The Sea Change (35 page)

I felt nervous of seeing Jimmy again, but he came back from his expedition in tremendous spirits, and so was Mrs Joyce. It was a very hot night, and we ate in the café belonging to our
village and didn’t go into the port. You go into the back of the café and look at huge black pots on charcoal stoves and choose what you will have. There isn’t much choice and
nearly everything is fried, but there is always marvellous fruit and I have got very attached to Turkish coffee. After we had sat for a long time, Jimmy suddenly asked me whether I would like to go
bathing by moonlight, and not having bathed all day this seemed a delicious proposal. Mr J. said should he and Mrs J. come and watch them, and Mrs J. said, no, she was tired, and wanted to talk to
him, so we all went back to the house, and then Jimmy and I went off with our bathing things. It was the kind of night when the moonlight was golden and the stars were like great shining drops: we
walked down to the bay and settled on the piece of rock where we usually sit before bathing and Jimmy said: ‘Let’s talk for a bit before we bathe.’

We sat for what seemed a very long time and he didn’t say anything. I nearly asked him if he had any particular subject in mind, but I had a feeling that he had something he wanted to say
so I just waited. Eventually, he said: ‘You’re nineteen, aren’t you?’ and I said, yes. Then he said: ‘I’m thirty-three: I’ve been thinking about it all
afternoon.’

After a bit, he went on: ‘I want to talk to you, but if you interrupt I’ll get so thrown I won’t be able to explain anything to you. OK, you won’t interrupt?’

I agreed, and folded my hands so that I could pinch myself if I forgot.

‘About your career. I think that you could make it – could be a good Clemency and a success in New York. If you make a hit there it will lead to other things – you won’t
be a secretary any more. But you’ll need help – you wouldn’t find New York on your own with a big and tiring part that easy: not if you were all by yourself.’

‘But I
shouldn’t
be all by myself, surely?’

‘Wait.’ I wanted to apologize, but that would have meant further interruption, so I didn’t.

‘Lillian doesn’t want to go to New York. And she doesn’t want Emmanuel to go either. She wants to buy a house in England and settle down for a bit. She doesn’t want him
to go either,’ he repeated: he was staring at me. I didn’t speak until he said: ‘Well? Have you thought of that?’

‘No I haven’t.’ I began to feel alarmed at the prospect. ‘I had not thought of trying to do new kinds of work without all of you at all.’

‘Well, it’s probably time you did.’

Something in his voice irritated me, and I said: ‘I haven’t thought about it, because I didn’t think that it was even decided that I should do the part. If I did, I suppose I
thought that everything else would be the same.’

‘You mean you thought that you’d still be his secretary? We’d still be a nice cosy little foursome?’

I asked him what was the
matter
– he sounded so odd.

He lit a cigarette with exaggerated care before he said: ‘I find it difficult to talk to you because I never know what you understand. You floor me every time. Leave the foursome for the
moment. It would have to come to an end anyway. Let’s concentrate on you in New York. I rehearse the show – perhaps they come over for the opening, and then there you are in a run, with
the rest of us maybe on a slow boat to China or some place. You may be there for
years
! You haven’t any friends in New York – you don’t know your way around – the
work is killing – hotel life will get you down – you’ll miss your family – awful old men will keep trying to take you up country for a weekend—’

‘Jimmy,
don’t
!’ I was laughing, and then I saw that although he meant me to laugh, he was meaning some of it, and even part of that picture of me alone in New York for
years was dismaying. I was just about to broach the question of Uncle Vin possibly having some part in the play, thus providing me with a friend and some family in one stroke, when he said:
‘Now I’m coming to the important part – I mean the part I really want you to understand. The best solution seems to me for me to stay in New York with you right through the run.
You see, I know how to take care of things for you all round. I know the city, I know theatre people, and I could see to it you have the right sort of time.’ He paused, and looked at me
expectantly.

‘It is exceedingly kind of you. But what about Mr Joyce?’

‘What about him?’

‘I thought you were supposed always to be working for him – with him, I mean.’

‘Yeah – but if you married me the situation would be different, and I might make a change.’

I stared at him. I wanted to say: ‘If I
what
?’ but felt it would be rude and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then he said almost angrily: ‘I
told
you I had some complicated things to say, and you have interrupted so much that I
have
got them in the wrong order. You don’t understand. I’m making you a perfectly businesslike
proposition. You need looking after, I know how to do it and it would all be much simpler if we were married. I like you very much,’ he added.

I wondered whether this sort of thing happened to a great many people, and what they did about it: it wasn’t at all how I’d ever thought of people proposing to each other. He seemed
serious – even nervous about it: it occurred to me that possibly he was just trying to be very kind, although it did seem to be carrying kindness a very long way.

‘I don’t want to marry somebody simply to make things more comfortable: I don’t think that is what marriage is for, but it is extremely kind of you to suggest it.’ I
thought for a bit, but I couldn’t think of anything to add.

He was silent for a while; then he said: ‘I wish you’d think about it some more before you turn me down. I don’t feel I’ve put it at all well: it’s not just what I
think about it all, but I’ve never met anyone like you before and I don’t know how to put it – that sounds corny: it’s honestly true.’

I said I would – indeed it would be very difficult not to think about it. He said: ‘Well, we’d better forget it now, and bathe.’

We bathed; but I found myself unable to put what seemed such an extraordinary matter out of my mind, so that at one moment I found myself floating on my back facing the stars, in the warm dark
water which at night seems to be scented more strongly of the sea, and thinking: ‘Really, Sarah, here you are bathing at night off an island in Greece, and your thoughts are much of the kind
that they have been when you are pleating Papa’s surplice on a rainy Saturday morning in Dorset.’

We came out and sat on our towels, and Jimmy had another cigarette. Before I had had much time to consider how to say it, I asked him how he would feel if some time after we had married one of
us fell in love with somebody who we would rather have married. If we
were
married, of course. He said: ‘I’ve thought of all that, naturally. I figured you’d have more
opportunity to fall in love with me than with anyone else – if you were married to me, of course.’ Then he added: ‘A lot of phoney marriages happen because the people have the
idea that they’re wildly in love. Don’t you think it might make sense to start with respect and affection – compatibility of interests and a few other things like that?’

When I said, but what about his falling in love with somebody else, the mere thought seemed to embarrass him as he went rather red and said I needn’t worry about that – that
wouldn’t happen to him. We left it at that: it all seemed a bit cold-blooded to me, but to accuse somebody of cold-bloodedness is something which I feel should not be lightly done. He said he
wished he’d brought some drink down with him, and we decided to go back.

When we were climbing the cliffs, which seemed much steeper in the moonlight, I said something about worrying about Mrs Joyce climbing them in the heat of the day, and he answered:
‘Lillian is pretty good at knowing what she can do really. It would be more like life if Emmanuel cracked up over them. He’s not so young as he was, you know. He’s in his late
sixties.’

‘Is he really?’ The thought surprised me so much that for a moment I didn’t remember that of course he was sixty-one – it was on the potted autobiography sheet that
sometimes got sent to people. So I said: ‘I don’t call sixty-one “late sixties”,’ and he didn’t reply.

Just as we were reaching the house he put his hand on my arm and said: ‘That was a terrible lie about Emmanuel’s age. I don’t know what made me tell it.’

I said it didn’t matter and I expected he’d forgotten, but he went on holding my arm, and said no, he hadn’t forgotten – he knew perfectly well, and I was the last person
he wanted to lie to. He looked quite desperate so there didn’t seem any point in telling him what Papa says about the least important part of lying being who you tell the lie to, so I
didn’t – I simply begged him not to worry. Now I’ve been back in my room, read Papa’s letter again and written all this – an enormous amount. Then I looked at other
bits I’ve written, and I see that I haven’t made a portrait of him.

Portrait of Mr Joyce. (This might be very interesting after we are all dead – a bit like planting trees.)

He is quite a small man with a sallow complexion and wiry thick hair which is dark except where it is a shining grey. He has a rather low forehead, but it is quite wide and he has surprisingly
delicate eyebrows – they seem to indicate a line rather than be one. He has very dark brown eyes with heavy eyelids: the expressions in them always seem to be more than one at a time and
often at variance. He has a jutting, but simple nose, and two lines run from the side of it down to his mouth, which is wide, with clearly cut complicated lips. He has magnificent ears – that
sounds rather like an elephant, but they are – large and delicate. He has quite an ordinary chin – I mean it just seems to go with the rest of his face without being a feature on its
own. He has veins and freckles on the backs of his hands, and thickish wrists and his shoulders are rather hunched. He has a gentle voice which very occasionally squeaks when he gets indignant: he
is also exceedingly good at imitating people – he just does it suddenly for a few seconds, but it is always startlingly accurate. He walks in a rather jerky manner – taking short
springy steps – not at all like Papa’s silent tread, but he does give one the same feeling of terrific energy. Perhaps it is because I am sleepy, but I really can’t think of any
more to say about him, except that I quite understand why Jimmy has been so devoted to him; he is such a kind man to people. An
excellent
employer as Aunt T. would say. Enough, but I begin
to wonder whether this diary is suitable for Mary.

3

JIMMY

I
N
the confusion which I seem to have gotten into one question goes on like a drumbeat setting the rhythm to something I
don’t begin to understand. What does she think of him? What
does
she think of him? I don’t feel that asking her would tell me: maybe I don’t have the courage to ask her, in
case she did tell me and it was the wrong answer. I’ve never seen Emmanuel show any interest in a girl without its being returned – he’s never had to make much effort for his
pounds of flesh – all these years I’ve sat back and watched it, I haven’t cared a damn one way or the other: I’ve protected him, soothed Lillian, and comforted the girl:
there was nothing in it for me. I’ve watched everyone’s behaviour rotate, as regular as clockwork – there’s a kind of off-beat reliability about people’s emotional
extremes – so that sometimes I’ve even known beforehand what was going to happen and have been able to soften the blow for somebody . . . Well, I don’t know now . . . His affairs
have always been some kind of escape: once or twice he was infatuated – with that wacky girl who was so good in
The Top Drawer
, and with the one with wonderful hair who sang in a night
club that awful summer we spent in Cannes – but generally, as he once said gossip columns should say: ‘I’m not good friends with her – we’re just going to bed’
– it was like that. Although he never talked about the situation with Lillian I knew it went round in circles: she wanted children, they weren’t possible so she didn’t want
Emmanuel; he strayed, she got frightened and did anything she could to get him back, and after a short interval it all started again. I’ve seen all that; it’s been the background to
nine years’ hard work; I’ve loved working with him, and as he once said to me: ‘By God, Jimmy, we don’t choose our backgrounds: if we did, mine would be so dull and
respectable that nobody would have a word to say about it.’ But supposing he isn’t seriously interested in her, what does she feel about him? Enough, maybe, to start something she
isn’t old enough or experienced enough to stop. But he is interested. He waits on that damn terrace every afternoon for her: I’ve watched his face when she comes out and sits on the
parapet. They don’t talk much, or she talks a bit and he watches her although she doesn’t seem to realize it. They never look up to my window, or even across to Lillian’s –
you’d think they were the only two people in the house those times. I didn’t think much about this – just happened to see them once or twice – until those pictures arrived.
That was what triggered the whole thing off. I’d never have believed he’d open Stan’s packet to me, and if I had thought of that, I’d never have believed how angry it would
make me. In all these years for the first time I felt: ‘That’s my packet –
my
life you’re interfering with – and nobody, not even you, has the right to do
it.’ It was worse to feel it with him: for the first time with him I felt back in that orphanage – that dead sea of equality; of owning nothing and not being owned. I didn’t want
to look at the pictures – I just wanted to throw them over the parapet, but when I saw them it was worse – it was as though I’d never seen Alberta in my life – she’d
been there all the time and I’d been too blind to see her. I wouldn’t have shown them to anybody – just kept them to myself and got Stan to take another lot for everybody
else.