The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (45 page)

But then what had happened? Probably they had locked her in her room. I pictured her lying there and crying, a tumbled figure of despair with her shoes off and her hair all tangled. (The vision filled me with pain, but it was rather beautiful too.) There was no doubt that she had thoroughly alarmed her parents by the naive violence of her declaration. What a mistake that had been. And they had reacted first with unbridled fury and then with devious slyness. Of course they did not think that she had changed her mind. They had changed their tactics. Had Arnold believed in my renunciation of his daughter? Probably not. I am not a good liar.

I had so much loved and trusted Julian’s instinct for frankness that I had not even had the sense to advise her to tone it all down a bit. I had not even, fool that I was, really foreseen how awful the thing would look to her parents. I had been far too absorbed in the sacredness of my own feelings to make the cold effort to be objective here. And what an idiot I had been, to go farther back, not to tone it all down myself! I could have broken it to her slowly, moved in on her gradually, wooed her quietly, hinted, insinuated, whispered. There could have been chaste and then less chaste kisses. Why did I have to sick it up all at once like that and put her in a frenzy? But of course this slow motion idea was only tolerable in retrospect in the light of the knowledge that I now had of her love for me. If I had started to tell her anything at all I could not have stopped myself from telling her everything straightaway. The anxiety would have been too terrible. I did not now meditate upon, or even entertain, the thought that I might have been and ought to have been silent. I did not reject this idea. Only it seemed to belong to some very remote period of the past. For better or worse, that was no longer in question, and guilt about it did not form part of my distress.

During the night I was, sleeping and waking, concerned with Venice. If they took her there I would of course follow. It is difficult to hide a girl in Venice. Yet how elusive my lion – darling was that night. I endlessly pursued her along black and white moonlit quays, quiet as etchings beside their glossy waters. Now she had gone into Florian’s only I could not open the door. When I got the door open I was in the Accademia and she had gone on into Tintoretto’s picture of Saint Mark and was walking across the squared pavement. We were back again in the Piazza San Marco which had become an enormous chess board. She was a pawn moving steadily forward and I was a knight leaping crookedly after her but always having to turn away to left or to right when I had almost caught her up. Now she had reached the other end and become a queen and turned about to face me. No, she was Saint Ursula’s angel, very august and tall, standing at the foot of my bed. I stretched out my arms towards her but she receded down a long path and through the west door of Inigo Jones’s church, which had become the Rialto bridge. She was in a gondola, dressed in a red robe, holding a tiger lily, receding, receding, while behind me a terrible drumming of hooves became louder and louder until I turned about and saw that Bartolomeo Colleoni with the face of Arnold Baffin was about to ride me to the ground. The terrible plunging hooves descended on my head and my skull cracked like an egg shell.

I woke to the sound of dustbin lids being clattered by Greeks at the end of the court. I rose quickly into a world which had become, even since last night, much more frightful. Last night there had been horrors, but there had been a sense of drama, a feeling of obstacles to be overcome, and beyond it all the uplifting certainty of her love. Today I felt crazy with doubt and fear. She was only a young girl after all. Could she, against such fierce parental opposition, hold to her faith and keep her vision clear? And if they had lied to me about her was it not likely that they had lied to her about me? They would tell her that I had said I would give her up. And I had said it. Would she understand? Would she be strong enough to go on believing in me? How strong was she? How little in fact I knew her.
Was
it really all in my mind? And supposing they took her away? Supposing I really could not find her? Surely she would write to me. But supposing she did not? Perhaps, although she did love me, she had decided that the whole thing was a mistake? That would, after all, be a thoroughly rational decision.

The telephone rang but it was only Francis asking me to come and see Priscilla. I said I would come later. I asked to talk to her but she would not come to the telephone. About ten Christian rang and I put the receiver back at once. I rang the Ealing number but got ‘number unobtainable’ again. Arnold must have somehow put the telephone out of action during that period of panic in the afternoon. I prowled about the house wondering how long I could put off the moment when it would be impossible not to go to Ealing. My head was aching terribly. I did try quite hard during this time to put my thoughts in order. I speculated about my intentions and her feelings. I sketched plans for a dozen or so different turns of events. I even tried to feign imagining what it would be like really to despair: that is, to believe that she did not love me, had never loved me, and that all I could decently do was to vanish from her life. Then I realized that I did despair, I was in despair, nothing could be worse than this experience of her absence and her silence. And yesterday she had been in my arms and we had looked forward into a huge quiet abyss of time, and we had kissed each other without frenzy and without terror, with thoughtful temperate quiet joy. And I had even sent her away when she did not want to go. I had been insane. Perhaps that was the only time which we should ever, ever have together. Perhaps it was something which would never, never, never come again.

Waiting in fear is surely one of the most awful of human tribulations. The wife at the pit head. The prisoner awaiting interrogation. The shipwrecked man on the raft in the empty sea. The sheer extension of time is felt then as physical anguish. The minutes, each of which might bring relief, or at least certainty, pass fruitlessly and manufacture an increase of horror. As the minutes of that morning passed away I felt a cold deadly increase of my conviction that all was lost. This was how it would be from now on and for ever. She would never communicate with me again. I endured this until half past eleven and then I decided I must go to Ealing and try to see her by force if necessary. I even thought of arming myself with some weapon. But suppose she was already gone?

It had begun to rain. I had put on my macintosh and was standing in the hall wondering if tears would help. I imagined pushing Arnold violently aside and leaping up the stairs. But what then?

The telephone rang and I lifted it. The voice of an operator said, ‘Miss Baffin is calling you from an Ealing call box, will you pay for the call?’

‘What? Is that—?’

‘Miss Baffin is calling you—’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll pay, yes – ’

‘Bradley. It’s me.’

‘Oh darling — Oh thank God – ’

‘Bradley, quickly, I must see you, I’ve run away.’

‘Oh good, oh my darling, I’ve been in such a—’

‘Me too. Look, I’m in a telephone box near Ealing Broadway station, I haven’t any money.’

‘I’ll come and fetch you in a taxi.’

‘I’ll hide in a shop, I’m so terrified of – ’

‘Oh my darling girl – ’

‘Tell the taxi to drive slowly past the station, I’ll see you.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘But, Bradley, we can’t be at your place, that’s where they’ll go.’

‘Never mind them. I’m coming to fetch you.’

 

 

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, Bradley, it’s been such a nightmare – ’

‘But what
happened
?’

‘I was an absolute idiot, I told them all about it in a sort of triumphant aggressive way, I felt so happy, I couldn’t conceal it or muffle it, and they were livid, at least at first they simply couldn’t believe it, and then they rushed off to see you, and I should have run away then, only I was feeling sort of combative and I wanted another session and then when they came back they were much worse. I’ve never seen my father so upset and angry, he was quite violent.’

‘God, he didn’t beat you?’

‘No, no, but he shook me till I was quite giddy and he broke a lot of things in my room – ’

‘Oh my sweet – ’

‘Then I started to cry and couldn’t stop.’

‘Yes, when I came round—’

‘You came round?’

‘They didn’t tell you?’

‘Dad said later on that he’d seen you again. He said you’d agreed to give it all up. I didn’t believe him of course.’

‘Oh my brave dear! He told me you didn’t want to see me. Of course I didn’t believe him either.’

I was holding her two hands in both of mine. We were conversing in soft voices and sitting in a church. (Saint Cuthbert’s Philbeach Gardens, to be exact.) Pale green angelica – coloured light entering through Victorian stained glass failed to dissipate the magnificent and soothing gloom of the place. Framing an elaborate reredos apparently made of milk chocolate, a huge melancholy rood screen which looked as if it had been rescued from a fire at the last moment announced that
Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis
. Behind a sturdy iron railing at the west end a murky dove – pinnacled shrine protected the font, or perhaps the cave of some doom – obsessed sibyl or of one of the more terrible forms of Aphrodite. Powers older than Christ seemed to have casually entered and made the place their own. High above us a black – clad figure paced along a gallery and disappeared. We were alone again.

She said, ‘I love my parents. I suppose. Well, of course I do. Especially my father. Anyway, I’ve never doubted it. But there are things one can’t forgive. It’s the end of something. And the beginning of something.’ She turned to me with gravity, her face very tired, a little puffy and battered and creased with much crying, and grim too. One saw what she would look like when she was fifty. And for an instant her unforgiving face reminded me of Rachel in the terrible room.

‘Oh Julian, I’ve brought irrevocable things to you.’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t wrecked your life, have I, you aren’t angry with me for having involved you in such trouble?’

‘That’s your silliest remark yet. Anyway, the row went on for hours, mainly between me and my father, and then when my mother started in he shouted that she was jealous of me, and she shouted that he was in love with me, and then she started to cry and I
screamed
, and, oh Bradley, I didn’t know ordinary educated middle – class English people could behave the way we behaved last night.’

‘That shows how young you are.’

‘At last they went off downstairs and I could hear them going on rowing down there, and my mother crying terribly, and I decided I’d had enough and I’d clear out, and then I found they’d locked me in! I’d never been locked in anywhere, even when I was small, I can’t tell you how – it was a sort of moment of – illumination – like when people suddenly know – they’ve got to have a revolution. I was just eternally not going to stand for being locked in.’

‘You shouted and banged?’

‘No, nothing like that. I knew I couldn’t get out of the window, it’s too high. I sat on my bed and I cried a lot of course. You know, it seems silly in the middle of all this real sort of — carnage – but I was so sad about the little things of mine my father broke. He broke two sort of cups and all my china animals—’

‘Julian, I can’t bear this – ’

‘And it was so frightening – and sort of humiliating – He didn’t find
this
, though, it was under my pillow.’ Julian took out of the pocket of her dress the gilt snuff box,
A Friend’s Gift
.

‘I wish it wasn’t open war,’ I said. ‘Julian, you know, what your parents were saying to you wasn’t crazy stuff. In a way they’re quite right. It’s absurd and improper to have anything to do with me. You’re so young and I’m so very much older and you’ve got your whole life – How
can
you know your mind, it’s all happened so quickly, you
ought
to be locked up, it’ll end in tears—’

‘Bradley, we passed this stage long ago. When I was sitting on my bed and looking at the broken china on the floor and feeling my life so broken, I felt so strong too and calm in the middle of it all and quite certain about you and quite certain about myself. Look at me. Certainty. Calm.’ She did look calm too, sitting there beside me with her weary lucid face and her blue dress with white willow leaves on it and her brown shiny young knees and our hands piled together on her lap and the gilt snuff box in the loop of her skirt.

‘You must have more time to think, we can’t – ’

‘Anyway, about eleven, and that was another last straw, I had to shout and beg them to let me out to go to the lavatory. Then my father came in again and started off on a new tack, being very kind and understanding. It was then he said that he’d seen you again and that you’d said you’d give me up, which of course I knew wasn’t true. And then he said he’d take me to Athens – ’

‘He told me Venice. I’ve been in Venice all night,’

‘He was afraid you’d follow. I was as cold as ice by this time and I’d already made a plan to pretend to agree with anything he said and then to escape as soon as I could. So I acted a climb down and how a treat like going to Athens made all the difference and – thank God you weren’t listening – and – ’

‘I know. I did the same. I actually did tell him I’d sheer off. I felt like Saint Peter.’

‘Bradley, I was so
tired
by then, God yesterday was a long day, and I don’t know if I convinced him, but he said he was very sorry he’d been so bad, and I think he was sorry too, only I couldn’t bear his becoming emotional and soppy and wanting to kiss me and so on, and I said I must sleep so he went away at last and my God he locked the door again!’

‘Did you sleep?’

‘The funny thing is I did. I imagined I’d stay awake all night, I’d seen myself staying awake and thinking, I was quite looking forward to it, but sleep simply took me, unconsciousness rushed over me, I couldn’t even undress, it was as if my mind ran straight into oblivion, it had to. And then this morning they started pretending I was sick, and escorting me to the bathroom, and bringing up trays and so on, it was disgusting and somehow frightening. And my father told me to rest and that we’d be leaving London later on today, and then he left the house. I think he went to the telephone box on the corner to make a call he didn’t want my mother to hear, he often does at that time in the morning, and anyway he’d dragged the wire of our telephone out of the wall yesterday when he was in a rage. Well, I’d got dressed by then and I looked for my handbag, only they’d taken it, and when I heard him go I tried my door only of course it was locked and I called to my mother and she wouldn’t open it, and then I
kicked
my breakfast tray which was just there on the floor. Have you ever kicked a boiled egg off its cup? When I saw that egg flying through the air I felt somehow that’s exactly how things are at the moment, only it wasn’t funny at all. And then I told my mother that if she didn’t open the door at once I would jump out of the window, and I meant it, and at last she did open the door, and I walked down the stairs with her sort of running backwards in front of me, it was very absurd and odd really, and I went to the front door only it was locked with the mortice lock. And all this time my mother was talking at me and begging and asking me to forgive her, it was pathetic, I’d never heard her talk like that before, as if she was really old. And I said nothing and I marched out into the garden and she followed me and I tried the side gate and that was locked too so I ran down the garden and got up on top of the fence – you know those fences are quite high, I don’t know how I did it – and dropped down into the next garden. And I could hear her scrabbling and calling – of course she couldn’t get over, she’s much too fat – and she stood on a box and we stared at each other and her face was so odd – she looked so sort of
surprised
, like someone might look surprised if their leg was shot off, I felt for a moment so sorry for her. Then I ran off across the next garden and over another fence, that wasn’t so high, and among some garages and I ran and ran and then I couldn’t find a phone box that worked and then I found one and I called you and here I am.’