The Beautiful Visit (33 page)

‘I have a sudden access of anxiety for you. I do not want to make you unhappy. I do not want you to suffer because of me.’

‘But you are not making me suffer.’

‘I am in no position to love anyone,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you least of all.’

‘But – but you do not want to go away?’

‘You know that I do not want to.’

‘Well then I do not understand. It is not you who are deliberately making me unhappy, but the situation, which is no more yours than mine.’

‘Then you
are
unhappy.’

‘Oh – not more than you. I think, perhaps less. I am simply filled with feelings I have never had before. I no longer know precisely what I feel I do love you,’ I added.

‘I desire you,’ he said quietly. ‘I want you, because I love you so much. Most of all, I have wanted to tell you. I don’t want you to answer me, but it eases my mind to
tell you this one thing. I know quite well that you are not ready to love me as much as you must love me before I could possess you. But telling you makes it possible for me to love lying on the
sofa with you in my arms; my beloved creature. You do not mind my saying this? In other circumstances there would be no need to say it. I love you.’ He turned back to the fire again.

‘I suppose,’ I said uncertainly, ‘that it is I who am a step behind you.’

‘Or a step ahead. It makes no difference.’

‘Then do we never meet? Do not people ever feel the same at the same moment?’

‘Sometimes they do. I think that at the beginning and at the end of love there is always a kind of dishonesty; it is inevitable, and should not be resented, even when it is painful. But in
the middle, the centre, there is a brilliant pure streak, when honesty is merely another joy. Then people meet.’

All the remainder of the night we lay, wrapped in one another’s arms, furthering our love, spending the precious time like gold, that we, as misers, were forced to spend. We lay with the
small clock evenly distributing our hours, striking them off by a single impersonal note, so that we began each hour in trembling silence.

Very early in the morning he slept for a short while. I watched his face by the light of the dying fire. I moved to touch his head, and he woke, instantly alert, as though he never slept more
deeply.

‘Is it time?’

‘No, no I do not think so. I am sorry I woke you.’

‘I did not mean to sleep.’

We would make tea now, he continued, and talk while we drank it. He put the last pieces of wood on the fire: the room seemed cold and I looked at the time. It was a quarter to six. The roses in
my hair were bruised and wilting. I unpinned them.

‘I should like one,’ he observed.

He produced a black pocket book, like the one the officer on the station had had, and tucked the rose away. The flames from the replenished fire leapt higher up the chimney and the kettle began
to throb.

‘I can see the lovely bones of your face in this light,’ he said. He came to me, and traced them with his finger.

‘Will you remember my face?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

‘I do not think it is so easy. I had great difficulty in remembering yours, even when I had just left you, and wanted to remember it.’

‘Perhaps I have not a very memorable face, or perhaps you tried to remember the wrong things. But I shall remember you.’

‘The wrong things?’

‘I shall remember you by your square forehead: it is almost completely square; and by the ledges of bone under your eyes; the way your whole face tilts into your small neat chin; the heavy
enchanting curve of your eyelid; and your enormous tears. One should not try to remember people in order to describe them to someone else. In doing this one loses everything of significance. If I
said that you had long grey eyes, a white complexion, and heavy dark brown hair, no one would be very much the wiser; but I should have made a public image of you which could be anybody, and which
would slowly obscure my private idea of you. All of which proves, my darling, that love should be a very private business. In communicating any of it to society, one literally gives something away,
and one does not get it back.’

We made and drank the tea and then I asked Ian whether I might wash my face.

‘The water will be cold. Shall I boil some more?’

‘No. I want cold water.’

He took me up the stairs to another landing where there was a large bathroom, and I bathed my aching eyes in icy water, resolving, as I did so, that when the moment arrived for him to go, I
would employ self-control.

The moment seemed to creep towards us in a measured remorseless manner, more calculated to destroy our sensibility than any sudden unmeditated parting. We were reduced to sitting silently by one
another, he holding my hand, exchanging little shadowy words of comfort, the ghosts of our grief.

‘You will write to me?’

‘If you will write to me.’

‘Yes, I promise.’

‘You know where to write?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shall I come to the station with you?’

‘No. I have to collect some luggage on my way.’

Eventually he rose, and went out for his cab. I heard his steps go down the stairs and the door shut, as I sat holding the sides of my forehead in my hands. He had said that he would be five
minutes, perhaps longer. I remembered that my hair was undressed, and, glad of employment, put it up. Almost as soon as I finished doing this, I heard the cab. It was ten minutes to seven. He did
not immediately come into the room; I imagined him putting luggage into the vehicle. Then I heard him, and turned to face the door. He came quickly into the room shutting the door, and walked over
to where I stood.

‘Do you mind very much if I leave you here? I should prefer it to anything else.’

I shook my head.

‘You need only walk out of the house. Leave everything. I should have asked you before. You don’t mind?’ He was gripping my hands.

‘No, I don’t mind.’

He took my head in his hands, bent a little to kiss me, stared at me for a moment and went. He shut the door; again I heard him descend the stairs; the front door slam; the cab door slam more
faintly. I heard the cab drive away. Then there was complete silence. I was alone. For some seconds I stood, frozen and trembling, where he had left me; my throat aching intolerably. I imagined him
leaning back in the cab, watching more and more streets separate us. Then the little clock struck seven and I turned blindly to the fire with some idea of extinguishing it.

I did put out the fire, and covered the white sofa and the piano; but the sight of the table with two cups still faintly warm from their tea was almost too much for me so that I decided not to
touch them. All the time I had been doing these things, I had thought that my one desire was to leave the house as quickly as possible. Now, however, when everything was done, going out of the
house seemed infinitely worse than staying within it. Here, no one could see me: I was afforded some kind of protection. I moved to the covered sofa and sat on it, still shivering, and quite unable
to do anything which required more initiative. Now, I thought, he will have collected his luggage and be driving to the station. I would sit there until I felt better; until the ache in my throat
subsided and my legs did not tremble so much; and then I would go. It seemed to have come so suddenly in the end: he had held my hands and kissed me – and gone in a moment without saying a
word. I had never asked him when I should see him again; there was an utterly unknown stretch of time between his kissing me and the next time we should meet. Why had I not asked him that simple
question? But perhaps he would not have known. At any rate he would have been able to tell me the longest time that he would be likely to be away. Perhaps when he wrote –
if
he wrote.
I began to be uncertain even of his writing, and felt much worse. Then I suddenly remembered that a caretaker came to the house, and began to worry that she would arrive and discover me. I must go.
I looked carefully round the room in order to remember it – and then my eye lighted on the clock.

It was six minutes past seven. He had only been gone six minutes. He would not even have picked up his luggage in all this time, which was only six minutes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I went home and remained in my room most of the day. Being very tired, I did not want to speak to my family. When they tried to make me come down for lunch, I said that I had
been dancing all night and only wanted to sleep. I do not know what they made of this tale, but they left me alone. I lay on my bed and imagined the other room – wondered whether the
caretaker had been to it; had taken away the cups, and cleared the fire: wept a few unrelieving tears, and slept, imagining his arms round me.

For fifteen days I existed in a kind of double life, half of which consisted in my job of packing parcels, cutting sandwiches at the canteen, and living with my family: and half of which was
centred round Ian’s absence; his absence and his silence. Whenever I was alone, and sometimes when I was not, my mind revolved round the three days I had spent with him. I remembered and then
elaborated and invented conversations I had had with him or might have had. I thought of everything there was to remember about him, stretching and spreading it thinly over my entire mind. I tried
to imagine what he was doing; and took to reading newspapers in the vain hope of discovering. I longed for him to write to me, and speculated endlessly on the reasons for his silence. On at least
two occasions I began writing to him, but found this so difficult (I was afraid to express my feelings, and nothing else seemed worth expressing) that I tore up the paper before I had covered it.
Sometimes I almost hated him for not writing, or I would imagine that he had done so and sent the letter to the wrong address, or that the letter had strayed, or that he had simply forgotten my
address. Sometimes I would reason with myself that it was absurd to expect a letter so soon; that for all I knew, he might be so placed that he was unable to write to anyone; and that it was mad to
mind so much about so small a thing. And sometimes I would simply weep and comfort myself with the hope that he would write the next day. All the fifteen days I fell more in love with him, and each
day I grew more afraid that perhaps, after all, he did not love me. Then on the evening of the sixteenth day a letter arrived.

He did love me. I read the letter three times to be sure of this, and then, a little ashamed of myself, read it again, in an attempt to discover anything else he felt. But except that he was
unhappy and that the letter was constantly interrupted, there seemed to he nothing.

‘He does love me,’ I repeated endlessly, smoothing the thin paper with my fingers and imagining his hand moving along it as he wrote. I examined and adored his writing. I folded the
paper and put it into the envelope. ‘He does love me, and he did not forget my address.’ I withdrew the letter again from the envelope, and tried to imagine the bare paper, before he
had covered it with words and sent it to me. That he should be able, so far away, to tell me on a piece of paper that he loved me, and then send it to me, seemed miraculous; waiting fifteen days
for such a joy a mere nothing. And this letter was now in my possession, so that never again should I have to wait with nothing to comfort me – I should never again be so desolate.

I collected writing materials, and, no longer afraid of expressing my feelings, started to write to him. I told him that I had received his letter, that I loved him, that I would go anywhere
with him; and after that words poured out of my heart; everything that I wrote seemed to add to my love, although never exactly pronouncing it, so that in a frenzy I wrote and wrote, tearing the
sheets and beginning again, until, very late in the night, I had completed my letter, addressed it carefully (he was a captain in some Scottish regiment I discovered), and sealed it. Then I read
his letter again and slept. I think it was then, reading his letter in my nightdress, that I began to desire him. At least I lay down remembering his hands and aching to be touched by them.