He looked at her anxiously. She didn’t smile.
“I’m a ruined man, Hester,” he said pathetically. “Television and the weather – I can’t survive them. I’m going to Ireland on Friday to buy some new cinemas, try to earn a little something.”
“You told me you were going to Ireland to get away from Harry,” Moira said maliciously. She glanced at Hester, seeming to absorb and reflect again the knowledge that Hester was wearing last year’s clothes. “I don’t say I believe you. I should have thought the way you feel about Harry, something far away like India would have suited you better. A soupgon more cream, Hester?”
“My wife doesn’t like Harry,” Joe explained. “She is only afraid to dislike him because he is a poet. We are both worried when we think we think of nothing but money. So we have Hi-Fi, and go to opera.”
“Opera. Wagner is divine,” Moira agreed, yawning.
Joe’s jowls sagged a little at the mention of Wagner.
“Verdi, Bizet, now Bizet is something,” he said quickly. “Do they have Verdi and Bizet in India?” he demanded.
No one knew.
“I thought Bizet was very O.K. Then I saw that first thing of his. Enough. I didn’t like it. But the Russians – Eugene Onegin? Do they have Eugene Onegin in India or Australia? Europe is all I want.”
“Is Ireland Europe?” Moira asked languidly. She rose and glanced quickly in the mirror. Her complexion was the cosmetician’s dream come true, as rich and soft as marshmallow, just tinged with Turkish delight.
“How are you going?” Hester asked coldly. She hadn’t been deceived by the talk of opera. Joe hated Harry, and she wanted to leave his house.
“I’m flying,” he said. “I’ve chartered a plane and it has three empty seats. Do you happen to know anyone who would like to share it?”
WEDNESDAY (4)
HESTER walked home through the woods without looking at them. There was a world inside her head, and it was filled with a dozen versions of a defenceless Harry overborne by enemies. England was a country that didn’t appreciate its poets until they were playwrights, or dead, but even so she was astonished by the malice which her father, Uncle Joe, and Morgan had shown towards Harry. She knew that what they hated was not Harry, but their own failure to be as he was. Harry, in his innocence, was like a clear pool in which they saw their own pretences. She couldn’t endure any more attacks on Harry. She hesitated at the gate, and then turned away from the house and walked through the woods until she came to the ruined chapel.
The chapel was roofless and derelict, but it had the melancholy romantic air that ruins so easily adopt. Nettles sprang through the cracks in the stone floor, but beneath this lay the bones of long-dead wool merchants, so that as well as its other charms, an implication of mortality lingered inside the broken walls.
Harry was sitting on one of the fallen stones.
“I came here to think,” he said in a guilty voice.
“All right. I’ll leave you.”
“Hester, please.”
She sat down beside him.
“I’ve been given a lot of advice about you today, Harry. Are you so bad?”
“I’ll tell you the truth. I’m no good at all. You’d do the right thing to tell me to go now. But I can’t make myself go, unless you tell me. I can’t move, with love of you closing over the top of my head.”
He knelt beside her and she put her hand on his shoulder. “So bad, Harry?” she whispered.
“In every way. You only have to trust me, and I’ll let you down.”
“It’s not true, Harry,” she said, beginning to cry quietly. “Anyway, you’re a poet.”
“Yes, in a way. Yes, I am.”
“So you wouldn’t be the same as other people.”
“I’m telling you, I’m worse than other people. You’ve no right to make excuses for me. And if I’m a poet I’m too lazy to be a good one.”
“I don’t believe it. You haven’t had a chance. You’ve had too much worry, with nowhere to live and no money.”
“Listen, Hester. I’m trying to tell you. I’ve had plenty of places to live, but I’ve been thrown out of most of them. When I was sent down from Oxford my mother couldn’t bear it any longer. She threw me out too. I went to Australia. I wanted to be an old-fashioned remittance man, but she wouldn’t send me the remittance.”
Hester made a weak attempt to laugh.
“It’s nothing to laugh about,” he said angrily. “I had to work on a sheep station. It was hot.”
“Hot?”
“It was so hot the snakes used to get burnt crossing the floor of my hut. It was so hot the mosquitoes turned into fireflies. The kangaroos fainted with the heat. And I was in the middle of it all, hacking away with an axe at the prickly pear, digging with a spade to reach the artesian wells fifty feet below ground – so that the sheep could get a drink. And the nearest pub was ninety-five miles away. It was filled with bearded men who had never seen rain. They carried guns. They shot anyone who tried to make a joke.”
“Harry, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Even now, if I see a sheep in Hyde Park I get the bush staggers.”
“I liked your Australian poetry.”
“You’re an angel in blue stockings.”
“What did you do when you came back from Australia?”
“This and that. Angels never ask questions.”
“When did you come back from Australia?”
“About four months ago.”
He stood up.
“Hester, I’ll have to go away. I want to tell you how I love you. I want to steal all the words of the poets and make a chain of them that will hold you for ever.”
She waited. He moved away from her, and for a minute they were poised in silence, with emotions swooping between them like birds.
“I can’t say anything, Hester. I was trying to write something when you came. Here it is. It’s on an envelope.”
He felt in his pocket, then gave her the envelope, and she read:
“You understand I haven’t finished it?” he asked anxiously. “A clumsy offering, but it means something. I’m not giving it to you as a love poem. It’s a warning. You think now your strength is enough for two. You’re making plans, you know. Soon you’ll feel you have no right to marry a man who is strong. Hester, you’ve the air of a woman who wants martyrdom. I’m the man to give it to you.”
“You don’t mean all this, Harry,” she said in distress.
“Be quiet. Goodness is as much a part of you as redness is of a cherry. I’m the worm that will eat the cherry away, redness and all. You think now you can change my character, tidy me up, get me a nine to five job, give me a room to work in, and watch the self-respecting income roll in one door while the works of genius roll out the other. But the cherry doesn’t change the worm. It’s the other way round. I’m an experienced worm. I know!”
Hester looked at him with the intensity of someone waiting for a miracle to be performed.
“You’re the fourth person to tell me today how worthless you are. I don’t believe it.”
“Well, I’ve tried,” he said gloomily. “I’ll not try again. Just describing myself makes me see I’m only half the man I was. I can’t reason any more. I met you two weeks ago, and I’ve been drowning ever since. My past life has come up before my eyes so often it’s beginning to look like a non-stop revue. Throw me a straw before I sink for ever. Are you in love with any other man?”