‘Are you warm enough, dear?’
‘Yes, Miles. The sun is warm, isn’t it? How green everything is, it’s like a great water meadow.’
‘I think one forgets about green in the winter.’
‘One forgets so many things. Every spring is a surprise.’
‘Every spring is a surprise.’
‘Just the grass growing again is so wonderful. Look at the light on it over there.’
‘How was Bruno when you saw him today?’
‘Much the same. He doesn’t know who I am. I think he doesn’t know who Danby is any more. He talks occasionally and it sounds like sense only it doesn’t connect with anything. He just seems to live in the present.’
‘A good place to live, Diana. It’s a miracle he survived that fall.’
‘The doctor says it won’t be long now. He’s awfully sort of cut off. Well, you saw.’
‘He’s pathetic.’
‘No, not pathetic. Just cut off.’
‘He still hasn’t asked about the stamps?’
‘No, thank heavens.’
‘I’m rather glad they’ve gone.’
The stamp collection had perished in the flood. The box had evidently floated out of the window. When the water subsided it was found in the yard, tilted over with some of its drawers missing. The few stamps that remained in the box were completely ruined.
Miles gently squeezed his wife’s shoulder. Everything that had happened to him lately had been completely unexpected. What a terribly complex thing his life must be to be able so utterly to surprise its owner! Miles felt as if everything had been somehow turned inside out. The shape was much the same, but the colour was different, the feel was different. It was the old world made new or else perhaps really seen for the first time.
For several days after Lisa’s departure he had lived in a state of stretched tense physical pain. He had let Lisa go, he had let her walk away down the street, and he had thought then that he was suffering. He did not experience her departure until nearly a day later, as if the news needed time to penetrate his body. When it had at last done so the real pain began. He could not eat or sleep. He did not attempt to go to the office, though he left the house every morning as if he were going to. He walked the streets all day. One day in Warwick Road he passed Diana on the pavement and could see from her strained inward face that she was similarly employed. She did not see him. In the evenings he sat in the drawing room and pretended to read. Diana went off to bed about eight. Miles, who could not now bring himself to share her bed, stretched himself out on the hearth rug and lay there stiff and open-eyed through the night hours. He began to think that he would soon die simply from lack of sleep.
He had thought at first that he would find Lisa, that he must find Lisa. He could not conceive how he had ever let her go out of his sight. Two houses. It would have worked. He could have forced it on her. He had asked Diana where she was, but Diana obviously did not know. The Save the Children Fund people did not know either. They said her forwarding address was their Calcutta office. He imagined finding her, meeting her in the street perhaps, or stopping her at the airport. He imagined the light sound, one evening, of her key in the door at Kempsford Gardens. ‘Miles, I’ve come back, I had to. I’ll never leave you again.’ He imagined a meeting in India, the circle of wondering dark faces as Lisa laughed and cried in his arms. Yet he did not visit travel agents or haunt London airport. He did not even write to her. Something very small inside him believed that she was gone, that he had really lost her, and he bent over in physical agony to contain that small searing lump of belief.
All this while he and Diana had scarcely spoken to each other. Diana spent an increasing amount of time in the bedroom, indeed in bed, and seemed to be crying a good deal. Once or twice she had made pitiful attempts to smile at him when they met on the stairs, but Miles’s face could not smile, and once when she touched his arm beseechingly he jerked away as if he had received an electric shock. Diana had passed by and gone on into the kitchen with a wailing sob. Miles knew that he was becoming crazed by lack of sleep but had no will to do anything about it. He waited patiently, resignedly, for his exhausted body to commit some merciful violence upon his tormented mind. On about the fifth day towards evening he found himself not so much falling asleep as entering a state of trance. He could see his surroundings with an increase of vividness but seemed to have withdrawn from them into a condition of remote dream-like helplessness.
Later he woke from an unconsciousness which had not seemed like sleep. It was night and the moon was shining into the drawing room where he was lying on the floor. It seemed to Miles that he must be dead. He seemed to see himself lying there, as if his soul had left his body and was standing like a tall sentinel beside it. He lay in the moonlight trying to remember who he was and what had happened to him. Then he remembered. Parvati had been killed yesterday in an air crash. He recalled how he had parted with her so lately at the airport. She had a shy way of waving, with one thin little hand fluttering beside her hair, then darting to toss the heavy pigtail back over her shoulder. She was wearing the red and gold sari which he so particularly liked. She was still so slim, the child not yet showing within her. She waved, and he could see the flash of her smile, and then she was gone through the doorway. It was the first time they had been really parted for years. ‘Soon back, darling, soon back,’ he had repeated to himself, as she had said it to him, as he looked at the empty doorway. And now she was dead, broken and scattered upon a mountain-side, utterly gone out of the world, existing no more anywhere, Parvati and his child. Miles turned away from the moonlight and rested his forehead upon the carpet. He lay there open-eyed and gazed and gazed upon the fact of her death. She was utterly gone out of the world for ever. She did not exist any more at all.
Diana had found him in the morning still lying there, apparently paralysed and unable to move. She had sent for a doctor and Miles was persuaded to hobble up to bed. After a while he seemed more rational, complained like an ordinary invalid, accepted hot water bottles and soup. He became pathetically dependent upon Diana, and could scarcely bear her to leave him for a moment, although he spoke to her very little. Then at last he began to talk. He talked to her for a whole day, for two whole days, about Parvati, he told her everything, about the child, everything, everything that he could remember right from the very beginning. He described to her in detail how he had first met Parvati when she was bicycling along King’s Parade, and he had thought, if only that marvellous girl’s sari would catch in the wheel of her bicycle I could go up to her and speak to her. Then the sari had caught in the wheel of the bicycle and Miles had run up to help her to free it and had asked her to have tea with him. She refused. Two days later he met her again at a political meeting, and she accepted. He told Diana everything that he could remember, down to the way she had waved and tossed her pigtail at the doorway at the airport. And he told her about standing alone in the hall with the newspaper. And Diana listened with tears streaming down her face.
After that they talked about Lisa. Diana told him about their childhood and what Lisa had been like then. She found some old photographs and showed them to Miles. They talked about their marriage and why it had happened and what it was like. ‘I coaxed you into love, Miles. It was not like Parvati, not like Lisa.’ ‘You coaxed me back to life. Perhaps only you could have done it.’ They talked of Miles’s loves and whether he had really loved Lisa from long ago and whether he would have married her if he had met her first. They talked in quiet voices like two very old people talking about things that had happened long ago in the distant past. It was then that Miles began to notice that some change had come about, that the world looked quite different, that it had been turned inside out.
The pain was not less. Or perhaps it must have become less since he could behave normally, eat meals and go back to the office. It was as if the pain remained there but he had grown larger all round it and could contain it more easily. It no longer bent and
racked his body. He carried it inside himself gently, almost gingerly, as if it were a precious egg. He sat very upright in the tube train, sat quietly at his desk in the office, nursing his pain, letting his body hold it carefully, lightly. He thought a great deal about Parvati and a great deal about Lisa. Their shades travelled with him wherever he went. And he experienced his loss as if it were one loss, blankly and without consolation, and his eyes seemed to open upon it, wider and wider, as he stared at what had happened and nursed the great egg of pain inside him.
During this time he often heard Diana telling him to leave her and to go to Lisa. He heard her words, to which he gave no reply except to smile and shake his head. The words had no connection now with practice or with the everyday pattern of his life. He knew now that Lisa was an impossibility and had to be an impossibility. That was indeed her role, her task, her service to him. He would never cease to love her. But he felt that he would probably never meet her again. She was dedicated, separated, withdrawn for ever beyond a grille, behind a curtain. And he would worship her cold virtue until he could see her no longer. He recalled the superb negativity of her last appearance. ‘No talk.’ ‘Will you write to me?’ ‘No.’ Indeed in his thought she was already changing. The girl whom he had known for so many years, the sick girl, the deprived one, the silent one, was already being obscured by something else. A tall cold angel, chilly and strong as a steel shaft, seemed to be materialising, never more to leave his side. The angel of death, perhaps of Parvati’s death.
Of course Miles knew what was going to happen next. He smiled his secret smile, he smiled alone, and he smiled at Diana, smiled through Diana, as she urged him that it was not too late to go to Lisa. He was in no hurry now, for he was in the hands of another power. On warm sunny spring evenings he sat in the little summer house, disregarding Diana’s anxiety about it being damp. When the weather was cold or rainy he sat at his study window watching the fast grey clouds falling down over the top of the Earls Court exhibition hall. When it grew dark he sat there in the darkness and looked out into the red glowing London sky. His thoughts became vague, floating, warm. They began to disintegrate as the darkness below them stirred and shifted. They began to fall apart into images.
Miles started writing poetry. He wrote easily. Huge chunks, great complicated pieces, arrived complete. Images fluttered about him, practically blinding him with their multiplicity. There is a grace of certainty about being in love. There is a grace of certainty in art, but it is very rare. Miles felt it now as he heard in poetry for the first time his own voice speaking and not that of another. And he knew that the moment had come at last when he could with humility call himself a poet. He had waited long enough and he had tried to wait faithfully. Yet it seemed to him now that he had simply not known how to wait, and that his attempts to prepare himself for the great service into which he was now entered had all been mistaken ones. He had strained and pulled and scratched fretfully at the surfaces of life, while the great other watched and smiled. What had availed him now, what had bundled him through the barrier into the real world, this Miles knew too, but now that his life’s work had begun he averted his gaze. And more deeply and calmly he knew that when the frenzy left him–for it could not last for ever–he would be left with all the tools of his trade.
Diana and Miles had begun to walk back through the cemetery, with their arms round each other’s waists. They walked very slowly, like an old couple. The evening sun shone upon the shining arches of the new grass and a rich smell of wet earth floated in the warm air. The avenue of lime trees was misted with young leaves.
Diana said, ‘I think you ought to have an electric fire in the summer house. It wouldn’t be too difficult to arrange.’
‘Warm days are coming now.’
‘Yes, but it is damp in there. And if we made it really warm you could work there in the winter too.’
‘I should like that. Especially if it snowed!’
‘Especially if it snowed. I’d have to make the whole place completely draught-proof of course. What’s the name of that stuff that you put round the doors and windows to seal them?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘I’ll ask the ironmonger tomorrow.’
30
ADELAIDE’S TEARS DROPPED into the open drawer, making damp spots on the pink and blue jumble of her underwear. They fell, as she straightened up, on to the sleeve of her new black suit which was made of a corduroy so fine that it carried a grey surface haze like shot silk. She smudged the tears away with her hand, hoping that they would not make a mark upon the corduroy. She peered at herself in the dressing table mirror. The hotel room did not provide a long glass. The frilly white blouse, also new, seemed to be the wrong size after all. She had bought it in a hurry. The frills refused to emerge elegantly at the neck of the jacket but remained crushed and jumbled inside, and if she tried to pull them out the blouse came adrift at the waist. But it was too late to do anything about that now, or about the blue necklace of Venetian beads which just did not look right on top of the blouse. She should have realised it was the wrong length. She took off the necklace and dropped it into her suitcase. Then she adjusted the mirror, stood back, and began cautiously to mount on a chair. By this method she could see the reflection of her lower half, see the black cord skirt, the invisible nylon stockings, and the black patent leather shoes with the steel buckle. Well, she thought, I certainly look right for a funeral.
She got down again very carefully. Adelaide was always afraid of falling and felt giddy standing on a chair. She picked up her little black velvet hat and began to dust it, holding it well away from herself, and leaning forward a little so that the tears should fall on to the floor and not on to her suit or hat. How is it possible, thought Adelaide, to go on crying for such a long time, one would think that the supply would run out. Where do they come from, these tears? She pictured a great lacrymose reservoir, the tears of a lifetime: and at the thought of how many she would still without doubt have to shed, the flowing stream redoubled. I’ve cried so much lately, it’ll damage my eyes, she thought, it’ll alter my appearance permanently. I really must stop, but how? She studied her face in the mirror. Her eyes were puckered and oozing and surrounded by great red circles of swollen skin. Her whole face was red and swollen and hot, its surface shiny with dried and half-dried tears. God, I look terrible, thought Adelaide. How can I put make-up on to that?
She began to comb her hair, dropping the little balls of loose hair at intervals into the hotel waste-paper basket. Her hair seemed to be coming out more than usual. It was not the right colour either. She had had to go to a strange hairdressers and the girl had tinted it to a much lighter brown. She wondered how noticeable this was. She had not yet got used to having short hair and got a shock from her looking glass every morning. The great length of cut hair travelled with her. The hairdresser had offered to buy it, but Adelaide could not consent to this, although the weird severed object caused her horror. She patted her new head. She had hoped that short hair would make her look younger. Now she thought it just made her look blowsy and untidy. She could not decide whether to push the short light-brown locks back behind her ear or to let them hang. They looked wrong either way. Perhaps it had been an awful mistake to have her hair cut off. But she knew perfectly well why she had done it.
Adelaide looked at her watch. She had still not finished packing. She could leave the big suitcase downstairs with the porter. She began to stuff her underclothes into the smaller bag. She went through the drawers and checked the wardrobe. She searched the unmade bed and found two damp handkerchiefs. She must remember to buy some paper ones. She had not been long in the hotel, but the sheets looked grimy and grey. Everything was ready now except her face. She had put off making it up in the hope that she would be able to stop crying. Now she would just have to put the makeup on and trust that it would somehow check the tears. Leaning well over the washbasin she mopped her face for some time with cold water. Then she dried it and began t
o smooth on a foundation cream. The touch of her fingers soothed her burning cheeks. She closed her eyes for a moment. Now for the powder. Just as she was preparing to apply the pearly pink lipstick to her swollen lips two great tears rolled down making two deep long furrows over the smoothly powdered curve of her cheeks. ‘Damn!’ said Adelaide. Her hand slipped and the lipstick went on to her chin. She thought, I shall have to wash my face and start again. Well, no I won’t. It doesn’t really matter any more what I look like. Then she repeated to herself, it doesn’t really matter any more what I look like. She felt that it was true and that it was an index of great changes in her life. The solemnity of the thought elicited two more big tears. She tried to rub the errant lipstick off with her handkerchief. It would not quite come off, but the pink blur blended well enough with her flushed face. She mopped her cheeks over lightly and put on her hat. The telephone rang to say that the taxi had come.
Adelaide carried the two bags down the narrow stairs, past the dusty potted plants in the brass bowls, and left the larger bag with the porter. She got into the taxi. She thought. Oh God now I shall really start to cry again. And she did. Curiously watched by people in neighbouring cars, she abandoned herself to sobbing as the taxi crawled slowly through the north London traffic. At last they had arrived. Adelaide dabbed her face with a soaking wet handkerchief and tried to powder it again, only now the powder puff seemed to have got wet too. She paid the taxi driver out of her new black patent leather hand bag. She crossed the busy pavement between a newspaper stand and a stack of crates of fruit which were just being delivered to the greengrocer. A tomato rolled across the pavement and broke, revealing its damp blushing interior at her feet. Adelaide skirted it and went into the little dark doorway and up the stairs to the office on the first floor. She knocked and went in.
Auntie and the twins were already there. Auntie was wearing a very long black coat with a fur trimmed collar and a hat which appeared to be made entirely of peacock’s feathers. She was also wearing a big red and green brooch and a number of flashy rings. The twins were in dark suits, Will sporting a red rose and Nigel a white rose. The registrar came forward to welcome Adelaide.