Doris Lessing - Love, Again

Now Elizabeth strode off to a station wagon, but slowed so as to adjust to Sarah's pace. The back of the car seemed crammed with large healthy dogs. Elizabeth drove fast and well — what else? She commanded the car with every muscle of her body, as if it were a horse she could not trust not to get out of hand. Meanwhile she gave Sarah information about what they saw as they drove through the jolly countryside. At the top of a rise she stopped the car and said, 'There it is, there's Queen's Gift.' Although she had lived in the house all her life and could hardly be unused to this view, she sounded like a child trying not to be too pleased with itself, and Sarah liked her from that moment.

The house stood four-square on its slight rise, dignified but sprightly, as if a country dance had been magicked into brick, but not without suggestions (the eight barred windows at the top?) that in its long centuries there must have been plenty of drama. It was a hot still afternoon in that summer of 1989, when one perfect day followed another. The house seemed determined to soak in sunlight and store it against the English weather that was bound to set in again soon. There it sat glowing redly amid its English lawns and shrubs and judiciously disposed trees, take me or leave me, not a house one could live in without submitting to it, and, clearly, Elizabeth felt that in presenting the house she was defining herself. Now she told Sarah she had been born there. Her father had been born there. Queen's Gift had been in her family one way or another since it had been built.

They drove slowly through appropriately impressive gates, the dogs barking and whining at being home, then through a wood of beeches and oaks, and turned a corner abruptly to approach a side view of the house, where, on a tall board that pointed the way to a beech walk, was Julie's face — an impetuous smiling girl — styled in black and white on a poster. At once Sarah was returned to her own world, or rather the two worlds slid together. There are times when everything seems like a film set or a stage set, and the old house had become a background for Julie Vairon, incongruous though that certainly was.

Stephen emerged from tall doors at the top of a flight of stone steps that were an invitation (only conditional, for above them was a notice that said, discreetly, Cloakrooms) to the public to ascend them. Stephen seemed worried. He descended the steps, smiling at her, but on the last one he stopped, and his large hand was curving around a gently eroded stone ball that crowned a pillar, as if, because of the habits necessary to a busy man, he was assessing the condition of this sphere since it might be time for him to do something about it.

He took her suitcase, set it on the bottom step, and said he would show her around. At this Elizabeth laughed and said, 'But poor Sarah, can't she have a cup of tea first?' as she relinquished their guest, her own duty done, to her husband. Sarah waited for a signal or glance that recognizes a situation, and it came: Elizabeth shone that smile on them both that says — in this case with good-humoured irony — 'I know what is going on and I don't mind,' before going off on her own affairs. In fact she had so little interest in this obligatory little act that the smile had faded before she turned away. There are not many spouses, or partners, strong-minded enough to forgo that look, that smile, or laugh, for it makes a claim, and an even stronger one than jealousy or anger. Stephen glanced at Sarah to see if she had noticed, and then a small grimace signalled, A pity, and he said aloud, 'Don't mind. She's got it wrong. If she had ever asked, I would have.

'Oh, but it's a compliment,' she said.

He put his hand inside her elbow. This hand both took possession of Sarah and said it was prepared to relinquish her at the smallest sign that it was taking too much for granted. Sarah, from the world of the theatre, laughed, put her arms around him, and kissed him on both cheeks, one, two. He at once went bright red. He was pleased, though.

'Sarah, I really am so glad to see you here. Don't ever think I'm not.'

Why should she think such a thing?

Apparently he still felt she needed essential instruction. Again he took her arm, this time with confident masculine proprietorship, which she enjoyed (she was prepared to concede) more than perhaps she ought. They walked slowly through gardens and shrubberies, and past long warm reddish brick walls where roses sent out waves of scent. Late May: the roses were early.

Stephen said he hoped that she, Sarah, and the whole company would give Elizabeth credit for all the work she had done. It was she who had persuaded artistic friends in Paris to get Julie Vairon's pictures exhibited. It was she who had approached the television people to make a documentary. Elizabeth was a generous woman, he insisted.

They walked on grass between two hedges of beech, whose attribute is to remind you, when in full healthy green, that it will hold its own through long winters, withstanding gales, frost, anything at all nature chooses to throw at it, never losing so much as a russet leaf. A beech hedge, whether it likes it or not, makes statements of confidence. It refuses pathos.

'She is always generous,' he said again, and, feeling she was being prompted, she asked, 'What does she make of — well, of you and Julie?' But it was the wrong question, for his face said he had already answered her. Disappointment in her made him relinquish her arm, and she, disappointed in her turn, insisted, 'She would admit that one may be jealous of a… ' She could not bring herself to say, 'a dead woman', for it was too brutal. Instead she said, '… of a ghost?' A foolish, harmless word.

'I don't think she would admit to anything so irrational.'

They had strolled on a good few yards through air that was a mix of warm dry scents all making claims on her memory, when she remarked, 'For one thing, you can't compete with a… dead woman.' It was not easy to use that word.

He stopped and turned to look close into her face. 'You say that as if you knew all about jealousy.'

'Did I? I suppose I did.' And hearing in retrospect how she had spoken, she was discomfited. She was off balance. Meanwhile his eyes, green but — seen so close — as full of variegations as the surface of a cut olivine, green specked with black and grey, were full on her face. Trying to laugh, she said, 'I remember saying to myself, That's it, never again, I'll never feel jealousy again.' She knew her voice was full of resentment.

'So you were generous too?'

'If you want to make it generosity… I thought of it as self-preservation. I know one thing — funny that I haven't thought of it for ages: but you can kill yourself with jealousy.' She was trying to make her voice light and humorous. She failed.

'You said to whoever it was, Bless you, my child, run off to your little amusements, what we have is so strong it can't affect our marriage?'

'It wasn't my marriage. It was later than that. And I certainly never said, Run along! On the contrary, that was it — finished!' She was surprising herself by the cold anger in her voice. 'I could never say it couldn't affect a marriage or anything else. It was a question of… '

'Well?' he demanded, and gripped her elbows in large and confident hands. The strength of those hands spoke direct to her, reminding her… His eyes, those interesting pebbles so close to her own, seemed to her now to be tinged with — was that anxiety?

Violent needs conflicted in her. One was to comfort and heal, for she always felt he emanated an appeal, a need: she had never been more aware than now that he guarded a hurt place. But it seemed her own need was stronger, for what burst out of her was: 'Pride. It was pride.' And she was surprised — if she could be more surprised than she had already become, seeing what was revealed of a forgotten past — at the violence in the word. What's the matter with me? she was asking herself, while she withstood the pressure of those uncompromising eyes. 'Of course it was pride. Do you imagine I'd keep a man who wanted someone else?'