The Sea Change (46 page)

She was wearing her prettiest dress – the one Lillian got with her in New York and she looked marvellously fresh and neat and clean.

‘How
are
you,’ I said, and that was just all I could think of to say. She said she was very well and thanked me – just how I might have known she would.

‘Do you mind me coming up? I wanted to know how you were.’

‘Not at all.’ She seemed nervous. ‘Come and see something.’

She led me into the bathroom. There, crouched in the bath, was a small kitten, looking very neat and lost.

‘Julius gave it to me as a parting present. Mr Joyce said he thinks there may be trouble about quarantine, but I’m afraid we’re committed to this cat now. It is much nicer than
it looks, but I’m keeping it in the bath because it can’t get out and it won’t matter if it makes a mess there. Of course it has been fed.’

‘How did you get here?’

She told me, and somehow I felt that everything had been all right. We went back into her room: there was the big book she writes in lying open on the bed.

‘Are you writing a novel or something?’

‘A kind of diary, but I don’t think I shall go on with it. I won’t, in fact.’ She shut the book and put it inside her suitcase.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me about the plans?’

‘Yes: what are they?’

I told her: she didn’t look as pleased as I’d hoped, although she thanked me in her prim way for all the trouble I’d taken.

‘What’s the matter, Alberta? You wanted to get home as quickly as possible didn’t you?’

‘I do, of course.’

In spite of her fresh clothes, her tanned skin and clear eyes, she looked pale and as though something was worrying her, and as though she couldn’t decide whether to tell me or not. I
waited; if I asked her, I guessed she wouldn’t. Then she sat on the bed suddenly, and said: ‘It sounds awfully silly, but I simply
dread
going back. I can’t explain it. I
would have thought that my father being dead would stop anything else mattering – like places, or things one had to do, but it doesn’t stop this at all. I just don’t want to go
back, and see them and hear all the story of him – how they found him and what people think of the driver of the car, and sort papers in his study and write letters to people I don’t
even know about him and clear up his house and all the traces of him so that somebody else can live in it, and then we all pack up and leave and that’s that. I just don’t want to go
back,’ she repeated, and then in a rather shaky voice added: ‘and you needn’t tell me that all this is both childish and selfish because I know – and that makes it
worse.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it—’ but she interrupted: ‘Well, it
is
both childish and selfish,’ and stared angrily at the floor.

‘I meant I wouldn’t dream of telling you anything about it. Except that I’ll come with you, if you’d find that any use at all. There’s sure to be a pub near where I
could stay and not be a worry to your family, but just be around if you needed me?’ I was standing in front of her at the end of the bed – there was nowhere to sit so I knelt because I
had to see her face. She looked up and simply said: ‘Oh Jimmy – it would make all the difference!’ Then more and more colour came into her face and she said: ‘If you are
quite sure that it wouldn’t inconvenience you?’

‘It wouldn’t.’ I handed her my handkerchief and she blew her nose.

‘It is most odd. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that your coming would make all the difference at all. I don’t mean to sound rude, of course: I mean I truly wasn’t
trying to get you to come or anything.’ She looked at me anxiously: ‘I really do thank you for taking all this trouble. So it won’t just be the aeroplane, it will be the train
down and everything else?’

I managed to make an airy gesture: ‘Aeroplanes, trains, boats – they’re all the same to me.’

Her eyes shone: ‘And people? Do you find them indistinguishable?’

I put my hand to her head: ‘Some of them have wet hair which is one way of telling. If I really want to make it easy for myself—’

She sneezed: I got my packet out and unwrapped it. ‘I put a little distinguishing mark on them.’ The bracelet exactly fitted, and she wasn’t wearing her watch. ‘Then it
is perfectly easy for me to tell even at a distance . . .’ She looked up from her wrist. ‘That they are different from everybody else.’

She looked solemn and sparkling and her head was very close to mine; but it was odd, I was loving her so much that I knew this had to be done in a different way to any way I’d tried or
imagined. So I picked up both her hands and kissed them, and then fetched her big book out of her suitcase. I put it on her lap and unscrewed my pen.

‘There’s just one more thing for you to write.’

‘What should I write?’

‘All good young diaries end up with a proposal: I’ll dictate it. “Today, Jimmy asked me to marry him. He says I may take as long as I like to decide about this as long as I
come to the right decision in the end.” That’s all.’

She wrote it: then she looked at the bracelet and finally said: ‘Is that true?’

‘Quite true – only it’s a secret: it’s a secret diary, you see: so nobody else knows.’

She looked awed: ‘You see – I’m not quite sure about it: it is rather a momentous step where one should consult all one’s feelings.’

‘It’s a case for considering every single one of them.’

‘And that takes time?’

‘Well, naturally, I don’t know how many feelings you have, but you take your time.’

She sneezed again. ‘I love my bracelet: it is truly the most beautiful object. Do you think we could change the subject – I haven’t got much presence of mind left about this
one?’

‘I haven’t got another subject to change into right now. But I ought to go and find Emmanuel and tell him the plans.’

‘Not our plans? I mean any plans we might make?’

‘Not them – no. I’ll meet you in the bar.’

When I was at the door, she said: ‘Jimmy! About Mr Joyce. He told me that if we go to New York, he may have to stay in England for a while: he sounded very sad about it. I think he has a
great devotion to you.’ I waited, because I thought she was going to say something else – but she didn’t – she just said: ‘That’s all. I just wanted to tell
you.’

Walking down the stairs feeling so rich with life I seemed to float, I suddenly thought of what she’d said about Emmanuel: in all the years I’d lived and worked with him I’d
never thought of the devotion as being that way round. I’d thought of him as powerful, casually generous, brilliant, and generally, somehow, a romantic character, and I as painstaking, and
faithful, his devoted dog-eyed boy. I’d really lived it that way regardless of results because I’d had no particular sense of direction – but now that I felt this changing I
didn’t have the need either to make a religion of working for him, or a political cause out of working for myself . . .

4

EMMANUEL

T
HE
whole day had been stamped with finality for him – all the events had the poignant unreality of a dream – of
ends and departure. He had burned the pictures of both the Sarahs together down in Jimmy’s room which he had found empty, and he had watched the paper curl and discolour ahead of a flame
hardly detectable in the bright sunlight. Very soon they were gone, and he was left with the empty red folder and nothing to conceal. Jimmy had arrived, remarked incuriously on the smell, and told
him that he was taking her to her home: he was grateful on the whole, not to have to make a gesture to Jimmy about that. They had gone down together to the bar with so much unsaid that the illusion
of their being in complete accord returned, or – possibly because he felt that this was an end to a certain kind of relationship with Jimmy – it had merely ceased to be an illusion.
They had ordered a drink, and Jimmy had told him more about the arrangements: he had listened as though these motions were already past, and had never had anything to do with him, but he had
observed Jimmy’s elated confidence and it had touched him somewhere with a sharp sense of separation. Lillian had joined them and her approach across the room was tentative, had a softness
about it which marked her behaviour throughout the day – he noticed that in all the time she had spent upstairs, she had not really made up her face.

And lastly, she came down, wearing the dress in which he had first desired her, and carrying the kitten’s basket. As she put the basket down on the floor, he saw a new and pretty bracelet
clustered on her wrist, about which, throughout the day, nobody said anything. Lillian was introduced to the kitten who responded with ferocious affection – it wasn’t until much later
in the afternoon that he had realized that Lillian was the first person to notice a new bracelet and remark upon it . . .

They had lunched at a taverna in the country – out of doors in a grove with the mountain of Hymettus behind them. Sprigs of verbena were laid on the table; the hot air was impregnated with
their dry lemon sweetness. They were served with a meticulous leisure – the meal ending hours later with a dish of walnuts steeped in honey. He could not remember what they talked about: any
gaiety had the quality of an Indian summer, as though, separately, they were all acknowledging the end of something together. He saw each one of them with the clarity of detachment, and with the
affection of a farewell, as though their lives together hung upon a thread; they were all going to leave one another and themselves in this hot silent place and were already aware of the changes to
come. He thought of the years he had known them and the hours that he had loved them and the moments that he had understood them – and he included himself in this plural. He saw her, a little
shy with Jimmy, friendly to Lillian and grateful to himself. He saw Lillian gentle to the girl, almost tender to Jimmy, but here there was a blank – he felt only that she was acutely aware of
him – he could put no name to her manner. And he saw himself – the oldest, who in some way had provided the pivot on which they had all turned to one another, whose function where they
were concerned might very well now be fulfilled and who had now to discover some private direction for the rest of his life. In these last hours he felt calm, disengaged, and concealed from them.
It did not occur to him – until they were standing round their table preparing to leave it – that perhaps there were dimensions to this concealment, and that they might each,
separately, have some different thing to conceal from the other one. This, sharpened by the urgency of departure – there was just time now to drive to the hotel, pick up the luggage and drive
to the airport – heightened his perceptions. One does not give up anything, he thought, she was never mine: it was a notion I had of myself with her. He remembered years ago telling Jimmy
something of the kind – when the boy had his orphanage chip on his shoulder – he’d told him that afterwards he would find that it had never been there, and this would make him
feel light, and a bit of a fool. My God, he thought, the difference between what one thinks about how things are and the actual living through of one’s discoveries!

He waited in the car with Lillian while the others collected their luggage. He looked at her and she smiled so hesitantly that he said: ‘What is it?’

‘It is horrid seeing people off. I was wondering whether I’d stay here, perhaps?’

He said: ‘I think we should both go.’ He did not know why he said it, and sounded perfectly determined. He glanced at her to see whether she was going to demur, but she simply
nodded.

He said: ‘I burned those pictures,’ and she answered: ‘Thank you, darling.’

When they came out of the hotel, Jimmy went in front and Alberta sat between them with the kitten’s basket on the floor in front of her. After a while and as though she had been thinking
carefully, she said:

‘I don’t really know how to thank you both for the wonderful time that I have had, and your kindness about everything. As it seems likely that I shall be going to New York
eventually, I wondered whether you would care to adopt this kitten? I thought perhaps it could live more happily in your house than being carted about the world by me. It isn’t that I
don’t like it – I think it is the most personable and strong-minded cat I’ve ever met. But there is its future to be considered.’

Lillian looked at him, so he said: ‘You must decide, but personally I think all houses should be furnished by at least one cat.’

So Lillian seriously accepted: she seemed to understand Alberta in this matter, who said: ‘It will be much more compatible than that eccentric little monkey,’ and they reminded each
other of its speedy and terrible behaviour, while he watched the road slip past, marking the time in seconds now.

At the airport they all got out and waited while the tickets were checked and the luggage weighed. They were late, they were given to understand: the bus passengers had already been waiting half
an hour, and the aeroplane was actually in – they could see it being refuelled. In the hall where all the stalls sold their trivia, they seemed to split up: Jimmy took Lillian’s arm and
walked her off to buy cigarettes. He was left alone with Alberta. She said diffidently: ‘Shall I see you again before we go to New York?’

‘I don’t know, Sarah. Do you dread going home?’ he added abruptly: the idea of her dreading it had suddenly occurred to him.

‘I do, rather. But it will be so much of a bridge to have Jimmy.’

‘Is he going home with you?’

‘If you can spare him?’

‘Oh yes. I shan’t be needing him – except for the New York production – for some time.’

‘Until you write another play in fact.’

‘Yes,’ he replied discovering this. They were silent until minutes later she said: ‘We’ve said goodbye, haven’t we? So we can’t say any more.’

‘Remember what I asked you.’

‘I do: it may well prove possible in the aeroplane.’

Their flight was being called. The others returned. Lillian kissed Alberta and Jimmy. Jimmy looked anxiously at him: he put a hand on Jimmy’s arm, and felt himself smiling, heard himself
say: ‘Take care of her.’ And Jimmy said: ‘Yes. I’ll call you at Claridge’s the day after tomorrow.’ Then they had to go. He stood by Lillian to watch them walk
through the doorways and become diminished by the crowd outside, who already stood with the afternoon sun in their eyes and white dust circling round their feet, waiting to be led to the aircraft.
Lillian said: