A Misalliance (14 page)

She took down from her shelves a classical dictionary that had belonged to her grandfather and turned to the section on Hercules. This brute, this bully had performed actions that were accounted miracles in the ancient world. These actions were popularly known as the Twelve Labours, but now she found that there were more, as if they had proliferated in his wake. In his cradle he had crushed the heads of two serpents sent by Juno to strangle him. As a youth he impregnated the fifty daughters of Thespius in a single night,
‘which brought him fifty Boyes’. He destroyed the monster Hydra; he caught and killed the hind with brazen feet. In the Nemean forest he slew a lion that was not to be hurt by iron, wood or stone. He vanquished Diomedes, King of Thrace, and fed him to his horses. He slew the Erymanthian boar; he shot the Stymphalian birds; he tamed the wild bull of Crete. He vanquished his rival Achelous in a combat for his mistress Deianeira. He slew Busiris, King of Egypt. He strangled, in a wrestling match, the giant Antaeus. He, most beautifully, carried off the golden apples of the Hesperides. He conquered Geryon, King of Spain, and took away his herds of fat cattle. He beat out the brains of Cacus, who, like his father, Vulcan, vomited tongues of flame. He slew Lacinius and on the place of his triumph built a temple to Juno, called Juno Lacinia. He tamed the Centaurs. He cleansed the Augean stables. He delivered Hesione from the sea monster. He conquered the Queen of the Amazons. He went down into Hell and brought back Cerberus on a triple chain. With his arrow he shot the eagle that was feeding on the still-growing liver of Prometheus. He killed Cygnus, in a duel on horseback. He slew the winged sons of Boreas. He passed the torrid zone and the burning sands of Libya, and waded through the quicksands of the Syrtes. He slew Eurythus, King of Oechalia, and carried off the Princess Iole. This, however, was his undoing, for when Deianeira heard of it she sent him a poisoned shirt which led to his death. Then, read Blanche, ‘After his death he was held a god, and believed to be the same as the sun’. So the sun
is
God, she thought.

All through that dark night she thought of this, and much else besides. In the morning she dressed carefully and went to the hospital, as usual. It was one of her days there, and she saw no reason to change it. She worked conscientiously, left for home in the late afternoon, and bought herself a bottle of Meursault to drink when she got there.

Bathed and changed, she sat and waited for Bertie, although he had not said that he would come. Nevertheless, she expected him. She knew him to be on the brink of his Greek holiday and supposed that he would look in to say goodbye to her. It occurred to her that these visits were, from his point of view, not really necessary. It was a year since the divorce and she had still not gone on the rampage, so there could hardly be any need for him to keep up this rather wary form of supervision. And as she had never heaped reproaches on his head – although she had never gone to much trouble to hide her dislike of Mousie – she supposed that he came back out of solicitude, to see how she was getting on. She did not think that she was stimulating company these days, for she assumed that sadness had dimmed her wit: therefore she took care to look nice for him and to provide some refreshment.

‘You are the only person I know who thinks that cake is an accompaniment to wine,’ he said, helping himself. ‘This is rather good. Lemon?’

‘It neutralizes the acid,’ said Blanche. ‘And you can drink so much more if there is something to mop it up. Wine, in my opinion, is wasted on a meal.’

‘And what have you been doing with yourself?’ asked Bertie, leaning back comfortably and brushing crumbs from his shirt.

‘Bertie,’ said Blanche. ‘You look terrible. You need a haircut, and that shirt would look loud on a juvenile. There is no need to let yourself go, you know. When one is middle-aged, it behooves one to look one’s best.’

‘It behooves one, does it? Let me tell you, Blanche, I have more than enough to do these days without ogling myself in the glass every five minutes.’

‘That is hardly my fault, is it? Anyway, what do you do that is so arduous? What have you done today, for example, except to put on that absurd shirt, in Fulham, and drive to
the office? Have you been down to Hell and brought back Cerberus on a triple chain? Have you shot the Stymphalian birds? Have you delivered Hesione from the sea monster? Have you impregnated the fifty daughters of Thespius?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Bertie. ‘Is there another bottle of this?’

‘In a minute. It occurs to me, Bertie, that your life is rather easy, compared with that of Hercules.’

‘And why should I compare my life with that of Hercules?’

‘Because he proves that you can get away with murder and still be admired for it.’

‘And you think that I have got away with murder?’ asked Bertie, thinking, This is it. This is what I got away with, and perhaps what I have come back for. He had been preparing himself for such a confrontation and now that it had come, so late in the day, he had completely forgotten what it was he had meant to say. His careful arguments, many of them augmented by Mousie, had simply slipped away from him.

‘I suppose you have done what most men think of doing and what many men actually do. And I grant you that it must have taken some courage. You are a conventional man, Bertie, and you hate fuss.’

Bertie, who had got more fuss than he bargained for, sighed.

‘I can see’, said Blanche, with heightened colour, ‘that I am a limited woman. Or rather, a woman with limited appeal. I suppose I am rather careful, and you once called me stately. Not one of those nudging giggling women who seem to make such an impression on men. Except that I thought you were too intelligent to put up with that. I was wrong. It was what you wanted. Perhaps you never wanted me much in the first place.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Bertie. ‘I wanted you all right.’

‘But you left me.’

Bertie sighed. ‘I wanted to start again. It was as simple as that. I wanted to go through it all again, the excitement, the anxiety, even the upheaval. It was exhilarating. To tell the truth, since we are telling the truth, I didn’t expect to
have
to leave you. It was Mousie who …’

‘Ah, yes. And you didn’t think that might happen? In your exhilaration?’

‘I rather thought you might have understood it. You always understood
me
.’

‘I have just told you how much I understand you. And perhaps I would have condoned it if I hadn’t felt so disgraced. Those awful friends of yours thinking what a lark it all was and inviting you both to dinner. I divorced
them
as much as you. I thought I could manage better without all those reminders.’

‘And can you? Manage better, I mean.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I can’t. I don’t think I can manage at all. I think I have become more foolish since you left me. The only company I have is that of virtuous matrons or whatever lame dogs I happen to acquire. I have become reduced to somebody who is supposed to occupy herself with good works. Not that I am opposed to that, but I sometimes have the feeling that somebody else would do them if I didn’t. And it is so terrible to come back to an empty house. I can’t tell you how terrible it is. Of course, I have all those wonderful resources that people keep telling me about. There is always the National Gallery,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘And somehow I am expected to manage on my own. I don’t know why this is. I am expected to do without holidays or birthdays or Christmas or all those things that real three-dimensional people have. I am expected not to
expect
them.’

‘You could marry again,’ he said, watching her carefully. ‘Barbara tells me that you have been seeing something of Patrick Fox.’

‘Patrick? Are you suggesting that I should marry Patrick?’

‘He was always very fond of you.’

‘Patrick? How could I marry Patrick when I am still in love with you?’

They looked at each other in amazement.

‘Bertie,’ said Blanche. ‘Don’t come here again. It is too easy for you to look in and conclude that I am all right. And it makes it easier for me to know that I might see you again. But I don’t think you can come back, not after this evening. I shall have to have the courage not to know about you.’

‘And I about you?’

‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘We must abide by the agreement. All it needs is a little strength.’

‘But you have just told me that I am no Hercules.’

‘You wouldn’t want his record. Think of your conscience.’

‘I can’t say goodbye, Blanche.’

‘Yes, you can. You’ve said it once.’ But, she thought, it is the second time that kills.

Eventually she closed the door behind him, and stood for a moment, looking at the shattered cake that he had so enjoyed. And I forgot to open that second bottle, she thought, and sat down and wept.

‘So when she said she was going to Cornwall with her sister, I made no demur.’ Miss Elphinstone spoke from the doorway of the drawing-room, duster in one hand, silver candlestick in another. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to argue with her. I just gave her to understand that I couldn’t comment. What I can’t appreciate, I ignore.’

Blanche listened half-heartedly, although apparently giving Miss Elphinstone her full attention. Now if ever was the time to summon up her famous resources. The summer was advancing, revealing its empty side to those who stayed at home. Each morning the sun, blanketed in white mist, rose over the garden and hovered uncertainly for the rest of the day, before blazing with sudden intensity at about five o’clock, encouraging thoughts of settled weather. But the weather remained unsettled, with unusually high rainfall, which Blanche heard crepitating on the leaves of the garden in the early dawn. She rose in a daze of tiredness, her mind empty of thought, to face a day whose demands seemed to increase rather than to disappear with habit. Postcards arrived from absent friends. Barbara and Jack, about to depart for their cottage, telephoned with instructions about feeding the cats while they were away. Blanche imagined Bertie in Greece.

‘And what will you do with yourself while I’m away, Blanche?’ enquired Miss Elphinstone. ‘Mark you, I’ll only
be gone the week. Just give you time to miss me, won’t I?’ And she flashed Blanche a smile of great kindness before turning away to pack her leather hold-all, her rubber gloves carefully folded around her holiday money, and a freshly baked cherry cake, Blanche’s going away present, poised delicately on the top.

This would be a tedious day. Blanche supposed that she should telephone Sally but found herself curiously unwilling to do so. This little adventure had run its course, and perhaps Patrick was the one who could best steer it to some sort of conclusion. She felt a passing sadness at her own inadequacy but retained enough common sense to know that in this particular situation the complications would simply proliferate. It seemed to her that no one in Sally’s entourage had the brutality to engage her fully in the problems of the present. In any event, the focus of attention must now not be Sally but her mysterious husband, whom Blanche had no desire to meet. I really only wanted to know Elinor, she thought; her parents were necessary footnotes, whilst Elinor was the main concern. And now I don’t suppose that I shall see her again. Out of her pervading sorrow, she thought with sadness of the child.

It was in the early afternoon, when Miss Elphinstone had left, and a silence had fallen on the house, and on the street outside, that the telephone rang. ‘Why, hello, Blanche,’ said Sally warmly. ‘How are you?’ Blanche murmured that she was well. ‘Nellie and I were wondering if you could come to tea today. Nellie’s longing to see you,’ said Sally. There was a specious brightness about her voice that Blanche perceived over and above the proffered invitation. It was as if Sally were disturbed in some way and was translating this disturbance into the habit of thought that came most easily to her: blitheness. Simultaneously, Blanche recognized this blitheness with a certain amount of dread. The old feeling of fear instilled itself into her mind again. Somehow her
contact with Sally was experienced as a loss of her own competence, for behind that blitheness lay requirements which she would be expected to meet without ever quite knowing what they were. Having marked Blanche down as inadequate to her purposes, Sally had perforce to make use of her. Blanche was quite aware of this. Her fear came in part from the feeling of being ruthlessly pursued and partly from an older feeling, and for an instant she saw in her mind’s eye the dream that she had had: herself, with white feathers in her hair, pulling on the oars of a rowing boat, while her mother, dressed in beige chiffon, looked on amused. But this is ridiculous, she told herself; no one is pursuing me. It may even be that I am lending myself to this, just as I did to Mother’s little manoeuvres, which could be the meaning of the white feathers. But she knew that she had dreamed the dream in the first place, and that she was thinking about it now because she had felt she was the one who needed rescuing, and that she had been reduced to this galley-slave behaviour only by the indifference of others.

Sally, she was aware, was quite indifferent to her. She was neither amusing enough, indiscreet enough, nor indeed rich enough to share any serious confidences with her. Sally regarded her as an extremely distant outpost of the welfare services, and was no doubt imprinted with this belief because she had first met Blanche at the hospital. Sally probably regarded the offerings left under the lid of the teapot as some kind of official contribution to her predicament and had not questioned it, indeed would not even dream of questioning it. She regarded this strange hiatus in her fortunes as some kind of accident, for which the influence of Saturn or some other cosmic configuration was to blame. Her main concern was to live through it unencumbered by responsibility, in order to move on smoothly to happier times with the least possible inconvenience. Blanche could see that when the time came for her to move on she would leave no trace
behind, as if indeed her footprints were as weightless as those of the nymphs or dryads she so closely resembled.