No Truce with Time Read online

  “She’s not appalling.”

  “I really believe you did consider her.”

  “Not for so very long.”

  “If I saved you from that, I haven’t lived in vain. What can you see in her?”

  “She’s got fine eyes.”

  “Eyes? Perhaps. But that pasty skin. And she’s such a skeleton. She must be Jive foot nine. She can’t weigh eight stone. Everyone on the island wonders how on earth she ever managed to get a husband.”

  “That’s just the point. When a woman of that type really does wake up …”

  “You sound as though you regretted her.”

  “One’s always curious.”

  “Is one? It’s not too late. You’ve still got time.”

  He laughed at that.

  “I might have time, but do you think I’d have much of anything else to spare, with you here?”

  It was a mischievous laugh, in which she joined. No, he wouldn’t have had much to spare of anything. Day after day he would pester her with plans for meetings. Every day, every hour, his absorption, his physical absorption in her grew more acute. It was just as she had dreamed it might be, during the sleepless hours of her siesta under the mosquito net: herself responsive as she dreamed of being, during those long hours. There was not a dream, not a phantasy that she did not realize; with an openness that astonished, that delighted him.

  “I’d no idea you could be like this,” he’d say.

  “I’m rather surprised at my own self.”

  “It’s so much better, so much more fun than it was before.”

  “That’s because we know each other better : because we find it easier to be ourselves with one another.”

  “Is it that? Perhaps it is. I’d never thought of that But to be able to talk like this … I never knew that one could talk openly like this, as if one were with a man. I suppose it’s because we’re really more friends than anything.”

  She smiled. She raised her hand, she drew its palm slowly along his cheek. You fool, you little fool, she thought. She longed to tighten her hand upon his head, to draw her nails in four long jagged tears from ear to chin.

  It was a dream, it was a torture. Even the most frenzied phantasies of those sleepless siestas had not revealed to her such acute sensation. It was a dream, an unbelievable dream, when his arms went round her. It was torture, unimaginable torture, when back on the verandah of her bungalow she recalled syllable by syllable the phrases that had tortured her. “See it in terms of fun.... Really more friends than anything....” It wasn’t true, it couldn’t be true that she had heard those things : that he should have seen a parallel between herself and the chambermaid in Notre Cœur.

  “See it in terms of fun,” indeed. If she only could. And to have to pretend to see it in terms of fun; to keep her manner light; to laugh and joke, as though no such thing as jealousy could exist for her, so that she could ask him on the friendliest of notes, “And was getting married part of your plan of medicine?”

  “Ultimately.”

  “You planned you mean to have an adventure with someone simple, as a medicine; then when you were quite cured, you’d look around for some nice girl?”

  She spoke mockingly, putting the words “nice girl “into inverted commas, in the way that she knew amused him.

  “It wasn’t quite that,” he said.

  “What was it, then?”

  “A great many things all jumbled up together.”

  “Shall I try and unravel them for you?”

  “You think you could?”

  She smiled.

  “I think it was like this,” she said. “You’d been made unhappy by that girl in London. You came here to forget her. There are two ways of forgetting anyone; a change of scenery; a change of person. You came here, looking for your own medicine. And after looking about a little while, you found it. And when one’s cured, one no longer needs a medicine, even if it was a pleasant medicine. You forgot you had been ever ill. You’re young, you’re ambitious. What next, you wondered. And looking ahead, planning your future, you pictured yourself as married.

  “Then you looked at your medicine bottle, and you thought, ‘ I can’t go on taking this for ever; it’s got to end one day.’ When the chance came of that New York trip, you thought, ‘ Well, here’s my opportunity.’

  “But even so, though your health was recovered, it was a little shock to be deprived altogether of your medicine. It left a gap, so that when you met a young and very attractive girl it was only natural that your heart should begin to beat, so that you couldn’t help remembering that it was with just such a girl as this that you had planned to build that life. She was a gay companion. It was fun to do things with her. Everyone liked her. She would make things easy for you, make friends for you. Her father had the kind of position that would be a help to you. And added to all of that, she was not only a very attractive person, but a sweet one too. Isn’t that what you meant by saying it was a mixture of a great many things?”

  She spoke teasingly, affectionately, so teasingly that he could not refrain from smiling.

  “If anyone else had said that, I’d have been furious.”

  “But it wasn’t anyone saying it, it was me.”

  “That makes all the difference.”

  He looked steadily at her, and his eyes were fond.

  “It’s marvellous to talk to you like this.”

  Marvellous! Marvellous! Impatiently, resentfully, she mimicked the intonation of his voice as she stood with her hands clenched that night upon the railing of the verandah. Marvellous : if he only knew how marvellous …

  If he only knew how marvellous it could really be. If only she were free to show him …

  And there in the doorway of his room was Gerald, his fingers plucking at the wainscoting, choking, fighting for breath, his forehead hot, his cheeks a scarlet purple. “Not worth the living … intolerable … every morning the same prayer …”

  The familiar tirade. And it was only this life that was such a burden to Gerald, that stood between her and happiness with Barclay.

  “If only I were dead … If only I were dead....” There it went again. What did he want with life? What pleasure did he get out of life? Did life bring him any happiness commensurate with the distress it caused him? Yet his continued existence was destroying the happiness of two other people.

  In an access of sudden hate she glared at that short thick form that stood shaking in the doorway. It was not at Gerald that she was staring; not the character, the person; but at the hulk of physical appearance. She saw the sick body, shaken with hereditary illness, a worn-out machine, something that had served its purpose, that had outlived its use, that was an encumbrance. To think that this useless object should stand between her and happiness. It was unfair, it was monstrously unfair. If only it were like a car that you could return to stock, fling out upon the scrap-heap.

  22

  Miss Hardwick raised her eyebrows as Mary presented her library books.

  “Another detective story? Do you know you’ve read nothing but detective stories for a fortnight?”

  “Haven’t I? Well, perhaps I haven’t.”

  “You haven’t. I can assure you. I was only looking through your card last night. I always go over everybody’s card at least once a month. I make a note every time a book’s brought back. That’s the way to run a library, particularly this kind of library. With such a very—well—half-educated clientèle. Keep a check on what they like and don’t like. It’s no good trying to force books on them, to say this is what you should read. That’s not the way. You must lead them. Find out what they like. Then offer them something better of its kind. Educate them. That’s the way I put it.”

  “And a very sensible way, too, Miss Hardwick.”

  “You think so? Now, that is encouraging. Because I do try. And no one seems to appreciate it. Everyone’s very nice, of course, about the little articles I write for the West Indian Quarterly. And so they should be, after all.
As H. E. said only the last time that he was over here, ‘ El Santo should be proud of you, Miss Hardwick.’ Yes, I do think the people here appreciate what I’ve been able to do in that way, to make their island known. But I don’t think they’ve even started to grasp what I’ve been able to do in the way of educating these people. They just think of me as someone who cares for books, who is lucky to have the run of their library. But it’s so much more than that. I can be a genuine influence in their lives. That’s what I try to be. That’s why I go over their lists so carefully. The first Tuesday of every month, I make a thorough check. Of course it’s the coloured people that I really worry over. They’re what matter. I don’t take the same interest, not really, in people like yourself. But I do look, every now and then, out of interest. So that I can get clues as to the kind of books that are worth recommending. That’s why I was looking down your list. And it was a surprise to me.”

  “One has one’s moods.”

  “I know. That’s what makes it so interesting. They say you can judge people by their friends. But you can judge them just as easily by their books. Books are friends. I guess at people’s characters by what they read. I guess at the moods they are in by what they read. When a young man reads nothing but adventure stories, I say to myself, ‘ He’s bored, he wants life to be dramatic.’ When a young girl starts reading poetry, ‘ Ah, it’s love,’ I think.”

  “I hope you don’t think that because I’ve been reading crime stories I’m going to become a criminal.”

  “Oh no, Mrs. Montague, of course not. You will have your little joke though, won’t you? I was wondering though. Detective stories are so unlike you. You were reading such a different kind of story four months ago.”

  “Was I? What was I reading then?”

  “I don’t know how I’d describe them quite. I suppose— well, wouldn’t modern be the word, perhaps?”

  Modern. Four months ago. That was when Barclay was in New York, when morning after morning she had tried to write to him, when afternoon after afternoon she had tossed sleeplessly under her mosquito net. Had she read nothing but “modern “novels then?

  “Could I see my card?”

  It was not a card: it was a series of cards kept in a long brown envelope; the record of every book that she had read since she had come, seven years back now, to El Santo. She ran her eye down the list in the same spirit that one rummages through a wardrobe to find old scarves and jumpers for a sale. (Did I ever wear that? When could I have bought that? Wasn’t that the hat I wore on the afternoon …) In the same spirit Mary ran her eye down the list. It was a miscellaneous list, she had chosen her books at random, following the advice of friends, of recommendations at the club, a list from which Miss Hardwick could have derived few conclusions, except that she was a voracious and undiscriminating reader: at any rate, for those six years.

  She studied the list more carefully as she reached the seventh year. November. The month before he came. A wet and sticky month. Yes, she had read a lot that month. Then dry weather started, blue skies and unpuddled streets. She had read a bare half as much. December. The month that Barclay had arrived. The tenth, wasn’t that the day? On the ninth she had taken out a book called The Turn of Fortune. She had returned it on the twelfth. She must have returned straight to that book after meeting Barclay on the quay. She had no recollection of the book: its scope, its nature, or the author’s name. Yet she must have read it with some attention to have kept it for three days.

  Her eye ran on. Now and again a title would strike some chord; a memory would be evoked of a particular day, a particular scene. She could see herself coming back from such and such a party to such and such a book. She could remember thoughts that certain books had given.

  She paused as she came near to Mardi Gras. She had been reading a magazine that afternoon when the telephone had rung, a magazine short story. But the day before she had taken out a novel. She had taken out a novel two days after. She had been reading a good deal just then. Although in retrospect it seemed that Barclay had absorbed all her thoughts, she must have been spending two or three hours every day over a book. Right through the spring that list of books ran on; as miscellaneous a collection after Mardi Gras as it had been before.

  March. It must have been in March that Barclay’s yacht arrived. The fifteenth? The seventeenth? She could not be certain which. But all through that week the list of entries ran. It was astonishing how the routine of one’s life went on, no matter what personal emotions might be convulsing it. In retrospect, she pictured those weeks as a living for Barclay, a living round Barclay’s plans. Yet day after day, she had been going down to the library, returning a book, deliberating a choice: day after day, till suddenly there came a full week s pause. An Unposted Letter, and then no entry for seven days.

  An Unposted Letter? Ah, but of course. That yellow cover that had lain on their bedside table in Barbados; the book she had been too excited to read on the journey there, that in Bridgetown she had had no time to read, that she had fallen asleep over on the journey back, that she had returned to the library unread because she could not very well sit reading a book that she had had out for a week, pretending that on that whole trip she had found not one spare moment in which to read it. There was that one week’s gap. Then once again the resumption of daily entries: the same miscellaneous list, classics, biographies, light novels, serious novels; a voracious and undiscriminating reader through those wild ecstatic weeks that had followed their Barbadian honeymoon : a miscellaneous list, until the entry Madame Bovary. Yes, and after that…

  After that it became a secret diary. Madame Bovary. Then Anna Karenina. Book after book in which she had tried, not to sublimate, but to find a companion for her moods: a book that would be a mirror, that would reflect her moods, that would analyse and arrange those moods, probe them and interpret them, so that as she read she would feel half in the confessional, half in the company of an intimate friend; the friend one dreamt of finding, that one never found, with whom one could talk in shorthand, comparing notes. That was the kind of book that she had read during those long hot afternoons when she had tossed restlessly under her mosquito net. She had thought herself unhappy then. Unhappy.... If she could only win back to that mood. She had been restless, yes; impatient, yes; half the time on edge : but she had been hopeful, expectant. A date had been marked upon a map that she could count hours to …

  Smoke, Farewell to Arms, The Weather in the Streets.... So the list ran. A month of entries, and then a pause : a week when there were no entries, a week when reading had been Impossible. The Moon and Sixpence; the book that they had chosen, he and she, the morning when he had not let her take Notre Coeur.... The Moon and Sixpence, and after that a week when reading had been impossible: that first impossible week of the Bruces’ presence: a week that had been followed by a rush of miscellaneous entries, of books changed twice a day, books that she had never read, that she had barely skimmed through, that had been taken from the shelves at random in the foiled effort to forget: a list from which alone that one entry of Notre Cœur stood clear and separate: that miscellaneous jumble. And now this steady flow of detective novels: this resolute attempt to forget her troubles.

  “And was it a good book, Mrs. Montague? Good of its kind, I mean?”

  With habitual prim intensity Miss Hardwick was pursuing her investigations.

  “I don’t read that kind of book myself. What’s it about? A woman who kills her husband? Was it convincing? Did you feel that it could have happened? You did? That’s strange. It’s what I never can feel about detective stories. I suppose that’s why I never read them. I never can believe that a real person, somebody one knows, could do a murder.”

  “That’s because you’ve too nice a nature.”

  “No, no, it isn’t. It’s a lack in me. Because I know that murders do take place. But I go to the club and I look round me there. I can imagine some of them doing almost anything, embezzling money, running off with their best friend�
�s wife, forging signatures, anything mean or petty, but that … But no, I can’t imagine anyone actually taking life.”

  “You have to postulate a very exceptional set of circumstances.”

  Herself, she could postulate that set so easily. They talked of the primitive blood issue of the jungle. My life or yours. No one would have any doubt there of the right action. You had to kill or be killed. Could not a similar, an equivalent situation arise in modern life when happiness, when a particular kind of happiness, a happiness that would be the symbol, the justification of life itself was threatened : when you would say to yourself, “If I don’t have this, then I don’t want life “? If at such a time one person, and one person alone, barred you from that happiness, did not that become a question of your life or his : a killing or being killed ? But how was Miss Hardwick to realize that; Miss Hardwick whose life flowed through level meadows?

  “Miss Hardwick commit a murder? I don’t suppose that in her whole life she has really lost her temper.”

  It was to a young police officer, Lieutenant Stewart, that she remarked that, an hour later, at the club. It was lightly that she remarked it, but a serious expression came instantly into her eyes.

  “Now, that’s interesting. That’s a matter on which I’ve rather definite opinions.”

  She smiled when he said that. There were few subjects on which he did not have definite opinions. He was young and earnest, and in the opinion of El Santo he was rather foolish and something of a bore. There was a challenge about the way he said, “I’ve very definite opinions about that.”

  “Have you ever noticed,” he said, “how very rare it is for murders to be committed in classes above the lower, or at any rate the lower middle class? Except in the case of homicidal maniacs like that man in Düsseldorf, or neurotics like that Mahon, or of political murderers that are after all only gangster killings. Leaving out that kind of murder, as I said, you never find the ordinary straightforward murder that fills the evening papers for a fortnight, that ends in an Old Bailey trial, is committed by anyone above the lower middle class strata of society. Come now, can you think of one?”