Nuns and Soldiers (53 page)

Daisy behaved exactly as he expected. Daisy’s absolute predictability was still a pillar of the world, a place almost, of absolute virtue which Tim recognized, though it gave him now no pleasure and brought him no consolation. Even in a perverse way he might have been briefly venomously glad if Daisy had turned him away with a curse. She had been making her lunch when he arrived. He refused to eat. After lunch she went out shopping and he lay on her bed in a phantasmagoria of misery. When she came back he sat up, paralysed and staring. The long day was passing.

‘Tim, stop looking as if you’ve had a stroke. Move, walk, come to the Prince of Denmark.’

‘We can’t go there.’ It was true. Tim was beginning to realize that he too must hide.

‘Why not, fuck you?’

‘We must leave here,’ said Tim. ‘We must live somewhere else. I’ve got money. We must go somewhere else.’

‘Why? I like it here and it’s cheap and your bloody money won’t last forever, and who’s “we” anyway?’

‘We must go, we must hide.’

‘You can hide, I’m damned if I will. I’m not a criminal!’

‘I am,’ said Tim. He continued to sit and stare out of the window. After a while Daisy went out slamming the door. The window began to grow dark at last.

 

 

‘He took money out of my bank account,’ said Gertrude.

Anne was silent.

Gertrude was back at Ebury Street. So was Anne. Anne had moved back into her old room, though she had not given up her flat.

It was late evening. Anne, in her blue dressing-gown had just been going to bed when Gertrude came in carrying a glass of whisky. Anne sat on the bed, Gertrude on the chair beside the dressing table. Gertrude had been out to dinner with Stanley and Janet Openshaw. She was wearing an amber-coloured silk dress.

‘And he went straight to that woman,’ said Gertrude.

Anne was not proud of her detective work. She had felt it necessary, some old academic sense of thoroughness, a desire for certainty, had led her to watch Daisy’s flat. She had watched it on the evening of Gertrude’s flight (she had telephoned the Count to discover what had happened) and on the next morning. In the morning she saw with a curious mixture of pain and relief and shame, Tim’s arrival. And she saw Tim turn and see her. It was a hateful role; but Anne wanted to be sure that she had not ruined Tim, and herself, for nothing. She resolved that she would not tell Gertrude. There was enough evidence without this horrible hurtful detail. At any rate she would keep this item in reserve, in case Gertrude weakened later. It might indeed never be necessary. However, she had been unable to restrain herself from making the Count happy by telling him of Tim’s prompt return to his mistress. She also now felt the need to liquidate her own remaining hopes as quickly as possible. She wanted the new phase of the world, whatever it might prove to be, to begin. The Count then, after saying he would not, had been unable to restrain himself from telling Gertrude.

‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘I don’t think you need go on fretting about having been unjust to him.’

‘I wish it hadn’t happened so quickly.’

‘Better so. If he had anything to say for himself he would have written or rung up.’

‘He rang Victor and Moses. I expect he tried to ring Manfred, only Manfred silenced the ’phone.’

‘Yes, but that was all on that day. He hasn’t given any sign of life since then.’

‘He could have found me, I didn’t even leave London, he could have guessed I was staying with Stanley and Janet.’

‘Why doesn’t he write if he isn’t totally guilty? He could ring up now if he wanted to.’

‘I know. I - when the ’phone rings-I feel so -’

‘Shall we go away, darling? Let’s go to the country, to Stanley’s cottage or - oh, somewhere else, anywhere out of London.’ Anne here expressed her own wish to flee. She almost suggested going to Greece.

‘No. I must stay here. I’ve got to - just in case of anything - and I must see Moses - about the arrangements - and the Count is such a support - and Manfred -’

Anne was silent. She was trying to read Gertrude’s state of mind. It was not easy.

Nearly two weeks had passed since the terrible parting, and there had been no communication of any sort from Tim. Anne, as the days passed in silence, lived with her own anguish, watched Gertrude inevitably turning to Peter for comfort, watched the quiet cautious growth of Peter’s sober hope. The Count visited Ebury Street, not too frequently. He had regained, with his hope, his dignity, his reserve. He was punctilious, heel-clicking, restrained; but now Anne could read him like a book. She saw the service of his love and could not but acknowledge it to be perfect. She could not but love him the more in seeing how wonderfully he loved her friend.

‘I can’t believe he actually planned to marry me for my money and support her - No, I can’t believe he intended that.’

‘I don’t suppose he knew himself what he intended,’ said Anne. ‘He’s a sort of moral imbecile.’

‘Yes -’

Anne did her part, day by day, hour by hour, in helping to complete Gertrude’s disillusion. It was a proper part, though such a painful one. Better that Gertrude should harden her heart quickly. Better for Gertrude, and better in a way for Anne. She did not want the scene at which she would have to assist, the events which she would have to witness, to last too long.

Gertrude’s state of mind was in fact much more complex than Anne imagined, for Gertrude was now obsessed not only with Tim but with Guy. Her relation with Guy had taken another turn. A strong latent sense of guilt about her hasty marriage was now released and raged within her. It was as if Guy too were saying, ‘I told you so!’ Why did I marry so quickly, so foolishly, she thought to herself; and to Guy’s shade she was constantly saying, I am sorry, I am so sorry. Yet she was not at peace with Guy. Rather, the peace which she had seemed to attain now seemed to her spurious, a tranquillized illusion necessary to the pursuit of her folly. She could not think of Guy gently, tenderly, sadly. She felt once more as if she were haunted by him, as if he came to her positively as a ghost; and with his haunting she felt the revival, with guilt and bitterness added to it, of her first awful grief. She had been formed and toughened by Guy’s hatred of the sentimental, the vulgar, the self-indulgent, the false. How much she had loved that clean sternness. How much she had betrayed it. It seemed to her now that she had weakly withdrawn her total love from Guy as he became cut off, abstracted, unkind, untender, doomed. This withdrawal had been the start of her betrayal, her moral fall. She recalled Guy’s saying once, we have individual virtues but general vices. No one is good all through, in all relations, for all purposes. As virtuous agents we specialize, we have to, because vice is natural and virtue is not. How quickly, without Guy, she had reverted to the natural level. How narrow, how artificial, it now seemed, her own ‘specialization’, which had somehow given her the illusion of being virtuous. And she said to him, why are you a ghost, why are you not with me really as my dear husband, as my support and guide. Your promises made me, and now you are gone. And she reached out into the void towards what she knew was now a figment of her own distressed and tormented mind.

About Tim she did not know what to think, except that he too was gone. She felt for him, thought of him at this time quite as if she were endowed with two minds and two hearts. She missed his presence with a detailed yearning.
Les cousins et les tantes
, eager, as Anne was, to obliterate her error, came sometimes near to hinting to her that it was ‘purely physical’, and thus momentary, or else a ‘mental aberration’ resulting from shock, a hysterical symptom, and thus also momentary. Gertrude knew that neither of these explanation was true. She had really loved Tim, and still did, with a love which would have to fade and wither. She comforted herself bitterly with a resentment against him, not only for his unspeakable treachery, but also because his awkward unnecessary existence and her own stupidity in sending him to France, had brought about that hasty and improper marriage, so offensive to the shade of Guy, and about which she now felt so painfully guilty and ashamed. She saw herself with the eyes of others and hung her head.

About the unspeakable treachery neither her head nor her conscience was entirely clear. She too, like Tim, had tried again and again to remember what exactly had been said in that awful nightmarish conversation. What exactly had she charged him with and what had he admitted and what had he denied? Was he always lying or only sometimes? Did it matter how much of the indictment was true, and what indeed
was
the indictment? She had at first tried to discuss this with Anne and the Count, even with Manfred, but all three were reluctant to hazard any views except rather general ones, and she herself soon felt such discussion to be improper. This meant that she was locked up alone with important, perhaps crucial problems. In fact Gertrude did not think that, in relation to her own decisions, the details could matter too much. Her sad foolish marriage was over. Tim was sufficiently guilty; and this appeared the more relentlessly clear as the days passed into weeks, without a word of any kind from her vanished husband.

Gertrude was also suffering from an ailment which had never acutely troubled her before, jealousy. The thought ‘it is over’ did not in any way alleviate this frightful degrading pain. Sometimes her jealousy seemed at the very heart and centre of the whole miserable situation. It was connected with her general sense of shame, her loss of moral dignity, her unwonted loss of face. She had always been the spoilt child of fortune, how could this happen to
her
, how could she be so woundingly insulted by fate? But it was more than this, deeper, more metaphysically awful. Tim had not just gone, he had gone to another woman, to whom he gave his physical love, the jests and sweetness and animal charm which Gertrude had so foolishly thought that she owned exclusively. She had learnt how death defeats love, at any rate defeats sex and tenderness. Now her tenderness was frustrated, embittered, but her desire raged. Tim had turned the light of his countenance elsewhere, and she would never know why or see that light again. Jealously she missed him, with anger and frenzy and bitter spiteful rage, and about this she could speak to no one.

 

 

‘All the same,’ said Gertrude to Anne, ‘we ought to-I ought to - give him a chance to - explain. I mean, I don’t want to see him - but he was so incoherent and -’

‘Presumably he is silent because there is no explanation except a damning one.’

‘I know. It’s just that I want it to be all settled, finished. I want to settle down to it, do you see? I want to know that he has had a chance to defend himself and has refused it. I need to
know
that. Then I’ll feel - better -’

‘You are generous,’ said Anne.

‘Oh
Anne
- don’t talk to me like that-I feel you’re acting a part - sorry, I know you love me, I know you sympathize -’

How acute she is, thought Anne. I am acting a part. Oh such a dry desolate part. She said, ‘I’m sorry, darling -’

‘I’m not generous. I’m destructive and spiteful. I want to get out of the mess I’ve made. I want to see Tim as impossible, to know he’s had a chance and rejected it. I can’t explain. Sometimes we need a scapegoat. I want to save myself. It isn’t generosity, and you don’t think so. You can
see
what a miserable muddle I’m in.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Anne. ‘I can’t find the right words. I am trying. ’ She looked at Gertrude’s dusky warm cheeks and handsome strong profile in the dressing-table mirror. Gertrude had dressed carefully, chosen a bracelet, a necklace.

Gertrude came and sat beside her on the bed. She took Anne’s hands and looked into her eyes. ‘Your hands are cold. And look, that burn hasn’t healed. You ought to let Victor look at it.’

‘Maybe.’

‘How lovely you look in your blue dressing-gown, it’s like an evening dress. Blue suits you. Wasn’t I clever to choose it for you?’

‘Yes, very -’

‘Anne, happiness has gone away. You first made me feel it was possible again. But I grasped a fake happiness, a wrong happiness -’

‘You will find the possibility, the reality.’

‘Guy said he wanted me to be happy -’

‘Yes, yes -’

‘Now I feel it would be a crime - Oh Anne, I know you have your troubles, I know you haven’t been able to get a job, but don’t worry about that. I want all your attention. I’m selfish enough and ruthless enough for that. We’ll get you a job later, you’ll see.’

‘I’m not worrying about jobs.’

‘It is
all right
, isn’t it, darling Anne?’

‘Yes, whatever it is!’

‘I mean you and me, forever, the old alliance?’

‘Yes, of course!’

‘You’ll stay with me always won’t you, I can’t exist without you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, you’ll stay?’

‘Yes - Gertrude, I’m sorry, I wish I were better -’ Tears sprang into Anne’s eyes.

‘Better! You’re perfect. It’s me that’s all wrong. That terrible terrible mistake, upsetting everything and everybody. I feel I shall never get over it. Don’t cry, my heart.’

‘You’ll recover,’ said Anne, dashing away the tears. ‘We all love you.’

‘Yes, I’m very lucky. Everyone has rallied round, of course, they’re proved right, but they’re so affectionate, so kind. I’ve been such a nuisance to you, to Manfred, to the Count.’

‘Nonsense. Did you have a nice evening with Stanley and Janet?’

‘Yes. The Count was there. He’s a wonderful being. You know, there’s a lot to discover in that man.’

‘Yes.’ Anne released her hands. For a moment she stroked her friend’s shining brown hair. ‘Did you talk to him at all about what you’ve been saying to me, about settling down and being sure that Tim has had a chance - ?’

‘Yes. We talked when he came here that day -’