The Nice and the Good (46 page)

Ducane got up and walked about the room. The scene had certainly been cleared. Fivey gone, Judy gone, Biranne gone, Jessica gone, Kate gone, Paula gone. He looked at himself in a mirror. His face, which he thought of as ‘lean’, looked peaky and thin, and he noticed the greasy unclean appearance of his hair and the dulled lock of grey in the centre of his forehead. His eyes were watery and yellowed. His nose was shiny and red from the sun. He wanted somebody, somebody. He needed a shave.

He said to himself, an era of my life has come to an end.
He reached for some writing paper and sat down and began to write.

My dear Octavian,

It is with great regret that I write to tell you that I must tender my resignation.…

W
ILL
I faint when I see him?

Paula wondered. It was idiotic to meet in the National Gallery. He had suggested on a postcard that they should meet beside the Bronzino. Paula had been touched. But it was a silly Richardesque idea all the same. If he had sent a
letter
and not a
postcard
she might have suggested something else. As it was she felt that all she could do was send another postcard saying
yes
. Fortunately there was nobody about at this fairly early hour except an attendant who was now in the next room.

Paula had arrived too soon. As Richard, with characteristic thoughtlessness, had suggested an early morning meeting, she had had to stay overnight at a hotel. She did not want to stay either with John Ducane or with Octavian and Kate. Indeed she had not told Octavian and Kate. And she needed to be alone. She had not slept. She had been unable to eat any breakfast. She had sat twisting her hands in the hotel lounge and watching the clock. Then she had to run to the cloakroom thinking she was going to be sick. At last she rushed out of the hotel and got into a taxi. Now there was half an hour to wait.

I might faint, thought Paula. She still felt sick and a black canopy seemed to be suspended over her head, its lower fringes swinging just above the level of her eyes. If that blackness were to come rushing down her body would twist and tilt and she would fall head first down into a dark shaft. She felt the vertigo and the falling movement. I’d better sit down, she thought. She moved carefully to the square leather-cushioned seat in the centre of the room and sat down.

The violence, the violence remained between them like a mountain, or rather it had become more like a dreadful attribute of Richard himself, as if he had been endowed with a menacing metal limb. Odd to think that. It was Eric who really had the metal limb. Had that scene in the billiard room made Richard impossible for her for ever?
She had never really thought this, but she seemed to have assumed it. Without it she would never have left Richard. With it she had not even wondered if it was possible to stay. Was it reasonable, was it not mad, to find this thing so important, so as it were physically important?

Paula stared at Bronzino’s picture. Since Richard had appropriated the picture she had deliberately refrained from making any theoretical study of it, but she remembered vaguely some of the things which she had read about it earlier on. The figures at the top of the picture are Time and Truth, who are drawing back a blue veil to reveal the ecstatic kiss which Cupid is giving to his Mother. The wailing figure behind Cupid is Jealousy. Beyond the plump figure of the rose-bearing Pleasure, the sinister enamel-faced girl with the scaly tail represents Deceit. Paula noticed for the first time the strangeness of the girl’s hands, and then saw that they were reversed, the right hand on the left arm, the left hand on the right arm. Truth stares, Time moves. But the butterfly kissing goes on, the lips just brushing, the long shining bodies juxtaposed with almost awkward tenderness, not quite embracing. How like Richard it all is, she thought, so intellectual, so sensual.

A man had appeared in the doorway. He seemed to materialise rather than to arrive. Paula felt a great force pin her against the back of the seat. He came quickly forward and sat beside her.

“Hello, Paula. You’re early.”

“Hello—Richard—”

“So am I, I suppose. I couldn’t do anything, I had to come.”

“Yes.”

“Well, hello—”

Paula made no attempt to talk. She was trying to control her breathing. A long breath in, now out, in, now out. It was quite easy really. She moved a little away, looking sideways at Richard, who was leaning one arm on his knee and staring unsmilingly at her. An attendant passed by. There was no one else in the room.

“Look, Paula,” said Richard, in a low voice, “let’s be business-like, let’s make a business-like start anyway. Ducane told you about this awful thing about Radeechy?”

“Yes.”

“About me and Claudia? Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s separate two issues, shall we? (a) Whether you think I ought to give myself up as it were, hand the whole issue over to the police and get myself sacked and charged with being an accessory. And (b) what you and I are going to do about ourselves. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get (a) settled first.”

God, how like Richard this is, thought Paula, and a painful shaft of something, tenderness perhaps, memory, pierced through her. The black canopy had gone away and her breathing seemed likely to go on. But her heart was hurting her with its violence.

“Aren’t the two issues connected?” said Paula. She had found herself unable to look at him and was looking at the floor.

“They’re connected in the sense that you might or mightn’t want to visit me in jail. Only in one of the four possible permutations of (a) and (b) and yes and no are they actually interdependent.”

Oh Richard, Richard. “Is John—sort of forcing you here?”

“No, no one’s forcing me. I just want (a) settled. We can’t take (b) first.”

“John seems to think it’s all right to keep it all quiet, and he—”

“Damn John. What do you think?”

Paula had not expected this. She had been utterly appalled by the story about Claudia and Radeechy, but she had not thought that any further judgment on it would be required from her. Or rather, she had at once taken over Ducane’s judgment that it was not necessary for Richard to own up. She tried to think about it now. Richard was requiring her to be objective. That in itself was extraordinary, as extraordinary as the fact that they were now sitting side by side. She looked up at the terrible figures of Truth and Time.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, Richard. John’s quite clear that his enquiry doesn’t need your evidence. You can’t help—the others now. You’d be punishing yourself and I see no point in it.”

Richard gave a long sigh.

She thought, he’s relieved, oh God, and she felt the pain again. She looked back at the floor and let her gaze creep as far as to his feet. Metal limbs.

“Now what about (b), Paula?”

“Wait, wait,” she murmured. “Let us be, as you say, business-like.” She moved a little further away and began to look at him. His twisted face had screwed itself further into a contorted suspicious mask of anxiety which he touched periodically with his hand as if trying to smooth it out.

“Richard, do you
want
to come back?”

He said a short clipped “Yes”. He added, “Do you want me back?”

Paula said in the same quick tone, “Yes”. Their two “yeses” hovered, inconclusive and curt.

“Richard, you’ve been living with somebody, haven’t you?”

“How did you know? Or did you just assume it?”

“I went one day—to the house—just to look—when I knew you were at the office. And I saw a rather beautiful girl let herself in with a latch key.”

“God. Did you do that, Paula? God. Well, there was a girl, but it’s over now. She was a tart.”

“What sort of difference do you think that makes?”

“All right. None. Anyway, she’s gone. She’s eloped to Australia with Ducane’s manservant, if you must know!”

“Did she write and tell you?”

“No, Ducane told me. Christ, you’re not going to be jealous of a tart who’s half way to Australia!”

“There hasn’t been anyone else, just lately I mean?”

“No. What about you? Have you had anybody?”

“No.”

“You’re not in love with Ducane, are you?”

“No, of course not, Richard!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Well, go on interrogating me. I can’t for the life of me see why you should want me back at all.”

“Richard, I must talk to you about Eric.”

“Christ, that bastard hasn’t turned up again?”

“No, no. He wrote and said he was going to, but he changed his mind, thank heavens.”

“You don’t love
him
, do you?”

“No, no, no.”

“Then can’t we forget him?”

“No, we can’t, that’s the point. At least we can’t forget—what happened. I know this sounds a bit mad, but that awful scene has remained like a sort of black lump spreading poison.”

“I know,” he said softly, “I know.”

Some Americans had arrived to inspect the Bronzino. They lingered, making learned comments, then glanced at the tense immobile pair upon the seat and hastily took themselves off.

“Paula,” said Richard, “we’re both rational beings. Maybe we couldn’t do anything about this apart, but we might be able to do something together. Something dreadful happened for which we were both to blame. It
happened
. You know I don’t believe in God or in guilt feelings or in repentance or any stuff of that sort. The past is gone, it doesn’t exist any more. However, things that do exist are responsibilities occasioned by the past and also our thoughts about it, which we may not find it very easy to control. I judge that there’s nothing further we can do for Eric except try to forget the bloody fool. There are things we might do for each other to make this cloud lift, if we decided that it was worth our trying to live together again. I don’t think the blank lump would poison us then. I think it would just gradually go away.”

As Paula looked at him, listening to his precise high-pitched voice so familiarly explaining something, expounding something, she felt a shudder pass through her which she recognised a second later as physical desire. She wanted to hurl her arms around Richard and hold him tightly. She stiffened and closed her eyes.

“What is it, Paula?”

“Nothing, nothing. You may be right. Let’s go on.” She opened her eyes and looked into a blue-golden blur of Bronzino. “Richard, if you were to come to me, if, if, would you go on having love affairs with other girls from time to time?”

After a short silence Richard said in a dry voice, “Possibly.”

“I thought so—”

“Please, Paula—It’s hard to say. At this moment I feel—well, hell, feelings are just feelings. I don’t know what I’d do. If the old pattern continues I’d probably be unfaithful now and then. I’d have to wait and see. You know it’s no use my telling you I’ve
decided
anything.”

“I know. I expect I could stand it. Only, Richard, will you, would you, please not tell me lies?”

“You mean you’d want me to tell you every time I kiss my secretary?”

“No. But I’d want to know if you were going to bed with your secretary.”

Richard was silent again for a short while, during which time a group of schoolchildren did the room with celerity. He said slowly, “It’s not at all easy to make such promises beforehand, Paula. At least it’s easy to make them. It’s not so easy to be sure what one will do when one is being tempted by some piece of quick trouble-free pleasure.”

Paula stared at the enamel-faced figure of Deceit, and at her reversed hands and scaly tail. Was it here, after all, that everything broke down and descended into a roaring shaft of shattered masks and crumpled rose petals and bloody feathers? But as she looked, clear-eyed now, she felt, infinitely stronger than any doubt, her intention to take Richard back. She turned to him.

“All right. But lies do corrupt and spoil.”

“I know that. I would keep them to a minimum.”

The Richardesque precision and even his intent at this moment of all moments to keep the door a little bit ajar for Venus, Cupid and Folly, touched her to an intensity of love for him which she could hardly control.

“Paula, about the twins—”

“What about the twins?”

“They’re not anti-me?”

“Oh my darling, no. They’ve kept their love for you, nothing’s touched it, I know that.”

The sudden endearment, the image of the children, brought a hot rush of tears as far as her eyes. She blinked, turning away, and the thought came to her for the first time, am I still attractive to him?

“Thank God for that. When can I—? I mean, have we decided anything?”

Paula stared back, tears and all. “Richard, ask yourself, ask yourself, do you really want to?”

“Why, Paula, you’re—Oh Paula, yes, yes, yes. Please give me your hand.”

Paula moved towards him. Their hands touched, their knees touched. They were both trembling.

“Oh Richard, not here—someone will—”

“Yes, here.”

The Americans, who had come back hoping for another look at the Bronzino, retreated rapidly.

“Paula, I’m falling in love with you again, most terribly in love.”

“I’ve never been out of love with you, never for a second.”

“Look, Paula, do you mind if we go home
at once
? I want to kiss you properly, I want to—”

They sprang up. Richard took a quick look at the attendant’s back and approached the Bronzino. He drew luxurious fingers across the canvas, caressing the faintly touching mouths of Venus and Cupid. Then he seized Paula by the hand and pulled her after him. They left the Gallery at a run. The attendant turned about and began anxiously counting the pictures.

“H
AVE
a drink,” said Ducane.

“Thanks. A little sherry.”

“Do you mind the fire? It’s not too hot for you?”

“No, I like it. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“I’m feeling much better. How’s Pierce?”

“Pierce is in splendid shape. He sends much love, by the way. He said I was to remember to say
much
love.”

“Mine to him. Do sit down. It’s so nice of you to have come.”