The Nice and the Good

“These binoculars are uncanny.”

  As she turned them into focus she could see the leaves on the trees of the wood as if they were inches in front of her face. She had never handled such powerful glasses. She moved the clear lighted circle down the hill and across the stones of the beach to pick up the object which she had seen upon the sea. She saw the faint ripples of the sea’s verge and the glossy satiny skin of the calm surface and then a trailing hand. Then she had full in view the little green plastic boat which the twins called ‘the coracle’ after the boat in Treasure Island. In the boat, both dressed in bathing costumes, were Kate and John Ducane. She could see from the dark clinging look of their costumes that they had just been swimming. They were laughing in a relaxed abandoned way and Ducane had just put his hand on to Kate’s knee. Mary lowered the glasses.

  She turned back into the room and came to stand in front of Willy and stare at him. She thought sadly, gaiety and laughter are not in my destiny. Alistair had been gay, but somehow Mary had been the pleased spectator of his gaiety rather than a participant in it. Kate was gay and could make others laugh, even Willy. Paula had something else with Willy, a calm camaraderie of shared interests. But I just make him sad, thought Mary, and he just makes me sad.

  “What ees eet, my child?”

  “You,” she said. “You, you, you. Oh, I do love you.”

  She often said this, but the words always vanished away, as if they were instantly absorbed into the infinite negativity which confronted her. She wished to pierce Willy with these words, to disturb him, even to hurt him, but he remained remote and even his tenderness to her was a mode of remoteness. It did not occur to her to think that Willy could be indifferent to her affection nor even to doubt that he found her attractive. Though not formally beautiful, Mary had as a physical endowment a strong confidence in her own power to attract. No, it was something else which kept them separate so. If Theo seemed to her like a man with broken bones walking about, Willy seemed like an inhabitant of some other dimension who could only tenuously communicate with the ordinary world. This would have troubled her less if she had not imagined his other dimension as a place of horror. Trying to make it more concrete she wondered, what could it be like to have suffered such injustice? Can he ever bring himself to forgive them? Mary thought that this would have been the problem for herself. But she had no evidence that it was the problem for Willy. Perhaps his demons were quite other.

  She sat down now, bringing a chair up close against the side of his and sitting so that she faced him. As she did so, looking down, she saw within the front of her dress her breasts pressing together like twin birds, and she thought, I am a treasure waiting to be found.

  “See, Mary, your white nettles have lifted up their heads.”

  “You are … You are …” she said, “a troll … that’s what you are. Oh, you do exasperate me so!”

  She began to caress him, drawing her fingers very lightly through the longish silky white hair, exciting it until it crackled and lifted a little to her touch. Then she started to caress his face with her finger tips, first lightly outlining his profile, his big faintly scored brow, his thin Jewish nose, the tender runnel above his lips, the roughened prickly chin, then moving her fingers to his eyes, which flickered shut and flickered open again, his cheeks, moulding the bones, and drawing her finger tips back along the length of his mouth: the soft feeling of the human face above the bone, touching, vulnerable and mortal. At last, with a movement which did not break the rhythm of hers, Willy captured her hand and held it with the palm flattened against the side of his head. His eyes closed now, and for a long time they sat quietly thus. Such was their love-making.

  Eleven

  “DO you think it’s ever safe to say one’s happy?” said Kate.

  “I think it would be ungrateful in someone who, like you, is always happy, not to admit it sometimes!” said John Ducane.

  “Ungrateful? To them? They have no morals and don’t deserve gratitude. Yes, it’s true that I’m always happy. But there are degrees of it. I feel such an intense happiness at this moment, I feel I might faint!”

  They were floating in the little green coracle upon the perfectly calm sea in which they had lately been swimming. The coracle, which had no oars, was propelled by the hands of its crew. It was a suitable craft only for very still weather, as it was easily swamped and overturned.

  Nearby upon the beach the twins, who had swum earlier in the day, were engaged in their perennial task of examining the stones. Uncle Theo, who disliked the stones and found them menacing, had once said that the twins behaved like people condemned by a god to some endless incomprehensible search. Uncle Theo himself, newly risen after his tea, was sitting on the beach beside Pierce’s clothes. Mary forbade anyone to enter the house in a wet bathing costume and the children always undressed on the beach. Pierce, who had been swimming for some time, was lying limply on the shelving pebbles, half in and half out of the water, like a stranded sea beast. Mingo, who had been swimming with Pierce, was shaking himself and spraying rainbow water drops over Pierce’s trousers and the left arm of Uncle Theo’s jacket. Montrose, sitting on the jagged tooth-like remains of the wooden breakwater, had fluffed himself up into his spherical bird form, and was regarding Mingo’s antics with yellow-eyed malignancy. Paula and Octavian, fully dressed now, were walking slowly along the beach discussing politics. Some natives were distantly encamped. It was Saturday.

  “Yes, one must think how lucky one is,” said Kate. “Think if one had been born an Indian peasant—” But in fact she could not think about Indian peasants nor think how lucky she was, she could only feel it in the slightly caressing tightening feeling of the sun drying the salt water upon her plump legs and shoulders.

  “You know, I think they’re all the tiniest bit afraid of you,” said Kate, reverting to something she had been saying earlier. “Willy is, Mary is, Octavian certainly is. Which is what makes it so wonderful, as I’m not!”

  “I can’t believe anyone’s afraid of me,” said Ducane, but he was obviously pleased all the same.

  “Your company makes me so happy. And it’s partly this sense of being absolutely free with you when nobody else is! I am possessive, you know!”

  “Just as well for both of us that I’m not!” said Ducane.

  “Darling! Forgive me! But of course you forgive me. You’re terribly happy too, I can feel it. Oh God, how heavenly the sun is. The twins keep saying that they want it to rain, but I want everything to go on for ever exactly as it is.” Kate was in that state of elation when speech becomes a mere natural burbling, like bird song or the chatter of a stream.

  The boat, which Ducane had been propelling with lazy pressures of his trailing hand upon the pleasantly resistant water, was almost motionless now. Kate and Ducane were very close together in the little boat, but not quite touching each other. He lay in the blunt stern, a little sprawled, knees crooked up and both arms over the side. She was in the almost equally blunt bows, sitting sideways with her legs half tucked under her. Between Ducane’s bare foot and her knee there was about half an inch of space of which they were both pleasantly conscious, as if through this narrow strait something were deliciously and impetuously rushing.

  Kate was inspecting Ducane with tender curiosity. Of course she had seen him thus stripped before, last summer in fact, only he had not then been for her the highly significant object which he had now become. How lovely it is, thought Kate, to be able to fall in love with one’s old friends. It’s one of the pleasures of being middle-aged. Not that I’m really exactly in love, but it’s just like being in love with all the pain taken away. It’s an apotheosis of friendship, it’s something one thought possible when one was young and then forgot about. There’s all the excitement of love in a condition of absolute safety. How touchingly thin he is, and so white, and the hair on his chest is turning grey. What is it that’s attractive about men’s bodies? It’s much more mysterious, more spiritual, than the attractiveness of women. Why is
it heavenly, the way the bones stick out so at his wrists? Oh dear, I don’t want him to think I’m looking at him critically. He must see he’s being adored. Why now he’s looking at me in just the same way. She snuggled her legs a little closer under her, feeling the pleasant tight pressure of her damp bathing dress holding her breasts in close against her body. At that moment her curious exploring gaze met Ducane’s and they began to laugh with mutual understanding. Ducane withdrew one hand from the sea and leaned forward and very deliberately touched Kate’s knee. She felt the lingering firmness of his hand in the midst of the cool water which was now trickling over her warm leg which had become quite dry in the sun.

  The boat gave a sudden heave forward. Ducane removed his hand abruptly from Kate’s leg. There was a soft splashing ahead. Pierce, who had swum up unnoticed, had taken hold of the length of rope which hung from the bows and was beginning to tow the boat along.

  Ducane was irritated and upset by the intrusion. He hoped the boy had noticed nothing. His thoughtless enjoyment of the present moment, the sun, the drifting, and Kate’s sweet Irish voice was spoilt now. His mood was broken and the bright day gave place to a wall of blackness whose name was Jessica.

  His relationship with Jessica was turning into a massacre and he could not see what could be done about it. There was as much emotion generated between them now as if they had been lovers. He had been defeated by a girl’s screams. And he knew that he had given her that shot of morphia as much to spare himself as to spare her. When he thought about the matter in general he was as certain as ever that he must leave her, must finish the job. But when he thought in detail about the process he not only shuddered, he became less sure. Could it be right to inflict so much pain? If only it were over, done, without the awful doing of it. He thought, I can’t do it simply by letter. Anyway, she would just come round at once, she would come to the office.

  Had he the right to be happy with Kate for a second, to take what Kate was so generously offering to him, at a time when he was causing this dreadful suffering to another person? What would Kate, with her fantasy of being nearer to him than anybody, think if she knew of this mess? What, if it came to that would Jessica think if she knew of what would seem to her his frivolous adventuring with Kate? Where, in all this, was Ducane, the upright man? Of course it was easy to see now that he ought never to have entangled himself with Jessica at all. Until even quite lately, however, he had at least been able to think of what he knew to be his sin in a fairly clear way. The pain involved in it for him, and he dared to think for her too, was at least fairly clean pain. They just had to separate and that, agonising as it was, was all there was to it. Now he was not so sure. As he lay limply on Jessica’s bed with his head upon her shoulder after he had stopped her screaming by promising to see her again Ducane had felt a new kind of despair. In the clairvoyance of this despair he had seen how much his folly had already damaged both of them.

  When Ducane had first begun to think of his relationship with Kate as important, and when he had decided to break with Jessica without yet considering what this would be like, he had seen it as one important aspect of his new world that he would now be able to attend properly to the needs of other people. After all he was not in love with Kate. He adored Kate and could be made happy by her, but he was not really in love with her. It was a civilized achievement of middle age. Kate could never be a burden and was not an obsession. While he had been Jessica’s lover, and during the later time when he had been trying to detach himself from Jessica, he had become insensitive and unavailable and unaware. People who came to him for assistance were but absentmindedly served. He had ceased to be interested in anyone but himself. He had envisaged his world with Kate, not as a tête-à-tête, but as once more a populated country, only a happy one. The wonderful thing about Kate was that she was unattainable; and this was what was to set him free for ever. She would give ease to his too long wandering heart, and then he could live more fully in the world of other people, more able, because more happy, to give them his full attention.

  But this was the distant landscape, the landscape beyond Jessica. Will I ever reach it, he wondered. Ought I not to withdraw from Kate, at any rate for a while? Is it even conceivably my duty to stay with Jessica? As things are at the moment I am no good to anyone. I can’t think about anybody but myself. I was no good to Willy this morning. Willy had alarmed Ducane that morning by the degree of his withdrawal, his refusal even to talk. Ducane thought, if I could have given Willy my full attention this morning I would have been able to force him to communicate with me. Perhaps Willy ought to have been left in London. He’s far too much alone here. Perhaps I have made a terrible mistake. If Willy kills himself it will be my fault.

  By some further twist or shift of the blackness these grim reflections put Ducane in mind of Radeechy. He had still not obtained the newspaper story and it seemed likely that he would have to act without it. He had decided to visit McGrath at his house unexpectedly on this next Monday evening, and really find out everything that the fellow knew. But how much would that amount to? With a kind of bitter weariness Ducane found his mind turning to the ‘whips and daggers and things’ which McGrath had seen at Radeechy’s house. What had Radeechy done with those girls? As he now felt a curious alleviation of his pain, an ability once more to see Kate’s brown shoulders and her plump back, turned to him as she looked forward over the bows of the boat, he thought, how natural it is to try to cure the pains of wickedness by positive devilry, vice itself is a rescue from the misery of guilt, and there are deeper pits into which it is a relief to fall. Then he thought, poor Radeechy.

  Pierce was towing the boat quite fast now, the tow rope between his teeth. Mingo, who had swum out after him, was also accompanying the boat, his ridiculous primly lifted dry head contrasting with the sleek wet head of the boy, who was dipping and slipping through the water like a seal.

  “Where’s Barb?” Kate called to Pierce.

  “Riding her pony,” he said, dropping the rope and retrieving it again spaniel-like.

  “She’s so mad on riding now,” said Kate, turning back to Ducane, “and she’s almost too fearless. I do hope we were wise to send her to that school in Switzerland.”

  “She’ll get her Oxford entrance all right,” said Ducane. “She’s a clever girl and her French should be perfect.”

  “I do wish Willy would change his mind about reading German with her.” Willy had unaccountably refused to help Barbara with her German.

  The boat slackened speed. Pierce had dropped the rope and was swimming on toward the cliff, the easternward end of the Red Tower, which here came down sheer into the water. Ducane felt relief, as at the removal of a small demoniac presence.

  “Don’t go in, will you, Pierce!” Kate was shouting after him.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “That’s Gunnar’s Cave,” said Kate, pointing to a dark line at the base of the cliff. “It must be low tide.”

  “Yes, you told me,” said Ducane. “The entrance is only uncovered at low tide.”

  “It gives me the creeps,” said Kate. “I have a fantasy that it’s full of drowned men who went in after treasure and got caught by the sea.”

  “Let’s get back,” said Ducane. He shivered. He began to move the little coracle slowly upon the gluey gleaming surface with rhythmical sweeps of his hands. Kate shifted herself slightly so that her leg was in contact with his. They looked at each other searchingly, anxiously.

  Twelve

  “WHY did Shakespeare never write a play about Merlin?” said Henrietta.

  “Because Shakespeare was Merlin,” said Uncle Theo.

  “I’ve often wondered that too,” said Paula. “Why did he never make use of the Arthur legends?”

  “I think I know,” said Mary.

  Everyone was silent. Mary hesitated. She was sure that she knew, only it was suddenly very difficult to put it into words.

  “Why?” said John Ducane, smiling at her encouragingly.

/>   “Shakespeare knew … that world of magic … the subject was dangerous … and those sort of relationships … not quite in the real world … it just wasn’t his sort of thing … and it had such a definite atmosphere of its own … he just couldn’t use it …”

  Mary stopped. It wasn’t quite that, but she did know. Shakespeare’s world was something different, larger.

  “I think I understand you,” said Ducane, “perfectly.” He smiled again.

  After that the conversation scattered once more, each person chatting to his neighbour. Sunday lunch was taking place, was nearly over, at the round table in the hall. Casie was circling round the table, removing plates, talking aloud to herself as she usually did when waiting at table, and moving in and out of the kitchen, through whose open door Montrose, in his elongated not spherical manifestation, could be seen lounging in the animal basket beside which Mingo was standing in a state of evident agitation. Every now and then Mingo would put one paw into the basket and then nervously withdraw it again. Montrose lounged with the immobility of careless power.

  “They treat women properly in Russia,” Casie was saying as she removed the pudding plates. “In Russia I could have been an engine driver.”

  “But you don’t want to be an engine driver, do you?” said Mary.

  “Women are real people in Russia. Here they’re just dirt. It’s no good being a woman.”

  “I can imagine it’s no good being you, but—”

  “Oh do shut up, Theo.”

  “I think it’s marvellous being a woman,” said Kate. “I wouldn’t change my sex for anything.”

  “How you relieve my mind!” said Ducane.

  “I’d rather be an engine driver,” said Mary crazily.

  Casie retired to the kitchen.

  There was no special arrangement of places at Sunday luncheon. People just scrambled randomly to their seats as they happened to arrive. On that particular day the order was as follows. Mary was sitting next to Uncle Theo who was sitting next to Edward who was sitting next to Pierce who was sitting next to Kate who was sitting next to Henrietta who was sitting next to Octavian who was sitting next to Paula who was sitting next to Barbara who was sitting next to Ducane who was sitting next to Mary.