Time of Hope (23 page)

But they were putting on their coats, and she stayed by Tom Devitt.

‘I’m driving him to the infirmary,’ she said to me, ‘Can we give you a lift?’

I shook my head.

‘Oh well.’ She gazed at me. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

They went out of the door together. Just as they got to the car, I saw Devitt turn towards her, as though asking a question. His face was frowning, but at her reply it lightened with a smile.

The hum of the car died at last away. While I could hear it, she was not quite gone. Then I went home the way I had come, four hours before. I was blind with misery; yet as I crossed the park under the dark, low, starless sky, there were moments when I could not believe it, when absurdly I was invaded by the hope that had uplifted me on the outward journey. It was like those times in misery when one is cheated by a happy dream.

Blindly I came home to my room. Under the one bare light the chair and table and bed stood blank before my eyes. They were blank as the darkness into which I stared for hours, lying awake that night. I stared into the darkness while mood after mood took hold of me, as changeable as the fever and chill of an illness, as ravaging and as much beyond my control. I could have cried, if only the tears would come. I twisted about in a paroxysm of longing. I was seized by a passion of temper, and I could have strangled her.

I had been humiliated once before – on that morning as a child, the memory of which possessed me for a moment in the night, when I offered my mother’s ten-shilling note. As a rule, I did not look for or find humiliation. I was no George Passant, going through the world expecting affronts and feeling them to the marrow of his bones. For my age, I got off lightly, in being free from most of the minor shames. But when humiliation came, it seared me, so that all my hidden pride shrieked out, and in bitterness I vowed that this must be the end, that I would make sure that I never so much as saw her again, that I would act as though she had never been. Yet, turning over on to the other side, praying for sleep, I hoped, hoped for a word that would put it right. It had been an accident, I thought; she was remote, she lived in a world of her own; she had just happened to see him that night. There must be a simple explanation. With the foolish detailed precision of love, I recalled each word between us since she invited me to go to the Edens’; and I proved to myself in that armistice of hope, that it was a series of coincidences, and none of it was meant. Tomorrow, no, the day after, I should receive a letter which would resolve it all. She might not know how I had been hurt. At the Edens’ she had been light and friendly to me, as though we should meet soon after on our usual terms. Her manner had been the same to both of us. She had not looked at him lovingly.

Then I knew jealousy. Where had they gone after the car drove away? Had he kissed her? Had he slept with her? Were they, at this moment when I was lying sleepless, in each other’s arms? For the first time in my thoughts of Sheila, my sensual imagination was active, merciless, gave me no rest.

The night ticked by, slower than my racing heart. Again I knew that it was all planned. Again, with detailed precision, but with another purpose, I went over each word that she had spoken since her invitation – her excitement when she first asked me to go, her tense exaltation, the tone in which she had telephoned at the cafe. It was the edge of cruelty. I had been hurt by motiveless cruelty on that morning of childish humiliation – but this was the first time I had felt cruelty in love. Did I know that night that it was the end of innocence? I felt much that I had imagined of love stripped from me by her outrage, and in the darkness, I saw in her and in myself a depth which was black with hate, and from which, even in misery, I shrank back appalled. I had always known it in myself, but kept my eyes away; now her outrage made me look.

In the creeping winter dawn, my thoughts had become just two. The first was, I must dismiss her from my mind, I must forget her name – and, as I got more tired, I kept holding to that resolve. The second was, how soon would she write to me, so that I could see her again?

The days passed; and, working in my room, a veil kept coming between my eyes and the page. When the veil came, I would hear some phrase of Sheila’s, and that set going my thoughts as through the sleepless night I sat there at my books, but I could not force my eyes to clear.

I heard nothing, I saw no one, I received no letter, for day after day. George and Jack and I had arranged to meet to see the new year in; but after one drink George went off to an ‘important engagement’, and Jack and I were left alone.

‘He must have found somebody,’ said Jack. ‘Good luck to him.’

We argued about how we should spend the night. Jack’s idea was that there could be no better way than of going to the local palais-de-danse and picking up two girls; but, at the mention of the word, I re-heard Sheila saying ‘we went to the palais’, and I could not face the faintest chance, the one chance in ten thousand, of seeing her there.

I wanted to stay in the public house, drinking. Jack was discontented, but, in his good-natured way, agreed. For him, it was a sacrifice. It was only to be convivial, and because he liked us, that he endured long drinking parties with George and me.

Amiably he sipped at his whisky, and made a slight face. He was so accommodating that I wanted to explain why I could not go to the palais; I was also longing to confide, and I knew that I should get sympathy and some kind of understanding; yet when I began, my pride clutched me, and the story came out, thin, half-humorous, so garbled that he could get no inkling either of my humiliation or my aching emptiness as each day passed. Even so, I got some relief, perhaps more than if I had exposed the truth.

‘We all have lovers’ quarrels,’ said Jack.

‘I suppose so,’ I said.

‘It’s sweet when you make it up,’ said Jack.

He smiled at me.

‘You’ve got to be a bit firm,’ he said. ‘See that she apologizes. Box her ears and make her feel a little girl. Then be specially nice to her.’ He went on: ‘It’s all right as long as you don’t take it too tragically. You watch yourself, Lewis. Mind you don’t get all the anguish and none of the fun. You’d better get her where you want her this time. I’ll tell you how I managed it last week–’

Thus I spent the last hours of 1925 listening to Jack Cotery on the predicaments and tactics of a love affair; of how he had changed a reverse into a victory; of comic misfortune, of tears that were part of the game, of tears that turned into luxurious sighs. And, listening to his eloquence, I was solaced, I half believed that things would go that way for me.

The first days of January. Not a word. The voice of sense gave way, and I began to write a letter. Then my pride held me on the edge, and I tore it up. When I could not sleep, I dragged myself out of bed to work. I did not know how long such a state could last. I had nothing to compare it with. I went on – with ‘automatic competence’, a clear high voice taunted me, more piercing than any voice of those I met. I worked to tire myself, so that I should sleep late into the morning. I was living always for the next day.

Before Christmas the group had arranged to go out to the farm for the first weekend of the year. I had promised to join the party. But now I recoiled from company, I told George that I could not go. ‘You’re forgetting your responsibilities,’ he said stiffly. There were other times when I craved for any kind of human touch. I went the round of pubs, talking to barmaids and prostitutes, anything for a smile. It was in one of those storms that I changed my mind again. On the Friday night I sought George out, and told him that I should like to come after all. ‘I’m glad to see you’re back in your right mind,’ said George. Then he asked formally: ‘Nothing seriously wrong with your private affairs, I hope?’

For George, it was a great weekend. Everyone was there, and he could bask right in the heart of his ‘little world’, surrounded by people whom he loved and looked after, where all his diffidence, prickles, suspiciousness, and angry defiance were swept away, where he felt utterly serene. At the farm, surrounded by his group, one saw George at his best. He was a natural leader, though, because of the quirks of his nature, it had to be a leader in obscurity, a leader of a revolt that never came off. He was a strange character – many people thought him so bizarre as to be almost mad: yet no one ever met him, however much they suppressed their own respect, without thinking that he was built on the lines of a great man.

Seated at the supper table, outside the golden circle of the oil lamp, George was at his best. Each word he spoke was listened to, even in the gossip, chatter, and argument of the group. That night he talked to us of freedom – how, if we had the will (and that it would never have occurred to him to doubt), we could make our children’s lives the best there had ever been in the world. Not only by making a better society, in which they would stand a fair chance, but also by bringing them up free and happy. ‘The good in men is incomparably more important than the evil,’ said George. ‘Whatever happens, we’ve always got to remember that.’

The whole group was moved, for he had spoken from a great depth. That was his message, and it came from a man who struggled with himself. When Jack, the most impudent person there, twitted him and said the evil could be very delectable, George shouted: ‘I don’t call
that
evil. It’s half the trouble that for hundreds of years all the priests and parents and pundits have tried to make us miserable by a load of guilt.’

I had not said much that supper time, for my mind was absent, thinking of a recent supper at that table, when I came in wet, alight with a secret happiness. For a moment I shook off my preoccupation, my own load, and looked at George. For I knew that he, more than most of us, was burdened by a sense of guilt – and so he demanded that we should all be free.

After supper, we broke into twos and threes, and Marion and I began to talk out in the window bay. She had just returned from her Christmas holidays, and it was three weeks since we had met.

‘I need your help,’ she said at once.

‘What about?’

‘I’ve got a problem for you.’ Then she added: ‘What were you thinking about just now?’

‘What’s your problem, Marion?’ I said, wanting to evade the question.

‘Never mind for a minute. What were you thinking about? I’ve never seen you look so far away.’

‘I was thinking about George.’

‘Were you?’ she said doubtfully. ‘When you’re thinking of someone, you usually watch them – with those damned piercing eyes of yours, don’t you? You weren’t watching George. You weren’t watching any of us.’

I had had time to collect myself, and I told her that I had been thinking of George’s message of freedom compared with the doctrine of original sin. Often she would have been interested, for she tried to get me to talk about people; but just then she did not believe a word of it, she was angry at being put off. Impatiently, as though irrelevantly, she burst out ‘Why in heaven’s name don’t you learn to keep your tie straight? You’re a disgrace.’

It was really a bitter cry, because I would not confide. I felt ashamed of myself because I was fond of her – but also I felt the more wretched, the more strained, because she was pressing me. It was by an effort that I kept back a cold answer. Instead, I said, as though we were both joking about our untidiness: ‘I must say, that doesn’t come too well from you.’

Jack was close by, talking to another girl, with an ear cocked in our direction. He moved away, as though he had not overhead anything of meaning in our words.

Again I asked about her problem.

‘You won’t be very interested,’ said Marion.

‘Of course I’m interested,’ I said.

She hesitated about telling me; but she wanted to, she had it ready. She had been offered a job in her own town. It was a slightly better job, in a central school. If she were to make a career of teaching, it would be sensible to take it. She could live with her sister, and save a good deal of money.

She wanted me to say, without weighing any of her arguments, just: you’re not to go. Increasingly I felt myself constrained, the offender (increasingly I longed for the lightness that came over me as I talked to Sheila), because I could not. I was tongue-tied, and all I had to say came heavily. My spontaneity had deserted me quite. Yet I should miss her, miss her with an ache of affection, if she went. I knew that somehow I relied on her, even as I tried to speak fairly and she watched me with mutinous eyes and gave me curt, rude answers. I tried to think only of what was best for her – and for that she could not listen to me or forgive me.

George called out heartily: ‘Lewis, are you coming for a constitutional?’

This was a code invitation, devised to meet the need of his curious sense of etiquette in front of the young women: a ‘constitutional’ meant going down the road to the public house, sitting there for an hour or so, and then coming back, ready to talk until the next morning. That night I was glad to escape from the house; no one else stirred, and George and I went across the field together.

Suddenly, on an impulse that I could not drive down, I said: ‘George, I’m going to leave you for an hour. I’m going for a walk.’

At first George was puzzled. Then, with extreme quickness, with massive tact, he said ‘I quite understand, old chap. I quite understand.’ He gave a faint, sympathetic, contented chuckle. He proceeded to go through one of his elaborate wind-ups: ‘I take it you might prefer me to practise a little judicious prevarication? If we walk back from the pub together, there’s no compelling reason why our friends should realize that you’ve been engaged on – other activities.’

In fact, I had no thought of seeing Sheila. Alone in the dark, I made my way through the lanes, drawn as though by instinct towards her house. I could not have said why I was going except that each yard I covered gave me some surcease. I knew that I should not see her with the relic of reason and pride, I knew that it would have been disastrous to see her. Yet on the way, across the same fields that I had first seen in a downpour with so much joy, surrendered to the impulse that drew me across the fields, down the lanes, towards her house, I felt a peace, such as I had not known since Christmas Eve. It was a precarious peace, it might break at any moment; but I was closer to her, and my whole body melted into the mirage of well-being.