Eva Trout (30 page)

Eva looked waitingly at the doctor, hoping he might assist her to answer. But in return he looked waitingly back at her. She said: “These seemed the best means.”

“They were drastic, hurried.”

“How should I go to, otherwise, all that trouble? I did not wish, either, to be immoral. I had had disagreeable impressions of love.”

“You say, ‘impressions’—impressions only? You had not experimented?”

“I was not anxious to.”

“I understand,” he said. “I will not say that this was a pity: who is to know?—Was there this, also: that you wished (in default of your father) to be Jeremy’s father as well as mother?”

“Possibly,” she ceded—not greatly startled.

“Look at the chateau!” he said suddenly. “I was born here, everything should be familiar; yet I have never seen what we are looking at exactly as it is at this moment, in this light. I have seen it at other moments, in other lights, which were as beautiful—never being the same. Transfigurations never repeat themselves. One need not be frightened of growing old; to the last, there will always be something new.—Come and look at the reflection in the pool!”

They did so.

“One must not,” he went on, “judge love too remorselessly. We are at its mercy, but not altogether; it is also at ours. It cannot be as tranquil as this water. It has it in itself to be ideal, yet it is prey to enormities and distortions—which are as agonising, one must remember, to the lovers as they are, as you say, disagreeable to onlookers. You were compelled, possibly, to be a closer, more constant onlooker than one should have to be?—That is not always a popular position.”

“No,” she said. “One is sometimes never forgiven.”

“Otherwise, what did they think of you, these people?— those you grew up amongst, and who may have persisted? In so far as they do persist, what are they thinking? Do you feel them to judge you?—This is important. Could you answer?”

“Oh, yes. They agree, I am a liar,” said Eva—though easily, and looking about her at the lovely transparency of the rising shadows without rancour or air of trouble. “I am not always. For instance, this evening.” ~

“One is made a liar.”

“I was once told, I am by nature truthful. But on the whole, Doctor Bonnard, I cannot answer—you see, I have made myself not think about what is thought of me, or was. Why is it important?”

“Because one is so much made by it. Whether one resists it or not, it has so much power. It is so hard not to comply with it, not to fall in with it—not to be overcome by it in the very battle one has against it. The way one is envisaged by other people—what easier way is there of envisaging oneself? There is a fatalism in one’s acceptance of it. Solitude is not the solution, one feels followed. Choice—choice of those who are to surround one, choice of those most likely to see one rightly —is the only escape. But for some of us, it is an escape difficult to make. Was it for you?”

“I continue going away. But I am awaited.”

“Jeremy,” said the doctor, apparently at a tangent, “has not yet incurred the ability to lie. We must remember, he is on the eve of doing so. We must all see—you will see, I know?— that if possible he shall never have the incentive. So far, he has been able to conceal, not yet, however, to misrepresent. The day you brought him to us, you told us he had been taken away from you, just before you left London, for some hours. The mystery of what happened in those hours, and of how, still more why, it was affecting him was tormenting you. Thérèse and I have come to feel, and would like to say to you, that you must not allow this to loom too large. We can find no signs of his having been harmed. Whatever was the design of someone else, the child may have, if anything, benefited. What happened could be part of—could even have led to?— the phase he is going through, of which I spoke to you: expanding desires. Can you see it as that?”

Leaving the pool, they ascended the outdoor antler-staircase of the chateau: at the top, door made fast against invasion by night. Backs to the door, they stood overlooking the scene where they had walked. All was sensuously dissolving, yet was gentle as a sigh, breathless—day, a dying yellow suffusion, was at its last. Wandering lovers were about—some faded trance-like into the distance, but where the pool gleamed two slowly embraced. Some new element entered Eva’s silence. Gerard Bonnard asked: “You are tired, madame?”

“No. I—”

“Not thinking, ‘Tomorrow, another journey’?”

“I was thinking of the end of it. Of somebody.”

“To be awaited, then,” he suggested gently, “is not always an undesired thing? I should be sad if I were not—that there should be somebody there is precious.” He smiled—that being, by now, more to be heard than seen. “May I be so happy as to think that you are, after all, in love?”

“Do you think so?” she asked, turning to him.

“It is what I hope. In spite of all, it is so very possible to be happy. I think,” said the doctor, looking towards Eva, “you are framed for happiness—if it could be simple?” He was a man of few gestures; he now made one. “It’s a matter of genius, possibly: hardly more!”

“This is not simple.”

“He is not simple?”

“No.”

“All the same,
bon voyage
!”

“I am frightened, as though I were about to die.”

“That is unworthy of you, as I know you.”

“Thank you,” said Eva, instantly drawing herself up. “But this—this beautiful place. I wish I could stay.”

“We must go in, all the same.”

They descended the staircase. He saw her to her hotel, then made his way home again through the forest, this track being so known to him that he could walk quickly through the gathering dark. Jeremy was asleep. Mme Bonnard sat sewing by a lighted window.

The scene of the reunion was a bar.

“And if I did?” asked Iseult, brazening it out. “She brought him to see us, according to you. No sooner were they in England than they were on our doorstep—or on what had been. That we weren’t any more at Larkins was the sheerest mischance, as
she
saw it! What had been gone through never occurred to her; nor did, that she mightn’t be doing a tactful thing. Her one wish was, one should meet the child.”

“Her intentions were excellent, if extraordinary.”

“So were mine, then.”

“Ah. What will you drink?”

“Anything,” said Iseult, agitatedly. About to bite on a tempting fingernail, she saw Constantine wince; she jerked it away. She said: “He’s a nice little boy.”

“Why are you becoming such a tramp?”

“That’s how you’d put it, would you?” she asked, giving him an analytical smile.

“That’s how it could be put.”

“Well, you had my letters—I’d thought I’d told you. Or didn’t you take in what I was saying? I’ve undergone an emotional hysterotomy, and am the better. No return of the former trouble need be anticipated. My inside’s gone. You understand what I mean?”

“Just a little out of my field, I fear… Your, er,
appearance
does not give that impression. Why on earth, Iseult, have you adopted it?—when did you?”

“During my travels. You don’t like it?”

“The fulminous Latin look? I could tell you who has gone for it—that you know, of course: Eric. Scandinavia’s nowhere. He bounced in the other day, all over again, and I’m getting sick of this. I have had enough of it.”

“What made you involve yourself?”

“Philanthropy.”

“Sorry,” Iseult said. “
I
can’t help you.”

“Oh, yes you can. Take him away.”

“I must
say
,” she cried, “you are utterly heartlessl”

“You are utterly wrong; I’m a different man. I’m distressed, actually.—What have you got in that parcel under your chair?”

“Oh, yes, Constantine: that reminds me—would you be so kind as to fish it up?” He did so, gingerly placing it on the table. Heavy, he mentioned. “Yes,” she said, “a revolver. I was going to ask you: could you keep it for me in the safe in your office? I have nowhere to put it; that’s why I brought it this evening. I’m sure you will? I can’t very well take it to Newcastle.”

“I’m sorry,” said Constantine, decidedly, “I’m not going to carry
that
across London.”

“It won’t go off,” she said patronisingly.

“Dead or alive, I wouldn’t be seen dead with it. It’s a ghastly parcel.” It was not a neat job: bulky-knobbly brown paper, thrice-knotted string. “Why are you going to Newcastle?—which Newcastle?”

“Upon-Tyne. I’ll be teaching, as a fill-in. Someone broke down.”

“And you still teach marvellously?”

“I teach,” said Iseult, gone taut. “Isn’t that enough? I don’t as I used.”

“One should not undergo emotional hysterotomy—perhaps?”

“That’s enough, Constantine.”

“Ah? Sorry.”

“How disobliging you are,” she complained, with reference to the revolver, shifting it on to an empty third chair. “Then if you won’t, I know what I’ll do,” she went on, smacking the palm of a hand on to the cushion of hair over her forehead, “take it round to Paley’s, tell them it’s Eva’s, get them to put it with the rest of her belongings down in the baggage room. It’s no business of theirs what is inside. If she turns up again, I can ask her for it; if she never does, there it can stay. It’s no longer of interest. I’d hand it back to Eric, but he’s better without it.”

“Also, you won’t be seeing him.”

“No—of course not!”

“How,” Constantine wanted to know, “do you know her belongings are in the baggage room?”

“I went in, to see what the place is like. I asked.”

“It surprises me they gave you the information—frankly. Looking as you do.”

“You can’t take your eyes off me,” she said coldly.

“Horror, I think,” he said. “It’s not that you’ve lost your looks, you’ve thrown them away—gratuitously. What on
earth
is your object?”

“To be different.” Stage-fright had caused her not to take in this bar when she first entered. She now did so. It was in Soho, somewhere. Outside in the street, summer staled away: in here, cracked leatherette was pent up in smokiness. The habitues, sparse this time of the evening, were nondescript. The waiter, if cognisant of their order, did not show it. She asked Constantine: “Do you come here often?”

“No. Nor shall I again.”

“Yes, you don’t seem to be cutting so much ice. Though anywhere else, I suppose,
I
might not do? I so well remember that place where we first had lunch, except where it was? But of course, in those days there was more to say. Wasn’t there?”

“Don’t be touchy, Iseult.”

“I was being funny.”

“You do realise, of course, that you’re jolly lucky I’m not turning you over to the police?”

“Exactly for what reason?”

“Attempted kidnapping.”

Fortunately the drinks came. The interpretation of “anything” had been vodka. Iseult so badly needed it that for some time she fought a delaying action, lacing and re-lacing her fingers round the glass. Constantine looked sceptically at his brandy before further diluting it with soda. Each, then, watched how the other did. Iseult drained the last of the vodka out of the sleazy ice before saying: “Still—what about my letters?”

“Immensely interesting. Yes—they were quite remarkable. I have them all, I believe. Do you want them back?”

“No, Constantine. Why?”

“Psychological material,
I
should have thought,” said he, bending upon her a look of disarming earnestness. “A pity they should go to waste—you should write a book: obviously. Shouldn’t you write a book?”

“No.”

He said: “I disagree with you.”

“What else do you think I was trying to do in France? It was born dead.” She twisted her head away.

“I’m sincerely sorry.”

The bracelets which had been noted by the sculptress were gilt, of exaggerated design. Iseult wore three on her left wrist —she pushed them up it, rattled them down again. “Talking of France, did you use that address of Eva’s I got from the Danceys?”

“No. She has really wounded me too much, this time. The next move—if any—will have to be hers.”

“What the whole of the picture is is, Eva obsesses you. You love her, in some preposterous way you don’t know yourself. I shouldn’t, I suppose, blame you for keeping me in the dark;
you’re
in the dark. Still, there it is—isn’t it, Constantine? Talking of the Danceys, what, in that case, do you think of all this about Henry?”

“I was not aware,” he said undisturbedly, “that there was anything about Henry. Rather a light-weight, surely?”

Plucking at a bracelet which had a jet inset, snapping it on its springs, she remarked: “He knew where she was.”

“Dear Iseult, don’t jangle your bangles at one! Rue de Rivoli, aren’t they? What are their individual histories, you make one wonder? Eat your nails, if you wish, but do try not to flaunt your trophies. You’ve been plunged in romance, that goes without saying.”

“Yes and no,” she said. “Do I look like it?”

“You’re at pains to do so.”

“Nothing went even as well as it did with Eric.”

To the now weed-throttled lake had been added a flat-bottomed boat—of the type whose absence once had been deprecated by the Dancey children. This one possibly was a leftover from the lads’ camping. Floating in the boat in the middle of the lake were Henry and Eva, with a bottle of wine.

The castle was but patchily reflected, owing to lily and other water-leaves being rendered luxuriant by June. The estate was undergoing an interim, the weaving community duped by Constantine not yet having attempted to move in, stupefied, one might imagine, by the amount to be done first. A look of great peace hung over the fagade, which had returned to its original air of having nothing behind it. Bluish bloom extended over the sheeny woods. The sun not so much shone as filled the sky.

Where were the swans? Gone.

“They can fly,” said Henry. “They must have taken off— what a decision! What was it like here?”

“I don’t know,” she said—meaning, she could not say.

“You’re full of inexplicable experiences!”

She tugged a handful of weed out of the lake. “A very little girl tried to drown herself.”

“Far too experimentary a school,” said Henry, devouring one then another of the prodigious strawberries from London. “But then, so would a honeymoon be.”