Most Loving Mere Folly Read online

  ‘No, you didn’t waste it all, really! Only it sounds as if you’ve got to be a bit of a genuine work of art yourself, to know another one when you meet it.’ He grinned at her rather ruefully, but with none of the constraint he would once have felt in attempting such an observation of his own.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you have! That’s the beginning and the end of it – that honesty, that integrity – the rock you stand on, the backbone that keeps you upright on such a very little base, the tension that pulls you up to six feet and upsets the law of gravity from upsetting you. And now we’re getting down to man, who is also a work of art, and an image of truth, and a statement of personal identity at his beast, that is! Some people have so little identity, they’re hardly visible.’

  He asked, this time with a faint flush and a more resolute smile: ‘Could you see me, the first time I came here?’

  ‘You were always perceptible,’ she said sombrely, and picked up her brush, and watched it cross the white surface of the tile with a single, skimming stroke.

  ‘But since then,’ he pursued, with an unaccustomed and restless flare of mischief, ‘I’ve started out on my career of being a little work of art in earnest, haven’t I? You’ve at least got me centred – just like you centre the clay!’ She looked up in surprise and disapproval to catch the last jealous gleam of his outraged self-love, but it was only like a startling glance backward at an old photograph.

  ‘I haven’t done anything to you. Things have happened to both of us. I didn’t go prising them into action, any more than you did. And I’m not directing them now.’

  ‘No one’s directing them,’ he said, with sudden desperate urgency. ‘How long do you suppose they can go on like that?’

  She put down the tile and the brush, and scrambled across the rug on her knees to take him by the shoulders. ‘What’s worrying you? What is it you’re afraid of?’

  The crumpled newspapers rustled as he turned ardently to her, winding his arms about her waist and drawing her close. She felt his heart thudding against her breast, in its sudden tumult shaking them both.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he owned, his lips stirring along her cheek. ‘It’s as if we haven’t stopped to think, or be afraid, or any of the things we might well have done. I love you so much! Oh, Suspiria, if anything should take you away from me!’

  It was seven weeks they had been lovers now, and neither of them had ever uttered a word of doubt, or seemed to feel the need of a glance over shoulder. The world had existed only to reflect their own fulfilled and assuaged faces. And yet this little cry of fear came out of him now as if it had been fully formed in his heart from the first moment of their happiness. She felt a sudden coldness take her senses, as if the shell of delight which had contained them had cracked suddenly, and the frosty wind blown witheringly in. She held him hard against her, passionately protesting:

  ‘What should take me away from you? Nothing will, nothing can! What’s the matter with you? You never talked like this before.’

  ‘No,’ he owned, ‘we’ve never talked about him. But he’s been there all the time. He’s there now, painting away in the studio. Some day we’ve got to begin seeing him again.’

  He turned his head, as though he were seeing him at that moment, clean through the wall.

  ‘It isn’t that I’m afraid. Well, yes, I am, but not of paying my score. I’m afraid of not doing things right. Talking about approaching things dead straight, and words like truth, and integrity—Oh, can’t you imagine how I feel about this? About having to be furtive about it, and hide it, when I want to shout it at everybody, and make a regular song about it?’

  Suspiria said in a stupefied whisper: ‘Furtive?’ and then, holding him off from her so that she could look into his face, which indeed had a look almost of embarrassment at meeting her eyes: ‘Have you had this at the back of your mind all along, then?’ It was incredible; she had lived like a happy sleepwalker, while he had been trying to make daytime sense of the whole thing, as if it were not too absolute to be questioned.

  ‘Yes, all the time. At first I thought – Well, after all, I’m not so much! – I thought it couldn’t last. And if I’d got to get out of it some day, and get over it, better not leave him anything to get over. I couldn’t see there was very much wrong with that, when he made it so easy. It would have been the opposite of what I’d call really straight, to chuck it in his face and put him to all that hell, if I was soon going to be over and done with, anyhow. You’re angry,’ he said quickly, ‘but I can’t help it. That was how I felt. But now, if it’s like this with you, too—’

  ‘If!’ she said, on a sharply indrawn breath. ‘My God, can you be in any doubt about it? What did you think? That I was having a little fun with you, and presently you’d be told: “That’s all!” and expect to back out like a good little boy? And would you have done that?’

  ‘I don’t know! I should probably have crawled after you on my hands and knees, begging you to let me stay. How can I tell? But that was what I’d rather have done, if it had ever come to that. Oh, I’ve known now for some time that it wasn’t like that with you at all. But once we’d started hiding it, I didn’t know how to get out of the tailspin, and so it’s gone on. And now I’ve said it, I’m no nearer knowing what we ought to do about it.’

  ‘But how could you make such a mistake?’ she whispered, raging. ‘How could you imagine anything but that I loved you? After that first time, wasn’t it plain enough? What does one have to offer, to make things clear to you? Did you think I lived like the novelettes, or something? Picking up lovers and dropping them every few weeks? Dennis, is that all you knew about me?’ She knew that it was unjust, and felt that he was hurt by it, but he did not retreat, for to go back now would not solve the problem, nor avoid in the end the necessity of approaching it again, and more desperately. But who would have thought that the idyllic evening would flower into this fury of words and sensitivities?

  ‘I didn’t know anything about you? What’s the good of pretending,’ he said passionately, ‘that we’ve got a perfect understanding, when the only thing we know about each other is this. The only thing! I love you, and you love me! All right, we know it now, and it’s enough, if it’s all we know. But how could I be certain of even that, then? And what was the sense of making him go through hell, if I wasn’t really any threat to him? But I never liked having to hide it, and now it can’t be hidden much longer, if it’s what we claim it is.’

  ‘You won’t believe me,’ she said, with an intense and resigned calm, ‘if I tell you that it never seemed to me we were hiding it. I didn’t talk about it, because there was nothing to be said about it to anyone but you. It was no more furtive to me than the ark of the covenant was furtive! It was as private as the middle of the heart, but it wasn’t the same as hiding it. I love you!’ she said, and for all her quietness it was a shout of exultation. ‘I’ve never loved anyone else, I never shall. If I’d known there could be anything like this, do you suppose Theo would ever have been my husband? And do you think I’m going to pretend this is less than it is, now that I have it?’

  ‘But he won’t disappear for us. And he must mean something to you, I know he does. I’ve seen enough of the two of you together to understand that. So what about Theo?’

  ‘There’s nothing Theo can do to separate us. I told you, I love you. No one on earth can interfere with that – not Theo, nor anyone else,’ she said, rearing her head formidably, and opening upon him the full blazing challenge of her eyes. ‘He means a lot to me. But not this!’

  ‘But you married him. He’s your husband, he’s got rights.’

  ‘No one has rights to any part of my identity,’ she said fiercely. ‘I know Theo. He thinks as I think. Theo won’t make any claims, he knows where people’s rights in one another ought to begin and end. I didn’t go looking for this, but I have it, and I’ll keep it. There’s no way he can alter it, or turn me back from it. But he won’t try. He won’t want to.’

  ‘
I can’t believe it! He must love you – doesn’t he love you? And if he does, he’ll hang on to you tooth and claw. That’s what I’d do in his place. I couldn’t bear not to, it wouldn’t be human. And Theo’s human enough!’

  ‘Love me?’ She checked at the question, marvelling. ‘Does he love me? I don’t know! I know so little about it, I’ve only just discovered it. How can I tell whether he’s known about it all along? And yet he seemed satisfied! But then, I was satisfied, too. It was a better marriage than most! Suppose somebody had asked him, does she love you, Theo? He’d say yes, and be sure it was the truth. Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘yes, I see how right you were to remind me about him.’ She put up her arms in a sudden passion of longing, and locked them about the boy’s neck, drawing his head down to her, rocking him against her cheek. ‘Don’t be afraid of anything! I’ll tell him! Everything shall be as we ought to have it – as honest as you want it. I promise you, my darling! Don’t be afraid of anything separating us – nothing can, nothing, nobody!’

  He believed her. There was no mistaking this transfiguring ecstasy, it met every test she had tried to propound for him. He encountered it directly, with no preconceptions, because his dreams had never reached half so far, and no timidity, because it was the first time he had ever so much as seen it, and it had leaned to his hand. It rang right, and it was right. An image of truth, absolutely authentic, absolutely itself, and he knew it by his blood, and his body, and his imagination, past the possibility of error. He felt the surging sweetness of honesty restored already in it, and ached again with the added burden of rapture, his mind assuaged, his body in bliss. Mouth to mouth, shuddering and sighing, they clung together in the pool of light the lamp shed over them, as lost to the room as if it had burst away from them, and left them islanded in the milky light of the moon.

  Impossible for the heart to bear or the body contain such an anguish of delight, and yet body and heart alike survived exquisitely to the promised and poignant peace. It rang right, and it was right; how could he doubt it, when he lay beside her in this ecstatic calm, loving the whole world for her sake, his heart heavy and holy with desire to give to everyone some part of his happiness? ‘Oh darling! Oh, darling—’ Nothing left to say but that, and it had the long profundity of all wisdom in it.

  Suspiria’s head sprang up suddenly from the crook of his arm, her eyes flaring emerald, her cheekbones whitening as the light spilled over them. ‘What was that?’

  The latch of the door relaxed with a faint and withdrawn click. A moment, and then something which was hardly a sound at all, the softest slur and creak, receding along the stone cavern behind the curtain which stirred along the hem, no more than a shiver in a subsiding draught.

  They sprang apart, scrambling to their feet. She put his arm aside with wild gentleness, and ran, and tore open the door. Along the dark, cold corridor they heard, she saw, another door close, and a key turn in the lock, with a soft and unobtrusive but unmistakable finality. They were left staring wide-eyed at each other, scarcely able to make out each other’s features now for the clarity of the figure that stood invisibly between them.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Suspiria then, with a gentle tenderness, as to a startled child. She came back to him, holding him by the arms, shaking him softly until the brittle whiteness left his face. ‘Go home, my darling! Leave me to talk to him. There is nothing to be afraid of – nothing. Only you must leave him to me, it’s better for us all. Especially better for him!’

  He said sensibly: ‘Yes!’ still trembling a little with the shock of the echo, which still reproached him. ‘Yes, I know! I’ll go. Can I come tomorrow? We ought to get everything straight between us, once for all.’

  She wondered for the first time, trying to shake the intruder out of her eyes, if it was going to be as simple as she had believed to exorcise the ghost of Theo. It might have been easier, she thought, if the substance, like the shadow, had come into the room and stood between them, instead of releasing the latch and recoiling into its chosen and impenetrable loneliness.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  The Futility of Action

  1

  Suspiria went and knocked on the studio door, and when only the slight and measured sounds of normal movement within answered her knock, called out to him firmly to let her in.

  ‘I must talk to you,’ she said, almost peremptorily, and waited with confident patience for an answer.

  Within the room, suddenly still, Theo’s voice said: ‘No need for that. You’ve got nothing to tell me, I’ve got nothing to ask. I’m working. You go to bed, and don’t wait for me.’ To all further questions and demands he returned no other answer, and after a few tiring repetitions not even that. His voice was remarkably level and calm, more carefully modulated than usual. At first it was stonily sober, and had a kind of pure echo, as if he spoke in a great emptiness; but after a while it blurred, and she knew that he had the bottle in there with him, and was gradually and purposefully drinking himself into stupor. Because he was more likely to carry this deliverance to its end if she remained there, she went away as he had told her to do, her steps echoing back to him steadily. She went to bed and lay waiting for him to come, but she knew already in her heart that he would not come.

  There was nothing new for her in sleeping alone. They had never submitted with any complacency to the tyranny of day and night. When he was working well, and felt like continuing, he would go on all night long if the nature of the work permitted it; if midnight found her in the middle of loading her kiln she would stay and finish the job. Everything passed on this night with a ragged semblance of normality, within this loose definition of what was normal. There was nothing to make her lie awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and listening to every sound from below.

  He did not come to bed. After a time she dozed uneasily, but awoke readily at the infinitely small and distant and clear clash of the lock on the studio door. Wide-eyed, as if she listened with her eyes, she traced the thread of his footsteps into the living-room, and heard the door shut. His walk was almost painfully steady and distinct. He must have stopped drinking as soon as she left him, and the effects had all been dissipated, probably in a fury of work. As if, she thought, your yesterday or mine can be recovered through a canvas, or through clay, or by any other means of expelling one’s own incomparably isolated being into tangible form! It will only turn out to be tomorrow, instead.

  She waited a little while after everything was quiet. The shut door did not open again. What now? He was sitting over the fire, or drifting into sleep in one of the chairs. In spite of the few embers left alight, it would be very cold there. She slipped out of bed and drew on her dressing-gown, and with great delicacy, for fear he should hear her too soon, opened the door of the bedroom, easing the heavy latch with her fingers. The air in the house was bitter and clear, as if the frost had entered by every door and filled the rooms with its lucid and sterile breath. Suspiria stood barefoot at the top of the staircase, and looked down into the large, shapeless darkness of the room below, dappled with forms of lighter or darker shadow. A very faint gleam survived on the hearth, but gave no light, only a landmark by which to move. She went soundlessly down the stairs, her hand just touching the freezing coldness of the iron rail.

  Theo was lying in a chair drawn up close to the feeble glow of the day’s embers, his long legs sprawled out across the hearth, his arms splayed over the arms of the chair, his head lolling sideways so that the face was almost turned into the cushion under him. She stood silent at the foot of the stairs until her eyes were accustomed to the dark, and the loose, thrown-down shape of him gathered to her sight out of the first blindness. At first he looked to her like a dead man, then only like a man sleeping, then she knew that his eyes were open, and his mind braced furiously against the destroying weight of his tiredness, though he was not yet aware of her.

  When she moved nearer he heard the sound of her naked feet, soft as it was, and lifted his head, all his bulk drawing
together in instant wariness. She felt her breast and lips bruise against the suddenly erected wall of his hostility.

  ‘Theo!’ Her voice was low, and carefully without emotion. It was only as if she had touched him, to make sure that he was really there.

  ‘You should be in bed and asleep,’ he said in a dead voice. ‘You’d better go back.’

  ‘No, I must talk to you. I need to talk to you, and I need that you should listen to me.’

  ‘There’s no need to say anything. Perhaps I ought to make it clear,’ said the same voice laboriously, ‘that I didn’t come spying on you. I came for some cigarettes. It was sheer bad luck that you didn’t hear me come. I made no attempt to be particularly quiet. But I couldn’t help recognising the implications as soon as the door was ajar. I had no intention of intruding.’

  ‘I never thought anything else. All the same, I’m sorry it happened. I’d rather have had this talk with you first.’

  ‘I’m no more likely to have misapprehensions about your motives than you are about mine. So there needn’t be any talk. Your feet are bare,’ he said, with a strange, distant pity. ‘Go back to bed.’

  ‘I want to tell you about Dennis and myself.’

  ‘Why? Do you take it to be an occasion for apologies?’

  ‘No!’ she said with violence. ‘I’m apologising for nothing! But it is an occasion for honesty, in justice to everybody. Dennis pointed that out to me, tonight, before you came. I want to tell you what I can no more help than he can, or you. There never has been a time to be ashamed of it, or to apologise for it. There may have been a time when we could have evaded it. But I think that would have been a kind of abortion, too. I wasn’t prepared for this, I didn’t go looking for it, but no words I know of could tell you how glad I am that it’s happened. I love him, he loves me. As far as I’m concerned it’s the first and only time, and I see no possibility of any end to it. If you hadn’t found it out for yourself tonight, you would have heard it directly from us.’