Henry Green - Nothing

"Well I say it's John should be thankful all his life to me and so should Jane be for you."

"Why?" he asked. "What've we done towards 'em in the long run?"

"But my dear" she cried "I'm ever so clear about it all!" Her voice was genuinely light and gay. "It was we who rendered everything possible for those two, which made me so restless and cross at one time. They'd simply got into the habit of getting old, Jane even gloried in letting herself go, now don't protest, and when she saw. I was be ginning to make something of John she grew so jealous she just couldn't stand anything."

"Where do I come into it then?"

"Why by being the sweetest man in the whole wide world and so enormously modest you can't even lift a thumb! Don't tell me she'd have been able to carry on once again with John if you'd as much as raised your little finger!"

"Did you let John off without a fight Liz?"

"Oh I'm different" she admitted in honeyed accents. "There's a fate on me Richard darling! Whenever I get involved with a man he always goes back to some first love old enough to be my mother."

"Never heard such poppycock in all my life" he gallantly protested.

"Ah but you don't know, you can't."

"A lovely creature like you" he insisted.

"Then why aren't I married now?"

"Often wondered and then by Jove one day I saw the whole thing in a flash! Fact is Liz you're so damned honest and that's a wonderful quality, rarest thing on earth nowadays. You just frighten 'em off when they can't measure themselves up."

"Richard is this a compliment?"

"Certainly is!"

"If you go on like it you'll make me cry." She beamed upon him. "Because you're the kindest sweetest man I think I ever met. Oh you'll make a woman so happy one of these days!"

"D'you believe that?" he demanded almost fiercely.

"As much as anything I ever uttered in my whole life!"

"Because when Jane won't have me I doubt if anyone else will now" he muttered.

"Don't be so absurd! I tell you any woman would be proud and honoured, Richard! And what d'you dare to mean by 'now?'"

"I'm no' getting any younger Liz."

"I can't make you out at all" she protested. "D'you feel old?"

"Can't say I do" he replied.

"Well where's the trouble then Richard? As I've told you before but you simply won't listen!"

"I don't remember exactly Liz."

"Why so far as I'm concerned I prefer older people, older than myself I mean. And you once said such a sweet thing to me when you were on the subject."

"I did? You do?"

"There you go again" she said cheerfully. "Oh I might have known this! Then was it just one of those things you throw off at a party?"

"Dreadfully sorry-" he began but she interrupted.

"You should be more careful what you say to women" she complained with a laugh. "You're almost impossible Richard. And I did set such store! You told me at the engagement party what you liked where I was concerned was my special blend of still being young and yet that I'd all the allure of experience."

"Good God I've always felt it Liz."

"Then why couldn't you recollect?"

"I did" he insisted. "I do."

"After all that's happened how can I believe you now?" she asked, her back to the fire.

"Never could manage to be much use at explaining" he said, moved over, put his arms about her waist and gave her a hug and a long kiss. She drew back but not away from his arms.

"Oh no you don't!" she laughed upon which he embraced her again.

"Look here-" she said seriously when next he allowed her to come up for air but at once his mouth came back on hers. After a moment she went noticeably limp and then, while he still pressed his lips on her tongue she raised her arms and tightened these around his neck.

"Oh Dick!" she said at last. "Oh Dick!!"

Upon which for no discoverable reason he began to choke. He soon had to let go of her and if at first she seemed to smile goodnaturedly, then as his face grew more purple and at last black, as his staring eyes appeared to fight an enemy within so frightful was the look of preoccupation on them, so in no time at all she was thumping his back, breaking off to fetch a glass of water, letting off small "ohs" of alarm until when his red eyes were almost out of their sockets he began to be able to draw breath once more and what was plainly a glow of ease started to pale him, to suffuse his patient, gentle orbs. Upon which, before this expression had time to grow positively hangdog, she got him in the bedroom on the bed. As he lay watching her and she unbuttoned his collar he found his voice again.

"Dreadfully sorry but quite all right now" he gasped.

"What was it then?" she cried.

"Always have often swallowed the wrong way all my life."

"I was so frightened. Oh Dick!" she said laying her soft cheek along his face.

He stayed the night and next morning she seemed entirely jubilant.

A WEEK or so later Mrs Weatherby entertained John Pomfret once more at her flat. It was dusk and as they were seated next each other on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders while she held his free hand moist in both of hers; as the fire glowed a powerful rose and it rained outside so that drops on the dark panes, which were a deep blue of ink, by reflection left small snails' tracks across and down the glass in rose, for Mrs Weatherby had not drawn the curtains; as he could outline her heavy head laid next his only in a soft blur with darker hair over her great eye above the gentle fire-wavering profile of her nose, and, because he was nearest to this living pile of coals in the grate, he could see into this eye, into the two tranparencies which veiled it, down to that last surface which at three separate points glowed with the fire's same rose; as he sat at her lazy side it must have seemed to him he was looking fight into Jane, relaxed inert and warm, a being open to himself, the fire, and the comfort of indoors, but with three great furnaces quiescent in her lovely head just showing through eyeholes to warn a man, if warning were needed, that she could be very much awake, did entirely love him with molten metal within her bones, within the cool back of her skull which under its living weight of hair was deeply, deeply known by his fingers.

"Oh dear" she murmured for the third time "darling d'you think we should close the shutters?"

He did not answer but tightened hold, to keep her. At that she leaned a little more against his shoulder.

They had been talking by fits and starts not so much in reply one to the other as to make peaceful, barely related statements which had advanced very little what they presumably meant by everything they said because they now seemed in all things to agree, in comfort in quiet, and rest.

"So you don't fed dearest you should be married in church?" she sighed as though to sum up a long discussion.

"Registry office, or might look ridiculous! At our age" he almost whispered to an ear he could not see.

"However you say" she agreed. There was another pause. "I'll think about it" she added.

"What was that darling?"

"The registry office" she explained.

"I know. Go on" he mumbled, yawning.

"I said I'd think it over, aren't you sweet" she sighed again and silence fell once more. After a long pause she murmured "D'you realize I can hardly believe Mary's given him back the ring, dearest?"

"Which ring?"

"Why the engagement! You're not to fall asleep on me yet" she commanded in her softest voice.

"Yes she did" he murmured "or so she said." He yawned again.

"But Philip's never mentioned a syllable John."

"Can't hardly think Mary'd actually go as far as pawn the object" he muttered.

"Oh darling the poor child could not get much for what it was, would she" and indolently saying this Mrs Weatherby chuckled. "Oh no she simply's not made that way, Mary'd never do such a thing. Now she's gone to dear Myra in Florence, Philip's taken Bethesda out twice, yes twice, two whole times did you know?"