The Sea Change (39 page)

So we all went. There followed an hour of sheer nightmare in the Post Office, when all we did was to put through the call to England and establish the fact that it might take all day to get
through again to the airport – I did manage it once, but couldn’t find anyone to speak English and then got cut off. There was nowhere to sit; Lillian had to go outside; the boy argued
with the operator until they weren’t speaking to each other and Alberta leaned against the counter absolutely white and speechless. The place reeked of dust and sweat, and all the windows
were closed. Something had to be done about it. I led Emmanuel outside and said that I would catch the boat when it called and call the airport from Piraeus. He said again that we might all go.
‘You can ask her, but the only thing she seems to want is that telephone call and it may take all day to come through.’ He agreed, and went to tell Lillian, who was waving anxiously
from her café table.

I went back to her. She was standing exactly as I had left her, and I remembered how we had waited in New York for the call to come through to her father – and her saying after she had
spoken to him ‘It’s simply that I’ve known him all my life’ as the tears ran down her face. I put my arm round her shoulder and told her that I was going to Athens to get
plane seats and she listened with that same strained expression, and said ‘That is extremely kind of you, Jimmy’ – and then I remembered wishing last night that she would be very
unhappy so that she would not notice who was comforting her. I said: ‘I’ll come and say goodbye before I go,’ and let go of her shoulder which seemed somehow light as well as
stiff.

When I got outside again, I was going straight up to the house to fetch our passports and tickets, but Emmanuel waved and I went over to them. He looked kind of surprised and very nervous.

‘Lillian says she wants to go with you.’

I looked at her. ‘
She
says so?’

Lillian looked me full in the face and spoke very fast – so I knew something was wrong. ‘Yes, Jimmy. If we are leaving so suddenly, there are one or two things that I want to do in
Athens, so I’d rather come over with you today if you don’t mind. Em doesn’t mind at all, do you darling?’

I didn’t catch his reply.

‘I shan’t hold you up at all. I’ll go straight to the hotel, and do my things on my own. Are you going back to the house? Because we haven’t got much time, and I
don’t think I could make it, but I want my light coat and my little square travelling case – it’s got most of my toilet things in it.’

‘When is the boat due?’

‘In about half an hour, I think, because people are already beginning to collect. You’d better go, Jimmy, if you’re going.’

She was quite right: there wasn’t time to argue with her. I did that walk in the fastest time I’ve ever made it, and by the time I’d finished packing what was needed, I saw the
boat in the distance, and ran part of the way back. How that kid ran the whole way I can’t think. I didn’t even have time to think why Lillian was so mad to go, but the craziest part of
it was that it wasn’t till I was back in the port that I realized that her going meant that Emmanuel would be staying with Alberta. For one moment I thought of thrusting all the papers and
his wife’s bag at him and saying: ‘You make the arrangements – just this once!’ but I knew I wouldn’t when I saw him. I’d always made the arrangements – it
was what I was for: it may have been then that I swore I’d be for something else: at least for making my own arrangements or, maybe, hers.

She was standing just as I had left her, with the boy squatting at her feet.

‘Any luck at all?’

She shook her head, and the operator clicked his teeth and smiled and closed his eyes, and Julius said: ‘Regrettably there is not time about telephone calls.’

The boat was hooting now and very near. I walked down to the quay with Emmanuel and Lillian where the row boats were waiting to take us out.

‘I’ll get seats any time from tomorrow evening, and I’ll either try to call you this evening, or send a telegram.’

‘Won’t tomorrow be too soon?’

I looked at Lillian grimly and thought that nothing would be too soon for me. Emmanuel said: ‘I’ll wait in the Post Office from six till seven this evening for you to call. All
right?’

‘OK.’

Lillian said: ‘Well goodbye darling. I hope her call comes through. See you tomorrow.’ She climbed into the small rocking boat and I put her case on her knees. She was smiling
brightly – the last thing I wanted was a boat trip with her.

‘Goodbye, Jimmy. Do your best.’

‘And you,’ I said; for a moment our eyes met and he had that creature-of-circumstance look I knew so well and had come to dread. But I had to go. I jumped in; I was the last, and we
were off. The boat was swooping into the harbour like a great white gull emitting shrill hoots. Emmanuel waved once and walked slowly away, back towards the Post Office, where, I thought, she would
still be standing . . .

‘Get her a chair!’ I yelled suddenly, and he turned round, but I don’t think he heard me.

A lot of that day I had to remind myself that the feelings I was having simply didn’t count beside Alberta’s – and that in a way I was doing something for her that she needed.
To begin with, we were no sooner on the boat and steaming away full bat when I discovered that we weren’t going straight back to Piraeus at all – far from it, in fact we returned from a
protracted tour to our island at about four and then went back to Piraeus. So all our mad rush had been completely unnecessary. The hope that the others would join us on the boat at four was dim
– I felt viciously that if the telephone operator didn’t succeed in messing up her call until long after that time, Emmanuel would somehow avoid catching the boat. I couldn’t tell
Lillian why I felt so anxious and frustrated by the whole thing – I knew from repeated experience what it was like being with her when she thought or knew that Emmanuel was with a girl he was
interested in. As she didn’t know, she took the news about our boat quite calmly. Once, she said: ‘Don’t worry too much about Alberta, Jimmy. Em’s the best person in the
world to be with when you’ve had a bad shock – he’ll look after her.’ As if that made it any better. Everybody on the boat was so damn gay – we careered along like
some kids’ Sunday outing. I put Lillian in a chair and told her I needed some exercise, and mooched around for what seemed like hours. I ended up just leaning over a rail, feeling bluer than
the sea, until I felt someone touch my arm, and it was Lillian saying why didn’t we both have a drink. ‘You can disown me afterwards if you like, Jimmy dear, but I’m parched and I
do so hate bars by myself.’ I noticed then that she had dark marks round her eyes, and thought that perhaps she hadn’t wanted to come at all – she’d honestly thought it
would be easier for Alberta to be alone with Emmanuel: somehow that touched me and I found the whole thing better after that.

Going back to our island was a bad time, though. We got there about a quarter to four – we didn’t come so far in to the harbour as we had in the morning, and the row boats seemed to
take an age to reach us. Lillian and I leaned over a rail on the boat deck watching the small laden boats, but long before they got near enough for us to see people’s faces we knew that
Alberta and Emmanuel weren’t there. The port otherwise seemed deserted, and the Post Office looked shut.

‘Perhaps the poor girl didn’t get her call through before they shut at midday.’ Then she added: ‘Probably she didn’t.’

I glanced at her face, but she gave no sign that she noticed me. Suddenly she pointed to the top of the mountain. ‘We never went up to the monastery. The day we arrived here, I planned to
do that, and we never did. That is something we
could
have done.’

‘What couldn’t we have done?’

The boat was leaving, and she turned away from the rail. ‘Oh – anything from preventing her father’s death onwards.’

We decided to settle somewhere for the rest of the trip, and found two chairs in the bows which seemed to have the right amount of shade and shelter. As we sat down she said: ‘If only one
knew at the time what one
could
do!’

‘What would happen then?’

‘Well, at least one would try to do it; one would be better occupied.’

She gave me a queer little smile – something appealing about it – not at all how I usually saw her.

The journey to Piraeus seemed very long – partly because it started at a time when the light begins to change, from hot afternoon sun – a bright, impartial light on everything
– to the beginning of evening when all those colours start up in the sky. We both slept the first part of the journey, and when I woke it was cooler and softer and Lillian was awake and
gazing into the distance. I woke with such a strong feeling for Alberta that it was almost as though I was actually with her and it was a real moment in my life – much more than any other
– I couldn’t remember anything better. I thought: ‘So
this is
my life,’ and saw Lillian looking at me and said:

‘I love her, now. I know it. I don’t just want to look after her – I want life with her on any terms at any price. Anything else would just be existing and playing – a
waiting game.’

Lillian leaned towards me and took my hands: ‘I’m glad you know – I
do hope
you get it.’

She looked like crying and I felt so wonderful – I couldn’t bear her to cry. ‘There’s nothing sad about it – I’ll find a way. Everything is different –
if one knows something.’

Lillian was very quiet after that, and we sat, hardly speaking, while the light sank slowly into the sea. It was beautiful, and I thought that any one of these things would from now on remind me
of her – the sea, the evening sky, a boat, the warm breeze coming off the land – but she would make me remember all these things at once – the whole world could come to life for
me because of her.

2

LILLIAN

T
HE
lights of Piraeus were strung out in a shallow half circle in grey dusk like a jeweller’s necklace on velvet. They
looked pretty, neat, and inaccessible, but somewhere in the future we were going to tie up in a gap between two beads and they would seem far apart. This was a kind of future – the only kind
that I could envisage – something already drawing to its past. But my own life stretched out round me like the sea – it seemed illimitable. Jimmy was silent – wrapped in his
dreams, and I, knowing so clearly what would shatter them, was at least silent to him.

The morning already seemed another life away: since I had seen Em’s face, so radiant with concerning love, I had lived my old life almost out: it had now so many threadbare patches where I
could find no substance, that I could see through myself in it. (‘You have a kind of indefatigable stupidity – all your life you have been rehearsing for this event when you thought you
were playing the lead in an ancient tragedy.’) Now, understanding perhaps for the first time in all my years of living with him, something that mattered to Em, I had left him to decide what
he would do, and to tell me afterwards what he had decided, of course. Even then, I had hardly done it. Jealousy – no, a searing envy for that girl who had shown me his face – had
blasted me so that I had stood on the terrace with the rocks going round me like lumps of brown sugar, and I had had to drink the brandy that she hadn’t wanted. Then we had all gone down to
the port – in single file, with the boy leading; the boy, Alberta, Jimmy, I, and Em last. All the morning, I knew that what dignity, what resolution I had was stiffened by hers – I
could not bear this acknowledgment, but I could not escape it.

Sitting by myself at the café table while the others were in the Post Office (
I
was the one who could not stand the heat and smell of sweat and nowhere to sit) all my resentment
and grievances for the string of his infidelities – known and guessed – were stripped off, revealing such a shocking inadequacy that it even seemed astonishing that I should have been
given the chance to recall so many. The times that I had stormed at him – the false righteous indignation that I had managed to employ – about his vulgarity, his coarse and partial
views of love, his lack of discrimination, all that I had contrived to twist into peculiar insults to me and my marriage with him unravelled, until I saw that the real confusion had always been
mine. He, at least, had known what he was doing; it had had nothing to do with his view of love, he must even have used discrimination to make sure of this. But I, standing upon rights which were
not mine and a deprivation which had not been his, had refused to recognize any loyalty in his behaviour to me; for, looking back on these affairs, I was forced to understand that he had not sought
love from them. He had not sought it with her: the facts that he had looked steadily more and more desperate since we had been here, and had made no attempts to be alone with her all pointed to his
having struggled . . . I might never have known; might have gone on thrusting Jimmy down his throat, speculating idly and aloud about his fatigue, if it had not been for the telegram. It had taken
the shock of the telegram for me to know anything . . .

I did not plan to go on the boat; I was too raw and confused to have plans, but when he came out to tell me that Jimmy was going to Athens to get tickets for the aeroplane, I suddenly felt that
I should go with Jimmy – that it was one thing that I could do for him – to leave him in peace to make his own decision, and I looked at him thinking how much patience he had had with
my difficulties. His face had closed to an expression of conventional waiting and concern, and I thought, if I leave him with her and he tells her – what will become of me? Then, because I
felt almost intolerably diminished to myself, I wondered what he had ever admired in me, and there was one answer to that. He had admired my courage – the only time that I ever had any
– which was when I had gone on carrying Sarah after they had said that it would almost certainly kill me, and had not told him that I knew this. That had been the end of my courage, it
seemed. There must have been many occasions for it, but it was too late to regret them: I could, at least, go to Athens, now. I told him I wanted to go: his reply confounded me.