments he sat down beside her, head cocked alertly, his chocolate nostrils twitching. Now and then he growled under his breath, aggressively, hopefully, at some fancied phenomenon.
“Nice dog, that,” said Tom. “Good watch-dog, I should say.”
“He’s a busy-body,” said Grace. “I can see nothing’s allowed to happen without his permission. I’m glad to say that means he’s spoilt at home.”
“He’s taken quite a fancy to you,” said Tom, encouraged once more by her smiling face. “Look at him guarding you.”
“It’s just that he’s out of a job for the moment,” she said, stroking him.
After a time, scenting a disturbance on the sky-line, he excused himself with an ingratiating wag, and disappeared.
“Good-bye,” she called.
“They’re faithful animals,” Tom observed. “I suppose—” he hesitated, for the subject had been taboo ever since that unfortunate business of the puppy; and one never knew, with women, what secret inconsolable refinements of sensibility they nourished; so that one was always blundering, and being made to feel callous, gross. “I suppose you’d never care to keep another? …”
“I’ve been thinking I’d like to,” she said. (For the first step towards improving the present and future is not to be morbid about the past.) “Dogs do so enjoy living with one, one really must— Besides, I’d be compelled to walk round the park every day, and that would be very good for me.”
There were practical remedies against despair that must be tried: exercise for one.
Presently he said:
“Talking of pets, I’m thinking of keeping one myself.”
From his tone, she judged that a joke was impending. His jokes depressed her—irremediably, she feared. But she answered in the same vein:
“What, a white mouse?”
“No. Guess again.”
“I couldn’t.”
A Note in Music Page 21