A Man of Forty (9 page)

“Mummy, is that you?”

“Yes, darling. What do you want?”

She spoke wearily, pausing at his half-open door.

“I only wanted to know,” said Paul, with dignity.

She noticed the distance in his voice, and felt a pang for it. But she was locked in her grief, in her grievance, and couldn't come out of it to talk with her son. He's all I've got left, but for how long? she asked herself bitterly. How many years before
he
finds a woman to displace me with? Perhaps ten. Perhaps fifteen. Men are all alike.

“Go to sleep, there's a good boy,” said Lydia.

It was in his mind to ask her to come in and say good-night again. But pride held him back. It doesn't matter, he said to himself. I'm seven and I can manage very well. This was a formula in frequent use, but tonight that genial boast had an unaccustomed cold ring of independence. Desolate in his pride, he answered nothing. He turned over and put his face into the pillow. He might have said, as he had sometimes done on other such occasions : Come and sit on my bed, Mum. In that wheedling, half-comical tone that used to make her laugh. And, if she hesitated or temporized, he would have said, clinching the matter : Come o-o-o-n, there's a good girl! And she, in the old days, would have answered, with that funny dove's croon of a laugh that she sometimes had : Oh, very well—just for two little minutes, mind! But now, such words couldn't or wouldn't be said between them ; and so there was nothing, nothing at all, to make her linger, or to help him forget the dream he had woken up with.

Lydia went on to her room, and Paul lay quiet in the darkness. In the real darkness now, for he lay on his back with eyes wide open, saying I will explore this large forest this mountain this river so ancient in the days in the nights of the bell is so blue; and the lids fell, soft as petals, and the voice that was and yet wasn't himself ran pattering on, like very small rain, in a wide world of soft grass, under saffron skies, where presently a star appeared, a daylight star that came shining through a cotton-wool cloud, and then was an eye, and then was a woman's face, and then was a gate in the wall which suddenly confronted him. He opened the gate and went in, leaving the gate to swing on its squeaky hinge. And the noise grew louder, and different, and again there were footsteps coming upstairs.

He shot up to the surface of sleep and called out, unthinking :

“Is that you, Mummy?”

“No, it's me,” said David.

To keep the conversation going, Paul asked : “ Is it time to get up yet?”

“No,” said David. “ I'm only just going to bed.”

“Are you going to bed in the big bedroom, with Mummy?”

“No. Not tonight.”

“Why aren't you?”

“Because it's very late, and Mummy's asleep. And now
you
must go to sleep. Good-night, old chap.”

“Good-night,” said Paul indecisively. “ I say, Dad!”

“Well, what is it now?”

“I like talking in the dark, don't you?”

“Yes, but it's time for sleep now. Good-night the apostle!”

“Good-night the parent!”

This long-established pleasantry, their private invention and monopoly, comforted the child but not the father. David went to his dressing-room, where he was to spend the night, himself feeling like a lost child. That he must cut himself off from Paul, as well as from Lydia, seemed the most cruel nonsense. It was a betrayal of the child's trust : however one looked at it, it was that. And that he would no doubt continue to see Paul at intervals made no appreciable difference. Infrequent tolerated meetings, bewildered dutiful self-conscious meetings carefully arranged on neutral territory, these were no substitute for the warm everyday taken-for-granted friendship that
united them now. That bond, that living tie, he by his act would sever. So be it : he accepted the necessity. And already, having one foot in the future, he felt a sort of guilt that he should have allowed himsejf to talk with his son, the son whom he was resolved to betray. Betray? But isn't that rather melodramatic? he asked himself. The little fellow will get on well enough. He'll have his mother : she's a good mother. And Eleanor too, he'll have Eleanor. It'll make no real difference to him whether I'm here or not, once the first strangeness has worn off. But—the apostle Paul : why did I twist the knife in my wound like that? In future, for the few days that remain, I must keep out of his way, or poor Lydia will resent it, suspect me of competing for him.

David slowly undressed and got into bed, where he lay watching the procession of his thoughts. So it's come to this! My God! Afraid to talk to my own son, lest his mother should be angry! Nor did the thought of Mary solace him. Her, the occasion of it all, he fended away from his mind, lest her lovely image, symbol of all joy, should be contaminated by the pain and ugliness of this night. Moreover, remembering Lydia's drawn face and desperate eyes, he could not for shame take joy in Mary. It was as if, even at this moment, Lydia were jealously watching him, listening to his thoughts. Lydia was everywhere, like the nursery version of God. Thou, Lydia, seest me.

Into this situation came Adam Swinford. For he was not put off. Before David could decide whether to put him off or not, the time for doing so had gone by. In making his one great, clear-cut, ruthless decision, David seemed to have spent himself : the minor alternatives that presented themselves were too much for him. So Adam came, pink-cheeked, wide-eyed ; confident and debonair; the world was his oyster. He came and was received by a distracted David ; a Paul who nursed an unspeakable secret; a vaguely expectant Eleanor
(though what it was she expected she didn't know); and lastly, and from an infinite distance, Lydia. He came bringing a little bag of cares which he might or might not open to the sympathetic gaze of David. But its weight was trifling; only now and again did he remember it; the present moment, if it gave him pleasure, was all he concerned himself with, ninety-nine days out of a hundred. It was no habit of his to meet trouble half way.

Should he or shouldn't he tell David about Lily Elver? That taking little piece. He had not in the least intended to go on seeing Lily. She was not really his cup of tea at all. What happens after a party, specially a party like the Buckrams', isn't evidence. Nevertheless, he
had
gone on seeing her. No style. A common little thing. Yet there was something infernally attractive about her. She adores me, he said : there must be something in her. I mean to say, it suggests there's something we have in common, or else… anyhow, for whatever reason, she did adore him, it was pretty clear ; and it would have been impossible, short of sheer unkindness, to head her off from coming to his rooms again. Besides, he hadn't wanted to. The morning after that first night he wished it had never happened; felt uneasy, nervous ; wondered what he had let himself in for. If she had telephoned then she would have had a cool reception. But she didn't. She waited three days ; and by then, by the end of three days, Adam was already beginning to think that it might be rather fun if… his eyes took on a bright intent look. His pulse quickened. And when her call came he smiled, congratulating himself on having made no move to get into touch with her. He answered her in a kindly but somewhat casual and drawling voice. It wouldn't do to seem eager : it would give her ideas.

He was hard put to it not to seem eager, however, when he saw her again in the flesh. She was no beauty. You couldn't call her that. But she was young, fresh, alive : alive with a spontaneous gaiety springing from the heart. Her little affectations were so transparent that they somehow made her seem more natural than ever. A child of nature she certainly was : never a one more so. A natural wanton, said Adam. Innocent and very sweet. Innocent but not tiresomely so. By no means. I'm in luck, he concluded ; but the situation, his thoughts ran on facetiously, is one that calls for much care in the handling. Her nose, the way it turned up, showing the nostrils, there
was something curiously eager and animal about it. It was touch and go whether he would be repelled by it or inflamed. Now he was the one, now the other. But the repulsion was infinitesimal, and in fact added a sort of sting to his desire. That streak of what he called commonness too, even that, somehow, rather to his surprise, added a spice to the affair. He was a little ashamed of her; he would have hated his friends to know, uncensorious though they were; and the necessity for secrecy, which kept him from enjoying her as honestly and innocently as she enjoyed him, at the same time kept him eager—or for a while did so. Lily became a habit.

She was certainly convenient : he had no taste for celibacy. At first, by way of epilogue to their embraces, she wanted tenderness, endearments, talk; but she soon learnt not to expect that kind of thing. She was indeed wonderfully adaptable. She never asked, on leaving him, when she should come again ; she knew that at the moment he wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. She let him forget her if he could, kept out of his way (but not too far out of it), and, except for that one telephone call, always left the initiative to him, or at least did her best to make it look as though she did so. When she wasn't chattering too much, saying things that made him too conscious of the gulf between them, it was pleasant to have her dropping in, pleasant to be within reach of her soft easy mouth, her bronze-glinting eyes, her sweet little squirrel-snout so cheeky and inquiring : very pleasant, and very handy, provided she came only when sent for, and provided none of one's friends turned up and put one to the pain of having to acknowledge her. So far, that awkwardness had been avoided, though there had been one or two narrow shaves. If such encounter did occur, he could not (not quite—he was not tough enough) treat her as socially non-existent, as you treat butlers and bootboys; and he felt that this was rather to his credit; it showed, didn't it, that there was nothing really snobbish about his attitude. On the other hand, people who didn't happen to think her as pretty as he thought her (or had at first thought her) would notice her lack of shall we say culture and what-not, and would raise their eyebrows at this lapse of taste on the part of one whose taste hitherto, he flattered himself, had always been impeccable.

What he was half inclined to confide to David on this visit was that Lily, of whom David, so far, had never heard, by behaving so
conveniently and remaining desirable (at least on one level), was willy-nilly establishing something like a claim on him. He would have denied and she (for reasons of policy) would have disavowed the claim, had it been stated : but there it was, unacknowledged and undefined, making a small sore spot in Adam's semi-consciousness. This is all very well, whispered a cautionary voice in him; it is very well indeed, this wenching and wantoning; in its way nothing could be nicer. But some day in the not so distant future you'll want to get married, won't you?—you'll want to see your unique self extended in children, won't you?—and then this Lily of yours, poor impossible little creature, is going to constitute a difficulty. Pack her off and let her marry someone of her own type? Yes, of course, if she will. But suppose she cuts up rough, makes trouble, tries—well, it's possible—some species of blackmail? A spiritual blackmail, call it. Poor she is but proud; no gold-digger; rather aggressively independent; not the kind of girl you can frankly fob off with an honorarium. So what? It was a problem; and if Adam had been in the habit of troubling about problems of the future he would have been troubled now. As things were, he was just sufficiently aware of it, looming ahead, to make it an excuse for talking things over with David. From David, a slowcoach, but a rock of imperturbable common sense, he would get sagacious advice and (he hoped) moral support. But he had not yet decided to tell him anything.

After breakfast on Sunday David took him for a walk, leaving the women and child at home. It didn't need a sharp eye to see that something had gone wrong in the household, but Adam was only moderately curious about that : not because he lacked curiosity, but because he could imagine no major crisis supervening in a marriage so long established as David's. And it was David's manner rather than Lydia's, David's effortful geniality punctured by moments of nervous watchfulness or moody abstraction, that set him mildly wondering what was up. Lydia's behaviour, since his arrival, had been unexceptionable. A more interested observer would perhaps have found something mechanical in her smile of welcome, her polite questions, her table manner; but it was not in Adam's character to pay close attention to a woman of her age when a younger one was present, and her facade of friendliness served its purpose to perfection.
To David it was lamentably unconvincing ; and concluding that Adam had seen through it he felt that an explanation was called for.

“You'll have to know sooner or later, Adam. There's a bit of trouble going on.”

“Trouble?” said Adam. His thoughts leapt to Lily.

“Lydia and I are going to separate.”

Adam was astonished. “ Really?… I'd no idea!”

“I expect she'll divorce me,” said David, hurrying on with his story. “ I'm sure I hope so. It's all my fault : that goes without saying. And yet it's not my fault either. I can't see that it's anybody's fault.”

Adam wondered what had happened. He wondered whether the presence of Eleanor Rook in the house had created some complication or other. Not the obvious complication (David was far too conventional for that), but perhaps some subtle variant on it. Not that Eleanor was a pretty girl : she wasn't. But she was, this time, somehow a little different. On his previous visit Adam had for the first time in his life seen here a being potentially attractive. Potentially is the word to stress, he said. He had said it then and he said it again now, after a further covert appraisal of her person. Gentle and quiet and colourless, that was Eleanor. A dull girl, he had always thought her. Yet her very dullness would add piquancy to the picnic if it concealed, as well it might, a high degree of seducibility. To see that tameness revert to the primitive, to feel her change into a new and vital creature in one's arms, that wouldn't (thought Adam) be altogether bad fun ; and he supposed that even David might have been visited by the same idea. Then suddenly, in a ‘flash, he saw how absurd, how far-fetched, these speculations were. It was the very last thing in the world you could imagine of old David.