The Sea Change (9 page)

Now, since there is no chance of his meeting me like that, I have insisted on flying with Em and the others going on a separate flight. But that hasn’t altered the desolate day of
departure: I’m leaving nothing here that matters and there is nothing in New York that I want. The worst of it is that I am taking so little with me – am travelling so light – it
is such a spectral business. Everything is done: the packing – the arrangements – the agents have looked over the house; Jimmy’s girl has made a scene on the telephone which
shocked poor little Miss Young; Em disappeared for nearly the whole of yesterday and nobody knew where he was which always frightens me so much that I’m horrible to him when he comes back,
and some people we hardly know have been badgering us to have a drink with them some time before we leave this evening. And that is exactly how it is when we leave anywhere. The only new ingredient
is the girl: she’s been with us a week now, and they say she does letters well and seems intelligent. I suppose New York will grow her up a bit, but at the moment the poor thing looks like a
typical little English frump. Anyway it’s better than a plastic blonde, or some ghastly would-be actress trying to get at Em. I gave her an old jersey I hadn’t got room for yesterday,
and she was really sweet about it – as though I’d given her a marvellous present – I must say she has nice manners.

And now I’ve got the whole day to fill in, until the car comes for us at six o’clock. Em likes going for walks on these days, and Jimmy – if he hasn’t any work to do
– goes to films, and I oscillate between fiddling with my appearance and fidgeting round picture galleries, or bookshops to find something to read for the journey. At least I suppose we might
all have lunch and spin that out for an hour or two: Miss Young – Alberta is her extraordinary name – has the day off: she really doesn’t look as though she’s called
Alberta, but except for plays people are seldom right for their names . . . Anyway we wouldn’t have to have her, which is a relief, because she shows signs of being starry-eyed about the
journey and that’s very difficult to take if one is as bored as I am.

2

JIMMY

‘M
AKE
it fun for her, Jimmy,’ he said this morning: ‘She’s never done it before – make it an
occasion.’ It was almost as though he wished he was flying with her himself, and, considering his alternative, one can’t blame him. Madam’s luggage! I’ve never known a woman
with so many impersonal possessions; she even travels with her private picture gallery, which is why we always have to be at airports early – to get through all the Customs forms and excess
baggage, I spent the afternoon with her to give Emmanuel a rest because she’s always jumpy before a journey. We met at Wilton’s for lunch and she was late which was the best way round.
She’d got us a table at the back, and I could tell by the way she came in that she wanted to enjoy herself . . . a smile of conspiratorial exhaustion, followed by a little sigh of potential
gaiety – ‘
What
a morning!’ and left it to my imagination. ‘Let’s have a
delicious
lunch.’ We did: Lillian has always had a fine feeling for food
and loves ordering it, so I let her choose for me as well. We talked of this and that, and then she suddenly shot at me: ‘Jimmy! what do
you
think of Em’s play?’

I knew what she meant, but I said: ‘You know, Lillian. I think it’s a honey – the only problem is finding a girl who can do that kind of thing.’

‘You know I don’t mean that one. I mean the new one.’

I didn’t say anything – so she repeated: ‘The new one. The one he’s had to re-write a whole act of.’

‘I didn’t even know that about it.’

‘
Didn’t
you?’ She sounded incredulous, but a little pleased as well. ‘I thought that if things were going badly, you’d be the first person he’d
tell.’

‘Well, he hasn’t. I haven’t seen it, he hasn’t discussed it, and I don’t even know what it’s about.’ I managed to sound resentful (Lillian is an
authority on resentment); it covered my embarrassment about a play which, so far as I knew, he hadn’t even begun.

She raised her eyebrows in a commiserating manner and was silent for a minute before saying: ‘I wish he
would
talk about it – to one of us – before it’s too
late.’

The waiter brought our sole, and I didn’t reply, ostensibly until he had served the fish, hoping really that I needn’t say anything; but she adores intimate criticism – she
doesn’t see it as destructive gossip, more as a means of measuring her intelligence by the yardstick of her inside information.

‘I mean that the whole idea of that play is fantastically difficult for anyone to do – the inversion of a Cinderella with the girl getting plainer and poorer all through the play. No
amount of spiritual growth is going to compensate for that with an audience – they can’t
see
it, unless you make her some sort of a saint, and he won’t do that. I told him
all this the first time I read it.’

It’s no good: I can’t keep out of it. In that much time she’d swept me along her current – past the danger notices – the drum of my own temper roared ahead and I
hadn’t the strength to get back. I’d had to deal with Emmanuel the night after she’d read the play, and at the memory of him then my detachment snapped,

‘In the first place the girl does grow inside – in exact proportion to her external changes. In the second place, I don’t know what you mean by some sort of saint, but
he’s made her a significant force on the credit side, I should have said, if you think of the last act. In the third . . .’

‘You
do
know what I mean. People don’t laugh at saints; you can’t make them ridiculous – the girl’s almost a clown.’

‘In the third place I don’t even agree about her getting plainer or poorer. It simply depends what you mean by those words.’

‘I mean what everybody means. I
don’t
mean Hollywood stuff – wearing well-cut rags and all that glossy simplicity racket. Really, Em’s plays are above
that.’

‘He doesn’t mean that either. He means a different kind of beauty, a different kind of richness — ’ I realized suddenly how loud my voice was by the expression on her
face, felt even angrier, and dropped it. ‘The right actress can convey these things – it’s all written for her.’

‘Exactly! The
right
actress, but he hasn’t found one. The girl here plays for laughs all the time, and now we’re going to New York for endless auditions, and you know as
well as I do that there isn’t anyone there young enough who can do it: it’s crazy!’

We were right on the edge; she was breathless, and her hands were shaking. It was Emmanuel who was flying with her, and I was supposed to be giving her a pleasant run. I started to hand us back
along the banks.

‘I agree that the girl here isn’t right. She’s been a great disappointment.’

‘But it was obvious from the start that she never would be.’

‘Well – we hoped. I know you realized that before we did.’ I was sweating now with the effort, and shame that I had made it necessary. I tried to smile and leaned towards
her.

‘Please eat your fish. Emmanuel would be furious if he knew I’d taken you out to lunch and then argued with you so that you couldn’t eat it.’

‘But we’re not arguing,’ she said, and slit her fish from the bone. ‘You agree with me really.’ She looked quite gay again, and poured us both more wine.
‘There isn’t anybody to play Clemency, and if Em had talked about the play before he wrote it, we might have got him to see that.’

We were going her way somehow or other. I had rejected violence – had dragged us into calm water, and now she tied me up and let us both down quietly until we emerged at the level she had
determined. The only way that I could defend Emmanuel was to agree with her. By the time I had agreed with her that one could tell Emmanuel how to write plays if only he would listen to what she
said, we had finished our pineapple, and she proposed that we drink some kirsch by itself. It was too late to go to a picture, and I had a desire to sleep which nearly overwhelmed me, but she
looked wonderful. Warmth and enjoyment always brought the faintest, most delicate pink to her cheekbones; her eyes, which were chiefly remarkable for their size, sparkled with an affectionate ease
– she liked being with me and visibly it did her good to like anything.

I’d forgotten her question in the sudden memory of the first time I had seen her – been struck by her, you might say – for she was a dramatic and beautiful sight. It was just
after I came out of the Army, in America: Emmanuel had offered me my job and asked me to weekend with them in Connecticut – they’d rented a house for the summer. I’d changed and
gone down to the sitting room. It was a hot June night –
Aida
was pouring out of the radiogram, and the windows were open on to the garden, but the room was empty. It was a large,
pleasant, quite ordinary room – books, low tables, and well-shaded lamps scattered about, and an enormous fireplace for burning logs; but it was the first private house I had been to since my
discharge, and it had a kind of haze of luxury and civilization over its comfort. There was a tray with bourbon and orange, cherries and ice, etc., to mix an Old Fashioned, and I was just wondering
whether I dared to start on one – when something made me turn round to face the window.

She was wearing a long dress of some finely pleated material – a very dark blue – bare on one shoulder and caught on the other by a swag of wonderful pearls. She was facing me; her
arms were lifted to draw the curtains behind her, her face and all her skin had the most astonishing radiance and her hair looked as though there was moonlight on it. She smiled, and said:
‘I’m Lillian Joyce,’ and at that moment something strange happened to me. All through the war, in various Godforsaken places, I’d listened to men talking about what
they’d left and what they were going back to. Women; their wives, their mothers, their jobs, their homes, or just women – women they’d slept with, women they’d never even
seen – the usual reminiscence of sentiment, sex, swagger, and plain homesickness; and I’d mostly listened because I’d never had a home or family and (although I never told them)
hadn’t even had a woman. They called me Orphan Annie – I was Annie for years – and I didn’t want to add to that. I’d listened because I always hoped I’d
understand why we were fighting the war, but I never did understand for myself – although sometimes I thought I could see why they thought they were. But when I saw Lillian like that and she
smiled, I suddenly knew. I wasn’t in love with her; I didn’t even want her, but I was struck by a kind of adoration. I’d have done anything to keep her as she was then: there was
nobody like her, but at the same time she was every woman. I felt that all these years I’d been helping to preserve her, and my whole war seemed natural in that moment.

The waiter was standing over us with the kirsch, and I asked for coffee.

‘What was it, Jimmy?’ she was asking.

I wondered whether to tell her.

‘You looked so sad and tender. Were you thinking of Annie?’

How the hell did she know about Annie – a secret I had made sure died with Private Sullivan?

‘Don’t worry about her. She was only making the stock scene; she’ll get over it.’

‘Oh – that one. I’m not worried about her.’

‘Well – what was it?’ She was asking in the best kind of way: gentle, and flatteringly curious.

‘Do you remember when I met you?’

She shut her eyes and opened them again. ‘In America, after the war. Do you know, Jimmy, I don’t exactly. In New York, was it?’

‘No – in Connecticut: that house you had for the summer – in 1946.’

‘I remember. That was the summer they stopped me bathing. My God, there didn’t seem to be anything left that they’d let me do.’ She lit a cigarette, and then asked:
‘Why – do you remember it especially well?’

There was no point in telling her something that happened to me; she would only see it as something much smaller which she had not noticed happening to her. I finished my coffee and smiled:
‘How could I forget such an occasion?’

Dimly, she seemed to sense a loss – that she had missed – a compliment? An effect that she had made? She asked for more coffee, and while it was being poured into her cup said:
‘Well, I’m glad it’s not Annie anyway. She simply wanted that part, I’m afraid, Jimmy – she’s hell-bent on her career.’

‘Yeah: I know. After nine years, I should know.’

There was a short silence, and then she asked me whether I thought the flight with Alberta was going to be trying at the same time as I asked her whether she minded leaving England. Then we both
smiled and disclaimed any concern on either count. After a moment I repeated that I wasn’t going to stay awake all night whatever Alberta might do, but that I didn’t think she’d
be any trouble and I liked her. ‘She’s very conscientious – a funny little thing – very English with all that prim enthusiasm.’

‘Like me? You once said how English I was.’

‘You are – but it’s different,’ I said lamely. It was difficult to attribute enthusiasm to Lillian, and primness didn’t seem to apply either.

We had an argument about paying for lunch which somehow felt so meaningless that I said so.

‘Nor do I. It’s because we’re leaving the country tonight,’ she answered. ‘I’m only determined to pay because I want you to do something for me, so
don’t thank me: try to feel a little in my debt.’

Outside, she said that she particularly wanted to go to a certain picture gallery where there was a private collection of French pictures being sold – the owner having died. She knew
pictures bored me, but she asked very nicely, and I felt she really wanted to go. We walked there slowly: it was fine for a wonder, sunlight, and in St James’s Square the traffic sounded like
a dusky murmur of summer. I knew she was thinking of Emmanuel before she said: ‘He chooses such funny bits of London to walk in!’

When I took her arm to cross a road she said casually: ‘I don’t really mind leaving this country in the least because there is nothing in it now that I really care about available
for me, and I’m far too feminine to care without that. You know the people who bought Wilde were really building contractors in disguise? Well, they pulled it down for the materials, and so
far as what remains of my family are concerned, I might as well be dead.’