Purposes of Love (17 page)

“Oh, to be sure, Miss.” She was about forty, with a red, tightly-buttoned face. Into her beadily appraising stare Vivian’s smile sank, leaving no trace. “Would you be wanting any help?”

“No, thank you, I can manage easily.” The woman washed her tea-things noisily, collected outer garments and a sinister-looking American cloth bag, and went, with a look over her shoulder which gave Vivian a feeling in her stomach as if she had eaten something very heavy and indigestible. She walked round the flat to see how much evidence she had left. The bedroom was quite straight; too straight, because Mic would almost certainly have left the bed to be made. Quite certainly he would have left the washing-up. Her compact was on the mantelpiece. Poor woman, she said to herself, firmly reasonable, it’s rather too bad. After all, she keeps the flat very clean. I feel sure, if I did for a gentleman, I should hate to have his fancy-friends bursting in on my elevenses. Mic forgot it was her day, of course. It seems neither of us is particularly good at this sort of thing.

She began preparing the lunch, which was more important.

When Mic arrived he said, “You
are
still here!” and took a little while to get over it. Then, “Thanks for the pen, but you shouldn’t have bothered. My dear, did Mrs. Gale walk in on you?”

“No, I came in on her. It was all right.”

“I’m damned sure it wasn’t. Darling, I can’t apologise. I didn’t remember about her till five minutes before she was due to be here. She lives just outside the hospital, so I took a chance and dashed out to stop her, but of course she’d gone.”

“Truly it was all right. We were both awfully tactful.”

Mic paid a great many compliments to the lunch, but was a little distrait all the way through it.

“Come out of it, Mic dear. What is it, anyway, not still Mrs. Gale? I forgot about her ten minutes after, and I’m sure she did about me.”

“Not her particularly, but just—”

“Well?”

“Well, what she stands for.”

“What does it matter?”

“It can matter, when you get enough of it. I ought to know that, if anyone does. I’ve lived with it. Now I’ve let it in on you.”

“Don’t worry, my dear. It’s only because you were a child it seems worse to you. It’s all new to me, you know, rather a game.”

“It can’t be long,” Mic said. He got up and went over to the window. “They find me rather useful here in little ways that are really off my beat. If I play for it, one of them—someone like Scot-Hallard, for instance, with a finger in several pies—will give me a leg-up to something we can get married on.

“Did you want to marry me?”

“Vivian!”

“Sweet, don’t look like that. I’m sorry. Please. But I thought you didn’t believe in it.”

“Good God, did you think I’d be satisfied with things as they are?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I just accepted it. It’s all we can have.”

“Well, I don’t accept it. I love you, in case I never told you so. Do you suppose I’m content not to offer you any security? What do you think I am?”

“I hadn’t thought like that.”

It had never occurred to her that she had put Mic under any obligation to offer her security. They had wanted something from one another and got it in fair exchange. Being married was obviously desirable because it would enable them to be together: and it was unfortunate that neither of them had any money, but nobody’s fault. They had proved themselves alike in so much, she had taken it for granted that he would share these feelings also. She had reckoned, as now she understood, without his childhood, the years of contempt and his need of compensation.

“I think, my dear,” she said at last, “we’re both starting life rather late and taking it rather hard. You know, however well-off we were, we’d have been crazy to marry without living like this for a little first. We both have rather angular personalities. It seems the angles fit, but we needed to find out.”

“That would have been different. It’s feeling that we can’t.”

“I’m glad, in a way, we can’t yet. Not that I wouldn’t trust you with every part of my life.” Reckless, insane commitment, yet she knew it to be true. “But this leaves us—what Jan would call fluid.”

He looked at her in a kind of liberated wonder. “I shall never know you.” He held her face between his hands. “Often I think I do, but there’s always something more.”

They spent the afternoon lying out on the hills, finding a night of four hours’ sleep not conducive to anything more strenuous. It was a good time, with hours of being together behind them and in front; they talked in desultory implications, smoked, made easy love and read one another things from
Texts and Pretexts.
In the evening they came back to the flat, not looking much at the clock because it had become unthinkable that this should end.

“You don’t mind tonight that it isn’t dark,” Mic said.

“I’m glad it isn’t. You know, Mic, apart from the fact that I love you, it’s very restful to see a body that isn’t a case and doesn’t look as though it could be.”

“Did you find so many bodies rather overpowering, coming suddenly at first?”

“Hardly at all. One’s mind somehow insulates them, at least, mine did. I suppose it’s the only comfortable way to carry on—I just didn’t realise how completely one does it till last night. All the men I’d bathed and dressed were as irrelevant as so many tables. Did you think me amazingly silly?”

“Amazing, but not silly.”

They dressed, more or less, in order to sit on the bed and look out of the window; Mic in shirt and slacks, Vivian in his dressing-gown, her shoulder half out of a split seam.

“I’m sorry it’s so decrepit. I had it at school, I believe.”

“I’ll mend it for you. It’s lasted pretty well if it’s ten years old.”

“Six, to be exact.”

“Only six? How old exactly are you, Mic? I don’t believe I know. I’ve always assumed for some reason that you were Jan’s age.

“That was rather flattering of you. Actually, I’m about ten years younger than Jan in development, and four in fact.”

“Are you only twenty-five? But then you’re a year younger than me. Mic, I can’t take this in. When I’m thirty you’ll only be twenty-nine.”

“Tempted by some fresh little thing of twenty-eight, you think?”

“But you do feel older in so many ways.”

“Mostly in ways I’d rather be without.”

“How little we know about one another, really. I don’t even know how many lovers you’ve had before me. It’s rather exciting, in a way.”

“Not very,” he said slowly. He looked withdrawn, like someone making a decision. “Do you want to know? One.”

“Tell me about her. What was she like?”

Mic got up without looking at her, and rummaged among some papers in a drawer. Presently he came back and put a snapshot into her hand. She saw a fair boy in tennis-flannels, gay and brilliantly vital, laughing into the lens. There was a date on it, five years old.

“You see.” He took it back again.

“It’s all right, Mic. I guessed, anyway.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“He looks charming. Where is he now?”

“In India. Married.” He put the picture in his pocketbook. “It seemed all very natural, at the time.”

“Of course. It’s a phase a lot of people go through at school.”

“We went on to Cambridge together.” He looked up quickly at her face.

“How did it end?” she asked lightly.

“Just died a natural death. We both had too much else to think about.”

“No women?” She was touched by the kindness he had shown her, and impressed by his imagination. Biology counted for something, she supposed.

“No. At least—”

“It doesn’t matter, my dear.”

“I’ll finish now I’ve started. It struck me after Colin had gone that I was twenty-three and hadn’t felt anything much about a woman, and I began to wonder. Then I met Jan, and there seemed no more doubt about it.”

“But you can’t count Jan. The most improbable people lose their heads over him. I can’t think why: he never does anything about it. I don’t think he knows, half the time.”

“I know, but I didn’t then. It seemed to me I ought to make up my mind one way or another. Unfortunately I didn’t know any girls very well, and it would have hardly been fair if I had. So—”

“All right. I know what you did. Was she kind to you? People say they are.”

“She seemed to think so. … I tried to pick one that seemed relatively decent, but it was rather … probably my fault. Anyhow I never felt much like another shot. So that’s all. Are you revolted?”

“Mic, darling, no. I was wishing I’d been there for you. If you hadn’t told me I’d never have known. How could you be so sweet to me, after all that?”

“There isn’t anyone but you. There never will be.”

“Dear.” She had seen his face, and hid his head in her arms so that he should not see she was afraid. Who was she, to be entrusted with this?

It seemed no time at all, after that, till she looked at the clock for the last time and said, “Half-past nine, Mic, dear.”

They got ready to go: indeed, their real time together was already over, and for the past half-hour they had been subdued to the expectation of this moment.

“Don’t bother to get the car out. It makes so little difference. It’s a nice night to walk.”

They kissed in a kind of dulled hopelessness, knowing that however much they crowded into it, in another minute it would all be gone. Their life, as they walked through the town, seemed to have ebbed out of them with the fading light. They made conversation between their silences, words that said nothing but were a kindly gesture, as people do before a journey. They were both, Vivian thought, probably a little tired.

“We shan’t feel like this in the morning, Mic.”

“I suppose you’re right. Sleep well.”

“I fancy we’ll both do that.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I’ve got one evening next week, Wednesday, I think, I’ll let you know.”

“Only one? My God.”

“I know. I might get more next year, when I’m more senior.”

“Where’s your room?”

She looked at him, appalled. He seemed quite serious.

“Mic, if you love me. You’d probably be arrested.” She gave a taut giggle, like the twang of an over-keyed string. “In any case I’d have to leave by the next train. You won’t, whatever happens. Swear it. Are you mad?”

“Perhaps not quite. Don’t worry. It seems queer I’ll never see the place where you sleep.”

“Yes; I’d like it better if you’d been there. Look, don’t come any farther, dear, we shall meet everyone. I love you. Don’t touch me, don’t say anything, I’m going now.”

In the main hospital corridor she met one of the Verdun pro’s.

“Hullo. Got your evening, did you?”

“No. Day off.”

“Day off? Some people strike lucky. You weren’t due till next week. I say, what do you think, they opened Mrs. Simmonds today and her stomach was almost solid with carcinoma, secondaries in the liver and everything, they couldn’t do a thing. Just sewed her up again.”

“How awful. She’s hardly thirty.”

“She doesn’t know, of course. Her husband was in the most awful state when they told him.”

“Yes. I expect so. Good night.”

Her room was almost dark. It looked very chilly and indifferent, and was scattered with odds and ends—bath-powder, face-lotion, and a discarded undergarment—that she had left about in her haste to get ready for Mic. She made a mental note not to do that again. She had been thinking, then, of all the future meetings they would have: now she could see only an infinity of farewells, and dying, in the end, a long way away from one another. Forcing herself to remember how tired she was, she refused to think of anything.

She was just about to put out the light for sleep, when Colonna knocked at her door. Vivian was puzzled, till she remembered there was a charge-nurses meeting that night.

Colonna had not heard about the day off, and there seemed no need to mention it. They talked vaguely, both in turn making efforts and then letting the conversation sag. She wondered why Colonna had bothered to come: it was unlike her to seek out company for its own sake.

“By the way,” Vivian asked in sudden recollection, “what did Matron want Valentine for that time?”

“Haven’t you heard? I thought everyone knew now. She’s going to be made Sister Gallipoli, when old Packington retires.”

“A
Sister?
But—Well, of course, she’s the obvious choice, if they want one of our own. Only—”

“As you say,” said Colonna, “we shall have to be careful.”

“Careful!” There seemed no more adequate reply, and Vivian stopped searching for one; her brain was not quick tonight. At last she said, “She won’t go back to mental nursing now.”

“Oh, yes. She thinks if she takes this for a year first it will give her more pull.”

“A year—oh, well, you’ll nearly have finished your training by then.” Where, she thought, will Mic and I be?

Colonna did not answer for a moment. Vivian noticed that the gold dragons had a few threads frayed out, and one of them had lost an eye.

“Probably it makes very little odds.” She spoke in a quiet unstressed voice, not like her. “A few months, or a few years. Some day she’ll leave me. All this is just a passing thing, for her. She happens to need it now, but she won’t. She doesn’t know it, but I know it.”

Vivian stared at her, wordless and helpless, but she seemed unaware of it. She was quite calm, like the bankrupt who knows that every security has been realised. She spoke as one might speak of the death of the soul.

Afterwards, Vivian could not remember how the conversation ended or with what sort of good night Colonna went away, or what thoughts of her own had made her cry herself to sleep.

T
RAFALGAR WAS TAKING-IN
. The wards took it in turns to admit the new patients, for seven days at a time. This week the weather was warm and fine; which meant, besides the emergency operation cases, a steady flood of road accidents. Six extra beds had been put up already. Sister Trafalgar had been twice to the office to ask for another probationer, but nobody could be spared.

It was a Friday, and Vivian’s evening, that week, for seeing Mic.