CHAPTER XXIX
The blinds were up; the sunlight lay bright across the
dressing-table. Helen, as usual, was
still in bed. The days were so
long. Lying in the soft, stupefying
warmth of her own body under the quilt, she shortened them with sleep, with
vague inconsequential thoughts, with drowsy reading. The book, this morning, was Shelley's
poems. 'Warm fragrance,' she read,
articulating the words in an audible whisper, 'seemed to fall from her light
dress
' (She saw a long-legged figure in white muslin, with sloping shoulders
and breasts high set.)
from her light
dress
And
her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The
air of her own speed was disentwined
(The
figure was running now, in square-toed pumps cross-gartered with black ribbon
over the white cotton stockings.)
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint
wind;
And
in the soul a wild odour is felt
Beyond
the sense, like fiery dews that melt
Into the bosom of a frozen bud
The
half-opened rose gave place to Mark Staithes's strangely twisted face. Those things he had told her the other night
about perfumes. Musk,
ambergris
And Henri Quatre with his bromidrosis of the feet. Bien vous en prend
d'κtre roi; sans cela on ne vous pourrait souffrir. Vous puez comme charogne. She made a grimace. Hugh's smell was like sour milk.
A
clock struck. Nine,
ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve! She felt guilty; then defiantly decided that
she would stay in bed for lunch. A
remembered voice it was Cynthia's sounded reproachfully in her memory. 'You ought to go out more, see more
people.' But people, Cynthia's people, were
such bores. Behind closed eyelids, she
saw her mother rapping the top of her skull:
'Solid ivory, my dear!' Hopelessly stupid, ignorant, tasteless, slow. 'I was brought up above my mental station,'
was what she had said to Anthony the other night. 'So that now, if ever I
have to be with people as silly and uneducated as myself, it's torture,
absolute torture!'
Cynthia
was sweet, of course; always had been, ever since they were at school
together. But Cynthia's husband that
retriever! And her young men, and the
young men's young women! 'My boyfriend. My girlfriend.' How
she loathed the words and, still more, the awful way they spoke them! So coy, such saucy implications of sleeping
together! When, in fact, most of them
were utterly respectable. In the few
cases where they weren't respectable, it seemed even worse a double
hypocrisy. Really sleeping together, and
pretending to be only archly pretending to do it. The dreary, upper-class Englishness of it
all! And then they were always playing
games. 'Ga-ames,' Mrs Amberley drawled
out of a pre-morphia past. 'A Dear Old
School in every home.' See more of those
people, do more of the things they did
She shook her head.
Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate
Whose
course has been so starless
Was it all nonsense? Or did it mean something something
marvellous she had never experienced?
But, yes, she had experienced it.
For in the fields of Immortality
My
spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
A
divine presence in a place divine
It was humiliating, now, to admit it; but
the fact remained that, with Gerry, she had known exactly what those lines
signified. A divine
presence in a place divine. And
it had been the presence in bed of a swindler who was also a virtuoso in the
art of love-making. She found a perverse
pleasure in insisting, as brutally as she could, upon the grotesque disparity
between the facts and what had then been her feelings.
I love
thee; yes, I feel
That
on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is
set, to keep its waters pure and bright
For thee
Noiselessly,
Helen laughed. The sound of the clock
chiming the quarter made her think again of Cynthia's advice. There were also the other people the people
they met when Hugh and she dined with the Museum or the University. 'Those god-fearing people' (her mother spoke
again), 'who still go on fearing God even though they've pitched him
overboard.' Fearing
God on committees. Fearing him in W.E.A. Lecture-rooms. Fearing him through
interminable discussions of the Planned Society. But Gerry's good looks, Gerry's technique as
a lover how could those be planned out of existence? Or the foetus irrepressibly growing and
growing in the womb? 'A
co-ordinated housing scheme for the whole country.' She remembered Frank Ditchling's eager,
persuasive voice. He had a turned-up
nose, and the large nostrils stared at one like a second pair of eyes,
insistently. 'Redistribution of the
population
Satellite towns
Green belts
Lifts even in working-class flats
' She had listened, she had succumbed to the spell of his hypnotic nostrils,
and at the time it had seemed splendid, worth dying for. But afterwards
Well, lifts were very
convenient she wished there were one to her own flat. Parks were nice to walk in. But how would Frank Ditchling's crusade
affect any of the serious issues?
Co-ordinated housing wouldn't make her mother any less dirty, any less
hopelessly at the mercy of an intoxicated body.
And Hugh would Hugh be any different in a satellite town and with a
lift from what he was now, when he walked up four flights of stairs in
It
was all beside the point. For the point was those silences in which Hugh enclosed himself at
meals. The point was that
martyred expression he put on if ever she came into his study while he was
working. The point was the furtive
squalor of those approaches in the darkness, the revolting detachment and
gentleness of a sensuality, in which the part assigned to her
was purely ideal. The point was that
expression of dismay, almost of horror and disgust, which she had detected that
time, within the first few weeks of their marriage, when she was laid up with
the flu. He had shown himself
solicitous; and at first she had been touched, had felt grateful. But when she discovered how heroic an effort
it cost him to attend upon her sick body, the gratitude had evaporated. In itself, no doubt, the effort was
admirable. What she resented, what she
couldn't forgive was the fact that an effort had had to be made. She wanted to be accepted as she was, even in
fever, even vomiting bile. In that book
on mysticism she had read, there was an account of Mme Guyon picking up from
the floor a horrible gob of phlegm and spittle and putting it in her mouth as
a test of will. Sick, she had been
Hugh's test of will; and, since then, each month had renewed his secret horror
of her body. It was an intolerable
insult and would be no less intolerable in one of Ditchling's satellite
towns, in the planned world those god-fearing atheists were always talking
about.
But
there was also Fanny Carling. 'The
mouse' was Helen's name for her she was so small, so grey, so
silently quick. But a
mystical mouse. A mouse with
enormous blue eyes that seemed perpetually astonished by what they saw behind
the appearances of things. Astonished,
but bright at the same time with an inexplicable happiness a happiness that
to Helen seemed almost indecent, but which she envied. 'How does one believe in things that are
obviously false?' she had asked, half in malice, half genuinely desirous of learning
a valuable secret. 'By living,' the
mouse answered. 'If you live in the
right way, all these things turn out to be obviously true.' And she went on to talk incomprehensible
stuff about the love of God and the love of things and people for the sake of
God. 'I don't know what you mean.' 'Only because you don't
want to, Helen.' Stupid,
maddening answer! 'How do you know what
I want?'
Sighing,
Helen returned to her book.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose
doctrine is, that each one should select
Out
of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
('One
of my boyfriends
')
And all the rest, though fair and wise
commend
To
cold oblivion, though it is the code
Of
modern morals, and the beaten road
Which
those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
Who
travel to their home among the dead
By
the broad highway of the world, and so
With
one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The
dreariest and the longest journey go.
The
dreariest and the longest, she repeated to herself. But it could be as long, she thought, and as
dreary with several as with only one with Bob and Cecil and Quentin as with
Hugh.
True Love in this differs from gold and
clay,
That
to divide is not to take away.
'I don't believe it,' she said aloud; and anyhow
there hadn't been much love to divide.
For poor little Cecil she had never pretended to be more than
sorry. And with Quentin it was just
well, just hygiene. As for Bob, he had
genuinely cared for her and she, on her side, had done her best to care for
him. But under those charming manners of
his, under those heroic good looks there was really nothing. And as a lover, how hopelessly clumsy he had
been, how barbarous and uncomprehending!
She had broken with him after only a few weeks. And perhaps, she went on to think, that was
her fate to lose her heart only to men like Gerry, to be loved only by men
like Hugh, and Bob and Cecil. To worship cruelty and meanness, be adored by deficiency.
The
telephone bell rang; Helen picked up the receiver.
'Hullo.'
It
was the voice of Anthony Beavis that answered.
He wanted her to dine with him tomorrow.
'I'd
love to,' she said, though she had promised the evening to Quentin.
There
was a smile on her face, as she leaned back again on the pillows. An intelligent man, she was thinking. Worth fifty of these
wretched little Cecils and Quentins.
And amusing, charming, even rather good-looking. How nice he had been to her the other night
at Mark's dinner! Had
gone out of his way to be nice. Whereas that pretentious ass Pritchley had gone out of his way to
be rude and snubbing. She had
wondered at the time whether Anthony wasn't rather attracted by her. Had wondered and rather hoped so. Now, this invitation gave her reasons, not
only for hoping, but for thinking so as well.
She hummed to herself; then, suddenly energetic, threw back the
bedclothes. She had decided that she
would get up for lunch.