Later, after the welcome verdict from Moorfields, when Duncan, who had heard nothing more from Jean and had not written to her either, was more positively attempting to put his life in order, he found himself bitterly regretting that he was now left without a job. At this point, not because of this regret but because he felt that the time had come, he at last wrote a note to Gerard, simply giving his address and asking him round for a drink. By now Duncan had given up hotels and had rented a small flat in Chelsea where he had been leading a
crazy solitary incognito existence. What passed at this meeting was never later on divulged by either of them. In a way, little passed, but the meeting itself was momentous. Duncan gave Gerard a brief general account of what had happened, omitting the drama at the tower. According to this account, Duncan, having gradually realised that Jean was in love with Crimond and that they were probably lovers, had come into possession of evidence (he did not say what evidence and Gerard did not ask) that they actually were lovers, and had soon after been told by Jean that she proposed to leave him. Since then, apart from a letter confirming that she was living with Crimond and had no intention of coming back, he had heard nothing. Gerard naturally wanted to know a good deal more, but naturally did not press for it. The occasion was also important for Duncan because he was able to ‘try out’ his damaged eye upon an important witness. In fact Gerard failed to notice the odd eye, and had to have his attention drawn to it by Duncan’s reference to ‘some eye trouble’. They got a bit drunk together and remembered, though they did not mention, the time when they had been lovers after Sinclair died. Gerard, without audibly bemoaning Duncan’s hasty resignation, which he could not see to be necessary, raised the question of a job. Teaching? No. Politics? Certainly not. Why not the Home Civil Service? Duncan, after indicating that he was ‘done for’, ‘fit for the dole queue’ and so on, agreed that this was not a bad idea, transfers from the diplomatic field to Whitehall did occur, and although he had so abruptly ‘cut the painter’ a sympathetic view might be taken. A short time after this he entered the Civil Service, not in the department which he would have chosen, but in a quite sufficiently promising and interesting post.
The fight in the tower had taken place in June. After Duncan had acquired his new job he had sent a letter to Jean saying that he loved her and hoped she would return. This was in August. He received no answer. He was still getting occasional letters from Dominic Moranty confirming that Jean and Crimond were together and becoming accepted as an established couple. Duncan now had even more time and
energy to be miserable. He was still attending the eye hospital but the original terrible fears for his eyesight were over, and he had also stopped imagining that he was ‘done for’. He had dissuaded Rose and Gerard from, admittedly vague, plans for ‘doing something about it’ (going to Dublin, remonstrating with Jean, denouncing Crimond and so on). He settled down to despair. For the time, friends and acquaintances thronged round him, a deceived and abandoned man is always popular, satisfying to contemplate. He was grateful to Gerard and Rose and Jenkin, who genuinely cared. But he wanted, so much more than the diversions which they invented for him, to sit alone with his own misery, his grief, his loss, even his jealousy, his obsessional images of Crimond, his remorse and regret, his sick yearning for his dear wife. He wanted to make terms with his unhappiness, to go over and over the terrible past, running through every ‘if only…’, until he had exhausted all these things and been exhausted by them.
Then suddenly, in November, Jean came back. It was a cold evening, a little snow was falling. Duncan was sitting as usual, with a whisky bottle and book, beside the gas fire in his little flat. The bell rang. It was late, he did not expect visitors. He went down some stairs, turned on a light, opened the front door. It was Jean. Duncan turned at once and began to go back up the stairs to the open door of his flat. He could still remember, later, the feeling of the banisters as he hauled himself up. He had put on weight, he was tired, he was a little drunk. He heard the front door close and Jean’s steps behind him. She followed him into the flat and into the sitting room closing the doors. She was wearing a black raincoat and dark green mackintosh hat, both lightly spotted with snow. She took off the hat, looked at it, brushed off the snowflakes and dropped it. Then she let the coat slide off backwards onto the floor. She uttered a little whimpering sigh, looked quickly at Duncan, then turned her head sideways and plucked at the neck of her dress. Duncan, who had retreated to the fireside, stood with his hands in his pockets gazing at her with a calm faintly inquisitive look which did not at all express his feelings. He had felt of course, as soon as he saw her, certain that she
was really and truly coming back to him. This was no conference under a flag of truce, it was surrender. A golden light shone before his eyes and an explosive dilation of his heart stretched his breast to bursting. He was ready to cry with tenderness, to faint with joy; but what steadied him and dictated the charade, upon which he later looked back with satisfaction, was a sense of
triumph.
It was a delectable and well-earned reward. He felt too a release of anger as if
now
he could shake her, beat her. Just for these sustained seconds she was at his mercy. This was the unworthy thought which made him able to seem so calm and unmoved. Jean too, before his eyes, went through some steadying hardening transition. Perhaps she had hoped for an instant welcome and to allow her tears to flow. There had been some beseeching in her first glance. Now she frowned, smoothed down her hair, turned to him again and said, ‘I expect you want me to make a statement.’
Duncan said nothing.
‘Well, briefly, I’ve left Crimond, that’s over, and I’d like to come back to you, if you’d like that. If not I’ll go away, now, and we can arrange a divorce or anything that suits you.’
Jean’s face was still red from the cold and the sudden warmth of the room, and her chin was wet where the snow-flakes had got at it under her hat. She looked down at her raincoat on the floor, and evidently realising that it had been a mistake to take it off since she might be leaving directly, picked it up and began putting it on again.
Duncan had by now controlled himself for so long that he found it positively awkward to set about expressing his feelings, and felt silenced by realising that he had a choice of words. Then, watching her, he said spontaneously, ‘What are you doing with that coat? Put it down.’
Jean dropped the coat and Duncan stepped forward and took her in his arms.
Thus ended the first episode of Jean and Crimond and thus began the renewed marital happiness of Jean and Duncan which lasted over many years until the occasion of the summer dance which has been described.
The problem about the book was really a quite separate matter which can be more briefly explained. It was separate, and yet it somehow increasingly wove itself into the fates of the friends, in and out as the years went by, and became, at least emotionally, connected with Crimond’s behaviour to Jean and Duncan. It all started long ago, when Sinclair was alive, and it was, as they all later recognised, deeply affected by, as it were, Sinclair’s hand protectively outstretched above the contentious volume.
When they were all still young, in their twenties, when Gerard and Sinclair were living together and founding and editing their short-lived left-wing magazine, they saw a good deal of Crimond. Crimond, not at that time well known, was splashing about in politics and had just been expelled from the Communist Party for left-wing deviation. He was living in Bermondsey in what he called ‘a rooming house’ and being conspicuously penniless and crammed with revolutionary virtues. They were all to varying degrees left-wing. Robin was, though not for long, also in the Communist Party, Sinclair declared himself a Trotskyist, Duncan and Jenkin were radical Labour supporters, Gerard was what Sinclair described as a ‘William Morris Merry England Socialist’. Rose (then a pacifist), and Jean, had just left the university. Long exciting sometimes acrimonious political arguments went on at Crimond’s place or at Gerard and Sinclair’s flat, or at ‘reading parties’ at the Curtland parents’ house in the country. Sinclair was very fond of Crimond, though not in any degree or way which could cause Gerard any jealousy. They were all free and generous and unjealous in their affections, in the style approved of by Levquist, and they noticed this too and felt pleased with themselves. They were all fond of Crimond, though he was even then the person least closely involved in the group. They also, and this was important, admired and respected him because he was more politically active, more dedicated, and more ascetic than they were. He was also more politically educated, and apt to assemble his ideas into theories. (He had been a very able philosophy student.) He began to write the pamphlets for which he was later renowned.
He lived very frugally upon occasional journalism and savings made from his student grant at Oxford, he had not, and did not seek, a job. He travelled little except for regular visits to Dumfries to see his father. He was known to be good at ‘living on nothing’, he did not drink, and had worn the same clothes ever since his friends could remember. He liked living with very poor people.
About this time, during the exciting political arguments, Crimond spoke of a long quasi-philosophical book which he intended to write, and whose agenda he sometimes, at their insistence, enlarged upon to Gerard and the company. By now Crimond’s savings were beginning to run out and (as he told Gerard when closely questioned) he was proposing to take a part-time job; any job, he said, so long as it was unskilled. Clearly it was no good trying to persuade Crimond to ‘join the establishment’ by becoming an academic or an administrator. Gerard had a poorly paid job with the Fabian Society, but Rose and Sinclair had ‘money of their own’, and Jean, whose father was a banker, was rich. Crimond’s situation was discussed, and it was deemed a pity that he should have to spend time on other work when he ought to be thinking and writing. ‘He ought to write that book!’ Sinclair said, and added only half in jest, ‘I feel it is the book which the age requires!’ It was also Sinclair who suggested that they should all join together and contribute on a regular basis to enable Crimond to devote himself to full-time intellectual work. ‘After all,’ said Sinclair, ‘writers have often been supported by their friends, what about Rilke living in those castles, and the
Musilgesellschaft
which supported Musil?’ It seemed probable that some such project was then actually communicated to Crimond and contemptuously rejected, at any rate nothing happened. The idea persisted however of what Sinclair referred to as the
Crimondgesellschaft
, later known among them simply as the
Gesellschaft.
Time passed. Sinclair was dead. Crimond had joined the Labour Party. He was becoming a popular figure on the far left, and was respectfully agreed to be an important intellectual. He became a parliamentary candidate. Duncan was in
London (after Geneva and before Madrid) and Jean was working (unpaid of course) as Crimond’s research assistant. Gerard and Rose had not forgotten Sinclair’s imagined
Gesellschaft
and, as it later appeared, Rose preserved the notion that this enabling of Crimond would constitute a sort of memorial to Sinclair who had so much admired him. The fact that Crimond had remained on the extreme left, while the others now held more moderate opinions, was not of course taken to matter. In a way, as Gerard and Jenkin agreed, they all felt a bit guilty before Crimond, that is before his ascetism and his absolute commitment. After the election (it was a hopeless seat, he did not expect to be elected) Gerard, prompted by Rose, questioned Crimond again about the book which he once said he would write. Jean and Duncan were by now in Madrid. Crimond, who had moved into larger no less shabby quarters in Camberwell, said he was about to start writing it. He also mentioned (in answer to questions) that he had taken a part-time job as an assistant in a left-wing bookshop. Gerard consulted the others, Rose, Jenkin, Duncan and Jean. He also consulted his father, and Jean consulted hers. A sort of informal document, not of course a legal instrument, was drawn up describing the proposed
Gesellschaft
as a group of supporters who would contribute appropriate sums of money annually in order to give Crimond enough free time to write his book. Matthew, Gerard’s father, joined in because he had been an ardent socialist when young and felt ashamed of being bored by politics now. Jean’s father, Joel Kowitz, who was to make the largest contribution, joined because he adored Jean and did everything that she asked. The next question was, would Crimond accept the money; there was disagreement, even bets, about the likelihood of this. Gerard, in some anxiety, invited Crimond round, explained the plan and presented the document. Crimond immediately said no, then said that he would think about it. More time passed. Finally Crimond, pressed by Gerard and then by Jenkin, agreed.
So the
Crimondgesellschaft
came into being. Of course no time-limit was mentioned. The committee, consisting of these members (only Joel never turned up), was to decide whether
contributions should be increased (in pace with inflation) or adjusted (in relation to contributors’ circumstances). A kind of silence then ensued. The benefactors did not like to ask questions about the book in case they might seem to be anxious about their investment, and Crimond, after suitable initial gratitude, provided no reports or acknowledgements. In fact, as they ruefully noticed, he promptly and almost completely broke off relations with his ‘supporters’, and was only by hearsay known to be travelling in America. (It’s only to be expected,’ said Jenkin understandingly.) There followed in due course, and not very long after, the drama in Ireland and its sequel, which has been recounted, which caused them all, especially Rose, a good deal of distress, and even anger against Crimond. After this, and after Jean’s return to Duncan, friendship, even communication, with the offender seemed for a time no longer possible, although of course the monies in aid of the book, maintained at a generous level, continued to be paid as promised. Rose uttered feelings which the others hesitated to express in saying that Crimond ought not now to accept their help. But of course, as they all more soberly agreed, it was necessary to separate their ruffled feelings from their promise, and from the particular interest which had prompted it, an interest which referred back to Sinclair’s original idea, and even further to Sinclair’s affection for Crimond.