The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (13 page)

‘You know exactiy where you are financially —’

‘Up Shit’s Creek without a paddle! I want a house. I want you to buy me a house.’

‘I can’t! You know what houses cost now!’

‘Well, sell something. Sell your other bloody house. Let her live in a flat for a change.’

‘Oh Em dear, don’t be silly. Don’t let’s start up this sort of mechanical argument again. We had it last week, we’ll have it next week —’

‘We haven’t had
this
argument before. Remember. I’ve given up my job and I’m bloody well —’

‘Please. When you use that awful tone we both stop being human beings and become machines.’

‘We used to be two happy machines stimulating each other.’

‘Oh go to sleep.’

‘You wish I was dead, don’t you,
don’t you
?’

‘Stop speaking in that tone.’

‘Go to sleep, he says. Do you imagine either of us can sleep now?’

‘Look, kid, please. I’ve got to work tomorrow.’

‘Work! Don’t make me laugh! You call it work chatting with women about their sex lives? Nice work if you can get it!’

‘Just stop talking, will you.’

‘Do you imagine I’m going to let you go to sleep and leave me with the thoughts I’ve got?’

‘I’ve got thoughts too —’

‘What’s the use of sleep anyway, when it’s nothing but a nightmare.’

‘We’re in this hell together. Let’s at least be kind to each other.’

‘I’ve been being kind to you for years and getting kicked in the teeth for it.’

‘I’ve done what I can.’

‘What sort of ruddy nonsense is that, I’d like to know! "Done what you can"! You wait and see what you’ll be able to do when you have to! People never get justice until they start being violent about it, then the others cough up pretty quick. I’m going to make you cough up. It’s just about my turn, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll show you my bank account —’

‘I don’t mean money, I mean real stuff, action, blood. God, I’ve been fading away, I hardly know myself. I’ve got all tame and timid. No wonder you’ve stopped loving me. Maybe a little violence will make me real again.’

‘Stop it, kid. You’ve said all this before.’

‘That’s right, look at your watch! Soon you’ll be saying that you’ve got to go. You haven’t got to go. You can stay here all day if you want to. You don’t want to.’

I’m not free any more than you are. Do you think I enjoy this situation –?’

‘Change it, then.’

‘You know there’s nothing we can do.’

‘I’m not talking about we. I’m talking about me. God, you’ve made me into a bloody wet. I’m a fighter and you’ve made me into a weak person. I’m not a weak person. I’ll never forgive you. I’m a fighter by nature but because I loved you I put up with it all without a whimper. God, what I’ve put up with! I’ve been as quiet as a little mouse for years. No wonder you think you can make me accept anything. Well, you’re fucking wrong.’

‘You haven’t been quiet for years, you’ve been screaming. And now that vile Pinn is here to listen.’

‘Perhaps I want a witness for when you kill me.’

‘Don’t be silly, Em.’

‘I know you want to kill me. I know I’m just a nightmare to you. You’d like to strangle me. Well, go ahead.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘So are you. You ought to see your face now. You look like a bloated gangster. All right, now tell me what I look like.’

‘Em,
stop.
Use a bit of self-control.’

‘You used to say your relation with Mrs Placid was so dull because there was no violence in it.’

‘I’m tired of violence.’

‘You mean you’re tired of me. I was just for kicks, I suppose.’

‘Please, dearest Em —’

‘Oh don’t get smarmy, that won’t let you out. Handsome is as handsome does. At least Pinn’s always stood by me and helped me.’

‘She’s in love with you, can’t you see that? She’s always been a mischief-maker. I won’t have her in the house, I’ve told you, I mean it.’

‘If you don’t like my friends you can stay away.’

‘I won’t keep bloody Pinn in drink.’

‘You come less and less often anyway. Why don’t you stay away altogether. That’s what you’d like to do.’ ‘You know I’ll never abandon you, you know I’ll be faithful—’

‘That’s machine talk. I wish I had a quid for every time you’ve said that. Anyway, do you call this faithfulness? You do the bloody minimum and you know it. All your faithfulness does for me is prevent me from finding someone else who’d really love me and look after me. God, to think I’ve given my whole life to you and it’s bloody dust and ashes.’

‘Em, be a little kind to me, please. Just for a change.’

‘Not that I’d care if you did come less often. Sometimes when you aren’t around I feel almost happy, well not happy, that’s impossible, but sort of contented, for a minute, now and then. Your visits just upset everything, they’re so bloody meaningless, they upset me, they upset Luca —’

‘Em, just try —’

‘I pray every day that I’ll stop loving you.’

‘Please, let’s break out of this circle.’

‘All right, let’s! Suppose you go tomorrow and tell Mrs Placid all about me and Luca and how you’re going to set us up in a house and live with us and visit her in her flat once a week!’

‘You know I can’t do that —’

‘I don’t know anything of the sort, that’s the point! Can’t you see this thing from my position for bloody once? Why shouldn’t she suffer for a change? Why shouldn’t she share the suffering, why should I do it all?’

‘It wouldn’t be sharing. You wouldn’t suffer less if she suffered more.’

‘Wouldn’t I just! I’d never stop laughing!’

‘You don’t just want revenge —’

‘Why shouldn’t I want revenge? Your bloody bourgeois genteel set-up over there, I’d like to smash it to pieces.’

‘All right, let off steam, you don’t mean any of this.’

‘Don’t I? You wait. I’ll carry the war into the enemy’s camp. War on the bloody rich. I know how the poor live. I only took up with you because I was afraid of poverty and what it does to people. Night after night I saw my step-father bashing my mother until at last he killed her.’

‘I’m not responsible for your step-father.’

‘Yes, you are. You’re the principle of evil in my life. You’re just my step-father by other means. There’s psychology for you.’

‘Let’s stop this slanging match, shall we? You always boast of coming out of the gutter, but at least you can behave like an educated person —’

‘You mean like a lady. Like dear Mrs Placid. I know it’s a class thing. She’s top drawer and rich —’

‘She isn’t, actually —’

‘Of course I want revenge. I want her to know what a heel she’s married to.’

‘It’s not her fault—’

‘What do I care? It’s not my fault either.’

‘Yes it is. It’s mostly my fault, but it’s partly yours too.’

‘Do you want me to scream?’

‘Anyway, she does suffer. She doesn’t suspect
this,
but she knows she’s lost my love.’

‘That valuable commodity! That was true once. I think you’ve gone back to her. Do you make love to her?’

‘Of course not!’

‘I don’t believe you. You lie to her. You probably lie to me. In a year or two you’ll ditch us both and go off with a young girl. You’re just a typical male chauvinist.’

‘That’s Pinn’s mindless terminology. At least do your own thinking.’

‘If I hadn’t torn up all your love letters in a rage I could have sent them to Mrs Placid in a parcel. I’m going to ring her up tomorrow morning.’

‘You know you won’t do anything of the sort. Do you imagine our relation would survive if you did?’

‘I’m getting a bit tired of that old bogeyman. Why not let’s try and see what it’ll survive and what it won’t survive. I’m tired of waiting for my rights so that Mrs Placid’s boy won’t be damaged. Am I to wait till he’s thirty? Let him take his chance. My boy’s damaged, why shouldn’t hers be? You saw what Luca was like this evening.’

‘Is he talking more?’

‘No. He hasn’t spoken to me for a week. He talks to Pinn though.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know. I overheard a long spiel the other day about wriggly tadpoles. But if I come near him he plays dumb. He’ll be a fair mess when he grows up. And you won’t even go and see his schoolmaster.’

‘There’s no point —’

‘I hope you’ll be prepared to support him in some genteel mental home. That’ll be another little item of expense.’

‘Well, I suggested adoption, it was you who wanted to keep him.’

‘I wanted to keep you.’

‘So it was just blackmail.’

‘Have you really got the face to taunt me now because I wanted to keep my own child? You’re a bloody phenomenon.’

‘You deliberately turn him against me.’

‘Don’t be a clot. It’s automatic. "Where’s Daddy?" Not that he ever asks that now, he never mentions you, God knows what goes on in his little head. Remember how we used to think of pretending you were a sailor? God, we were pathetic.’

‘Yes, I remember that. We’ve gone a long way together, kid. Let’s still look after each other. Please please be patient a little longer.’

‘O.K., but what are we waiting for? For her to die, or what?’

‘Emily, need we have this endless fruitless personal talk?’

‘What do you want us to talk about, Racine? I thought personal talk was your thing.’

‘It isn’t. I don’t talk personal talk all the time with Harriet.’

‘Don’t mention that name! I don’t want to hear what happens in your other set-up. Of course you don’t, you don’t need to. She’s secure, she’s got you, she doesn’t have to bother about personal things, because they’re all hunky-dory. She can think about the ruddy dinner service and whether she’ll go to evensong. Oh I’m the flesh and she’s the spirit, don’t tell me, I know! I’ll write it all up for the Sunday papers ope day. "I was an every other Tuesday wife." God, sometimes I feel like people who go to an airport with a machine gun and just shoot everyone within sight. You simply have no idea how much I suffer.’

‘You feel jealousy and spite and resentment. I feel guilt. That’s worse.’

‘Is it? Get rid of it then, do what I’m always asking you to do!’

‘It’s no good, that wouldn’t do it. We’re simply trapped, caught —’

‘Who’s "we"? You say that just in order to stop thinking. You’re such a bloody coward. You stay with her out of cowardice, you daren’t step out of line. You daren’t think, so you live in a dream. At least I used to bring a little reality into your life. Over there you live in a bourgeois dream world.’

‘Do stop using the word "bourgeois". You don’t even know what it means.’

‘It means dream. At least here it’s real. It may be bloody ghastly but it’s real.’

‘You said a little while ago it wasn’t real. Or did I misunderstand you?’

‘I could kill you sometimes. You know what I mean. Her place is real, it’s part of society, people come there, she’s somebody. This place is nowhere at all. I’m just loose, lost, rattling about, a bit of bloody scrap. No wonder I can’t make friends or look anybody in the face. The women down at the school just stare at me and pass by. They know I’m an unmarried mum. I see bloody no one except you and bloody Pinn and the Welfare busybody. Welfare! Christ! And then you have the face to complain about my conversation! If we had some friends together like ordinary married people do, we might have something else to talk about except ourselves. We could have ordinary talk and gossip and that and look at other things together, and not be always staring at each other. Why do we have to be shut up all the time in this cage? Why can’t we have friends together? I’d like to meet your friend Montague Small, I’ve been watching his Milo Fane series on telly, it’s smashing. He’s an interesting person. I’d like to meet him. He wouldn’t tell Mrs Placid, would he?’

‘It’s impossible.’

‘Why? Do I just have to live by your bloody decrees? Oh God, if you know how much I wish we could live together in a proper house like real people and give dinner parties, instead of living in this hole like blasted criminals.’

‘I’m sorry, my darling —’

‘I daren’t even cry in front of you now, you get so ratty. It seems mad to say it, but I’ve simply lived on love all these years, I’m like a bloody saint living on the bloody sacrament. I’ve got all thin and fine by living on pure love! Christ, I’m tough. If I wasn’t I’d be dead!’

‘Yes, you’re tough, kid. You’re my tough girl, my Berlin prostitute, my little blackamoor princess.’

‘You’ve gone smarmy again. You’re trying to make me stop. I know your tricks.’

‘My glinting jewel, my jack of diamonds —’

‘My Queen of the Night. Remember how you used to call me that? I’m fed up with being Queen of the Night. I want to be Queen of the Day for a change.’

‘Darling, just pity me a little. I’m miserable and desperate too.’

‘If it was just you and me I’d comfort you, I’d stop you being miserable. I’d make you happy like women do. But you can’t expect me to feel sorry for you when you’re mostly somewhere else. You do see. You asked for my love and got it and now you’re deliberately destroying it. I said I prayed to stop loving you, but I don’t really want to. It’s what my whole life is for and I can’t change that now. Oh my sweetikin, how can such a love as ours stop, it can’t stop ever, can it? It is a great love, isn’t it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You must come to me properly, you must find a way through, you must, you must, you must.’

‘Yes.’

‘I know we quarrel, but I love you so much, you are my whole life, you are everything. I haven’t got anything else. You will make it all well, won’t you? You can, I know you can.’

‘Yes.’

‘And soon?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘When?’

‘Emily—’

‘All right, all right. God, I’m so tired and now it’s nearly time to get up. There’s the sun shining outside. You know what. You’ve killed me and sent me to hell, and you must descend to the underworld to find me and make me live again. If you don’t come for me, I’ll become a demon and drag you down into the dark.’

Blaise tended to leave Putney earlier and earlier. These early morning departures were terrible, and were indeed largely symbolic since he could rarely hope to get back to Hood House before Harriet was awake. He wanted to represent each occasion to her as exceptional (‘I simply couldn’t get away’) and also to be able to tell himself that he had not really ‘spent the night’. He condemned himself for inconsistency and meanness and cowardice, but could not now resist the sheer longing to get away as soon as he decently could from Emily’s accusing voice and vicinity. He could, when once away, put himself together again with remarkable speed. He longed for the return to Harriet and calm. And mad as this might seem, he actually did feel calm a good deal of the time at Hood House, and Putney then seemed hardly to exist.