The Golden Notebook (23 page)

Here you and I are...' How they were was reflected in his face and eyes, which were warm on her face-'and look what it would be like if we were married.' Ella felt herself go cold. She thought, Surely he's not saying that as a man does, warning a woman? He's not so cheap, surely? She saw an old bitterness on his face, and thought: No, he's not, thank God, he's carrying on some conversation with himself. And the light inside her was relit. She said: 'But you aren't married at all. You can't call that being married. You never see her.' 'We got married when we were both twenty. There should be a law against it,' he added, with the same desperate humour, kissing her. He said, with his mouth on her throat: 'You're very wise not to get married, Ella. Be sensible and stay that way.' Ella smiled. She was thinking: And so I was wrong after all. That's exactly what he's doing, saying: You can expect just so much from me. She felt completely rejected. And he still lay with his hands on her arms, and she could feel the warmth of them right through her body, and his eyes, warm and full of love for her, were a few inches above hers. He was smiling. That night in bed, making love to him was a mechanical thing, she went through the motions of response. It was a different experience from the other nights. It seemed he did not know it; and they lay afterwards as usual close in each other's arms. She was chilled and full of dismay. The day after she had a conversation with Julia, who had been silent all this time about Paul's staying the nights. 'He's married,' she said. 'He's been married thirteen years. It's a marriage so that it doesn't matter if he doesn't go home at nights. Two children.' Julia made a non-committal grimace and waited. 'The thing is, I'm not sure at all... and there's Michael.' 'What's his attitude to Michael?' 'He's only seen him once, for a moment. He comes in late-well you know that. And he's gone by the time Michael wakes up. To pick up a clean shirt from home.' At which Julia laughed, and Ella laughed with her. 'An extraordinary woman she must be,' said Julia. 'Does he talk about her?' 'He said, they got married too young. And then he went off to the wars, and when he came back, he felt a stranger to her. And as far as I can make out, he's done nothing but have love affairs ever since.' 'It doesn't sound too good,' said Julia. 'What do you feel for him?' At the moment, Ella felt nothing but a cold hurt despair. For the life of her she could not reconcile their happiness and what she called his cynicism. She was in something like a panic. Julia was examining her, shrewdly. 'I thought, the first time I saw him, he's got such a tight miserable face.' 'He's not at all miserable,' said Ella quickly. Then, seeing her instinctive and unreasoning defence of him, she laughed at herself and said: 'I mean, yes, there is that in him, a sort of bitterness. But there's his work and he likes it. He rushes from hospital to hospital, and tells marvellous stories about it all, and then the way he talks about his patients-he really cares. And then with me, at night, and he never seems to need to sleep.' Ella blushed, conscious that she was boasting. 'Well, it's true,' she said, watching Julia's smile. 'And then off he rushes in the morning, after practically no sleep, to pick up a shirt and presumably have a nice little chat with his wife about this and that. Energy. Energy is not being miserable. Or even bitter, if it comes to that. The two things aren't connected.' 'Oh, well,' said Julia. 'In that case you'd better wait and see what happens, hadn't you?' That night Paul was humorous and very tender. It's as if he's apologising, Ella thought. Her pain melted. In the morning she found herself restored to happiness. He said, as he dressed: 'I can't see you tonight, Ella.' She said, without fear: 'Well, that's all right.' But he went on, laughing: 'After all, I've got to see my children sometime.' It sounded as if he were accusing her of having deliberately kept him from them. 'But I haven't stopped you,' said Ella. 'Oh, yes you have, you have,' he said, half-singing it. He kissed her lightly, laughing, on the forehead. That's how he kissed his other women, she thought, when he left them for good. Yes. He didn't care about them, and he laughed and kissed them on the forehead. And suddenly a picture came into her mind, at which she stared, astonished. She saw him putting money on to a mantelpiece. But he was not-that she knew, the sort of man who would pay a woman. Yet she could see him, clearly, putting money on a mantelpiece. Yes. It was somewhere implicit in his attitude. And to her, Ella, but what's that got to do with all these hours we've been together, when every look and move he's made told me he loved me? (For the fact that Paul had told her, again and again, that he loved her, meant nothing, or rather would have meant nothing if it had not been confirmed by how he touched her, and the warmth of his voice.) And now, leaving, he remarked, with his small bitter grimace: 'And so you'll be free tonight, Ella.' 'What do you mean, free?' 'Oh... for your other boy-friends; you've been neglecting them, haven't you?' She went to the office, after leaving the child at his nursery school, feeling as if cold had got into her bones, into her backbone. She was shivering slightly. Yet it was a warm day. For some days she had not been in connection with Patricia, she had been too absorbed in her happiness. Now she easily came close to the older woman again. Patricia had been married for eleven years; and her husband had left her for a younger woman. Her attitude towards men was a gallant, good-natured, wisecracking cynicism. This jarred on Ella; it was something foreign to her. Patricia was in her fifties, lived alone, and had a grown-up daughter. She was, Ella knew, a courageous woman. But Ella did not like to think too closely about Patricia; to identify with her, even in sympathy, meant she might be cutting off some possibility for herself. Or so she felt. Today Patricia made some dry comment about a male colleague who was separating from his wife, and Ella snapped at her. Later she came back into the room, and apologised, for Patricia was hurt. Ella always felt at a disadvantage with the older woman. She did not care for her as much as she knew Patricia did for her. She knew she was some sort of symbol for Patricia, a symbol perhaps of her own youth? (But Ella would not think about that, it was dangerous.) Now she made a point of staying with Patricia and talking and making jokes, and saw, with dismay, tears in her employer's eyes. She saw, very sharply, a plump, kindly, smart, middle-aged woman, with clothes from the fashion magazines that were like a uniform, and her gallant mop of tinted greying curls; and her eyes-hard for her work, and soft for Ella. While she was with Patricia, she was telephoned by the editor of one of the magazines that had published a story of hers. He asked if she were free to lunch. She said she was, listening in her mind to the word free. For the last ten days she had not felt free. Now she felt, not free, but disconnected, or as if she floated on someone else's will- Paul's. This editor had wanted to sleep with her, and Ella had rejected him. Now she thought that very likely she would sleep with him. Why not? What difference did it all make? This editor was an intelligent, attractive man, but the idea of his touching her repelled her. He had not one spark of that instinctive warmth for a woman, liking for a woman, which was what she felt in Paul. And that was why she would sleep with him; she could not possibly have let a man touch her now, whom she found attractive. But it seemed Paul did not care one way or the other; he made jokes about the 'man she had taken home from the party,' almost as if he liked her for it. Very well, then; very well-if that's what he wanted, she didn't care at all. And she took herself off to lunch, carefully made-up, in a mood of sick defiance of the whole world. The lunch was as usual-expensive; and she liked good food. He was amusing; and she liked his talk. She was eased into her usual intellectual rapport with him, and meanwhile watched him and thought it was inconceivable that she could make love with him. Yet why not? She liked him, didn't she? Well then? And love? But love was a mirage, and the property of the women's magazines; one certainly couldn't use the word love in connection with a man who didn't care whether one slept with other men or not. But if I'm going to sleep with this man, I'd better do something about it. She did not know how to; she had rejected him so often he took the rejection for granted. When lunch was over, and they were on the pavement, Ella was suddenly released: what nonsense, of course she wasn't going to sleep with him, now she would go back to the office and that would be that. Then she saw a couple of prostitutes in a doorway, and she remembered her picture of Paul that morning; and when the editor said: 'Ella, I do so wish that...' she interrupted with a smile and said: 'Then take me home. No, to your place, not to mine.' For she could not have borne to have any man but Paul in her own bed now. This man was married, and he took her to his bachelor flat. His home was in the country, he was careful to keep his wife and children there, and he used this flat for adventures like these. All the time she was naked with this man, Ella was thinking of Paul. He must be mad. What am I doing with a madman? He really imagines I could sleep with another man when I'm with him? He can't possibly believe it. Meanwhile, she was being as nice as she could be to this intelligent comrade of her intellectual lunches. He was having difficulties, and Ella knew this was because she did not really want him, and so it was her fault, though he was blaming himself. And so she set herself to please, thinking there was no reason for him to feel bad, simply because she was committing the crime of sleeping with a man she did not care tuppence for... and when it was all over, she simply discounted the whole incident. It had meant nothing at all. She was left, however, vulnerable, quivering with the need to cry, and desperately unhappy. She was yearning, in fact, towards Paul. Who rang her next day to say that he couldn't come that night either. And now Ella's need for Paul was so great that she told herself it didn't matter in the slightest, of course he had to work, or to go home to his children. The next evening they met full of defences on either side. A few minutes later they had all vanished, and they were together again. Some time that night he remarked: 'Odd isn't it, it really is true that if you love a woman sleeping with another woman means nothing.' At the time she did not hear this-somewhere in her a mechanism had started to work which would prevent her hearing him when he made remarks that might make her unhappy. But she heard it next day, the words suddenly came back into her mind and she listened to them. So during those two nights he had been experimenting with someone else, and had had the same experience as she. So now she was full of confidence again, and of trust in him. Then he began to question her about what she had done during those two days. She said she had had lunch with an editor who had published one of her stories. 'I've read one of your stories. It was rather good.' He said this with pain, as if he had rather the story were bad. 'Well, why shouldn't it be good?' she asked. 'I suppose that was your husband, George?' 'Partly, not altogether.' 'And this editor?' For a moment she thought of saying: 'I've had the same experience you've had.' Then she thought: If he's capable of being upset by things that never happened, what would he say if I told him I did sleep with that man? Though I didn't, it didn't count, it was not the same thing at all. Afterwards Ella judged that their 'being together' (she never used the word affair) started from that moment- when they had both tested their responses to other people and found that what they felt for each other made other people irrelevant. That was the only time she was to be unfaithful to Paul, though she did not feel it mattered. Yet she was miserable she had done it because it became a sort of crystallisation of all his later accusations of her. After that he came to her nearly every night, and when he could not come she knew it was not because he did not want to. He would come in late, because of his work, and because of the child. He helped her with her letters from 'Mrs. Brown,' and this was a very great pleasure to her, working together over these people for whom she could sometimes do something. She did not think of his wife at all. At least, not at the beginning. Her only worry, at the beginning, was Michael. The little boy had loved his own father, now married again and living in America. It was natural for the child to turn with affection to this new man. But Paul would stiffen when Michael put his arms around him, or when he rushed at him in welcome. Ella watched how he instinctively stiffened, half-laughed, and then his mind (the mind of the soul-doctor, considering how best to deal with the situation) started to work. He would gently put down Michael's arms, and talk to him gently, as if he were grown-up. And Michael responded. It hurt Ella to see how the little boy, denied this masculine affection, would respond by being grown-up, serious, answering serious questions. A spontaneity of affection had been cut off in him. He kept it for her, warm and responsive in touch and in speech, but for Paul, for the men's world, he had a responsible, calm, thoughtful response. Sometimes Ella, panicked a little: I'm doing Michael harm, he is going to be harmed. He'll never again have a natural warm response to a man. And then she would think: But I don't really believe it. It must be good for him that I'm happy, it must be good for him that I'm a real woman at last. And so Ella did not worry for long, her instincts told her not to. She let herself go into Paul's love for her, and did not think. Whenever she found herself looking at this relationship from the outside, as other people might see it, she felt frightened and cynical. So she did not. She lived from day to day, and did not look ahead. Five years. If I were to write this novel, the main theme, or motif, would be buried, at first, and only slowly take over. The motif of Paul's wife-the third. At first Ella does not think about her. Then she has to make a conscious effort not to think about her. This is when she knows her attitude towards this unknown woman is despicable: she feels triumph over her, pleasure that she has taken Paul from her. When Ella first becomes conscious of this emotion she is so appalled and ashamed that she buries it, fast. Yet the shadow of the third grows again, and it becomes impossible for Ella not to think. She