Shadows had taken over the lawn when the three boys appeared in the trees, and Elizabeth clapped her hands and called, ‘Go and get your baths and have your suppers. They are in the refrigerator.’
It was too pleasant sitting here to go inside, and they sat on under the big tree, drinking sherry in the twilight.
‘You’ll have supper with us, of course,’ stated Elizabeth. Stephen was not mentioned, and again Sarah reminded herself that he had a complicated life with a thousand obligations and connections.
They ate at leisure in the little room next to the kitchen, and it was quite dark outside when the boys appeared. They wore short red dressing gowns and were brushed, and they smelled of soap. These fair creatures with their transparent skins, their clear blue eyes, their diffident charm, had even more the look of angels who had chosen to grace an earthly choir.
‘Have you had your baths? Yes, I can see you have. Well done. Did you eat your suppers? Good. Well, it’s going to be a big day tomorrow. This is the calm before the storm. Put yourselves to bed.’ They came to her, one after another, and she planted efficient kisses on three offered cheeks. ‘Off you go, then.’
And off they went, with decorum, to the door, where suddenly they became children, in a flurry of little squeaks and giggles. The door banged shut after them, and their crashing race up the stairs shook the walls.
Boys will be boys, said Elizabeth’s smile, and she sighed with satisfaction. Norah’s sigh echoed hers, a long expiring breath that was a confession of sorrow. Elizabeth glanced sharply at Norah, who bravely smiled, but with a small grimace. Childless Norah. Elizabeth patted her friend briskly on her shoulder and gave her a chin-up smile. Norah sat quiet for a moment, then got up and began clearing away plates.
The door opened and James stood there. He was looking at his mother.
‘What is it?’ demanded Elizabeth, and as he did not speak, but hesitated, holding on to the door handle, ‘Well, what do you want?’
That he had come for something, that he wanted something, was plain, for those blue eyes were full of a question, but after a moment he said, ‘Nothing.’
‘Then run along,’ she said, not unkindly.
Again the door shut behind him, but this time quietly. Almost at once he came back. He stood staring at his mother. ‘What is it James?’ she said. He did not go and he did not speak. There was something like a battle of wills between the two pairs of eyes. Then James seemed to shrink, but when he turned away he was stubbornly holding himself together.
Sarah made sure she was in her room when the coach returned, bringing the members of the company who had not been delivered to the hotels.
Under her door came an envelope. ‘Sarah. Why not? You never look at me. You never see me. I could kill you for it. I’m drunk. Andrew.’
Having scarcely slept the night before she slept at once. Dreams need not go by contraries. Her dreams that night could not have been more to the point, scenes from a farce, men and women running in and out of doors, wrong rooms, right rooms, a joker changing numbers on doors, cries of indignation and laughter, a girl sitting on a bed noisily weeping, head flung back, black hair streaming, a finger pointed in accusation at…
Since the company had returned from Stratford so late, they were not in the breakfast room when Sarah got there. She left it as Henry came in and said ‘Sarah…,’ but she went into the interior of the house, to escape him, not replying. There she saw Stephen climbing a small back staircase, again with the three boys, and they all carried an assortment of tools. He stopped on the landing and called down, ‘We are about to have a lesson in basic plumbing.’
‘It is the business of the wealthy man to give employment to the artisan,’ she quoted. At this the three young heads turned quickly, from three different levels of the stair, looking down at her, each face wearing that delighted but half-scared smile children accustomed to authoritarian rule use to salute rebellion. She was being insubordinate, they felt, but this must define their schools, not their parents.
Stephen said, ‘Nonsense. Everyone should know how the machinery of a house works. But there’s quite a decent bench under some beeches if you follow the path we were on yesterday and then turn right.’
The two younger boys pounded up the stairs, giggling. James stopped on the landing and then lifted his head to gaze out of the window there. He did this in the way one uses to check up on something, or greet someone. At any rate, he was lost to the world for a long minute, and then Stephen came back, seemed to hesitate, then put his hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Come along, old chap.’
James slowly came out of his contemplation, smiled, and went with his father up the stairs. Sarah quickly ran up to the landing, and saw out of the window an enormous ash, waving its arms in the morning sunlight.
Then she followed instructions and, a good way from the house, found a wooden bench under old beeches. She sat canopied by warm green. A green thought in a green shade. At least the weather continued good: not an observation to be made lightly on a day a play was to be presented in the open.
She contemplated the old house. Its bulk dwarfed the ash tree, James’s familiar, which had a look of standing on guard. From here, nearly a mile away, the green masses merely stirred and trembled, drawing in or repelling black specks, presumably rooks. She had been there an hour or so when Stephen came. He sat down beside her and at once said, ‘She came into my room last night.’
‘Julie?’
‘I wouldn’t exactly say that.’
She nibbled a grass stem and waited.
‘I couldn’t have brought myself to go to her.’
‘No.’ When he did not go on, she enquired, ‘Well?’
‘You mean, how did I acquit myself?’
‘No, I did not mean that.’
‘I have to report that I surprised myself. And I gave her a pleasant surprise or two, I am sure. A good time—as they put it over there.’ She said nothing, and now he turned a hard critical grin full on her. ‘You mean that was not what you meant? But women wait for us to fall down—oh, forgive me.’
‘Speaking for myself—no.’
‘Perhaps I shall marry her. Yes, why not?’ he mused.
‘Oh, congratulations. Oh, brilliant.’
‘Why not? She lisps about the wonderful life here.’
‘Elizabeth doesn’t seem to her an impediment?’
‘I don’t think she really sees Elizabeth. I suspect she thinks Elizabeth is not pretty enough to count.’
‘I remember being the same. I was rather younger than Susan, though.’
‘Yes. She’s juvenile. Yes, I’d say that was the word for her. Anyway, Elizabeth wouldn’t be an impediment, would she, if I decided to…’ All this in the hard angry voice she did occasionally hear from him. ‘Could Elizabeth really complain? She could marry Norah.’ And then that personality left him, in a deep breath that let out, it seemed, all the anger. His voice lowered into incredulous, admiring, tender awe. ‘It’s the youth of her—that young body.’
Sarah could not speak. She had been thinking, far too often, I shall never again hold a young man’s body in my arms. Never. And it had seemed to her the most terrible sentence Time could deal her.
‘But, Sarah…’ He saw her face averted, put his hand to it, and turned it towards him. He calmly regarded the tears spilling down her face. ‘But, Sarah, the point is, it’s a young body. Two a penny. Any time. She’s not…’ Here he let his hand slide away, making it a caress, consoling, tender, as you would for a child. He looked at the wet on his hand and frowned at it. ‘All the same, if I married her, what bliss, for a time.’
‘And then you’d have the pleasure of watching her fall in love with someone her age, while she was ever so kind to you.’
‘Exactly. You put it so…But last night I was asking myself…she really is sweet, I’m not saying she isn’t. But is it worth it? To hold Julie’s hand is worth more than all of last night.’
Is.
She said, m
aking her voice steady, ‘Although Henry is in love with me—he really is—’
‘I had noticed. Give me credit.’
‘Although he knows I am crazy about him, he hasn’t come to my room.’
‘His wife, I suppose.’ As she did not reply, ‘You don’t understand, Sarah. For a monogamous man to fall in love—it’s terrible.’
‘But, Stephen, it’s only monogamous people who can fall in love—I mean, really.’ She felt she was doing pretty well, with this conversation, though her voice was shaking. ‘We romantics need obstacles. What could be a greater one?’
‘Death?’ said Stephen, surprising her.
‘Or old age? You see, if I had been Susan’s age, if I had been…then I don’t think morality would have done so well. There would have been nights of bliss and then wallowing in apologies to his wife.’
Stephen put his arm around her. This was a pretty complex action. For one thing, it was an arm (like hers) that easily went around a friend in tears. Once it had comforted Elizabeth, weeping bitterly because Joshua had chosen someone else. It was an arm that went easily around his children. But the arm would rather not have gone around this particular person: it was her arm that should go around him. When he assumed this brotherly role, he relinquished reliable Sarah. Never had a supporting, a friendly arm so clearly conveyed: And now I am alone. But she knew she could expect words of kindness and consolation. A complicated kind of noblesse oblige would dictate them.
‘There’s just one little thing you are overlooking, Sarah. AIDS.’
The arrival of that word, like the arrival of the disease itself, has the power to jolt any conversation into a different key. In this case, laughter. While she was thinking that church bells warning of plague must often enough have tolled across these fields, and this was just another instalment of the story, she had to laugh, and said, ‘Oh, that is a consolation. That makes everything all right. And anyway, it’s ridiculous. Me—AIDS.’
‘But, Sarah,’ said he, enjoying, as she could see, her genuine indignation, ‘we have been living in a dream world. The one thing I wasn’t going to say to Susan was, But I couldn’t possibly have AIDS because I’ve been chaste. For various reasons I don’t propose to go into…because one doesn’t say that to a woman…’
‘No.’
‘But imagine it. A beautiful young thing, all maidenly hesitation, the bashfulness of true love, appears in your bed, ready to flee away at a cross word, but the next thing, she is enquiring efficiently about condoms and one’s attitudes towards oral sex. I did allow myself to say, But, Susan, you really don’t have to worry about me, and she said, What makes you think you don’t have to worry about me? I’ve been working in and around New York theatres for five years…it does take the romance out of the thing.’ She was laughing. He was observing this, she could see, with relief. ‘Do you realize how lucky we were, Sarah—us lot?’
‘How kind of you to include me in your lot.’
‘Pre-AIDS. Post-AIDS. That’s the point. We were liberated from the old moralities. Guilt was never more than a mild flick of the whip.’
‘We were still romantic. We talked about being in love, not having sex.’
‘We didn’t worry all that much about pregnancy…and I never knew anyone with VD. Did you?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember anyone saying, I think I’ve got syph.’
‘There you are. Paradise. We lived in paradise and didn’t know it. But these young things, they have more in common with our grandparents and great-grandparents than with us. Ridden with fear, poor things. Well, for my part, I wonder if it’s worth it.’
‘You’re telling me that when Susan arrives in your bed tonight you’re going to say, I don’t think it’s worth it, run along back to your bed little Susan, there’s a good girl?’
‘Well—no. But, Sarah, I know absolutely what she meant by There’s no conviction in it.’
‘But, Stephen, you won’t be feeling like this for long. Just as I quite soon will return to being a severe elderly woman, and I’ll say about other people’s follies, Really, how tiresome.’
‘So you keep saying.’
‘Yes, I do. I have to.’
‘Anyway, I was never much good at pain. I simply cannot put up with it.’ As if he were talking about a fractured knee or a headache, and not a brutal fist slamming again and again into one’s heart.
‘There’s only one thing we can all rely on. Thank God. What we feel one year won’t be what we feel the next.’
They sat on in silence, knowing their thoughts ran on parallel lines.
At midday they walked to the house, passing a shady glade full of children, fifteen or so, Stephen’s among them. Recent fiction has taught that a tribe of children may only be seen as potential savages capable of any barbarism, but it was hard to associate these with anything much more than the friendly waves and smiles they were offering the adults. Stephen sent his offspring and their friends a lofty wave of the arm, as to a distant shore. James’s face, as he followed the two with his eyes, was thoughtful, brave, and stubborn too. So he had looked at his mother and, today, at the ash tree. The two were thinking, as adults do, with discomfort, it was just as well that between the mental landscapes those youngsters knew and their own lay such gulfs of experience that the children could have no notion of all the effort that would be demanded of them. Out of sight of the children, out of sight of the house, Stephen unexpectedly stopped and put brotherly arms around her. ‘Sarah, I don’t think you begin to know what you’ve meant to me….’ He let her go, without looking at her, as if any emotions he might find on her face were bound to be too much.
In the room where a buffet meal waited for them, Henry was already seated, with Susan. Henry at once got up and leaned over Sarah to demand in a rough voice that this time did not mock itself, ‘Sarah, where have you been?’
Sarah was watching how Susan smiled at Stephen, whose returning smile held ingredients that she must find contradictory. For one thing, it was clear that Stephen was more ‘in love’—but why the quotes?—than he let on. His whole body was flattered, was pleased, and seemed to be sending messages, of its own accord, to Susan’s. But his face was full of ironies and was saying, Don’t come too close. What he said aloud was, ‘Slept well?’ She giggled delightfully, blushed, but looked confused.
‘Sarah,’ Henry was saying, in the same voice, ‘what are you going to do this afternoon?’
‘I’m going into the town to the hairdresser.’ She smiled, she hoped, nonchalantly at this man whom she loved—oh yes, she did, for the invisible weavers were doing their work well—and her heart was babbling, ‘I love you,’ as she offered him a plate of healthy country bread.
‘The hairdresser!’
‘And what are you going to do?’ she enquired, though she had been determined not to ask.
‘I’m doing a couple of hours with the musicians. They were a bit ragged last night. I’ll be there from three till five.’ He made it a question.
‘If I’ve finished, I’ll come.’ She was thinking that nothing would induce her to be there and, with equal force, that nothing could keep her away.
Later, having done with the hairdresser, she took a taxi back and went straight to the theatre area. Henry was leaning moodily against the edge of the musicians’ platform. He had his hands pushed deep into his pockets, and he seemed tired and discouraged. He was pale. He was ill. The musicians were coming from the shrubs that screened the new building. Henry had seen her, for now he remarked, ‘Be still my heart’—not to her, but to the trees and the sky. He at once parodied himself, going into a pose like Romeo’s under Juliet’s balcony, on one knee with arms outstretched. On his feet again, he was unable to prevent himself sending her a long and wretched look, but parodied that too, by intensifying it to the point of ludicrousness. She had to laugh, even while dissolving into sweet nostalgia for long-lost shores.
When the music rehearsal was done, he came to her and had just said, ‘
Let’s go and walk,’ when she saw Benjamin coming purposefully towards them.
‘Here’s your admirer,’ said Henry, surprising her, for she did not know he had noticed Benjamin’s attentions, and plunging her into loss as he ran off, swiping at a shrub as he went, and jumping over another.
Sarah could not help being thrilled by Henry’s jealousy, though he was off the mark. You may fall into liking, as you do into love, though it is a less common surrender. It is easy to confuse one with the other. Benjamin had fallen into liking with her, on first sight, just as she and Stephen had done with each other at that first meeting in the restaurant. Could she say she had equally fallen into liking with him? No; she had only to make the comparison. Which is not to say she did not like him well enough.