Gerard was eating the plum cake, now the biscuits, now attacking the cheese, walking about and dropping crumbs on the carpet. Watching him trampling in the crumbs Rose said in exasperation, ‘You keep praising this book, but you say it’s all wrong! If it’s Marxism it must be. Isn’t that the end of the matter?’
‘No – no – it’s the
beginning.
When you read it –’
‘I’m not going to read it! I think it’s a detestable book, I wish it didn’t exist.’
‘You’ve
got
to read it.’
‘Why?’
‘For reasons I’ll explain in a minute. In a way I wish it didn’t exist, it will encourage fools and knaves and have a lot of bad results, yet I’m glad it exists too, it will
force
its opponents to think, it shows that people can have, just in this crucial area, new thoughts.’
‘Books of new thoughts are published every week.’
‘No they aren’t, not pointed at just this spot.’
‘The revolution, the greatest in human history. It’s just sensationalism, all it will stir up is all our old ideas.’
‘Then we must have some new ones.’
‘We
can’t.
Oh Gerard I’m so
tired.
’
‘Darling, sorry, don’t get sleepy again – I want to tell you –’
‘I’m going on a cruise with Reeve and the children, a
long
cruise, a
world
cruise.’
‘Oh.’ This arrested Gerard. ‘When?’
‘At Easter. Well, not a world cruise, but longish, weeks – I can’t remember.’
‘Oh. That should be nice.’
‘I’m going to see
much
more of them, I’m going to change my life, I’m going to sell this flat and go and live in Yorkshire.’
‘Rose! You’re not to!’
‘Why ever not? Who’s to stop me?’
‘I am. Look, all right go on this damn cruise, see your family if you want to –’
‘Thanks!’
‘But just
listen
to what I’m going to say.’
‘All right, all right!’
‘
Wake up.
’
‘I am awake. I’m sorry to be so dismissive about Crimond’s book, I’m sure it’s no good, though it certainly seems to have done something to you, but you’ll get over it, it’s nothing to do with us.’
‘We financed it.’
‘That was an accident. You’ll soon forget it. It hasn’t changed your life.’
‘It has, actually – this is what I want to explain. This book must be answered, and it can be answered, point by point.’
‘All right, review it – only you said you wouldn’t.’
‘It deserves more than a review.’
‘What then?’
‘An equally long book.’
‘Who will write that?’
‘I will.’
Rose stooped and picked up some crumbs from the carpet and dropped them on the table. She felt, not yet comprehensible to her, a sense of doom, as of a death sentence written in a foreign language. She said wearily, ‘Oh don’t – don’t do that.’
‘Rose, I must. It’s my duty.’
‘Gerard, it’s
vanity
, wanting to do this, it’s simply
vanity.
You can’t start a long book now, you haven’t time.’
‘I’ve got to – for Jenkin – for Sinclair – for all of us.’
‘Don’t be so romantic – sentimental –’
‘Crimond’s book is deep, and it’s fizzing with ideas – some of it’s partly right, much of it’s absolutely terrifyingly wrong.’
‘You’ll write a commentary on it.’
‘No! I must write
my own book.
I see how to do it now. It will mean a vast amount of reading, and
thinking
till one
screams
– but I feel now, nothing else matters – that book must not go unanswered –’
‘Funny,’ said Rose, scraping the apple parings and the minutely chopped cheese from her plate onto Gerard’s and placing his plate on top of hers, ‘I used to think that at some time, perhaps when you retired, you and I might have some sort of different happiness together, I don’t mean anything special, just like going to Venice or something. I even thought we might have some fun together. Poor Rose, she wanted to be happy, but alas it was not to be. Yes, it’s time I went to Yorkshire. I’ll go riding over the dales with Reeve and Neville and Gillian.’
‘Look, I shall need a research assistant.’
‘Try Tamar.’
‘I thought of you, we could work together.’
‘Gerard –’
‘That’s why you’ve got to read that book, you’ve got to
study
it – and why you mustn’t leave London. We might live close to
each other, next door, even share a house – why not? I’ve thought –’
Rose began to laugh. ‘Share a house?’
‘Why ever not? I think it’s a good idea. We needn’t be in each other’s pockets. But we could meet every day –’
Rose went on laughing helplessly. ‘Oh – Gerard – you and I – share a house –’
‘Well-?’
‘No, no, it’s out of the question.’
‘All right,’ said Gerard, picking up his coat, ‘and you don’t care for the research assistant idea?’
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Well, maybe it was a silly idea. I’ll find someone. You’re tired. What the hell are you laughing at?’
Rose, sitting at the table, was laughing hysterically, covering her wet mouth and eyes with Gerard’s fine white handkerchief. ‘Oh just – you – or history – or – something!’
‘I’ll say goodnight then,’ said Gerard rather stiffly, putting on his overcoat. ‘Thank you for supper. I’m sorry I made those absurd, as you evidently think them, suggestions.’
‘Wait a minute!’ Dropping the handkerchief Rose darted to him, she seized the sleeves of his coat, still damp from the rain and shook him, pulling him for a moment off his balance so that they both nearly fell to the floor. ‘Don’t be such a
fool
, do you understand
nothing
? Of course I’ll be your research assistant, and of course we’ll share a house or live next door or whatever you want – but if this happens we’ve got to have a pact – it must be like getting married, I mean
like
getting married, I’m tired of having
nothing
, I want
something
at last, we must be
really
together, I must have some sort of
security
– I’ll read the book, I’ll do anything you want, but I must feel at last – or is it hopeless – oh that book – you’re not going to marry Crimond, are you?’
‘Rose, are you going mad?’
‘You’ll want to be with him, to discuss the book.’
‘I don’t want to see him yet, perhaps not for ages, he may not want to see me, I suppose we’ll meet sometime, but we can’t be friends – because –’
‘You’re not going to go away – and marry someone else – we’ll be together –’
‘Yes, yes, and you can go on your cruise, but you’re not to go and live in Yorkshire.’
‘Because you need a research assistant.’
‘Because I need
you.
’
‘I’m making you say these things.’
‘Rose, don’t be so exasperating, you know I love you.’
‘I
don’t
know, I know
nothing
, I live on the edge of
blackness
– if you follow this book idea I’ll go with you – but I must have some sort of security.’
‘You have security! You’re Sinclair’s sister, you’re my closest friend. I love you. What more can I say?’
Rose released him. ‘Indeed. What more can you say. And you remember – well, why should you remember. So we’ll live together, or next door, or nearby, and see each other
often
–’
‘Yes, if you want it.’
‘You suggested it.’
‘Because I want it.’
‘All right then. Now go home. I really am tired.’
‘Rose, don’t be so –’
‘Go now. I’m all right. I’ll help you with your book.’
‘Goodnight, darling. Don’t be angry with me, dearest Rose. I really do love you. I’ll make you believe it. We may even go to Venice.’
After he had gone Rose cried quietly, soaking the white handkerchief and dropping her tears onto the stained rosewood of the table. She thrust the plates away and poured out some more whisky. Oh the tears she had shed for that man, and they were certainly not yet at an end.
She felt exhausted, aware that something large had happened, but not sure what it was, whether it was something to her advantage, or a terrible mistake, the throwing away of her last card. How impeccably, she felt, she must have behaved all these years, so many of them now, to be thinking of her behaviour tonight as such an outrageous display of emotion!
She felt remorseful and ashamed, she had shouted at him, she had said what she thought. She had said that she loved him and that she had got nothing in return, which was not only not true, but definitely not good form. She had seen Gerard wince at her tone and at the crudity of her formulation. These were old griefs, often privately rehearsed, concerning which she had never, that she could remember, exclaimed so to their innocuous author. What she regretted most bitterly however about the recent scene, and what left her now so limp with apprehension, was that she had actually revealed to Gerard what she had so often thought, that what she wanted from him was a
promise.
What of all things was more likely to alienate him, to make him cautious and aloof, than such a
claim
made upon him by a hysterical woman? It was just what he would dislike most that she had so thrust against him. Oh how imprudent, how perhaps fatally unwise.
It was true that what had occasioned her indiscretion was Gerard’s own suggestion that they should share a house, his use of these words which evoked what, in her modest way, she had always hoped for! He had, more precisely, said live near each other, live next door or share a house, separate flats no doubt, not in each other’s pockets. It was she who had then made conditions, demands for ‘security’, and in a turbulent manner most likely to make him tactfully withdraw. She pictured now the coolly grateful way in which she should have greeted his idea! In any case, the notion of proximity had come up as a matter of convenience, of having one’s research assistant close at hand! What on earth would that collaboration, if it came to it, be like? Would she be capable of such a demanding and such a protracted task? Would she be able to study and understand that difficult book whose ‘wrong-headedness’ she would hate and fear, settle down to hard and perhaps uncongenial work, living with the continual possibility of disappointing and displeasing Gerard? Suppose she tried it for six months and was then replaced by a competent young woman? Oh the traps and miseries which dog all human desires for happiness, one ought not to desire it! Now Gerard was excited by the book, it filled him with new life and
strength, but later perhaps, defeated by it, unable to write his great ‘reply’, it might bring him down into humiliation and despair. She might have to witness that. The whole situation was fraught with possibilities of new and awful pain, now that she was no longer young and wanted rest and peace. This wish for peace, she realised, had been wafted to her by Reeve and his children, had come to her at Fettiston, moving towards her, over the moors, out of that quiet well-remembered landscape. She was, she realised, very much looking forward to the cruise! Well, Gerard had given her leave to go. But as she became, if she became, more involved in his work, more necessary, she would increasingly disappoint her newly discovered family, who were kind enough to need her, would be bound to neglect them and hurt their feelings by being seen to be the property of Gerard. But had she not always wanted just that, to be the property of Gerard? I am a wretch, she thought, I am luckier than almost anyone in the world but I have always made myself discontented by an obsession which I ought long ago to have controlled or banished.
Rose had drunk some more whisky and eaten some more of Annushka’s rich plum cake. She had begun to feel she would have to sit up all night in a state of painful excitement going over and over these pictures of the recent past and the near future. As, to encourage herself to go to bed at last, she kicked off her shoes and undid her stockings she began to think about Crimond. She had wanted the book to be over, to be an ending, something drifting away at last and taking its author with it. Now of course, if Gerard was right about it, there would be reviews, discussions, controversies, photographs of Crimond in the papers, his voice on radio, his face on television.
Crimond would be famous
. This was something they had not imagined during that long time when the ‘surly dog’ had been wandering around somewhere outside in the dark. If only she could believe that there was something which would pass, pass away, like the publication date of the book itself. If only she could believe now, as she believed before, even hours ago, that they, she and Gerard, had really finished with Crimond, that he would become a name of someone who had
published a book which no one read or noticed. What was now seeping into her troubled consciousness like a dark dye was the thought that Crimond could not thus belong to the past. He belonged, perhaps hugely, like his book, to the future. Gerard had said he had no plans to see Crimond. But in the nature of things, in the nature precisely of his own enterprise, he would have to. They would be drawn together. At some point, surely, he would long to argue with Crimond, to question, to persuade, to try out his own ideas upon so strong an opponent. Perhaps it was even, half-consciously, the prospect of this combat face to face which was making Gerard so excited and so passionate. Or could she believe that Gerard would cool, see the book as ordinary and his own enthusiasm as a passing mania? Did she
want
to believe that Gerard would calm down and lose interest and that all that ardour, that great intent, would come to nothing after all?
Rose found that, as she continued slowly to undress, pulled off her brown corduroy dress and her white blouse, she was breathing deeply, almost sighing. She got into her long nightdress, settling it over her raised arms, seeking comfort in the familiar gesture. So there would be a future Crimond. If Gerard wrote, or even began to write, his book, if Rose was helping him, even if she were in any way, even as she had always been, close to him, she was bound to meet Crimond again. As she felt this she began, with the automatic swiftness of thought, to rewrite in her mind the letter of – what was it – apology, retrieval, reconciliation, which she had written to Crimond when he had just left the house on that amazing day after his proposal of marriage. My dear David, please forgive me for my graceless words. Your disclosure took me by surprise. Let me say now how grateful and how moved I am. I ran after you but you had gone. You said that we should meet again. Please let us do so, let us get to know each other. Perhaps I could love you after all. I am mad, thought Rose. Do I not remember how relieved I was, so soon after, that I had not sent that reckless compromising letter, a letter which, however little it said, would have brought Crimond back to me with every expectation? I would have had to send him away a
second time, and how painful and significant that second parting would have been for both of us. Even the existence of that letter in Crimond’s hands would have bound me to him in some sort of terrified servitude as if he were to blackmail me with it. How much I would have feared that Gerard might find out that, however briefly, even for seconds, I had felt like that. So, these are the rights over me which I give to Gerard. But supposing…
I assumed you to be unattainable, perhaps I was wrong. Rose, don’t be angry with me, please forgive me. Love has to be awakened, I want to awaken yours. You are capable of loving me
. If I had written at once, she thought, I could have got him back, I could at least have erased that dreadful impression. By now he will have digested my arrogant words and decided to hate me. What treatment I gave to that proud man, and how I may yet be made by him to suffer for it.