Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going

He was in that state when she no longer haunted him all day, but it came back at night and when, if thinking about her while she was not there did not make him as desperate as he had once been when first he knew her he still had that same feeling come over him at times and all the more, very often, when they had just met again.

Five months ago, when his love had been first conceived, he had been maddened by his thoughts of her when she was away, they had boiled all over him and then when she came back they would simmer down again to his happiness. But now he was cooling off he still had returns of that old feeling made worse because he resented her still having that command.

She still swayed him like water moves a trailing weed, and froth and some little dirt collects round, and sometimes when he first heard her voice again and when as now she used that private tone, then it was as if his tide had turned and helpless he was turned back, delivered up to move to her tune and trail back the way he had come helpless, delivered over, benighted.

And as does, in moonlight in cold deep-shadowed other day, push him out of his burrow and kick the old buck to death so when they saw him down, these girls and Amabel, coming out as she now did, all set upon him he was so absurd.

‘Look round, darling,’ Amabel said as cruel as could be, ‘I’m here, not floating around outside.’ Angel, he said to himself, angel and knew how fatuous it was and could not help himself. When he did turn round to say how do you do, like Robin Adams he could not bring himself to look at her and this made him seem ashamed.

‘Hamlet,’ said Julia, and then all three girls laughed.

‘Well, my darlings, and what shall we do?’ she went on and laughed twice, for Max had turned his back again, he looked so like any boy at school, ‘here we are, three lovely girls all mewed up and can’t get out. What d’you say?’

Amabel smiled at his back as though she was taken up with thinking all of him over. She held a bone paper knife against her cheek, along her nose now and then across her forehead. She thought these three bits prettiest in her face.

Angela said how lovely her dressing gown and bent down to stroke it and Amabel murmured Embassy Richard had given it her. So all three of them laughed again, and Amabel said, ‘I’m so bored, darling.’ They were in league against him and watched his back like cats over offal or as if they thought his heart might fall out at their feet feebly smiling and stuck all over with darts or safety pins.

Miss Crevy asked where Alex had got to and Julia said, why didn’t she know he was up to his old tricks with Toddy, how he adored her, for as soon as Amabel looked another way he would always be after her maid.

‘Is she so very pretty then?’

Julia laughed and explained she was ever so old and besides hadn’t Angela seen her in here already and Amabel sat on, quite still and quiet, looking at his back.

‘Lot of people down there,’ he said at last.

Julia thought she would take him in hand. ‘Max, why don’t you turn round and entertain us?’ she said and smiled at Amabel who smiled back. ‘You do look such a silly standing there as if they’d made you dunce or put you in Coventry or something.’

But this shot went too near home. Amabel said again and this time more kindly, ‘I’m so bored, darling,’ for she did not care to let them go too far with him.

He turned round and again could not bring himself to raise his eyes. He said:

‘There’s nothing for it,’ and at that he saw her feet which were bare in sandals and looked fantastic on that cheap carpet. Her toes were pink and quite perfect for him, so much so they had no character at all and he thought they were unreal. The nails glittered.

‘Are you going to go out like that?’ he said.

‘I might.’

He still looked at her toes and while she watched his face she began to move them one after another. He quickly dared one look at her face to see what she was driving at and what he saw, remembered beauty, turned his heart to stone so tight that he smiled into her jewelled eyes like any Fido asking for his bone. Now she was back he was delivered up for punishment, only wanting to be slaves again. She looked hard at him. ‘Oh, God,’ he said and turned away again.

Julia laughed. ‘Max,’ she said, ‘we’re here, this way, and not out there. Oh, d’you remember,’ she went on, ‘that time we were out at Svengalo’s when the mad waiter, that one who never finished rearranging one’s knives and forks, began to lose his trousers, they simply began to slip down like petticoats and he never knew? It was Embassy Richard had unbuttoned him and he had no idea, d’you all remember how Max got up and went out on us, because he couldn’t take it, and there we were left to blush?’

‘Oh, no!’ said Angela, who had not been with them.

‘Amabel, d’you remember it?’ Julia went on, ‘and then we never saw that mad waiter again, Svengalo sacked him for not minding his trousers, so they all use safety pins now, the other waiters. Richard said Svengalo does too, he’d tried the other night. Come back to us, Max darling.’

As he made no reply she went on:

‘And do you remember that time I fainted and you took me outside and that drunk made a pass at me when you had stretched me out? Shall I ever let you forget how you left me at once after I was better and went right away? And didn’t come back. Defenceless, mind you, or almost, against that gorilla and he was so beastly drunk he didn’t know what he was doing except when he picked on me. Why do you go away, Max?’

‘Yes,’ Amabel said, ‘why do you leave us?’ and all he could find to say was well he was here, wasn’t he, speaking with his back still turned to them.

‘But then what on earth happened to you?’ Angela said.

‘Oh, well, you see there were others in our party, there always are,’ Julia said and she looked at Angela gravely, ‘but wasn’t it beastly of him, Am?’ she said, turning to her, but Amabel was looking at her toes. ‘And then there was that time when he walked out on you, Am, and I said you can’t do that, go back. D’you remember? It was that night we went out by car to bathe and the farmer thought we had no clothes on. And when life’s so short.’

‘Did you say that then, darling?’ Amabel said and smiled sweetly up at her.

‘But what are you thinking of, darling, it was Mr Hignam, no less, said it to Claire of course, though what he can have meant I can’t imagine.’ She smiled as sweetly back.

‘When was this, do tell me?’ Angela said.

‘Not for your ears, darling,’ and while she said this Amabel kept her eyes on Julia. She began to move her toes again.

‘But why, my dear, what’s this?’ said Julia, because nothing had happened then or she would have remembered. But she saw how Amabel did not know this, or did not mean to see it.

‘Well, really,’ Julia said, ‘well, well.’

Max had turned round. He looked at each in turn.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s this?’

‘That night when we went to bathe,’ said Amabel.

‘Which one?’

‘When the farmer thought Julia had no clothes on.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you wondered too.’

‘I wondered?’

‘Oh no, he didn’t,’ Julia said and laughed quite differently.

‘By God Max,’ Amabel said, ‘the way you go on with my friends,’ she said, although Max had first introduced Julia to her and they had never become friends.

‘No, darling, really, I had on my flesh-coloured suit’

‘I don’t remember anything.’

‘Well, if you don’t remember,’ Amabel said to him, ‘I should think you were tight. Anyway, by the way you went on in my car afterwards you would be.’