The Book and the Brotherhood (57 page)

‘You persist in misunderstanding me,’ said Rose, ‘and you evidently don’t listen to me!’

‘Perhaps you find me rather – provincial – but –’

‘Oh don’t drag that in! If you think it’s
class
–! It’s perfectly simple, I don’t like you!’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Crimond, and he flushed and drew back his thin lips to show his teeth. ‘As for Gerard, what has he ever given you in return for your caring for him so –?’

Rose stood up and Crimond at once stood too. She was relieved to find herself more eloquently angry. ‘How dare you speak like that of Gerard! You’re envious of him, you’re spiteful to him and insulting to me. You seem to imagine that I feel friendly, even warmly, towards you – I do not! And what your ridiculous “proposal” amounts to is that after being madly in love with Jean and wrecking her marriage you suddenly drop her and run to me in order to get your revenge on everybody, and – and you offer – you exhibit – some crazy feeling you have – it certainly isn’t love – which consists of spite and vanity and sentimental nostalgia and inferiority complex – people thinking you’re “provincial” – and you expect me to console you and – and
justify
you – oh, and what conceit, to imagine that I once cared for you and still do –’

‘
It is
love,’ said Crimond. ‘
You
are misunderstanding
me.
’

‘When did you think of all this, three days ago? How can I take you seriously?’

‘Of course you must be surprised, and perhaps you resent my direct approach, but –’ Then he suddenly cried out loudly, ‘Oh God, I could
explain
it all!’ Then he said, quietly again, ‘When can we meet – please –’

‘I don’t “resent” it,’ cried Rose, ‘I’m not
interested
enough to resent anything! I don’t want to discuss your feelings. You are an enemy of people that I love, you are a person whom I utterly reject. I don’t want to see you, I ask you to go and not to trouble me with any more of this nonsense. Now please go away, and understand that I don’t want to see you again!’

She moved from the table and went to open the door. Looking back at him she saw his face for a moment blazing with emotion. The next moment, still flushed, he resumed his impassive expression. He walked as far as the middle of the
room where he stopped, drew his heels together and bowed slightly. Then he went past her through the doorway, picked up his coat in the hall, and left the flat closing the door quietly behind him.

Rose stood still. His sudden departure, his
absence
, came to her as a strange shock. He was no longer there – and she was standing alone in the most terrible storm of her own emotions. How
could
he have come to say such a thing, to upset her so, to
hurt
her so! She felt, in that moment, dreadfully dreadfully
hurt
, wounded, as if he had rejected her, not she him. How could he so unfeelingly, so brutally, have put her in a situation where she was forced to behave as she had just behaved! I shouldn’t have spoken like that, she thought, I lost my head, I should have been cool and collected and courteous, and not let him stay so long and say so much. I should have asked him to go away at the start. Of course I ought not to have let him come at all. I was too unkind, and it wasn’t exactly what I felt either. I did like him then, at Oxford, I admired him, we all did. Oh I shall regret this so much, it will cause me so much pain later, that I behaved so stupidly, so badly.

Then she thought, I’ll run after him. Then she thought, but it would be undignified and would give the wrong impression. Then she found herself dragging open the door of the flat and running down the stairs.

The air outside met her with a tidal wave of cold. She stood on the frosty slippery pavement and looked up and down. Had he come by car? Had he driven off already? He was not in sight. She ran to the corner and looked both ways along the next road. A car some distance away was just pulling out and disappearing. She ran back, past her house, slipping on the pavement and grasping the railings to prevent a fall. She scanned another road but could not see him. She walked slowly back and in again at the wide open door and up the stairs. She shut herself into the flat and leaned back against the door. She was gasping aloud. What was the matter with her? Why did it now seem the most important thing in the world to find Crimond and bring him back and talk to him and go on talking to him? Why ever had she let him go? Why had she
spoken to him in such a crude cruel way? What could he be thinking of her now, he so proud a man, who had trusted her with so amazing an admission? He had said, surely she would understand such a thing. Yes, yes, she would, she did. She was deeply moved by that captive love which had never died. She believed him. She ought to have thanked him for loving her with such a love.

Rose began to walk about in her sitting room, up and down, up and down. The sun had gone, and she turned on the lights. Was it possible that somehow, within a period of minutes, she had
fallen in love
with Crimond? Why was I so aggressive, so final, she thought. Really, he has done me an honour – even if he only thought of me as a life-line. I was so haughty, so awful, so vulgarly conceited, talking of his insulting me by saying he loved me. I ought to have been grateful. I didn’t have to reject him like that, to drive him away, to be so rude. I could have said I’d see him again. I ought to have done so anyway out of compassion. Why couldn’t I even feel sorry for him, there would have been no harm in that. He looked so tired and so sad. I can still tell him, I can hear that
explanation
he said he could make. Only he won’t forgive me for what I’ve said, he won’t think I’m sincere. Oh what is happening to me, and what have I done!

Rose was aware, now, that she was intensely
flattered
by Crimond’s homage. He, so fastidious, so aloof, had come to her as a suppliant. He said he loved her and had always loved her. Of course he is mad, she thought, I always believed he was mad. But how different that madness seemed now when it was expressed as love for her. I must see him again, she thought, I must see him
today.
I can’t go on without seeing him. I’ll ring him up, he may be home by now. She began to look in the telephone book, then remembered he had said he had no telephone. She thought, I’ll drive to his house. But what could she say when she was there, what reason could she give, her appearance could only seem like a total surrender, and supposing he rejected her. Then I should go mad too, she thought, I
am
mad – but it’s such a pain, I must relieve the pain somehow, oh why didn’t I keep him here at least while I
thought
about it! I’ll write him a letter and then run out and post it. I’ve got to do something or my heart will burst. I’ll write a careful letter and suggest that we have another talk soon, I’ll say I was sorry I was so rude, and I didn’t mean to be, I’ll say…

With a sense of relief she set out pen and paper and sat down at the table. She began hastily to write.

Rose read this through carefully, then crossed out the sentences about being disturbed and hoping to be forgiven, and wrote the letter out again. The writing of it relieved the pain. She was still looking at it when the telephone bell rang. Her immediate thought was, it’s him, he feels just as I do, that we
must
meet again. She ran to the telephone, fumbling clumsily to pick it up.

‘Hello, Rose, it’s me,’ said Gerard’s voice.

Gerard. She had so completely forgotten Gerard’s existence that she gave a little exclamation of surprise, and then was silent holding the instrument away from her. She could hear Gerard saying, ‘Hello, Rose, is that you?’

She said, ‘Could you hold on a moment, I must turn something off in the kitchen.’

She went away into the kitchen and looked at a row of matching red saucepans standing in order of size. She went back to the telephone.

‘Yes?’

‘Rose, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter.’

‘You sound very odd.’

‘What did you want?’

‘“What did I want?” What sort of a question is that? I’m just ringing you up! Are you ill?’

‘No, no, I’m sorry –’

‘I did want to ask you something actually, do you know when Jean and Duncan are coming back?’

Gerard? Jean and Duncan? Who were these people? Rose tried to concentrate. ‘Very soon, I think, Tuesday or Wednesday, that’s what Jean said when I rang her yesterday evening.’

‘I’m so glad, I thought they might be afraid to show their faces in London. Look, could we have supper this evening, at your place, or I’ll take you out?’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’

‘Lunch then.’

‘No, I’ve got to see someone –’

‘Ah well – it’s short notice, I’ll try again. Darling, are you sure you’re all right?’

‘Yes, of course. Thanks for ringing. I’ll give you a ring soon.’

Rose, who had no engagements that day, returned to the table. She thought, I am out of my mind. It is
impossible
, because of Gerard, because of Jean, for me to have any relation of any kind with Crimond. If I were to go round to his house now, which is what I want to do more than anything in the world, I am capable of falling into his arms, or at his feet. I ought to be locked up, I must lock myself up. This is dangerous insanity and I must get over it. Perhaps I could just send him the letter though – just the letter to take away that awful impression, to make peace somehow between us, otherwise I shall be in pain forever, thinking of what he must think of me. I could cut out the bit about seeing him again. But of course he might take the letter as encouragement, he might come again, simply turn up. Oh how I wish he would! She went back to the table and took up an envelope. Then she read the letter again and crumpled it up. Tears came into her eyes.

I pity him, she thought, that’s what I must tell myself ever
after. I love him, I love him, but it’s no use. How can I make sense, how can something like this happen so quickly? But it has happened – and it’s impossible, it’s deadly, it must simply be stopped and killed, I must
drown
these thoughts. The least weakness could make a catastrophe, a desolation. No one must know. How could I live if Gerard knew? If anything were to happen – it could only go wrong – and that would break me, it would break some integrity, some dignity, some pride, something by which I live. I can’t risk my life here. But, oh, what pain, a secret pain that will be with me forever. I must be faithful to my real world, to my dear tired old world. There is no new world. The new world is illusion, it’s
poison.
God, I am going mad.

She went into her bedroom. She thought, and he wanted to
marry
me! She threw herself on the bed and wept bitterly.

During the short time when Rose was with them at Boyars, Jean and Duncan had kept up a pretence of some sort of instant recovery. Rose had been amazed at their calmness. At dinner that evening they were able to be almost like their old selves. This was not a prearranged ‘act’, it was an instinctive façade set up to make endurable Rose’s embarrassing presence, her status as a witness who would eagerly report what she had seen in other quarters. It was necessary to ‘impress’ Rose before she could be got rid of. Rose was duly impressed and described their achievement to Gerard; at once however she and Gerard set to work to correct any misleading rosy impression which might have been made. They agreed that the ‘calmness’ was itself an effect of shock, the ‘jollity’ to be compared with the nervous cheerfulness of bereaved people at funerals, who then go home to weep. They sketched out many
trials and difficulties, and wondered whether the reunion would work at all. Perhaps it might even collapse at once through Duncan’s uncontrollable resentment, or Jean’s flight back to Crimond. Rose and Gerard did not however try to imagine in detail what their friends were now up to, and did not continue their speculations beyond generalities; it was necessary to wait and see. Such temperance was characteristic of these two.

Rose had considered leaving Boyars at once, on the evening of Duncan’s arrival, but thought it wise to wait until the next morning just to see a little how things were going on. She thought her presence, just at first, might be helpful, imposing a calming limiting formality. She had asked Annushka to make up a bed in the room at the back of the house which Duncan had occupied on the weekend of the skating. She said nothing about this and did not attempt to discover where he had spent the night. In fact Duncan had spent that night by himself in that room. After the first discovery that ‘they did not hate each other’, Jean and Duncan fell into an amazing shyness, a kind of mute fear, a time of not uncomfortable silences, when sitting in the same room was enough. They were soon aware, and as a short prospect this was a relief (so Rose was right), that they were simply waiting for Rose to go. At lunch, even at tea, there was an air of slightly crazy cheerfulness, but at dinner they were acting a part. They sat with Rose briefly after dinner, then disappeared saying, truly enough, that they were ‘absolutely exhausted’. As soon as they were out of sight Rose
ran
to her bedroom up the back stairs so as not to pass Jean’s room, noisily closed her door, and exhausted too, went early to bed and to sleep. The scene in Jean’s room was brief too. Jean and Duncan wanted a rest from each other. They were aware too of the proximity of Rose. They hardly needed words to agree that tonight they would sleep apart. Duncan, also using the back stairs so as not to pass Rose’s room, which lay between, tiptoed to his former bedroom, not surprised to find the bed made up and the room warm. Jean took one of Dr Tallcott’s sleeping pills and went to sleep at once. But Duncan stood for a long time in the darkness
at the window. At first he did not turn on his light because he was waiting for Rose to turn out hers. He could see the faint glow of her light on the lawn and on the curving wall of the turret. But when it went out he stayed there standing in the dark. He opened the window and let in the chill but moist air which even carried very faintly the smell of wet earth. The rain had ceased and a few stars were visible. He stood at the window uttering deep breaths like little soundless sobs. He felt the exalted anguish of a man in a spiritual crisis who is struck down by a sudden visitation, a mixture of shock, prostration, fear, and a weird painful joy. He was glad to be alone and able to tremble and gasp over it all. His irritable coldness to Gerard and Jenkin had not been entirely simulated. He had to stay cool, to stay cold, so as not to expect too much, not to expect anything, not to imagine the future at all; and he was, helpfully, annoyed by the gleeful faces of his friends bringing the good news and expecting him to be excited and grateful. He had inhibited his hopes, deliberately feared the worst, even nursed his old huge resentments, and did not know until he was actually in Jean’s presence that he still absolutely loved her, and that she at least sufficiently seemed to love him. That was enough of a miracle to rest upon for one night at any rate.