Authors: Muriel Spark
‘What
does your mother think?’
‘Oh,
she likes the idea. They all like the idea. And
I
quite like the idea.
But—’
‘Do you
want to get married at all?’ Ronald said.
‘No,’
Tim had said. ‘I don’t know why, but I don’t.’ Ronald said to Matthew, as he
poured tea from a great height, ‘Do you want really to get married?’
‘Well,
I’m very much in love with Alice.’
‘Are
you sure you want to get married?’
‘I’d like
Alice for a wife if I was to marry.’
‘Do you
want to marry at all?’
‘I can’t
say I do,’ Matthew said. He drank down his tea which had become cold through
Ronald’s method of pouring.
‘It’s
the duty of us all to marry,’ Matthew said. ‘Isn’t it? There are two callings,
Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony, and one must choose.’
‘Must
one?’ Ronald said. ‘It seems evident to me that there’s no compulsion to make a
choice. You are talking about life. It isn’t a play.’
‘I’m
only repeating the teaching of the Church,’ Matthew said.
‘It isn’t
official doctrine,’ Ronald said. ‘There’s no moral law against being simply a
bachelor. Don’t be so excessive.’
‘One
can’t go on sleeping with girls and going to confession.’
‘That’s
a different question,’ Ronald said. ‘That’s sex: we were talking of marriage.
You want your sex and you don’t want to marry. You never get all you want in
life.’
‘I’ll
have to marry in the end,’ Matthew said, gazing at the tea-leaves in the bottom
of his cup. ‘The only way I can keep off sex is by going to confession and
renewing my resolution every week, and sometimes that doesn’t work. It’s an
unnatural life if one’s a Christian.’
‘Find
the right girl, then, and marry her.’
‘Alice
is the right girl.’
‘Well,
get her to marry you.’
‘I don’t
want to get married, you know.’
Ronald
laughed. He was rather surprised that the conversation was becoming rancorous.
Matthew
said, ‘Do you want to marry?’
‘No,’
Ronald said. ‘I’m a
confirmed
bachelor.’
‘Why
don’t we want to marry? It isn’t as if we were homosexuals.’
Ronald
greatly desired, as he sometimes did, to run his fingers through Matthew’s
black curls. He thought, well, isn’t he right? We are not homosexuals.
Repressed homosexuality is a meaningless term because no-one can prove it.
Matthew
said, ‘I suppose most people would say the confirmed bachelor is a subconscious
homosexual.’
‘Impossible
to prove,’ Ronald said. ‘You can only deduce homosexuality from facts.
Subconscious tendencies, repressions — these ideas are too simple and too
tenuous to provide explanations. There are infinite reasons why a man may
remain celibate. He may be a scholar. Husbands don’t make good scholars, in my
opinion.’
‘I’m
only saying,’ said Matthew, ‘what people say. They say all bachelors are
queers. Hee hee. Or mother-fixated or something.’
‘Oh,
what people say! They always look at what might be, or what should be, never at
what is.’
‘My
trouble is this,’ Matthew said, ‘I have a mind to consider the lilies of the
field. In other words, I’m a lazy Irish lout and I like to feel I can chuck up
a job any time, and go off to Bolivia.’
‘Are
you thinking of going to Bolivia?’
‘No,’
said Matthew, ‘not particularly.’
‘Your
shoes are wet,’ Ronald observed.
‘Yes,
can I take them off?’
‘You
should have taken them off before.’
Matthew
said, ‘Are there any women who really don’t want to marry?’ He let his shoes
fall with a plop. Ronald put them straight and at a shrewd drying point near
the gas fire.
‘Yes,
very often, but those are the ones who marry.’
‘They
get married, not actually wanting to?’
‘Yes.
Like many men.’
‘Why?
Is it sex?’
‘Not
always, I think. It’s probably a development in human nature. Something both
conforming and unconforming. Otherwise, spinsters and bachelors would all be in
religious orders.’
‘Part
of me feels they should be.’
‘The
whole of you should acknowledge that they aren’t.’
‘It’s
fear of responsibility that puts me off marriage. Responsibility terrifies me.
Does it terrify you?’
Ronald
considered. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No-one offers me much of it.’ He thought of Hildegarde
and her attempt to take him over as a whole burden for herself.
‘I’ve
got responsibilities,’ Matthew said, twiddling his stocking-toes, ‘I’ve got to
send money home to Ireland to my mother and my aunt. There’s only my mother and
her sister on the farm and the farm’s gone down. They want me to get married,
though. I feel immoral as a bachelor. Do you ever feel immoral?’
‘Not
very often,’ Ronald said. ‘I’ve got my epilepsy as an alibi.’
‘It
used to be called the Falling Sickness,’ Matthew said. ‘Would you come out to
the coffee bar and have a look at Alice?’
Ronald
could not forbear to say, ‘I’ve seen her.’
‘Have
you? Where?’
‘In a
café in Kensington. She was with Patrick Seton.’
A heap
of Ronald’s unwashed laundry lay on the carpet. He had started to make a list
which bore the words ‘3 cols’. This lay on the top of the pile.
‘How
did you know it was Patrick Seton? Have you met him?’ Matthew said.
Ronald
could not forbear to say, ‘Yes, I gave evidence on his handwriting once. He was
convicted of forgery. I have a letter here in my desk,’ Ronald rattled on, ‘which
will probably convict him again. So your way will be clear,’ he said, ‘to marry
Alice.’
‘She
told me the case was off.’
‘That
hasn’t been decided yet.’
‘Will
you come out and meet Alice?’ Matthew said. ‘She’s working at the “Oriflamme”‘
‘All
right.’ Ronald kicked the laundry.
‘Of
course, you know,’ Matthew said, ‘she isn’t a Catholic. She’s a spiritualist.’
‘I don’t
suppose she’d let it stand in her way if she wanted to marry you.’
‘I
meant, from my point of view——’
‘Yes, I
know what you meant.’
‘Well,
as a Catholic how do you feel about——’
Ronald
turned on him in a huge attack of irritation. ‘As a Catholic I loathe all other
Catholics.’
‘I can
well understand it. Don’t shout, for goodness’ sake—’ Matthew said.
‘And I
can’t bear the Irish.’
‘I won’t
stand for that,’ Matthew said.
‘Don’t
ask me,’ Ronald shouted, ‘how I feel about things as a Catholic. To me, being
Catholic is part of my human existence. I don’t feel one way as a human being
and another
as a Catholic.’
‘To
hell with you, now,’ Matthew said.
Ronald
lifted one of Matthew’s shoes, which he had placed so carefully to dry —
neither too near the gas fire nor too far from it — and cast it casually at
Matthew’s head.
Matthew
started to hit out, then stopped with his hand in mid-air. Ronald’s arm, lifted
for protection, was arrested for a second before he dropped it, and he realised
that Matthew was sparing him on account of his epilepsy.
Matthew
stumbled over the laundry, put on his damp shoes, then went off to the
lavatory. When he returned Ronald was ready to accompany him to the coffee bar
where Alice was working.
‘Her
pregnancy doesn’t show as yet,’ Matthew said. ‘I’d adopt the child as my own if
I married her. Do you think, by the way, I ought to try to marry her? She’s got
long black hair, only you don’t see it look so glorious when she piles it up as
when she lets it fall.’
Time had come round for
one of Alice’s ten-minute rest periods, and she sat at the table with Ronald
and Matthew while they ate tough salty pizza. She delicately picked a speck of
tobacco from her tongue and sadly inhaled her cigarette.
‘I love
the man,’ she said. ‘I know he’s innocent.’
Matthew
immediately said, ‘Ronald here is examining one of the vital documents in the
case. Ronald is a handwriting expert. He is often consulted in criminal cases —
aren’t you, Ronald? He’s got this document that’s supposed to be a forgery. It’s
a letter — isn’t it a letter, Ronald?’
Ronald
smiled as one who had only himself to blame. Matthew went on, ‘He puts these
documents to all sorts of tests — don’t you, Ronald? There’s a test for the
ink, and the paper, and all the folds. The most important thing is the
formation of the letters — anyone can do the rest, but Ronald’s the best man
for detecting the formation of letters. And sometimes the forger has stopped to
assess his handiwork and then retraced. That’s fatal because there’s an
interruption in the writing which can be detected under the microscope, at
least Ronald can detect it — can’t you, Ronald?’
Alice
was looking at her cigarette, which she was tapping on the edge of the
ash-tray.
‘I
shall never believe he’s guilty,’ she said. ‘Never.’ Ronald thought, ‘How that
second, histrionic “never” diminishes her — how it debases this striking girl
to a commonplace.’
‘I’ll
always believe in his innocence,’ she said. ‘Always. No matter what the
evidence is.’
‘I
haven’t yet looked at the document,’ Ronald said. ‘I am sure it will not be
incriminating to your friend.’
She
looked up at him. ‘Why are you sure?’
‘Because
he is your friend,’ Ronald said.
Something
in his tone made Matthew collect his senses. ‘I haven’t been indiscreet in
talking about the letter, have I?’ he said.
‘It’s
perfectly understandable,’ Ronald said.
‘After
all,
you
told me about it.’
‘That’s
right,’ Ronald said, ‘I did.’
Matthew
kept looking uncomfortably at Ronald. But he chattered on, desperately, in his
desire to depreciate the girl’s lover.
‘Ronald
says Patrick Seton has been convicted of forgery before.’
‘Well,
I don’t believe it. He’s been abroad a lot of his life at famous séances. He
was married at one time. His divorce is coming through shortly, and we’re
getting married. Colonel Scorbin, who’s one of the leading spiritualists in
Mrs. Marlene Cooper’s Circle, and a colonel, said to me, “Patrick is one of
those rare persons who are born to do great things and to suffer injustice and
persecution.” I said to him, “I believe it,” and I do believe it and I always
will, always.’
She
seemed not sure how to look at Ronald, whether to show a predominance of
hostility which might frighten him, or of fear which might move him to pity; or
whether to affect charm and win him over. She offered all three in a way, by
holding her head loftily as she regarded him, by pleading with her eyes under
their lashes, and by sitting with the elbow over her chair so that her breasts
rose unmistakably towards him.
Matthew
realised that he had caused Ronald to be the centre of her attention rather
than achieved his desire to discredit Patrick.
Alice’s
ten-minute rest was up. She sauntered about with her long swing among the
tables and the trailing ivy of the ‘Oriflamme’ taking orders for coffee.
Matthew and Ronald stayed for a while and she returned as often as she could to
their table, once pausing with her tray, on the way to serve a customer, to say
to Ronald what was still on her mind.
‘The
case may not come off. Have you any idea if the case will be brought?’
‘No. It
has nothing to do with me.’
‘It
would be easy to frame up a case against Patrick, with that letter.’
‘Nothing
will be framed up,’ Ronald said. ‘Please forget about the letter.’
Matthew
said, ‘Can I meet you after the shop’s closed and take you home?’
‘Yes,’
she said, and she nodded. ‘Yes.’
Matthew
had not expected her assent.
‘Are
you sure?’ he said, instantly afterwards feeling like a lout.
‘Yes,
yes, I’m sure.’ She was looking at Ronald.
‘I’ll
be back here at the “Oriflamme” at ten to twelve,’ Matthew said. She was
looking at Ronald.
‘Goodnight,
Alice,’ Ronald said.
‘Can’t
you do something for Patrick?’ she said to Ronald.
He
said, ‘You should not expect anything of Patrick Seton. Leave him.’
Matthew
and Ronald walked along the Chelsea Embankment. Matthew said, ‘I didn’t expect
her to let me fetch her tonight. I’d better ‘phone my sister. She’s expecting
me to stay with her tonight because my brother-in-law’s gone over to Dublin
with my other uncle, and she doesn’t like to be alone in the house with the
children. I’d better ‘phone and tell her I’ll be late. Did you mind me telling
Alice about that document you’ve got to inspect? Was it confidential?’