The Sea Change (37 page)

‘He might
get
to mind,’ she said wistfully. ‘And it wouldn’t stop us going on trips from time to time – once we were settled in.’

‘Lillian, I think it’s a fine idea, but what about this play? Won’t he want to go straight to New York for that?’

‘That’s what I wanted to ask you.’ She leaned forward while I lit her cigarette and I smelled that scent I’ve known ever since I’ve known her: something to do with
lemons – I’ve always liked it.

‘Couldn’t you manage the play, and Alberta, if you’re going to use her, with
out
Em? Surely he doesn’t have to be there all through rehearsals? We could just fly
over for the opening, and fly back, if he wants to go very badly.’

‘He may want to be there,’ I said – I was beginning to feel trapped.

‘But you could manage without him, if he didn’t?’

‘Yes – yes I think I
could
do that; but I wouldn’t want to if he didn’t want me to.’

She was watching me carefully for the evasions I was trying to avoid.

‘Alberta is going to be good, isn’t she? You’ve really decided to use her?’

‘
I
should like to. I don’t know what he thinks. I was going to see this morning, but she walked out on us. I think I upset her.’

‘That’s a good sign anyway.’

‘Why? Surely it’s better for a producer if an actress holds her ground and keeps on acting.’

‘Temperament,’ she said vaguely: ‘or perhaps Em put her off.’ She was thinking of something else. Then she asked suddenly: ‘What did you think of those
pictures?’

‘Very good. Very like her too.’ I’d planned what to say about them by now.

‘Oh Jimmy, is that all you can find to say?’

‘What else would you say?’

‘I’d say that Miss Young is going to have quite a time in New York. I think everyone will be after her if she isn’t protected. I think you’ll have your work cut out to
keep her mind on her work.’

‘She’s always seemed to me reasonably conscientious.’

‘My dear, you forget how young she is. She’s never lived in a city before, and certainly nowhere where every other young man in town will want to date her. If you don’t take
pretty drastic steps, you’ll find yourself without a lead because she’ll have married someone, or be having a breakdown through lack of sleep or something.’

‘What steps do you suggest I take?’

She put out her cigarette and started hunting in her bag. ‘Well, you could always marry her yourself, couldn’t you Jimmy?’

I felt the back of my neck start to burn, which, damn it, I’d give anything to stop. ‘She’d never marry me.’

‘Oh I don’t know. If you made it clear to her that it was for the sake of her career, and pointed out the vicious and dreary alternatives, she might. After all, whatever you are, you
aren’t a fate worse than death.’ Then she stopped, and said: ‘Jimmy – I’m teasing you – perhaps in very bad taste. It’s
your
life – you do
what you want. Only, if you want something, do something about it.’

I said I’d see about paying the bill and walked flaming into the cool café. As I walked I thought – really I could go anywhere just like this and not have left much behind. I
didn’t seem to have anything excepting nine years’ experience at directing Emmanuel’s life and his plays. A future as insecure as my past was uncertain, and nothing tangible about
the present unless you counted some nice luggage which just about held my clothes. However you looked at it, it wasn’t much to offer.

When I got back to Lillian, she gave me her hand to pull her up, and said: ‘You should count up your assets one day, Jimmy dear. You’d be surprised.’

I didn’t tell her that I had, and I wasn’t.

On the way back Lillian said: ‘Let’s go by the sea’; so we did, and half way home she said: ‘Let’s bathe’; so we did that too. We were peaceful and
didn’t talk much; once she said to me: ‘I wasn’t teasing you in a bitchy way, darling Jimmy. I was trying to infuse you with the kind of courage I’m afraid you haven’t
got. Like you have kinds I haven’t got.’ Then she went on dreamily: ‘I wonder how many of us it would take to make one whole person? Even the four of us wouldn’t do.
Hundreds, I expect.’ Then she yawned, and it made me remember Emmanuel in the morning and wonder where Alberta was, but I didn’t want her to know that I felt anxious about either of
them so I waited for her to suggest our return.

We found Alberta kneeling on the terrace with the typewriter in front of her and Emmanuel signing the letters she had finished for him; everything very calm and businesslike, but I noticed that
Emmanuel wouldn’t look at me, and I felt somehow nervous of meeting Alberta after the morning, although Lillian had so obviously enjoyed herself that she filled any gaps there might have
been.

After dinner I took Alberta for a bathe. I’d had what seemed to me at dinner a very good idea, but when we got down on the beach and I was alone with her – although it still seemed
good, it seemed much more difficult. I’d decided that the only way to do it was to be perfectly practical and level-headed and not make too much of the whole thing. Then, although that
couldn’t frighten her, she might see the sense of it, and I might get some sort of line on how she felt. After all, if she said she couldn’t bear me, or she was in love with someone
else or she didn’t want to marry anybody, I’d know where I was. I’d also thought pretty carefully about what Lillian had said, and decided that my only asset was that I did know
how to look after people – so I plugged that part of it fairly hard. The only trouble was that she didn’t say any of the things back that I’d expected. She didn’t say she
couldn’t bear me, she didn’t say that she was in love with anybody else (although she didn’t say she wasn’t); she kept saying that was extremely kind of me – as though
I was offering her a job. I nearly got angry with her, she was so damn polite: she also said something queer about not wanting to marry in order to be more comfortable . . . what the hell does she
think I’m for if it isn’t to do every single goddam thing I could to look after her in every way I can think of? I suppose I
didn’t
put it to her right; once I’d felt
that, I felt sure of it and said so – in order to give myself some kind of loophole to raise the matter again. We bathed, and her hair got wet so that it was stuck in little wet triangles on
her forehead and the rest of it was like a neat gleaming cap: I spread out my towel for us both to sit on and put hers round her and for one awful moment I wished she was very unhappy so that she
wouldn’t even notice who was comforting her. Then she asked me if I’d thought what it would be like if she fell in love with someone else after we were married: this was good; at least
it meant she was thinking about it, but naturally I answered her very calmly and finished by making a few general (rather good) remarks about marriage, but I’ve noticed that women
aren’t much good at generalizations, they always come back to a personal view: she said what about
my
falling in love with somebody. The utter impossibility of this clearly
hadn’t struck her – I didn’t feel that I could go into that so I just brushed it aside. Then I felt we’d said just about as much as I could manage without losing control of
the situation, so I said I wanted a drink. I made her climb in front of me in case she slipped: alone, I could say this to her – even with Lillian it would be possible, but somehow, after
this morning not with Emmanuel. This made me angry and I told her an idiot lie about him, and she knew it was one although I think even if she hadn’t I couldn’t have stuck to it. I
wanted to take her by the shoulders and stare into her eyes and ask: ‘What
do
you feel about him? Just tell me so I’ll know and I won’t ask any more questions’;
because I know she wouldn’t lie to me – she’s about the most truthful person I’ve ever met – but I couldn’t do it: I just apologized, and went to bed feeling
lousy with anxiety that I’d never be worth her the way I was acting. She’s the last person in the world I want to lie to, and he’s the last person in the world I want to lie about
– and so what? I still did it. That kept me awake some time, and I came to the conclusion that what with one thing and another I’d been taking my own character for granted.

4

LILLIAN

A
PART
from giving Jimmy a chance to be alone with Alberta, I really did want to talk to Em. He’d been almost silent at
dinner, excepting when he’d done a set piece – one of his film script conference stories with everyone calling him Mannie – I know them all but they still make me laugh; the rest
of the time he seemed hardly to be with us. At one point, when we’d been talking about Greek myths I said why didn’t he make a play of one – in contemporary terms, and he said the
idea had a kind of whimsical vulgarity that nauseated him. And that, as Jimmy said, was that. Alberta asked whether there were any new ideas that hadn’t been written about, and he said no,
but occasionally somebody discovered something for himself, and then, if he could write, it became a fresh translation, and, to people who hadn’t made the discovery, something new. But in
three hours that could hardly be described as a fair share of the conversation. It irritated me because I felt he was casting a feeling of gloom on all three of us and the whole day.

After the others had gone for their bathe, I got glasses and our house bottle of brandy which we hardly ever drink because it is so full of fire and vanilla, and lay on the one comfortable chair
that we keep on the terrace. ‘Really, Em, that was a most tactless suggestion.’

‘What was tactless?’

‘Couldn’t you see that Jimmy wanted to be alone with her? The last thing they want is a pair of old chaperones: I’d have thought you would be the first person to notice that.
Give me some brandy, darling.’

He poured the brandy in silence, and lit a cigarette.

‘Is something worrying you? Is the new play on your mind?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Are you worrying about Alberta?’

‘Alberta?’

‘Clemency, if you prefer. Jimmy seems quite happy about her.’

‘Has Jimmy been pouring out his heart to you?’

‘He’s much too shy. He doesn’t have to tell me – I know.’

He sat on the parapet and turned to the sea – I could hardly hear what he said. ‘What do you think she feels about him?’

It was odd, I hadn’t thought of that. ‘I’m not sure. She’s got the kind of reserve that makes it very difficult to tell. It’s obvious she
likes
him, and
after all, she agreed to go bathing with him. Do you remember that time in France when we found that wonderful little beach one night and took off all our clothes and just plunged in?’ He
didn’t answer, and I knew it was no good getting angry with him when he was like this, so I went on: ‘and the next day when we tried to find it again in the light, we couldn’t: it
didn’t seem to be anywhere. Do you remember?’

He said: ‘I didn’t – but you’ve reminded me.’

‘Darling, do turn round, or I shan’t hear a word you say, and could I have one of your cigarettes?’

He bent down to give me one, and when he lit the match I saw his face. He looked dreadful – collapsed and exhausted like he used to look after bad asthma. ‘Darling! What is the
matter? Are you ill?’

But he only blew out the match and said crossly: ‘Not in the least. I’m deadly tired – that’s all; I didn’t sleep last night.’

‘You slept this morning.’

‘As you’ve so often told me, that is hardly the same thing.’

‘Do you want to go to bed now?’

He smiled then, and said: ‘Oh no – the last thing I want to do is to go to bed.’ He drank some brandy and sat on the parapet again. ‘What was it you wanted to talk
about?’

‘I’m not at all sure that you’re in the right mood for it.’

He said nothing: I’ve noticed before that he gets these attacks of silence: they annoy me because I don’t understand them – whatever he is feeling doesn’t take me like
that when I feel it, and the most I can do is to provoke him into a contradiction or a retort. That would be useless now; I was just about to try again, when he said: ‘You want to talk about
returning to England and buying a house – is that it?’

‘Yes. Would they be wildly unsuitable topics?’

‘Not if you will do most of the talking.’

I said: ‘I’ve adored being here: it has been a perfect holiday, but I feel it is coming to an end.’

‘The perfection?’

‘No – the whole thing. I feel that it is time we went back – almost I feel I know we
are
going back. I’m not bored, and it has been wonderful to bathe again and
live in this air and the marvellous, continuing sun – but I was wrong about one thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘I thought that an island would be a good place for you to write, and it hasn’t been. I feel this must be depressing for you, and that you would be far happier in one of the old
places that you associated with writing. If we went back to London – Jimmy could get you that nice room in Shepherd Market and I could start house hunting, and only take you to see one if it
really seemed a desirable residence. If it is humanly possible, I should like to find a house and get a bit settled before we go to the Bahamas in January.’

‘Why on earth are we going there?’

‘Because Leonard and Jo asked us. Oh, don’t start being difficult about that – you said you wanted to go when they asked us. If we’ve just got a new house it will
probably be torture to go, although one can’t do anything much to a garden in January, whereas the autumn is the perfect time to start. But it may take months to find the right
house.’

‘In which case?’

‘In which case, the sooner we start the better. Then you’ll be able to get on with your play, Jimmy can go on training Alberta until they have to go to America – perhaps she
could have a short holiday at home as well, I know that she wants to see her father, and I can look for the house.’

I waited for him to say that he wanted to go to New York, but he didn’t: he didn’t say anything.

‘What I do need to consider much more with you is the kind of house we are looking for.’