The Sea Change (17 page)

When he stirred, she got to her feet, and took their tray into the kitchen, but the sensation of warmth and lightness remained with him. He joined her; she was rubbing her face furiously with a
wet handkerchief.

‘Aunt Topsy says that to make really light pastry, you should never let the flour get beyond your knucklebones. I don’t know how far dirt should go in good housework, but I’m
sure it shouldn’t get to one’s forehead.’

‘Are you tired? You’ve done a great deal of housework.’

‘I’m not, thank you. Fortunately I have a magnificent constitution. That was the most delicious lunch; now I’m going to clean up the kitchen.’

‘I’d like to help. Shall I dry things?’

‘Thank you. There are some rather queer towels, with verses – what Papa calls pupperel on them. Do you think people really
read
their tea towels in America?’

‘I expect the poor bored housewife gets something out of them.’

‘I know. Everything about food and kitchens is made so dull, they do need something. It’s terribly difficult to feel skilful and indispensable with gadgets and pre-stressed food.
It’s all boiled down to the least you can do, which is so disheartening.’

They washed up: there was a kind of affectionate ease with her that he had only felt before with anybody after making love. She asked him how he had come to write his first play and what it had
been about, and these questions which he had so often been asked and answered with a kind of dishonest brevity, got their full reply. He told her about running away – getting frightful
toothache the first day; about Elsie finding him sitting in the road outside a pub holding his head and crying; how she took him to her dressing room and got the stage carpenter to pull his tooth
out with a pair of pliers, made him rinse his mouth out with eau de Cologne, and then got him a job with the company. He told her about his disastrous appearance on the stage and how good Elsie had
been then – how afterwards she had said ‘Write it all down ducks – get it out of your system – it will only make trouble for you if you don’t and it won’t do
anybody any good inside. If you can think of all that you said on the spur of the moment, you might write a famous play – with a deevy little part in it for me.’ And when he had asked
her what deevy meant, she said it was slang, but very refined.

‘Tell me about her – what did she look like?’

‘There aren’t many people like her now – although then she was quite an ordinary type. She had been a blonde, and she’d played ingenues for years until she got too heavy
for them. She dyed her hair when it began to fade; she still had a pretty complexion and blue eyes, but I think they’d faded like her hair. She had a fine pair of arms and shoulders –
they were much more a point of admiration in those days: women dressed to display them – and for the rest, she enjoyed her food and her stout too much to keep her figure. But besides her
ready heart and her practical kindness she combined a sense of adventure with a general cosiness in perfect proportions – at least for a boy of fourteen. She said she was thirty-five, but she
must have been well over forty: she only mothered me when I really needed it: the rest of the time she never forgot that she was a woman, and that I would one day be a man. She had a passion for
gentility and refinement, but for her they went with high life and romance – she believed in them – she didn’t care a damn what the neighbours thought. She’d once had supper
with a marquis and it was one of her favourite stories against herself. “Imagine
me
, dear,” she used to say, “fancying myself a marchioness because a nice young man liked
me figure – the
ideas
we get about ourselves.” She thought England was the best country in the world – she loved the theatre, and she was passionately in love with the
manager of our company, who treated her pretty badly most of the time, and was frequently unfaithful to her with the string of young women engaged to play the parts she had once had.’

‘Did she know about it?’

‘She knew. She knew all about him, and it didn’t make any difference. You see, she knew a good deal about herself. I only once saw her really down with it, when I burst into her
dressing room one evening and found her hunched under her dressing gown struggling into her corsets with tears streaming down her face. “He’s off with that Violet Everard now. Each time
he says it’s never going to happen again; I know it is, but I enjoy him thinking it won’t.”And when I tried to comfort her, she dropped the dressing gown and said: “Of
course he’s fond of me, but you help me into these and you’ll see what a silly old woman I am to go chasing after what I’m not meant for any more. I’ve only got to get
myself into these to have a good laugh at myself – carrying on like a girl of sixteen inside all this. If I can’t learn to be my age, why should I expect him to?” And then she
really did laugh at herself, and cleaned up her face and gave her performance – as Violet’s mother in the play. It was the only time I ever saw her cry.’

He had forgotten about drying glasses – he was sitting on the table – years away. She took the cloth from him and said gently: ‘What about your play?’

He laughed, as though he had caught it from Elsie. ‘My play. I wrote it: every single character had a title, and most of them were wicked, except for the part I wrote for Elsie, into which
I poured all my ideals of womanhood and goodness, and so the most frightful things happened to her without the slightest effect – she might have been a block of stone, she was so passive, so
indestructible, and dull. It took place in an earl’s castle: opened with a shrimp tea in the library, and it was called
Evil Does Not Pay
. One of the characters left the stage on a
line which ran: “I must leave your blasted presence: you sully the air so that I cannot breathe it,” and the hero poisoned a lot of characters in the last act by putting bad oysters in
their champagne. They didn’t drink anything else, you see, so that was bound to do for them.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘That was the terrible thing. They did it – as a farce – instead of a pantomime, at Christmas. They let Elsie play the part I’d written for her; they paid me twenty
pounds and I was so excited I didn’t realize what was going on. I went out and bought a string of pink pearls for Elsie – she loved pink – they were in a box lined with pink
velveteen, and I planned to give them to her with a card on the first night. It was she who had given me her bottle of green ink she hardly ever used for writing letters, and her box of notepaper
to write the play. They were shifty about letting me see rehearsals, but they were all laughing and saying how good it was – except Elsie, who just kept saying get on with starting another
play, and just before they went up on the first night she called me and said she was very proud of me, and if the play didn’t go as I expected I must not fret but see it was all for the best
and everybody had to get started somehow.’

He stopped, and said: ‘I haven’t thought about all this for years, and this is the third time today that I’ve remembered about it.’

‘Go on: what happened?’

‘They put me in front, in a box all by myself, and for about ten minutes, until the house lights went, I felt no end of a nob. I saw myself wearing a top hat and owning theatres, with
Julia Neilson, Lewis Waller, Playfair, Dion Boucicault and others all on their knees to me imploring me for plays. I don’t suppose those names mean anything to you, but they meant a lot then
– they were the epitome of heroic glamour – thousands of people adored them and collected postcards of them in their famous parts just as avidly as they collect pin-ups today. I’d
just got as far as postcards of me, when the house lights went. From the moment the curtain went up, I knew something was wrong; and when I saw the pink flannel shrimps, the size of bananas, and
the house laughed at them, my heart dropped like a small burning coal into my boots, where it remained for the whole performance, while I struggled with my feelings. My feelings!’ he laughed:
‘you’ve no idea what they were like – resentment, shame, rage, self-pity, sheer, obstinate refusal to accept the situation – shame and rage again. They went round and round,
accompanied by a full house in holiday mood, roaring with laughter at what I considered to be my most heartrending speeches, agonizing situations, and beautiful moments. When Elsie came on in a
white nightgown several sizes too large for
her
, and a long wig of golden hair streaming down her back, I nearly burst. The conflict was so awful, you see: a bit of me thought she looked
wonderful; and a bit wanted to laugh, because she was somehow a caricature of herself, and there was everybody shouting with mirth, and her entrance was one of my beautiful moments – well, I
sat there seething until – I don’t remember what made me – but I laughed – by mistake, of course: it made me furious; I was crying as well, without any noise – with
tears on my scalding face like spit on an iron. And I thought if they could see me now – the author looking like this, they’d laugh more than ever: they were the world, you see, and it
would be my fault if I gave them another chance to laugh at me. So I watched the rest of the play with a kind of glassy calm – if I was a failure I was going to be dignified about it. And so
I bolstered myself until my nose cleared, and I imagined myself facing the company afterwards, with worldly indifference. I hadn’t bargained for the end, at all, when they clapped and the
cast started to cry for author; Edward Burton – he was the actor manager – sent for me and they hauled me on to the stage and I found myself standing between him and Elsie, unable to
look at either of them, as the bitterness of my failure rolled over me all over again. I had set out to do one thing, and the fact that it had turned out to be something quite different, escaped
me. I could only see what I’d failed to do.’

He became aware, as he stopped again, of how much he had been talking; he had talked and talked, and she had finished the kitchen. He made a small conclusive gesture with his hands. ‘Well:
that was that. But it was the classic example of things not turning out as I had meant them to.’ He looked round for a cigarette, and she pushed the packet across the table to him.

‘You were fourteen when all this happened?’

‘Don’t you feel I ever could have been?’

‘It just seems so young to write a play and have all that happen, and very hard to bear at fourteen. What did Elsie say to you?’

‘Oh, she saved my bacon – or sense of proportion – as usual. She talked to me nearly all night till she was dropping, bless her. Had I realized that lots of people wrote plays
who never had them performed at all? Of course I hadn’t. Did I realize how much easier it would now be to get another play put on? Of course I didn’t. I explained that I wanted to write
about life, and she said there was nothing to stop me but I’d have to learn something about it. The best thing she said was that one wasn’t born knowing things, but one had a chance to
find out what one wanted to know. She – do you
want
to hear all about this?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘She said that as I wasn’t living in castles with a whole lot of earls, it would be difficult to write a serious play about them and that I’d written a play out of other plays,
and not out of what I saw or knew. Then she said: look at her: could I imagine her behaving like Lady Geraldine FitzAbbot? Not her – she wouldn’t be so silly: she wasn’t pure and
high born – she was fat and rather common; she liked her stout and a good laugh and she dyed her hair and she loved Teddy Burton and there was nothing pure or noble about her – but at
least I
knew
her. Then I began to see what she meant, and felt so much better that although it was three in the morning, I gave her the pink pearls and asked her to marry me, and she was
sweet about it all – the pearls and the proposal.’

‘Did you really want to marry her?’

‘It may seem absurd to you, but yes – I did, then. She ill seemed to me so
good
– such a good, kind creature, and I found that such an attractive quality – I
wanted to stay with it. I still feel like that, sometimes.’

‘You mean, you still sometimes wish you had married her?’

‘Yes – no, that’s not what I meant.’

There was a silence, and then she coloured, and said: ‘I’m so sorry. Of course that’s not what you meant.’ She was thinking of Lillian, and her possible implication of
disloyalty.

He put his hand on her shoulder – let it rest – and took it away. ‘I know it’s not what you meant, either.’ He understood her – that she didn’t know he
had not been thinking of Lillian.

In the taxi, driving across town to the piers to meet Lillian, he thought of Alberta arranging flowers and unpacking in the apartment she had so neatly made habitable, and
Lillian in the boat locking and unlocking pieces of hand luggage, and worrying about whether he had remembered to meet her. Out of her country family life, Alberta – in the middle of New York
– could do what was required of her: she could adapt what she had been bred and brought up to be, because something else in her was steady – was not rocked by outward changes. But if
Lillian made physical gestures her body broke down, and he did not think that she recognized any other kind now: her courage was therefore constantly misspent, and sinking into the parched field of
her activities. She was as pinned by this fixed image of herself and her desperate efforts to serve it, as Alberta was free to be served by her own imagination. That, he supposed, was the
difference – and he hovered above it, uncertain where he should stand . . .

2

LILLIAN

T
HE
restlessness started the night before we were supposed to dock. Up until then, it hadn’t entered my head – I
don’t know why not. Jimmy had been his sweetest – really I’d enjoyed the trip – even when he got seasick, which he always does, poor thing, he was so pathetic and
good-tempered about it, and so grateful for being looked after that somehow even his being prostrate for two days hadn’t spoiled the journey. I read to him – he still likes C. S.
Forester and almost any poetry I choose best, and we had delicious little picnic meals in his cabin although the poor creature couldn’t eat much. But he adored being looked after – I
think that’s never having had parents or a proper home – and it was heavenly to be the nurse for a change. He said I was good at it, and he meant that, which was so warming. He told me
about his life in orphans’ homes which he’s never talked about before, and it sounded awful – much worse than he realized. The sense of being a collection – of everything
being based on justice rather than feeling; everybody dressed the same, having the same, acting the same, and knowing everything about each other. He told me that he was sent a tin motor car
anonymously for Christmas, and he kept it buried in the garden so that the others couldn’t share it and told everybody it was lost and dug it up to touch and look at it by himself. Of course
it got all rusted and fell to bits, but he said it was worth it to have a secret. It was the only secret he managed to have, he said, the others all got found out in spite of telling lies. He said
that even at the time he felt disconnected from his life – as though he was watching somebody else go through the motions of it. I understand that: that’s why he is so useful to Em and
adores him so, and I really must
not
be jealous of that. But the night before we were supposed to dock there was fog and we reduced speed and everybody was talking at dinner about how late
the fog might make us. It was then: it came over me just like the beginning of a disease or fever that perhaps in a week Em had become attracted to her and seduced her because that would be the
easiest thing in the world to do. And immediately I thought what nonsense – think of her – she’s just a dull little schoolgirl, and if he wants to seduce somebody, he can do
better than that. Then I thought of that horrible Gloria Williams – mincing lethargic creature with those hideous legs – a genteel martyr if ever there was one – if he could get
off with
her
he might do anything. The vulgarity of my thoughts about him sometimes appals me,
and
the language in which they are couched, which, of course, is in keeping. After all,
I
picked her, and God knows I have learned to consider this squalid little possibility. After dinner, I asked Jimmy to walk on the boat deck with me, and while he was getting our coats I
resisted the urge to confide in him – to share this apprehension: I don’t want Jimmy to discover that Em talks to him more than he talks to me, and so I have always pretended to Jimmy
that I know everything, and understand, or don’t care. But while we were pacing up and down in that curiously heavy, billowing air, I asked him what Em had had to do all the week in New York,
and when he told me, I felt much better, because really there would hardly be time to start a new affair as well. Only I do hope we don’t get delayed too much by this weather, and nobody will
say anything definite about that. After a bit, Jimmy said would I like to go to the movies – they were showing
The African Queen
, which we’d both seen, but it is Jimmy’s
beloved Forester, and I adore Katharine Hepburn, so we went. Afterwards, Jimmy had a drink and we talked a bit about where we would be in the summer, and I said I wanted to go to Greece, which
shook him, but it’s quite true – I do, and Em has promised me for years. Jimmy looked miserable, and said he loathed sightseeing, and wouldn’t it be too hot, and I explained about
my idea of living on an island, and having a really simple life. I also told him that I thought that an island would be a good place for Em to write and be away from the theatre or contacts with
it. I begged him not to put Em off, and he looked shocked, and said of course he wouldn’t dream of it. Then, suddenly, we had nothing more to say and he suggested going to bed. I
couldn’t sleep. I read and read: in the end I took a pill, and it was like falling slowly into a heavy warm sea – silent and colourless; dark and empty and immeasurable. At the very
beginning of my waking, I dreamed of meeting Em. I could float, which made my movements most gentle, and he was standing on a very small island, with one tree beside him. I felt my hair shining, my
skin moist as I rose out of the water and turned to him, nearer and nearer, until our eyes were almost fused in our meeting. Then I saw that his island was floating also – away from me
– and that I was not to reach it – that I had come up out of the sea on to my separate island, but with no tree, and I sank on to the pale sand which darkened as the sun went slowly in
and I woke. It was late – if there had not been fog we should have docked by now. I rang Jimmy, and he’d had breakfast and knew that we should dock at six. At least we knew. In eight
hours I should see him –
if
he was there to meet me –
if
the fog did not get worse –
if
he had news of the time that we were to dock. Jimmy came and talked
while I had breakfast and was very calm and stern, and said I was working myself up, and he’d call Em’s hotel and make sure that he knew we were due at six. He tried to make the call
while I thought how funny it was that I couldn’t even
enjoy
being excited any more. The call was no good: everybody was making them, and by the time we were through the delay, Em had
checked out – which at least means the apartment is on. I wondered what on earth he and the girl were doing, and started to feel bad about her again. Perhaps I get excited by the wrong things
– or perhaps excitement is no good anyway. Really I would like to meet him much more like the first half of my dream – with a kind of beautiful, calm confidence – and very
quietly. As it is, I can’t keep still: can’t eat lunch; get more and more breathless, and a pain inside ticks over like an engine ready to start; the palms of my hands sweat, and I keep
thinking that I’ve forgotten to pack something. And yet, whenever I feel like this – right up to whatever is going to happen – the event seems, as it were, to start without me: I
am not in it – all my imagination of it is dislocated and there seems nothing to take its place. Once, I remember him meeting me (also in New York), and within a few minutes, we were having
an argument about some dreary people we hardly knew, and I told him how excited I’d been about meeting him, and he said: ‘In order to talk about the Smithsons?’ And then I
remembered thinking that excitement was useless. That’s the trouble with me: I hardly have any real feelings – just awful substitutes – intellectual imaginings, and physical
anti-climaxes. Yes, but how does one
have
real feelings, and how can I have them about Em if he doesn’t have them too? I
did
have them about Sarah. Oh! Sometimes I wish she had
lived a little longer so that I would have more of her to remember now; her two years seem so short that I’ve nearly lost the taste of them: all my memories are coloured with the pain of
losing her. Surely that was real – that wrenching, aching loss? Afterwards Em once said to me: ‘Only joy is unmistakable: remember your joy in her.’ He said it in the kind of way
that made me feel it was true, but I couldn’t understand him; I didn’t accept what he said, because not having been allowed to suffer instead of Sarah, I refused not to suffer as well
as she. It’s very odd: I think so much about these things – but I hardly ever think about them in this way: it is something to do with the ship being late, and these eight hours being
slipped into my life – not how I expected or meant. I understand what people mean when they say: ‘I would die for her’; in certain circumstances, not being able to becomes a kind
of outrage. There is something weak and dangerous about making a person the centre of your life: people are damaged and die too easily – but
where
is anything indestructible? My chief
feeling about Em is fear that I may lose him, and as I’ve never really had him, this is absurd. It is funny, the way I’m always trying to give things I haven’t got, and am
terrified of losing something I’ve never had, but I don’t seem to laugh at it enough to do any good. I think it was sometime after lunch, when Jimmy had gone off to tip our stewards and
people, that I made a solemn promise to myself that I would honestly try to be kind and generous to Alberta – try to understand and make the best of her; and having made this promise,
something of the calm – the dreamlike calm was there, and it didn’t even seem difficult to do. When Jimmy came back, he went on treating me as though I was terribly strung up – he
didn’t see any difference: it made me angry that he couldn’t see – and that’s how I lost my short-lived calm. We had already made the arrangements – I was to go
straight off the ship with my dressing case and meet Em, and Jimmy was to wait behind, see all our luggage through the Customs, and follow us – but we made them again. Jimmy said why
didn’t I have a rest, but I couldn’t. In the end, I decided to change; I had a new suit of very pale blue silky tweed which I’d never worn, and a dark blue silk jersey, and some
shoes which wer e very plain, but exactly the same colour. I sent Jimmy away, and he said he was going up to look down on the sea, and he’d meet me at five.