Most Loving Mere Folly Read online

  The years of their life together were dragging at her memory. She went into the workshop, and damped the green pots which were cracking with their long wait for firing. She swung the wheel, and watched it spin slowly down again into stillness; uncovered the kiln, and looked from the empty blond brick within to her spoiling work, but could not bring herself to care. Almost automatically she began to fill the kiln, lifting each piece with slow, careful hands.

  What was to be done now? Whether designedly or not, she had taken Dennis clean out of his old background, and stamped into him the impress of her own mind. She did not think she had set out to do it, but it was done; no, worse, it was still doing, and if he found himself wrested as savagely away from her also in this lost condition, half-made, what hope would he have of growth into any complete kind of creature? He needed her certainty as she needed his promise. And there was the immaculate and erect fact of their love, implacable, demanding its due. And in the studio Theo, who had been deserted by his own beliefs and left to burn, silent and drunken and rotting in his jealousy and pain.

  If you cannot, for all your individuality, escape the conviction that you are your brother’s keeper, who are you to choose between your brothers?

  Something was breaking; she felt it in her own heart, even before Dennis came through the house looking for her.

  He was very quiet, and in the passion of her concentration she did not hear him until he came behind her, and put his hands very softly over her breasts, and his lips against the nape of her neck, under the short curved feathers of black hair. He touched her with a wonderfully eloquent delicacy, an adult delight newly accomplished. For her it was like being able to watch a tree grow, the constant miraculous reward for every moment of patience. With every growth in him, she was enlarged. It could not be other than good. It was goodness itself. And yet the eloquence of his fingers could not silence the eloquence of those blue eyes in their extremity of grief and loneliness.

  She turned within his hands, and shut her arms about his neck, and held him against her breast silently for a long time. Conviction had changed hands, certainty had gone over to a new home. He was the one who stood gently sustaining her, holding her together between his palms against the disintegrating violence of her divided heart. And he understood more than she could tell him. He said in a whisper, his mouth against her forehead:

  ‘This can’t go on, you’ll be broken in pieces if it does.’ And after a long, quiet minute, while she stretched herself fiercely against the young and erect solidity of his body: ‘He’s in the studio now, isn’t he? I saw the light. Let me go to him! You’ve done enough.’

  ‘What would be the use?’ she said. ‘He’s drunk. He’s been drunk, more or less, for three days. He won’t understand a word you say. And what could you say to him that would mean anything?’

  ‘I could tell him the truth – that there’ll have to be a clean break. You love me, and you can’t go against it. He’ll have to give you a divorce, and let you have a new chance of happiness.’

  She gave a small, dry laugh, repeating after him: ‘Divorce!’ and: ‘Happiness!’ as if they were words she had never heard before, bits of another language fallen from nowhere into his mouth. The ideas they conveyed seemed to her so irrelevant. As if divorce could either set her free from Theo or offer her happiness! It was like suggesting that her brother’s keeper could shoulder off the responsibility by resigning as soon as it became heavy to carry.

  ‘There’s nothing else for it,’ he insisted gently. ‘You can see he isn’t going to let any sort of friendship survive it. It’s better you should come away with me, and get clear of him. Better for him, too! What is there for him here, now?’

  ‘It won’t be any use,’ she said again. ‘If you saw him you’d understand that. But go, if you want to. I don’t see how it can make things any worse, for any of us.’

  Dennis took her by the shoulders, and turned her softly towards the kiln again. He had what he had always wanted, a moment of ascendancy over her; partly she had given it to him in her weariness, and partly he had taken it from her, but he had it, and she felt how jealously he held it, with what exultant archings of his wings he covered her, for an instant, from the shadow of responsibility for herself.

  ‘You go on loading here, forget about us!’

  She heard the door close after him, and the steady receding sound of his footsteps as he walked into the house. She loved him so much that she wanted to believe him effective, and for an instant she even achieved it. It was like wine to her heart; but it did not last.

  3

  After a while she could not bear it any longer, and crept back into the house, her ears strained for any revealing sounds from within the studio as she passed. When she was just closing the door of the living-room behind her, she heard the shattering fall of glass; even then she tried to go on, and leave them uninterrupted, but after five minutes of straining her ears involuntarily in the dark and empty room, and as many of stopping them with her fingers, she could no longer keep away. She pushed the door wide, and went back along the passage.

  The voices hardly indicated anything. Words were indistinguishable, there was only a thick, harsh muttering and shouting, and through it occasionally, with exhausting care and distinctness, Dennis’s voice arguing and pleading, over and over again the same short phrases. She did not try to disentangle them; the tone was enough. It had an undertone of shock, as if he had just come through some cruelly optimistic electric treatment, beneficial, no doubt, if the mind survives it. She thought: ‘My God, what are we all doing to one another?’

  She went in. Theo was standing before his easel, facing the door, his feet splayed wide to keep him upright. The dead, satiated face and the living, famished eyes confronted her with a contrast of such violence that she saw nothing else for a moment. Then the rest of the scene appeared item by item, fading in from the edges of the circle of which the eyes were the centre: the fragments of the broken glass lying in a pool of spirit, a trampled tube of flake-white snaking out its contents upon the bare boards of the floor, and already trodden furiously about a small area before the easel, where Theo had threshed round in his frenzy of industry without relief; a litter of brushes, rags, tubes, ground colours and oils lying about the bench, and a canvas or two knocked down among the wreckage; the portrait of herself propped against the wall in the far corner, as if he had stood it there for safety before he began to get drunk in earnest. The cool of its greys was like a drink of water in a desert. Nothing else in the room seemed poised and at rest, except the little group of trifles, delicate, graceful and unimportant, out of which he was making one more still-life, with what reserve of vision and dexterity she could not guess.

  The room smelled strongly of whisky. Dennis, with a face as white as chalk, was standing beside the bench, pouring a fresh drink with unsteady hands; she heard the siphon stuttering against earthenware, a flat sound like the chattering of teeth. He had tipped the small brushes out of the biscuit beaker in which Theo usually stood them, because there was no other clean vessel in the room, and Theo’s insistent demands were hammering in his ears so stupefyingly that he could think of nothing else until he had satisfied them. Both hands, one still holding a loaded brush, came lurching out after the beaker, and fastened upon it unsteadily. She saw how fastidiously Dennis’s fingers avoided the touch, how gratefully they relinquished the cup and drew back.

  The whisky went down much too fast. Dennis was not saying anything now. No doubt he had tried to give voice to part, at least, of what he had thought was needed between them, bringing it down gradually from its original self-conscious belligerence into words of one syllable, patiently uttered and re-uttered. All without result! Now he knew it was all wasted. He looked more than a little sick with indigestible experience. It took him a full minute to realise that she was there within the doorway, and then he looked at her only briefly, with a white, wordless apology, and lifted his shoulders a little in a gesture of helplessness.
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br />   Over the rim of the beaker, staring at her with those blue, blind eyes crazy with pain, Theo said thickly and low: ‘Go away, I don’t need you! Go away, and take your little dog with you. I’m working—’

  It was coherent so far, and then deep complaint thickened into a wordless and indistinguishable mumbling. As much use talking to the wind. She looked at Dennis, and said very quietly: ‘We’d better go. You see it’s hopeless.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dennis, not moving. The brush was back at the canvas now, all the life left in the hand gathered readily to direct its touch. He swung his shoulder on them, but he knew they were still there, and watching him; she doubted if he knew anything more than this, he was so intensely dedicated to holding himself firmly closed against them.

  ‘How long will he go on like this?’ asked Dennis in a rapid undertone.

  ‘Until he drops unconscious, I expect.’

  ‘Couldn’t we take the bottle away with us?’

  ‘What’s the use? I think he’s got another one hidden somewhere. If we leave him this one, he may give up when he finishes it.’

  His dulled ears could not have deciphered the whispers, mere breaths as they were, but he knew in his blood that they were involved in some conspiracy against him. Suddenly he turned and shrieked at them: ‘Get out – get out! Leave me alone!’ It was such a howl of agony that they drew back from him in superstitious horror. He put down the beaker with a crash on the bench, and clawing round by one hand, made a swaying rush at them for a few steps, and then had to recover himself frantically to withstand the pull of his own weight. He lost his bearings slightly, and bearing round in blind anger, came face to face with his portrait of Suspiria across the cold grey yards of air. The lifted face, wildly alert in thought, looked through him and beyond him, and all the whirling planes of colour, charmed into stillness, burned suddenly brighter and clearer, the luminous greys receding magically to give his arms passage round her body.

  The two who were withdrawing from him stopped, shaken and afraid, in the doorway, hearing his voice say quietly, with a curiously still and distant grief: ‘Spiri, don’t leave me!’

  Suspiria wrenched herself out of Dennis’s arm, and went forward a few steps like a sleepwalker, her hands raised protestingly towards the swaying figure. She felt Dennis’s terror dragging her arms down, trying to pull her back to him; but he managed not to speak. It was left to her. Everything, in the end, was left to her. They tore her in pieces between them, dragging her heart in two, but the final onus of choice was always on her.

  ‘Spiri!’ Theo was looking at her now as he had looked at the image of her a moment ago, his eyes frantically intelligent and alive in the muddy shape of his estranged face. It was as if he were trying to climb out of crumbling earth towards her, out of a kind of grave. ‘Spiri, don’t leave me!’

  There was not a sound nor a movement from Dennis. He was standing flattened against the door, with his teeth locked hard on his lower lip, and his frightened eyes following her movements in fascination and despair. For a moment he held his breath, for a moment believed her lost; and then he knew that it was over. She had seen the instantaneous flame of calculation and triumph, tiny but clear in the blue eyes, the little flare of vengeful pleasure in her recapture.

  She turned, groping frenziedly towards the door, blind with revulsion, like an animal starting back from the rim of a trap discovered only just in time; and Dennis sprang to take her extended hands, to shut a protective arm round her, and half-lift, half-lead her from the room. She clutched at him eagerly, not because she had abdicated her responsibilities, but because for the moment he was the quickest way of escape from the snare, and his will to snatch her away was equal and ardent with her will to go. By the time he had drawn her into the corridor and shut the door hard behind them, he had already lost her. She was out of the circle of his arm, and away into the darkness upon her own firm feet, and all he could do was follow her tamely where he had wanted to shepherd her with passionate tenderness. She did not know how to be weak and in need for more than a few minutes at a time.

  A lamentable cry followed them along the dark passage. They heard the easel rock and jar, and then: ‘Spiri! – Spiri! – Spiri!—’ with diminishing violence until all was quiet, and the living-room door shut, and the curtain drawn between them and him. At the last moment Dennis looked back, bewildered and dismayed by the silence.

  ‘Ought we to leave him alone? He isn’t responsible. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, turning in the middle of the room, and staring at him with wild green eyes, as if she would run from him, too, if he came near her, ‘he knows what he’s doing, all right. Leave him alone!’ It was rather as if she had said: ‘Leave me alone!’ She stood back against the drawn window-curtains, stirring from foot to foot, and plying her fingers in the folds. ‘At least,’ she said, her eyes steadying upon his face, ‘you didn’t try to pull me back. You didn’t say anything. I won’t forget that. What happened? What did you say to him?’

  ‘Not much! It was just no use. I tried to explain – he didn’t understand what I said, just looked at me as if I wasn’t there at first, and went on drinking.’

  ‘He didn’t want to understand. It’s his way of protecting himself.’

  ‘Then he began raving, and dropped his glass. You’d have thought nothing existed but whisky, the way he screamed for another. I suppose I just wanted to keep him quiet at any price, but if I hadn’t given it to him he’d have got it himself. He’s still capable of that, anyhow. I wanted you not to hear – but of course, you did. Look,’ he said, bitterly in earnest, ‘I can’t let you stay here alone with him tonight.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool!’ she said roughly, shaking her head until the black hair settled in curved plumes across her forehead. ‘Are you beginning to tell me what I can do, and what I can’t? Of course I shall stay here. This is where I live! That’s my husband! Have you forgotten?’ The brief indignation of her eyes dulled as quickly. ‘I’m safe enough,’ she said, more gently. ‘I couldn’t be safer. There was only one thing Theo could do to me – only one thing he’d have wanted to do. And now that’s over. And you’re safe, too,’ she said, ‘at least from losing me – if that’s what you think of as safety!’ Her eyes dwelt with faintly bitter understanding upon his hands, which lifted so jubilantly towards her at the note of encouragement. ‘Without that!’ she said.

  He recoiled at once, snatching back his hands as if her look had scalded them. An involuntary pity stirred in her at sight of his distress. ‘I’m sorry!’ she said sharply. ‘I can’t help it! Leave me alone tonight! You can afford to wait a little while. Go home now, please. I don’t want to be touched tonight. Oh, no, no – it isn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done.’

  ‘But I shan’t see you till tomorrow night,’ he said, drawing back from her reluctantly. ‘I must know that you’re all right!’

  ‘For God’s sake, what can happen to me? Of course I shall be all right. I’ll put a note under the stone by the gate for you, in the morning, if you’re so worried. But there’s nothing to worry about, I tell you.’

  But at the last moment she could not let him go without some gesture of exasperated kindness. In the doorway she overtook him, and drew him round to face her for a moment, pulling him down into her arms.

  ‘Don’t be angry with me! I can’t stand any more tonight!’ She kissed him, and her disgust and weariness melted in the instant passion of his responsive mouth, and a terrible tenderness filled her heart. ‘Oh, darling, darling,’ she said, in a torn and husky whisper, ‘what have I dragged you into? What have I done to you?’

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  A Death

  1

  Suspiria awoke with a jangling start, and lay staring up at the darkness and the faint, bluish frost-light above her face, with wide eyes and vibrating senses. She had not meant to sleep at all. She had intended only to lie down in her bed, and listen for the sounds of Theo draggin
g himself finally upstairs to the room beneath her attic; but a kind of drugged exhaustion had shut her eyes before she knew she was in danger, and she had gone headlong down into pits, pyramid-shafts, infinities, of sleep, far below the levels of refreshment or comfort. The ascent out of that blackness, sudden though it was, seemed to her a long, laborious swim upward from the deepest and heaviest of ocean-depths, and yet she was flung out into reality at last quite unprepared. She lay groping a dazed way back to the truth of her situation, and remembered why her mind had willed so vehemently to make its temporary escape.

  The boy had gone home like a docile child, without protest if not without misgivings. He was so used to the idea that she knew better than he did that he gave no trouble. When he had been through such a complex of shocks as last night’s, he no longer complicated everything even with the tender male stirrings of his self-love, which prompted him at other times with nagging suggestions that he ought to be taking the initiative. For both of them, of course. He was the man, it was his part to be stronger. Knowing or fearing that he was not caused him indignation and pain and shame, but not now in such acute form that they could not be completely wiped out when some larger emotion possessed him. In the moments of passionate satisfaction he was eased of all his misgivings, because he knew himself more than adequate. Gentle, adult, triumphantly fulfilled, he shared her certainty and peace, sometimes she felt that he gave them back to her when they were slipping out of her hands. How many people, she wondered, lived long, contented married lives, year upon worthy year, without ever suspecting that such a plane of achievement existed, somewhere far out of their scope? And she and the boy had found their way to it without effort, in a miraculous and tender dexterity of spirit and flesh, lifting each other over the threshold with a lovely simplicity. In that dazzling conviction of accomplishment Dennis was safe from any doubts. And when the extreme of difficulty and distress was exchanged for the extreme happiness, he forgot his own vanity as simply, shaken out of caring whether he cut a figure or not, provided they got through the jungle with their lives. Then he would go softly in front of her, abashed, willing to be guided.