Doris Lessing - Love, Again

James slowly came out of his contemplation, smiled, and went with his father up the stairs. Sarah quickly ran up to the landing, and saw out of the window an enormous ash, waving its arms in the morning sunlight.

Then she followed instructions and, a good way from the house, found a wooden bench under old beeches. She sat canopied by warm green. A green thought in a green shade. At least the weather continued good: not an observation to be made lightly on a day a play was to be presented in the open.

She contemplated the old house. Its bulk dwarfed the ash tree, James's familiar, which had a look of standing on guard. From here, nearly a mile away, the green masses merely stirred and trembled, drawing in or repelling black specks, presumably rooks. She had been there an hour or so when Stephen came. He sat down beside her and at once said, 'She came into my room last night.'

'Julie?'

'I wouldn't exactly say that.'

She nibbled a grass stem and waited.

'I couldn't have brought myself to go to her.'

'No.' When he did not go on, she enquired, 'Well?'

'You mean, how did I acquit myself?'

'No, I did not mean that.'

'I have to report that I surprised myself. And I gave her a pleasant surprise or two, I am sure. A good time — as they put it over there.' She said nothing, and now he turned a hard critical grin full on her. 'You mean that was not what you meant? But women wait for us to fall down — oh, forgive me.'

'Speaking for myself — no.'

'Perhaps I shall marry her. Yes, why not?' he mused.

'Oh, congratulations. Oh, brilliant.'

'Why not? She lisps about the wonderful life here.'

'Elizabeth doesn't seem to her an impediment?'

'I don't think she really sees Elizabeth. I suspect she thinks Elizabeth is not pretty enough to count.'

'I remember being the same. I was rather younger than Susan, though.'

'Yes. She's juvenile. Yes, I'd say that was the word for her. Anyway, Elizabeth wouldn't be an impediment, would she, if I decided to… ' All this in the hard angry voice she did occasionally hear from him. 'Could Elizabeth really complain? She could marry Norah.' And then that personality left him, in a deep breath that let out, it seemed, all the anger. His voice lowered into incredulous, admiring, tender awe. 'It's the youth of her — that young body.'

Sarah could not speak. She had been thinking, far too often, I shall never again hold a young man's body in my arms. Never. And it had seemed to her the most terrible sentence Time could deal her.

'But, Sarah… ' He saw her face averted, put his hand to it, and turned it towards him. He calmly regarded the tears spilling down her face. 'But, Sarah, the point is, it's a young body. Two a penny. Any time. She's not… ' Here he let his hand slide away, making it a caress, consoling, tender, as you would for a child. He looked at the wet on his hand and frowned at it. 'All the same, if I married her, what bliss, for a time.'

'And then you'd have the pleasure of watching her fall in love with someone her age, while she was ever so kind to you.'

'Exactly. You put it so… But last night I was asking myself… she really is sweet, I'm not saying she isn't. But is it worth it? To hold Julie's hand is worth more than all of last night.'

Is.

She said, making her voice steady, 'Although Henry is in love with me — he really is — '

'I had noticed. Give me credit.'

'Although he knows I am crazy about him, he hasn't come to my room.'

'His wife, I suppose.' As she did not reply, 'You don't understand, Sarah. For a monogamous man to fall in love — it's terrible.'

'But, Stephen, it's only monogamous people who can fall in love — I mean, really.' She felt she was doing pretty well, with this conversation, though her voice was shaking. 'We romantics need obstacles. What could be a greater one?'

'Death?' said Stephen, surprising her.

'Or old age? You see, if I had been Susan's age, if I had been… then I don't think morality would have done so well. There would have been nights of bliss and then wallowing in apologies to his wife.'

Stephen put his arm around her. This was a pretty complex action. For one thing, it was an arm (like hers) that easily went around a friend in tears. Once it had comforted Elizabeth, weeping bitterly because Joshua had chosen someone else. It was an arm that went easily around his children. But the arm would rather not have gone around this particular person: it was her arm that should go around him. When he assumed this brotherly role, he relinquished reliable Sarah. Never had a supporting, a friendly arm so clearly conveyed: And now I am alone. But she knew she could expect words of kindness and consolation. A complicated kind of noblesse oblige would dictate them.

'There's just one little thing you are overlooking, Sarah. AIDS.'

The arrival of that word, like the arrival of the disease itself, has the power to jolt any conversation into a different key. In this case, laughter. While she was thinking that church bells warning of plague must often enough have tolled across these fields, and this was just another instalment of the story, she had to laugh, and said, 'Oh, that is a consolation. That makes everything all right. And anyway, it's ridiculous. Me — AIDS.'

'But, Sarah,' said he, enjoying, as she could see, her genuine indignation, 'we have been living in a dream world. The one thing I wasn't going to say to Susan was, But I couldn't possibly have AIDS because I've been chaste. For various reasons I don't propose to go into… because one doesn't say that to a woman, '

'No.'

'But imagine it. A beautiful young thing, all maidenly hesitation, the bashfulness of true love, appears in your bed, ready to flee away at a cross word, but the next thing, she is enquiring efficiently about condoms and one's attitudes towards oral sex. I did allow myself to say, But, Susan, you really don't have to worry about me, and she said, What makes you think you don't have to worry about me? I've been working in and around New York theatres for five years… it does take the romance out of the thing.' She was laughing. He was observing this, she could see, with relief. 'Do you realize how lucky we were, Sarah — us lot?'

'How kind of you to include me in your lot.'

'Pre-AIDS. Post-AIDS. That's the point. We were liberated from the old moralities. Guilt was never more than a mild flick of the whip.'

'We were still romantic. We talked about being in love, not having sex.'

'We didn't worry all that much about pregnancy… and I never knew anyone with VD. Did you?'

'No, I don't think so. I don't remember anyone saying, I think I've got syph.'

'There you are. Paradise. We lived in paradise and didn't know it. But these young things, they have more in common with our grandparents and great-grandparents than with us. Ridden with fear, poor things. Well, for my part, I wonder if it's worth it.'

'You're telling me that when Susan arrives in your bed tonight you're going to say, I don't think it's worth it, run along back to your bed little Susan, there's a good girl?'

'Well — no. But, Sarah, I know absolutely what she meant by There's no conviction in it.'

'But, Stephen, you won't be feeling like this for long. Just as I quite soon will return to being a severe elderly woman, and I'll say about other people's follies, Really, how tiresome.'

'So you keep saying.'

'Yes, I do. I have to.'

'Anyway, I was never much good at pain. I simply cannot put up with it.' As if he were talking about a fractured knee or a headache, and not a brutal fist slamming again and again into one's heart.

'There's only one thing we can all rely on. Thank God. What we feel one year won't be what we feel the next.'