The Honeyed Peace (9 page)

'Next year, when the fish are better,' the Colonel said, 'we will have money and we will go the galleries in Paris and Italy. We can travel cheap, Lily?'

'Oh yes, certainly,' Lily said, ashamed that she did not know.

'We will go in the summer when Grace has her vacation; she will want to see the pictures too. She is so interested in painting as we are.'

'Yes,' Sim said, although he thought the business was more likely to fail than to give them money for a trip. And if it failed, he would probably lose his house. I cannot lose my house, he thought, I will not lose it.

But no one said, for talk's sake, for fun, to be cosy: And you come too, Lily. Of course not, Lily thought. I am an intruder. I do not deserve to be here, you have to earn it. Nothing was changed; it was only harder and secret. They were the same men, as solid as they had been at Tobruk or Alamein or Cassino. Since they had never turned and run, why should they now? Grace had joined them, for the endless duration. You had to stay and live it, you had to share it with your friends and love them more than yourself, then you belonged as Grace did. I must get out, Lily thought, I am scared, I don't know who I am.

They lunched at the Crown Hotel, which was the most expensive place in town, and Lily guessed at once that they never came here, but naturally they would offer her what they could not afford for themselves. The dining-room at the Crown was full of silent eaters, all looking as if the food disagreed with them and Sunday was a punishment. The waitresses were insolent and slow and disliked the foreign merry manners of these Poles. Lily hated the waitresses and wanted to tell them to honour their betters and bring beer at once when it was asked for; and the meal was disgusting, all white, everything white, and lukewarm and thick.

She saw how cheerfully Sim and the Colonel matched coins and added and got enough for the bill. And how Grace behaved, quietly and easily, knowing what money they had and did not have and how hard the week would be, but able to arrange it for them somehow. They will eat scraps at Sim's house, and wash the dishes together, and talk of Marek's painting and how they are going to Italy, and tomorrow morning Grace will go to the bank and Sim and Marek will go wherever they manage their fish, and none of them will despair.

Let them win, Lily thought, oh, God, let them win. Before, she had been part of the winning, but now, somehow, somewhere, she had lost her place; she had demobilized herself.

Sim walked ahead with Grace; there was just time to walk to Sim's, pack Lily's suitcase, and take a taxi to the station. They had urged her to stay but she said she could not, so many errands, she said, you know how it is. What am I trying to think? Lily wondered. Oh yes, Grace's legs look perfectly all right. They are hers, and how she is is all right.

The Colonel was not talking. Lily saw him staring at the street, the houses, the sky, and knew he was thinking of colours and what you could do with grey. With an effort, the Colonel abandoned the street, and took Lily's arm.

'General, you are sweet to come to us. It made us happy.'

'Thank you, Marek.'

'They walk well together.'

'Yes.'

'One day they will marry.'

'What?' It could not be her voice, squeaking like that.

'Why not? She is not Princess or Countess; she did not go anywhere; she has no dresses except three, all ugly. And she is a good woman, everything is good. She loves Sim: she is not afraid of what life he will have.'

'I didn't mean that.'

'It is different, Lily. You must be a Pole perhaps to understand. We come very far away, but that is not strange to us. We always go back but maybe not the same ones who go away. Sim knows. Grace knows this too; she is not a Pole, but she knows, for Sim. For you it is the same life as before. That is good. That is what we all like, but it does not happen so.'

Ah no, Lily thought, you are wrong. She might have cried out in pain, it was so clear in her face. The Colonel remembered then what Sim had told him, hurriedly, in Polish, when the girls went to fix their hair before lunch. Sim had been useless for Lily, too, or so he said. They were only concerned with their own lives, their own little problems. Their problems were nothing and would be solved. But how did a woman learn to stop loving a dead man?

'I am sorry, Lily. We hope it comes better for you. Everybody must forget something, Lily. It is not possible to live if you always remember.'

What is he saying? Lily thought. Her legs felt cold and weak; the streets went on and on. Where was Sim's house? Why is he telling me this?

Grace must have packed for her. There was more gin; she could taste it burning in her mouth. She did not listen to the men, or hear her answers. She believed she could hear the minutes ticking in her tiny silent watch. It was raining again, she noticed, as they drove through the cold identical streets, and the station held its own cloud of train-smoke and looked as it had when she arrived, dark, and full of jumbled pale people in raincoats. The ladylike broadcast voice told them where to find the train for London. Sim walked up and down the long train while she waited with the Colonel and Grace, out of the rain. Sim reported he had found an empty compartment and led them, carrying her suitcase.

Then she was inside the familiar varnished box, leaning out the door, while they stood with the rain making pearls in their hair. The three of them, all so tall, united, with laughing faces, called goodbye.

'It's been lovely,' Lily called back. 'Such a wonderful week-end!

We'll meet soon, won't we? Darlings, take care, darlings, thank you, goodbye, goodbye.'

The noise of the train cut off their words, the lowering smoke blurred them, and they were three distant figures under the feeble bare light-bulbs.

Lily closed the window and sat down, with her feet on the opposite bench. Her feet were wet, London was hours and hours away. A hot bath, she thought, trying to imagine comfort, and a hot toddy and a hot-water bag.

I have made a cruel mistake, she told herself. She was whispering in the silence of her mind. There is no one to remember for, or no one to remember with; everyone must forget. The dead are dead, there is nothing to be done. And the ghosts, the others she believed were like herself; had she pursued them, saying: Ghosts, ghosts; when they only wanted to live?

She was not rejected by the ghosts, who would be too kind for that, but she knew she must leave them. How did you pick up the habit of living, once you had lost it? How did you live with yourself after you had guessed for the first time, with disbelief and certainty, with horror, that you were a coward?

She shut the door into the corridor, pulled the shades to hide herself from passing people, and turned off the light. Shrivelled with cold, she lay under her coat, sick with cold, sick with weariness, sick of all the journeys. And watched the rain, like melting grease against the dark window, and the night too dark to see.

A PSYCHIATRIST OF ONE'S OWN

Every day now, when Matthew Hendricks woke, he heard the voice (whose voice?) asking: 'What are you doing here?'

'How do you mean "here"?' he would answer irritably in silence. Here happened to be Paris. Before that, for two years, it had been Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas, the Virgin Islands; before that, New York; before that, Majorca; before that, Rome; before that, Three Star Ranch, Kneehole, Montana; before that, London; before that, Villa Léonie, Le Lavandou, Var ... What difference did 'here' make? 'here' was more places than he could easily remember; he had to match years and addresses before he knew where he had lived. Why don't you just say, 'What are you doing?' and have done? Hendricks demanded of this unknown inquisitive voice. There was no answer, of course. All the voice did was ask once, ruin the beginning of the day, and shut up. It is not, Hendricks thought, as if I were a cheerful waker. Some people feel low at sunset, l'heure bleue given over to assignations, brooding cocktails, a wistful spell with the gramophone, doubt. For me,
l'heure bleue
is dandy. By then I have got past the day, I can rest on my oars, more time is finished. It is waking that I hate. I do not need any foreign voice, coming from a mouth which secretes too much saliva, asking me questions I cannot answer.

There were other irritations, besides the voice. His workroom changed; papers, pencils, the typewriter, books were minutely disarranged. Each morning he lost his temper and his time, putting back exactly where it belonged what he used for his work. He made tremendous scenes to June, his wife, shouting that he asked very little and expected at least that she could control her maids. In an equal rage, June said the room would not be cleaned, then he would be at peace in the untroubled dirt, and she in peace without his ridiculous carrying on. He locked the room and kept the key. Even so, in the mornings, some subtle disorder had occurred. He could not explain it, he did not dare speak of it; gradually, without mentioning the subject, the maid Ermilla resumed her daily dusting and sweeping. He had also begun to suffer from an intermittent trick of vision. He would be talking to one of the many friends who appeared for drinks, for dinner, and speaking to Johnny Fitch he would see Tom Boyd's face or
vice versa
. June observed a new habit of blinking, she thought Matthew had some deplorable grow-in nervous tic. He was trying to blink the right face on to the right person. It was all maddening, harassing; he wished he had never agreed to come to Paris. He had been content in the Caribbean, half asleep, floating in the warm air and the warm sea, not sure what month it was or what year, letting time flow over him.

June, who never thought about her husband but only drew conclusions, decided Paris was doing Matthew a great deal of good. He had been increasingly lazy in Saint Thomas, he was behind schedule on his book, but now in Paris he was again working as he should. She did see that Matthew, always a detached undemanding man, had become fussier; she put it down to age and admitted she probably had little manias herself which she did not notice. If she ignored Matthew's nonsenses, he would stop them. She believed in not taking things seriously.

Awake, Matthew Hendricks lay still, getting used to it. He studied the weather. There had been an immense amount of weather to study, in all the places he lived; he preferred weather which did not change. Today, the first autumn rain fell with unlikely grey persistence. He had forgotten this rain, during two years in the tropics, and regarded it with distaste. It did not matter to him, he simply did not like it. Get up, Hendricks told himself, go on get up. Let it rain.

While shaving he studied his face because it was there before him, as the weather was. He did not like or dislike this collection of features. Except for his eyes, his appearance had nothing to do with him, he wore the face and the tall body of a stranger, a well-mannered healthy tamed prosperous fellow who woke and lived and slept without any doubts except those that can be handled. His eyes, Hendricks thought, more or less suited him; he saw them as unpleasantly sharp, bright without warmth, greenish, snooping, remembering. But they sat so nicely in his head, wide apart beneath arched brows, that no one was apt to notice their real quality. His hair, his skin, his jaw-line, his neck were all younger than they should be; youth came naturally to him and stayed and stayed. He had a fine nose, he knew he was handsome, and took no interest in it because this handsomeness belonged to someone else. He went on shaving and felt as ugly as rotten fruit.

The maid knocked at the door, bringing breakfast. Hendricks was ready with his attractive smile and cordial voice.

'
Bonjour
, Ermilla.'

'
Bonjour
, Monsieur.'

June found these treasures wherever they went; the treasures worked like slaves, they were grateful, they never went out, being too hideous to have any other interests, loyalties, loves. Ermilla made a pale green blur in the room, setting his breakfast tray on the table by the window. June always put her maids into green uniforms for the morning. Long ago, Hendricks had explained to his wife that he could speak to no one until lunchtime; his mind would be shredded; his day's work destroyed. Mrs Hendricks obeyed this rule of absence and silence not from love nor in consideration of her husband's talent. She respected her husband's writing because it was far more interesting to be rich from books than from the manufacture of radiators or shower caps. She enjoyed being known as the wife of a famous novelist; Hendricks was convinced that the sort of people who read his books were the sort of people June had for friends. Fame meant nothing except money. He could not imagine what else he would do if he did not sit down every day at nine and write until one; he might as well make all this money which he and June seemed to need.

The work went badly; the rain was like a fool whispering in the room, not talking to him but snuffling on and on. He was upset, then angry, then frantic. He did not care about what he was writing, a love story set in a Caribbean island; but it gave him an athlete's pride to be able to do this, day after day. He was proud of his discipline and his skill. Why should today's rain matter? If he started breaking up for rain, the next thing would be that he couldn't work if there were sun, or wind, or snow; he had to work, there must be something to count on.

He went to lunch, bothered by a small sickish headache. Seven hundred words, he told himself; the daily quota was twelve hundred. Seven hundred to throw away; and he never threw away his work, he could rely on its quality, it was always up to the standard he set for it.

June said, 'Hello, Matty, how was the morning?'

'I couldn't work. It's the rain.'

'Not really?' She took it for granted that Matthew worked well unless he had the flu or a hangover; she told people that all this talk of writers and temperament was absurd, Matthew was never difficult about his books.

'We may have to leave,' he said; 'I don't want any soup.'