The Burden (16 page)

It was a statement, not a question.

Llewellyn gestured to a waiter who came.

He ordered a Curaçao.

‘May I order you something?'

‘Thank you,' she said. And added: ‘He knows.'

The boy bowed his head in assent and went away.

They sat for a moment or two in silence.

‘I suppose,' she said at last, ‘you were lonely? There aren't many Americans or English here.'

She was, he saw, settling the question of why he had spoken to her.

‘No,' he said at once. ‘I wasn't lonely. I find I'm – glad to be alone.'

‘Oh, one is, isn't one?'

The fervour with which she spoke surprised him.

‘I see,' he said. ‘That's why you come here?'

She nodded.

‘To be alone. And now I've come and spoilt it?'

‘No,' she said. ‘You don't matter. You're a stranger, you see.'

‘I see.'

‘I don't even know your name.'

‘Do you want to?'

‘No. I'd rather you didn't tell me. I won't tell you my name, either.'

She added doubtfully:

‘But perhaps you've been told that already. Everyone in the café knows me, of course.'

‘No, they haven't mentioned it. They understand, I think, that you would not want it told.'

‘They do understand. They have, all of them, such wonderful good manners. Not
taught
good manners – the natural thing. I could never have believed till I came here that natural courtesy could be such a wonderful – such a
positive
thing.'

The waiter came back with their two drinks. Llewellyn paid him.

He looked over to the glass the girl held cupped in her two hands.

‘Brandy?'

‘Yes. Brandy helps a lot.'

‘It helps you to feel alone? Is that it?'

‘Yes. It helps me to feel – free.'

‘And you're not free?'

‘Is anybody free?'

He considered. She had not said the words bitterly – as they are usually spoken. She had been asking a simple question.

‘
The fate of every man is bound about his neck
– is that what you feel?'

‘No, I don't think so. Not quite. I can understand feeling rather like that, that your course was charted out like a ship's, and that you must follow it, again rather like a ship, and that so long as you do, you are all right. But I feel more like a ship that has, quite suddenly, gone off its proper course. And then, you see, you're lost. You don't know where you are, and you're at the mercy of the wind and sea, and you're not free, you're caught in the grip of something you don't understand – tangled up in it all.' She added: ‘What nonsense I'm talking. I suppose it's the brandy.'

He agreed.

‘It's partly the brandy, no doubt. Where does it take you?'

‘Oh,
away
… that's all – away …'

‘What is it, really, that you have to get away from?'

‘Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's the really – well, wicked part of it. I'm one of the fortunate ones. I've got everything.' She repeated sombrely: ‘Everything … Oh, I don't mean I've not had sorrows, losses, but it's not that. I don't hanker and grieve over the past. I don't resurrect it and live it over again. I don't want to go back, or even forward. I just want to go
away
somewhere. I sit here drinking brandy and presently I'm out there, beyond the harbour, and going farther and farther – into some kind of unreal place that doesn't really exist. It's rather like the dreams of flying you have as a child – no weight – so light – floating.'

The wide unfocused stare was coming back to her eyes. Llewellyn sat watching her.

Presently she came to herself with a little start.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't come back. I'm going now.' He rose. ‘May I, now and then, come and sit here and talk to you? If you'd rather not, just say so. I shall understand.'

‘No, I should like you to come. Good night. I shan't go just yet. You see, it's not always that I can get away.'

It was about a week later when they talked together again. She said as soon as he sat down: ‘I'm glad you haven't gone away yet. I was afraid you might have gone.'

‘I shan't go away just yet. It's not time yet.'

‘Where will you go when you leave here?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You mean – you're waiting for orders?'

‘You might put it like that, yes.'

She said slowly:

‘Last time, when we talked, it was all about me. We didn't talk about you at all. Why did you come here – to the island? Had you a reason?'

‘Perhaps it was for the same reason as you drink brandy – to get away, in my case from people.'

‘People in general, or do you mean special people?'

‘Not people in general. I meant really people who know me – or knew me – as I was.'

‘Did something – happen?'

‘Yes, something happened.'

She leaned forward.

‘Are you like me? Did something happen that put you off course?'

He shook his head with something that was almost vehemence.

‘No, not at all. What happened to me was an intrinsic part of the pattern of my life. It had significance and intention.'

‘But what you said about people –'

‘They don't understand, you see. They are sorry for me, and they want to drag me back – to something that's finished.'

She wrinkled a puzzled brow.

‘I don't quite –'

‘I had a job,' he said smiling. ‘Now – I've lost it.'

‘An important job?'

‘I don't know.' He was thoughtful. ‘I thought it was. But one can't really know, you see, what is important. One has to learn not to trust one's own values. Values are always relative.'

‘So you gave up your job?'

‘No.' His smile flashed out again. ‘I was sacked.'

‘Oh.' She was taken aback. ‘Did you – mind?'

‘Oh yes, I minded. Anyone would have. But that's all over now.'

She frowned at her empty glass. As she turned her head, the boy who had been waiting replaced the empty glass with a full one.

She took a couple of sips, then she said:

‘Can I ask you something?'

‘Go ahead.'

‘Do you think happiness is very important?'

He considered.

‘That's a very difficult question to answer. If I were to say that happiness is vitally important, and that at the same time it doesn't matter at all, you'd think I was crazy.'

‘Can't you be a little clearer?'

‘Well, it's rather like sex. Sex is vitally important, and yet doesn't matter. You're married?'

He had noticed the slim gold ring on her finger.

‘I've been married twice.'

‘Did you love your husband?'

He left it in the singular, and she answered without quibbling.

‘I loved him more than anything in the world.'

‘When you look back on your life with him, what are the things that come first to your mind, the moments that you will always remember? Are they of the first time you slept together – or are they of something else?'

Laughter came to her suddenly, and a quick enchanting gaiety.

‘His hat,' she said.

‘Hat?'

‘Yes. On our honeymoon. It blew away and he bought a native one, a ridiculous straw thing, and I said it would be more suitable for
me
. So I put it on, and then he put on mine – one of those silly bits of nonsense women wear, and we looked at each other and laughed. All trippers change hats, he said, and then he said: “Good Lord, I do love you …” ' Her voice caught. ‘I'll never forget.'

‘You see?' said Llewellyn. ‘Those are the magical moments – the moments of belonging – of everlasting sweetness – not sex. And yet if sex goes wrong, a marriage is completely ruined. So, in the same way, food is important – without it you cannot live, and yet, so long as you
are
fed, it occupies very little of your thoughts. Happiness is one of the foods of life, it encourages growth, it is a great teacher, but it is not the purpose of life, and is, in itself, not ultimately satisfying.'

He added gently:

‘Is it happiness that you want?'

‘I don't know. I ought to be happy. I have everything to make me happy.'

‘But you want something more?'

‘
Less
,' she said quickly, ‘I want
less
out of life. It's too much – it's all too much.'

She added, rather unexpectedly:

‘It's all so
heavy
.'

They sat for some time in silence.

‘If I knew,' she said at last, ‘if I knew in the least what I really wanted, instead of just being so negative and idiotic.'

‘But you do know what you want; you want to escape. Why don't you, then?'

‘Escape?'

‘Yes. What's stopping you? Money?'

‘No, it's not money. I have money – not a great deal, but sufficient.'

‘What is it then?'

‘It's so many things. You wouldn't understand.' Her lips twisted in a sudden, ruefully humorous smile. ‘It's like Tchekov's three sisters, always moaning about going to Moscow; they never go, and never will, although I suppose they
could
just have gone to the station and taken a train to Moscow any day of their lives! Just as I could buy a ticket and sail on that ship out there, that sails tonight.'

‘Why don't you?'

He was watching her.

‘You think you know the answer,' she said.

He shook his head.

‘No, I don't know the answer. I'm trying to help you find it.'

‘Perhaps I'm like Tchekov's three sisters. Perhaps I don't really want to go.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Perhaps escape is just an idea that I play with.'

‘Possibly. We all have fantasies that help us to bear the lives we live.'

‘And escape is my fantasy?'

‘I don't know.
You
know.'

‘I don't know anything – anything at all. I had every chance, I did the wrong thing. And then, when one has done the wrong thing, one has to stick to it, hasn't one?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Must you go
on
saying that over and over?'

‘I'm sorry, but it's true. You're asking me to come to a conclusion on something I know nothing about.'

‘It was a general principle.'

‘There isn't such a thing as a general principle.'

‘Do you mean' – she stared at him – ‘that there isn't such a thing as absolute right and wrong?'

‘No, I didn't mean that. Of course there's absolute right and wrong, but that's a thing so far beyond our knowledge and comprehension, that we can only have the dimmest apprehension of it.'

‘But surely one knows what is right?'

‘You have been taught it by the accepted canons of the day. Or, going further, you can feel it of your own instinctive knowledge. But even that's a long way off. People were burned at the stake, not by sadists or brutes, but by earnest and high-minded men, who believed that what they did was right. Read some of the law cases in ancient Greece, of a man who refused to let his slaves be tortured so as to get at the truth, as was the prevalent custom. He was looked upon as a man who deliberately obscured justice. There was an earnest God-fearing clergyman in the States who beat his three-year-old son, whom he loved, to death, because the child refused to say his prayers.'

‘That's all horrible!'

‘Yes, because time has changed our ideas.'

‘Then, what can we do?'

Her lovely bewildered face bent towards him.

‘Follow your pattern, in humility – and hope.'

‘Follow one's pattern – yes, I see that, but my pattern – it's wrong somehow.' She laughed. ‘Like when you're knitting a jumper and you've dropped a stitch a long way back.'

‘I wouldn't know about that,' he said. ‘I've never knitted.'

‘Why wouldn't you give me an opinion just now?'

‘It would only have been an opinion.'

‘Well?'

‘And it might have influenced you … I should think you're easily influenced.'

Her face grew sombre again.

‘Yes. Perhaps that's what was wrong.'

He waited for a moment or two, then he said in a matter-of-fact voice:

‘What exactly is wrong?'

‘Nothing.' She looked at him despairingly. ‘Nothing. I've got everything any woman could want.'

‘You're generalizing again. You're not any woman. You're you. Have
you
got everything you want?'

‘Yes, yes,
yes
! Love and kindness and money and luxury, and beautiful surroundings and companionship – everything. All the things that I would have chosen for myself. No, it's
me
. There's something wrong with
me
.'

She looked at him defiantly. Strangely enough, she was comforted when he answered matter-of-factly:

‘Oh yes. There's something wrong with
you
– that's very clear.'

She pushed her brandy-glass a little way away from her.

She said: ‘Can I talk about myself?'

‘If you like.'

‘Because if I did, I might just see where – it all went wrong. That would help, I think.'

‘Yes. It might help.'

‘It's all been very nice and ordinary – my life, I mean. A happy childhood, a lovely home. I went to school and did all the ordinary things, and nobody was ever nasty to me; perhaps if they had been, it would have been better for me. Perhaps I was a spoiled brat – but no, I don't really think so. And I came home from school and played tennis and danced, and met young men, and wondered what job to take up – all the usual things.'