The Sea Change (13 page)

He was tired, and empty now of reminiscence – the small domestic lights of his day went singly out, and thoughts recurred in faster and more distant fragments, until – mere pinpoints
of light – they too were gone, and blankness rolled slowly over his senses like a blind. But when the darkness seemed complete – just above the reach of his daily mind there was a light
– more clearly to be seen as it shone alone: he knew he must turn towards it and climb until he touched it in order to work again, and it was then that he began the slow ascent.

4

ALBERTA

New York

Darling Uncle Vin,

This won’t be a long letter, because in spite of there being so much to say, I seem awfully tired, and I haven’t even written to Papa yet. There is one trouble. It is about my flying
here with Mr Joyce. As you know, this was a last-minute plan because poor Mrs Joyce was ill, and I asked you at the airport not to say anything to Papa about it, as I know it would worry him and I
am too far away to put him at his ease about it. I suppose if I wasn’t so far away, he wouldn’t worry, but I am, and he would, and so I have decided to deceive him. This is wrong, but
to tell him now seems wronger. Isn’t that odd? I don’t think I’ve ever been in this position before. Please write to me about it and write to me anyway. We had the most enormous
and grand dinner on the aeroplane you can imagine: hors d’oeuvres, cold soup, salmon, chicken, ice cream and little chocolate things, cheese, fruit and coffee and a pale yellow wine (not
champagne but still delicious) and sherry first, and brandy afterwards but I didn’t. Mr Joyce is very interesting to talk to. He listens, for one thing – that was when I told him about
Papa – and he sticks to the subject so that one doesn’t just stop at the beginning things people usually seem to say. He told me a bit about what it would be like here, but it is too
soon to tell you how accurately. But he made it all sound much easier than I had been feeling it would be, and he was charming about Papa, and said he would like him. Quite soon after dinner I went
to sleep like a hedgehog I was so full of food. You sit in wonderful chairs that fall over backwards to make you comfortable, but I woke up very early because I was cold and rather stiff, and Mr
Joyce got my coat and most kindly wrapped it over my blanket. He looked awfully tired – as though he hadn’t slept at all, but he said he had a little. It was light again: the sky is
quite different when you are looking out into it and not simply up – you can love it instead of just admiring it. It was misty below, so I couldn’t see America even when it was beneath
us, but Mr Joyce said we don’t come over New York – just a rather dull beach. We had coffee and orange juice – a whole glass full – and then we started to come down, which
hurt my ears in spite of swallowing and blowing my nose. Suddenly through the mist I saw land quite near, and the airport buildings slanting up at us. When we came down the rubber tyres
smoked
as they touched the ground, and in the end there was a kind of ticking noise when we stopped. It was seven in the morning (quite different for you Uncle Vin) and there was a feeling
of us all starting a new life. The airport didn’t seem very different except for people’s voices. Mr Joyce was photographed getting out of the aeroplane, and it took us ages to get
through the Customs, but then we had a car to drive us into New York. Enormous advertisements – really as big as houses – and the most beautiful bridges and sometimes the traffic goes
at different levels so you can’t work out where you are going to be, and the sun had come out so that from a distance New York looked like a bunch of upright needles glinting, and the newborn
feeling went on when one looked at them. All the traffic seemed deliberate and silky, but Mr Joyce says it isn’t in the city. When we got there it was like being in a ravine sometimes, but
with sky at the end as well as above, and that somehow makes one feel more on the surface of the earth and very small. At the hotel the girl in the lift was a terribly pretty black girl, and
everybody says ‘You’re welcome’ when you thank them for anything. We are on the sixteenth floor. I have a small room with a bathroom and shower and telephones. I’ve unpacked
and had a bath and some breakfast – America is a land swimming in orange juice – and I have to go to Mr Joyce’s room when he telephones me. I’m writing to you because
unpacking made me feel too far away from home to write to them just yet. I think aeroplanes are rather breathless. I looked at
Middlemarch
to see if it had stayed the same; Mr
Casaubon’s begun to be ill and without wanting to I’m sorry for him. Do you think some people are
meant
to be ill? I wasn’t thinking of poor Mrs Joyce: she looked
dreadfully unhappy at being left behind, but as though she often has bad luck of that kind. Oh what I most wanted to say: it was so sweet and good of you to come all the way to the airport –
I was missing you dreadfully in the car on the way there – and it was much better seeing you again without
soaking
your rheumatic joints through your clothes, darling Uncle Vin I must
say you do take family relationships with all your heart, and the least Papa can do is go to
Death for Breakfast
when it comes to Dorchester. I’ll write to them tonight – the
telephone – I must go.

Your loving SARAH.

I have written to Papa, at last. So much has happened, that it was quite easy – I simply said ‘we’ all the time, and it is only five days now until the others arrive here. It
is curious, though, what an oblique difference deception makes: it made me write all the time about events and not my feeling about them. I tried to describe New York but did not succeed at all
well. I think this is partly because apart from being here for the first time, everything that I am doing here is new as well – so I haven’t had a chance yet to see more than the
obvious differences. I’ve met so many people in such a short time (counted it up – it’s thirty-six hours – far more than one new person an hour) and they are all kinds of
people I haven’t met before, so that now I’ve reached a point where I can hardly understand what they say. Our life has been like a very crowded map, and we have had to go to all the
places as quickly as possible. I don’t know how Mr J. stands it – except that he’s not as old as I thought – he’s four years younger than Papa – and I suppose
he’s used to it, but on the other hand he’s had far more to do than I have. So far we’ve spent two hours on the letters that were waiting here – goodness! the people who
write to him! – and three hours on auditions for the girl called Clemency in his play, which I haven’t had time to read yet, although now I nearly know one scene by heart, we’ve
watched it so many times. None of the auditions were any good, but it was very interesting to watch. One poor girl was so frightened that she sat looking at her script and not saying anything until
she burst into tears, and Mr J. was very nice to her and asked her to come back, although he said afterwards that she was much too tall anyway. He is an extremely kind man. Then we had an
extraordinary picnic lunch in an office with two men who had been at the auditions. They just ate yoghourt because they were dieting, but they talked about what they would have liked for lunch all
the time we were eating ours, until I must say it got quite difficult and hardhearted to go on eating it. They asked me if this was my first time in America, but otherwise they talked to Mr J.
about the play. Then we went to Rockefeller Center which is just like a whole town going on in one building with lifts – no,
elevators
– being the transport, like trains. Mr J.
had to rehearse his introduction to another play of his they are doing on television. That is a whole other life too, and fearfully complicated. Mr J. only had to sit in a chair and talk, but it
had to be the right amount of time, and they wouldn’t let him read from the piece he’d dictated to me in London. So that took much longer than it was meant to, and we didn’t get
away until half past six, and he sent me to telephone some people to put off a drinks engagement, and that’s when I realized to my horror that he was taking me with him to the public dinner
at eight thirty that evening. It was evening dress, and I haven’t got one because the green net that Aunt T. made two years ago was really too childish to bring. I felt so miserable about
this, that I didn’t dare say anything until we were outside Rockefeller Center, waiting for a cab. I didn’t want to go to the dinner in the least and I was feeling awfully tired, but I
knew he didn’t want to go either – and not having Mrs Joyce must be making it far worse. The trouble is that none of my clothes seem right somehow. I’ve got my silk dress here,
but honestly it’s the kind of dress that secretaries seem to wear after breakfast – it no longer seems to have an element of festivity about it. Well, I told him in the end: I was
afraid he’d be angry, but I explained that I would let him down even more if I went in my dress. I always gabble when I’m nervous – and I went on explaining about my dress sense
being unformed, and the dress only just not having puff sleeves because Aunt T. finds them easiest to do, and all the time he was looking at me and I had no idea what he was thinking. (Partly I
think that’s the heavy lids to his eyes.) Then he said: ‘Good. You’ve provided a perfect opportunity for both of us. We’ll go and buy you a dress and a bag and things this
minute. I refuse to go to the dinner by myself, and secretaries aren’t expected to have evening dresses as a rule, so don’t blame yourself. Here’s a cab, come on, let’s
enjoy ourselves.’ In the cab he asked the driver what big store would be open late, and the cab man said it depended what our requirements were, and when he was told he thought most seriously
and then said he recommended Bloomingdales. (He turned out to be a man who thought seriously about everything.) It was open late that night and he could recommend it personally because his daughter
bought her best things there and looked like a million dollars. Mr J. said fine, and thanked him. The driver said we were welcome – Lexington and 60th, and we set off. Somehow Mr J. had
stopped me wanting to cry, and both of us feeling tired, and now he smiled at me and said he’d always wanted to do this. The driver said he strongly advised me to make a list of what I wanted
to save time. Mr J. began to make a list: he put down a dress and a bag and shoes, and then said what about stockings? The cab driver said that was no way to make a list if one was dressing a lady:
we should start scientifically from the skin up – if one was organizing a project one must use plain English and that meant girdle, bra, and panties. Mr J. said he was quite right. The driver
said it beat him how some people administrated their simple everyday lives. We got wars, and psychiatrists, and traffic jams just because none of us stopped to check the efficiency of our
motivation – he’d been saying this to people for years now and it was surprising how little difference it made, and did we know why? Mr J. said no, why? Human nature, said the cab
driver. He didn’t speak for a moment and then he sighed and swerved the taxi away from a woman who was trying to cross the road with a dog. It wasn’t that human nature ever changed,
he’d concluded, there was just too damn much of it. Take atomic energy. That was quite predictable if one was an educated guy, but you could go through every college in the world and still
not get the other side of human nature. This was why he had no regret about not going to college although he’d sent his daughter; not that he guessed it would make much difference. Mr J. said
it probably wouldn’t. Then he got more cheerful, and said well, how was the list? I said we hadn’t been doing it because we were so interested, but that was no good. Did we realize, he
said, that Mozart could write down a whole symphony of classical music and play a game of chess simultaneously? So couldn’t we even fix a shopping list and
talk
? So far as he could
remember, we’d omitted perfume, make-up – there was a new non-greasy clingstick foundation selling in five shades in two sizes – jewellery, Bloomingdales were running a line in
charm bracelets just now and his daughter had gotten one with miniature bottles of deadly poisons all round it which seemed to him cute and by the way, what was my name? They sold handkerchiefs on
which they would instantly print your name or nickname, but perhaps the British weren’t so hot on nicknames – anyway, here we were. I said my name was Alberta and he said it was a swell
name. Then as Mr J. paid him, he said have a good time mister and he sure hoped I’d be a social credit to him. Then he hooted with laughter, and said forget it – just a political sally,
and drove off.

We bought a terribly pretty dress. It was a heavy corded cotton, pale mushroom colour with a little apricot velvet on it. It wasn’t the kind of dress I’d even imagined, but it was
the only one I tried on; we both thought it was the prettiest, and suited me. We bought a stiff petticoat for it covered with roses and very pretty too, and shoes that matched and
four pairs
of stockings (I’ve never had so many good ones before) and then two bags. A gold one for the dress, and a black one for day with A.Y. on it in gold. Then Mr J. said what about an evening coat
– even the cab driver had forgotten that – and we went to the coat department – up again – and he found a peacock blue velvet coat which he said would be good with my dress.
Then we went down again and bought gloves for the coat. Then last of all, he bought me a white handkerchief with strawberries (white ones) embroidered all over it and a bottle of scent which he
said he liked and I must trust. It was terribly hot in the store and we both had to carry our overcoats. All our parcels were being packed together: he said that he would go and collect them and
then he suddenly thrust some money at me and told me to go and buy underclothes while he got the parcels, and meet him at the entrance we had come in by. ‘You must have everything new at once
for once. Just spend that, and get as much as you can.’ It was a fifty-dollar bill. It seemed a lovely meaningless amount – I realized then that dollars weren’t being money to me
at all, and we’d bought so many things so quickly that the whole expedition seemed a mixture between an adventure and a game. I spent all the money except for a few small coins, and got the
most lovely things I’ve ever seen in my life. It wasn’t until we were in a cab, and I saw the great pile of parcels, and remembered Jimmy giving me a ten-dollar bill yesterday in
London, and my saying that I’d keep careful account of it that I suddenly realized that all these things must have cost a great deal of money – much more than I was earning, and anyway
I’d planned to keep that for Humphrey and Clem. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so suddenly and completely dreadful – so burning, and ashamed, and caught out by myself. I
couldn’t say anything – and there seemed nothing that I could do – except wear the things, and thank him for taking so much trouble, and pay him back for them by degrees. He was
smoking quietly, and then, as though I had been thinking aloud, he leaned towards me and said: ‘Don’t worry so much. This was my idea, my responsibility, my pleasure. I am not in the
habit of doing it, but it was necessary this evening. It has nothing to do either with conventional scruples or your salary, and if I have overdone it, it is a reflection upon my character, and not
yours. Will you please remember what you told me about your father giving away clothes to people who needed them?’ I said people didn’t need evening dresses, and he said I
shouldn’t be too sure of that. Then he said: ‘Because Mrs Joyce isn’t here, I am asking you to do far more than either of us expected of you. This’ – he indicated the
parcels – ‘is all part of that. Do you understand now?’ I think I do. At least I felt very much better – as suddenly as I had felt worse. At the hotel, he said we had only
got three-quarters of an hour to change, and would I come to his suite as soon as I was ready, because he was a quick changer? So I put on all the wonderful new clothes, and powder and lipstick and
my locket, and brushed my hair a lot, and scratched the soles of my shoes and put the ten-dollar bill in my new golden bag, and some scent behind my ears. Aunt T. says that ladies should only wear
a touch of scent, but although it smelled delicious in the bottle, I couldn’t smell a touch on me at all – so I put on a whole lot more until I could smell myself quite easily.