The Nice and the Good (40 page)

“Odd how those stones are never
quite
spherical.” Paula spoke in her most precise tones, sounding like one of her children. She examined a mottled mauvish pebble and then tossed it into the water.

He’s in the Red Sea, now, she thought, he’s steaming north. An enormous elongated Eric, all face and head, moved slowly under steam through a calm resistless sea. I must be completely relaxed, she thought. I must have no will, no purpose, I must simply
undergo
him.

I’ll meet him in London, she thought. But would he want to share her bed? How would it be? Perhaps it would be better to see him down here? But she could not bear that he should come near the twins. I must be rational, she thought, I must be rational.

“Paula—”

“Sorry. Were you saying something?”

“What’s the matter, Paula? And don’t say nothing’s the matter. I can see you’re frantic about something.”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“Come, come, Paula. Everyone has been noticing it. Tell me what’s the matter. I might be able to help.”

So everyone had been noticing it. “You can’t, John. I’m as lonely as a lunatic.”

“Paula. You’re going to tell me.”

Am I? she wondered almost vaguely. She picked up and examined another imperfectly spherical stone and tossed it after the first one.

“Paula, please, my dear—”

“If I could only tell it all in a completely cold objective way,” she said aloud to herself.

“Yes, yes, do that. You can. What’s it about? Just tell me roughly what it’s about, to make a start.”

“It’s about a chap called Eric Sears.”

“Who is he?”

“My former lover.”

“Oh.”

“You probably imagine, as everybody seems to, that I divorced Richard. Well, I didn’t. Richard divorced me because I had had a love affair with Eric.”

“Did you love Eric?”

“I must have done.”

“Do you love Eric?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Are you seeing him?”

“I’m going to. He’s on his way back from Australia to see me, to
claim
me.”

“You don’t have to be claimed if you don’t want to.”

“It’s—more complicated than that.”

“You’re bound to him in some way?”

“Yes.”

“A child?”

“No, no. It’s awful. I couldn’t tell you.”

“But you’re going to tell me.”

“It was how things happened with Richard.”

“I imagine Richard had had plenty of love affairs before Eric came on the scene?”

“Yes. That’s what they say, is it? Yes, Richard was unfaithful. But that doesn’t excuse my unfaithfulness. It doesn’t even explain it. I was temporarily insane.”

“What’s Eric like? What does he do?”

“He’s a potter. He’s a big blonde man with a beard. At least he had a beard. He’s a demon.”

“How was it that things happened with Richard.”

Paula took a deep breath. She felt her face contract as if a great wind were straining the flesh backward. She said, “They had a fight.”

Paula was conscious of the immense quietness of the scene. The sun shone down into clear still water revealing the pale paving of the sea. Very distant feet crunched upon pebbles. Far away an aeroplane hummed, descended. Out on the horizon the swimming children splashed, their voices all but lost in the hot air which moved very slightly above the water like a heavy canopy. “What happened?” said Ducane’s voice, very very softly.

“It was quite sudden,” she said. “It was at our house, in the billiard room. You know, well perhaps you don’t know, at our house in Chelsea there’s a big room for billiards built on at the back. Richard used to play a bit. It had a door leading into the garden. It was late one night and Richard had said he’d got to go to Paris on office business. I think he said this just to trap me. Of course I’d told him about Eric. I’d told him about Eric right at the start, in a cold blank sort of way, and he was cold and blank about it too. I didn’t even properly realise that he was jealous. I thought it might even be a kind of relief to him. Eric came round to the house that evening. It was idiotic of me to let him come there, but he very much wanted to. He hadn’t been before. I think he just wanted to walk around in Richard’s place. We were talking in the hall. I think we were just going to leave and go to Eric’s flat. Then we realised that Richard had come in through the garden and was standing in the billiard room in the darkness listening. As soon as I heard a sound I knew what had happened and I turned the light on. Eric and Richard had never met before. We all stood together in the billiard room and Eric started to make some sort of speech. He wasn’t particularly put out and he was proposing to carry off the situation with a high hand. Then Richard just sprang at him. Eric’s a big man, but Richard was in the Commandos, and he just knew how to fight and Eric didn’t. He hit Eric somehow on the
neck and I think Eric was half stunned. Then, God knows how he did it, and it happened so quickly, he pushed Eric back against the wall and overturned the billiard table against him.”

“My God,” said Ducane softly.

“You know what a billiard table weighs,” said Paula. Her voice was almost pedantic. Her gaze was focused on a particular pebble on the floor of the sea. “The edge of the table came down on to one of Eric’s feet, and the upper part of it crushed him against the wall. He began to scream. Richard and I tried to pull the table back. It was an extraordinary scene. We didn’t say a word to each other, we just pulled at each end of the table. Eric went on screaming. Then the table shifted a little and he collapsed and Richard pulled him out into the open. He was practically unconscious with pain. I went and telephoned for an ambulance.”

Paula was silent.

“What happened then?” said Ducane in the same almost whispering voice.

“I went with him to the hospital. The next time I saw Richard was outside the divorce court.”

“And was Eric much hurt?”

“He hadn’t any serious internal injury,” said Paula in her exact voice. “But one foot was completely crushed. He had to have it amputated.” She added, “We pretended it was an accident, of course.”

Ducane said after a pause. “I see. What happened then?”

“Well, what happened then was that I abandoned Eric too. I couldn’t go back to Richard, the idea didn’t occur to me, and anyway he wrote to me about divorce the next day. I think he just couldn’t stand it either, somehow. And I couldn’t stay with Eric. His being maimed like that by Richard just snapped things off. I almost hated the sight of him, and I think he hated the sight of me. For a while everything became too terrible, one could scarcely bear to be conscious. I let go of Eric and he just moved away, sort of automatically. I went on seeing him, but it was like acting in some nightmarish play. Then he told me he was going to Australia. We were both relieved.”

“And then—?”

“And then he wrote from there to say he’d met somebody
perfectly marvellous on the boat and was going to marry her. I was jolly relieved. Then I heard nothing till about four weeks ago when he wrote to say he hadn’t got married after all and that the only thing he needed and wanted in the world was to see me and he was coming back. His boat’s due next week.”

“You’re frightened of him,” said Ducane.

“Yes. I always was a bit frightened of him. Funny, I was never frightened of Richard, though Richard’s a violent man in a much more obvious way.”

“You said Eric was a demon.”

“Yes. It’s odd, because he’s a man one might easily see as absurd. I think I saw him as absurd at first, a sort of pompous play-actor. But he’s got in some literal sense magnetism, an animal force, such as quite a stupid person might have. Not that Eric’s stupid, but I mean this is nothing to do with the mind, at least not with the rational mind. It’s a quasi-physical thing. Perhaps that’s what attracted me. Richard is so cerebral, even his sensuality is cerebral. Eric was like a piece of earth, or maybe more like the sea. I always associated him with the sea.”

“Do you in any way want to see him?”

“No. But I’ve got to see him. I’ve got to—undergo it again.”

“I can see,’’said Ducane, speaking carefully, “that you feel you as it were owe him something. It’s like a precise bond—”

“Exactly. A blood bond. I think he believes that there’s a spell that only I can break. There’s a sickening awfulness in his life which only I can remove. This is why I’ve got to face him and face him alone.”

“Do you really believe that you could do anything for him? Given that you don’t love him? Or do you think it possible you might begin to love him again?”

“No! I don’t know if I could do anything. At times I think he wants somehow to punish me. There are days, hours, when I think he’s coming back to kill me. Or it might be enough if he could find some way of humiliating me. I just don’t know what’s going to happen. All I know is that whatever it is it’s got to happen. Next week.”

Ducane was frowning into the sea light. “Who else knows this story?”

“No one. Except Richard and Eric.”

“Why have you kept silent about it?”

She hesitated. “Pride.”

“Yes. And this is what’s made it into something dreadful. You’ve been infected by the demon in Eric.”

“I know. The whole thing, the way it all happened, was shattering. And what it shattered most of all was some conception I’d had of myself, some wholeness. It’s odd. That was why I never tried to stop Richard divorcing me. Something was utterly broken in me by that scene in the billiard room. Something which hadn’t been broken by my going to bed with Eric. It was as if one’s guilt had been made into a tangible object and rammed into one’s guts.”

“You’ve got to relive this thing, Paula, and not just for Eric but for yourself.”

“Maybe. But when Eric comes—”

“You must use your common sense about it. I understand how you feel. And obviously you’ve got to meet Eric alone. But I think you ought to meet him in a sane context. I mean with other people all round you. He must meet your friends and see that you have support, a world of your own. Now I shall be in London next week—”

There was a quick crunching of pebbles and a shadow moved near them like a lizard. It was Uncle Theo.

Theo looked pale and dry in the bright sun, the big rounded dome of his skull surmounting his shrunken doggy face like a helmet. He looked down on them with a puckered expression of slightly quizzical disgust. He said, “Paula, Letters for you.” Three letters fell on to the stones. He hesitated, as if awaiting a summons to stay, and then marched quickly off, stooping well forward from the waist and digging his feet noisily into the pebbles before Ducane could get out more than an “Oh Theo—”

Paula looked after him. “He seems so depressed these days. I wonder what on earth goes on inside his head? Poor Theo. John, I do wish you’d talk to him seriously. Make him tell you what’s the matter. He’d talk to you.”

Ducane gave a small snarling laugh.

“Oh!” Paula had just looked at the letters. ‘‘There’s one from Eric. He’s at Suez.”

“Better read it quickly,” said Ducane. He turned away
squinting into the sunlight, trying to discern the swimming children. He noticed that it must be low tide since a bank of purple seaweed, only visible at that time, was making a darker blur in the clear greenish water, which had already receded by several feet since he and Paula had sat down. Theo’s aimlessly purposeful figure diminished steadily.

After a moment Ducane heard a strange sound beside him. He turned to see that Paula had covered her face with her hand. Her shoulders shook.

“Whatever is it, Paula?”

Paula went on shaking, and a low raucous sound came from behind the shielding hand. The other hand stretched out and tossed Eric’s letter to him. Ducane read.

My dear Paula,

not to beat about the bush, this letter comes to tell you that I have met somebody perfectly marvellous on the boat and I am going to marry her. How very strange life is! I have always had a sense of being in the hands of the gods, but often they work in such unexpected ways! I knew I had to come back to England and I thought it was because you needed to see me. But how unimportant this seems now. Forgive me for putting it in this way, but I can be kindest to you by being plainest. What seemed the necessity of seeing you was really just the wanderlust, or rather the magnetism of my destiny pulling me away. Everything has worked out quite wonderfully. We are getting off the boat here and will fly to Cairo. (If you remember I have always wanted to see the pyramids.) After that we fly to New York and on to Chicago to meet Angelica’s people. (Her father is a big man in the art world, incidentally, and she has a lot of money, though of course that’s not important and I didn’t even know it at first. She is a marvellous person.)

I am sorry, dear Paula, to burden you with this recital of my felicity, but there is no point in delaying the happy news. I know how much you must have been waiting and expecting. Believe me I have thought about your needs. But I think it would be unwise for us to meet now.
There is much that it would be hard for Angelica to understand. She is a very
unshadowed
person, and I have not upset her by any of the grimmer things out of my past. (I say this in case you should ever happen to meet her, though I imagine this is unlikely. We are going on a world tour after the marriage and will probably settle in San Francisco, which will be a good place for my work.) I feel confident that you will forgive this defection on my part. You are a woman of many resources and not given to envy, jealousy or moping. I trust and believe that you will soon be able to rejoice in my good fortune without feeling resentment at my failure to render to you an aid which you may have persuaded yourself that only I could give. May it in some way please you to hear me say: I am happy and feel set free from the past. It is my very earnest wish that you will one day be able to say the same.

P.S. Please be sure to destroy this letter.

Ducane turned to look at Paula. Paula’s face was transformed. It expanded smoothly, blandly, seeming to have increased in area, with eyes and mouth extended, and he realised that she had been laughing. Her face, which had been pinched in behind a narrow mask, was relaxed and shining. As she shuddered again and gasped into laughter Ducane began to laugh too, and they laughed together, rocking to and fro and sending the mottled pebbles rolling down the slope towards the water.