A Garden of Trees (22 page)

“You know,” she said, “we may have to go back to them soon.”

“May you?” I said. This news did not hurt me as I thought all the time it should have done, because I knew there was something ending and the details were only reflections of the sadness that bathed us like light.

“Peter won't go back to Oxford,” she said. “He will have to get a job and I suppose my father will get him one.”

“And you?”

“I will go back too.”

“And you will cook suppers for the rest of your life?”

“I suppose so,” she said.

I followed her into the kitchen. She was busy with pots and pans and I squeezed out of her way between a cupboard and the door. Whatever I did not feel, I had to say it.

“I hate this ending of a year,” I said.

“Do you? You see, we are not yet individuals.”

“I don't want to be an individual.”

“You do, I think you became an individual when you got angry with Marius, and then you have your work to do, haven't you?”

“I loathe my work,” I said.

“Do you?”

“And now I am not angry with Marius, I am quite under his spell again, I want to go on as we have been going. Have you ever been angry with Marius?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“So you see, it is no good.”

“What is no good?”

“There is something intolerable in this, that we want to go on as we are and we cannot act as individuals.”

“Why cannot you . . . ”

“Because I am fond of Marius as well as in love with you,” I said.

She broke some eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them vigorously. “You know,” she said, “you are much more part of the world than Marius is.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don't know. I think you are the thing that endures.”

“Endures!”

“Yes. Marius is transitory, and Peter too in a way.”

“How do you see the future then?”

“I would never say,” she said, “not even to myself.”

She tipped the bowl of eggs into a sauce pan and turned up the gas. “You make me feel like a pair of overalls,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “you are.”

She was rummaging in a drawer of the cupboard and I could see her laughing to herself. Squeezed behind the door I felt as if I were in a coffin. “You ought to put some milk in those eggs,” I said.

“Never milk with butter.”

“Let me stir the damn things then,” I said.

She went back into the drawing-room and I stirred the eggs lethargically with a wooden spoon.

“I mean that you are the sort of working clothes,” she said. “That is what I mean by overalls.” She was speaking from the passage and I wished I could see her face. “Something that saves the stuff underneath. Without overalls you get terribly worn, and people splash you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I am too, in a way. I cook and have things ready and I don't put milk in buttered eggs, that's what I do.”

“And do you have children and sow and knit and take dogs for walks in the country?”

“Perhaps. We both have things to do, to keep us going.”

“I hope we get somewhere,” I said.

We took the buttered eggs through to the drawing-room and ate them sitting cross-legged on the floor. I tried to imagine her in ten years time with a pack of dogs on strings. I imagined it easily. “There is not enough salt,” she said.

“I am feeling unbearably sentimental,” I said.

“I cannot bear sentimentality,” she said.

“Then you are wrong, you are a sentimental person.”

“Why?”

“Because you remember what we said in the pub, and while I was away you felt as if you were in a monastery.”

“That was not meant to be sentimental.”

“But it was, because sentimentality is always remembering everything and having a great regard for what is important and taking care of people.”

“I thought sentimentality was going soft in the centre like Peter and chocolates.”

“Peter overdoes it, but that is what I mean. Peter may one day overdo it too much, and I do not think that he will feel as if he is in a monastery.”

“I did not mean that I was like those women in French novels who end up nuns.”

“No, French novels are not sentimental.”

“I don't think I could be a nun,” she said.

She went to make coffee. When I was alone I felt impatient as if the time we had left was running out upon the floor. “I thought about you too,” I shouted. And there was something that I was afraid of saying if she were not there to stop me.

“Are you sentimental because things are coming to an end?” she said.

“It is because I am that they are.”

“Why?”

“It is because I have cared so much for the last week that I cannot break it by asking it to continue. I cannot ask you . . . ”

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said.

She came back with the coffee. “Perhaps you are right about sentimentality,” she said. “Things don't change all at once, people are very stupid about that, they expect them to and then they don't and they are miserable. You have to preserve the old things and they change very slowly and then what you want often happens on its own.”

“So we just endure,” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

We drank our coffee sitting cross-legged again opposite each other as if at some ceremony. I remember her with her two hands holding her cup up to her lips and myself waiting until she should put it down. When she did I said, “And if you go away what will Marius do?”

“There is his wife,” she said.

“Supposing his wife wanted him to go with you?”

She stared at me. “That is not what you have done,” she said, “is it?”

“I don't know,” I said.

Her eyes became frightened. She put her cup down slowly. “He wouldn't go,” she said.

“He might do. When I left them she was trying to tell him something, I don't know what it was, I think she was trying to make him . . . ”

“What?”

“Be an individual. I think she wanted him to be free of her because as long as he is with her he can never escape his past.”

“Is that what you meant when you said that you were fond of Marius as well as . . . ”

“Yes,” I said.

She hung her head and pushed her finger into the carpet with the intentness of a child. “I don't think . . . ” she began softly.

“But you said that things must happen slowly, that if you try to change them all at once it is disastrous.”

“It is you who are changing them.”

“No, I have done nothing, it is only what happens.”

“You make them so complicated.”

“That is what they are.”

She looked up. “I don't believe that,” she said.

“If they were not I would . . . ”

“At the bottom there are simple things, I think they are quite simple.”

“It needs a great effort to keep them simple.”

“I don't think so, that is what Marius says, but he is wrong, they are quite easy.”

“It needs a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice?” She looked frightened.

“Yes, that is what you would say as well as him.”

“It only needs what you said, remembering everything and caring for people and keeping yourself open to what is important for others.”

“So you see you are sentimental, and Marius will probably go with you.”

“Supposing he is sentimental too?”

“If he is it depends on what has happened this evening with his wife.”

There was a silence for a while and then she leaned forwards and said “You are wrong, you know. Why are you trying to do it?”

“If it is wrong what would you have me do?”

“I don't know,” she said. She put her hand up to her face in a gesture of dismissal. “It is too complicated,” she said. She stood up wearily and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “One day we shall know it was wrong. Perhaps when Marius comes back we shall know it.”

She cleared the cups and plates and left me. It was sad now I was impatient only with myself, because I did not know what should be happening. I looked at the clock and saw that it was nearly midnight. I thought suddenly that perhaps there were only a few more times that I should see her, and when I thought this it was so unbearable that I stood up and was about to follow her into the kitchen when I heard the sound of a key in the door of the flat and Peter came in. I was at least glad it was not Marius. Peter threw his coat on to the sofa, and I tried to appear at ease. I did not want to involve him in what was happening because I was ashamed of it. I did not know why. “There is something dreadful to-day,” Peter said; “Like an eclipse.”

“Like the end of the holidays.”

“Yes.” He walked through to Annabelle. “You will have to start again,” he said. “I'm hungry.”

“There's a letter for you on the table,” Annabelle said. Her voice sounded flat and strained, and I wondered if Peter would notice it.

Peter came back. He looked at me quickly and then away. He too was trying to appear at ease. He picked up the letter. “Haven't you opened it?” he said. “I always open other people's letters, it's so friendly.” I did not smile and I do not think he expected me to. He was talking to kill the silences. “It's from my father,” he said. He stared at it for a second as if he did not want to open it and then as he slit the envelope with his finger he began to talk again in his over-casual voice. “On the last day of the holidays I used to do something dreadful so that I should want to escape from it.” He slid the letter out from the envelope and held it folded not reading it. “Something embarrassing that I could not bear.” He fiddled with the letter and I realized that it was as important to me as it was to him. “But I cannot do anything embarrassing any more,” he said. He unfolded the letter. “At least I don't think so.” Then he read it.

Annabelle came in from the kitchen with her knives and forks and she walked past me without looking at me. Now she would give Peter his supper and Peter would eat it and she would carry the plates backwards and forwards for the rest of her life. The rest of her life without looking at me. I wanted to scream. “There,” Peter said. “Something embarrassing after all.”

He handed the letter to Annabelle and she read it.

“What?” I said.

“We are going away,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“Do you?” He looked at me then, but we both knew how difficult this was. He walked away and pretended to be tidying something. “In a week we will be going away,” he said. “My father has fixed it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And what will you do?” he said, with his hands among the flowers on the piano.

“I have got to go away too,” I said.

“Oh have you?”

“Yes,” I said.

Annabelle read the letter and folded it and put it back in the envelope. She still did not look at me. “I wonder what Marius will do,” Peter said.

Nobody answered. Annabelle left us. Peter turned round violently and laughed. “So it is the end of the holidays,” he said.

He dragged a chair towards him and sat down. “Of course we could stop it,” he said. “But we won't. We can't be embarrassing any more.” He flung his legs out and slumped backwards with his head on his chest. “I am resigned, quite resigned. People have always wanted me to be and now I am.” He snorted. “It is terrible,” he said. He was silent for a while and breathed as if he were asleep. Then “I hope to God that one day I will not be resigned any more,” he said.

When Annabelle came back with her cup and saucer she stood by me and said quietly, “Where are you going?”

“Away,” I said.

“I should just like to know,” she said.

“I will tell you when I know myself.”

“Thank you,” she said. She said this almost bitterly.

I watched Peter eat his eggs and drink his coffee and we never spoke, and Annabelle came and went with the regularity of a machine. The time that I had wished to go slowly now did not move at all. The pendulum swung, Annabelle passed steadily with averted eyes, Peter chewed into the silence with the tick of clocks, but the hands on the faces that should have brought us to midnight failed and left us helpless in a dead parade. In the minutes before Marius came we lived a very long time on our own, the sadness and bitterness between us that I had tried to prevent and now could not explain. I felt as if I were at the bottom of the hill with the heap of old iron, the wheels circling ceaselessly in the dusty sun.

When Marius came we heard him on the landing, he was fumbling with the lock of the door and he could not open it, and then we heard the click of the latch as it opened and closed, and he was in the passage where we could not see him. The wheels revolved. We waited for him and he did not come in. “Marius,” Peter called. He swung round in his chair and peered towards the passage. There was nothing happening. “Marius, what is this feeling like the end of the world?”

Marius moved, but still he was a shadow and still quite silent, and Peter leaned forwards with his arms on the chair. Then Annabelle came out of the kitchen and walked along until she was opposite Marius and she stood there hard and determined with her hands clasped in front of her and her head thrown back like a child that is about to ask a question that is an agony to it, and she said, “Marius, tell me, how is your wife?”

“She is dead,” Marius said, coming in to where we could see him.

After that there were only fragments. I remember Marius walking to the window where he stood as he had often stood looking out into the night, and Annabelle following him and standing beside him. She hesitated only for a moment. Peter did not move at all, he was sitting turned round in his chair staring towards the passage where Marius had lingered when he had asked him his question. They remained there. I picked up my coat and put it over my arm and left them. I made sure that I would remember them and did not look back. During the second in which Annabelle had hesitated before she joined Marius by the window she had looked at me and her eyes were not frightened as they had been once, but frightened for herself and for both of us. There had been no bitterness. I hoped that Marius needed her, because if he did not it was terrible.