Somewhere Beyond Reproach (2 page)

Although Mark went to Cambridge I decided not to. I did not go partly because I was afraid of failure and partly
because
I believed I could learn more in the outside world. In retrospect I neither deplore nor applaud this decision. I left home and took a bed-sitter in Fulham. My initial loneliness was offset by my sense of purpose. I started working for a small advertising concern specialising in ‘point of sale’ material, window stickers, display stands for tins and the like. It was about this time that another school friend, Tim Gerson, started the haulage business that was radically to change my financial future, I am glad to say for the better. I put what capital I had into the concern, but to begin with went on with my advertising work as a safeguard.

I went on seeing Mark, not for his company but in the hope that he would let slip bits of information about Dinah. Naturally I asked him casual questions about her as well. A year or so after my walk with her beside the abbey, I
discovered
from Mark that he was going to a dinner party to which she had been invited. We talked about other things for the rest of the afternoon. Just before I left I asked him in an offhand way whether he knew the person who was giving the party well enough to get him to ask me. This seemed quite natural. The dinner was the same night. Mark said it could be fixed. There were fifteen of us there and I made sure that Dinah did not speak to me directly or alone. Halfway through dinner I heard her speaking my name and found myself trembling. She was merely asking if I could pass her the butter. She looked more beautiful than I
remembered
. She wore a low-cut green velvet dress with white lace round the neck and at the cuffs. I did not look at her often; this was partly for fear of showing my real feelings
and partly to show my calculated indifference. I saw her stealing glances at me. I did not overdo the direct avoidance, for by doing so I could well have appeared comic. She asked me what I was doing and I told her civilly that I was
working
in advertising. Since most of the other male guests were undergraduates, I think this impressed her. I paid a good deal of attention to the only other beautiful woman there. I made sure that Dinah did not miss the fact that we left together. During this party I heard her mention that she was going to a large Charity Ball the following month. I made a mental note of this and resolved to see that I was invited. In the event this did not prove hard. An aunt of mine was on the committee of almost every charitable occasion in London. At the time I did not intend these occasional meetings to do anything more than keep me in her mind. At the dance in question we were all tied to the parties we had gone in. I saw Dinah once. She was trapped by an obese young man the colour of a mulberry. He seemed eager to kiss her. In spite of her imploring gaze I left her with a cheery smile and a wave. How different this outward action was from what I inwardly felt.

The next time I saw her was quite by chance in the toy department of a large store. I was completely taken off my guard. I literally bumped into her as she was winding up a small mechanical duck. She smiled at me and asked how I was getting on. My nervousness made me curt but I realised that she now considered this to be in character. She told me that her father, who was in the Foreign Office, had been appointed First Secretary in Ankara. The duck bobbed and dithered across the glass top of the counter. I felt sick. Naturally she was going with him. It ought to be very
interesting
. I nodded. I needed time to think and I was not going to get it. I could have asked her out but I had grown so used to my role of indifference that I found myself saying that I hoped she’d enjoy herself. The duck was still just moving jerkily as though in its death throes. The shop
assistant
picked it up and said:

‘We’ve got one that quacks as it moves.’

My mind was completely empty. I turned to go. What else could I do? When I got to the lifts there was a queue for the only one there. Clearly I was going to be left to wait for the next. I felt unless I could get out of the building fast, I might go back and look for her. I blundered down the emergency stairs. Outside the store a bus had stopped. I didn’t look at the number but just got in. Five minutes later I knew that I could not go back. She would have gone. As the bus rolled into Leicester Square I found I was in tears. Half an hour later I was able to console myself with the thought that she would be unlikely to make a lasting alliance with a Turk. It was some small consolation. Soon, though, I started to see that this was no disaster. Had she remained in London or gone to a university the number of eligible suitors would have been infinitely greater.

Three months later I gave up advertising and devoted
myself
entirely to the haulage business which Tim Gerson and I had started. We became partners. Within a year the
business
was a viable concern. I worked hard and continued a normal social life while Dinah was away. I was content to wait. It would be easy enough to discover her father’s address on his return.

I find it very difficult to write about Dinah’s return and the start of our first relationship. So much has happened since then. So many times I have seen my earlier
interpretations
of events shown to be hopelessly false. I shall try to be honest about this. Yet I still cannot bear the thought that my self-absorption and my need to see things in a
certain
way has given me a false memory of the beginning of our first affair. Before we slept together I was afraid of anything other than the hypothetical, anything beyond the planned. My expectations of our happiness were day-dreams, and day-dreams are safe. I was frightened of any real
culmination
. Once I had reached some consummation, what could there be beyond it? I feared I should soon be proclaiming my happiness and at the same instant realising that this
happiness
had passed while I spoke. In retrospect I am
disconcerted
at the ease with which I first possessed her. Perhaps
because all my previous preparations are made to look so unnecessary. Perhaps because I should have realised then that it was possible only because Dinah was a woman and not the goddess of a region in my mind. I shall not say what she wore or how she looked, or tell you that her sheets were striped or that her feet were cold. Only the facts.

As I had guessed, the social world in which she had moved abroad had been limited to embassy parties. She had often been bored and lonely. Neither did her return to England make everything all right. She now knew few people and felt isolated and alone. Two weeks after her return she had written to me asking whether I could come as her partner to a dance. I accepted. I was not only excited, but also touched that she had had to ask somebody she had known so little. At the party she told me about her present
problems
, also that she had not found a job and was having to pay too much for a tiny flat. I was sympathetic and helpful. Very different from the brash and arrogant young man I had
previously
attempted to portray. At the end of the dance my car would not start. This was not planned. Nobody else was leaving at that time. The tubes and buses had long since stopped. I offered to walk home with her. There were no taxis in sight. It is a long walk from Chelsea to Putney. It was already four o’clock and a cold February night. When we reached the flat it was after five and the first of the early morning delivery lorries were starting to rumble over
Putney
Bridge. Outside a butcher’s, men were carrying the disembowelled carcasses of sheep into the shop, still
dripping
with blood. At the door of her flat she said I couldn’t possibly walk all the way back. She had a sofa. I agreed to stay. The flat consisted of a bathroom, a kitchen and a
bed-sitting
room. The sofa and her bed were in the same room. The sofa was too short, there weren’t enough blankets. I got up after half an hour and murmured that I was leaving. She rolled over, still half-asleep, leaving me room to get into bed with her. I did. I lay awake hardly daring to move. Later she half-woke and like a drowsy child laid an arm across my chest. We lay like this till dawn. Three days later I
possesed her. It had been simple, natural and beautiful. For a time I laughed at my former fears.

*

It was several days after my return from France, in late June of 1957, that I discovered where Dinah had gone. In all my careful preparations and working out of my affair with Dinah, I had left out one vital figure. I had completely underestimated the power of childhood friendships. I had, I suppose, thought that the tenacity of ‘boy next door’
relationships
only existed in the cheaper Sunday papers. I had forgotten Mark Simpson. I had also assumed that the distance that had once separated me from Dinah had equally
separated
her from Mark at Cambridge. I subsequently learned that he had seen her in Turkey on several of his vacations.

Although I had always envied the easy way he talked to her, I had noticed that what they said never had the slightest hint of a deep friendship. Familiarity at that age I felt was more likely to breed indifference emotionally, if not actually contempt. In our six-month friendship I had purposely not encouraged Dinah to talk about her friends. That she should live a life I did not know about seemed dangerous to me. I assumed, as she rarely went out or talked about friends, that she had all her needs supplied by me. The lunacy of my egotism amazes me in retrospect. When I felt I had her, there had been no need for me to shine in front of other people. My former merits were known. They should need no further and continuing proof. Besides, my feeling of love made me beyond reproach in my own eyes. For the first time in my life sexual consummation had increased rather than diminished my affection. I silently rejoiced in my good
fortune
.

The haziness of my memory as regards this first
relationship
with Dinah is proof of my faults. The relationship was almost entirely in my mind. It had been there for so long that even the possession of the woman herself did little to alter this. We talked to each other in a void. We never discussed any specific issues. Our mutual understanding, which existed only in my mind, seemed enough. Other
issues would cloud this, even detract from it. A love so rare could not gain from the mundane triviality of logical
conversation
or discussion. I know however that I did not bore her. She was alarmed more than anything else. Yet she said nothing of this. A lot of the time she was happy too. But at other times she must have felt terribly cut off. We went out to films and theatres often. She could not complain on that score. We went to art galleries; we walked a lot. The map of London had a new significance for me now. Mentally I traced the path of our mutual happiness on an imaginary map. In the same way that I recorded my impressions with such detail in France, in London I stored up exact memories of occasions. As I looked at her I could recall her in all these places. Her expression looking at a particular painting. What pleasure I got if she should pause in front of a work that I particularly admired. As we walked very close together, this was generally the case. Nor did we sully those soundless halls with any noise other than our footfalls. When we talked normally about food, and furniture for her flat, I made these opinions of hers seem significant. Dishes she liked were also included in my store of sacred memory.
Re-reading
this I am painfully aware that any further
explanation
of her absence on my return from France may seem superfluous. But I felt such tenderness. It is hard to be
convincing
when claiming that self-absorption need not be selfish. I said to myself that my behaviour was perfectly natural, that the initial gaiety and slightly elated and nervous
talkativeness
was certain to become a deep affection, conscious of every mood … quieter and more mellow. Women in a perpetual state of chirpy high spirits have always annoyed me. They hover expectantly on the edge of everything for fear of being in nothing. Most conversation is reported
incident
. We were always together. There was nothing to report.

My letters could have finally convinced her that we were not for each other. My mania for observed detail must have seemed obsessive. My lack of everyday concern for her work must also have contributed. My feeling of gloom and sorrow, for what I was, increases as I write. When younger I had
been able to reduce myself to tears by exaggerating the
happiness
I was not enjoying. On the rare occasions when I tell a joke or story I sometimes gain pleasure through
identifying
with the hero. This narrative will give me few pleasant opportunities of that sort.

I had never met Dinah’s mother. But the desperation I felt as I clutched those half-dozen unopened letters of mine forced me to take this repulsive step a couple of days later. I cursed myself for not having questioned Dinah about her friends. The possibility of her having gone to stay with Mark did not enter my mind. Quite apart from the
humiliation
I should have to undergo in admitting to the woman that I had been deserted. I did not feel that I should be able to find room for a mother in the ever-present treasure chest of my sweet nostalgia for everything to do with Dinah. There was also every chance that the woman would refuse to tell me where her daughter was. She might not even know. If I admitted the intimacy of my relationship, that might
prejudice
my chances of finding out. If I pretended to be a casual friend this could also tell against me. I could not
resolve
any definite approach. Pathetically I decided to tell the truth if this seemed at all possible. This proved to be
unnecessary
.

*

My misgivings were confirmed as soon as I set eyes on Mrs Lisle. Her eyes were a chilling slate grey, her carefully permed hair was a slightly lighter shade of the same colour. Her glasses were frameless except for blue eyebrow shaped strips of plastic along the top. My dislike for the mother was as instantaneous as had been my love for the daughter.

She lived in a small house off Wimbledon Hill. The only individuality the residents showed was in the different colours of the doors. A deep red was the most favoured. The
regularly spaced trees had been cut back the year before. With their summer covering of leaves they were all the same shaving brush shape as in a child’s painting. I looked at the highly patterned Victorian moulding over the windows and under the eaves of the houses; all my earlier snobberies about suburban living returned with force. Mrs Lisle’s door was varnished. As I came up the garden path it was covered by an orange and white canvas curtain to stop it blistering and sticking in the sun.

Mrs Lisle welcomed me as though I was expected. I was.

‘Harry Cramb?’ she said.

My surname has never pleased me. Her careful
articulation
made me like it still less. I nodded assent to the slight note of questioning in her voice.

*

The drawing room looked out on to a garage across a small strip of grass at the back of the house. I looked around me. There was no single piece of furniture that I would have liked to possess. The nineteenth-century landscapes were better. I looked down hastily. I almost felt the question forming in her mind: ‘Are you interested in painting?’. My vacant expression led her to ask instead:

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘No, please don’t bother,’ I paused and added, ‘Unless you want some.’

She did. I was left alone. I saw a photograph of Dinah on a round table to one side of the mantelpiece. The
floorboards
creaked as I moved towards it. Quite out of place here. I did not hear Mrs Lisle return. I heard her say from the doorway:

‘She was eighteen when that was done. Taken by a funny little man in Southsea.’

I said nothing. What could I say? I was known about. I assumed the extent of Mrs Lisle’s knowledge must be
considerable
. She was in no haste to question me.

‘We
have
been lucky with the weather this summer,’ she said, almost as though in some mysterious way she was
responsible
. ‘I hear you’ve been in France. What part?’

I told her. I think she realised and relished to the full her comment on my travels. She said:

‘Really you are lucky. I don’t know how you find the time.’

I told her about my ear. Of course she was very sorry. I was determined not to talk unless questioned. We sat in silence for some moments. I felt her thinking: ‘Poor young man. Nothing much to say for himself.’ Later I was to learn that Mrs Lisle used silences for thoughts more precise than that. She was summing me up. She had heard about me. I had ‘hurt’ her daughter and there I was at last. Sitting in her drawing room unsummoned and completely at her mercy. She said:

‘I’m going to be quite frank with you, Harry.’ She leant forward and took a delicate sip of tea. She smiled at me and went on. ‘You see I believe that complete honesty can save one from so many tiresome mistakes.’

I found myself moving my hands nervously back and forth on my trouser legs. I became conscious of this and
immediately
forced myself to be quite still. I made no
acknowledgement
of her devastating clichés.

‘You’re not going to like me when I tell you that Dinah was miserable with you.’

With difficulty I fought back any desire to contradict. I should at any rate not leave the house having given her any indication of my violent feelings. I was already feeling sick. Why somebody of Dinah’s delicacy had not severed all
relations
with such a mother with the severing of the umbilical cord, I was at a loss to know. And at the time I could have gained no satisfaction from a nasty little joke of that kind.

‘She never felt that she knew you at all. I think I can almost see what she meant. I don’t mean this at all unpleasantly. She said that you were never very responsive.’

I think that remark gave me the first inkling of the woman’s intelligence. I replied:

‘I don’t think that any denial of mine will change your judgement.’

As soon as I had spoken I realised that I had merely reinforced her first impression.

She ignored my brief interjection.

‘I wonder if you’re going to be sensible and take an older person’s advice.’ No hint of questioning tone. I was going to take her advice. She would make sure that I had to. ‘I know Dinah pretty well. I
am
her mother.’ She paused for the inevitable little smile. That extra prolongment of my agony. ‘She talked to me a lot about you. She was very much in love.’ I noticed the past tense with a terrible stab of pain under my diaphragm. Mrs Lisle picked up her cup and placed it firmly on the tray as though a decisive stage had been reached. ‘If it’s any comfort to you, in my opinion, I don’t think it would ever have worked.’ My anger at this was terrible. I restrained myself. She must have noticed in spite of my efforts at repression. ‘I’m saying this because I don’t want you to feel you could have done anything had you been in London.’ She got up and walked over to the sideboard. She picked up a carefully folded
Daily
Telegraph.
I could have got a copy myself. I didn’t have to look yet I did: experienced my worst humiliation under the scrutiny of those slate-coloured eyes.

*

Not merely an engagement; my eye had started there, up and down those columns. My bowels had loosened just as before a beating. ‘Marriages’ and there it was. Mark’s name, her name … at Deerhurst Church, Gloucestershire. No details of best man or bridesmaids. Only the bare
announcement
and Mrs Lisle’s silence. I turned towards the door. I dared not speak for fear of crying in front of her. I saw the photograph, the hint of a smile at the corner of those
delicate
lips. A photograph that had already receded a little further into history: Miss Dinah Lisle, five years before her marriage … the lines from the Litany came to mind: ‘from fornication … and sudden death … Good Lord deliver us’ … from sudden marriage, Good … At the door I realised that I was holding the paper. I put it down on the back of a chair. It fell to the floor. Mrs Lisle took a
couple of steps after me. I hurried. In spite of the striped curtain outside the door, it had still stuck. ‘Let me do that. You have to lift it by the letter box before pulling.’

‘Thank you,’ I murmured from the path. The idiocy of my remark struck me later.

A tennis court, a stream by an abbey … ‘I need a strong arm’ … ‘no “I love you” only “I love”.’ There was a bus shelter half-way down the street. Thankfully I hid from further eyes.