The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (44 page)

It remains for me to say to you most sincerely that there is absolutely nothing between Harriet and me. That at least is not one of your problems, as I hope by now you have realized. Moreover, if there is anything at all that I can do to help you, I beg you to let me know. (For instance, I could lend you money.) Please keep in mind this availability and forgive me for any clumsiness in the past. You cannot surely, on reflection, see me as, in relation to you, a sinister agency.

Finally an expression of opinion, which I hope you will not think is impertinent. If you want to keep Harriet in your life you can probably do so, but you should act quickly and decisively. I mean, come here, stay here, for a while at any rate, and
take over.
She has gone back to Hood House and whether she now expects you or not I don’t know. But if you don’t come she might do anything. I don’t mean anything desperate, but she might clear off and vanish so as to make a real break. She is perhaps waiting, but will not do so indefinitely.

Excuse these observations. I wish you both very well.

Yours

    Monty.

(Typical! thought Blaise of this letter.) Harriet’s letter ran as follows:

Dear Blaise,

the simple fact that you have not come back here, not written, not telephoned, not anything, tells me, 1 think, and it is meant to tell me, I suppose, all that I need to know. You have gone away. You have left me. You mean me to understand it and I do. Would I now forgive you if you totally rejected Emily McHugh and came back to me? I don’t know. Anyway you won’t do that. I shall not dwell on my unhappiness. I suppose you want a divorce. I write to say this, that I will cooperate with you to get a divorce and will make everything easy for you on condition that I keep Luca. The child I must have and you can hardly grudge him to me. I have the impression that neither you nor his mother cares very much about him. He was thoroughly
neglected
at Putney. This could be proved if necessary in a law court. He passionately wants to stay with me and not return to you and Emily. I am prepared to fight a legal battle for Luca, but I hope and believe that your own sense of his best interests will coincide with mine. He needs security, communication and love, and these I can give him. He will in every way be far better off here. I am prepared to devote my life to the upbringing of that child. You should be grateful to me. I am letting you have what you want without reproaches or difficulties. Oh Blaise, how can you have done this, how can it have happened, I can scarcely believe this nightmare! I love you as I have always done. That is what is so terrible. And if your world should end – but what is the use of saying that. As things are now, I could never be an accepting slave. You have chosen her and must do without me. But oh it is so terrible -1 did not intend to write like this. I mean what I say about Luca.

H.

As soon as he received this letter Blaise realized with anguish that the peace and joy which he experienced with Emily depended on his assumption that Harriet’s situation was static. Harriet was to be ‘frozen’ in an attitude of waiting, of attention, while Blaise sorted out his emotions and settled down into at least as much of a new world as would satisfy Emily and make her reasonably happy. Was he still,
still,
so mad as to imagine that he could perfectly keep both women? Evidently. Harriet’s letter put him into a frenzy, the sight of her handwriting made him feel sick, it was like being in love again. How
could
he have lost her after all these years? Now he longed for her, longed to hold her in his arms and
explain
it all. He had always had Harriet to tell his troubles to, and could he not turn to her now and tell her this trouble? If only he could explain to Harriet, explain his whole mind, explain the difficulty he was in, lay the dilemma at her feet. He imagined Harriet saying gently, as she had so often said before when he told her his problems, ‘Yes, yes, it is difficult, isn’t it – now let’s see what can be done —’

‘And you’ve fallen in love with Kiki St Loy.’

‘Oh shut up,’ said Blaise.

‘You have. You said her name in your sleep last night.’

‘You lie. We’ve got enough troubles without your inventing this rubbish about Kiki.’

‘You drove her back to London in your car.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I could smell her off you.’

‘Pinn told you, I suppose. Pinn marooned her on purpose so that I had to drive her. I only took her to the station.’

‘Did you kiss her?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You lie. What fun our married life is turning out to be. No wonder you want to go home to dear old Hood House and Mrs Placid.’

‘Stop it. Emily. Darling. I don’t want to go raving mad. If possible.’

‘I don’t want to go mad either,‘ said Emily. ‘I just wish I knew one way or the other what you were going to do.’

‘I’m going to stay here with you and make you happy at last.’

‘Are you? Honest? If you fail now it’s the end, you know that.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘You mustn’t fail. I’ve bought three fuchsias for the balcony. And collars for the cats.’

‘I told you not to buy collars for the cats, they’ll hang themselves.’

‘Maybe we ought to hang ourselves.’

‘Oh Emily —’

‘You look so unhappy. Oh my darling, why couldn’t we have just found each other properly, without all this hell, why didn’t you
wait
for me? Blaise, come here, kneel here please, look at me.’

Blaise left his chair and knelt and looked up into the fierce blue truthful eyes of Emily McHugh. He felt with a desperation which was almost relief, yes, I am hers. But oh what will become of us, what will become of us?

‘We must make our love work,’ said Emily. ‘It’s everything I’ve got. I think it’s everything you’ve got now, unless you intend to wreck yourself. Will you try, Blaise, will you be a hero for my sake?’

‘Yes, yes.’

He means it
now,
she thought. He is utterly with me now, he is utterly mine. But can I hold him to it? I am becoming so cruel and frightened with him. I can’t help tormenting him and making him wretched. There’s such a flood of happiness waiting to be released, if only this thing were true at last. But he’s so broken and rattling about, he’s half demented with not knowing what to do, and I can’t help him here, I can’t even afford to pity him. He won’t be loyal, he’ll mess it about somehow, and will I be able to stand it if he does? Oh if only only only we could be happy and ordinary like other people. I’d work so hard for him, I’d give him my whole life and being with such joy. Oh if only he’d waited for me! How can perfect happiness be so near to two people and not draw them to it like a magnet?

Blaise was thinking, yes, I am hers. But what on earth am I to do about Harriet? If my whole life is stripped away and smashed how can I be of use to any woman? I’ve just got to fight for myself too, I’ve got to
look after
myself. And I’m in such a financial mess now and I can’t borrow from Monty. (Or can I?) I must see Harriet. I can’t possibly know where I stand until I’ve see her again.

He said, ‘I’ll go over and fetch Luca. I’ll go today.’

‘You don’t want to fetch Luca,’ said Emily. ‘You want to see
her.
I can read it in your eyes. No, don’t go. Luca can stay there for the present. I think I agree with you after all, he’s better away when we’re both in this awful state. You won’t go over there will you?’

‘No. All right.’ I will go though, he thought. I must invent some cover story. He got up slowly. ‘Did I really say Kiki’s name in my sleep?’

‘So you think you might have done!’

‘Where’s Kiki?’ said David to Pinn. ‘Have you brought her like you said?’ ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Pinn. ‘You look ready to faint. Are you that much in love?’

‘My mother has just gone away,’ said David.

‘What, gone away without you? You poor pet. Look you’d better get inside and sit down.’

David had returned to find Pinn in the front garden of Hood House, peering in through one of the windows.

David let himself into the house and Pinn followed. Already the place seemed to echo. Automatically David went through into the kitchen. On the kitchen table there was a note from Harriet to Edgar about arrangements for feeding the dogs. David looked round the kitchen and the sad betrayed room was unbearable to him. He went out again and into the drawing-room and lay down on the sofa. Misery prostrated him with a kind of exhaustion which weakened every inch of his body, as in a bad case of influenza.

His mother was gone, flown. He was to have accompanied her. He had agreed to all the arrangements, the timetable of departure, the telephone calls to school. He had even packed his suitcase and placed it near the door. He had got up early and watched his mother and Luca at breakfast in the kitchen. His mother had run out after him with a cup of coffee. She had embraced him in the hall, hastily, passionately, in a corner like a lady kissing her young footman. He felt her hot face pressed upon his. She had whispered. ‘Bear it – I need you so much.’ She had never spoken to him like that before. The train left at eleven and the taxi had been ordered for ten-thirty.

At nine-thirty David quietly left the house. He set off on his usual route towards the motorway. He walked through the lanes which he knew so well and over the shoulder of the little hill where the black and white cows used to be. The hedges had been bulldozed and the ditches were full of blue plastic cement sacks. Soon there would be a housing estate. As David mounted the slope, trying not to count the minutes, he could already hear the hum of the motorway, which was now open. The concreted courtyard where he had once lain supine in the sun in a final act of solitude was now a racing track of glittering motor-cars. And upon the nearer carriageway as he approached he could see, and shuddered at it, the squashed and flattened form of a hare, a monogram of fur and blood. The volcanic tumble of bulky red earth which had come to rest so strangely in the quiet field was alien no longer, it had been raked over and sown with grass. The young blades were already showing.

David had intended simply to stay away from the house until after the train had left and then to return. He tried not to reflect upon whether he would then find his mother still there. He felt like someone who has gone to avoid a death scene or the removal of a body. When he came back it would be
done
and the house though terrible would be clean. Oh that awful uncleanness, as he had felt it in the last days, his own dear precious home haunted, infested! The spectacle of his mother and Luca, whispering, laughing, petting Lucky, petting each other. His own title of son usurped and caricatured. His mother could not know what she was doing or she would not do it. He had intended simply to stay away, but now he realized that his ramblings had brought him fairly near to the railway station and he could actually go and watch the train depart.

A piece of disused railway track curving through a cutting led towards the station where the ground evened out a little. David had often walked this way, striding upon the grass-embedded sleepers, crumbly as dark chocolate, and searching for old nuts and bolts, venerable relics, their sturdy cast-iron forms printed with vanished insignia. He hurried along now, springing upon the soft slightly rotting wood until the little station was almost in sight and he could see the glittering rails of the still open permanent way. A disused railwayman’s hut, a wooden shack, solid and now quite hollow, stood just before the intersection. David glided in through the gaping door and looked along the line. The station was quite close and he could command a view of the platform. A few people were waiting for the London train. His mother was not among them. It was a quarter to eleven.

Perhaps she won’t come, he thought. If only she could not fail this test, if only she could find it impossible to leave without him. He could go back and take her in his arms. If only he knew how to do this. But they had lost the language of their affections, they had lost the style. How repulsive to him had been that hasty embrace in the hallway, that awkward hot almost guilty kiss. He stood well back within the open square of the window, in the shadow, and watched the platform. He turned to consult his watch. It was dark in the hut and smelt of warm unpainted wood and elder flowers. When he looked up Harriet and Luca had come on to the platform. Harriet was talking to the taxi driver, gesturing, perhaps telling him to drive quickly back towards the house in case David should be coming from there. She looked about, her gaze even crossing the dark window of the hut, as if she expected him to come running up from somewhere at any moment. He saw that she had brought his suitcase with her. He could not see her face clearly but he could read the detailed symbolism of her movements with the lifelong sympathy of his own body. She was distraught. I will go to her, he thought. Then suddenly she knelt down and, pretending to be settling Luca’s coat collar, embraced him with a frantic gesture.

A few minutes later the train was audible. It swept past, obscuring the view for a moment, and then stopped at the platform. Harriet had gone back to the barrier and was looking away down the road. The guard was calling to her. She returned and began pushing the suitcases into the train. She bundled Luca on. The door banged. David saw her still hanging out of the window as the train rattled away into the trees and curved out of sight. Its vibration hovered in the air for a while after it had gone and then there was silence. David emerged from the hut and walked up to the other side of the station, crossed the footbridge, and began to walk slowly along the road that led back to Hood House. It was a longer way than through the fields but he had no heart to walk in the fields now. The hot piney sandy smell of the railway was gradually left behind. He thought, I am entirely alone. I am entirely alone and abandoned for the first time in my life. I have neither father nor mother. She got into the train. She need not have done so. She got into the train and went away without me.

Simply the waiting, the vigil, the refusal had been his purpose. But what now? He was suddenly on his own, returning to an empty house. She will come back, he thought. But would she? When? He had, with his body’s sympathy, felt her final frenzied need to flee, to run. Of course there was Monty, there was Edgar. But he felt alienated from Monty. Monty had refused to talk to him when talk would have helped so much. Monty had become aloof and mute. And David’s mother too had rejected Monty. ‘He is no use,’ she said once, after she had virtually shut the door in Monty’s face. Monty was ‘no use’ and Edgar would soon be going back to Oxford. David would be alone. He could not go back to his school after those telephone calls. All his life someone had fed him, provided his clothes, given him money, told him what to do who would look after him now?