‘Yes.’
‘With whom you’ve been having a love affair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you go to that place to show yourself and your lover to Jesse?’
‘No, it was an accident.’
‘How long has this affair been going on?’
‘Two years.’
‘Two years?’
‘Yes.’ Midge moved over to the window, threw open the door onto the balcony, and sat down near it. Thomas followed.
‘Did Meredith know?’
‘Yes. He saw me and Harry here. He knew we’d been making love.’
‘You mean you made love here, in this house?’
‘Yes, in the spare room. We used to meet at Harry’s place before Stuart moved in.’
‘And you’re in love with Harry?’
Midge hesitated. ‘Well — I was — yes.’
‘What do you mean you were? Do you want a divorce so you can marry him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want to marry him,’ said Midge. She began to cry a little, keeping it in control, averting her face.
‘You want him as a lover not a husband? Does he want you to get a divorce?’
‘Yes.’
‘You say you don’t want a divorce but if, as it appears, you love him and not me wouldn’t that be sensible? Please say what you want.’
‘If you want a divorce — ’
‘Are you expecting me to accept this liaison, which incidentally is now public knowledge? In case there was any ambiguity a well-known gossip columnist has named names. Do you want to go on being my wife and his mistress, is that it?’
‘No. My relation with Harry is now over. It ended before I knew about that article. I was going to tell you. I hope you’ll believe me.’
‘I don’t think I do. I think you’re just defending yourself after the shock of being found out. When did the relation end, as you say?’
‘I think — it was a few days ago.’
‘When you realised you could not conceal it any longer. You decided to say it was over. To help yourselves over a difficult time and then resume. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence that “you think” it ended a few days ago! Please be honest and tell me.’
‘It was because of Stuart.’
‘Stuart? Of course, he was there, and Edward. And Meredith knew. Weren’t you afraid Meredith would tell me?’
‘I asked him not to.’
Thomas, standing near her, one hand stretched out to touch the wall, was silent a moment. He said, ‘You have defiled everything. But just let me understand. Edward and Stuart have been discreet — and Meredith too … But no doubt you felt you could not rely on their discretion for ever. Hence this change of tactics. To hide your relationship more securely by pretending it is over?’
‘No, no — it was
Stuart
— he told me I ought to tell you. He wasn’t going to tell you. He said I ought to.’
‘But why should that have altered anything? Look, I just can’t believe that a relationship which has lasted for two years under difficult circumstances can suddenly dissolve like that. Deception on that scale demands a great deal of thought and energy and — commitment. It must have been the major part of your life, your chief activity. You must have felt you were really married to Harry. Why should Stuart matter?’
‘Because he made me see. He made me feel different. I fell in love with Stuart. I’m still in love with him.’
Thomas looked at her carefully. He moved away from the wall, took off his glasses, took out his handkerchief, then stuffed the handkerchief away and put the glasses on again. ‘What does that mean, what can it mean? Have you told him?’
‘Yes. I love him. I went to him, I want to be with him. I want to work with him, I want to work for him, I want to change my life.’
‘So now you don’t want to live with Harry you want to live with Stuart?’
‘Yes, but — I must see Stuart again, I must — ’
‘Have you told Harry this?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d like Stuart to be your lover? What does Stuart think about it?’
‘He doesn’t want me, not like that. But later I might be with him in his work, I want to change, I want duties — ’
‘Duties — oh — my dear Midge — Anyway you want to leave me and Meredith?’
‘Not Meredith.’
‘But me?’
‘Only because you won’t want me now.’
‘Do you expect me to beg you to stay? I won’t do that. It would not be fair to you. You must decide what you want to do. You may well be happier without me. I don’t understand this Stuart thing. I don’t think it’s a deliberate deception, but it’s some kind of psychological device. Aren’t you relieved in a way that I know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Precisely. It must have been nervous work. You’re suffering from shock because Stuart knew and because he dared to judge you. To save yourself you had to embrace your executioner. I can imagine that Stuart was an obstacle, after your secret life had been working like a charm, something really hard at last. You’ll get over Stuart and run back to Harry. He’ll console you. Isn’t that what will happen — my dear — wife?’
‘No. I don’t think so. Oh you’re so
cold.
You never do anything natural — ’ She lifted her head with her wet mouth open a little. She had stopped crying.
‘What do you want me to do, shout and break things? I’ve only just, an hour ago, discovered what you and your lover have known for years. I’ve only just found out that my happy life has been based on a mistake. I’m just not inflicting my suffering on you in the form of rage.’
‘I don’t think you really care all that much.’
‘Of course I do, it will damage my practice! Who will take their troubles to a man who can’t even understand his wife? How do you imagine I feel about being made a public fool of? This sort of bespattering publicity changes people, and it’s only just beginning. Journalists will be on the telephone, photographers outside the door. It’ll be like the old days for you, only you won’t enjoy it this time.’
‘You are cold and detached, you think, now you are not even being serious, you don’t care. You have never really seen me at all.’
‘I may be a fool, and I may have been an imperfect husband, but I have loved you very much and I do love you very much. Only you must not expect me to bare my heart to you now, at this moment, in this situation. I find you with Harry, he runs away, he has nothing to say, you offer no excuse, there can be no excuse. I am confronted with the monumental fact of your passionate love for somebody else and your cold-blooded willingness to deceive me. Now I have to protect myself and I am beginning to do so at once. I am not going to let you and Harry maim my life. I am very deeply hurt. My conception of you, my thought of you, was so precious — ’
‘You took me for granted.’
‘Of course. I trusted you completely. My home, my marriage, was one place where I did not have to be suspicious. My love for you was an absolute resting place. Now I learn that you have been lying to me systematically, anxiously watching my plans in case they interfered with yours, arranging your timetable so as to be with your lover, longing for him, thinking about him, even as you spoke to me being with him.’
‘It didn’t feel like that,’ said Midge.
‘You mean you didn’t think of it as lying. Your sense of his presence made me unreal, so how could I be damaged! You resented my existence, you looked past me at him. You excused yourself because your love for him was live and real, and your love for me was old and withered.’
‘I was in love.’
‘That is supposed to let people off.’
‘I’m sorry — I didn’t expect it.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Thomas. ‘Having a scene now would be no use to either of us. I don’t want to stir things up to satisfy your emotions. You had better stay here and sort yourself out. I won’t be in the way. I’m going to Quitterne, when I’ve packed a case. You decide what you want and let me know later on. I won’t put any pressure on you, and I will help you to carry out any plan you make. You are free to make up your mind. One thing though. If we part company, or when we part company, Meredith stays with me.’
‘We’ll make civilised arrangements,’ said Midge, her tears beginning again. ‘But please don’t go away yet — you haven’t understood — ’
‘Civilised! We are far far beyond civilisation! How I wish it hadn’t been Harry.’
‘Thomas, please don’t be so angry — ’
‘Do you call this anger? I wish you well. I want you to be happy.’
Thomas left the room, Midge sat moaning into her handkerchief. A few minutes later his steps came quickly down the stairs and the front door opened and closed. Midge sank to the floor beside her chair and abandoned herself to sobbing.
Brownie had not said yes to Edward’s question. But she had not said no either. They had not made love. Not there upon the bed where Mark had lain in his happy drugged ecstasy before he got up and floated out of the window. They had sat and talked about Mark. Though neither of them exactly said so, his presence in the room quietly contradicted any pleasure they might have had in each other’s company, at the same time constituting that strange ambivalent bond. ‘It’s because of Mark.’ ‘Yes,’ Edward had said, ‘but it’s not just because of Mark.’ ‘It might be, that might be its deep meaning.’ ‘Well, if it’s deep enough — that wouldn’t be bad, would it?’ ‘It would be — if we were just substitute Marks for each other — blotting him out.’ ‘But we couldn’t blot him out.’ ‘No, so perhaps he’s a barrier.’ ‘What would he have wanted?’ ‘We can’t make sense of that question.’ This discussion, whose logic eluded them, began to frighten them both, and they stopped it. They talked more simply about Mark, Edward talked about the college, Brownie about their childhood.
Now Edward was going to see her again. They did not want to meet in that room a second time. They could not go to Mrs Wilsden’s house, or to Elspeth Macran’s, and Edward could not envisage bringing Brownie to his own home. He and Brownie both felt secretive about their painful necessary extraordinary relationship. They did not want yet to expose it to the scrutiny of the world, not yet, until they had themselves riddled out what it was. They were secret homeless lovers, not even yet lovers, and that homelessness and deprivation was somehow too a part of their relation, their pact, something which made it for the moment in an essential way provisional and innocent.
Today they were to meet for lunch in a pub suggested by Brownie in Bayswater, not far from, but not dangerously near, Elspeth Macran’s house. Edward did not want to suggest anything. He wanted to come where
she
said, and there was a soothing charm in the idea of their both making their way through big indifferent anonymous London to that meeting place where they would sit as invisible people in their private corner. The idea of meeting in a pub was good too, it suggested, perhaps, a new phase, a beginning of ordinariness, wherein their relation, less strained, would become more full. Edward, much too early for the rendezvous, was walking through Soho. He liked long walks through London, the action of walking dulled and calmed his too active mind. He had not entirely given up hope of finding Mrs Quaid, though he thought it most likely that she had simply moved on. He could hardly, in memory, now believe she was absolutely real. It was more like remembering a dream. He decided to walk to Bayswater through the back streets north of Oxford Street, passing near to Fitzroy Square on the way.
Edward had not told Brownie about Jesse, at least he had not told her about his ‘hallucination’, or about Jesse’s disappearance and the London search. He had spoken vaguely about his stay at Seegard. Brownie had expressed no curiosity about it. There were other things to talk of. There had been no letter from Ilona. He did not now expect one. How could Ilona write him a letter? It was almost as if he now believed her to be illiterate. If she ever did write, Mother May would censor the letter and would stop any note saying, ‘Don’t worry, he is back.’ As long as Edward
did not know,
Edward would be bound to return to Seegard. The place was by now becoming grotesque and dark in his imagination and he feared the idea that he must go back to it. Everything changes so in one’s mind, he thought, and there was so much that was irreducibly awful in his own. Sometimes he imagined how things, some things at least, might turn out well. He would suddenly find Jesse, perhaps meet him in the street. That would be somehow typical of what happened with Jesse, it would be right. So Edward as he walked along looked at the people he passed, often seeing false Jesses and experiencing the sharp stab of a quenched hope. Or else Ilona would write after all, saying casually, ‘Of course he’s here’, sending Jesse’s love. Or else Edward would go back to Seegard and, as he imagined it, creep in, unlock the tower door and run up the stairs and into Jesse’s room and into his arms. He lacked Jesse, he missed him, he longed for him. And then came back the awful fear, the guilt, the secret which only Thomas knew. Would he ever, in some happy future, sit with Brownie and tell her all about it? In that telling the hallucination would become something almost trivial, something seen at once as an illusion. Then as his hunted mind came back again to Brownie, he felt: but there is no future. It was like looking in the mirror and seeing nothing there.