Doris Lessing - Love, Again

Stephen cut short his visits and came to London to see Sarah. They walked about and around streets and parks and even went to the theatre. They left some comedy at the first interval, saying that normally they would have enjoyed it.

Susan had written to him. It was a love letter that offered everything. 'I shall never love anyone as I love you.'

'I swear it's that damned music,' said Sarah.

'I was hoping it was because of my intrinsic qualities. But I suppose it does make things easier to stick a label on them.'

This was the same need to snap and snarl that so often possessed Sarah.

'Sorry,' said Stephen, 'I simply don't recognize myself.'

A week later she telephoned him at his home and at first thought she had got the wrong number and had reached someone whom she had awakened. She could hear breathing, and then a mumbling or muttering which could be his voice, and she said, 'Stephen?' Silence, and more difficult breathing, and he said, or rather slurred, her name. 'Sarah… Sarah?' 'Stephen, are you ill? Shall I come?' He did not answer. She went on talking, even pleading, urging, for a long time, but while he did not put down the receiver, he did not answer. She was talking into silence, and her own voice was sounding ridiculous, because she was making the reassuring optimistic remarks that always need an interlocutor similarly cheerful to carry conviction. At last she felt he was not listening. Perhaps he had even gone to sleep, or walked away. Now she was full of panic, like a bird trapped in a room. She had the number of the telephone in the kitchen at Queen's Gift, used for domestic matters, but there was no reply. She sat for a while in indecision, feeling that she ought to go to him at once, but telling herself that if he had wanted her to come he would have said so. Besides, why did she always assume he had no one else to turn to? In the end she took a taxi to Paddington, then the first possible train, then a taxi to the house. She asked to be put down outside the gates, for her sudden uninvited appearance at the house itself would seem too dramatic. The great gates had been newly painted glossy black with gold touches, like the 'highlights' hairdressers use to enliven a hair-do. She went in through an unobtrusive little door in a brick arch at the side. This was like an allegory of something, but she could not think what. In her present condition, signs and symbols, portents and presages and omens, comparisons apt and silly, formed themselves out of a voice overheard in the street, a dog barking, a glass slipping out of her hand and smashing loudly on a hard surface. Her irritation at this unwanted and insipid commentary on everything she did contributed to her bad temper. Now her heart was racing, for she was possessed with the need to hurry, while she felt her trip here to be absurd. There seemed to be no one about. Posters for Ariadne on Naxos were everywhere, and Julie's face was nowhere. Of course: they were trying out this opera. A small cast and delicious music, Elizabeth said. Where was Elizabeth? Not in the vegetable garden, nor with the horses, nor anywhere near the house. And what would Sarah say when she did find her? 'Look, Elizabeth, I had to come, I was worried about Stephen.' (I am worried about your husband.) Elizabeth must at least have noticed that Stephen was — well, what was he at this moment? Worse: he was much worse. After wandering about for some minutes, feeling like a thief or at least an intruder, she saw Stephen sitting on a bench by himself, in full sunlight. He sat hunched, legs apart, hands loosely dangling and folded between them, like tools he had forgotten to put away. His head was lowered, and his face was dripping sweat. A hundred yards away stood the great ash tree, James's friend. Under it was a bench, in deep shade. She sat down by him and said, 'Stephen… ' No response at all. Right, she thought, this is it: I know this one, I've seen it before. This is the real thing, the Big D (as its victims jocularly call it when not in its power), it is the authentic hallmarked one-hundred-percent depression: he's gone over the edge. 'Stephen, it's Sarah.' After a long time, at least a minute, he lifted his head, and she found herself the object of — no, not an inspection, or even a recognition. It was a defensive look. 'Stephen, I've come because I'm worried about you.' His eyes lowered themselves, and he sat staring at the ground. After another interval, he said, or mumbled, in a hurried swallowing way, 'No use, Sarah, no good.' He was occupied deep within himself, he was busy with an inner landscape, and did not have the energy for the outside world. She knew this because she sometimes underwent a much less total version of this condition. She was absent-minded, heard words long after they were spoken, felt them as an intrusion, had to force herself to pay attention, and then spoke hurriedly to get the irrelevance over with. At meetings at The Green Bird, in conversations with colleagues, she had to make herself come up out of depths of an inner preoccupation with pain actually to hear what they said, then frame words appropriate for an answer. But at least she could do it, and she was getting better. Stephen's state was worse by far than anything she herself had known, and the panic she felt deepened.

What should she do? As a beginning, get him into the shade. She said, 'Stephen, get up, you must get out of the sun.' He seemed surprised, but her hand at his elbow prompted him up and then, slowly, to the cool under the ash tree. His clothes were soaked with sweat.

What he needed was someone to sit by him all day and all night, bring him cups of this and that, cool drinks, tea, a sandwich of which he might perhaps eat one mouthful, while she — or someone — talked, saying anything to remind him he was in a world with other people in it, and these people did not all live in a world of suffering. No one performed this service for her, but then she was not and never had been anything like as ill as he was now. Her mind approached carefully, and in controlled terror, the thought that if the pain she felt was a minor thing compared to what he felt, then what he felt must be unendurable. For she had often thought she could not bear what she felt.

She went on sitting there beside him. She wiped the sweat off his face. She felt his hands to make sure he was not now chilled by the coolness under the tree. Sometimes she said, 'Stephen, it's Sarah.' She made casual and even random remarks, trying to keep his exterior landscape in place: 'Look, the horses are racing each other in that field.' 'That's going to be a pretty good crop of apples.' He did not look at her or respond. Not a hundred yards away was where she had seen him walking and talking with the neighbour Joshua. Now, that was Stephen, surely? That was what he was? A competent and serious man in command of his life? Again her emotions reversed, and she felt ridiculous being here at all.

After a couple of hours she said, 'Stephen, I'm going to get you a drink.' She went to the kitchen, directed there by women's voices. Shirley and Alison were making pastry tartlets for that evening's Ariadne on Naxos. They wore scarlet plastic aprons too small for their ample bodies. These two amiable, infinitely wholesome and reassuring women worked on either side of a table where heaps of flour, dishes full of eggs, and bowls of butter cubed into ice water made a scene of plenty, and they were giggling because Shirley had flour on her cheek, and Alison, trying to wipe it off, had brushed it onto Shirley's plump golden plait.

'Oh, sorry, Mrs Durham,' said Shirley. 'We're just being silly today.'

'I'd like to take Mr Ellington-Smith a drink,' said Sarah.

'All right. What? Orange juice? Apple juice? Pineapple juice? James likes that. Mango juice -1 like that.' And Shirley broke again into giggles.