The Sea Change (11 page)

He took the box from her without a word, and mercifully, at that moment his flight was called. We all got to our feet, and looked round again for Alberta, who advanced from the other end of the
hall rather shyly – with uncle.

I saw the expression on Lillian’s face, but Emmanuel must have felt it, as he put the orchids on the table and walked forward to meet them. They talked for a moment or two, and Emmanuel
shook hands with the uncle and then turned back to us: the other passengers were through the door by now. He kissed Lillian with such kindness that there was something compassionate about it;
nodded to me, and stood aside for Alberta, who had hugged her uncle and now said in her rather high clear voice: ‘Goodbye, Mrs Joyce. I do hope you have a good voyage.’

Lillian was staring at Emmanuel, but she said: ‘Thank you so much.’

Then Alberta said goodbye to me and went through the door, and before Lillian could say anything, Emmanuel had nodded to both of us and followed her.

I took her arm and we walked back past the table with the orchids on it to the escalator, down and out to the car. The driver wrapped a rug round our knees: I told him to pick up the luggage at
Bedford Gardens, and we were off. As soon as the car started to move, Lillian broke into a flood of tears. I leaned forward and closed the limousine glass, and, as I did this, I realized that
Alberta’s uncle had vanished at the barrier, and we hadn’t had to offer him a lift. Lillian had thrown herself rigidly against the seat – she was crying with her hands clenched to
her sides. I found a handkerchief and put it on her lap, and waited. Overhead I heard a plane, and wondered whether it was his – it was funny what a curious sense of loss I had when he went
somewhere without me.

Lillian was subsiding. I pulled her head against my shoulder and said: ‘Poor sweetheart. You have had a day of it. What would you
like
to do now?’

She’d stopped crying – she must have been exhausted, and now as though she was half asleep, she said: ‘I should like to be a round little woman with healthy pink cheeks and no
figure, with three children and a husband whom nobody thought was wonderful but me. I’d like to live in one of those little houses and go to the seaside with the family once a year, and have
a mongrel dog who was very faithful, and be very good at making cakes and knitting patterns like the magazines say. I should like a cast-iron routine with me being the variant – instead of
endless variations with me being the routine.’ She stopped a moment and then said: ‘Of course I only want that sometimes – or with part of me.’

‘You aren’t a routine, Lillian: you’re full of surprises.’

‘Like my behaviour about poor old Sol’s orchids. I recognize that: I call it routine. Did you know I hoped Em had sent them?’

‘No.’

‘It doesn’t excuse me in the least though. I didn’t even think of giving them to Alberta. She might have liked them.’

‘Oh come,’ I said – groping for a lighter note: ‘poor Alberta; you said you wouldn’t even pin them on your dearest enemy.’

She moved her head so that she could see me: she looked suddenly worn to her age.

‘When I saw her going through that door with Em following her, I did hate her: I’d been dreading that moment, and I hated her.’

3

EMMANUEL

S
HE
chose her sweet off the tray with care, and, on impulse, he took another of the same kind and gave it to her. She was
still wearing her bulky coat, and her seat belt would hardly go round her, but the stewardess, with a kind, professional smile, had seen that it was fastened, and now she would have to stay hot and
uncomfortable until they were up. They had taxied to the end of the runway, and the engines were being run up, one by one – he had explained this to her with the first of them – and now
she sat tense and expectant, staring out of the window at this roaring dusk. After a moment she unwrapped a sweet and ate it thoughtfully. The engines were collected together; with a small shudder
of release they were moving into the short race for speed to become airborne. He felt her attention to the ground; her second’s astonishment when she realized that imperceptibly they had left
it; her amazement at the dwindling houses dropped like pebbles into the bottom of the air. They made a circuit, and below them were houses no longer, but lights marking the earth with intricate
chains and swags, and an occasional rolling glint of water like sheet iron. They were climbing – up into a melting sky cropped with milky hesitant stars, and the sun gone – leaving a
flush upon the air like the scent of heat. The cloud was as distant as mountains in an allegory: the sensation of speed settled to movement with the lack of comparison: they were in the air, and
then, as with the crackle like a mechanical clearing of the throat it announced its course, height, and cruising speed, they were in the aircraft. Belts were unfastened; cigarettes were lit.

‘Would you like to take off your coat now?’

She nodded: she was calm again, but her eyes shone and there was something friendly about her excitement. Her coat was taken away, but not before she had extracted a battered book from one of
its pockets. She was wearing a white cardigan over a blue and white checked shirt, and her absolutely straight hair was smoothed back from her ears by a black velvet snood. He looked at the book in
her lap: it was a Victorian copy of
Middlemarch.

‘Is that a good book?’

And she answered briefly: ‘Marvellous!’ Then she added: ‘but I don’t think I can read it now,’ and put it into the rack in front of her.

‘No – you can’t. You’ll be very busy for the next hour or two.’ Drinks and hors d’oeuvres were being handed and wheeled about, and now approached them. She
said: ‘I’m very inexperienced about drink: my opportunity for it has been rather limited.’

So he chose some sherry for her, and had a glass himself. He watched her choosing hors d’oeuvres until he said gently: ‘Of course you can have as much of this as you like, but there
is a seven-course dinner coming later.’

Her hand shot back into her lap and she went very pink.

‘I didn’t know. Goodness! I thought this was dinner. Thank you for telling me.’ She took one canapé off her plate and handed the rest back to the stewardess.
‘I’m so sorry. Is that all right?’

‘Does your father disapprove of drink?’

‘Oh no. But we don’t have it very much at home because he gives it to everybody who comes to the house and it’s gone in a trice. My aunt says that he does not discriminate
about his generosity. Do you know that all my brothers’ clothes have to be locked up to stop him giving them to people? And Papa’s clothes are very clearly marked because my aunt says
that this discourages people as it is known that he only has two suits left.’

‘And what about your aunt’s clothes – or yours, or your sisters’?’

Well, he only asks for them. He never routs about in our rooms. It’s only the boys who are in constant danger.’

‘What else does he give away?’

‘Oh – food, and books and furniture, but he’s got down to the big pieces now, so we tend to hear him at it. But once he gave all our winter blankets away in the autumn before
we’d started using them. It depends what people ask for. Hardly anybody
asks
for a dining room table. But fruit and vegetables! We’ve simply had to give them up.’

‘People must impose on him.’

‘They do, of course. But he says it is much better to be a fool than to miss somebody who really needs something.’

‘There might be something between the two extremes.’

‘There is: but my aunt advises us not to argue with him. He gets deeply distressed.’ Her face changed at the thought: ‘You see, to agree with us about that would mean altering
his principles, and he feels that one should determine these as early in life as possible and then act on them. If one kept altering one’s principles, one would be acting from expediency or
chance, and he says that one is short-sighted and the other of incalculable distance. What do
you
think about that?’

‘I think that relatively few people have principles. They can be expensive to maintain, and most people aren’t prepared to pay enough for them.’

‘Papa says that the great examples help in forming them – and after that he says that appreciation is a very good thing.’

‘
Does
he!’

She looked at him and went pink again. ‘I’m sorry. It’s probably rather dull hearing what somebody else thinks when you haven’t even met them.’

‘It is not in the least dull. Your father sounds the most interesting man I haven’t met for years. I should like him very much.’

‘Oh – everybody
does
; they almost love him – well, a few really do and the rest think so. Even the gypsies round us do. They used to steal the most enormous goose or
turkey to give him for Christmas every year. This worried Papa because naturally he accepted it, and he couldn’t always find where they stole it from to give it back. He said Caesar seemed to
live further away each year. So in the end he went to see the wife of the head gypsy and told her all about his rheumatism and she said that she would cure it, and he asked her to do it instead of
a goose which anybody could give him but nobody could cure his rheumatism. So now he gets a jar of greenish brown paste to rub on or drink with hot water.’

‘Does it cure him?’

‘Well, it makes him much better; I don’t think it actually cures him.’ She looked suddenly round her: people were being served with dinner. It seems so
odd
to be talking
about him here. He says that only the great man or the bore are totally unaffected by their environment . . .’

‘It depends which environment: one would not say you had been unaffected by yours.’

She flushed again. ‘Wouldn’t one?’ and he realized that it was with pleasure.

They had dinner, which took a long time, as Alberta was deeply impressed by it and ate everything. During it, she asked him about New York and the work she was to do, and he explained that they
were going first to an hotel and afterwards, possibly, to an apartment which friends often lent them; and as soon as they had cast Clemency, to the country somewhere. In New York she would do all
his letters, make the appointments, and accompany him to auditions – at least until Jimmy arrived. Then his wife might want various things done for her – shopping commissions,
telephoning, and letters. ‘But you’ll have some time to yourself,’ he finished; ‘there is a great deal to see there, and the shops are irresistible to women. There are two
warnings: you told me that you’re inexperienced about drink: a little drink goes a long way in New York until you’re used to it. Secondly, a number of people will want to play Clemency
and will stop at nothing to get an audition or to see me at the hotel; and still more people will want to know who
is
going to play her, or even looks like doing so. You must never let
either of us be bounced by surprise tactics – especially out of working hours, and you must never know anything about what is being decided.’

She listened so solemnly that he said: ‘That sounds pompous, but it is not meant to be more than necessary instruction: the American theatre doesn’t work quite like ours.’

‘I’ll do my best. If I get stuck, may I ask you?’

‘Me or Jimmy. Don’t worry Mrs Joyce with anything unnecessary. We have to look after her: she has a heart trouble.’

She looked at him and her face changed again, as it had for her father. Her face, which was very young but not remarkable, was sometimes unexpectedly beautiful because of the simplicity of
expressions upon it. Whatever she was feeling was occasionally to be seen – fresh, and entire – like the difference between looking at clear or muddy water.

Their tables had been removed, and now she was fishing in a battered handbag for a handkerchief, and he noticed punctures on the leather flap where there had been initials.

‘We must get you a new bag,’ he said gently: he was touched by her thinking of this detail in connection with changing her name.

She pushed it under her seat again. ‘It is worn out really – I’ve had it since I was fifteen: I would have got a new one anyway.’

Passengers were being offered brandy etc., and he asked her if she wanted any.

‘No thank you. But I enjoyed the wine enormously; more than any I’ve ever had.’

‘Jimmy told you why we wanted to change your name, didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ She was silent a moment, and then said: ‘I suppose that must be one of the hardest things to accept.’

In spite of himself, he said sharply: ‘She hasn’t accepted it. That’s die trouble.’ This was the trap of travelling: the surge of illogical, unreasoning intimacy: to
spread it, he asked unseriously: ‘What would your father say about that, do you think?’

She thought for a time without answering. ‘I don’t know. He says that experience is like food, and if one’s system is working properly it uses some kinds for nourishing and
others should just be eliminated. He says that the most unhappy people are the ones who can’t get rid of the useless experience.’

He was past the small personal confidence, and interested again.

‘Perhaps good experience – like food – can go bad on one.’

She laughed and said: ‘Yes – one mustn’t blame the experience too much: it doesn’t make itself.’ She was silent again; then she said diffidently: ‘Do you know
what I think?’

He leaned back in his seat thinking: it’s infectious – my fault, I asked for it – let’s have it. ‘No,’ he said.

‘The whole of life – for people – is like an enormous unfinished carpet with loose ends hanging out, and some people spin a few more inches of a strand, and some weave in one
of the existing strands, and very occasionally somebody does both those things: that makes a piece of new pattern in the design which goes on and on. And other people spend their lives trying to
see the whole roll of carpet that has been made in order to see what must be done to finish it.’

He was caught by this: laughing at himself for his shady little fears and delighted with her. ‘
Do
they see it all? Those last people?’