“Are you trying to comfort me?”
She burst out: “I wonder if it’s true. I don’t know. I don’t know anything now. I’ve given up trying to understand.”
I put my arm round her, and at the touch she began to speak with intense emotion.
“I can’t give him up,” she said. “Sometimes I think I only exist so far as I exist in his mind. If he doesn’t think of me, then I fall to pieces. There’s nothing of me any more.”
“Would it be better,” I said, “if he went away?”
“No,” she cried, in an access of fear. “You’re to tell him nothing. You’re not to tell him to go. He must stay here. My mother needs him. You know how much she needs him.”
It was true, but it was a pretext by which Joan saved her pride. For still she could not bear to let him out of her sight.
Perhaps she knew that she had given herself away, for suddenly her tone changed. She became angry with a violence that I could feel shaking her body.
“He’ll stay because she needs him,” she said with ferocity. “He’ll consider anything she wants. He’s nice and considerate with her. So he is with everyone — except me. He’s treated me abominably. He’s behaved like a cad. He’s treated me worse than anyone I could have picked up off the streets. He’s wonderful with everyone — and he’s treated me like a cad.”
She was trembling, and her voice shook.
“I don’t know how I stood it,” she cried. “I asked less than anyone in the world would have asked. And all I get is this.”
Then she caught my hand. The anger left her as quickly as it had risen. She had flared from hunger into ferocity, and now both fell away from her, and her tone was deep, tender and strong.
“You know, Lewis,” she said, “I can’t think of him like that. It’s perfectly true, he’s treated me abominably, yet I can’t help thinking that he’s really good. I see him with other people, and I think I am right to love him. I know he’s done wicked things. I know he’s done wicked things to me. But they seem someone else’s fault.”
The sun had dipped now to the edge of the sea. Her eyes glistened in the radiance; for the first time that night, they were filmed with tears. Her voice was even.
“I wish I could believe,” she said, “that he’ll be better off without me. I might be able to console myself if I believed it. But I don’t. How does he expect to manage? I’m sure he’s unhappier than any human soul. I can look after him. How does he expect to manage, if he throws it away?”
She cried out: “I don’t think he knows what will become of him.”
Part Three
The Last Attempt
24: Two Dismissals
After Boscastle I saw little of Roy for months. He altered his plans, and returned to Germany for the summer and autumn; I heard rumours that he was behaving more wildly than ever in his life, but the difference between us was at its deepest. We met one day in September, when he flew back at the time of Munich. It was a strange and painful afternoon. We knew each other so well; at a glance we knew what the other was feeling; though we were on opposite sides, we were incomparably closer than with an ally. Yet our words were limp, and once or twice a harsh note sounded.
I talked about myself, on the chance of drawing a confidence from him. But he was mute. He was mute by intention, I knew. He was keeping from me some inner resolve and a vestige of hope. He was secretive, hard, and restless.
I thought for the first time that the years were touching him. His smile was still brilliant, and made him look very young. But the dark nights had at last begun to leave their mark. The skin under his eyes was prematurely rough and stained, and the corners of his mouth were tight. His face was lined less than most men’s at twenty-eight — but it showed the wear of sadness. If one met him now as a stranger, one would have guessed that he had been unhappy. The mould was shaped for the rest of his life.
There was another change which, as I noticed with amusement, sometimes ruffled him. It ruffled him the morning of our discoveries about Bidwell.
Roy had come back to the college in November and was working in Cambridge until the new year. One December morning, Bidwell woke me in the grey twilight with his invariable phrase: “That’s nine o’clock, sir.” He pattered soft-footed about my bedroom and said, in his quiet soothing bedside voice: “Mr Calvert sends his compliments, sir. And he wonders if you would be kind enough to step up after breakfast. He says he has something to show you, sir.”
The message brought back more joyous days, when Roy “sent his compliments” two or three mornings a week — usually with some invitation or piece of advice attached, which Bidwell delivered, as honest-faced, as solemn, as sly-eyed, as a French mayor presiding over a wedding.
I went up to Roy’s rooms immediately after breakfast. His sitting-room was empty: the desks glinted pink and green and terra cotta in the crepuscular morning light. Roy called from his bedroom: “Bidwell is a devil. We need to stop him.”
He was standing in front of his mirror, brushing his hair. It was then I noticed that he was taking some care about it. His hair was going back quickly at the temples, more quickly than I had realised, since he managed to disguise it.
“Still vain,” I jeered. “Aren’t you getting too old for vanity?” I was oddly comforted to see him at it. The face in the mirror was sad and grave; yet somehow it brought him to earth, took the edge from my forebodings, to watch him seriously preoccupied about going bald.
“Nothing will stop it,” said Roy. “The women will soon be saying — ‘Roy, you’re bald.’ And I shall have to point a bit lower down and tell them — ‘Yes, but don’t you realise that I’ve got nice intelligent eyes?’”
Then he turned round.
“But it’s Bidwell we need to talk about. He’s a devil.”
Roy had now been back in his rooms for a fortnight. During that time, he had made a list of objects which, so far as he remembered, had disappeared during his months abroad. The list was long and variegated. It included two gowns, several bottles of spirits, a pair of silver candlesticks, most of his handkerchiefs and several of his smartest ties.
I was amused. Our relations with Bidwell had been curious for a long while past. We had known that he was mildly dishonest. There was a narrow line between what a college servant could regard by tradition as his perquisites and what his fingers should not touch. We had known for years that Bidwell crossed that line. Any food left over from parties, half-empty bottles — those were legitimate “perks”. But Bidwell did not content himself with them. He took a kind of tithe on most of the food and drink we ordered. Neither of us had minded much. I shut my eyes to it through sheer negligence and disinclination to be bothered: Roy was nothing like so careless, and had made one sharp protest. But we were neither of us made to persist in continuous nagging.
We happened to be very fond of Bidwell. He was a character, sly, peasant-wise, aphoristic. He had a vivid picture of himself as a confidential gentlemen’s servant, and acted up to it with us. He loved putting on his dress suit and waiting at our big dinner parties. He loved waking us up with extreme care after he had found the glasses of a heavy night. He loved being discreet and concealing our movements. “I hope I haven’t done wrong, sir,” he used to say with a knowing look. We did not mind his being lazy, we were prepared to put up with some mild dishonesty: we felt he liked us too much to go beyond a decent friendly limit.
Roy worked him harder than I did, but we were both indulgent and tipped him lavishly. Each of us had a suppressed belief that he was Bidwell’s favourite. Our guests at dinner parties, seeing that wise, rubicund, officiating face, told us how much they envied our luck in Bidwell. All in all, we thought ourselves that we were lucky.