No Truce with Time Page 9

  “Understood?”

  “And without my saying it. You’re marvellous. I knew you would understand. But to understand without my saying it. There’s no one like you.”

  The light in his eyes was fond. His fingers pressed her arm affectionately, then let it go.

  “Let’s go and choose your book,” he said.

  15

  In a thick damp mist the heat lay over Rodney. For two days there had been neither rain nor sun. For forty-eight hours the white statue of the Savane had been invisible. Like the folds of a heavy garment, the density of the air impeded every movement. Trickles of water ran down every wall, clothes were sopped, cushions soaking. Its effect on Gerald’s chest was cataclysmic. For hour after hour he had choked and coughed: not only in the evenings, not only after sessions at the club, but in the early morning. Even at breakfast time he was choking, spluttering, inveighing against his health, the climate, the fools in England. Mary was limp with exhaustion by the time he left her: worn out before the day had started; unrested after a restless night, with the long slow passing hours of the day stretched out before her.

  Moodily she lay on her long chair. Everything was damp : the cushions under her head, the cover of the book. Her hands felt like sponges. Her clothes clung against her skin. The pages of the book stuck when she tried to turn them. It was like dealing a dirty pack.

  Only half-past nine. The day had scarcely started: with nothing to do, nothing to look forward to. If only the mist would lift: if only it would break in rain. If only something would happen, one way or the other. If only the weather would make up its mind, be positive. The weather was like her life, a grey hindering obscurity.

  How long was it since Barclay had returned? Ten days? And in those ten days not once had they been alone: not a drive along the beach; not a picnic on the yacht; not a letter slipped between the pages of a novel. It was as though there had never been those notes, those drives, those picnics. It was just as if …

  Impatiently she shifted in her chair. Just as if what? That was the trouble. She did not know. Had anything happened? One would think from Barclay’s manner that nothing had. There was no embarrassment in his behaviour. He was friendly, easy, glad to see her. Just as he had always been, in public.

  It was unbelievable; to have wooed her incessantly, extravagantly, hysterically, to have battered on her defences till he had finally broken them, to have stage-managed with consummately adroit technique a love affair in what amounted to full view of an entire island: to have left her on a note of desperate promise, to have written her a succession of homesick letters, and then on his return to behave as though there had been nothing between them: ever.

  That was the most astonishing part of the whole thing ˙ that he should be able to behave as though they had never leant against a balcony with the rhythm of the calypsos thudding along their veins, as though a circle of sunlight had never moved along polished woodwork, as though there had never been that click of a turning door handle in a strange hotel. If only he had shown some embarrassment. If he had tried to avoid her. That she would have understood. He had not, though. He had been towards her as friendly, as amiable as ever. She could not detect the slightest difference in his manner.

  What did he want? What was he planning? Was this part of his technique: his particular way of breaking off? Was not that the hardest part of an affair from the man’s point of view? She had read of the skill with which some men would so arrange a situation that it would seem to the woman as though the dismissal had been made by her. She had read innumerable masculine descriptions of woman’s tears, of woman’s scenes. Was this his way of avoiding that? It might be. It might well be.

  What did she know of Barclay after all? Only what he himself had told her. He had told her that, before herself, there had been in his life only that one girl in Jersey. But no inexperienced man could have conducted an intrigue with such adroitness. He had behaved as though the deception of friends, the hoodwinking of husbands, was a role he had played too often to consider failure. He had been so certain of himself that he had run risks, like a trapeze artist. Of course he had been experienced, thoroughly experienced. Innocence was a bait: a tactic that he had thought appropriate to her age and status. If he had had a young girl to deal with, no doubt he would have paraded with appropriate exaggeration his feats of gallantry.

  Had he planned the whole thing from the start, stage by stage? Had he, foreseeing with his experienced eye that sooner or later he would have to close an intrigue that would be a burden in a place where much of his spare time might be spent, decided in advance to end it during his New York trip? Had it been all a cut-and-dried campaign: the end envisaged from the start, like a trained runner knowing when to sprint? Would he at a later date, on the brink of some light-hearted enterprise, produce her as an example of the pleasant thing that love could be if one did not take it solemnly?

  “It all went to plan,” she could hear him saying, “the regulation courtship: rather an original kind of courtship too. Remind me to tell you about it some day. The fun we had hoodwinking all those gossips; carrying on an affair not so much behind their backs as under their very noses. We got away with murder. Believe it or not, we actually managed to get away for five whole days together : and to Barbados. Yes, Barbados, of all places. It was the happiest thing that’s ever come my way. Not an unhappy minute. It didn’t drag on either. There was a clean cut. I went up to New York for a business trip. I was sad when I went away. Yes, that I must admit. But you know how it is, new places, new people. Things get pushed into the background. I was away longer than I had intended. When I got back we both realized without one word said that the thing was over. No scenes, no tears, no explanations. We’re the best of friends : though we’ve never even referred to it. If one wanted to choose the completely happy affair, well, there it is.”

  And as he said that, no doubt into his eyes would come that teasing look. His account of the affair would be a stage of courtship: as though he were saying, “What fun it was! But we, you and I, we could have even better fun.” Was that how it was to be? Was that the way it was? She did not know. How could she know? Her life was like this mist. She could not see. She could not move. She was befogged, becalmed. What was the matter? Was anything the matter? She was in a vacuum.

  Half-past nine. Three hours of the morning to be lived through.

  It was more than three hours. It was after one before Gerald returned for lunch. He was breathing heavily and his face was flushed. He paused on the steps of the verandah, beating his fists against his chest.

  “It’s terrible,” he grumbled. “Life’s not worth living under these conditions. This climate. It’s more than one can stand. If only I could get away.... Those damned socialists in England won’t give people like myself a chance of making a decent living. They’re grateful to us when there’s a war and there’s something they can get out of us. But when we’ve served our purpose … This chest of mine. I don’t know why I go on living....”

  It was the familiar wail. She would have liked to have been sympathetic, but she was too familiar with this particular complaint. If only he drank less. You couldn’t feel sympathetic towards an illness that was self-induced.

  “Poor dear,” she said. “Come along. Lunch is waiting.”

  It was a heavy meal: an Irish stew, with a large dish of starchy vegetables: yams and bread-fruit and sweet potatoes. It was the kind of lunch he liked: the kind of lunch that he insisted on. She had failed to convince him that he would foel far better on a plate of soup and a fruit salad. No wonder he was always ill. It was hard not to be impatient with a trouble for which he held the cure, when there were so many people with real troubles in the world.

  “I don’t know why I go on living,” he grumbled on. “I’m no use to myself. I’m no use to anyone. A nuisance to others. A burden to myself. How much better off you’d be if I were dead. You could sell my properties. You could go back to England. Marry some young fellow....”


  “Now, Gerald, please …”

  “It’s true. You’d have a lovely life. There’s nothing you couldn’t do, nowhere you couldn’t go....”

  “Gerald, I insist....”

  “But it’s true: you know it is.”

  “It isn’t true. And I won’t have you talk like that. It’s silly. And I dislike it. Let’s have our lunch. It’s late. Who was at the club?”

  “The usual crowd. Who’d be there but the usual crowd? That’s one of the worst things about this place; seeing the same people every day. No wonder that one gets edgey, that one has to drink. It’s a vicious circle. It’s …”

  She interrupted him. Another minute, and he would be off again on one of his tirades: saying how foul life was: how useless his existence: what a relief the end would be. She had heard those tirades a thousand times. There were times when she was sorry for him; there were times when she felt that it was her job to listen to him, to make the right comments, to be his audience. There were other times, such as this, when she could barely control her patience.

  “I suppose J. B. was there?” she said.

  “Oh yes. Young Barclay too. He’s certainly no fool, that boy.”

  “That’s what you’ve always said.”

  “Did I? I didn’t know how clever he was till now. He knows which side his bread’s buttered. To get J. B. would be enough, but to get Kitty Bruce as well …”

  “Kitty?”

  “The betting’s two to one they’re engaged already.”

  “Gerald …”

  “Farquharson was offering evens.”

  “What nonsense!”

  “I offered threes myself.”

  She laughed impatiently.

  “You’ll lose your money if you were taken. He hardly knows her. Two months ago he’d never heard of her.”

  “Two months can be two years. He saw plenty of her in New York. He’s had ten days with her on a ship. Half her time here’s spent with him. He knows her better than most men know their wives when they walk down the aisle. Besides, he isn’t any fool. He’s a quick worker where the main chance lies.”

  “What an outrageous thing to say!”

  “Not at all. He wouldn’t marry a girl just because her father was rich. But equally he’d not fall in love with a girl who wouldn’t be an asset. He’d wait till he’d met the girl who’d not only be an asset to him, but with whom he could fall in love as well. That’s what I call being sensible. He may have calculated a little at the start: before he let himself fall right in love. But once he let himself go—why, you’ve only got to look at them together to see he’s crazy over her. I’ve asked them out to dinner tomorrow night. Then you 11 see for yourself the way it it.”

  “I’ll still go on saying that it’s nonsense.”

  Nonsense: of course it was. And the most absurd part of it all was, that she could not explain to anyone just why it was absurd. She couldn’t give them the reason. To Gerald, it would seem obvious that Barclay should fall in love with Kitty Bruce. Nothing was more suitable, from the worldly view. Barclay was the first person that a father with any sense would welcome as his son-in-law. He was the right age for a romantic marriage: not inexperienced, but with his illusions left, with Kitty herself, gay and fresh and wholesome, an asset in herself, apart from the fact that her father was chairman of a dozen companies.

  Naturally Barclay had his eye to the main chance. The young man wasn’t worth much who hadn’t. No doubt when he had planned out his future he had seen himself at just such an age married to somebody like Kitty Bruce. No wonder the Rodney gossips were writing it down as a settled thing. It was so eminently suitable: that was the trouble about it. It was too suitable: far too suitable. That was the trouble about everything in life: people did not do the best things for their own interests. They didn’t do the suitable things. They did the things they felt like doing; things that precluded the suitable course of action. Nothing could have been less suitable for Barclay than to fall in love with herself. But he had; and there it was; and that was all there was to it. And it was absurd to talk of the announcement of an engagement to Kitty Bruce. Kitty Bruce wasn’t the explanation of his strange behaviour.

  At her side lay Notre Coeur. “It’s nothing,” he had said. He had hurried her on, deliberately, to The Moon and Sixpence. Why? He must have had some personal reason for not wanting her to read it. For it wasn’t “nothing “: it certainly wasn’t nothing. Anyone who cared for Maupassant would care for it.

  Why hadn’t he wanted her to read it?

  It was in the spirit of a detective on the track of a clue that she had taken the novel from the library, that she had rushed her way through the book, turning pages, skipping paragraphs, sometimes missing a whole chapter; getting the general scheme and pattern of the book; then starting again at the beginning, to read it slowly, meditatively, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, phrase by phrase; searching those pages, paragraphs and phrases for the clue, if there was a clue there, to Barclay’s strange behaviour.

  Slowly, pensively, she read. Why had he not wanted her to read this story of a Parisian, rich, talented and lazy, who had fallen in love with a young widow; a fashionable hostess with a reputation that was not discredited because her salon was frequented in the main by men; men drawn, moreover, from Bohemian circles; men whose wives were not invited, did not expect to be invited? It was the kind of plot that forty years later a very modern novelist might have used. It was modern to that extent.

  But what parallel was there between this story and hers and Barclay’s? What resemblance between this eager, ambitious boy and the disenchanted Frenchman in early middle age, with his wealth, his elegance, his amateur’s absorption in the arts? What resemblance, either, between herself and this accomplished flirt, with her fetish for masculine adoration, her love of playing one man against another, of making men fall in love with her, of yielding nothing, but making close friends of them once they had become her slaves; who did not torture them, but who kept their love, in her own phrase, “simmering ” ? What resemblance was there between Michèle and herself; this Michèle who in her final surrender had been led not by the heart but by the brain, whose senses had been never really touched, who had not so much yielded to love as chosen love, in a mood of curiosity, as caprice, of which she had wearied as she would weary of a hat or cloak? A surrender that caused André far more misery than her coquettishness had caused her slaves. Could anything be less like herself?

  André had, it is true, wooed Michèle with letters, writing of a love that he never expressed in words, returning late at night to pour out in a stream of phrases the longing, the anguish that through the long hours of a soiree he had concealed beneath the formality of manners : letters that morning after morning had lain beside her coffee.

  Was there any parallel between those two situations? Possibly there was. It was with letters that Barclay had wooed her: and her own response to those letters had not been unlike Michèle’s. Her fancy had been titivated by the situation, by the contrast between the formal calm with which Barclay had treated her at the club and the wild phrases he poured out the moment he was back in his hotel. She had found the situation, almost in Michèle’s words, “picturesque, unusual, the kind of thing that might happen to the heroine of a novel.”

  And afterwards, there had been some slight resemblance between the yacht that Barclay had bought with herself in mind and the pavilion that André had furnished for his Michèle. Yes, there was a resemblance. And later possibly there was a still further likeness: in the anguish with which André had been torn on slowly realizing that he had never really touched Michèle’s senses. Was that a likeness? Possibly. But so slight, so brief; since Barclay had woken her to love, whereas nothing ever had touched Michèle.

  While as for those final sections, where André in despair had gone into the country; to recover; to let himself be captivated by the charm, fresh and sensual, of a country girl— what parallel could be there, unless Barclay in a moo
d of irritation had sought some improbable and unsavoury solace in Rodney’s underworld? What could be further from the general outline of their love-affair than the final twist where André returned to Paris, to the torment of half-solaced love, taking with him as an anodyne the unseeing, unsuspecting adoration of his village love-affair? No, no, there was no real resemblance, no close parallel. Yet, Barclay had tried to stop her reading it. There might be, there must be a clue somewhere there. I’ll ask him, I’ll take him off his guard, she thought.

  16

  There was a cocktail party that evening at the club: a subscription party to raise funds for the cricket club. She went straight up to Barclay.

  “I’m surprised that you should have thought so poorly of Notre Cœur,” she said.

  She said it with a smile, on the light note of banter that it had amused her to use in the days when her banter had been a mask. It was a shield now, but she was grateful for having learnt its use.

  He started at her question, surprised; momentarily off his guard. Yes, I was right, she thought.

  “Why did you think badly of it? I thought it good,” she said.

  He hesitated, frowned, then smiled

  “Did I say it was bad?”

  “You stopped me reading it.”

  “That’s quite another matter.”

  “I was right, then.”

  “Where?”

  “In thinking you didn’t want to have me read it”

  “I don’t think I quite said that.”

  He was smiling now; that crooked, teasing smile which she had seen so often on his face, on the yacht, reflected in the mirror. It had been part of their love-making, that smile. For twelve weeks now she had not seen it. The sight of it made her dizzy. If only it were an evening party; so that they could walk away into the garden, out of sight of the verandah.

  She looked at him steadily. It was the first time that their eyes had really met since his return.