Going Wrong (2 page)

“Satisfy me! It isn’t a question of satisfying me.”

He knew she had heard that speech of his before, or something very much like it. He had composed it long ago, learned it by heart. It was none the less true for that, and what else could he say but the truth? “Please you then. I want to please you. But I don’t have to say that again, you know that.”

“I know I’m not going to be your wife, I’m not going to be the mother of your children.” She looked up when the orange juice came, gave the barman the smile that should have been his. “I’ve told you enough times, Guy. I’ve tried to tell you nicely. I’ve tried to be honest and behave properly about this. Why won’t you believe me?”

He didn’t answer. He raised his eyes and looked sombrely at her. Perhaps she took this heavy look of his for a reproach, for she spoke impatiently.

“What is it now?”

It was hard for him but he had to ask. If he didn’t ask now, he would do so later. If not today, he would ask tomorrow on the phone. Better ask now. Better to know. He had to know what he must fight against, if he had an adversary. His throat dried a little. He badly didn’t want his voice to be hoarse.

“Who is he?”

His voice
was
hoarse. He sounded as if someone had him by the throat. She was surprised. He had caught her off guard.

“What?”

“I saw you with him. Walking along Ken High Street. It was last Tuesday or Wednesday.” He was pretending, in a breathless voice, a casualness he didn’t feel. It was not only the day that he knew, indelibly, but the hour, the precise time to the minute, the precise spot. He could find it if he were to go there now, as if their footprints were engraved in the pavement. He thought he could find it blindfold or in his sleep. And he could see them, the two of them, images petrified in his memory, their happy faces—no, not that, he was inventing that—outside the Kensington Market.

“A little runt of a fellow,” he said, and now he was savage. “Ginger hair. Who is he?”

She hadn’t wanted him to know. That gave a scrap of comfort. Her cheeks reddened. “His name’s William Newton.”

“And what is he to you?”

“You’ve no right to ask me these questions, Guy.”

“I have a right. I’m the only person on earth who has a right.”

He thought she might dispute that but she only said sulkily,

“Okay, but don’t make such a big thing of it. Remember, you did ask, so you have to accept the answer.” Did she know how that made his heart fall through his body? He looked at her, holding his breath. “I’ve known him for about two years, as a matter of fact. We’ve been going about together for a year. I like him very much.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I say. I like him a lot.”

“Is that all?”

“Guy, this is very hard for me to talk about when you look at me like that. William is becoming important to me and I am to him. There, now you know.”

“Is he your lover?”

“Does it matter? Yes. Yes, of course he is.”

“I don’t believe it!”

She tried to say it lightly. “Why not? Aren’t I attractive enough to have a lover? I’m only twenty-six, I’m not bad-looking.”

“You’re beautiful. I don’t mean that. I mean him. Look at him. Five feet six, sandy-haired, a face like a zebra without the stripes—and what’s a zebra without stripes? What does he do? Has he got any money? No, don’t answer that. I could see he hasn’t. A poverty-stricken ginger dwarf—I don’t believe it. What do you see in him? For Christ’s sake, what do you see in him?”

She said equably, looking at the menu, not even looking up, “Do you really want to know?”

“Certainly I want to know. I’m asking you.”

“Conversation.” She lifted her eyes. He thought she sighed a little. “If he talked to me all day and I never heard another person talk as long as I lived, I’d never get bored. He’s the most interesting man I ever knew. There, Guy, you did ask.”

“And I’m boring?”

“I didn’t say that. I said that to me you’re not as interesting as William. Not just you, no one is. You asked me why I go about with him and I told you. I fell in love with William for the things he says and—well, for his mind, it’s as simple as that.”

“You fell in love?” Oh, the horror of uttering those words! He would have expected to die before he spoke them, or that speaking them would kill him. He felt weak and his hands went out of control. “You’re in love with him?”

She said formally, “I am.”

“Oh, Leonora, you can say that to
me?”

“You asked me. What am I supposed to do? Tell lies?”

Oh yes, tell lies; tell me any lie rather than this awful truth. “And you go to bed with him for his conversation?”

“You want to make it sound ridiculous, I know that, but, yes, oddly enough, in a way I do.”

She ordered melon with prosciutto without the prosciutto, followed by pasta. He had gambas and tournedos Rossini. He made an effort to speak, to say anything, and succeeded only in sounding like some scolding chaperon. “I wish you’d have a decent meal for once. I wish you’d have something expensive.”

He could tell she was relieved he had changed the subject, or she thought he had. The truth was he couldn’t bear to go on talking about it. The words hurt. Her words stayed in his ears, pressing and drumming:
I fell in love with him.

“As it is,” she said, “I don’t like you paying. I don’t belong in a world where men pay for women’s food just as a matter of course.”

“Don’t be absurd. It’s not a question of sex, it’s a question of me earning about fifty times what you do.” He shouldn’t have said it, he knew that as soon as he had. It was a fault with him, which he recognized, to be unable to resist expressing pride in his success as a self-made man. The frown was back on her face, drawing together those winged eyebrows. He began to feel angry as well as miserable. That was the trouble; when they were together, on these rare occasions, always in the glare of noon, always in public, he was unable to keep his temper.

“I know you hate what I do for a living,” he said, staring at the two frown lines, the steady blue eyes. “It’s because you don’t understand. You don’t know the world we live in. You’re an intellectual and you think everyone’s got your taste and knows what’s good and what isn’t. It’s something you can’t understand, that ordinary people just want ordinary pretty things in their homes, things they can look at and—well, identify with if you like, things that aren’t pretentious or phony.”

“‘His position towards the religion he was upholding was the same as that of a poultry keeper towards the carrion he feeds his fowls on: carrion is very disgusting but fowls like it and eat it, therefore it is right to feed fowls on carrion.’”

Guy felt himself flush up to his eyes. “I don’t suppose even you made that up.”

“Tolstoy did.”

“I congratulate you on your memory. Did you learn it on purpose to come out with it today? Or is it one of the things
he
says in his marvellous conversation?”

“It’s a piece I like,” she said. “It’s appropriate for lots of the terrible things that people do to other people today. I don’t like any of the things you do for a living, Guy, but that’s only part of it.”

“Are you going to tell me the rest?”

Her melon came and his prawns. He asked for a bottle of Macon-Lugny. He was a long way from an alcoholic but he liked to drink every day, to drink quite a lot, an aperitif and wine at lunch-time, two or three gins before dinner, and a bottle of wine with dinner. If the person he was with wanted to share another bottle or two in the evening, that was all right with him. Even for Leonora he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t like a drink or deny himself the cigarette he would have after his steak.

“You never have actually told me, you know. You’ve said why you fancy the ginger dwarf but never quite why you don’t fancy me. Any more, that is. You did once. Fancy me. I mean.”

“I was fifteen, Guy. It was eleven years ago.”

“Nevertheless. I was your first, and a woman always loves her first best.”

“Antiquated sexist rubbish, that is. And I must tell you, if you call William a ginger dwarf, I shall get up and go.”

“I’m not going to sit here and be insulted,” he jeered in a cockney char voice.

“As you say. I’m glad you said it; saved me the trouble.”

He was silent, too angry to speak. As was often the case at these meetings of theirs, he became too angry or too unhappy to eat, in spite of the hunger he had felt a few minutes before. He would drink instead and end up reeling out of the place, red in the face. But he wasn’t red yet. He could see himself in the black glass panel opposite, next to the still of Cary Grant in
Notorious,
a very handsome man with strong classical features, a noble forehead, fine dark eyes, a lock of dark hair falling casually over his tanned brow. He put Cary Grant in the shade. His looks paradoxically made him angrier. It was as if he had everything already—looks, money, success, charm, youth—so what was there left for him to acquire, what was there he could find to sway her when everything was inadequate?

“I don’t want a sweet,” she said. “Just coffee.”

“I’ll just have coffee too. D’you mind if I smoke?”

“You always do smoke,” she said.

“I wouldn’t if you minded.”

“Of course I don’t mind, Guy. You don’t have to ask with me. Don’t you think I know you by now?”

“I shall have a brandy.”

“Go ahead. Guy, I wish we didn’t quarrel. We’re friends, aren’t we? I’d like us to be friends always, if that’s possible.”

They had been through that before.
I fell in love with him.
The words buzzed in his ears. He said, “How’s Maeve? How’re Maeve and Rachel and Robin and Mummy and Daddy?”

He knew he should have said, “Your mother and father,” and he wished it didn’t give him pleasure to see her small wince when he referred to her parents like that. But he went on, he compounded it, he couldn’t help himself, “And their appendages,” he said, “Step-mommy and Step-daddy, how are they? Still in love? Still making mature second marriages now they’re old enough to know their own bloody minds?”

She got up. He held her wrist. “Don’t go. Please don’t go, Leonora. I’m sorry. I’m desperately sorry, please forgive me. I go mad, you know. When you’re as unhappy as I am, you go mad, you don’t care what you say, you’ll say anything.”

She prized his fingers off her wrist. She did it very gently. “Why are you such a fool, Guy Curran?”

“Sit down again. Have your coffee. I love you.”

“I know that,” she said. “Believe me, I don’t doubt that. You’ll never hear me say I don’t think you love me. I know you do. I wish you didn’t. God, I wish you didn’t. If you realized what a hassle it is for me, how it blights my life, the way you go on and on, the way you never leave me alone, I wonder if you’d—well, if you’d give up, Guy?”

“I’ll never give up.”

“You’ll have to one day.”

“I won’t. You see, I know it isn’t true, all that. You say you fell in love with what’s-his-name, but it’s infatuation, it’s a passing phase. I know you really love me. You’d hate me to leave you alone. You love me.”

“I’ve said I do. In a way. It’s just that …”

“Have lunch with me next Saturday,” he said.

“I always have lunch with you on Saturdays.”

“And I’ll phone you tomorrow.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you will. I know you’ll phone me every day and have lunch with me every Saturday. It’s like being sure Christmas will come round.”

“Absolutely,” he said, raising his brandy glass to her, sipping it, then drinking it as he might wine. “I’m as reliable as Christmas and as—what’s the word?—inexorable. And I’ll tell you something. You wouldn’t come if you didn’t really love me. The ginge—this William, you’re not in love with him, you’re infatuated. It’s me you love.”

“I’m fond of you.”

“Why do you keep on seeing me then?”

“Guy, be sensible. I only do it now because—well, I needn’t go into that.”

“Yes, you need go into that. Why do you ‘only do it now because’?”

“All right, you asked for it. Because I know how you feel, or I try to know how you feel. I want to be kind, I don’t want to be rotten. I did make promises and whatever to you when we were kids. No person in their right mind would call those promises binding, but just the same. Oh God, Guy, you’re on my conscience, don’t you see? That’s why I have lunch with you on Saturdays. That’s why I listen to all this stuff and let you insult my father and mother and my friends and—and William. And there’s another reason. It’s because I hope—well, I
hoped
—I’d make you see sense; I hoped I’d convince you it was hopeless—sorry about all those hopes—and you’d come to see there wasn’t a joint future for you and me. I had this idea I’d convince you we could be friends and that’s how it’d have been by this time, you agreeing to be my friend—well,
our
friend, William’s and mine. Does that explain it now?”

“Quite a speech,” he said.

“It was as short as I could make it and still say what I meant.”

“Leonora,” he said, “who’s turned you against me?” It was a new idea. It came to him as a revelation might, enlightenment vouchsafed to a faithful believer. Her face, guilty, wary, on guard, showed him he was right. “I can see it all now. It’s one of them, isn’t it? One of them’s turned you against me. I won’t do for them, I don’t match up to their idea of what’s good for you. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“I’m grown-up, Guy. I make up my own mind.”

“You wouldn’t deny you’re a close family, would you? You wouldn’t deny they’ve got a lot of influence on you.” She couldn’t deny it, she said nothing. “I bet they’re over the moon about this William, I bet he’s first favourite with the lot of them.”

She said carefully, “They like him, yes.” She got up, touched his hand with hers, giving him a look he couldn’t understand. “I’ll see you next Saturday.”

“We’ll speak first. I’ll phone you tomorrow.”

She said in an even cheerful tone, “Yes, you will, won’t you?”

He walked off one way and she the other. Once she was out of sight he hailed a taxi. He thought of asking the taxi driver to go to the house in Portland Road where her flat was, go there and thrash the whole thing out with her, maybe with William there as well. He was sure William would be there, waiting for her, listening sympathetically while she complained about lunch and him and what a bore it all was, and then giving her the benefit of his brilliant conversation.