However a query had been set up in his life by Gerard’s prescient
démarche.
Was he going to go or to stay? Jenkin, in some pain, had gone over possible compromises and rejected them. If he did what he was intending to do he would be
getting right away
from Gerard and from his present ‘world’ altogether. He would be somewhere else, in another country with other people, doing new things, and as he saw it very absorbing and demanding and time-consuming things. Taking a plane to London for an occasional lunch with Gerard did not seem to fit into this picture; and such glimpses were likely to be more distressing than satisfying. Some comfort, some satisfaction, which belonged to his staying was just entirely incompatible with his going. If he went away he would lose, would never develop or regain, that peace which at times he now experienced and knew that Gerard experienced,
in their mutual presence, a sense of having come to rest in absolutely the right place. His departure would destroy that for ever. It was not at all that he imagined that Gerard would resent his decision and somehow cut him off, it was just that an almost continuous absence would make them into strangers. They might try to overcome this alienation but time and space would not be denied. Whatever happened Jenkin knew that Gerard’s behaviour to him would be perfect. But such an absence would starve love of anticipations and treats and make of their old long friendship something smaller and different. The thought was agonising. Of course Jenkin had faced the prospect and felt the pain of it before but now what was to be lost had gained considerably in volume. The ideas of home and of peace which Gerard had trailed so temptingly before him did attract him deeply and did
surprise
him as things which he had never really thought he would achieve. He had, without reflection or regret, dismissed them as, for him, impossible, and so not objects of desire. He had had of course his own peace of mind which depended on his solitude. He had never even thought that he would ever get to know Gerard any better or come any nearer to him than what had been their splendid but static friendship of so many years standing. Now, if as Gerard had actually envisaged (and this still amazed Jenkin) they were to share a house this would involve what he had never in relation to Gerard dreamt of, a genuine
life together.
Jenkin had considered a shared life as, for him, out of the question, utterly not his lot, had not even, save in the vaguest way when he was very young, wanted it. His relations with women about which he had been so successfully secretive had never brought him at all near to notions of marriage; and he had settled down quite early in life to being cheerfully celibate and solitary, his only steady and important relationship being with Gerard and the set which had so long ago crystallised around him. Now this possible shared life with his oldest closest friend seemed immensely attractive to him and not only attractive but somehow in prospect easy, natural, appropriate, proper, fated. In this prospect problems about sex bothered Jenkin not at all. He had always since he first saw
him when they were both eighteen adored Gerard. The idea of being in bed with him had never occurred to him for an instant and would have seemed, and seemed now, actually comic. Jenkin in fact felt perceptibly
flattered
by Gerard’s (evidently) not finding his old friend unattractive, though this too was immensely funny. Gerard’s lovers had all been beautiful, Sinclair and Robin for instance, or formidably handsome, Duncan. But possible ‘dramas’ on that front were not part of his worries. Here again, whatever happened or more likely did not happen, Gerard would be perfect. Contemplating Gerard during their recent peaceful meetings Jenkin had even reflected that an old dog might still be taught new tricks; and this idea too made him laugh, afterwards. However all these tempting and beautiful thoughts, these deep tender desires, ran harshly up against Jenkin’s equally deep resolution about the necessity of an absolute departure; and he felt uncomfortably that the voice of duty also spoke on that side. Jenkin did not want just yet to have that uncomfortable interview with duty. He was, he was aware, putting it off, being drunk upon the honeydew of Gerard’s love.
Such thoughts were in his head when Tamar appeared at his door at about ten o’clock. He was not expecting her.
‘Tamar, what luck, you’ve just caught me, I was just going out shopping. Come in, come in!’
He ushered Tamar into his sitting room and turned on the lights and lit the gas fire. It was cold and misty outside. He went to the kitchen and brought back a mug with holly in it and put it on the mantelpiece. He thought, when I’m in Spain at Christmas I shall get a sign. Tamar refused coffee, hot soup, toast. She kept her coat on. They sat down in the cold room, huddled near the fire.
‘Not at the office?’
‘I’m on sick leave again.’
‘Well, how is it with you, my dear, and how are you?’
‘I think I’m done for,’ said Tamar. She spoke calmly and her face, still thickened and dulled as Jean had seen it on the previous day, was not jerking in spasms of pain, nor were her eyes straying about. She kept moistening her parted lips and
looked down steadily at the green tiles in front of the little spluttering fire. She breathed deeply.
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve told Jean.’
‘You mean about Duncan and the child?’
‘Everything.’
Jenkin was dismayed to hear this. ‘How did that come about?’
‘I just couldn’t bear not knowing whether Duncan had told her. He hadn’t. But I went to her and blurted it all out, for nothing as it were. Now she’ll tell him I’ve given him away and that he made me pregnant and the child is gone and so on.’ She spoke slowly.
Jenkin’s thoughts raced about in many directions. ‘Jean and Duncan will survive. It won’t wreck them all over again. You aren’t afraid of that, are you?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Tamar went on with her terrible calmness, staring down at the green tiles. ‘I’m not concerned about them. I’m concerned about myself.’
‘What did Jean say?’
‘She said she and Duncan would have adopted the child.’
‘Oh –’
‘That put me in a
rage.
It was as if they would have pushed past me and left me in the gutter and gone on together into the sunlight carrying my child away.’
‘I understand.’
‘I told Jean she had been horribly cruel to Duncan, and that I loved Duncan, and that I hated her.’
‘But you don’t hate her.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I shall never see her again. We shall be unable to bear each other. And Duncan will detest me. Everybody will detest me. But perhaps even that doesn’t matter. I shall tell everyone now, I think.’
‘Better wait a while,’ said Jenkin. ‘Absolute frankness sounds good, but it’s not always the right policy.’
‘I expect Lily Boyne had gossiped about it all over the place.’
‘I feel sure she hasn’t.’
‘Jean will tell some version of it to someone. I’d rather tell my version straightaway.’
‘Tamar,
wait
,’ said Jenkin. ‘We’ll see. I feel rather confused about this and your head isn’t exactly clear. Would you like me to go round to Lily and see her – and perhaps Jean too – would that help? I’m not sure –’
‘I don’t care. Perhaps I won’t tell anyone. Let them hear anything they like and believe anything they like. I’m done for.’
‘That’s not true and it’s wrong to say it. It’s a way of trying to get out of trouble by pretending to give up, when you’re dealing with trouble which you can’t give up. You must
endure
this thing and
know
that it will pass and you will outlive it
in a good way.
There are all sorts of things, wise and unwise things, which you might do now and you’ve got to
think
about these – and they affect other people too.’
‘Oh – other people! Actually there is something I can do, but it may be awful –
wicked
–’
‘Tamar –’
‘I just need help,
extreme
help –’
‘What –?’
‘I’ve decided to become a Christian.’
Jenkin was very surprised. ‘Good heavens – do you really think –?’
‘You, even you,’ said Tamar in her quiet explanatory voice, ‘do not at all understand how black and how destroyed my whole mind has become. That’s what I meant when I said I wasn’t concerned about Jean or Duncan or anybody, only about myself. I’ve got to be saved from destruction – I can’t even say that I want to be, but somehow I must be, and I can’t do it myself, and you can’t do it either. I need supernatural help. Not that I really believe it’s supernatural or there is any supernatural. But perhaps there is help somewhere, some force, some power –’
‘But, do you believe –?’
‘Oh you and your belief and your sincerity and so on, I knew you’d start on that, you all think that’s so important! I don’t. When you’re drowning you don’t care what you hold onto. I
don’t care whether God exists or who Christ was. Perhaps I just believe in magic. Who cares? It’s up to me, it’s
my
salvation.’
‘But, Tamar, who put all this –’
‘All this nonsense into my head? Father McAlister. I’ve seen him several times. He wants me to be baptised and confirmed.’
The telephone rang in the hall and Jenkin got up to answer it.
Jean had not, on the previous evening, told Duncan about Tamar’s visit or her revelation. The evening passed as usual except that Jean was more full of gaiety, jesting and laughing wildly. Duncan seemed in good spirits too. They had their customary pleasurable argument about Provence versus the Dordogne, and whether it might not be a good idea after all to live in north Italy. The following morning, Friday, Duncan went away at his usual time.
After he had gone Jean returned to the abominable task of thinking through in detail everything which Tamar had revealed. Jean could not comfort herself by imagining that Tamar was deluded or lying, or that the child was not Duncan’s, or that the child was still alive. She felt sure that Tamar had told the truth. How was such an enormity to be thought about at all, how was it to be survived, what was the worst of it? Was there anything which could be in any way mended? Jean did not believe that this new horror could destroy her new relation, obscure as it still was, with Duncan. But it would wound it, perhaps change it in ways which were hard to foresee. There was the sheer surprise, the sense of the miraculous, that Duncan could after all produce a child; and there was the agony that it was not her child. And the separate and strange agony that the child was dead. There was also the particular shock of discovering that Duncan could go to bed (yet why ever not?) in her absence and do it so casually, with so young and vulnerable a creature. Wild peripheral considerations also tormented Jean. Told early that children were
impossible, Jean and Duncan had not distressed each other by perpetual moaning about this. Jean had kept her own desire for a child as a secret sorrow. Perhaps Duncan had done the same. Together they were philosophical about it, even professing relief at being spared the horrors of parenthood. But now, since it appeared that Duncan
could
do it, would it not be possible to find a woman, any woman, who would bear his child and hand it over? Would Jean love such a child? Was it not, for both of them,
too late?
Then there was the awful question of whether she should tell Duncan at all? Was it true that the news was likely to ‘get round’? The weird elation she had felt at first at having ‘found him out’ and ‘knowing what he did not know’ now appeared as a small nasty psychological oddity.
Tormented, walking up and down the room, Jean felt a piercing growing need to
do
something, anything, to relieve the pain of continuous reflection. Another form of distress came to her aid, a new hurtful hypothesis: perhaps during her absence Duncan had had many love affairs. Why should the escapade with Tamar be the only one? And perhaps it had not been by any means as brief, and on his side carnal, as she had suggested? Duncan had told Jean that he had not been near any woman during her absence and she had believed him. Evidently she had been naive.
Jean suddenly decided that there was one thing she could do, even if it were only to pass the time, she could search Duncan’s desk. She went into his study and began carefully opening the small drawers and examining the papers. Almost at once she came upon Crimond’s note.
There is unfinished business between us.
She looked at the date upon the note and at the time of the rendezvous.
Today.
She looked at her watch. It was ten thirty.
She put the note back in the desk and ran to the telephone and rang Duncan’s office. He was not there. Was he at a meeting? No one knew. Then she thought. There could be no doubt about the meaning of the note, that it meant confrontation, not reconciliation or discussion. She at once thought of the games of Russian roulette which she had always taken to
be charades. Could this be a charade, some sort of frightening or humiliating force – or the real thing? There had been the Roman Road… It could simply be a lethal trap. Whatever it was, there was no doubt in her mind that
Duncan would go.
He would never let Crimond vaunt, even in his mind, that Duncan was afraid.
Jean seized the telephone again and dialled Crimond’s number. Of course this was crazy. On
this
morning Crimond would never answer. Besides what could
she
say to him? The number was unobtainable. Suppose she were to get out the car and drive there at once? Might not her presence enflame both men and make what might have been some harmless display into a murdeous fight? Jean rang Gerard’s number. There was no answer. Then she rang Jenkin.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Jenkin, it’s Jean. Look, this sounds mad, but I think Duncan may have gone round to Crimond’s place to fight some sort of duel –’
‘Oh – no –’
‘At least, well, perhaps he hasn’t, I’m not sure, he may have done, and I can’t go round myself –’
‘I’ll go – when did he –?’
‘Crimond asked him to go at eleven, I’ve just found the note – if you go at once you might arrive first – but oh hell you haven’t got a car – and ours – I’ve just remembered it’s at the garage, or I could drive you round, oh
hell
–’