HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (19 page)

I had remarked that such a self-seeking civilization would be like the jungle, and he had agreed, without seeming to find anything out of the way in the idea; and his plan for the future – a future patterned on the uneasy past – certainly wasn’t going to sweeten that jungle or make it any more tolerable for its minor inhabitants.

I had high hopes for that future, as I told you, but they sprang more from the humility of man (what that sailor would probably label his servile nature) than from the force of arrogant self-determination.

Christ taught humility and neighbourly co-operation; but I would have thought of them anyway … It has always seemed to me that one should maintain a formal pattern of good conduct, not because of any supernatural compulsion, but simply because it is more efficient. Dishonesty and self-seeking do violence to this pattern of co-operation: they may be more profitable to the individual, but they distort his surroundings so much that in the end those surroundings become intolerable for nine-tenths of his fellow men.

Reason will tell you this: reason will confirm that a pattern – a co-ordinated, smooth-working picture – is vital, if life is to have any dignity or significance at all. The wish to ‘behave’ does not need the fear of punishment or the hope of heaven hereafter to give it validity: it springs from common sense, the sense of community, the constant awareness that if you conduct yourself decently and unselfishly you aid the betterment of your surroundings, while if you conduct yourself like an ape with an acquisitive nose and itching fingers, you are fashioning, for men to live in, an ape’s horrific world.

The sailor at dinner might say: First establish your impregnable place in society, then use it well: otherwise a tougher customer than you will get there first, and use it badly. That is all right if you are immunized against power, if you are confident of being incorruptible in a corrupt milieu. I have never yet met, or even observed at long range, such a man: the man who can preserve, against the tide of success, the ethics of humility, or who can be trusted with total authority when he has won it against opposition.

No. If power corrupts, fight corruption – not in others, but in yourself. Collect nothing you do not need: compete with all men, in the most rewarding of all forms of competition – service. Such conduct will produce its own design: a unique and formidable pattern, fit for the greatest as well as the humblest nation on earth.

This was not all we talked about in bed, but it was part of it … I have always believed that such a discussion, involving the higher thought in somewhat dubious surroundings, is a superior way of passing the time: Sacred and Profane Love within the confines of a spring mattress. And if you exhaust a subject or run out of adjectives, no awkward pause ensues.

Behind it all, of course, colouring our exchanges and giving them an unreal and speculative quality, was the question of whether we would ever share a future together, no matter in what form it was cast.

‘If I am killed,’ I began at one point, towards morning, when the hands of the clock seemed to be racing, and through the thick plush curtains there edged a shaft of grey, unwelcome light, ‘if I am killed–’

I felt you stiffen in my arms and then, as suddenly, relax again.

‘It’s all right,’ you said. ‘I can talk about it now, here, as long as I can feel you close to me, though later I may remember and be sad about it … If you are killed, what do you want me to do?’

‘Remember me – be sad for a long time – then remember me again, and be happy. If you have a child, I shall be there, in him, if you are alone–’ I paused, feeling that I was helping you not at all and should never have started talking about it. To embark on the subject, and then to fail, was immeasurably worse than silence. Sweet, we have only a short memory to share, but it has been lovely. It will last a long time: when it begins to fade, don’t be sad about it or think you are being unfaithful to me. That won’t be true at all, and I would never want you to have that feeling.

You were lying with your head pillowed in the crook of my arm. Now you turned, burying your face in my shoulder so that I could hardly hear what you were saying, and spreading the bright fan of your hair across my chest. I loved you very much for your closeness to me.

‘I hope I have a child,’ you murmured. ‘I wish one knew straight away … If I am left alone, I don’t expect to be very brave about it for a long time afterwards. There’ll be no quick flourish: I know just the sort of ache I shall have for you. I know just the sort of tears … But later on … Darling,’ you said, with a sudden touching humility, ‘I’m only nineteen. You won’t forget that, will you?’

In the half-light I nodded, pressing you close to me, understanding all that you were thinking but could not put into bleak words. ‘I know. I know. You are only nineteen, and life can’t ever be over then, however bitter it may be at the time. Do you think I would want you to turn your back on it, because of the happiness we gave each other?’

‘You wouldn’t be disappointed if–’

‘I should be disappointed if a person as sweet and lovely as you went to waste, after I was gone … Sweet,’ I said, very slowly, ‘I think that’s all I want to say – about – the – idea – of – you – marrying – again ...’

I felt your lips forming to a kiss on my shoulder. ‘Same here,’ you murmured. ‘Tired, darling?’

‘I am only human,’ I answered, after consideration.

‘May I say that you have proved it? How much of the night is left?’

‘Technically, none.’

‘So it’s good morning ...’

‘Yes. A very, very good morning, sweet.’

‘And thank you for a lovely night.’

‘It’s me that should be saying that.’

‘All I did was just lie here.’

‘You have a short memory.’ I felt your eyes closing, and I shut my own. ‘That’s about the only thing you didn’t do,’ I murmured, ‘but I’m not complaining … Remind me in the morning to tell you how lovely you were.’

‘Morning now.’

‘Not yet, precious, not yet.’

‘All right – not yet.’

So, for a space, we slept together.

I kept waking up, or perhaps I was never fully asleep; but somehow I was aware of the passing of all this time, dreamlike and uncontrolled.

For us it was the division between the past and the future, between our day of meeting and our day of goodbye; the hours now made up the dark, neutral ground between, and we crossed them swiftly. You slept uneasily – or did I dream that I watched you? Sometimes you whispered to yourself, and once you threw an arm across my chest as if you would anchor me and time together, and somehow stay the sun. Your body felt hot, and when I touched your forehead it had a slight, fevered dampness, which seemed childlike and pathetic.

The grey minutes were ticking away: it was difficult not to call after each one, for the solemn and inexorable procession was now paying us no attention at all. Lying there, we were discounted, indifferently ignored: we had had our lovely day and night, and they were being borne away, as a street is swept clean of flowers after a village festival, whether one would have it remain in fancy dress a little longer, or not.

Somehow, some remote, invincible authority gives an order, and the party is over. There is no argument, because it has been tried before and it is never any good.

Here the authority was the hated clock, and most remote and invincible of them all, and as between sleeping and waking the successive chimes of London advanced the day towards us, I thought (or dreamt that I thought) that I would never listen to a church bell again without a nervous and sweating anxiety that you would soon be taken from me.

When sleep did come it was a fearful and shadowy business, attended by flocks of demons striving murderously to claw us apart.

We had wished each other good morning, but of course it was not a good morning: it was a terrible one.

When I finally woke up and opened my eyes I found that you were watching me, and that I surprised you in a look of such compassionate tenderness that I pitied you for the thoughts you must be having. But I did not ask you what they were … Instead I smiled and said: ‘Do I look very old?’

You shook your head. ‘You look like a baby, sweet.’

‘A rather knowing infant … What time is it?’

‘Nearly nine.’

‘Oh ...’ I rolled over and reached for the telephone. ‘Breakfast now?’

‘Yes, please.’

Somehow we both knew that there was to be no more lovemaking: that neither of us wanted it or could have summoned up any sort of fervour or impulse. There was between us now, a faint weariness of the spirit, as well as our bodies’ reaction to the night’s expense of energy: it was the beginning of goodbye, and we both knew it through and through, from the moment of waking. An old and foolish dance tune popped into my head – ‘But in the Morning, No?’ That seemed to cover it.

When I had ordered the most attractive breakfast permitted by the regulations I turned back and took you in my arms, without saying anything. There was an obvious change even in the feel of you: you seemed colder, more detached, keeping tight command of yourself because you had to. I felt the same way myself. The whole room was beginning to shout ‘Time’s up!’ with the most dreadful clarity and persistence, and we had nothing to keep it at bay except a disregarding tenderness for each other. And if what I felt now was anything to go by, that was not going to be enough.

Presently I said: ‘Lovely night, sweet.’

‘Yes.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you.’

There didn’t seem to be anything more to add. Already I was beginning to feel dead inside. We lay there quietly until breakfast was brought in.

This was the breakfast we were going to have enjoyed so much – the flourishing signature to the start of our honeymoon. Now it was everything but that: it was our last meal together, it was the end of our shared life, for as far as the mind could see. It had grapefruit and an omelette and toast and marmalade and really excellent coffee: but it also had ‘Finish’ on the menu, and it was unadulterated hell throughout.

At one point you said: ‘What time do you have to go?’

‘About noon.’

‘Station?’

‘Not straight away. Report to HQ first.’

‘I think I’ll go back home today. I’ve nothing to do in London.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s the best idea, darling.’ I thought for a minute, while the bedroom echoed ‘Nothing to do in London’ as if it were some dreary kind of curse. Then I added: ‘Why not catch the eleven o’clock? Then you won’t have to hang about afterwards.’

You looked at me and said: ‘Yes, I will. Don’t come to the station, though. I’ll just go off in a taxi.’

‘All right.’

Then you began to cry. You had a piece of toast halfway to your mouth, and you suddenly looked at it and then your mouth crumpled and you dissolved into pitiful tears. Momentarily I was almost panic-stricken, with no notion what to do: there you sat, so shaken by your sobbing that you could control none of your movements, so helpless in your distress that had you not been relaxed against the pillow you might well have fallen. It seemed that your heart was already broken … I put my arm round you and held you close, until the first shaking storm of your grief had passed; then, when you were no longer out of control but rather crying like a little girl lost among strangers who she does not trust, I said gently: ‘Don’t, sweet. Please don’t. I don’t think I can bear it if you cry.’

You were wordless, and your tears still fell, as if reproaching me for being able to talk at all, when we were in such a wilderness.

‘You’ve been so good up to now,’ I said. ‘Much better than me, really – you’ve been able to make me forget it all, while you must have been remembering yourself … This is nearly the end, I know, but somehow we’ve got to deal with it, as we’ve dealt with everything else so far.’

Quieter now, you laid your wet cheek against mine. A tear which splashed on to my forearm made a little pathway for itself and then gradually dried to nothing. It was the last one to fall … I could feel your eyelashes blinking, and the muscles of your throat swallowing and swallowing. You were really very brave and good.

‘It was what you said last night,’ you whispered presently. ‘I’m so sorry, dearest … I suddenly remembered what you said about not coming back.’

‘I’ll come back.’

‘It’s such a long time. I won’t know what’s happening. You’ll be fighting – there’ll be all sort of dangers – you won’t hang back, you’ll be in front – you know you will – why do you have to be an officer ...?’

‘That doesn’t make any difference.’

‘It might do. Promise me–’

I interrupted you. ‘Anyway I haven’t the feeling I’m going to be killed.’ Out of sight, I touched the wood of the bedside table. ‘Darling, I’ve side-stepped nearly every sort of missile in this war: the luck will hold.’ I knew this was bad talk, but somehow I did feel it, very strongly. ‘You’ll see – I’ll be back almost before you’ve missed me, covered with medals and a matted beard.’

You smiled at that (as well you might) but you said: ‘It’ll be so lonely.’

‘Lonely?’ I took you by the shoulders and shook you gently. ‘Do you think you will be alone?’ I asked. ‘You have a husband … Only the goodbye is sad, precious – the rest is so strong, and has such hope buried deep inside it, that it can never fail us. Isn’t that true? When I am gone I don’t take everything with me. The best part stays with both of us all the time: it’s the part we’ve built together and live on now, the part we’ll have in the future. And in a little while I shall come back, and we can share it all again.’