The Malcontents (23 page)

‘So you don’t feel like playing?’

When he had been brazen, overdoing it, it had been easier for Stephen. Not instantaneously, he said: ‘No. It would be useless.’

‘Oh, come on. In for a penny, in for a pound. It won’t get you in much deeper.’

‘There’s no point in it.’

‘I’ve been one of you, haven’t I?’ The front had dropped right away, Lance was pleading. ‘I’ve done my whack.’

Stephen didn’t answer.

‘You’re not still thinking I’m responsible for poor old Bernie, are you? I swear that I had nothing to do with it.’

‘I haven’t a view on that. It doesn’t enter.’

‘Well then. You might as well say a word for me.’

‘It would be valueless.’

‘I dare say it would. Just for the look of it, though.’

Stephen’s voice sounded harder than he intended.

‘No. Not for the look of it, I can’t.’

‘Of course you can. Why not?’

‘Have I got to tell you?’

‘You’d better.’

‘It’s your fault that we’re in this situation. With hindsight I think they’d probably have stopped us anyway, but they wouldn’t have made us look ridiculous into the bargain. You’ve done that. With your drugs. No one minds what you do – providing it’s no danger to the job or anyone else. This has been. I’d come to the rescue if I could really help you. But as for tokens, I don’t think they’re called for. I’ve tried to think it out. It seems to me the obligation is cancelled.’

Lance had listened without a twitch. He said: ‘You knew all about me before you took me in.’

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t.’

‘You should have done.’

‘That’s fair.’

‘Anyway, you soon did know. You should have told me to stop.’

‘That’s fair too.’

‘We were too democratic, we never interfered with anyone. Someone ought to have been in charge,’ Neil broke in. Lance said to Stephen: ‘I’d either have played or got out. I wouldn’t have blown any secrets. You could have trusted me.’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen.

‘Well then. Won’t you think again?’

‘No. It wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve thought enough. I’m sorry.’

Lance gave an imitation of his impertinent smile. He gazed steadily at Stephen, and said: ‘Right ho. There’s never any harm in trying, is there, though?’

It was that flick of jautiness which, as Stephen left them, on his way to meet Tess, recurred to him, made him unreconciled to the decisions he had made, and once, like a shame jabbing back into memory, forced him to shut his eyes and stand stock-still.

Over the telephone to Tess, in a hurry, possible meeting places for tea leaving him blank as though he were a stranger in the town, Stephen had finally come out with the name, Simpkin and James. It was an unlikely rendezvous for them. This was the local Fortnum and Mason’s, a grocery for the genteel, not long after this to be, like other small genteel emporia, closed down. Stephen had sometimes been taken there for tea when he was a child, but had not been inside since. There, in the café upstairs, overheated, overscented, full of provincial ladies, at a side table Tess was waiting for him. As he went towards her, he seemed to be the only man in the room.

‘How’s it gone?’ she said.

She already knew something about the interview with Hotchkinson, and that Stephen was seeing Neil that afternoon. During that lunchtime telephone conversation, Stephen hadn’t told her what he had decided, or if he had decided anything: but that she had guessed, or more than guessed. So, when he repeated what he had said to Neil, she nodded.

‘It’s no use trying to get you to change your mind, is it?’

He shook his head, thinking that, if there had been such a hope, he would have gone to her before this.

‘I don’t think I want to,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult. But I don’t think I want to. Most people wouldn’t have done what you’re doing, though.’

‘Lance was there. That was a nuisance.’ Stephen was pressing on a sore. ‘He wanted me to do the same for him.’

He went over the scene for her, as he had done within himself – not getting free since he left Neil’s room.

‘He accepted that it would be absolutely useless. He knows that as well as I do,’ said Stephen, as though she were arguing with him.

‘I think he just wanted not to be left out,’ she said. She hesitated, and then went on: ‘Perhaps we got him wrong. We thought he was only after sensation. And adventure. And didn’t care a rap for anyone else. Perhaps that’s wrong. Or perhaps people like that want a bit of affection, like everyone else.’

‘That’s the blackmail of pity,’ said Stephen.

‘You wouldn’t say that,’ she replied, ‘unless you thought so too.’

They were picking at the neat little sandwich triangles.

She understood that he was distracted and guilty. In their own shorthand, fragmentary, sentences not finished, he was saying that they had tolerated everything, they hadn’t interfered with, or criticized, anyone’s ‘private life’ (that was the phrase they used, prim when it was referring to activities anything but prim). It was part of their creed. Still, no one should let his private life mess up others or the job in hand. They had excluded people from the core, close friends, whose private lives might have been a danger: such as a clever man, a very good man, whose homosexual pickups went too wide. It was easy to see that they ought to have excluded Lance. That was their mistake. Had they the right to blame him for it now?

‘I think so,’ said Tess.

‘Have we?’

‘He’s never thought about anyone but himself.’ She added: ‘Is he worthwhile?’

‘Who is? I mean, can we say that against anyone?’

Suddenly Tess was finding herself more positive than he was. This was a kind of discrimination which they didn’t like making, which didn’t fit the climate they had been brought up in, or their hopes. But to Tess, left to herself, it came naturally enough, gave a sign of how her character would later show itself, like bone so far almost hidden under the flesh.

She didn’t choose to argue with him that afternoon. She wanted to ease him, she tried another way.

‘Darling. Would you feel better if you spoke up for him, after all?’

‘Possibly.’

‘I’m sure you would.’

He held out his cup for her to fill again, but didn’t answer.

‘It wouldn’t make much more unpleasantness for you, would it?’

‘A certain amount.’

‘Never mind. You could take it. We could take it, couldn’t we?’

‘That goes without saying. It wouldn’t really count, one way or the other.’

‘Well then. Do it.’

He was sitting back, she watched the clear profile. Then he turned to her with an affectionate, intimate smile, and she was sure that she had resolved him. He said: ‘No. That’s not for me.’

He went on, still intimately, almost lightly: ‘I’d better get it cut-and-dried. I’ll ring up the man Hotchkinson before we go. I’ll tell him that I shall give evidence for Neil, and then I shall call it a day. That’s as much as I shall do.’

It came to Tess as an unmitigated, unprepared surprise. She was certain that he meant it, and that this was how he would act. She was as certain that he had spoken honestly a moment before, and wasn’t being moved by a last residue of prudence, or loss of nerve. It was a mystery, perhaps as much to him as to her. It seemed to cut clean across his nature. He spoke and behaved as though doubts, or even scruples, had at last been wiped away. She wondered if he were feeling the release of exerting his will. Exerting his will in a vacuum or without cause, after being at others’ mercy all those days. She wondered how often he could be so hard.

In a matter of minutes, she was due for another surprise. He had said he was thirsty, and ordered another pot of tea.

Teacups clinked on the next table, there was the sound of womens voices, the smell of scent.

‘There’s another thing,’ said Stephen.

He was looking down at the table. What hadn’t he covered, what was coming, one more threat to take care of, she thought.

‘I think we ought to get married pretty soon. If you agree. Will you?’

She had imagined so often hearing him ask her. She had doubted whether it would ever happen. Her hopes had been strong, but she had tried to sink them down. Often her imagination had been too much for her. But it hadn’t produced a scene like this, not the two of them in the midst of a crisis, sitting in the feminine well-to-do café, crowded, public, so that he hadn’t even taken her hand. Astonished, taken aback, the shock wave not yet followed by delight, she found herself, in reply, asking the singular question: ‘Why?’

‘I need you.’

‘Is that enough?’

‘It is for me.’

The shock wave was receding now. Tess said: ‘Darling. Of course I want to marry you. More than anything on earth. I’m not coy. But for you – Is this the right time for you to know what you want?’

‘What is the right time?’

‘No. I’m serious. I’ve got to tell you the truth. God knows, I wish I hadn’t to. But you’ve been under great strain. You still are. So have we all, but you’ve felt it worst. I don’t think you’re in a state to make up your mind – about anything like this.’

She went on, determined, almost fierce, cheeks flushed dusky.

‘I’ve got to tell you something else. You won’t like it. You’re strong, but you’re vulnerable too. A lot of supports have let you down. Your parents have let you down. You were prepared for it, in one way, and in another way you weren’t. You want to get rid of everything that’s let you down. I believe that’s right for you. But I don’t believe it’s a good reason for marrying me.’

Stephen didn’t respond at once. Then he said, as though thinking to himself: ‘All that is absolutely true.’

Tess felt a seep of desolation, empty inside. She had been honest with him, she had thought of him. She had harmed herself, he wouldn’t make the same choice again.

‘All that is absolutely true. Most of it had occurred to me, you know.’

Suddenly he gazed full at her. ‘But it doesn’t count. I want you to marry me.’

‘Leave it for two or three months. Then see.’ That was her last lame honest effort.

‘Will you marry me?’

She remembered afterwards that immediately she had said something like ‘of course’, but that was a false memory. In fact, she had, by way of delight, as an emblem of acceptance, asked how he had been thinking of her.

He said: ‘These last few days, I’ve realized that I didn’t know you before. Not properly.’

‘Now?’

‘Now I know a bit more.’

‘Do you?’

‘I’m not a romantic, am I?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘But I love what I know.’

It was actually then that she said both ‘yes’ and ‘of course’, as though answering to a single question. She reached across the table, took his hand, and kissed it. Whether anyone at neighbouring tables noticed, she couldn’t have told.

When Stephen said that he was not a romantic, he was half-deluding himself. If he had been born a little earlier, he probably would have been. Nevertheless, there was a certain truth in his statement about not really knowing her. They had been to bed within a few days of meeting. Even with her, sex had come first, and knowledge afterwards. With him, a long time afterwards. With him, though not with her, sex had for a while got in the way of knowing. It was a curious converse to their parents’ courting. Though their own children might in due course think that they had found their way to the same end.

Across the table, Stephen was being practical, liberated, after the bitterer practicalities, to cope with this one. They had better get married in the spring. He wanted her to finish her degree course, he was enough of a professional for that, he didn’t like unfinished business, he said. As for their plans together, she knew already that there was his trust to live on, and he would get an academic job in the autumn. His subject made him more independent than most men: he could do it anywhere. His decision about Neil, his involvement in this case ahead, might shut some doors, not all.

‘That won’t be too difficult,’ he said. He added: ‘It’ll be more difficult to be some use outside. For both of us.’

He had told her of Neil’s intention. That wasn’t open to them: they couldn’t have accepted that kind of politics; yet they were committed. Committed to what? They didn’t make it vocal to each other, even now: perhaps any answer would have seemed too inflated for their taste. They might have admitted, but then their mouths would have been wry, that they couldn’t just look on: they were living in this world, they didn’t like it, they had to work for a better. That seemed flat enough. Yet they were committed. Time might play tricks on them, but they wouldn’t alter as much as sceptical onlookers would expect, or hope. These last days had affected them, but hadn’t altered them. Stephen’s thoughts had darkened, so had his pessimism, but, when it came to the future, he still believed, as much as Tess, in the possibilities men had, almost in what Tess father would have called grace, and had as much irreducible hope.

‘It’ll be more difficult,’ he said. ‘There I haven’t much to offer you.’

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘We’ll carve something out.’

‘I don’t see it clear.’

‘Maybe we can’t do much. But we’ll do something.’

She was good – it wasn’t art, it was nature – at giving him no more encouragement than he could take. They didn’t say any more about the future, but he was more comfortable, and she also, because something had been said.

Before they left the café, Stephen went to a telephone (women’s voices in the background) and rang up Hotchkinson. Mr Hotchkinson was at home. With pressure, Stephen extracted the home number. He heard the high, strangulated voice. ‘What do you want?’

Stephen said that he had decided to give evidence for Neil St John.

‘Think again.’

‘No. This is definite.’

‘So much the worse for you.’

‘Will you note it? I don’t want any misunderstanding.’

‘Noted.’ Hotchkinson didn’t indulge in useless argument. ‘It’s on your own head.’

Hotchkinson inquired about Forrester, evidence for him? No, said Stephen, in a sharp emphatic tone, he wouldn’t do that. A grunt at the other end of the line. Hotchkinson then said, issuing a brusque communiqué, that the warrants had now been duly issued and that the two would presumably be arrested that evening. About getting them bailed out – For Stephen, who hadn’t been near a criminal case, that hadn’t entered his mind. Money? Forrester was no problem. ‘If money’s needed for St John–’ Stephen began, and Hotchkinson said: ‘Point taken.’ He added: ‘That’s about all,’ gave Stephen time and place of the inquest (‘Nothing will happen’) the next morning, and there was a clink of the receiver ramming down.