‘There isn’t Monty,’ said Monty. ‘There is no such person.’
‘Monty, I do hope you don’t mind – I’ve told Edgar – about us —’
‘Us?!’
‘You and me. I mean, how I feel about you.’
‘Edgar must have enjoyed that.’
‘It was no more than I expected,’ said Edgar.
‘It’s no business of his anyway,’ said Monty. ‘I have put up with this fantastic invasion of my privacy. Must I have my private concerns discussed as well?’
‘I’m sorry —’
‘I hope you made it clear to Edgar that whatever sort of faked-up affection you feel for me is certainly not reciprocated.’
‘Monty!’ said Edgar.
‘I told him, yes,’ said Harriet, starting to cry again.
‘Let me say it once more,’ said Monty, ‘with a witness. I do not believe in your so-called love, but whether or not it is serious does not concern me. I have no grain of love for you in my nature. I have helped you out of a sense of duty, or more precisely out of a sort of inertia, since you forced yourself upon me. I shall be obliged if you will leave me out of your daydreams. I will not tolerate any "interesting" relationship here, however shadowy. I say this for your good. Now please go away, go to bed. You too, Edgar. Clear off.’
Harriet, who had been staring at him with flowing tears, gave a cry, covering her face. Then she ran from the room. There was a moment’s silence.
‘Surely that was not necessary,’ said Edgar, frowning.
‘I think it was, precisely, necessary.’
‘You could have been kind —’
‘Kindness would be fatal. Now go away, will you. Drive yourself back to London or whatever you do at this time of night. Or do you want Harriet to allot you a bedroom?’
‘No, I don’t think I’ll go just yet,’ said Edgar, ‘I want to talk to you.’ He had remained solidly in the armchair. ‘I say, Monty, is there any whisky around?’
‘There’s some in the drawing-room.’ Monty sat down near the window and leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. The journey to the kitchen was, for the moment, beyond him.
‘Here.’ Edgar was thrusting a glass towards him. He took it.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Bankhurst,’ said Edgar.
‘Yes. I’m grateful to you for fixing that business.’
The point is, I haven’t fixed it.’
‘Oh. Then you haven’t.’
‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot,’ said Edgar.
‘Thanks.’
‘I can’t get to the bottom of you.’
‘I am bottomless.’
‘I mean, I feel I don’t know you well enough. You see, Binkie asked me, naturally, for a testimonial. And I found I couldn’t write one.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Monty. ‘As I told Harriet, I don’t really exist.’ He raised his head and drank some of the whisky. The room was gently and rhythmically wavering and something was pulling at his scalp and elongating his face.
‘I’m worried about you,’ said Edgar’s voice. Edgar was pouring some water into his whisky with a shaking hand. ‘You see – you know what one writes in a testimonial – conscientious, trustworthy, good with his colleagues, good with the children, and so on. I found I couldn’t write it.’
‘You mean,’ said Monty, ‘that you felt I was not a proper person to be trusted with children. I daresay you’re right. Am I conscientious and trustworthy? I daresay I’m not. All right. So forget it.’
‘No, no,’ said Edgar, ‘don’t misunderstand me —’
‘I think I understand you very well, you have put the matter very clearly.’
‘I don’t exactly think ill of you. I just don’t feel I can see you. I feel you may be having some sort of breakdown and —’
‘No breakdown,’ said Monty. ‘I wish I could have a breakdown, but I’m incapable of it.’
‘I do wish you’d talk to me frankly. Is it just – Sophie – or is there something else? Are you in love with Harriet?’
Monty laughed curtly. ‘No. I used to feel fond of Harriet. But I’m – beyond all that -now.’
I wonder if you really are. What do you mean by "beyond"?’
‘There’s only one thing the matter and that’s everything.’
‘Talk to me about it. Please, Monty.’
Monty said nothing for a while, and just kept swilling the whisky round and round in his glass and sipping a little. He could hear in the silence Edgar’s heavy breathing, like the breathing of a sleeping dog. Drink, emotion, drowsiness? He would soon fall asleep himself. And he recalled how once, as undergraduates, drinking together, they had both fallen asleep simultaneously in the middle of an argument. He felt an impulse, but resisted it, to remind Edgar of the occasion. He got up, intending to go off to bed. It was too late to eat anything now. He found that he had sat down again. He said to Edgar, ‘Would you like to hear that tape of Sophie, the one I was playing when you came to burgle your letters?’
‘Oh my God —’
‘It’s in that drawer. And the tape recorder is under the desk. Do you know how to work it?’
‘No. But ought we to —’
‘Bring it all here.’
Edgar tumbled the tape and the apparatus between Monty’s feet, where the white bear rug was trailing on the floor, and Monty began to fix the tape on.
‘Can you stand it?’ said Edgar.
‘Oh – what I can stand —’
‘I’m not sure if I can.’
‘She didn’t know I was taping this,’ said Monty. ‘It was near the end. I wanted a little memento of my darling wife.’ The tape turned slowly and a new voice was heard in the room, very clear, a little staccato, high-pitched, very slightly French, very slightly northern, a trenchant self-assertive actress’s voice, the inimitable mixed and mingled voice of the one and only Sophie.
‘Take it, take it, it’s so heavy on my feet. The book, take it. Ach. Could I have the drops now. I have got the shakes today. Let me have the glass, will you – no not that – the glass, the looking-glass. Mon dieu, Mon dieu.’
‘You were saying.’
‘What was I saying? Why do you keep making me talk so. I want some peace now. Take it.’
‘You were saying.’ ‘I thought you knew about Marcel, we hardly bothered, I was so sure you knew. I thought you heard us giggling that night when he went round and came in again and there was his coat in the hall, and we both got the giggles. You mean you didn’t know?’
‘No.’
‘Oh well. Oh I do ache so. And my back itches. C’est plutôt quelque chose de brûlant. No, no, don’t touch me, that is no use now, you just hurt – Ach. You bored me so about Marcel, at last I hardly tried. You made me swear and of course I swore, what else could I do? Oh it was so boring. But you never believed me, did you, and the proof was when you said "He has told me everything" and I didn’t know what to say.’
‘You laughed.’
‘Thank God I had still the power to laugh at you then. It was not true of course. Toujours des ennuis. If you could only have seen your face, that dreadful inquisitor’s face, how I hated it. When you put that face on it was for a whole evening, a whole day. No, it’s not the pain now, just aching so. Mon dieu. I hated you then. "Did you, did you, did you?" you could say for hours on end.’
‘Well, did you?’
‘You mean with Sandy? Yes, of course.’
‘At the earlier time?’
‘Oh what does it matter! No, at the later time. He would not leave me alone. What does it matter now what happened, nothing matters now. Are you to write my story? It would be something. You could not have invented it. And you have put on the face that I hate so. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. You know that time that I went to Brussels to Madeleine, to her sculpture show. I was with Sandy then. We went to Ostend. It was boring.’
‘You went twice to Madeleine, again the next year.’
‘Why do you keep
asking now, why do you even now torment me?’
‘You torment me.’
‘It is that I cannot be bothered now to he. It was so wearisome to lie and I got into such muddles. Oh such muddles I got into.’
‘You went twice to Madeleine.’
‘Oh yes, who was it the second time. I think it was Edgar.’
‘Edgar?’
‘Surely you knew about me and Edgar.’
‘Before I met you —’
‘Oh but after we were married too. One could not get rid of Edgar. He was such an old faithful. If there was no one else there was always Edgar.’
‘So you went to Ostend with Edgar.’
‘No, no, to Amsterdam. We took the train. Madeleine sent off my postcards to you from Brussels. Only it was so funny I made a mistake. I said on a postcard I had been to Bruges and you said did I like Bruges and I said I had never been there, and you just looked at me as if you could kill me.’
‘If you only hadn’t lied so.’
‘Mais naturellement. Such a husband deserves lies.’
‘You ought never to have married me.’
‘You made marriage a prison. You made my life so miserable with your stern face and always thinking and always these endless questions. On se croirait chez le juge a"instruction. I have not had a moment’s joy with you, and I felt so happy and free with the others always, and then the return to you with your face of a gaoler and a torturer. I have not had a moment’s joy in this marriage.’
‘I have not had a moment’s joy either.’
‘Switch it off!’ said Edgar. Monty switched off the tape and resumed his former attitude, leaning forward with his head in his hands.
‘That’s not true, of course,’ said Edgar, ‘about me.’ He spoke quite softly and calmly, but his breathing was heavier, almost a panting sound.
‘I didn’t suppose it was,’ said Monty. He picked up his glass again, circled it about awhile and then drained it.
‘You believe me? I never went to Amsterdam with Sophie. I never went to bed with her ever, after your marriage, or before it either. I wrote to her when she was your wife, yes. But I hardly ever saw her alone. I came to tea that time. And I had lunch with her once when you were in New York with Richard – but I told you about that in a letter – it was at Pruniers and —’
‘Yes, yes. You even told me what you ate. It doesn’t matter.’
‘You do believe me?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Why did you play me the tape?’
‘I wanted to hear you say it wasn’t true. If it wasn’t true about you, it mightn’t have been true about the others. I thought after she died I’d have to go after them all. There were dozens of them. Well, at least a dozen. I don’t mean I thought I’d go and shoot them or anything. But I wanted to hear what they’d say, I wanted to confront them, to let them know I knew, to hurt them somehow. Then I decided it would be pointless.’
‘I’m glad you decided that,’ said Edgar softly.
‘Of course she did have lovers. But I never knew quite which or how many. The ones she named may have been a sort of front for other ones I’ve never even heard of.’
‘When did you make the tape – I mean in relation to -?’
‘Her death. It was about three days before. It was typical of conversations we had been having over a period of weeks, months – and went on having till the end. I thought I should have a record of the death scene.’
‘You oughtn’t to have done it,’ said Edgar.
‘Made the tape? True.’
‘And you oughtn’t to have kept it.’
‘True.’ Monty took the tape off the machine and went over to the fireplace and stirred up the wood fire and placed the tape in the midst of the glowing embers where it began to sizzle and blacken. ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said. ‘Good night. Forget about the Bankhurst business. You’re quite right about me.’
‘Wait,’ said Edgar. ‘Sit down. Please. Sit down.’
Monty moved his chair to the fire and sat gazing at the tape which was burning now.
‘Has this done anything for you, Monty?’
‘Has what? Oh you mean playing the tape and – No, I shouldn’t think so.’
‘Is that what’s the matter, brooding about Sophie’s lovers? You mustn’t. My dear, she’s dead.’
‘You think I should forgive her? That’s hardly the question.’
‘Never mind the terminology. You must let her go.’
‘There can be no speech between the bereaved and the unbereaved.’
‘It doesn’t matter now who her lovers were or how many. It doesn’t matter at all. Death is more important than these things. I mean, it makes a different scene. You must calm your spirit. We are mortal too. You are tearing yourself to pieces, Monty. You mustn’t. What’s more you know you mustn’t, you know all about it.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. You know what I mean.’
‘Words, words.’
‘Let it all go, Monty. The resentment and the jealousy and the reliving it all. Sophie is dead and you must respect her death, and that means not tearing away at a memory of her personality. Death changes our relation to people. Of course the relation itself lives on and goes on changing. But you must at least try to make it a good relation and not a rotten one. Sophie is dead and you are alive and your duty is the same as any man’s, to make yourself better. You are making yourself worse.’
‘You think so.’
‘Yes. And somehow deliberately. You’re making a drama out of it. Oh if only I could understand you and help you. I love you, Monty, I always have, since we were students, and I’ve always admired you so much.’
‘You are mad,’ said Monty. ‘You admit I’m horrible and you must see by now that I’m not even talented.’
‘Of course you’re talented. Why don’t you try and write a proper novel? Of course that’s not the whole answer, but it’s part of it. It’s your job, if you’ve got enough courage. Anyway, stop being so secretive and ferocious. It isn’t even that, it’s being small-minded, petty, cowardly somehow. Oh I know my words are all astray. If only I could see what it is.’
‘You think you haven’t seen "it" yet?’ said Monty.
Edgar looked at him in silence for a moment or two and the silence of the night all about them possessed the room. ‘No, I don’t understand. I think there’s something else. And I think you’d better tell me what it is. Now.’
‘All right,’ said Monty. ‘I killed her.’
‘You – killed -Sophie?’
‘Yes. Of course she would have died anyway fairly soon. But I killed her.’
There was a pause. The fire murmured, collapsing. The silence sighed.
‘To save her from suffering?‘ said Edgar.
‘No. I don’t think so. Just out of anger or jealousy or spite or something. I dreaded her death, I dreaded her death agony, I kept thinking about it. But I didn’t kill her for that reason. I killed her because she maddened me.’
‘But you didn’t – mean to?’
‘Yes, I think I did. It wasn’t premeditated of course. I’d often wanted to hit her and she often tried to provoke me to, but in all those years I never touched her. Then at the end it was like an obsession – to get her to tell me all those things before she died – which later I wouldn’t be able ever to find out. Only then – all at once – I just couldn’t stand it any longer her talk – her consciousness – and I took her by the throat and squeezed – and – then I stopped and – she was dead.’
‘Oh Christ.’
‘So there you are,’ said Monty. ‘That was it! You have it, and can go away contented. More whisky before you depart?’
‘No, no – you mustn’t talk like that – what about the doctor and-?’
‘Dr Ainsley saw her. He saw the marks on her throat. He never said a word. He wrote "cancer" on the death certificate.’
‘Oh Monty, Monty —’
‘So you see your intuitions were qui
te sound. I would hardly make a good schoolmaster;’
‘Stop. You don’t understand – I’m not – But tell me, is it this guilt which makes you so-?’
‘So – whatever I am. No, it isn’t exactly guilt, old friend of my college days. It’s more like – deep – shock. You see -I loved her – what I’ve been talking about sounds like – pure obsession – cruelty – but I loved her with – all my passion and all my tenderness as well – I loved her – all her little ways of being herself – and it wasn’t true what she said on the tape – and I said it too – about there being no joy in our married life – there was deep joy – she teased me and worse – but there was love between us and she relied on me so – it was just at the end – she was so unhappy, so unhappy and so frightened – she didn’t want to die – she wasn’t made – in her mind and her soul – to face a slow awful inevitable death – she became – with the misery and the fear – another person – and there was no one but me – to express it all to – all her misery – and she wanted to make me suffer and I ought to have accepted that suffering on my knees – but I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, treat her like a dying person – I had to fight her – and I kept wanting to know and wanting to know – and so we tormented each other – all that time – until I killed her – it should have been so otherwise – but it’s not guilt really, it’s shock – I’ve felt almost mad with it – if she’d died naturally it would have been – but I did it – I stopped our conversation – which could have become different, better – I chose the moment of her death, I chose the moment when she should go – and that deprives it of all – inevitability – makes it seem – almost accidental – as if it needn’t have happened at all – as if it can’t quite have happened – but only half happened – and she’s half here – and it’s all – unfinished – and she’s still dying – and she’ll go on dying – and suffering – for ever.’
Monty was shuddering as he spoke, his mouth trembling, his hands trembling. Now the fire, into which he had been gazing, became hazy before his eyes, his eyes were wet, his mouth was wet, a flood of tears burst from him and he uttered a sob and his face was covered in tears and the tears were dropping down on to his jacket and on to the floor. Still sobbing he half rose, pushed the chair from him and knelt on the floor, resting his elbows on the chair and weeping without restraint like a desperate child.