The Sea Change (33 page)

She would drop down beside him with a brief friendly smile, but unless he asked her a question, they were usually silent.

Sometimes he asked about the child – the prodigy – with whom she went for walks.

‘How was Jules Verne today?’

‘In a very calculating mood. He was estimating how long the world would last – but it is all done in millions and partly in Greek, so I find him difficult to follow on the
subject.’

‘Has he references for his calculations?’

‘Oh yes, but he says he is a critical statistician, and therefore will take nothing for granted. He said it was a thousand pities that I was not better informed, as our duologue on the
subject was unbalanced by my ignorance, and then we talked about other things.’

‘What did you talk about next?’

‘Fish, and marriage.’

‘Has he proposed to you?’

‘He had mentioned the matter, but he feels that I am far too old, and he does not approve of too great a discrepancy in age. He is only ten, you see; that makes nine years between us. He
feels that looking after his animals – he is very zoophilic – and his children and cooking for him might prove too much for me by the time he is of an age to marry.’

‘I see. And what about fish?’

‘I was asking him if he had ever seen a shark here. He said yes, he had once, and that there were stories of people being eaten by them from time to time – about four people since
the war, he said, which made it a distinguished, though horrible, end.’

‘And then what?’

‘I told him about learning your play.’

‘I should like to meet him.’

‘I’m afraid it would be no good. He does not want to meet you as he says that the Greeks wrote fair the best plays and it might hurt your feelings if this fact were to
emerge.’

That was one kind of conversation that they had. Occasionally, he asked her how she was getting on with Jimmy. Then she was always serious, even when she answered, as once she did: ‘He
says that I am improving. He has managed to get my head in the air and my feet on the ground, and he says that is something.’

‘What does he mean by that?’

‘Oh – I hung my head and muttered and shuffled about with my feet all the time whenever he wanted me to stand still.’ She stretched out her foot on the parapet as she said this
– flexed it, and let it lie. She had the most beautiful feet that he had ever seen – small, with neat round heels and articulate toes, and a pretty arch between them.

‘You have Trilby feet,’ he said aloud without thinking.

She looked up and smiled, and blushing a little, said: ‘Do you think that Jimmy is Svengali then?’

‘I don’t know. How do you feel about it all? About Clemency, I mean?’

She didn’t answer for a moment – she never answered idly, he noticed. ‘You see, we’ve been concentrating on such beginnings that I’ve rather lost Clemency. Jimmy
says this doesn’t matter.’

‘But it worries you?’

‘Yes – it does, rather, I feel that I ought to be learning about her as well, but there doesn’t seem to be time for it.’

‘Would you like to read her with me again?’

‘Very much.’ She looked up with sudden gratitude, and her forehead cleared. He wanted to take her face in his hands and shower endearments upon it: he put his hands in his pockets,
and said: ‘Right: well, we’ll do that tomorrow. Afternoon?’ When the others were there, they drank
arezinata
, ate the luscious black olives, and watched the evening
triumph. Watching the sun set was a long, beautiful sight. It sank with heroic brilliance – the sky a great map of its tumult: they had none of them ever seen sunsets like these. It turned
the rocks the colour of a leopard’s eyes – the white houses tender, delicate pinks – the sea an inky blue but broken and furred with gold as the evening winds silently echoed over
it.

They would sit until the nearby island bloomed mysteriously like a whale in the sea, and a pale crocus cluster of lights trembled from the Peloponnese; the vine against the house was black, and
he could watch her face less secretly. Then, sometimes he would cry a private supplication to some god; that it should stay like this – not perfect – she was not his, and she knew
nothing of it, but simply that she should be always there. In the flushed calm of the hour, with the long evening before him – even his night alone seemed distant, anything beyond it a dream,
and this seemed a possible prayer.

He did not suggest reading Clemency with her until she had had a clear two weeks with Jimmy. This was chiefly because, in some odd way, he was far more frightened of Jimmy discovering about him
than he was of Lillian – who seemed safely wrapped up in her own enjoyment. But Jimmy had this streak – which until now he had been grateful for – of acute perception where he was
concerned; of anticipating his wishes, of understanding his smallest requirements, of attending him through every kind of crisis. He did not want the precipitation of Jimmy knowing – his
intimate blind eye, his almost aggressive loyalty . . . There was, in any case, a slight strain between them – very slight – hardly definable – but something to do with the night
when Jimmy had followed him down on to the terrace, clearly expecting him to talk himself into the new play, and he hadn’t, because he had had nothing to say about it. Then, quite suddenly
Jimmy had switched – to her, and in a few moments of professional reason, had taken his mornings away from him. He had felt then like a child who has had something most precious to it firmly
and with maddening kindness put out of its reach. Only Jimmy hadn’t even realized what he’d done – poor Jimmy – he was simply trying to do his best with a raw girl in a big
acting part. It was absurd, after all these years, to blame Jimmy for doing his job properly. The prospect of reading the play with her sharpened the whole evening and softened the night, when he
was actually able to invoke these kinder, more reasoned considerations . . .

The next morning, Lillian remarked as they walked on to the port, was exactly like a Dufy. There was a stiff breeze; the sea was petrol blue and neatly choppy, the coloured caiques –
painted pinks and scarlets and greens – were frolicking at their moorings, the sky overhead was crowded with small, hurrying, white clouds; canvas awnings over shops and cafés were
flapping with unrhythmic gusto, and the dozen or so harbour cats were all behaving like theatrical gangsters or secret agents. Only the mules and donkeys stood with lowered heads and expressions of
cynical calm, looking – as Lillian said – as though they were trying to hold their breath to recover from hiccoughs. They had now a routine for the morning’s shopping. They bought
all the food together – Lillian choosing, and he carrying the baskets: fruit, vegetables, Nescafé, rice, tinned meat, eggs, and cheese; then she went to buy cigarettes from the
ex-sponge diver who had had the bends and was hopelessly crippled, and he went to the Post Office. He was not interested in the possibility of letters, but Lillian – in theory, at least
– adored them, and he knew that
her
letters from Dorset were important to her. So he went every day with the bundle of their passports, and helped the internationally crabbed official
with ‘Young’ and ‘Joyce’ (he clearly felt that one ought to stand for the other, and the other should not exist at all). This morning, there was a good haul: two letters for
her – one from Dorset and one from London, a bulky letter for Lillian, two for him, and a packet from New York for Jimmy.

‘Darling, what a lot! Anything for me?’

He handed her her letter and she fell upon it.

‘It’s from Peg Ashley – I wrote and told her about this heavenly place. I haven’t seen her for ten years, but I thought that if we were going to settle down it would be
nice to take up with her again. I’ve asked her to look for a house for us.’

He did not reply – afraid that it might involve actually discussing the future. With one of his own letters in his hand he was looking at the packet for Jimmy which now lay face downwards
on the table. On the back of it, in bold sprawling writing, was the name and address of the photographer to whom Jimmy had taken her for pictures in New York. He had an overwhelming desire to see
the pictures: he looked at Lillian; she was engrossed in her letter which was a very long one – but the packet was addressed to Jimmy. He opened his own letter and looked at it: it was from
Willi Friedmann, and quite short, but difficult to read. With his mind on the packet he skimmed through his letter. Matthias had had an accident of the hand – Friedmann was not thence going
to buy the fiddle as it would not be useful – something about destiny (very Germanic, he thought impatiently) and machinery at school – the boy was in hospital – then an almost
illegible paragraph about the boy’s feelings which he did not read. Bad luck for the boy, he thought absently – and reached for the packet. Lillian was still reading – it would be
hours before they were back at the house, and the thought of having to see the pictures with Jimmy suddenly nauseated him. He opened the packet. The pictures were in a folder, and pinned to it was
a note from Stanley to Jimmy. ‘Roughs – only. She’s a natural, your girl: congratulations. Stan.’ Trembling, on fire with wordless thoughts, he ripped open the folder, and
there she was. There were eight pictures and they gave him another shock. He had not known that anyone else could see her with such clarity and understanding of what she was; he had thought his
image a private one made by his love – it was the only sense of possession he had had about her. At the bottom of the set was a small replica of one plate with another note. ‘For your
pocketbook’. Anger roared in him like a drum roll: he felt when it stopped he would be forced to see something terrible, and clung to the anger, which at least blinded him. He put the small
picture in his pocket, and gathered up his own two letters saying savagely to himself: ‘Time I did some letters with my secretary.’ He must get back to the house; this desire repeated
until it became almost a shout: he turned to Lillian. She was wearing a wide-brimmed red hat which particularly suited her complexion, and now she was bent over the photographs . . .

‘. . . well –
really
– he is the most astonishing photographer. I mean, she has a nice little face, but who would have thought that this could be made of it!’

He did not reply, but smiled absently at her and looked about for Spiro to pay for the coffee – must get back.

‘Whenever you smile at me like that, I know that you aren’t listening. Seriously – I should think that she’ll get film offers if she’s any good at all at acting and
photographs like that; wouldn’t Jimmy be furious if she accepted them!’

‘Why should it make any difference to him?’

‘My dear, his
protégée
! He’s been one all his life, he’s never
had
one. Haven’t you noticed how it’s changed him?’

‘In what way?’

‘He’s growing up.’ Lillian said it with a kind of satisfaction.

Walking up the hill through the village, he kept behind Lillian’s donkey. The stone steps – seemingly so shallow, and cut with wide enough treads for the whole donkey to stand on one
of them – this morning were endless: as soon as he got his breath on one level, there was another to be climbed. He had never needed to wear a hat, but now the sun was boring down into the
back of his neck in painful, uneven pulses – like the electric current of toothache. Beyond these physical discomforts his mind hunted his worst fears; refusing to consider exactly what he
would find, it nevertheless pursued some dangerous track started by those confidential scraps of writing which had not been addressed to him. With this there was the most frightful sense of
unreality – the feeling that he did not, could not exist in circumstances which had seemed to descend on him from nowhere, without warning or consideration for what he had thought that he
was, making him feel old, and irrelevant and disassociated. The sky burned, the houses dazzled, the stones had no flesh on their bones under his feet: he was sixty-two, and his wife sat on a donkey
ahead of him. She was nineteen on the cool terrace, and her future stretched illimitable, like the sea round her. The gap between wanting and giving widened with each step that he took, and each
step was bringing him nearer the sun, inviting its violence. He walked – his heart like a sledge hammer – collecting panic, as ideas, facts, likelihoods, and comparisons reared up and
sheered off in his mind, each one irrefutable, each not to be borne: he clung only to the shreds of his anger and the illusion that whatever he found could be changed.

When the house was in sight, Lillian called back to him and talked the rest of the way – some long reminiscences about something they had done together; he tried to listen, but it made him
feel still more unreal. At the door of the house he gave her the wallet to pay for the donkey and told her to get the man to bring the food in: he wanted to find them alone.

Jimmy was alone on the terrace, stretched at full length on the parapet – she was nowhere to be seen. Jimmy heard the door opening and sat up and said ‘Hi!’, he seemed half
asleep.

‘Where is your pupil?’ Trying to say it lightly made his voice tremble.

‘Alberta? She’s somewhere around. It got too hot and we called it a day. She said something about writing a letter and she couldn’t do it in the sun,’ he added.

The donkey man padded quietly across the terrace with their baskets: unreality began to ebb; he noticed that a plant on the terrace had suddenly flowered with one great scarlet trumpet. Then
Lillian appeared and paid the man, who received the money in his customary manner made up of indifference almost bordering on compassion, and went, closing the terrace door behind him. It was all
the same, and I am a little mad, he thought wearily; he had to sit down. Then Lillian said: ‘Have you shown the photographs to Jimmy?’

Jimmy said lazily: ‘What photographs?’

‘The ones of Alberta that Stanley took.’

Jimmy swung his legs down off the parapet and said: ‘Did Stan send them to
you
?’

He said: ‘As a matter of fact he didn’t, but I couldn’t resist looking at them. I hope you don’t mind—’