The Dividing Stream (20 page)

Karen hated this sort of emotional intimacy no less than physical intimacy; Chris’s outburst had affected her as she would have been affected if she had been called in to witness a surgical operation. But she steeled herself, and put an arm round the other woman’s shuddering body. ‘‘ Chris, you mustn’t be so upset, you mustn’t make mountains out of molehills.’’ No, she mustn’t; it made one feel sick, absolutely sick. Oh, why wouldn’t people show some guts, pride, control? Instead of parading their filthy little emotional wounds and abscesses as she had seen lepers in Egypt parade their sores. Shut up, shut up, she wanted to scream. ‘‘There there, Chris, Chris, do try——’’

But like most women who have been spoiled by their husbands, Chris was a connoisseur in sympathy and at once recognized the synthetic flavour of what Karen was feeding her. She was now horrified at her previous admission, and hastily whimpered: ‘‘Oh, I know that I’m being silly, because it’s not as if I were
in love
with Béngt. I mean, I care most awfully for him, and of course people being what they are, they think what one would expect. It’s just—just that having no children of my own—oh, it’s ridiculous of me—but I like to have someone to mother, and he’s always been so sweet and thoughtful to me, always, always. Except, of course’’—she gulped, and began to wipe the plaster off her cheek with a handkerchief she first licked—‘‘except when he behaves as he behaved this evening. And that upsets me, I don’t know why. I just can’t help it. I suppose I’m too sensitive. Tiny always says I’m too sensitive.’’ She blew her nose hard until it was the colour of the crimson varnish on her nails, and all at once giggled: ‘‘And now I suppose, I’d better try and use this thing. I’m sure I shall fall in.’’

Later, she and Karen wandered out into the overgrown garden which straggled behind the house until it eventually petered out in a tangle of briars, nettles and rusty barbed wire. ‘‘ Moths!’’ exclaimed Chris, and then more shrilly ‘‘Bats!’’: but she did not wish to be seen by the men until her eyes were less red, and so she endured these tribulations, walking up and down a dusty gravel path, her arm in Karen’s. ‘‘ Let’s sit down,’’ she said, pointing to a stone seat which glimmered in the moonlight. ‘‘What stars!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘ What a moon! Don’t they make you feel romantic, Karen?’’

Karen laughed, but her whole being shuddered from this kind of sisterliness; she could tolerate it with no woman, least of all with Chris. ‘‘I’m not very romantic,’’ she said at last.

‘‘No, I don’t believe you are,’’ Chris said.

They sat mutely on the warm, pocked stone, one at each end, as if in acknowledgement that between them there was really no sort of contact. Yet the contact was there, had they both known it, since each was thinking the same kind of thoughts, each was hugging the same kind of secret. And the thought and the secret brought an extravagant bloom to Karen’s usually subdued beauty and gave to Chris a beauty she had never before possessed. For now she was beautiful, as she watched the bats wheeling and felt the gnats sting her ankles and mused, giving her whole being up to this voluptuously intense remembrance, of a few agonizing moments after a picnic in Epping Forest sixteen years previously, and of the weeks of lonely fear that followed. He had Béngt’s loose movements and hair of the same colour, the colour of condensed milk, and he, too, smelled of cleanliness, yes, smelled of it as these Italians smelled of dirt. He had worn a ridiculous white student’s cap which made him look like a petty-officer, and had boarded with her aunt in the flat off the Finchley Road. He had promised to write to her, and she herself had written, times without number; but all she had received was a postcard from Stockholm. The Town Hall and on the other side ‘‘Best wishes, Tore”. Oh, it had been cruel. But the smell of the crushed leaves, and that clean smell above her.…

Karen mused less sentimentally. But she, too, had stumbled on the lost, impossible ideal: discipline, heroism, austerity. And how she had despised her father through all those years, wishing that he would die. For when she was seven she had heard him scream out with pain and she, who could bear agonies without crying, had decided that he was no father of hers. She repudiated him, she cast him aside. Men were brave, men were strong, and he was not one of them. Year by year, he weakened and softened before her eyes, clutching at her with his insatiable demands, whimpering, moaning, sobbing out his complaints. And at the end screaming: ‘‘I won’t die, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!’’ as he would scream when the doctor had to cause him the slightest discomfort.… Oh, if one must die, one should have the courage of the beasts of the field and go and die alone. All this emotionalism, this give and take of sympathy, handing it back and forth like some flabby, liquescent horror: no, no.… But Frank, ah, Frank: and she thought of him standing and watching the game of draughts, his shoulders thrust back, his legs wide apart, his hands under the wide leather belt, and those deep, vertical lines which furrowed either cheek.…

‘‘Did you notice how Béngt smoked the cigar you gave him?’’ Frank suddenly asked.

‘‘No,’’ Max said. ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Oh, I don’t know. He was watching you to see what you did. As if he didn’t know which end to put in his mouth. And then he left the band on. Odd.’’

‘‘Odd?’’

‘‘Well, with his background. I mean, you’ve heard his stories, haven’t you? Father Ambassador in Prague, later Paris. The vast estates. All that sort of thing.’’

‘‘Do you think he’s a phoney?’’

Frank shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘Wouldn’t be surprised.’’

‘‘But in that case we ought to tell Chris.’’

‘‘She wouldn’t believe it.’’ And he added, in his own mind: ‘‘Serve her right, anyway, if she wants to make a fool of herself.’’

‘‘I’m going to make some enquiries,’’ Max said. ‘‘I can do it through our Swedish office, and find out if there really
is
a Count von Arbach—and if he’s here in Florence.’’

‘‘As you like,’’ Frank said.

The two women appeared slowly out of the darkness, walking arm in arm; and because each still wore her secret like some transfiguring garment, the men thought, with astonishment, how beautiful they looked. Throats, arms, foreheads gleamed like snow in the moonlight: there was a soft swishing, as they climbed the steps.

‘‘Where’s my old man got to?’’ Chris said; and as she spoke, the garment disintegrated. She looked plain, dowdy and not a little pathetic, ‘‘And Béngt?’’ she added.

‘‘A stroll,’’ Frank said. ‘‘They said they’d be back soon.’’

‘‘Oh, there they are!’’ Chris exclaimed. She pointed up the road, ‘‘What are you two up to?’’ she shouted out, and there was a note of anxiety in her voice. ‘‘We’re all ready to go.’’ Béngt and Tiny turned on their heels and continued their even pacing, this time away from the restaurant. ‘‘Oi,’’ Chris shouted. She gave a piercing whistle.

Béngt looked round, and touched Tiny’s arm.

‘‘That’s more like it,’’ Chris said. ‘‘He’s walking awfully steadily for a man who was drunk. Awfully steadily,’’ she repeated, as if she had made some nasty discovery. ‘‘What have you two been doing?’’ she asked again, as, blinking at the lights, they mounted the terrace.

‘‘Oh, chatting,’’ Béngt said.

‘‘Chatting—about what?’’

‘‘This and that,’’ Tiny said. ‘‘I can’t really remember.’’

‘‘Anyway it’s made Béngt sober.’’ Chris swung her bag over her shoulder like a satchel, picked up her two bottles of red and green liqueur, and then said: ‘‘Well, shall be go?’’

I
N
the car, Karen stared at Max’s head for many minutes without speaking to Frank who sat in the back beside her. Chris Maskell had claimed Béngt for the Hillman Minx, though he would obviously have preferred the Packard.

‘‘Where would you like to be dropped?’’ Max asked, as they drove through the Porta Romana.

‘‘Oh, the other side of the bridge.’’

‘‘But can’t we take you to your door? It’ll be no trouble.’’

‘‘The bridge will do.’’

Karen again stared at Max’s head; it irritated her, the way he allowed his hair to grow on his neck before having it cut.

‘‘You must have your hair cut,’’ she said, and then turned to Frank: ‘‘Don’t be silly. Let us take you all the way. Why not?’’

He laughed. ‘‘Because you want to do it out of inquisitiveness, not kindness.’’

‘‘Well, it
is
funny that I’ve known you all these days and I still don’t know your address. Well, isn’t it?’’

‘‘I don’t mind your knowing it.’’ He mentioned a street and a number. ‘‘I haven’t asked you there merely because there’s no reason for doing so. I have one room, at the top of the house, and you have to climb seventy-six stairs. No lift,’’ he added. ‘‘You wouldn’t like that. To-morrow I’m going to look for somewhere else. Oh, not because it isn’t comfortable. But I’m getting involved.’’

‘‘Involved?’’

He smiled. ‘‘Not in the usual vulgar sense in which one gets involved with one’s landlady’s daughter. They’re a nice family and they’ve been very kind to me. But I’m too much one of them now. If they drive out in the car on a Sunday I’m always asked, the children keep coming up to my room, and I can never get out or in, without a conversation. He’s a dentist, and a bad one. Can’t bear to hurt a soul, and so when he drilled a tooth of mine, left half the decay untouched. Two weeks later I had an abscess. Oh, they’re nice enough people, as I say, and the house is clean, and I have my room for a song. But I can’t bear that kind of proximity—the identities of others pressing on one so. No privacy. It just doesn’t do.’’ He looked out of the window as the car drew to the kerb. ‘‘You’ve brought me all the way. You shouldn’t have done that. How did you find the street?’’

‘‘When Max comes to a new place, the first thing he does is to buy a map,’’ Karen said contemptuously. ‘‘ He’s terribly thorough. And then he goes over square inch after square inch.’’

‘‘Good idea. I do the same.’’ When Karen attacked Max, however obliquely, Ross never failed to put in a word of defence. It was something Karen could not understand.

‘‘Good-bye.’’ Frank hurried away, waving one hand, and then ran back and put his head through the front window. ‘‘And thank you, thank you for everything—the drive, the dinner, everything.’’ He turned his head to the back seat where Karen was waiting: ‘‘ If you’re really inquisitive about my room, come and see it for yourself.’’

‘‘Now?’’

He laughed. ‘‘No, not now. I’ve told you they’re a very respectable, bourgeois family. But tomorrow, tomorrow afternoon—if you really want to.’’

‘‘Tomorrow afternoon,’’ Karen said, with no more than an appearance of equanimity. ‘‘All right. The address?’’

He once again repeated it.

She and Max did not mention Frank until she lay in bed. Then, as he brushed his teeth while she turned over the pages of a book which she had no intention of reading, she said: ‘‘What do you make of him?’’

‘‘Of whom?’’

‘‘Frank Ross.’’

Max took the toothbrush from his mouth and spat before he said: ‘‘ Now that I’ve met him, I think they were probably right, the journalists. He must have had a sort of genius.’’

‘‘Oh, I don’t mean-as a soldier,’’ Karen said irritably.

Max looked surprised. ‘‘But that’s the most important part of him.’’

‘‘The war is over.’’

‘‘Exactly. And that’s why he can settle to nothing else. A man like that is never really himself except during a war. One can see he’s not happy.’’

‘‘I don’t understand him,’’ Karen said.

‘‘You said that the first day you met him.’’

‘‘Did I?’’ she asked in astonishment. ‘‘Funny your remembering that. He’s—so totally unlike all the other men I’ve ever known, doesn’t care about the same things—money, a career, family life.’’

‘‘He cares about nothing,’’ Max said. ‘‘To me that’s rather frightening. It gives a man so much power.’’ Methodically, he rinsed his toothbrush, wiped it on a towel, and placed it in the rack: the whole routine, repeated night after night, made Karen want to shout at him.

But: ‘‘Power,’’ she mused. ‘‘Yes, one does feel that. And the power is the greater for being so curtailed. One feels that if the switch were turned on, anything might happen. Anything.… Oh, this is a stupid, boring book,’’ and she threw the copy of
Vanity Fair
, one of Colin’s prizes, on to the floor. It fell, open and face downwards, in a tangle of India paper pages. Max stooped to pick it up and straighten it, as she asked: ‘‘ What did you two talk about?’’

‘‘Nothing. The war.’’

‘‘Oh, the war,’’ she laughed, ‘‘that dreary old war. I believe we only have wars every twenty years in order to give you men a topic of conversation. Heaven knows what you would do without it.… Damn!’’ She threw back the bed-clothes and said: ‘‘Bring me my dressing-gown, would you? And my slippers.’’

‘‘What’s the matter?’’

‘‘I promised Mother to put Nicko on his pot. She wanted to go to bed early because she was tired, and it’s the girl’s night out. I’d almost forgotten. Not that it’s any use,’’ she went on, as he helped her into the dressing-gown. ‘‘ He does it all the same. It’s such a beastly habit. I wish I knew what to do about it. Mother believes it’s our fault.’’

‘‘Our fault?’’

‘‘She never says so in so many words, but I know it’s what she thinks. She’s had those sort of theories ever since I can remember. There was a boy who used to steal at the school.… Strange, her being so much more
modern
than any of her children.’’

She went into the child’s darkened room and said ‘‘ Blast’’ loudly when her foot kicked a table.

‘‘Granny,’’ a voice said, on the edge of hysteria.

‘‘It’s me—Mummy.’’

‘‘Oh, Mummy.’’ All at once there was the sound of noisy weeping.

Karen continued to grope for the light as she said, more cross than alarmed: ‘‘Nicko, what on earth is it? What’s the matter? … And where’s the light?’’

‘‘I’ll turn it on.’’ No less abruptly the tears ceased.

A pillow had fallen to the floor, and the sheet and blankets had bidden up so high that the child’s feet stuck out from beneath them. His face was scarlet under a criss-cross tangle of fine blond hair, his thumb was in his mouth.