Nuns and Soldiers (66 page)

‘Yes, but this was totally different. You know he’s always been a bit soft about me -’

‘Did he make some declaration, the scoundrel?’

‘No, he said nothing. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” It was all over in a moment.’

‘How do you mean all over? You stopped holding hands and -’

‘I said something like “all right” and he recovered and we went on talking about something else.’

‘Like the situation in Poland or -’

‘Something ordinary, I -’

‘You shut him up.’

‘He shut himself up. Tim, he’s my friend, he was Guy’s friend -’

‘Oh - yes - yes -’

‘There wasn’t any sentimental conversation, there was just a funny moment -’

‘I hate funny moments, they’re dangerous.’

‘He’s an admirable man and an exceptional man. You’re not going to go against him?’

‘No, one couldn’t. Besides, oh dear - oh dear -’

‘But, Tim -’

‘You’re going to say who am I to talk.’

‘No, I’m going to say I love you and no one else matters tuppence. ’

‘That’s good. And you don’t mind him and Anne clearing off?’

‘I’m delighted! How ruthless love makes one. I never took them to our places.’

‘I’m glad of that. Oh my God, oh my darling - Gertrude, I feel so bossy, do you mind?’

‘I feel bossy too, it’s just love.’

‘But I must tell you how it was -’

‘You’ve told me.’

‘Not properly. I must tell you everything. I want to very much. I hardly understand it myself.’

‘I’m sorry I was so awful, I made up my mind so quickly, at least it wasn’t like making up my mind, it was as if the whole world had changed and I could do nothing -’

‘And then, of course, other people rather took you over.’

‘No, they didn’t. Well, perhaps they did a bit. I was so
hurt
-’

‘I know, I know, forgive me.’

‘I started on a course and had to keep on just so as to keep sane.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean other people took you over -’

‘If it hadn’t all become so public at once one could have had second thoughts -’

‘Yes, I know, I’m so bloody terrified of that lot -’

‘But it wasn’t just that - it was a kind of hardness, inner pride. As if I had to have a destructive occupation to cure the misery. Do you understand?’

‘I think so.’

‘And that terrible mixed-up conversation-I felt I had to rush to a conclusion or die of pain -’

‘Oh my dear heart - I’ve gone over and over and over that conversation trying to see what it meant.’

‘So have I.’

‘It all happened so fast.’

‘We both became entirely irrational so quickly, like falling down a steep slope -’

‘But the point is, listen Gertrude, how it happened, and I felt so guilty that made me instantly stupid -’

‘I should have
waited
and let you
talk
-’

‘No, do listen, you see there were a lot of different things, separate things really, well not quite separate but - oh hell, do you think I’ve got concussion?’

‘Would you like to lie down?’

‘No, I’m all right. I’m not sure what concussion is, actually. Anyway, there were those things. I suppose the main thing, the
awful
thing, was that I didn’t tell you about Daisy at the start.’

‘You should have done, you should have done it instantly, at moment one.’

‘I was so dazed at moment one. Just remember what it was like.’

‘At moment two then.’

‘That’s just it-I kept putting it off.’

‘It would have been right, and it would have been easy.’

‘You say that now, you mean you would have swallowed anything? ’

‘What a way to put it!’

‘I was so bloody frightened, I thought I’d lose you if I told. I felt I just couldn’t
explain
Daisy without our thing collapsing, you’d think it was
fatal.
’

‘It was wrong not to tell, and you should have trusted me, trusted our love, surely you could see how much I loved you.’

‘Yes. I believed and yet I didn’t believe. I kept thinking how
can
she love me. Oh God. These things are separate, aren’t they? I want to keep everything separate, there are so many sort of
items.
Anyway, I didn’t tell, I wanted to and meant to but I kept putting it off, and as I did thatI-I rethought it -’

‘Rethought what?’

‘About Daisy and me. I changed it in thought. I made it not important. I wanted it to shrivel up and go away into the past. I did-n’t want to tell you about it until it was tiny and meaningless.’

‘Is it tiny and meaningless now?’

‘No.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, that was one thing, and another thing was that when you chucked me out on the first occasion -’

‘I didn’t -’

‘When you chucked me out on the first occasion I ran straight back to Daisy.’

‘And made love?’

‘Well - maybe - yes -’

‘I don’t like that.’

‘OK, but listen to it. I was so smashed up, just imagine, I suppose I needed comfort. I couldn’t think where else to go -’

‘I might start feeling sorry for her, only I don’t want to think about her. I don’t want to touch her with my thought at all.’

‘Later on, of course, I saw how awful this was -’

‘Yes, you just ran away.’

‘I couldn’t be with you as less than I had been. But perhaps I should have waited and argued and - hoped and -’

‘Yes -’

‘Well, later I felt I’d failed, given up, betrayed
that,
our love, that
fact
-’

‘Yes, I failed too.’

‘If only I’d stayed by myself, if only I hadn’t gone to Daisy then, but I did, I fell right back into the - the old - routine -’

‘Routine -’

‘Well - anyway then I found you again, and that was so wonderful -’

‘You could have told me then.’

‘Then I thought I’d wait till we were married.’

‘When
would
you have told me?’

‘I don’t know. I thought that if I waited it would get easier to tell you, but then I realized it was getting harder not easier.’

‘Then it’s just as well you were unmasked.’

‘Yes. You see - my God, I do want to
understand
what happened. You see, I only went back to Daisy when I thought I’d lost you, so I wasn’t in
that
sense deceiving you, but then I was in the
other
sense and the things got mixed in my mind and I felt
hopelessly
guilty -’

‘I understand -’

‘And then when you suddenly went for me about that stuff you got from Jimmy Roland -’

‘I’d just heard it, I was so confused, so shocked -’

‘You see, Daisy and I did discuss how we’d marry rich people and support each other but of course it was just a silly joke. And I suppose Jimmy Roland overheard this drivel -’

‘In that pub.’

‘Yes. I can’t understand how he can have been so beastly though - anyway -’

‘That was another thing. I think I see what you mean about separating out the items.’

‘Yes, and I felt
suddenly
so guilty, so much
more
guilty, when you accused me -’

‘You added it all up in a muddled way -’

‘Yes, and I couldn’t help acting as if I might have done
anything,
and the fact I’d never mentioned Daisy’s existence was so terribly important -’

‘Yes - And Daisy’s
existence
was important, something you so absolutely couldn’t deny.’

‘Yes. I couldn’t have invented
any
lie then, I couldn’t
then
have denied her. Oh God in heaven -’

‘The truth got hold of you at last.’

‘Yes, it got hold of
me,
but I wouldn’t explain it to
you.
And not having had the faith and the courage to keep away from Daisy was like a kind of infidelity -’

‘Was perhaps a kind of infidelity. But I understand -’

‘And then of course when I ran back to Daisy for the second time, that really seemed to finish everything. I felt as if I were being compelled to act as if any awful thing that you imagined of me was true. And, oh God, I took that money out of the bank -’

‘It doesn’t matter -’

‘I was going to repay it, I
am
going to repay it -’

‘Oh Tim -’

‘I think I did it to sort of ruin myself, to make return impossible, it was too painful to hope for.’

‘I never believed you’d planned to live with Daisy on my money.’

‘I think you believed it for a second.’

‘It was such a terrible shock, the sense of being deceived by someone loved and trusted absolutely -’

‘My darling -’

‘And I was so consumed by jealousy, I was
enraged
by jealousy -’

‘Yes, you were terrible, you terrified me and I became utterly stupid -’

‘It all suddenly burst over both of us like a storm, and there was a lot of deep awful vanity. I felt so damnably insulted -’

‘Please don’t start again -’

‘In a way I wanted to think you were a traitor so as to ease the pain.’

‘To feel you’d married beneath you and were well served!’

‘Yes!’

‘Gertrude - all this - all my fault - it hasn’t
damaged
us, has it?’

‘No, I don’t think so. This, your coming back - it’s all part of the sort of - logic - of our love. It’s made everything more-I can’t think of the word - detailed - There’s so much more of us now.’

‘Logic, yes. I couldn’t discriminate. I had to learn how the lies were separable from the rest and from each other. Do you remember, I said I wasn’t real and you mustn’t rely on me, and you said you’d make me real? I think you’ve done it.’

‘But, Tim. How about Daisy? How about her
now
? You say you’ve left her.’

‘I’ve left her.’

‘Have you really? Don’t you still want somehow to have her in your life? She’s been there so long.’

‘I have really left her and I don’t want to have her in my life.’

‘That’s really true?’

‘Yes.’

‘After all those years together?’

‘Yes. It’s finished.’

‘But don’t you love her still? You must do.’

The cicadas had stopped suddenly. Already the night crickets had begun their high miauw. An
hibou
made a low coughing
hibou
noise, quite unlike an English owl.

Tim was silent, thinking. He said, ‘It’s odd about stopping loving somebody. It’s odd in a way that it can happen, but it obviously does. I could imagine stopping suddenly because I realized I hated them, my love was hate, though that’s never happened to me. But like with me and Daisy I suppose it dematerializes, it fades away.’

‘So you do still love her? Oh Tim, don’t be frightened, I’m not trying to do hurt or damage, tell me the truth.’

‘I’m trying to. I feel it’s not important, it’s metaphysical, it’s over, it’s already been taken away to a vast distance. I love you and only you and you are everything.’

‘Yes, but answer the question.’

Tim thought about the years and years and years of Daisy, his whole adult life, really. He saw her narrow head and cropped hair and big painted eyes, and something happened in his heart.

‘I can’t help feeling something about her -’

‘You pity her?’

‘No. I think she’s all right.’

‘Better off without you?’

‘Yes. She’s got a strength of being which I never touched or knew. It’s that I can’t undo Daisy. I did love her and that period of time is still close. It’s over though. I couldn’t have come
here
if it hadn’t been over. I thought I was leaving her so as to be alone, and I
was
alone, like I told you -’

‘The festival of the leaves.’

‘Yes, and
Jesus pardons, Jesus saves.
But maybe underneath it all I was simply going through a sort of procedure, like a sort of ritual or ordeal, so as to get back to you. It was all
about
you.’

‘I wonder. Maybe it had to happen. Yet it was all so awfully accidental too.’

‘I had to purify myself, to regain my innocence in order to return, it made me able to hope. In an odd way the Count helped me, he said I ought to leave Daisy.’

‘The Count - ?’

‘Yes, and then there was Mrs Mount’s letter -’

‘Fancy Veronica writing to you! People think she’s a cynic but she’s a soft old thing really. She may even be sentimental about you!’

‘And she said you were alone -’

‘She probably just heard I was going and didn’t know about the Count and Anne, I didn’t tell anybody.’

‘And then I arrived and saw you and the Count -’

‘And then you ran away again, and had to be nearly drowned to teach you to come back!’

‘Yes. At the other end of that tunnel there was a new world. I’m so glad the dog was all right.’

‘So am I.’

‘But about Daisy. It’s really finished. It’s more like as if she were dead.’

‘Yes.’ And Gertrude thought about Guy, and she thought to herself, isn’t it strange, all those many years I deeply and faithfully loved Guy, and now I deeply and faithfully love Tim, who could not be more different. I shall become, well I shall partly become, a different person. But that is a movement of life that I can’t and won’t deny. It is so, like the stones and the leaves.

‘I wish I could think of everything,’ said Tim. ‘I still haven’t, it’s still not all fitted together, there are dark bits and fuzzy bits and I so want you to see it -’

‘Probably it can’t all be seen. You’ve given it to me now, with the dark bits and the fuzzy bits, I’ve got it all. Yes, yes, I’ve got you, all of you.’

‘Gertrude, I know you’re thinking about Guy.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sucha-by contrast - sucha-mouldy old husband!’