Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going

‘Oh, then! Well, I did pop out for a moment,’ she said, looking long at her face in her glass.

‘Who with?’

‘We went to that cocktail club round the corner.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘No, let me finish,’ she said, putting more red on her lips. Her face blushed in spots where he had kissed her. ‘You’ve made such a mess of my face. Here, hold this,’ she said and gave him her mirror. His hand shook so he was no use to her. ‘Darling, you mustn’t get upset about little things like that. It was only Richard and you know what he is.’

‘Embassy Richard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why him?’

‘Why not, darling?’

‘When I rang up you said Marjorie was with you.’

‘No, I didn’t. You said you couldn’t get on to me.’

‘I meant afterwards.’

‘Oh, then! I didn’t want to tell you, that’s all.’

‘It would take more than him to upset me,’ he said.

‘Then what’s the matter with you now?’ she said sweetly.

‘Nothing’s the matter.’

‘I can’t understand you these days at all. Here, give me back my mirror. What shall I do?’ she said, ‘it is in a mess,’ tilting and turning her face from side to side.

‘Well, what about it?’

‘About Richard you mean? Why, nothing. By the way, he said he was coming on your train.’

‘You didn’t invite him by any chance?’

‘How could I? I’m not coming, you know, you didn’t invite me. It’s absurd, I can’t just get packed like that at a moment’s notice.’

‘Then I shan’t go,’ he said, turning away and going back to the window.

She did not take much notice of this. ‘But, darling,’ she said, ‘you can’t just leave them like that when you asked them.’

‘I can. I’ve given old Evelyn the tickets. It’s arranged.’

‘But you can’t, they’re your guests. You mustn’t be so independent. I won’t let you. Think what they’ll say.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Oh, yes, you do, you must care. The whole thing’s absurd,’ and, forgetting she had just said she was not coming, ‘it’s absurd,’ she said, ‘you say we can’t go because Richard is in the hotel and travelling on the same train.’

They did not either of them notice the slip she had made.

‘How d’you know?’ he said, turning round.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking at him, ‘only he said he would be here and when he says he will be somewhere, I believe him more than when you tell me the same thing.’

‘You’ve seen him?’

‘Max, darling, don’t be so ridiculous. I haven’t set eyes on him since last night. He might be in Timbuctoo for all I care and anyway I don’t know, darling. I must say, my dear, you don’t seem very upset at my not coming.’

‘If you don’t come, then I don’t.’

‘Why must you be like this? I tell you you can’t behave like that. You’ll never be able to get anyone to go abroad with you again.’

‘I don’t care.’ There was a pause. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t going to go.’

‘Then why did you say what you did when you rang me up the last time?’

‘Because,’ he said, finding it at last, ‘because I saw with all this fog I might be with them for hours as the trains weren’t running. I had to see them off, you know.’ He came up to her smiling.

‘No, keep away,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to think this out.’ He’s such an awful liar, she thought, but already everything seemed different. ‘No, I don’t believe it,’ she said and began to hope.

‘It’s true,’ he said and then she knew he was lying and did not care. All she wanted from him was something reasonable like a password which would take her along without humiliation past frontiers and into that smiling country their journey together would open in their hearts as she hoped, the promised land. Not of marriage but of any kind of happiness, not for ever but while it lasted. She knew better than to want too much of any situation and marriage she had never wanted, though often imagined, after the first three weeks. It would have been better with almost anyone else but there it was, he fascinated her and so it was for her to fascinate him.

‘Well then, supposing I did,’ she said.

‘You really are going to come?’

‘I might.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Is that all you are going to say about it?’

‘It’s marvellous,’ he said. They kissed again. Some little time later it was he who drew away.

‘Where’s Embassy Richard going?’

She lay back irritated that he had left her.

‘How should I know?’

‘I suppose that party business was too much for him. London’s getting too hot to hold him,’ he said.

‘You know if I’m really going to go away with you you’ve got to be nice to me,’ she said.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘No tricks with the other girls, mind, or I’ll be off home again.’

‘If you do,’ he said, ‘I’ll go back with you.’

‘I shan’t let you.’

‘I know more than to let you go off alone.’

‘That’s being too silly for words,’ she said. ‘Why did you stop kissing me like that? And anyway, how many of those others have you kissed up here this afternoon?’

‘Now it’s you are being ridiculous.’

‘Not as I know you, my dear. Oh, well, go on then and kiss them. Who cares?’

‘I don’t kiss them.’

‘I suppose I’m being tiresome again, darling, am I? Never mind. Let’s have a rest. No, don’t kiss me again, please not, give my complexion a rest. Sit down here. I’ll put my head on your shoulder and have a sleep.’ She yawned and settled herself down, shifted round a little, shut her eyes, breathed deeply twice and went off at once. She always could whenever she wanted.

As he sat there he realized he did not know if she was going to come or not. And if she did come out he did not know if she would stay or when she would get it into her head to start home which she might at any time. He realized without putting it into words he did not even know if he was glad she was going to come or sorry she was going to stay at home, he only knew that now she was here he would probably have to be with her wherever she made up her mind to be.

She lay on his shoulder in this ugly room, folded up with almost imperceptible breathing like seagulls settled on the water cock over gentle waves. Looking at her head and body, richer far than her rare fur coat, holding as he did to these skins which enfolded what ruled him, her arms and shoulders, everything, looking down on her face which ever since he had first seen it had been his library, his gallery, his palace, and his wooded fields he began at last to feel content and almost that he owned her.

Lying in his arms, her long eyelashes down along her cheeks, her hair tumbled and waved, her hands drifted to rest like white doves drowned on peat water, he marvelled again he should ever dream of leaving her who seemed to him then his reason for living as he made himself breathe with her breathing as he always did when she was in his arms to try and be more with her.

It was so luxurious he nodded, perhaps it was also what she had put on her hair, very likely it may have been her sleep reaching out over him, but anyway he felt so right he slipped into it too and dropped off on those outspread wings into her sleep with his, like two soft evenings meeting.

They slept and then a huge wild roar broke from the crowd outside. They were beginning to adjust that board indicating times of trains which had stood all of two hours behind where it had reached when first the fog came down. This woke him so that he started and this in turn woke her.

Like someone who is lost she did not know where she had been and in the same way neither of them knew how long they had been asleep so that when, after stretching and asking him where she might be, she found she was in this hotel she thought they had slept much longer than they had. She told him they must get down to join the others. She laughed. ‘They would never believe if we told them we had been asleep wrapped up in our clothes like babes in the wood,’ she said.