‘I’m here,’ he pointed out — unnecessarily, she thought ‘I won’t run away.’
‘I don’t care whether you do or not.’
‘So that’s it,’ he started. ‘A minute ago it was equality. I’m all in favour of that, but what sort do you mean?’
This touched her rawly. ‘Together we can seem strong, and even be strong. But apart, things aren’t so firm.’
He looked at her, a woman with a light in her eyes that would take a lifetime to penetrate, but what riches would pass from one to another in the process! Last night he had relished her small breasts and firm hips, and now when she turned a gaze on him he found it hard to meet.
‘Human beings are like that,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect anything else. I’m not too proud to lean on you if you’ll do me the honour of leaning on me! I not only love you, but I like you as well, and I can’t say more than that. I never was much good at lovers’ speeches, but our love’s gone beyond that by now. It’s going into the fire of life and God knows what it’ll find there. The best love goes into it, and if it’s worth anything it never comes out because the flame won’t relax its grip. In many ways it’s a savage flame, jealous on both sides, but it holds us together in bed at night so that we feel part of the earth and each other. Can I say it’ll go on longer than that? Whether the flame lasts till we die depends on what we’ve got in us. But who can say? Who can promise or prophesy? I feel it in you, but only you can tell me whether I’ve got it in me. I don’t even know whether it’s love or not, and that’s how I feel, and all I can say about it. After that it’s normal everyday humdrum life and work and care — while knowing for sure that the fire burns in us both for as long as we want it to. I’ve grown to dislike strength. I distrust it now, so I know it’s not strength. It’s something beyond. I’m not strong, and I’m not weak either, and maybe it’s the same with you, though I’ll let you say so if you like, and if you don’t I won’t mind! It’s just a rooted feeling I’ve got, because we’ve been through a lot together, and for each other, so it’s had time to get there, though I saw it first thing, when you left your husband that day and came to my room in Camden Town. If you remember it as long as I do we’re in that flame for good. The trouble with me is — and I know you’ve always felt this — that I don’t explain things. I don’t talk, I don’t say much. It’s not that I’m inarticulate, because my mind is continually talking and explaining and saying things to itself. I just don’t think many things are important, or worth bringing to my lips. It’s not even that I’m too lazy to talk, either, because I’ll often go out of my way to do things or work. Anyway, it always takes less energy to talk than it does to listen, or say nothing. While you talk you make energy to go on talking. I’m sure of that. You start to tell lies because you get carried away. You get too much energy, so you say things that don’t matter. I suppose that’s why I don’t or won’t say that I love you in so many words, because I believe that things should speak for themselves, though they hardly ever do, so I have to end up saying something. And anyway, if the comforting and tormenting flame is bright enough, there’s no need to point it out. It’s almost sacrilegious to show it for what it is, not because I’m afraid of it going away but because I feel embarrassed at stating the obvious. Maybe I’m wrong. In the beginning was the Word, and I should speak, but at the same time I know that one should not use the Word in vain, and who’s to say whether it’s vain or not till it’s finally over and we’re dead?’
She stood a few feet from him, her face turned away, listening to his measured words while a thin rain fell. He could have gone on talking. When he once began, it sounded even more natural than not talking. But he stopped, and stepped over to her, took her by the shoulders and kissed the back of her neck. ‘You weren’t listening?’
She turned, which he was glad of so that he could kiss her lips. ‘What have you left for me to say?’
She looked at him, a faint apprehension on realising from the set of his face that she was likely to be with him for a long time. Luckily, she was in love, and so was he, but how long could they make it last? She would never think it wrong to ask such a question of herself.
‘Tell me your side of it whenever you like,’ he said.
‘I will.’
He took her hand. ‘If ever it’s necessary.’
‘It will be,’ she said, ‘time and time again. I think I’m a normal sort of person, and I live my life trying not to be alarmed by it.’
They walked down the hill and, half-way to the village, had to stand in towards the hedge to let a car go by. It was the Morris Traveller from the house, and Myra waved when she saw Enid at the wheel. Dean was sitting beside her, and in the back were several suitcases, and Dean’s bulging rucksack.
Frank stared, but they did not look at him, or give any sign of having seen Myra — though the car passed within a foot of them. The windscreen wipers were going against the rain, but Enid’s beautiful and slender face was stony and set at the road, an expression of misery and determination from which her blonde hair was swept back neatly into a tail.
Dean beside her looked happy, though bemused, and rubbed a hand over his bunched features as if rain were falling directly on to them. The windows were partly open, and the radio was playing a song by that new group called The Beatles.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Maria was in the kitchen, and he asked her where Enid was.
‘Don’t know,’ she said sulkily.
He put the perfume on the dresser, and saw some letters resting against a mug. The first had no stamp on, only his name in Enid’s handwriting. He took this and several others into the living-room, and saw at a glance that none conveyed the overdue cheque from Teddy Greensleaves, so he ripped Enid’s letter quickly open.
‘Dear Albert,’ he read, ‘I have gone away with Dean and I’m not coming back, not to live with you, anyway. I’ve left you and the children so that I can live another life, because I’m in love with Dean and he’s in love with me. By the time you get this we’ll be on the sea for Ostend, because we are going to Turkey, to live there a while. After then, I don’t know where. I drove the Morris to the station at Bedford, and left it in the car park to collect whenever you like with the spare keys.
‘I suppose you’ve found out by now about the cheque from your gallery. I signed your name on it, and put it into my account, so that we’ll have a bit of money to start us off with. We also took the money from the tobacco tin in your studio. I hope you don’t mind, but I had to do it this way because I didn’t want any fuss. I know you’d have given me the money if I asked for it, but I couldn’t face the bother when I told you what it was for. In any case, I have worked for it all these years.
‘I’m sure you won’t mind me going away, because it was finished a long time ago. There’s no more we can find out’ about each other. It’s plain a mile off, and we both know it. It’s a big wrench for me to leave the kids, but I’m sure you’ll take care of them. I know I can rely on you for that at least. Well. Dean is waiting in the car, and getting impatient, so I have to go.’
He threw the letter aside. It was fairly short for such good riddance. He could hardly believe his luck. Free at last. Locked into the domestic prison at eighteen and now, at forty-four, liberated by the armies of adolescent passion! Released by a curt letter from his skedaddling all-in-all wife! But did she think you only lived as man and wife so as to get to know each other? She must have got such a shallow idea from that flat-faced little bastard Dean.