Part Six
A Single Act
That night, after Sheila told me she was in love, I stayed in the street, my eyes not daring to leave her lighted window. The music had played round me; I had said goodbye; but when I came out into the cold night, I could not go home. Each past storm of jealousy or desire was calm compared to this. The evening when I slipped away from George and stood outside the vicarage, just watching without purpose — that was nothing but a youth’s lament. Now I was driven.
I could find no rest until I saw with my own eyes whether or not another man would call on her that night. No rest from the calculations of jealousy: ‘I shall want some tea,’ she had said, and that light phrase set all my mind to work, as though a great piece of clockwork had been wound up by a turn of the key. When would she make him tea? That night? Next day? No test from the torments, the insane reminders, of each moment when her body had allured me; so that standing in the street, looking at her window, I was maddened by sensual reveries.
It was late. A drizzle was falling, silver and sleety as it passed the street lamps. Time upon time I walked as far up the street as I could go, and still see the window. Through the curtains her light shone — orange among the yellow squares of other windows, the softest, the most luxurious, of all the lights in view. Twice a man came down the pavement, and as he approached her house my heart stopped. He passed by. A desolate prostitute, huddled against the raw night, accosted me. Some of the lights went out, but hers still shone.
The street was deserted, At last — in an instant when I turned my eyes away — her window had clicked into darkness. Relief poured through me, inordinate, inexpressible relief. I turned away; and I was drowsing in the taxi before I got home.
For days in Chambers I was driven, as violently as I had been that night. Writing an opinion, I could not keep my thoughts still. At a conference, I heard my leader talk, I heard the clients inquiring — between them and me were images of Sheila, images of the flesh, the images that tormented my senses and turned jealousy into a drill within the brain. And in the January nights I was driven to walk the length of Worcester Street, back and forth, hypnotized by the lighted window; it was an obsession, it was a mania, but I could not keep myself away.
One night, in the tube station at Hyde Park Corner, I imagined that I saw her in the crowd. There was a thin young man, of whom I only saw the back, and a woman beside him. She was singing to herself. Was it she? They mounted a train in the rush, I could not see, the doors slid to.
Soon afterwards — it was inside a week since she broke her news — the telephone rang at my lodgings. The landlady shouted my name, and I went downstairs. The telephone stood out in the open, on a table in the hall. I heard Sheila’s voice: ‘How are you?’
I muttered.
‘I want to know: how are you, physically?’
I had scarcely thought of my health. I had been acting as though I were tireless. I said that I was all right, and asked after her.
‘I’m very well.’ Her voice was unusually full. There was a silence, then she asked: ‘When am I going to see you?’
‘When you like.’
‘Come here tonight. You can take me out if you like.’
Once more an answer broke out.
‘Shall you be alone?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ In the telephone the word was clear; I could hear neither gloating nor compassion.
When I entered her room that evening she was dressed to dine out, in a red evening frock. Since I had begun to earn money, we had taken to an occasional treat. It was the chief difference in my way of life, for I had not changed my flat, and still lived as though in transit. She let me do it; she knew that I had my streak of childish ostentation, and that it flattered me to entertain her as the Marches might have done. For herself, she would have preferred our old places in Soho and round Charlotte Street; but, to indulge me, she would dress up and go to fashionable restaurants, as she had herself proposed that night.
She was bright-eyed and smiling. Before we went out, however, she said in a quiet voice: ‘Why did you ask whether I should be alone?’
‘You know.’
‘You’re thinking’, she said, her eyes fixed on me, ‘of what I did to you once? At the Edens’ that night — with poor Tom Devitt?’
I did not reply.
‘I shan’t do that again,’ she said. She added: ‘I’ve treated you badly. I don’t need telling it.’
She walked into the restaurant at the Berkeley with me behind her. Just then, at twenty-five, she was at the peak of her beauty. For a young girl, her face had been too hard, lined, and over-vivid. And I often thought, trying to see the future, that long before she was middle-aged her looks would be ravaged. But now she was at the age which chimed with her style. That night, as she walked across the restaurant, all eyes followed her, and a hush fell. She made the conversation. Each word she said was light with her happiness, more than ever capricious and sarcastic. Sometimes she drew a smile, despite myself. Then, in the middle of the meal, she leaned across the table, her eyes full on me, and said, quietly and simply: ‘You can do something for me.’
‘What?’
‘Will you?’ she begged.
I stared at her.
‘You can be some good to me,’ she said.
‘What do you want?’
She said: ‘I want you to see Hugh.’
‘I can’t do it,’ I burst out.
‘It might help me,’ she said.
My eyes could not leave hers.
‘You’re more realistic than I am,’ she said. ‘I want you to tell me what he feels about me. I don’t know whether he loves me.’
‘What do you think I am?’ I cried, and violent words were quivering behind my lips.
‘I trust you,’ she said. ‘You’re the only human being I’ve ever trusted.’
There was silence. She said ‘There is no one else to ask. No one else would be worth asking.’
In exhaustion, I replied at last: ‘All right. I’ll see him.’
She was docile with delight. When could I manage it? She would arrange any time I liked. ‘I’m very dutiful to Hugh,’ she said, ‘but I shall make him come — whenever you can manage it.’ What about that very night? She could telephone him, and bring him to her room. Would I mind, that night?
‘It’s as good as any other,’ I said.
She rang up. We drove back to Worcester Street. In the taxi I said little, and I was as sombre while we sat in her room and waited.
‘He’s highly strung,’ she said. ‘He may be nervous of you.’
A car passed along the street, coming nearer, and I listened. Sheila shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’ll come by bus.’ She asked: ‘Shall I play a record?’
‘If you like.’
She grimaced, and began to search in her shelf. As she did so, there pattered a light step down below. ‘Here he is,’ she said.
He came in with a smile, quick and apologetic. Sheila and I were each standing, and for a second he threw an arm round her waist. Then he faced me, as she introduced us.
‘Lewis, this is Hugh Smith.’
He was as tall as me, but much slighter. His neck was thin and his chest sunken. He was very fair. His upper lip was petulant and vain, but when he smiled his whole face was merry, boyish, and sweet. He looked much younger than his years, much younger than either Sheila or me.
He was taken up with Sheila’s dress.
‘I’ve not seen you in that before, have I?’ he said. ‘Yes, it’s very very nice. Let me see. Is it quite right at the back—?’ he went on with couturier’s prattle.
Sheila laughed at him.
‘You’re much more interested than my dressmaker,’ she said.