Did I miss her? I did, but in an odd way that perplexes me. What I came to feel at the losing of her, at the loosing of her, wasn’t the furnace blast of anguish that might have been expected, but rather a kind of pained nostalgia, such as, oddly, I knew in childhood, sitting by the window, say, on a winter eve, chin on fist, watching the rain on the road like a corps of tiny ballet dancers, each drop sketching a momentary pirouette before doing the dying swan and collapsing into itself. Remember, remember what they were like, those hours at the window, those twilight dreamings by the fire? What I was yearning for was something that had never been. By that I don’t mean to deny what I once felt for Polly, what she once meant to me. Only now when my mind reached out for her it closed on nothing. I could recall, and can recall, every tiniest thing about her, in vividest and achingmost detail — the taste of her breath, the heat in that little hollow at the base of her spine, the damp mauve sheen of her eyelids when she slept — but of the essential she only a wraith remained, ungraspable as a woman in a dream. What I mean to say is, the loss of my love for Polly, of Polly’s love for me, was — something something something, hold on, I’m groping towards it. Ah, no good, I’ve lost the thread. But love, anyway, why do I keep worrying at it, like a dog gnawing at its sores? Love, indeed.
A TREATISE ON LOVE, SHORTER VERSION
All love is self-love
There, does that nail it?
I couldn’t remain for long at the studio, sneaking out to buy the few essentials for survival and scuttling back again and huddling at the cluttered table drinking milk straight from the bottle and nibbling on crusts of bread and bits of cheese, like old Ratty, my friend and mascot from gate-lodge days. There was no Maisie Kearney nearby to make clandestine sandwiches for me. Also it was very cold. The heating system, such as it was, seemed to have broken down entirely, and if it hadn’t been for the fug of warmth seeping up through the floorboards from the laundry below I might have died — is it possible to be indoors and yet perish from exposure? And there was nothing to do, either, except brood, surrounded by what seemed the rubble of my life; the canvases stacked against the walls looked as if they had turned their faces away in shame. Conditions were primitive, as you would expect. Don’t enquire about hygiene. I hadn’t even a toothbrush, or a clean pair of socks, and for some reason never thought to purchase such items on my hurried outings to the shops. Mrs. Bird, the launderer’s wife, very kindly came to my rescue. I relinquished my clothes to her, passing them to her round the doorpost in a bundle, and she washed and dried and ironed them while I sat upstairs wrapped in a rug, sighing and sneezing. That was a low point, the very nadir, I would say, except that there was worse to come.
In desperation I thought of returning to the gate-lodge and lying low there again for a while, but there are only so many times one can revisit scenes of childhood; the past gets worn out, worn down, like everything else.
Anyway, after I had been three or four days on the run, Gloria turned up. Don’t know how she knew I was at the studio; wifely instinct, I expect. Or maybe Mrs. Bird told her I was there. Mrs. Bird has some experience in these matters, flighty Mr. Bird being a notorious philanderer and frequent bolter. I was cleaning brushes that didn’t need cleaning when there was a tap at the door. I froze, and caught sight of myself in the big mirror over by the door of the lavatory, round-eyed with fright. I knew it couldn’t be Mrs. Bird: she would not call on me unbidden. Good God, could it be Polly, returning to give me yet another piece of her mind, or the Prince, perhaps, old sad-eyed Freddie, to slap me across the face with his driving gauntlets and call me out for pinching his precious book? I crossed to the door on tiptoe and put my ear against the wood. What did I expect to hear? Someone fuming out there, the cracking of knuckles and the impatient tapping of a foot, or maybe even the repeated slap of a truncheon into a callused palm? Deep down I have always been terrified of authority, especially the kind that comes knocking on my door in the middle of an otherwise uneventful afternoon.
Gloria, when she is not quite at ease and feels called on to show her mettle, adopts a sort of swagger that I have always found endearing, and at the same time a little sad and, I have to confess it, a bit embarrassing, too. Of course, I do not let on that I can see through her pose — that wouldn’t do: we must allow each other our little subterfuges if life is to be lived at all. So into the studio she came sashaying, not quite but almost with a hand propped insouciantly on her hip — that’s how I always see her in my mind, hand-on-hip — and gave me as she passed me by one of her wryest, most knowing, most withering, small smiles. She is at the best of times a woman of few words, a thing in which she differs markedly from me, as you will know by now. That stillness, the air she has of keeping her own counsel and of having a lot of counsel to keep, was one of the traits that attracted me to her in the first place, long ago. I suppose it lent her a certain sibylline quality. Even still I always feel, with her, that I’m in the presence of a large secret studiedly withheld. Have I said that before? Nowadays it all feels like repetition. Think I’ve said that, too. Where will it end, I want to know: the painster in a padded cell, straitjacketed and manacled to the bed, muttering in a monotone the one word over and over, me me me me me me me me me me me.
Gloria stopped in the middle of the floor, turned and stood in her fashion model’s pose, head back, chin up, one foot thrust forwards, and looked about. “So this,” she said, “is where you’re skulking now.”
Skulking? Skulking? She was trying to provoke me. I didn’t mind. I was surprised at how pleased I was to see her, despite everything, including the thick ear I was bound to get at any moment now. There was something almost playful in her manner, however, something even flirtatious. It was very puzzling, but I was glad of the glimmer of warmth, wherever it was coming from.
Yes, I had been staying here, I said, with a sniff, standing on my dignity, what shreds of it were left. Needed time to think, I said, to consider my options, arrive at some decisions. “I thought you’d come for me before now,” I said.
That elicited a dry chuckle. “Like Mummy fetching you home after school?” she said.
I had been gone, in all, for little more than a week, first at the gate-lodge, then briefly at Grange Hall, then here. What had she been doing during that time? Certainly not watching by the window with a candle lit for my return, if her scathing look and brittle manner were anything to go by.