I sat down. The room was hot and oppressive. I felt faintly pathetic like a private detective. “I suppose you want me to leave you my cigarettes and go,” I said.
“Darling, you know how I love seeing you. Tell me what you have been doing lately.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’ve finished my book.”
“I’m sure it’s dreadful.”
“Yes. Do you know when Marius will be in?”
“No,” she said. “And why make such a fuss about Marius? You’re not going to ask him why he doesn’t marry Annabelle, are you?”
“I might,” I said.
“Oh how dreadful,” she said. “How perfectly dreadful. Please don’t do it in my house, that’s all. You can do it anywhere else.”
When Marius came in I saw at once that he seemed younger. He had always been theatrical, but now he made his entrance with some of the awkwardness of inexperience, his movement from the door to the chair being performed self-consciously as if he were watching himself from the audience. Once he had acted as if there were no one present to him except himself. Now there were others. It was strange that I was not more glad to see him.
“I’m going to my bedroom,” Alice said. “I can’t bear to hear your conversation.”
Marius sat in the chair and smiled his half-smile into the carpet. Then he pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and took an enormous time to open them. “How did you know I was here?” he said.
“Peter told me.”
“Yes,” he said. He searched for matches. “I didn’t know where you were,” he added.
“No,” I said. “That’s what everyone says.”
Once, I remembered, what Marius had acted had been the same as what he felt. Now I had the impression that it was not. But that, surely, was what happened when one grew old? For Marius, then, growing younger, was this situation merely one about which he felt nothing? I found this difficult to believe.
“How did you think Peter was?”
“Not very well.”
“No. I’m thinking of going away,” he said.
“Away? You’ve only just got back.”
“I’ve got nothing to do here.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“Oh I don’t know,” he said.
So here we were, I thought, back in the shop window where what is displayed has nothing to do with what is underneath, where the little packets are sham and the meanings, like Peter’s figures, non-existent. The only oddity was that in Marius’s window, as in those of the more exclusive establishments, there did not even seem to be anything on show. No feelings and nothing on show. It was at least logical.
“Where will you go?” I said.
“Back home,” he said. I had not heard him use the word “home” before. “There are things to be done there,” he said.
“And what will Peter do?” I found myself talking of Peter instead of Annabelle in the way that everyone did.
“I believe his father is trying to get him a job in Paris.”
“Will Peter take it?”
“I hope he will.”
“Do you know his father then?”
“Oh yes. I stayed with them, you know, for quite a time. He is a very remarkable man, his father. Very remarkable indeed. I was doing some work for him out there.”
“What sort of work?”
“Various things,” Marius said.
There was nothing else to say. I stood up to go. I was angry, but this time it was with a quite dispassionate annoyance, a desire to get away into an atmosphere that was whole. Marius watched me and then asked me, more from politeness than anxiety, I thought, if I would have lunch with him the next day. I thanked him. Politeness was better than nothing. I walked along to say good-bye to Alice and I found her lying on her bed in the shaded light. “I told you you would be in a mess if you went with Marius,” she said. She was looking very tired and the light made hollows in her face as it lay on the pillow. “Are you in a mess?” I said.
“No,” she said. The room smelt of smoke and the curtains were heavy against the window. I thought of how Marius had once said that Alice did not have an effect on people and now he did not have an effect on people either. “I don’t mind being in a mess,” I said. I left her my cigarettes and went.
I met Peter in the square. I was glad to see him. “I’m sorry I can’t ask you in,” he said. “The place is full of priests.”
“Priests?” I said.
“Substantially there is only one, I suppose, but he is like one of those jelly-fish that are composed of a million minor orgasms.”
“Organisms,” I said.
“Yes, organisms. He knows all about cricketers and actresses. He is that sort of priest.”
“Come back to my room,” I said. “I can make some supper.”
“Anywhere,” Peter said. “Anywhere for God’s sake that is not holy.”
We sat on a bus. I felt again like a private detective. It was as if Peter were my witness from whom I had to extort the truth before he was killed. “Start from the beginning,” I said. “Is that Marius’s child?”
“I suppose so,” Peter said.
“I was beginning to wonder even about that.”
“Yes,” Peter said.
“So what’s wrong with Marius? Why’s he going away?”
“There’s nothing else for him to do.”
“Doesn’t he want to stay with Annabelle?”
“Yes,” Peter said.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Annabelle says it’s no good,” Peter said.
We sat together handcuffed by what we did not understand, and I could think of nothing except the fatuity of my questions. “What happened when you were abroad?” I said.
“We were with each other for a time,” he said. “My father was sent to the West Indies, you know, so that we were there with Marius. We were moving in and Marius was round about the house and it was all right then. Annabelle was all right. Then I went away to do this ridiculous job and by the time we were due to come home it was all wrong. Nobody was saying anything and Marius just followed us hoping for the best. And now here we are. Why the devil did she start a child if she didn’t want to stick with him?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“So he’s got to go away and the whole bloody thing’s breaking up. I could kill her.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And now what’s she going to do? What’s she going to do with the baby? No one seems to be interested in that. All they do is call her a tough nut. They seem to be more interested in me.”
“They can talk about you,” I said.
“Why can’t they talk about her? It’s going to be very awkward for my father and mother if Annabelle has a child. They can’t very well cart her around with them. Yet everyone treats her as if she’d done something marvelous and me as if I’d been certified insane.”
“You know this psychoanalysis stuff is nonsense,” I said. “Why keep on bringing it in?”
“You don’t know it,” he said. “You don’t know it at all. My father could charm the hindquarters off an ox.”
We went up to my room. Its ugliness hit us. “Oh dear,” Peter said. I lit the gas fire and cleared some clothes off a chair. Peter was examining the writing-desk that turned into a washstand. The walls were the colour of the inside of a trunk. “Why do you live here?” he said. “I don’t mind it,” I said. I found myself being almost proud of its ugliness, proud of the condition of poverty which was the disease of the post-war world. I found a bottle of beer among my boots.
“I wondered,” Peter said. “It is funny how none of us know anything about you. Perhaps this is the hold that you have over us, that you live in a place like this.”
“I only live here because I choose to.”
“Why?”