It was three weeks after she had arrived that Ruth said, ‘I’m going to write to Edward.’
‘I have written,’ said Harvey.
‘I know,’ she said, and he wondered how she knew, since he had posted the letter himself. ‘But I’ll write myself. I couldn’t be the wife of an actor again.
‘If he was a famous actor?’
‘Well, he isn’t a famous actor. A part here, a part there, and sometimes a film. So full of himself when he has a part. It was a much better life for me when he was a curate.’
But she had no nostalgia even for those days of church fêtes, evening lectures and sewing classes. She already had a grip of her new life, dominated as it was by the Book of Job.
‘You feel safer when you’re living with someone who’s in the God-business,’ Harvey said. ‘More at home.’
‘Perhaps that’s it,’ she said.
‘And a steadier income.’
‘Such as it is,’ she said, for she asked little for herself. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I was bored. He always agreed with me, and you don’t.’
‘That’s because you’re one of my comforters,’ Harvey said. ‘Job had his comforters to contend with; why shouldn’t I?’
‘Do you think of yourself as Job?’
‘Not exactly, but one can’t help sympathising with the man.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Ruth. ‘Job was a very rich man. He lost all his goods, and all his sons and daughters, and took it all very philosophically. He said, “The Lord gave, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Then he gets covered with boils; and it’s only then that his nerve gives way, he’s touched personally. He starts his complaint against God at that point only. No question of why his sons should have lost their lives, no enquiries of God about the cause of their fate. It’s his skin disease that sets him off.’
‘Maybe it was shingles,’ Harvey said. ‘A nervous disease. Anyway, it got on his nerves.
Ruth said, ‘He had to be touched himself before he would react. Touched in his own body. Utterly selfish. He doesn’t seem to have suffered much or he wouldn’t have been able to go into all that long argument. He couldn’t have had a temperature.’
‘I don’t agree. I think he had a high temperature all through the argument,’ Harvey said. ‘Because it’s high poetry. Or else, maybe you’re right; maybe it was the author who had the temperature. Job himself just sat there with a long face arguing against the theories of his friends.’
‘Make a note of that,’ Ruth commanded.
‘I’ll make a note.’ He did so.
‘Someone must have fed him,’ said Ruth. ‘Someone must have brought him meals to eat as he sat on the dung—hill outside the town.’
‘I’m not sure he sat on a dung-hill outside the town. That is an assumption based on an unverified Greek version of the text. He is merely said to have sat in the ashes on the ground. Presumably at his own hearth. And his good wife, no doubt, brought him his meals.’
Ruth had proved to be an excellent cook, cramped in the kitchen with that weird three-tiered kerosene stove of hers.
‘What do you mean, “his good wife”?’ Ruth said. ‘She told him, “Curse God and die.”‘
‘That was a way of expressing her exasperation. She was tired of his griping and she merely wanted him to get it off his chest quickly, and finish.’
‘I suppose the wife suffered,’ said Ruth. ‘But whoever wrote the book made nothing of her. Job deserved all he got.’
‘That was the point that his three friends tried to get across to him,’ Harvey said. ‘But Job made the point that he didn’t deserve it. Suffering isn’t in proportion to what the sufferer deserves.’
Ruth wrote in September:
Dear Edward,
I suppose you have gathered by now that I’ve changed my mind about Harvey. I don’t know what he’s written to you.
He really is a most interesting man. I believe I can help Harvey. I can’t return to face the life we had together, ever again. My dear, I don’t know how I could have thought I would. My plan was, as you know, entirely different. I feel Harvey needs me. I am playing a role in his life. He is serious. Don’t imagine I’m living in luxury. He never mentions his wealth. But of course I am aware that if there is anything I require for myself or Clara, I can have it.
You may have heard from Ernie Howe that he is coming to visit Clara. She’s well and pretty, and full of life.
I’m sure you have heard from Harvey how things are between him and me. It’s too soon to talk of the future.
This has been a difficult letter to write. I know that you’ll agree with what I say. You always do.
Ruth
She gave Harvey the letter to read, watching him while he read it. He looked younger than Edward, probably because of Edward’s beard, although he was a little older. Harvey was lean and dark, tall, stringy.
‘It’s a bit dry,’ Harvey said.
‘It’s all I can do. Edward knows what I’m like.’
‘I suppose,’ said Harvey, ‘he’ll be hurt.’ ‘He doesn’t love me,’ Ruth said.
‘How do you know?’
‘How does one know?’
‘Still, he won’t want to lose his property.’
‘That’s something else.’
Now, in October, Ruth was talking about sending to England for cretonne fabric. ‘One can’t get exactly what I want in France,’ she said.
Harvey wrote:
Dear Edward,
Thanks for yours.
The infant is cutting a tooth and makes a din at night. Ruth has very disturbed nights. So do I. It’s been raining steadily for three days. Ernie Howe came. We had a chat. He seems to feel fraternal towards me because we both had to do with Effie. He wants to talk about Effie. I don’t. Afterwards, in the place next door that Ruth has fixed up for herself and Clara, Ernie asked her if she would go home and live with him and bring the baby. Ruth said no. I think he’s after Ruth because she reminds him of Effie. He said he wouldn’t take the child away from Ruth if she doesn’t want to part with it, which she doesn’t.
I’m sorry to hear that you don’t miss Ruth. You ought to.
Cheque enclosed. I know you’re not ‘selling your wife’. Why should I think you are? You took money before I was sleeping with Ruth, so where’s the difference?
I don’t agree the comforters just came to gloat. They relieved Job’s suffering by arguing with him, keeping him talking. In different ways they keep insinuating that Job ‘deserved’ his misfortunes; he must have done something wrong. While Job insists that he hasn’t, that the massed calamities that came on him haven’t any relation to his own actions. He upsets all their theology. Those three friends of his are very patient and considerate, given their historical position. But Job is having a nervous crisis. He can’t sleep. See 7, 13—16.
When I say, My bed shall
comfort me, my couch shall ease
my complaint;
Then thou scarest me with
dreams, and terrifiest me through
visions:
So that my soul chooseth
strangling, and death rather than
my life.
I loathe it; I would not
live alway: let me alone …
So I say, at least the three comforters kept him company. And they took turns as analyst. Job was like the patient on the couch.
Ruth doesn’t sympathise with Job. She sees the male pig in him. That’s a point of view.
The baby has started to squawk. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the noise.
Yours,
Harvey