The Walking Stick

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s only the opinion of two men.’

  ‘Is it the opinion of one woman?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘This interests me,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Haven’t you always been preaching the virtues of courage and perseverance to me?’

  He put down his glass. ‘On target, that was. Bang on target. Every time a coconut.’

  I put my head on his shoulder. ‘Sorry. I know how you feel – how you must feel.’

  He put his hand round my legs. It closed on my knee and was warm there. It was the wrong knee.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  But I had moved away.

  We ate about nine-thirty. The cooking had come off well – never a certainty with me. We drank a bottle of wine between us. He went into the kitchen and came back with another one.

  I laughed. ‘No more for me.’

  He filled my glass and then his own. His face had paled with the food and drink.

  ‘Do me a favour?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you said earlier. Then you said “I’ll try”.’

  ‘Drink makes me cautious.’

  ‘Well, just tell me something then. Am I a failure in other ways?’

  ‘Oh, that’s not a question you need me to answer!’

  ‘What I mean is: am I a failure in the other big way? With the girl I love.’

  I sipped at the wine and then put it down. ‘How can I answer that question?’

  ‘Truthfully. On the chin.’

  ‘And if I said yes?’

  ‘I reckon I’d jump in the river.’

  ‘So it’s blackmail.’

  ‘No, I want the truth.’

  ‘Well, you can stay out of the river.’ My heart was thumping, and that was not the effects of wine.

  ‘Really? Really, Deborah?’ He didn’t smile, but the tight creases in his face changed and lifted. ‘That makes a lot of things worth while.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Breathing for one.’

  I laughed again.

  He said: ‘Can I ask that question again? Do me a favour?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stay here tonight.’

  I looked at my glass. It was still nearly full. The wine was a sort of old rose colour. For wine is bright at the goblet’s brim . . .

  An answer; you’re twenty-six; you know your own mind; it’s out of the question; say no before he gets the wrong impression; sleeping with him, naked together, a whole night, you, a cripple; you must be insane even to think of it. He’s insane to ask. But nothing’s insane for him to ask, or to do.

  A shiver (try to suppress it) went corkscrewing in womb-dark depths. Over. Now sense. Take it easy.

  ‘Deborah,’ he said. ‘Please . . .’

  He did not wear his scarlet coat, For wine and blood are red . . .

  This isn’t love, this violent passion, taking the breath, making the blood drumbeat; it’s a sexual hand, clutching. But such a nice girl with a good upbringing and such intellectual parents. This man, over here; this one waiting; not next week; tonight; in half an hour; the unutterable invasion of privacy; intimacies often considered but never known. Put it off. In a month, two months, not now.

  ‘Deborah,’ he said, still not moving, but eyes weighing, grey eyes darker with need.

  Well, all I had to do was say no. Tongue against top of palate – the easiest monosyllable. He wouldn’t, couldn’t stop me from leaving. I was my own mistress.

  Or his.

  ‘If you want me to stay,’ I said, ‘I’ll stay.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I suppose I should be all agog to set down in detail the very first experience of a hitherto sexually deprived girl of twenty-six. At this distance, short though it is, I suppose I’m now detached enough to separate the pure physical act from what you might call its emotional overtones, to see the struggle between withholding and giving as a struggle between different sides of the same impulse, to weigh sheer awful pleasure-killing embarrassment against an absolute resolve of the intelligence to find a rationalization for it all.

  Maybe we’re all egoists and think our experiences are different, whereas really it’s only a million million variations on the same theme. That I was lame and withered and painfully innocent only added and subtracted shades of meaning to a cliché that is current everywhere. It’s probably not even far from unusual that our first sexual meeting should have been emotionally taut, exciting, rubbing the senses raw, nervously exhausting and inexpert to the point of failure. (Although I knew so little I knew instinctively now that he had had quite little to do with women.) Nor can it be unusual that later in the night, perhaps about one, with the shaded light still burning – shaded by a tea cloth that later we found blackened through by the heat of the bulb – and in the drowsy, bittersweet, half acrid-seeming warmth, when limbs touched again and urges rewoke and inhibitions were taken unawares, that what passed then for completion came to us.

  The following morning I slid away from him early and took a bath and cooked breakfast almost before he woke. Then after breakfast he drove me to the nearest telephone box and I rang Sarah. To my relief she had come home late and had thought me asleep in my room. I said I’d been visiting a friend, and would be home tonight. She said, what time was my plane to Dublin tomorrow, and I said not till the afternoon, and she said in a cool casual voice: ‘You’re all right, Deborah? Not ill or anything?’ And I said in the same sort of voice, ‘No, I’m fine, darling. See you tonight.’

  Then we went shopping and I bought enough for lunch and dinner, and the Sunday newspapers, and some more bottles of wine, and a new tea towel.

  It was a lovely day with a warm wind directing the clouds like traffic past the sun, and when we got back we sat on the balcony in a couple of deck chairs basking. There wasn’t much talk. He made coffee, and the smell and taste were delicious in the sun-warmed air. Very little moved on the river, and today all the derricks were silent. It was like being in some foreign city a thousand miles from London.

  At last he said to me: ‘D’you have to go to Ireland?’

  ‘I’ve booked a flight.’

  ‘Scrub it.’

  ‘I shall only be gone ten days.’

  ‘Come somewhere with me instead.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Erica is counting on me.’

  ‘Let her count, Deb. I’m afraid.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Of your damned hygienic dehydrated pre-packed medical family. Once you get back among ’em.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll discover it’s an intellectual error to have an affair with an unlettered burke like me. You’ll talk it all out on an academic level until there’s no real feeling left.’

  ‘Don’t you think I’ve a mind of my own?’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. At present I’m only appealing to your body. At least I hope I’m doing that?’

  ‘Don’t talk of it. It’s you that’s analysing now.’

  ‘You shivered. Are you cold?’

  ‘Very warm, thank you.’

  ‘I want you again, Deborah.’

  ‘Oh, God, be quiet.’

  ‘Are you scolding me or God?’

  ‘Don’t tease. Enjoy the sun.’

  ‘I want to enjoy you.’

  ‘Some time. Some time. Don’t talk. Let it be. Wait.’

  We had lunch on the terrace; some of the cold chicken, with cheese and grapes and wine. We drank too much wine. We didn’t get drunk, but the feeling of being heady and relaxed and high-spirited and giggly and uncaring was new to me. Everything we said to each other was very funny. We laughed, and loved with our eyes, and the sun was warm and the grapes were sweet.

  When the last was gone he said: ‘Let me paint you. Let me start another canvas absolutely different. Let me paint you d
ifferent. The way all artists want to paint their women.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Others might see it when it’s done.’

  ‘We’ll not let ’em see it. I’ll promise to give it you if you want it, and you can tear it up.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Please. Look, I tell you what. If you want, if you still feel the same way about your leg, in spite of everything I’ve said and done, then let’s do it from the waist up only.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘What difference does it make? There’s no one else to see.’

  What difference did it make? I took a gulp of wine.

  ‘Look, the sun’s going round and the light won’t be so good in another hour.’ He got up. ‘I’ll get the easel and the chair ready.’

  He stumbled as he went in. Perhaps he would paint better this way, slightly drunk and inflamed with desire. Could I claim I was any different? Or wanted to be any different. Embalm this moment. Food and wine and love and sun and no thoughts. If one could stay like this, lifting away the upper cerebral cortex, stuffing it on a shelf somewhere and allowing all the physical instincts their proper place. Some people went through life that way – and made a thorough mess of it. But was theirs more of a mess than when one tried to live entirely by reason and self-awareness? Was there no happy mean, where one need be neither overcivilized nor the complete savage?

  It was agony to know the name for everything, to know all the smart tags. To know exactly what all the educated and over-educated would say. If they saw me at this moment, drowsy and sensuous and warm, how easily they’d explain it all in words of five syllables, how cool and appraising they’d be, those that weren’t hiding their laughter. Go away brain, leave me alone . . .

  So when he came out, tight faced and heavy eyed and said it was ready, I got up and went in, trying not to stumble and trying not to limp, and sat on the stool and took off my clothes, and he wrapped a piece of crimson curtain around my legs and kissed me and gave me a glass of warm wine to hold, and I gulped at it, and he went away and began to draw.

  But of course it was no good. Five minutes perhaps it lasted while he scrawled the outlines. But then he had to come over to move my head. I gave him the glass to drink and he sipped at it and held it for me to drink, and his hands were so unsteady that he spilled the warm wine over my breasts, and when I smiled up at him he allowed the glass to tilt again and it all spilled everywhere, running down my arms and hands like fine blood.

  After that, as I suppose we really knew from the beginning, no painting was done.

  That night I wired Erica to say I’d changed my plans and was not coming to Ireland. About eight Leigh drove me to see Sarah at the flat. I told him to go and I would follow him by taxi, but he said he’d wait and it didn’t matter if it was hours. He’d wait in his car on the other side of the square. He had, he said, plenty to think about.

  Virginia went home every weekend, and Sarah didn’t usually see Philip Bartholomew on Sunday evenings, so if she wasn’t working I was fairly sure of finding her alone. I did.

  When she saw me she said: ‘Lovey, what have you been doing? You look as if you’ve been taking Purple Hearts. And you’re sunburned!’

  ‘It’s the day,’ I said. ‘We sat by the river. His studio is by the river, you know.’

  ‘Leigh again?’

  ‘Yes. . . We – sat by the river.’

  I put down my stick and untied the scarf that I’d put on because of the open car. ‘Sarah, I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve got to tell you something.’

  ‘D’you want anything to eat? There’s some cold ham in the fridge and a crumb or two of pâté.’

  ‘No. I’m not hungry.’

  She put down the stocking she was examining for ladders and crossed her slim strong beautiful legs. ‘Say on.’

  ‘Sarah, I’m not going to Ireland. I’m going away with Leigh.’

  She pursed her lips as if to whistle and then didn’t. ‘So I shall be the only bastion of purity left in the Dainton family.’

  ‘Don’t joke.’

  ‘Sorry. Of course you’re not going into this in the light-hearted way Arabella does. But it’s happened suddenly, hasn’t it? A couple of weeks ago you were in the middle of a cold war.’

  ‘I know. But probably that’s not unusual, is it? You quarrel – then come together again – and all the time you’ve been apart the – the chemistry has been working . . .’

  She looked at me. ‘Does Erica know?’

  ‘I’ve wired I’m not coming. She doesn’t know anything else. And for a time I’d rather she didn’t know. At least . . . I don’t want to cause her any worry – or Douglas – but I don’t want her mind turned on this. I don’t want what I’m doing analysed and parsed. I’ve as much right as anybody to be irrational for once.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘Of course. Where are you going?’

  ‘Spain probably.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘D’you want me to help you pack?’

  I got up. ‘I – want to tell you more about it; and yet I don’t want to. That’s irrational enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘You mean you want female counsel without the great Dainton brain?’

  ‘Yes! . . . Oh, darling, yes, I do . . . Or not counsel. Because what’s done is done, what’s decided is decided. But I’d like to – to just . . .’

  She got up too, topping me by five inches. ‘You look as if you need an old-fashioned cup of tea. I’ll make you one. Put your feet up, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.’

  While she was gone, I kicked off my shoes, the heavy one and the light one and put my stockinged feet up on another chair and wriggled my toes – or wriggled those that would wriggle – and stared at them complacently. Either I was still full of wine or love or something, because the fact that my feet didn’t match seemed for the first time ever not to matter.

  When she came back I told her the rest – edited here and there – but no doubt she could read between the gaps.

  She said: ‘What does he intend, do you think? To get a divorce somehow? Or isn’t that in the book?’

  ‘Just at the moment I’m trying not to think or plan or contrive or anything. All my life things have been planned ahead, arranged, ordered – not unpleasantly; I don’t at all complain. But this is different. I’m going to live from day to day.’

  ‘And enjoy it . . .’

  ‘I think I can.’

  She stirred her tea and sipped it thoughtfully. ‘Send me a postcard.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll write to Erica?’

  ‘I shall write something.’

  ‘One thing . . . I think you ought to try and play this all on the same level, Deborah. You’ve always been one to feel things quite a bit, haven’t you? Arabella will have a broken heart six times before she’s our age, and it’ll mend again quick as a wink. You’re the type to sink in deep and nearly drown.’ With an absent-minded hand Sarah fluffed out her hair. ‘Well, you say you’re going to enjoy yourself and live from day to day and be happy. That’s Arabella’s way, not really yours. So if you play this Arabella’s way then you ought to try to keep to her rules . . .’ She stopped. ‘Have you the least idea what I’m trying to say?’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me not to get too involved, just in case.’

  ‘Roughly, yes. The wording’s confused but that’s the message. It’s a precaution, Deb, if you know what I mean. Like fastening your seat belt. It’s just a general thought I have. Not knowing him, but knowing you. I like him; there’s nothing more in this than what there seems. I’m only suggesting you should watch yourself – as a precaution.’

  I patted her hand and then bent to put on my shoes again.

  ‘Maybe I already am too involved, Sarah. How d’you measure out love? By the spoonful or the square yard? Probably there isn’t any way . . . I’m going in with my eyes open. From now on it’s ju
st as it comes.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  We flew to Gibraltar and hired a little car there. We got into Spain the following day and drove along the west coast towards Cadiz. But we stopped short at a motel about five miles north of Tarifa. Being August there would be crowds at all the popular places, but here there was nowhere to stay except at two motels on a three-mile stretch of beach. It was very hot, but all the time a strong breeze blew off the Atlantic. The sea was white with surf and the bathing not too safe, for the pale fine sand fell away in a bar that was covered on all but the low tides, and one was suddenly out of one’s depth. I’d refused to go into a shop in Gibraltar to buy a costume, but Leigh had bought two for me there by guess, and they fitted well enough. I’d never imagined it would be possible in August to find so quiet a place; but you only had to walk a few hundred yards round a point of rock and there was no one at all. So I bathed about four times every day. This was heaven.

  When we were having breakfast one morning on the balcony I asked him how he had known of such a place when he had never been to Spain before.

  He said: ‘Jack Foil told me about it. He came touring this way last year.’

  ‘D’you mean he knows we’ve come here now?’

  ‘How could he? No, but when we were coming I remembered what he’d said. Luckily.’

  ‘Luckily indeed.’

  ‘Deborah.’ His smile was half a frown in the bright light.

  ‘Um?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your leg, about your walk, see. D’you have to wear that built-up thing – that extra thick shoe?’

  ‘Afraid so. Sorry.’

  ‘But I’ve been watching when you’ve walked to the sea, no shoes, no stick. You limp less, you do really.’

  ‘I walk on my toes, that’s why.’

  ‘Why not try that with an ordinary shoe?’

  ‘I was told not to. I was told it would throw my spine off balance.’

  ‘Wasn’t that when you were growing up, though? I can’t see why it’d put you off balance if it makes you limp less.’

  ‘I haven’t any normal shoes – I mean a pair of normal shoes – if I wanted to try.’