Eyeless In Gaza (41 page)

It was all beside the point. For the point was those silences in which Hugh enclosed himself at meals. The point was that
martyred expression he put on if ever she came into his study while he was working. The point was the furtive squalor of those approaches in the darkness, the revolting detachment and gentleness of a sensuality, in which the part assigned to her was purely ideal. The point was that expression of dismay, almost of horror and disgust, which she had detected that time, within the first few weeks of their marriage, when she was laid up with the flu. He had shown himself solicitous; and at first she had been touched, had felt grateful. But when she discovered how heroic an effort it had cost him to attend upon her sick body, the gratitude had evaporated. In itself, no doubt, the effort was admirable. What she resented, what she couldn't forgive was the fact that an effort had had to be made. She wanted to be accepted as she was, even in fever, even vomiting bile. In that book on mysticism she had read, there was an account of Mme Guyon picking up from the floor a horrible gob of phlegm and spittle and putting it in her mouth – as a test of will. Sick, she had been Hugh's test of will; and, since then, each month had renewed his secret horror of her body. It was an intolerable insult – and would be no less intolerable in one of Ditchling's satellite towns, in the planned world those god-fearing atheists were always talking about.

But there was also Fanny Carling. ‘The mouse' was Helen's name for her – she was so small, so grey, so silently quick. But a mystical mouse. A mouse with enormous blue eyes that seemed perpetually astonished by what they saw behind the appearances of things. Astonished, but bright at the same time with an inexplicable happiness – a happiness that to Helen seemed almost indecent, but which she envied. ‘How does one believe in things that are obviously false?' she had asked, half in malice, half genuinely desirous of learning a valuable secret. ‘By living,' the mouse answered. ‘If you live in the right way, all these things turn out to be obviously true.' And she went on to talk incomprehensible stuff about the love of God and the
love of things and people for the sake of God. ‘I don't know what you mean.' ‘Only because you don't want to, Helen.' Stupid, maddening answer! ‘How do you know what I want?'

Sighing, Helen returned to her book.

(‘One of my boy friends . . .')

The dreariest and the longest, she repeated to herself. But it could be as long, she thought, and as dreary with several as with only one – with Bob and Cecil and Quentin as with Hugh.

‘I don't believe it,' she said aloud; and anyhow there hadn't been much love to divide. For poor little Cecil she had never pretended to be more than sorry. And with Quentin it was just – well, just hygiene. As for Bob, he had genuinely cared for her and she, on her side, had done her best to care for him. But under those charming manners of his, under those heroic good looks there was really nothing. And as a lover, how
hopelessly clumsy he had been, how barbarous and uncomprehending! She had broken with him after only a few weeks. And perhaps, she went on to think, that was her fate – to lose her heart only to men like Gerry, to be loved only by men like Hugh, and Bob and Cecil. To worship cruelty and meanness, be adored by deficiency.

The telephone bell rang; Helen picked up the receiver.

‘Hullo.'

It was the voice of Anthony Beavis that answered. He wanted her to dine with him tomorrow.

‘I'd love to,' she said, though she had promised the evening to Quentin.

There was a smile on her face, as she leaned back again on the pillows. An intelligent man, she was thinking. Worth fifty of these wretched little Cecils and Quentins. And amusing, charming, even rather good-looking. How nice he had been to her the other night at Mark's dinner! Had gone out of his way to be nice. Whereas that pretentious ass Pitchley had gone out of his way to be rude and snubbing. She had wondered at the time whether Anthony wasn't rather attracted by her. Had wondered and rather hoped so. Now, this invitation gave her reasons, not only for hoping, but for thinking so as well. She hummed to herself; then, suddenly energetic, threw back the bed-clothes. She had decided that she would get up for lunch.

SO FAR AS
Mary Amberley was concerned, that spring and early summer had been extremely dull. Anthony was a charming boy, no doubt. But two years were a long time; he had lost his novelty. And then he was really too much in love. It was pleasant having people in love with you, of course, but not too violently, not if it went on too long. They became a nuisance in that case; they began to imagine that they had rights and that you had duties. Which was intolerable. All the fuss that Anthony had made last winter about that art critic in Paris! Flattering, in a certain sense. Mary had rarely seen anyone so desperately upset. And seeing that the art critic had turned out, on a nearer acquaintance, to be a bit of a bore, she had quite enjoyed the process of letting herself be blackmailed by Anthony's dumb miseries and tears. But the principle was wrong. She didn't want to be loved in that blackmailing way. Particularly if it was a long-drawn blackmail. She liked things to be short and sharp and exciting. Another time, and with anyone who wasn't the art critic, she wouldn't allow Anthony to blackmail her. But the trouble was that, except for Sidney Gattick – and she wasn't really sure if she could tolerate
Sidney's voice and manner – there was nobody else in sight. The world was a place where all amusing and exciting things seemed, all of a sudden, to have stopped happening. There was nothing for it but to make them happen. That was why she went on at Anthony about what she called ‘Joan's treatment,' went on and on with a persistence quite out of proportion with any interest she felt in Joan, or in Brian Foxe, or even in Anthony – went on simply in the hope of creating a little fun out of the boring nothingness of the time.

‘How's the treatment advancing?' she asked yet again that afternoon in July.

Anthony replied with a long story, elaborately rehearsed, about his position as Heavy Uncle; and how he was gradually establishing himself, on a more intimate footing, as Big Brother; how from Big Brother, he proposed to develop, almost imperceptibly, into Sentimental Cousin; and from Sentimental Cousin into . . .

‘The truth being,' said Mrs Amberley, interrupting him, ‘that you're doing nothing at all.'

Anthony protested. ‘I'm going slow. Using strategy.'

‘Strategy!' she echoed contemptuously. ‘It's just funk.'

He denied it, but with an irrepressible blush. For of course she was half right. The funk was there. In spite of the two years he had spent as Mary's lover, he still suffered from shyness, still lacked self-confidence in the presence of women. But his timidity was not the only inhibiting force at work. There was also compunction, also affection and loyalty. But of these it would be all but impossible to talk to Mary. She would say that he was only disguising his fear in a variety of creditable fancy dresses, would simply refuse to believe in the genuineness of these other feelings of his. And the trouble was that she would have some justification for the refusal. For, after all, there hadn't been much sign of that compunction, that affection and loyalty, when he originally told her the
story. How often since then, in futile outbursts of retrospective anger, he had cursed himself for having done it! And, trying to persuade himself that the responsibility was not exclusively his, had also cursed Mary. Blaming her for not having told him that he was betraying confidences out of mere wantonness and vanity; for not having refused to listen to him.

‘The fact of the matter,' Mary now went on, implacably, ‘is that you haven't got the guts to kiss a woman. You can only put on one of those irresistibly tender and melancholy faces of yours and silently beg to be seduced.'

‘What nonsense!' But he was blushing more hotly than ever.

Ignoring the interruption, ‘
She
won't seduce you, of course,' Mary continued. ‘She's too young. Not too young to be tempted, perhaps. Because the thing you go for is the mother instinct, and even a child of three has got that. Even a child of three would feel her little heart wrung for you. Absolutely wr-wrung.' She rolled the
r
derisively. ‘But seduction . . .' Mrs Amberley shook her head. ‘You can't expect that till a good deal later. Certainly not from a girl of twenty.'

‘As a matter of fact,' said Anthony, trying to divert her from this painful dissection of his character, ‘I've never found Joan particularly attractive. A bit too rustic.' He emphasized the word in Mary's own style. ‘Besides, she's really rather childish,' he added, and was instantly made to regret his words; for Mary was down on him again, like a hawk.

‘Childish!' she repeated. ‘I like that. And what about you? Talk about pots and kettles! The feeding-bottle calling the diaper childish. Though of course,' she went on, returning to the attack at the point where she had broken through before, ‘it's only natural that you should complain of her. She
is
too childish for you. Too childish to do the pouncing. Childish enough to expect to be pounced on. Poor girl! she's come to the wrong address. She'll get no more kisses out of you than she gets out of that benighted early Christian
of hers. Even though you do profess to be civilized . . .'

She was interrupted by the opening of the door.

‘Mr Gattick,' the maid announced.

Large, florid, almost visibly luminous with the inner glow of his self-satisfaction and confidence, Sidney Gattick came striding in. His voice boomed resonantly as he spoke his greetings, enquired after her health. A deep voice, virile as only the voice of an actor-manager playing the part of a strong man can be virile. And his profile, Anthony suddenly perceived – that too was an actor's: too noble to be quite true. And after all, he went on to think, with a contempt born of jealousy and a certain envy of the other's worldly success, what were these barristers but actors? Clever actors, but clever with the cleverness of examination-passers; capable of mugging up a case and forgetting it again the moment it was finished, as one mugged up formal logic or The Acts of the Apostles for Pass Mods or Divvers. No real intelligence, no coherent thinking. Just the examinee's mind lodged in the actor's body and expressing itself in the actor's booming voice. And, for this, society paid the creature five or six thousand pounds a year. And the creature regarded itself as important, wise, a man of note; the creature felt itself in a position to be patronizing. Not that it mattered, Anthony assured himself, being patronized by this hollow, booming mountebank. One could laugh – it was so absurd! But in spite of the absurdity, and even while one laughed, the patronage seemed painfully humiliating. The way, for example, he now acted the distinguished old military man, the bluff country squire, and, patting him on the shoulder, said, ‘Well, Anthony my lad!' – it was absolutely intolerable. On this occasion, however, the intolerableness, it seemed to Anthony, was worth putting up with. The man might be a tiresome and pretentious fool; but at least his coming had delivered him from the assaults of Mary. In Gattick's presence she couldn't go on at him about Joan.

But he had reckoned without Mary and her boredom, her urgent need to make something amusing and exciting happen. Few things are more exciting than deliberate bad taste, more amusing than the spectacle of someone else's embarrassment. Before Gattick had had time to finish his preliminary boomings, she was back again on the old, painful subject.

‘When you were Anthony's age,' she began, ‘did you always wait for the woman to seduce you?'

‘Me?'

She nodded.

Recovering from his surprise, Gattick smiled the knowing smile of an experienced Don Juan and, in his most virile
jeune premier
's voice, said, ‘Of course not.' He laughed complacently. ‘On the contrary, I'm afraid I used to rush in where angels fear to tread. Got my face slapped sometimes. But more often, not.' He twinkled scabrously.

‘Anthony prefers to sit still,' said Mrs Amberley; ‘to sit still and wait for the woman to make the advances.'

‘Oh, that's bad, Anthony, that's very bad,' said Gattick; and his voice once more implied the military moustaches, the country gentleman's Harris tweeds.

‘Here's a poor girl who wants to be kissed,' Mrs Amberley went on, ‘and he simply hasn't got the courage to put an arm round her waist and do it.'

‘Nothing to say in your own defence, Anthony?' Gattick asked.

Trying, rather unsuccessfully, to pretend that he didn't care, Anthony shrugged his shoulders. ‘Only that it isn't true.'

‘What isn't true?' asked Mary.

‘That I haven't the courage.'

‘But it is true that you haven't done the kissing. Isn't it?' she insisted. ‘Isn't it?' And when he had to admit that it was true, ‘I'm only drawing the obvious inference from the facts,' she said. ‘You're a lawyer, Sidney. Tell me if it's a justifiable inference.

‘Absolutely justifiable,' said Gattick, and the Lord Chancellor himself could not have spoken more weightily. An aura of robes and full-bottomed wigs hung round him. He was justice incarnate.