The World as I Found It (48 page)

Oddly, they got along better after that, both imagining they had come to an understanding, though each had a different notion of just where things stood.

Russell could afford to be kind now that his stint in the alien corn was over. Two days later, he was off for Boston to tie up some loose ends, then bound for England. In the meantime, he didn't want to upset these nice people by telling them that their bohemian daughter and he had not the slightest intention of getting hitched. D.D. understood him, he thought — that was what mattered. And again, the next day, when the Dudleys were outside, D.D. made love to him with impressive speed and ingenuity, reducing him to a gibbering, moaning ninny as she bounced atop him, preening her breasts and lean young stomach before his hot, watery eyes. Russell, in rut, said impulsively, You must come to England sometime!

Bertie, dearest darling! cried D.D. I'd follow you anywhere!

S
TEAMING
across the Atlantic on the
Northumberland
a week later, Russell found himself wondering if D.D. might have taken his overheated words to heart. After all, it was one thing for her to visit him in England (and several weeks together might be rather agreeable, he thought with a grin), but surely, even D.D., in all her wild imagination, could not possibly think that he meant for her to come and stay — certainly not to live or
marry
.

No, he thought, she couldn't possibly be that naive — they were not even remotely suited to each other. He promised himself that he would write her a long letter when he arrived in England, a warm, appreciative letter that would boost her spirits while gently cutting her loose, leaving her a few fond memories and a good deal the wiser. Still, in his anxious moments, he was tempted to send a telegram flatly telling her not to come. But each time he ruled it out as being too cruel — cruel and probably unnecessary, since by now she surely realized that it was only a passing fancy.

With this, then, he put D.D. out of mind, instead absorbing himself in the news of Austria's escalating dispute with Serbia, a dispute that increasingly threatened to involve the other European powers. Russell found the news depressing, but even more depressing was the delight his fellow English passengers took in it. It sickened and amazed him how fierce and irrational, how clannish and thick, they could be, these bland, tweedy salesmen and cottagers and their pale wives — how people who would be morally repelled at the thought of blood sports could, in the next breath, declare their high-minded willingness to pack their sons off to slaughter Germans. Once or twice a day some bilious old fool would come huffing back from the wireless room with the latest news, setting the whole ship astir. Afternoons in the ship's lounge, between darts and quaffs of black and tan, the old poppycocks would prognosticate, matching the French army against the German and England's dreadnoughts against all comers. As for the ship's fifteen German passengers, they were treated with the disdainful correctitude accorded to people about to be deported. The Germans kept to themselves, dining together at two tables at the far end of the dining room and rarely speaking above urgent whispers.

The passage was generally chilly and overcast, with gray girders of light that sheared off into the ocean's gray-black deeps. Russell generally held his distance from the other passengers, working every morning on an article for the philosophical journal
Mind
, then walking the decks in the afternoons, when the ship's lackluster amateur band could be heard practicing
The Turkey Trot
and
Rose in the Bud
. He was gloomy about his prospects in England, unsure what he wanted from Ottoline and even more hesitant about his work. America, in that sense, had been a vacation where he could coast on brilliance and reputation without doing the brutal work that had made him famous — work that, after the blows Wittgenstein had given him, he wondered if he would ever do again. He now had more offers for lectures and books than he could possibly handle, but nothing that seemed to him especially vital or important. Back in Cambridge, he would find waiting for him the notes on logic that Wittgenstein had dictated to Moore in Norway — a Pandora's box that he was almost afraid to open. And for all Russell knew, Wittgenstein was charging off to enlist. Knowing Wittgenstein's recklessness, Russell felt almost sure he would never survive a war, and so Russell found himself faced with the equally depressing prospect of holding a box without a key.

Often in those days just before the war, Russell felt like a fraud. Because for all his expressions of principle and humanity, he saw there was also a nihilistic side of him that was as eager for war as anybody, eager that, for better or worse, life might change. The news, meanwhile, grew worse. Returning to his cabin after breakfast one morning, Russell saw his first iceberg, a glowing, white-hot hull whose heights it seemed he could never scale as he watched it slip by, smoking white against the fog and alive with the cries of birds he could not see.

Three days later, on July 21 — two days before Austria delivered her ultimatum to Serbia — Russell arrived in London. Ottoline sounded cool when he rang her up but finally agreed to meet him that afternoon at Mrs. Dood's flat. After D.D. and almost three months apart, neither of them knew what to do once Ottoline finally arrived, late as usual. Wanting to make himself desire her more than he did, Russell kissed her passionately, but she felt limp and bony. Her mouth fell open, loose and and pulpy, and as he drew away, he noticed new wrinkles around her lips.

You're angry with me, he said.

I'm not, she insisted, squirming from his grasp. But I have been thinking that it would be best —

Don't say it — It would not be best.

She clenched her hands in exasperation. You don't even know what I'm about to say! I don't want to completely
end
our relationship, if that's your fear. But I do think it ought to be platonic.

He felt suddenly hot and claustrophobic. You do not. Come, sit down here. You're just angry with me.

Turning away, she said, Please, just leave me a moment.

Ottoline lit a cigarette and began walking restlessly around the room, straightening things that didn't need straightening and eluding his expectant eyes until at last she said:

I do, I think we should cease any further sexual involvement. You need a wife, and I need my peace. Believe me, I was thinking of this before you left — long before you mentioned this girl. Come now, darling, face facts. I can hardly compete with a woman twenty years my junior. Why on earth would I even
want
to? Surely you find her physically more desirable. How could you not?

He sat down, his head splitting as he squeaked, I do
not
find her more desirable.

Oh, please, scoffed Ottoline.

Sensing his comparative inexperience in this new situation, she felt a gathering sense of power and ruthlessness, as she did when she had him pinned in the reflex lens of her camera. Oh, but she wanted to tear off the mask and tell him about Lamb, to say that she knew far better than he the pleasures of a young body.

Come now, she jabbed. Why not admit it? You don't really want me as a lover now. Oh, maybe you
think
you do.

And I tell you, he said on the verge of tears, that's
not
true.

He was trapped, no more able to admit to her than he could to himself that he didn't want her. To say that was like sentencing himself to a future of privation and loneliness. Embracing her, he crumpled down beside her on the sofa, groping for the small breasts that didn't rebound and fill his hands when squeezed, amazed at the lumps and swags on her thighs that weren't on D.D.'s. Ottoline was all atwitch. Elbows poking, feet squirming, she clapped her thighs on his digging hands, her hair filling his mouth like dry feathers as her face slid away. He was like a blind man; he had to remove her clothes just to find her, but all he found was a brittle, middle-aged body like his own. Grazing over her, searching for a spot to start, he probed her like an ache, but she wouldn't be roused. In the end he had his way, but she, suffering all the while, proved her point about the hopelessness of it. Dogged as a tortoise mounting a rock, he gave one last spasm, then lapsed back into the gelid sea of his mind, not even moving as Ottoline rose in silence, her joints cracking as she crept off to wash herself.

Still, she didn't let him get away with it. After a long silence, as they were dressing, she asked, And you actually think she's a good writer?

He was tying his tie, but with this he lost his place, eyeing her miserably as he dropped the loops. Oh, she has talent — some, though not much. She has none of your regalness — she's thoroughly American. We frequently quarreled. I know
we
never fought like that.

Ottoline raised her eyes and he reddened, embarrassed to have referred to them in the past tense. Just to be sure, Ottoline said, So you don't love her?

Grateful she asked, he replied emphatically, Absolutely not.

Skeptical but now faintly conciliatory, Ottoline said, Well, you certainly
thought
you did. Would you care to see your letters?

He knew he would have to swallow this, the ritual abasement. He gave her some digs, but then he played his trump, saying, Darling, I do want to break with her, I swear it. The problem is, I'm afraid she may be coming to England to visit me.

You
invited
her here?

Only once. Very casually. I certainly never expected her to jump at the idea the way she did. We were with her family. I couldn't very well cause a scene.

Ottoline was agog. Couldn't cause a scene? Think of the
scene
when the poor girl finds she's crossed the Atlantic for nothing!

I didn't purposely mislead her, if that's what you think. I rather doubt she'll come, in any case, he added weakly. I sent her a letter yesterday — a very kind letter, in fact — explaining my feelings and saying it would be best to break it off. Russell affected a heartless look. And if she misses my letter and comes — well, I'll simply tell her how things stand with us.

Ottoline parted her hands of this. You'll not drag me into this! Don't you dare! I'll not risk scandal because of your stupidity.

But then curiosity got the better of Ottoline, who snidely demanded, Now, tell me. Just what does this little
writer
of yours look like, anyway?

But D.D. was forgotten over the next days as it grew increasingly likely that England would be drawn into a general European war. Feeling in Parliament about England's entry into war was volatile and divided, and Ottoline persuaded Philip to give a speech urging neutrality, even going so far as to suggest that he might speak to Russell, who, she said, had done considerable thinking on the subject. Philip, not one to let personal matters interfere with the national weal, readily agreed. He even told her to invite Russell to dinner to discuss the matter.

With the war, then, began the gradual unfreezing of relations between Russell, Ottoline and Philip. In fact, there arose between them an odd alliance, as if even Philip sensed that Russell was no longer a true rival for Ottoline's affections.

Yet how sublimely odd it was for Russell, after all these years of being persona non grata at Bedford Square, to hear his name announced in his mistress's home, then to sit across from the guilty wife and his former nemesis, armed only with an arch look, a glass of sherry and a napkin on his knee. In this competition to see who could be the most natural and charming, Russell regaled them for nearly an hour with tales lampooning America. Not to be outdone, his amused host, meanwhile, interjected some able quips and anecdotes of his own, all the while comparing, as Russell did, the amplitude of Ottoline's self-conscious laughter.

After dinner, they got down to business, with Russell holding forth about the four different kinds of wars: wars of colonization, principle, self-defense and prestige. Of the four, Russell felt that the first two, colonization and principle, were often justified. As for the third, self-defense, it was only rarely justified, and then only against an opponent of inferior civilization. But wars of the fourth type — wars of prestige like this one — these, he said, could never be justified, being based on national vanity and offering only the rewards of hubris.

Having made these distinctions, Russell told Philip, who was no more a pacifist than he himself was, that he would have to take great care in crafting his speech. To preserve his credibility, he would have to make it clear that he was not opposed to
all
wars but only to trumped-up wars of prestige like this one.

Watching her politic husband take counsel from her lover, Ottoline was appalled at her own folly, feeling that in her amorous conquests, she had likewise been waging a war of prestige — or rather staving off a feared loss of prestige through failing desirability. Why had she ever embarked on this dangerous course? she wondered. Russell, she saw, was neither as handsome as Philip nor even remotely as kind. So why hadn't Philip been enough for her? And why, when she had a husband who adored her and when — she had to admit it — she was losing her appeal, why did she still feel this urge to squander herself, holding herself up as a kind of Helen, a trophy for the men?

Philip's speech in the House of Commons aroused much hostility but it also helped rally pockets of beleaguered support — enthusiasm that instantly evaporated the next day, August 4, when war was declared and many violently opposed to war turned violently in favor of it.

Ottoline was still in bed when Philip, up all night in various Parliamentary sessions, telephoned, no sooner telling her the news than he burst into tears. She immediately called Russell, who had remained in London, asking him to meet her in Russell Square, across from the British Museum.

Russell had been waiting for fifteen minutes when he saw her coming down the path, egretlike in a watery silk dress that snapped about her spindly, purple-stockinged ankles. A brooding black hat shadowed her eyes, which were swollen from crying. To him, her powdered cheeks suggested the fuzzy wings of a moth; her lips seemed ill aligned, flat, the teeth more equine. He didn't even seem especially aware that he was looking, but Ottoline knew very well what it was. She saw, as he did, that she was now crossing a kind of invisible equator, and that her looks were losing their youthful consistency, causing her to look rather attractive one day, haggard the next. Today was the unappealing, temperamental Ottoline, the Ottoline who expected more, got less and so grew fussy while he grew steadily more remote.