The Long Prospect (21 page)

‘Yes, yes,' she protested. She looked down at the ground and exclaimed, ‘Oh, look at all the ants in the glasses!'

‘What's the matter? What's wrong?'

‘Nothing...Oh, Max! Where will
you
be? You won't be there. Where will you be? I only want to be with you. That's all I want. Don't make me leave you. Don't go away. Don't leave me with them.'

She leaned forward and put her head on her knees, racked with sobs.

Max got to his feet and waited.

Presently, Emily blew her nose and said indistinctly, ‘Where are you? What are you doing?'

She blew her nose again and Max held out a hand and said, ‘Stand up.'

In front of him, abashed, she roughly pushed her hair back from her face and eyed him in silence, frowning.

‘We'll go round to the other lawn; there'll be more shade.' He took her arm. ‘What would you think about a swim this evening?'

‘The baths? They'll be floodlit. That'd be nice.'

It was not far to the other side of the house, a little over a hundred yards, but they went slowly, curiously in need of the sun's benefits.

Max felt the warm walk in the sun to be a kind of convalescence for the girl who walked beside him. Her tears disturbed him. She wept as someone else might have succumbed to a recurring fever. When he saw her cry he could not escape the idea that she was sick. At these times, Emily was taken over, banished;
something
wept, something deep, universal. It was not pleasant to see.

He started to talk. His was now the task of stimulating into full life the confidence and self-reliance in her which had, over the months, been increasing in strength. Though it was contrary to his aims, Max spoke at first in personal appeal—sure there of her response—of what he hoped and expected of her; mentioning too, what she had always known, that his time with her was limited, and growing shorter. But the truth was that Emily needed one person, one human. He at present was the person, and he was going. Independence did not exclude loneliness, lovelessness. And Emily was young. She had known too much of both; she had too few memories to sustain her in an empty time, and no reason to look to something better in the future.

Listening to his comments on the morning's novel, the state of her bicycle bell, and again, university life, Emily was interested, cheerful, as forgetful of the past half-hour as if she had indeed been hypnotized into oblivion. She asked him what time they should leave for the pool, and mentally made a perfect dive through the shining black surface of the water.

But catching sight of her expression in repose, Max thought, what have we done?

CHAPTER SEVEN

ABANDONING FRED to Lilian and Rosen, Billie went in search of Max. She walked on tip-toe down the hall, face uplifted like an antenna, arms extended slightly to balance her teetering progress. A forgotten cigarette in her right hand shed flakes of ash as she pushed at the kitchen door.

The room was empty and marvellously neat. The big unshaded globe set in a socket in the wall burned steadily, giving the silent room the look of a shrine dedicated to the domestic gods. Billie, at least, gazed into the halo of light as if she believed herself to be in the presence of
something.
It was several seconds before she could accept the idea that she was quite alone.

Then a ball of amusement began to unwind in her chest. She knew he was in the house. His non-appearance gave her the nerve-scraping sensation that he was playing a game, teasing her.

She gave an excited giggle and touched the wickerwork of her lacquered hair; noticing her cigarette, she stubbed it out in the sink; then, smoothing her red and white floral dress, she went out into the hall.

‘I'm fed up with Fred,' she had confided to Lilian recently. ‘He thinks more of hubby than he does of me. He wouldn't offend him for anything. He comes to call for me, sits down, starts to talk to hubby, has a drink...I come out and say, “It's time we weren't here, Fred.”

‘They both look up like a couple of stunned mullets, and, I might add, make just about as much noise. I suppose they're really jealous of one another but they've got a queer way of showing it. I don't want them to be fighting or unfriendly or anything, but wouldn't you think that once in a while they'd flare up? But no. Sometimes he stays so long that hubby has to say, “Isn't it about time you two shoved off?” It makes me feel so small. And Fred knows it.'

Lilian listened without sympathy or indignation to this tale of suffering. She felt very little for Billie but mild contempt. However, a subsequent conversation, during which she had been driven to reveal her own irritation with Rosen, made a bond of mutual discontent and Lilian had advised her friend to follow her example and look around for something better.

Billie's journey to Max's room tonight was in direct response to this advice, though, as she well knew, Max was not precisely what Lilian had had in mind.

A line of light showed under the closed door of his bedroom and Billie stopped dead, listening, wondering whether that pest of a kid was with him. Defiant, she refused to knock but suddenly pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

‘Surprise! Look who's here!' she cried, oddly out of breath. ‘All alone, Max?'

Abruptly deported from Europe, Max looked up from his book. His abstraction merged into impassivity when he saw what the situation was in the Antipodes, and was to be, according to Billie's plans. She meant to stay. He rejected the five or six most appropriate answers and said, ‘Hullo, Mrs Duncan. Another party?'

Carefully not meeting his eyes, she slid into the green upholstered armchair he had just vacated. She crossed her legs and draped the soft folds of her skirt consciously while Max, after switching on the centre light to supplement the lamp, found a packet of cigarettes and offered her one.

Released at length from the elaborate business she made of having it lighted, he sat down opposite her and leaned back.

‘I wasn't disturbing you, was I? You were only reading.' She flashed him an almost nervous, embarrassed glance. But if she counted on disarming him by a show of diffidence she was unsuccessful.

‘As a matter of fact, I
was
reading.'

‘And
I
only came to have a chat,' she told him, widening her eyes, defensive, aggrieved, and ready for battle.

From himself to Billie Duncan, there was nothing to be said, but eventually, to break the silence, Max said, without great pretence of interest, ‘Was your party successful the other week?'

The effort of asking, the premonitory boredom of hearing a lengthy answer, was so acute that, temporarily drained, he leaned back in his chair and tried to draw some strength from his cigarette.

But tonight, nothing he said was to connect with what Billie had to say. ‘Your little friend isn't home?'

‘Emily? No. She's gone to see Pat.' Reluctantly, in response to his wishes.

‘I'm not exactly sorry, are you?' Billie muttered, staring at the bright tip of her cigarette.

‘I don't believe I've thought about it one way or the other.'

Aware of his gaze, Billie became less happily aware that she was exposing herself at close quarters to a man several years her junior. She admitted it—ten years. For the first time she confronted the idea that the liaison that had lately filled her daydreams might not, from his point of view, have so much to offer.

‘Oh, by the way,' Max said suddenly, ‘is Fred here? You remember he asked what the chances were of making a change-over to our firm a few weeks ago? I must have a word with him about it.'

‘What's Fred got to do with it?' she said sulkily. Max looked so young. His skin was fine and tanned. More temperately she said, ‘What were you reading? You've got two books there.'

‘I should have been looking at this report; I have to speak about it tomorrow, but—'

‘I'm keeping you back?' she said, getting hostile.

‘Instead, I was reading this novel.'

Her attention was nailed down. ‘Novel? Story, you mean?' She turned on Max the besotted expression a woman gives to a baby. ‘Detectives? Cowboys? A love story?'

‘Not really—'

But she would not listen. She knew
exactly
what it was. She shook her head sagely, half lifted a hand to show him it was useless to demur. His secret, she seemed to suggest, was discovered. She crowed as if it were the most delightful thing she had ever heard. ‘Well, fancy that! Fancy you!'

Max dared not speak, and if he moved he would be bound to speak. He stayed in his chair, surveyed the room. He noticed the way the black night air seemed to enter through the open window and penetrate for a short distance before submitting to the lights.

Billie was still talking, but her voice dropped now to a note of throbbing alcoholic seriousness. ‘—read poetry, too.' She had lifted an open book from the shelf and was looking at it as if it were a sacred relic, and at Max, the possessor, with something of the same awe.

‘Read poetry?' he said. ‘Yes, occasionally. Not so much as I used to.'

‘It was open! It was on top! You must have put it there!'

‘Perhaps I did,' Max agreed.

‘Can I look at it?'

‘Do.'

How is it possible, Max wondered, giving way to moody generalizations, that the idea of progress can survive in the face of the evidence supplied by human nature? If it were suggested to Billie, for instance, that human nature had not only not improved, but had not changed in the last two thousand years—what would she do? Laugh. Something. Anyway, disbelieve.

Not exactly cheered by his conclusions he moved, and disturbed Billie, who had been running a finger along the broken lines of verse and wondering how she looked from Max's chair.

‘What's the matter?' she said, noticing his expression. Leaning forward at an angle of forty-five degrees, she looked like a not very well-carved figurehead.

‘Matter? Do you like it?' he asked, glancing at the book in her hand.

‘Oh.' She relaxed and gave a little smile. ‘It's beautiful, just beautiful. It does you good, doesn't it?'

‘Take it with you. Keep it as long as you like.'

‘
Could
I?' She appeared overcome at the thought.

Leaving her eyes on his, she could be seen to retire: seconds later, in tears, her voice pitched high, she returned. ‘What's the good of it to me?
I
can't read it. You know how to. You can,' she insisted wildly. ‘Max, I never knew another man who did. I never knew anyone else like you. They've all been rough—not like you...'

She reached out to touch his hand, but the chairs were too far apart. ‘You've got to help me. You've got to be nice to me. I'm so unhappy. If you knew—'

When Max stood up she was immediately silent, watching him, tense and expectant.

‘I honestly think you shouldn't say any more. It would be a pity. I think you would be sorry. If it's something between you and Fred—'

She made an angry movement to shut him up.

‘Forget about Fred! You don't have to keep going on about Fred! I'm talking about you. And me. I know what I'm doing. You teach that kid all kinds of things. You talk to her, Max. But I need you. You could tell me things, too. Teach me. Be nice to me. And I could do more for you than a kid like that...Couldn't I? Or don't you like me?' Her voice dropped a tone.

Max stood listening—hands in pocket, head bowed—with a complete absence of feeling. Yet when she asked that last question he winced. She was uncertain. She was vulnerable. Even Billie. Next to someone who felt something—if temporary, mistaken, unadmirable—he was obscurely ashamed.

Sitting down he said, ‘I think it's not so simple as that. I'm in no position to give or receive help, Billie. And if I were, I must say frankly, that I wouldn't be the right person to help you find what you want. I know that in another mood you'll agree that I'm right. You'll wonder how, from your own point of view, you could have thought so.'

He held her eyes steadily, and his voice, with its rough undertone of resonance, was serious. Mistaking the flicker of angry fascination on her face for an acknowledgement that the scene was over, he said more lightly, ‘Is Fred here? I spoke to the foreman about him and he thought there was a good chance of something coming up next week that might easily suit him.'

She looked at him quickly, exhaled a stream of breath and cigarette smoke and stubbed out the butt in an ashtray on the shelf beside her. In her left hand she held, and with her long fingernails penetrated, the lace edge of a small scented handkerchief.

‘No.' Without expression she dismissed his last remark. ‘Why?'

It was evident that she threw the question at him from some stubborn prearranged position along the course of her own inner argument.

‘Why?'

‘Wouldn't you be the right one?'

Her unabashed persistence seemed to convey an awful blankness at some centre of her being. Max said, ‘I think it would take too long to tell if I haven't already made it clear.'

One could not talk to, reason with her: yet she was human. She looked at him with animal blankness, then she was suddenly penetrated, changed colour, grew human.

Even in her humiliation Max felt relief.

‘I know.' She smiled and the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘I'm nothing. I'm not good enough for you. I'm just a housewife in a small town. Say it!'

There was a strong impression in the air that Billie saw Max and herself on a screen, in black and white.

The situation was ludicrous. Max had to try to make her admit it before she went away. ‘You don't believe that for a minute.'

But she held her position, staring, venomous. ‘It's just that you like them younger, I suppose. Well, that's your own peculiar affair, isn't it?'

For a shocked moment she waited, then, alarmed by the sound of her words, and his rigid silence, she retreated sideways to the door. Even so, through her fright, she was suddenly insanely angry.