The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (24 page)

They were sitting in a couple of the white basket chairs on the small tiled verandah, whose glass roof was supported by formalized teak caryatids, now the worse for wear and splitting a little like old ships’ figureheads. The sun blazed on the glass, making a flower of light at one corner, and the hot thick perfumed air shifted slightly about in big perceptible polleny bundles. Monty, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal thin white black-furred arms, was sweating. It was eleven-thirty in the morning. He was drinking the gin and lemon and parsley mixture. Harriet, drunk with her own survival, was drinking nothing. Monty felt restless to screaming with a strange irritation. Had he hoped, like a vampire, to batten on his neighbours’ trouble, and to be helped in his catastrophe by surveying theirs, and was he now disappointed to find a triumph of courage and decency where he had expected a shambles of resentment and grief, a holocaust of rage and hate? Had he really wanted to console a broken Harriet?

‘All the same,’ he said, ‘your troubles are only beginning. Emily McHugh exists, and —’

‘Yes, yes, I know she exists, I
know
it. Blaise is with her now, I sent him to her. Monty, you must meet her. I pitied her. I
liked
her, and she didn’t hate me. I want her to come here, I want her to see it all, a real family, a real home. I want her to accept it and not to feel condemned or excluded. Monty, do you think I’m mad? I thought at first I’d die of grief and shock. But now – you see it’s got to be all right, so it will be all right. And I feel so crammed full of will power, I think I could make the universe obey me.’

‘You are wonderful,’ Monty said again. In her own way she will make the other woman suffer, he thought, she will punish her; and he felt less annoyed.

‘And I think I shall adopt Luca.’

‘But Luca has a perfectly good mother of his own! He even has a perfectly good father of his own!’

‘No, I don’t mean literally. I’m not as mad as that. Of course he must live with Emily, but I want him to come here a lot, I want him to have his own room here. The poor child could do with a second mother. We’ve decided to move him to a better school.’

‘We?’

‘Blaise and I. I’m going to see Emily again tomorrow. Blaise is sure she won’t refuse. Of course it will all take time.’

‘But don’t you feel any ordinary jealousy?’ said Monty. Was it possible that those apparently automatic torments which had crippled his own marriage could be cured after all by simple magnanimity, if that was what it was?

‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Harriet, picking up the skirt of her striped dress and tucking it under her. ‘Monty, I think I will have a little of that mixture after all. I’m talking big to make myself feel that I can manage, because if I can’t manage we’re all smashed up. You don’t know how brave I’m having to be not to become a screaming mess.’

‘I sorry,’ he said. I am stupid, he thought She is really brave and intelligent. I keep wanting to imagine it isn’t genuine, but it is genuine.

‘I feel such idiotic jealousy about the past, as if that mattered, it’s gone, it doesn’t exist any more. But he
was
in love with her, and he
did
sleep with her.’

‘Doesn’t he now?’ said Monty. Blaise had always been a bit vague on this point.

‘No, of course not! That’s what it’s all about. She’s a remnant, a duty –’

Was Blaise lying, Monty wondered. And then he thought sadly, I shall never know. Blaise will not forgive me for being the calm spectator, he will not forgive me for sitting here with Harriet and hearing her describe his contrition.

‘Oh I feel jealousy, yes,’ said Harriet, gazing with her big vague eyes down the garden, where Panda and Babu and Seagull were lying panting in the sun. ‘Only I’m determined not to go mad with it I’ve got to be in control of myself and of them. They expect it of me, even Emily expects it, Blaise says. I’ve got to save them all. Of course it’s a wreck, a crash. Many marriages would simply break. Only mine isn’t going to. All claims will be met It’s like being bankrupt but determined to pay. We shall
make a place
for Emily in our lives, we shall have to. I won’t enjoy it, I shall often hate it But as you said, she’s a fact, the boy is a fact. Of course if it hadn’t been for the boy, Blaise would have left her long ago, she knows that But given that the boy is here he may even help, he may make us all behave better. An innocent can help.’

‘How about David?’ said Monty. It was not that he wanted to needle her, he just wanted to be sure that she had seen everything, that they had looked at it together.

Harriet, still gazing, frowned with pain. ‘’He’s very hurt and he won’t say anything to Blaise. He may be – no, I won’t say the most damaged, for I won’t let him be damaged, I won’t let him. And he’s old enough and wise enough to carry it I’ll help him. He’s not a child. But it will be a long task and we’re only at the beginning, it will be a long daily task. It’s like having been free all one’s life, and then suddenly being conscripted. Oh Monty, you will help me, won’t you?‘ Without turning, she stretched out her hand and Monty took it and held it Ajax appeared from the orchard. He smiled briefly at his mistress and then lay down and panted with the others. ‘Monty, tell me more about what Edgar said when you told him.’

Monty released her hand. ‘He said he was sorry he wouldn’t be able to talk to you any more.’

‘Oh, but tell him he can talk to me! I don’t want it to be taboo. The more people I can talk to about it the better I’ll feel. It’s got to be public, like marriage itself, otherwise it will be a nightmare.’

‘Have you discussed
this
with Blaise,’ said Monty. ‘I mean about it being public?’

‘No, not exactly – we haven’t decided – Anyway, do tell Edgar he can come and talk to me.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Monty. His irritation returned. Harriet’s
exalté
mood had something ridiculous about it. No good would come of all these fine intentions.

‘I’d like to talk to Magnus about it too,’ said Harriet.

‘I doubt if that will be possible,’ said Monty.

‘Isn’t it strange how one gets extra strength to cope with something like this? I feel I’m out in the open, out in the truth, like an open field with the wind blowing. I thought at first I should never be able to stop crying and I felt so weak and crushed. Then somehow I saw that only loving Blaise much more would help us all out, and then I found I simply had that much more to give!’

‘Suppose Emily McHugh won’t play?’ said Monty.

‘She will play,’ said Harriet. ‘She’ll have to. We’re both in a new country where we’ve got to live. That sounds grim but you see, I know she didn’t hate me – I’ll
get
Emily to play.’

‘So you’re the boss.’

‘You’re laughing at me again. And you’re looking at your watch. I must go. Come, boys, good boys. Monty, help me to keep it up. You will, won’t you? And don’t forget to tell Edgar. Oh, Monty, you really mustn’t give me another Lockett’s thing! That cup must be quite valuable, look at all the gold leaf or whatever it is! Whatever will your mother say?’

When Harriet was gone Monty went into his study, which he kept dark on these bright days. Locketts had dark red wooden shutters, decorated with stiff pointed tulips with blue girls’ heads for flowers. These he kept pulled to across the open window, and the room was full of garden smells but fairly cool, the marbled wallpaper dimly swirling, the coffered ceiling studded with shadows, the narrow stained-glass cupboards, designed for tall vases and willowy madonnas, gleaming dully, their jewelled foliage extinguished. Monty fell on his knees in the accustomed attitude, but could not clear his mind of thoughts. He felt himself tensely seeking a healing blank which his anxious mind in the same movement rejected. Imagery of above and beyond was of no use now. He felt caught and full of unclassified resentment After a while he sank down sideways, holding one ankle, and stared at the thin blurry line of gold between the shutters. What had he expected and wanted? To hear Harriet cry out, to feel needed by her, to see that marriage in ruins?

How readily, how naturally, one makes a home inside the misfortunes of others. If this was still an instinct for him he had achieved nothing. He felt an old hatred for himself which he knew to be the most fruitless thing of all. I must get away, he thought. But where to? Soon his mother would be arriving. Sitting there he grew gradually quiet. The image of Sophie reasserted itself, painful but with a sense of the accustomed. He saw her glinting spectacles, her little well-shod feet, her perky avid head, her small air of begging for attention, which betokened all that was, after all, so touching and defenceless about her. He recalled a dream he had had last night. He had been a big blinded animal, and Sophie, naked except for a huge floral hat, was leading him upon a chain. Such small breasts she had. He wished desperately now to weep, but there were still no tears.

‘You should go now,’ said Emily. ‘You mustn’t keep Harriet waiting, must you?’

‘And you actually talked peacefully together?’ said Blaise. Everything that was now happening seemed strictly impossible.

‘No. I told you. She talked. I sneered silently.’

‘But you didn’t shout at her, you didn’t tell her to go?’

‘Why should I? What she had to say was interesting. And she seems quite a nice person. She’s the one who’s had the shock, after all.’

‘So you – you accept the situation?’

‘I didn’t say I did. I don’t know what the situation is. Do you?’

‘But if you both – if you don’t fight – there we are —’

‘Sometimes, I wonder how intelligent you are,’ said Emily. She was arranging in a vase some yellow and white roses which Harriet had sent from the Hood House garden.

‘No, no. I’m not crazy,’ said Blaise, ‘I know anything can happen. One can’t absorb a shock like this just – but you’ve been so wonderful, so kind, both of you —’

‘So kind to all-important central paramount you. Yes.’

‘All right, kid, I’m pure egoist – and – don’t say it – most men are. Let me speak then out of my egoism. I want you both. This is what I’ve never been able in the past to say to you really frankly, I’ve been afraid to. This new truthfulness may help us all. It certainly helps me. I feel suddenly free. I feel better, I don’t feel afraid, I can say what I think. You know, Em, our love was always somehow marred by my feeling so afraid. I can love you so much better now —’

‘I wonder what it was you were afraid of which you’re not afraid of now. The possibility of my fighting for my rights? Has that gone then?’

‘No. I mean truth is sort of infectious, it spreads. I was always trying to placate you —’

‘And now you won’t? You were saying you wanted us both.’

‘I wouldn’t have dared to say that before. Of course I don’t love Harriet in the special way that I love you. You know that. But I do care for her and it’s not just duty, though there is duty, absolute duty to both of you. So I am caught and held. That has always been so really, only now thank God I can tell truth about the whole thing to both of you. Now for the first time somehow it can all be well —’

‘I think you’re a swindler. You’re getting away with it, that’s what you mean – you having both of us, you having everything, you loved and cherished. You, you, you.’

‘Well – yes —’

‘You’re being very frank and imagining it suits you. However, I doubt if entire truthfulness has yet descended from heaven. You’ve been such an habitual liar. Remember, I concede nothing.’

Blaise was silent for a moment, watching Emily carefully planting the roses into a large purple cut-glass vase. Emily was wearing a summer dress, a cheap cotton thing of a pale green, with white daisies upon it, rather like an overall. She had paid today only the discreetest attention to her personal appearance, and she looked pretty, her dark hair boyishly neat, her face creamy pale, her amazing eyes very blue in the clear morning sunlight, flashing now a little with a kind of irony which Blaise could not understand but which he felt to be, in spite of her words, benevolent. He was trying hard not to display a disgraceful relieved happiness which Emily might feel as a provocation. The smallest gentlenesses to him of the two women were gifts which made him feel vastly rich and vastly humble. Never had these two, endowed now with such godlike power over him, seemed so thrillingly attractive. He waited on Emily’s every word and gesture, his whole being vulnerable to her as never before.

‘Well,’ said Emily, tickling Little Bilham’s nose with the final rose, then standing back to admire her vase, ‘my point is that you won’t be able to drop your old habits so easily. You’re still trying to placate me with half truths and jostle me into the position that suits you. You say you love me in a special way and her you just sort of care for. Or did I misunderstand you?’

‘No – no -,’ said Blaise uneasily. The sun revealed with fearful clarity the little familiar shabby room which Emily had, in her new mysterious mood, meticulously cleaned and tidied. It occurred to Blaise that he had never seen flowers in this room before. Why had it never occurred to him to bring any?

Emily looked at him with the new indecipherable irony in her eyes. ‘Oh never mind. I could tie you into such knots, but I won’t bother. Today anyway. You won’t tell me the trutheven now, I know that. Only the situation will tell me the truth in the end. Never mind, never mind.’

‘Em, kid, you won’t ever, will you, tell Harriet about, you know, our special world? That’s private, such things have to be. An outsider wouldn’t understand. Harriet would just be upset. That’s our secret, isn’t it?’

‘I daresay I won’t tell her,’ said Emily. ‘All right, I won’t, it would be pointless. I suppose I should be glad to have some secrets with you still. Is Harriet going to tell everybody about our jolly trio? Your celebrity friend already knows all about it.’ Emily thus designated Monty, whom she seemed to have taken against, rather to Blaise’s relief. ‘Or do I remain boxed up, receiving thrilling clandestine visits from your wife?’

‘We’ll have to think, we mustn’t be hasty. There’s my practice. There’s David.’

‘When am I going to meet famous David? He looks awfully. handsome in his photo, much handsomer than you.’