HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (17 page)

‘That’s all right,’ you answered. ‘Doesn’t it do you good to talk about it? I expect you wrote those books for much the same reason.’

He smiled at me. ‘She’s clever,’ he said. ‘Hang on to her.’

‘Until tomorrow, I will.’

‘Of course – you’re pulling out, too. That’s not much of a honeymoon, is it? What went wrong?’

I explained about the cancelled leave and the disappointment generally, and added: ‘There’s a story there for you, if you want to write one. A goodbye story. Nothing special to it, but it must have happened to so many people. They might like to read about it.’

‘Wish I could,’ he answered. ‘But I’ve no time for anything but scribbles. Wait till after the war.’

‘Are you going on writing then?’

‘I hope so. Actually I want to write for the theatre, if I can break into it. I’ve got one grand idea for a play that I was working on just before the war began: the heroine starts as a patient in a lunatic asylum, falls in love with one of the doctors, and gropes her way to sanity by way of sex. Not a dry eye in the house!’

‘No audience, by the sound of it … What about films?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t like them. Don’t like the people in them – narcissistic young men and glorified harlots. They seem to be the stock types nowadays – they, and what they call the character type, who’s always some old snide Irishman with a face like a shrivelled walnut and a brain to match. Still, I prefer him any day to the young female eyeful with a nine-inch smile and her hips swinging from ear to ear. Or Errol Flynn impersonating a hero and brandishing his weapon all over the place. They give me the horrors.’

I laughed. ‘You seem to be subject to the horrors … Well, I hope it’s going to be the sort of world where you can write plays, in reasonable peace.’

‘I shall make it so!’ He banged the table with his fist, and added, unnecessarily: ‘This brandy is really very good indeed … That’s what we’re put here for,’ he went on, ‘not to see what sort of a world it turns out to be, but to mould the things ourselves. All these indications of a servile state to come–’ He gestured. ‘There’s plenty of talk about the post-war world, but from what an angle! It’s all of what “they” are going to do to us: how many jobs, how big a pension or a dole “they” are going to allow us to have. Preposterous! People who sit about like mice, waiting for things to happen to them, deserve nothing and will probably get just that. The world is
ours
, not “theirs”: ours to make, ours to take hold of, ours to fashion. Listen, chum,’ he said, nearly falling out of his chair, ‘I’m not going to hang about while somebody else decides what sort of a life I’m going to live. By God – !’

‘Commander – the neighbours!’ you said.

He looked round. ‘Oh – sorry …’ He waited until some of the surrounding interest and, indeed, indignation had subsided, and then continued: ‘But you see the point, don’t you? If you don’t make a success of your own life, if you don’t make an individual effort, “they” won’t do it for you. In fact, just the opposite: they’ll simply spit on their hands, take one good grip, and have your guts for garters.’

‘It sounds like the jungle.’

‘Ain’t it so?’

‘But do you really want to be a success, on those terms?’

He smiled. ‘I can’t make up my mind. But on the whole … Success is disappointing, failure is seedy; on the whole it is better to be successful.’

‘Why “disappointing”?’

‘Don’t you think it’s true? Whenever I get something, I always want the next thing ahead. When I first joined the Navy, my greatest ambition was to be First Lieutenant of a corvette. When I got the job, the Captain was on my neck all the time, and I wanted a command so that I’d be free of pinpricks. Now I
have
a command, and of course there’s the operational staff to cope with, and it’s like being pecked to death by a flock of birds with brass beaks.’

‘Aren’t you rather beyond the reach of that sort of thing?’

He laughed out loud. ‘Good heavens, no! In fact I’m standing right in the line of fire all the time. By God, I remember when my ship gave the wrong recognition signals and the Admiral had me up about it. “Monsarrat,” he said, “I’m afraid you’re in the rattle.” “What, again, sir?” I said. “Yes, my boy,” he said, “again …” You’ll understand that I’m glamorizing the interview a bit, because actually as soon as I got inside the room, blood, hair, and toenails began to fly, and I nearly lost my half-stripe. But that’s another story.’ He looked at his watch suddenly, in a swift, nervous movement. ‘Hell! Time’s up! I must go and plough the ocean. What’s happening to you tomorrow? Are you going – um – abroad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Odd if I convoyed you … Well’ – he held out his hand – ‘thanks for the session; it’s been a lot of fun. Have a good – no, that’s a silly remark. God bless you both.’ He smiled again, and was gone.

He left behind him one of those natural reflective silences wherein a leave-taker is privately summed up by the people he says goodbye to. It is not necessarily critical, but the space has to be filled. You broke the silence first, in a way I hadn’t been expecting.

‘Oh, darling,’ you said, ‘will you be like that, when you leave me?’

‘Like what?’

‘Sad and nervous and jumpy. He was hardly drunk at all, you know: just immensely depressed at saying goodbye and having to go off to sea again. Will it be like that for you?’

‘No,’ I answered after a pause, ‘it won’t be like that for me. There’s probably something in sea going, some special kind of loneliness and separation, which he had met before and can foresee each time. We are going to be different.’ (I didn’t believe any of this, but it sounded plausible.) ‘In fact, we are different, already – we’re spending all of the time together, right up to the last, instead of my having to be by myself, and missing you. And in any case, have you forgotten that we are on our honeymoon, and that upstairs is a room not only much more expensive than any you have yet slept in, but with a supremely comfortable bed and a man to go with it.’

You smiled. ‘No. I haven’t forgotten. But tell me some more about it.’

I told you some more.

‘Darling,’ you said, ‘you have a nice way of putting things, though it might not suit everyone.’ You picked up your glass, your loving eyes holding mine in a warm glow. ‘Your arms, my defence, my arms your recompense,’ you murmured, and drank. Then you pushed back your chair. ‘Let’s go up,’ you said, happily. ‘I’m in good form.’

There should be asterisks here, I suppose, and if I wanted to cheapen the thing I should put a lot of them in, and start again with: ‘The waiter knocked on the bedroom door, and brought in the breakfast tray.’ That is called ‘leaving it to the imagination’ – of all things, the foremost current indecency. But somehow I don’t think our lovemaking was of the asterisk order, was it? Lovemaking is never unmentionable, though some versions of it may be brutal or foolish; and the lovemaking of two people who, adoring each other, are about to part and wish to say goodbye with their bodies as well as with all the rest, is not the kind that needs to be censored.

Besides, I want you to remember it, all of it, as I do. This is what our goodbye was like. Please remember that, as long as you can.

The room, with the curtains drawn and the bedside lamp glowing and falling softly on the turned-back sheet and on your insubstantial chiffon nightdress which lay waiting for you, was even more suited to our private delight than it had seemed during the early afternoon; now it had something more than comfort, it had a personal welcome for both of us, promising that whatever we did there would be aided by a dreamlike and sensuous luxury … While you were having your bath I sprawled in an armchair and finished my cigar (you called out to me: ‘How very masculine that is!’ To which I replied: ‘And it’s not the most masculine thing about me, either ...’) then I started to undress. The fur boots you had given me caught my eye, and I put them on: they looked exceptionally handsome and they gave to my naked body an oddly rakish air, a touch of Cavalier irresponsibility, which was exactly what I was feeling at the moment. They had something, those boots: they were good boots to go to bed in.

Again you called out from the bathroom: ‘I’m getting lonely in here. You’re very quiet. What are you doing?’

‘Walking up and down in my fur boots,’ I said. ‘I look like Charles the First dictating a letter.’

I could almost hear you putting your head on one side. ‘That’s rather hard to imagine,’ you answered at length.

‘Come in and show me.’

You were like a jewel in that bathroom, a creamy, glowing focus of all the warmth and light in the world. The opaque, faintly scented water hid your legs, lapped round your middle, left sweetly outlined your breast and shoulders. Your hair was pinned up on top of your head, like a little girl’s. You were smiling up at me. I had forgotten you were so lovely.

My own body, toughened, scarred in two places, knocked about, felt awkward and intrusive by comparison, and something seemed to have rendered it unfit to be close to yours: the dirt and stress and pain of the last few years had somehow disqualified it from sharing your tenderness. But: ‘You have a nice figure,’ you said.

‘I have very nice boots.’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘You have a nice figure, too.’ I looked down at your nineteen-year-old body, with its clear skin and its fresh perfection of line; and then I looked at myself in the full-length mirror. Something I saw there crystallized that sense of unfitness, and I said suddenly: ‘Oh, God, I wish I’d met you about fifteen years ago. I’m too old for you.’

You stared. ‘You’re not too old at all!’

‘But if I were twenty instead of thirty-five–’

‘What difference would that make?’

‘All the difference in the world. That’s the age to be in love, not–’ I gestured impatiently. ‘I’m not sure what it is I want to give you, but it has something to do with being young and graceful and sunburnt: more of a lover and less of a husband, perhaps. You deserve someone who can look as fresh and vital as you’re looking at this moment.’

‘Don’t you feel like a lover?’

I smiled. ‘Surely. And that, at my age, is almost improper. And I think I could have been a more attractive and virile one at twenty. Now I’m almost past it – the wild, to-hell-with-it part anyway.’

‘Oh, yes, you’re past it all right.’ You held out a hand. ‘Help me up,’ you said, and as I pulled you, you rose suddenly upright, a warm, dripping figure, naked and flawlessly lovely. Then you put a wet hand on my chest, surrounded by a little haze of perfumed steam. ‘If you are past it now, sweet,’ you said, ‘it’s just as well I didn’t meet you when you were at the top of your form. And don’t shake your head like that, because you know quite well what I’m talking about … Now hurry up, and have your bath, and let’s have no more nonsense. Past it, indeed! ...’ You wrapped the towel close around you, and trailed away into the bedroom, grumbling charmingly and leaving tiny wet footmarks, while I winked to my reflection in the mirror. The idea I had brought up had seemed important for a moment, when I compared our two bodies: now it didn’t matter a damn. I felt as much past it as Casanova at fifteen.

I had only been in the bath a moment or two when you called out: ‘Darling.’

‘Yes?’

‘How long will you be gone?’

I knew what she meant, but I said: ‘About ten minutes. Have patience.’

‘How long really, sweet?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What would be the most?’

‘About – two years.’ That was likely to be the least, as far as I could gather, but it was secret anyway, even if I had been able to bring myself to tell you the whole truth. ‘Why do you ask, darling?’

‘I was thinking.’ A pause. Then: ‘Children.’

‘Oh … I’d been thinking about that, too.’

‘What do you think?’

I splashed about with my hands in the water, wondering exactly how to put it. ‘It’s so much
your
affair, darling. You know I’d love one, but that’s only
my
point of view; I don’t have any of the worry or the hell – it’s your responsibility, it’s your body that has to be used.’

‘It is yours.’

‘Is it, darling? Well … I thought we’d probably have one later on, after a year or so, but now that I’ll be gone for so long, and you’ll be alone, it seems rather a good idea. In fact it’s far more than just that. But
only
if you’re absolutely certain about it yourself.’

Through the open doorway your voice came low and gentle, confirming our accord: ‘That’s what I thought too. Ordinarily I’d want you to enjoy me for quite a long time, and I’d want you, too, for myself – that’s part of what we got married for, isn’t it, and it’s never seemed to me a selfish point of view – but if you’re going to be away anyway ...’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘So we’ll just–’

‘Yes.’

It was an odd conversation to conduct between two rooms, out of sight of one another, but perhaps this was the best way of settling it – not because of shyness, but because the subject had so much emotional content, such potential sadness at this moment, that a detached approach was the only way through it. Face to face with me, watching my eyes, you would have been reminded that this might be the last chance you would ever have of conceiving a child by me: that mutilation might prevent another, that you could be widowed months before it was born … Of course I wanted one, as close to your image as possible; but your inclination in the matter was paramount. It was such a very easy wish for me to have: the bill for it was all yours, and you would be alone all the time you were paying for it.