To Room Nineteen

Collected Stones Volume One

DORIS LESSING

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

‘The Other Woman’ was first published in Lilliput; ‘Through the Tunnel’ in John Bull; ‘The Habit of Loving’, ‘Pleasure’, ‘The Day Stalin Died’, ‘Wine’, ‘He’, ‘The Eye of God in Paradise’ and ‘The Witness’ in The Habit of Loving; and ‘One off the Short List’, ‘A Woman on a Roof’, ‘How I Finally Lost My Heart’, ‘A Man and Two Women’, ‘A Room’, ‘England versus England’, ‘Two Potters’, ‘Between Men’ and ‘To Room Nineteen’ appeared in A Man and Two Women. ‘Twenty Years’ was first published in 1994 in the Daily Telegraph.

These stories have appeared previously in paperback in the following editions: ‘The Habit of Loving’, ‘The Woman’, ‘Through the Tunnel’, ‘Pleasure’, ‘The Day Stalin Died’, ‘Wine’, ‘He’, ‘The Eye of God in Paradise’ and ‘The Witness’ in The Habit of Loving; ‘The Other Woman’ in Five. The rest of the stories appear in A Man and Two Women.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Bibliographical Note

Preface

The Habit of Loving

The Woman

Through the Tunnel

Pleasure

The Day Stalin Died

Wine

He

The Other Woman

The Eye of God in Paradise

One off the Short List

A Woman on a Roof

How I Finally Lost my Heart

A Man and Two Women

A Room

England versus England

Two Potters

Between Men

The Witness

Twenty Years

To Room Nineteen

About the Author

Also by the Author

Read On

The Grass is Singing

The Golden Notebook

The Good Terrorist

Love, Again

The Fifth Child

Copyright

About the publisher

PREFACE

All these stories have lived energetic and independent lives since I wrote them, since they have been much reprinted, in English and in other languages. None has been more anthologized than ‘Through the Tunnel’, mostly for children. I often get letters from children about it, and adolescents too, for it seems that fearful swim under the rock beneath the sea expresses their situation, or is like an initiation process. It was written because I watched a nine-year-old boy, in the South of France, longing to be accepted by a group of big boys, French, but they rejected him, and then he set challenges for himself, to become worthy of them. But, curiously, when the group turned up again some days later, the English boy had proved to his own satisfaction that he did not need them. I did not set out to write the tale for children, but this raises the whole question of writing stories especially for children. Another story, or short novel, which children like, is The Fifth Child. Italian adolescents, chosen from schools all over Italy, gave it a prize over other books from different parts of the world. Who would have thought that grim tale would appeal to children?

‘The Habit of Loving’ made a brilliant one hour television film, with Eric Portman. It was written because I - then fortyish - fell in love with a handsome youth, while an eminent and elderly actor was in love with me. The reversals of sex and situation from life to fiction would make an interesting exercise for those who enjoy that kind of psychological detective work.

‘One off the Short List’ earned approval from women, and, interestingly, from men too. I associate it with the Sixties, when it was written, for more and more that decade seems to me a comedy of sexual manners and mores. No one knew how to behave; there were no rules at all. Was this for the first time, ever? I was angry when I wrote the story, but now memories of that time make me laugh. Barbara Coles says to the seducer Graham, But you don’t even find me attractive - defining a good deal more than her own situation, for most of the sexual dance was to do with power games, one-upmanship, domination, and nothing to do with attraction, let alone love, sweet love.

‘To Room Nineteen’ is another story much translated. Recently in Hong Kong’s Chinese University the professor who was teaching it wanted me to explain to his students - and, clearly, to him - the point of the story, which to him was that a woman needed privacy so much that she died for it. This need for privacy, said he, is foreign to their culture. (But perhaps not for long: a woman in Beijing recently wrote an applauded novel inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.) The famous culture gap, in this discussion, proved unbridgeable. I myself have never understood this story. I do not believe for a moment that Susan Rawlings knew what it was she wanted. She was driven, but by what? She was in love with death, that is certain, but why, when she had everything any reasonable person could want. A couple of German students in Berlin asked why these intelligent and socially responsible people did not go to a marriage counsellor. The storyteller’s riposte, that then there would be no story struck me, as well as them, as frivolous. Yes, they were raising literary questions rather more fundamental than they seemed to know. But the story comes out of some hidden place not only in me, but in many women of our time, otherwise it would not have proved so popular with them. My association is with Hardy’s heroine, Sue Bridehead, who said that there would come a time when people would choose not to live, or with Olive Schreiner’s heroine who said, ‘I’m so tired of it, and tired of the future before it comes.’ A kind of moral exhaustion. I believe we do not understand the reasons for these tides of feeling as well as we think we do. And sometimes I wonder if our clever methods of birth control have not struck deep into both men’s and women’s belief in themselves - into regions much deeper and more primitive than are amenable to sweet reason.

‘The Eye of God in Paradise’ is saturated in the atmosphere of the sad and frightened time after World War Two, in Europe. I was in Germany, and I did see and experience people and places that went into the story. I visited a mental hospital, like the one I describe - and one ward in it later went up to make a scene in The Fifth Child. But that it is set in Germany is not the point at all. It is about the under-soul of Europe, the dark side where wars and killings and perversions are bred.

‘England versus England’ is often printed in magazines and collections outside this country. Other people look at us, and see what I saw when I wrote it: the depredations of our class system. I was in a mining village near Doncaster for a week, in a miner’s family, and I saw a good deal of what is described.

‘Between Men’ made a very funny half-hour television film. Television companies took more risks then than they do now.

‘A Woman on a Roof’ is liked by young people. It would make a half-hour film, and it nearly did.

‘The Day Stalin Died’ is appreciated by old Reds everywhere. When I wrote it, so I was told, the Communist Party high-ups laughed, but in public had to disapprove of it. It was the tone that was wrong: it does not do to treat serious matters lightly.

‘How I Finally Lost My Heart’ is one of my favourite stories, but not necessarily other people’s.

‘Two Potters’ has never been one of my best-liked tales, but authors have to resign themselves to having unloved favourites. Another tale - this time a novel, also had as a basis or theme a serial dream - The Summer Before the Dark - and both have for me the attraction and curiosity due to the hidden sides of ourselves. The continuing dreams of the vast dusty plain, the fragile and mortal mud houses and the old potter, went on for a decade or so, and were as interesting to me as an old and much-loved tale. Or visits to a country one has known well and left.

‘A Room’ has the same quality - for me - of a world as real as our daytime world, where time slips and slides, and people we have never met are as familiar as old friends.

‘Wine’, a very short story, is a distilling of a four-year-long love affair.

‘He’ has sometimes annoyed feminists, but I think it tells the truth about many women’s feeling for men.

Doris Lessing, 1994

The Habit of Loving

In 1947 George wrote again to Myra, saying that now the war was well over she should come home again and marry him. She wrote back from Australia, where she had gone with her two children in 1943 because there were relations there, saying she felt they had drifted apart; she was no longer sure she wanted to marry George. He did not allow himself to collapse. He cabled her the air fare and asked her to come over and see him. She came, for two weeks, being unable to leave the children for longer. She said she liked Australia; she liked the climate; she did not like the English climate any longer; she thought England was, very probably, played out; and she had become used to missing London. Also, presumably, to missing George Talbot.

For George this was a very painful fortnight. He believed it was painful for Myra, too. They had met in 1938, had lived together for five years, and had exchanged for four years the letters of lovers separated by fate. Myra was certainly the love of his life. He had believed he was of hers until now. Myra, an attractive woman made beautiful by the suns and beaches of Australia, waved goodbye at the airport, and her eyes were filled with tears.

George’s eyes, as he drove away from the airport, were dry. If one person has loved another truly and wholly, then it is more than love that collapses when one side of the indissoluble partnership turns away with a tearful goodbye. George dismissed the taxi early and walked through St James’s Park. Then it seemed too small for him, and he went to Green Park. Then he walked into Hyde Park and through to Kensington Gardens. When the dark came and they closed the great gates of the park he took a taxi home. He lived in a block of flats near Marble Arch. For five years Myra had lived with him there, and it was here he had expected to live with her again. Now he moved into a new flat near Covent Garden. Soon after that he wrote Myra a very painful letter. It occurred to him that he had often received such letters, but had never written one before. It occurred to him that he had entirely underestimated the amount of suffering he must have caused in his life. But Myra wrote him a sensible letter back, and George Talbot told himself that now he must finally stop thinking about Myra.

Therefore, he became rather less of a dilettante in his work than he had been recently, and he agreed to produce a new play written by a friend of his. George Talbot was a man of the theatre. He had not acted in it for many years now; but he wrote articles, he sometimes produced a play, he made speeches on important occasions and was known by everyone. When he went into a restaurant people tried to catch his eye, and he often did not know who they were. During the four years since Myra had left, he had had a number of affairs with young women round and about the theatre, for he had been lonely. He had written quite frankly to Myra about these affairs, but she had never mentioned them in her letters. Now he was very busy for some months and was seldom at home; he earned quite a lot of money, and he had a few affairs with women who were pleased to be seen in public with him. He thought about Myra a great deal, but he did not write to her again, nor she to him, although they had agreed they would always be great friends.

One evening in the foyer of a theatre he saw an old friend of his he had always admired, and he told the young woman he was with that that man had been the most irresistible man of his generation – no woman had been able to resist him. The young woman stared briefly across the foyer and said, ‘Not really?’

When George Talbot got home that night he was alone, and he looked at himself with honesty in the mirror. He was sixty, but he did not look it. Whatever had attracted women to him in the past had never been his looks, and he was not much changed: a stoutish man, holding himself erect, grey-haired, carefully brushed, well dressed. He had not paid much attention to his face since those days many years ago when he had been an actor; but now he had an uncharacteristic fit of vanity and remembered that Myra had admired his mouth, while his wife had loved his eyes. He took to taking glances at himself in foyers and restaurants where there were mirrors, and he saw himself as unchanged. He was becoming conscious, though, of a discrepancy between that suave exterior and what he felt. Beneath his ribs his heart had become swollen and soft and painful, a monstrous area of sympathy playing enemy to what he had been. When people made jokes he was often unable to laugh; and his manner of talking, which was light and allusive and dry, must have changed, because more than once old friends asked him if he were depressed, and they no longer smiled appreciatively as he told his stories. He gathered he was not being good company. He understood he might be ill, and he went to the doctor. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with his heart, he had thirty years of life in him yet – luckily, he added respectfully, for the British theatre.

George came to understand that the word ‘heartache’ meant that a person could carry a heart that ached around with him day and night for, in his case, months. Nearly a year now. He would wake in the night, because of the pressure of pain in his chest; in the morning he woke under a weight of grief. There seemed to be no end to it; and this thought jolted him into two actions. First, he wrote to Myra, a tender, carefully phrased letter, recalling the years of their love. To this he got, in due course, a tender and careful reply. Then he went to see his wife. With her he was, and had been for many years, good friends. They saw each other often, but not so often now the children were grown-up; perhaps once or twice a year, and they never quarrelled.

His wife had married again after they divorced, and now she was a widow. Her second husband had been a member of Parliament, and she worked for the Labour Party, and she was on a Hospital Advisory Committee and on the Board of Directors of a progressive school. She was fifty, but did not look it. On this afternoon she was wearing a slim grey suit and grey shoes, and her grey hair had a wave of white across the front which made her look distinguished. She was animated, and very happy to see George; and she talked about some deadhead on her hospital committee who did not see eye to eye with the progressive minority about some reform or other. They had always had their politics in common, a position somewhere left of centre in the Labour Party. She had sympathized with his being a pacifist in the First World War – he had been for a time in prison because of it; he had sympathized with her militant feminism. Both had helped the strikers in 1926. In the thirties, after they were divorced, she had helped with money when he went on tour with a company acting Shakespeare to people on the dole, or hunger-marching.

Myra had not been at all interested in politics, only in her children. And in George, of course.

George asked his first wife to marry him again, and she was so startled that she let the sugar tongs drop and crack a saucer. She asked what had happened to Myra, and George said: ‘Well, dear, I think Myra forgot about me during those years in Australia. At any rate, she doesn’t want me now.’ When he heard his voice saying this it sounded pathetic, and he was frightened, for he could not remember ever having to appeal to a woman. Except to Myra.

His wife examined him and said briskly: ‘You’re lonely, George. Well, we’re none of us getting any younger.’

‘You don’t think you’d be less lonely if you had me around?’

She got up from her chair in order that she could attend to something with her back to him, and she said that she intended to marry again quite soon. She was marrying a man considerably younger than herself, a doctor who was in the progressive minority at her hospital. From her voice George understood that she was both proud and ashamed of this marriage, and that was why she was hiding her face from him. He congratulated her and asked her if there wasn’t perhaps a chance for him yet? ‘After all, dear, we were happy together, weren’t we? I’ve never really understood why that marriage ever broke up. It was you who wanted to break it up.’

‘I don’t see any point in raking over that old business,’ she said, with finality, and returned to her seat opposite him. He envied her very much, looking young with her pink and scarcely lined face under that brave lock of deliberately whitened hair.

‘But dear, I wish you’d tell me. It doesn’t do any harm now, does it? And I always wondered … I’ve often thought about it and wondered.’ He could hear the pathetic note in his voice again, but he did not know how to alter it.

‘You wondered,’ she said, ‘when you weren’t occupied with Myra.’

‘But I didn’t know Myra when we got divorced.’

‘You knew Phillipa and Georgina and Janet and lord knows who else.’

‘But I didn’t care about them.’

She sat with her competent hands in her lap and on her face was a look he remembered seeing when she told him she would divorce him. It was bitter and full of hurt. ‘You didn’t care about me either,’ she said.

‘But we were happy. Well, I was happy …’ he trailed off, being pathetic against all his knowledge of women. For, as he sat there, his old rake’s heart was telling him that if only he could find them, there must be the right words, the right tone. But whatever he said came out in this hopeless, old dog’s voice, and he knew that this voice could never defeat the gallant and crusading young doctor. ‘And I did care about you. Sometimes I think you were the only woman in my life.’

At this she laughed. ‘Oh, George, don’t get maudlin now, please.’

‘Well, dear, there was Myra. But when you threw me over there was bound to be Myra, wasn’t there? There were two women, you and then Myra. And I’ve never understood why you broke it all up when we seemed to be so happy.’

‘You didn’t care for me,’ she said again. ‘If you had, you would never have come home from Phillipa, Georgina, Janet et al and said calmly, just as if it didn’t matter to me in the least, that you had been with them in Brighton or wherever it was.’

‘But if I had cared about them I would never have told you.’

She was regarding him incredulously, and her face was flushed. With what? Anger? George did not know.

‘I remember being so proud,’ he said pathetically, ‘that we had solved this business of marriage and all that sort of thing. We had such a good marriage that it didn’t matter, the little flirtations. And I always thought one should be able to tell the truth. I always told you the truth, didn’t I?’

‘Very romantic of you, dear George,’ she said dryly; and soon he got up, kissed her fondly on the cheek, and went away.

He walked for a long time through the parks, hands behind his erect back, and he could feel his heart swollen and painful in his side. When the gates shut, he walked through the lighted streets he had lived in for fifty years of his life, and he was remembering Myra and Molly, as if they were one woman, merging into each other, a shape of warm easy intimacy, a shape of happiness walking beside him. He went into a little restaurant he knew well, and there was a girl sitting there who knew him because she had heard him lecture once on the state of the British theatre. He tried hard to see Myra and Molly in her face, but he failed; and he paid for her coffee and his own and went home by himself. But his flat was unbearably empty, and he left it and walked down by the Embankment for a couple of hours to tire himself, and there must have been a colder wind blowing than he knew, for next day he woke with a pain in his chest which he could not mistake for heartache.

He had flu and a bad cough, and he stayed in bed by himself and did not ring up the doctor until the fourth day, when he was getting lightheaded. The doctor said it must be the hospital at once.

But he would not go to the hospital. So the doctor said he must have day and night nurses. This he submitted to until the cheerful friendliness of the nurses saddened him beyond bearing, and he asked the doctor to ring up his wife, who would find someone to look after him and would be sympathetic. He was hoping that Molly would come herself to nurse him, but when she arrived he did not mention it, for she was busy with preparations for her new marriage. She promised to find him someone who would not wear a uniform and make jokes. They naturally had many friends in common; and she rang up an old flame of his in the theatre who said she knew of a girl who was looking for a secretary’s job to tide her over a patch of not working, but who didn’t really mind what she did for a few weeks.

So Bobby Tippett sent away the nurses and made up a bed for herself in his study. On the first day she sat by George’s bed sewing. She wore a full dark skirt and a demure printed blouse with short frills at the wrist, and George watched her sewing and already felt much better. She was a small, thin, dark girl, probably Jewish, with sad black eyes. She had a way of letting her sewing lie loose in her lap, her hands limp over it; and her eyes fixed themselves, and a bloom of dark introspection came over them. She sat very still at these moments like a small china figure of a girl sewing. When she was nursing George, or letting in his many visitors, she put on a manner of cool and even languid charm; it was the extreme good manners of heartlessness, and at first George was chilled: but then he saw through the pose; for whatever world Bobby Tippett had been born into he did not think it was the English class to which these manners belonged. She replied with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ to questions about herself; he gathered that her parents were dead, but there was a married sister she saw sometimes; and for the rest she had lived around and about London, mostly by herself, for ten or more years. When he asked her if she had not been lonely, so much by herself, she drawled, ‘Why, not at all, I don’t mind being alone.’ But he saw her as a small, brave child, a waif against London, and was moved.

He did not want to be the big man of the theatre; he was afraid of evoking the impersonal admiration he was only too accustomed to; but soon he was asking her questions about her career, hoping that this might be the point of her enthusiasm. But she spoke lightly of small parts, odd jobs, scene painting and understudying, in a jolly good-little-trouper’s voice; and he could not see that he had come any closer to her at all. So at last he did what he had tried to avoid, and sitting up against his pillows like a judge or an impresario, he said: ‘Do something for me, dear. Let me see you.’ She went next door like an obedient child, and came back in tight black trousers, but still in her demure little blouse, and stood on the carpet before him, and went into a little song-and-dance act. It wasn’t bad. He had seen a hundred worse. But he was very moved; he saw her now above all as the little urchin, the gamin, boy-girl and helpless. And utterly touching. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘this is half of an act. I always have someone else.’

There was a big mirror that nearly filled the end wall of the large, dark room. George saw himself in it, an elderly man sitting propped up on pillows watching the small doll-like figure standing before him on the carpet. He saw her turn her head towards her reflection in the darkened mirror, study it, and then she began to dance with her own reflection, dance against it, as it were. There were two small, light figures dancing in George’s room; there was something uncanny in it. She began singing, a little broken song in stage cockney, and George felt that she was expecting the other figure in the mirror to sing with her; she was singing at the mirror as if she expected an answer.

‘That’s very good, dear,’ he broke in quickly, for he was upset, though he did not know why. ‘Very good indeed.’ He was relieved when she broke off and came away from the mirror, so that the uncanny shadow of her went away.

‘Would you like me to speak to someone for you, dear? It might help. You know how things are in the theatre,’ he suggested apologetically.

‘I don’t maind if I dew,’ she said in the stage cockney of her act; and for a moment her face flashed into a mocking, reckless, gaminlike charm. ‘Perhaps I’d better change back into my skirt?’ she suggested. ‘More natural-like for a nurse, ain’t it?’

But he said he liked her in her tight black trousers, and now she always wore them, and her neat little shirts; and she moved about the flat as a charming feminine boy, chattering to him about the plays she had had small parts in and about the big actors and producers she had spoken to, who were, of course, George’s friends or, at least, equals. George sat up against his pillows and listened and watched, and his heart ached. He remained in bed longer than there was need, because he did not want her to go. When he transferred himself to a big chair, he said: ‘You mustn’t think you’re bound to stay here, dear, if there’s somewhere else you’d rather go.’ To which she replied, with a wide flash of her black eyes, ‘But I’m resting, darling, resting. I’ve nothing better to do with myself.’ And then: ‘Oh aren’t I awful, the things wot I sy?’

‘But you do like being here? You don’t mind being here with me, dear?’ he insisted.

There was the briefest pause. She said: ‘Yes, oddly enough I do like it.’ The ‘oddly enough’ was accompanied by a quick, half-laughing, almost flirtatious glance; and for the first time in many months the pressure of loneliness eased around George’s heart.

Now it was a happiness to him because when the distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the theatre or of letters came to see him, Bobby became a cool, silky little hostess; and the instant they had gone she relapsed into urchin charm. It was proof of their intimacy. Sometimes he took her out to dinner or to the theatre. When she dressed up she wore bold, fashionable clothes and moved with the insolence of a mannequin; and George moved beside her, smiling fondly, waiting for the moment when the black, reckless, freebooting eyes would flash up out of the languid stare of the woman presenting herself for admiration, exchanging with him amusement at the world; promising him that soon, when they got back to the apartment, by themselves, she would again become the dear little girl or the gallant, charming waif.

Sometimes, sitting in the dim room at night, he would let his hand close over the thin point of her shoulder; sometimes, when they said good night, he bent to kiss her, and she lowered her head, so that his lips encountered her demure, willing forehead.

George told himself that she was unawakened. It was a phrase that had been the prelude to a dozen warm discoveries in the past. He told himself that she knew nothing of what she might be. She had been married, it seemed – she dropped this information once, in the course of an anecdote about the theatre; but George had known women in plenty who after years of marriage had been unawakened. George asked her to marry him; and she lifted her small sleek head with an animal’s startled turn and said: ‘Why do you want to marry me?’

‘Because I like being with you, dear. I love being with you.’

‘Well, I like being with you.’ It had a questioning sound. She was questioning herself? ‘Strainge,’ she said in cockney, laughing. ‘Strainge but trew.’

The wedding was to be a small one, but there was a lot about it in the papers. Recently several men of George’s generation had married young women. One of them had fathered a son at the age of seventy. George was flattered by the newspapers, and told Bobby a good deal about his life that had not come up before. He remarked for instance that he thought his generation had been altogether more successful about this business of love and sex than the modern generation. He said, ‘Take my son, for instance. At his age I had had a lot of affairs and knew about women; but there he is, nearly thirty, and when he stayed here once with a girl he was thinking of marrying I know for a fact they shared the same bed for a week and nothing ever happened. She told me so. Very odd it all seems to me. But it didn’t seem odd to her. And now he lives with another young man and listens to that long-playing record thing of his, and he’s engaged to a girl he takes out twice a week, like a schoolboy. And there’s my daughter, she came to me a year after she was married, and she was in an awful mess, really awful … it seems to me your generation are very frightened of it all. I don’t know why.’

‘Why my generation?’ she asked, turning her head with that quick listening movement. ‘It’s not my generation.’

‘But you’re nothing but a child,’ he said fondly.

He could not decipher what lay behind the black, full stare of her sad eyes as she looked at him now; she was sitting cross-legged in her black glossy trousers before the fire, like a small doll. But a spring of alarm had been touched in him and he didn’t say any more.

‘At thirty-five, I’m the youngest child alive,’ she sang, with a swift sardonic glance at him over her shoulder. But it sounded gay.

He did not talk to her again about the achievements of his generation.

After the wedding he took her to a village in Normandy where he had been once, many years ago, with a girl called Eve. He did not tell her he had been there before.

It was spring, and the cherry trees were in flower. The first evening he walked with her in the last sunlight under the white-flowering branches, his arm around her thin waist, and it seemed to him that he was about to walk back through the gates of a lost happiness.

They had a large comfortable room with windows which overlooked the cherry trees and there was a double bed. Madame Cruchot, the farmer’s wife, showed them the room with shrewd, non-commenting eyes, said she was always happy to shelter honeymoon couples, and wished them a good night.

George made love to Bobby, and she shut her eyes, and he found she was not at all awkward. When they had finished, he gathered her in his arms, and it was then that he returned simply, with an incredulous awed easing of the heart, to a happiness which – and now it seemed to him fantastically ungrateful that he could have done – he had taken for granted for so many years of his life. It was not possible, he thought, holding her compliant body in his arms, that he could have been by himself, alone, for so long. It had been intolerable. He held her silent breathing body, and he stroked her back and thighs, and his hands remembered the emotions of nearly fifty years of loving. He could feel the memoried emotions of his life flooding through his body, and his heart swelled with a joy it seemed to him he had never known, for it was a compound of a dozen loves.

He was about to take final possession of his memories when she turned sharply away, sat up, and said: ‘I want a fag. How about yew?’

‘Why, yes, dear, if you want.’

They smoked. The cigarettes finished, she lay down on her back, arms folded across her chest, and said, ‘I’m sleepy.’ She closed her eyes. When he was sure she was asleep, he lifted himself on his elbow and watched her. The light still burned, and the curve of her cheek was full and soft, like a child’s. He touched it with the side of his palm, and she shrank away in her sleep, but clenched up, like a fist; and her hand, which was white and unformed, like a child’s hand, was clenched in a fist on the pillow before her face.

George tried to gather her in his arms, and she turned away from him to the extreme edge of the bed. She was deeply asleep, and her sleep was unsharable. George could not endure it. He got out of bed and stood by the window in the cold spring night air, and saw the white cherry trees standing under the white moon, and thought of the cold girl asleep in her bed. He was there in the chill moonlight until the dawn came; in the morning he had a very bad cough and could not get up. Bobby was charming, devoted, and gay. ‘Just like old times, me nursing you,’ she commented, with a deliberate roll of her black eyes. She asked Madame Cruchot for another bed, which she placed in the corner of the room, and George thought it was quite reasonable she should not want to catch his cold; for he did not allow himself to remember the times in his past when quite serious illness had been no obstacle to the sharing of the dark; he decided to forget the sensualities of tiredness, or of fever, or of the extremes of sleeplessness. He was even beginning to feel ashamed.

For a fortnight the Frenchwoman brought up magnificent meals, twice a day, and George and Bobby drank a great deal of red wine and of calvados and made jokes with Madame Cruchot about getting ill on honeymoons. They returned from Normandy rather earlier than had been arranged. It would be better for George, Bobby said, at home, where his friends could drop in to see him. Besides, it was sad to be shut indoors in springtime, and they were both eating too much.

On the first night back in the flat, George waited to see if she would go into the study to sleep, but she came to bed in her pyjamas, and for the second time, he held her in his arms for the space of the act, and then she smoked, sitting up in bed and looking rather tired and small and, George thought, terribly young and pathetic. He did not sleep that night. He did not dare move out of bed for fear of disturbing her, and he was afraid to drop off to sleep for fear his limbs remembered the habits of a lifetime and searched for hers. In the morning she woke smiling, and he put his arms around her, but she kissed him with small gentle kisses and jumped out of bed.

That day she said she must go and see her sister. She saw her sister often during the next weeks and kept suggesting that George should have his friends around more than he did. George asked why didn’t the sister come to see her here, in the flat? So one afternoon she came to tea. George had seen her briefly at the wedding and disliked her, but now for the first time he had a spell of revulsion against the marriage itself. The sister was awful – a commonplace, middle-aged female from some suburb. She had a sharp, dark face that poked itself inquisitively into the corners of the flat, pricing the furniture, and a thin acquisitive nose bent to one side. She sat, on her best behaviour, for two hours over the teacups, in a mannish navy blue suit, a severe black hat, her brogued feet set firmly side by side before her; and her thin nose seemed to be carrying on a silent, satirical conversation with her sister about George. Bobby was being cool and well mannered, as it were deliberately tired of life, as she always was when guests were there, but George was sure this was simply on his account. When the sister had gone, George was rather querulous about her; but Bobby said, laughing, that of course she had known George wouldn’t like Rosa; she was rather ghastly; but then who had suggested inviting her? So Rosa came no more, and Bobby went to meet her for a visit to the pictures, or for shopping. Meanwhile, George sat alone and thought uneasily about Bobby, or visited his old friends. A few months after they returned from Normandy, someone suggested to George that perhaps he was ill. This made George think about it, and he realized he was not far from being ill. It was because he could not sleep. Night after night he lay beside Bobby, after her cheerfully affectionate submission to him; and he saw the soft curve of her cheek on the pillow, the long dark lashes lying close and flat. Never in his life had anything moved him so deeply as that childish cheek, the shadow of those lashes. A small crease in one cheek seemed to him the signature of emotion; and the lock of black glossy hair falling across her forehead filled his throat with tears. His nights were long vigils of locked tenderness.

Then one night she woke and saw him watching her.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, startled. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

‘I’m only watching you, dear,’ he said hopelessly.

She lay curled up beside him, her fist beside her on the pillow, between him and her. ‘Why aren’t you happy?’ she asked suddenly; and as George laughed with a sudden bitter irony, she sat up, arms around her knees, prepared to consider this problem practically.

‘This isn’t marriage; this isn’t love,’ he announced. He sat up beside her. He did not know that he had ever used that tone to her before. A portly man, his elderly face flushed with sorrow, he had forgotten her for the moment, and he was speaking across her from his past, resurrected in her, to his past. He was dignified with responsible experience and the warmth of a lifetime’s responses. His eyes were heavy, satirical, and condemning. She rolled herself up against him and said with a small sad smile, ‘Then show me, George.’

‘Show you?’ he said, almost stammering. ‘Show you?’ But he held her, the obedient child, his cheek against hers, until she slept; then a too close pressure of his shoulder on hers caused her to shrink and recoil from him away to the edge of the bed.

In the morning she looked at him oddly, with an odd sad little respect, and said, ‘You know what, George. You’ve just got into the habit of loving.’

‘What do you mean, dear?’

She rolled out of bed and stood beside it, a waif in her white pyjamas, her black hair ruffled. She slid her eyes at him and smiled. ‘You just want something in your arms, that’s all. What do you do when you’re alone? Wrap yourself around a pillow?’

He said nothing; he was cut to the heart.

‘My husband was the same,’ she remarked gaily. ‘Funny thing is, he didn’t care anything about me.’ She stood considering him, smiling mockingly. ‘Strange, ain’t it?’ she commented and went off to the bathroom. That was the second time she had mentioned her husband.

The phrase, the habit of loving, made a revolution in George. It was true, he thought. He was shocked out of himself, out of the instinctive response to the movement of skin against his, the pressure of a breast. It seemed to him that he was seeing Bobby quite newly. He had not really known her before. The delightful little girl had vanished, and he saw a young woman toughened and wary because of defeats and failures he had never stopped to think of. He saw that the sadness that lay behind the black eyes was not at all impersonal; he saw the first sheen of grey lying on her smooth hair; he saw that the full curve of her cheek was the beginning of the softening into middle age. He was appalled at his egotism. Now, he thought, he would really know her, and she would begin to love him in response to it.

Suddenly, George discovered in himself a boy whose existence he had totally forgotten. He had been returned to his adolescence. The accidental touch of her hand delighted him; the swing of her skirt could make him shut his eyes with happiness. He looked at her through the jealous eyes of a boy and began questioning her about her past, feeling that he was slowly taking possession of her. He waited for a hint of emotion in the drop of her voice, or a confession in the wrinkling of the skin by the full, dark, comradely eyes. At night, a boy again, reverence shut him into ineptitude. The body of George’s sensuality had been killed stone dead. A month ago he had been a man vigorous with the skilled harbouring of memory; the long use of his body. Now he lay awake beside this woman, longing – not for the past, for that past had dropped away from him, but dreaming of the future. And when he questioned her, like a jealous boy, and she evaded him, he could see it only as the locked virginity of the girl who would wake in answer to the worshipping boy he had become.

But still she slept in a citadel, one fist before her face.

Then one night she woke again, roused by some movement of his. ‘What’s the matter now, George?’ she asked, exasperated.

In the silence that followed, the resurrected boy in George died painfully.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’ He turned away from her, defeated.

It was he who moved out of the big bed into the narrow bed in the study. She said with a sharp, sad smile, ‘Fed up with me, George? Well, I can’t help it, you know. I didn’t ever like sleeping beside someone very much.’

George, who had dropped out of his work lately, undertook to produce another play, and was very busy again; and he became drama critic for one of the big papers and was in the swim and at all the first nights. Sometimes Bobby was with him, in her startling, smart clothes, being amused with him at the whole business of being fashionable. Sometimes she stayed at home. She had the capacity for being by herself for hours, apparently doing nothing. George would come home from some crowd of people, some party, and find her sitting cross-legged before the fire in her tight trousers, chin in hand, gone off by herself into some place where he was now afraid to try and follow. He could not bear it again, putting himself in a position where he might hear the cold, sharp words that showed she had never had an inkling of what he felt, because it was not in her nature to feel it. He would come in late, and she would make them both some tea; and they would sit hand in hand before the fire, his flesh and memories quiet. Dead, he thought. But his heart ached. He had become so used to the heavy load of loneliness in his chest that when, briefly, talking to an old friend, he became the George Talbot who had never known Bobby, and his heart lightened and his oppression went, he would look about him, startled, as if he had lost something. He felt almost lightheaded without the pain of loneliness.

He asked Bobby if she weren’t bored, with so little to do, month after month after month, while he was so busy. She said no, she was quite happy doing nothing. She wouldn’t like to take up her old work again?

‘I wasn’t ever much good, was I?’ she said.

‘If you’d enjoy it, dear, I could speak to someone for you.’

She frowned at the fire but said nothing. Later he suggested it again, and she sparked up with a grin and: ‘Well, I don’t maind if I dew …’

So he spoke to an old friend, and Bobby returned to the theatre, to a small act in a little intimate revue. She had found somebody, she said, to be the other half of her act. George was very busy with a production of Romeo and Juliet, and did not have time to see her at rehearsal, but he was there on the night The Offbeat Revue opened. He was rather late and stood at the back of the gimcrack little theatre, packed tight with fragile little chairs. Everything was so small that the well-dressed audience looked too big, like over-size people crammed in a box. The tiny stage was left bare, with a few black and white posters stuck here and there, and there was one piano. The pianist was good, a young man with black hair falling limp over his face, playing as if he were bored with the whole thing. But he played very well. George, the man of the theatre, listened to the first number, so as to catch the mood, and thought, Oh Lord, not again. It was one of the songs from the First World War, and he could not stand the flood of easy emotion it aroused. He refused to feel. Then he realized that the emotion was, in any case, blocked; the piano was mocking the song; ‘There’s a Long, Long Trail’ was being played like a five-finger exercise; and ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ and ‘Tipperary’ followed in the same style, as if the piano were bored. People were beginning to chuckle, they had caught the mood. A young blond man with a moustache and wearing the uniform of 1914 came in and sang fragments of the songs, like a corpse singing; and then George understood he was supposed to be one of the dead of that war singing. George felt all his responses blocked, first because he could not allow himself to feel any emotion from that time at all – it was too painful; and then because of the five-finger-exercise style, which contradicted everything, all pain or protest, leaving nothing, an emptiness. The show went on; through the twenties, with bits of popular songs from that time, a number about the General Strike, which reduced the whole thing to the scale of marionettes without passion, and then on to the thirties. George saw it was a sort of potted history, as it were – Noel Coward’s falsely heroic view of his time parodied. But it wasn’t even that. There was no emotion, nothing. George did not know what he was supposed to feel. He looked curiously at the faces of the people around him and saw that the older people looked puzzled, affronted, as if the show were an insult to them. But the younger people were in the mood of the thing. But what mood? It was the parody of a parody. When the Second World War was evoked by ‘Run Rabbit Run’ played like Lobengrin, while the soldiers in the uniforms of the time mocked their own understated heroism from the other side of death, then George could not stand it. He did not look at the stage at all. He was waiting for Bobby to come on, so he could say that he had seen her. Meanwhile he smoked and watched the face of a very young man near him; it was a pale, heavy, flaccid face, but it was responding, it seemed from a habit of rancour, to everything that went on on the stage. Suddenly, the young face lit into sarcastic delight, and George looked at the stage. On it were two urchins, identical it seemed, in tight black glossy trousers, tight crisp white shirts. Both had short black hair, neat little feet placed side by side. They were standing together, hands crossed loosely before them at the waist, waiting for the music to start. The man at the piano, who had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, began playing something very sentimental. He broke off and looked with sardonic inquiry at the urchins. They had not moved. They shrugged and rolled their eyes at him. He played a marching song, very loud and pompous. The urchins twitched a little and stayed still. Then the piano broke fast and sudden into a rage of jazz. The two puppets on the stage began a furious movement, their limbs clashing with each other and with the music, until they fell into poses of helpless despair while the music grew louder and more desperate. They tried again, whirling themelves into a frenzied attempt to keep up with the music. Then, two waifs, they turned their two small white sad faces at each other, and, with a formal nod, each took a phrase of music from the fast flood of sound that had already swept by them, held it, and began to sing. Bobby sang her bad stage-cockney phrases, meaningless, jumbled up, flat, hopeless; the other urchin sang drawling languid phrases from the upperclass jargon of the moment. They looked at each other, offering the phrases as it were, to see if they would be accepted. Meanwhile, the hard, cruel, hurtful music went on. Again the two went limp and helpless, unwanted, unaccepted. George, outraged and hurt, asked himself again: What am I feeling? What am I supposed to be feeling? For that insane nihilistic music demanded some opposition, some statement of affirmation, but the two urchins, half-boy, half-girl, as alike as twins (George had to watch Bobby carefully so as not to confuse her with ‘the other half of her act’) were not even trying to resist the music. Then, after a long, sad immobility, they changed roles. Bobby took the languid jaw-writhing part of a limp young man, and the other waif sang false-cockney phrases in a cruel copy of a woman’s voice. It was the parody of a parody of a parody. George stood tense, waiting for a resolution. His nature demanded that now, and quickly, for the limp sadness of the turn was unbearable, the two false urchins should flash out in some sort of rebellion. But there was nothing. The jazz went on like hammers; the whole room shook – stage, walls, ceiling – and it seemed the people in the room jigged lightly and helplessly. The two children on the stage twisted their limbs into the wilful mockery of a stage convention, and finally stood side by side, hands hanging limp, heads lowered meekly, twitching a little while the music rose into a final crashing discord and the lights went out. George could not applaud. He saw the damp-faced young man next to him was clapping wildly, while his lank hair fell all over his face. George saw that the older people were all, like himself, bewildered and insulted.

When the show was over, George went backstage to fetch Bobby. She was with ‘the other half of the act’, a rather good-looking boy of about twenty, who was being deferential to the impressive husband of Bobby. George said to her: ‘You were very good, dear, very good indeed.’ She looked smilingly at him, half-mocking, but he did not know what it was she was mocking now. And she had been good. But he never wanted to see it again.

The revue was a success and ran for some months before it was moved to a bigger theatre. George finished his production of Romeo and Juliet which, so the critics said, was the best London had seen for many years, and refused other offers of work. He did not need the money for the time being, and besides, he had not seen very much of Bobby lately.

But of course now she was working. She was at rehearsals several times a week, and away from the flat every evening. But George never went to her theatre. He did not want to see the sad, unresisting children twitching to the cruel music.

It seemed Bobby was happy. The various little parts she had played with him – the urchin, the cool hostess, the dear child – had all been absorbed into the hard-working female who cooked him his meals, looked after him, and went out to her theatre giving him a friendly kiss on the cheek. Their relationship was most pleasant and amiable. George lived beside this good friend, his wife Bobby, who was doing him so much credit in every way, and ached permanently with loneliness.

One day he was walking down the Charing Cross Road, looking into the windows of bookshops, when he saw Bobby strolling up the other side with Jackie, the other half of her act. She looked as he had never seen her: her dark face was alive with animation, and Jackie was looking into her face and laughing. George thought the boy very handsome. He had a warm gloss of youth on his hair and in his eyes; he had the lithe, quick look of a young animal.

He was not jealous at all. When Bobby came in at night, gay and vivacious, he knew he owed this to Jackie and did not mind. He was even grateful to him. The warmth Bobby had for ‘the other half of the act’ overflowed towards him; and for some months Myra and his wife were present in his mind, he saw and felt them, two loving presences, young women who loved George, brought into being by the feeling between Jackie and Bobby. Whatever that feeling was.

The Offbeat Revue ran for nearly a year, and then it was coming off, and Bobby and Jackie were working out another act. George did not know what it was. He thought Bobby needed a rest, but he did not like to say so. She had been tired recently, and when she came in at night there was strain beneath her gaiety. Once, at night, he woke to see her beside his bed. ‘Hold me for a little, George,’ she asked. He opened his arms and she came into them. He lay holding her, quite still. He had opened his arms to the sad waif, but it was an unhappy woman lying in his arms. He could feel the movement of her lashes on his shoulder, and the wetness of tears.

He had not lain beside her for a long time, years it seemed. She did not come to him again.

‘You don’t think you’re working too hard, dear?’ he asked once, looking at her strained face; but she said briskly, ‘No, I’ve got to have something to do, can’t stand doing nothing.’

One night it was raining hard, and Bobby had been feeling sick that day, and she did not come home at her usual time. George became worried and took a taxi to the theatre and asked the doorman if she was still there. It seemed she had left some time before. ‘She didn’t look too well to me, sir,’ volunteered the doorman, and George sat for a time in the taxi, trying not to worry. Then he gave the driver Jackie’s address; he meant to ask him if he knew where Bobby was. He sat limp in the back of the taxi, feeling the heaviness of his limbs, thinking of Bobby ill.

The place was in a mews, and he left the taxi and walked over rough cobbles to a door which had been the door of stables. He rang, and a young man he didn’t know let him in, saying yes, Jackie Dickson was in. George climbed narrow, steep, wooden stairs slowly, feeling the weight of his body, while his heart pounded. He stood at the top of the stairs to get his breath, in a dark which smelled of canvas and oil and turpentine. There was a streak of light under a door; he went towards it, knocked, heard no answer, and opened it. The scene was a high, bare, studio sort of place, badly lighted, full of pictures, frames, junk of various kinds. Jackie, the dark, glistening youth, was seated cross-legged before the fire, grinning as he lifted his face to say something to Bobby, who sat in a chair, looking down at him. She was wearing a formal dark dress and jewellery, and her arms and neck were bare and white. She looked beautiful, George thought, glancing once, briefly, at her face, and then away; for he could see on it an emotion he did not want to recognize. The scene held for a moment before they realized he was there and turned their heads with the same lithe movement of disturbed animals, to see him standing there in the doorway. Both faces froze. Bobby looked quickly at the young man, and it was in some kind of fear. Jackie looked sulky and angry.

‘I’ve come to look for you, dear,’ said George to his wife. ‘It was raining and the doorman said you seemed ill.’

‘It’s very sweet of you,’ she said and rose from the chair, giving her hand formally to Jackie, who nodded with bad grace at George.

The taxi stood in the dark, gleaming rain, and George and Bobby got into it and sat side by side, while it splashed off into the street.

‘Was that the wrong thing to do, dear?’ asked George, when she said nothing.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I really did think you might be ill.’

She laughed. ‘Perhaps I am.’

‘What’s the matter, my darling? What is it? He was angry, wasn’t he? Because I came?’

‘He thinks you’re jealous,’ she said shortly.

‘Well, perhaps I am rather,’ said George.

She did not speak.

‘I’m sorry, dear, I really am. I didn’t mean to spoil anything for you.’

‘Well, that’s certainly that,’ she remarked, and she sounded impersonally angry.

‘Why? But why should it be?’

‘He doesn’t like – having things asked of him,’ she said, and he remained silent while they drove home.

Up in the warmed, comfortable old flat, she stood before the fire, while he brought her a drink. She smoked fast and angrily, looking into the fire.

‘Please forgive me, dear,’ he said at last. ‘What is it? Do you love him? Do you want to leave me? If you do, of course you must. Young people should be together.’

She turned and stared at him, a black strange stare he knew well.

‘George,’ she said, ‘I’m nearly forty.’

‘But darling, you’re a child still. At least, to me.’

‘And he,’ she went on, ‘will be twenty-two next month. I’m old enough to be his mother.’ She laughed, painfully. ‘Very painful, maternal love … or so it seems … but then how should I know?’ She held out her bare arm and looked at it. Then, with the fingers of one hand she creased down the skin of that bare arm towards the wrist, so that the ageing skin lay in creases and folds. Then, setting down her glass, her cigarette held between tight, amused, angry lips, she wriggled her shoulders out of her dress, so that it slipped to her waist, and she looked down at her two small, limp, unused breasts. ‘Very painful, dear George,’ she said, and shrugged her dress up quickly, becoming again the formal woman dressed for the world. ‘He does not love me. He does not love me at all. Why should he?’ She began singing:

He does not love me

With a love that is trew …

Then she said in stage cockney, ‘Repeat; I could ‘ave bin ‘is muvver, see?’ And with the old rolling derisive black flash of her eyes she smiled at George.

George was thinking only that this girl, his darling, was suffering now what he had suffered, and he could not stand it. She had been going through this for how long now? But she had been working with that boy for nearly two years. She had been living beside him, George, and he had had no idea at all of her unhappiness. He went over to her, put his arms around her, and she stood with her head on his shoulder and wept. For the first time, George thought, they were together. They sat by the fire a long time that night, drinking, smoking and her head was on his knee and he stroked it, and thought that now, at last, she had been admitted into the world of emotion and they would learn to be really together. He could feel his strength stirring along his limbs for her. He was still a man, after all.

Next day she said she would not go on with the new show. She would tell Jackie he must get another partner. And besides, the new act wasn’t really any good. ‘I’ve had one little act all my life,’ she said, laughing. ‘And sometimes it’s fitted in, and sometimes it hasn’t.’

‘What was the new act? What’s it about?’ he asked her.

She did not look at him. ‘Oh, nothing very much. It was Jackie’s idea, really …’ Then she laughed. ‘It’s quite good really, I suppose …’

‘But what is it?’

‘Well, you see …’ Again he had the impression she did not want to look at him. ‘It’s a pair of lovers. We make fun … it’s hard to explain, without doing it.’

‘You make fun of love?’ he asked.

‘Well, you know, all the attitudes … the things people say. It’s a man and a woman – with music of course. All the music you’d expect, played offbeat. We wear the same costume as for the other act. And then we go through all the motions … It’s rather funny, really …’ she trailed off, breathless, seeing George’s face. ‘Well,’ she said, suddenly very savage, ‘if it isn’t all bloody funny, what is it?’ She turned away to take a cigarette.

‘Perhaps you’d like to go on with it after all?’ he asked ironically.

‘No. I can’t. I really can’t stand it. I can’t stand it any longer, George,’ she said, and from her voice he understood she had nothing to learn from him of pain.

He suggested they both needed a holiday, so they went to Italy. They travelled from place to place, never stopping anywhere longer than a day, for George knew she was running away from any place around which emotion could gather. At night he made love to her, but she closed her eyes and thought of the other half of the act; and George knew it and did not care. But what he was feeling was too powerful for his old body; he could feel a lifetime’s emotions beating through his limbs, making his brain throb.

Again they curtailed their holiday, to return to the comfortable old flat in London.

On the first morning after their return, she said: ‘George, you know you’re getting too old for this sort of thing – it’s not good for you; you look ghastly.’

‘But, darling, why? What else am I still alive for?’

‘People’ll say I’m killing you,’ she said, with a sharp, half angry, half amused, black glance.

‘But, my darling, believe me …’

He could see them both in the mirror; he, an old pursy man, head lowered in sullen obstinacy; she … but he could not read her face.

‘And perhaps I’m getting too old?’ she remarked suddenly.

For a few days she was gay, mocking, then suddenly tender. She was provocative, teasing him with her eyes; then she would deliberately yawn and say, ‘I’m going to sleep. Good night, George.’

‘Well, of course, my darling, if you’re tired.’

One morning she announced she was going to have a birthday party; it would be her fortieth birthday soon. The way she said it made George feel uneasy.

On the morning of her birthday she came into his study where he had been sleeping, carrying his breakfast tray. He raised himself on his elbow and gazed at her, appalled. For a moment he had imagined it must be another woman. She had put on a severe navy blue suit, cut like a man’s; heavy black-laced shoes; and she had taken the wisps of black hair back off her face and pinned them into a sort of clumsy knot. She was suddenly a middle-aged woman.

‘But, my darling,’ he said, ‘my darling, what have you done to yourself?’

‘I’m forty,’ she said. ‘Time to grow up.’

‘But, my darling, I do so love you in your clothes. I do so love you being beautiful in your lovely clothes.’

She laughed, and left the breakfast tray beside his bed, and went clumping out on her heavy shoes.

That morning she stood in the kitchen beside a very large cake, on which she was carefully placing forty small pink candles. But it seemed only the sister had been asked to the party, for that afternoon the three of them sat around the cake and looked at one another. George looked at Rosa, the sister, in her ugly straight, thick suit, and at his darling Bobby, all her grace and charm submerged into heavy tweed, her hair dragged back, without make-up. They were two middle-aged women, talking about food and buying.

George said nothing. His whole body throbbed with loss.

The dreadful Rosa was looking with her sharp eyes around the expensive flat, and then at George and then at her sister.

‘You’ve let yourself go, haven’t you, Bobby?’ she commented at last. She sounded pleased about it.

Bobby glanced defiantly at George. ‘I haven’t got time for all this nonsense any more,’ she said. ‘I simply haven’t got time. We’re all getting on now, aren’t we?’

George saw the two women looking at him. He thought they had the same black, hard, inquisitive stare over sharp-bladed noses. He could not speak. His tongue was thick. The blood was beating through his body. His heart seemed to be swelling and filling his whole body, an enormous soft growth of pain. He could not hear for the tolling of the blood through his ears. The blood was beating up into his eyes, but he shut them so as not to see the two women.

The Woman

The two elderly gentlemen emerged on to the hotel terrace at the same moment. They stopped, and checked movements that suggested they wished to retreat. Their first involuntary glances had been startled, even troubled. Now they allowed their eyes to exchange a long, formal glare of hate, before turning deliberately away from each other.

They surveyed the terrace. A problem! Only one of the tables still remained in sunlight. They stiffly marched towards it, pulled out chairs, seated themselves. At once they opened newspapers and lifted them up like screens.

A pretty waitress came sauntering across to take the orders. The two newspapers remained stationary. Around the edge of one Herr Scholtz ordered warmed wine; from the shelter of the other Captain Forster from England demanded tea – with milk.

When she returned with these fluids, neatly disposed on similar metal trays, both walls of print slightly lowered themselves. Captain Forster, with an aggressive flicker of uneasy blue eyes turned towards his opponent, suggested that it was a fine evening. Herr Scholtz remarked with warm freemasonry that it was a shame such a pretty girl should not be free to enjoy herself on such an evening. Herr Scholtz appeared to consider that he had triumphed, for his look towards the Englishman was boastful. To both remarks, however, Rosa responded with an amiable but equally perfunctory smile. She strolled away to the balustrade where she leaned indolently, her back to them.

Stirring sugar into tea, sipping wine, was difficult with those stiff papers in the way. First Herr Scholtz, then the Captain, folded his and placed it on the table. Avoiding each other’s eyes, they looked away towards the mountains, which, however, were partly blocked by Rosa.

She wore a white blouse, low on the shoulders; a black skirt, with a tiny white apron; smart red shoes. It was at her shoulders that the gentlemen gazed. They coughed, tapped on the table with their fingers, narrowed their eyes in sentimental appreciation at the mountains, looked at Rosa again. From time to time their eyes almost met but quickly slid away. Since they could not fight, civilization demanded they should speak. Yes, conversation appeared imminent.

A week earlier they had arrived on the same morning and were given rooms opposite each other at the end of a long corridor. The season was nearly over, the hotel half empty. Rosa therefore had plenty of time to devote to Herr Scholtz, who demanded it: he wanted bigger towels, different pillows, a glass of water. But soon the bell pealed from the other side of the corridor, and she excused herself and hastened over to Captain Forster who was also dissatisfied with the existing arrangements for his comfort. Before she had finished with him, Herr Scholtz’s bell rang again. Between the two of them Rosa was kept busy until the midday meal, and not once did she suggest by her manner that she had any other desire in this world than to readjust Captain Forster’s reading light or bring Herr Scholtz cigarettes and newspapers.

That afternoon Captain Forster happened to open his door; and he found he had a clear view into the room opposite, where Rosa stood at the window smiling, in what seemed to him charming surrender, at Herr Scholtz, who was reaching out a hand towards her elbow. The hand dropped. Herr Scholtz scowled, walked across, indignantly closed his door as if it were the Captain’s fault it had been left open … Almost at once the Captain’s painful jealousy was erased, for Rosa emerged from that door, smiling with perfect indifference, and wished him good day.

That night, very late, quick footsteps sounded on the floor of the corridor. The two doors gently opened at the same moment; and Rosa, midway between them, smiled placidly at first Herr Scholtz, then the Captain, who gave each other contemptuous looks after she had passed. They both slammed their doors.

Next day Herr Scholtz asked her if she would care to come with him up the funicular on her afternoon off, but unfortunately she was engaged. The day after Captain Forster made the same suggestion.

Finally, there was a repetition of that earlier incident. Rosa was passing along the corridor late at night on her way to her own bed, when those two doors cautiously opened and the two urgent faces appeared. This time she stopped, smiled politely, wished them a very good night. Then she yawned. It was a slight gesture, but perfectly timed. Both gentlemen solaced themselves with the thought that it must have been earned by his rival; for Herr Scholtz considered the Captain ridiculously gauche, while the Captain thought Herr Scholtz’s attitude towards Rosa disgustingly self-assured and complacent. They were therefore able to retire to their beds with philosophy.

Since then Herr Scholtz had been observed in conversation with a well-preserved widow of fifty who unfortunately was obliged to retire to her own room every evening at nine o’clock for reasons of health and was, therefore, unable to go dancing with him, as he longed to do. Captain Forster took his tea every afternoon in a café where there was a charming waitress who might have been Rosa’s sister.

The two gentlemen looked through each other in the dining room, and each crossed the street if he saw the other approaching. There was a look about them which suggested that they might be thinking Switzerland – at any rate, so late in the season – was not all that it had been.

Gallant, however, they both continued to be; and they might continually be observed observing the social scene of flirtations and failures and successes with the calm authority of those well qualified by long familiarity with it to assess and make judgments. Men of weight, they were; men of substance; men who expected deference.

And yet … here they were seated on opposite sides of that table in the last sunlight, the mountains rising above them, all mottled white and brown and green with melting spring, the warm sun folding delicious but uncertain arms around them – and surely they were entitled to feel aggrieved? Captain Forster – a lean, tall, military man, carefully suntanned, spruced, brushed – was handsome still, no doubt of it. And Herr Scholtz – large, rotund, genial, with infinite resources of experience – was certainly worth more than the teatime confidences of a widow of fifty?

Unjust to be sixty on such a spring evening; particularly hard with Rosa not ten paces away, shrugging her shoulders in a low-cut embroidered blouse.

And almost as if she were taking a pleasure in cruelty, she suddenly stopped humming and leaned forward over the balustrade. With what animation did she wave and call down the street, while a very handsome young man below waved and called back. Rosa watched him stride away, and then she sighed and turned, smiling dreamily.

There sat Herr Scholtz and Captain Forster gazing at her with hungry resentful appreciation.

Rosa narrowed her blue eyes with anger and her mouth went thin and cold, in disastrous contrast with her tenderness of a moment before. She shot bitter looks from one gentleman to the other, and then she yawned again. This time it was a large, contemptuous, prolonged yawn; and she tapped the back of her hand against her mouth for emphasis and let out her breath in a long descending note, which, however, was cut off short as if to say that she really had no time to waste even on this small demonstration. She then swung past them in a crackle of starched print, her heels tapping. She went inside.

The terrace was empty. Gay painted tables, striped chairs, flowery sun umbrellas – all were in cold shadow, save for the small corner where the gentlemen sat. At the same moment, from the same impulse, they rose and pushed the table forward into the last well of golden sunlight. And now they looked at each other straight and frankly laughed.

‘Will you have a drink?’ inquired Herr Scholtz in English, and his jolly smile was tightened by a consciously regretful stoicism. After a moment’s uncertainty, during which Captain Forster appeared to be thinking that the stoicism was too early an admission of defeat, he said, ‘Yes – yes. Thanks, I will.’

Herr Scholtz raised his voice sharply, and Rosa appeared from indoors, ready to be partly defensive. But now Herr Scholtz was no longer a suppliant. Master to servant, a man who habitually employed labour, he ordered wine without looking at her once. And Captain Forster was the picture of a silky gentleman.

When she reappeared with the wine they were so deep in good fellowship they might have been saying aloud how foolish it was to allow the sound companionship of men to be spoiled, even for a week, on account of the silly charm of women. They were roaring with laughter at some joke. Or rather, Herr Scholtz was roaring, a good stomach laugh from depths of lusty enjoyment. Captain Forster’s laugh was slightly nervous, emitted from the back of his throat, and suggested that Herr Scholtz’s warm Bavarian geniality was all very well, but that there were always reservations in any relationship.

It soon transpired that during the war – the First War, be it understood – they had been enemies on the same sector of the front at the same time. Herr Scholtz had been wounded in his arm. He bared it now, holding it forward under the Captain’s nose to show the long white scar. Who knew but that it was the Captain who had dealt that blow – indirectly, of course – thirty-five years before? Nor was this all. During the Second World War Captain Forster had very nearly been sent to North Africa, where he would certainly have had the pleasure of fighting Herr, then Oberst-leutnant, Scholtz. As it happened, the fortunes of war had sent him to India instead. While these happy coincidences were being established, it was with the greatest amity on both sides; and if the Captain’s laugh tended to follow Herr Scholtz’s just a moment late, it could easily be accounted for by those unavoidable differences of temperament. Before half an hour was out, Rosa was dispatched for a second flask of the deep crimson wine.

When she returned with it, she placed the glasses so, the flasks so, and was about to turn away when she glanced at the Captain and was arrested. The look on his face certainly invited comment. Herr Scholtz was just remarking, with that familiar smiling geniality, how much he regretted that the ‘accidents of history’ – a phrase that caused the Captain’s face to tighten very slightly – had made it necessary for them to be enemies in the past. In the future, he hoped, they would fight side by side, comrades in arms against the only possible foe for either … But now Herr Scholtz stopped, glanced swiftly at the Captain, and after the briefest possible pause, and without a change of tone, went on to say that as for himself he was a man of peace, a man of creation: he caused innumerable tubes of toothpaste to reach the bathrooms of his country, and he demanded nothing more of life than to be allowed to continue to do so. Besides, had he not dropped his war title, the Oberst-leutnant, in proof of his fundamentally civilian character?

Here, as Rosa still remained before them, contemplating them with a look that can only be described as ambiguous, Herr Scholtz blandly inquired what she wanted. But Rosa wanted nothing. Having inquired if that was all she could do for the gentlemen, she passed to the end of the terrace and leaned against the balustrade there, looking down into the street where the handsome young man might pass.

Now there was a pause. The eyes of both men were drawn painfully towards her. Equally painful was the effort to withdraw them. Then, as if reminded that any personal differences were far more dangerous than the national ones, they plunged determinedly into gallant reminiscences. How pleasant, said that hearty masculine laughter – how pleasant to sit here in snug happy little Switzerland, comfortable in easy friendship, and after such fighting, such obviously meaningless hostilities! Citizens of the world they were, no less, human beings enjoying civilized friendship on equal terms. And each time Herr Scholtz or the Captain succumbed to that fatal attraction and glanced towards the end of the terrace, he as quickly withdrew his eyes and, as it were, set his teeth to offer another gauge of friendship across the table.

But fate did not intend this harmony to continue.

Cruelly, the knife was turned again. The young man appeared at the bottom on the street and, smiling, waved towards Rosa, Rosa leaned forward, arms on the balustrade, the picture of bashful coquetry, rocking one heel up and down behind her and shaking her hair forward to conceal the frankness of her response.

There she stood, even after he had gone, humming lightly to herself, looking after him. The crisp white napkin over her arm shone in the sunlight; her bright white apron shone; her mass of rough fair curls glowed. She stood there in the last sunlight and looked away into her own thoughts, singing softly as if she were quite alone.

Certainly she had completely forgotten the existence of Herr Scholtz and Captain Forster.

The Captain and the ex-Oberst-leutnant had apparently come to the end of their sharable memories. One cleared his throat; the other, Herr Scholtz, tapped his signet ring irritatingly on the table.

The Captain shivered. ‘It’s getting cold,’ he said, for now they were in the blue evening shadow. He made a movement, as if ready to rise.

‘Yes,’ said Herr Scholtz. But he did not move. For a while he tapped his ring on the table, and the Captain set his teeth against the noise. Herr Scholtz was smiling. It was a smile that announced a new trend in the drama. Obviously. And obviously the Captain disapproved of it in advance. A blatant fellow, he was thinking, altogether too noisy and vulgar. He glanced impatiently towards the inside room, which would be warm and quiet.

Herr Scholtz remarked, ‘I always enjoy coming to this place. I always come here.’

‘Indeed?’ asked the Captain, taking his cue in spite of himself. He wondered why Herr Scholtz was suddenly speaking German. Herr Scholtz spoke excellent English, learned while he was interned in England during the latter part of the Second World War. Captain Forster had already complimented him on it. His German was not nearly so fluent, no.

But Herr Scholtz, for reasons of his own, was speaking his own language, and rather too loudly, one might have thought. Captain Forster looked at him, wondering, and was attentive.

‘It is particularly pleasant for me to come to this resort,’ remarked Herr Scholtz in that loud voice, as if to an inner listener, who was rather deaf, ‘because of the happy memories I have of it.’

‘Really?’ inquired Captain Forster, listening with nervous attention. Herr Scholtz, however, was speaking very slowly, as if out of consideration for him.

‘Yes,’ said Herr Scholtz. ‘Of course during the war it was out of bounds for both of us, but now …’

The Captain suddenly interrupted: ‘Actually I’m very fond of it myself. I come here every year it is possible.’

Herr Scholtz inclined his head, admitting that Captain Forster’s equal right to it was incontestable, and continued, ‘I associate with it the most charming of my memories – perhaps you would care to …’

‘But certainly,’ agreed Captain Forster hastily. He glanced involuntarily towards Rosa – Herr Scholtz was speaking with his eyes on Rosa’s back. Rosa was no longer humming. Captain Forster took in the situation and immediately coloured. He glanced protestingly towards Herr Scholtz. But it was too late.

‘I was eighteen,’ said Herr Scholtz very loudly. ‘Eighteen.’ He paused, and for a moment it was possible to resurrect, in the light of his rueful reminiscent smile, the delightful, ingenuous bouncing youth he had certainly been at eighteen. ‘My parents allowed me, for the first time, to go alone for a vacation. It was against my mother’s wishes; but my father on the other hand …’

Here Captain Forster necessarily smiled, in acknowledgment of that international phenomenon, the sweet jealousy of mothers.

‘And here I was, for a ten days’ vacation, all by myself – imagine it!’

Captain Forster obligingly imagined it, but almost at once interrupted: ‘Odd, but I had the same experience. Only I was twenty-five.’

Herr Scholtz exclaimed: ‘Twenty-five!’ He cut himself short, covered his surprise, and shrugged as if to say: Well, one must make allowances. He at once continued to Rosa’s listening back. ‘I was in this very hotel. Winter. A winter vacation. There was a woman …’ He paused, smiling, ‘How can I describe her?’

But the Captain, it seemed, was not prepared to assist. He was frowning uncomfortably towards Rosa. His expression said quite clearly: Really, must you?

Herr Scholtz appeared not to notice it. ‘I was, even in those days, not backward – you understand?’ The Captain made a movement of his shoulders which suggested that to be forward at eighteen was not a matter for congratulation, whereas at twenty-five …

‘She was beautiful – beautiful,’ continued Herr Scholtz with enthusiasm. ‘And she was obviously rich, a woman of the world; and her clothes …’

‘Quite,’ said the Captain.

‘She was alone. She told me she was here for her health. Her husband unfortunately could not get away, for reasons of business. And I, too, was alone.’

‘Quite,’ said the Captain.

‘Even at that age I was not too surprised at the turn of events. A woman of thirty … a husband so much older than herself … and she was beautiful … and intelligent … Ah, but she was magnificent!’ He almost shouted this, and drained his glass reminiscently towards Rosa’s back. ‘Ah …’ he breathed gustily. ‘And now I must tell you. All that was good enough, but now there is even better. Listen. A week passed. And what a week! I loved her as I never loved anyone …’

‘Quite,’ said the Captain, fidgeting.

But Herr Scholtz swept on. ‘And then one morning I wake, and I am alone.’ Herr Scholtz shrugged and groaned.

The Captain observed that Herr Scholtz was being carried away by the spirit of his own enjoyment. This tale was by now only half for the benefit of Rosa. That rich dramatic groan – Herr Scholtz might as well be in the theatre, thought the Captain uncomfortably.

‘But there was a letter, and when I read it …’

‘A letter?’ interrupted the Captain suddenly.

‘Yes, a letter. She thanked me so that the tears came into my eyes. I wept.’

One could have sworn that the sentimental German eyes swam with tears, and Captain Forster looked away. With eyes averted he asked nervously, ‘What was in the letter?’

‘She said how much she hated her husband. She had married him against her will – to please her parents. In those days, this thing happened. And she had sworn a vow to herself never to have his child. But she wanted a child …

‘What?’ exclaimed the Captain. He was leaning forward over the table now, intent on every syllable.

This emotion seemed unwelcome to Herr Scholtz, who said blandly, ‘Yes, that was how it was. That was my good fortune, my friend.’

‘When was that?’ inquired the Captain hungrily.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘When was it? What year?’

‘What year? Does it matter? She told me she had arranged this little holiday on grounds of her bad health, so that she might come by herself to find the man she wanted as the father of her child. She had chosen me. I was her choice. And now she thanked me and was returning to her husband.’ Herr Scholtz stopped, in triumph, and looked at Rosa. Rosa did not move. She could not possibly have failed to hear every word. Then he looked at the Captain. But the Captain’s face was scarlet, and very agitated.

‘What was her name?’ barked the Captain.

‘Her name?’ Herr Scholtz paused. ‘Well, she would clearly have used a false name?’ he inquired. As the Captain did not respond, he said firmly: ‘That is surely obvious, my friend. And I did not know her address.’ Herr Scholtz took a slow sip of his wine, then another. He regarded the Captain for a moment thoughtfully, as if wondering whether he could be trusted to behave according to the rules, and then continued: ‘I ran to the hotel manager – no, there was no information. The lady had left unexpectedly, early that morning. No address. I was frantic. You can imagine. I wanted to rush after her, find her, kill her husband, marry her!’ Herr Scholtz laughed in amused, regretful indulgence at the follies of youth.

‘You must remember the year,’ urged the Captain.

‘But my friend …’ began Herr Scholtz after a pause, very annoyed. ‘What can it matter, after all?’

Captain Forster glanced stiffly at Rosa and spoke in English, ‘As it happened, the same thing happened to me.’

‘Here?’ inquired Herr Scholtz politely.

‘Here.’

‘In this valley?’

‘In this hotel.’

‘Well,’ shrugged Herr Scholtz, raising his voice even more, ‘well, women – women you know. At eighteen, of course – and perhaps even at twenty-five –’ Here he nodded indulgently towards his opponent – ‘Even at twenty-five perhaps one takes such things as miracles that happen only to oneself. But at our age …?’

He paused, as if hoping against hope that the Captain might recover his composure.

But the Captain was speechless.

‘I tell you, my friend,’ continued Herr Scholtz, good-humouredly relishing the tale, ‘I tell you, I was crazy; I thought I would go mad. I wanted to shoot myself; I rushed around the streets of every city I happened to be in, looking into every face. I looked at photographs in the papers – actresses, society women; I used to follow a woman I had glimpsed in the street, thinking that perhaps this was she at last. But no,’ said Herr Scholtz dramatically, bringing down his hand on the table, so that his ring clicked again, ‘no, never, never was I successful!’

‘What did she look like?’ asked the Captain agitatedly in English, his anxious eyes searching the by now very irritated eyes of Herr Scholtz.

Herr Scholtz moved his chair back slightly, looked towards Rosa, and said loudly in German: ‘Well, she was beautiful, as I have told you.’ He paused, for thought. ‘And she was an aristocrat.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Captain impatiently.

‘She was tall, very slim, with a beautiful body – beautiful! She had that black hair, you know, black, black! And black eyes, and beautiful teeth.’ He added loudly and spitefully towards Rosa: ‘She was not the country bumpkin type, not at all. One has some taste.’

With extreme discomfort the Captain glanced towards the plump village Rosa. He said, pointedly using English even at this late stage, ‘Mine was fair. Tall and fair. A lovely girl. Lovely!’ he insisted with a glare. ‘Might have been an English girl.’

‘Which was entirely to her credit,’ suggested Herr Scholtz, with a smile.

‘That was in 1913,’ said the Captain insistently, and then: ‘You say she had black hair?’

‘Certainly, black hair. On that occasion – but that was not the last time it happened to me.’ He laughed. ‘I had three children by my wife, a fine woman – she is now dead, unfortunately.’ Again, there was no doubt tears filled his eyes. At the sight, the Captain’s indignation soared. But Herr Scholtz had recovered and was speaking: ‘But I ask myself, how many children in addition to the three? Sometimes I look at a young man in the streets who has a certain resemblance, and I ask myself: Perhaps he is my son? Yes, yes, my friend, this is a question that every man must ask himself, sometimes, is it not?’ He put back his head and laughed wholeheartedly, though with an undertone of rich regret.

The Captain did not speak for a moment. Then he said in English, ‘It’s all very well, but it did happen to me – it did.’ He sounded like a defiant schoolboy, and Herr Scholtz shrugged.

‘It happened to me, here. In this hotel.’

Herr Scholtz controlled his irritation, glanced at Rosa, and, for the first time since the beginning of this regrettable incident, he lowered his voice to a reasonable tone and spoke English. ‘Well,’ he said, in frank irony, smiling gently, with a quiet shrug, ‘well, perhaps if we are honest we must say that this is a thing that has happened to every man? Or rather, if it did not exist, it was necessary to invent it?’

And now – said his look towards the Captain – and now, for heaven’s sake! For the sake of decency, masculine solidarity, for the sake of our dignity in the eyes of that girl over there, who has so wounded us both – pull yourself together, my friend, and consider what you are saying!

But the Captain was oblivious in memories. ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘No. Speak for yourself. It did happen. Here.’ He paused, and then brought out, with difficulty, ‘I never married.’

Herr Scholtz shrugged, at last, and was silent. Then he called out, ‘Fräulein, Fräulein – may I pay?’ It was time to put an end to it.

Rosa did not immediately turn around. She patted her hair at the back. She straightened her apron. She took her napkin from one forearm and arranged it prettily on the other. Then she turned and came, smiling, towards them. It could at once be seen that she intended her smile to be noticed.

‘You wish to pay?’ she asked Herr Scholtz. She spoke calmly and deliberately in English, and the Captain started and looked extremely uncomfortable. But Herr Scholtz immediately adjusted himself and said in English, ‘Yes, I am paying.’

She took the note he held out and counted out the change from the small satchel under her apron. Having laid the last necessary coin on the table, she stood squarely in front of them, smiling down equally at both, her hands folded in front of her. At last, when they had had the full benefit of her amused, maternal smile, she suggested in English: ‘Perhaps the lady changed the colour of her hair to suit what you both like best?’ Then she laughed. She put back her head and laughed a full, wholehearted laugh.

Herr Scholtz, accepting the defeat with equanimity, smiled a rueful, appreciative smile.

The Captain sat stiffly in his chair, regarding them both with hot hostility, clinging tight to his own, authentic, memories.

But Rosa laughed at him, until with a final swish of her dress she clicked past them both and away off the terrace.

Through the Tunnel

Going to the shore on the first morning of the holiday, the young English boy stopped at a turning of the path and looked down at a wild and rocky bay, and then over to the crowded beach he knew so well from other years. His mother walked on in front of him, carrying a bright striped bag in one hand. Her other arm, swinging loose, was very white in the sun. The boy watched that white, naked arm, and turned his eyes, which had a frown behind them, towards the bay and back again to his mother. When she felt he was not with her, she swung around. ‘Oh, there you are, Jerry!’ she said. She looked impatient, then smiled. ‘Why, darling, would you rather not come with me? Would you rather –’ She frowned, conscientiously worrying over what amusements he might secretly be longing for, which she had been too busy or too careless to imagine. He was very familiar with that anxious, apologetic smile. Contrition sent him running after her. And yet, as he ran, he looked back over his shoulder at the wild bay; and all morning, as he played on the safe beach, he was thinking of it.

Next morning, when it was time for the routine of swimming and sunbathing, his mother said, ‘Are you tired of the usual beach, Jerry? Would you like to go somewhere else?’

‘Oh, no!’ he said quickly, smiling at her out of that unfailing impulse of contrition – a sort of chivalry. Yet, walking down the path with her, he blurted out, ‘I’d like to go and have a look at those rocks down there.’

She gave the idea her attention. It was a wild-looking place, and there was no one there; but she said, ‘Of course, Jerry. When you’ve had enough, come to the big beach. Or just go straight back to the villa, if you like.’ She walked away, that bare arm, now slightly reddened from yesterday’s sun, swinging. And he almost ran after her again, feeling it unbearable that she should go by herself, but he did not.

She was thinking, Of course he’s old enough to be safe without me. Have I been keeping him too close? He mustn’t feel he ought to be with me. I must be careful.

He was an only child, eleven years old. She was a widow. She was determined to be neither possessive nor lacking in devotion. She went worrying off to her beach.

As for Jerry, once he saw that his mother had gained her beach, he began the steep descent to the bay. From where he was, high up among red-brown rocks, it was a scoop of moving bluish green fringed with white. As he went lower, he saw that it spread among small promontories and inlets of rough, sharp rock, and the crisping, lapping surface showed stains of purple and darker blue. Finally, as he ran sliding and scraping down the last few yards, he saw an edge of white surf and the shallow, luminous movement of water over white sand, and, beyond that, a solid heavy blue.

He ran straight into the water and began swimming. He was a good swimmer. He went out fast over the gleaming sand, over a middle region where rocks lay like discoloured monsters under the surface and then he was in the real sea – a warm sea where irregular cold currents from the deep water shocked his limbs.

When he was so far out that he could look back not only on the little bay but past the promontory that was between it and the big beach, he floated on the buoyant surface and looked for his mother. There she was, a speck of yellow under an umbrella that looked like a slice of orange peel. He swam back to shore, relieved at being sure she was there, but all at once very lonely.

On the edge of a small cape that marked the side of the bay away from the promontory was a loose scatter of rocks. Above them, some boys were stripping off their clothes. They came running, naked, down to the rocks. The English boy swam towards them, but kept his distance at a stone’s throw. They were of that coast; all of them were burned smooth dark brown and speaking a language he did not understand. To be with them, of them, was a craving that filled his whole body. He swam a little closer; they turned and watched him with narrowed, alert dark eyes. Then one smiled and waved. It was enough. In a minute, he had swum in and was on the rocks beside them, smiling with a desperate, nervous supplication. They shouted cheerful greetings at him; and then, as he preserved his nervous, uncomprehending smile, they understood that he was a foreigner strayed from his own beach, and they proceeded to forget him. But he was happy. He was with them.

They began diving again and again from a high point into a well of blue sea between rough, pointed rocks. After they had dived and come up, they swam around, hauled themselves up, and waited their turn to dive again. They were big boys – men, to Jerry. He dived, and they watched him; and when he swam around to take his place, they made way for him. He felt he was accepted and he dived again, carefully, proud of himself.

Soon the biggest of the boys poised himself, shot down into the water, and did not come up. The others stood about, watching. Jerry, after waiting for the sleek brown head to appear, let out a yell of warning; they looked at him idly and turned their eyes back towards the water. After a long time, the boy came up on the other side of a big dark rock, letting the air out of his lungs in a sputtering gasp and a shout of triumph. Immediately the rest of them dived in. One moment, the morning seemed full of chattering boys; the next, the air and the surface of the water were empty. But through the heavy blue, dark shapes could be seen moving and groping.

Jerry dived, shot past the school of underwater swimmers, saw a black wall of rock looming at him, touched it, and bobbed up at once to the surface, where the wall was a low barrier he could see across. There was no one visible; under him, in the water, the dim shapes of the swimmers had disappeared. Then one, and then another of the boys came up on the far side of the barrier of rock, and he understood that they had swum through some gap or hole in it. He plunged down again. He could see nothing through the stinging salt water but the blank rock. When he came up the boys were all on the diving rock, preparing to attempt the feat again. And now, in a panic of failure, he yelled up, in English, ‘Look at me! Look!’ and he began splashing and kicking in the water like a foolish dog.

They looked down gravely, frowning. He knew the frown. At moments of failure, when he clowned to claim his mother’s attention, it was with just this grave, embarrassed inspection that she rewarded him. Through his hot shame, feeling the pleading grin on his face like a scar that he could never remove, he looked up at the group of big brown boys on the rock and shouted, ‘Bonjour! Merci! Au revoir! Monsieur, monsieur!’ while he hooked his fingers round his ears and waggled them.

Water surged into his mouth; he choked, sank, came up. The rock, lately weighted with boys, seemed to rear up out of the water as their weight was removed. They were flying down past him now, into the water; the air was full of falling bodies. Then the rock was empty in the hot sunlight. He counted one, two, three …

At fifty, he was terrified. They must all be drowning beneath him, in the watery caves of the rock. At a hundred, he stared around him at the empty hillside, wondering if he should yell for help. He counted faster, faster, to hurry them up, to bring them to the surface quickly, to drown them quickly – anything rather than the terror of counting on and on into the blue emptiness of the morning. And then, at a hundred and sixty, the water beyond the rock was full of boys blowing like brown whales. They swam back to the shore without a look at him.

He climbed back to the diving rock and sat down, feeling the hot roughness of it under his thighs. The boys were gathering up their bits of clothing and running off along the shore to another promontory. They were leaving to get away from him. He cried openly, fists in his eyes. There was no one to see him, and he cried himself out.

It seemed to him that a long time had passed, and he swam out to where he could see his mother. Yes, she was still there, a yellow spot under an orange umbrella. He swam back to the big rock, climbed up, and dived into the blue pool among the fanged and angry boulders. Down he went, until he touched the wall of rock again. But the salt was so painful in his eyes that he could not see.

He came to the surface, swam to shore and went back to the villa to wait for his mother. Soon she walked slowly up the path, swinging her striped bag, the flushed, naked arm dangling beside her. ‘I want some swimming goggles,’ he panted, defiant and beseeching.

She gave him a patient, inquisitive look as she said casually, ‘Well, of course, darling.’

But now, now, now! He must have them this minute, and no other time. He nagged and pestered until she went with him to a shop. As soon as she had bought the goggles, he grabbed them from her hand as if she were going to claim them for herself, and was off, running down the steep path to the bay.

Jerry swam out to the big barrier rock, adjusted the goggles, and dived. The impact of the water broke the rubber-enclosed vacuum, and the goggles came loose. He understood that he must swim down to the base of the rock from the surface of the water. He fixed the goggles tight and firm, filled his lungs, and floated, face down, on the water. Now, he could see. It was as if he had eyes of a different kind – fish eyes that showed everything clear and delicate and wavering in the bright water.

Under him, six or seven feet down, was a floor of perfectly clean, shining white sand, rippled firm and hard by the tides. Two greyish shapes steered there, like long, rounded pieces of wood or slate. They were fish. He saw them nose towards each other, poise motionless, make a dart forward, swerve off, and come around again. It was like a water dance. A few inches above them the water sparkled as if sequins were dropping through it. Fish again – myriads of minute fish, the length of his fingernail, were drifting through the water, and in moment he could feel the innumerable tiny touches of them against his limbs. It was like swimming in flaked silver. The great rock the big boys had swum through rose sheer out of the white sand – black, tufted lightly with greenish weed. He could see no gap in it. He swam down to its base.

Again and again he rose, took a big chestful of air, and went down again. Again and again he groped over the surface of the rock, feeling it, almost hugging it in the desperate need to find the entrance. And then, once, while he was clinging to the black wall, his knees came up and he shot his feet out forward and they met no obstacle. He had found the hole.

He gained the surface, clambered about the stones that littered the barrier rock until he found a big one, and, with this in his arms, let himself down over the side of the rock. He dropped, with the weight, straight to the sandy floor. Clinging tight to the anchor of stone, he lay on his side and looked in under the dark shelf at the place where his feet had gone. He could see the hole. It was an irregular, dark gap but he could not see deep into it. He let go of his anchor, clung with his hands to the edges of the hole, and tried to push himself in.

He got his head in, found his shoulders jammed, moved them in sideways, and was inside as far as his waist. He could see nothing ahead. Something soft and clammy touched his mouth; he saw a dark frond moving against the greyish rock, and panic filled him. He thought of octupuses, of clinging weed. He pushed himself out backwards and caught a glimpse, as he retreated, of a harmless tentacle of seaweed drifting in the mouth of the tunnel. But it was enough. He reached the sunlight, swam to shore, and lay on the diving rock. He looked down into the blue well of water. He knew he must find his way through that cave, or hole, or tunnel, and out the other side.

First, he thought, he must learn to control his breathing. He let himself down into the water with another big stone in his arms, so that he could lie effortlessly on the bottom of the sea. He counted. One, two, three. He counted steadily. He could hear the movement of blood in his chest. Fifty-one, fifty-two … His chest was hurting. He let go of the rock and went up into the air. He saw the sun was low. He rushed to the villa and found his mother at her supper. She said only, ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’

All night the boy dreamed of the water-filled cave in the rock, and as soon as breakfast was over he went to the bay.

That night, his nose bled badly. For hours he had been underwater, learning to hold his breath, and now he felt weak and dizzy. His mother said, ‘I shouldn’t overdo things, darling, if I were you.’

That day and the next, Jerry exercised his lungs as if everything, the whole of his life, all that he would become, depended upon it. Again his nose bled at night, and his mother insisted on his coming with her the next day. It was a torment to him to waste a day of his careful self-training, but he stayed with her on that other beach, which now seemed a place for small children, a place where his mother might lie safe in the sun. It was not his beach.

He did not ask for permission, on the following day, to go to his beach. He went, before his mother could consider the complicated rights and wrongs of the matter. A day’s rest, he discovered, had improved his count by ten. The big boys had made the passage while he counted a hundred and sixty. He had been counting fast, in his fright. Probably now, if he tried, he could get through that long tunnel, but he was not going to try yet. A curious, most unchildlike persistence, a controlled impatience, made him wait. In the meantime, he lay under water on the white sand, littered now by stones he had brought down from the upper air, and studied the entrance to the tunnel. He knew every jut and corner of it, as far as it was possible to see. It was as if he already felt its sharpness about his shoulders.

He sat by the clock in the villa, when his mother was not near, and checked his time. He was incredulous and then proud to find he could hold his breath without strain for two minutes. The words, ‘two minutes’, authorized by the clock, brought close the adventure that was so necessary to him.

In another four days, his mother said casually one morning, they must go home. On the day before they left, he would do it. He would do it if it killed him, he said defiantly to himself. But two days before they were to leave – a day of triumph when he increased his count by fifteen – his nose bled so badly that he turned dizzy and had to lie limply over the big rock like a bit of seaweed, watching the thick red blood flow on to the rock and trickle slowly down to the sea. He was frightened. Supposing he turned dizzy in the tunnel? Supposing he died there, trapped? Supposing – his head went around, in the hot sun, and he almost gave up. He thought he would return to the house and lie down, and next summer, perhaps, when he had another year’s growth in him – then he would go through the hole.

But even after he had made the decision, or thought he had, he found himself sitting up on the rock and looking down into the water; and he knew that now, this moment, when his nose had only just stopped bleeding, when his head was still sore and throbbing – this was the moment when he would try. If he did not do it now, he never would. He was trembling with fear that he would not go; and he was trembling with horror at that long, long tunnel under the rock, under the sea. Even in the open sunlight, the barrier rock seemed very wide and very heavy; tons of rock pressed down on where he would go. If he died there, he would lie until one day – perhaps not before next year – those big boys would swim into it and find it blocked.

He put on his goggles, fitted them tight, tested the vacuum. His hands were shaking. Then he chose the biggest stone he could carry and slipped over the edge of the rock until half of him was in the cool, enclosing water and half in the hot sun. He looked up once at the empty sky, filled his lungs once, twice, and then sank fast to the bottom with the stone. He let it go and began to count. He took the edges of the hole in his hands and drew himself into it, wriggling his shoulders in sideways as he remembered he must, kicking himself along with his feet.

Soon he was clear inside. He was in a small rock-bound hole filled with yellowish-grey water. The water was pushing him up against the roof. The roof was sharp and pained his back. He pulled himself along with his hands – fast, fast – and used his legs as levers. His head knocked against something; a sharp pain dizzied him. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two … He was without light, and the water seemed to press upon him with the weight of rock. Seventy-one, seventy-two … There was no strain on his lungs. He felt like an inflated balloon, his lungs were so light and easy, but his head was pulsing.

He was being continually pressed against the sharp roof, which felt slimy as well as sharp. Again he thought of octupuses, and wondered if the tunnel might be filled with weed that could tangle him. He gave himself a panicky, convulsive kick forward, ducked his head, and swam. His feet and hands moved freely, as if in open water. The hole must have widened out. He thought he must be swimming fast, and he was frightened of banging his head if the tunnel narrowed.

A hundred, a hundred and one … The water paled. Victory filled him. His lungs were beginning to hurt. A few more strokes and he would be out. He was counting wildly; he said a hundred and fifteen, and then, a long time later, a hundred and fifteen again. The water was a clear jewel-green all around him. Then he saw, above his head, a crack running up through the rock. Sunlight was falling through it, showing the clean, dark rock of the tunnel, a single mussel shell, and darkness ahead.

He was at the end of what he could do. He looked up at the crack as if it were filled with air and not water, as if he could put his mouth to it and draw air. A hundred and fifteen, he heard himself say inside his head – but he had said that long ago. He must go on into the blackness ahead, or he would drown. His head was swelling, his lungs cracking. A hundred and fifteen, a hundred and fifteen pounded through his head, and he feebly clutched at rocks in the dark, pulling himself forward, leaving the brief space of sunlit water behind. He felt he was dying. He was no longer quite conscious. He struggled on in the darkness between lapses into unconsciousness. An immense, swelling pain filled his head, and then the darkness cracked with an explosion of green light. His hands, groping forward, met nothing; and his feet, kicking back, propelled him out into the open sea.

He drifted to the surface, his face turned up to the air. He was gasping like a fish. He felt he would sink now and drown; he could not swim the few feet back to the rock. Then he was clutching it and pulling himself up on to it. He lay face down, gasping. He could see nothing but a red-veined, clotted dark. His eyes must have burst, he thought; they were full of blood. He tore off his goggles and a gout of blood went into the sea. His nose was bleeding, and the blood had filled the goggles.

He scooped up handfuls of water from the cool, salty sea, to splash on his face, and did not know whether it was blood or salt water he tasted. After a time, his heart quietened, his eyes cleared, and he sat up. He could see the local boys diving and playing half a mile away. He did not want them. He wanted nothing but to get back home and lie down.

In a short while, Jerry swam to the shore and climbed slowly up the path to the villa. He flung himself on his bed and slept, waking at the sound of feet on the path outside. His mother was coming back. He rushed to the bathroom, thinking she must not see his face with bloodstains, or tearstains, on it. He came out of the bathroom and met her as she walked into the villa, smiling, her eyes lighting up.

‘Have a nice morning?’ she asked, laying her hand on his warm brown shoulder a moment.

‘Oh yes, thank you,’ he said.

‘You look a bit pale.’ And then, sharp and anxious, ‘How did you bang your head?’

‘Oh, just banged it,’ he told her.

She looked at him closely. He was strained; his eyes were glazed-looking. She was worried. And then she said to herself, Oh, don’t fuss! Nothing can happen. He can swim like a fish.

They sat down to lunch together.

‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘I can stay under water for two minutes – three minutes, at least.’ It came bursting out of him.

‘Can you, darling?’ she said. ‘Well, I shouldn’t overdo it. I don’t think you ought to swim any more today.’

She was ready for a battle of wills, but he gave in at once. It was no longer of the least importance to go to the bay.

Pleasure

There were two great feasts, or turning points, in Mary Rogers’s year. She began preparing for the second as soon as the Christmas decorations were down. This year, she was leafing through a fashion magazine when her husband said, ‘Dreaming of the sun, old girl?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, rather injured. ‘After all, it’s been four years.’

‘I really don’t see how we can afford it.’

On her face he saw a look that he recognized.

Her friend Mrs Baxter, the manager’s wife, also saw the magazine, and said, ‘You’ll be off to the south of France again, this year, I suppose, now that your daughter won’t be needing you.’ She added those words which in themselves were justification for everything: ‘We’ll stay faithful to Brighton, I expect.’

And Mary Rogers said, as she always did: ‘I can’t imagine why anyone takes a holiday in Britain when the same money’d take them to the Continent.’

For four years she had gone with her daughter and the grandchildren to Cornwall. It sounded a sacrifice on the altar of the family, the way she put it to her friends. But this year the daughter was going to the other grandmother in Scotland, and everyone knew it. Everyone. That is, Mrs Baxter, Mrs Justin-Smith, and Mrs Jones.

Mary Rogers bought gay cottons and spread them over the living room. Outside, a particularly grim February held the little Midlands town in a steady shiver. Rain swept the windowpanes. Tommy Rogers saw the cottons and said not a word. But a week later she was fitting a white linen sunsuit before the mirror when he said, ‘I say, old girl, that shows quite a bit of leg, you know …’

At that moment it was acknowledged that they should go. Also, that the four years had made a difference in various ways. Mary Rogers secretly examined her thighs and shoulders before the glass, and thought they might very well be exposed. But the clothes she made were of the sensible but smart variety. She sewed at them steadily through the evenings of March, April, May, June. She was a good needlewoman. Also, for a few happy months before she married, she had studied fashion designing in London. That had been a different world. In speaking of it now, to the women of her circle – Mrs Baxter, Mrs Justin-Smith, and Mrs Jones – her voice conveyed the degree of difference. And Mrs Baxter would say, kindly as always, ‘Ah well, we none of us know what’s in store for us when we’re young.’

They were about to leave towards the end of July. A week before, Tommy Rogers produced a piece of paper on which were set out certain figures. They were much lower figures than ever before. ‘Oh, we’ll manage,’ said Mary vaguely. Her mind was already moving among scenes of blue sea, blue sky.

‘Perhaps we’d better book at the Plaza.’

‘Oh, surely no need. They know us there.’

The evening before they left there was a bridge party in the Baxters’ house for the jaunting couple. Tommy Rogers was seen to give his wife an uneasy glance as she said, ‘With air travel as cheap as it is now, I really can’t understand why …’

For they had booked by train, of course, as usual.

They successfully negotiated the Channel, a night in a Paris hotel, and the catching of the correct train.

In a few hours they would see the little village on the sea where they had first come twenty-five years ago on their honeymoon. They had chosen it because Mary Hill had met, in those artistic circles which she had enjoyed for, alas, so short a time, a certain well-known stage decorator who had a villa there. During that month of honeymoon, they had spent a happy afternoon at the villa.

As the train approached, she was looking to see the villa, alone on its hill above the sea. But the hill was now thick with little white villas, green-shuttered, red-roofed in the warm southern green.

‘The place seems to have grown quite a bit,’ said Tommy. The station had grown, too. There was a long platform now, and a proper station building. And gazing down towards the sea, they saw a cluster of shops and casinos and cafés. Even four years before, there had been only a single shop, a restaurant, and a couple of hotels.

‘Well,’ said Mary bitterly, ‘if the place is full of tourists now, it won’t be the same at all.’

But the sun was shining, the sea tossed and sparkled, and the palm trees stood along the white beach. They carried their suitcases down the slope of the road to the Plaza, feeling at home.

Outside the Plaza, they looked at each other. What had been a modest building was now an imposing one, surrounded by gay awnings and striped umbrellas. ‘Old Jacques is spreading himself,’ said Tommy, and they walked up the neat gravel path to the foyer, looking for Jacques who had welcomed them so often.

At the office, Mary inquired in her stiff, correct French for Monsieur Jacques. The clerk smiled and regretted that Monsieur Jacques had left them three years before. ‘He knew us well,’ said Mary, her voice coming aggrieved and shrill. ‘He always had room for us here.’

But certainly there was a room for Madame. Most certainly. At once attendants came hurrying for the suitcases.

‘Hold your horses a minute,’ said Tommy. ‘Wait. Ask what it costs now.’

Mary inquired, casually enough, what the rates now were. She received the information with a lengthening of her heavy jaw, and rapidly transmitted it to Tommy. He glanced, embarrassed, at the clerk, who, recognizing a situation, turned tactfully to a ledger and prepared to occupy himself so that the elderly English couple could confer.

They did, in rapid, angry undertones.

‘We can’t, Mary. It’s no good. We’d have to go back at the end of a week.’

‘But we’ve always stayed here …’

At last she turned towards the clerk, who was immediately attentive, and said with a stiff smile: ‘I’m afraid the currency regulations make things difficult for us.’ She had spoken in English, such was her upset; and it was in English that he replied pleasantly, ‘I understand perfectly, Madame. Perhaps you would care to try the Belle Vue across the street. There are many English people there.’

The Rogerses left, carrying their two suitcases ignominiously down the neat gravelled path, among the gay tables where people already sat at dinner. The sun had gone down. Opposite, the Belle Vue was a glow of lights. Tommy Rogers was not surprised when Mary walked past it without a look. For years, staying at the Plaza, they had felt superior to the Belle Vue. Also, had that clerk not said it was full of English people?

Since this was France, and the season, the Agency was of course open. An attractive mademoiselle deplored that they had not booked rooms earlier.

‘We’ve been here every year for twenty-five years,’ said Mary, pardonably overlooking the last four, and another stretch of five when the child had been small. ‘We’ve never had to book before.’

Alas, alas, suggested the mademoiselle with her shoulders and her pretty eyes, what a pity that St Nichole had become so popular, so attractive. There was no fact she regretted more. She suggested the Belle Vue.

The Rogerses walked the hundred yards back to the Belle Vue, feeling they were making a final concession to fate, only to find it fully booked up. Returning to the Agency, they were informed that there was, happily, one room vacant in a villa on the hillside. They were escorted to it. And now it was the turn of the pretty mademoiselle to occupy herself, not with a ledger but in examining the view of brilliant stars and the riding lights of ships across the bay, while the Rogerses conferred. Their voices were now not only angry, but high with exasperation. For this room – an extremely small one, at the bottom of a big villa, stone-floored, uncarpeted; with a single large bed of the sort Mary always thought of as French; a wardrobe that was no wardrobe, since it had been filled with shelves; a sink and a small gas stove – they were asked to pay a sum which filled them with disbelief. If they desired hot water, as the English so often do, they would have to heat it in a saucepan on the stove.

But, as the mademoiselle pointed out, turning from her appreciative examination of the exotic night scene, it would be such an advantage to do one’s own cooking.

‘I suggest we go back to the Plaza. Better one week of comfort than three of this,’ said Mary. They returned to the Plaza to find that the room had been taken, and none were available.

It was now nearly ten in the evening, and the infinitely obliging mademoiselle returned them to the little room in the villa, for which they agreed to pay more than they had done four years before for comfort, good food, and hot water in the Plaza. Also, they had to pay a deposit of over ten pounds in case they might escape in the night with the bed, wardrobe, or the tin spoons, or in case they refused to pay the bills for electricity, gas, and water.

The Rogerses went to bed immediately, worn out with travelling and disappointment.

In the morning Mary announced that she had no intention of cooking on a holiday, and they took petit-déjeuner at a café, paid the equivalent of twelve shillings for two small cups of coffee and two rolls, and changed their minds. They would have to cook in the room.

Preserving their good humour with an effort, they bought cold food for lunch, left it in the room, and prepared themselves for enjoyment. For the sea was blue, blue and sparkling. And the sunshine was hot and golden. And after all, this was the south of France, the prettiest place in Europe, as they had always agreed. And in England now, said the Daily Telegraph, it was pouring rain.

On the beach they had another bad moment. Umbrellas stretched six deep, edge to edge, for half a mile along the silvery beach. Bodies lay stretched out, baking in the sun, hundreds to the acre, a perfect bed of heated brown flesh.

‘They’ve ruined the place, ruined it,’ cried Mary, as she surveyed the untidy scene. But she stepped heavily down into the sand and unbuttoned her dress. She was revealed to be wearing a heavy black bathing suit; and she did not miss the relieved glance her husband gave her. She felt it to be unfair. There he stood, a tall, very thin, fair man, quite presentable in an absurd bathing slip that consisted of six inches of material held on by a string round his hips. And there she was, a heavy firm woman, with clear white flesh – but middle-aged, and in a black bathing suit.

She looked about. Two feet away was a mess of tangled brown limbs belonging to half a dozen boys and girls, the girls wearing nothing but coloured cotton brassiéres and panties. She saw Tommy looking at them, too. Then she noticed, eighteen inches to the other side, a vast, grey-haired lady, bulging weary pallid flesh out of a white cotton playsuit. Mary gave her a look of happy superiority and lay down flat on the sand, congratulating herself.

All the morning the English couple lay there, turning over and over on the sand like a pair of grilling herrings, for they felt their skins to be a shame and a disgrace. When they returned to their room for lunch, it was to find that swarms of small black ants had infested their cold meats. They were unable to mind very much, as it became evident they had overdone the sunbathing. Both were bright scarlet, and their eyes ached. They lay down in the cool of the darkened room, feeling foolish to be such amateurs – they, who should have known better! They kept to their beds that afternoon, and the next day … several days passed. Sometimes, when hunger overcame them, Mary winced down to the village to buy cold food – impossible to keep supplies in the room because of the ants. After eating, she hastily washed up in the sink where they also washed. Twice a day, Tommy went reluctantly outside, while she washed herself inch by inch in water heated in the saucepan. Then she went outside while he did the same. After these indispensable measures of hygiene, they retired to the much-too-narrow bed, shrinking away from any chance of contact with each other.

At last the discomfort of the room, as much as their healing flesh, drove them forth again, more cautiously clothed, to the beach. Skin was ripping off them both in long shreds. At the end of a week, however, they had become brown and shining, able to take their places without shame among the other brown and glistening bodies that littered the beach like so many stranded fish.

Day after day the Rogerses descended the steep path to the beach, after having eaten a hearty English breakfast of ham and eggs, and stayed there all morning. All morning they lay, and then all afternoon, but at a good distance from a colony of English, which kept itself to itself some hundreds of yards away.

They watched the children screaming and laughing in the unvarying blue waves. They watched the groups of French adolescents flirt and roll each other over on the sand in a way that Mary, at least, thought appallingly free. Thank heavens her daughter had married young and was safely out of harm’s way! Nothing could have persuaded Mary Rogers of the extreme respectability of these youngsters. She suspected them all of shocking and complicated vices. Incredible that, in so few years, they would be sorted by some powerful and comforting social process into these decent, well-fed French couples, each so anxiously absorbed in the welfare of one, or perhaps two small children.

They watched also, with admiration, the more hardened swimmers cleave out through the small waves into the sea beyond the breakwater with their masks, their airtubes, their frog’s feet.

They were content.

This is what they had come for. This is what all these hundreds of thousands of people along the coast had come for – to lie on the sand and receive the sun on their heating bodies; to receive, too, in small doses, the hot blue water which dried so stickily on them. The sea was very salty and warm-smelling – smelling of a little more than salt and weed, for beyond the breakwater the town’s sewers spilled into the sea, washing back into the inner bay rich deposits which dried on the perfumed oiled bodies of the happy bathers.

This is what they had come for.

Yet, there was no doubt that in the Plaza things had been quite different. There, one rose late; lingered over coffee and rolls; descended, or did not descend, to the beach for a couple of hours’ sun worship; returned to a lengthy lunch; slept, bathed again, enjoyed an even more lengthy dinner. That, too, was called a seaside vacation. Now, the beach was really the only place to go. From nine until one, from two until seven, the Rogerses were on it. It was a seaside holiday with a vengeance.

About the tenth day, they realized that half of their time had gone; and Tommy showed his restlessness, his feeling that there should be more to it than this, by diving into one of the new and so terribly expensive shops and emerging with a mask, frog’s feet, and airtube. With an apology to Mary for leaving her, he plunged out into the bay, looking like – or so she rather tartly remarked – a spaceman in a children’s comic. He did not return for some hours.

‘This is better than anything, old girl, you should try it,’ he said, wading out of the sea with an absorbed excited look. That afternoon she spent on the beach alone, straining her eyes to make out which of the bobbing periscopes in the water was his.

Thus engaged, she heard herself addressed in English: ‘I always say I am an undersea widow, too.’ She turned to see a slight girl, clearly English, with pretty fair curls, a neat blue bathing suit, pretty blue eyes, good legs stretched out in the warm sand. An English girl. But her voice was, so Mary decided, passable, in spite of a rather irritating giggle. She relented and, though it was her principle that one did not go to France to consort with the English, said: ‘Is your husband out there?’

‘Oh, I never see him between meals,’ said the girl cheerfully and lay back on the sand.

Mary thought that this girl was very similar to herself at that age – only, of course, she had known how to make the best of herself. They talked, in voices drugged by sea and sun, until first Tommy Rogers, and then the girl’s husband, rose out of the sea. The young man was carrying a large fish speared through the back by a sort of trident. The excitement of this led the four of them to share a square yard of sand for a few minutes, making cautious overtures.

The next day, Tommy Rogers insisted that his wife should don mask and flippers and try the new sport. She was taken out into the bay, like a ship under escort, by the two men and young Betty Clarke. Mary Rogers did not like the suffocating feeling of the mask pressing against her nose. The speed the frog feet lent her made her nervous, for she was not a strong swimmer. But she was not going to appear a coward with that young girl sporting along so easily just in front.

Out in the bay a small island, a mere cluster of warm, red-brown rock, rose from a surf of frisking white. Around the island, a couple of feet below the surface, submerged rocks lay; and all over them floated the new race of frog-people, face down, tridents poised, observing the fish that darted there. As Mary looked back through her goggles to the shore, it seemed very far, and rather commonplace, with the striped umbrellas, the lolling browned bodies, the paddling children. That was the other sea. This was something different indeed. Here were the adventurers and explorers of the sea, who disdained the safe beaches.

Mary lay loose on the surface of the water and looked down. Enormous, this undersea world, with great valleys and boulders, all wavering green in the sun-dappled water. On a dazzling patch of white sand – twenty feet down, it seemed – sprouted green grass as fresh and bright as if it grew on the shore in sunlight. By reaching down her hand she could almost touch it. Farther away, long fronds of weed rocked and swayed, a forest of them. Mary floated over them, feeling with repugnance how they reached up to her knees and shoulders with their soft, dragging touch. Underneath her, now, a floor of rock, covered with thick growth. Pale grey-green shapes, swelling like balloons, or waving like streamers; delicate whitey-brown flowers and stars, bubbled silver with air; soft swelling udders or bladders of fine white film, all rocking and drifting in the slow undersea movement. Mary was fascinated – a new world, this was. But also repelled. In her ears there was nothing but a splash and crash of surf, and, through it, voices that sounded a long way off. The rocks were now very close below. Suddenly, immediately below her, a thin brown arm reached down, groped in a dark gulf of rock, and pulled out a writhing tangle of grey-dappled flesh. Mary floundered up, slipping painfully on the rocks. She had drifted unknowingly close to the islet; and on the rocks above her stood a group of half-naked bronzed boys, yelling and screaming with excitement as they killed the octopus they had caught by smashing it repeatedly against a great boulder. They would eat it – so Mary heard – for supper. No, it was too much. She was in a panic. The loathsome thing must have been six inches below her – she might have touched it! She climbed on to a rock and looked for Tommy, who was lying on a rock fifty feet off, pointing down at something under it, while Francis Clarke dived for it, and then again. She saw him emerge with a small striped fish, while Tommy and Betty Clarke yelled their excitement.

But she looked at the octopus, which was now lying draped over a rock like a limp, fringed, grey rag; she called her husband, handed over the goggles, the flippers and the tube, and swam slowly back to shore.

There she stayed. Nothing would tempt her out again.

That day Tommy bought an underwater fish gun. Mary found herself thinking, first, that it was all very well to spend over five pounds on this bizarre equipment; and then, that they weren’t going to have much fun at Christmas if they went on like this.

A couple of days passed. Mary was alone all day. Betty Clarke, apparently, was only a beach widow when it suited her, for she much preferred the red-rock island to staying with Mary. Nevertheless, she did sometimes spend half an hour making conversation, and then, with a flurry of apology, darted off through the blue waves to rejoin the men.

Quite soon, Mary was able to say casually to Tommy, ‘Only three days to go.’

‘If only I’d tried this equipment earlier,’ he said. ‘Next year I’ll know better.’

But for some reason the thought of next year did not enchant Mary. ‘I don’t think we ought to come here again,’ she said. ‘It’s quite spoiled now it’s so fashionable.’

‘Oh, well – anywhere, provided there’s rocks and fish.’

On that next day, the two men and Betty Clarke were on the rock island from seven in the morning until lunchtime, to which meal they grudgingly allowed ten minutes, because it was dangerous to swim on a full stomach. Then they departed again until the darkness fell across the sea. All this time Mary Rogers lay on her towel on the beach, turning over and over in the sun. She was now a warm red-gold all over. She imagined how Mrs Baxter would say: ‘You’ve got yourself a fine tan!’ And then, inevitably, ‘You won’t keep it long here, will you?’ Mary found herself unaccountably close to tears. What did Tommy see in these people? she asked herself. As for that young man, Francis – she had never heard him make any remark that was not connected with the weights, the varieties, or the vagaries of fish!

That night, Tommy said he had asked the young couple to dinner at the Plaza.

‘A bit rash, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, well, let’s have a proper meal, for once. Only another two days.’

Mary let that ‘proper meal’ pass. But she said, ‘I shouldn’t have thought they were the sort of people to make friends of.’

A cloud of irritation dulled his face. ‘What’s the matter with them?’

‘In England, I don’t think …’

‘Oh, come off it, Mary!’

In the big garden of the Plaza, where four years ago they had eaten three times a day by right, they found themselves around a small table just over the sea. There was an orchestra and more waiters than guests, or so it seemed. Betty Clarke, seen for the first time out of a bathing suit, was revealed to be a remarkably pretty girl. Her thin brown shoulders emerged from a full white frock, which Mary Rogers conceded to be not bad at all and her wide blue eyes were bright in her brown face. Again Mary thought: If I were twenty – well, twenty-five years younger, they’d take us for sisters.

As for Tommy, he looked as young as the young couple – it simply wasn’t fair, thought Mary. She sat and listened while they talked of judging distances underwater and the advantages of various types of equipment.

They tried to draw her in but there she sat, silent and dignified. Francis Clarke, she had decided, looked stiff and commonplace in his suit, not at all the handsome young sea god of the beaches. As for the girl, her giggle was irritating Mary.

They began to feel uncomfortable. Betty mentioned London, and the three conscientiously talked about London, while Mary said yes and no.

The young couple lived in Clapham, apparently; and they went into town for a show once a month.

‘There’s ever such a nice show running now,’ said Betty. ‘The one at the Princess.’

‘We never get to a show these days,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s five hours by train. Anyway, it’s not in my line.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mary.

‘Oh, I know you work in a matinée when you can.’

At the irritation in the look she gave him, the Clarkes involuntarily exchanged a glance; and Betty said tactfully, ‘I like going to the theatre; it gives you something to talk about.’

Mary remained silent.

‘My wife,’ said Tommy, ‘knows a lot about the theatre. She used to be in a theatre set – all that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, how interesting!’ said Betty eagerly.

Mary struggled with temptation, then fell. ‘The man who did the décor for the show at the Princess used to have a villa here. We visited him quite a bit.’

Tommy gave his wife an alarmed and warning look, and said, ‘I wish to God they wouldn’t use so much garlic.’

‘It’s not much use coming to France,’ said Mary, ‘if you’re going to be insular about food.’

‘You never cook French at home,’ said Tommy suddenly. ‘Why not, if you like it so much?’

‘How can I? If I do, you say you don’t like your food messed up.’

‘I don’t like garlic either,’ said Betty, with the air of one confessing a crime. ‘I must say I’m pleased to be back home where you can get a bit of good plain food.’

Tommy now looked in anxious appeal at his wife, but she inquired, ‘Why don’t you go to Brighton or somewhere like that?’

‘Give me Brighton any time,’ said Francis Clarke. ‘Or Cornwall. You can get damned good fishing off Cornwall. But Betty drags me here. France is overrated, that’s what I say.’

‘It would really seem to be better if you stayed at home.’

But he was not going to be snubbed by Mary Rogers. ‘As for the French,’ he said aggressively, ‘they think of nothing but their stomachs. If they’re not eating, they’re talking about it. If they spent half the time they spend on eating on something worthwhile, they could make something of themselves, that’s what I say.’

‘Such as – catching fish?’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that? Or … for instance …’ Here he gave the matter his earnest consideration. ‘Well, there’s that government of theirs for instance. They could do something about that.’

Betty, who was by now flushed under her tan, rolled her eyes, and let out a high, confused laugh. ‘Oh well, you’ve got to consider what people say. France is so much the rage.’

A silence. It was to be hoped the awkward moment was over. But no; for Francis Clarke seemed to think matters needed clarifying. He said, with a sort of rallying gallantry towards his wife, ‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about getting on.’

‘Well,’ cried Betty, ‘it makes a good impression, you must admit that. And when Mr Beaker – Mr Beaker is his boss,’ she explained to Mary, ‘when you said to Mr Beaker at the whist drive you were going to the south of France, he was impressed, you can say what you like.’

Tommy offered his wife an entirely disloyal, sarcastic grin.

‘A woman should think of her husband’s career,’ said Betty. ‘It’s true, isn’t? And I know I’ve helped Francie a lot. I’m sure he wouldn’t have got that raise if it weren’t for making a good impression. Besides you meet such nice people. Last year, we made friends well, acquaintance, if you like – with some people who live at Ealing. We wouldn’t have, otherwise. He’s in the films.’

‘He’s a cameraman,’ said Francis, being accurate.

‘Well, that’s films, isn’t it? And they asked us to a party. And who do you think was there?’

‘Mr Beaker?’ inquired Mary finely.

‘How did you guess? Well, they could see, couldn’t they? And I wouldn’t be surprised if Francis couldn’t be buyer, now they know he’s used to foreigners. He should learn French, I tell him.’

‘Can’t speak a word,’ said Francis. ‘Can’t stand it anyway – gabble, gabble, gabble.’

‘Oh, but Mrs Rogers speaks it so beautifully,’ cried Betty.

‘She’s cracked,’ said Francis, good-humouredly, nodding to indicate his wife. ‘She spends half the year making clothes for three weeks’ holiday at the sea. Then the other half making Christmas presents out of bits and pieces. That’s all she ever does.’

‘Oh, but it’s so nice to give people presents with that individual touch,’ said Betty.

‘If you want to waste your time I’m not stopping you,’ said Francis. ‘I’m not stopping you. It’s your funeral.’

‘They’re not grateful for what we do for them,’ said Betty, wrestling with tears, trying to claim the older woman as an ally. ‘If I didn’t work hard, we couldn’t afford the friends we got …’

But Mary Rogers had risen from her place. ‘I think I’m ready for bed,’ she said. ‘Good night, Mrs Clarke. Good night, Mr Clarke.’ Without looking at her husband, she walked away.

Tommy Rogers hastily got up, paid the bill, bade the young couple an embarrassed good night, and hurried after his wife. He caught her up at the turning of the steep road up to the villa. The stars were brilliant overhead; the palms waved seductively in the soft breeze. ‘I say,’ he said angrily, ‘that wasn’t very nice of you.’

‘I haven’t any patience with that sort of thing,’ said Mary. Her voice was high and full of tears. He looked at her in astonishment and held his peace.

But next day he went off fishing. For Mary, the holiday was over. She was packing and did not go to the beach.

That evening he said, ‘They’ve asked us back for dinner.’

‘You go. I’m tired.’

‘I shall go,’ he said defiantly, and went. He did not return until very late.

They had to catch the train early next morning. At the little station, they stood with their suitcases in a crowd of people who regretted the holiday was over. But Mary was regretting nothing. As soon as the train came, she got in and left Tommy shaking hands with crowds of English people whom, apparently, he had met the night before. At the last minute, the young Clarkes came running up in bathing suits to say goodbye. She nodded stiffly out of the train window and went on arranging the baggage. Then the train started and her husband came in.

The compartment was full and there was an excuse not to talk. The silence persisted, however. Soon Tommy was watching her anxiously and making remarks about the weather, which worsened steadily as they went north.

In Paris there were five hours to fill in.

They were walking beside the river, by the open-air market, when she stopped before a stall selling earthenware.

‘That big bowl,’ she exclaimed, her voice newly alive, ‘that big red one, there – it would be just right for the Christmas tree.’

‘So it would. Go ahead and buy it, old girl,’ he agreed at once, with infinite relief.

The Day Stalin Died

That day began badly for me with a letter from my aunt in Bournemouth. She reminded me that I had promised to take my cousin Jessie to be photographed at four that afternoon. So I had; and had forgotten all about it. Having arranged to meet Bill at four, I had to telephone him to put it off. Bill was a film writer from the United States who, having had some trouble with an un-American Activities Committee, was blacklisted, could no longer earn his living, and was trying to get a permit to live in Britain. He was looking for someone to be a secretary to him. His wife had always been his secretary but he was divorcing her after twenty years of marriage on the grounds that they had nothing in common. I planned to introduce him to Beatrice.

Beatrice was an old friend from South Africa whose passport had expired. Having been named as a communist, she knew that once she went back she would not get out again, and she wanted to stay another six months in Britain. But she had no money. She needed a job. I imagined that Bill and Beatrice might have a good deal in common but later it turned out that they disapproved of each other. Beatrice said that Bill was corrupt, because he wrote sexy comedies for TV under another name and acted in bad films. She did not think his justification, namely, that a guy has to eat, had anything in its favour. Bill, for his part, had never been able to stand political women. But I was not to know about the incompatibility of my two dear friends and I spent an hour following Bill through one switchboard after another, until at last I got him in some studio where he was rehearsing for a film about Lady Hamilton. He said it was quite all right, because he had forgotten about the appointment in any case. Beatrice did not have a telephone, so I sent her a telegram.

That left the afternoon free for Cousin Jessie. I was just settling down to work when comrade Jean rang up to say she wanted to see me during lunch hour. Jean was for many years my self-appointed guide or mentor towards a correct political viewpoint. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she was one of several self-appointed guides. It was Jean who, the day after I had my first volume of short stories published, took the morning off work to come and see me, in order to explain that one of the stories, I forget which, gave an incorrect analysis of the class struggle. I remember thinking at the time that there was a good deal in what she said.

When she arrived that day at lunchtime, she had her sandwiches with her in a paper bag, but she accepted some coffee, and said she hoped I didn’t mind her disturbing me, but she had been very upset by something she had been told I had said.

It appeared that a week before, at a meeting, I had remarked that there seemed to be evidence for supposing that a certain amount of dirty work must be going on in the Soviet Union. I would be the first to admit that this remark savoured of flippancy.

Jean was a small brisk woman with glasses, the daughter of a Bishop, whose devotion to the working class was proved by thirty years of work in the Party. Her manner towards me was always patient and kindly. ‘Comrade,’ she said, ‘intellectuals like yourself are under greater pressure from the forces of capitalist corruption than any other type of Party cadre. It is not your fault. But you must be on your guard.’

I said I thought I had been on my guard; but nevertheless I could not help feeling that there were times when the capitalist press, no doubt inadvertently, spoke the truth.

Jean tidily finished the sandwich she had begun, adjusted her spectacles, and gave me a short lecture about the necessity for unremitting vigilance on the part of the working class. She then said she must go, because she had to be at her office at two. She said that the only way an intellectual with my background could hope to attain to a correct working-class viewpoint was to work harder in the Party; to mix continually with the working class; and in this way my writing would gradually become a real weapon in the class struggle. She said, further, that she would send me the verbatim record of the Trials in the thirties, and if I read this, I would find my present vacillating attitude towards Soviet justice much improved. I said I had read the verbatim records a long time ago; and I always did think they sounded unconvincing. She said that I wasn’t to worry; a really sound working-class attitude would develop with time.

With this she left me. I remember that, for one reason and another, I was rather depressed.

I was just settling down to work again when the telephone rang. It was Cousin Jessie, to say she could not come to my flat as arranged, because she was buying a dress to be photographed in. Could I meet her outside the dress shop in twenty minutes? I therefore abandoned work for the afternoon and took a taxi.

On the way the taxi man and I discussed the cost of living, the conduct of the government, and discovered we had everything in common. Then he began telling me about his only daughter, aged eighteen, who wanted to marry his best friend, aged forty-five. He did not hold with this; had said so; and thereby lost daughter and friend at one blow. What made it worse was that he had just read an article on psychology in the woman’s magazine his wife took, from which he had suddenly gathered that his daughter was father-fixated. ‘I felt real bad when I read that,’ he said. ‘It’s a terrible thing to come on suddenlike, a thing like that.’ He drew up smartly outside the dress shop and I got out.

‘I don’t see why you should take it to heart,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we weren’t all father-fixated.’

‘That’s not the way to talk,’ he said, holding out his hand for the fare. He was a small, bitter-looking man, with a head like a lemon or like a peanut, and his small blue eyes were brooding and bitter. ‘My old woman’s been saying to me for years that I favoured our Hazel too much. What gets me is, she might have been in the right of it.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘look at it this way. It’s better to love a child too much than too little.’

‘Love?’ he said. ‘Love, is it? Precious little love or anything else these days if you ask me, and Hazel left home three months ago with my mate George and not so much as a postcard to say where or how.’

‘Life’s pretty difficult for everyone,’ I said, ‘what with one thing and another.’

‘You can say that,’ he said.

This conversation might have gone on for some time, but I saw my cousin Jessie standing on the pavement watching us. I said goodbye to the taxi man and turned, with some apprehension, to face her.

‘I saw you,’ she said. ‘I saw you arguing with him. It’s the only thing to do. They’re getting so damned insolent these days. My principle is, tip them sixpence regardless of the distance, and if they argue, let them have it. Only yesterday I had one shouting at my back all down the street because I gave him sixpence. But we’ve got to stand up to them.’

My cousin Jessie is a tall girl, broad-shouldered, aged about twenty-five. But she looks eighteen. She has light brown hair which she wears falling loose around her face, which is round and young and sharp-chinned. Her wide, light blue eyes are virginal and fierce. She is altogether like the daughter of a Viking, particularly when battling with bus conductors, taxi men, and porters. She and my Aunt Emma carry on permanent guerrilla warfare with the lower orders; an entertainment I begrudge neither of them, because their lives are dreary in the extreme. Besides, I believe their antagonists enjoy it. I remember once, after a set-to between Cousin Jessie and a taxi driver, when she had marched smartly off, shoulders swinging, he chuckled appreciatively and said: ‘That’s a real old-fashioned type, that one. They don’t make them like that these days.’

‘Have you bought your dress?’ I asked.

‘I’ve got it on,’ she said.

Cousin Jessie always wears the same outfit: a well-cut suit, a round-necked jersey, and a string of pearls. She looks very nice in it.

‘Then we might as well go and get it over,’ I said.

‘Mummy is coming, too,’ she said. She looked at me aggressively.

‘Oh well,’ I said.

‘But I told her I would not have her with me while I was buying my things. I told her to come and pick me up here. I will not have her choosing my clothes for me.’

‘Quite right,’ I said.

My Aunt Emma was coming towards us from the tearoom at the corner, where she had been biding her time. She is a very large woman, and she wears navy blue and pearls and white gloves like a policeman on traffic duty. She has a big, heavy-jowled, sorrowful face; and her bulldog eyes are nearly always fixed in disappointment on her daughter.

‘There!’ she said as she saw Jessie’s suit. ‘You might just as well have had me with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Jessie quickly.

‘I went in to Renée’s this morning and told them you were coming, and I asked them to show you that suit. And you’ve bought it. You see, I do know your tastes as I know my own.’

Jessie lifted her sharp battling chin at her mother, who dropped her eyes in modest triumph and began poking at the pavement with the point of her umbrella.

‘I think we’d better get started,’ I said.

Aunt Emma and Cousin Jessie, sending off currents of angry electricity into the air all around them, fell in beside me, and we proceeded up the street.

‘We can get a bus at the top,’ I said.

‘Yes, I think that would be better,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘I don’t think I could face the insolence of another taxi driver today.’

‘No,’ said Jessie, ‘I couldn’t either.’

We went to the top of the bus, which was empty, and sat side by side along the two seats at the very front.

‘I hope this man of yours is going to do Jessie justice,’ said Aunt Emma.

‘I hope so too,’ I said. Aunt Emma believes that every writer lives in a whirl of photographers, press conferences, and publishers’ parties. She thought I was the right person to choose a photographer. I wrote to say I wasn’t. She wrote back to say it was the least I could do. ‘It doesn’t matter in the slightest anyway,’ said Jessie, who always speaks in short, breathless, battling sentences, as from an unassuageably painful inner integrity that she doesn’t expect anyone else to understand.

It seems that at the boarding house where Aunt Emma and Jessie live, there is an old inhabitant who has a brother who is a TV producer. Jessie had been acting in Quiet Wedding with the local Reps. Aunt Emma thought that if there was a nice photograph of Jessie, she could show it to the TV producer when he came to tea with his brother at the boarding house, which he was expected to do any weekend now; and if Jessie proved to be photogenic, the TV producer would whisk her off to London to be a TV star.

What Jessie thought of this campaign I did not know. I never did know what she thought of her mother’s plans for her future. She might conform or she might not; but it was always with the same fierce and breathless integrity of indifference.

‘If you’re going to take that attitude, dear,’ said Aunt Emma, ‘I really don’t think it’s fair to the photographer.

‘Oh, Mummy!’ said Jessie.

‘There’s the conductor,’ said Aunt Emma, smiling bitterly. ‘I’m not paying a penny more than I did last time. The fare from Knightsbridge to Little Duchess Street is threepence.’

‘The fares have gone up,’ I said.

‘Not a penny more,’ said Aunt Emma.

But it was not the conductor. It was two middle-aged people, who steadied each other at the top of the stairs and then sat down, not side by side, but one in front of the other. I thought this was odd, particularly as the woman leaned forward over the man’s shoulder and said in a loud parrot voice: ‘Yes, and if you turn my goldfish out of doors once more, I’ll tell the landlady to turn you out. I’ve warned you before.’

The man, in appearance like a damp, grey, squashed felt hat, looked in front of him and nodded with the jogging of the bus.

She said, ‘And there’s fungus on my fish. You needn’t think I don’t know where it came from.’

Suddenly he remarked in a high insistent voice, ‘There are all those little fishes in the depths of the sea, all those little fishes. We explode all these bombs at them, and we’re not going to be forgiven for that, are we, we’re not going to be forgiven for blowing up the poor little fishes.’

She said, in an amiable voice, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and she left her seat behind him and sat in the same seat with him.

I had known that the afternoon was bound to get out of control at some point but this conversation upset me. I wa relieved when Aunt Emma restored normality by saying: ‘There. There never used to be people like that. It’s the Labour Government.’

‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Jessie, ‘I’m not in the mood for politics this afternoon.’

We had arrived at the place we wanted, and we got down off the bus. Aunt Emma gave the bus conductor ninepence for the three of us, which he took without comment. ‘And they’re inefficient as well,’ she said.

It was drizzling and rather cold. We proceeded up the street, our heads together under Aunt Emma’s umbrella.

Then I saw a newsboard with the item: Stalin is Dying. I stopped and the umbrella went jerking up the pavement without me. The newspaperman was an old acquaintance. I said to him, ‘What’s this, another of your sales boosters?’ He said: ‘The old boy’s had it, if you ask me. Well, the way he’s lived – the way I look at it, he’s had it coming to him. Must have the constitution of a bulldozer.’ He folded up a paper and gave it to me. ‘The way I look at it is that it doesn’t do anyone any good to live that sort of life. Sedentary. Reading reports and sitting at meetings. That’s why I like this job – there’s plenty of fresh air.’

A dozen paces away Aunt Emma and Jessie were standing facing me, huddled together under the wet umbrella. ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ shouted Aunt Emma. ‘Can’t you see, she’s buying a newspaper,’ said Jessie crossly.

The newspaperman said, ‘It’s going to make quite a change, with him gone. Not that I hold much with the goings-on out there. But they aren’t ued to democracy much, are they? What I mean is, if people aren’t used to something, they don’t miss it.’

I ran through the drizzle to the umbrella. ‘Stalin’s dying,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’ said Aunt Emma suspiciously.

‘It says so in the newspaper.’

‘They said he was sick this morning, but I expect it’s just propaganda. I won’t believe it till I see it.’

‘Oh don’t be silly, Mummy. How can you see it?’ said Jessie.

We went on up the street. Aunt Emma said: ‘What do you think, would it have been better if Jessie had bought a nice pretty afternoon dress?’

‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Jessie, ‘can’t you see she’s upset? It’s the same for her as it would be for us if Churchill was dead.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ said Aunt Emma, shocked, stopping dead. An umbrella spoke scraped across Jessie’s scalp, and she squeaked. ‘Do put that umbrella down now. Can’t you see it’s stopped raining?’ she said, irritably, rubbing her head.

Aunt Emma pushed and bundled at the umbrella until it collapsed, and Jessie took it and rolled it up. Aunt Emma, flushed and frowning, looked dubiously at me. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea?’ she said.

‘Jessie’s going to be late,’ I said. The photographer’s door was just ahead.

‘I do hope this man’s going to get Jessie’s expression,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘There’s never been one yet that got her look.’

Jessie went crossly ahead of us up some rather plushy stairs in a hallway with mauve and gold striped wallpaper. At the top there was a burst of Stravinsky as Jessie masterfully opened a door and strode in. We followed her into what seemed to be a drawing room, all white and grey and gold. The Rites of Spring tinkled a baby chandelier overhead; and there was no point in speaking until our host, a charming young man in a black velvet jacket, switched off the machine, which he did with an apologetic smile.

‘I do hope this is the right place,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘I have brought my daughter to be photographed.’

‘Of course it’s the right place,’ said the young man. ‘How delightful of you to come!’ He took my Aunt Emma’s white-gloved hands in his own and seemed to press her down on to a large sofa; a pressure to which she responded with a confused blush. Then he looked at me. I sat down quickly on another divan, a long way from Aunt Emma. He looked professionally at Jessie, smiling. She was standing on the carpet, hands linked behind her back, like an admiral on the job, frowning at him.

‘You don’t look at all relaxed,’ he said to her gently. ‘It’s really no use at all, you know, unless you are really relaxed all over.’

‘I’m perfectly relaxed,’ said Jessie. ‘It’s my cousin here who isn’t relaxed.’

I said, ‘I don’t see that it matters whether I’m relaxed or not, because it’s not me who is going to be photographed.’ A book fell off the divan beside me on the floor. It was Prancing Nigger by Ronald Firbank. Our host dived for it, anxiously.

‘Do you read our Ron?’ he asked.

‘From time to time,’ I said.

‘Personally I never read anything else,’ he said. ‘As far as I am concerned he said the last word. When I’ve read him all through, I begin again at the beginning and read him through again. I don’t see that there’s any point in anyone ever writing another word after Firbank.’

This remark discouraged me, and I did not feel inclined to say anything.

‘I think we could all do with a nice cup of tea,’ he said. ‘While I’m making it, would you like the gramophone on again?’

‘I can’t stand modern music,’ said Jessie.

‘We can’t all have the same tastes,’ he said. He was on his way to a door at the back, when it opened and another young man came in with a tea tray. He was as light and lithe as the first, with the same friendly ease of manner. He was wearing black jeans and a purple sweater, and his hair looked like two irregular glossy black wings on his head.

‘Ah, bless you, dear!’ said our host to him. Then to us: ‘Let me introduce my friend and assistant, Jackie Smith. My name you know. Now if we all have a nice cup of tea, I feel that our vibrations might become just a little more harmonious.’

All this time Jessie was standing-at-ease on the carpet. He handed her a cup of tea. She nodded towards me, saying, ‘Give it to her.’ He took it back and gave it to me. ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

‘I am perfectly well,’ I said, reading the newspaper.

‘Stalin is dying,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘Or so they would like us to believe.’

‘Stalin?’ said our host.

‘That man in Russia,’ said Aunt Emma.

‘Oh, you mean old Uncle Joe. Bless him.’

Aunt Emma started. Jessie looked gruffly incredulous.

Jackie Smith came and sat down beside me and read the newspaper over my shoulder. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well, well.’ Then he giggled and said: ‘Nine doctors. If there were fifty doctors I still wouldn’t feel very safe, would you?’

‘No, not really,’ I said.

‘Silly old nuisance,’ said Jackie Smith. ‘Should have bumped him off years ago. Obviously outlived his usefulness at the end of the war, wouldn’t you think?’

‘It seems rather hard to say,’ I said.

Our host, a teacup in one hand, raised the other in a peremptory gesture. ‘I don’t like to hear that kind of thing,’ he said. ‘I really don’t. God knows, if there’s one thing I make a point of never knowing a thing about, it’s politics, but during the war Uncle Joe and Roosevelt were absolutely my pin-up boys. But absolutely!’

Here Cousin Jessie, who had neither sat down nor taken a cup of tea, took a stride forward and said angrily: ‘Look, do you think we could get this damned business over with?’ Her virginal pink cheeks shone with emotion, and her eyes were brightly unhappy.

‘But, my dear!’ said our host, putting down his cup. ‘But of course. If you feel like that, of course.’

He looked at his assistant, Jackie, who reluctantly laid down the newspaper and pulled the cords of a curtain, revealing an alcove full of cameras and equipment. Then they both thoughtfully examined Jessie. ‘Perhaps it would help,’ said our host, ‘if you could give me an idea what you want it for? Publicity? Dust jackets? Or just for your lucky friends?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ said Cousin Jessie.

Aunt Emma stood up sand said: ‘I would like you to catch her expression. It’s just a little look of hers …’

Jessie clenched her fists at her.

‘Aunt Emma,’ I said, ‘don’t you think it would be a good idea if you and I went out for a little?’

‘But my dear …’

But our host had put his arm around her and was easing her to the door. ‘There’s a duck,’ he was saying. ‘You do want me to make a good job of it, don’t you? And I never could really do my best, even with the most sympathetic lookers-on.’

Again Aunt Emma went limp, blushing. I took his place at her side and led her to the door. As we shut it, I heard Jackie Smith saying: ‘Music, do you think?’ And Jessie: ‘I loathe music.’ And Jackie again: ‘We do rather find music helps, you know …’

The door shut and Aunt Emma and I stood at the landing window, looking into the street.

‘Has that young man done you?’ she asked.

‘He was recommended to me,’ I said.

Music started up from the room behind us. Aunt Emma’s foot tapped on the floor. ‘Gilbert and Sullivan,’ she said. ‘Well, she can’t say she loathes that. But I suppose she would, just to be difficult.’

I lit a cigarette. The Pirates of Penzance abruptly stopped.

‘Tell me, dear,’ said Aunt Emma, suddenly rougish, ‘about all the exciting things you are doing.’

Aunt Emma always says this; and always I try hard to think of portions of my life suitable for presentation to Aunt Emma. ‘What have you been doing today, for instance?’ I considered Bill; I considered Beatrice; I considered comrade Jean.

‘I had lunch,’ I said, ‘with the daughter of a Bishop.’

‘Did you, dear?’ she said doubtfully.

Music again: Cole Porter. ‘That doesn’t sound right to me,’ said Aunt Emma. ‘It’s modern, isn’t it?’ The music stopped. The door opened. Cousin Jessie stood there, shining with determination. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy, but I’m not in the mood.’

‘But we won’t be coming up to London again for another four months.’

Our host and his assistant appeared behind Cousin Jessie. Both were smiling rather bravely. ‘Perhaps we had better all forget about it,’ said Jackie Smith.

Our host said, ‘Yes, we’ll try again later, when everyone is really themselves.’

Jessie turned to the two young men and thrust out her hand at them. ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, with her fierce virgin sincerity. ‘I am really terribly sorry.’

Aunt Emma went forward, pushed aside Jessie, and shook their hands. ‘I must thank you both,’ she said, ‘for the tea.’

Jackie Smith waved my newspaper over the three heads. ‘You’ve forgotten this,’ he said.

‘Never mind, you can keep it,’ I said.

‘Oh, bless you, now I can read all the gory details.’ The door shut on their friendly smiles.

‘Well,’ said Aunt Emma, ‘I’ve never been more ashamed.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Jessie fiercely. ‘I really couldn’t care less.’

We descended into the street. We shook each other’s hands. We kissed each other’s cheeks. We thanked each other. Aunt Emma and Cousin Jessie waved at a taxi. I got on a bus.

When I got home, the telephone was ringing. It was Beatrice. She said she had got my telegram, but she wanted to see me in any case. ‘Did you know Stalin was dying?’ I said.

‘Yes, of course. Look, it’s absolutely essential to discuss this business on the Copper Belt.’

‘Why is it?’

‘If we don’t tell people the truth about it, who is going to?’

‘Oh, well, I suppose so,’ I said.

She said she would be over in an hour. I set out my typewriter and began to work. The telephone rang. It was comrade Jean. ‘Have you heard the news?’ she said. She was crying.

Comrade Jean had left her husband when he became a member of the Labour Party at the time of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, and ever since then had been living in bed-sitting rooms on bread, butter and tea, with a portrait of Stalin over her bed.

‘Yes, I have,’ I said.

‘It’s awful,’ she said sobbing. ‘Terrible. They’ve murdered him.’

‘Who has? How do you know?’ I said.

‘He’s been murdered by capitalist agents,’ she said. ‘It’s perfectly obvious.’

‘He was seventy-three,’ I said.

‘People don’t die just like that,’ she said.

‘They do at seventy-three,’ I said.

‘We will have to pledge ourselves to be worthy of him,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose we will.’

Wine

A man and woman walked towards the boulevard from a little hotel in a side street.

The trees were still leafless, black, cold; but the fine twigs were swelling towards spring, so that looking upward it was with an expectation of the first glimmering greenness. Yet everything was calm, and the sky was a calm, classic blue.

The couple drifted slowly along. Effort, after days of laziness, seemed impossible; and almost at once they turned into a café and sank down, as if exhausted, in the glass-walled space that was thrust forward into the street.

The place was empty. People were seeking the midday meal in the restaurants. Not all: that morning crowds had been demonstrating, a procession had just passed, and its straggling end could still be seen. The sounds of violence, shouted slogans and singing, no longer absorbed the din of Paris traffic; but it was these sounds that had roused the couple from sleep.

A waiter leaned at the door, looking after the crowds, and he reluctantly took an order for coffee.

The man yawned; the woman caught the infection; and they laughed with an affectation of guilt and exchanged glances before their eyes, without regret, parted. When the coffee came, it remained untouched. Neither spoke. After some time the woman yawned again; and this time the man turned and looked at her critically, and she looked back. Desire asleep, they looked. This remained: that while everything which drove them slept, they accepted from each other a sad irony; they could look at each other without illusion, steady-eyed.

And then, inevitably, the sadness deepened in her till she consciously resisted it; and into him came the flicker of cruelty.

‘Your nose needs powdering,’ he said.

‘You need a whipping boy.’

But always he refused to feel sad. She shrugged, and, leaving him to it, turned to look out. So did he. At the far end of the boulevard there was a faint agitation, like stirred ants, and she heard him mutter, ‘Yes, and it still goes on …’

Mocking, she said, ‘Nothing changes, everything always the same …’

But he had flushed. ‘I remember,’ he began, in a different voice. He stopped, and she did not press him, for he was gazing at the distant demonstrators with a bitterly nostalgic face.

Outside drifted the lovers, the married couples, the students, the old people. There the stark trees; there the blue, quiet sky. In a month the trees would be vivid green; the sun would pour down heat; the people would be brown, laughing, bare-limbed. No, no, she said to herself, at this vision of activity. Better the static sadness. And, all at once, unhappiness welled up in her, catching her throat, and she was back fifteen years in another country. She stood in blazing tropical moonlight, stretching her arms to a landscape that offered her nothing but silence and then she was running down a path where small stones glinted sharp underfoot, till at last she fell spent in a swathe of glistening grass. Fifteen years.

It was at this moment that the man turned abruptly and called the waiter and ordered wine.

‘What,’ she said humorously, ‘already?’

‘Why not?’

For the moment she loved him completely and maternally, till she suppressed the counterfeit and watched him wait, fidgeting, for the wine, pour it, and then set the two glasses before them beside the still-brimming coffee cups. But she was again remembering that night, envying the girl ecstatic with moonlight, who ran crazily through the trees in an unsharable desire for – but that was the point.

‘What are you thinking of?’ he asked, still a little cruel.

‘Ohhh,’ she protested humorously.

‘That’s the trouble, that’s the trouble.’ He lifted his glass, glanced at her, and set it down. ‘Don’t you want a drink?’

‘Not yet.’

He left his glass untouched and began to smoke.

These moments demanded some kind of gesture – something slight, even casual, but still an acknowledgement of the separateness of these two people in each of them; the one seen, perhaps, as a soft-staring never-closing eye, observing, always observing, with a tired compassion; the other, a shape of violence that struggled on in the cycle of desire and rest, creation and achievement.

He gave it her. Again their eyes met in the grave irony, before he turned away, flicking his fingers irritably against the table; and she turned also, to note the black branches where the sap was tingling.

‘I remember,’ he began; and again she said, in protest, ‘Ohhh!’

He checked himself. ‘Darling,’ he said dryly, ‘you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.’ They laughed.

‘It must have been this street. Perhaps this café – only they change so. When I went back yesterday to see the place where I came every summer, it was a pâtisserie, and the woman had forgotten me. There was a whole crowd of us – we used to go around together – and I met a girl here, I think, for the first time. There were recognized places for contacts; people coming from Vienna or Prague, or wherever it was, knew the places – it couldn’t be this café, unless they’ve smartened it up. We didn’t have the money for all this leather and chromium.’

‘Well, go on.’

‘I keep remembering her, for some reason. Haven’t thought of her for years. She was about sixteen, I suppose. Very pretty – no, you’re quite wrong. We used to study together. She used to bring her books to my room. I liked her, but I had my own girl, only she was studying something else, I forget what.’ He paused again, and again his face was twisted with nostalgia, and involuntarily she glanced over her shoulder down the street. The procession had completely disappeared, not even the sound of singing and shouting remained.

‘I remember her because …’ And, after a preoccupied silence: ‘Perhaps it is always the fate of the virgin who comes and offers herself, naked, to be refused.’

‘What!’ she exclaimed, startled. Also, anger stirred in her. She noted it, and sighed. ‘Go on.’

‘I never made love to her. We studied together all that summer. Then, one weekend, we all went off in a bunch. None of us had any money, of course, and we used to stand on the pavements and beg lifts, and meet up again in some village. I was with my own girl, but that night we were helping the farmer get his fruit, in payment for using his barn to sleep in, and I found this girl Marie was beside me. It was moonlight, a lovely night, and we were all singing and making love. I kissed her, but that was all. That night she came to me. I was sleeping up in the loft with another lad. He was asleep. I sent her back down to the others. They were all together down in the hay. I told her she was too young. But she was no younger than my own girl.’ He stopped; and after all these years his face was rueful and puzzled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I sent her back.’ Then he laughed. ‘Not that it matters, I suppose.’

‘Shameless hussy,’ she said. The anger was strong now. ‘You had kissed her, hadn’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘But we were all playing the fool. It was a glorious night – gathering apples, the farmer shouting and swearing at us because we were making love more than working, and singing and drinking wine. Besides, it was that time: the youth movement. We regarded faithfulness and jealousy and all that sort of thing as remnants of bourgeois morality.’ He laughed again, rather painfully. ‘I kissed her. There she was, beside me, and she knew my girl was with me that weekend.’

‘You kissed her,’ she said accusingly.

He fingered the stem of his wineglass, looking over at her and grinning. ‘Yes, darling,’ he almost crooned at her. ‘I kissed her.’

She snapped over into anger. ‘There’s a girl all ready for love. You make use of her for working. Then you kiss her. You know quite well …’

‘What do I know quite well?’

‘It was a cruel thing to do.’

‘I was a kid myself …’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She noted, with discomfort, that she was almost crying. ‘Working with her! Working with a girl of sixteen, all summer!’

‘But we all studied very seriously. She was a doctor afterwards, in Vienna. She managed to get out when the Nazis came in, but …’

She said impatiently, ‘Then you kissed her, on that night. Imagine her, waiting till the others were asleep, then she climbed up the ladder to the loft, terrified the other man might wake up, then she stood watching you sleep, and she slowly took off her dress and …’

‘Oh, I wasn’t asleep. I pretended to be. She came up dressed. Shorts and sweater – our girls didn’t wear dresses and lipstick – more bourgeois morality. I watched her strip. The loft was full of moonlight. She put her hand over my mouth and came down beside me.’ Again, his face was filled with rueful amazement. ‘God knows, I can’t understand it myself. She was a beautiful creature. I don’t know why I remember it. It’s been coming into my mind the last few days.’ After a pause, slowly twirling the wineglass: ‘I’ve been a failure in many things, but not with …’ He quickly lifted her hand, kissed it, and said sincerely: ‘I don’t know why I remember it now, when …’ Their eyes met, and they sighed.

She said slowly, her hand lying in his: ‘And so you turned her away.’

He laughed. ‘Next morning she wouldn’t speak to me. She started a love affair with my best friend – the man who’d been beside me that night in the loft, as a matter of fact. She hated my guts, and I suppose she was right.’

‘Think of her. Think of her at that moment. She picked up her clothes, hardly daring to look at you …’

‘As a matter of fact, she was furious. She called me all the names she could think of; I had to keep telling her to shut up, she’d wake the whole crowd.’

‘She climbed down the ladder and dressed again, in the dark. Then she went out of the barn, unable to go back to the others. She went into the orchard. It was still brilliant moonlight. Everything was silent and deserted, and she remembered how you’d all been singing and laughing and making love. She went to the tree where you’d kissed her. The moon was shining on the apples. She’ll never forget it, never, never!’

He looked at her curiously. The tears were pouring down her face.

‘It’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Terrible. Nothing could ever make up to her for that. Nothing, as long as she lived. Just when everything was most perfect, all her life, she’d suddenly remember that night, standing alone, not a soul anywhere, miles of damned empty moonlight …’

He looked at her shrewdly. Then, with a sort of humorous, deprecating grimace, he bent over and kissed her and said: ‘Darling, it’s not my fault; it just isn’t my fault.’

‘No,’ she said.

He put the wineglass into her hands; and she lifted it up, looked at the small crimson globule of warming liquid, and drank with him.

He

‘Goodness! You gave me a start, Mary …’

Mary Brooke was quietly knitting beside the stove. ‘Thought I’d drop in,’ she said.

Annie Blake pulled off her hat and flopped a net of bread and vegetables on the table; at the same time her eyes were anxiously inspecting her kitchen: there was an unwashed dish in the sink, a cloth over a chair. ‘Everything’s in such a mess,’ she said irritably.

Mary Brooke, eyes fixed on her knitting, said, ‘Eh, sit down. It’s clean as can be.’

After a hesitation Annie flopped herself into the chair and shut her eyes. ‘Those stairs …’ she panted. Then: ‘Like a cuppa tea, Mary?’

Mary quickly pushed her knitting away and said, ‘You sit still. I’ll do it.’ She heaved up her large, tired body, filled a kettle from the tap, and set it on the flame. Then, following her friend’s anxious glance, she hung the dish cloth where it belonged and shut the door. The kitchen was so clean and neat it could have gone on exhibition. She sat down, reached for her knitting, and knitted without looking at it, contemplating the wall across the room. ‘He was carrying on like anything last night,’ she observed.

Annie’s drooping lids flew open, her light body straightened. ‘Yes?’ she murmured casually. Her face was tense.

‘What can you expect with that type? She doesn’t get the beds made before dinnertime. There’s dirt everywhere. He was giving it to her proper. Dirty slut, he called her.’

‘She won’t do for him what I did, that’s certain,’ said Annie bitterly.

‘Shouting and banging until early morning – we all heard it.’ She counted purl, plain, purl, and added: ‘Don’t last long, do it? Six months he’s been with her now?’

‘He never lifted his hand to me, that’s certain,’ said Annie victoriously. ‘Never. I’ve got my pride, if others haven’t.’

‘That’s right, love. Two purl. One plain.’

‘Nasty temper he’s got. I’d be up summer and winter at four, cleaning those offices till ten, then cleaning for Mrs Lynd till dinnertime. Then if he got home and found his dinner not ready, he’d start to shout and carry on – well, I’d say, if you can’t wait five minutes, get home and cook it yourself, I’d say. I bring in as much as you do, don’t I? But he never lifted a finger. Bone lazy. Men are all the same.’

Mary gave her friend a swift, searching glance, then murmured, ‘Eh, you can’t tell me …’

‘I’d have the kids and the cleaning and the cooking, and working all day – sometimes when he was unemployed I’d bring in all the money … and he wouldn’t even put the kettle on for me. Women’s work, he said.’

‘Two purl, plain.’ But Mary’s kindly face seemed to suggest that she was waiting to say something else. ‘We all know what it is,’ she agreed at last, patiently.

Annie rose lightly, pulled the shrieking kettle off the flame, and reached for the teapot. Seen from the back, she looked twenty, slim and erect. When she turned with the steaming pot, she caught a glimpse of herself; she set down the pot and went to the mirror. She stood touching her face anxiously. ‘Look at me!’ She pushed a long, sagging curl into position, then shrugged. ‘Well, who’s to care what I look like anyway?’

She began setting out the cups. She had a thin face, sharpened by worry, and small sharp blue eyes. As she sat down, she nervously felt her hair. ‘I must get the curlers on to my hair,’ she muttered.

‘Heard from the boys?’

Annie’s hand fell and clenched itself on the table. ‘Not a word from Charlie for months. They don’t think … he’ll turn up one fine day and expect his place laid, if I know my Charlie. Tommy’s after a job in Manchester, Mrs Thomas said. But I had a nice letter from Dick …’ Her face softened; her eyes were soft and reminiscent. ‘He wrote about his father. Should he come down and speak to the old so and so for me, he said. I wrote back and said that was no way to speak of his father. He should respect him, I said, no matter what he’s done. It’s not his place to criticize his father, I said.’

‘You’re lucky in your boys, Annie.’

‘They’re good workers, no one can say they aren’t. And they’ve never done anything they shouldn’t. They don’t take after their dad, that’s certain.’

At this, Mary’s eyes showed a certain tired irony. ‘Eh, Annie – but we all do things we shouldn’t.’ This gaining no response from the bitter Annie, she added cautiously, ‘I saw him this morning in the street.’

Annie’s cup clattered down into the saucer. ‘Was he alone?’

‘No. But he took me aside – he said I could give you a message if I was passing this way – he might be dropping in this evening instead of tomorrow with your money, he said. Thursday she goes to her mother’s – I suppose he thinks while the cat’s away …’

Annie had risen, in a panic. She made herself sit down again and stirred her tea. The spoon tinkled in the cup with the quivering of her hand. ‘He’s regular with the money, anyway,’ she said heavily. ‘I didn’t have to take him into court. He offered. And I suppose he needn’t, now the boys are out keeping themselves.’

‘He still feels for you, Annie …’ Mary was leaning forward, speaking in a direct appeal. ‘He does, really.’

‘He never felt for anyone but himself,’ snapped Annie. ‘Never.’

Mary let a sigh escape her. ‘Oh, well …’ she murmured. ‘Well, I’ll be getting along to do the supper.’ She stuffed her knitting into her carryall and said consolingly: ‘You’re lucky. No one to get after you if you feel like sitting a bit. No one to worry about but yourself …’

‘Oh, don’t think I’m wasting any tears over him. I’m taking it easy for the first time in my life. You slave your life out for your man and your kids. Then off they go, with not so much as a thank you. Now I can please myself.’

‘I wouldn’t mind being in your place,’ said Mary loyally. At the door she remarked, apparently at random, ‘Your floor’s so clean you could eat off it.’

The moment Mary was gone, Annie rushed into her apron and began sweeping. She got down on her knees to polish the floor, and then took off her dress and washed herself at the sink. She combed her dragging wisps of pale hair and did each one up neatly with a pin till her face was surrounded by a ring of little sausages. She put back her dress and sat down at the table. Not a moment too soon. The door opened, and Rob Blake stood there.

He was a thin, rather stooping man, with an air of apology. He said politely, ‘You busy, Annie?’

‘Sit down,’ she commanded sharply. He stooped loosely in the doorway for a moment, then came forward, minding his feet. Even so she winced as she saw the dusty marks on the gleaming linoleum. ‘Take it easy,’ he said with friendly sarcasm. ‘You can put up with my dust once a week, can’t you?’

She smiled stiffly, her blue eyes fastened anxiously on him, while he pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Well, Annie?’

To this conciliatory opening she did not respond. After a moment she remarked, ‘I heard from Dick. He’s thinking of getting married.’

‘Getting married, now? That puts us on the shelf, don’t it?’

‘You’re not on any shelf that I can see,’ she snapped.

‘Now – Annie …’ he deprecated, with an appealing smile. She showed no signs of softening. Seeing her implacable face, his smile faded, and he took an envelope from his pocket and pushed it over.

‘Thanks,’ she said, hardly glancing at it. Then that terrible bitterness came crowding up, and he heard the words: ‘If you can spare it from her.’

He let that one pass; he looked steadily at his wife, as if seeking a way past that armour of anger. He watched her, passing the tip of his tongue nervously over his lips.

‘Some women know how to keep themselves free from kids and responsibilities. They just do this and that, and take up with anyone they please. None of the dirty work for them.’

He gave a sigh, and was on the point of getting up, when she demanded, ‘Like a cuppa tea?’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’ He let himself sink back again.

While she worked at the stove, her back to him, he was looking around the kitchen; his face had a look of tired, disappointed irony. An ageing man, but with a dogged set to his shoulders. Trying to find the right words, he remarked, ‘Not so much work for you now, Annie.’

But she did not answer. She returned with the two cups and put the sugar into his for him. This wifely gesture encouraged him. ‘Annie,’ he began, ‘Annie – can’t we talk this over …’ He was stirring the tea clumsily, not looking at it, leaning forward. The cup knocked over. ‘Oh, look what you’ve done,’ she cried out. ‘Just look at the mess.’ She snatched up a cloth and wiped the table.

‘It’s only a drop of tea, Annie,’ he protested at last, shrinking a little aside from her furious energy.

‘Only a drop of tea – I can polish and clean half the day, and then in a minute the place is like a pig sty.’

His face darkened with remembered irritation.

‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ she went on accusingly, ‘she lets the beds lie until dinner, and the place isn’t cleaned from one week to the next.’

‘At least she cares more for me than she does for a clean floor,’ he shouted. Now they looked at each other with hatred.

At this delicate moment there came a shout: ‘Rob. Rob!’

She laughed angrily. ‘She’s got you where she wants you – waits and spies on you and now she comes after you.’

‘Rob! You there, Rob?’ It was a loud, confident, female voice.

‘She sounds just what she is, a proper …’

‘Shut up,’ he interrupted. He was breathing heavily. ‘You keep that tongue of yours quiet, now.’

Her eyes were full of tears, but the blue shone through, bright and vengeful. ‘“Rob, Rob” – and off you trot like a little dog.’

He got up from the table heavily, as a loud knock came at the door.

Annie’s mouth quivered at the insult of it. And his first instinct was to stand by her – she could see that. He looked apologetically at her, then went to the door, opened it an inch, and said in a low, furious voice: ‘Don’t you do that now. Do you hear me!’ He shut the door, leaned against it, facing Annie. ‘Annie,’ he said again, in an awkward appeal. ‘Annie …’

But she sat at her table, hands folded in a trembling knot before her, her face tight and closed against him.

‘Oh, all right!’ he said at last despairingly, angry. ‘You’ve always got to be in the right about everything, haven’t you? That’s all that matters to you – if you’re in the right. Bloody plaster saint, you are.’ He went out quickly.

She sat quite still, listening until it was quiet. Then she drew a deep breath and put her two fists to her cheeks, as if trying to keep them still. She was sitting thus when Mary Brooke came in. ‘You let him go?’ she said incredulously.

‘And good riddance, too.’

Mary shrugged. Then she suggested bravely, ‘You shouldn’t be so hard on him, Annie – give him a chance.’

‘I’d see him dead first,’ said Annie through shaking lips. Then: ‘I’m forty-five, and I might as well be on the dust heap.’ And then, after a pause, in a remote, cold voice: ‘We’ve been together twenty-five years. Three kids. And then he goes off with that … with that …’

‘You’re well rid of him, and that’s a fact,’ agreed Mary swiftly.

‘Yes. I am, and I know it …’ Annie was swaying from side to side in her chair. Her face was stony, but the tears were trickling steadily down, following a path worn from nose to chin. They rolled off and splashed on to her white collar.

‘Annie,’ implored her friend. ‘Annie …’

Annie’s face quivered, and Mary was across the room and had her in her arms. ‘That’s right, love, that’s right, that’s right, love,’ she crooned.

‘I don’t know what gets into me,’ wept Annie, her voice coming muffled from Mary’s large shoulder. ‘I can’t keep my wicked tongue still. He’s fed up and sick of that – cow, and I drive him away. I can’t help it. I don’t know what gets into me.’

‘There now, love, there now, love.’ The big, fat, comfortable woman was rocking the frail Annie like a baby. ‘Take it easy, love. He’ll be back, you’ll see.’

‘You think he will?’ asked Annie, lifting her face up to see if her friend was lying to comfort her.

‘Would you like me to go and see if I can fetch him back for you now?’

In spite of her longing, Annie hesitated. ‘Do you think it’ll be all right?’ she said doubtfully.

‘I’ll go and slip in a word when she’s not around.’

‘Will you do that, Mary?’

Mary got up, patting her crumpled dress. ‘You wait here, love,’ she said imploringly. She went to the door and said as she went out: ‘Take it easy, now, Annie. Give him a chance.’

‘I go running after him to ask him back?’ Annie’s pride spoke out of her wail.

‘Do you want him back or don’t you?’ demanded Mary, patient to the last, although there was a hint of exasperation now. Annie did not say anything, so Mary went running out.

Annie sat still, watching the door tensely. But vague, rebellious, angry thoughts were running through her head: If I want to keep him, I can’t ever say what I think, I can’t ever say what’s true – I’m nothing to him but a convenience, but if I say so he’ll just up and off …

But that was not the whole truth; she remembered the affection in his face, and for a moment the bitterness died. Then she remembered her long hard life, the endless work, work, work – she remembered, all at once, as if she were feeling it now, her aching back when the children were small; she could see him lying on the bed reading the newspaper when she could hardly drag herself … It’s all very well, she cried out to herself, it’s not right, it just isn’t right … A terrible feeling of injustice was gripping her; and it was just this feeling she must push down, keep under, if she wanted him. For she knew finally – and this was stronger than anything else – that without him there would be no meaning in her life at all.

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