The Nice and the Good (16 page)

The boat slackened speed. Pierce had dropped the rope and was swimming on toward the cliff, the easternward end of the Red Tower, which here came down sheer into the water. Ducane felt relief, as at the removal of a small demoniac presence.

“Don’t go in, will you, Pierce!” Kate was shouting after him.

“No, I won’t.”

“That’s Gunnar’s Cave,” said Kate, pointing to a dark line at the base of the cliff. “It must be low tide.”

“Yes, you told me,” said Ducane. “The entrance is only uncovered at low tide.”

“It gives me the creeps,” said Kate. “I have a fantasy that it’s full of drowned men who went in after treasure and got caught by the sea.”

“Let’s get back,” said Ducane. He shivered. He began to move the little coracle slowly upon the gluey gleaming surface with rhythmical sweeps of his hands. Kate shifted herself slightly so that her leg was in contact with his. They looked at each other searchingly, anxiously.

“W
HY
did Shakespeare never write a play about Merlin?” said Henrietta.

“Because Shakespeare was Merlin,” said Uncle Theo.

“I’ve often wondered that too,” said Paula. “Why did he never make use of the Arthur legends?”

“I think I know,” said Mary.

Everyone was silent. Mary hesitated. She was sure that she knew, only it was suddenly very difficult to put it into words.

“Why?” said John Ducane, smiling at her encouragingly.

“Shakespeare knew … that world of magic … the subject was dangerous … and those sort of relationships … not quite in the real world … it just wasn’t his sort of thing … and it had such a definite atmosphere of its own … he just couldn’t use it …”

Mary stopped. It wasn’t quite that, but she
did
know. Shakespeare’s world was something different, larger.

“I think I understand you,” said Ducane, “perfectly.” He smiled again.

After that the conversation scattered once more, each person chatting to his neighbour. Sunday lunch was taking place, was nearly over, at the round table in the hall. Casie was circling round the table, removing plates, talking aloud to herself as she usually did when waiting at table, and moving in and out of the kitchen, through whose open door Montrose, in his elongated not spherical manifestation, could be seen lounging in the animal basket beside which Mingo was standing in a state of evident agitation. Every now and then Mingo would put one paw into the basket and then nervously withdraw it again. Montrose lounged with the immobility of careless power.

“They treat women properly in Russia,” Casie was saying as she removed the pudding plates. “In Russia I could have been an engine driver.”

“But you don’t want to be an engine driver, do you?” said Mary.

“Women are real people in Russia. Here they’re just dirt. It’s no good being a woman.”

“I can imagine it’s no good being
you
, but—”

“Oh do shut up, Theo.”

“I think it’s marvellous being a woman,” said Kate. “I wouldn’t change my sex for anything.”

“How you relieve my mind!” said Ducane.

“I’d rather be an engine driver,” said Mary crazily.

Casie retired to the kitchen.

There was no special arrangement of places at Sunday luncheon. People just scrambled randomly to their seats as they happened to arrive. On that particular day the order was as follows. Mary was sitting next to Uncle Theo who was sitting next to Edward who was sitting next to Pierce who was sitting next to Kate who was sitting next to Henrietta who was sitting next to Octavian who was sitting next to Paula who was sitting next to Barbara who was sitting next to Ducane who was sitting next to Mary.

Edward was now explaining to Uncle Theo about some birds called “honey guides” who lived in the Amazonian jungle and these birds had such a clever arrangement with the bears and things, they would lead them to where the wild bees had their nests and then the bears and things would break open the nests to eat the honey and so the birds could eat the honey too. Henrietta was explaining to Kate how there were loops and voids in the space-time continuum so that although it might take you only fifty years to reach the centre of the galaxy in your space craft, thousands of years would have passed here when you got back. (“I don’t think I
quite
understand,” said Kate.) Octavian, who had been discussing with Paula the prospects of reform in the trade union movement, was now anxiously asking her if she felt well, since she had eaten practically no lunch. Ducane and Barbara were flirting together in French, a language which Ducane spoke well and enjoyed any chance of showing off.

Mary, who got up to help Casie at various points during the meal, was left, as often happened, in a conversational vacuum. She liked this, feeling at such moments a sort of maternal sense of ownership toward the group of chattering persons all round her. Casie was now putting fruit and cheese on to the table. Octavian was reaching for the decanter of claret. Everyone was drinking wine except the twins who were drinking
Tizer and Paula who was drinking water. Mary began to observe the face of her son who was sitting opposite to her.

Pierce too, seated between Edward and Kate, had no one to talk to. He was watching with fierce concentration the conversation between Barbara and John Ducane. Mary thought, I hope no one else is noticing him. He is looking so intense and strange. Then she thought, Oh dear, something is going to happen.

“
Quand est ce que tu vas me donner ce petit concert de Mozart?
”

“
Jamais, puisque tu ne le mérites pas!
”

“
Et pourquoi ça, petite égoiste?
”

“
Tu n’y comprends rien
à
la musique, toi
.”

“
Tu vas m’enseigner, alors
.”

“
Tu seras docile?
”

“
Mais oui, mon oiseau!
”

“
Et qu’est ce que tu vas me dormer en retour?
”

“
Dix baisers
.”

“
C’est pas assez
.”

“
Mille baisers alors!
”

Pierce got up abruptly, scraping his chair noisily back over the paved floor of the hall. The chair fell over backwards with a crash. Pierce walked to the front door and went out through it, slamming the door behind him. There was a startled silence.

“Public school manners,” said Casie.

Mary began to rise. Both Uncle Theo on one side and John Ducane on the other put out restraining hands. Mary sat down again. Uncle Theo said to Edward, “Do go on telling me about dolphins.” Kate started to say, “Don’t worry, Mary dear—”

Mary decided she could not stay. She got up and went out quietly through the kitchen and out into the garden. The garden was hot, brooding, and quiet, even the cuckoo was silent in the afternoon heat. Mary began to walk up the pebble path, brushing the plump veronica bushes with her hand. The bushes exuded heat and silence. She passed through the gate in the wall. It was not in her mind to look for Pierce. She knew he would have started to run once he was outside the front door. He would be half way to the graveyard by now, and there, buried in the ivy, he could lie hidden even if she were to follow him. In any case she
had nothing to say to her son and she had already stopped thinking about him. His tormented nerves had wrought upon her nerves, and it was the sudden burden of her own nebulous and uncertain anguish which had made her rise from the table.

I am making a complete ass of myself, thought Mary, and it’s getting worse too. I’m not eighteen. I just must not give way to these vague emotional storms of self-pity. It isn’t as if there was anything definite the matter. There’s nothing the matter at all.

She walked up the enclosed funnel of the lane through the smell of hot moss and reached the little wood and sat down on the tree trunk, kicking a hole for her feet in the dead leaves. Perhaps I need a holiday, she thought, perhaps it’s as simple as that. Sometimes I just feel so shut in, with all those people and they’ve all got
something
while I’ve got nothing. I really ought to try to get some sort of proper job. But I suppose they do need me here, the children need me. When the twins are grown up I shall take a teacher’s training course and have quite a different sort of life.

Then she thought, is this really all I have to look forward to, is this what I have to comfort myself with? Years more of managing someone else’s house and then a job as a school teacher? But my wants are huge, my desires are rapacious, I want love, I want the splendour and violence of love, and I want it now, I want someone of my own. Oh Willy, Willy, Willy.

A shadow moved in the dappled light. Mary looked up. It was John Ducane. In a flurry she rose to her feet.

Mary was very fond of Ducane and admired him, but as Kate had quite accurately said she was a little afraid of him.

“Oh, John—”

“Mary, do sit down. Please forgive me for having followed you.”

She sat down again, and he sat beside her, perched side-ways on the log, regarding her. “Mary, I’m so sorry. I feel what happened was my fault. I behaved in a silly insensitive way. I do hope you aren’t upset.”

Upset—I’m frantic, thought Mary. I’m frenzied, I’m desperate. She said, “No, no, don’t worry. I’m afraid Pierce behaved abominably. I do hope Barbara wasn’t too hurt.”

“No, she was very sensible about it,” said Ducane. “I’m afraid I hadn’t realised, well, quite how serious things were. I’ll be more tactful in future. Please don’t you be distressed. These young people have got to suffer, we can’t save them from it—”

Damn their sufferings, thought Mary. She said, “Yes. Of course they have great powers of recovery.”

Mary thought suddenly, this is an abomination, sitting here and having this conventional conversation when I feel so desperate and deprived and torn inside. She thought, is there nothing I can do about it? Then there seemed to be only one thing she could do about it and she did it forthwith. She burst into a storm of tears.

“Good heavens!” said John Ducane. He took out a large clean handkerchief, unfolded it, and handed it to Mary who buried her face in it.

After a minute or two, as the tears abated a little and she began to blow her nose on the handkerchief he touched her shoulder very gently, not exactly patting it but as if to remind her of his presence. “Is it about Pierce?”

“No, no,” said Mary. “I’m not really worried about Pierce. It’s about me.”

“What? Tell me.”

“It’s about Willy.”

“What about Willy? You’re not frightened that he—?”

“No. I’ve never thought that Willy was likely to kill himself. It’s just that—well, I suppose I’ve fallen in love with Willy.” The uttered words surprised her. Her diffused tender agitation had not the relentless finality of her older loves. Yet it was beginning to fill the whole of her consciousness and it was, it must be, the deep cause of these sudden storms of misery.

Ducane took the information gravely and thoughtfully, as if Mary were a client explaining her case. He said after a moment, “My feeling is that I’m glad of this because it can’t fail to do Willy good. What does he feel about it? Does he know?”

“Oh, he knows. As for what he feels— you know Willy as well as I do. How can one discover what he feels?”

“I thought he might perhaps behave—quite differently with you?”

“No, no. We seem to know each other well but I think that’s just because I parade my feelings. He’s affectionate, detached, passive, absolutely passive.”

“He’s never told you about that place?”

“He’s never talked about himself at all.”

“Are you going to see him now?”

“No. He said not to come today. You know how he is.”

“I know how he is,” said Ducane, “and I can see he’s not a convenient man to be in love with. But let’s think, let’s think.”

There was silence in the wood as they sat side by side, Mary slowly rubbing her face over with the handkerchief, Ducane, frowning with concentrated attention, leaning forward and pulverising a dry beech leaf in his hand. A pair of brimstone butterflies, playing together, passed flittering in front of them. Mary stretched out her hand toward the butterflies.

She said, “I’m sorry I’ve inflicted this on you. One should bear one’s own burdens. I’m perfectly all right really. After all, I’m not in my first youth! It’ll blow over, it’ll settle down.” Settle down! she thought. Yes, settle down into dreariness and quietness and forgetfulness and boredom. Yet she knew that it was not really the sharp tragic knife of passion that disturbed her now, it was some vaguer nervous storm out of her unsatisfied woman’s nature. The dreariness was already with her, it had its part in her present jumpiness, her present tears. This thought was so heavy with despair that she almost began to cry again.

Then she saw that Ducane had got up. He stood in front of her, staring at her with his round surprised-looking blue eyes. He said in an excited voice, “Mary, do you know what I think? I think you should marry Willy.”

“Marry Willy?” she said dully. “But I’ve told you what he’s like with me.”

“Well, change him. I’m sure it’s a matter of will. You let him infect you with his passivity, you accept his mood.”

It was true that she accepted his mood. “Do you think I really could—?”

“You must try, try with all the forces you can summon. You’ve been too humble with him. It’s often an act of charity to treat someone as an equal and not as a superior! A woman in love is a great spiritual force if only she wills
properly. You have no idea how much power you have over us! I’ve known it for a long time, that, for Willy, only you can do it. But I hadn’t thought enough to see that you’d have to fight him, surprise him, wake him, hurt him even. Mary, you must try. I think you should marry Willy and take him right away from here.”

Have I this power, she wondered. Ever since she had first met Willy she had been totally subservient to him. The ‘parade of feelings’ had not altered that. For all these gestures she had really extinguished herself in his presence, wanting simply to let him
be
. It now seemed to her that this had been all wrong, that this was the very policy which produced, for both of them, the frustrating melancholy which she had taken to be his defence against her.