The great thing was that there was no hurry. He turned on his side to look at Lindsay and saw that she was stirring and would soon be awake. He looked upon her with love, with a possessive positive love which made nothing of his moments of disloyalty. He prepared his presence, his smile, for her like a table arrayed. In a moment she would open her eyes and draw him instantly to her with a beaming laziness. She always knew deeply and at once where she was and with whom. He waited tenderly for her to awaken. Had he made a terrible mistake? The wonderful thing now was that no mistake was terrible. There was plenty of time, and time would show him what he really wanted to do. He would survive. He could always, and after his own beautiful fashion, return to Ann. Ann would always be waiting.
Chapter Thirty-four
'WELL, Emma, said Hugh, 'what about it?
'Oh that, she said. 'Was I supposed to be thinking it over?
For some weeks now she had managed by a combination of procrastination, feigned illness, and sheer vagueness to see him only infrequently, while the idea was kept up of a continual communication. Much time was spent on the telephone making and unmaking arrangements which rarely matured: which was all mysterious to Hugh, since it seemed that, especially since Emma was not working, she should have nothing in the world to do except to see him. However she patently did not want him to go away and appeared to put considerable energy into tormenting him, and he had to be content with that.
For Hugh the interim had had a sad and haunted character. He shunned society and seemed to wander in a void where tall shadowy figures with ghostly heads loomed over him and vanished. He heard a babble of voices and was at a loss to know whether they were the product of a deranged ear or a wandering mind. He visited his ear specialist and departed from him with his usual contempt. Yet he had his own grip on life and took the time almost after a religious fashion as a suspense to be endured. He took out his old painting equipment, looked at it, and put it away again. He went often to the National Gallery and gloomily visited the Tintoretto which still drew its knot of admirers at lunch-time. Once he stroked it absently, as he had done when it was his, and was savaged by an attendant. He called on Humphrey at Cadogan Place and drank sherry with him and with Penn. Penn was looking better, altogether gayer and more attractive, quite the young man. He had let Humphrey buy him a new suit as a retrospective birthday present. He met them again by accident when they were on their way to the Tower, and saw them distantly another time lunching at Pruniers. He was sorry not to see anything of Mildred, who was the only person he could have talked to, but she was still in the country.
This occasion of visiting Emma he was resolved to make into something of a crisis. He had a sense of a due time, perhaps a significant testing time, having passed: and he feared to fail with her simply through timidity. He had by now sufficiently also a sense of grievance. His need for her did not diminish; and very sweetly now the notion of her as a strange forbidden fruit mingled with the old passion which had so risen from the depths, encrusted and yet the same. She filled his mind, she was his occupation. Though what solution, bringing them together, would crown this time he did not know or trouble too closely to inquire.
It was tea-time. It seemed to be always tea-time at Emma's. The weather had changed and it was a bleak windy day, and tugged-at leaves and whirling branches knew that summer was defeated and departing. Outside the window the little evergreen garden tossed itself about in a tumultuous undulating mass of dark shapes. The wind came in sudden roars and whines. In the room a fan heater purred, mingling its faint rattle with the now perpetual noises inside Hugh's head. He had just made the tea and brought it in. Emma was sitting in her usual chair. She had a new dress on, or at any rate one which Hugh had not seen before, and looked singularly handsome. The dress was of a dark fine very light tweed with a thin green stripe, cut wide and long in the skirt like all her dresses. Leaning back, the silver-topped cane in its place, her frizzy grey hair more orderly than usual like a contrived and generous wig, she seemed something remote, something French, something vastly clever and timeless out of some courtly world of ceremony and sophistication. Tender, admiring, covetous, and unreasoningly pleased with himself, he took her good looks as an omen and as a tribute.
She looked at him with the air of resolute vagueness which he had come to know, and said, 'Would you pour out the tea, dear? I just don't feel strong enough. I'm sure you've made it beautifully.
Hugh poured out. 'Now don't put me off this time, Emma. Don't treat me as if I scarcely existed. Talk to me properly. I deserve some real speech.
'Real speech? she said. 'You're bullying me.
'Me bullying you, for God's sake, when you haven't seen me in weeks? And you know how much I want from you.
'Oh yes. You were the one who wanted, roughly; everything. The second time round. She laughed her shrill little laugh.
He edged his chair closer. 'Well, what about it, Emma?
She turned to stare at him, her eyes heavy with some sad extinguished light. 'I could never decide in the old days whether you were cliv'inely simple or just stupid.
'What do you think now?
'I don't know. Perhaps that you are divinely stupid and God loves fools. Perhaps God is a fool. Could you fetch me those tablets, please, from the desk.
He fetched them and stood fidgeting, aware of himself as stout and shambling before her. He was vaguely conscious of the room as looking different. 'Why must we always fight? Why can't we be at peace together at last? Why do you always try to confuse me?
'This isn't fighting, Hugh. I've been very gentle with you. I haven't struck you once, really to hurt. Though I could. As for the other, you are so adorably confusable. C' est plus fort que moi. She swallowed a tablet with a gulp of tea.
'Talk to me properly! He let his voice now entreat her shamelessly.
Emma was still looking up at him sadly. Then as if shaking herself into an effort, she said, 'You want some real speech, do you? All right I'll see what I can arrange. Do you notice anything different in this room?
He looked about him. There were many new things. The but too symbolically stripped look which the room had worn as a result of Lindsay's depredations had quite gone. There were new rugs, a new bookcase, a new writing-desk in the window, cushions, miniatures, Chinese vases, which had not been there before, and on every level surface were scattered little specks of treasure in gilt and silver and glass. The room had put on its attire again, it was adorned like a bride.
'Good heavens! said Hugh.
'You are an unobservant chap, you know.
'Is it — for me? he said. He was moved, and also sad that he had not thought himself to bring her armfuls of expensive knick-knacks to fill those empty spaces..
'No, it's not for you, said Emma. 'It's for Jocelyn.