Doris Lessing - Love, Again

I tell you, Julie, had said Julie to herself, something like ninety years before Sarah walked slowly in the hot morning away from her house towards the river, if you let yourself love this man then it will be worse for you than it was with Paul. For this one is not a handsome boy who could only see himself when he was reflected in your eyes. Rémy is a man, even if he is younger than I am. With him it will be all my possibilities as a woman, for a woman's life, brought to life. And then, Julie? A broken heart is one thing, and you have lived through that. But a broken life is another, and you can choose to say no. She did not say no. And who was it, which Julie, who said to the other, Well, my dear, you must not imagine if you choose love you won't have to pay for it? But it was not Athene's daughter who said, Write your music. Paint your pictures. But if that is what you choose, you will not be living as women live. I can't endure this non-life. I can't endure this desert.

Now just ahead was the river, with its pools and its shallow falls, and the bench the town authorities had thoughtfully provided for people who wanted to contemplate Julie's sad end. Someone was already on the bench. It was Henry. The curve of his body suggested discouragement. He stared ahead of him, and it was not because he was deaf that he did not hear her approach. His ears were plugged with sound. He had a Walkman in his pocket. The music he was listening to was sure to be as far as it could be from Julie's. Sarah could hear a frantic tiny niggling, then a small savage howling, as she sat down and smiled at him. He tore off the headphones, and as the music, no longer directed into his brain, swirled about them, he switched the machine off, looking embarrassed. He sang at her, ' Tell me what love means to you before you ask me to love you ' — Julie's words, but it was a tune she did not know, since she was not an inhabitant of the world he entered when he clamped his headphones on.

Then he put back his head and howled like a wolf.

She suggested, 'I am baying at the moon, for 'tis a night in June, and I'm thinking of you… of who? Of you-hoo.'

'Not bad. Not far off.'

'Have you been here all night?'

'Just about.'

'But you know it's going to be all right.'

He sang, 'Have you been here all night, but you know it's going to be all right.' He said, 'Yes, I know, but do I believe it?' He abruptly flung his legs apart, and his arms, then, finding this position intolerable, he threw the left leg over the right, then the right over the left, and folded his arms tight. A bright blowing spray set a bloom of cool damp on their faces. The river ran fast through the forest trees, past reddish and orange rocks, making baby whirlpools and eddies, leaving stains of pinkish foam on the weeds that oscillated at the river's edge. Above the fall was a wide pool where the water was dark and still, except where the main stream ran through it, betraying itself in a swift turbulence that gathered the whole body of water into itself at the rocky edge, flinging up spray as it fell into another pool, where it seethed like boiling sugar syrup among black rocks. This was not a deep pool, though it was the famous whirlpool that had drowned Julie and — so some of the townspeople said — had drowned Julie's child. (How could they have said it? Had there not been a doctor and the doctor's certificate? But if people want to believe something, they will.) Below this treacherous pool, past a mild descent among rocks, was another, large, dark, and quiet except where the water poured deeply into it. It was this pool where Julie came to swim, but only at night, when, she said, she could cheat the Peeping Toms.

'To drown herself there must have needed a real strength of mind,' said Sarah.

'She was probably stoned.'

'She never mentioned drinking or drugs in her journals.'

'Did she say everything in her journals?'

'I think so.'

'Then I'll go back to my first interpretation. When I read the script I didn't believe in the suicide.'

'You mean, you agree with the townspeople? They thought she was murdered.'

'Perhaps they murdered her.'

'But she was just about to become a respectable woman.'

'That's just the point. Suppose they didn't like the idea of this witch becoming Madame Master Printer.'

'A witch, you keep saying.'

'Do you know what, Sarah? I dream about her. If I dreamed of some sugarplum all tits and bum, then that would be something, but I don't. I dream of her when she's — well, getting over the hill. Well over.'

She turned her head to see his smile, sour, a bit angry, and close to her face.

'Sex appeal isn't all bum and tits,' said she, returning his vulgarity to him.

He sat back, gave her an appreciative but still angry smile, and said, 'Well, yes, I'd say there was some truth in that. Of course, as a good American boy, I should only be admitting to nymphets, but yes, you're right.' He sprang to his feet, grabbed up her hand, kissed it. Her hand was wet with spray. 'Sarah… what can I say? I'm off to get some sleep. If I can. I've got a technical rehearsal at eleven. Roy is rehearsing the townspeople. And I've got the singers this afternoon. Will you be there? But why should you be?'

'If you want me to be.'

'Lazing on a sunny afternoon,' he sang to her. Then he pushed the plugs back into his ears and walked or, rather, ran off back towards Julie's house.

She went to the edge of the pool below the falls. The whirlpool, in fact. Here Julie must have stood, looking down at the dangerous waters, and then she jumped. Not much of a jump, perhaps six feet. The stony bottom of the pool could be glimpsed through eddies. She could easily have landed on her feet, then fallen forward, perhaps onto that rock, a smooth round one, and allowed herself to be sucked past the rock to the deeper pool. Allowed herself? She could swim, she said, like an otter.

Sarah felt she should turn her head, and did so. There was Stephen, staring at her from where he stood by the bench a few feet away. She went to the bench and sat down. He sat beside her.

'We are all up early,' she remarked.

'I haven't been to bed. I suppose I look it.' His clothes were crumpled, he smelled stale, and he wore his tragic mask. Again Sarah thought, I've never, never in my life felt anything like this — this is the grief you see on the faces of survivors of catastrophes, staring back at you from the television screens. 'I went walking with Molly last night,' he said. 'She very kindly agreed to come walking with me. We walked along some road or other. It was pretty dark under the trees.'

She could imagine it. A dark road. He could hardly see the girl who walked beside him under the trees. There had been that niggardly little moon. They had walked from one patch of dim light to another. Molly had been wearing a white cotton skirt and a tight white T-shirt. Patterns in black and white.

Sarah watched the racing water, for she could not bear to look at his face.

'Extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, what happens to one's pride. She kissed me. Well, I kissed her.' He waited. Then, 'Thanks for not saying it, Sarah.' Now she did cautiously turn her head. Tears ran down cheeks dragging with grief. 'I don't understand any of it. What can you say about a man of fifty who knows that nothing more magical ever happened to him than a kiss in the dark with…?'

Sarah suppressed, At least you had a kiss. At that moment anything she felt seemed a selfish impertinence.

'I've missed out on all that,' she heard, but faintly. A breeze off the water was blowing his words away. 'I've had a dry life. I didn't know it until… Of course I've been in love. I don't mean that.' The wind, changing again, flung his words at her: 'What does it mean, saying that to hold one girl in your arms makes everything that ever happened to you dust and ashes?'