“At first I didn’t believe a word he said, thought he was inventing it. It came like a knife in my back. I couldn’t think, couldn’t understand. But he began to give details, details no one but Jacques and I could ever have known. He said Jacques had been persistently unfaithful all through those six weeks. You know, I told you, he was away off and on during those weeks on sabotage work. Pierre said Jacques had been with one woman after another, in Nice, in Juan, even in Villefranche. Like a dog, going with any bitch.… Pierre said he’d heard Jacques talking about me with two women in a café, making them scream with laughter, telling them about me and my inexperience, what I’d said to him and what he’d replied, telling them how I adored him, and why. And more—much more.…”
Alix abruptly put her knife and fork down and lowered her head. Then after a minute she looked up again and smiled briefly with eyes gone very dark.
I said: “ For God’s sake.” I moved to get up. “Listen, darling, please.…”
She said quietly: “Feeling paternal again? I’m all right.”
I wasn’t feeling that way, but I made no further move, afraid of any gesture she might think was claiming too much. I said: “You were quite right. It’s better buried. Let it lie.”
She pushed her hair back with her fingers. “ Perhaps you can guess how I felt when I began to believe what he said. While I was there with Pierre the worst didn’t come. Just then I still carried on like someone who makes the motions of ordinary life without feeling anything. My brain went on, pretending to him, trying to save myself, scheming to call you instead of my apartment, determined that whatever happened to me Pierre shouldn’t escape. It wasn’t till afterwards, until I came round after he’d tried to strangle me—even later than that: it wasn’t really till the next day that the worst happened. There was a sort of great blackness here.” She touched her middle. “It was as if something had gone, and there was an empty desert. I didn’t care if I lived or died. In fact I wanted to die, just to be rid of the bitterness and the pain.”
I didn’t say anything. She went on: “After a bit, after some weeks it began to change. The need to die was gone, but there was never any more need to feel anything again. Not only was it bitter, it was cheap. All life was cheap and useless: empty puppets, all worthless, jigging on strings. It didn’t matter whether Pierre was dead or alive. I’d gone to all that trouble to find out who had betrayed Jacques; but in the end it didn’t matter, there was nothing to punish, nothing to betray. The others who’d gone; they were like Jacques; no doubt of it; there wasn’t anything left to believe in any more.”
The waiter came in and said: “Is there something not to your liking, ’sieu-m’dame? The veal, perhaps?”
When we’d reassured him and he’d gone we made a pretence of getting on with the meal.
She said wearily: “It was about Jacques that he gave himself away. He was so anxious to destroy that he lost his caution. He said he’d seen Jacques in Hyères with a certain woman. As it happened, though I didn’t know what Jacques did with his time, I always knew where he was because one of my jobs was to bring him instructions. And I know he hadn’t been anything like as far away as Hyères—not from our marriage until the tenth or eleventh of May. He went there then, but that was twelve days after Pierre was ‘ arrested.’ ”
I said: “ I’m very sorry—and ashamed of my insistence.”
“No. You’d a right to know. And perhaps your theories are right. I was born expecting too much. Well now—I expect nothing. That’s all over—for good.”
There was a longish silence.
I said slowly: “ D’you think you’ll be content to live for ever in a vacuum?”
“… Not a vacuum. But one can get along with other things.”
“Such as living well, dressing extravagantly, gambling as the mood takes you, and helping in occasional black-market enterprises?”
“Yes, if you like.”
I shook my head. “It won’t do.”
“What?”
“Plenty of people can get along like that but not you. It won’t do, Alix. You’re deluding yourself now just as badly as when you thought Jacques a saint. Instead of overrating him you’re underrating yourself.”
“Oh, no, I’m not.”
“Oh, yes, you are, my darling. May I call you that?”
“No.”
“Well, it doesn’t alter anything. You can’t change yourself inside to order. The person you’re doing your best to be—in self-defence—couldn’t ever have gone through what you’ve gone through. She’d have shrugged her shoulders … carried on living just the same.”
She said rather gently: “But, Giles, don’t you see, it’s because I went through such a time that I’m determined never to go through it again. I’m not waiting about to be trampled on any more. I’m not going to depend upon another person for my happiness.”
I smiled back at her. “ You’re making certain of not being let down.”
“Yes.”
“There’s no one now who can let you down except yourself.”
“That’s it.”
“But aren’t you rather letting yourself down by thinking as you do?”
“I don’t think so.”
“God knows, I’ve no right to preach. But it looks to me to be a question of courage.”
She coloured slightly. “ I think it needs courage to live to yourself alone.”
“Or funk dressed up as courage. Real courage, surely, is in doing something about it, not in running away.”
“Like the goat butting against the wall. He won’t learn.”
I said: “ What a big advance we’ve made since last Saturday.”
“Have we?”
“I think so. We sit and argue like friends instead of playing ricochets in the water.”
She smiled again. “All right,” she said. “ I admit that.”
After dinner we walked up towards Mont Boron, as we’d done once before. It was a beautiful night; not yet quite dark in the west but the short twilight was going. The profile of the land was blurred against the steely haze of the sea and the sky. I’d suggested Mont Boron. It was calculated perhaps, but there was simply no other way. We might get one more meeting, and at that, after a break and seeing Charles again, her defences might have gone up double height. At present she was curiously soft—as if the telling of her trouble had got rid of some of the hurt inside her.
We got out on the path where we’d been that other night, and watched the lights of Nice winking and brightening below and all over the distant wooded hillside.
I said: “ To-night you haven’t to tell me what you can see.”
“No.…” She stopped and looked over the wall. “Have I ever told you how glad I am about that?”
“I’m glad you’re glad. I only wish I could have made something of the rest.”
“Don’t think of me as someone who’s injured,” she said. “ I don’t feel it. I feel fine. Why shouldn’t I be fine? I’ve everything I want. When you go home don’t think of me as a poor stunted creature shut off from the Kingdom of Heaven, or something of the sort. Think of me dancing and singing outside the Gates.”
I said: “I shall think of you among the Dryads. May I make a last request too?”
“Of course.”
“When I go home don’t think of me as sitting inside the Gates of Heaven reading a lecture to the poor souls shut out.”
She laughed. It was her old laugh really back this time. “I know you’re not like that.”
“Perhaps I’ve come near sounding as if I believed it. That’s your fault for rousing a contentious spirit.”
We went on a bit further, and then I said: “Stop here.”
“Why?”
“This was where we stopped before.”
“So it was. I don’t know how you can tell.”
“Well, I can. But there’s no music. Last time we had music.”
“Yes. I remember, a rumba.”
“And an Italian
tenor singing about being in prison and not able to escape.”
“You said something—no, I said something about my mind being hilly, and you quoted …”
“ ‘The vigorous mind has mountains to climb and valleys to repose in.’ ”
“That’s it.”
“You were pleased about it.”
“Why?”
“Because someone else thought the way you did, I suppose.”
“Was it Hazlitt or—or …”
“Emerson? I never looked it up.”
She said after a minute: “And the frogs were croaking.”
We listened together. They were there but farther away than before.
“It was somewhere about here that the thing was settled so far as I was concerned.”
She looked at me. I could see she couldn’t refrain from saying: “Was it? Why?”
“Don’t know. I think it followed the close-up, didn’t it?”
She moved her head slightly, the light catching her eyes. “Yes.… That was a little obvious. I’m sorry.”
“It was the first time,” I said, “that I really got any idea.… D’you remember I put my fingers on your face like this …”
She shrank back against the wall. “Oh, no. There’s no need to-night. You can see perfectly well.”
“And then somehow the rest followed.”
She said: “Look, Giles, this is a very nice walk and I like you, but I don’t want to go that way again.”
“Was it an unpleasant way?”
She shrugged slightly. “ That is not in our bargain.”
I leaned back against the wall. “Being strictly rational and unsentimental—what’s your objection?”
“… That I don’t want—any of that.”
“Not any part of the way?”
“Not any part. Besides—if you feel as you say you do …”
I said: “It’s all over and done with as far as you’re concerned. That’s admitted. So there’s no risk to you in it. Nor have you any fidelity to anyone, as you had last year. The thing’s a passing pleasure—or a passing event at least—with no afterthoughts. Isn’t it your way of thinking we should take the sensations as they come—make what there is to be made of them—then shrug and pass on?”
After a minute she turned from the wall. “ I’m not scared of your kisses, Giles, if that’s what you’re … You can kiss me if you want to—if it’s going to do … any good. You’ve been very persistent—and kind. But don’t think you’ve talked me into it. Your reasoning isn’t really very good this time. It’s in—rather poor taste.”
I drew her a little out of the light of the lamp and looked at her. She looked beyond me.
I said: “ Yes, it’s in very poor taste and I’m ashamed of it. I’m damned ashamed of half the things I’ve said to you these last few days—and my persistence and what you call my kindness. But I’m not ashamed of loving you and never will be. Look at me, you devil!”
She looked at me. “Alix!” I said in a whisper. “ Wake up! Alix! Can you hear me?”
She smiled slightly. “I think it’s you that’s afraid.”
“Yes,” I said, close to her. “We’re both afraid, if it comes to that. I need courage just as much as you. It’s not the courage to do what I’m doing now—that’s surface stuff. It’s the courage to know. And there’s only you can give it me. No one else—anywhere.…” I kissed her.
After about half a minute she tried to get her mouth away, but it didn’t work. Then she didn’t resist any more.
I just couldn’t believe it. There were footsteps somewhere near and I let her go. But somehow at the last minute my hand touched hers and I grasped it. She let it stay. I couldn’t believe that either. The bones in her hand seemed small, childish. I heard her breathing beside me. Something had swelled in my throat, was thumping there.
Four men were coming past, laughing and joking. They were working men, shirts open at brown muscular throats.
She leaned against me. She was trembling, and I wasn’t much better.
I said in English: “Darling Alix. Darling Alix.”
Her hand tightened on mine for a second. She said: “ Oh, God, I’m lost again. Don’t let me go.”
Chapter 17
I suppose I should have taken that literally. I suppose I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight any more at all. It would have been the natural precaution of a strong-minded person. Then none of the rest would have happened.
But in a reasonable world it would have seemed an unreasonable act.
We didn’t break up that night until after midnight. We sat in a café and talked—as if we hadn’t talked enough these last few days. But it was talk with a difference.
She seemed dazed by what had happened, still unsure of herself, and afraid. She kept looking at me, laughing sometimes, at others with her eyes narrowed, trying to understand.
We talked about all the things that so far had never conceivably been discussed. She was worried about Charles. I was, too, but didn’t say so. She said she would have to tell him herself. He was due back to-morrow morning. She would go home to-night and tell him, try to explain when they met tomorrow. Then later I could come up and we would talk everything over. I agreed. At the time there didn’t seem much else to do. As I say we were still in a reasonable world.
I stood for a couple of minutes beside the futuristic Studebaker while she sat with her hands on the cream-coloured wheel.
She said: “ I don’t know, I suppose I’ve been deceiving myself, thinking that I had no feeling.… It was there from last year but … Giles, even now I’m not sure. Is it some sort of midsummer madness?”
“Midsummer sanity, thank God.”
“Which is the real me, the one who came out this morning—or the one you’re sending home to-night?”
“They’re both part of the same. You’re all of a piece; there’s nothing irrational about it.”
She said: “ It’s no good; I’m not the wife for you. In an English village I shall be scared of the people, and they’ll be scared of me.”
“You underrate your own toughness—and theirs.”
She smiled a bit. “ I shall never, never underrate yours. All through you’ve had the most … courage and patience and—and forbearance. I should never have believed—”
“No,” I said. “Keep off the hero-worship. Anyway, there’s no excuse for it. Everything’s been done from the most selfish of motives. Alix—I don’t like to see you go.”
She put her hand on mine. “I’ll phone you to-morrow as soon as I’ve seen Charles.”
“You promise—whatever you feel like in the morning.”
“I promise, Giles.”
So I let her go.
When I got back to my hotel I felt drunk. Excitement and triumph. I walked round and round the bedroom like a caged tiger. I felt like shouting and singing, and only a consideration for the traveller in silks and linens in the next room kept the situation in hand. In the end I couldn’t stick it any longer and went out again, walked through the empty streets for nearly an hour. I felt as if I should never be tired again.
I made plans and changed them ten times; I talked to Bénat, lectured Johnny, explained to Cousin Lewis, bought a house, introduced Alix, spent Clara’s legacy, drove Alix about England; there was practically nothing I didn’t picture in that hour.
Back at the hotel again at last, I undressed and got into bed, but it was no good putting out the light. I sat there and chain-smoked until four. Then at last the light off and sleep for a couple of hours.
Awake at six, and, in one of those queer half-sleepy moods that yet seem to see further than most, I began to think things out.
It all seemed so much clearer now. I thought: the young girl, warm-hearted, exceptionally intelligent, highly strung, adoring her mother. When she’s nine that changes, mother leaves them, goes off with another man. Higher the admiration the greater the fall. Father dies as result. Probably at that age thought of her mother in anothe
r man’s arms would seem intolerable, disgusting. The first soar, long since healed over and apparently recovered from. Then ten years later marries man and comes to love him very deeply. He’s hanged by Germans. A great bereavement, sustained by a memory. Idolises memory of Jacques. Two or three years later she learns he was a common rake of a particularly nasty kind, a liar and a cheat. Scar number two, still festering.
Yet psychologist would say first much more important. Hadn’t it left its mark on Charles, too?
Strange issue for a country doctor in Dijon, these two. But the mother …
I turned over. Not easy for me. Last year, before explosion of Jacques, legend, I’d noticed in Alix something.… Not all attributable to Jacques’s tragedy. Nor was everything in her this year the outcome of Pierre’s disclosures. It was the result of them, built on something older. You couldn’t call it a sense of guilt where sex was concerned—that was too strong; rather a shying away, a hint of distaste—and only noticeable now and then. Back to nine, that dated back to nine. Yet she’d loved Jacques naturally, with all the warmth of her nature. This thing only a quirk which normal love and happiness would straighten out. I could give her that. Would give her that. I’d tackle it—with all the patience of my own love. Six o’clock blues. Not afraid.
Always provided I got a chance. She’d promised last night—this morning? She’d tell Charles. Natural she wanted to explain it herself. Once I got her away …
If I could get her away. What about Charles? Where did he come in? Almost everywhere.
By this time I was wide awake.
For some time I’d been pretty sure there was a sort of sex relationship between Alix and Charles, and equally convinced it was not physical sex. Because it was devoid of physical complications, Alix had come to look up to him as the one stable and uncontaminated thing in her world, realistic, astringent, cynical. He wouldn’t let her down as her mother had done and couldn’t in the way Jacques had done. Whether she admitted it or not, she was still seeking illusion. And he accepted it.
Accepted it because he wanted her and needed her. Had done practically all his life. You can’t be a man if no one accepts you as a man. Alix had accepted him as a man at fourteen. In a queer more adult way she still fulfilled the same function.