‘But why should you want someone like that?’
‘For a change …’ And as this did not seem to register: ‘She’s sweet,’ I went on, ‘and no trouble at all. She wouldn’t ever be.’
‘Is that what you want? No trouble?’
‘Yes. Or I did then. The other thing–’ I did not want to hurt her, for all sorts of unaccountable reasons, but suddenly I was sick of the invasions and swampings of love, as well as the eternal pressure of its inquisition. ‘Oh God, Kate, I just couldn’t take the intensity any more! You never left me alone for a minute! At the beginning, it was like living in a Turkish bath, with hot Chanel instead of steam. And at the end–’
She had grown watchfully still. ‘At the end?’
‘You turned against me.’
‘I never did that, Johnny.’
‘Criticism. Whatever I was doing was wrong. You never left me alone there, either.’
‘But we didn’t get married just to leave each other alone.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
She sighed, a deep sigh of resignation. ‘I once told you that “forever” was a long word.’
‘The longest in the language.’
She went off on another, more immediate tangent. ‘I still don’t see what it is that I don’t give you, that this girl does.’
There must have been several words for it, but I could only find one – or rather, two. ‘Elbow-room.’
With a flash of the old Kate, she said: ‘Well, don’t wear out your elbows,’ and we both laughed, briefly and harshly, for the first and the last time of that exchange. From then onwards, the night divided us again, and grew bitter, and irritating, and utterly destructive.
Kate paused only long enough to switch subjects; then she was away once more, in full swing, and all I could do was fend her off, first with restraint, then with an answering toughness. It seemed that, having lost one strongpoint, she must straight away build another one, and sally forth from that, armoured for battle.
‘To hell with that girl!’ she said, with sudden vehemence, sudden crudity. ‘But that doesn’t mean to hell with us! It’s going to take more than your loving whore to screw up our lives, and that’s a promise, from me to you! … Johnny, now is the time, for a whole battery of reasons. Come back with me now. Break this all up, and come back.’
‘South Africa again?’
‘South Africa again. I must go. I have to. But I want you with me. It won’t make any sense, otherwise.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense, the way you suggest. What do I eat? How do I live? As a fake landowner? As a tame pensioner of the rich Mrs Steele?’
She had wandered to the windows, and was staring out of it, as if somewhere down in the caverns of 77th Street she could find answers to everything, even to me. ‘That wouldn’t matter,’ she said. ‘That sort of thing never does.’
‘Of course it wouldn’t matter, to you!’
She sounded as if she were smiling. ‘Would you care to elaborate on that?’
Her returning confidence irritated me. ‘It wouldn’t matter, because you’d have me back where you think I belong. Down in the cellar with a leg-iron on me. Your leg-iron. We’d be back to the same old round of high low.’
‘High low?’
‘It’s a zany kind of poker game,’ I said, ‘and a damned good way to lose all you have in the world.’ I splashed out another drink, spilling half of it, and a slice of lemon for luck, onto our expensive parquet flooring. But I let the mess lie where it was. Someone else could clean up the world tonight … ‘In this case, it would be you high, me low. Well, I’m not going back to those good old days, Kate. I’ve grown out of them, whether you like it or not. And you never did like it, did you?’
She had turned round, for an inspection which took in me, and a certain wildness in my look, and the sticky spread of gin and lemon on the floor. But for once she did not summon domestic aid, nor dart forward with an assuaging dishcloth. She had decided her priorities. ‘Honestly, Johnny, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh yes, you do! I have the limelight now, not you, and you’ve never been able to bear the idea. You want to change us round again, so that you’re back in the centre and I’m somewhere out on the rim. Hauling me back to South Africa is just the first step in that process. Then I suppose you’ll get to work in earnest. Well, it’s not going to happen!’
‘This is absurd.’
‘You’re damned right it’s absurd! That’s why I’m taking damned good care it doesn’t get started!’
‘What is it you’re afraid of?’ she asked, in apparent wonderment.
‘I’m not afraid of anything.’
‘Yes, you are. You’re scared to death of something. You won’t write a good book – you just turn out a trick musical. You back away from real things, real problems like South Africa, and choose to be a TV personality instead. Johnny, it’s not good enough for someone like you. You’re becoming a coward – a talented coward.’
‘Well, hooray!’ I said angrily. ‘I’ve found my niche at last.’
‘You’ve found a niche, and so do rabbits and mice … Niche is a very good word,’ she went on, with a calmness more than usually infuriating. ‘Perhaps you do need one, perhaps you need that kind of hideaway. But not all by yourself … If you won’t come out of it, why not let me in?’
‘It’s a small niche,’ I said, ‘and you’re a big girl now. But you’re not going to get any bigger.’
‘Can I have a drink?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Like me.’
‘Just like you.’
‘OK.’
I poured out her customary modest martini, and passed it over to her. Our hands touched; it was the closest we had been to each other, all that day. But it still wasn’t going to be any good; we were now both fully armed, and not for one second was I going to let down my guard.
Sipping her drink, wearing her most reasonable air, she said: ‘Johnny, you’re a clever man. Tell me what happened to us.’
‘We evaporated,’ I said, as curtly as I could.
‘How could we evaporate? We had too much, just for it to disappear.’
‘Maybe the sun was too hot.’
‘What sun?’
‘Oh, God, what does it matter?’ I asked irritably. ‘That was a silly metaphor, anyway.’
‘All right,’ she said, equable to an alarming degree. ‘Something evaporated, and it isn’t there any more. But everything else hasn’t disappeared with it. That couldn’t be possible. Not with us.’ She was looking at me with serious, solemn eyes; it was a moment for extreme caution. ‘We both have our faults,’ she said. ‘We’re still human, thank God. You are perpetually afraid of something – of testing yourself against some really great measurement, maybe. And you are vain – you have to be loved, one hundred per cent, all the time. You react to criticism like you react to violence – you think it’s simply illegal. And you drink too much. But then there’s me. I know the worst of my faults, and I give it to you on any kind of silver platter you choose. I am proud.’
I waited, but that seemed to be the end of this not too extensive catalogue. ‘Well, that’s just wonderful,’ I said. ‘I have three big faults, you have one little one. Three to one. That’s quite a proportion. It makes a lousy martini, but as long as it makes you happy–’
‘Pride is the fault,’ she interrupted. ‘It’s at the very top of those seven deadly sins. Terrible things spring from it. Look it up, if you want to, if you need to. It’s the worst sin there is, and I have it, and I’m sorry, and if it’s contributed anything to the sort of mess we’re in, I’m sorry ten times over.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ I said again. My dialogue was not growing any more deft, but I could not help that particular shortfall, either. ‘A becoming humility
is just what we need, at this moment.’
‘It’s on the list of things we need,’ she answered. She was in much better shape than I was, and the contrast was beginning to show. ‘And because I love you – really love you, and want you – I don’t mind listing it. But that’s not really what we’re talking about.’ She gathered herself for a summation, for a flourish of feminine skills; and it was interesting, especially for a writer, and daunting, especially for me, to watch her doing it. ‘Please come back home with me. Back to Maraisgezicht. We can work this all out there. But I have to go, Johnny. My people need me.’
‘For Christ’s sake, shut up about your people! You sound like Catherine of Russia.’
‘That’s not how I feel … Pride again, perhaps … But they do need me, and I need you.’ It was the first time she had ever said it, since the wild old days when she had needed me in a different way; more than ever, I mistrusted it. ‘You taught me such a lot, at the beginning,’ she went on, ‘when you were – well, when you were a good man. It wasn’t on purpose, I don’t think; it came from just listening to you, watching you, living with you … I would never have asked Father Shillingford here, if it hadn’t been for you. I used to think that kind of man was just a bloody nuisance. Now I don’t. I know he is a saint. I owe you that, too … Please stay with me now.’
‘Or what?’ I asked after a moment.
‘Or?’
‘There’s always an “or” to these things. Take a look at the handbook … I won’t go back with you, and get submerged and rehabilitated and generally castrated.’ I had difficulty with the last word, which had never been one of my favourites, and I took another giant swallow to smooth things out. ‘So what’s the alternative?’
She said: ‘We say goodbye.’
There was always a point in every nightmare when one felt: This is all wrong; things don’t happen like this; and it came as a vile shock that I seemed to have reached it now. I reacted very quickly, on crude impulse. It was all wrong, but I couldn’t cure it, and it seemed that Kate did not want to. I downed the last of my drink at a gulp, angry with her, angry with myself for feeling a perceptible twinge of fear. Fear was exclusively for other people … Then I said: ‘If that’s the way it is, we’d better start practising. Goodbye!’
Then I gave her a wave, and walked out.
She called after me: ‘Where are you going?’ but I would not have answered, even if I had known. In fact, I did not know. I didn’t even know exactly where I was. I seemed to be nowhere special, or – as in a nightmare – lost in a forest which might have been hell, and running furiously in order to keep up with the trees.
Kate was getting me down at last, and the sooner I was really drunk, the better.
Actually, I spent the night with Susan, and it was a flop, from beginning to end. Worst of all, it was a sexual flop.
When finally I shambled my way up to her apartment, in search of some sort of refuge, I found that I did not particularly like anything I found there. The place was in a detestable mess – untidy, dusty, totally uncared for; the bathroom was festooned with washing, almost impossible to negotiate, the kitchen piled with grimy plates and encrusted saucepans. I did not even like the look of Susan herself.
She had gone back to allowing people to fool around with her hair, and the result of what was probably a recent, three-hour session with some mincing young professor of the coiffe was a positive bird’s-nest of loops, twists, streaks and kiss curls, framing her head as if with a lunatic halo. She looked like a film company starlet who wanted to look like Brigitte Bardot; her aim, whether laudable or not, could scarcely have been wilder.
I complained instantly, and the move was far from popular.
‘I have to do things with it,’ she answered, in a not too friendly tone. ‘Everyone does.’
‘That’s a damned good reason for leaving it as it is.’
‘I can’t. I’m on the stage!’
‘That sort of hairdo won’t make you a better actress.’ I sat down with a thump on the cluttered sofa; a sharp cracking sound indicated that I had landed squarely on a concealed gramophone record. ‘Well done, Steele,’ I said. ‘You’ve broken another record.’
‘Oh Johnny,’ she wailed, ‘it’s my Yves Montand.’
‘More good news.’ I looked about me, with a wobbling gaze. ‘Why do you live in such a terrible mess?’
‘It isn’t a mess. It’s comfortable.’
‘It’s an absolute pigsty,’ I said, ‘and don’t argue … Well, come on, what do we do now? Entertain me.’
She was staring at me doubtfully. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘I would like another drink. You can cut out the diplomacy.’
She poured out something which I hoped was Scotch and soda, and I drank some of it, though cautiously. I knew that I was raggedly drunk already, and that drink was doing nothing for me; probably it was taking something away – my nerves seemed to be yelping for a respite which they could not find. Susan started up the record player, with an insipid tune, a man playing the piano as if he had been scared by it when young, and then she began to talk, in a bright voice, about something terrible which had happened backstage that morning, while I stared ahead, not hearing what she said.
The moment seemed to mark a very low ebb indeed – my wife out of love, my mistress out of wits; an old-fashioned domestic dilemma indeed, not to be solved in any way that I could see.
Presently Susan finished a long, involved sentence with the words ‘awful’, ‘fantastic’ and ‘hilarious’ in it, and then asked: ‘Honestly, what do you think?’
‘Christ!’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.’
‘But I was telling you!’
‘I never listen to theatrical chatter.’
‘But it’s important!’
‘It’s not. It’s the dullest topic in the world. It’s like–’ I searched for a parallel, ‘–it’s like local politics, and the awful thing the Mayor said to Councillor O’Toole about the sewage disposal plant. It’s like the eight different ways of making a mint julep. It’s like TV in the morning! Who cares?’
Susan picked out a simple, wounding word. ‘Does that mean I’m dull?’
I considered, since it seemed to deserve a sensible answer. ‘Yes, you’re pretty dull.’
She switched off the music abruptly, and turned, and asked: ‘Johnny, what’s happened to us?’
The familiar ring of the question was not the most comforting sound in the world. ‘You’re stealing dialogue,’ I told her after a moment.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said unhappily. ‘I never understand you nowadays.’
‘Nothing’s happened to us. We’re as good as new.’
‘We’re not.’ She was standing over me now, looking down at me, considering – to the best of her ability – the problem of a drunken man who did not seem to love her any more. ‘It’s not the same now. It hasn’t been the same, for a long time. And we must do something about it, before it’s all spoiled.’
I squinted up at her. ‘Tell me more,’ I said. ‘What do we do, to revive this magic memory?’
She was more determined, more prepared, than I had expected. ‘We don’t revive it,’ she said.
‘Farewell for ever? Well, well … Strong stuff, Susan, old girl. I must remember that, for my next work of art.’
But the parallel with another recent interview was growing oddly close; a young man need never have left home. Sooner or later – whichever way I could manage it – I would have to start taking all this goodbye stuff seriously.
Her next words pointed up the fact.
‘Be nice to me,’ she said, ‘and please listen. Don’t let’s pretend any more, Johnny. Things aren’t the same, and we both know it. It was a lot of fun in Barbados, and fun for a little while here, specially when you were hel
ping me so much. But it hasn’t been fun for a long time, has it?’
‘Some of it has been highly enjoyable.’
‘Oh, that part’s all right, when it happens. But I mean, the serious things, the being friends … We don’t seem to have anything left.’
‘What serious things did we have before?’
She was still staring down at me, her face wearing a rare look of unhappiness and confusion. ‘You know what we had,’ she said after a moment. ‘At least, you know what you said … So it’s silly to go on meeting, when there’s nothing left any more except going to bed now and then.’
I sipped my drink. ‘The practice is still well spoken of.’
‘But if it’s only that … It’s such a silly reason for–’
‘For what?’
She said: ‘I don’t want to break up your marriage.’
I stared back at her, genuinely surprised. ‘You couldn’t,’ I told her. Then I felt that I might soften this. ‘I mean, it’s not that kind of–’
‘I know what you meant,’ she said, interrupting me for perhaps the very first time since I met her. ‘But even if I couldn’t break it up, this sort of situation could. And it’s not worth it. I know. That kind of thing never is.’
‘Not worth what?’ It seemed a good moment to be obtuse, and the effort involved was negligible.
‘Not worth breaking up a marriage like yours.’
‘Do tell me more.’
‘I wish you’d help me,’ she said, ‘instead of joking and pretending.’
I had to resist this impertinence. ‘I’m not doing either,’ I said roughly. ‘Not that you could tell the difference … What do you mean, a marriage like mine?’
‘I mean,’ said Susan, serious and intent, ‘that you still love her very much. There’s not such a lot of that around. You should never throw it away.’
I had to think about that for a bit, before deciding how to answer it. For some reason, it seemed first and foremost a blatant intrusion; Susan simply was not licensed to operate in this area; her expertise was confined to smaller matters altogether. It would be better, I thought presently, to work her back towards her own ground; I wasn’t equipped, neither on this evening nor on any average evening during my present lousy half-life of pressure and counter-pressure, to deal with inquisitive fingers from the nursery-wing of affairs.