“But I don’t see why that should separate us! Most people who … like each other a lot keep bits of life private from each other.”
“I’m sorry, Donald. It’s very neurotic of me but that’s how I see it.”
“You’re not neurotic.”
“Oh but I am!” said Joan anxiously. “I really am very neurotic! I often do the most silly things …”
“Like not speaking to me on the telephone?”
She looked down obliquely and murmured, “Well, yes.” Donald stood up and said, “I’d better go.”
“It was very kind of you to come all that distance.”
“It was not. I had to find out what was wrong.”
At the front door he said, “Goodbye, Joan.”
She said kindly, “Goodbye, Donald.”
He got into the taxi and gave an address in the city. He sat on the back seat in the posture he had taken in the armchair, and bits of thought passed through his head.
“Why did I say “rather emotional” when I meant “love”? Why was I so meek and reasonable? I should have struck her. As I left I should have struck her face.
The last time we met we seemed to get on very well.”
The taxi stopped in a street of tenements with a theatre at one end. Donald paid the driver, entered a close and walked up flights of steps to a landing with a bright red door on it. He pressed the letterbox open with a finger and whistled through. After a while the door was opened by a young cadaverous man with a straggly red beard and wearing a coat over pyjamas. He stared at Donald, raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, well.”
“Can I come in? I know it’s selfish of me but I need to talk to someone …”
“Come in then.”
They crossed a lobby into a small room containing a bed, a chair, a dressing-table and a television set. The floor, dressing-table and television set were covered with untidy piles of books. The bearded man threw off his coat, lay on the bed, pulled blankets over him and stared at the ceiling, hands clasped under head. Donald said, “A bad thing has happened to me. If I don’t tell someone I’ll have to walk about all night brooding on it.”
“All right, tell me.”
Donald walked carefully about the room, talking in a slow, almost hesitant voice. Sometimes he said, “I may be mistaken about this bit …” and sometimes, “She didn’t say exactly that, she put it more subtly.”
When he had finished the bearded man yawned and said, “That’s very interesting, Donald. Were you very keen on her?”
“Oh yes. I thought we were going to marry. She’s the one girl I know who didn’t make me feel embarrassed when I wanted to be … sexual with her. We were always comfortable together, she was so frank and pleasant and … beautiful.”
“No, Donald, not beautiful. Remember, I’ve seen her.”
“Yes, beautiful! I know her face is so individual it’s almost ugly, but her body is beautiful by any standard — slender, with wee steep breasts, and a very big backside (she said it made clothes difficult to put on) and fine long legs. And she could undress without looking self-conscious or coy.” “She slept with you?” said the bearded man, looking surprised.
“Once or twice. Twice, to be exact.”
“I always thought her a quiet sort of girl.”
“She is a quiet sort of girl.”
“And … what was she like?”
“Like?”
“Like in bed?”
“Oh, I never fornicated with her — we just slept. I wasn’t in the mood for anything more urgent, and I didn’t think she was either. She kept her underwear on. But I’ve never slept so sweetly as I did with her arms round me. I’m usually a poor sleeper.”
After a pause the bearded man said, “Don’t you think she might have felt cheated?”
Donald sat down, turned the pages of a book without looking at them and said, “It had occurred to me. It’s one reason why I can’t blame her for her behaviour tonight.” “Still, she could have broken with you more kindly.”
“But you can’t break kindly with someone who loves you! The right way is to break honestly. By a very honest little act she showed me she was done with me. She put my voice carefully down on the hall table so as not to disturb it, and went quietly away and washed her hair. Her meaning was pretty clear, but like a fool I went to her house and discussed it.”
The bearded man said sleepily, “A pity you didn’t play on her love of animals. If you’d galloped up to her door at the head of a troop of cavalry she would have found you irresistible.”
There was quiet in the room for several minutes. Then Donald said thoughtfully, “Why don’t I protest more? The last time I was in love and the girl broke with me (that was five years ago) I protested all the time. I did stupid things, like insulting her in public and praying God to kill her. I thought my condition was unbearable. Now I feel quite calm. I have this ache in my chest, but talking to you has made it less, and it will disappear altogether when I get to sleep. Tomorrow it will come back for a few hours in the evening, but it will be perfectly bearable. And during the coming weeks it will come for a shorter time each day, and in three or four months I won’t have it at all. And that —” said Donald standing up, “is the sad thing. Joan will be nothing but an ache to me, then not even that, and in a few years it will be hard to remember her. I wish this ache would last as long as I lived, so I could always remember her. But even my memory of her will come to nothing and everything we did and felt together will be senseless and useless.”
He looked at the bearded man as if hoping to be refuted, but the bearded man was asleep.
THE PROBLEM
The Greeks were wrong about the sun; she is definitely a woman. I know her well. She often visits me, but not often enough. She prefers spending her time on Mediterranean beaches with richer people, foreigners mostly. I never complain. She comes here often enough to keep me hopeful. Until today. Today, perhaps because it is Spring, she arrived unexpectedly in all her glory and made me perfectly happy.
I was astonished, grateful, and properly appreciative, of course. I lay basking in her golden warmth, a bit dopey and dozey but murmuring the sort of compliments which are appropriate at such times. I realized she was talking to me in a more insistent tone, so I occasionally said, “Yes” and “Mhm”. At last she said, “You aren’t listening.”
“Yes I am —” (I made an effort of memory) “— You were talking about your spots.”
“What can I do about them?”
“Honestly, Sun, I don’t think they’re important.”
“Not important? Not important? Oh, it’s easy for you to talk like that. You don’t have to live with them.”
I almost groaned aloud. Whenever someone makes me perfectly happy they go on to turn themselves into a problem. I gathered my energies to tackle the problem.
I said, “Your spots were first noted by Galileo in the sixteenth century, through his new improved telescope. Before that time you were regarded as the most perfect of all heavenly bodies —”
She gave a little waiclass="underline" I said hastily, “But they aren’t permanent! They come and go! They’re associated with several good things, like growth. When you have a very spotty year the plants grow extra fast and thick.”
She hid her face and said, “Why can’t I have a perfect heavenly body like when I was younger? I haven’t changed. I’m still the same as I was then.”
I tried to console her. I said, “Nobody is perfect.” She said nothing.