‘We’ve hardly begun,’ was all he could say.
He was right in thinking she lacked courage. But she would acquire it by experiene, the only way she knew. It was too late for questions. Who needed them? Questions only occurred to those who found the uncertainties of life too painful to bear. Yet she did, because to let go was to die, especially during changes that seemed incomprehensible.
He stood up, and she wondered what for. Was he about to leave because he could take no more – dump her – make the excuse that he was going to the lavatory, then walk quickly to the room for his luggage and drive away? Would he join Aubrey in Rome, or find himself a proper woman who would take care of him with no holds barred – as they say? He looked tired, but smiled, a hand at her shoulder. ‘This jungle music’s better to dance to than listen to. Let’s have a try!’
She looked. He took her astonishment to indicate that she would not be able to act, so held her arm firmly till she got up and followed. They moved around the floor. He was right. The noise wouldn’t let them talk. Unlike the other couples flinging about, they stayed close, her face at his shoulder, his arms around her and hers about him. The dance wouldn’t let them look at each other. It was better this way, more comforting. Nor did he seem to mind. Both were lost in their separation. She liked being close to him yet alone. He kissed her, then stepped away and swung her back and forth, spun himself, and turned her. She laughed, jolted uncomfortably into freedom. You don’t have to care, he said, and it’s called enjoying yourself. She laughed again. The walls of the room ran around her. He was one side, then the other. His face was not part of her, but his body was, as he came near and spun off again. She missed a table by inches, and stepped back, close to him. She had never danced in her life, and now she had. He was quick, and even her clumsiness vanished.
He took a torch out of his pocket to light the path back. He liked the way to be plain, his uncertainties resolved. For her to have everything clear in life would be like having no head. She’d left all that behind. She would sit beside him in the car with no head. At the fair as a child there had been a headless woman. She remembered her terror on seeing the lit-up and gaudy poster. She had not dared ascend the wooden steps and see the woman with no head. Lost it in a terrible accident at some factory in Lancashire, a man beside them said. Every fair has a headless woman, her father scoffed. It’s the same one, the other man told him, travelling around. She makes better money, I’ll bet, than she did when she worked in the mill. Does she, though, her father wondered. She gripped his hand, and questioned why it was always a headless woman and never a headless man.
‘In tropical places,’ Tom was saying, ‘we didn’t walk anywhere without a torch shining at the ground, because of reptiles.’
Back at the room she said: ‘I care for you more than I’ve ever cared for anyone. It may not help at the moment to say it, but I want you to know, all the same.’
He stood in silence.
‘I’m sorry I’m such a misery,’ she said. But her soul was her own – sorry or not. In the uncertainty of degradation and homelessness she was herself. He did not attempt to control her by trying to share her despair. She did not need such assistance. He would not do it. He endured her feelings as far as it was possible to do so, but left her free with them, the only attitude which might help to detach her from an agony that would not release her. The nearest he would go to acknowledging her plight was to say, as he undressed: ‘We’d better get some sleep. We’ll both feel better tomorrow.’
What else could the poor bloke say? Unable to speak, she held him in a strong grip. He moved with her to the bed. She was a long way from anything she had known. He knew she was tormented, but there was nothing he could do. He was not the sort of man to do anything except allow her to endure while not being totally devastated himself. She had to break the ropes of past attachments, and weave new ones with her own unaided strength and will. She was remaking the life of another man, as she had first made the life of George by marrying him and getting him started in business and in life. She had brought up one child and would now bring up another. Was that to be all she would do with herself?
It was as if she were simply passing the years before starting something real, but by the time she was able to she would be dead. As far as she was concerned there was no other life but this, and she had to do what she wanted while there was still time. She had not come on earth to shoe-horn men out of their suits of armour and bring up their children, even though they would be called her children as well.
She had to decide – either end it, and do what she wanted, or leave things alone and live like a cabbage. The way was clear, and wide open. Every course was possible, desirable – or out of the question. She was trapped because the breadth of space was boundless. There was no firmer trap than that. She was caught beyond all possibility of movement because all movement was possible and no direction closed to her.
To leave one man and meet another – where was the sense in that? To abandon one child and have another – wherein lay the difference? To depart from one man she had never loved, to one she believed that she did, was that sufficient? The altered landscape clarified her ideas on the matter. The unknown language around them brought out only what was important. There was no time for dross, no space for former confusions. If she weren’t to die she must know what she wanted.
Men were more or less taken care of from the womb to the coffin. So were women – if that was what they wanted, but she was herself first and a woman second. She knew that now. He had been a sailor before being a man, but she had never been anything except a woman. The only strength was in being an individual. Even in the world at large – if it mattered to think so – the more individuals there were, instead of married couples, the greater the strength of that society. Double the number of individuals in a society and it would be indestructible. But if so few of them wanted to be individuals she would at any rate be one herself, as far as it was possible to be so. Only in that way could she survive.
Without any foreplay she pulled him into her, and in a few moments felt him ejaculate. Thus soothed, she fell asleep, only awake long enough to know that he had moved across to his own bed. The next thing she knew she was having vivid dreams and beginning to wake up.
9
He bought a box of antico Toscano, gnarled, dark-brown, foul-smelling cigars that nevertheless tasted ambrosial. No other word would fit, he said. He had looked more and more like a schoolboy since she had got the laboratory report that spread his smile beyond all doubt.
An Italian gentleman at the next coffee table leaned across to say it was customary to cut the antico Toscano into two and smoke half at a time. The tobacconist kept a special pair of scissors for the purpose, he added.
The palm-lined promenade was in sunlight. Tom preferred to smoke his roots in one long sixteen-centimetre stick, though he had thanked the Italian for his kind advice. They walked under the palms. ‘I mustn’t,’ she said, ‘forget to buy some insect repellent from the chemist, though I suppose if you smoked those all night and sat by my bed they wouldn’t stand much of a chance.’
‘I love you,’ he offered. ‘Of course I’ll do it.’
She believed him, whether said lightly or not. They loved each other, but didn’t know why. How could you know why? Only a fool would want to know. The reasons were obvious if you looked for them. The answers were always there before the questions. But he couldn’t convince her when he said this in all the seriousness of his easygoing manner. Oh how mixed that sailor’s manner was – far more so, it seemed, than when she had first met him.