The Black Prince (Penguin Classics) (35 page)

‘Is she the daughter of Arnold Baffin?’ said Marigold. ‘I do so admire his books, he’s my favourite writer.’

‘You must go, my children,’ I said, rising. I could not bear any longer not being alone with my thoughts. ‘I will arrange everything for the best with Priscilla. It remains to wish you both every happiness.’

‘I confess you’ve surprised me,’ said Roger.

‘Being beastly to you two won’t help Priscilla.’

‘You’ve been
sweet,
’ said Marigold. I think she would have kissed me, only Roger piloted her off.

‘Cheery – bye to my favourite dentist!’ I shouted after them.

‘He must be drunk,’ I heard Roger say as I shut the door.

I went back to lying face downwards on the black woolly rug.

 

 

 

 

‘Guess what I’ve got in this bag!’ I said to Priscilla.

It was the same evening. Francis had let me in. There was no sign of Christian.

Priscilla was still occupying the upstairs ‘new’ bedroom with the rather tattered – looking walls of synthetic bamboo. The oval bed, which had black sheets, was tousled, doubtless just vacated. Priscilla, in a rather clinical white bath robe, was sitting on a stool in front of a low very glittering dressing – table. She had been staring at herself in the mirror when I came in, and returned to doing so after greeting me without a smile. She had powdered her face rather whitely and reddened her lips. She looked grotesque, like an elderly geisha.

She did not reply. Then she suddenly reached out to a big jar of greasy cold cream and started plastering it upon her face. The red lipstick melted into the grease, tingeing it with red. Priscilla spread the pinkish mess all over her face, still gazing devouringly into her own eyes.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘look who’s here!’ I put the white statuette on to the glass top of the dressing – table. I laid the enamel picture and the malachite box beside it. I drew out a mass of entangled necklaces.

Priscilla stared. Then without touching the stuff she reached out and took a paper tissue and began wiping the red mess off her face.

‘Roger brought them for you. And look, I’ve brought you the buffalo lady again. I’m afraid she’s a bit lame, but – ’

‘And the mink stole? Did you see him?’

‘Yes, I saw him. Now, Priscilla, I want to tell you—’

Priscilla’s face, cleaned of the grease, looked raw and mottled. She dropped the soggy reddish screw of tissue on to the floor. She said, ‘Bradley, I’ve decided to go back to Roger—’

‘Oh, Priscilla—’

‘It’s no good. I should never have left him. It isn’t fair to him. And I think away from him I’m literally going mad. All chances of happiness are gone from me. Just being with myself is hell all the time anyway. And here in this meaningless place I’m with myself more. Even hating Roger was something, it meant something, being made unhappy by him did, after all he belongs to me. And I was used to things there, there was something to do, shopping and cooking and cleaning the house, even though he didn’t come home for his supper, I’d cook it and put it ready for him and he wouldn’t come home and I’d sit and cry watching the television programme. Still it was all part of something, and waiting for him at night in the dark when I went to bed, listening for his key in the door, at least there was something to wait for. I wasn’t alone with my mind. I don’t really care if he went with girls, secretaries in the office, I suppose they all do. I don’t feel now that it matters much. I’m connected with him forever, it’s for better and worse, worse in this case, but any tie is something when one’s drifting away to hell. You can’t look after me, obviously, why should you. Christian’s been very kind, but she’s just curious, she’s just playing a game, she’ll soon get tired of me. I know I’m awful, awful, I can’t think how anyone can bear to look at me. I don’t want to be looked after anyway. I can feel my mind decaying already. I feel I must smell of decay. I’ve been in bed all day. I didn’t even make up my face until just before you came, and then it looked so terrible. I hate Roger and the last year or two I’ve been afraid of him. But if I don’t go back to him I’ll just dissolve, all my inwards will come pouring out, like people who are just going to be hanged. I can’t tell you what the misery’s like that I’m in.’

‘Oh, Priscilla, do stop. Here, look, pretty things. You’re pleased to see them again, so there’s something that gives you pleasure.’ I plucked up a long necklace with blue and glassy alternate beads out of the pile and shook it free and opened it out into a big O to put round her neck, but she gestured it violently away.

‘Did he send the mink?’

‘Well—’

‘I’m going back anyway so it doesn’t matter. It was kind of him to bring – What did he say, did he want to see me, did he say I was awful ? Oh my life has been such hell, but when I go back it won’t be worse than now, it couldn’t be. I’ll try to be resigned and quiet. I’ll try to do I ittle things, I’ll go to the cinema more. I won’t shout and cry. If I’m quiet he won’t hurt me, will he? Bradley, would you come with me to Bristol? I’d like you to
explain
to Roger – ’

‘Priscilla,’ I said, ‘listen, dear. There’s no question or possibility of your going back now, not ever again. Roger wants a divorce. He’s got a mistress, a young girl called Marigold whom he’s been living with for ages, for years, and he wants to marry her now. I saw them this morning. They’re very happy and they love each other and they want to marry each other and Marigold’s pregnant—’

Priscilla got up and walked stiffly towards the bed. She got into it. It was like a corpse climbing into its coffin. She pulled up the bedclothes.

‘He wants to get married – ’ Her mouth had become flabby and her speech blurred.

‘Yes, Priscilla – ’

‘He’s had this girl for a long time – ’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s pregnant—’

‘Yes.’

‘So he wants a divorce – ’

‘Yes. Dear Priscilla, you’ve understood it all and you must face it all—’

‘Death,’ she murmured, ‘death, death, death – ’

‘Don’t give way, my dear—’

‘Death.’

‘You’ll soon feel better. You’re well rid of that heel. Honestly. We’ll make a new world for you, we’ll spoil you, we’ll all help, you’ll see. You said yourself you’d go to the cinema more. Roger will give you an allowance, and Marigold is a dentist – ’

‘And perhaps I could pass my time knitting little things for the baby!’

‘That’s better, show a bit of spirit!’

‘Bradley, if you knew how much I hated even you, you’d know how far beyond any human hope I am now. As for Roger – I’d like to stick – a red – hot knitting needle – into his liver – ’

‘Priscilla!’

‘I read about it in a detective story. You die slowly and in terrible agony.’

‘Please—’

‘You understand nothing of – the horror – no wonder you can’t write real books – you don’t see – the horror – ’

‘I know of horrors,’ I said. ‘I know of joys too. Life has good surprises, prizes, glories. We’ll protect you and give you treats – ’

‘Who’s “we”? Ach – I have nobody in the world. I’ll kill myself. That’s best. Everyone will say, it’s for the best that she killed herself, she’s better off dead. I hate you, I hate Christian, I hate myself so much I could spend hours and hours just screaming with hatred and with the pain of it, oh the pain of it, oh Roger, Roger, Roger, the pain of it – ’

She had turned on her side and was sobbing quietly, rather breathlessly, her mouth shuddering, her eyes awash with tears. I had never seen anyone so inaccessibly miserable. I felt an urge to
put her to sleep
, not for good of course, but if only one could have given her a shot of something just to stop this awful weeping, to give some intermission to the tormented consciousness.

The door opened and Christian came in. Gazing at Priscilla she greeted me inattentively with a sort of ‘holding’ gesture which, it occurred to me, was the height of intimacy. ‘What is it
now
?’ she said to Priscilla sternly.

‘I’ve just told her about Roger and Marigold,’ I said.

‘Oh God, did you have to?’

Priscilla suddenly started to scream quietly. ‘Scream quietly’ may sound like an oxymoron, but I mean to indicate the curiously controlled rhythmic screaming which goes with a certain kind of hysterics. Hysterics is terrifying because of its willed and yet not willed quality. It has the frightfulness of a deliberate assault on the spectators, yet it is also, with its apparently unstoppable rhythm, like the setting going of a machine. It is no use asking someone in hysterics to ‘control themselves’. By ‘choosing’ to become hysterical they have put themselves beyond ordinary communication. Priscilla, now sitting upright in bed, gave a gasping ‘Uuuh!’ then a screamed ‘aah!’ ending in a sort of bubbling sob, then the gasp again and the scream and so on. It was an appalling sound, both tortured and cruel. I have four times heard a woman in hysterics, once my mother when my father hit her, once Priscilla when she was pregnant, once another woman (would that I could forget that occasion) and now Priscilla again. I turned to Christian raising my hands distractedly.

Francis Marloe came in grinning.

Christian said, ‘Out you go, Brad, wait downstairs.’

I ran down the first flight, then went more slowly down the second flight. By the time I reached the door of the dark brown and indigo drawing – room the house had become entirely silent. I went in and stood with my feet well apart, breathing.

Christian entered.

‘She’s stopped,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’

‘I slapped her.’

I said, ‘I
think
I’m going to faint.’ I sat down on the sofa and covered my face with my hand.

‘Brad! Quick, here, some brandy – ’

‘Could I have some biscuits or something? I haven’t eaten all day. Or yesterday.’

I really did feel, for that moment, faint: that odd absolutely unique sensation of a black
baldacchino
being lowered like an extinguisher over one’s head. And now, as brandy, bread, biscuits, cheese, plumcake became available, I also knew that I was going to cry. It was many many years since I had wept. What a very strange phenomenon it is, little perhaps they realize who use it much. I recalled the dismay of the wolves when Mowgli sheds tears, in the
Jungle Book
. Or rather, it is Mowgli who is dismayed, and thinks he is dying. The wolves are better informed, dignified, faintly disgusted. I held the glass of brandy in both hands and stared at Christian and felt the warm water quietly rising into my eyes. The quiet inevitability of the sensation gave satisfaction. It was an achievement. Perhaps all tears are an achievement. Oh precious gift.

‘Brad, dear, don’t – ’

‘I hate violence,’ I said.

‘It’s no good letting her go on and on, she tires herself so, she did it for half an hour yesterday – ’

‘All right, yes, all right – ’

‘Why, you poor pet! I’m doing my best, honest. It’s no fun having a near – crazy in the house. I’m doing it for you, Brad.’

I had managed to shallow a piece of cheese, but it felt like eating soap. The brandy did good though. I was terribly upset by this glimpse of Priscilla, it was such a vista of hopelessness. But the precious tears, what were they? They were, they could not but be, tears of pure joy, a miraculous portent of my changed state. All of me, material and spiritual, all my substance, all my humours, was composed of the ecstasy of love. I stared ahead of me through the warm silvery veil of my tears and saw Julian’s face, eager and intent, like a bird – mask, hanging there in space, like a vision of the Saviour come to console some starving and crazed ascetic in a desert cave.

‘Brad, what is it, you look extraordinary, something’s happened to you, you’re beautiful, you look like a saint or something, you look like some goddam picture, you look all young again—’

‘You won’t abandon Priscilla, will you, Chris?’ I said, and I mopped the tears away with my hand.

‘Did you just notice something, Brad?’

‘What?’

‘You called me “Chris”.’

‘Did I? Like old days. Well, but you won’t? I’ll pay you—’

‘Oh never mind the dough. I’ll look after her. I got on to a new doc. There’s a treatment with injections she can have.’

‘Good. Julian.’

‘What was that?’

I had just uttered Julian’s name aloud. I got up, ‘Chris, do you mind, I must go. I’ve got something very important to do.’ Think about Julian.

‘Brad, please – Oh, all right, I won’t keep you. But I want you to say something to me.’

‘What?’

‘Oh that you forgive me or something. That there’s peace between us or something. You know I just loved you, Brad. You saw my love as a sort of crushing force or a will to power or something but I just wanted to hold you. And I did really truly come back here to you and for you. I thought about you out there and what a fool I’d been. Of course I’m not a romantic crazy. I know our thing couldn’t work then, we were so young and God we were stupid with each other. But there was something I saw in you which didn’t leave me alone. I used to dream we were reconciled, you know in dreams at night, real dreams.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘Oh God! And it was such a dream of happiness. And then I’d wake up and remember the way we parted in such hatred and there’d be Evans’s silly old face beside me, we shared a bed almost right up to the end. I say, I said some mean things about poor Evans to you, I wished I hadn’t afterwards, I must have made a pretty poor impression – I didn’t really despise Evans or hate him or want him to die, it wasn’t like that at all, I was just so bored with him and with the whole place. The only thing that kept me going out there was making money. Not painting or breathing exercises or deep analysis. I even took up pottery, Christ, I tried everything. In the end only money was real. But I always felt that there was another world, a sort of spiritual world, I guess, waiting for me somewhere. And I just hoped when I came back here that I was coming to a sort of home, a sort of home right in your heart – ’