Sometimes those discussions were a relief, simply because they took away from my loneliness. I had not the spirit to seek for Marion, away from her stage properties. That night at the theatre had been a misfire when I did not want another. It was out of loneliness that I returned to the group, for there I could find without effort the company of some young women. They welcomed me back. George began by saying: ‘I take it that you’re slightly reducing the extent of your other commitments.’
‘It’s over,’ I said. I did not wish to speak of it.
‘Thank God for that,’ said George. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.’ And automatically, from that moment, George demoted Sheila in his speech. After being cloaked in euphemisms for a year, she was referred to once more as ‘that damned countyfied bitch’.
Jack was listening, attentively and shrewdly. ‘Good,’ he said, but he looked troubled. I wondered if he noticed that, when I went out to the farm, I did not stir from the house for fear of the remote chance of meeting Sheila. I wondered too if he would pass any word to Marion.
With a considerateness that touched me, the Edens asked me to their Christmas Eve party, in my own right, asking me to bring a partner if I felt inclined. Eden went out of his way to drop the hint that they had ‘rather lost touch with Sheila Knight’. I went alone. Just as last year, the drawing-room was redolent of rum and spice and orange; most of last year’s party were there; all was safe, I listened to Eden, the fire blazed, Mrs Eden did not mention Sheila. In the early morning, when I left the house, it was colder than that last warm Christmas morning, and no car stood outside.
It was on a January morning, returning home from the reference library (I had changed my routine, so as never to be in the main shopping streets in the afternoon), that I found a telegram waiting at my lodgings. Before I opened it, I knew from whom it came. It read: YOU ONCE WANTED TO BORROW A BOOK FROM ME IT IS NOT A GOOD BOOK I SHALL BRING IT TO THE USUAL CAFÉ TOMORROW AT FOUR. It was signed SHEILA, and, luxuriating in the details, I noticed that it had been dispatched from her village that morning at nine-five. It gave me the pleasure of intimacy, silly and caressing, to think of her going to the post office straight after breakfast.
I made no struggle. I had two weapons to keep me out of danger — pain and pride. But I dismissed the pain, and thought only of my emptiness. As for pride, she had appeased that, for it was she who asked. I was infused by hope so sanguine that I felt the well-being pour through me to the fingertips. I watched motes dancing in the winter sunlight. Just as when I was first in love, it seemed that I had never seen things so fresh before.
The clock was striking four when I went through the café, past a pair of chess players already settled in for the evening, down to the last alcove. She was there, reading an evening paper, holding it as usual a long way from her eyes. She heard my footstep, and watched me as I sat down beside her.
She said: ‘I’ve missed you.’ She added: ‘I’ve brought the book. You won’t like it much.’
She set herself to talk as though there had been no interval. I was irritated, in one of those spells I had previously known. Was this she whose absence made each hour seem pointless? Yes, she was good-looking, but was that hard beauty really in my style? Yes, she was clever enough, but she had no stamina in anything she thought or did.
At the same instant I was chafing with impatience for reassurances and pledges. I did not want to listen to her, but to take her in my arms.
She saw that something was wrong. She frowned, and then tried to make me laugh. We exchanged jokes, and she worked at a curious awkward attempt to coax me. Once or twice the air was electric, but through my fault there were gaps of silence.
‘When shall I see you again?’ said Sheila, and we arranged a meeting.
I went away to drink with George, impatient with her, compelled by the habit of love to count the hours until I saw her next — but incredulous that I had not broken away. Perhaps it would have been like that, I thought, if our roles had been reversed and she had done the loving. There might have been many such teatimes. Perhaps it would have been better for us both. But when I drank with George there was no jubilation in my tone to betray that afternoon, even if he had been a more perceptive man.
By the first post of the day I was expecting her, I received a letter. My heart quickened, but as I read it I chuckled.
‘I can’t appear tomorrow afternoon’, she wrote, ‘because I have a shocking cold. I always get shocking colds. Come and see me, if you’d like to, and can face it. My mother will be out of the way, visiting the sick. If I were a parishioner, she would be visiting me, which would be the last straw.’
When I was shown into the drawing-room, I saw that Sheila was not exaggerating. She was sitting by the fire with her eyes moist, her lids swollen, her nostrils and upper lip all red; on the little table by her side were some books, an inhaler, and half a dozen handkerchiefs. She gave me a weak grin. ‘I told you it was a shocking cold. Every cold I have is like this.’ Her voice was unrecognisably low, as well as thick and muffled.
‘You can laugh if you want to,’ she said. ‘I know it’s comic.’
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ I said, ‘but it is a bit comic.’ I was feeling both affectionate and amused; she was so immaculate that this misadventure seemed like a practical joke.
‘My father doesn’t think so,’ she said with another grin. ‘He’s terrified of catching anything. He refuses to see me. He stays in his study all day.’
We had tea, or rather I ate the food and Sheila thirstily drank several cups. She told the maid that she would not eat anything, and the maid reproached her: ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever, Miss Sheila. You’re hungrier than you think.’
‘That’s all you know,’ Sheila retorted. In her mother’s absence the maid and Sheila were on the most companionable terms.
While I was eating, Sheila watched me closely.
‘You were cross with me the other day.’
‘A little,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘I’m trying to behave,’ she said. ‘What have I done?’
‘Nothing.’ It was true. Not once had she been cruel, or indifferent, or dropped a hint to rouse my jealousy.
‘Wasn’t it a good idea to make it up?’
I smiled.
‘Then what was the matter?’
I told her that I loved her totally, that no one could be more in love than I was, that no one could ever love her more. I had not seen her for three months and I had tried to forget her — three bitter months; then we met, and she expected me to talk amiably over the teacups as though nothing had happened.
Sheila blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and considered.
‘If you want to kiss me now, you can,’ she said. ‘But I warn you, I don’t really feel much like it.’
She pressed my hand. I laughed. Cold or no cold, her spirits were further from the earth than mine could ever be, and I could not resist her.
She was considering again.
‘Come to a ball,’ she said suddenly. She had been searching, I knew, for some way to make amends. With her odd streak of practicality, it had to be a tangible treat.
‘I hate balls,’ she said. ‘But I’ll go to this one if you’ll take me.’
‘This one’ was a charity ball in the town; Mrs Knight was insisting that her husband and Sheila should go; it would annoy Mrs Knight considerably if I made up the party, Sheila said, getting a double-edged pleasure.