‘Whatever we do, it isn’t going to be easy, is it?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘nothing can be easy when we have so many people to think of.’
I was not ready to reply, when she reiterated: ‘It isn’t only ourselves, there are two others I’m bound to care for.’
‘You don’t think I’ve forgotten about Geoffrey and the child, do you?’
‘You can’t ask me to hurt either of them. I’ll do anything for you if I don’t have to hurt them. I’m all yours.’
Her face was passionate and self-willed. She said: ‘That’s the proposition I’ve got to make. We’ve got to hide it. I never thought I should want to hide anything, but I’ll do it for you, I’ll do it because I need you. It will take some hiding, I shall have to let Helen into it so that I can get away, I shan’t be able to come to you more than once or twice a week, but that will make up for everything. It’ll rescue us, we can go on forever, and we’re luckier than most people ever will be in their lives.’
The sight of the flush on her cheeks, usually so pale, excited me.
I went to the fireplace. As I looked down at her, I had never wanted her more. I was seized with memories of taking her, the words we had muttered; I was shaken by one memory, a random one, not specially ecstatic, of lifting her naked in front of a looking-glass, which came from so deep as to be almost tactile.
I was thinking also how perfectly it would suit me to have her as my mistress, a relation which would give me the secretive joy I doted on, make no new claims on me, leave me not struggling any more to reshape my life.
It seemed as near a choice as I had had.
I heard my own voice, thick and rough: ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It must be all or nothing.’
‘How can it be either?’
‘It must be.’
‘You’re asking too much.’
‘Have you begun to think,’ I asked, ‘what a secret affair would mean to you? It would have its charm to start with, of course it would, everyone who’s lived an open life always hankers after concealments and risks. But you’d soon get over that, and then you’d find it meant lies upon lies. Corroding every other relation you had in order to sustain one that you began to dislike more and more. You haven’t been used to playing confidence tricks. It would mean for you that you’d never behave again as you like to behave—’
‘I dare say it would mean all that,’ she said. ‘But, if it avoids pain for others, do you think I should be put off?’
My hand gripping the mantelpiece, I said as simply as I could: ‘It would not avoid pain for me.’
‘I was afraid of that.’
‘I don’t mean jealousy, I mean deprivation. If I took you on your terms, I should lose what I want most of all. I’m not thinking of you at all now, I’m just thinking of myself.’
‘I’m glad,’ she said.
‘I want you to be with me all the time. I believe we shall be happy, but I can’t promise it. But you know it better than anyone will ever do, I’m not good at living face-to-face with another human being. Unless you’re with me I shall never do it.’
As I spoke, she had bent her head into her hands, so that I could only see her hair.
‘I can’t be sad, I can’t be,’ she said at last. ‘But I don’t see that there is a way through.’
She looked up, her eyes lucid, and said: ‘I can’t get out of talking to you about Geoffrey, though you won’t like it.’
‘Go on,’ I replied.
‘I don’t want to make it too dramatic. I’m fond of him, but I’m not driven to him as I am to you. I’m not even sure how much he depends on me—’
‘Well then.’
‘It may be a good deal. I must tell you this, I used to hope it was.’
She went on: ‘I don’t know him, I never have done, as well as I do you. I don’t know how strong his feelings are. His senses are strong, he enjoys himself very easily, he’s inclined to be impatient with people who don’t find life as easy as he does.’
She wanted to believe that that was all. She was trying not to give herself the benefit of the doubt. The words she said — just as when we first met secretly in the café — were honest. But once again her hopes, and mine also, were stronger than the words. She wanted to believe that he did not need her much. I wanted to believe it too.
Then she burst out — ‘He’s never done a thing to me or said a thing to me that isn’t as considerate as it could be. He’s not given me a single bad hour to hold against him. How can I go to him and say, “Thank you, you’ve been good to me, now for no reason that I can possibly give you I intend to leave you cold.”’
‘I am ready to speak to him,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said violently. ‘I won’t be talked over.’
For an instant, temper, something deeper than temper, blazed from her eyes. She smiled at me: ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish I could be angry with him, and it makes me angry with you instead.
‘As for talking me over,’ she added, ‘he might not mind, he might regard it as civilized. But you and I aren’t civilized enough for that.’
‘I will do anything to bring him to the point,’ I said.
‘Not that.’
‘Then will you?’
‘After what I’ve said, you oughtn’t to ask me.’
As I stood by the mantelpiece in the bright room, watching her on the sofa, the curtains still not drawn and the winter sky black above the park, the air was heavy between us, heavy in a way no tenderness could light.
‘Do you think I like you having the harder part?’ I said.
‘I’ll do anything but that.’
‘It’s our only hope.’
‘I beg you,’ she said, ‘let’s try my way.’
It was a long time before, in the heavy thudding air, I could reply.
‘No,’ I said.
43: Visit from a Well-wisher
ONE afternoon in the following week, when I was still in suspense, my secretary came into the office and said that Mr Davidson was asking to see me. Behind my papers, for I was busy that day, I welcomed him, apprehensive of the mention of Margaret’s name which did not come.
I was incredulous that he had dropped in just because he was in tearing spirits and liked my company.
‘Am I interrupting you?’ he said, and chuckled.
‘That’s an unanswerable question,’ he broke out. ‘What does one say, when one’s quite openly and patently in the middle of work, and some ass crassly asks whether he’s interrupting you?’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘this can all wait.’
‘The country won’t stop?’ With a gesture as lively as an undergraduate’s, he brushed the quiff of grey hair off his forehead. ‘You see, I’m looking for someone to brag to. And there’s no one else in this part of London whom I can decently brag to, at least for long enough to be satisfactory.’
He had just, calling at the Athenaeum, received the offer of an honorary degree, not from his own university but from St Andrews. ‘Which is entirely respectable,’ said Davidson. ‘Of course, it doesn’t make the faintest difference to anything I’ve tried to do. If in twenty years five people read the compositions of an obsolete critic of the graphic arts, it won’t be because some kind academic gentleman gave him an LL.D. In fact, it’s dubious whether critics ought to get any public recognition whatever. There’s altogether too much criticism now, and it attracts altogether too much esteem. But still, if any criticism is going to attract esteem, I regard it as distinctly proper that mine should.’
I smiled. I had witnessed a good many solid men receive honours, men who would have dismissed Davidson as bohemian and cranky: solid men who, having devoted much attention to winning just such honours, then wondered whether they should accept them, deciding, after searching their souls, that they must for their wives’ and colleagues’ sakes. By their side, Austin Davidson was so pure.