Storyboard (26 page)

“You said, ‘having children’.”

“I didn’t say ‘rearing them’; I said ‘having them’. And loving them. Rearing them is a job. You can do it well or badly, and you can give in to it, just like any other.”

“And Sophia?”

“Well, she’s lucky because she’s good at her job. So
she can not only enjoy doing it; she can even afford to be choosey, if she wants to. Nobody’s going to give her the sack if she says she doesn’t want to do cigarette advertising for instance, or the nastier sorts of
purgatives
. Except that I’m bound to say that it never does work like that, because if one is good at it, one tends to respond to the challenge and forget what the product does to people; one doesn’t bother about the what
because
the how is so fascinating. I’m surprised Sophia didn’t tell you that. Perhaps she was afraid to.”

“Perhaps.”

“I expect she saw you as rather an ideal sort of person, and then tried to be someone you’d like. She does get caught up in things, Sophia does—in advertising and in life as well. That’s the real danger, but it’s inside herself, not something corrupting from outside. It’s giving up the the island.”

Ralph said, “I would like some tea, Hugh.”

“So would I,” Hugh said. “Nobody’s ever encouraged me to talk at this length before. It’s fascinating finding out what I think about things. Perhaps we ought to have some cake as well. Mrs. Rhodes went to Fullers, I’m glad to say.”

*

Keith and Sylvia had never experienced disaster
before
. They didn’t know what to do about anything so final, which was yet not final for them; Stephen was dead, but there
they
were, together. The convention for disaster is that one bears it while it is happening, and picks up the pieces when it is over. But what pieces?—Pieces of what? If one’s house falls down, one can, after whatever toil, whatever privations, build another. But if one’s son dies, what then?

It might have been easier if Stephen had died at once.
The suddenness might have shocked them into a shared grief, a shared comfort. But he took four days to die, and there was nothing to do around the house, but only wait for messages. They could not talk about the
accident
because there was guilt between them. If Sylvia had not gone upstairs to lie down, Stephen could not have tipped the pan over, but if Keith and Sylvia had not quarrelled the night before, would Sylvia have wanted to go upstairs and lie down? In the hospital the guilt was still there, with the fear; they could not have said so, but they would rather have gone separately to see him. Four restless unhappy days, keeping the house with nothing to do, and then Stephen died, and was buried, and the Chairman himself came to the funeral.

Keith would rather have gone back to work at once, but that was not usual. “Expect you’ll want to take Sylvia away somewhere,” P.A. had said, so they had gone to Paris to insulate themselves from parents and
colleagues
. There was little more to do in Paris than there had been in Purley. Time had to be filled, so they made expeditions, sightseeing about the city, and to Versailles and to Chartres. It was a meaningless occupation, except that it ate time, and offered a succession of neutral topics for conversation. Sylvia spoke of doing her Christmas shopping. They had better go either to Keith’s parents or her own for the Christmas holiday. It would be
expected
under the circumstances.

They stayed at a hotel in the Rue de Lille, and ate their breakfast behind glass at a café facing the Seine. They had done Notre Dame, and the Invalides, and Sacré Coeur, and the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre, and the Museum of Modern Art, and Montmartre and the Flea Market but not Pigalle, and the Madeleine and a great many other buildings of a sacred character. This
morning Keith would have a haircut, while Sylvia visited the department stores. Then they would meet downstairs at the American Express, have a drink at the Café de la Paix and watch the world go by, find
somewhere
fairly inexpensive for lunch, and come back to the hotel so that Sylvia could lie down for a while. When Keith handed in his key, there was a letter for him at the desk. It was from P.A.

“He says we can stay as long as we like. There’s no hurry about getting back.”

But what would they do with all that time? “We might as well go back as planned. We don’t want to change the tickets,” Sylvia said.

“He says the Foundation Soap thing has folded up. He says they’d finally agreed the advertising, and then Hoppness cancelled the whole project. He says he isn’t sorry.”

“Why did it fold?”

“Apparently there was some article in
The
Radical
giving the game away. I don’t suppose it was what
The
Radical
intended, but once enough people knew that Hoppness was going to launch an identical product to Foundation Soap, and put big money behind it,
Pettifer’s
shares dropped several points, and Hoppness took them over. Best thing that could have happened, from Hoppness’ point of view.”

“So all that work was wasted?”

“If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else.”

Keith broke open a
croissant,
and spread it with butter and jam. Sylvia sipped her coffee in the thick white cup. Outside there was the river, and they could see the Pont Solferino to the left and the Pont Royal to the right. It would be a fine sunny day again, crisp enough so that
one would enjoy walking, which was just as well since they did so much of it. Keith would probably buy an English newspaper at the little stall outside the Flor, and then go on to find a barber somewhere in the Boulevard St. Germain. What was planned for this evening?—the Opera?—a play?—some new, and naturally French, film? Keith would know; he had arranged to fill the evenings as well as the days. Perhaps they might, before they left Paris, buy a picture at one of the little galleries they passed every day. It would be something to change the look of the house.

Since the day of the accident, Sylvia had not wept. Of course it was winter. No wonder she felt so cold.

*

When you have been used to sharing the week-end, then a week-end on your own has an unfamiliar
loneliness
. There weren’t enough things to buy when you went shopping by yourself; you made a list out of habit, but to do so was a waste of time, not that wasting time
mattered
when you had so much more of it. Well,
je
ne
suis
pas
vierge,
Sophia told herself; she’d finished with an affair before, and got over it.

It wasn’t just because all that with Ralph was over that worried her. It wasn’t the fact, but the
circumstances
. Was it just cant, then, this talk of hers of giving up advertising? If it were just a lie she told herself, she shouldn’t have passed it off as truth to Ralph. One liked to keep some sort of lifebelt. She had always told herself she could teach if advertising ever became too much for her, and so she could. She had never tried teaching—she hadn’t had to—but she had a good degree, and there would be no difficulty in finding a post. Devon Educational Authority was particularly short of teachers, as all rural areas were. If she were to make the break
with this hollow life she was leading, why not break completely, and go back to her roots in Devon? Not that roots had ever seemed to her particularly attractive things.

She had never told Ralph she liked working in
advertising
, and she didn’t; she loathed it, very often.
Naturally
there were moments; one did get a satisfaction out of doing things well and being praised for it, but that, she supposed, would apply in any job. How annoying that her thoughts kept coming back to this; she would do better to read a book. She poached herself an egg for lunch, and tried to settle to reading. No good. Perhaps she should have made more to Ralph about the
fascination
of it; he probably hadn’t understood that. She didn’t want to become a career woman like Nancy Harvey, though. Nancy took things too seriously, regarded any criticism, even of the most constructive kind, as a
personal
attack, and became all edgey and bitter in Plans Boards. Sophia would rather like to become a Group Head, though, and supposed that, if she were to stay at the Agency long enough, she would, or could now
maybe
, if she chose to leave the Agency for another. And she’d had offers. But she didn’t want to make a real thing out of advertising like Nancy and a few other women she could think of; she didn’t want to join the I.P.A., and get elected to the Creative Circle or that sort of thing; that would be much too committing.

She decided that she would simply stop thinking about Ralph, except that stopping herself was all part of
thinking
about him, and one couldn’t forget just by wanting to. He wasn’t the sort of person she had thought he was, and he wasn’t the sort of person
he
thought he was either. But was anybody? Was Sophia? Didn’t she deceive
herself
too? She hadn’t really meant that about giving up
advertising to be a teacher. One played up to people, and didn’t know one was doing it. Ralph had played up to her for a while, perhaps, enjoying being the sort of person she saw, but that gets irksome, and he probably hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped. One couldn’t hold people to the way in which one first saw them.

He was pompous. He took himself too seriously; that was his trouble. And she had taken him too seriously; that was hers.

She didn’t want to grow into a Nancy Harvey. Could one help but be what one became? Perhaps a little, but it would be difficult, and the effort would never be over. Was it worth it? Being something other than what one really was, that was just a pretence, just fake. But if there were bits of what one was that one didn’t like, then one just had to pretend, and hope the pretence would stick. One had to keep on pretending, or else give in. Ralph hadn’t pretended for long, but should she blame him for preferring to live up to his own pretence of himself instead of the pretence she had invented for him?

No, it was cant to talk of giving up advertising for teaching, but she would give up advertising for a family any time, because she wanted one. Not for a husband; she could be a good wife, and a Group Head too. But she would give it up for a family. And if she were never to marry (and it was very possible that she might not, when she considered the obstacles she herself placed in the way of it), still she would not become like Nancy, but would try to be more like Hugh. Advertising or any other job couldn’t be instead of a family; that was where Nancy made her mistake. Sophia didn’t yet know what could be instead of a family. She hoped she would never need to find out.

Meanwhile she could only do what she could do.
She would go on being as good a copywriter as she could, and as good a person. She would ask to leave Hugh’s group; they both knew it was time for that. She would try not to be too—what was it?—ego-involved, not to be too upset when things went wrong in the
Hoppness
way or any other way; she would tell herself it wasn’t really important, and that advertising was like that. Trying wouldn’t make much difference. She would often be upset, and ego-involved too (ridiculous association of an old brown hen, sitting on a piece of copy paper, and cackling), but both would pass more easily for her trying. And she would never be a teacher. She’d be bloody awful at teaching, as a matter of fact.

As for Ralph, she wouldn’t phone him, and she wouldn’t make a point of not phoning him. One didn’t forget people, and she would not forget him. It had been very different this time from the experience with Paul, and not wanting to meet on the stairs. She knew Ralph better, and herself better, so, whatever
happened
, she was the better for it. She didn’t care if she did meet Ralph on the stairs. In fact, she hoped they would meet somewhere casually, unimportantly, at a pub or at a party, and if she, Sophia, had the sense to do no more than grin at him, why then they might both begin to laugh together, and it would be all right
between
them, much lighter than before. She thought that, if this were going to happen, it had better happen fairly soon. Ralph was the sort of person for whom matters very quickly became habitual.

And she would never, ever, go into teaching.

*

She would never go back to teaching.

Keith had thought it was time to talk seriously, and
with much clumsiness, much clearing of the throat, had said, “What will you do, Sylvia? Do you want to go back to teaching for a bit?” and she, sitting at the
dressing-table
of a bedroom of a hotel in the Rue de Lille and creaming her face, had said, “No,” just like that,
without
thinking. And she supposed, since it had come out so pat, that she must mean it.

It was so simple. You couldn’t go back. You might want to do so, but that was only a daydream, screening yourself from things as they were and making an excuse for your not accepting them or changing them. It was not the responsibility and the occupation offered by Richmond High School that she had wanted, but a shift in the balance of power; she had wanted to be out at work while Keith stayed at home, and both were young again. But they were not young now, and she was not, if she considered deeply, the sort of woman who is
devoted
only to failures.

If she and Keith had lived, in every important way, more and more apart, it had been because she had never bothered to try to keep closer together, since marriage and the child would always hold them at least
conventionally
close. Now Stephen was dead. Keith had his own life at the Agency—or at least the Agency had Keith’s life, which might not be the same thing—and Sylvia did not belong to the Agency. She could break up the marriage if she wished, ask for an arranged divorce, but she didn’t want that; she had been
married
too long to be good at being unmarried. Keith was somebody, not nobody. Perhaps there was nothing strong to keep them together, but nor was there anything to pull them apart.