The sun was slowly moving round the sky as she sat. Her eyes were still shut. She could hear the birds, a sound in the distance she couldn’t identify, a shout from the house, a smaller cry, servants. She was weeping.
Her mood had tipped down, the tightness in her chest, the old ache. Where could she go, with this grief, this love for George? There was no George to give it to.
Twenty minutes later her tears had gone. She was dry and empty. She stayed sitting until the air began to cool, and the sun was orange on the horizon. The birds were singing their twilight song, madly.
At supper, the trout tasted wrong: bland yet unpleasant. She ate some of it to please Mrs Dowling, but it was an effort.
The lamp had been lit in her bedroom. Coming in, she noticed a worn, flat, very familiar box, which she at once raised to her nose: George’s cigar case.
Sleep was coming when she heard a sound. It was at the window, a bird tapping. But how strange: something was happening to her body. Heat was stealing over her, beginning at her feet, moving up her legs, her stomach, up to her face. She was hot, sweating. The next second, cold was passing above as if spread by a giant hand moving back and forth over her. The cold air so chilly. She sat up. The whole room was freezing. A pressure on her shoulder, like a touch, a hand, and then a sound in her ear, quite distinct: Polly, it’s me. As if by magic, she smelled the aromatic, crackling burning smell of cigar — as strong as autumn leaves.
She was looking round the room: by the wardrobe a new density. She lit the lamp. Nobody. She swung her head round, could still feel the pressure on her shoulder.
‘George?’ she said then. ‘George?’
She took her shawl, sat in the chair. She waited an hour, a second hour. She woke in her chair.
Three days later, she felt him again in her room. It was nearly June. In her diary, she wrote: His presence came again.
***
Johnny visited. Brett placed a jug of homemade lemonade on the cloth-lined table on the terrace.
‘Is it all as you expected it to be?’ asked Johnny.
‘All?’
‘The house — The Heights,’ said Johnny, looking confused, and colouring.
‘Very much. I had low expectations, as you might imagine. I thought that I might find it intolerable.’
He bowed his head respectfully, took out his cigarette box, extracted a cigarette, tapped it absently on his leg. ‘Florence and Eleanor are hoping they might see you soon. Have you had — company?’
‘Charles was here for three days. We went for a drive.’
‘You enjoyed yourself, I hope, Aunt?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Would you — like to walk?’
They went down the wide shallow steps beside the sloping lawn, down past the small willow and pond, and then there was a gate, and they were in the lane, leafy and shaded, pooling dark green and dappled with moving dots of light, bordered by high grass and cow-parsley pressing up on every side, and bushes of May, sour-smelling in the earthy air of the lane.
‘Do you recall the way?’ asked Marian, as they rounded the bend, and the shadowing trees gave way to the open sky, the view of low hills.
‘I do.’
They continued in some silence, until they came to the stile.
‘Please,’ said Johnny, promptly opening it for her. She went through.
He caught up with her. ‘I hope we will meet, now you are so close to Weybridge.’
‘What is the distance?’
‘Fifteen miles. Negligible.’
‘I would say it is a considerable distance.’
They were both silent as they returned to the house.
Two days later, to her surprise, she heard the sound of wheels and horses, and saw, from the upstairs window, the tall form of Johnny bending forward as he dismounted. As she signed the forms he’d brought — acceptance forms for her investments — she thought to herself, it would be better if he went.
‘I was hoping,’ he remarked, ‘that we might be able to read Dante. That you might be — unoccupied — this afternoon.’
His mood looked gloomy — mouth truculent.
Marian asked Brett for tea, adding, ‘and some of Mrs Dowling’s biscuits.’
After Brett went, Johnny said, ‘What are Mrs Dowling’s biscuits?’
The simple solemnity and darkness of his manner, made her slightly smile.
‘They are made, I believe, of almond and sugar and butter.’
‘Ah.’
Marian asked after Eleanor and Florence.
‘Florence has had a cold; Eleanor is quite well.’
But the silence was so oppressive that Johnny finally got up and walked around, stopping at the piano. He ran his fingers over the lid. ‘The piano is so well placed here — just in the light of the window. I assume it does not receive direct sun? You would not want it to.’
‘It does not.’
After a moment he said, ‘Will you play?’
Marian hesitated.
‘Why don’t you try? You are, after all, alive.’
Marian looked up — the remark was practically impertinent. But Johnny looked only grave, and she sat at the familiar seat, lifted the lid. She hadn’t played since George had died, and now the dense smell of the piano was suddenly released: woody, resinous. She played Schumann, the last movement of the Fantasie in C, with its slow rising arpeggios, its dreamlike rising currents. Just to feel the smooth cool keys under her fingers again, and to fill the room with sound, felt bewitching. All the time Johnny was watching her, leaning on the piano, three feet away.
***
He was back three days later.
It was a fine day; they positioned themselves on the terrace table, but the breeze would nick the pages, making them flap violently, as if in a slick of sea-wind. Marian, roving the fields with her eyes, noticed the summer house.
‘If it is swept,’ she said, ‘we might do well to try there. It is a pity to be in the house.’
A solitary octagonal affair, with a timber and glass roof, long windows all round, down on the second lower lawn, close to the great oak tree, but exposed to the sun. The summer house had flaking, white-painted dried wood sidings. The room smelled strongly — of being closed up, sun-saturated yet warm, as if damp had recently dried out. It was a queer pungent smell, but not unpleasant. There was a table and four chairs. The top windows were hung with muslin to filter the light.
Johnny began reading the eleventh canto of the Inferno. Marian regarded his thick-lashed eyes, the brutish handsome whole of him subordinated to the single mental effort — of reading and enunciating the Italian correctly.
‘How much,’ said Johnny abruptly, putting the book down, ‘does Dante pass judgement on those sinners — those very ordinary sinners?’
‘A good question,’ admitted Marian, flashing him a glance of surprise. ‘To my mind, he finds the perfect balance in Canto V. The famous one. Between judgement and compassion — I’m sure you remember,’ — she was already flicking the pages, until she reached the story of the adulterous couple, Paulo and Francesca, who were spotted by Dante gliding so lightly on the winds in hell.
‘Tell me more,’ said Johnny, with a faint smile. She smiled, too. She was always explaining to him how events in the poem related to Dante’s life. In life, the adulterous woman was Francesca, married to the crippled son of the lord of Rimini. She became the lover of the son’s brother, the gallant captain Paulo.
‘Eternal suffering, for falling in love!’ said Marian. ‘But Dante feels for them at the same time.’
Francesca and Paulo were innocent friends reading Lancelot alone, and while they were reading, they had no suspicion that anything was going to happen between them; even though their eyes kept meeting, and they kept blushing. But one particular event mastered them.
Maria
n herself was blushing now. She was not sure she wanted to go on.
‘Continue,’ said Johnny.
She hesitated, then, in slow Italian:
Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante
— and she tailed away.
‘Translate, please,’ Johnny said. The way he was looking at her made her colour rise further.
Her heart was making great beats inside her, her insides were like jelly. She spoke slowly, the trembling inside herself did not stop. ‘When we read, that the smile — the longed-for smile — was kissed by the great lover —’
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso
la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante
She paused.
‘He who — never shall be parted from me, all trembling — kissed my mouth.’
A bird sounded outside; the light in the white-clothed summer house was milk-coloured.
Marian continued:
quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.
‘That day,’ she added, scarcely audibly, ‘we read no further.’
‘What do you think?’ said Johnny.
‘What do I think?’ she replied, mechanically, her limbs still watery and strange. ‘There is judgement, you see. For putting reason aside. They are carried by desire, like the wind. That’s why they glide so lightly on the wind.’
She had looked down at her hands — she did not dare look up. When she did, Johnny was moving his chair towards her, his arms were reaching for her, and he was leaning forward to kiss her. They kissed, fully, mouth on mouth.
10
While she was at Witley, she was ill, then she was well. She would grieve for George one moment, but in a tipping second she might be feeling the air of a June summer day, looking over the fields at the elms with their pools of shadow: aware that Johnny would be here this day or the next or at worst the next. Weybridge was only fifteen miles away.
In the milky light of the summer house, warm on a sunny day, even after the sky had become cloudy, Marian and Johnny read more of the Divine Comedy, Marian speaking the words aloud in her soft, musical voice. In the evenings, they drank champagne.
When she was ill she took to her bed, and when she was better she made intermittent resolutions. She wrote a note to Johnny saying she needed solitude for the next week; but the same day, when Mrs Dowling asked her about groceries, she hesitated. Because now her mind, like some rogue creature with a will of its own, was bent on calculations, such as how many soles and oysters to order for Johnny’s forthcoming visit, these being foods he liked. She would name various items to the cook, and then say she was expecting Mr Charles and probably Mr Cross on Thursday. Was she? She had to admit she was.
Charles was helpful as ever, dealing with the river of post that came to the Priory at Witley, and bringing down to Witley the post that he thought she might like to see.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Charles on his next visit, his whole face distorted, ‘the holiday will be for at least two weeks.’
He was referring to his family vacation.
‘My dear Charles,’ she said, confidently, ‘any business at the bank or with Mr Warren, Mr Cross will easily attend to, and he will order anything for me from town.’
She wrote to Georgiana: No one is permanently here except my servants, but Sir James Paget has been down to see me, I have a very comfortable country practitioner to watch over me from day to day, and there is a devoted friend who is backwards and forwards continually to see that I lack nothing.
And when Barbara had come, early in the month, she had exclaimed, ‘Ah, Marian, too thin!’, tugging at Marian’s clothes; but then she had stepped close, gazing at her face like a doctor performing a forensic examination. ‘My dear Marian — you look much better than I expected!’
‘I surprise myself,’ admitted Marian. ‘The world is so intensely interesting. So much to live for —!’
The words had come out, as almost a cry. Barbara had hugged her — uncorseted as ever. After she had gone, Marian thought, yes, the world was interesting. Life was interesting. Emotions were interesting. In fact they were impossible. How was it that only months after George’s death, after twenty-five years of being with him, she had found herself enjoying the company of this man twenty years younger, their Nephew; how was it possible that a romantic intimacy had sprung up between herself and Johnny?
Hard to describe. His face animated as soon as he saw her, and her mood lifted too. He would sit close; he wanted to find out how her day had been. Even his moments of uncertainty — he had a habit of putting his hand in front of his mouth if he was not sure of what he was saying — endeared him to her.
He seemed to want to look at her for pleasure.
Her!
She looked in the mirror.
It was not good.
Her face was lined: there were lines on her forehead, around her mouth. The size of her head — she had no illusions about it, it was large. But his attention, so fastened on her, was life-kindling. He waited for each word she said — as if she were dropping jewels on the air. He bought her lavender, eau de cologne, strawberries, poppies he had picked himself. When they were in the same room, she could feel that he was riveted to her, even with others in the room. They had, for several weeks now, taken it for granted that his visits were for the purpose of being together, rather than financial consultation or business of some sort.
In August, in the milky light of the summer house, he said he wanted to marry her.
In her diary Marian wrote: Decisive conversation. For some weeks after that she referred to him not as Johnny, but as Mr Cross.
11
At the end of September Marian received a letter from Barbara. Barbara wanted to come and see her, to ask her advice about one of her protégées, Hertha Marks. Barbara arrived on a warm September day, and everything about her, the vigorous way in which she flung her arms around Marian, and then insisted on carrying her own bag, made Marian feel that Barbara carried life with her, in a healthy way, in contrast to herself. Barbara’s cheeks were ruddy and sunburnt and freckled from painting outside.
On their first walk, Barbara explained in more detail about Hertha. Hertha’s sister had had a nervous breakdown, Hertha wanted to give up her studies to go and nurse her.
‘But my dear Barbara,’ said Marian, ‘she wishes to be a — curative — presence to her sister.’
‘It is the kind of self-sacrifice I loathe.’
‘To do what is right … is not always easy,’ said Marian.
‘You do what is right —!’ said Barbara, in her usual easy way.
Marian half-shuddered, as they walked through a part of the lane that was in shade from overhanging trees. ‘No,’ said Marian, aware that she was blushing. ‘The one who always did what was right, and without calling attention to it, was George. He brought me always to my better self. He had the surest instinct.’ With tears starting to her eyes, she went on: ‘Barbara, you knew him so well! He encouraged me —’
‘He did a great deal for you,’ admitted Barbara, as they began walking back to the house.
‘My whole day is taken up with letter-writing now. He did it all —’
‘So you could do your work.’
‘Exactly,’ — a tremulous smile.
‘He was a wife, really,’ said Barbara, thoughtfully.
‘ — No-o-o!’
‘No?’
Marian tried to smile. Where was her strength? Barbara meant no harm. She must hold it in perspective —
grief was gone. Starlings rising in a sudden cloud, with their massing cries, up, up, and into the lime tree, the peculiar unity of movement.
‘How did you find this wonderful house?’ asked Barbara. ‘It has everything one could wish for.’
‘Mr Cross.’
‘Mr Cross. Johnn
y.’
‘As you say,’ said Marian, flicking a fly off her sleeve. ‘He’d been looking for several years. It had the advantage of being close to where he lives. In Weybridge.’
‘And why is that an advantage?’
‘Why! Because we — I — am a close friend of the entire household; and Mr Cross manages my financial affairs.’
Barbara looked slowly up. ‘My dear Marian, you must forgive me my questioning. I sometimes think my memory suffered.’
Marian took Barbara’s hand. She kept forgetting about Barbara’s stroke.
Inside, in the east-facing drawing room, they were served tea and pie by Brett. Barbara lit the fire, there was a quick blaze, the room began to be filled with ruddy light, Barbara exclaiming how delicious the pie was. And everything that Barbara did conveyed health to Marian, and seemed indirectly to point to her as someone caught in her own sadness.
Over tea, Barbara said, ‘Now, tell me about The World. How is Mr Spencer?’
Marian couldn’t help smiling. Barbara, who hadn’t an ill-natured bone in her body, always enjoyed hearing about Spencer. Marian said he was as self-absorbed as ever. He, who once said that biography was the most stupid use of a person’s brain, was now embarked on a giant autobiography! ‘No other subject, I believe, will compel the same level of interest,’ remarked Marian, her eyelids lowering.
They laughed.
‘Of course, the person people will want to write about is you.’
‘I hope you are wrong. All one’s private concerns subjected to the cold, hard curiosity — the eye of a stranger … to whom one’s struggles, deepest yearnings — are nothing. No — no.’
As Marian spoke, an enormous dark melancholy was descending softly and taking whole possession of her.
‘I understand your feelings. Why should you be inspected, poked at, torn apart, and held up for judgement!’
Marian smiled thinly. That terrible phrase — poked at, torn apart — she changed the subject. The fire was snapping and burning strongly.
In Love with George Eliot Page 26