An Accidental Man (43 page)

Today's post about summed it up. Clara was too happy to bother except for a hasty note to salve her conscience. Garth was full of pity and felt it might be salutary to think of even less fortunate people. He thought it might do Charlotte good to do social work. Mavis had absorbed Matthew into a final
we
. Matthew didn't care. He had not bothered to write. He had not telephoned. If he was telephoning now it was too late. He only wanted to make use of her to solve Mavis's problems. To make the way plain for him and Mavis. Patrick had got the history prize. Gracie was blissfully happy in Ireland. George was very grand.
We
were grateful and sent our good wishes. Austin and Dorina were coming home. Mavis thought Charlotte might be of use. George sent his
special
love. Matthew didn't care. The last time she had answered the telephone it was a man who uttered obscenities, having gathered that a maiden lady lived there alone. Perhaps that was him again now. Or perhaps it was Matthew-Mavis who thought Charlotte might be of use. But it was too late. Charlotte was no use to anybody any more. Even Alison, to whom she had once been of use, had rejected her finally. Therefore she must be worthy of rejection.

Matthew didn't care. Matthew and Mavis were
we
, to have and to hold to love and to cherish till death did them part. They would be rich and joyful. They would live in a grand house and the maid would dust the Chinese vases. Gracie was blissfully happy in Ireland. Clara was so longing for the Greek cruise. Garth was full of pity. So was George, who sent his
special
love. Patrick had won the History Prize. Patrick had written regularly to Alison. He had never once written to Charlotte. Charlotte would be of use. Charlotte would mind the children while Gracie and Ludwig went out to dinner. Austin and Dorina are coming home. Clara's life is thrilling.

Of course Charlotte knew perfectly well, she did not need to be told it in a patronizing communication from Garth, that other people were worse off than she was and she ought to feel lucky. She hadn't got strings of children and a husband who went to the pub. How much she wished that she had, someone like Garth would never know. Of course she had had an easy life, and with a little ingenuity could still have one. She had long ago surrendered the great illusions and the little ones were so much her friends that they had become entirely translucent. She was not the sort of person who would fall out of the bottom of society. She had a good digestion. She could hunger and satisfy her hunger, feel weary and go to a comfortable bed. If she awoke in black misery, as she alway did, she had the inductive powers to know that when she had got up she would probably enjoy a cup of tea. A detective story could hold her attention, even
The Times
could. Human beings can keep going and even in some sense enjoy their existence with fewer devices than that. But it somehow remained that she, she Charlotte Ledgard, had been cheated out of her life and survived now as a mere shadow. No wonder Alison had punished her and Matthew thought of her only as an instrument. That she could still be an instrument might have comforted her once, but not now.

So Austin and Dorina were reconciled and would soon be home. Another happy ending. Charlotte would clean the flat for them before she left, buy flowers for them. They would be grateful, but they would not want to see her again. It would be necessary for Charlotte to take a job, only it was not clear what she could do except look after elderly ladies. Of course she could remind Clara of her kind suggestion and go and live with her and George. Clara and George had a high sense of duty and would never by an eyelid's flicker indicate to Charlotte that she was a burden. Only late at night when Charlotte was in bed and they had returned from a dinner party would they speak of poor old Char and ruefully and kindly wish her at the devil. And then Clara would tease George about Charlotte being in love with him. And Charlotte would lie alone in bed and hear the married couple murmuring below. And everyone would say how generous of the Tisbournes to look after old Charlotte who was getting on in years and had never been easy to live with even when she was young. She could stick it out with George and Clara until the little Leferriers arrived. Then she would earn her keep, as she had earned it with Alison year after year at the Villa.

Charlotte knew perfectly well too that these vistas were not only fruitless but quite possibly false. In a very abstract way she knew that something unexpected could happen even to her, scarcely something pleasant, but at least something different. She could become ill. Even this might alter things. But she could not change her knowledge of the blankness of the future into any sort of hope, or really conceive of the future at all except as a series of nightmarish rat-run extensions of her present vileness. That she condemned herself in moral terms brought no consoling spring of vitality and even guilt gave her no energy. When this is so one is in extremity indeed.

I hate everybody, she thought, and I hate them not because they are bad or spiteful or because they ignore me or even because they pity me. I hate them in a pure way because they are fortunate and have what I have not, and there is no human being so wretched that my hatred, like the divine mercy, cannot find its way to him. She lay on the wretched lumpy bed in the twilight, behind the filthy gauze curtains, lying awkwardly, without even the will to make herself comfortable, and she thought about death and whether it made any sense to desire it. No, it made no sense. She was far beyond the truth and its sharp dividings of the world. Whether or not she should kill herself, whether it would seriously matter to anyone or anything if she did, was a question which had no answer, which could not even be properly framed. Why should she kill herself in a fit of envy, and then again why should she not? It was all one. Whether this despair made it easier or harder to act, whether it would finally carry her off, mere chance would decide. She had always been the slave of chance, let it kill her if it would by a random stroke. She would not die gladly, but then she had not loved gladly either. Her swansong would be made of words smashed into nonsense against a cracked world, exploding with it into the chaos upon which everything rested and out of which it was made. And the people who said, as they smiled and sipped their evening drink, ‘Poor Charlotte killed herself out of spleen', would themselves very soon be dead too.

The morning was wearing away. Soon it would be time to feed herself again, to continue the motions of living. She had certainly been trying to keep herself alive, she had even been to see Doctor Seldon. He had told her there was nothing wrong with her and had given her tranquillizers and sleeping pills. He had troubles of his own. She hated him too all the same. Should she rise up and open another tin of corned beef and another tin of beans? Stoking the machine, keeping the wheels turning for a little bit longer. Should she sit in the kitchen and eat a plateful of stuff with
The Times
propped up in front of her, scanning the Personal Column for an advertisement for a lady companion, cook and housemaid kept? Or should she not? Should she get up and stop the milk and feed herself fifty sleeping pills? She had been so happy once with her father before Clara was born. But that was in a previous existence, that child scarcely a memory, that man not even a ghost.

Charlotte pulled herself off the bed and wandered back into the sitting-room. She could not endure the happiness of Mavis and Matthew, that torture at least she could spare her consciousness. She went to the place where she had put away the items which had once seemed to her so interesting, the swimming certificate, the torn letter. Should she send them to Matthew to trouble his peace? She sat down at the table and began to write.
My dear Matthew, when you receive this I shall be dead
 . . . Odd that to face death was really to face nothing. When men said that the spectacle of death could instruct and save they lied. Healthy men said this, men radiant with suffering and guilt, men steely with will and art. Death's real disciples know that there is no face we can turn towards death. Only life stretches away on every hand, hideous and dry and becoming tinier and tinier.

Slowly Charlotte crumpled up the page. She put it together with the swimming certificate and the old torn letter in the empty grate. Betty's words looked up at her
we'll meet then . . . Austin doesn't suspect.
She struck a match and set fire to the papers, poking them until they fell to dust. Then she went to the kitchen and took a glass and filled a jug with water. She went back into the bedroom. She found the sleeping tablets.

Odd that one should so naturally wish to lie upon one's bed to go to sleep forever.

Matthew and Dorina were sitting in the drawing-room looking at each other. It was mid-morning. Dorina's bag was packed. Matthew got up. He said, ‘I'll ring for a taxi.'

‘No. Wait a little longer. Please.'

‘Better get it over.'

‘Please —'

Matthew dialled the number of the taxi rank. It was engaged.

‘I'm sorry,' said Dorina. ‘But after these days with you I don't think I can stand “never again”. I can't stand it.'

‘You've got to,' said Matthew. He dialled the number again. ‘Hello. Could you send a taxi at once?' He gave the address.

‘I am not going to cry,' said Dorina. ‘I promised I wouldn't.' She spoke in a slow precise voice, not looking at him. ‘That you of all people, to whom I have come closest in all the world, who understands me as if you had made me, that you of all people should be the only one that I can never see again —'

‘That's how it is,' said Matthew. ‘Sorry.'

He got up and went to the window.

‘I am not reproaching you.'

‘I know.'

‘There must be some compromise, some second way.'

‘None. You know that as well as I do.'

They had lived an age in three days. He had seen her rise as if from a tomb. Taking her by the hand, he had pulled her up out of the paralysis of fear. She had found her courage like someone remembering her own name. Her love for Austin had been set free into the world. He had seen the joy of resurrection. Only now in the last hours had a sense of horror returned. Like radium, this treatment cures and then begins to destroy. It was time to end it.

‘Yes,' said Dorina. ‘Yes. But it's too horrible. I love Austin. Yet I can't help feeling that I belong to you automatically whether you will or no forever. And that this will be so even if we don't meet any more.'

‘It's meaningless, Dorina,' said Matthew. ‘You are comforting yourself with empty words. I seem brutal now, but I must be. I suffer too. How can one be with someone as I have been with you in these days and not love them? One could do nothing for them unless one did love them. That we must now part absolutely is our bad luck. But only this absolute parting ratifies what went before and makes it other than a sort of crime. If I am to have helped you at all I must abandon you completely.'

‘After all this —'

‘We must make all this as if it had never been.'

‘Couldn't we at least write occasionally, once a year?'

‘No. If you write to me I will not only not answer, I shall tear up the letter unread. Forgive me.'

The front door bell rang.

‘There's your taxi.'

Matthew left the room and went to the front door. In a moment or two he would be by himself. He knew he could assuage his own pain, there were means. He could not stand much more of this. Bundle her in and away and weep then.

Garth was standing on the doorstep.

As soon as Matthew had opened the door Garth darted into the hall and shut the door again.

‘Whatever is it?' said Matthew.

‘Sssh. I know Dorina's here. I was coming to see you. Then I saw the Tisbournes parking their car just down the road. They're bound to be coming here too. I ran on first, I thought I'd better warn you.'

‘Thank you,' said Matthew. ‘Dorina, here's Garth. The Tisbournes are just arriving. Dorina, could you just sit in the dining-room. I'll get rid of them as quickly as possible. Here, take your suitcase and your handbag.'

‘I'll hide too if you don't mind,' said Garth. ‘I'm no good at acting.'

Dorina gave a little moan and crossed the hall, followed by Garth. The door bell rang again. Matthew waited a moment or two, then opened the door.

‘Why, George and Clara, what a nice surprise!'

‘I do hope you don't abhor the dropper-in,' said George.

The taxi drew up behind them.

Matthew said to the taxi driver, ‘I don't need you after all. Here, let me pay you for coming.'

‘Oh no!' cried Clara. ‘Stop him, George. We're spoiling his morning. Matthew, you were just going somewhere.'

‘No, I wasn't — I mean, it can wait. Do come in.'

‘Taxi, don't go, wait!'

‘Clara, I really don't want it. No, go, please. Now do come in, just for a minute. I have got to go somewhere actually, but —'

‘Can we just come in for a sec?'

‘Yes, yes. Come into the drawing-room. Would you like a drink?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘Clara, medium sherry, George, Scotch and water, that's right, isn't it?'

‘Clever old Matthew, you remember everybody's little foibles!'

‘He remembers everything, doesn't he. Thank you, dear Matthew.'

‘Do sit down.'

‘Thank you.'

‘It's got quite hot again, hasn't it,' said Matthew.

‘Yes, it's really a summer for once, like people have in other places. Aren't you drinking, Matthew?'

‘Well, yes, but I must go soon.'

‘We'll take you in our car. Where do you want to go?'