by Tim Jeal
The path we were on led down to a wooden bridge over a stream. The trees were not so thick lower down. The ground was not so hard here. The moisture made it slippery. Dinah took my arm for the second time.
‘You don’t mind my using you as an anchor?’
‘Go ahead.’
We stopped on the bridge and looked down at the slowly moving water. Dinah said:
‘Aren’t you afraid I might take you for a ride? Wouldn’t it be perfectly reasonable to leave a crippled husband for a rich and healthy one?’
‘No it wouldn’t,’ I snapped.
‘So the horrid idea of this advantage you have never entered your mind?’
‘I didn’t know about Mark’s leg till after I had begun. It changed nothing. It entered my head that you would have to love me a lot to dream of leaving a man in his condition.’
Dinah did not reply to this. She started to walk on to the other bank.
‘Aren’t we rather crossing our bridges before we come to them?’ she asked, looking back at me.
‘Isn’t that rather the result of your charming directness?’
‘Which is the result of your kind invitation.’
The bank on the other side of the bridge rose steeply. Dinah decided to skirt the worst of the slope. I did not. The looseness of the bank and the mud did the rest. I fell and slid for several feet on my stomach. When I got up my chest was covered by a two-inch-thick layer of mud. Dinah looked down at me. Whether she had initially wanted to laugh, I don’t know. If she had wished to, she nevertheless managed to stifle it. I got up and walked round the way she had gone. As I did so I took off my coat. My shirt and tie, I was pleased to see, were not marked. When I had reached the same level as Dinah, I managed to smile and say:
‘You were quite right. I shouldn’t have tried a short cut.’
‘Just like Mark,’ she said. ‘He always used to try the most impossibly difficult things when he got out of hospital.’
She looked at me with mocking intentness.
‘I’m afraid you’ve got your knees a bit messy.’
‘I’ll be able to brush it off when it dries.’
‘Well then, there’s no need to be looking quite so sorrowful.’ Now she did laugh. ‘If you could have seen your face. So intent and then so dismayed.’ She came closer to me. I had my back to a beech tree. She was still laughing when I felt her breath on my face. Her kiss almost had the quality of derision. I turned my face slightly. The action seemed so insanely out of character. I longed to be able to cry out: ‘Not yet, I am not ready yet.’ She did not let me go. I felt her arms round the back of my neck. Her breath came in little spurts as she kissed me again and again and her laughter bubbled up from inside. When she stepped back there was no look of humility, no desire for self-justification. She turned and softly hummed:
‘Where, oh where will it be?
In Eastbourne, Brighton or Capri?’
And I leant against the one stable thing in the universe — the tree behind me. The feeling was not unlike an impossibly bright light at the back of my head. I seemed to be hovering between life and death, an unreal region. I felt almost as if my heart had been physically ripped out and was no longer with me but with my beautiful laughing torturer. I saw the sun glinting on the brass buttons of her coat as she walked into a clearing. What should I do? Pretend that nothing had happened. Deny the almost chemical change that had taken place in my body? She would have to speak. The words of her little couplet might have prepared me for what she said next:
‘Do you think we’ll write each other letters in the long separations? Will I write: “It will be marvellous to see you and hold you in my arms. Life is so dreadfully different without you. I’m sitting peeling potatoes and thinking of you; the way the hair grows on your chest. Andrew is splashing in the bathroom. Mark is still getting up.”?’ She stopped and looked at me without mockery. Her voice was utterly flat. ‘Do you know he can put on his clothes by himself now? I had to dress him. Then there was the excitement of every little thing he could do for himself. “Look, I can do this, I can do that, I can stand on my head …” And I was so good with my bravos and well dones.’ She turned away. I saw her put her hands over her face. ‘Why does everything have to be so sickeningly sad, Harry?’
I went up to her and put my arms round her. I buried my face in her black hair and didn’t know what I could say. After a few seconds she broke away from me.
‘I’m cold. Will you take me home?’
We crossed the bridge again. I said:
‘I wonder what sort of a day Andrew has had.’
‘I expect he’s had a lovely time. He’s probably fallen over like you. He may have ruined his shoes. I may have to buy him another pair. He was wearing his best school suit for your friends. Did you notice that?’
I saw a tear fall and then another.
‘Don’t cry,’ I murmured. She pulled her arm away as I took it. She walked on ahead of me, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her coat. My confusion was complete. We might have begun our walk two days before for all the sensation of time I had had. Our hour and a half seemed literally to have been stolen from the day. When Cathy and Tim welcomed us there would still be doubt in my mind as to whether the path we followed existed.
Seventeen
For the next week I slept badly. Although I worked hard in the day I did not want to sit down quietly in the evening. I used to get back and walk around the flat. In desperation I went for long walks. On two nights I went to concerts. I was tortured by wondering what she was doing. What was she saying to Mark? Had she told him about what happened? I was to discover this in a manner which I had not expected.
By the following Sunday I had reconciled myself to the fact that I should leave the next step in our relationship to Dinah. On several occasions I started to write to her but each time tore up the paper before I had completed anything. Each day I re-lived our trip to the country. I tried to think whether she could possibly have been flippant in kissing me. I presumed that since she was a married woman I could assume that she would not have acted as she did without the corresponding feelings. Her tears added to my certainty. Her remarks about the unpleasant sides to breaking a marriage, although they had shocked me at the time, now seemed altogether comprehensible. She had not aimed these remarks so much at me as at herself. The decision, as I had always known, would ultimately have to be hers. I could well imagine what the weight of taking such a decision must be like. I therefore put down her laughter as she kissed me to her being overwrought in the face of such a decision. She was not laughing at me but at herself, at the grim comedy of the situation, the irony of returning to somebody she need never have left. That Sunday afternoon I had walked a long way again, turning these considerations over in my mind. When I returned to my flat it was dark. I turned on all the heaters in my sitting room and got myself a drink. I then lay back on my sofa. I had not been to sleep the previous night till after four so I was tired. I woke up several hours later to hear the bell ringing.
When I opened the door I saw Mark Simpson standing in the hall. I hesitated for a moment, then asked him to come in. Neither of us said anything till I had got him a drink and asked him to sit down.
Simpson took a large mouthful of whisky and said:
‘Dinah’s told me about last weekend.’ He didn’t sound angry or upset. I nodded. He went on: ‘I haven’t come to ask you what your intentions are. I’ve come to try to define my own position. It may help.’
‘You didn’t seem so detached when I came to dinner,’ I said quietly.
‘I’ve had time to think since then. I’m really very conventional. You must forgive me if I find it a little difficult to extend a cordial hand to a man who intends to take away my wife.’
I didn’t bother to refute this. What would be the use? Instead I said:
‘You told me to forget, when I followed you. Your thinking has changed that too?’
He didn’t bother to answer this. He continued
as though I had not spoken.
‘Although I can only speak for myself, I hope that you’ll understand that I have Dinah’s interests at heart as well.’
‘Very nice of you,’ I murmured. His look of sincere good will seemed to me to be fat complacency. His lack of anger disgusted me.
‘It’s very easy for somebody in Dinah’s position to become bored. Looking after Andrew and me is an onerous task, more onerous since my illness.’
Why couldn’t he say ‘hard work’ instead of ‘onerous’?
‘Even so,’ he went on, ‘it isn’t enough to occupy her mind like a job.’
‘She could take a course in modern languages, make lamp-shades, join the Women’s Institute,’ I said angrily, feeling sure that he was going to explain what happened the previous weekend by boredom. Again he seemed undeterred by my interjection.
‘You know Dinah better than that,’ he replied as though sad at such a puerile interruption. I felt I had to say I had not meant it seriously. Nevertheless I managed to keep quiet. Sensing my mood, he said: ‘You must give me a chance. In the normal course of events I could have put down her interest in you to lack of excitement in her everyday life. Her past relationship with you rules this out.’
‘It didn’t rule out your marriage,’ I choked.
‘I didn’t realise how strong the attachment was then.’
‘When did you? Ten years have passed. Valentine’s Day hasn’t brought me little good-will messages from either of you: “to the man who taught us how to love”.’
He looked at me and said sympathetically:
‘She didn’t tell me everything until after our marriage.’
‘Weren’t you slightly surprised at the speed the thing happened?’
‘Yes. But I was also grateful. I wanted to marry her. I did what she asked because I wanted to. I don’t suppose you realised that I loved her too. I suffered a lot when she went to live with you.’
‘What do you think happened to me when I came back from France that summer?’
‘I told you, Harry, I didn’t realise the depth of the relationship.’
‘How convenient.’
He moved in his chair and leant forward. For the first time there were signs that his composure was breaking.
‘I suppose her mother told you that she was frightened of you. Well she was. Your happiness seemed to be almost independent of her. She was a sort of drug that made you happy, something that didn’t have to exist except in your mind. She told me that you never had a single conversation in the real sense of the word.’
The truth of what he was saying did nothing to lessen my anger.
‘And what is conversation in the real sense of the word?’
‘An exchange which both people are equal participants in. Something like that I suppose.’
I got up and sneered:
‘And how many real conversations have you had since your hospital regeneration? What was all that about the remoteness you felt? The pleasure you took in your inner life? What room did that leave for what I never managed?’
‘I suppose I knew that you took those pages. Dinah read them too, not all that long before you did. I felt angry then. I should have destroyed them ages ago. I’m not trying to moralise with you or point out faults which I lack. I’m telling you what she told me before we got married. I’m trying to make my own position clear. I married her to save her from somebody who, she assured me, made her feel that she didn’t exist. I loved her too.’
‘And she didn’t love you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ He looked tired and ill. This admission made me feel slight sympathy. I sensed that he really was trying to tell me what happened.
‘So you felt that she’d come to love you? Did she?’
‘We didn’t have much time. I became ill just over a year later.’
‘And after that?’
‘It isn’t easy to live with somebody who is a liability and knows it. If I tried to do something for myself, this was taken by her as an insult. As though I was saying: you wouldn’t have done that for me. If I hurt myself doing something which somebody else could have done for me, she blamed herself. For ever, why didn’t you ask me? The most annoying thing I could say would be: I don’t want to be a nuisance. You can have no idea of the strength of tension that can be generated in a house with a cripple. I was in hospital for two years. Rehabilitation is not the wrong word for going home.’ He looked at me anxiously as though to say: This is the truth, I am not trying to self-justify. I remembered Dinah saying: ‘Why does everything have to be so sickeningly sad?’ I looked down at the carpet and waited for him to go on.
‘I started to realise how vulnerable she was. Also how proud. It is hard to be able to admit that one has made a mistake, that one chose the wrong course. The fact was terribly simple; she had tried to escape by marrying me and had promptly been rewarded by a worse kind of slavery. I might add, the worst kind of slavery. You can’t square being unkind to cripples with your conscience. They’re so much worse off than you are. She’d fight her anger for weeks and feel ashamed when it finally broke. She took a lover. I didn’t blame her. She told me, but even so it didn’t stop the guilt. You can leave a healthy husband without a qualm but not a cripple. People can say that they won’t be emotionally blackmailed, but they are. They can say that it could happen to anybody, that it’s one of those chances that don’t merit special consideration. But that’s just humbug.’
My voice shook slightly as I asked:
‘What happened to the lover?’
‘I didn’t ask. He was brought so that I could look at him. He teaches English at some school. She can’t see him often. I don’t know whether she always sees her mother when she says she does.’
‘Don’t you care?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘Not much. I expected it to happen earlier. Expectation always softens the blow when it comes, like somebody you know dying of cancer. You’ve gone through the funeral before they’re dead. The actual occasion is almost superfluous.’
‘You never tried to find out?’ I could not help my anxiety showing.
‘I don’t think he stood a chance,’ he said. ‘Withdrawal symptoms seem to make men attractive. He was a lively, out-going, you know — all the cheery words, sort of person. He was contented with her and she wasn’t contented with him as a result. My illness removed me mentally; you, she’s always told me, were never anything except remote. It’s strange, even pathetic; some people can’t love anybody who gives everything and isn’t afraid to say so. Perhaps you did. You didn’t seem to.’
‘So I’d found the right formula for keeping her love, I just overdid the dose? Is that right?’ Sadness had overcome anxiety.
‘I think so,’ he replied. I recognised the slightly bored air that I had noticed at dinner.
‘Don’t you care about anything? I thought somebody working as you do would believe in something. But with you — nothing. I can’t help feeling that you’re not real. Do you believe in anything?’ I think I was talking just to stop thinking about myself. Asking aimless questions to divert attention from myself. I was surprised at the vehemence of his reply.
‘I believe in suffering. Only by learning to suffer can you get rid of fear. My God doesn’t say: Believe in me to stop suffering. Mine, yours … we are only taking our small share in the world’s pain. Perhaps pain is the only way to make us love.’ He calmed down, and then went on: ‘But you see we’ll go off the rails again like we did last time. This has little to do with my marriage.’
‘And yet it’s why you came here.’ Suddenly I seemed to realise why he had come. To force himself to suffer more. I remembered what he had written about pain. What a scene for a martyrdom: my soulless furniture, the emptiness of anything that belongs. ‘So you came to say: I am ready. Take her. You want me to.’ He clasped his hands as though the most difficult moment had come. Quietly he said:
‘Isn’t that what you want me to say? I can’t do the obvious. I can’t f
ight. If you love her you must do so in spite of me. Love isn’t anything if it involves humiliating husbands, lovers.’
‘So I go to her and tell her that I’ve come at the right time. That her husband wants to go and contemplate, so what could be more convenient. We can go to the seaside and he won’t mind. What sort of a chance are you giving me?’
His chubby face puckered. Momentarily he shut his eyes.
‘That must depend on what you make of it. I came to tell you my position. I can’t determine yours. I’m not so twisted as to want to stay with her when I honestly believe it’s the worst thing I can do for both of us.’ He smiled. ‘Not even to increase my share of the world’s pain.’
How could I ever have felt sympathy for him? He seemed more at ease, as though conscious that he had said almost everything he had come to tell me. I wondered whether he had discussed what he would say with Dinah. For a moment I included her in my hatred. The few occasions we had had together seemed superfluous. I, who had been going to dictate terms, had been their fool all along. And yet I didn’t ask him whether he had talked to her about this visit. I didn’t dare. He could claim that it was the sensible thing to do. Dinah must be innocent. I had returned not as a fly to a spider, but as … I did not know what. Eventually I said:
‘You told me people weren’t able to leave cripples.’
‘Only if they are helped. Not only my help is enough. You must help as well. She and I never had a chance together after … my stay in hospital.’ He had hesitated before saying the last four words. It seemed as though he had been about to say something different. I asked: ‘Have you said everything?’ I desperately wanted to get him out of the flat, to be alone, to try and think. He looked at me almost with pity as he said:
‘No, there is one more thing. Something I ought to have told you years ago when I knew.’ He bent forwards, cupping his face in his hands. His voice was agonised: ‘She didn’t tell me till it was too late … I loved her then, I might have told you otherwise.’ I felt the same terror that I had experienced when Mrs Lisle handed me that newspaper. ‘I’ve only told you part of the reason why we married so quickly. When she had told me it was too late to do anything. She vowed never to lie to me again.’