14
“I don’t understand.” Hermione was facing Darrington. The room in the little Soho hotel that he had asked her to, was narrow with the window (top floor) overlooking a narrow side-street, overlooking the narrow debouching door of the Temple Theatre opposite. The room had grown narrow, it appeared, while she regarded it for at first the room containing Darrington had contained Italy, the slopes of Monte Solaro, anemones blooming pre-war Easter red and the blood red of the foot steps of Adonis that had been the atrocious wooden image that they had carried to the songs of pre-Hellenic old volcanic southern gypsy chanting. Christ had died and Christ was to be born again. Red anemones had flowered against the dim shabby paper of the narrow room and red anemones had fallen beneath her feet and had burned the very soles of her feet as she had stepped tentatively out of her bed cold mornings, mist cold early spring mornings, mornings over Soho like a brides veil for she was that in her renewed love of Jerrold. The narrow room with the stained sulphur coloured paper had been wide tunnel toward enchantment. At the end of the now narrow room, like vision projected by an enchanter’s magic, there had been the white cone of Vesuvius, the shale that had been the other side of Vesuvius, the side that sloped toward Pompeii, that was shale and scattered vineyard when seen from Herculaneum. The room with its narrow sordid proportion and its one narrow meagrely curtained window looking over the Soho back street had been wide and marvellous, a small concentrated space, like the tube of the Indian mystic, self-made from which, or at the end of which, he projects images of marvellous reality. The wall paper, Hermione now observed, was the mustiest of faded mustard yellow. The wall paper, Hermione saw it for the first time, was faded with a smudgy uneven spottiness that let show through the mustard like spots, the egg-stain like spots of singularly mal-formed tuberous yellow rose buds. The room became a room in Soho and the paper sordid as she saw it. The room shrank. “I don’t understand you at all. You go off on a vulgar escapade with Vane. You have this child—” “I thought we had talked all that out before. I thought it was arranged that it should — be — yours—” “How could it ever be mine? How could you ever be mine?” “Then why did you ask me to come back here? I might have — stayed — with—” She might have stayed with Vane. But she didn’t say it. She didn’t even think it really for she could never have stayed with Vane. The room shrank to its mean proportion. “What are we going to do anyway about it?”
“I told you I had Beryl arrange for the baby at that officers’ wives’ farm home for a few weeks—” “A few weeks — there’s always afterwards.”
Afterwards — afterwards— But why hadn’t he thought of that before? Was the strain too great — was Darrington some monster simply who was sent to persecute her? “I tell you I love Louise.” “Why didn’t you tell me that before I came back?” “I didn’t want to hurt you.” “Rot. You’d hurt me enough. You hurt me long ago. Why didn’t you say simply you were going to carry on with Louise—” Hermione heard the words, listened to herself speaking the words. “You go at once and register that child as Vane’s.”
Register the child. She had not thought of registering the child. There had already been preliminary taken for granted registration of the child — Mrs. Jerrold Darrington — baby, female — Phoebe Fayne. There had already been that. Why begin again? Why begin again? What was Darrington after? What was it all about? “Why hadn’t you seen this before — made it clear sooner?” Her words like white lead came from her with the force of something beyond Hermione. Hermione, worn past endurance, found words that she had never dreamed she had the strength to utter, forming somewhere white bullets, white searing lead, in the inside of her now cold head, and white bullets, white searing lead, projected outwards, out and out and out into a void where Darrington was, where Jerrold was. Someone was standing before her, someone who had nothing to do with Jerrold, some odd, uncanny and evil metamorphosis, evil and evil and bloated and dull as that very Cretan Minotaur. Minotaur sent to destroy the Athenian youth, to destroy beauty, Minotaur of wickedness. . Hermione no longer recognised this creature, herself one white frozen heat of flame repudiated some obscene creature who suggested obscene and evil things. “Register it? But that’s the merest legal formality. You said it was to be yours. I have your letters. You urged me on to have it. You let me go through with it though I was crippled with the last one and you let my friends (my bloated millionaire friends as you call them) see me through the added expense of the pneumonia and that dreadful set-back that meant that double nursing and impossible delicacies. You let me do that and you asked me, comfortably out of it, out of this world, to come back to Soho.”
Trampled flowers smell sweet. But there is a murderous ox foot, a cloven devil foot. Was it the war simply, that walked forward that would crush with devil horns and great brute devil forehead the tenderest of growths — Phoebe. Phoebe. Don’t say her name out loud, Hermione. Keep Phoebe Fayne out of it. It was you who were wrong drifting into this, tired and having no proper place to go to and it was better (far better) for Phoebe to have that officers’ wives’ home (what a cheat) in the country to go to for a few months until you could arrange, Beryl arranging it, Lady de Rothfeldt so kindly arranging it, officer’s wife. . pneumonia, very ill, husband only just returned but a cheat. A cheat. Husbands didn’t return like this with a bit of a uniform, his old tunic with a dash somewhere of a bit of ribbon as a smoking jacket. Jerrold was all in bits, trousers and jacket didn’t go together, Jerrold was all in bits. “I will look after you,” and “now register it as Vane’s,” didn’t go together. Jerrold was a Minotaur and there was only one thing now to do about it. Dodge him.
“I’m just waiting. Was just waiting. They said I must be careful. I’m going out to-morrow. I have to go to Richmond. You have to register them in the district where they were born — Richmond.” “See that you do then. See that you do then. It’ll be evidence to divorce you. .” Divorce? Was she hearing, seeing? She was mad simply. This word that they had none of them used (Vane had so suavely brushed it) was brought out in a fervour of brutality against her. “Divorce me?” “Of course. It’s the only way to do it. I as a returned officer can prove your infidelity—” “My infidelity?” “Well, Louise and I — that will be overlooked. You are, aren’t you, the offender?” “Offender?” “I mean — well you know what the law is in England? You can’t divorce me as you have been unfaithful—” “Unfaithful?” Words out of the Daily Mail meaning nothing. Where had he picked these words up? What did these words mean? Words out of the Daily Mail mean nothing. Unfaithful wife, returned officer husband, lover, baby. . words out of the Daily Mail meaning nothing.
“But what about you? What about—?” “O well — that — you can’t prove anything.” “Prove anything? But I have your letters. Details. Your writing me all the details. .” “Look here, Astraea”—even now, even now, Astraea.
Nothing in him that doth fade but doth suffer — but doth suffer — suffer — suffer — sea-change. You suffer toward sea-change but there was an end to legitimate suffering, this suffering of Hermione’s was illegitimate. You don’t take more than your share of suffering any more than you take more than your share of happiness — wheels within wheels — the labyrinth but Theseus (was it?) had the clue, walked straight on, straight on, labyrinth of London upon London and the war, black abysses of pockets of blackness into which you wander feeling the crash of a plane, sensing, feeling the blue body crumpled — an American fighting for France or the brave fawn-coloured young body ground — ground — don’t think. Labyrinth. How marvellous to be of it, in it, one of them, one of the Athenian youths and maidens sent — sent — Athenians. Hermione stared at the wall, waiting for an answer for the wall was mustard coloured and the map that she had pinned there now some days ago, a map fallen from one of the Weeklies now became something other, somewhere else, another pocket, another world. “That map’s rotten — cut up into Balkan states and all wrong.” Map pinned to the wall, sketched in map from London Weekly that she hadn’t thrown away, had pinned on the wall, map of the Balkans, difficulties, marked off in dark lines, cut into dark thick lines, political, meaning nothing, but a map from a modern weekly (last week’s?) and the problem of the Balkans and the map was nothing but it covered a space of the mustard paper and the map was a map of Greece, all distorted by political black lines and dotted lines, the sort of map, you remember we had with our weeklies in that odd spring, never to come again, mist like a bride’s veil over Soho, and she would talk of the map, thus dodging the Minotaur, thus dodging Darrington. She would pretend not to have heard Darrington, would go on talking as if the registering, deliberately of Phoebe as illegitimate was nothing, could be nothing, though she was Mrs. Jerrold Darrington and how difficult to explain, “you see I am married but this is someone else’s child.” But Darrington was mad. The whole thing was impossible, all the letters, he was mad, shell-shock, dissociation (she must make excuses for him) but it was wrong, Hermione knew it was wrong. Hermione had had her share of suffering and if she took more than her share of suffering the world would topple over for you can’t arrogate virtue to yourself, you can’t suffer more than Christ — and she had suffered. Dead, resurrected but she had come to the wrong place. She belonged in heaven after Phoebe — and she wasn’t in heaven. Heaven had been open to her and she had walked straight into Purgatory or Hell even, this hell of Darrington cowering over her, a little now cringing to her. This was worse than his bullyings. He was cringing to her. What had happened? What had Louise done? Drugs, sleep — evil — drinks — the wrong kind — abuses — turned his head — come back — he was so nice a week ago. It had all happened in a few days. Turned into a monster, a Minotaur when Hermione had thought he was one of the youths of Athens, he, as she, lost alike in a labyrinth, alike in the end to be saved, but he wasn’t to be saved — Astraea — how dared he call her that. He was mad obviously. Astraea was a name that went with al fresco suppers and the odd pear tree that had plumed itself so extravagantly like a white swan against the upflung hills of Ana-Capri. Astraea was shining over Amalfi and Astraea was the very heart of the orange flowers, golden with that tight whirl of still smooth petals, texture of the orange flowers so much more ivory smooth than any camellia even, even than the wax smooth and ivory stiff gardenia. Elegant. Things of the senses beyond the drift of people and the stuffiness of trains and the Italians with too many children — that remained apart and untouched (then) in grubby cheap little bed-rooms, in bed-rooms on the rue gauche that were youth — youth — simply.