I'll Never Be Young Again

  And we saw a tall Englishman, very correct, white-haired, cane in hand, walk solemnly along a gravel path, and a girl flounced past him, rouged, mincing, lifting an eye, and he stared at her stiffly without a quiver of his face, but when she had passed him he turned round slowly, his eyes beady, enquiring, and followed, solemn as ever, along the path where she went.

  There were children running with hoops, a little boy throwing a ball into the air, and a tiny girl who fell flat on her face, baring her round behind naked to the world. And we laughed, and I said: ‘It’s fun, isn’t it?’ and Hesta said: ‘Yes, it’s nice,’ and we went on being happy, and looking at people and things. Suddenly the sky seemed to burst over our heads, and the rain came down. Everyone ran for shelter.We were near to the entrance, and there was a rank of taxis just outside, so we got into the first one that was there.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hesta.

  ‘You don’t have to be back for ages?’

  ‘No - not till this evening.’

  ‘Do you know of any film?’

  ‘I can’t think - suddenly.’

  ‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re getting wet, Dick; come in out of the rain.’

  ‘Well, what shall I tell him?’

  ‘I don’t know - anywhere, it doesn’t matter. You’re getting soaked.’

  ‘Shall we go to my room?’

  ‘Yes - why not?’

  ‘Shall I tell him, Hesta?’

  ‘We might as well.’

  I gave the man my number in the Rue du Cherche-Midi.

  ‘I can’t think why we’ve never thought of that before,’ I said.

  ‘There’s always been something to do,’ said Hesta.

  ‘Well, it’s a great idea, anyway,’ I said.

  The man was a fool about finding the number. He kept peering about him, and he went a few yards too far. I tapped on the glass and he pulled up the wrong side.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said Hesta; ‘which door is it? We can run across.’

  It was still raining hard. She bent her head and ran, laughing, and crouched in the doorway, and when we were inside she took off her cap and shook the rain out of it.

  ‘Are you wet?’ I said.

  ‘No, not very,’ she said.

  I led the way upstairs to my room. I was afraid she would think it was awful. I mumbled something about it being untidy. She came in, swinging her béret in one hand, and her balloon in the other, and she looked round, and peered out of the window, and saw vaguely what it was like.

  ‘It’s nice,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! it’s not bad,’ I said, and I went and covered up my writing things with a piece of blotting-paper and then I thought perhaps that was conceited, as if I had thought she would go over and look at them.

  She sat down on the bed, her back against the wall, and the balloon floated up to the ceiling, staying motionless in one corner.

  I gave Hesta a cigarette, but I did not sit down; I moved about the room. It seemed odd having her there. She made it different. I knew it would not be the same when she had gone. I was shy and awkward, as if we weren’t ourselves, and suddenly I did not know what to talk about.

  ‘I wonder how long it will go on raining,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  We might have been two strangers in a dentist’s waiting-room. I felt she ought to be turning over a magazine. I sat down on the bed, too, swinging my legs on the floor, forcing a whistle. Our cigarettes gave us something to do.

  We did not speak for a long while. Then: ‘I saw Briand the Minister this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Did you?’ said Hesta.

  I turned and looked at her and I could not go on being stiff any more, so I put my arms round her, and she smiled, and we weren’t shy and strange then, but ourselves again.

  ‘Oh! darling, I love you so much,’ I said, and she held me very close, and I kissed her eyes and her mouth, and she clung to me, and we lay down together on the bed.

  I said: ‘Hesta, darling, Hesta,’ and she said: ‘Yes?’ and I said: ‘Can’t I love you?’

  She said: ‘You are loving me.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘really, I mean.’

  ‘Oh! Dick - why?’

  ‘Because I want to so terribly; I can’t go on any longer, sweetheart, it’s impossible - I must.’

  ‘No - Dick.’

  ‘Yes - darling - yes. Let me, say you’ll let me.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh! darling, it’s because you don’t know. Please, darling, let me.’

  ‘No . . . No . . .’

  ‘You don’t care about me?’

  ‘Dick, it’s not that, you know it’s not that.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s - I can’t explain. Suddenly like this, it’s not - I don’t know.’

  ‘Darling, you’re making too much of it. It’s nothing, my love, it’s nothing. It doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Oh! Dick, it does.’

  ‘No, darling, not a thing. I love you so, you needn’t be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘You won’t have a baby, I promise you.’

  ‘It isn’t that . . .’

  ‘Oh! darling, let me, I can’t not - darling, please.’

  ‘I don’t want it to be like this.When I’ve imagined it - oh! Dick, it’s been different, it’s been lovely - we’ve been away somewhere, not suddenly in your room like this - not the daylight . . .’

  ‘Hesta, what does it matter where it is? I want you more than anything, whether it’s a room or a wood or it’s night or it’s eleven in the morning, none of that counts, darling. You don’t have to be afraid of anything, darling, I promise you. Not a thing . . .’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Oh! don’t go on thinking and worrying, Hesta; forget everything you’ve ever thought about. I love you so much, so much.’

  ‘No, Dick, please.’

  ‘Yes, darling. Yes. You’ve got to let me. Yes, I don’t care . . .’

  It was still raining. I stood looking out of the window, smoking a cigarette. People were passing in the street below bent under umbrellas. A little cat crept from the doorway of the shop opposite, and ran across the road, sleek and wet, his tail outstretched.

  I could hear the bell of a tram as it stopped in the Boulevard Montparnasse. The sky did not seem to have cleared at all; it would be a wet evening. Outside on the parapet was the stump of the cigarette I had smoked the day before.

  I watched a blind blowing backwards and forwards on the second floor of the house in front.

  Hesta was still lying on the bed. She was staring up at the balloon that hung from the ceiling in the corner of the room. It did not seem to move at all. I chucked her a cigarette, but she did not take it. I wished she would not look so young. She had never looked so young as this. I went on gazing out of the window and smoking my cigarette. I kept my eyes fixed on the tiles of the roof, and it seemed to me that, suddenly, out of nowhere, born from a thought, I saw Jake’s face looking at me, and we were in a circus tent, with the hot air about us, and the crowd swarming against the ropes. Jake - looking down at me.

  It was something of horror, something of fear, and then it was gone.

  Hesta was sitting up now, pulling at her dress. Why did she have to look so young? I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say. She glanced up at me, and smiled, and she seemed a child, with a child’s smile. I wondered whether she expected me to sit beside her, and take her in my arms, and kiss her. If only she would not look like that. If only she were different. The orange béret lay at her feet.

  The rain kept on all the time. Hesta looked up at me, waiting for me to be the first to speak, waiting for me to do something, to say something, as though in some strange way she asked for comfort. I did not know what to do.

  I threw away my cigarette. ‘Oh! hell!’ I said,
‘let’s go out and get bloody drunk . . .’

  5

  After that day we did not meet so often at the Dôme or the Rotonde, but Hesta would come along to the Rue du Cherche-Midi instead. She did not want to at first; she always made some sort of excuse, and would pretend she was thirsty and longing for a drink at a café, or she would say there was a film she wanted to see.

  It was not any good, though, she had to give in. We would be sitting at the Dôme perhaps, not speaking, I very moody, irritable, scarcely answering when she did say something, and she would lay her hand on mine and look across at me.

  ‘Dick, you’re funny today; tell me what’s the matter?’

  And I would shrug my shoulders. ‘Nothing, what could be the matter?’

  She would sigh helplessly, and insist. ‘Please tell me, Dick; I know there’s something, I can’t bear it.’

  Then I would laugh as if I did not care, and say: ‘You know perfectly well, let’s forget about it.’

  She would hesitate, and look about her as though she were afraid people were staring at her, and then say: ‘You mean, you want us to go along to your room?’ And I said: ‘Yes, but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘If you want to so much, I’ll come, Dick.’

  ‘No, why should you?’

  ‘Yes, Dick - it’s hopeless sitting here, let’s go.’

  We would get up, I still sulky, not looking at her, and she quiet, oddly remote, and we walked along not talking much, but once back in my room I would hold her very close to me and say: ‘Darling, darling, I was beastly at the Dôme just now, but it was only because I want you so terribly that it sends me crazy. Say you don’t hate me, say you’re happy to come here . . .’

  ‘Yes, Dick, if it makes you happy.’

  ‘But not only me, darling, you, too - it must be for you, too.’

  ‘Yes - it is, I promise.’

  And then afterwards everything seemed to be all right again, and I did not feel irritable and moody, and nothing mattered, and then I thought we might as well go out and have a drink, or stroll around, because there really was not much point in staying indoors any longer. I felt fine, gay and irresponsible; I felt like laughing at all the other people, and what fools they were, and I would walk with Hesta back to her pension, and if she could not get out again that evening it did not matter so very much, because, anyway, we had just seen each other.

  So soon Hesta got into the habit of coming straight to the room, and we did not meet first at the café. The meeting part seemed forced now, a waste of time; it meant hanging about to no purpose, when we might have been in the room.The summer was definitely starting now, and on Sundays, and sometimes other days, we were able to go into the country. We went to Barbizon several times, and after lunch walked right into the thick of the forest, striking away from the tracks and the paths, and we used to lie down under the trees.

  We found a special place, a sort of sand-pit with rocks behind us and ferns, very high above the trees, so that we could look down and there would be nothing but the forest around us as far as we could see, like a carpet made up of trees, and every describable colour of green. I had not ever seen trees like that except in Norway. I tried to remember always that it was Fontainebleau, and France. I did not want to think about Norway.

  We lay down in our pit, with a beam of light coming down upon us through the trees. We never saw or heard anyone at all. Hesta went on getting lovelier; I could not seem to stop wanting her, she was so lovely. She gave up wearing her béret. She wore a yellow dress and she did not have any hat. Her hair was cut very short. I slept sometimes with my head in her lap, and she would sit still, cramping herself stiff rather than wake me.

  ‘You ought to have told me,’ I said.

  ‘I liked you being there,’ she said.

  Hesta was funny, she asked questions, she wanted to know things about me. It was a bore having to talk over what had happened before. I was not interested in myself of the old days any more, of my home, and my father and all that. I was only interested in our lives, and living in Paris, and what we did.

  ‘Tell me, Dick, I want to know everything you used to do,’ she said; ‘I want to know what your home was like, and what you thought, and - I don’t know - just about you as a little boy.’

  ‘Oh! it was deadly,’ I said, ‘there isn’t much to tell. I can’t think of anything that would amuse you.’

  ‘It isn’t for being amused,’ she said,‘it’s because - I can’t explain - I want to love you in that way, too, as if you were a boy still, belonging to me.’ ‘Darling,’ I said, feeling for her hand - but I wasn’t really listening.

  ‘Why did you run away, were you so terribly unhappy?’ she went on.

  ‘I expect I was a damn fool,’ I said yawning; ‘I was bloody ignorant, and I didn’t know a thing. Sweetheart, how marvellous your skin is, just there, where your arm finishes - Gosh! I’ll go crazy . . .’

  ‘But tell me,’ she said, ‘didn’t anyone ever understand you? I can’t bear it - if only I’d known you.’

  ‘That would have been good,’ I said lazily, ‘if we’d known each other as children - I guess we’d have been a filthy couple.They’d have sent us to a reformatory for immoral behaviour.’

  ‘Dick - I do understand you, don’t I, better than anyone?’

  ‘Sure, sweetheart.’

  ‘Better than your friend, that man you went away with, who got drowned?’

  I did not want to talk about Jake.

  ‘Oh! that’s different,’ I said; ‘never mind about that. Darling, you’re so lovely, so lovely, come close to me, near; can I do anything to you I like, can I sort of tear you in pieces?’

  She was still thinking, though; she was still staring up at the trees.

  ‘Oh! Hesta, beloved,’ I said, ‘don’t let’s be serious.You said you wouldn’t ever be serious. Life’s too short, darling . . .’

  And I put my arms round her and kissed her, and held her, and now it was she who smiled, and she who clung to me, saying: ‘I love you, I love you.’

  It was not very satisfactory, this business of Hesta living at the pension and me in my room in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. She was always having to get back just when I most wanted her to stay. Her music lessons, too, interfering with everything. Then even though she did come round to my room most days, it had to be at a definite time, and that spoilt things. Perhaps I would not be in a good mood until just before she was leaving, and then there was no time. Or she would be in a bad mood, nervy or tired. We would have little scenes over nothing at all. I used to say it was her fault and she would not answer, but I felt she thought it was mine. We went on like this through the summer.

  Some days it was marvellous, a Sunday perhaps, and we would have gone to St Cloud by a steamer up the Seine, amusing ourselves with the people, and come back in the evening to dine at the Coupole, and so home to my room, where she would stay until it was time to go. That was perfect; we loved each other and it was finished, and anyway there was tomorrow.

  Other days were bad. She would arrive when I was trying to get some work done on the book, hopelessly difficult at all times, and perhaps at that moment a flash of something like the truth and meaning of writing would come upon me, so that I could not bear to let it go, and she would sit on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette, while I tried to convey my flash into words of meaning. It wouldn’t be any good, though. It was impossible to concentrate; however still and unobtrusive she would be I knew that she was there. She worried me, she sent away the flash, she crept into my mind.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I said, pushing away my paper and pen, ‘I can’t write.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Hesta, ‘I’m in the way.’

  ‘No,’ I said, going over to her, ‘I want you more than I want the book.’

  But somehow even that was not true. I was not any good for either, writing or loving. They would not work side by side. The memory of that flash spoilt the loving. I could not surrender myself entirely to
Hesta, nor she to me. We were aware of that hidden flash between us all the time. We were not either of us happy. We were not together.There was not satisfaction in anything that happened. Afterwards it would be late, she would have to go, and it all went for nothing. It was a waste. She would smile at me, but I felt all the time she was wondering why she had bothered to come. She was only being kind, and her kindness had not helped me. The thought of the good days would no doubt force itself into both our minds, and we would wonder why it was not always the same.We would not reproach each other, but we would put a black mark against the day for having been a failure.

  It left us uneasy, bewildered, not knowing what to do about it.

  Then she went, and there was not even a moment to talk, to be ordinarily affectionate, to be glad about being with each other; there was only time for the mechanical, ‘I love you, darling,’ and ‘See you tomorrow.’

  One day I said to Hesta: ‘It’s hopeless, you know, this life of yours at the pension. It spoils everything.’

  She looked at me thoughtfully.

  ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘I wish that we could be married.’

  ‘Oh! darling.’ I stared at her in amazement. ‘You can’t mean that. Why, marriage is terrible. You know how often we used to talk about it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but somehow it doesn’t seem so bad now.’

  ‘We can’t,’ I went on, ‘we wouldn’t love each other half so much. Being with you wouldn’t be a thrill any more. You’d just be my wife. We should take each other for granted.’

  ‘I don’t see that it would matter,’ she said.

  ‘Darling, you don’t really want to be married. You haven’t thought what it would be like. Seriously now, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘No, Hesta, you can’t have. Why, at once life is stale, ordinary, going on the same day after day. Surely you haven’t suddenly got moral scruples, have you?’

  ‘Oh! Dick - that’s horrid of you . . .’

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m not being horrid. But marriage - you’d feel tied and so would I. The very respectability of it would finish things for me. It’s perfect as we are, never being quite sure.’