A Severed Head (29 page)

I could see the two women exchanging glances. I realized then that Rosemary must have known all along about Antonia
’
s relations with Alexander, since doubtless it was at her flat that they met. The champagne cork hit the ceiling.

‘
Dear heart,
’
said Antonia,
‘
don
’
t fret, be still, be still. We all love you, we do.
’
She came up to pluck again at my sleeve and I gave her a glass. I gave one to Rosemary.

I said,
“
I shall give you the Audubon prints as a wedding present.
’
I drank and began to laugh again. They watched me with disapproving puzzlement.

My child, I feel as if we two are like survivors of a wreck, who have suffered so much together that they can hardly, thereafter, bear to see each other. It is indeed for some such reason that I have avoided you, and I have felt that on your side the same reluctance must exist to renew a relation which has occasioned so much torment. What has happened to us, my darling Georgie, since that day before Christmas when we lay together in front of your fire like two children in a wood? How much innocence we must have had then, as we have lost so much since! You may say that it is about time for the robins to come and cover us with leaves. Indeed I can hardly guess at your sufferings, considering how little I understand my own: nor can I guess at your bitterness against me, nor do I know whether anything remains between us which can be mended. I write this almost without hope of salvage, and yet I have to write; for I feel as if we had been actors in a play, and there must be some exchange between us for the drama to be complete. This seems a cold way to greet you, but I must be honest and confess to you how stunned and how half alive I at this moment feel. I must see you, do you understand, even if it is only to find out certain things uncertainty about which torments me; and yet with hope, when we look on each other again in the solitude which this carnage has created, of more than that. Will you at least try, my Georgie, my old friend? If I don
’
t hear anything from you to the contrary I will ring you up next week. We did really love each other, Georgie, didn
’
t we? Didn
’
t we? In the name of that reality -

M.

I completed the letter and looked at my watch. It was nearly eight o
’
clock. I decided I had better move to the departure lounge so as to be well installed in some unobtrusive position before they arrived. I wanted to see the last of them.

It was the evening of the eleventh, and I had been at London Airport all day. It had not been difficult to discover when Honor and Palmer were going. They were on an evening flight. And having decided on this course of action some time ago, when the day came I was unable to stay at home. I had sat in various bars and eaten various sandwiches. At last in a desperate effort to distract my mind I had started writing to Georgie; I was not sure if the letter would do, I was not sure if it said what I felt, I was not sure what I did feel. Only in the most abstract possible way was I able to attend to Georgie. I was really conscious of nothing except that soon I should see Honor and it would be for the last time.

I had not replied to Palmer
’
s letter. Of course I had started on half a dozen replies, but in the end it seemed slightly less painful to accept the blow in silence as, what it clearly was, final. I read his letter again and again trying to see just what insight into my condition lay behind it, what possible discussion between the pair of them about how best to finish me off. One might as well have guessed at a conversation of gods. But it was certain that now Palmer knew.

Antonia and Alexander had gone to Rome. I was profoundly relieved when they went. I had moved back with all my belongings to Lowndes Square. The removal men seemed to have got quite used to moving the things to and fro. I did not know whether I would stay there, but I had had to get out of Hereford Square, and had indeed got out on the very evening of Antonia
’
s second revelation. I had of course proved a disappointment to Antonia. I did not know quite how keenly she felt it and I did not at all inquire. I treated her with a mocking friendliness which kept her puzzled, and met her continual affection with continual irony. I could not forgive her and I wanted her out of my sight. I too had become harder and more absolute, and a constant and unmixed sense of my loss kept me so. The talent for a gentler world which Palmer had remarked upon was precisely what had now died in me. It had been at best no very saintly talent; merely a quieter mode of selfishness. Yet I did not once break out, and neither Antonia nor Alexander knew exactly what I was thinking. It gave me a little satisfaction to keep them in the dark.

That the gentle Alexander had so long ago put horns on my head I could not forgive either. This particular treachery had a quality so pure that it seemed almost independent of Antonia. It was as if Alexander had done something to the whole of my past, to years that stretched far back, beyond my marriage, into the nursery, into the womb. That he in whom, more than any other, my mother lived again should so quietly and so relentlessly have defrauded me cast a shadow that was like a scar upon an innocence of the past which I had believed to be impregnable. It was not that I judged him morally. It was not that I believed he could not to some extent
‘
explain
’
; and indeed he wanted to. He suffered more than Antonia from my misleading levity. He wanted, I knew, to tell me of his doubts, his scruples, how he had been led imperceptibly from this position to that; in short how it had all happened. I even occasionally sensed in him a desire for confidences which would have excluded Antonia; and I wondered with a little sympathy and curiosity how much of his own will had gone into the making of the present situation. I had no doubt that the story would be a good one. After all, I knew from my own case how gentle, how far from cold-blooded, can seem to the deceiver the deliberate deception of a beloved person. But my reaction to Alexander was something much more automatic than a judgement, and much more relentless. It was odd that the pain of it felt so like loneliness. Through him so much of my past had been peopled, which was now a stricken solitude.

I settled myself in the departure lounge in the far corner and spread out a large newspaper in front of me. I thought it very unlikely that they would see me. In any case I was ready to take the risk. Outside the enormous window lighted aircraft passed by slowly on their way to the runway. In the warm lounge half-audible voices gave sing-song instructions through loudspeakers to tense people who seemed to understand them. It was like a waiting-room for the Last Judgement. I drank some whisky, keeping the paper well up, and round the edge of it I kept a watch on the head of the escalator. There was still nearly an hour to wait before their plane was due to leave, but I was too sick by now to do anything but watch. I felt as if I were about to be present at a murder, though as the victim or as the assassin was not quite clear.

Extreme love has a voracious appetite. It is also true that, by some metamorphosis brought about by its own violence, it can live on almost anything. I had lived through this interval of time upon the thought that I should see Honor again; and it was as if at that moment I would die. I saw nothing beyond and was concerned with nothing beyond. To see her actually going, to see her leaving my life forever through a certain door, was like an act of self-destruction which held its own dark satisfaction. Yet even this idea was, when the day came, obscured, and in my reeling consciousness there was nothing left but the notion of actually seeing her. This, it seemed, was miracle enough, was painful joy enough, even if it only lasted for a moment.

I looked at my watch and wondered if I dared to go to the bar again for some more whisky. I decided to stay where I was. I subsided behind the paper. One arm was beginning to ache. A kind of blank exhaustion came over me. The end-of-the-world atmosphere was beginning to be oppressive, and I could not determine whether a distant roaring noise was made by aeroplanes or by my own blood. The whole day had been a vigil. Perhaps I was now falling asleep. I found my head nodding as if it would fall off. In a few seconds I was adrift in a dream which I had had several times lately, a dream concerning a sword and a severed head; and then I saw Palmer and Honor naked in each other
’
s arms, enlaced, closer and closer, until they seemed to have become one person.

I jerked my head upright and secured the paper which had wavered a little. I had nodded only for a moment. I confirmed this by looking at my watch; and I peered again round the edge of the paper. Then like demons rising I saw them come. They were gliding up from below side by side, first their two heads and then their shoulders as the escalator bore them up towards the level. I moved the paper back into position and blotted them out and closed my eyes. I wondered now if I could sustain the scene at all.

It took me several minutes to collect myself. When I ventured to look again they had gone over to the bar and now had their backs to me. Palmer was ordering drinks. He ordered three drinks. Then I saw that they had a girl with them, a smart pale girl with neatly cropped hair wearing a new Burberry overcoat. They sat down all three together still with their backs to me. Something in the way the girl handled her drink was suddenly familiar to me. She turned her head, stroking down her nose with a forefinger. It was Georgie.

I lowered the paper a little farther and became absorbed in staring at them. I could not quite believe that I was seeing them, so little did my eyes feed the voracity of my mind. Honor and Palmer showed me each a turned shoulder and part of a cheek. Georgie sat with her back to me directly, revealing her uptilted profile as she turned from time to time, now towards Palmer, now towards Honor. These two seemed to have their attention centred on their young companion. They leanecj forward solicitously, making a trio of heads, and now one hand and now another reached out to pat their charge upon the shoulder. It might have been two parents with their child. Georgie herself seemed over-excited and dazed. I observed her plump face and her uncertain movements. Something was dulled in her. Perhaps it was that glow of independence which I had so much loved, which had made her, for my particular depraved purposes possible. For all her protestations, I had never enslaved Georgie. She was, I conjectured, enslaved now. She kept fumbling in her bag, and at last in response to some laughing inquiry of Palmer
’
s brought out her passport and a long coloured ticket which she laid on the table. It was only then that I realized that she was travelling too.

As they sat there talking and laughing, bathed in an almost unbearable glow of significance, they seemed like actors, and I half expected everyone else to fall silent so that their words might become suddenly audible. I had prevented myself so far from looking especially at Honor. I looked at her now. Her lips moved and smiled but her brow was gathered. Her face was strained and sallow and I recalled how she had looked when I first saw her in the fog at Liverpool Street Station with the drops of water upon her hair. She looked to my eyes of farewell touchingly mortal, as she had looked then, her demon splendour quenched. Only now I could see, in her ugliness, her beauty. It was almost too much. She was hatless, and kept passing her hand through her hair to smooth it back behind her ears. The oily black strands kept falling forward again; and from time to time I saw her full profile as she spoke to Georgie or Palmer. Her curving Jewish mouth, with its natural red against the yellow tinge of the skin, was fixed in a stiff smile, while the hand moved and moved. She looked very tired.

‘
WILL PASSENGERS FOR FLIGHT D 167 TO NEW YORK PLEASE COME FORWARD TO THE EMBARKATION DOOR,
’
said a superhuman voice.
‘
HAVE YOUR TICKETS AND PASSPORTS READY PLEASE.
’

Everyone sprang up, and in the shock of the moment I rose too I had not noticed the time. It was too cruel. There was a little flurry as Georgie dropped her handbag and Honor picked it up for her. Then the trio moved forward together. Palmer in his soft tweed travelling-coat looked clean and bland like a big bird. He looked, it came to me, a man in triumph. I could hear his youthful laughter; and as if picked out by a spotlight I could see his hand slip through Honor
’
s arm. The grip closed affectionately as he drew her along beside him.

I had thought, once, that I might have run forward to her. But they were already as remote from me as persons seen in a film. I saw them take their places in the queue. All I could see now was Honor
’
s dark head, and her shoulder pressed against Palmer
’
s. I knew that I could not wait to see them go through the door. It was like witnessing an execution. I turned away from them and walked towards the escalator.

I turned all the lights on. I was back at Lowndes Square and it was even now only a quarter to ten. The scene was as I had left it in the morning, my camp bed unmade, a few rugs askew on the floor, cigarettes and water and aspirins beside the bed, an overflowing ash-tray, and yesterday
’
s evening paper. I stared at these relics. I went over to the window. Down below I could see the lights of the cars as they passed in endless procession and wheeled round into Knightsbridge. The street lamps lit up the striped trunks of the trees. The pavements were damp and reflected the yellow light. It must have rained today. I could not remember.