Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘Well, it would take your mind off. And there are some quite good programmes. When my second husband died, and when my eldest daughter died, and when my son-in-law—that’s the husband of my youngest daughter, or was, died—I don’t know what I should have done without the telly. You see I depended on them, in a way. Not for money, of course. The telly made up for some of it.’

‘I see,’ said George, whom this catalogue of catastrophes had made a little ashamed of his own sorrow.

‘Yes, it gives you something, if you see what I mean, it’s like a present. Not that I’m against giving, far from it. I’ll give with anyone, so far as I can afford it. But there comes a time when giving doesn’t satisfy—you have to have something in return, if you take my meaning.’

‘I think I do.’

‘It isn’t fair, and it’s just as bad to be unfair to yourself as it is to be unfair to other people. You don’t get anything out of being unfair to yourself.’

‘No.’

‘And they misunderstand and take advantage. They impose on you. It’s happened to me, before now, poor as I am. Not with my relations, though, I will say that.’

‘I’m imposing on you now,’ said George. ‘I’m taking advantage of your good nature.’

‘No, you’re not. I’m glad to work for you.’

‘But what do I give you in return?’

That’s stumped her, George thought.

‘Oh, I dunno. I suppose I like seeing you around and then we have a chat together sometimes. And then you pay my wages.’

‘That isn’t much,’ said George.

‘And then I’m sorry for you.’

‘Because I’m ill?’

‘That, and other things.’

What did she mean? She knew about his relationship with Deirdre, of course; she couldn’t help knowing. But she couldn’t know about his dream and how it had upset him.

‘For everything you’ve done for me,’ he said, ‘I’m more than grateful. Tell me something I can do for you and I’ll gladly do it.’

‘You just lie still and get better,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll have done something for me. And take a tip from me, sir, though it’s not for me to give it. You’d be happier without that Miss O’Farrell hanging round.’

During the next few days the telephone bell rang many times and each time George answered it in a different spirit. Desire, despair, grief, anger—anger lasted a long time: how dared she not love him when he loved her, and had done so much for her—given her the life she never could have had without him? Now he was like a nut whose kernel has been eaten by a worm; he could almost hear himself rattle. The emptiness, the dryness! No current could recharge him; the battery was worn out. He could never go through all this with another person, the expense of spirit had been too great. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame: had it been that? Were the moralists right to warn you against the sins of the flesh? Most of his friends believed, and he too had believed, that the senses fed the mind and nourished the affections; without their co-operation the spirit withered, but if so, why was he in this plight—mentally, emotionally and spiritually bankrupt? With no friends, no interests, no hopes, just an abyss, a void, where Deirdre had once been?

Then came revenge. Ah, he would show her! Hate was a stimulant as well as love; he would get the same satisfaction from hating her that he had once got from loving her, the same delight from thwarting her wishes that he had once got from granting them.

‘Darling, I didn’t recognize your voice.’

‘You say that every time you ring me up.’

‘But every time it’s true.’

It probably was true, for every time they spoke on the telephone he had a different feeling for her: now it was hatred, and hatred speaks with a different voice from love.

‘But darling, you can’t still be infectious! It’s four days now.’

‘But you’re so frightened of infection.’

‘Yes, but I could put my head in through the door.’

‘I shouldn’t like to think I’d given you something.’

‘But you’ve given me so many things! I shouldn’t mind one little tiny germ.’

‘Let’s put it off another day. It would be safer.’

‘Darling, it must be as you wish.’

In spite of the joys of hatred, he suffered agonies each time he said he would not see her. And hatred disagreed with his digestion. All his life he had been delicate, suffered from headaches, bronchial asthma and attacks of fibrositis; during the three years he had been in love with her all these had disappeared; he had a clean bill of health. But now no longer. The symptoms of food poisoning, or whatever it was, had gone, but he still didn’t feel himself. All his processes, mental and physical, were disorganized. He flourished on agreement. The spirit of opposition, denying his deepest impulses their outlet, was making a sick man of him. He forgot little things, was constantly mislaying his belongings—sometimes he couldn’t see them when they were staring him in the face, a sort of amnesia of the eye—and his daily routine, the order in which he did things, got hopelessly confused. He cleaned his teeth with shaving-soap and tried to shave with tooth-paste. What would happen at the office, where he was due back on Monday?

‘Take her back! Take her back!’ said the voice within him that always pleaded for her; ‘take her back, and let things go on as they used to! She is no different now from what she was; she was always like this, only you didn’t know it! Can’t you re-establish the relationship on the basis of truth? Truth is antiseptic, it will cleanse and heal the wound, and then when she behaves in character you won’t be angry, because you know what makes her tick! You were in love with a false Deirdre, created by your imagination; aren’t you man enough to love the real one, now that you know her faults? She loved you, knowing yours—women are more realistic than men——’

‘But she didn’t and doesn’t love me, that’s just it.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because she told me so in a dream.’

‘A dream! What sort of evidence is a dream?’

Then followed a part of the record that George was altogether too familiar with—the pros and cons of the dream. But hadn’t her subsequent behaviour verified it, hadn’t Mrs. Buswell’s hints and ultimate outspokenness confirmed it?

Without Mrs. Buswell he would have given in, for every time that he forgave Deirdre (and in his heart he forgave her seventy times seven) he felt so much better physically and mentally, so nearly restored and integrated, that sometimes he would snatch up the receiver and start to dial her number. ‘Darling, I’m quite all right: do come round now!’ Mrs. Buswell was never present when he committed these extravagances, but her invisible presence restrained him from fulfilling his intention. Regretfully he put the receiver back.

It was the vision she had given him of reciprocal affection dominating, softening, yes, and even sweetening, physical love. Physical love, she must know all about it, a working woman who had had two husbands. But she insisted on reciprocity: she didn’t think that love was healthy without it. ‘But surely, Mrs. Buswell’ (so he argued with her shade), ‘unselfish, unrequited love is the noblest of all emotions? The love that religion itself enjoins on us—the love that expects no return?’ But she wouldn’t have it. ‘God himself,’ she said (in these imaginary conversations), ‘wouldn’t expect us to love Him unless He first loved us.’

On Saturday the telephone didn’t ring; the morning passed and still it didn’t ring. At lunch-time when people are most likely to be in, George rang Deirdre.

‘Welcome 9191.’

‘Hullo, darling, does that sound more like me?’