Time of Hope (27 page)

I had wondered many times whether Jack was right about her too. Had she really been in love with me? I wanted it to be true. Just then, I was voracious for any kind of woman’s love.

I believed that Marion had been fond of me. I believed that if I had wooed her, I could probably have persuaded her to love me. That was as far as I trusted Jack’s propaganda. Yet now, unsure of myself, I wanted to meet Marion again. I had not seen her, except to wave to in the streets, for months. She was the most active of us, and it would have been right out of character for her to sit and mope. She had gone off and attached herself to the town’s best amateur theatrical company. There she found a new circle: to my surprise, people spoke highly of her as a comic actress. I wished that we could be brought together again, without any contrivance of mine. I had, of course, a furtive, fugitive hope that Jack might not after all have been exaggerating, and that she would fall into my arms.

Strangely enough, it was through Martineau that I caught a glimpse of her at the theatre. It was a Friday night in November. Although we did not know it, Martineau was within a few days of renouncing his share in the firm, and we were to go to the house for only one more Friday night. Unconcerned, amiable, and light hearted, Martineau mentioned that
The Way of the World
was being acted the following week, and invited me to go with him to see it.

It was a singular choice of entertainment, I thought later, for a man who was on the point of trying to live like St Francis; but Martineau enjoyed every minute of it. He appeared in his wing collar, frock coat, and grey trousers, for, until he actually left the firm, he never relaxed in his dress. We sat near to the stage, and Martineau roared with laughter, more audibly than anyone in the house, at each bawdy joke. And he was particularly taken by Marion. She was playing Millamant, the biggest part she had had with this company, and she won the triumph of the evening. Her bright eyes flashed and cajoled and hinted; on the stage her clumsiness disappeared, she stood up straight, she had presence and a rakish air, and her voice lilted and allured. Despite her reputation, I had not expected anything like it. I felt very proud of her.

Martineau was captivated entirely.

‘She’s a stunner,’ he said, using enthusiastically, as he often did, the slang of years ago. ‘She’s a perfect stunner.’

I told him that I knew her fairly well.

‘Lucky old dog,’ said Martineau. ‘Lucky old dog, Lewis.’ At the end of the play, Martineau was reluctant to leave the theatre. ‘Lewis,’ he said, ‘what do you say to our paying respects to your young friend? Going round to the stage door, we used to call it.’

We had to wait, along with other friends of the cast, for the theatre was a makeshift one, and all the women dressed in one large room. At last we were allowed in. Marion was still shining in her greasepaint, surrounded by people praising her. She was lapping it up, from all quarters, both sexes, from anyone who had a word of praise, whatever its quality. She caught my eye, looked surprised, smiled, cried out ‘Lewis, my dear’, then turned to listen, her whole face open to receive applause, to a man who was telling her how wonderful she had been. The air was humming with endearments and congratulations. I took Martineau to Marion, and he added his share, and it was clear that she could not have enough of it.

A couple of young men were competing for her attention, but Martineau held her for a time. Apart from a smile of recognition, and a question upon how I liked the show, she had been too ecstatic in her triumph to come aside to me. She was glad I was there; but she was glad Martineau was there, she was glad everyone in the room was there; she was ready to embrace us all.

The company were holding a party, and we had to leave. Marion called goodbyes after Martineau, after me, after others who had been praising her.

Martineau and I went out into the cold night air.

‘What a stunning girl,’ said Martineau. ‘I say, Lewis, your friend is something to write home about.’

I agreed. But I was lonely and dispirited. I wished I had not gone.

On winter afternoons, when I could not work any longer, I gazed from my attic window over the roofs. This time last year – the thoughts crept treacherously in – I might have been at tea with Sheila. Now the evening ahead was safe, quite safe. I was keeping my resolve. I had abstained from all the forbidden actions, in order to cut her out of my heart. Yet why – I could not help crying to myself – had she of all women the power to set me free?

I was not well that winter, and for days together slept badly and woke in a mysterious malaise. There was nothing I could be definite about, but I was worried, for the Bar Finals and the future, as I lay awake listening to the thudding of my heart. It was necessary, I knew, to take no notice. And I had to do my best to see that George was not too much damaged, now that Martineau had left the firm in November. Often, when I felt like lying in bed, I had to struggle through some work, and then drag myself off to an argument with George or Eden. There were other lives beside one’s own; it was a discipline hard to learn, when one was young, ill, and empty with unrequited love.

Sometimes those discussions were a relief, simply because they took away from my loneliness. I had not the spirit to seek for Marion, away from her stage properties. That night at the theatre had been a misfire when I did not want another. It was out of loneliness that I returned to the group, for there I could find without effort the company of some young women. They welcomed me back. George began by saying: ‘I take it that you’re slightly reducing the extent of your other commitments.’

‘It’s over,’ I said. I did not wish to speak of it.

‘Thank God for that,’ said George. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.’ And automatically, from that moment, George demoted Sheila in his speech. After being cloaked in euphemisms for a year, she was referred to once more as ‘that damned countyfied bitch’.

Jack was listening, attentively and shrewdly. ‘Good,’ he said, but he looked troubled. I wondered if he noticed that, when I went out to the farm, I did not stir from the house for fear of the remote chance of meeting Sheila. I wondered too if he would pass any word to Marion.

With a considerateness that touched me, the Edens asked me to their Christmas Eve party, in my own right, asking me to bring a partner if I felt inclined. Eden went out of his way to drop the hint that they had ‘rather lost touch with Sheila Knight’. I went alone. Just as last year, the drawing-room was redolent of rum and spice and orange; most of last year’s party were there; all was safe, I listened to Eden, the fire blazed, Mrs Eden did not mention Sheila. In the early morning, when I left the house, it was colder than that last warm Christmas morning, and no car stood outside.

It was on a January morning, returning home from the reference library (I had changed my routine, so as never to be in the main shopping streets in the afternoon), that I found a telegram waiting at my lodgings. Before I opened it, I knew from whom it came. It read: YOU ONCE WANTED TO BORROW A BOOK FROM ME IT IS NOT A GOOD BOOK I SHALL BRING IT TO THE USUAL CAFÉ TOMORROW AT FOUR. It was signed SHEILA, and, luxuriating in the details, I noticed that it had been dispatched from her village that morning at nine-five. It gave me the pleasure of intimacy, silly and caressing, to think of her going to the post office straight after breakfast.

I made no struggle. I had two weapons to keep me out of danger – pain and pride. But I dismissed the pain, and thought only of my emptiness. As for pride, she had appeased that, for it was she who asked. I was infused by hope so sanguine that I felt the well-being pour through me to the fingertips. I watched motes dancing in the winter sunlight. Just as when I was first in love, it seemed that I had never seen things so fresh before.

The clock was striking four when I went through the café, past a pair of chess players already settled in for the evening, down to the last alcove. She was there, reading an evening paper, holding it as usual a long way from her eyes. She heard my footstep, and watched me as I sat down beside her.

She said: ‘I’ve missed you.’ She added: ‘I’ve brought the book. You won’t like it much.’

She set herself to talk as though there had been no interval. I was irritated, in one of those spells I had previously known. Was this she whose absence made each hour seem pointless? Yes, she was good-looking, but was that hard beauty really in my style? Yes, she was clever enough, but she had no stamina in anything she thought or did.

At the same instant I was chafing with impatience for reassurances and pledges. I did not want to listen to her, but to take her in my arms.

She saw that something was wrong. She frowned, and then tried to make me laugh. We exchanged jokes, and she worked at a curious awkward attempt to coax me. Once or twice the air was electric, but through my fault there were gaps of silence.

‘When shall I see you again?’ said Sheila, and we arranged a meeting.

I went away to drink with George, impatient with her, compelled by the habit of love to count the hours until I saw her next – but incredulous that I had not broken away. Perhaps it would have been like that, I thought, if our roles had been reversed and she had done the loving. There might have been many such teatimes. Perhaps it would have been better for us both. But when I drank with George there was no jubilation in my tone to betray that afternoon, even if he had been a more perceptive man.

By the first post of the day I was expecting her, I received a letter. My heart quickened, but as I read it I chuckled.

‘I can’t appear tomorrow afternoon’, she wrote, ‘because I have a shocking cold. I always get shocking colds. Come and see me, if you’d like to, and can face it. My mother will be out of the way, visiting the sick. If I were a parishioner, she would be visiting me, which would be the last straw.’

When I was shown into the drawing-room, I saw that Sheila was not exaggerating. She was sitting by the fire with her eyes moist, her lids swollen, her nostrils and upper lip all red; on the little table by her side were some books, an inhaler, and half a dozen handkerchiefs. She gave me a weak grin. ‘I told you it was a shocking cold. Every cold I have is like this.’ Her voice was unrecognisably low, as well as thick and muffled.

‘You can laugh if you want to,’ she said. ‘I know it’s comic.’

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ I said, ‘but it is a bit comic.’ I was feeling both affectionate and amused; she was so immaculate that this misadventure seemed like a practical joke.

‘My father doesn’t think so,’ she said with another grin. ‘He’s terrified of catching anything. He refuses to see me. He stays in his study all day.’

We had tea, or rather I ate the food and Sheila thirstily drank several cups. She told the maid that she would not eat anything, and the maid reproached her: ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever, Miss Sheila. You’re hungrier than you think.’

‘That’s all you know,’ Sheila retorted. In her mother’s absence the maid and Sheila were on the most companionable terms.

While I was eating, Sheila watched me closely.

‘You were cross with me the other day.’

‘A little,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter now.’

‘I’m trying to behave,’ she said. ‘What have I done?’

‘Nothing.’ It was true. Not once had she been cruel, or indifferent, or dropped a hint to rouse my jealousy.

‘Wasn’t it a good idea to make it up?’

I smiled.

‘Then what was the matter?’

I told her that I loved her totally, that no one could be more in love than I was, that no one could ever love her more. I had not seen her for three months and I had tried to forget her – three bitter months; then we met, and she expected me to talk amiably over the teacups as though nothing had happened.

Sheila blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and considered.

‘If you want to kiss me now, you can,’ she said. ‘But I warn you, I don’t really feel much like it.’

She pressed my hand. I laughed. Cold or no cold, her spirits were further from the earth than mine could ever be, and I could not resist her.

She was considering again.

‘Come to a ball,’ she said suddenly. She had been searching, I knew, for some way to make amends. With her odd streak of practicality, it had to be a tangible treat.

‘I hate balls,’ she said. ‘But I’ll go to this one if you’ll take me.’

‘This one’ was a charity ball in the town; Mrs Knight was insisting that her husband and Sheila should go; it would annoy Mrs Knight considerably if I made up the party, Sheila said, getting a double-edged pleasure.

‘My mother thinks you’re a fortune hunter,’ said Sheila with a smile. For a moment I was amused. But then I was seized by another thought, and felt ashamed and helpless.

‘I can’t come,’ I said.

‘Why can’t you? You must come. I’m looking forward to it.’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

I was too much ashamed to prevaricate.

‘Why not? It isn’t because of Mother, is it? You never mind what people think.’

‘No, it’s not that,’ I said.

‘I believe my father doesn’t dislike you. He dislikes nearly everyone.’

She unfolded a new handkerchief.

‘I’m getting angry,’ she said nasally, but she was still good-tempered. ‘Why can’t you come?’

‘I haven’t got the clothes,’ I said.

Sheila sneezed several times and then gave a broad smile. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘For you of all men to worry about that. I give up. I just don’t understand it.’

Nor did I; it was years since I had been so preposterously ashamed.

‘It has worried you, hasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know why, but it has,’ I confessed.

Sheila said, with acid gentleness ‘It’s made me remember how young you are.’

Our eyes met. She was in some way moved. After a moment she said, in the same tone ‘Look. I want to go to this ball. They don’t give me much money, but I can always get plenty. Let me give you a present. Let me buy you a suit.’