And Lydia knew this. Also that Scylla had kept her freedom, was up to all their old amusements out in Europe, down in the South. Scylla saw Clarence continually and made fun of him. Might flirt with him, more curious things can happen, when her proper business was to marry too, and establish herself.
And both the young women knew that this meeting if inevitable was unfortunate, the end of a friendship from university to marriage. Lydia had made a dangerous one. God only knew where adventure would lead the other.
The husband came in. Knocked over his wife’s book with a movie paper, and began to talk about himself. A row at the garage and how he had scored. Lydia frowned.
“Phil, Scylla is here.” He kissed Scylla several times, while she stared up to see what the prettier woman could do with her eyes; while she was loathing him because he had taken her friend away from her. To use Lydia’s practical brain and her unpractised love for his own little ends, to betray her, mishandle her, exploit her. And be dreadfully punished when Lydia recovered from her passion because he had laid familiar paws on her pride. Her heaven-born pride which might as easily move to hell. In a timeless instant she saw the woman Lydia would be, when she would punish her fancy-boy for being the slick little animal he was. And, during the transition, break both hearts.
I may become like that, too. A thought passing, passionate then dispassionate.
At lunch, on Philip’s insistence, she praised the table-setting, who had adored Lydia for being the world’s worst housekeeper. It was easier when Philip dropped the garage and making eyes, and shewed frank jealousy. He was really afraid of his wife’s old friends, knew that he must detach her from them quickly. And Lydia revelled in his authority, her mind storing it up for later, for part of the interminable, intolerable score they would have to recite to one another. . . . In a house where there would be no children, nor any garden for forgiveness full of the other’s favourite flowers.
Now Scylla minded this. Minded also that Philip had not even thought to approach her as his wife’s friend. What was left her now but observation? She had had enough of grief. There was only her amusement left, the contrast between Lydia’s naïve eroticism and her formidable wits: Philip’s technique with her no more than the length of rope on which he had to hang himself. His method was to cut conversation, to interrupt whatever was said; and when he spoke, interrupt himself, so that there should never be any continuity. Perfectly sound. The quickest way to exasperate Scylla. He was reckoning that he could, not quite such a fool as these grand ladies thought him. Could shew them that not being a gentleman was worth something: give Lydia’s lady friend something else to call him than a misplaced insect.
And Scylla no longer believed that her reserve of charity was an arsenal. She did not want Lydia if she could not tell her the story of the cup, draw on her learning, and on her instinct for tradition, which might have been created to meet the situation. Without that story her summer in the South was no story, and how often had Lydia been down with them in the wood? Philip once, had followed her there, uninvited, and found her singing them troubador songs. Had bawled jazz and almost dragged her away. Impulses cold, cruel, and insolent grew in Scylla, along with understanding perfecting itself.
A new aspect of the worst had arrived. They were already too accustomed to it. Had seen too many designs broken, whose assembly had been mysteries of harmony. Until they had forgotten unity, harvest ahead of vintage; forgotten that there could be any condition but emulation, advantage, and personal success. She despised herself because she had not the clean surgery to cut out memory and hope. As the story of the house could not be told without the wood, the house-party could not be described without the cup. As well talk politics to Picus as speak of the cup with Philip in the room.
“What happened down South?” said Lydia. “London makes me ache for it. I hear the waves turning over—don’t interrupt, Phil—and the branches turning round in the wood.” Scylla thought: ‘Concentrate on Carston. Make him funny—with the fun left out.’ Nothing that she said held together, who had Picus and under Gault to tell to the proper person to hear it, sœur douce amie. Lydia must know that because of Philip she could not tell. Lydia had refused to dine alone with her. Scylla did not know the stupid scene he had made when Lydia had tried to go, until he had made love to her, and snatched a promise she did not dare break.
Lydia knew and was not consoled. There might be news of Clarence. She was a jealous woman. Scylla had had Clarence to herself: had looked up at Philip, smiling. Already she knew what she had married, what they would become. Soon she would not be with Scylla’s people, or even in their world. And Scylla stayed in and walked out of it so airily. Soft, bitter, little laps of far-seeing. The quickest thing to do was hate, before it was taken out of her in sorrow. Hadn’t Scylla come to triumph? Her husband’s delicious voice and vulgar accent enchanted and fretted her. His words and the beauty of his wrist as he lit Scylla’s cigarette. How could she keep him? And keep him Phil? Be sure of him and improve him? Possible or impossible, it was not her job. Who should have been advising Scylla, correcting and fortifying her.
Exasperated, the lion’s paw fell, claws astretch.
What follows can be as well represented operatically—it began:
Philip: (recitative) “Lydia and I are often thinking of you, Scylla—and I’m sure you won’t take us up wrong.”
Lydia: “We were both thinking if it is quite the thing for you to be there alone with all those men!”
Scylla: (song) “Felix is my chaperone, chaperone,” etc.
Philip and Lydia: (duet) “In the end it does not do, does not do,
People know you for that kind of woman.”
Scylla: “What sort of a woman?”
Philip and Lydia: (recit.) “We feel it since we married. It does not do, it does not do, to go against society.”
Philip: “I’ve seen a good deal of the world, you know—perhaps not quite the same society as yours, but—”
Philip, Lydia and Scylla: (trio) “People say—”
“What do they say?”
“You know the things they say.”
“What have they said?”
“We’d rather not tell you and go into details.”
“Go into details!”
“You’re doing it for MY GOOD.”
Philip and Lydia: (duet) “Of course we are, of course we are.
We wouldn’t hurt your feelings,
BUT—”
Philip: “I’m so fond of you, Scylla.”
Lydia: “We’re so fond of you, Scylla.
BUT—
We’ve found it out, we’ve found it out.
The world has reason on its side.”
Scylla: (solo) “What is the world?
Lydia’s world was my world,
And I don’t know Philip’s world.
What reason has the world got, anyhow?”
Philip and Lydia: (anthem) “IT DOES NOT DO.
IT DOES NOT DO.”
Philip and Scylla: (duet) “What good do these men do to you?”
“What good do I do them?”
Philip and Lydia: (quick recitative) “But can’t you consider that every one thinks that you sleep with each other in turn?”
Philip, Lydia and Scylla: (trio) “Including my brother?”
“Now, Scylla, be decent!”
“I am learning behaviour from you.”
“You’re so young,
So attractive—”
“I am several years older than you.”
Lydia: “You were always a baby.”
Philip: “And always the lady.”
Philip really said that, and when Scylla giggled, the string that tied them burned through and snapped. She remembered Picus at home: under Gault. A cup in a welclass="underline" in a house. Out of India: in a book out of no man’s land.