Time of Hope (29 page)

‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing much,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit strung up, that’s all.’

She switched on the light.

‘I shall never have a bedside manner,’ she said. ‘Look, if you’re worried, you ought to see poor Tom Devitt. He was a sensible doctor.’

I thought it was not meant to be cruel. In her innocence, that was over long ago.

‘You rest,’ she said. ‘I’ll make the tea. You needn’t have asked me.’

She had brought some cakes, though she never ate them, some books, and, eccentrically, a tie. There was something random about her kindness: it was like a child trying to be kind. She was gay, putting the kettle on the gas ring, making tea, giving me my cup. She switched off the light again, and sat on the other side of the fire, upright on the hard chair. She talked on, light and friendly. The suspense was raging inside me. I answered absently, sometimes after a delay, sometimes not at all. She looked inquiringly ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

I was quivering, so that I took hold of the bedrail.

She asked another question, about some book or person, which I did not hear. The blood was throbbing in my neck, and I could wait no longer.

‘Sheila,’ I said. ‘Marry me.’

She gazed at me, and did not speak. The seconds spread themselves so that I could not tell how long a time had passed; I could hear the fire, whose noise was a roar in my ears, and my own heart.

‘How ever would you manage’, she asked, ‘to keep us both?’

I had anticipated any response but that. I was so much astonished that I smiled. My hands were steadier, and for the first time that day I felt a respite.

‘We might have to wait,’ I said. ‘Or I’d find a way.’

‘I suppose you could. Yes, you’ve got plenty of resource.’

‘But it’s not important,’ I cried. ‘With you–’

‘It might be important,’ said Sheila. ‘You never give me credit for any common sense.’

‘It’s not the point,’ I said. ‘And you know it’s not.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said, as though reluctantly.

‘If you’ll marry me,’ I said, ‘I’ll find a way.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Do you think I’m playing?’

‘No.’ She was frowning. ‘You know me better than anyone else does, don’t you?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Yes, you do,’ she said, ‘That’s why I came back. And you still want to marry me?’

‘More than anything that I shall ever want.’

‘Lewis, if I married you I should like to be a good wife. But I couldn’t help it – I should injure you. I might injure you appallingly.’

‘That is for me to face,’ I said. ‘I want you to marry me.’

‘Oh,’ she cried. She stood up, rested an elbow on the mantelpiece, arched her back, and warmed her calves in front of the fire. I watched the glow upon her stockings; she was silent, looking not at me but straight down the room. Then she spoke: ‘If I marry, I shall hope to be in love.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not in love with you,’ she said. ‘You know that, and I’ve told you.’ She was still not looking at me. ‘I’m not in love with you,’ she repeated. ‘Sometimes I ask myself why I’m not. I ask myself what’s the matter with me – or what’s missing in me, if you like.’

A few times in my life, there came moments I could not escape. This was one. I could not escape the moment in which I heard her voice, high, violent, edged with regret and yet with no pity for herself or me.

In time, I asked: ‘Must it always be so?’

‘How do I know?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You can answer that – maybe better than I can.’

‘Tell me what you feel.’

‘If you must hear,’ she said, ‘I think I shall never love you.’ She added: ‘You may as well hear the rest. I’ve been hoping I should love you – for a long time now. I’d rather love you than any of the others. I don’t know why. You’re not as nice as people think.’

At that, having heard the bitterest news of my young manhood, I burst out laughing, and pulled her down on to my knee to kiss her. That final piece of ruthless observation took away my recognition of what I had just heard; and suddenly she was glad to be caressed and to caress. For now she was radiant. Anyone watching us then, without having heard the conversation, would have guessed that she had just received a proposal she was avid to accept – or, more likely, that she was out to win someone of whom she was almost but not quite sure. She was attentive, sleek, and shining. She was anxious to stroke my face when I looked downcast. She wanted to rub away the lines until I appeared as radiant as she did. She was reproachful if, for a moment, I fell into silence. She made me lie on the bed, sat by me, and then went out to buy supper. About that we had what to all appearance was a mild, enjoyable lovers’ quarrel. She proposed to fetch fish and chips: I told her that, despite her lack of snobbery, she was enough a child of the upper middle class to feel that the pastimes and diet of the poor were really glamorous. The romance of slumming, I said. You’re all prostrating yourselves before the millions, I said. And I had a reasonable argument: I had to live in that room; her sense of smell was weak, but mine acute. She pouted, and I said that classical faces were not designed for pouting. We ended in an embrace, and I got my way.

She left late in the evening, so late that I wondered how she would get home. Wondering about her, suddenly I felt the lack of her physical presence in the room. Then – it came like a grip on the throat – I realized what had happened to me. The last few hours had been make-believe. She had spoken the truth. That was all.

It was no use going to bed. I sat unseeing, just where I sat while she answered my proposal. She had spoken with her own integrity. She was as much alone as I was – more, for she had none of the compensations that my surface nature gave me as I moved about the world. She had spoken out of loneliness, and out of her craving for joy. If my heart broke, it broke. If I could make her love me, well and good. It was
sauve qui peut
. In her ruthlessness, she had no space for the sentimentalities of compassion, or the comforting life. She could take the truth herself, and so must I.

Had I a chance? Would she ever love me? I heard her final voice – ‘if you must hear’ – and then I thought, why had she been so happy afterwards? Was it simply that she was triumphant at hearing a proposal? There was a trace of that. It brought back my mocking affection for her, which was strongest when I could see her as much chained to the earth as I was myself. She could behave, in fact, like an ordinary young woman of considerable attractions, and sit back to count her conquests. There was something predatory about her, and something vulgar. Yes, she had relished being proposed to. Yet, I believed, with a residue of hope, that did not explain the richness of her delight. She was happy because I had proposed to her. There was a bond between us, though on her side it was not the bond of love.

But that – I heard her final voice – was the only bond she craved.

I did not know how to endure it. Sitting on my bed, staring blindly at where she had stood, I thought what marriage with her would be like. It would only be liveable if she were subjugated by love. Otherwise she would tear my heart to pieces. Yet, my senses and my memories tore also at my heart, even my memories of that night, and I did not know how to endure losing her.

I did not know on what terms we could go on. I had played my last card, I had tried to cut my suspense, and I had only increased it. Would she sustain the loving make-believe of the last few hours? If she did not, I could not stand jealousy again. I was not strong enough to endure the same torments, with no light at the end. Now it rested in her hands.

I had not long to wait. The first time we met after my proposal, she was gay and airy, and I could not match her spirits. The second time, she told me, quite casually, that she had visited the town the day before.

‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ The cry forced itself out.

She frowned, and said: ‘I thought we’d cleared the air.’

‘Not in that way.’

She said: ‘I thought now we knew where we stood.’

I had no intention then. But, unknown to me, one was forming.

Three days later, we met again, in the usual alcove in the usual café. She had come from her hairdresser’s, and looked immaculately beautiful. I thought, with resentment, with passion, that I had seen her dishevelled in my arms. Through tea we kept up a busy conversation. She made some sarcastic jokes, to which I replied in kind. She said that she was going to a dance. I did not say a word, but went back to the previous conversations. We were talking about books, as though we were high-spirited, literary-minded students, who had met by accident.

She went on trying to reach me – but she knew that I was not there. Her face had taken on an expression of puzzled, almost humorous distress. Her eyes were quizzically narrowed.

She asked the time, and I told her five o’clock.

‘I’ve got lots of time. I needn’t go home for hours,’ she said.

I did not speak.

‘What shall we do?’ she persisted.

‘Anything you like,’ I said, indifferently.

‘That’s useless.’ She looked angry now.

Automatically I said, as I used to: ‘Come to my room.’

‘Yes,’ said Sheila, and began powdering her face.

Then my intention, which up to then I had not known, broke out.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘What?’ She looked up from her mirror.

‘Sheila,’ I said, ‘I am going to send you away.’

‘Why?’ she cried.

‘You ought to know.’

She was gazing at me, steadily, frankly, unrelentingly. She said: ‘If you send me away now, I shall go.’

‘That’s what I want.’

‘Once I shouldn’t have. I should have come back and apologized. I shan’t do that now, if you get rid of me.’

‘I don’t expect you to,’ I said.

‘If I do go, I shall keep away. I shall take it that you don’t want to see me. This time I shan’t move a single step.’

‘That’s all I ask,’ I replied.

‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sure.’

Without another word, Sheila pulled on her coat. We walked through the smoky café. I noticed our reflections in a steam-filmed mirror. We were both white.

At the door we said the bare word, goodbye. It was raining hard, and she ran for a taxi. I saw her go.

One day, between my proposal to Sheila and our parting, I met Marion. I was refreshed to see her. I found time to speculate whether Jack had, in fact, slipped in a word. She was much more certain of herself than she used to be. Of us all, owing to her acting, she had become most of a figure in the town. She threw her head back and laughed, confidently and with a rich lilt. I had no doubt that she had found admirers, and perhaps a lover. Her old earnestness had vanished, though she would always stay the least cynical of women.

With me she was friendly, irritated, protective. Like many others at that time, like Mrs Knight at the ball, she noticed at once that I was looking physically strained. It was easy to perceive, for I had a face on which wear and tear painted itself. The lines, as with Sheila, were etching themselves while I was young.

Marion was perturbed and cross.

‘We’ve got to deliver you in London on the–’ It was like her to have remembered the exact date of Bar Finals. ‘We don’t want to send you there on a stretcher, Lewis.’

She scolded George.

‘You mustn’t let him drink,’ she said. ‘Really, you’re like a lot of children. I think I’m the only grown-up person among the lot of you.’

Against my will, she made me promise that, if I did not feel better, I would go to a doctor.

I was afraid to go. Partly I had the apprehension of any young man who does not know much of his physical make-up. There might be something bad to learn, and I was frightened of it.

But also I had a short-term fear, a gambler’s fear. Come what may, I could not stop working. It was imperative to drive myself on until the examination. Nothing should stop that; a doctor might try to. After the examination I could afford to drop, not now.

I parted from Sheila on a Friday afternoon. The next morning, as I got out of bed, I reeled with giddiness. The room turned and heaved; I shut my eyes and clutched the mantelpiece. The fit seemed to last, wheeling the room round outside my closed eyelids, for minutes. I sat back on the bed, frightened and shaken. What in God’s name was this? Nevertheless, I got through my day’s quota of reading. If I broke the programme now, I was defeated. I felt well enough to remember what I worked at. But the next morning I had another attack, and for two days afterwards, usually in the morning, once at night.

I was afraid: and above all I was savagely angry. It would be intolerable to be cheated at this stage. Despite Sheila, despite all that had happened to me, I had got myself well-prepared. That I knew. It was something I had to know; I should suffer too much if I deceived myself this time. George was speaking not with his cosmic optimism, but as a technical expert, when he encouraged me. Recently I had asked him the chances. George did not think naturally in terms of odds, but I pressed him. What was the betting on my coming out high in the first class? In the end, George had answered that he thought the chances were better than even.

It would be bitter beyond bearing to be cheated now. My mind was black with rage. But I was also ignorant and frightened. I had no idea what these fits meant. My fortitude had cracked. I had to turn to someone for help.

I thought of calling on old Dr Francis – but, almost involuntarily one evening, after struggling through another day’s work, I began walking down the hill to the infirmary. I was going to ask for Tom Devitt. The infirmary was very near, I told myself, I should get it over quicker; Tom was a modern doctor, and the old man’s knowledge must have become obsolete; but those were excuses. She had spoken of him the afternoon that I proposed, and I went to him because of that.

At the infirmary I explained to a nurse that I was an acquaintance of Devitt’s, and would like to see him in private. She said, suspiciously, formidably, that the doctor was busy. At last I coerced her into telephoning him. She gave him my name. With a bad grace she told me that he was free at once.