The Sea Change (31 page)

‘Lillian?’ he said: his voice was faint, but perfectly clear.

‘This is Lillian.’

‘This is Emmanuel Joyce. Let me hear you – say good evening to me.’

‘Good evening.’

‘Thank God. I’ve been thinking so much about you – I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. How are you? You are not ill, are you?’

‘No. Are you really in Stockholm?’

‘Only just. I’m catching a plane back tonight. Before I catch it I must know one thing about you.’ He paused, and afraid that the line would go dead, I said: ‘What thing?
What do you want to know?’

There was another pause, and then his voice, still faint, and very deliberate, said: ‘Do you think you could possibly marry me?’

Then I heard my own voice simply asking: ‘When?’ and heard him give a delighted laugh.

‘Oh – I
was
right to ask you like this. As soon as anyone will allow us. I’ll be back tomorrow. Are you wearing something blue?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought you were. Lillian!’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m forty-one. Is that all right?’

‘It’s quite all right.’

‘Not much background, I warn you – it’s all foreground with me.’

‘I’ve got no foreground at all.’

‘We can share in that case. Would you like a sapphire?’

‘What for?’

‘To bind you to me, of course.’

‘Yes – yes I would like one.’

‘Dark or light?’

‘Not dark or light.’

‘Not dark or light,’ he repeated as though that pleased him. ‘Where are we going to live?’

‘We are going to live with each other.’ (I remember how simple and charming that sounded then.)

We made a plan about meeting; then he said: ‘Lillian! Do I have to get anyone’s permission to marry you?’

‘I’m twenty-four: I’ll just tell them. I’m sure they’ll be pleased.’

‘I shouldn’t count on that.’

I said: ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Say good night to me now – I’ve got to go.’

‘Good night, Emmanuel.’

There was a pause, and then his voice – faint and gentle.

‘Good night, darling Lillian.’

Then he had gone: I put the receiver down, and walked slowly back to the family and told them. We were both right. They were far from pleased: dumbfounded, incredulous, horrified, suspicious,
angry, and embarrassed. But they couldn’t stop me, and nothing they said mattered in the least. This was when I felt who I was: felt distinct, direct, without choice, calm, and able to do
exactly what was needed. Everything they said – and they all said a great deal – simply uncovered more of my own purpose to me, without changing it. I found no need to argue with them;
that they did not frighten or divide me, nor make me unhappy or angry. For once I felt something steady, like a firm seed, growing in me – reaching the extremities of my eyes and fingers, so
that I saw what a suspended creature patched up of imagination and invention I had always been – the whole of my life until this moment (I was packing my clothes with an economy of neat
movement that made even this part of it enjoyable). For once, then, I neither planned nor imagined what marrying Em would be like: I packed all my clothes and dined and slept, breakfasted, said
goodbye to the family and caught the train to London, and all the time I was contained in the movement of each minute. I remember feeling almost physically as though my life had suddenly turned
towards the sun, and perhaps there is some connection between then and how I am now – so many years later, on this hard bed with the sun striking me on this island of Greece.

But if it is just that there may be some connection, what is it, and what is different between now and then? Surely it is not simply the years? Only the energy is recognizable all this time
apart; then there seemed to be so much to do with it, and now? What place is there for my generosity, or target for sacrifice, or time for my patience or – with Sarah gone – person for
loving? If I continue as I am, I must find this out or I shall be wrecked and energy will explode in rockets of distress . . . All this makes me unbearably sleepy and sleep now is like a kind of
holding my breath in my heart – I can wake, so to speak, where I left off: and so I sleep.

4

JIMMY

T
HE
first time I noticed that something was wrong was in the middle of the night two days after we arrived on the island.
There are two small bedrooms at the top of this house we’ve taken; Emmanuel has one – ostensibly for writing, but he’s taken to sleeping there – and I have the other. We all
go to bed late, as the evenings are cooler for walking about, and most of us rest in the afternoons. We’d had a good evening; gone down to the port and eaten at one of the restaurants. The
food is lousy, but what travel bureaux call the atmosphere – and I don’t know what else to call it – is gay; and the brandy although it tastes cheap actually is. There was a young
girl playing an accordion; it’s a queer instrument for a girl, but she played it very well, and what looked like all her family stood around and shouted and sang and she never said anything
back – just smiled and smiled. Well – we walked home along a path overlooking the sea; the fishing boats were out with flare lights to attract the fish and the moon was coming up,
shining, someone said, like pewter on the sea; I remembered this because it bothered me, I couldn’t think what pewter was. Then Lillian said: ‘When we have our house, darling,
we’ll have pewter in the dining room – it is so much more beautiful than silver.’ Alberta asked what kind of house, and where were they going to have it, and Lillian said,
England; in the country, but they didn’t know where, and Alberta must help to find it, but, oh no, she would be in New York, wouldn’t she – for years and years if the play ran?
And Emmanuel said just nothing at all.

When we got back I went straight up and feeling I shouldn’t sleep until I heard Emmanuel quiet in his room next to mine, I lay on my bed and smoked. I heard him come up after saying
goodnight to Lillian, and waited for him to settle down, but he didn’t. It wasn’t that he made much noise, or even that I could hear everything (the wall was thin but not that thin); it
was just that a strong feeling of restlessness seeped through it to me and made me anxious. I wanted to go into his room, but didn’t feel that he’d like that. I lay there arguing that
he’d come in to me if he wanted to talk, but he didn’t come, and I knew he wasn’t asleep and I couldn’t sleep either. It was his play, I thought, gnawing at his vitals, and
it was then that I realized that I got a kind of vicarious excitement out of Emmanuel starting a play, and didn’t like that somehow.

It must have been much later – I realized I’d been dozing – when I came to because I heard his door open and his steps on the creaking stairs. Then another door opened, and
then silence. Surely he hadn’t woken Lillian? She was sleeping so well these nights that I didn’t think he would, and knew I didn’t want him to; after all, what was I for? But
when, minutes later, I got out of bed and went to my window overlooking the sea terrace, I saw him sitting on the parapet with his knees drawn up and his head on them – he wasn’t
looking at the moon on the sea. I went down.

When he heard me, he raised his head and made a motion of silence with his hand towards the window a few yards away: Lillian slept there.

‘Is the play on your mind?’

‘Which play?’

‘The new one.’

He shook his head. We were whispering, which seemed to make us say less.

He made another motion, and we moved further along the terrace away from Lillian’s window. I offered him a cigarette, and he took it: I waited for him to say something, but he
didn’t. After a while (I was watching him, and he was looking at the sea) I said: ‘This house in England. Is that Lillian’s idea, or have you decided to settle down?’

He said: ‘She wants the house to be in England.’

There was another pause, and then he broke out: ‘Which part of one decides to settle down? That’s what I should like to know, and what happens to the rest of one?’

‘Lillian wants to do it?’

‘
I
think it would be better for Lillian – for both of us.’

‘Is that what is worrying you?’

He smiled, and it gave me a shock, because it made me notice his eyes which didn’t change – had still a kind of desperate hunger which was accentuated by the smile.

‘You know, Jimmy, when I am anxious, anything that comes into my head attaches itself to my anxiety. I’m just Anxiety Inc. People always think that one has a good reason for feeling
as one does if philosophy could find it out, and often one has no reason, or a damn bad one. Perhaps that is what philosophy is meant to find out, among other things. More and more I sympathize
with Marlowe and his allegorical figures. I could wake up in the morning and say “I’m sloth today” and everything I touched would be affected by what I was.’

He stopped abruptly, but I felt his thoughts going on and on. I was right about this because a minute later he said: ‘If I had to describe the whole of life on this earth by marks on a
piece of paper, I would make circles.’

‘
Circles?
’

He looked at me almost impatiently: ‘Yes. The serpent’s tail in his mouth, the links of a chain, the sun – the paradox, the fitting connection of one thing with another –
the difficulty of understanding what is a beginning and what is an end – dimensions always seem to be scaled down in an attempt to conceal this difficulty, so it’s almost impossible to
see anything whole – even one’s life.’

‘Do you want to see that whole?’

He smiled again, and said gently: ‘It might help, Jimmy, it might help.’

‘Yeah, I see what you mean,’ I said, after thinking about it. ‘It would make a hell of a difference to what one did.’

‘Or a difference to who one was?’

‘I suppose so.’ I wasn’t with him there, and I had thought of something else. ‘Look here – what about the girl?’

He drew deeply on his cigarette without replying, and then he gave a curious little start as though he’d only just heard what I’d said.

‘She’s going to be good, don’t you think, Jimmy?’

‘I don’t know yet. What I do know is that it’s no good her being the perfect Clemency inside, if I can’t get it to come across, which it isn’t doing now.’

‘You can’t expect that in two sessions. Give her time.’

‘Of course I don’t expect her to learn everything at once.’ I heard the trace of anger in my voice – for some reason I was unaccountably nervous. ‘What worries me
is that she’s unexpectedly self-conscious – and while she’s like that she sets up a block and I can’t get past it. I can’t get her to understand why I want her to do
what I want.’

He didn’t say anything, so I went on: ‘You’ve seen it: she blushes, and looks miserable, and tries again and it’s further off the point than ever.’

‘You’ve established the fact that she’s got a big voice.’

‘Yeah, I know, but she doesn’t know how to use it. She’d lose it in a week the way she is going at present. That’s what I’ve got to teach her. How to relax and keep
herself balanced so that she knows what she’s doing and where it is coming from.’

‘Well? I don’t disagree with you, but what am I supposed to say?’

‘Well, so I think it would be better if I had her to myself for a bit. I think it’s easier to outgrow this self-conscious thing with one other person. Even two people make an
audience, and with you there she’s worrying the whole time about the sense of the part – the matter rather than the manner.’

‘I see.’

‘Just for a bit – until I get her loosened up and with more confidence.’ Something was wrong about this conversation, but so help me I didn’t know what.

He threw his cigarette away, and smiled at me but there was something wrong with that, too. ‘Well, Jimmy, if you feel that it would make it easier for you to have her to yourself you must
have her to yourself. We must all bear the main point of the exercise in mind, after all. What else are any of us for?’

‘Speaking for myself, I have no idea.’

After a bit, he asked: ‘Did she say that she didn’t want me there?’

‘She hasn’t said anything at all; it’s my idea. Let me have her for a week, and then come and see. She’ll need you later on. This isn’t an easy way to do things
after all – it’s forcing someone, like a hothouse plant. She’ll need you when she knows a little more how to say the lines; then she’ll have to understand why she says any
of them.’

‘I doubt it. I expect I shoot my bolt when I write a play; the rest is up to the rest of you – producers and the like.’

‘Look here,’ I said desperately: ‘I’m
not
the rest of them – I’m on your side, to do things exactly as you want. If you don’t think it’s a
good idea for me to work on her alone, I
won’t
. . .’ I was raising my voice, and he made a move for silence.

After we’d both listened for a moment, he said: ‘No – you go ahead. You’d better get some sleep if you’re going to work in the morning.’

I felt dismissed, and like most people who have got their own way in something, I was anxious to make an irrelevant gesture. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like a hot drink or something, to help
you sleep?’

He smiled again. ‘Hot milk, on a Greek island? Don’t be absurd, Jimmy. You go up: I shan’t be long.’

And that was that.

Well – I started the next morning working with Alberta alone, and he went to the port with Lillian, who was delighted.

Alone with her on the same terrace where we had talked about her in the night, I looked at her carefully – trying to think of the best method . . . She stood in front of me in a cotton
skirt and shirt with the sleeves rolled up: she had bare feet. She looked tense and apprehensive, and when she realized I was looking at her she shifted her weight from one foot to another and
looked at the ground – like a kid about to recite a lesson she doesn’t know. She had nice feet; I hadn’t noticed them before.

‘Let’s sit a while and talk.’

She smiled obediently and sat down: I wasn’t getting anywhere.

‘Look – what’s the matter? When we work on this, you get kind of frightened so I don’t know what to do with you.’