Darling, p.16
Darling, page 16
She said: “Well. Come on. It’s like the first swim of the season. Last one in the water’s a coward! Shall I shut the window?”
“By all means.”
She shut the window. Then she turned and smiled at him and drew her slip slowly over her head. He smiled. It was like homecoming. He could not prevent himself. He went and kissed her body and smelt its familiar smells. Now she was confident at last. She bent her head down to him and kissed his ears, slipped her tongue into them and defied him to escape. He picked her up and carried her to the bed and threw her onto it, himself onto her. She spread her legs and grabbed him and squeezed him until he had to fight to be free of her and resume the gentle battle.
“Do you know,” she said at last, “the room really went around? I swear it really went around.” She studied his hand which lay on the pillow beside her, pale as wax. “It’s a miracle, isn’t it? It really is a miracle. We’re still a couple. I thought—I was terribly afraid things would have—changed. But they haven’t. They haven’t. We’re still a couple, after all this time. Better than ever. It was for me anyway.” She put her hands behind her head and stared up at the stained beams above her. “Thank God it’s never too late! When two people really belong together like we do, it’s never too late, no matter what, is it? Oh, Robert, I’m so happy. I’m so happy I don’t know what to do. This time we won’t make any mistakes. We’re both a lot older and a lot wiser. And we won’t make any silly mistakes. This time it’s really going to work—for good. For one thing, we’re not stopping in London. What we really want is a little cottage in the country somewhere. Somewhere simple where we can live simply. You can write and I can—cook and look after things. I might even have a baby. I’d like that. Oh, I know we can be happy, really happy, together. I know we can.” She looked up at the click; Robert had lifted the telephone.
He said: “Get me London Airport, will you, please?”
“What’re you doing?”
“I presume you bought a return ticket?”
“Robert, what’re you doing?”
“Flight reservations, please.”
She was without strength. Naked, she felt like an infant. She toiled across the spongy bed to get at him. He stood away from her, a bullfighter despising the tired beast.
“I want to reserve a seat to Rome, please, for this afternoon. First class. The Princess della Romita. Just one, that’s right. When? Five thirty, yes, that would suit her very well, I should imagine.”
“Give me that phone.” She had struggled around the bed to grab him. He held up the phone, with his hand over the mouthpiece, while she reached for it. Then he replaced it. She threw herself at him, battering him with soft fists, her flesh slack now, its smell almost displeasing to him. His nakedness seemed incidental. His expression was determined. But she lacked all dignity now, her body powerless to regain him so quickly, her breasts streaked with sweat, her hair untidy, her lips bruised, her arms slack and without purpose in the struggle. She pushed away from him and sat down on the bed and sobbed. “I hate you,” she shouted at him and stood up once more, anxious to attack him. He had turned away and had begun to put on his clothes. “No, I don’t. I don’t hate you at all. I wish I did, but I don’t. I love you. Don’t you understand that?”
“Oh yes, I understand,” he said.
“Then why—” She pulled at his sweater. He detached her hand, patiently. “How can you throw it all away?”
“It was all thrown away years ago.”
“That’s not true. What about just now? Wasn’t that anything? Didn’t that count?”
“Count as what?” he asked politely.
“Making love, didn’t that count for something?”
“It was very nice,” he said. He might have been talking about a meal. “Now get your clothes on and I’ll run you to the airport.”
“You weren’t making love at all, were you?”
“Isn’t it a little late in the day to play that particular card, darling? Don’t tell me you still imagine having it off to be a gesture of love?”
“You bastard—”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Hadn’t you heard?”
“You bloody swine—”
“Don’t tell me you thought otherwise—”
“I love you,” she wailed.
“Come on. Get dressed. Let’s get out of here.”
“You’re only pretending to be tough. You’re not really tough. You know you’re not. Let’s at least give it a chance. Give it a week. Let’s at least have a week together. We could go to Paris.”
“You’re going to Rome,” he said. “Alone.”
“I don’t blame you for hating me.”
“What a comfort!”
“I only married him so that you’d know how miserable I was.”
“Very dramatic of you, Diana. Quite your best style.”
“I was making love,” she said. “I don’t care what you were doing.”
“In that case we’re all happy.”
“You don’t put me off, you know, being vile to me. It doesn’t put me off.”
“It puts me off,” he said. “It disgusts me.”
“Sorry?”
“To hear myself. To hear myself talking to you like this. To realize how much I want to—destroy you. I don’t want to feel like it a moment more than I have to. For God’s sake, let’s get out of here. Get your things on and let’s get out of here.”
“We can’t just go like this,” she said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“What’re we going to tell them downstairs?”
“We’re going to tell them we’re leaving. What do you think of that for a story?”
In the car, she said: “You’re in love with someone else, I suppose, is that it?”
“No. I’m not in love with anybody.”
“You’ve gone back to your wife, is that it?”
“No, that’s not it either. Actually, we’re getting a divorce. Or she is. She’s found someone she wants to marry.”
Diana said: “I see—”
Robert said: “Isn’t that good news now?”
“Oh, don’t,” she said. “But what’re you going to do? If you’re not—you know—”
“I’m going to America. For a year to begin with. I’m going to a small university. I shall do some lecturing. I shall do some research—”
“You’ll hate it.”
“No, I shan’t. I shall love it. I shall gather my memories about me and—”
“What’s the use in being bitter? What good will it do you? You’re only acting, you know you are.”
“I’m sure you’re qualified to tell, if anyone is.”
“Robert, stop the car—”
“Oh, no.”
“Please.”
“Not on your life. We haven’t got long.”
“No, we haven’t.”
“No puns please. You’re going to catch your plane and no messing about.”
“I’m not going back.”
“You are going back.”
“I’ll kill myself.”
“Then kill yourself.”
“I will. I swear I will.”
“Then do.”
She wrenched open the door of the car and pitched herself toward the road. He snatched her brutally back into the car.
“People really do die doing that. You ought to be careful.”
“If I can’t be with you, I don’t want to be alive at all.”
“There’re plenty of things you can do besides making a nasty mess on the road,” he said.
“It doesn’t convince me,” she said, “your act. I’m not convinced by it. You’re much too nice to be like you’re being. I really don’t want to live without you.”
“Make a gallant effort,” he said.
“It’s true.”
“All your lies are true at the time.”
“I don’t mind what you say to me. Or what you do to me.”
“What a happy basis for a relationship!”
The noise of a jet taking off stormed over them. The thin tick-tick of the car indicator warned her that they had come to the turning. She took out her compact and wondered where to begin on her bleak, tear-stained face.
She said: “At least give it one more chance. It can’t hurt.”
“There isn’t a chance,” he said. He looked for one more chance to hurt her, but she was already involved with her makeup. The buildings swam into view and grew tall beside the car. “The show must go on,” he said, but there was no malice in his voice, His own wounds had begun to hurt. She said nothing, but handed her little case to the porter who came to help her, recognizing a rich woman in spite of the rusty door. She turned a composed, cold face to Robert and he realized, with a chill of anguish, that she was making a polite goodbye for the benefit of the porter. The party was over.
She went, brisk and haughty, through the departure door. He leaned his head forward on his fists and the horn of the car gave an impertinent peep as his weight fell on it. He jerked up and stared at the modern bustle which scampered across the scene in front of him.
She said: “I don’t know how you found out I was in England.”
“That’s our job.” They grinned at her.
“Well, I think it’s scandalous. One can’t even make a journey without being traced.”
“Are you happy in Italy, Princess?”
“Very happy. As happy as I can be.”
They followed her onto the tarmac. She made for the first-class ladder. It was a fine afternoon. She turned at the bottom of the steps and smiled, with cautionary reluctance. Her hair blew about her face. She grinned more generously and the photographers clicked into action.
The reporter said: “What was the exact purpose of your visit to England then, Princess?”
“That’s my business,” she said.
“Is it true you came to see your lawyer?”
“Absolute nonsense,” she said. “Whoever told you that? The truth is, I came back because I bought some new shoes last time I was here—these as a matter of fact—they’re Israeli crocodile or something and they’ve been pinching dreadfully. So I thought I’d come back and have something done about them.” She smiled at their smiles, knowing that she had told them something they could use. “I haven’t even got a lawyer. I can’t afford them, as a matter of fact.”
“And the shoes are quite comfortable now?”
“I’ve never been more comfortable in my life.”
She went on up the stairs, riding on the triumph of her repartee, paused to wave a wind-tossed goodbye and, minding her head, disappeared into the cabin. Inside, she suddenly realized that she had never given Robert the gold cuff links she had bought him in the Via Condotti. Never mind, they’d do just as well for her husband. It would be so nice to see him again. Dear Cesare.
A Note on the Author
Frederic Raphael was born on August 14th 1931 in Chicago, and emigrated to England with his parents in 1938. He was educated at independent schools in Sussex and Surrey, before studying at St John’s College, Cambridge. His career spans work as a screenwriter and a prolific novelist and journalist.
In 1965 Raphael won an Oscar for the 1965 movie Darling, and two years later received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Two for the Road. He collaborated on the screenplay of Stanley Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut, and wrote a controversial memoir of their time together, Eyes Wide Open in 1999.
Discover books by Frederic Raphael published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/FredericRaphael
Darling
California Time
Coast to Coast
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1965 by Signet Books
Copyright © 1965 Frederic Raphael
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The moral right of the author is asserted.
eISBN: 9781448211050
Visit www.bloomsburyreader.com to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for
newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.
Frederic Raphael, Darling
