A Man of Forty (8 page)

“Would you like tea?” asked David, in the first interval.

“No, thank you,” said Lydia coldly.

Another blunder : he ought to have ordered tea without consulting her. Being unhappy, she was resolved to accentuate her un-happiness by the physical discomfort of going without her accustomed cup of tea.

“
I
should like some,” he said. “ In the second interval, I think. Won't you change your mind, Lydia?”

“Oh… just as you please,” said Lydia. After a moment's silence she said : “ Do you want to see the play out?”

He gave a slight start. “ Don't you like it?”

“I don't care for it much. Do you?”

“Well, it's amusing, isn't it?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Of course,” he said, trying to lure her into neutral conversation, “ It won't bear looking at closely. It's flimsy and machine-made. But the acting's pretty good. And even a poor play is better than any film, don't you think?”

Lydia did not answer.

“Unless that's merely middle-aged conservatism,” said David, with a smile.

Retrospectively he listened to his voice speaking, and thought : My God, how polite, how false, how self-conscious! He wished the play were at an end, so that they could decently withdraw and go home, no matter what awaited them there. Lydia could keep up polite appearances when she liked, but to-day, evidently, she was in no mood to play pretty and pretend that everything was as usual. The strain of the past few weeks had wrought havoc in her : she was desperately resolved to make an end of indecision and suspense. Until she could speak to some purpose, therefore, she would be silent.

This was how David read her, and so far as he went he was right. The fact that she was bitterly unhappy, as he knew too well, made him wince and wish to spare her ; but her silence, which had the effect of a perpetual reproach, made him feel like a felon in the presence of his judge. This he resented, and this modicum of resentment kept his resolution alive.

So the afternoon dragged on. In the second interval the arrival of the tea-tray created a moment's diversion. Lydia sipped her tea, but would eat nothing. She was civil and unsmiling. David watched her with guilty solicitude. He knew he was cutting a ridiculous figure, and this knowledge went with him into the street, rode with him in the taxi to the station, and sat by his side in the home-going train. The nervous husband, wanting to be released from his bargain. The nervous, obsequious husband. At moments he came near to hating Lydia for making him feel like that.

For the first five minutes they had a compartment to themselves. And presently Lydia broke her long silence to say : “ Well, David?”

She had a sort of smile on her lips, but he did not much like the look of it.

“Yes,” he said.

“What is it you want to tell me?”

He glanced out of the window, while he searched for words. The train was moving into a station.

“We'll talk this evening,” he said.

The train stopped. Someone got in.

Evening of the same day. A little after half-past nine. At last they are alone together, these two, alone in the low-ceiled, friendly sitting-room, which they've always taken such pleasure in. Supper is over, and Eleanor, for reasons of her own, has just gone to bed. David sits with a book in his lap. Lydia, opposite him, is sewing. With averted head she sits and sews, shutting herself away. For a few moments after the door has closed behind Eleanor, David remains motionless, staring ahead. Then, with sharp emphasis, he shuts his book and lets it fall on the floor beside him. The small noise, in this conscious silence, has the effect of violence. But a glance at Lydia shows him that she will not help him. A wave of despairing anger breaks in his mind, but he gets out of his chair with exaggerated quietness and stands looking down at her bent, dark head.

David stands looking down at Lydia. And Lydia is aware of the scrutiny but will not (he thinks) look up, will not alter her posture, will not drop her infernal sewing, in fact will do nothing but oppose to his pleading a stubborn silence. In his face is no hint of the fury that her attitude rouses in him. He has learnt by long practice the habit of control; but what if by some mischance the control is snapped? David seems to be, and normally is, the mildest, the most patient of men; but the very fact that with Lydia he drives himself on so tight a rein holds dangerous possibilities.

“I expect you know what I have to tell you,” said David, with deliberate quietness.

“Do you?” said Lydia.

“It's about Mary Wilton,” said David.

“That doesn't altogether surprise me.”

Though he thought he heard contempt in her voice, he contrived to answer without change of tone :

“I suppose not. It must have been pretty obvious.”

“ You're very transparent, David. Even Paul can see through you.”

“Paul? What do you mean? Has he said something?”

Lydia put down her sewing and met his harassed glance. “ Are you in love with her?”

He was surprised. “ Why, of course! That's the whole point, isn't it?”

“I mean,” said Lydia, coldly patient, “ are you seriously in love with her? Or is she just another Lucy? It's so difficult to know, with you. You find it so easy to lose your heart. It comes of having such a loving nature, no doubt. I'm not criticizing : I only want to know.”

“It is serious, yes,” said David.

He refused to be drawn into a discussion of the Lucy episode, though his mind already bristled at the threat of it. She had dragged Lucy into the conversation merely to put him out of countenance and discredit his passion for Mary Wilton. No love is valid that is not everlasting : that was Lydia's dogma. The fact that David had thought himself in love more than once was proof positive, she would argue, that he had never “ really “ been in love at all. And David himself was conventional enough, and self-distrustful enough, to feel that every such episode remembered against him did somehow weaken his position and cast some doubt on the genuineness of his emotions. But another and maturer part of him rebelled against that suggestion. If you looked at the thing coolly, with detachment, it seemed both natural and inevitable that one's desire for something beyond reach should in time become infected—and at last identified—with the misery of its own non-fulfilment, and so dwindle to vanishing-point. The alternative was an obstinate perseverance in self-torture that could only end in neurosis or actual madness. In Lydia's eyes it was a reproach to David that he had ever loved Lucy, and equally a reproach that he had ever stopped loving Lucy. There was a nice irony—but he hadn't the calm of mind to enjoy it—in the fact that his inconstancy to Lucy should be used as a debating-point against him by Lydia.

“I see,” said Lydia. “ It's serious. For how long?”

He saw, with a pang, that the malice had gone out of her inquisition : this question masked a wistful hope.

“For how long? How do I know?” But he did know, or thought
he knew. He was merely trying to soften the blow by appearing cool and reasonable. “ If I were to go by what I feel——”

“Yes,” said Lydia quickly, “ what you feel. There's nothing else to go by.”

David answered : “ It's painfully simple. I'm possessed by her. To live without her would be unreal, a kind of death.”

She confronted him with a tortured smile. “ Let's leave it at that, David. I understand perfectly.”

“Do you?” said David. “ I'm not so sure.”

The past rose up before him, the past he had shared with Lydia. The thing he had done, the words he had spoken, seemed monstrous. Yet it was true, what he had said. It was real. Or wasn't it? Was anything so real as Lydia's suffering and his own?

“I'm not sure you do understand,” said David again. “ Because what I've told you is only half of it. It isn't that I feel differently for you. It's only——”

She interrupted him. “ No, you don't feel differently for me. You feel the same as you've always felt—a sort of tired friendship. You think I'm going to be unhappy, and so I am, and that's a nuisance for you. It won't seriously bother you once you've got this new woman, this new lovely young woman with her bedroom eyes. But just at the moment it's a nuisance. You resent it, and you resent me. What are you going to do about it?”

Mary's question. And now Lydia's. Women are like that, aren't they? Tell a woman you love her, and if she's interested she'll hardly wait to be kissed before asking what you are going to do about it. We'll keep two servants, she says, and live at So and So. No children for the first year, and then we'll have three at two-year intervals. Central heating a sine qua non. You love me? Fine. When do we start? This kind of thing is apt to take the wind out of a man's sails, especially a man like David Brome. David's not bluffing ; but he is, I'm afraid, a romantic, and he hasn't thought his position out to the last detail. He loves Mary, and must tell Lydia so. He loves Mary and must have Mary : that's as far as he has got. And so—

David winced. “ There's only one thing I can do. I must go away.”

“For good?” asked Lydia.

He did not answer. To leave his wife and child, and start life
again with someone he had known only a few weeks—he could do this, but say it he could not.

“I see,” said Lydia.

Her voice took an unexpected turn, and in an anguished glance he saw that she was crying. He took a step towards her. She moved angrily out of reach, half-saying, half-sobbing : “ Don't touch me!” Her voice ended on a squeak. The sight of her, childish and forlorn, helplessly crying, angrily struggling for control, made David want to unsay everything and offer her comfort. But he stood there in silence, hating himself, and almost hating Mary for having destroyed something that had been so long in the making. Or was it not yet destroyed?

“I ask only one thing,” said Lydia at length. “ Please go quickly. Go tomorrow.”

“If you wish it, Lydia. But Adam's coming. Had you forgotten?”

“Adam? We can put him off. Tell him why. Why not? People have got to know.”

“Very well, Lydia. If you'd rather. But, you know,” said David, “ we have… one has ... I mean, nothing is settled yet. We've made no definite plans.”

Lydia, dry-eyed, looked at him with a curious twisting smile.

“It frightens me to hear you say that, David.”

“Frightens you. What does?”

She turned her face away. “ I'm going to bed. Good-night.”

“But, Lydia! Do you mean “—he hesitated—” you're afraid I'll go away?”

“No, David. I'm afraid you won't go away.”

He stared. “ I don't think I understand, quite.”

“I'm afraid you won't go away,” she repeated. “ And then I shall have to go through this all over again.”

Paul woke out of a dream to hear footsteps coming upstairs. He cocked his head half an inch from the pillow, and listened.

“Is that you, Mummy?”

No answer. The steps came nearer.

Paul was not frightened. Not yet. But a spasm of anxiety went through him. He knew his mother's step, even on the stairs ; and he guessed that she was on her way to the big bedroom. He knew that he had awakened into the mystery called the middle of the night; and he had had strange dreams, which he chose not to remember. The effort not to remember his dreams made his eyes smart and the skin of his face tight and tingling. If he could coax her into the room, make her speak to him and touch him, all would be well. But he did not really expect that. What he expected, arguing from past experience, was to be told to go to sleep. By making a fuss, by confessing himself frightened (but he wasn't frightened), he could make her come in and give comfort; but lately he had grown shy of exercising that power, and secretive, moreover, about the fact and form of his night-fears. It was an adventure, and probably a sin, to be awake at all at this fabled hour of the night : the smell of danger was in it. Darkness was all about him, but it was his own darkness and friendly, the darkness of shut eyes, very different from the other kind. This darkness was like being inside a smooth cylinder, or like floating over a range of round black hills, or like almost anything you chose to think of. It was warm and safe and very private. By thinking, you could see all manner of shapes and colours in it; and by unthinking, you could stop seeing them : this, above all, was what made it good. If Mummy came in he would open his eyes and brave that other, that outer darkness : till then he would sit in himself, with windows shut and blinds drawn.

But, meanwhile, she had not so much as answered him.

His small warm body held itself tense under the bedclothes. As the unanswering silence lengthened, till it was as much as ten seconds long, he screwed himself up yet tighter, and his toes clutched and tautened the legs of his pyjamas. He still held his head stiffly off the pillow, so that both ears should be uncovered and listening. And, as he listened, memory with lightning speed gathered in the tale of her good-night to him. Back from the theatre, back from her lovely treat, she had found him only just going to bed. She had found him, moreover, being “ naughty,” refusing to brush his teeth, refusing to drink his hot milk, refusing to do anything that Eleanor told him to do : and all for no reason except to postpone the moment when the light would
be put out and he left alone. Lydia's arrival had changed all that. The world was normal again, or nearly so ; and Paul's lurking anonymous terror was for a moment placated. The sight of Lydia returned was too good to be true, but this was still not quite the Lydia he looked for—and had looked for for many days and weeks. She hugged him with a violence that matched his own mood. But her smile, when she remembered to smile at all, was not quite her own : it was something put on, like a false face, and the dim half-thought had flashed into his heart that the person hiding behind it was perhaps not Mummy at all, but a stranger dressed up in her body. Not hers that fixed grimace, that glittering brightness, that too patient effortful voice. And here he was, awake in the night, calling to her, wanting reassurance, though he didn't know why.