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

‘ “To-morrow if she is well enough, to-morrow, and for the last time.

My friend paused. All this time with his face and his voice he had been dramatizing his interview with the doctor: first he was one, then the other.

‘I can’t pretend he underestimated what the separation would mean to us,’ he said, ‘he spoke with a gravity which made it seem more than ever final. “And supposing she doesn’t consent?” I asked him. “Then you must make her,” he said. “You must plead with her, for her sake, and yours too, to give up this suicidal folly. Do you want to kill her?”

‘ “Do you want to kill her?” I retorted.

‘We had our last meeting. I won’t say anything about it—it was in almost every way so unlike the others that it hardly counted. You see, they were all outside time, but, in this one, Time was so present he might have been standing over us with his scythe and hour-glass. The moment of real parting came much earlier, the doctor brought it in his bag, like a prescription. It took us unawares, like sudden death. Afterwards we were like ghosts, planning our reunion beyond the grave. I remember that even her voice sounded different. It had been ours, just as a song belongs to the listener as much as to the singer, but it became hers, a lovely voice expressing what she thought, but not what we thought, another person’s voice. I believe we even argued a little about how soon she would be well enough, etc., and whether she shouldn’t consult another doctor. I remember the long pauses, when we were thinking what to say, better than what we said. There had been no pauses before, only the sort of pauses that there are in music, leading up to the next theme. It seemed extraordinary that the world outside should be more real than the world contained in this room. We were only going to be as we had been before we met, it was no worse than that; and yet it seemed to both of us that such an existence, the existence we had known before, would be unbearable. Almost deliberately I tried to keep my thoughts away from hers, there was a refuge in egoism, for to think of her pain doubled mine. So I sat by her bedside as correct as a doctor, as unimplicated as a district visitor; and the love duet, without which no opera is complete, instead of swooning itself away in long, heart-broken phrases, grew more and more tense and staccato and inconsecutive with the things we had to say to keep silence at bay, but hated saying, until somehow I got myself out of the room, and out of the flat, and out of the palace, on to the Zattere where the heat blasted me, but it would have been the same if it had been freezing—I couldn’t have recognized myself in any environment.’

My friend stopped as abruptly as if his memories had come up against a concrete obstacle. I was still uncomfortably aware of seeing the whole thing at an angle different from his, and of withholding some of the sympathy I should have liked to give; and all I could think of to say was:

‘So she agreed to the parting?’

‘Yes,’ he answered listlessly, ‘she agreed to it. In a way, she decreed it, for I should never have consented. But she was not herself that day.’

‘No?’ I said.

‘No. It was the shock, of course, the mortal shock of the . . . discovery and then the strain of those last hours. She reproached herself a good deal . . . for having written to me. That was all nonsense. I could see she was not herself. But how could you expect her to be? I wasn’t, either.’ He added, with an effort: ‘She had to take her tablets.’

‘Had she never taken them before?’ I asked.

‘Never in my presence, I swear. They were for emergencies, you see. She kept them by her bed, in a tortoiseshell box. But the maid said she had taken them quite often, between times, and that was one reason why she was alarmed. I didn’t and don’t believe it.’

‘You saw the maid again?’

‘Oh yes, I saw her every day. I went—to ask, you know, and in case the . . . ban should be lifted. I couldn’t keep away. And I wanted to make up to the maid for what I had left undone. But, do you know, I couldn’t induce her to take it. She changed towards me completely, and was as grim as she had been on the first day. She wouldn’t let me come any further than the door. She said she wished she’d never let me in.’

‘Did you see the doctor again?’ I asked.

My friend hesitated.

‘Yes, but only once. He didn’t want to see me, in fact he refused. I didn’t know his name, so I couldn’t go to his house, and the maid wouldn’t tell me the hours when he made his visits. But I knew he came every day, so once more I kept watch outside the palace and caught him as he came in, about midday, it must have been.’

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the same technical stuff about her illness, and that she wasn’t so well, and he was anxious about her, and would I kindly keep away, and so on. I waited till he came out again, a long time, but he wouldn’t speak to me, he just shook his head and hurried off.’

‘How unkind,’ I commented.

‘Yes, wasn’t it? And I came to have a hatred for the place, for Venice, I mean, so in the end it wasn’t so difficult to leave. I gave my address in England to the maid, and begged her to write to me as often as she could, since she said her mistress wasn’t allowed to; but I only got one letter.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Oh, it was stuffed with lies.’

‘What sort of lies?’

‘Oh, ridiculous accusations against me, and against the English generally, and Sanctions, and the war, and how badly England had always treated Italy, and how we had won the war and were worse off than before, and she was thankful for that, and a lot more in the same vein.’

‘But what did she accuse you of?’ I asked.

‘Oh, she said I had broken into the house like a burglar, and had been very wicked, and thought only of myself, and I wouldn’t go away, and I ought to have been prosecuted, and the doctor had said this and that, and everyone agreed with him.’

‘You could afford to disregard all that,’ I remarked.

‘Of course. And that the whole thing had been too much for her, and that she only went through with it because I forced her to, and that she would have sent me away only she was sorry for me, but it went on too long and that was why she died.’

‘She died?’

‘Yes, she died. That was the one fact in all that string of falsehoods.’ He lowered his eyes and his voice. ‘But I know one thing. It wasn’t being with me that killed her—it was being without me. She died of a broken heart.’

He was silent for a time and then said:

‘You agree with me, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Because if I thought otherwise, I couldn’t, I really couldn’t——She died because I was taken away from her. You see that, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ I repeated.

‘I don’t value my life very much, and if I thought there was a word of truth in that letter, except the one fact of her death, well, I should want to kill myself. But there wasn’t. You would agree there wasn’t?’

‘Of course,’ I repeated.

‘You are quite sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Will you say it again?’

‘I’m sure there wasn’t a word of truth in it,’ I pronounced firmly. He sighed.

‘Thank you, thank you, Arthur. What a good friend you are!’

The tears were running down his face. I could not leave him like that, late as it was; I stayed with him and tried to comfort him, and it was not, until he had disagreed with me several times that I felt that I could, without unkindness, leave him to himself.

‘Uncle Tim, Uncle Tim!’ There was no escaping the voice. Uncle Tim hoisted himself out of his chair and limped towards the window. It still looked a long way off when the cry began again; close to, this time. ‘Coming!’ called Uncle Tim, but it made no difference; the mournful importunate anapaests followed each other without a break. ‘Uncle Tim, Uncle Tim!’ It was like a weary goods train climbing an incline. Uncle Tim threw open the window and leaned out.