‘And why do you say “damn” and “what the hell’s the matter?” and turn up late at a party where you might have known I’d be there wanting to see you! Oh I’m a fool, a
fool.
’
‘You said something about Gull and Lily getting married.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘It needs changing.’
‘Yes, Gulliver’s back from Newcastle – and he’s got a job – and they’re going to be married. And Gideon and Pat have adopted Tamar.’
‘Have they?’
‘Well, they’re in charge, they’ve fixed everything, she’s to go back to Oxford, there’s to be a
Tamargesellschaft
, we’ll all contribute to help her through –’
‘Good. But who says so?’
‘Gideon, he arranges things now. Tamar’s got a flat of her own, Violet’s living at Notting Hill, Tamar’s happy, Violet’s happy, all the things you might have done, only you hadn’t time and didn’t try –’
‘I doubt if Violet’s happy – but you’re quite right that we didn’t try enough –’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Rose, just, please, be careful what you say.’
‘It’s come to that, has it, I have to “be careful what I say”! What about what
you
say? You accuse me of –’
‘What have I accused you of except of being fond of your family?’
‘I have no family. You are my family. That means I have no family. I’ve given you my life and you haven’t even noticed.’
‘You are talking nonsense which is designed simply to hurt me. Of course you have family. It looks to me as if Reeve is simply taking you over, he’s leading you away like a little docile domestic animal.’
‘You mean he’s exploiting me, he want’s a housekeeper?’
‘Well, why shouldn’t he? He counts on the conventions of family affection.’
‘Why “conventions”? Those people need me and want me, which you have never done.’
‘Rose, don’t shout at me, you know I can’t stand tantrums.’
‘I’m not shouting. All right, I’m talking nonsense. It’s all much simpler than that. I’ve always been in love with you and you can’t be in love with me, which isn’t your fault. But for some reason it’s all suddenly become
unbearable
.’
‘What am I supposed to do? Do you want me to go away, now?’
‘You mean for ever?’
‘Don’t be silly. You seem to be finding me unbearable, you are certainly angry with me, I can’t think why. It’s not a good moment, you are overwrought, perhaps about something else, and I’m being no use here – it might be a sensible idea if I cleared off.’
‘You mean someone is waiting for you, you are looking at your watch.’
‘Rose, are you
drunk?
’
‘All right, go then.’
There was a silence. Rose had unbuttoned the top of the brown corduroy dress she was wearing and pulled at the white collar of the blouse underneath it and clawed at her throat with one hand. She wondered,
am
I drunk? Why are these
awful things happening? She had been walking to and fro as she spoke between the rosewood table on which she had put the untouched drinks and the desk where she suddenly noticed a letter to Gerard which she had started two days ago and not finished. She picked it up and crumpled it violently in her hand. She thought, is this the end of such a long road, shall I scream, shall I faint? He has forgotten that we were ever lovers. Well, it was a long long time ago and it didn’t mean
that
even then. Now I am waiting for him to go, I shall not stop him, and if he goes everything will be different, we shall irrevocably become strangers to each other. Perhaps we are already strangers and I am only now beginning to notice it. She tossed the crumpled letter on the floor.
Gerard watched her. He was standing by the fireplace. He was upset and amazed by her sudden desire to wound him. For a moment he considered going away. But something else happened, which was that he suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. He had plenty to be tired of and tired about, everything lately had been
too much.
He said, ‘Oh God, I feel so tired!’, and went to the table and picked up one of the glasses of sherry. As he did so he accidentally spilt some of the golden liquid on the table. Although the poor old table was already so stained Rose instinctively brought out of the pocket of her dress her handkerchief, still damp with tears, and mopped up the little pool. Gerard immediately put his hand down upon her hand and they stood quiet thus for a moment, not looking at each other. When the moment passed and he withdrew his hand and she lifted her head towards him he said, ‘We mustn’t quarrel, darling,
we
mustn’t quarrel.’
Rose, who had been so tearless and fierce, now felt the tears about to come again, and with them a vast sensation of relief which was marked by a renewed consciousness of her toothache, of which she had been oblivious. She felt so intensely glad, so thankful, so grateful that Gerard had not gone, that he had touched her and called her ‘darling’, and that she did not have to go on with her mechanical assault upon him which had hurt both of them so much. She said, as the tears rose, ‘I must get another handkerchief, this one’s soaked in sherry.’
‘Here, take mine.’
She buried her face in his large white handkerchief, still stiff with its laundered folds, but already smelling of his pocket, warming it with her breath and wetting it with her tears. She had been let off some terrible fate, which had for a moment looked at her.
‘Will you stay to supper?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Gerard, ‘but don’t
make
anything.’
A little later after they had been in the kitchen together and Gerard had opened a bottle of wine and Rose had taken two aspirins and opened a tin of tongue and a tin of spinach and set out some cheese and apples and a plum cake, and they had talked a little about Gull and Lily, and Tamar and Violet, and Annushka who was thank God not seriously ill, they sat down at the round table, which Rose had covered with raffia mats, with the food and drink before them and confronted each other as for a conference. They were both very hungry however.
‘Rose, you said that “for some reason” it’s all unbearable. Can we get at the reason?’
‘Do you think we should go on with that? I want to talk about you.’
‘It’s true that you haven’t asked me how I am and what I’ve been doing, except for a ridiculous impertinent innuendo on the latter point.’
‘I’m sorry. How are you and what have you been doing?’
‘I
will
tell you, but I’d rather wait a bit.’
‘Gerard, it’s not anything awful?’
‘Not exactly – awful – but – I’ll tell you, only let’s remove these other things first.’
‘You mean the things I said?’
‘And the things I said, and why we both – evidently – feel in a sort of crisis. Of course there are some obvious reasons.’
‘You mean Jenkin –’
‘Yes. That. As if the world has ended, and – for all of us it’s the end of one life and the beginning of another.’
‘For all of us,’ said Rose, ‘you mean for both of us.’
‘I can’t help feeling there are a lot of us still. Well, there’s Duncan, but I don’t know –’
‘I think we’ve lost them,’ said Rose.
‘I hope not.’
‘But what is it, this beginning of another life – isn’t it just a sense of our own mortality, can it be anything else?’
Gerard murmured, ‘There’s work to do…’
‘When Sinclair died we were young – we felt then, too, that we were to blame.’
‘Yes. We felt we hadn’t looked after them properly, either of them – but that’s superstition. Guilt is one way of attaching a meaning to a death. We want to find a meaning, it lessens the pain.’
‘You mean saying it’s fate or –’
‘Making it into some kind of allegory, dying young, the envy of the gods – or dying as a sacrifice, giving one’s life for others, somehow or other, accepting their punishment, a familiar enough idea after all.’
‘Oh – heavens –’ said Rose, ‘you’ve thought of that too – a perfect oblation and satisfaction –’
‘Yes, but it won’t do, it’s a blasphemy, it’s a corrupt kind of consolation – it’s what feeling we’re to blame leads to – I mean irrationally feeling we’re to blame.’
‘So that’s not our new beginning.’
‘A redemptive miracle? Of course not! It’s the accidental-ness we have to live with. I’m not sure what I meant by a new beginning anyway, perhaps just trying to live decently without Jenkin.’
‘You said there was work to do.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t think Crimond murdered Jenkin?’
‘We must stop asking ourselves that question.’
‘Would you ever – ask him?’
‘Ask Crimond? No.’
‘Because you
do
think it conceivable –’
‘We’ve got to live with that mystery. But, oh Rose, it all hurts me so – you’re the only person I can say this to – just
Jenkin being dead is so terrible, his absence. I loved him, I depended on him, so absolutely.’
Rose thought, I can never tell Gerard why I feel so particularly that Jenkin’s death was my fault. But of course I’m
mad.
I
don’t
think Crimond killed him. That’s another – what Gerard called an allegory. Do I imagine that somehow the accident came about because of something in Crimond’s unconscious mind, because of his resentment against me? Oh if only I’d behaved differently to him, more kindly, more gratefully. Gerard thought, I can never tell Rose just how much I loved Jenkin and in what special way I loved him, and how he laughed at me! That’s a secret that isn’t tellable to anyone. But it’s a relief to mention his name to her. I shall often do that.
They were both silent for a while, Gerard intently peeling an apple, Rose dissecting her cheese into smaller and smaller pieces which she had no intention of eating. She was beginning to feel in a sad but calm way that the evening was reasonably, safely, over. Later, she knew, she would accuse herself of having said things, not unforgivable, for she knew they were already forgiven, but stupid and perhaps memorable. There had been no catastrophe. Yet were they not, these things and the sense in which they did not matter, proof of a distance between her and Gerard, of an impossibility which had always existed and of which she was only now becoming fully conscious? She was indeed a slow learner! Was she learning to be resigned, was that what being resigned was like, to shout and wave in the street as the prince passes, and realise he does not know or care whether you are cursing or cheering – and will smile his usual smile and pass on. What a ridiculous idea, thought Rose, I feel so tired, I must be falling asleep, that was almost a dream, seeing Gerard passing by in his coach! If only he would go now, I know I could go to sleep quickly. My toothache is better. She stared at him and her stare seemed to hold him, his strong carved face set out in light and shadow, the few gleaming lines of light grey in his curly hair. She felt her own face becoming heavy and solemn and her eyes closing.
‘Rose, don’t go to sleep! You haven’t asked me an important question!’
‘What question?’
‘About the book!’
‘Oh, the
book.
’ Rose felt like saying, damn the book. She just wanted the book to be over, she had had enough of it. Perhaps that was resignation too.
‘You haven’t asked what I thought of it. After all, what do you imagine I’ve been doing all this time?’
‘Well, what do you think of it? That it’s no good, it’s nonsense? Gerard, it doesn’t
matter
now – that at least is finished with, isn’t it?’
‘Oh dear.’ He said it ruefully, like a boy. ‘Rose, let’s have some whisky. No, don’t get up, I’ll get it. I say, let’s get drunk, I want to talk to you so much, I want to talk and talk. Here, drink this, it’ll wake you up.’
When Rose took a sip of the whisky she did suddenly feel more alert.
‘You’re the first person I’ve talked to, the first person I’ve seen since I finished it, that’s why I haven’t answered the telephone or been anywhere, I had to be by myself, to read it carefully and slowly, I just had to stay locked up with that book.’
‘But is it any good? It must be a crazy book full of obsessions.’
‘Yes, in a way it is.’
‘I knew it – all that time and all that money to produce a madman’s fantasy. It must have been dull, madmen’s fantasies always are.’
‘
Dull?
No, it nearly killed me.
It will
nearly kill me.’
‘What do you mean? You’re frightening me. I thought somehow it would hurt you –’
‘Dangerous magic? Yes.’
‘What do you mean
yes?
’
‘Rose, the book is wonderful, it’s
wonderful.
’
‘Oh no! How awful!’
‘Why awful? Do you mean I might die of envy? You know, I think I might have done, at the beginning, when I began to see how good it was, I had such a mean contemptible feeling of being disappointed!’
‘You hoped you could dismiss it, throw it away – I wanted you to do just that.’
‘Yes, yes, I felt put down – you know we got so used to thinking of him as crazy, unbalanced, and of course bad, unprincipled –
cruel
, like the way he treated Duncan at the dance.’
‘You mean taking his wife?’
‘No, I was thinking of his pushing Duncan into the Cherwell – that was something so ugly and gratuitous – not that we know what happened of course – Rose, do you remember how Crimond
danced
that night?’
‘I didn’t see him.’
‘He was like a demon, it was like seeing a god dance, a destructive, creative
powerful thing.
We’ve all been so obsessed with closing our ranks because of the harm he did to Duncan – ever since the business in Ireland we’ve undervalued Crimond. We’ve thought of him as unsuccessful and shabby, and surly, like a dog prowling around outside – and then as our politics diverged so much, and that really did matter –’
‘And still matters.’
‘Yes, I’ll come to that in a moment, we began to add up Crimond to be generally no good, wrong morals, wrong politics, irresponsible, vindictive, a bit dotty – How could such a person write a good book?’
‘But you think he has.’
‘Rose, it’s an extraordinary book, I’m quite carried away – I’m sure I’m not wrong about it.’
‘And not envious?’