The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (19 page)

Pinn, whom Blaise had failed, as he now realized, to explain to Monty, opened the door. It was also at once evident that Monty thought Pinn was Emily, and found her rather attractive. Pinn flushed up and smiled. ‘This is Constance Pinn, Emily’s friend,’ said Blaise quickly.

Ever since Pinn’s revelation Blaise had been living in a fantastic world. He could hardly recognize himself, his self-awareness had so much changed in quality. The easiest thing to think was that he was going to die. This, was not exactly an intent to commit suicide, though he did consider suicide, it was rather a sense of the impossibility of surviving much longer, whatever he did, whatever he chose. He felt rent apart by an unremitting mental, felt as physical, strain. When he was alone he groaned aloud. He did not, except in a very shadowy way, speculate about what Harriet would do when she knew; though when he did wonder about this he felt how little he really knew about his wife. He had never seen Harriet in any really awful situation. Theirs had been such a sunny marriage. Her character, which made this so, had also its enigmatic side. What
would
she do? This question however he soon sheered off whenever it occurred to him. What was unimaginably awful was not what Harriet would do when she knew, but simply her knowing. To know that Harriet
knew
would change the entire universe. What would Harriet’s face look like with that knowledge inside her head?

Pinn was smartly dressed in a green linen coat and skirt with a white silk shirt. Emily, who now appeared in the doorway of the sitting-room, had abandoned her usual slacks and jumper and was wearing a blue and black zigzag pattern dress with a low square neck which Blaise particularly disliked. She had fixed the Italian cameo brooch (which Pinn had borrowed and returned) on to one side of the neck, a little too far out towards the shoulder, where it had come undone and was hanging down. Pinn’s greater discretion, as Blaise suddenly saw the two women with Monty’s eyes, made her look much the handsomer of the two. They were both of course dressed, not for Blaise, but for an exciting meeting with a famous writer. He had telephoned to say that he was coming over with Montague Small, but had not said why. It was eleven o’clock the next morning. How little Emily looked, he thought, how tiny and insignificant, almost dwarfish. Thin lines of grey already soiled the blackness of her hair. This is Emily McHugh,’ he said. It did not sound like an introduction.

Emily smiled, revealing a smear of pink lipstick upon her teeth. The Italian cameo brooch fell off on to the floor and she stooped quickly to pick it up, and laid it on the table. ‘Do please sit down. Get the sandwiches, please, Pinn.’

The best white cloth with the lace edges had been put on to the little bamboo table. Monty, smiling, sat down on an upright chair. He scooped up Little Bilham off the floor and began stroking him hard, as one might stroke a dog. Little Bilham turned to regard Monty with his wicked eyes. Blaise sat down on another upright chair and Emily upon the arm of the armchair. Pinn brought in sandwiches and a jug of coffee and stood there like a servant, also smiling.

‘Or would you rather have a drink?’ said Emily to Monty. ‘I mean, there’s coffee, but would you rather have sherry?’

‘Coffee is fine.’

‘You don’t mind my puss? Are you a catty person?’

‘I’m very fond of cats.’

‘I’ve read all your books,’ said Pinn.

‘We’ve been watching the television series,’ said Emily, pouring out the coffee. ‘It’s so exciting. Did you write the script?’

‘Partly.’

‘I do think Richard Nailsworth absolutely
is
Milo Fane, don’t you?’ said Emily. ‘Did you choose him?’

‘No, I didn’t actually,’ Monty seemed unable to stop smiling. He was wearing a white shirt and one of his narrowest silkiest indigo ties and suit of speckless close-grained black. He looked like a rich discreedy foppish eighteenth-century curate.

‘Is Dickie Nailsworth queer?’ said Pinn, who had gone to stand opposite Monty, her hands on the back of Emily’s chair.

‘I don’t know.’

‘He can’t be,’ said Emily. ‘He’s so virile. One can tell by the movements. Are you working on another Milo book?’

‘Not at present.’

‘How do you
begin
a book?’ said Pinn.

‘I’ve come to tell you something,’ said Blaise to Emily.

‘Shall I go away?’ said Pinn. Blaise’s tone had changed the atmosphere abrupdy.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I want a witness. Two witnesses.’

Monty stopped smiling and stopped stroking the cat.

Emily was rigid. Unconsciously she reached out and picked up the Italian cameo brooch and put it up against her cheek. Her vividly blue eyes shone like gems. She looked at her lover with a stern grim expression which made her suddenly beautiful.

‘Monty,’ said Blaise. He did not know why now he was suddenly addressing Monty. ‘I mean –’ He turned back to Emily. ‘I have decided to tell my wife everything.’ He had meant to say ‘Harriet’ but said ‘my wife’ instead at the last moment.

Emily was magnificent. Her face did not change at all. She contrived to stare at Blaise with an almost intellectual sort of intentness, as if he were a chess problem. Then after a pause she said ‘Why?’

The question, though it might have been anticipated, took Blaise by surprise. He said ‘Because it’s right – I mean, it’s time – I can’t go on any longer –’ He had not thought out whether he would say anything about Luca. He now decided not to. With things as terrible as this Luca was a side issue.

‘Then you will live with me?’ said Emily. They stared at each other.

‘I don’t know.’

Emily put the brooch down and began unsteadily to pour coffee into her cup, not looking at him. ‘What’s the point then?’

‘I want to tell the truth.’

‘Go on then.’

‘I want to make —’

‘I think you’re lying,’ said Emily. ‘This has nothing to do with the truth. You’ve thought of something, you’re up to something. I don’t care whether she knows or not. I want you to live with me properly. That’s what I’ve always wanted.’

Pinn said, ‘When he’s told her, if he tells her, he’ll have to live with you.’ Pinn, half-smiling in a self-consciously subtle way, was watching, not Blaise or Emily, but Monty. Monty too could not help looking at Pinn.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Emily. ‘It could work the other way, couldn’t it? His telling her could be a way of getting rid of me. Suppose she orders him to stop seeing me? That would be reasonable after all. She’s his wife, as he pointed out just now. Then he’d have to choose either her or me, and he might choose her. As things are at the moment at least he doesn’t have to choose.’

‘If he tells her you win,’ said Pinn, still looking at Monty with a pensive smile as if her words were addressed to him.

‘Why?’

‘Because it unties your hands. When you can fight her in the open you’re bound to win. You can break all that up, once you’re free.’

‘I wish I shared your optimism,’ said Emily. ‘What am I supposed to fight with, bottles? Mr Small, won’t you have a sandwich? I can’t think why Blaise has brought you here to listen to this rather squalid conversation.’

‘Have a cucumber sandwich,’ said Pinn. ‘They slip down like oysters.’

‘You don’t seem very interested in what I’ve just told you,’ said Blaise. ‘Perhaps I won’t tell her after all.’

‘Please yourself. Pinn, could you bring a wet rag, dear? I’ve just spilt some coffee.’

Pinn brought a rag and together they manoeuvred it under the cloth where the spot of coffee was. Emily then began to pin the Italian brooch back on to her dress, in the middle this time.

‘Why have you never written a Milo Fane play?’ said Pinn to Monty.

‘I tried once, but it didn’t work.’

‘I’ve written a play,’ said Pinn. ‘About a girls’ school. It’s a bit saucy. I suppose one has to have an agent?’

‘For a play, yes.’

‘Perhaps you could recommend one?’

‘Emily,’ said Blaise.

‘Yes?’

‘You’ve been asking me to tell Harriet for years.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Emily. ‘What I’ve been asking for for years is you. Her state of mind doesn’t interest me. I ask you if you’re going to live with me now, and you say you don’t know, which means no, I presume.’

‘I can only do one thing at a time. If you only knew how difficult this thing is—’

‘Well, don’t do it then. Do you want our sympathy or what? Could you get some more hot milk, Pinn?’

‘In fact,’ said Monty to Emily, putting Little Bilham down on the floor, ‘he is right to point out that he can only do one thing at a time. He probably can’t foresee what will happen later. But I think I agree with your friend that this change could augur well for you. And at least it will be a change.’

‘Oh thank you very much!’ said Emily.

‘Mr Small is right,’ said Pinn, returning with the milk.

‘I wanted you to tell her,’ said Emily, ‘because I thought this meant honesty and truth and a square deal for me. Christ, I started out wanting everything and I’ve been content, well I haven’t been
content
for a second, I’ve put up with having very little, the least mean little little that you dared to have the face to offer me in return for my whole life. I still want everything and I still hope for everything. I daresay I am very stupid indeed. I’m a stupid woman and a millstone round your neck and so on. But the fact remains that I love you (yes, I must be stupid) and I want you to be my husband, my real husband, and live with me in a real house and look after me and your son, and Christ we need looking after, look at us. Talk about deprived, we didn’t drop out, we were pushed. The sheer cruelty of it all just beats description. It’s like famine and pestilence and war. You’re cruel, you’re like Hitler, you deserve to be assassinated for what you’ve done to me and Luca. You come here today with your bloody "witness" to tell me grandly you’ve decided to tell your wife I exist What am I supposed to do, cheer? I don’t want to chat to you about her. You can’t chat with people who are starving, people who are perishing. I don’t care any more whether you tell her or not. I want justice. If I decide to tell her she’ll know anyway. I could tell her now this minute by telephone if I wanted to. It doesn’t just depend on you. Oh God, why did you have to spring it all on me like this, with your blasted witnesses! Oh get out, get out, get out.’

Emily, whose face had been first pale, then red, burst into sudden loud sobs. Tears covered her face as with a veil. She sobbed angrily, wailing an ‘ow! ow! ow!’ like an animal which is aggressive because terrified. She put one hand over her mouth, biting her palm.

‘Oh,
stop it!’
said Blaise.

‘Take it easy, Em,’ said Pinn.

Emily rose, and still biting her hand left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Monty put the damp limp cucumber sandwich which he had been holding down on to the tablecloth. He said, ‘I’d better go,’ and rose.

Blaise got up too. ‘I’ll walk down the road with you,’ he said to Monty.

They left the flat and walked down the tiled path to the road in silence. They began to walk slowly along the road. It was a grey warm morning, threatening more rain.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Monty. ‘My coming was a bad idea. I’m sorry.’

‘I thought she’d be delighted,’ said Blaise. They halted at the corner.

‘You’d better go to her,’ said Monty.

Pinn came up, her heels clicking a good deal on the pavement ‘Aren’t you coining back to talk to her?’ she said to Blaise.

‘Of course I am!’

‘She’s hysterical now.’

‘Sorry not to be able to run you back,’ said Blaise to Monty. ‘If you walk towards Putney Hill you’ll get a taxi. See you later. Thanks for coming.’ He turned-away along the road, leaving Pinn and Monty together.

‘I want to see you again,’ said Pinn. Her eyes behind her jaunty glasses were sombre, and she uttered the words expressionlessly, the way some purists read poetry.

‘Sorry –’ said Monty vaguely. He was upset by the scene that had just ended. He felt that he had been made a fool of.

‘I want to see you again,’ she said. ‘It is important to me. Things are not often important to me, but this is. I don’t want you to say anything now. I mean, you needn’t even answer this remark. You are Montague Small. I am nobody. A cat may look at a king. I will come and see you sometime. Just don’t say that I can’t. That is all I ask of you. Good-bye.’ She turned sharply and walked away and her heels clicked off with a slightly echoing moist sucking noise along the still damp pavements.

Monty loosened his tie. His umbrella was locked inside the Volkswagen and it was beginning to rain. He felt irritably dissatisfied with himself. Then his old huge familiar misery gradually returned like an old friend.

My darling Harriet and my dear wife. I am too cowardly to tell you what follows face to face, so I am telling it to you in a letter. I shall try to explain
clearly
because clarity and truthfulness are of the utmost importance here. You will be surprised, shocked, horrified at what I have to tell you, but I
must
tell you, not least because I love you absolutely, and lying to you has become ultimately intolerable to me. Some years ago (over nine years ago to be precise) I took a mistress. Her name is Emily McHugh and she is now over thirty. I was physically attracted and I succumbed to temptation. This, I know, is indefensible. But I did not intend to continue this brief unworthy liaison, and I should certainly then have confessed it to you had Emily not become pregnant. A child now exists, a boy, aged eight, and my duty to this innocent being is a reason why I have to tell you the truth, and should have told it long ago only I was a hopeless coward and did not want to shatter your and David’s peace and destroy your respect for me. I put this down simply and perhaps crudely but you may imagine the suffering and the shame which lie behind these words. I have to tell you now, to lay it all before you for judgement. I was never really ‘in love’ with Emily and have long ago ceased finding her attractive. I wish heartily that all this had never happened, not only because of the shameful and damaging consequences, but because it was so evidently from the start a complete mistake. There was and has been no real love, only a dreadful bondage, an involvement tormenting to me and exasperating to her. We would have separated years ago, in fact very soon after the start, had it not been for the child’s existence. I have during these long years visited her at intervals and have of course financed her and the child. This was a responsibility which I could not shirk however much I yearned to be rid of the whole matter and to be what I seemed, and what in a deep way I feel I have indeed been, utterly yours. The rich reality of my life with you has inevitably filled me with joy, though with a corresponding separated pain, as the years have passed and I have been living a lie. I am profoundly ashamed, and in now confessing this can only cast myself onto your love as a religious person casts himself onto God. Harriet, if ever I needed your love I need it now. I need it to continue to breathe, I would die without it, and I ask you for it on my knees. As you
know,
I love and have loved only you. I deserve punishment, but I ask for grace. Please, my darling, my sweet dear girl, forgive me and help me to deal with this awful situation. Let me at last share this trouble too with you and let us look at it together. I dare to ask you this, having in mind not only my own fault and my own suffering, but also the sufferings of a wretched woman whom I have also wronged, and a little innocent child whose father I am. Emily has long known (ever since, as I say, almost the start) that I do not love her, and resent her as a burden and as the spoiler of my perfect happiness with you. She is a very deprived and unhappy person, full of vexation, and having lost the charm of her physical good looks. I do not belittle this crime which I have committed against you and against her. But I ask you, madly perhaps, for your love as the only instrument of salvation. Can you, dare you, wretched and miserable and unworthy as I am, love me
more?
I know that by making this confession I am thrusting us both out into the unknown. I do not know how you will feel, and you yourself perhaps do not know, even as you (oh God, I can hardly bear to think of it) read these words, how you will react Time will be needed to show us this. But I do with utter humility and full consciousness of my fault beg and beseech you to pity me and not to stop loving me. If you love me all can somehow be, if not retrieved, at any rate compassionately ordered, and the value of truth itself may cast a little light on the desolation which I have so unwittingly wrought. I am very very sorry and I feel I could die of shame and misery of loss, only if you will love me I shall live. I feel, as I write this, that I have never loved you more or valued you more. You are all that matters here, you and your saving love. Oh do not abandon me in my pain. It is, even though I am so frightened at what you may feel or do, a blessed relief to tell you the truth at last. It has needed something little short of heroism to do so. I so long felt that this, which I am doing now, was impossible and beyond my powers. Pity me and succour me and do not, I beg you, let me wait long for your judgement. I deserve anger, but give me love, or if anger, anger with love. The extra power which will save the world can only come from your perfect love, my angel and my wife.