Charles did not answer. He pulled slowly at his cigar.
“I feel very apologetic,” said Celia, “for coming so often at weekends. Somehow, after Pappy died, I began to look upon it as my home. Especially in the war. And being with the children. It made such a difference, knowing children. But now I’m really settling down into those rooms at Hampstead, it will be different, quite different. I’m going to do what I’ve never had time to do before. I’m going to write. I’m going to draw.”
Charles went on gazing at the silver candlesticks.
“Business was down again last week,” said Maria. “I very much doubt if the play will go on running into the spring. It’s years, isn’t it, since we took a holiday together? It’s quite absurd, but there are lots of places I’ve never even seen. We could go away, Charles, when the play comes off. Would you like that? Would it make you happy?”
Charles laid his cigar down on his plate, and folded his dinner napkin.
“A very charming suggestion,” he said. “The only thing wrong with it is that it comes too late.”
Too late for the concerto, too late to write good music and not bad? Too late to draw, too late to put those stories into print? Too late to make a home, to settle down, to love the children?
“Tomorrow,” said Charles, “I propose doing the business through the right channels. Getting a lawyer to write you a proper letter.”
“A letter?” said Maria. “A letter about what?”
“A letter asking you to give me a divorce,” said Charles.
We none of us spoke. We stared at Charles, perplexed. That was the voice I did not hear, thought Celia, the voice the other end of the line. That was what made me uneasy, that was what made me afraid. That and the way he pushed the pantry door with his foot.
Too late, thought Niall, too late for Charles as well. And he knows it. The parasites have done their work.
“Divorce you?” said Maria. “What do you mean, divorce you? I don’t want to divorce you. I love you very much.”
“That is too bad, isn’t it?” said Charles. “You should have told me so more often. No use telling me now, when it does not interest me to listen. You see, I happen to be in love with someone else.”
Niall looked across the table at Maria. She was no longer Mary Rose, she was no longer anyone. She was the little girl who, nearly thirty years before, had stood at the back of the stalls and watched Mama upon the stage. She had watched Mama, and then turned to the mirrors on the wall, and the gestures that she copied were borrowed, not her own; the hands were the hands of another, so was the smile, so were the dancing feet. The eyes were the eyes of a child who lived in a world of fantasy, of masks, and faces, and scarlet hanging curtains; a child who when she was shown real life became bewildered, frightened, lost.
“No,” said Maria, “No…”
She got up, and stood looking at Charles, with her hands clasped. The part of an injured wife was one she had never played.
23
Celia had left her gloves and her library book in the doctor’s waiting room. She went back to fetch them after the consultation. The woman with the little boy was no longer there. She must have been going to see one of the other doctors, whose names were written on the brass plates of the front door. A man was sitting at the table instead, glancing through the pages of the Sphere. His face was gray and haggard. Perhaps he is very ill, thought Celia, perhaps he is going to be told something far worse than I was told. That is why he does not really read the pages of the Sphere, but flicks them over, two by two, with a queer impatient gesture. And none of the people who come to this room know why the others suffer. Or what they think. Or why they come. She picked up her gloves from the table, and her library book, and left the room. The secretary-receptionist stood in a white coat by the open front door. “It has turned colder,” she said.
“Yes,” said Celia.
“A treacherous time of year,” said the secretary. “Good afternoon.”
The front door slammed. Celia walked down the steps, and turned to the left up Harley Street. It was colder, as the woman said. The wind came in little gusts. It was a day to be inside somewhere, cosseted and loved; by a warm fireside, with the clatter of friendly cups and saucers, a sleepy cat licking its paws, a cyclamen in a pot on a windowsill putting forth new buds.
“Well, what happened? Put your feet up, tell me everything.” But one had not got that sort of friend. She turned down Wigmore Street towards the Times Book Club. Fibroids. Lots of women had fibroids. It was quite a common thing. The operation nowadays, as the doctor said, was nothing out of the ordinary. She would be much better after it, she would not know herself. Take it easy at first, a few weeks’ rest, and then ready for anything. No, she was not scared at all of the operation. Just the knowledge that she would never be able to have children. It was so foolish, so idiotic to mind. There was no question of her getting married, she was not in love, never had been in love, and she was not likely to meet anyone now; nor did she want to fall in love, nor had she any desire to marry.
“Were you contemplating marriage?” the doctor asked.
“No, oh, no.”
“Well, then, you have nobody but yourself to consider?”
“No one at all.”
“Your general health is very good, you know. And I assure you there is nothing whatever to worry about. I’d be frank and tell you if there was.”
“I’m not worried. Truly.”
“All right. Splendid. Then it’s just a question of fixing the time and the place. And the surgeon.”
No children, though. Never. No possibility, once one had the operation. Today one was a woman, capable of bearing children. But not in a few weeks’ time… In a few weeks’ time one would be a sort of shell. No more than a shell. That woman there, walking ahead of Celia along Wigmore Street, she may have had the operation, too. She looked heavy, set. On the other hand, she might be married with several children. So it would not matter. She had the look of a married woman. A stolid vicar’s wife, up from the country. She was hesitating now; she crossed the road to Debenham’s, and stared into a window. She made up her mind, she went inside. One would never know whether the woman has had the operation that one must have oneself.
Celia pushed through the swing-door of the Times Book Club, and walked upstairs to the library. She went to the table of her initial letter. The usual girl was in her place. The one with platinum hair.
“Good afternoon, Miss Delaney.”
“Good afternoon.”
And suddenly Celia had an impulse to tell the girl about the operation. To say, “I have got to have my insides out, which means I can never have children.” What would the platinum girl say? Would she say, “Oh, dear, I am so sorry,” and her expression of sympathy bring a warmth to the heart, so that one could walk out of the Times Book Club, happier, more reconciled? Or would she stare in embarrassment and, glancing down at the finger on Celia’s hand, see that Celia was not married? So that it could not matter? So why should Celia care?
“I have that biography you were asking for, Miss Delaney.”
“Oh, thank you.” But Celia did not feel like a biography. “You haven’t any short stories? Good ones, that are easy just to pick up and put down again?”
Idiotic phrase. What did she mean? She meant what the man was doing to the Sphere in the waiting room in Harley Street.
“Nothing much, I’m afraid, in the way of short stories. But there’s a nice bright new novel out, a first novel, that has had very good reviews.”
“Can I see?”
The platinum girl handed the novel up over the desk.
“Is it light?”
“Oh, yes, quite light. Very easy reading.”
“Very well. I’ll take it.”
The novel was published by the firm of which Mr. Harrison was managing director. The novel was written by some woman who had the time to write. She had signed a contract, honored it, lived up to it. Unlike Celia. If Celia had only
applied herself, if there had not been Pappy to nurse, if there had not been the war, there would be people coming up to the table here and saying to the platinum girl, “Any new stories out by Celia Delaney?” It was only a question of going back to the rooms in Hampstead, of sitting down, of making time. No amount of operations could prevent her doing that. A sick person could always think. A sick person could scribble in bed. Prop up a drawing board in bed.
“Would you like to take the biography too? I kept it especially for you.”
“All right, thank you. All right, I will.”
The biography and the new light novel were handed together over the table.
“I saw your sister’s play the other night.”
“Did you? Did you like it?”
“I didn’t think much of the play, but I loved her. She is wonderful, isn’t she? Not a bit alike, are you?”
“No. No, we aren’t really. You see, we are only half-sisters.”
“Oh, that accounts for it perhaps. Well, I would go and see her again, any day. And so would my boyfriend. He was mad about her. I was quite jealous!”
The platinum girl had a ring on her finger. Celia noticed it for the first time.
“I did not know you were engaged.”
“Yes. Been engaged for nearly a year. Going to be married at Easter. The library won’t see me anymore after that.”
“Have you got a house?”
“Yes, of course.”
But Celia could not go on talking to the platinum girl because some man in a bowler hat and glasses who had been getting impatient pushed forward with his library book, and there was someone else, waiting behind him.
“Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon.”
Down the stairs of the library, and out across the street, and the gusty wind colder than ever, blowing down the back of her neck. It was true then that personal, selfish anxiety swamped every other feeling. The visit to Harley Street had colored the day. Not once since leaving the consulting room had Celia thought about Maria.
“You’re not a bit alike, are you?”
“No. No, we are only half-sisters.”
But we must be alike, because we both have Pappy’s blood in our veins. We have his strength, his vigor, his tenacity to life. At least, Maria has. That was why she stood for one moment only, looking at Charles across the table, with those frightened eyes. One moment only. Then she pulled herself together and said: “How stupid of me. I’m so sorry. I ought to have known. Who is it, by the way?”
And when Charles told her, Maria answered, “Oh! Oh, her… Yes, I see. There couldn’t really be anybody else, could there? I mean, not living quietly as you do, down here.”
After which, she began to clear away the coffee cups as Polly might have done. No one knew what she was thinking about, or what went on, inside. Niall got up then, and went out of the room; he did not say good night to anyone. Celia helped Maria with the remaining plates. Charles went on smoking his cigar. And Celia thought that if words could be taken back and swallowed, if the hands of the clock could be turned and moved backwards to the morning hours, if the day could begin again and all of them have one more chance, then none of that need have happened. Charles would not have gone out for his walk and taken his decision. He would not have spoken down the telephone. The day would have ended in another fashion. “Is there anything I can do?” she had said to Maria, putting the cups and saucers on the sideboard. Her voice an undertone, as when someone was ill, with a temperature; the same urgent need to help the person in pain, to fetch hot milk, water bottles, blankets.
“You? No, darling, nothing.”
Maria, who never cleared away but left the debris for other people, took the tray through the door into the pantry. Maria, who never called Celia darling, only Niall, smiled over her shoulder, and was gone. Then Celia had done the unforgivable. She had meddled. She had turned back into the dining room to speak to Charles.
“Please don’t make this final,” she had said. “I know things have not been easy for you, ever. But you knew that when you married Maria, didn’t you? You knew her life could never be quite the same as yours. And then the war. The war did fearful things to so many people. Please, Charles, don’t break everything up. Think of the children.”
It was useless, though. It was talking to a man one had never really known. A man whose life, whose thoughts, whose actions were things one could not claim to understand.
“I must ask you, Celia,” he said, “not to interfere. It is really no concern of yours, is it?”
No, it was no concern of hers. The marriage of Maria, the children, the house where she had stayed, the home she had so often shared. No concern at all. They did not need her help. Maria would face the future on her own. There was nothing Celia could do. Nothing at all. And going back to London the next day, by the usual train, was somehow like going back to the house in St. John’s Wood after Pappy died. There was the same sense of aftermath. A moment in time had ended. Somewhere, in the deep earth, a body lay buried. A life.
The children, from the drive, had waved farewell. “See you next weekend.” But Celia would never go again. Not now.
Here she was, she thought, crossing Vere Street into the back entrance of Marshall’s, shaken out of security because of fibroids and the threat of operation, while Maria had to face the destruction of married life. Celia was mourning the loss of children never born, while Maria would lose children who really lived. That was what divorce would mean. Charles, though technically the guilty party, would want to have the children. The children belonged to Farthings, to Coldhammer. Visits to the flat, yes. The excursion to the theater. To see Mummy act. But not often. The visits less and less. And it was so much nicer living in the country, with Daddy, and Polly, and what would they call the new mother? By her Christian name, in all probability. That was the modern way. Everyone would settle down. Everyone would jog along.
“Hi. Has anyone sent Auntie Celia a Christmas present?”
“No. Oh! Must we? I mean, we needn’t, need we, now?”
“We never see her. Why should we?”
Someone prodded Celia in the back, and she moved on, apologizing. It was very full in Marshall’s. She had been blocking the gangway, by the steps going down into the haberdashery. She could not remember what it was she had come to buy. Was it some shoes? Yes, it was shoes. But the shoe department was already full of people. And women were sitting about on chairs with sad, despondent faces, and useless stockinged feet, waiting for their turn.
“I’m sorry, madam. We’re very busy this afternoon. Come back later.”
On again then, moving with the throng towards the lift. Upstairs. Had any of these women had the operation? That woman there, with the ugly hat, her mauve lips clashing with the trimming, had she got fibroids? Even if she had, it did not matter. That broad band on her ungloved hand proclaimed her married. She probably had a little boy at school in Sunningdale.
“I’m going down to see David on Saturday.”
“What fun. A picnic lunch?”
“Yes, if it is fine. Then football afterwards. David’s playing.” The woman stepped out of the lift, and went towards the underwear.
“Going up? Going up? Anymore going up, please?”
One may as well go somewhere. One may as well wander through Marshall’s because there was something depressing in the thought of getting into the Bond Street Tube, and changing at Tottenham Court Road for the Edgware line to Hampstead, and then walking home to empty rooms.
Baby linen. Cots. Pram covers. Little lawn frocks with smocking on them. Rattles. She remembered coming here with Maria before Caroline was born. Maria had ordered a complete layette, and put it down to Lady Wyndham.
“She can pay for everything,” said Maria, “except the pram. I shall make Pappy give me the pram.”
Celia had chosen a large blue shawl. She had changed it afterwards for pink, Caroline being a girl. There was a shawl on the counter now, not such good quali
ty though, nowadays. She fingered the shawl, her mind with Caroline, at school. What would happen to Caroline?
“Are you looking for shawls, madam? This has just come in. They get snapped up very easily. The demand is so great.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, yes, madam. We have not had this quality since before the war. Was it for a first baby, madam?”
“No. Oh, no… I was only looking.”
The woman’s interest waned. Celia moved away. Not for a first baby. Not for any baby. No pram rugs, smocks, or rattles. What would the woman say if Celia looked into her bored gray eyes and said, “I have got fibroids. I can’t ever have a baby.” Would she summon a tag-end of courtesy and answer back, “I’m very sorry, madam, I’m sure.” Or would she look startled, and whisper to the assistant further down the counter, and the assistant call for the head of the department. “We are afraid there is a lady here, not very well.” Better, for all concerned, to move away.
“Going up, please.”
Why had Niall driven away on Sunday night, without saying good-bye to anyone? Why had he just got into his car, and gone?
“You’re not very alike, are you?”
“No. No, he’s only my half-brother.”
But we must be alike, because we both have Mama’s blood in our veins. Mama’s singleness of purpose, her concentration, her love of solitude. At least, Niall had. That was why Niall had left Farthings Sunday night and driven to the sea, probably, to his boat; so that the things that hurt, the people he loved, should not come between him and his music. So that he could be by himself, with the sounds in his head, untouched, uninterrupted; in the same way that Mama had danced alone. Was that why he had gone? Or was it because he thought, “This is my fault. This is all our faults. The three of us have murdered Charles.”
Ladies’ Restroom. On The Left… That was thoughtful of the people in control of Marshall’s. There must be so many women like herself with fibroids. With a slight headache. With tired feet. With a little nagging pain. And there they were, sitting on chairs around the wall, for all the world as if they were back again in the doctor’s consulting room. Women with parcels. Women without parcels.