Doris Lessing - Love, Again

She had been rebuked and was glad of it: he wasn't going to put up with any second best.

Elizabeth and Norah returned very late that night, saying they had had a wonderful time: they had learned useful things about the organization of festivals. Why didn't they have a festival at Queen's Gift? They stood at the window in a drawing room, looking out into the glamorous night, which they seemed reluctant to relinquish for bed, as they chatted. Both brown with the summer, full of health and accomplishment, they were two handsome women who seemed to have dropped into that room at all only as a favour to a guest: and Sarah thought that Stephen himself looked rather like a guest. He gave his wife today's news about the Entertainment that would take place in three days' time: in French, with French music, and singers who were friends of Elizabeth's from Paris. Sarah then remarked that they could soon expect trouble from the actors' and musicians' unions if foreign performers were used. Elizabeth said that when they had expanded and the new building was in use, their Entertainments would no longer be considered amateur, she knew that. Perhaps Sarah could give them good advice? The two women went off to bed with the look of those who have done a social duty.

Stephen asked Sarah if she would enjoy a stroll, and they walked for an hour across fields, through woods, while the moon slid away and lengthened the shadows. They did not talk. It occurred to Sarah that she was enjoying the silence. More, she was submitting to it, like a cure. A bird breaking out of a tree as they came under it startled her, the noise painfully loud.

Sarah stayed three days in the house that had stood there four centuries. She was enjoying the feeling that she was one of the hundreds — thousands? — of people who had passed through it. She did any number of agreeable things in it, looked at its pictures and furniture, read its history. Elizabeth and Norah took her for energetic walks, while she advised them on theatre problems. She liked them both, and, particularly, the exuberance of their plans for the future. It appeared that they planned to invite The Green Bird to put on Julie Vairon here at the end of summer, after the run in France. The facilities might not be ready, but the workmen had been given instructions to hurry up everything. This meant Stephen felt he had a good excuse to work with them in the task of putting up a framework of rafters for the roof. On the last afternoon, observing that Sarah was watching, he came down and took her off to walk in the trees.

'I suppose you think it is pretty ridiculous?' he enquired, meaning his doing physical work. She was thinking that it suited him, for he looked so much better, the cloud gone from his face. Then he said that Elizabeth was grateful for all the advice. 'That was what we've lacked, really. What you've got — all the experience of the business side. I know that Elizabeth can seem pretty offhand, but don't imagine she isn't as pleased as she can be.'

Sarah had not thought of Elizabeth as offhand: she was familiar with this kind of woman, borne along on the energy of her competence, not impatient of others' lesser efforts so much as oblivious of them. Sonia was going to be the same.

'Do you think Elizabeth and Norah believe we are having an affair?' she made herself ask, and he at once went red. 'Well, yes, probably, I suppose so. But don't mind about it. I'm sure she doesn't. Perhaps she even likes me better for it.' And then, in a switch of mood, even of personality, for he was suddenly hard and angry: 'A very sensible woman, Elizabeth. I don't think I've ever known anyone as sensible. She doesn't have much time for weakness of any kind.' A pause. A long one. It was touch and go, she could see, whether he would go on. Then, deliberately, 'I think I find that as intolerable as anything in my life, that I can't talk to a woman I've lived with for fifteen years as I can to you.'

'Intolerable,' she said: she was not used to excessive language from him.

'Yes, that's the word, I think. Yes, intolerable. I find a good deal intolerable, and that more than anything. You see, I don't think she knows much about me. If you are thinking, But she doesn't care about you — well, that's a different issue. But there's something about a woman you've known since you played on a seesaw together not knowing a damned thing about you — yes, intolerable.'

When she left, they were separating for only a couple of days, because they would meet on Saturday at Belles Rivieres.

The town's three hotels had been called Hôtel des Clercs, Hôtel des Pins, and Hôtel Rostand. Now there were l'Hôtel Julie, Hôtel la Belle Julie, and Hôtel Julie Vairon. Any muddles about bookings, letters, and telephone calls were considered by the proprietors unimportant put against the benefits of being associated with the town's illustrious daughter. The hotels had been booked out a month before the opening of Julie Vairon. To avoid ill-feeling, the company had been disposed equally among the three.

Sarah's window overlooked a main square composed of houses left to merge into a palette of pastel colours, chalky white and cream, gentle greys, and the palest of terracottas, so sympathetically worked on by time (from the look of things, many decades) that only a freshly painted wall, the end wall of Hôtel la Belle Julie, glared white, explanation enough why the town authorities preferred this graceful fading. Sarah's room was on the corner of l'Hôtel Julie, and from it she could see the windows of a room in Hôtel la Belle Julie, also on the second floor, which had a balcony, with white and pink oleanders in pots. There Bill Collins lay in bathing trunks all Sunday, and from there he had waved to Sarah before sinking back, arms behind his head, in his chair. His eyes hid themselves behind dark glasses. Between Sarah and the young man stood an umbrella pine with a rough reddish bark, and this thick trunk absorbed into itself such a charge of erotic longing she could not bear to look at it, but directed her eyes at an ancient plane tree, with a bench under it, where children were playing. She tried not to look at all at that dangerous balcony once she saw that Bill had been joined by Molly, who lay on a parallel chair. She was not half nude, for her milky Irish skin could not be safely submitted to this sunlight. She lolled in loose blue pyjamas, her arms behind her head. Her eyes were invisible, like his. The two had the luxurious show-off charm of young cats who know they are being admired. Sarah admired them with abandon, while pain sliced through her. Knives had nothing on this: red-hot skewers were more like it, or waves of fire. She had not felt physical jealousy for so long, she had had at first to wonder, What is wrong with me? Have I got a temperature?

She was poisoned. A fierce poison ate her up, wrapped her in a garment of fire, like the robes used in antiquity to enwrap rivals, who were then unable to pull the cloth from their flesh. Not only the sight of Molly — Bill's equal, being young — and the hot rough trunk of the tree, but the grainy texture of her curtain, which held hairy light like sunlight on skin, the solid curves of cloud shot with golden evening light, the sound of a young laugh — all or any of these squeezed air from her, leaving her eyes dark and her head dizzy. Certainly she was ill; if this was not illness, then what could you call it? She felt, in fact, that she was dying, but she must put a good face on everything and pretend nothing was happening. No use to pretend to Bill himself, though. When they met that evening as the company assembled outside Les Collines Rouges, his close hold of her did not lack information that he was responding to her condition and wanted her to know it. He let his mouth brush her cheek and murmured, 'Sarah… '