What did it matter? This one would be the last for a long while. He would be able to see her, now, every week, and sometimes on a Sunday as well. At last he could begin to make things up to her a little. Whatever she did, now, he would think of it like this. The luxury of forgiveness was denied him. It was he, not she, who was tied to a profession which expelled divorce respondents. It had never occurred to her to question or reproach him, to demand any pity or any compensation. Now at least he could partly fill, with the smaller kinds of happiness, the gap of the greater.
He was wearing a new suit, and paused over it dubiously. It was a lighter grey than he generally had: he dressed conservatively on the whole. It looked all right, he supposed, in its way. Anyhow, Christie would probably like it. He did not actually admit to himself that this thought had visited him when he chose the cloth.
He opened the roof of the car—it was a beautiful day—and started out, feeling happy, not only because he was going to see her, but because he was learning to take this kind of thing in his stride. Apart from other considerations, jealousy had offended the physician in him, like a septic focus. He had attacked the symptoms with a good deal of resolution and some success. The cause remained. It was too deep even for surgery now; he knew that, and accepted it.
The spell of fine weather had lasted. A thin film of white dust powdered the green stuff at the edges of the road, and settled, as he drove, on the paintwork of the car. The sky was brilliantly blue. His mind, too, felt clear and serene. It was not getting her back that was important—he had always done that, and felt less anxiety about it this time than ever before—but getting her back without mess or suffering or indignity.
Christie had asked him to meet her at the outside door of the theatre; she had a coaching to work in, she said, before she could get away. He parked the car there and waited for her to come out, wondering what she would have on.
She did not see him for a moment or two. When the door opened, she was still deep in conversation with her pupil, a grave intelligent little boy of twelve or so. He was asking advice about something, with the deadly serious logic of his age. Christie’s opinion was evidently valuable, and she was considering it with proper weight. For a moment she looked concentrated, impersonally satisfied, free; all the fluffy edges of indecision cleared away. The boy felt carefully in his pocket, and drew forth, delicately cherished, a fat white mouse with a black rump. They bent over it together. He transferred it to her cupped hands, where it sat, twitching a translucent whiskered nose. Presently its owner received it back again, like one who has conferred the ultimate recognition of merit, raised his cap politely, and departed with an important clump of metal boot-heels.
Christie looked up and saw Kit. She smiled uncertainly; but he had expected that. Returning the smile cheerfully, he opened the door of the car.
“I’m so sorry I had to be late,” she said in a small voice.
“It’s all right. I’ve only just come myself. Who’s the boyfriend?”
“Oh, Billy. I’m giving him voice-production. He’s got an accent.”
“Have you reformed it?”
“Not much. It’s so attractive, I shall probably end by having it myself instead.” She laughed without conviction. Kit took her firmly by the elbow.
“Tea first, I think. Then you can tell me all the news.” He turned the car in the direction of Paxton.
“Kit, not that Paxton place. It’s so full of people. Why not that farm where we went before?”
“All right. It’s too good a day, really, for town.” He began to reverse down a side-turning. Suddenly she began to search about on the seat.
“Oh, Kit. I’ve left my bag in the theatre. Do you mind?”
He stopped the car. “I suppose it’s no good saying come without it. Probably take another world war to bring in pockets for women. Don’t be long.”
“Come in with me. There’s no one there. I don’t want to be away from you.”
“Well, it might save time.” They went through the echoing theatre, chilly now that the heating had been turned off.
“We were in one of the practising rooms,” she said, “behind the stage.” As they went through the side door into the wings Kit sniffed, affectionately, the familiar smell. “This one,” Christie said.
He murmured, as he followed her in, “It’s nice to be in here again.”
“It’s all different now.”
“Yes,” he said. “It looks a bit chilly, doesn’t it, without the bed.”
There was nothing in the small cell but a piano, a deal table and a couple of chairs. Christie’s bag was on the table. She picked it up, and sat back on the table’s edge. He came towards her, but she held him off for a moment, looking at him.
“You’ve got a new suit on. You look so nice in it. It matches your eyes.”
“It’s too light. I chose the cloth in a gloomy shop.”
“Of course it isn’t. You always ought to wear that colour.” She threw her arms round his neck. “Oh, darling, I wish you weren’t always more than I bargained for—sweeter, or better-looking, or something. You always are. I might have known you would be to-day.” She gave an unreal laugh, and buried her face in his shoulder.
He stroked her hair. “Look here,” he said gently, “if you’re going to worry about this till it’s off your chest, why not get it over now, before we start? Then we can enjoy ourselves. No point in spoiling your tea.”
She looked up, as if she were frightened. “Darling, why are you being like this? I thought you’d … Don’t you mind?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “yet.” It must have gone further than he had supposed. What had that little swine looked like? If he could … Look out! he thought, checking himself quickly. He must, just this once, carry it through as he knew, when he was quiet and alone, it ought to be done. If he didn’t spoil this, all the months of happiness ahead would be better for it. “It’s all right,” he said. “Tell me the worst to start off with, and then how it happened. Like a detective story. Then I’ll tell you how to detach the poor wretch without undue suffering. That’s what you want, I suppose? Come on. Don’t look so scared. After all, I’ve been there before.”
She drew back. He noticed, then, that her face was white and strained with sleeplessness. He had not seen her like that since Miss Heath died. He sat down on the table beside her, taking her hand in his.
“Kit. Didn’t you read my letter?”
“Of course. All but the postscript. You’d spilt a bottle of ink, or something, over the bottom of the page.”
“But all the rest, after. I wrote it out again.”
“I should think you forgot to put it in, then.”
“Oh, Kit, I couldn’t have. Did I? I remember, I did have to post it in a frightful hurry in the end. So that was why … I couldn’t think why you were so …” She stopped. The strain in her face changed, slowly, to relief. “Oh, well. I’m glad really. It doesn’t matter, now.”
Kit, too, felt a moment’s sense of reprieve. Need he know about it? It was so much easier without the details that Christie charged with such unconscious vividness; they had a way of taking on a life of their own afterwards, when he was driving home, or in bed at night when there was a week to wait before he saw her again. Let it go. In an hour or two it would be nothing to do with either of them. … No, it was too easy. The certainty of truth was the only thing in their relationship that was rare, that kept it above the level of a million furtive philanderings.
“Come on,” he said, putting his arm round her shoulders. “You know you’re bursting to tell me really.”
“I’m not. I don’t want to think about it any more. I’ve got you. Nothing else matters. I don’t know now why I thought it did. Things look different when you’re alone. … I love you, Kit. I want you more than anything else. I was mad—I want to forget about it.”
“We both will afterwards. You know you’ll feel better if you spit it out. Fire away. The end first. You slept with this chap,
I take it. How many times?”
“Oh, Kit, no!” She had never lied to him. Even if she had, he would have known she was not lying now. His face lightened. He was glad, all over again, that he had kept himself in hand. Just a little good listening, and it would be over. He almost glanced at his watch. She was still talking, however.
“… you’ve no idea how upright and everything he is. He never even said anything till he’d been offered a housemastership. The junior masters aren’t supposed to get married, you see. He doesn’t believe in long engagements. Poor old Jimmie.”
She smiled reminiscently. It was not till Kit withdrew his arm from her shoulders that she looked up and saw his face.
“Darling, what is it? Don’t. Honestly I haven’t been to bed with him. I promise you. I’d say if I had, you know I would. He didn’t even ask me.”
“No. He asked you to marry him.”
“Well, precious, so would you if you could. Don’t look so hurt, I can’t bear it. It was a crazy idea. I knew I’d realize it as soon as I saw you again. That’s why I asked you to come—oh, I forgot, you didn’t read that part. Well, you came, anyway. I’ll write to him to-morrow.”
“You hadn’t refused, then?”
“Well, no, not finally. I hadn’t the heart to turn him down flat—it seemed less snubbing, sort of, to say I’d think it over and let him know. Besides … Kit, darling, don’t think me a beast, but he’ll have twenty little boys in his house between six and thirteen. I couldn’t help just thinking about it for a second. Not longer than that.”
He was silent, watching her thoughts run, clear as water, through her eyes. Already the reminder of her doubts had raised them again. She was waiting for him, now, as she always waited, to make up her mind for her in the only way she understood. She was quite near him still. Her hair was soft and fluffy to-day; she must just have washed it. He said nothing.
“He’s fond of children, you see. He wanted somebody who was too. I expect he’ll soon find some one else, though, don’t you?”
“Possibly. Are you fond of him?” He spoke distantly and precisely, as if he had been in the consulting room. He had learned the manner, however, with Janet. It made him seem older than he was.
“Oh, we get on all right. Kit, what’s the matter? You don’t sound as if you cared whether I married him or not. Why are you so queer?”
Yes, he thought; why am I? A moment’s lapse of control, and everything would settle itself. Quite natural, quite involuntary. Or almost involuntary, after the first split second of consent. “I thought you sent for me because you wanted advice.”
“Of course I did, darling. You’ve always got me out of all my jams. Look at Mr. Cowen.”
“We’re not discussing Mr. Cowen now.”
“Kit, I can’t stand this. Don’t be cross. You asked me to tell you. … Don’t you mind, or what? Kit, look at me, say something.” Her voice shook dangerously. “You haven’t stopped loving me, have you?”
Well, he thought, that would be one way. Old-fashioned surgery, dirty and destructive; the Heroic Lie. It mattered, he supposed, very little; still …
“No,” he said, without emotion. “Not yet.”
“Not yet? Darling, what do you mean?”
“I haven’t discussed my wife with you, have I?” Surely something would give him away. But he had learned not to make mistakes; it was too late to unlearn it now. “I’m afraid I may have given you the impression that I was never very fond of her. That isn’t true. I loved her as much as I was capable of loving any one. It lasted three years. That includes the time when we were engaged. Now do you see?”
She looked away. At last she said under her breath, “But I thought … That was different. She wasn’t kind to you.”
She was sitting with her knees screwed up on the table, trying to see his face. He got up, and moved away.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” he said crisply. “She was faithful to me, though.”
He heard a shallow sound behind him, but still stared at the frosted glass of the window, crossed, at intervals, by the jerky shadows of feet outside.
“No one’s to blame. Our circumstances are a bit unfortunate, that’s all. I think it’s only fair to give you the first chance of clearing out. If we left it much longer, it might be me. You can’t drag these things on. When they’re over, they’re over. What about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She had wrapped her arms round her knees, as if she were cold. “I don’t know anything when you talk like that.” She got off the table, and came, hesitating, towards him. “Kit—please—won’t you be ordinary, just for a minute? I’d feel safer if you would.”
This dependence, this persisting trust, were what he had most feared. Suddenly he feared them no longer. They were what he had needed. She had no one, he thought, to give her things. He could look at her now.
“I am being ordinary. After all, we’re separated for fairly long stretches. One doesn’t spend all that time in a welter of emotion, particularly if one’s got a job to attend to. I’ve thought for some time this would be the best way out, for both of us.”
“Kit. Is that true?”
“Perfectly true.” He had thought it often, as one thinks how much simpler life would be if one could dispense with the need for food. “Haven’t you?”
“I don’t know. Thinking didn’t seem to come into it, really, very much.”
“Well,” he said briskly (the tone often worked well with nervous patients), “I think it’s about time it did. You only fancy I matter more than Maurice and Co. because I’ve been more persistent. You’d have left me several times already, if I hadn’t kept making scenes.” (It was amazing what rational material could be produced from bad dreams.) “Presently we’d both have got sick of it. You’ll forget all these episodes, when you’ve had a kid or two.”
“I always wanted them to be yours. … You make it all sound so reasonable, you muddle me up. Don’t keep-talking about me, as if you weren’t there. Won’t you be unhappy—don’t you mind?”
“Oh; me. It’s different for a man, you know.” Phrases returned to him; he could almost have smiled at the faithfulness with which he had learned them. “These things take a much smaller place. Men have so many other interests. They’re naturally more self-centred.”
She looked puzzled, as if she were being set a lesson in advance of what she had learned.
“I don’t know about men. I only know a few people. We’d be lonely without each other.”
“For a week or two. It blows over.”
“I shall always want to tell you things.”
“Well, there’s nothing to stop your writing to me. This isn’t a Lyceum melodrama.” (If would be like her, he thought, to write on her honeymoon. He would read it, too, and be proud that it was possible.) “I’m always there if you get worried about anything.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can always write, can’t I?”
He knew that was decisive. He might have thought of it sooner. She only needed to be saved the cold plunge of a decision on the spot. Nothing remained but to get out of the way. The current would carry her.
“We’ll meet again sometime. Not for a bit, though; you’ll have enough to think about. Well, I’d better be going.”
“Oh, not yet! I haven’t—I wanted us to have to-day.”
“I’ve got to get back to a case. I meant to tell you before.”
“Kit. Kiss me good-bye.”
She had no concealments. It was not a farewell she wanted; it was a decision her mind need not make.
“No,” he said. “Don’t be silly. You know it’ll only unsettle you. You’ll be all right. Good-bye.”
“Kit—I love you—”
He paused, with his hand on the door. He had done everything. If, after all …
“—I’ll never, never forget you.”
No, he thought; of course. I wondered, for a moment …
“Thanks for being nice to me.” (That was right, wasn?
??t it? He had seen it in a book, or somewhere.) “Good-bye.”
He went out without looking back.
In the car, driving home, the spurious years dispersed from his face. He might have been twenty-five. But there was no need to look for the horn glasses, since he was alone.
CHAPTER 24
JANET WROTE FROM MADEIRA. She described the weather on the voyage, the deck sports. She enclosed a snapshot, which indicated greater distances than the foreign stamp on the envelope. There was a kind of family resemblance between all the four faces. He wrote back, slowly evolving suitable sentences, as if it had been a home-letter from school.
Christie wrote once, to say how often she thought about him, to tell him Florizelle had a new dress woven by Swedish peasants, and to ask him if he was sure she was doing the right thing.
He answered reassuringly.
The shape of her writing on the page was like a physical touch. Before he even read it, he could see her writing it twisted round sideways at the table, in her old smock that smelt of greasepaint, her leg tucked up on the seat of the chair.
It was all over. If he repeated this long enough to himself, presumably it would mean something.
A woman patient, for whom he had ordered a certain régime, came to him complaining of difficulties with her husband: he interviewed the husband, persuading him at length to view things in the light of reason. McKinnon came to call, and gave character-sketches of public personalities, consistent with his theories, but inconsistent, Kit felt, with a cursory glance at their faces in the illustrated papers. Bill, the husband of Shirley, met him in the street and said that the Group had a lot to offer him, any time he cared to come along. Headlines in the papers grew menacing, and parallel columns, reported from different capitals, related the same events like differently curved distorting mirrors. Every day something illustrated afresh the inability of human beings to be visible to one another; every catastrophe of astigmatism in action reminded him that he had once held a fugitive particle of truth.
Honour, morality, logic could justify its destruction, as scientists can destroy a living cell; like the scientists, they could not create it again. They could not even discover what had made it live.