The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (16 page)

‘Bradley, don’t shout. I – ’

The telephone rings again.

I go and lift the receiver.

‘Brad! I say, is that really you? Guess who this is!’

I put the telephone down, settling it carefully back on to its stand.

I went back into the sitting – room and sat down. ‘That was her.’

‘You’ve gone quite white. You’re not going to faint, are you? Can I get you something? Please forgive me for talking so stupidly. Is she hanging on?’

‘No. I put the thing – down—’

The telephone rings again. I do nothing.

‘Bradley, let me talk to her.’

‘No.’

I get to the telephone just after Arnold has lifted the receiver. I bang it back on to the rest.

‘Bradley, don’t you see, you’ve got to deal with this, you can’t shirk it, you can’t. She’ll come round in a taxi.’

The telephone rings again. I lift it up and hold it a little way off. Christian’s voice, even with the American tang, is recognizable. The years drop away. ‘Brad, do listen, please. I’m round at the flat, you know, our old place. Why won’t you come round? I’ve got some Scotch. Brad, please don’t just bang the phone down, don’t be mean. Come round and see me. I do so want to take a look at you. I’ll be here all day, till five o’clock anyway.’

I put the telephone down.

‘She wants me to go and see her.’

‘You’ve got to, you’ve got to, it’s your fate!’

‘I’m not going.’

The telephone rings again. I take it off and lay it down on the table. It bubbles remotely. Priscilla calls in a shrill voice, ‘Bradley!’

‘Don’t touch that,’ I said to Arnold, pointing at the telephone. I went in to Priscilla.

‘Is that Arnold Baffin out there?’ She was sitting on the side of the bed. I saw with surprise that she had put on her blouse and skirt and was putting some thick yellowish – pinkish muck on to her nose.

‘Yes.’

‘I think I’ll come out to see him. I want to thank him.’

‘As you like. Look, Priscilla, I’m going to be away for an hour or two. Will you be all right? I’ll come back at lunch – time, maybe a bit late. I’ll ask Arnold to stay with you.’

‘You will come back soon?’

‘Yes, yes.’

I ran in to Arnold. ‘Could you stay with Priscilla? The doctor said she shouldn’t be left alone.’

Arnold looked displeased. ‘I suppose I can stay. Is there any drink? I wanted to talk to you about Rachel, actually, and about that funny letter you wrote me. Where are you off to?’

‘I’m going to see Christian.’

 

 

 

Marriage is a curious institution, as I have already remarked. I cannot quite see how it can be possible. People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self – deceivers, if not actually liars. The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighbourhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement. There is nothing like the bootless solitude of those who are caged together. Those outside the cage can, to their own taste, satisfy their need for society by more or less organized dashes in the direction of other human beings. But the unit of two can scarcely communicate with others, and is fortunate, as the years go by, if it can communicate within itself. Or is this the sour envious view of the failed husband? I speak now of course of ordinary ‘successful’ marriages. Where the unit of two is a machine of mutual hatred there is hell in a pure form. I left Christian before our hell was quite perfected. I saw very clearly what it would be like.

Of course I was ‘in love’ with Christian when I married her, and I felt that I was lucky to get her. She was a showy pretty woman. Her parents were in business. She even had a little money of her own. My mother was impressed, slightly intimidated; Priscilla too. Later, when I imagined I knew more about ‘love’, I decided that my feeling about Christian was ‘just’ overwhelming sexual attraction, plus a curious element of obsession. It was as if I had known Christian as a real woman in some previous incarnation, and were now reliving, perhaps as a punishment, some doomed perverted spiritual pattern. (I suspect there are many such couples.) Or as if she had died long before and come back to me as a demon lover. Demon lovers are always relentless, however kind in life. And it was sometimes as if I could ‘remember’ Christian’s kindness, though all now was spite and demonry. It was not that she was usually, though she was sometimes, grossly cruel. She was a spoiler, a needler, an underminer, a diminisher, simply by instinct. And I was Siamese – twinned to her mind. We reeled about joined together at the head.

The reason why, after swearing that I would not see her, I changed my mind and rushed to her
was
simply this. I realized quite suddenly that I would now be in torment until I had seen her and
settled
that she had no more power over me. Witch she might be, but surely not for me any more. And this was of course made much more obviously necessary by Arnold’s having, by this vile chance, ‘got in on her’. I think his describing her as ‘an enormously nice person’ had some cosmic effect on me. So she had got out of my mind and was walking about? Arnold had seen her with innocent eyes. Why did this threaten me so terribly? By going to see her myself I would be able to ‘dilute’ the power of her meeting with Arnold. But I did not think all this out immediately. I acted on instinct, wanting to know the worst.

The little street in Notting Hill where we had lived in our more recent previous existence had become a good deal lusher since those days. I had, of course, avoided it always. I saw now as I ran along the pavement that the houses had been glossily painted, blue, yellow, dusty pink, the doors had fancy knockers, the windows cast iron decorations, false shutters, window boxes. I had dismissed the taxi at the corner as I did not want Christian to see me before I saw her.

The sudden recrudescence of the far past makes one dizzy even when there are no ugly features involved. There seemed to be no oxygen in the street. I ran, I ran. She opened the door.

I think I would not have recognized her at once. She looked slimmer and taller. She had been a bunchy sensuous frilly woman. Now she looked more austere, certainly older, also smarter, wearing a simple dress of mousy light – brown tweed and a chain belt. Her hair, which used to be waved, was straight, thick, longish, faintly undulating, and dyed, I suppose, to a reddish brown. Her face was more bony, a little wrinkled, the faintest wizening effect as on an apple, not unpleasant. The long liquidy brown eyes had not aged or dimmed. She looked competent and distinguished, like the manager of an international cosmetic firm.

The expression of her face as she opened the door is hard to describe. Mainly she was excited, almost to the point of idiotic laughter, but attempting to appear calm. I think she must have seen me first through the window. She did in fact laugh, in a suppressed burp of merriment as I came in, and exclaimed something, perhaps ‘Jesus!’ I could feel my own face twisted and flattened as if under a nylon stocking mask. We got into the sitting – room which was mercifully dark. It seemed to look very much as it had used to look. Huge emotions like gauze curtains made the place breathless, perhaps actually made it dark. One cannot at the time name these (hate? fear?), only later can one press them away and give them names. There was a moment of stillness. Then she moved towards me. I thought, rightly or wrongly, that she was going to touch me, and I moved back towards the window, behind an armchair. She laughed, in a sort of crazy wail like a bird. I saw her uncontrolled laughing face like a grotesque ancient mask. Now she looked old.

She had turned her back on me and was fiddling in a cupboard.

‘Oh Jesus, I shall get the giggles. Have a drink, Bradley. Scotch? I guess we need something. I hope you’re going to be nice to me. What a horrid letter you wrote me.’

‘Letter?’

‘There was a letter addressed to me in your sitting – room. Arnold gave it to me. Here, take this and stop trembling.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘God, I’m trembling too. Thank heavens Arnold rang up and said you were coming. I might have fainted otherwise. Are we glad to see each other?’

The voice was faintly steadily American. Now that I could see her more distinctly among the dark blurry browns and blues of the room I realized how handsome she had become. The old terrible nervy vitality had been shaped by a mature elegance into an air of authority. How had a woman without education managed to do that to herself in a little town in the Middle West of America?

The room was almost the same. It represented and recalled a much earlier me, a younger and yet unformed taste: wickerwork, wool – embroidered cushions, blurry lithographs, hand – thrown pottery with purple glazes, hand – woven curtains of flecked mauve linen, straw matting on the floor. A calm pretty insipid place. I had created that room years and years and years ago. I had wept in it. I had screamed in it.

‘Relax, Brad. You’re just meeting an old friend, aren’t you? You were quite excited in your letter. Nothing to be excited about. How’s Priscilla?’

‘All right.’

‘Your ma still alive?’

‘No.’

‘Unwind, man. I’d forgotten what a bean pole you are. Maybe you got thinner. Your hair’s thinner but it’s not grey is it, I can’t see. You always did look a bit like Don Quixote. You don’t look too bad. I thought you might be an old man all bald and shambling. How do I look? Jesus, what a time interval, isn’t it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Drink, won’t you, it’ll loosen your tongue. Do you know something, I’m glad to see you! I looked forward to you on the ship. But I guess I’m glad to see everything just now, I get a buzz from the whole world just now, everything’s bright and beautiful. Do you know I did a course in Zen Buddhism? I guess I must be enlightened, everything’s so glorious! I thought poor old Evans would never get on with the departure scene, I prayed every day for that man to die, he was a sick man. Now I wake up every morning and remember it’s really true and I close my eyes again and I’m in heaven. Not a very holy attitude is it, but it’s nature, and at my age at least you can be sincere. Are you shocked, am I awful? Yes, I think I am glad to see you, I think it’s fun. God, I just want to laugh and laugh, isn’t that odd?’

The coarse style was new, transatlantic in origin I assumed, though I had imagined her life there as very genteel. The way she used her body and eyes was not new, was however more conscious, as if taken up into the amused ironical
persona
of an older and more elegant woman. The older woman flirts with a self-controlled awareness which can make her assaults much more deadly than the blind rushes of the young. And here was a woman for whom to be conscious was to flirt. Her ‘attack’ now was hard to describe, it was so generalized throughout her being, but there was a steady emanation of pressure, generated by slight swaying movements, the angle of the head, the darting of the eyes, the trembling of the mouth. Expressions such as ‘ogling’ would be far too crude to suggest these lures. The effect was of watching an athlete or a dancer whose quality is evident even in what appears to be complete repose. There was invitation which was also mockery, even brilliant self – mockery, conveyed in her poses. When she was young there had been simpering, involuntary silliness, in her coquetry. This was quite gone. She had mastered her instrument. Perhaps it was all that Zen Buddhism.

As I looked at her I felt that old fear of a misunderstanding which amounted to an invasion, a taking over of my thoughts. I tried to stare at her and to be cold, to find a controlled tone of voice which was hard and calm. I spoke.

‘I came to see you simply because I thought that you would annoy me until I did. I meant what I said in my letter. It was not “excited”, it was just a statement. I do not want and will not tolerate any renewal of our acquaintance. And now that you have satisfied your curiosity by looking at me and had your laugh will you please understand that I want to hear no more of you. I say this just in case you might conceive it to be “fun” to pester me. I would be grateful if you would keep away from me, and keep away from my friends too.’

‘Oh come on, Brad, you don’t own your friends. Are you jealous already?’

The jibe brought back the past, her adroit determination to retain every advantage, to have every last word. I felt myself blushing with anger and distress. I must not enter into argument with this woman. I decided to repeat my statement quietly and then go. ‘Please leave me alone. I do not like you or want to see you. Why should I? It sickens me that you are back in London. Be kind enough to leave me absolutely alone from now on.’

‘I feel pretty sick too, do you know? I feel all kind of moved and touched. I thought about you out there, Brad. We did make a mess of things, didn’t we. We got so across each other, it spoilt the world in a way. I talked about you with my guru. I thought of writing to you – ’

‘Good – bye.’

‘Don’t go, Brad, please. There’s so much I want to talk to you about, not just about the old days but about life, you know. You’re my only friend in London, I’m so out of touch. You know I bought the upper flat here, now I own the whole house. Evans thought it was a good investment. Poor old Evans, God rest his soul, he was a real bit of all – American stodge, though he understood business all right. I amused myself getting educated, or I’d have died of boredom. Remember how we used to dream of buying the upper flat? I’m having the builders in next week. I thought you might help me to decide some things. Don’t go, Bradley, tell me about yourself. How many books have you published?’

‘Three.’

‘Only three? Gosh, I thought you’d be a real author by now.’

‘I am a real author.’

‘We had a literary chap from England at our Women Writers’ Guild, I asked about you but he hadn’t heard of you. I did some writing myself, I wrote some short stories. You’re not still at the old Tax grind, are you?’