Marnie (17 page)

I stared up at the curved stone ceiling which was quite low in the alcove over the bed. ‘To me it’s so degrading.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Give me one reason why you think that.’

‘It’s . . . animal.’

He made a first little movement of annoyance. ‘We
are
animal – in part. We can’t take our feet out of the mud. If we try we fall slap on our faces. It’s only by
accepting our humanity that we can make the most of it.’

‘But—’

‘We can degrade anything, of course – that’s the price we pay for our brains and our ingenuity – but if we do, it’s our own silly fault. We can just as easily exalt
it. Whoever made us gave us the whole pack.’

In the café on the quay outside someone was playing a guitar. It sounded twenty miles away from me just then. I was trying not to tremble because I knew if I started he would know at
once, and I’d really have hated to give myself so much away. It wasn’t exactly a trembling of fear but of sheer nerves. All those nice nerves that kept so steady when I was stealing
money had gone back on me just now. And my mixed feelings for him weren’t mixed any longer; I didn’t like anything he stood for, male body, male superiority, male aggressiveness
disguised as politeness. I hated him for having humiliated me, for having come into the room when I had practically no clothes on and put his hands up and down my body so that I was sick and hot
and ashamed of myself and him.

Of course it was what was expected. I knew that. You don’t live the way I’d lived without knowing it all. But it doesn’t mean you have to want it all. Right through the evening
I’d been trying to set myself to see it sensibly, like not happening to me, like it might have been if Mollie Jeffrey had got sent to prison, something you could keep at a distance. But you
can’t always do what you set yourself to do.

He said gently: ‘I’d give a lot to know how your mind works.’

‘My mind? Why?’

‘It turns too many corners. It never goes the straight way to anything. It ties itself up in little knots and sees things inside out.’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘These quaint ideas you have about sex. If they were nothing else they’d be desperately old-fashioned.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘You’re a very pretty girl – made for love. It’s like a bud saying it won’t open, or a butterfly that won’t come out of its chrysalis.’

I looked at him. I’d thought when it came to this, when there wasn’t any escape, I’d be able to pretend that I liked it. But I knew now I couldn’t, not for all the tea in
China. But I daren’t risk yet being outspoken about it – not any more than I had been. I wasn’t sure enough of him.

I sighed and said: ‘I’m really most awfully sorry, Mark. Perhaps I’ve got it all wrong tonight. But I promise you, it isn’t just something wrong with my reasoning.
It’s something I feel afraid of and have got to – to overcome. Give me time.’

He was really too easy to cheat. ‘That’s a very different matter. Perhaps you’re tired and overexcited. Perhaps too much has happened in one day.’

He was even giving me excuses. I said: ‘The plane upset me a bit. Don’t forget it was my first flight. And don’t forget either that this is my first wedding. It would have been
better for you if I really had been a widow.’

‘Well, we’ll carry that over for consideration tomorrow.’

The next day the weather was bright but showery. We hired a car to take us across the island to see the stalactite caves and a pearl factory. I bought some earrings and two or
three brooches. In the evening we went to a night club and watched Spanish dancers. When we’d seen the best I was taken ill with pains in my stomach and we had to get back to the hotel by
taxi. That took care of that night, but I didn’t think it was going to be a good excuse for long. The day after we spent in Palma. We bought a decanter and wine glasses in the glass works,
and a handbag for me and a wallet and some shoes for him. I quite enjoyed it, just as I’d found it all right being with him at the races. That part was all right – though I should have
been just as content on my own. When night came I was all tensed up for another argument and with a new set of excuses, but to my surprise he was quite matter-of-fact and didn’t try to touch
me. We had twin beds, and except for the embarrassment of sharing the room I’d nothing to complain about. The same the next night
and
the next. I mean, it was surprising.

During the day I could tell he was watching me sometimes, and now and then I caught a look on his face as if I was a puzzle that wouldn’t come out. But all round he was considerate enough,
except that we did so much in so short a time.

Now I’m as strong as a horse, but even I felt tired with all we did. He might be thin and pale, but I realized he was about as delicate as a four-minute miler. Perhaps he was trying to
tire me out.

On the fifth day we flew to Ibiza and took a car to watch a Saint’s Day fiesta in one of the tiny villages. It was queer and strange, with the sun reflecting off the blank white wall of
the church, and the mass of black-clothed peasants seething in the square like a lot of beetles that have just hatched out. The only colour was the procession of sacred images bobbing through the
crowd, and the young girls who wore bright fiesta costumes with lace and silk and coloured underskirts.

I saw one of them who was specially pretty standing next to Mark. She had long plaited black hair with a great satin bow and she was chattering to a crowd of these older women who were all in
black, and wrinkled and weather-beaten as if they’d spent forty years in the sun and the rain. He caught my look and smiled, and I think he saw what I was thinking because when we moved off
he said:

‘Youth doesn’t last long here, does it? A year or so, and then she’ll marry a farmhand and it’ll be all childbearing and work in the fields.’

‘It’s so unfair,’ I said. ‘She’s trapped – no escape.’

‘Oh, yes, I agree. Though if you weep for her you weep for all the world. We’re all trapped the instant we’re born – and we stay so until we die.’

I felt he was blunting the point; by making it general he was taking the edge off what I felt for that girl; but I could not find the right words to say so.

Afterwards we sat in a café and drank cognac at fourpence a glass and watched the Spaniards crushing to the bar trying to get served. Quite a lot of the young men were already pretty well
on and we could hardly hear ourselves speak for all the noise. Three young men at the door of the café were trying to get three girls to talk to them. The girls were giggling behind their
hands and acting like the young men weren’t there.

I said: ‘Men only want one thing from a woman really, don’t they? Something that’s over in five minutes, and then they can pass on. It doesn’t seem to me it matters what
woman it is as long as it’s a woman.’

Mark drank his brandy. I knew as soon as I saw his face that I’d said the wrong thing, and afterwards I wondered why I’d said it, knowing it would really sting him.

‘We’re all caught up in systems bigger than ourselves, Marnie. This isn’t a very good one: most of the girls here will be elderly drudges by the time they’re thirty. But
it doesn’t follow that their standards are lower than ours. In fact what you’ve just said comes from a lower view of life than theirs, not a higher. Most of them would despise you for
it.’

‘Like you do?’ I said gently.

He took a slow breath. ‘Darling, you’re a big girl now. If someone gave you a new system of bookkeeping to learn, you’d learn it. Quicker than I could. Well then, try to keep
an open mind, be ready to learn about other things.’

‘Such as this, I suppose.’

‘Such as trying not to have set ideas – other people’s ideas – about love.’

There was an awful wild cackle of laughter from the men at the bar. It reminded me of Keyham. If that was love I thought . . .

Mark said: ‘Everybody’s experience is something new – absolutely new to themselves – unique. Right?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, have you ever been to a Spanish fiesta before?’

‘No.’

‘Would anybody telling you about it be the same thing?’

‘No.’

‘Then don’t let yourself be told about sex. It’s a nasty trivial little indulgence only if you make it that.’

‘It isn’t what I’ve been told, it’s what I feel!’

‘You can’t feel about what you haven’t known.’

I moved my glass into one of the damp rings on the table that other glasses had left.

He said: ‘If you study some of the Eastern religions you’ll find that the act of love is closely linked with the act of worship. Not necessarily in the way of orgies, but because
they think that on the rare occasions when there is great love between a man and a woman, it copies on a lower level the love of man for God and the ultimate union of man with God.’ He
stopped. ‘All right, that’s high-flying stuff you may think. But it’s better to keep that in mind than dragging it all down to the level of the lavatory and the gutter and the
brothel. You pays your money and you takes your choice.’

There was a sort of scuffle at the bar, and three men began to sing through their noses. Others began to stamp and clap their hands.

Mark said: ‘Darling, if you have memories of some sort, can’t you try to forget them?’

‘I haven’t any memories – of that sort.’

He put his hand over mine. ‘Then I wish you’d help me to make some.’

That night we spent at a hotel at San Antonio. He ordered champagne before our dinner and some sort of red wine with it, and then we had three big liqueurs afterwards. This
with the brandy I’d swallowed at the fiesta should have knocked me silly, but I just haven’t that sort of head. At the end of the dinner I caught sight of myself in a mirror, and
although the holiday had browned my skin the drink had only had a sort of paling effect around my mouth and nose.

I was wearing a crimson taffeta frock, off the shoulders with three-quarter-length sleeves. It looked all right. I suppose I looked all right too, which was crazy on my part because this was the
time if ever to look a frump.

After dinner we went for a walk, but there wasn’t much to see and we came back fairly soon, and when we got into the bedroom I knew this was it. And it was too late to develop an illness.
Even he would have seen through it tonight.

He came across and tried to kiss me. ‘Darling, d’you remember that you made promises when you married me?’ He was very gentle and half teasing.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And are you willing to honour them?’

‘Sometime maybe.’

‘I think it should be now.’

‘No.’

‘I think it should be now,’ he said again.

I could feel the panic growing up in me. ‘You knew what you were marrying.’

‘What?’

‘A liar and a thief.’

‘Even in this?’

‘Yes, even in this.’

‘In what particular way have you lied to me this time?’

I looked past him at the room, at the amphora in the corner, at the beaten copper plate on the wall, at my coat carefully hung and his coat thrown anyhow over a chair.

‘I don’t love you,’ I said.

He pulled a bit away from me and tried to look in my eyes. But he could only see my face, and that was empty, I should think. ‘Marnie, look at me. D’you know what you’re
saying? Do you know what love means?’

‘You’ve tried very hard to tell me.’

‘Perhaps it’s time I stopped talking.’

‘It won’t make any difference.’

He didn’t let me go. ‘Why did you marry me?’

The amphora thing had come out of the sea, they said, and was centuries old. Mark had been very interested.

‘Because I knew if I didn’t marry you you’d turn me over to the police.’

‘You – really believed that?’

‘Well, it was true, wasn’t it?’

‘Honestly, Marnie, dealing with you I’m in quicksands. Where does your reasoning lead you? How could I have turned you over to the police? Once I’d covered up for you it was
only my word against yours.’

I couldn’t explain anything more, so I shrugged.

He kissed me. He took me by surprise and he made no mistake about it this time.

‘Don’t you hate me?’ I said, when I could get a breath.

‘No.’

I tried to tug away from him, getting in a worse panic every minute. ‘You’re not listening to what I’m saying! Don’t you understand plain English! I haven’t any
feelings for you at all. It was all a lie, right from the beginning, first because I wanted to steal the money and then afterwards when you caught me, I had to say
something
, I had to
pretend, so that you wouldn’t hand me over to the police. But all the time I was playing up to you,
nothing
else,
nothing
! I don’t love you. I didn’t want to marry
you but you left me no way out! Now let me go!’

Perhaps after all the drink was in me. I know I sounded pretty shrill even to myself. Anyway I hope it was that. I hadn’t intended to blurt it out then, and when I did I’d wanted to
make it sound decenter than that. He still looked at me, and now I was looking at him. The pupils of his eyes were big and the whites were slightly bloodshot. He said: ‘I’ve been
thinking something of the sort for the last two or three days. But even that doesn’t answer all the questions.’

‘What questions?’

‘Never mind. When I married you I didn’t do so with my eyes shut. Love isn’t always blind.’

‘Let me alone.’

‘Nor is it always patient. Nor is it always gentle.’ I suppose the drink wasn’t lying quite silent in him either.

I tried to swallow the panic. I’d never felt really scared since I was thirteen; I’d never been really scared of anyone, not even the police, never in my life. But I knew now
I’d not gone the right away about this at all. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me, but even if he did it had worked the contrary way. Now when it was too late I said: ‘Mark,
we’re both talking rubbish. We really are. We’ve both had too much to drink. I’m feeling a bit muzzy in the head. Let’s talk about this in the morning.’

‘All right,’ he said quietly, and then as quietly as doom began to undo the buttons at the back of my frock.