Lewis Percy (21 page)

At other times, when he was away from her, he felt, more maturely, a disgust at his own virtue, in itself not entirely sincere or voluntary, a disgust for the whole idea of virtue in its diminished Christian interpretation: continence. Great deeds were not always undertaken virtuously, nor were great loves blamelessly consummated. It seemed to him that since his marriage he had become debilitated, passive, that his essential self had deteriorated, and his simplicity been compromised. When he thought of Emmy he felt sour, rancorous, as if she had no right to provoke him by existing,
as if she summoned up from hidden depths a furious dissatisfaction with the life he had been called on to live, and which might, if he exerted the requisite vigilance, pass for normal. Indifference faded away, leaving a new scrutiny in its wake. He was surprised by destructive impulses, which he always suppressed, ravenous yet sickly appetites, and restless nights which demoralized him. Sometimes he longed for the peace of those ruminant years before he had ever seen her. He knew that she had the power to lift him into a more heroic future, a life fit for a man, but that this would cause damage, abandonment, injury, and also loss. Beneath his half-hearted and sorrowful obedience – an obedience that brought with it a certain peace – he detected a deep unreadiness for adventure, and this was a source of dismay to him, and of mature disappointment.

When Pen and Emmy issued an invitation to dinner it was more or less easy to decline, pleading an indisposition of Tissy’s. In any event Tissy refused to go, so his excuse was more or less honourable. How much more, how much less preoccupied him for several days.

He began to leave home earlier in the mornings and to return home later at the end of the day, although it would never have occurred to him to go anywhere else, or even to break his journey. Filled with an unforgiving energy he walked both to and from work, hoping to exhaust himself. But his energies simply redoubled, and he slept badly, sometimes hardly at all. Tissy accepted this without criticism, ascribing it to the fact that he had finished his book and was uneasy without its physical presence in the house. Oddly enough, she was not unhelpful to him: her calm, even her silence, assured him that nothing was really amiss.

On one such day he received a rather nasty shock. Shopping in Selfridges in his lunch hour – for he had a sentimental attachment to the place – he heard himself greeted loudly, delightedly, by a stout woman in a brilliant blue dress, with whom, as far as he knew, he had no connection.

‘Lewis! Lewis Percy!’

He turned, amazed to be discovered here, and looked into the still handsome but now ageing face of someone whom he could not call to mind.

‘Don’t you remember me? I recognized you at once. You haven’t changed at all. It’s Roberta! You remember me now, don’t you? Roberta, from Paris! From that funny flat we all lived in.’

‘Roberta! Of course!’

He took her in his arms and kissed her. But in fact he would not have known her. She had put on a great deal of weight and looked quite old. But she must be in her early fifties, he calculated, and then came the thought: it was nearly twelve years since Paris, and if the years had dealt so harshly with her what had they done to him?

‘So you left Paris?’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you ever would.’

‘Well, I got homesick for a place of my own. I’ve got a lovely little flat in St John’s Wood now. Of course, I paid the penalty financially, but I’m quite happy. I’m working for a printing firm – a bit of a comedown, but what can you expect? I reckon I’m very lucky. But I often think of those days. We had some laughs, didn’t we?’

She surveyed him fondly. He wanted to bury his face in her neck and tell her all his troubles, but merely planted another kiss on her cheek and smiled.

‘And what about you? What about your work?’

‘I made it into a book,’ he said. He did not think he could tell her about the stunning monotony of his everyday life, for she would simply look at him with the rounded eyes of incomprehension. As it was she smiled at him fondly.

‘You always were a clever boy. And you’re quite handsome now, quite distinguished. You’ve filled out, grown even taller. Yet I knew you at once, didn’t I?’ She laughed delightedly.

‘I’m married,’ he said.

‘So that accounts for it. Well, dear, I’m so glad you’ve done well. Perhaps you’ll bring your wife to see me one of these days. Ring me any time: I’m in the book. Try some of
this salami,’ she went on. ‘Have you still got your appetite? That’s one of the things I remember about you.’

‘You were always good to me, Roberta.’

‘Me?’ Her eyes widened. ‘We all liked you, Lewis. You were our pet. Well, I mustn’t keep you. Take care of yourself, dear. And give me a call sometime.’

He felt inadequate to deal with such generosity of spirit, and merely watched her as she took up her position at the bread counter, still trim, still bold, despite her weight and her greying hair, still uninhibited, He loved her bright colours, so totally in character. He pictured her in her little flat, cooking exquisite meals, bossing her guests around. A contented woman, avid for the good things in life, and, no doubt, just as unnervingly direct. If he took Tissy to visit her she would sum up their marriage in a trice. He remembered how she had upbraided the virginal Cynthia. ‘
Faites de la gymnastique ou faites-vous baiser
!’ He smiled as he remembered, and then sighed. Much gained, much lost. Would it always be like this? Yet throughout the afternoon, in the silent library, the smile returned when he thought of Roberta, now stout, now kindly, with an innocence of goodwill that surpassed anything he had to offer. He pondered the mystery of kindliness, not very evenly distributed, appearances deceiving more in this area than in any other. Curious, he looked her up in the telephone directory and saw that she lived in Hall Road. On his way home he sent her a large bunch of roses.

For he was still seduced and beguiled by the company of women, and more by their company than by their unsettling challenges. He longed to relax, if that were possible, in their benign presence, and to begin his sentimental education all over again. He pictured a kind of seminar, where women would do the teaching, for was that not their business? Without them he had started off in different directions, possibly the wrong ones; nothing worked as he had expected it to work; even conversation had broken down. This must account for Tissy’s muteness, and for the unspoken questions that separated them. He did not in all honesty see how her
present life could satisfy her, although it was clearly an improvement on the one she had known with her mother. Her very silences bespoke withdrawal, a private judgement, although he never heard her voice a single criticism. She was, in many ways, a stranger to him, a stranger whom he was duty bound to accommodate. He sometimes imagined that she felt the same way about him. Yet this marriage was by now so established that he had no choice but to continue it. There was no good reason not to do so. In comparison with Tissy, in her official role, Emmy appeared almost insubstantial, with no more authority than an outlaw. Faced with the problems they both presented he longed to be young again, immature, hopeful, comfortable, yes, comfortable, as he had not been for many years.

But if Emmy appeared insubstantial, she was also extremely persistent. In his mind’s eye he conjured her up before him: she wore her long brown skirt, and her expression was severe, her eyes sorrowful. He could not mistake the fact that even in dreams and fantasies she appeared to be condemning him. So anxious did this make him that he was determined never to court such condemnation again. In the light of her contempt his chivalrous behaviour withered, and he realized that what he had thought of as a certain dull decency, a candidature for honest citizenship, would, by worldly standards, pass for impotence. He wanted to do the right thing, whatever that was: he was no longer sure. This thought raised certain fascinating speculations about what constituted heroic behaviour in those who lived in the real world and were not bound – or protected – by the conventions of literature. Dimly he began to perceive a second volume, an updating of his first: the hero enters the twentieth century. Or does he? As the mechanism of his mind began to function once more he felt a sensation of pure relief. This persisted in spite of his love for women in general and his wife and his putative mistress in particular. In fact the function of his work, as opposed to his imagination, was to safeguard him from such dangers as the unwary might fall into. In a new notebook he began to
sketch out a plan, rejoicing as the titles of books to re-read began to multiply, and as tentative chapter headings began to take shape. It was time, he reckoned, to champion the cause of men in literature. The sympathy of the feminists was beginning to elevate women to impossibly heroic status. In realizing that both he and his subjects were bound by male conventions he felt distinctly refreshed. For the first time in many days he was able to lunch with Pen without thinking of him as Emmy’s brother. Pen’s fine ruddy face, with its agreeable air of amiability, evoked no other face in his tender memory but remained attached to Pen himself. He suspected that Pen knew something of what had passed between Emmy and himself but was too courteous to mention it. This evidence of masculine good manners cheered Lewis, making him feel less alone. Women, he reflected, would have been all over each other in similar circumstances. The idea of being invited to confide his troubles raised in him an instinctive shudder. The
urge
to confide was one thing: he had felt the urge to confide in Roberta. But this had been almost theoretical. The
invitation
to confide seemed to him to be situated on the line that divided friendship from conspiracy; women crossed it habitually, men never. So much did he admire his friend’s reticence that he wondered how he might convey this to him, then realized that to do so would have caused them both profound embarrassment.

Although the library habitually had the shaded air of winter, Lewis realized, on his journeys to and from work, that the long summer days were now established. The sky continued white until past nine o’clock, sometimes until nearly ten. Lewis and Tissy were drawn by the beautiful calm evenings to take their walks under trees in full leaf, and past front gardens full of roses. On such evening walks, which by tacit consent did not always coincide with a visit to Mrs Harper (the air being too solemn, too healthful for so short a journey) Lewis admired, as he had never done before, the tact of his natural setting. He had described himself to Emmy as suburban man, hoping thus to discourage her, for her
background was markedly more aristocratic than his own. Yet now he felt that to be suburban was almost a calling in itself, involving steadiness, a certain humility in the face of temptation, social or otherwise, and a loving, almost painful attachment to home. The stamp of a suburban childhood, he reflected, probably marked one for life. It was more difficult to move either up or down if one were born and bred in a quiet street, in a large but unpretentious house whose wide windows looked across to others of the same pattern, and behind whose curtains one could, very occasionally, discern the vague pale shape of a woman, moving about her innocuous business, waiting for the breadwinner to come home. There was for him a sweetness in the absence of excitement that such a condition implied, or perhaps imposed. Arm in arm with his wife, sauntering wordlessly, almost becalmed, he knew himself to be in his natural setting, in the place where he belonged. Sometimes this saddened him, but then sadness was also inherent in those silent streets, those tranced hot afternoons. He thought of a hundred Madame Bovarys waiting for a lover, while their husbands were away plying some harmless trade. Perhaps even Tissy entertained seditious thoughts. That was the trouble with women, he told himself: on balance they were so much bolder than men. Then he realized that he would abhor in his wife behaviour that he considered natural in himself, although it might intrigue him in others. He shook his head: there was no answer to any of it.

One evening, as they were drinking a last cup of tea, the telephone rang. Tissy answered it.

‘It’s for you,’ she said, her lips pursed. ‘It’s that woman, Emmy. She wants to speak to you. Says it’s important.’

Surely she would not, could not be so bold as to pursue him here? Lewis felt almost righteously shocked as he took the receiver from Tissy. Nevertheless, he allowed her to retreat into the kitchen before clearing his throat and speaking.

‘Emmy?’

‘Lewis? Could you come over to Pen’s house?’ Her voice sounded distant and tearful.

‘Why? Is anything wrong?’

‘It’s Pen,’ she went on. ‘There’s been a bit of an upset. He’s all right, but we’ve had the most tremendous row. I think he’s rather drunk. Could you possibly come over? I think he’d like you to.’

‘Well, of course,’ he said, his mouth suddenly dry. ’I’ll be with you in half an hour.

‘Something’s happened to Pen,’ he told Tissy. ‘I’m going there now. Don’t wait up for me – I may have to stay.’

His after-image of her was of a pale form slowly backing away from the kitchen door, gathering the cups from the table and lowering them equally slowly into the sink. She seemed ghostly, marginal, insubstantial, in comparison with the prospect of seeing Emmy again, but he was too agitated to examine the implications of this. He was also aware that she was displeased, but he postponed consideration of this too until later. He was in no sense, despite his anxiety, conscious that anything untoward was afoot.

He flew down to the main road and picked up a providential taxi. Pen’s house, a cottage by London standards, yet with the desirable chic that his own house lacked, was in Pitt Street. The sky was now dark; crowds were leaving the cinema. He had always liked this district, from whose animation his own house seemed too far removed, seemed, when seen across this distance, countrified, somnolent, provincial. Instinctively he straighted his tie before ringing the bell.

Emmy stood there, in a long purplish skirt and a cream silk shirt half obscured by rows of tortoiseshell and amber beads. She looked at him without interest, her expression every bit as severe as he had imagined it. This, if anything, made her more attractive. He found himself longing for her indulgence.