Time of Hope (25 page)

She caused me intense jealousy. Not only with Tom Devitt; in fact she quarrelled with him early in the year. I told her that I was suspicious of her quarrels. ‘You needn’t be this time,’ she said. ‘Poor Tom. It’s a pity. He couldn’t turn me into a doctor’s wife.’ She reflected, with a frown.

‘The more helpless they are, the worse one treats them.’ She looked at me. ‘I know I’m unpleasant. You can tell me so if you like. But I’m telling the truth. It’s also true of less unpleasant women. Isn’t it so?’

‘I expect it’s true of us all,’ I said.

‘I’ve never found a man who made me helpless yet,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it would be like.’

‘I’ve found you,’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not so helpless. I shouldn’t come to see you if you were.’

I ceased to be jealous of Tom Devitt, but there were others. They were nearly all misfits, waifs and strays, often – like Devitt – much older than she was. For the smart comely young businessmen who pursued her she had no use whatsoever. But she would find some teacher at the School timid with women or unhappily married, and I should hear a threatening, excited ‘we’ again. She had a very alert and hopeful eye for men whom she thought might fascinate her. In getting to know them, she rid herself of her self-consciousness; instead of shrinking into a corner, as she did in company, she was ready to take the initiative herself, exactly as though she were a middle-aged woman on the prowl for lovers. I could see nothing in common between those who pleased her. I knew that she herself imagined some implacably strong character, some Heathcliff of a lover who would break her will – but they were all weaker and gentler than she was.

Each of those sparks of interest guttered away, and she came back, sometimes pallid, ill-tempered, more divided than before, sometimes sarcastic and gay.

I was beyond minding in what state she came back. For each time I was bathed in the overwhelming reassurance of the jealous. After days spent in the degrading detective work of jealousy, I saw her in front of me, and the calculations were washed away. It was only the jealous, I thought later, who could be so ecstatically reassured. She had said that she went home by the eight-ten last night. Where had she been between teatime and the train, with whom had she been? Then she said that her mother had been shopping in the town, and they had gone to the pictures. Only the suspicious could be as simple and wholehearted in delight as I was then.

I did not spend much time with the group during those months. My first Bar examination happened in the summer, and whenever I could not see Sheila I was trying to concentrate upon my work. I went out at night with George and Jack, I still went to Martineau’s on Fridays, but the long weekends at the farm I could no longer spare. There was, I knew, a good deal of gossip; by now it was common knowledge that I was head over heels in love with Sheila. Marion also began to keep away from the group, and we never met at all.

There was one pair of curious, observant eyes that did not let me keep my secrets unperceived. Jack Cotery was interested in me, and love was his special subject. He watched the vicissitudes in my spirits as day followed day. He went out of his way to meet Sheila once or twice. Then, in the summer, not long before I set off to London to take the examination, he exerted himself. He came up one night and said, in his soft voice ‘Lewis, I want to talk to you.’

I tried to put him off, but he shook his head.

‘No. Clearly, it’s time someone gave you a bit of advice.’

He was oddly obstinate. It was the only time I had known him make a determined stand about someone else’s concerns. He insisted on taking me to the picture-house café. ‘I’m more at home there.’ He grinned. ‘I’m tired of your wretched pubs.’ There, under the pink-shaded lights, with girls at the tables close by, whispering, giggling, he was indeed at home. But that night he was keeping his eyes from girls. With his rolling muscular gait he led the way into the corner, where there was a table separate from the rest. The night was warm; we drank tea, and got warmer; Jack Cotery, in complete seriousness, began to talk to me.

Then I realized that this was an act of pure friendliness. It was the more pure, because I had recently been busy trying to stop one of his dubious projects. In the autumn he had borrowed money from George, in order to start a small wireless business. Since then he had launched out on a speculation that was, if one took the most charitable view, somewhere near the edge of the shady. He was pestering George for more money with which to extricate himself. I had used my influence with George to stop it. My motives were not all disinterested; I might still want to borrow from George myself, and so Jack and I were rivals there; but still, I had a keen nose for a rogue, I had no doubt that to Jack commercial honesty was without meaning, and thus early I smelt danger, most of all, of course, for George.

Jack was a good deal of a rogue, but he bore no grudges. No doubt he enjoyed advising me, showing off his expertness, parading himself where he was so much more knowledgeable, so much less vulnerable, than I. But he had a genuine wish, earthy and kind, to get me fitted up with a suitable bed-mate, to be sure that I was enjoying myself, with all this nonsensical anguish thrown away. He had taken much trouble to time his advice right. With consideration, with experienced eyes, he had been watching until I seemed temporarily light-hearted. It was then, when he felt sure that I was not worrying about Sheila, that he took me off to the picture-house café. He actually began, over the steaming tea ‘Lewis, things aren’t so bad with your girl just now, are they?’

I said that they were not.

‘That’s the time to give her up,’ said Jack, with emphasis and conviction. ‘When you’re not chasing her. It won’t hurt your pride so much. You can get out of it of your own free will. It’s better for you yourself to have made the break, Lewis, it will hurt you less.’

He spoke so warmly that I had to answer in kind.

‘I can’t give her up,’ I said. ‘I love her.’

‘I’ve noticed that,’ said Jack, smiling good-naturedly. ‘Though why you didn’t tell me earlier I just can’t imagine. We might have dangled a few distractions before your eyes. Why in God’s name should you fall for that – horror?’

‘She’s not a horror.’

‘You know very well she is. In everything that matters. Lewis, you’re healthy enough. Why in God’s name should you choose someone who’ll only bring you misery?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Once or twice’, I said, ‘I’ve been happier with her than I’ve ever imagined being.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jack. ‘If you didn’t get a spot of happiness when you’re first in love, it’d be a damned poor lookout for all of us. Look here, I know more about women than you do. Or if I don’t’, he grinned, ‘I must have been wasting my time. I tell you, she’s a horror. Perhaps she’s a bit crazy. Anyway, she’ll only bring you misery. Now why did you choose her?’

‘Has one any choice?’ I said.

‘With someone impossible,’ said Jack, ‘you ought to be able to escape.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ I said.

‘You’ve got to,’ said Jack, with more vigorous purpose than I had ever heard from him. ‘She’ll do you harm. She’ll make a mess of your life.’ He added: ‘I believe she’s done you a lot of harm already.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said.

‘I bet you don’t know when to make love to her.’

The hit was so shrewd that I blushed.

‘Damn the bitch,’ said Jack. ‘I’d like to have her in a bedroom with no questions asked. I’d teach her a thing or two.’

He looked at me.

‘Lewis,’ he said, ‘it’s the cold ones who can do you harm. I expect you wonder if any woman will ever want you.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I do.’

‘It’s absurd,’ said Jack, in his flattering, easy, soothing fashion. ‘If you’d run across someone warm, you’d know how absurd it is. Why, with just a bit of difference, you’d have a better time than I do. You’re sympathetic. You’re very clever. You’re going to be a success. And – you’ve got a gleam in your eye… It’s like everything else,’ he went on. ‘You’ve got to believe in yourself. If she’s ruined that for you, I shall never forgive her. I tell you, it’s absurd for you to doubt yourself. There are hundreds of nicer girls than Miss Sheila who’d say yes before you’d had time to ask.’

When he cared, he was more skilful than anyone I knew at binding up the wounds.

Jack looked across the table. I was certain that he had something else to say, and was working his way towards it. He was using all his cunning, as well as his good nature.

‘Now Marion’, he said, as though casually, and I understood, ‘would be a hundred times better – for any purpose that you can possibly imagine. I don’t mind telling you, I’ve thought of her myself. I just can’t understand why you’ve done nothing about it.’

‘I’ve been pretty occupied,’ I said. ‘And I wasn’t–’

‘I should have thought’, said Jack, ‘that you might have found time to think of her. After all, she’s been pining for you long enough.’

I was forced on to the defensive. I said, in confusion, that I knew she was rather fond of me, but he was exaggerating it beyond all reason.

‘You bloody fool,’ said Jack, ‘she worships the ground you walk on.’

I still protested, Jack went on attacking me. If I did not realize it, he said roughly, it must be because I was blinded by Sheila. The sooner I got rid of her the better, if I could not notice what was going on round me. ‘Remember too,’ said Jack, ‘if anyone falls in love with you, it is partly your own fault. It’s not all innocence on your side. It never is. There’s always a bit of encouragement. You’ve smiled at her, you’ve been sympathetic, and you’ve led her on.’

I felt guilty: that was another stab of truth. I argued, I protested again that he was exaggerating. I was confused: I half wanted to credit what he said, just for the sake of my own vanity; I half wanted to be guiltless.

‘I don’t care about the rights and wrongs,’ said Jack. ‘All I care about is that the young woman is aching for you. Just as much as you ache for your girl. And without any nonsense about it. She wants you, she knows she wants you. But remember she can’t wait for ever. If I never advise you again, Lewis, I’m doing so now. Get free – not next week, tonight, go home and write the letter – and take Marion on. It will make all the difference to you… I’m not at all sure’, he said surprisingly, ‘that you wouldn’t be wise to marry her.’

The examination did not trouble me overmuch. It was not a decisive one; my acquaintances who were taking law degrees, like Charles March, were exempt from it; unless I did disgracefully badly, nothing hung upon the result. Once I got started, I felt a cheerful, savage contempt for those who tried to keep me in my proper station. I had only taken one examination in my life, the Oxford, but I found again that, after the first half-hour, I enjoyed the game. In the first lunch interval, certain that I was not going to disgrace myself, I reflected realistically, as I had done before, that my performance this year would be a guide to my chances twelve months hence in the Bar Finals – on which, in my circumstances, all depended.

I stayed at Mrs Reed’s, for no better reason than habit, but this time I did not have to look in entreaty at the hall table each time I entered the house. Sheila’s letter arrived on my second morning, according to her promise. For I had seen her before I left town, not listening to Jack Cotery, despite the comfort he had given me. The letter was in her usual allusive style, but contained a passage which made me smile: ‘My father has lost his voice, which is exceedingly just. He croaks pathetically. I have offered to nurse him – would you expect me to be good at the healing word?’ And, a little farther on, she wrote: ‘Curiously enough, he inquired about you the other day. He is probably thinking you might be useful some time for free legal consultations. My family are remarkably avaricious. I don’t know whether I shall inherit it. Poor Tom used to have to prescribe for my father. But Tom was a moral coward. You are evasive and cagey, but you’re not that.’

Evasive and cagey, I thought, in the luxury of considering a beloved’s judgement, in the conceit of youth. Was it true? No one else had ever said so. So far as I knew, no one had thought so. She had seen me get on, in harmony, with all kinds of people – while she shrank into a corner. And she alone had seen me quite free.

She wrote in the same vein about her father, her mother, herself. She was unsparing; equally remote from moral vanity or visceral warmth; she saw no reason to give herself or anyone else the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes her judgements were lunatic, and sometimes they went painfully deep. Those judgements were her revenge. People got through life with their lies and pretences, with their spontaneity, with their gluey warmth denied to her. She was left out of the party. So she told them that the party was false and the good-fellowship just a sham, and in telling them so she was sometimes no truer than a hurt child; but sometimes she tore the façade off the human condition, and made us wince at the truth.

Her letter brought her near, and I went undisturbed through the rest of the papers. I saw Charles March at dinner, with his usual party of Cambridge friends. He undertook to find out my marks in detail; he had no idea why I was so curious, nor that next year’s examination was a crisis in my career, but he was a sensitive, quick-witted man, pleased to be of help. I envied his assumption that it was easy to discover what was going on behind the scenes. Some day, I thought, I too must be as sure of myself, as much able to move by instinct among the sources of information and power. Twenty years ahead, and it was ironical to meet Charles March, and for us to be reminded that I had once resolved to emulate him.

I remained in London for an extra afternoon, in order to go to Lord’s and watch some cricket. There, in the sunshine, I felt peace seep over me like a drug, steadying my heart, slowing my pulse. The examination was safe. Soon I should be seeing Sheila. There was not even the shadow of care, as there had been that day – it suddenly came back to memory and made me smile – when my father watched his first and only cricket match and I sat beside him, eight years old.