Begin again, p.13
Begin Again, page 13
Their moment passed. Neither had the power to snatch the other for more than a few minutes out of time and place and the implacable march of everyday events. The charmed circle in which they had once loved so securely now dissolved at a single breath.
Jane could not help noticing that the lobster mayonnaise was lying in the sun. Perhaps she should not have cared, but she did care. Lobster mayonnaise was expensive. It was impossible not to think of that.
They ate it with tea-spoons and bread and butter, and Henry was very obliging and went all the way down in the middle of the meal to fetch Jane up a glass of water, because she felt thirsty.
“Florence feeding?” inquired Jane, when he came back. Poor Florence! A pity there hadn’t been enough mayonnaise for her.
“She was having a boiled egg,” said Henry, and added as an afterthought, “out of a wineglass.”
“I know. The egg-cup got broken.”
“Florence looks tired,” said Henry, who had a funny habit of noticing how people were looking.
“She’s fed up with her job. The only thing is I don’t think she’s much chance of anything better.”
“It’s rotten how hard you have to work.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Not awfully. Come to that I suppose we needn’t work at all if we don’t want to.”
“I can’t think why you do.”
“Can’t you? Why, what do you suppose I should do all day at home? It isn’t only that either. It’s—it’s one’s whole attitude to life. Living up here in London I have a right to my own friends, my own opinions. I’m not accountable to any one for anything I do. I can’t hurt any one but myself. Oh, Henry! You must see it’s the only possible—the only decent way of living!”
“You talk as if your family were difficult to live with, but I think they’re awfully sweet. They’ve always been terribly nice to me when I’ve been down there anyway.”
“No, they’re not difficult,” admitted Jane kindly. “But of course if they knew what I was really like they’d disapprove.”
“Nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense. I don’t suppose we should agree on a single important subject.”
“I don’t suppose you’d talk about that sort of thing,” said Henry, and then looked puzzled at this remark being greeted with delighted laughter.
“Oh, Henry, you are perfect. Darling, you’re almost too perfect to be true.”
“But, Jane darling, you do say such silly things. As if any one could disapprove of you!”
“Why, what do you suppose they’d say if they knew about next week-end?” said Jane, and then immediately cursed herself for a blundering fool. That stricken look on Henry’s face! Oh, Henry, why are you so hopelessly sensitive? Hurriedly she tried to repair the damage her thoughtless remark had caused; not only, or even chiefly, because she was sorry at hurting him, but because she felt too tired, yes, literally physically too tired, to cope with the outburst of conscience she had unwittingly provoked.
“But they won’t know and it’s nothing to do with any one else anyway—oh, Henry, for God’s sake, don’t look like that.”
“Oh, Jane. Jane, darling. Promise me it’s all right.”
“Of course it’s all right. Oh, Henry, please! If you don’t want to—don’t! But if we do, at least let’s be cheerful about it. By the way, I must get a wedding-ring, mustn’t I? Oh, dear, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, Jane—it hurts when you talk like that. . . . Darling, if only I could tell you what it means to me. So sacred and lovely.”
Well, whatever it is or isn’t, though Jane, it’s not sacred. If Henry’s going on like this I honestly don’t think I can go through with it. Sacred! I wanted it to be fun, to bring us closer, to stop our quarrelling. I’ve said I will, and I will, but I must stop his going on like this or I shall go mad.
“Will you get the wedding-ring or shall I?” said Jane. She did not really mean to be so brutally practical, but she felt that if Henry did not become less sentimental she would slap him.
“You can leave all that to me,” said Henry shortly, and he added in a low, hurt voice, “I don’t know how you can think of such things just now.”
Perhaps if Jane had not been so tired, if it had not been such a long and hot day, she would have let this protest go by with a mental shrug; but Henry’s ill-timed fit of conscience had played on her nerves. He was trying to put too much on to her. Why couldn’t he stand on his own feet instead of demanding from her a moral support she could not give? All this about “meaning such a lot to him” was a sort of way of trying to stifle his conscience. He wanted her to bear with him the burden of this sickly load. Well, she wasn’t going to. She wasn’t going to pretend any more. Jane, resentment seething in her mind, burst into an impassioned self-defence.
“You’re just a muddle of sentiment, Henry. Of course you can think of ‘such things’ now, or at any other time. You can think of anything at any time,” cried Jane wildly, “only you won’t admit to yourself you can. You simply won’t see that the whole point about a love-affair is that it’s natural—not the muddle of second-hand emotion that you try to make it. Oh, God, I wish I could explain to you what I mean!” She battled fiercely among her jostling thoughts for words to express a conviction that sprang from the very essence of her personality and that the stimulus of anger was bringing to the forefront of her mind. “If you’re genuine about things, nothing is incongruous. Nothing can shock you. Think of Shakespeare,” cried Jane (meaning to explain, but the urgency of her thoughts carried her on), “think of all great creators. Oh, Henry, I wish I could make you see how important that is. It’s only people who shut their eyes and pretend who can talk as stupidly as you do. If you were honest to yourself about loving and wanting me you wouldn’t go on like you do. You think I shock you. Well, I can tell you you shock me far more and far worse. . . .”
At this point Jane stopped for breath, and seeing that Henry had gone quite white, faltered and said suddenly, “Oh, well—never mind. It doesn’t matter.” He would never understand, so what was the good? And it was really rather awful when he looked like that. She stretched out a tentative hand. Henry averted his face and immediately a final spasm of irritation ran through her.
“It’s just that we’re—different,” she concluded hopelessly.
“We needn’t be.”
“What do you mean, we needn’t be?”
The quarrel was dying away into a gloomy and hopeless interchange of perfectly meaningless accusations.
“I mean you aren’t a bit like the real Jane these days.”
“Yes, I am. I mean this is the real me.” (The futility of it!)
“No, it’s not. It’s this beastly life is spoiling you. It’s—it’s working so hard and eating ice-cream in the bath and eggs out of wine-cups and—and that sort of thing.”
“Well, I think it’s much more natural to eat ice-cream in the bath than to sit at an idiotic dinner-table mouthing platitudes at the best type of English people.”
“I don’t. I think it’s a pose.”
“How can eating ice-cream in the bath be a pose? I suppose you’d like to think of me gathering roses in a linen overall in a Sussex garden.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Henry, to whom this picture made a strong and immediate appeal.
“That’s your type, really. Looks fragile, but a good little sportswoman. Standing on the terrace of a large country house in breeches saying ‘Down, sir!’ to a beastly spaniel.”
“Don’t be silly. You know I like you as you are.”
“You’ve just said you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t you? I thought you did.” (Lord, what depths of idiocy!)
“I like you,” said Henry heavily, “as you could be.”
“I know. Ever so winning. Jumping up and flinging my arms impetuously round your neck when you come in. Half-darned sock falls to the floor.”
“It would be better than having to wait twenty minutes on the doormat.”
(Oh, this picking-over of the past for idiotic grievances, this resuscitating of wrongs barely felt at the time, these loathsome dragged-up accusations.)
“If you sit here much longer telling me how long you were kept waiting on the doormat you won’t be home in time to see your sister before she goes.”
It was a shot at random, as Jane had no idea of the time, but it was a lucky one. Henry, who had promised to be back by half-past ten to see his married sister and her husband who were dining with his family, looked at his watch guiltily, got up, and stood uncertainly among the remnants of lobster mayonnaise and dirty plates. He ought really to have been at home tonight. His family weren’t too pleased at his going out anyway. But he had wanted so badly to see Jane again, to hold her in his arms, to learn from her lips that she really loved him. And even now, for one of Jane’s kisses he would miss a thousand sisters. But nothing, he thought, neither quarrel nor kiss, ever came to a dignified end in his life. There was a thwarting spirit abroad which turned awry all things before their proper conclusion. He saw this spirit as something tangible, something with an evil grinning mouth and a spider-like body. Their anger would in time have dulled down, turned to remorse, been transmuted into tenderness; but a spidery hand had stopped the circling wheel. There was another appointment to be kept. Love should not die before it had flowered into passion, possession. The wheel was slowing—but if he could shout defiance at the spider-spirit just for a few brief hours, snatch away those thwarting clinging fingers, clasp his love to him. . . .
“You’d better hurry,” said Jane. “There aren’t so many buses at this hour.”
III
Florence’s novel did not go well that evening. She was working on a difficult chapter. Celia was by now to have reached a stage of utter apathy. She no longer cried herself to sleep in bed every evening. She no longer locked herself into the bathroom and wrote poetry. She no longer implored her mother to remove her instantly from school. She no longer, in fact, did anything at all. This is the subtle part, thought Florence, and gazed thoughtfully at the half-page of writing, scored with crossings-out. “‘Get up, Celia,’ shouted the dormitory head. ‘Yes,’ said Celia. ‘Have you stripped your bed?’ ‘No,’ said Celia. ‘I say, Celia,’ shouted another, ‘what answer did you get to that sum about the two trains?’ ‘I don’t remember,’ said Celia.” It was all extraordinarily true to life, but was the subtlety of it quite effective on paper? And yet how else but by pages and pages of this was one to indicate Celia’s mental apathy? Moreover, herein lay the artistic climax of the novel, and the ultimate denunciation of the girls’ public-school régime—that Celia, who had spent the earlier part of the book in protesting, imploring, and weeping, was now so utterly cowed that she accepted everything with the mute resignation of despair. Florence read the last half-page over again, and wondered if there were too many “saids” in it. And yet there was a subtle emphasis in this too. The monotonous repetition of the word “said” might be intended to accentuate the contrast between the child’s mind and her mechanical actions. Or would the reader miss this? Florence read it through once more, and decided that as this was to be an especially significant chapter she would leave it for this evening. The effect was intended to be cumulative, and cumulative effects involved a lot of careful writing. She was feeling tired, and when she was tired her thoughts were apt to get out of control, shifting about in her head, suggesting strange things to her. She closed her eyes and immediately an imaginary picture sprang up in her mind like a jack-in-the-box (but who had touched the spring?), of herself seated before a luxurious dressing-table. She was examining a pearl necklace, while a lady’s maid brushed out her hair. Florence opened her eyes quickly. It would be so dull to be rich, so dull to be rich. Now she was stepping down an old oak staircase, holding her long white satin train carefully to one side. Some one was standing waiting for her in the hall. He took her hand and kissed it—Good God! This time Florence was genuinely shocked at herself. This is the only life I could live. This is the sort of thing I like. She opened her eyes on the table littered with the pages of her novel. She picked up a piece of egg-shell off the carpet, and threw it at the waste-paper basket. It fell short. How awful to live in a house full of servants! I am tired. I think I’ll go to bed.
But instead of doing so she picked up a hand-mirror and scrutinized her face.
When you look into a mirror the strangest thoughts come into your head. Florence believed that she was ashamed of nothing; but there was a little rankling core of feeling buried deep down in her mind of which she was ashamed and whose existence she therefore denied. All sorts of defences and barricades guarded this secret place. Scorn of “society butterflies” who “do nothing but chase after men.” Avowal of independence. (“I don’t think I could stand being married.”) The expression of “advanced” views. (“Of course sex-experience is good for every one.”) It was comforting to talk thus of sex as something every one knew all about, something one could experiment with at any moment if one cared to. Thinking like this, one built up more securely the barriers round that secret place. (“I couldn’t possibly make a career of just being married.” “A series of affairs probably suits some women much better.” “‘Some of this season’s prettiest débutantes’—isn’t it disgusting, Jane?”)
Think, talk, say anything. Anything as long as you hide from yourself the shame in the innermost parts of your mind. The secret rankle and itch of humiliation. The cold ashy voice that suggests, “Has any man ever desired you? Will any man ever desire you?”
There is something hypnotic about looking into a mirror. As if something had suddenly frightened her, Florence flung the glass down and began to undress as fast as she could. Apparently the barriers were not so secure after all; something in the concentrated gaze of her own reflected eyes, greenish-hazel under their heavy dark eyebrows, had pierced through her defences, almost caused the barriers to crumble away. For one moment, terrifying in its suggestion of ultimate loneliness, those eyes in the mirror, mercilessly scrutinizing, had almost bored their way into the secret place. Florence left her clothes lying in a heap on the floor and scrambled into bed. I must go to sleep quickly. I’m tired, it’s late. I’m tired, it’s late. I must go to sleep quickly.
Chapter VII
“Fear,” explained Sylvia to her parents as the soup went out and the fish came in, “is due entirely to an association of ideas.”
“Is it really, darling?” said her mother. (The plates weren’t very hot, were they?)
“For instance,” said Sylvia, “you can teach a baby to be absolutely terrified of its food.” She paused impressively. She was prepared to talk on the subject indefinitely.
“How?” asked Henrietta amiably.
“Baby?” said Mrs. Perry, her attention suddenly arrested. “Terrified? Nonsense. Poor little thing.”
“There have been experiments in America. Whenever you give it its bottle you let off a pistol behind its head. In time the baby screams with terror whenever it sees its bottle whether you let off the pistol or not. Association of ideas, you see.”
“Whoever would want to do such a cruel thing?” exclaimed Mrs. Perry, her attention now thoroughly aroused.
“And the proper way to treat fear is to find out the association, you see, and break it down—or rather replace it by a nice one. I mean you could give a baby a golliwog or something to play with when it had its bottle—build up a pleasant association of ideas for it.”
“A baby young enough for a bottle wouldn’t care for a golliwog.”
“Oh, well, mummy, you know what I mean.”
“But where would you be after you’d finished all this pistol and golliwog business?”
Sylvia was very patient with her mother. “What do you mean, where would you be?”
“I mean what good would you have done the child?”
“Oh—good! You don’t understand. This was a scientific experiment.”
“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Perry, mystified.
“Where do you get all these queer ideas from, Sylvia?” inquired her father.
“Oh, daddy! They aren’t queer. Absolutely every one knows a little elementary psychology these days.”
“Do they really? I had no idea I was so ill-informed.” He was chaffing her in the kindest way, as sceptical, as indulgent, as generous and as infuriating as ever.
“You’re absolutely bottom of the class, daddy,” said Henrietta.
“Yes, but Sylvia will take me in hand. She’ll coach me privately till I surprise you all.”
Sylvia smiled automatically at her father and ate her excellent fish. If only one’s family could treat one as a person. One must humour daddy, the poor sweet, but it was rather pathetic the way one’s parents laughed at anything they couldn’t understand.
No one would have guessed that Henrietta was trying so hard to say something. She laughed. She talked. Words were such easy things. Something came into your mind and you said it. You could say anything you wanted to, couldn’t you? After all, it wasn’t anything difficult she wanted to say. Nothing to be afraid of. Fear is due to the association of ideas. What ideas? No, that’s wrong—build up a pleasant association. Ask mummy to hand me a golliwog as I say it. Have I laughed out loud? No, I only laughed in my mind. Nobody heard. I’m saying something else out loud. I can hear myself asking daddy about his golf. Go on, say it now. Say it while you’re thinking about something else. It’s easier that way. As if you had just remembered. Oh, mummy, Phyllis rang up while you were out and asked me to stay with her this week-end. I said I would. Go on, say it.
“Oh, and do you know who I met at the club-house?” continued Mr. Perry, placidly helping himself to mustard, “a fellow who’s just moved near here—no, no cauliflower for me, thank you—name of Atkins. Has a daughter about your age, Henrietta. Awfully nice girl. Came to fetch him in the car. Wants us all to go over to tea and tennis next Sunday.”
