The Drowning People (27 page)
It is true, you know: those who give much expect much to be given to them; those who take much expect much to be taken from them. Ella took the person Sarah valued most from her and after that she could never be sure of anyone completely. As Charles had been taken from Sarah so might I be taken from Ella; that was her fear, and fear is the undoing of many. That is how I understand it now. The only way Ella could be sure of me was to drive me away and have me back on her terms; and because she was young and Eric—sweet, trusting Eric—was on hand, he and his love for me were the means she chose. And I, tormented by love for her, driven by the coolness of those haunting eyes—a coolness in which I saw no fear, no weakness—set my mind to the task ahead; I resolved to accept Ella’s challenge, to prove myself to her on her terms.
That was my undoing; that was my crime. And like Ella’s crime it shaped my life from that moment onwards. Sitting on that rusty bench above the quarry I decided that I would give up the riches of friendship and self-respect for Ella’s love; I decided—and here I was weakest—that I could not imagine life without her love, that it was worthy of any sacrifice I had it in my power to make.
I was wrong. No love is worth that. No human being is worth the total abdication of self. But I did not know that then; and though I dimly suspected the damage I might do by accepting Ella’s challenge I ignored all scruple. My only thought was the selfish gratification of my own desire, my only prize the restoration of our mutual trust. I was not old enough to know that this trust might be restored in other ways; that it was not emotional cowardice which Ella feared but betrayal; that as I sat by the quarry then, trying to think, I was being presented with my last chance to save us both.
I knew none of these things; and because this was so I got up slowly from the bench and went in search of Eric. I found him alone in the
salon,
reading; and with a first shiver of treachery I put my hand on his and said that we should leave. I remember his surprise, remember his wide brown eyes and his mouth opened to protest. I remember too how his protest died on his lips, how his look changed from one of mystification to comprehension, how he bounded from his chair and went to pack, spurred on by sudden joy and undreamed of hope. I saw Ella for a moment before I left and I kissed her good-bye with a fury that was new to me. It scared her and I was glad that it scared her; I wished her to know the strengths in me which she had stirred; and I wished her to doubt, perhaps, whether I would return: I wished her to doubt the outcome of her test so that when I passed it her confidence in me would be all the greater. Sitting in this icy room now I can hardly speak.
I
T IS COLD OUTSIDE
; the sun is setting over a roaring sea; the light is fading. For the first time I do not want to go on. For the first time the telling of what I have done sticks in my throat and I cannot speak. The boy my story has concerned so far has been innocent; willful perhaps and undoubtedly weak, but innocent, naïve. Now he is no longer so. He can no longer claim to have no knowledge of what he does; he cannot escape judgment for what he will do; and I must live with the consequences of what he did again. I have spent my life living with them, living with them and trying to forget. Now I must remember. I must seek out the images that Sarah taught me so well to bury; must trace thoughts and motives I had thought obliterated forever; must steel myself to the sound of Eric’s laugh ringing back at me in my dreams. I think that that laugh will be the hardest memory to bear, for it is so trusting, so fearless. Eric’s love for me was pure and warm and freely given. I abused it coldly and calculatingly. And I have spent a lifetime trying to forget that, trying to bury what I did. Now I owe it to Eric to follow this story to its end in all its wealth of shameful detail. I owe it to him to spare myself nothing, to remember; for frankness is the only reparation I can make and I must make it freely. That much I know.
My first memory of the days we spent together is of the train journey we took after leaving Ella’s house. We were going to Vaugirard to stay with Eric’s family—though what possessed me to go there I do not know—and I remember our journey because it contrasted so completely with one we had so recently taken together from Prague. I mean, of course, that I contrasted so completely with the excited boy who only the day before had gone to see his lover full of hope and joy and thoughts of future happiness. I was different on the second journey because I understood Eric’s smiles now and returned them; because I knew with absolute clarity that Ella was right and also, though this sickens me to say, that I would pass her test. I try to remember precisely what I felt beyond this, whether I gave any attention to the possible consequences of my actions, whether I would have cared if I had done so. Behind each and every thought of mine were my love’s eyes, distant and derisive, the eyes I had seen by the quarry that morning. I wanted to make myself worthy of their approval, to make them shine for me again. I wished to prove, once and for all, that I had the qualities which Ella sought. I thought that by passing her test I would cement our love and for that prize I would have risked anything.
The ease with which my ties of friendship with Eric dissolved under Ella’s influence shames me now. Then I’m almost certain that it didn’t. And as I talk I remember why it didn’t. I remember the tricks I used to bypass all considerations that might have weakened my resolution, the cunning by which my possessed mind protected itself and its intentions from all complicating scruple, from all distracting thought. I remember now how I taught myself to separate the Eric I knew from the Eric I had been challenged to explore. And I remember that I was so successful in this separation that the two sides of his nature—the passionate and the platonic—grew in my mind until they had formed two complete personas, linked of course but ultimately distinct.
Eric the lover I did not know and did not care to know; him I transformed, with deft precision, from a person who might have feelings into a trophy whose sole purpose was to be won. Questions of loyalty and even of gender dissolved in the harsh face of my determination to conquer. Eric the friend could not, of course, be so dealt with. He was the Eric I knew, the Eric I would have turned to for advice in any situation but this, the Eric I had laughed with, drunk with, fought with and worked with for three heady months in Prague. He could not be made into a trophy and had instead to be separated so completely from the prize I wished to win that no concern for friendship or history would stand in the way of my desire for victory. I separated Eric the lover from Eric the friend with cold deliberation; and with the treachery of a Judas I saw the first fruits of my work even as our train pulled into the small station at Vaugirard. I found myself able to smile without affection; to put meaning into looks that held none; to make action and thought discrete. I had worked fast, that I knew; and I knew also that my work could not last long. I had anesthetized my mind, nothing more; but I thought, correctly as it turned out, that this would be adequate for my purposes. When my conscience stirred I had the duplicity to tell it that Eric himself had encouraged the separation which I so artfully executed. He, I whispered to it, had never said anything to me of his feelings for me. He had never been open or honest about them, had not attempted to widen our relationship to include or at least to acknowledge them. This I told myself so frequently and with such assurance that I almost believed it. I tried not to think of the signs he had given me, of the overtures he had made; for I knew that no betrayal of friendship can resist the light of examination for long.
We arrived at Vaugirard in the late afternoon and were met at the station by Eric’s sister Sylvie, a large woman, prematurely middle-aged, in whose face the Vaugirard nose and jaw sat incongruously with a weak mouth and tranquil eyes. She kissed her brother and offered me her cheek, pointing as she did so to an old red Citroën parked nearby. As we pulled out of the car park she asked me, in correct but hesitant English, whether I had enjoyed my time in Prague.
“Very much,” I replied.
“I would have liked to go too,” she said. “It would have been wonderful.” She paused. “But I have my duties here.” And as she spoke she looked with a certain smugness at her brother, who ignored her.
After this we drove on in silence, past the modern flats of a growing town and into the cobbled streets of its medieval past. On a hill which commanded the entire district was a château, fortress-like in construction and bearing, which was proudly pointed out to me as the family’s own.
“Of course we do not own it any longer,” said Sylvie as we waited at traffic lights, “but the family stays on here nevertheless. There will always be a Vaugirard in Vaugirard.”
And I thought of another castle, far finer than this one, and of another voice talking of ownership and duty. Eric said nothing.
Louise de Vaugirard welcomed me with open arms and a hearty dinner. The family lived in one of the old houses in the center of the town, a high narrow building which from the street looked cramped but which was in fact cavernous, with low-ceilinged rooms leading into and out of one another in haphazard profusion. It was longer than it was wide and had been extended at various times into the garden behind it, so that only a small square patch of lawn now remained.
“We play croquet there in the summer,” said Louise, pointing it out to me. “What a pity you have come in the winter, for I fear the weather will be very harsh.”
I had no desire for lazy summer afternoons with Eric’s family and looked at the cloud outside with gratitude. In the comfort of his own home, under the strain of his family’s kindness, I felt that my ingenious separation of him into friend and trophy would be difficult to prolong; and as I replied that the weather could be no worse than it would be in England, I wondered why I had come all and thought with relief that I had only promised to stay five days. For five days the anesthetic might endure; beyond that I could not be sure and I had no wish for its effects to wear off in the bosom of Eric’s family itself.
After Sylvie had left us to cook for her husband and child, Eric’s father arrived and shook hands with his son and then with me with heavy dignity. He was a great squat man with huge hands and a powerful, viselike grip. It was possible to see, as Eric stood beside him, that although my friend resembled his father his features had been softened by his mother’s genes, for a prominent nose and strong jaw gave the elder man an air of terrifying caricature which the younger had escaped. Eric
père
was a friendly giant who sat quietly through dinner while his wife’s conversation warmed the room; occasionally he bestowed a hospitable smile on me, but more he did not do or say. When we had moved upstairs for coffee, however, he pulled me to one side.
“I would like to thank you for what you have done for my family,” he said in a deep, gruff voice. “Eric speaks very well of you as do all who met you in Prague.” I thought of Mr. Kierczinsky and Pavel Tomin, remembering with a start that they existed, they who only a few days before had played so large a part in my life. Eric’s father spoke English slowly with a heavy accent.
“It was a great pleasure to be able to help,” I said. “An honor.”
“And the paintings were interesting also, no?”
“Fascinating.”
“Yes. It is a pity we could not have kept some of them. But what use do I have for pictures?” He smiled at me and shook his head while I, trying sincerely not to like him, smiled back.
I don’t know why even the polite trivia of that time seems worthy of retelling. I retell it, I suppose, to delay the recounting of what I did. Though it shames me to do so I linger on the Vaugirards, on the ease with which they accepted me into their home and their lives, an ease which makes my treachery all the worse. I, who intended their son nothing but harm—or who at least was prepared to sacrifice him on the altar of my love for another—was welcomed into their lives; and I accepted their hospitality as Judas might have accepted Christ’s at the Last Supper: duplicitously, deviously, deceitfully. I was accepted because I was their son’s friend; on that recommendation alone I was welcomed as a member of the family. I stayed in their house; I shared their food, their wine, their conversation; and all the time they harbored a traitor in their midst and they did not know it. Though outwardly friendly I never allowed myself to warm to Louise’s charm or to Eric
père
‘s clumsy kindness, and there also I was deceptive: for I behaved as though I was their friend when I was not; as though I deserved their trust when I did not. And I distanced myself from them because I knew enough to be wary of any closeness with Eric’s family.
In deceiving the Vaugirards, in disregarding their humanity because I knew that recognition of it would sway me from my purpose, I behaved as shamefully as I had ever done and steeled myself to behave more so. It makes me sick to remember it now, to see their smiling faces, to think of Louise’s cooking or Eric
père
‘s wine. Those dinners in Vaugirard return to me in my dreams with the sound of that family laughing. The memory of them makes my own laugh hollow, joyless and insincere. And I know that it is all these things.
The actual taking of my prize was easy, and I say that without vanity. On the evening of my second day with the Vaugirards I decided to act, for I feared their kindness and was uncertain how much longer I could endure it. I knew enough to know that treachery had its limits, you see, and I was fearful of testing them. So I sat through a second dinner, which like the first was long and very good, drinking little and watching, waiting for my opportunity. It came as the last plates were cleared and Eric excused himself and got up to go to bed; and I, sensing that it had come, excused myself too and left the room with him, smiling my good nights to his family.
We ascended the narrow flight of steep stairs that led to our bedrooms in a silence which for me was grimly purposeful. On the landing outside my room, high up in the gods of the house, Eric said good night to me and turned to open his own door.