I'll Never Be Young Again (39 page)

I began to shave, watching a strange face in the glass that was not mine, and the shudder of apprehension grew upon me, holding me fast with cold still hands.

I heard a taxi hoot some way up the street, and the hooting drew nearer, and then there was the screech of brakes as it drew to the pavement in front of the house.

I stood still where I was, the shaving-brush in my hands, and I did not move.

I heard a door slam below and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Yet the taxi did not go away, it continued where it was in the street below. I wondered why she had not sent it away. The door of the other room opened, and I heard her walk across the floor. She did not come into the bedroom. I hesitated a moment, and then I went to the door, the soap melting on my face, the brush still in my hands.

Hesta was bending over the table. I could not see what she was doing. I waited, wondering whether I should speak. Then she turned suddenly, looking over her shoulder, and she stood up, and stared at me.

We went on looking at each other without speaking.

‘You’ve come back,’ she said, and her voice trailed off, odd, uncertain.

‘Yes,’ I said.

I smiled, and then moved towards her, wondering why we must be unnatural to one another and strained.

‘I came back last night,’ I said:‘I wondered where you had gone.’

I saw she had a piece of paper in her hands. She laid it aside, it was blank, and it fluttered to the floor.

‘I was just going to write you a letter,’ she said.

‘I never gave you my address in London,’ I said; ‘it was stupid of me, you might have wanted it, in case anything had happened.’

Then I wondered why she should write me a letter if she did not know where to send it.

‘You couldn’t have posted it, anyway,’ I said.

‘I was going to leave it here for you,’ she said.

I frowned, puzzled by her words.

‘I don’t see there was any need for that,’ I said.

She got up and went and stood by the mantelpiece. She fingered a little ornament, putting it in its place. Her face was different, queer somehow, and strained. I knew then that I had to ask a question, that I could not go on pretending to myself that everything was all right.

‘What’s happened?’ I said. Then her eyes swept my face, lost and strange.

‘You shouldn’t have gone away,’ she said; ‘I told you at the time and you didn’t listen. You shouldn’t have gone away . . .’

The soap was dry and harsh on my face now, but I did not bother to wipe it off.

I went over to take hold of her, but she shook her head and pushed me with her hands.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no, it’s no good.’

Her voice was hard, she stared past me, over my shoulder.

‘Tell me,’ I said, and I fingered her dress, not looking at her. She waited a minute, as though searching for words, and when she spoke it was not her speaking, but somebody else.

‘We’re not going on any more,’ she said; ‘we’ve come to the end of this.’

‘How do you mean?’ I said.

She said: ‘It isn’t any good any more. It’s all over. That’s what I came to write and tell you. It’s all over.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, and I took hold of her hand and held on to it, as though this were some measure of safety.

‘I don’t understand.’

Her voice went on, dull and monotonous, repeating the same thing.

‘I told you not to go away,’ she said; ‘I knew what would happen. It’s no use saying I’m sorry. Sooner or later it was bound to be. You didn’t see that, you just went away and you didn’t seem to mind.’

‘You mean you don’t love me,’ I said, ‘it’s finished, it’s gone?’

‘Love,’ she said, and she shrugged her shoulders and laughed. A funny sort of laugh that wasn’t hers.

‘I don’t know anything about love,’ she said, ‘but whatever was is spoilt and done with. We don’t belong to each other like we did. I couldn’t help it, it happened. Life’s like that, it’s queer. I’m sorry. I can’t say anything more than that, can I?’

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Why are we changed?’ I couldn’t believe the truth of what she was saying. I thought she must be following some silly idea in her mind.

‘You see, you don’t mean what you did to me any more,’ she said; ‘once you were everything, and now I’ve lost it, the thing that was you. Since you’ve been away I’ve been with someone else.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no.’

‘Yes. I had to, I wanted to. You know what I was like, you know. You shouldn’t have gone.’

I did not listen to all that. I only had before me the vision of her with some man, doing our things.

‘You didn’t let someone, Hesta,’ I said, ‘you didn’t, not with you?’

‘Yes—’ she said.

I went on staring at her.

‘No,’ I said,‘no - it isn’t true.You’re not like that, cheap, stupid, giving yourself to anyone.’

‘It is true,’ she said.

I sat down on the arm of the chair with my head in my hands trying to think some way out of all this.

‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not true, you’re lying. It’s too filthy, too bloody filthy.’ I went on repeating this to her in an effort at persuasion.

‘Too filthy, too bloody filthy.’

She did not seem to see.

‘You told me once it didn’t mean a thing,’ she said. ‘Those were your words: “It doesn’t mean a thing.” In here, in this room. The first time it happened with us.’

‘That was different,’ I said; ‘you can’t go by that, you don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘You can’t get out of it,’ she said. ‘You can’t prevent what has been with me, with us, with other people. You made me in the beginning and now it’s too late to alter things. I have to go on now - I can’t go back to where I was.’

‘Is it Julio?’ I said, ‘that fellow . . .’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It didn’t seem to matter once you had gone.’

She told me this gravely and calmly with her hands clasped in front of her. She was cool, unperturbed.

‘Oh! darling . . .’ I said. ‘Oh! darling, darling . . . what have I done . . . ?’

‘You mustn’t mind,’ she said. ‘I felt rather awful at first, too. And then it was so natural, so inevitable, and I wanted to, anyway.’

She did not realize, she was only a child.

‘You can’t,’ I said; ‘Hesta, my Hesta, you don’t understand. It isn’t a little thing, it’s the beginning of degradation, the loss of everything that’s lovely and perfect in you, it’s the start of a life that leads to nothing but misery and humiliation . . .’

‘Why?’ she said. ‘I don’t see that. Besides, what does it matter?’

‘It does, darling, it does matter.’

‘I don’t look upon it in that way,’ she said. ‘I want it, that’s all, and it doesn’t matter who.’

‘No, no, Hesta . . .’

‘It’s too late, Dick, to go on in this way now. Too late. It’s my own life, and I shall live in the way that’s easiest for me. Once there was music, and then there was you, and now there’s this. It can’t be helped.’

‘We’ve got to fight this together, Hesta, we’ve got to get out of it. We’re going to be married, darling; do you understand? We’re going to be married.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘No, Dick, you’re being ridiculous, you don’t seem to follow what I’ve been telling you. We’ve finished, you and I; it’s over. I can’t go on with our life. I want new things . . .’

‘Hesta, sweetheart, what you’ve been telling me is something that hurts more than I believed it possible to be hurt, but we can get over it, we can, if we try together. I want to look after you, to take you from this. We’ve got to start again, we’ve got to. We’re going to be married . . .’

‘No, I don’t want to be married. Once, yes, last year, but you didn’t listen then, you said marriage was old-fashioned and absurd. I agree with you now, too. It is absurd. I wasn’t made for that. I’m going away - I want to be gay, to have fun. I’m going with Julio.’

My horror for her future was blinded by my loathing at what she had done, and I could see nothing but pictures in my mind, evil and distorted.

‘You’re not going away with him,’ I said. ‘He can’t have what I have had, not you, Hesta, he can’t . . .’

‘What’s the use of all this?’ she said. ‘You should have thought of it before, months ago.You didn’t bother, you’ve never thought of anything or anyone but yourself.’

‘Hesta . . .’

‘No - never, for one moment. It was you, you, all the time. Nothing mattered except what affected you. Loving, living, going away, it was you who came first. You did not think of me, and how I felt. I did not count. What’s the good of trying to look after me now?’

As she spoke it seemed to me I was not there listening to her, but standing beneath a lamp-post in a dark London street, and the light of the lamp cast a shadow on the face of Jake beside me.And I leant forward, ashamed of my curiosity, saying:‘Anyway, what had he done?’ and Jake turned his eyes upon me, gentle, strange. ‘Just been selfish,’ he said, ‘and thinking about his body.’ And then far away, the whisper of a voice, remote, and distant from me.

‘I killed him because he’d spoilt the life of some woman I’d never even met.’

Then I was in a circus tent, stretched upon the ground, the life ebbing from me, the life that I loved - so painful now, so dim, and Jake looking down upon me, Jake’s eyes that would not leave me . . .

‘You didn’t bother to think,’ said Hesta, ‘that was all, you just didn’t bother. P’raps it’s not your fault, p’raps it’s just something to do with us both being young.’

Only I didn’t die, it was Jake who had died. Jake had been drowned in the Baie des Trépassés, and I was here, alone, and listening to Hesta.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked her, and I looked up at her as though she were strange to me now, some other woman, in some other life.

‘I’m going away with Julio,’ she said.

I was calm and indifferent, all feelings seemed to have gone from me.

‘That won’t last,’ I said.‘You won’t stay together for long.What will you do then?’

‘I don’t make plans ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait and see. I’ll enjoy myself; somebody will turn up.’

‘I want you to stay with me,’ I told her, but my voice was toneless somehow, lacking conviction.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s over, you and I.You only ask me because you have to, because you feel responsible.You want to save your own conscience.We could never be the same together.You know that. Not after the other thing. You’d always be thinking of it. Even now, when I’ve only just told you, you feel different to me, quite different.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no.’

But I knew she was speaking the truth. Already I was another man and she was another woman.

‘You don’t need me either,’ she said. ‘Why, I’ve realized that for a long time.You have your writing, that’s the only thing that counts with you.’

‘My writing?’ I said.

‘Yes. You’d give up the world for that. You gave up me.’

I looked at her, not saying anything.

‘You’ll go on as you’ve been doing all the autumn,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand that any longer. You’ll soon forget all this, us, and what we’ve been.You’ll be successful, with your book published and your play produced, and people talking about you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you set out for?’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said.

‘Yes, I do,’ she said, ‘I’ve known always, in the back of my mind, it would end like this. Last spring I wanted to be married, I wanted to have a baby, and a home, and to look after you, us being together always - like ordinary people. But you told me not to think like that, you told me it was worthless and absurd. And now you’ll be free, on your own, famous soon with your books and happy; and I’m going to be happy too, in my way, in the way you taught me.’

She picked up her bag and her hat from the chair. She began to powder her nose.

‘You used to say: “Don’t let’s ever be serious”, didn’t you? I always think of that now. I’m never serious. I laugh at people and things. It’s the only way. So I shall say that to you, now - don’t let’s ever be serious, Dick - life’s too short.’

She laughed, cramming on her hat. ‘I don’t think there’s anything I want to take. I’ve moved everything I needed last week. Do you suppose you’ll go on living here?’

I didn’t think it could be true, somehow, the strange normality, her voice, natural and calm.

‘I thought Julio and I might go down to the South,’ she said; ‘I long to be all day in the sun. He’s got a little money, I believe. I don’t know how. Probably sponges on vague relations. As a matter of fact, he’s quite nice, Dick.’

Was she saying all this to me? We were like two people meeting over tea. I tried to bring myself down to reality.

‘You’re not happy,’ I said.

She stared at me blankly. ‘I?’ she said. ‘My dear, I’m terribly happy. It’s such fun, feeling that nothing matters.’ She looked at me, smiling, a new Hesta, confident, strangely self-possessed.

‘Well, there’s nothing more to say, is there?’ she said. ‘I’m glad I’ve told you, and you’ve been sensible. Not like men in books, murdering women. We had a good time in a way, didn’t we? I’ve got a wretched taxi ticking away in the street.’

‘You’re not going?’ I said.

Still I wasn’t quite sure, still I would not believe the truth.

‘Yes. There’s no point in staying here. I only came to write the letter, you know. It was a shock, seeing you in the doorway. That’s why I was stupid at first.’

She looked round her, smiling vaguely. ‘Funny old room,’ she said;‘there have been nice times here. Lately, I’ve hated it, though. It’s been different for so long.You had better go and dress, Dick. You haven’t finished shaving, have you?’ She stood by the door, holding on to the handle.

‘How funny if we meet in a few years, and you’re terribly famous,’ she said. ‘I shall come up and speak to you, and you won’t recognize me.You’ll say: “Who on earth is this little creature?” and you’ll peer down at me over the heads of publishers. I wonder whom I shall be with then. Be happy, Dick, with your writing and vague women who come along. You mustn’t mind about me. I shall have fun, you know . . .’