Lover's Leap (19 page)

‘Why are you so anxious now,' she asked, ‘for me to do something about my acting? At first you didn't seem a bit interested and when I asked you how I was to get on the stage you refused to help me.'

‘I certainly didn't, Meriel. I merely said, what was true, that I didn't know.'

‘Well, that comes to the same thing. And now you keep bothering me to go to classes and read plays and study parts.'

‘Well, my dear child, you came to London with the object of taking up the stage, didn't you?'

‘Yes, or at least I believed I did; but now I've lost interest in it.'

‘And yet you go on staying in London.'

‘O, so you want me to go, do you?'

‘What I want isn't the point, Meriel. But what does your husband think of it?'

‘O Geordie doesn't mind.'

‘Didn't he ask you, during your lunch together, when you were going home?'

‘No, he didn't say a word about it. He said that the only thing that mattered was that I should enjoy myself.'

‘And you explained, of course, exactly how you were enjoying yourself?'

She took no notice of this. She never does, when I venture on sarcasm.

‘Well, my opinion is that you owe it to him to do what you set out to do. Besides, you ought to have a job. After all, you must have something to occupy you. You don't even go to see people, and when I offer to introduce you to friends of mine, Rhoda Gaunt for instance, you refuse.'

‘I don't want friends, thank you.'

‘All the more reason why you should have a job.'

‘I have a job.'

‘Might I ask what it is?'

‘You,' she said. ‘So now you know.'

‘Well, in any case,' I replied, ‘I'm not a whole-time job.'

She laughed grimly. ‘That's not my fault.'

A week later. As we sat at breakfast this morning in her flat, Meriel announced to me that she had a plan.

‘I'm glad to hear it,' I said; ‘a plan for a job.'

‘No, not a plan for a job. Just a plan, and a very good one too. Listen, Phil,' she began eagerly; ‘I've found a
flat, a delightful one, in Chelsea, overlooking the river.'

‘But do you want to leave this one?'

‘Don't interrupt. It's a larger flat than this one; two floors, the top floor and the one below it. There are two rooms, one large, one smaller, a kitchen and a bathroom, and on the top floor two more large rooms, one with a huge window looking across the river, a perfect room for a studio.'

Ah, now I saw what she was driving at. She was so eager and excited that I dreaded the moment when I should have to wreck the plan. I said nothing and she went on.

‘It's a marvellous opportunity; just the place, of all others, to suit us.'

‘You mean …?'

‘I mean that we must take it at once and move in. O, and—I forgot—there are gas fires and a geyser.'

‘I shook my head. No, my dear. It sounds charming, but it would never do.'

Her face fell. ‘But you haven't seen it.'

‘I don't mean the flat, Meriel. What I mean is, we would fight like cats.'

‘Fight? I wouldn't.'

‘But I would,' I said. ‘You've no idea how bad-tempered I am sometimes.'

She laughed. ‘You bad-tempered? You're an angel, Phil.'

‘Only for a small portion of each day. For the rest of the time I'm a devil.'

She got up and put her arm round my shoulders. ‘Well, I'll cheerfully put up with a devil if it's this devil.'

‘No, Meriel, it's impossible.'

She laid her cheek on my head. ‘Darling devil, please do. Think how lovely it would be.'

‘Think how nicely we get along as it is.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘yes, don't we? So it stands to reason that it would be nicer still.'

‘On the contrary, it would spoil everything.'

She left me and went to the window. ‘You're not very polite,' she said resentfully.

‘One can't afford to be polite when important decisions have to be made. One has to be truthful and face facts.'

‘And the fact is that you would hate to share a flat with me.'

‘The fact is I know it would be a mistake.'

‘For you, perhaps; not for me.'

‘My dear Meriel, if it was a mistake for one of us it would be a mistake for both of us.'

For a long time she stood with her back to me, gazing out of the window without speaking. She was sulking. I went to her and slid my arm through hers.

‘Think how nice it is now, Meriel. When we meet we're all fresh and full of chatter and delighted to see each other, and in the intervals we have something to look forward to. If we were always together, we couldn't keep it up. We should be bound to get dull and silent, as bad as a humdrum old married couple. Then you'd have to skip off to some third party, and so it would go on till the whole country was thick with your discarded lovers lying about like fallen ninepins.'

That aspect of the case, as I had foreseen, made an irresistible appeal to Meriel the self-dramatizer and she burst out laughing.

‘You do say dreadful things to me,' she replied gleefully. ‘But listen to this, Phil. If you won't agree to my plan you must promise me one thing.'

‘And that is?'

‘Promise first.'

‘Not likely.'

‘Well, you must let me come in the mornings and sit in your studio while you're working.'

‘Not for anything, my dear.'

‘Why not?'

‘How do you imagine I could work if I had you chattering there?'

‘I won't chatter. I'll sit perfectly still. You needn't take the least notice of me.'

‘Then you might just as well not be there. What good would it be to either of us?'

‘I should feel I had some share in your work.'

‘But, my dear child, I can't work when other people are there.'

‘Not even me?'

‘Not even you. It puts me off completely.'

‘But Phil, I hate to be shut out of all that side of your life. I want to … to enter into it, to be an inspiration to you, to be your … what is she called? … your Egeria.'

‘Inspiration, Meriel, works just as well, better if anything, at long range. If you want to inspire me, do so from Powis Square.'

Her face clouded again and she turned away. I still held her arm. ‘Forgive me, Meriel; but when you say that kind of thing I can never believe you're serious. It seems to me quite unreal. We don't go in for inspiration nowadays, do we? That's why I make silly, facetious replies. I simply can't help myself.'

But Meriel's face remained sullen. ‘I think you're very unkind,' she said petulantly.

‘And I,' I said, trying to undo my offence, ‘think you're very kind, and if you want to be kinder still you'll leave me to get on with my work in solitude, since that's the only way I
can
work.'

She sighed. ‘I sometimes wonder how you manage to be a painter at all. You don't seem to have a scrap of romance in you.'

Six months later. How terribly right old Etherton was when he remarked that a grown-up child is an unaccountable and formidable animal, and how wise was his
advice to break off as soon as a love affair showed the first signs of going to pieces. For the truth is that Meriel and I are reaching a dead-end from which I see no escape. Is it my fault? I would have been glad enough to continue as we began, meeting twice or thrice a week in that cheerful, irresponsible, idyllic fashion; and if only Meriel had had something to occupy her in the intervals, we might have gone happily on like that for goodness knows how long. The trouble is that, as Etherton would put it, ‘the lady is not inclined to philosophy.' Moderation is anathema to her, for moderation is unromantic. The lover must abandon himself neck and crop. She was content at first that we should meet two or three times a week, because that was more than we had met previously. But now she demands more still and is aggrieved when I refuse. She complains that it is a sign that I don't love her. I can't very well explain to her that I love her only on condition of not seeing her too often, that fundamentally we haven't much in common, that if we saw more of each other we should certainly like each other less. But I do tell her, what is also true, that my work demands that I shall have a good deal of time to myself. But that, she maintains, is a sign (and I'm not sure she isn't right) that I prefer my work to her. Also, when I plead engagements with other friends, even when I occasionally dine with old Etherton, she takes it as a slight on her. Isn't she ready to devote all her time to me? Hasn't she kept herself free of friends and acquaintances for my sake? Yes, alas, that is only too lamentably true. She has insisted on doing what I have tried so hard to prevent; she has cut herself off from everybody and everything but me.

‘I know now why you keep urging me to study acting,' she said to me the other day. ‘It's not because you think I'd be any good or would care tuppence if I were. It's to keep me out of your way, to stop me bothering you.'

I have never succeeded in fathoming what exactly is
the position as regards her husband. Meriel looks at things so much from her own point of view—or rather, from her own points of view, for her point of view alters with every mood—that it is impossible to place much reliance on what she says. A month ago she went home for a fortnight and, I gather, confessed to her husband. She has assured me that he didn't mind at all, that he said she must do exactly as she liked, that she was to consider herself perfectly free. If he really said that, it means that he is an unusually long-suffering husband, or a very long-sighted one, or very proud, or that Meriel has led him such a dance in the past that he is only too glad to resign and let some other poor devil shoulder the burden. Bitter experience makes me suspect that the last explanation is the true one, for Meriel is certainly a terrible handful. She demands so much of one. She resents my having any life at all, independent of her: it is, for her, mere selfishness on my part that I should want to call my soul my own; and these grievances have gradually during the last few months undermined the charming gaiety that made her in the past such delightful company. Our meetings are becoming less and less the happy feasts they used to be, more and more occasions for argument and recrimination. When she is in these moods, facts and history have no meaning for her. She complains, for instance, that she deserted home and Geordie for me, while I have deserted nothing for her. I remind her that she deserted home and Geordie for the stage, not for me, but she refuses to accept this view, indeed she has ceased to believe in it. A more romantic view has supplanted it. She even accused me, one day, of preventing her from going on the stage and of ruining her career.

‘Why not let us agree, Meriel,' I said, when she presented me with this astonishing fiction, ‘that I broke into your home by night and tore you screaming from the arms of your husband?'

I begin to doubt if she's really in love with me at all, and in spite of her periodical parrot-cries that she and Geordie are ‘devoted to each other', it is clear enough that she isn't in love with him either. What she really desires, I think, is that he and I should both be desperately in love with her, furiously jealous of each other, and engaged in a romantic struggle to claim her.

Poor Meriel. The actual behaviour of each of us must be exasperating to her. Moreover, the truth is that, though she doesn't really care two straws about either of us, she's terribly entangled in both of us. Her conscience, I can see, is continually tormenting her about her home and Geordie, and yet she cannot bear to lose hold of the free, romantic side of life represented, alas how inadequately, by me. She is torn between the two of us and cannot make up her mind to do without either. If it weren't for that, I would solve the problem for her at once by leaving her. But, as it is, I daren't, for if I did, Heaven knows what she would do. I believe she's capable of jumping out of a window simply to punish me. She's one of those unfortunate people who love to torture themselves and those near to them, and so will not and cannot escape from the hopeless position in which they land themselves.

I hoped at first, after she had confessed to Geordie and they had agreed (if indeed they really did agree) to be free, that her mind would have been set at rest and she would recover her old gaiety and happiness. But nothing of the kind. It is so intolerably unromantic of Geordie not to cherish a hopeless longing for her that she won't countenance the idea and so the dilemma survives intact. She both has her cake and eats it. What a weary business it all is. I shall think twice next time before I allow myself to be seduced.

And yet from time to time we have happy meetings still. This spring we have begun going into the country
occasionally for week-ends. I suggested it in the hope of seeming less parsimonious, and for a while it seemed to give us a new lease of life. On the first occasion Meriel was as excited and gleeful as a child, and when we got into the train she flung herself back in her corner and said with a happy sigh:

‘Well, now I've got you all to yourself till Monday.'

Poor little thing! Seeing her so completely happy I was overcome with remorse for my treatment of her, my refusal to share a flat with her, to let her spend whole mornings in my studio, my stern limitations of our meetings. And yet what else could I do? I must have time to work and think and see my other friends. If I hadn't, I should go stark mad, and then I should be even less use to her than I am at present.

When we were starting on our second week-end expedition a disturbing thing happened. We were in the Refreshment Room at Waterloo station, having some sandwiches before catching our train, when, turning to look at the clock, I found myself face to face with Rose and Jennifer. They must have caught sight of me before I turned, because they were both looking at me and so there was no chance of escaping their notice. At the first shock I felt as if a wave had burst over my head and engulfed me. I stood staring helplessly, and they, seeing my embarrassment, simultaneously prepared to let me escape. But in a moment I had pulled myself together and held out my hand and they came up and were introduced to Meriel. They had only just come in and had not yet ordered anything, so we all stood together for a few minutes while Jennifer came nobly to the rescue with glib conversation. Rose and I, too, timidly exchanged a few pallid words, gazing questioningly at each other across a gulf. Meriel asked Jennifer if she was an artist.