Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
Her room was grey and cold and smelled faintly of lemons, and he heard her make the small undergrowth movement of someone caught awake in the dark who means to be woken. If she had been very
angry, she would have sat up, switched on the light and stared at him until he was breathless . . . Patiently, he roused her.
‘What is it?’
He sat on the bed shivering.
‘I have a plan. You must hear it now.’
She switched on the light. One thing that always surprised him was how she looked in the morning – fresh and gentle, and years younger than her age. Now, any resentment for his abandoning
her at the Westinghouses’ was neutralized by her curiosity – her hair was ruffled like silky waves in a primitive picture, and her eyes, shining, were waiting, poised for him to
begin.
‘We are to live in a house: I have been thinking what we need, and the first thing is for some external structure which does not change. It would give us better chances, and provide us
with the necessary sense of commitment. We are living like twentieth-century savages in hotels and boats and aeroplanes. It is bad for your health, and my work, and does not give us any sense of
adventure or freedom any more. You are deprived of many things that you love. You could have a garden, and animals, collect your books and gramophone records. I have been thinking most carefully
about all this,’ he added, and the second time it really felt as though he had, and as though he had never thought of it before.
She laid her hands one upon the other and leaned a little towards him: ‘I could have a walled garden.’
‘If you like.’
‘And a wilderness, and grapes and nectarines – and a proper herb garden and those charming cows with bruised faces . . .’
‘You could have anything you like.’
‘I think they are Guernseys: and you could have a beautiful room to work in– Oh! what about Jimmy? He hates fresh air.’
‘He loves the sun. He’d come and go.’
‘He wouldn’t count English sun.’
‘Are we to live in England?’
‘Where else do you want to live?’
He felt her reach the edge of her pleasure and look down. He said: ‘I hadn’t really thought about that. But I’d thought we might as well pick a good climate.’
‘Where had you thought of?’
He said again: ‘I hadn’t thought of anywhere really. I mean I hadn’t even considered whether it should be here or somewhere in Europe.’
‘Only not in England?’ ,
‘My experience of English country has been as limited as it has been unfortunate. Skies like saucepans and a smell of gumboots and damp tweed. Don’t you remember staying with the
Maudes and your hot water bottle steaming in the sheets?’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that – truly.’
‘And tremendous damp dogs smelling of haddock, and all the food served at blood heat and mice trying to keep up their circulation at night. Don’t you remember that frightful mouse
that was running to and fro simply to keep warm?’
‘Em, that was just Clarissa. She couldn’t run a house anywhere.’
‘And servants. The only ones we ever saw were at least ninety and raging hypochondriacs. Don’t you remember that dreary butler of Clarissa’s who changed all our meal times
because of his injections? And the housemaid who was on some kind of diet that made her faint all over the place?’
‘You’re exaggerating now.’
‘Only just. It wouldn’t surprise me. Accident is so calamitous in the English countryside. Calamitous and dull.’
‘It would be just as difficult to get servants here.’
He made an effort not to be irritated by her gravity. ‘You really want Wilde back, don’t you, darling?’
And responding to his affection, she answered quite simply, ‘Yes.’
There was a silence – then they both spoke at once; both smiled, and he said: ‘What little reflections of our own uncertainties we do provide. Yes, of course I want a house.
That’s why I broke in on you so early. I asked
you
whether it was what you wanted.’
She looked at her hands upon the sheets in another silence before she said: ‘The trouble is that I don’t know what I’m
for.
That makes it very difficult to know what I
want, because I never want the same thing for long. It is different for you.’
‘Is it?’
‘Isn’t it? You have your plays to write.’
‘I agree that that means I can get by a good deal of the time in a smug frenzy of activity.’
After a moment, she said: ‘But sometimes you can’t?’
He nodded. ‘
Why
I write them – what I’m for, or even what plays are for: there are layers of those two questions about everything, so that one can’t answer one
layer in terms of another.’
‘Do you remember when you were a child saying that you lived in a house in a street, in London, England, Europe, the World?’
He shook his head. ‘Our childhoods were not the same.’
‘It always stopped at the world. The world was one’s total horizon of one’s address. Now, it doesn’t seem enough.’ She sighed, and then smiled to dismiss it.
‘Well?’ His head was beginning to drum, and his skin felt like a hot, dry leaf. He did not want his fiery resolutions to drift into a haze of her nostalgia.
She looked up again from her hands.
‘Shall we start looking for a house?’
‘What? Immediately?’
‘Yes. Go back to England, hire a car, and start looking.’
‘I thought we were here to cast your play, and couldn’t leave until we had.’
‘That is something else I have to tell you. We’ve drawn such a blank that Jimmy and I have decided to try out Alberta for Clemency. So we can go anywhere.’
‘
Alberta?
The
secretary
?’
He explained, and she was silent. Then she asked questions, and he explained again. It was a little like the course for the Grand National, he thought – twice round, and every obstacle
presenting a different problem. Then she was silent again. At last, she said: ‘Well, the whole idea seems preposterous to me: I don’t think it is fair on the poor girl, who knows
nothing of what she is in for. Jimmy, at least, must think very highly of her even to try and sweat her through it. I suppose he’s fallen in love with her.’
‘What on earth makes you think that?’
‘He’s susceptible and he’s got strong protective instincts, and she’s at an age when she’d fall in love with anyone who suggested it to her.’
‘Why do you dislike this poor girl?’
‘Why should my thinking she’d fall in love with Jimmy mean that I dislike her?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea, but it seems to.’
‘I’m not against her,’ she said after a pause: ‘I simply think that what you propose doing with her is silly.’
‘I need coffee,’ he observed; ‘and a hot bath. Could we leave this arrangement, now? I can’t think of anything more to say about it.’
‘Well – don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘About Alberta being no good? I am taking that possibility into account.’
‘About Jimmy falling in love with Alberta – and Alberta with Jimmy.’
‘So far as Jimmy is concerned, he’s much more interested in my play. And Alberta is not a suggestible little schoolgirl.’ He said this with an almost venomous conviction which
surprised him.
She was lighting a cigarette: he felt in his dressing-gown pocket – then thought that if he smoked now his head would get worse, and squeezed the packet regretfully.
Suddenly, she said: ‘Em!
Don’t
seduce her – anything else but not that.
Please
make sure of that.’
He looked at her: she had spoken as though it was hopeless – as though it was already important and true. He took out a cigarette, tapped it on his finger nail, reached for her lighter,
and used it before he had designed an answer.
‘Lillian – know what put that into your head, but I am old enough to be her father, I am married to you, and I don’t think she is in search of sensation. She has told me enough
about her family for me to feel responsible to them for her. Will that do?’
He felt the climate between them change.
‘No, it won’t. The first two reasons are laughable, and the last one frightens me. Do you mean you
respect
her?’
‘One hardly ever respects people, does one? It’s not such a personal business. Sometimes one can respect what they stand for.’
‘And you do?’
‘I hadn’t considered it before, but yes.’
She said coldly: ‘I fail to see the difference between Alberta and thousands of other girls.’
‘Then you have no reason to respect her.’ He got to his feet: his head was pounding, and beyond their familiar air of destruction something unknown was building of which he was
afraid.
‘Em!’
As he moved back to her, he felt her change her mind, and because of this, he said more gently: ‘What is it?’
She said rapidly: ‘I do agree about the house – but not now – not this summer . . .’ He waited.
‘Will you do two things for me?’
‘What are they?’
‘Will you make us both some coffee and take me to Greece?’
And because this made him smile, he promised.
3
JIMMY
I
T
’
S
no good saying Greece before seven – they won’t change their minds,
they’ve decided, or rather
she
has, and I suppose he had to trade Greece for Alberta. Oh well! Join the Joyces and travel, or travel and see the Joyces – it comes to much the
same thing. It’s stupid to feel sore about it, when it doesn’t matter to me where the hell we go. I suppose I can as well train that girl on a Greek island as I can train her any place
else.
If
I can train her at all. It began with Lillian. I was taking a shower and she came into my room and called out to me. I wrapped a towel round me and found her, fresh as a daisy,
sitting on my bed with a tray of coffee and orange juice beside her.
‘I’ve come to have more coffee with you: I’ve had some with Em.’
‘Is he up?’
She nodded. ‘He’s having a long, hot bath.’
‘What’s the time, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Just after eight. Em couldn’t sleep – he had so much to tell me, and we’ve made a lot of plans.’ She gave me my coffee. Somehow I knew that he
had
told her,
so I said: ‘He’s told you about our plan for Clemency?’
‘He has. Jimmy, seriously – which one of you had this idea?’
‘It wasn’t either one of us. We both had it.’
‘But one of you must actually have made the suggestion?’
‘We just sort of looked at each other and arrived at it. He asked her if she’d do it. Naturally, I leave that kind of thing to him.’ I looked at her carefully. If she started
upsetting Alberta, I’d never get anywhere with her. ‘It’s only an experiment, you know. It may work – it may not. But we had to do something.’
‘What do you think of her?’
Wondering exacdy this, I said: ‘I think she looks as though she may be able to learn. Otherwise she has the intelligence, and I should say, the stamina.’
‘Do you think she is attractive?’
‘She’s got something of what is needed for Clemency – that’s the main reason why we are trying her. Lillian – I’m sure you think it’s a crazy idea, but
you could make a lot of difference to whether it’s a success or not.’
‘How could I?’ She was off her guard – engaged – any appeal would do that to her if there was a shred of truth in it.
‘I shall have to work her very hard – voice mostly – to get it to come across and to get it to last for a possible eight performances a week. She’ll get tired and
depressed and nervous. If you could give her a bit of confidence, be kind to her, help her with her appearance, and so on – it might make all the difference. You know what I mean. Any little
thing. Get her hair cut properly – not curled – and tell her what an improvement it is.’ There was a pause, and then I added: ‘Then if she’s no good, help me to help
her out of it. She’s in for a tough time whichever way it goes.’
She smiled then, took my empty cup away from me, and looked at her watch. ‘All right, Jimmy. I’ll help, if you’ll tell me what to do. There isn’t much time to have her
hair cut because we’re going to Greece.’
‘
When
are we going to do that?’
‘As soon as possible. I want her to arrange the tickets this morning.’
‘Oh Lord!’
‘It doesn’t matter to you. You can work as well on an island as anywhere else. You love sun and swimming.’
‘It seems crazy to me.’
‘It’s no more crazy than all of us coming all the way over here in order to make a decision we could perfectly well have made in London. Oh Jimmy, please be nice about it. I
do
so want to go, and Em doesn’t mind as long as we find a house to live in and he doesn’t have to work in some hotel bedroom.’
‘OK.’
‘It would be silly to go all the way back to England – think of the
rain
.’
‘I see the only solution is Greece,’ I said, trying to sound pleasant about it.
Lillian went and I dressed, wondering why her saying ‘it doesn’t matter to
you
’ stung me somewhere – why should it? – I had always prided myself on not
caring where we went as long as we didn’t go too far away from theatres for too long and I could work with Emmanuel.
I found him sitting on a chair outside my room pretending to read a paperback.
‘You can’t see to read in that light.’
‘I can’t see to read in any light; Jimmy, for God’s sake, before we do anything – take me to a chemist.’
‘Drugstore,’ I said gently: ‘Stay where you are a minute.’
Alberta was cleaning up the kitchen: when she saw me, she sneezed.
‘We’re all going for a nice holiday to Greece. That’ll mean four plane tickets for Athens as soon as possible. The travel agent’s name and number are in the green book.
Would you call them? I’ll be back in half an hour if you have any trouble.’
She sneezed again, and said: ‘
Greece!
Goodness! When?’
‘As soon as possible. From tonight onwards. Have you got soap powder up your nose?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I might as well warn you that from now on I shall take a personal and very disapproving interest in any cold you get.’