An Accidental Man (3 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Yes.'

Ludwig Leferrier stared down into the small calm radiant unsmiling face of Gracie Tisbourne. Was it conceivable that the girl was joking? It was. Oh Lord.

‘Look, Gracie, are you serious?'

‘Yes.'

‘But I mean —'

‘Of course if you want to back out of it —'

‘Gracie! But — but — Gracie, do you love me?'

‘Can you not infer that from what I said just now?'

‘I don't want inferred love.'

‘I love you.'

‘It's impossible!'

‘This is becoming a rather stupid argument.'

‘Gracie. I can't believe it!' argument.'

‘Why are you so surprised?' said Gracie. ‘Surely the situation has been clear for some time. It has been to all my friends and relations.'

‘Oh damn your friends and relations — I mean — Gracie, you do really mean it? I love you so dreadfully much —'

‘Don't be so
silly,
Ludwig,' said Gracie. ‘Sometimes you're just a very
silly
man. I love you, and I've done so ever since you kissed me behind that tomb thing in the British Museum. I never thought I'd be so lucky.'

‘But you expected this?'

‘I expected it now.'

‘I didn't.'

‘So are you now dismayed?'

‘No! I've loved you for ages. But you're so sort of grand. Everyone's after you.'

‘I'm not grand. And that's a very vulgar way of putting it.'

‘Sorry —'

‘I'm small and ignorant, whereas you know everything.'

‘As if that — ! I thought I was one of hundreds.'

‘Well, you're one of one.'

‘You've been so calm!'

‘A girl has her pride. Shall we now go hand in hand and tell my parents?'

‘No, please — I say, will they mind?'

‘They'll be delighted.'

‘I somehow thought they wanted you to marry that guy Sebastian.'

‘They want what I want.'

‘They won't mind my being American?'

‘Why should they? Especially as you aren't going back to America any more.'

‘You said once they wanted you to marry an Englishman.'

‘Only because anyone else might take me away. But you won't. We'll be living in Oxford.'

‘I don't know about Oxford. Oh Jesus, Gracie, I can't believe it, I'm so happy — Darling, please —'

Gracie's divan bed, on which they were sitting was very narrow and fitted in beneath a long white shelf. Small fat cushions, which Ludwig hated, and which Gracie referred to as her ‘pussy cats', further reduced the sitting or lying area. Ludwig banged his head on the shelf. One hand burrowed under Gracie's warm thigh. His head sank and he felt the roughness of his cheek against the smoothness of her taut dress. Crushed close together, two hearts battered in their cages. No screen of calm now. Ludwig groaned. He had never made love to her. The thing was anguish.

‘Mind the table!'

He began to fall off, twisting a rubbery leg to avoid a crash, and subsided embracing the coffee pot while Gracie above him stifled laughter. ‘Ssh, Ludwig!'

The Tisbourne's house in Kensington, pretentiously called Pitt's Lodge, was a narrow poky little gentleman's residence cluttered with elegant knick-knacks masquerading as furniture. Ludwig had already broken two chairs. Behind the papery walls of the small rooms Gracie's parents were omnipresent. Now just outside the door Clara Tisbourne was calling down to her husband, ‘Pinkie darling, the Odmores want us for the
second
weekend.' It was an impossible situation even if Gracie had been willing. He could not take Gracie to his own apartment because Gracie disliked Mitzi Ricardo. Mitzi also disliked Gracie and referred to her as ‘little Madam' until she realized that Ludwig loved her. Perhaps it would have to be the British Museum again.

‘Whatever shall we do?' he said to Gracie.

‘About what?'

They had never discussed sex. He had no idea whether Gracie was a virgin. Must he now tell her about his campus amours? Oh Christ.

‘Here. Yes, I know. Dear Ludwig, just sit quietly and hold my hand.'

He looked into the mysterious guileless eyes of the girl to whom he had committed himself, his life, his future, his thoughts, his feelings, his whole spiritual being. She was so fantastically young. He felt centuries older than this opening flower. He felt coarse, gross, ancient, dirty. At the same moment it occurred to him that she was almost totally a stranger. He loved, he was engaged to be married to, a complete stranger.

‘Gracie, you are so pure, so true.'

‘That's your
silly
talk.'

‘You're so young!'

‘I'm nineteen. You're only twenty-two.'

‘When shall we get married? How quickly can one get married in England?'

‘We've only just got engaged.
Please
, Ludwig. You know the way mama bounces in.'

‘What's the use of being engaged? I want —'

‘It's nice being engaged. We shall be a long time married. Let's enjoy our engagement. It's such a special time. I've so much liked the first five minutes of it.'

‘But, Gracie, how are we going to —'

‘Besides, mama will insist on a big white wedding and those things take ages to organize.'

‘Surely we don't have to have all that crap? Gracie, you know you can always get what you want —'

‘Well, I want it too. It will be such fun. I'll have Karen Arbuthnot as a bridesmaid —'

‘Gracie, have a heart —'

‘We couldn't get married now anyway with grandmama so ill. Supposing she were to die on our wedding day?'

‘Is she very ill?'

‘Aunt Charlotte says she's dying. But that may be wishful thinking.'

‘I feel so terribly afraid I'll lose you.'

‘Don't be idiotic. Here's my hand here, feel it.'

‘Gracie, poppet, are you sure you don't mind —'

‘What? Ludwig, you're
trembling
.'

‘It's all so sudden. I've been in such a state these last weeks.'

‘About little me?'

‘Yes, about you. And about — Yes. Gracie, you're sure you don't mind what I've done? I mean my not going back ever, my not going to fight, you know —'

‘Why should I mind your not wanting to fight in a wicked war? Why should I mind your choosing to live here in England with me and become English?'

‘Later on you might want to go to America and we couldn't, I guess.'

‘I don't want to go to America. You are my America.'

‘Dear Gracie! But — you don't think it's dishonourable?'

‘How can it be dishonourable to do the right thing?'

How indeed.

They were sitting side by side, precariously, as if they were on a boat. Ludwig held her right hand tightly in his. His left arm was stretched round her shoulder. His bony tweedy knees were pressed against her sleek knees, pale brown and shiny through openwork tights. She smelt of young flesh and toilet soap and pollen. Oh God, if they could only take their clothes off! Outside it was raining. Warm early summer rain playfully caressed the window. A bright subdued light showed the small pink and white houses opposite against a dark grey sky which shone like illuminated metal. There would be a rainbow somewhere above the park. Elsewhere that war was going on, high explosive and napalm and people killed and maimed. There were people out there who had been at war all their lives.

The crucial date had passed. He had torn up his draft card some time ago. But until lately there had been a way out. Now there was none. He had taken a carefully considered step and with it had chosen exile. He had no regrets, except about his parents. He was their only child. It had been the achievement of their lives to make him what they could never be, genuinely American. They would never understand.

‘Have some more elevenses,' said Gracie. ‘Have some Tennis Court Cake. I know you like marzipan. Have some Russian gâteau.'

Her little bedroom, which she called her sitting-room, and in which indeed they had so far done nothing but sit, was cosy and prim. Its formality and order were those of a child. This schoolroom neatness, this bitty folky flowery charm, represented, Ludwig suspected, not only Gracie's unformed taste but also some vanished era in the taste of her parents. He had once heard Gracie resisting Clara's enthusiastic ideas about redecorating it. A growing miscellany of pictures now fought with the sprigged wallpaper: small Impressionist reproductions, engravings of hawks and parrots, photos of the Acropolis and Windsor Castle and the Taj Mahal. Yet Gracie knew nothing about architecture, nothing about birds, and constantly mixed Van Gogh up with Cezanne. Indeed she appeared to know very little about anything, having firmly left school early and refused any further education. What on earth is one to do, he had once thought, with a girl who has no idea who Charlemagne was and who doesn't care? Later he admired her nerve and came to prize her calm ignorance. She was without the pretensions and ambitions which powered his own life. Her simplicity, her gaiety, even her silliness lightened his Puritan sadness. Yet he also knew that she was no mere kitten, this almost-child. There was a formidable will crushed up inside this unfolding bud.

‘No thanks, no cake.'

‘Have a jelly baby.'

‘No. I'm still feeling kicked in the stomach.'

‘Well, I'm
hungry
.'

Gracie was a great eater, but remained slim. She was a pale miniature-looking girl with a small well-formed head and a small eager face. She had glowing powdery flesh, very light blue eyes, and wispy half-long silvery golden hair. When she was petulant she looked like a terrier. When she was self-satisfied, which was often, she looked oriental. She was not coquettish, yet she was very conscious of herself as a young and pretty girl. Her tiny mouth was aware, thoughtful, stubborn. She seemed to Ludwig like a precious relic, an heirloom of vanished feminine refinement, something almost Victorian.

‘Do you think you'll get the Oxford thing?'

‘Gee, I hope so. I try not to think about it. It matters so much.'

‘I'd like to live in Oxford. It's such a pretty place. And you can get into the country.'

‘You won't mind being the wife of a stuffy old ancient history don?'

‘Don't be absurd, Ludwig. Do you think I want to marry an astronaut or something? I only wish I wasn't such an ignoramus. I'll just have to keep quiet and smile. I suppose there are wives like that in Oxford. Still the rest of the family will make a show. Papa was a Senior Wrangler and mama was at Bedford and of course Patrick —'

Anxiety about the Oxford job had contributed to his torment, he wanted that job so dreadfully. Oxford had in these months grown huge and wide and magnetic in his consciousness. This too was a kind of being in love. He pictured himself there like a man picturing paradise. He feared disappointment like a man fearing hell. Of course whatever happened now he would stay on in England after his London scholarship year was over. Athena had here sufficiently seized him by the locks. All the elements of his case were clear to him and he had no more doubt about the rightness of his decision. The war was a piece of absolute wickedness in which he would take no part. He would not fight for the United States of America in that war. But neither was it his task to make politics, to shout and speechify and martyr himself. I am not a political animal, he told himself repeatedly. He was a scholar. He would not waste his talents. He would stay in England, where by a pure and felicitous accident he had been born, and take part in the long old conversation of Europe. To regret that his role was in so many ways an easy one was purely sentimental.

The analysis was clear and the decision was made. Only his protestant conscience, like a huge primitive clumsy processing machine, obsolete yet still operational, continued to give him trouble. If only he could take that awful uncomprehending misery away from his parents. He dreaded their letters in which, in language which both offended and touched him, they begged him to come home and get himself ‘straightened out'. Did they really think he must be mad? He dreaded their confused reproaches, their fear. Old European terrors, inherited from generations of wandering ancestors, coursed in their blood and made them shudder from breaking the laws of the United States and evading its decrees. And there was their dreadful wrong-headed pride. Grief at his absence, fear of bureaucracy, what the neighbours thought, it was all jumbled together.

His father's family were devout protestants from Alsace. His mother's family were Lutherans from Bavaria. His maternal grandfather, who disappeared during the war and was thought to have died in a concentration camp, had been a minister. A strong and rigid disapproval of Hitler had led both families to migrate westward, and Ludwig's parents had met soon after the war in Mont-de-Marson where Ludwig's father had been working as an electrical engineer. They soon decided to emigrate to America, but while waiting for their visas went first on a brief visit to England so as to improve their English. Here, with what now seemed an intelligent prescience, young Ludwig had achieved an English birth, and with it the right to British nationality, although before his first birthday he was already in the U.S.A. He grew up happily enough, normally enough, as an American child, his parents' joy. Yet in his blood too old European things lived and waited, and as he became an adult and an intellectual he found himself an unidentified person, a changeling. He inherited the physical awkwardness of his parents and their deep conscientious anxiety. He grew up into problems which they had hoped to leave behind. He was uneasy with his hybrid name. He felt ashamed of being an Aryan German and yet also ashamed of having ceased to be one. His parents, perfectly bilingual in French and German, spoke only English at home, laboriously conversing even when they were alone together in this language which they never fully mastered. Ludwig learnt his French and German at school. His parents were grateful to America, and the glow of that gratitude was shed over his childhood.