Love Again (15 page)

She remembered an incident from her childhood, one she had put into a frame long ago, with an appropriate smile. She was six years old. A small boy—he seemed to her a small boy, for he was a year younger than she was—stood with her under a great tree that had in it a tree house and told her that he loved Mary Templeton.
He had just embraced her, fat little arms around her neck, a fat wet kiss on her cheek, and an impulsive ‘I love you’. Because of the kiss and the arms and the ‘I love you’ she told him—outraged, self-righteous, dissolved in love for him—that he couldn’t love Mary, for she was too old; he must love her. And when he said stubbornly that he really loved Mary, she was full of a conviction of his unfairness. He had kissed her, he had said he loved her, and she could still feel the warm little arms around her. Mary Templeton was the most glamorous of the small girls, because she went every week to ballet school and was nine years old. (Surely as a female creature she—Sarah—should have known that it was inevitable he must love Mary, because she was out of reach.) Sarah told him that he and she together should set up life in the tree house just above their heads, an arboreal paradise, for she had already in imagination planned the cheese and tinned ham she would take from the pantry, and the old eiderdown from the understairs cupboard. The small boy hesitated, for he did like the tree house, but repeated that he loved Mary.

This incident frozen all those years ago, a baby mammoth in ice, was filling her with the emotions of then. She had adored the plump little boy with his soft dark locks and his wide blue eyes. His wet kiss on her cheek and his ‘I love you’ had utterly melted her. It was inconceivable he did not adore her. But he had decided to dream of Mary Templeton instead. Long ago, under that tree in a garden since bulldozed to make a housing estate, a desolation of grief had swallowed her. A little child’s love. So she had filed it away: a childish love, not to be taken seriously.

When Bill arrived he had with him Molly, Mary Ford, and Sandy Grears, the lighting man. Sarah thought, while hot knives sliced her back, Of course, Bill and Molly are in the same hotel. And Sandy? He was a strong young man, capable, with the good looks of health, a recent addition because of the demands of
Julie Vairon
, and she had not had time to notice him much. It seemed he had invited the actors to his flat for lunch, and they had all accepted, and
some had afterwards gone to Bill’s room, and then Sarah had so kindly rung Bill to ask him over. Sarah looked quietly (she hoped) at Bill while he came out with this, but he was only smiling, not looking at her. The four young people were smiling as they came in. In this context Mary Ford was one of them. They were a group she was excluded from as absolutely as if she were dreaming them, and they would vanish when she woke. Meanwhile, in a moment that was short for them but frozen for her in the intensity of observation, she saw them in a frame: Bill standing there in her living room, laughing, his hand on his hip, and the two young women’s bodies turned towards him and passive with desire. Their faces were all a hopeful waiting. (Mary Ford too? Interesting.) Sandy broke it, by flinging himself into a chair, saying as he saw Julie’s picture pinned there, ‘A home from home.’

And now they were all in the camaraderie of the theatre. But only in appearance, for Sarah was on that other shore, excluded, watching. She saw how Bill was dispensing himself in looks and smiles, and how the women suffered. They could not take their eyes off him, any more than she could. He was like a young glossy animal, a deer perhaps? She thought of the biblical scene where all the women, entranced by Joseph, cut their hands with their fruit knives, not knowing what they did, a scene reinterpreted by Thomas Mann—bound to be reset, always, in a thousand contexts, by life. The scene had the same slowed-down underwater quality as an erotic fantasy or an erotic dream.

A lot of chat went on, badinage. Messages were being sent out in that other language that so often accompanies the ostensible exchange. Bill was telling a long humorous tale of how in New York there had been a goodish interval between one engagement and another. ‘I was weeks out of work. The telephone didn’t ring for me once. Then, suddenly, it didn’t stop. I was offered four parts in a week. I didn’t know myself.’ He was looking not at the women but at Sandy as he spoke. Switching into cockney: ‘Reely I di’n’t, oo’d’v
thort it, me, Bill Collins.’ And then in BBC standard, ‘The cynosure of all eyes.’ Mary Ford murmured, ‘Oh dear, I do wonder why.’ At once he despatched her a genuinely wounded glance, went red, laughed with pleasure, and at once recovered himself with ‘Four! All at once! Too much!’ And who was the fourth, Sonia? He tilted back his head and laughed, exposing his strong and perhaps too full throat, and from that position—arrogant, touch-me-not—defended himself with a diagnostic inspection of them all. ‘I chose this one, of course. I chose Julie. I couldn’t resist her. Besides, I’ve never been in France, let alone worked there. From dearth to plenty,’ he drawled, an American, malicious, and very far from the dear little boy. Molly listened to the real message here, and smiled. It was a small, tight smile. Mary Ford even nodded as she smiled. Sarah could feel that same smile on her own face. Then Bill smiled at Sandy and understanding sliced into Sarah and at the same time—surely?—into the other two women. Of course. This excessively beautiful young man…the theatre…New York. And yes, he had a girlfriend, he had said so. All young men have girlfriends and even wives, if feeling sufficiently threatened. These thoughts careered through Sarah’s head while she shouted silently at herself, For God’s sake, stop it!

The telephone rang. It was Stephen. He had been crying. He probably still was, for his voice was unsteady. ‘I want you to talk to me. Don’t say anything sensible, just talk. I’m going mad, Sarah.’

This was not an occasion when one might say, I’ll call you back. She told the young people (nearly middle-aged Mary still included with them?) that it was a call from New York about
Abélard and Héloïse
. She knew that Mary Ford knew this was untrue. Mary at once got up, and the others followed suit—Bill, she saw, and felt a quite excessive pleasure, with obvious reluctance. ‘We’ll leave you,’ said Mary. ‘I hope it’s not bad news. Not our American sponsor?’

‘No, it’s not our American sponsor.’

Mary Ford went off down the stairs, that solid young woman like a milkmaid in jeans—her joke. Sandy asked to use the bathroom.
Molly went to the door, with Bill just behind her. Sarah, returning from showing Sandy to the bathroom, saw that Bill, unable to resist the waves of longing from Molly, had bestowed himself in an embrace. Molly was dissolved in it, eyes closed. Over Molly’s head Bill saw Sarah. He put Molly away from him; she went blindly off. Bill came to Sarah, slid his hand down her back, and kissed her. On the mouth. Nothing at all brotherly about this kiss. He breathed in her ear, ‘See you, Sarah,’ and slid a hot cheek against hers. Sandy could be heard coming from the bathroom, and before he appeared, Bill had quickly stepped back from the embrace and was going out. Sarah watched the two young men depart down the stairs.

She returned to her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed and listened to Stephen. He was talking in broken sentences. ‘What is this all about, Sarah? What is it? I don’t understand. If only I could understand it…’ He was on the other end of that line for perhaps half an hour. Silences. She could hear him breathe, long, sighing, almost sobbing breaths. Once she thought he had put down the telephone, but when she said, ‘Stephen?’ he said, ‘Don’t go, Sarah.’

Later he said, ‘I suppose I must go and help Elizabeth. I said I would. She does need me, you know. Sometimes I think I’m just an irrelevance, but then I see she relies on me. That’s something, I suppose.’ Then, ‘
Sarah
?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘And I rely on you. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking. I feel as if something has come up from the depths and grabbed me by the ankle.’

‘I understand, absolutely.’

‘You do?’ He was disquieted: solid and equable Sarah, that was her role.

Act Two ended with Julie’s miscarriage of Rémy’s baby, theatrically so much easier than the death of a small child, which, they
knew, would have taken the play over, have had the audience awash with tears. Besides, a child was always a nuisance at rehearsals, and if they took her to France she would need minders and nannies. Interesting, how much discussion went on about this. Some found the decision cynical. Henry particularly did. He said, ‘It’s much easier to believe that this child didn’t mean all that much to her, oh no, it was just one of those things, she was pregnant and then she had a miscarriage, too bad.’ Henry had a small son, carried photographs of his family, American-style, showed them to everybody and rang his wife every night. Andrew Stead certainly didn’t like it. He protested that his child had been callously disposed of. In life, he pointed out, Rémy had gone to the house in the forest to play with the child, had begged the family to see that the child was a reason for marriage. Then Bill reminded them that Julie had had a real miscarriage, of his child. Everyone forgot that, he complained. He was sure Paul minded about that miscarriage. Julie had said he did. The journals were consulted. Everyone was reading them. Sarah took her stand on what would ‘work’. The point was the effect on the townspeople. They said that Julie had killed her child. But in the play they say Julie induced a miscarriage by swimming in the forest pool’s icy water. The essential thing was that she must be blamed for the loss of the child. ‘And we can’t have two miscarriages—two deaths.’ Attempting an echo, from Oscar Wilde, she said, ‘To lose one child is sad, to lose two simply careless.’ She noted that the Americans did not laugh but the English did. The English in this context included Bill Collins. Sandy and Bill broke, on a single inspiration, into a recital of ‘Ruthless Rhymes’, an exuberant performance.

sang Bill.

sang and danced Sandy, Bill joining in. The Americans seemed mildly shocked. Henry was even reproachful. Andrew’s face indicated that he was well accustomed to adjusting himself to different degrees of culture clash. Sarah, Mary Ford, Sonia, Roy Strether, George White, all, as one says—accurately in this case—fell about. They needed to clown and laugh because of Julie’s infant, disposed of heartlessly for theatrical reasons.

Who laughs at what is a far from simple business. All the younger people were in an uproar of laughter, both at the theatre and at rehearsals, because Roger Stent had sent a letter to Sonia: ‘I hope you are proud of yourself. Those witty little knives of yours cut my fingers and I had to have two stitches.’ Sonia had sent him two red roses with a card saying merely ‘Diddums’. Sarah found herself a bit shocked. Mary confessed she was too. ‘I am beginning to wonder,’ remarked Mary, ‘if I’m really in tune with the times.’

Act Three began with Julie alone in her little house, seeing nobody except when she went to the printing firm where she took her drawings and pictures to be sold, or returned the music she had finished copying. This was the trickiest part of the play, for nothing much happened for several minutes, and it was where the music came in most usefully.

Julie believed she was visited by inspiration: the music was
‘given’ to her: but from a very different source than the ‘first period’ music.

This gift…whose hand brings it, whose mouth sings it? I wake at night and hear voices in the trees, but they are not angels of God, I am sure of that. God’s angels would never come to me, because they do not condone despair. According to the old ideas what I feel is a sin. This forest is full of presences from the past. Once the troubadours walked here on their way from one castle or defended hill town to another. They sang of love, and of God, for no matter how sad they were, they never forgot God. The music I am hearing now surely cannot be theirs. But perhaps it is, for where God is, the devil is too. The ideas I am writing now are not mine, not Julie Vairon’s, for I am a newcomer in the forest, we are all brand new these days, with ideas that have dispensed with God and the devil. If I went back to Martinique I would find in the forest what I felt as a girl—the devil Vaval. But the devil there is different, he’s primitive and full of tricks. I was never afraid of those presences, because my mother knew how to keep them quiet. Besides, in my mind I was already in Europe, I did not belong to them. I knew I would come here one day. I don’t think the music I used to write would be strange to anyone in the world—everyone’s heart breaks for love at some time in their lives. No, this new music that comes into my mind now is like draughts of sweet poison, but I have to drink it. I feel it running in my veins like a cold fever. At such times I cannot lift my head from my pillow and my hands and feet are lead. Perhaps it is my little girl who sings these songs to me? She was not allowed to live. She has taken her unlived life with her somewhere. Where? But we do not believe in hell, or purgatory or heaven. Why is it so easy for us not to believe in all the things people so recently believed—that they believed for thousands of years? All those books in my father’s library…no, I shall not call him my father, for he did not acknowledge me, or say I was his daughter in front of the world. He gave me presents and paid for tutors. I had a mother and no father
.

My mother said to me, I come from a long line of unmarried
mothers, and I don’t want you to be the same. (It was her idea of a joke. I refused to laugh then but I do now.) But I am the same, and my little girl too, if she hadn’t died. But perhaps in her lifetime things would have changed and the choice would not be between a safe husband and being an outcast or eccentric. (Stendhal’s advice to his sister Pauline.) In Paris or any big city I’d be thought a bit eccentric, a sort of vagabond, and find a place in the theatre and with artists. Why am I writing like this? I don’t want anything else. I am happy with my little house among the trees and the rocks, with the waterfall and the wind singing my music to me
. But this excerpt was from after she had regained an equilibrium.