I’m sorry, I said. She gave me a sharp look, but I wasn’t being sarcastic. I told her about my father drinking, and my mother.
“My father’s weak, though I love him very much. Do you know what he said to me one day? He said, I don’t know how two such bad parents can have produced two such good daughters. He was thinking of my sister, really. She’s the really clever one.”
You’re the really clever one. You won a big scholarship.
“I’m a good draughtsman,” she said. “I might become a very clever artist, but I shan’t ever be a great one. At least I don’t think so.”
You can’t tell, I said.
“I’m not egocentric enough. I’m a woman. I have to lean on something.” I don’t know why but she suddenly changed the subject and said, “Are you a queer?”
Certainly not, I said. I blushed, of course.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of good men are.” Then she said, “You want to lean on me. I can feel it. I expect it’s your mother. You’re looking for your mother.”
I don’t believe in all that stuff, I said.
“We’d never be any good together. We both want to lean.”
You could lean on me financially, I said.
“And you on me for everything else? God forbid.”
Then, here, she said and held out the drawing. It was really good, it really amazed me, the likeness. It seemed to make me more dignified, better-looking than I really was.
Would you consider selling this, I asked?
“I hadn’t, but I will. Two hundred guineas?”
All right, I said.
She gave me another sharp look.
“You’d give me two hundred guineas for that?”
Yes, I said. Because you did it.
“Give it to me.” I handed it back and before I knew what, she was tearing it across.
Please don’t, I said. She stopped, but it was torn half across.
“But it’s bad, bad, bad.” Then suddenly she sort of threw it at me. “Here you are. Put it in a drawer with the butterflies.”
The next time I was in Lewes I bought her some more records, all I could find by Mozart, because she liked him, it seemed.
Another day she drew a bowl of fruit. She drew them about ten times, and then she pinned them all up on the screen and asked me to pick the best. I said they were all beautiful but she insisted so I plumped for one.
“That’s the worst,” she said. “That’s a clever little art student’s picture.” She said, “One of them is good. I know it is good. It is worth all the rest a hundred times over. If you can pick it in three guesses you can have it for nothing when I go. If I go. If you don’t, you must give me ten guineas for it.”
Well, ignoring her dig I had three guesses, they were all wrong. The one that was so good only looked half-finished to me, you could hardly tell what the fruit were and it was all lop-sided.
“There I’m just on the threshold of saying something about the fruit. I don’t actually say it, but you get the idea that I might. Do you feel that?”
I said I didn’t actually.
She went and got a book of pictures by Cezanne.
“There,” she said, pointing to a coloured one of a plate of apples. “He’s not only saying everything there is about the apples, but everything about all apples and all form and colour.”
I take your word for it, I said. All your pictures are nice, I said.
She just looked at me.
“Ferdinand,” she said. “They should have called you Caliban.”
One day three or four after her first bath she was very restless. She walked up and down in the outer cellar after supper, sat on the bed, got up. I was looking at drawings she’d done that afternoon. All copies of pictures from the art-books, very clever, I thought, and very like.
Suddenly she said, “Couldn’t we go for a walk? On parole?”
But it’s wet, I said. And cold. It was the second week in October.
“I’m going mad cooped up in here. Couldn’t we just walk round the garden?”
She came right up close to me, a thing she usually avoided and held out her wrists. She’d taken to wearing her hair long, tied up with a dark blue ribbon that was one of the things she wrote down for me to buy. Her hair was always beautiful. I never saw more beautiful hair. Often I had an itch to touch it. Just to stroke it, to feel it. It gave me a chance when I put the gag on.
So we went out. It was a funny night, there was a moon behind the cloud, and the cloud was moving, but down below there was hardly any wind. When we came out she spent a few moments just taking deep breaths. Then I took her arm respectfully and led her up the path between the wall that ran up one side and the lawn. We passed the privet hedge and went into the vegetable garden at the top with the fruit trees. As I said, I never had any nasty desire to take advantage of the situation, I was always perfectly respectful towards her (until she did what she did) but perhaps it was the darkness, us walking there and feeling her arm through her sleeve, I really would have liked to take her in my arms and kiss her, as a matter of fact I was trembling. I had to say something or I’d have lost my head.
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was very happy, would you, I said. Of course she couldn’t answer.
Because you think I don’t feel anything properly, you don’t know I have deep feelings but I can’t express them like you can, I said.
Just because you can’t express your feelings it doesn’t mean they’re not deep. All the time we were walking on under the dark branches.
All I’m asking, I said, is that you understand how much I love you, how much I need you, how deep it is.
It’s an effort, I said, sometimes. I didn’t like to boast, but I meant her to think for a moment of what other men might have done, if they’d had her in their power.
We’d come to the lawn on the other side again, and then to the house. A car sounded and grew close and went on down the lane beyond the house. I had a tight hold on her.
We came to the cellar door. I said, do you want to go round again?
To my surprise, she shook her head.
Naturally I took her back down. When I got the gag and cords off she said, “I’d like some tea. Please go and make some. Lock the door. I’ll stay here.”
I made the tea. As soon as I took it in and poured it, she spoke.
“I want to say something,” she said. “It’s got to be said.”
I was listening.
“You wanted to kiss me out there, didn’t you?”
I’m sorry, I said. As usual I started to blush.
“First of all I should like to thank you for not doing so, because I don’t want you to kiss me. I realize I’m at your mercy, I realize I’m very lucky you’re so decent about this particular thing.”
It won’t happen again, I said.
“That’s what I wanted to say. If it does happen again—and worse. And you have to give way to it. I want you to promise something.”
It won’t happen again.
“Not to do it in a mean way. I mean don’t knock me unconscious or chloroform me again or anything. I shan’t struggle, I’ll let you do what you like.”
It won’t happen again, I said. I forgot myself. I can’t explain.
“The only thing is, if you ever do anything like that I shall never never respect you, I shall never, never speak to you again. You understand?”
I wouldn’t expect anything else, I said. I was red as a beetroot by then.
She held out her hand. I shook it. I don’t know how I got out of the room. She had me all at sixes and sevens that evening.
Well, every day it was the same: I went down between eight and nine, I got her breakfast, emptied the buckets, sometimes we talked a bit, she gave me any shopping she wanted done (sometimes I stayed home but I went out most days on account of the fresh vegetables and milk she liked), most mornings I cleaned up the house after I got back from Lewes, then her lunch, then usually we sat and talked for a bit or she played the records I brought back or I sat and watched her draw; she got her own tea, I don’t know why, we sort of came to an agreement not to be together then. Then there was supper and after supper we often talked a bit more. Sometimes she made me welcome, she usually wanted her walk in the outer cellar. Sometimes she made me go away as soon as supper was over.