The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (36 page)

‘What tosh, my dearest dearest Chris.’

‘Oh sure, but all the same – you know something, suddenly I feel you’re open to me, right open to me – I can walk straight in and there’s
welcome
written on the mat – Brad, say those good words, will you, say you forgive me, say we’re really reconciled and friends again at last.’

‘Of course I forgive you, Chris, of course we’re reconciled. You must forgive me too, I wasn’t a patient man – ’

‘Sure I do. Now thank God we can talk at last, talk all about how things were and about the bloody fools we used to be, make it all good again, buy it back, that’s what “redeem” means, doesn’t it, what happens in the pawn shop. When I saw you crying for Priscilla I knew it was possible. You’re a good man, Bradley Pearson, we can make it together if only we open our hearts – ’

‘Chris, dear. Please!’

‘Brad, you know in a way you
are
my husband, I’ve never really stopped thinking of you that way, after all we were married in church, with my body I thee worship and the whole sacred caboodle, we were pure in heart once, we meant well by each other, we really cared, didn’t we, didn’t we care?’

‘Possibly, but—’

‘When it went wrong I thought I’d become a cynic forever – I married Evans for his money. Well, that was a real action anyway, I never left him, he died holding my hand, the poor old bugger. But now I feel as if the past has all fallen away. I came back to you to say this, Brad, to
find
this, and now we’re older and wiser and sorry for what we did, why don’t we try again ?’

‘Chris darling, you’re dotty,’ I said. ‘But I’m very touched.’

‘Gee, Brad, you look so young. You look all dewy and spiritual like a cat with kittens.’

‘I’m going. Good – bye.’

‘You can’t go just when we’ve established a new deal. I wanted to say all this to you before only I couldn’t because you were sort of different, sort of closed, I couldn’t sort of see you properly, but now you’re all here, every bit of you, and so am I, it’s the real thing, we must have another go, Brad, we must. Of course you don’t have to decide at once, think it over peacefully at your leisure – we could live anywhere you like and you could get on with your work quietly, we could get a house in France or Italy, anywhere you like – ’

‘Chris – ’

‘Switzerland.’

‘Not Switzerland. I hate mountains.’

‘Well, then – ’

‘Look, I must – ’

‘Kiss me, Bradley.’

A woman’s face changes in tenderness. It may become scarcely recognizable. Christian
en tendresse
looked older, more animal – like and absurd, her features all squashed up and rubbery. She was wearing an open – necked cotton dress of rich Chinese red and a gold chain round her neck. The flesh of her neck was stained and dry behind the fresh gold of the chain. Her dyed hair was glossy and animal – sleek. She was looking at me in the cool north indigo duskiness of the room with such a humble pleading diffident rueful tender look upon her face, and her drooping hands were opened to me in a sort of Oriental gesture of abandonment and homage. I stepped forward and took her in my arms.

At the same time I laughed, and holding her, not kissing her, continued to laugh. I saw over her shoulder a quite other face of happiness. But IPheld her very consciously and laughed, and then she began to laugh too, her forehead moving to and fro against my shoulder.

Arnold came in.

I released Christian slowly and she looked at Arnold and went on laughing in a weary almost contented sort of way, ‘Oh dear, oh dear – ’

‘I’m just off,’ I said to Arnold.

He had sat down quietly immediately on entering, like a man in a waiting – room. He had his wet look (his drenched albino aspect) as if he had been in the rain, his colourless hair darkened with grease, his face shiny, his nose pointing like a greased pin. His very pale blue eyes, washed almost to whiteness, were cool as water. I had seen, before he had time to smooth it, the expression of chagrin with which he had greeted our little scene.

‘You will think it over, Brad, won’t you, dear?’

‘Think what over?’

‘Oh, he’s priceless, he’s forgotten it already! I just proposed to Brad and he’s forgotten it!’

‘Christian has taken leave of her senses,’ I said in a kindly tone to Arnold. ‘I’ve just ordered all your books.’

‘Why?’ said Arnold, now affecting a friendly gloomy detachment and still sitting sedately on his chair, while Christian, chuckling to herself, was reeling or dancing in little steps about the room.

‘I’d like to make a reappraisal. I feel I may have been unjust to you, completely wrong in fact.’

‘Decent of you.’

‘Not at all. I want to be – at peace with everybody – at this time—’

‘Is it Christmas?’ said Arnold.

‘No, just – I’ll read your books, Arnold – I’ll do it – humbly and without prejudice – please believe that – and please forgive me for – all my – shortcomings and – ’

‘Brad’s become a saint.’

‘Are you feeling all right, Bradley?’

‘Just look at him. I guess it’s the transfiguration!’

‘I must go – good – bye, good – bye – and – be well – be well – ’ waving rather awkwardly to them both and eluding the hand which Christian stretched out to me I got to the door and swung myself through the tiny hall and out into the street. It appeared to be evening. What had happened to the day?

As I neared the corner of the street I heard running steps behind me. It was Francis.

‘Brad, I just wanted to say – Wait, please, wait – I wanted to say I’ll stick by her whatever happens, I’ll—’

‘Who?’

‘Priscilla.’

‘Oh yes. How is she?’

‘Asleep.’

‘Thank you for helping poor Priscilla.’

‘Brad, I wanted to make sure you weren’t angry with me.’

‘Why should I be?’

‘Not sick with me after all the things I said and crying on you and all, some people it just sickens them if you throw up all your woes like that, and I’m afraid I – ’

‘Forget it.’

‘And Brad. I wanted to say, just one more thing – I just wanted to say – whatever happens – I’m on your side.’

I stopped and looked at him and he smirked and bit his fat lower lip and the little eyes came questing slyly up. ‘In the coming – great – battle,’ I said, ‘whatever it – may turn out – to be – thank you, Francis Marloe.’

He looked a little surprised. I gave a sort of military salute and walked on. He ran after me again.

‘I’m very fond of you, Brad, you know that.’

‘Bugger off!’

‘Brad, please could I have some more cash – I’m sorry to bother you but Christian keeps me so short – ’

I gave him five pounds.

 

 

 

 

The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. It is, on the whole, a merciful arrangement. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to little new beginnings. Our soon – tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvellously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so neatly apportioned to our need. Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm – infested dark. How our frail identities survive these chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain.

The next morning – it was another sunny day – I woke early to an exact perception of my state; yet knowing too that something had changed. I was not quite as I had been the day before. I lay, testing myself, as someone after an accident might test himself for broken limbs. I certainly still felt very happy, with that curious sense of the face as waxen, dissolving into bliss, the eyes swimming with it. Desire, still cosmic, was perhaps more like physical pain, like something one could die of quite privately in a corner. But I was not dismayed. I got up and shaved and dressed with care and looked at my new face in the mirror. I looked so young it was almost uncanny. Then I drank a little tea and went to sit in the sitting – room, with my hands folded, looking through the window at the wall. I sat as still as a Buddhist and experienced myself.

After the initial revelation, love does demand a strategy: that this is often the beginning of the end makes it no less imperative. I knew that today, and presumably every other day forever, I would have to busy myself concerning Julian. Yesterday this had not seemed so precisely necessary. Yesterday what had happened was simply that, through no merit of my own, I had become virtuous. And yesterday that had been enough. I loved, and the joy of love made a void in me where my self had been. I was purged of resentment and of hate, purged of all the mean anxious fears that compose the vile ego. It was enough that she existed and that she could never be mine. I had to live and love alone, and the sense that I could do so had almost made me a god. Today I was no less virtuous, no more illusioned, but my will was just a trifle busier and fussier. Of course I could never tell her, of course silence and work would felicitously absorb the great power with which I was endowed. But all the same I felt a new need for some rather more localized Julian – directed activity.

I sat motionless for I am not sure how long. Perhaps I really went into some sort of trance. Then the telephone rang and my heart went off in a black explosion as I was instantly certain that it was Julian. I ran to the instrument and fumbled and dropped it twice before I got it to my ear. It was Grey – Pelham, ringing up to say that since his wife was indisposed he had an extra ticket for Glyndebourne and would I like it? I would not! Glyndebourne forsooth! When I had politely got rid of him I rang Notting Hill. Francis answered and told me that Priscilla was calmer this morning and had agreed to see a psychiatrist. After that I sat and wondered if I would ring Ealing. Not to talk to Julian of course. Perhaps I
ought
to ring Rachel? But supposing Julian were to answer?

As I was scorching and freezing my mind with this possibility the phone rang again and again my heart exploded, and this time it was Rachel. Our conversation was as follows:

‘Hello, Bradley. It’s dreary old me.’

‘Rachel — dear – nice – happy – you – so glad – ’

‘You can’t be drunk at this hour of the morning.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Eleven – thirty.’

‘I thought it was about nine.’

‘You’ll be glad to hear that I’m not coming round to see you.’

‘But I’d love you to.’

‘No, I’ve got to get hold of myself. It’s so – below me – to persecute my old friends.’

‘We are friends, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, yes, yes. Oh Bradley, I mustn’t start — I’m glad you’re there, I won’t bother you more than I can help. Bradley, was Arnold at Christian’s place yesterday?’

‘No.’

‘He was, I know. Never mind. Oh God, I mustn’t
start—’

‘Rachel—’

‘Yes?’

‘How’s — how’s – Julian — today?’

‘Oh much as usual.’

‘She’s not – by any chance – going to come round here – to get her
Hamlet
. — is she?’

‘No. She seems to be off
Hamlet
today. She’s down the road with a young couple who are digging a conversation pit in their garden playroom.’

‘A what?’

‘A conversation pit.’

‘Oh. Ah well. I see. Tell her – No. Well—’

‘Bradley, you do – never mind what it means – love me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Sorry to be so sort of – limp and wet – Thanks for listening—I’ll ring again – ‘Bye – ’

I forgot Rachel. I decided I would go out and buy Julian a present. I still felt ill and rather faint and given to fits of trembling. At the idea of buying the present a lot of trembling came on. Present – buying is a fairly universal symptom of love. It is certainly a
sine qua non
. (If you don’t want to give her a present you don’t love her.) It is I suppose a method of touching the beloved.

When I felt that I could walk all right I left the house and went as far as Oxford Street. Love transforms the world. It had transformed the big Oxford Street shops into diplays of possible presents for Julian. I bought a leather purse, a box of handkerchiefs, an enamel bracelet, a fancy sponge bag, a pair of lace gloves, a set of ballpoint pens, a key ring, and three scarves. Then I ate a sandwich and went home and laid all the presents out together with the six – volume London edition of Shakespeare upon the marquetry table and the mahogany night table, and contemplated them. Of course I could not give her all these things at once, it would look odd. But I could give her one now, another later: and meanwhile here they were and they were
hers
. I tied one of the scarves round my neck and felt giddy with physical desire. I was on a high building and wanted to hurl myself down, I was being burnt and nearly losing consciousness, I was in pain, pain.

The telephone rang. I staggered to it and gasped into it.

‘Oh Brad. It’s Chris.’

‘Oh – Chris — hello, dear.’

‘I’m glad I’m still Chris today.’

‘Today — yes—’

‘Have you thought over my proposition?’

‘What proposition?’

‘Gee, Brad, you are a tease. Look, can I come over and see you right now?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve got a bridge party.’

‘But you can’t play bridge.’

‘I learnt in the thirty or so years of your absence. I had to pass the time somehow.’

‘Brad, when can I see you, it’s kind of urgent?’

‘I’ll come round to see Priscilla — this evening – probably—’

‘OK, I’ll wait. Mind you come.’