The House in Paris (20 page)

She said: 'I can't marry Ray.'

Max said nothing; they looked at each other's drinks.

She went on: 'They'll say, "Why not?" '

'Surely that's your affair.'

'But my marriage was their affair. They don't like change. They'll say, "What next, then?" What, indeed?'

'Well, what next?'

'I don't know. I've never made any break before. What does anyone do next?'

'Would you marry me?'

'But you don't want to marry me.'

Max said: 'It is more or less impossible.'

'Naomi. What about her?'

'Well, what about her? You have got to think too.'

'What would she do next, for instance?'

'You know her life.'

'You see, Ray's a man. He ...'

'You know we would be wretched married.'

'You would rather marry Naomi?'

He paused, then said: 'Yes.'

'Why?'

'I am at home with her, she reposes me and I need her. I am not ashamed with her; there is nothing to be explained. Also, I love her: I could not hurt her life.'

Karen's arm was on the table: he touched it thoughtfully.

'No, don't,' she said.

'I'm sorry, I didn't realize — '

'I did.'

'She would be my wife,' he said. 'You and I expect so much the whole time. I cannot live in a love affair, I am busy and grasping. I am not English; you know I am nervous the whole time. I could not endure being always conscious of anyone. Naomi is like furniture or the dark. I should pity myself if I did not marry her.'

'That's what my mother said.'

'You should stay with your own people. Go home, Karen. I beg you to go home. I do not want adventure, you are not capable of it — don't weep, you will kill me — you don't know what you want.'

Turning quickly away from all the other tables Karen knocked her tears away with her hand. Yes, I do,' she said. 'Why else am I here?'

'Do you want to stay here tonight?'

'Yes, I do. Do you?'

'Not when you are crying; I dread you. But I do. Tonight is impossible; I must be at work tomorrow by half-past eight.'

'Then that means, never.'

'Why?'

She did not speak or look at him.

'Next Saturday,' he said, 'I will come across to Folkestone. By the early afternoon boat. Will you meet me?'

'Yes,' she said. 'But I don't like Folkestone; I've been there.'

'We can stay somewhere else.'

'Hythe is along the coast. About five miles.'

' — Will you have another drink?'

She shook her head. He paid for the drinks and they walked out of the café, then stood, uncertain, on the quay. She said: 'I think I'll go on board.'

As they crossed the bridge, he began to say: 'You know — '

'Oh, please, Max — I'm so tired.'

They walked slowly over the cobbles between the railway lines to her boat. Looking across the water, she saw Boulogne as she had seen it this morning — its façade of gayness and trivial peace. It hung like a painted scene. The melancholy boulevards, the silent citadel were out of view. The Casino trees stood still in yellow light; the flags had dropped and hung lifeless down their poles.

'Then, Saturday,' he said.

'Yes. Don't write before then.'

'No. There is nothing to say.'

'No,' she said.

9

Rain drifted over the Channel and west over Romney marsh; there was no horizon, the edgeless clouds hung so low. Centuries ago, the sea began to draw away from the cinque port, leaving it high and dry with a stretch of sea-flattened land between town and beach. The grey barracky houses along the sea front are isolated; if the sea went for them they would be cut off. Across fields dry with salt air, the straight shady Ladies' Walk, with lamps strung from the branches, runs down from the town to the sea: on hot days a cool way to walk to bathe. Inland, in summer, a band plays in a pavilion beside the canal, whose water is dark with weeds that catch at the oars of pleasure boats, and overshadowed by trees. On and off, there is rattle of musketry practice from the ranges along the edge of the marsh. West of the town, the canal bends under a bridge then goes straight to Lympne between the hills and the marsh; across the marsh martello towers in different stages of ruin follow the curve of the coast towards Dungeness, where at nights a lighthouse flashes far out. On its inland side, the town climbs a steep hill, so that the houses stand on each other's heads. The beautiful church must have crowned the town; now new houses spread in a fan above it, driving back the thickety hazel woods. Back from the brow of Hythe hill the country — cornfieldy, open and creased with woody valleys, Kentish, mysterious — stretches to the chalk downs. Now and then you hear bells from Cheriton, or distant blowy bugles from Shorncliffe camp: this week-end, they were muffled by low clouds.

Not having been here before and now coming with Max made an island of the town. It stayed like nowhere, near nowhere, cut off from everywhere else. Karen cannot divide the streets from the patter of rain and rush of rain in the gutters. She remembers a town with no wind, where standing on the canal bridge you hear trees sighing with rain and the sea soughing on the far-off beach. All Saturday night, rain rustled the chestnut across the street from their window; on Sunday morning the lace mats on the dressing-table were wet. The handkerchief she had left lying the night before was wet too; she wiped her pearls but when she clasped them on again they were cold round her neck. Though the window looked on the High Street, nothing was opposite except the chestnut, growing in an old garden.

Rain in summer seems a kind of disaster. The idea of this rain being disaster, though they knew it was not, had hung over Max and Karen meeting on Folkestone pier on Saturday afternoon. They said nothing about the broken weather till, waiting for a taxi outside the harbour station, she brushed rain off his overcoat sleeve with her hand. After that minute or two crossing the gangway, drops hung on the heavy English stuff. Karen said: 'You've come with no mackintosh?' 'I did not think; it only began raining outside the Nord, when there was no time to go back. I can buy one somewhere in Folkestone.'

'But haven't you one already?'

'It would be no harm to have two,' said Max.

So they stopped in Guildhall Street and bought him a light fawn mackintosh with a buttoning-up collar. Karen wanted to go out to Hythe by bus, but he said they might as well keep the taxi. The mackintosh, with its new rubbery smell, slid about during the drive out, showing its check lining and the chain inside the collar to hang it up by. Max leaned back, smoking cigarette after cigarette, knocking the ash off over the window and only glancing at Karen now and again: his deliberateness struck her as never before. There are degrees in being alone with someone. It was not till they had driven down Sandgate hill — not till they were, even, clear of Sandgate itself, on that flat stretch of road above the beach, passing cream-coloured houses with gardens of tamarisks — that she saw what made them completely alone for the first time: there being no sun. Always before, at Twickenham or Boulogne, the sun by happening to shine had been a felt presence, adding itself the whole time. It had been insistent on the flowery pink tree, the salt quay stones. Till today, they had not, when alone, ever been two; always either three or one. Now, what they did was cut off from any other thing, their silence related to them only. Tamarisks flying past the rainy windows were some dream — not your own, a dream you have heard described. Not what they both saw — the sea, the bare hill, the railway arch, trees, villas — but the sense of
not
seeing these stamped their drive for her.

She had taken off the sapphire ring that morning and put a bought wedding ring on the finger, which had so far made her keep her left-hand glove on. Seeing
HYTHE
on a yellow sign made Max stoop to pick up their scattered things and rout for her other glove in the folds of the mackintosh, as though they arrived somewhere like this every day. The taxi drove down the High Street and pulled up; Karen got out and, waiting outside the Ram's Head, felt rain from this new sky on her face. She looked at the wet green tree across the street and, inside the porch, at the brass-railed door of the inn. Under the cloud-bound sky a clock, uphill, struck. The struck hour sounded final: from then on the day governed itself. Max put a hand under her elbow and they went in.

A real ram's head glared from the hall wall; the manageress looked through her hatch with glass eyes too. 'Number nine,' she said. The head-maid's bumping backview, with crooked apron-string bow like a white scut, went on up. The stairs split, left and right.

'Mind, m'm,' said the maid, ahead in a dark arch. This unlit floor was all steps, two dull square glass panes only in one door. 'Mind, m'm; it's dark here when you don't know.' 'I can see that.' It had to be dark, built in between the hill and the tight street. The maid said: "Number nine,' ahead, opening a door. Karen saw the chestnut over the white blind. She looked round and put her hat on the bed. The boots brought the bags up; the maid who would not go refolded a towel over a jug; Number Nine shuffled with servants staring into your back. 'The gentleman said, tea in the lounge.' The maid, the boots had to go; the door shut. Karen looked at her face in the strange glass. She thought: 'I must go down,' but stopped to see the room behind in the glass.

Rain made the day dark for day, but till late the light did not change. Saturday stayed late, reflected on wet roofs and straight wet paths uphill. The west broke, the grey went white, lightening across the rain that did not stop but still veiled darkening houses and trees. At nine they went out and stood on the canal bridge; the band pavilion was empty, the chairs stacked up. Hearing the sea creep on the far beach, they walked that way, along the Ladies' Walk. Along this tunnel of trees lights hung quenched under arching branches, rain glittering past, no June moths. On a bench back from the walk another couple of lovers were blotted out, faceless, sheltered by the unfrequented night. On the embanked sea-front a house with a tower stood up; next door, in the lodging-house terrace, someone played a piano, but then stopped. Here the sea air was washed unsalt by the rain; you only smelled tamarisks and wet grass. The sea crept on the shingle with a half-living rustle; on its far-out silence Dungeness lighthouse flashed, stopped, flashed. At the sight of this one light Karen remembers her hand, wet with rain and for some minutes forgotten, tightening on Max's wet india-rubber sleeve. He made her face inland, where the High Street lights rose steadily through the rain and windows studded the hill where many people would sleep tonight.

'I am supposing,' he said, 'that you know what you are doing. It will be too late when you ask yourself: What have I done?'

She asked herself: What have I done? at about three o'clock. She only knew she had slept by finding an hour missing on her luminous watch. She thought, how frightening luminous watches are, the eye of time never stops watching you ... The street lamp still lit up the chestnut tree, cut out its fingered leaves on the dark above and cast the same inescapable barred square on the ceiling over the bed. The mantelpiece and the wardrobe with its mirror stood each side, darker than the dark walls. Having done as she knew she must she did not think there would be a child: all the same, the idea of you, Leopold, began to be present with her. This made her lean over, trying to see Max's face. But there was not enough light and his face was turned away from her in the cleft of the pillow. There was something cast-off about his way of lying, as though whatever it was had finished with him, too. They had both come a long way, without consulting each other, to sleep under a ceiling with this barred light. Between the tamarisks passing the rainy window and this lamp-invaded darkness, nothing remained. She began to count how many hours were left before his ship sailed tomorrow night — no, tonight. Her sleep of an hour had let tomorrow in.

The weight of being herself fell on her like a clock striking. She saw the clothes she would put on to go home in hanging over a chair. While it is still Before, Afterwards has no power, but afterwards it is the kingdom, the power and the glory. You do not ask yourself, what am I doing? You know. What you do ask yourself, what have I done? you will never know.

Had this not been escape? She was washed back ashore again. Further out than you dare go, where she had been is the outgoing current not strong enough not to let you back? Were you not far out, is there no far out, or is there no current there? I am let back, safe, too safe; no one will ever know. Naomi and my mother, who would die if they knew, will never know. What they never know will soon never have been. They will never know. I shall die like Aunt Violet wondering what else there was; from this there is no escape for me after all. Max lies beside me, but Naomi sat on my bed in the dark; she was there first and will never go away. I have done what she does not know, so I have not done what I dread. Max said at Boulogne; 'One cannot simply act.' I thought he meant, must not, what it meant was, cannot. People must hope so much when they tear streets up and fight at barricades. But, whoever wins, the streets are laid again and the trams start running again. One hopes too much of destroying things. If revolutions do not fail, they fail you.

This seemed to have to be, when nothing had ever had to be, so I thought it would be all. It looked like the end. I did not see it would have an end. These hours are only hours. They cannot be again, but no hours can. Hours in a room with a lamp and a tree outside, with tomorrow eating into them. The grass sprang up when we took our hands away. The maid will make this bed and fold back two corners of eiderdown like they were folded back when I put my hat on it. If I could brush the rain off his sleeve again, and drive past the tamarisks, and walk up behind the maid with the bumpy bow on her back, and put my hat on the bed —

Now nothing more has to be. Whatever may happen this morning, it will be part of afterwards. I wish there were fewer hours before he sails. I shall be glad to be back again in London; they are always delighted to have me home. Is one gentler to older people because their death is nearer? I thought tonight would be the hour of my death but here I still am, left to die like Aunt Violet after mother has died like her. To be with Ray will be like being with mother; that is why my marriage makes her so glad. Max was the enemy. It is true he hurt me, but now nothing more has to be. I cannot see him, only touch him, and that is over. At Boulogne, to touch was to see, to see was to touch. But all that time we were travelling to only this: a barred light on a ceiling, a lamp, a tree outside.