Homecomings (33 page)

‘It would be ungrateful to grumble,’ he replied in a stately fashion. ‘One manages to earn one’s bread and butter’ – as usual, he could not keep it up, and he winked – ‘
and
a little piece of cake.’

‘What about you, L S?’ He was genuinely curious about others, it was one of his strengths. ‘Every time I hear about you, you seem to be flourishing.’

Yes, I said, things had gone comparatively well.

‘You go from power to power, don’t you? Backstairs secrets and gentlemen in little rooms with XYZ after their names, all clamping collars round our necks,’ he said, with a kind of free association. He broke out: ‘There was a time when I used to think you’d become an ornament here.’ He grinned: ‘In that case, just about this year of grace we should have begun to cut each other’s throats.’

‘I’m sure we should,’ I said.

Getliffe, his mood changing within the instant, looked at me in reproach.

‘You mustn’t say those things, L S. You mustn’t even think them. There’s always room at the top and people like you and me ought to help each other.

‘Do you know,’ he added in a whisper, ‘that just now one has to turn down cases one would like to take?’

‘Too busy?’

‘One’s never too busy for a thousand smackers,’ said Getliffe frowning: he was, unexpectedly so after the first impression he made, one of the most avaricious of men.

‘Well then?’

‘One comes to a stage when one doesn’t want to drop any bricks.’

He was coy, he repeated his allusion, looked at me boldly like a child expecting to be caught out, but would not explain. Then I realized. There would be vacancies on the Bench soon, Getliffe was in the running, and throughout his whole career he would have sacrificed anything, even his great income, to become a judge. As he sat there that morning I thought I was seeing him almost on top of his world, Getliffe
in excelsis,
one of the few men I had ever seen in sight of all he wanted. It was to him at that moment that I had to let my secret out.

‘Herbert,’ I mentioned it casually, ‘I may want, it isn’t certain but I may, a bit of advice about a divorce case.’

‘I thought your poor wife was dead,’ Getliffe replied, and his next words overlay the first: ‘I’m very sorry to hear it, L S.’

‘I may want some professional advice about how to get it through as painlessly as possible.’

‘
I’ve
always been happily married,’ Getliffe reproved me. ‘I’m thankful to say that the thought of divorce has never come into either of our heads.’

‘Anyone would like to be in your position,’ I told him. ‘But–’

‘I always say,’ Getliffe interrupted, ‘that it takes a sense of humour to make a success of marriage. A sense of humour, and do-unto-others – especially
one other
– as-you-would-they-should-do-unto-you. That’s what it takes.’

‘Some of us aren’t quite as lucky.’

‘Anyway,’ said Getliffe, suddenly curious, ‘what position are you in?’

I knew that, although tricky, he was also discreet. I told him that I had known a woman, whose name did not matter at present, before her marriage: she had been married under four years and had a child not yet three: now she and I had met again, and wished to get married ourselves.

‘Well, L S, I’ve got to tell you what I think as man-to-man, and I’ve got to tell you that your decent course is to get out.’

‘No, I shan’t do that,’ I said.

‘I’ve thought of you as a fellow-sinner, but I’ve never thought of you as heartless, you know.’

He looked at me without expression, and for an instant his tricks, his moral indignation and boasting dropped away: ‘Tell me, old chap, is this desperately important for you?’

I said the one word: ‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ His tone was kind.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s no use saying any more about what I think. I can tell you the best chap to go to, of course, but you probably know that yourself. But, if you must, I should go to – Do you know that he’s pulling in £20,000 a year these days? It’s a very easy side of the profession, L S, and sometimes one wishes that one hadn’t started off with one’s principles.’

‘At this stage,’ I said, ‘I doubt if he could say anything that you and I don’t know. You see, the woman I want to marry has nothing to complain of from her husband.’

‘Will he play? Between you and me and these four walls, I shouldn’t if I were in his shoes.’

‘It wouldn’t be reasonable to ask him, even if we felt able to,’ I replied. ‘He happens to be a doctor.’

Getliffe regarded me with a hot-eyed, flustered look: ‘Tell me, L S, are you co-habiting with her?’

‘No.’

I was not sure that he believed me. He was, at one and the same time, deeply religious, prudish, and sensual: and, as a kind of combined result, he was left with the illusion that the rest of mankind, particularly those not restrained by faith, spent their whole time in regulated sexual activity.

Recovering from his excitement, he became practical about legal ways and means, which I was conversant with, which normally I should have found tiresome or grittily squalid, but which that morning gave me a glow of confidence. The smoke-dark sky, the reading-lamp on Getliffe’s desk, the tobacco smell: the hotel evidence we should want: the delay between the suit being filed and the hearing: the time-lag before the decree absolute: as I discussed them, I had forgotten how much I had invented, talking to Getliffe. It sounded down-to-earth, but for me it was the opposite.

The next afternoon, the November cloud-cap still lay low over the town, and looking out from my flat, past the reflection of the lamp in the window whose curtains were not drawn, I saw the park prematurely grey. Each instant I was listening for the lift outside, for Margaret for the first time had promised to come to me there. She was not yet due, it was only ten to four, but I had begun to listen for her early. With five minutes still to go, I heard the grinding and cranking of the antique machine, and went out on to the dark landing. The lights of the lift slowly moved up; there she was in the doorway, her cheeks pink from the cold air, hands tucked inside her fur coat, her eyes brilliant as though she were relaxed at being in the warm.

Straightaway she came into my arms, the fur comforting under my palms as I held her. After we had kissed, but while she was still close to me, she said: ‘I’ve thought about being with you.’

She added: ‘It’s been a long time.’

As she took off her coat her movements were assured, flowing and without nerves: she was enjoying herself; she was so different from the woman who had left me at the party that I was both delighted and taken aback. Somehow I felt that, high as her spirits were, they were still deluding her.

Sitting on the sofa, she held out her feet to the electric fire, and I took my place beside her and put my arm round her. It was all as simple, as domestic, as though we had never parted.

‘I’m sorry about that night,’ she said.

‘I was afraid.’

‘You needn’t have been.’

‘I didn’t believe it was the end.’

‘It’s not so easy to end as all that, is it?’ she said, with a sarcastic smile but her eyes light.

‘I hope it’s not,’ I said. ‘I don’t only hope it, but I think it.’

‘Go on thinking it,’ she cried, leaning back against my arm.

We were both looking across the room towards the windows, where, the sky having darkened and closed in, we saw nothing but the images of the room’s lights. We were each in that state – and we knew it in the other – which was delectable and deceptive, lazy on the tide of unadmitted desire.

‘I don’t want to move,’ she said.

It was some time, it might only have been seconds, before she made herself sit straight and look at me. She had the air of positive resolve which comes to one when cutting through a tangle. She had gone through nights, just as I had, when all seemed simple: then next morning the tangle was unresolvable again. That afternoon, she had come feeling all was clear.

‘Whatever we do, it isn’t going to be easy, is it?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘nothing can be easy when we have so many people to think of.’

I was not ready to reply, when she reiterated: ‘It isn’t only ourselves, there are two others I’m bound to care for.’

‘You don’t think I’ve forgotten about Geoffrey and the child, do you?’

‘You can’t ask me to hurt either of them. I’ll do anything for you if I don’t have to hurt them. I’m all yours.’

Her face was passionate and self-willed. She said: ‘That’s the proposition I’ve got to make. We’ve got to hide it. I never thought I should want to hide anything, but I’ll do it for you, I’ll do it because I need you. It will take some hiding, I shall have to let Helen into it so that I can get away, I shan’t be able to come to you more than once or twice a week, but that will make up for everything. It’ll rescue us, we can go on forever, and we’re luckier than most people ever will be in their lives.’

The sight of the flush on her cheeks, usually so pale, excited me.

I went to the fireplace. As I looked down at her, I had never wanted her more. I was seized with memories of taking her, the words we had muttered; I was shaken by one memory, a random one, not specially ecstatic, of lifting her naked in front of a looking-glass, which came from so deep as to be almost tactile.

I was thinking also how perfectly it would suit me to have her as my mistress, a relation which would give me the secretive joy I doted on, make no new claims on me, leave me not struggling any more to reshape my life.

It seemed as near a choice as I had had.

I heard my own voice, thick and rough: ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It must be all or nothing.’

‘How can it be either?’

‘It must be.’

‘You’re asking too much.’

‘Have you begun to think,’ I asked, ‘what a secret affair would mean to you? It would have its charm to start with, of course it would, everyone who’s lived an open life always hankers after concealments and risks. But you’d soon get over that, and then you’d find it meant lies upon lies. Corroding every other relation you had in order to sustain one that you began to dislike more and more. You haven’t been used to playing confidence tricks. It would mean for you that you’d never behave again as you like to behave–’

‘I dare say it would mean all that,’ she said. ‘But, if it avoids pain for others, do you think I should be put off?’

My hand gripping the mantelpiece, I said as simply as I could: ‘It would not avoid pain for me.’

‘I was afraid of that.’

‘I don’t mean jealousy, I mean deprivation. If I took you on your terms, I should lose what I want most of all. I’m not thinking of you at all now, I’m just thinking of myself.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said.

‘I want you to be with me all the time. I believe we shall be happy, but I can’t promise it. But you know it better than anyone will ever do, I’m not good at living face-to-face with another human being. Unless you’re with me I shall never do it.’

As I spoke, she had bent her head into her hands, so that I could only see her hair.

‘I can’t be sad, I can’t be,’ she said at last. ‘But I don’t see that there is a way through.’

She looked up, her eyes lucid, and said: ‘I can’t get out of talking to you about Geoffrey, though you won’t like it.’

‘Go on,’ I replied.

‘I don’t want to make it too dramatic. I’m fond of him, but I’m not driven to him as I am to you. I’m not even sure how much he depends on me–’

‘Well then.’

‘It may be a good deal. I must tell you this, I used to hope it was.’

She went on: ‘I don’t know him, I never have done, as well as I do you. I don’t know how strong his feelings are. His senses are strong, he enjoys himself very easily, he’s inclined to be impatient with people who don’t find life as easy as he does.’

She wanted to believe that that was all. She was trying not to give herself the benefit of the doubt. The words she said – just as when we first met secretly in the café – were honest. But once again her hopes, and mine also, were stronger than the words. She wanted to believe that he did not need her much. I wanted to believe it too.

Then she burst out – ‘He’s never done a thing to me or said a thing to me that isn’t as considerate as it could be. He’s not given me a single bad hour to hold against him. How can I go to him and say, “Thank you, you’ve been good to me, now for no reason that I can possibly give you I intend to leave you cold.”’

‘I am ready to speak to him,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said violently. ‘I won’t be talked over.’

For an instant, temper, something deeper than temper, blazed from her eyes. She smiled at me: ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish I could be angry with him, and it makes me angry with you instead.

‘As for talking me over,’ she added, ‘he might not mind, he might regard it as civilized. But you and I aren’t civilized enough for that.’

‘I will do anything to bring him to the point,’ I said.

‘Not that.’

‘Then will you?’

‘After what I’ve said, you oughtn’t to ask me.’

As I stood by the mantelpiece in the bright room, watching her on the sofa, the curtains still not drawn and the winter sky black above the park, the air was heavy between us, heavy in a way no tenderness could light.

‘Do you think I like you having the harder part?’ I said.

‘I’ll do anything but that.’

‘It’s our only hope.’

‘I beg you,’ she said, ‘let’s try my way.’

It was a long time before, in the heavy thudding air, I could reply.

‘No,’ I said.

ONE afternoon in the following week, when I was still in suspense, my secretary came into the office and said that Mr Davidson was asking to see me. Behind my papers, for I was busy that day, I welcomed him, apprehensive of the mention of Margaret’s name which did not come.

I was incredulous that he had dropped in just because he was in tearing spirits and liked my company.

‘Am I interrupting you?’ he said, and chuckled.

‘That’s an unanswerable question,’ he broke out. ‘What does one say, when one’s quite openly and patently in the middle of work, and some ass crassly asks whether he’s interrupting you?’