“Nay, Livia, and you know why. I’m anxious that Charlie shouldn’t have any
shocks.” He had called the boy Charlie because she had and it seemed almost
something shared and sharable at last between them, something that warmed his
voice as he added: “Give him a chance, Livia. Leave him alone a bit. God
knows that’s a hard thing to say, but I mean it.”
She said after a pause: “Do you hate me, George?”
He shook his head. “I never did and I never could. I’m not much use at
hating folks, to be frank. But I can fight ‘em when I have to… and I’d have
to now, if you made me.”
“And you think you’d win?”
“I’m not so sure, but I’m not sure I’d lose, either. That’s why I say give
him a chance. Give us all a chance this time.”
In the kitchen she prepared tea herself, not letting him do so, as if she
were certain nothing had been changed (and practically nothing had). She
began to cry a little while she moved about. George watched her unhappily,
puzzled not so much by her behaviour as by his own, for he found himself less
moved by her tears than by her simple act of tightening a tap that had been
leaking into the sink for days. Nobody could do things so deftly, quickly,
tidily, incontrovertibly. She had probably got her own way with Japs pretty
much as she did with taps, George reflected whimsically; and then again he
was touched by her next remark, clairvoyant in that old familiar blinding way
of hers: “You think I’m acting, don’t you, George? And you think that means
I’m not sincere?… You don’t understand that sometimes I mean things so much
I HAVE to act?… You don’t understand that, because you NEVER mean things so
much… Oh, George, you don’t know how terrible it is to be alive in this
world!”
“Perhaps I do, Livia, perhaps I don’t feel it the way you do, but I know
it, and I also know this—there’s not only terror—there’s hope
—and love—”
“But they’re the most terrible of all—”
“Nay, nay, not how I see things.”
“But do you see ANYTHING? Anything to match love and hate? I love my son
and I hate that girl—I’d kill her if I got the chance…”
“You would?”
“That shocks you, doesn’t it?”
“Nay… it doesn’t exactly do that. But it makes me think.”
“And you think it’s awful… yet all the other killing that’s going on
—killing without hate—oh, THAT you can take for granted. Duty.
Honour. Jeffrey did too—and with better brains than yours… What do
you SEE, George? In the future, I mean? What chance is there? This humanity
you do everything for—what do you see in it?”
George saw the greyness round the edges of the curtains; he looked at his
watch, then crossed to the window and let in the summer dawn. Already it was
staring the moon out of the sky. It seemed to him that the world, like Livia,
was snarled with memories and desires, beauty and blackness and lies and
truth and hope and despair; you might as well leave it alone unless you had a
driving love for the thankless job of tackling it. But if you had that love,
then you could go ahead. George saw the roofs across the street as they took
form and substance, and knew that the love in his own heart was more than he
could speak or even make a speech about—and least of all to Livia; but
the thought of it, and the continual vision of it, had governed all he had
ever done that seemed either weak or strong.
“Aye,” he said as he turned back to her. “I’ve often wondered that myself,
but it doesn’t make any difference.” He came over and touched her shoulder
with a kindliness induced by his own thoughts rather than by any more
personal emotion. “Drink up, Livia—we’ll have to hurry if you want to
catch the five-ten. And no more arguments, because we’ll not change each
other, I reckon, from now till doomsday…”