Getting It Right (46 page)

He was shown into the library by a Filipino who invited him to sit down and then vanished. He didn’t sit: by now his mouth was dry and he felt extremely nervous. He
looked round the room, which looked exactly the same as it had when he had played the Secrets game with her such a long time ago. He wandered about: the picture of Dmitri was still on the vast
desk. This was also the room where Winthrop had beaten up Spiro and there was the painful piece of the mantelpiece that had nearly knocked him out. The artificial logs were back in their studiedly
casual positions. And that was the door through to her bedroom. As he recognized this, it opened and Joan came through it. She was in full regalia; orange wig, a white face, a dark green satin tube
dress with dark green satin sandals, and a brighter, dark green nail varnish.

‘Why – hullo,’ she said, as though he wasn’t the person she expected to see but never mind – a kind of genial indifference that he found chilling.

‘Hullo, Joan.’

‘Yes: well, we’d better have a drink. Whatever you’ve come about, it’s bound to make things easier.’ She went over to the drinks table and picked up the brandy
bottle. ‘I’m having my usual. Will that do you?’

He thought he’d said yes, but she couldn’t have heard him, because she turned round holding the bottle as a query: he nodded. She gave him his glass and, taking her own, sat in a
large, high-backed chair, indicating that he should sit on the sofa . . . ‘Well, cheers,’ she said. ‘You’ve been calling me up quite a bit, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. I was worried.’

‘What was worrying you?’

‘I heard about Dmitri.’

‘Oh, yes. Everyone seems to have heard about that.’

There was a silence. Then he said: ‘I wanted to tell you that I knew that was very important to you and I was sorry.’

‘It
was
bad luck, wasn’t it? I thought he’d stay because of my money, but he managed to find someone even richer than me. I hadn’t bargained on that.’

‘Is that really what you thought?’

‘It is really what I thought. But it’s not all that I really thought.’ A spasm of what he guessed might be pain crossed her face, leaving it hard and bland. Then she said:
‘But I don’t think that’s all you wanted to see me about. I have a feeling you may have come to see if the coast was clear?’

He opened his mouth to say, ‘No,’ but then he remembered that it had crossed his mind that comfort might have taken the form of another extraordinary night with her, and felt
trapped.

‘I have to tell you that it isn’t,’ she said – she had been watching him – ‘or perhaps it would be more true to say that there is no coast.’

He waited, and she went on:

‘You would be surprised at the number of people who have wanted to take Dmitri’s place. I had to leave France to escape some of them, and I’m leaving England to escape a whole
lot more.’

‘I’m not one of those people,’ he said, surprised at discovering this, and certainty about it making him suddenly very clear.

‘I thought that. But then you are somebody who’d make the stakes so high, you’d never play.’

‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

‘Love. You’re all for love, aren’t you? And that’s so difficult and precious and important, that it lets you out of being
for
anything.’ The way in which
she said it made it unpainfully acceptable – simply true.

‘Yes,’ he said, and found he was smiling at her. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Time for another drink.’

But, while she was getting them, he remembered what he was
really
here for, and the feeling of ease which he associated with any length of time spent with her began to evaporate.

The moment she gave him his drink, he knew he had to plunge in.

‘I have come about something else.’

‘Right.’ She sat down again, crossing her long legs.

‘I’ve come about Winthrop.’

‘Oh yes?’ She seemed mildly surprised.

‘The chap he was living with happens to be my best friend: Harry.’

‘Yes, I know. You all came to the party together, didn’t you?’

‘You
know
about Harry? Well then, why are you taking Winthrop away?’ As she sat motionless, regarding him but not saying, he plunged on: ‘Harry
loves
Winthrop. He really loves him! It’s breaking his heart. Perhaps you didn’t know that. I expect Winthrop played that part of it down. I expect he’s just so keen on the excitement
and living it up with you – America and all that – he didn’t bother to tell you about Harry.’

‘Of course I know that he’s left Harry. That’s nothing to do with me.’

‘It
is
! Of course it is! He wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t for you!’

‘Did Harry send you to see me?’

‘No. He doesn’t know anything about it.’

‘Then, what’s your point?’

‘My point is,’ he was beginning to feel angry, ‘that surely, once you know that you’re breaking up somebody else’s life like this, you surely won’t go on with
it.
You
aren’t in love with Winthrop, are you?’

She said, ‘I’m in love with Dmitri.’ She said it without any expression.

‘Well then, you must have some idea of what Harry is feeling like.’

‘I’m sorry for him,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Of course.’

‘Is that all you can say?’

‘What else is there? What else could
you
find to say to
me
? And what difference would it make anyway, whatever you said? As a matter of fact,’ she went on,
‘I’m not particularly keen on pity. Pity takes something away from grief. People think they’re sharing it, but really they’re just taking some. I prefer to keep my grief
intact.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you said that Dmitri had managed to find someone even richer than you. That’s what you said.’ He felt uncomfortable about repeating it, it sounded
so hard on her. ‘Well, don’t you see that you’re doing exactly the same thing to Winthrop? Providing him with someone much richer than Harry who can give him a more exciting
time?’

‘Yes – that’s perfectly true. But you seem to have forgotten one very important thing.’

‘What’s that?’ He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know, because already he had the sense that it would be annihilating.

‘You’ve left Winthrop out of it. You haven’t counted him at all. You haven’t, for instance, considered that he must want to go. That if it wasn’t me, it would be
somebody else. The result would be the same for Harry. People usually find what they seek, if they really search for it. But they also often start by knowing what they
don’t
want.
Dmitri didn’t want me. Winthrop doesn’t want Harry. You see? It’s quite simple, really – devastating but simple.’

There was a long silence. Then, he said hesitantly: ‘But is it going to make
you
happier to take Winthrop away with you?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, for a moment. He’s a companion; and a ranger.’

She had been staring into her empty glass. Now, without lifting her eyes she said:

‘Do you know that?’ Her voice was husky, so low he could hardly hear her.

‘It’s a poem of Wyatt’s, isn’t it? I don’t know it well.’

‘I can’t get it out of my mind. That’s just the first verse. I don’t think I shall be
happy
with Winthrop, but I think that with him, or perhaps through him, I
shall know a little of what it feels like to be Dmitri. That’s as near as I can get now, you see.’

She was looking at him and, although nothing about her seemed in the least like him, he was reminded of Harry.

‘I think I’d better go now.’

She got to her feet at once. ‘Yes.’

She went with him through the large hall to the door. At the door, she said: ‘I admire you for coming. I hadn’t forgotten you. Read the second verse of that poem sometime.’

He pressed her hand, and, on second thoughts, kissed it. ‘Good luck,’ he said. It seemed a hopeless, but the only, thing to say.

In a second, the door was shut gently between them, and he turned to walk slowly down the stairs.

He sat in the car for some time without thinking of anything very much at all. Feelings for Joan – of nearly every possible kind – were uppermost, but they were in
such confusion that he could not use them with his mind. Most of all, he felt that he was not going to see her again, and knowing that something was over was different to discovering later that it
had ended. He had only met her three times, but each time she had affected him deeply. He felt a kind of love for her for that.

He started to drive northwards. Coming out of the Park he thought that he would like to go and see Jenny: he now had the evening free, and he wanted to get things right with her, or, at least,
find out what was wrong. Then he thought, no, they might think that he wanted supper when he’d already had lunch with them, and he didn’t want an evening with Jenny’s mother as
well. He began aiming for home; then he thought that perhaps he’d better pass by Harry’s, in case he was back and by himself. He was aware of half-hoping that Harry wouldn’t be
there, but when, in fact, he stopped outside Havergal Heights and saw that all Harry’s windows had no lights, he felt both relieved – and depressed.

The house
was
getting rather dirty – even he could see that. He didn’t feel hungry, so he made himself a cup of coffee and went upstairs to find Joan’s poem. Wyatt
– he knew he had it in an anthology somewhere. He found it and read the second verse aloud to himself.

He was back in the firelit room with her in her loose, grey-green robe. She hadn’t forgotten him. He felt tears come to his eyes, and he read the verse again. The poem was called
‘Remembrance’. He had to read the rest of it.

She had said nothing about the last verse.

It was odd, he thought, how moved he could be by something that he did not thoroughly understand: for the end of it seemed to him almost deliberately enigmatic – could be taken as profound
bitterness, or as some kind of fatal resignation. All he could be sure of was that it touched him; conjured the mystery and passion of a long dead poet’s long dead love.

He shut the book and, as he did so, it occurred to him that he would one day read that poem to Jenny. Then, without any warning, and almost reluctantly, he supposed that he must love Jenny. He
stopped at this: in some ways the idea was not credible; he had none of the feelings about her that he had read about or imagined having; she was quite an ordinary person really, not particularly
anything; in fact he couldn’t think of anybody who was
so
not particularly anything as she.

When he arrived at her house and rang the bell, he had made up his mind to say that he wanted to take her out – to dinner, or to a pub, or somewhere. He’d manage to sweep her off
somehow.

The door was opened by Anne, or Jenny’s mother.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Come in. I’m afraid Jenny’s out,’ she said as they went into the kitchen.

‘Out?’

‘Yes; it is funny, isn’t it? But she said she wanted to see a French film. She hardly ever does that kind of thing, but I wanted to be in anyway because of a telephone call so it
didn’t matter.’

They sat down each side of the kitchen table which he now remembered he hadn’t offered to help carry back into the house.

‘I’m just heating up some baked beans. Would you like some?’

‘Thank you.’

She pulled a cigarette out of a battered packet and lit it from her last one.

‘I know: I’m chain-smoking. It’s very bad. Shall we finish the gin? There’s not much left, and we don’t usually drink it, but one way and another I feel like one
tonight.’

‘A small one for me.’

‘It’ll be a small one for both of us: never mind.’ She found the bottle and poured them drinks. ‘As a matter of fact, Gavin, there’s so little left because I
don’t mind telling you I’ve had one already. I’m trying to make up my mind about something – and it’s impossible: I don’t seem to . . . be able to.’

He realized that she was very near tears: Oh, God, he thought, this is all I need, and then felt ashamed.

‘Are you serious about Jenny?’

‘Serious?’

‘You know what I mean. You may think it’s none of my business to ask you, but I’ve a very good reason.’

‘I – I care about her – what happens to her, I mean. I’m sort of getting to know her – finding out – ’

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You are alike!’

For some reason, this annoyed him. ‘What’s your reason?’

Instantly, she became more serious, as he noticed people usually did about their own affairs. ‘Someone’s asked me to marry them. Chap I used to know when we were in Wendover. He was
a policeman then: now he’s in the Army. That means living wherever he happens to be stationed.’ There was a pause, and then she added: ‘He’s given me a month to make up my
mind.’

‘And, if you go, you’ll feel you’re letting Jenny down?’

She nodded miserably. ‘I
know
I will be. She can’t bring up Andrew and get a decent job; at least not until he’s older. She can’t come with me. And I don’t
think she’d hear of my taking Andrew, even supposing George was willing.’