Doris Lessing - Love, Again

Mary took pictures of Sarah and of Jean-Pierre, separately and together, while they stood in the middle of the stadium, then sitting on the lower tier of the seats, and then on the highest seats, where — if the camera was positioned just so — Jean-Pierre's and Sarah's heads would be seen against a flying scroll, a metal banner that stretched from one umbrella pine to another: Julie Vairon. 1865–1912. Jean-Pierre said it was a pity Stephen's face would not be with Sarah's near the banner, but Mary said it was no problem: she could blow up a picture of Stephen and superimpose his face beside Sarah's on the banner.

Then Sarah told the two she would walk down by herself to the town, for old times' sake, for she could see they wanted to be alone.

On the plane going home, Mary said, 'I thought I had come to terms with everything, but I hadn't, really. So I have to do it all over again.'

This was shorthand for: I thought I had accepted that I would not marry or have a serious lover to live with, because my mother is ill and is getting worse and anyway I am getting old, my hair is going grey, and I was very unhappy, but I came to terms with it, but now…

'I understand perfectly,' said Sarah.

Sometimes women remembering past follies can exchange Rabelaisian laughter, but it was too recent. Later, no doubt.

'And there's another thing,' said Mary. 'I don't care about Julie any more. They've done her in.'

'Yes, she's well and truly dead now, isn't she.'

And that was the moment, frequent in the theatre, when, after months or even years of total immersion in a story — an Entertainment — the people who made it simply turn their backs and stroll away.

Sarah returned from France to find Joyce in her flat. This time it seemed she intended to stay. Again something had happened but Joyce was not going to talk about it. She had gone home, saying that she was going to.stay there because 'they aren't nice people' — meaning Betty and the gang. Her father had heckled and shouted, and found himself confronted by Anne, who announced that if he was ever 'nasty' to Joyce again she would leave him. Hal said Anne was being silly. Anne began packing. Hal said, 'What are you doing?' Anne said, 'What do you think I'm doing?' She had seen a lawyer. At that, hell was let loose. Sarah heard all this from Briony and then Nell on the telephone. The two grabbed the receiver from each other in turn. They were full of the awe appropriate to reporting a major hurricane. 'But when Daddy stopped shouting, Mummy said, "Goodbye, Hal," and started to leave,' said Briony. 'Yes; she got to the door before he realized she meant it,' said Nell.

He made promises. He apologized. The trouble was, Hal had never believed he was anything less than adorable. Worse, he had probably never wondered what he was like. He did not know what his wife meant by 'behaving nicely', but his manners did change, for whatever he said to Briony or Nell or his wife came out as short incredulous exclamations: 'I suppose if I ask you to pass the butter you are going to threaten me with a lawyer?' 'If I get your meaning rightly you're going to the theatre without me.' 'I suppose you'll fly off into a rage if I ask you to take my suit to the cleaners.'

Joyce removed herself to Sarah's. Anne said she was absolutely fed up with him and was going to leave him anyway. 'But I'm going to retire soon,' said Hal. 'Do you expect me to spend my last years alone?'

He came to see Sarah. He did not telephone first. Standing in the middle of her living room, he asked, or announced, 'Sarah, have you thought of us spending our last years together?'

'No, Hal, I can't say I have.'

'You aren't getting any younger, are you? And it's time you stopped all this theatre nonsense. We could buy a place together in France or Italy.'

'No, Hal, we could not.'

There he stood, gazing somewhere in her direction with wide and affronted eyes, his palms held out towards her, his whole body making a statement about how badly he was being treated — he, who was entirely in the right, as always. This big babyish man, with his little tummy, his little double chin, his self-absorbed mouth, making a total demand for the rest of her life, was not seeing her even now. Sarah went close to him, stood about a yard away, so that those eyes that always had so much difficulty actually looking at someone must take her in. She said, 'No, Hal, no. Did you hear me? No. No. No. No. No. No, Hal — finally, no.'

His lips worked pitifully. Then he turned sleep-wise around and rolled slowly out of the room, with the cry, 'What have I done? Just tell me. If someone would just tell me what I've done?'

Anne took a flat, and Joyce went to live with her mother.

Briony and Nell were outraged and would not speak to Anne or to Joyce. They announced they intended to marry their boyfriends, but their father wept and begged them not to leave him. At last they understood how much their mother had shielded them from, how much they had not noticed. Pride did not allow them immediately to forgive Anne, who, they kept saying, must shortly come to her senses. Meanwhile Sarah was a transmitter of messages.

'What did Mummy say when we said we wouldn't ever speak to her again?'

'She said, "Oh dear, but when they get over it remind them they have my telephone number.'"

Briony said angrily, 'But that's patronizing.'

'Do you want me to tell your mother so?'

'Sarah, whose side are you on?'

And Nell, a week or so later: 'What are they doing over there?'

'You mean, how are they spending their time? Well, your mother's working as usual. Joyce is cooking for both of them. And she's trying to learn Spanish.'

'Cooking! She's never cooked; she can't even boil an egg.'

'She's cooking now.'

'And I suppose she thinks she's going to get a job with Spanish?'

'I said she is trying to learn Spanish.'

Sarah did not tell them how happy their mother was. She realized she had never seen Anne anything but long- suffering, tired, exasperated. Anne and Joyce were like girls who had left home for the first time, sharing a flat. They made each other little treats, gave each other presents, and giggled.

Then Briony: 'Doesn't Joyce ever actually say anything? I mean, she must be awfully pleased with herself.'

'Well, yes: she says all her dreams have come true.'

'There you are, we knew it!'

'What's wrong with that?'

'All her dreams have come true. That's all she ever wanted, just to have mummy all to herself.'

'But, Briony, just a minute… surely you don't imagine… '

'What?' demanded Briony, already affronted by the new dose of unpleasant reality announced by her aunt's tone.

'Well — don't you see? She's not going to stay at home, is she?'

'What? Why not?'

'Well, she's going to get bored, isn't she?'

'Oh no… '

'She'll be off and back again, it'll all go on the same.'

'But it just isn't fair,' said Briony.

From Elizabeth came a letter and a package. The letter said that when his divorce came through, she was going to marry a neighbour, Joshua Broughton. Perhaps Stephen had mentioned him? She had known Joshua all her life. It would be nice to run the two farms together. She said that her commitment to the Queen's Gift Entertainments would continue, but perhaps not as much as when Stephen was there to help. She did not mention Norah.

The picture she enclosed had hung on the wall in Stephen's bedroom. There was also a photograph.

When Sarah saw what the picture was, she felt she had never known Stephen, even that their friendship had been an illusion. It was of a bold smiling young woman, dressed in a fashionable white dress with a pink sash. She held a straw hat on her knee and sat in a chair under a tree. The picture could have been by Gainsborough. It had been painted, at Stephen's request, by someone or other from the little photograph, now yellowing and faded, which was of Julie sitting on a rock in half-shade. She wore a white camisole and a white flounced petticoat. Her arms and neck were bare. Her feet were bare. Her dark hair was loose and blowing away from her face. She was offering herself to whoever had taken that photograph, in her posture, her smile, her passionate black eyes. The photograph had been tinted, and the crude boiled-sweet colours had faded. A tree behind the rock had hints of sickly green, and the rock had a rouged side. Around her neck — was that a necklace? Little blobs of red… no, a ribbon. Why had she tied on that ribbon? It was out of character, so much so it shocked. Perhaps the man who took the photograph — Paul? Rémy? — had said to her, 'Here is one of the new cameras. Yes, I know you were wondering what was in this great case, but no, it isn't a musical instrument, it's a camera.' She was sitting on the edge of her bed, in her camisole, about to slip it off, or having just slipped it on, saying, 'Oh no, you aren't going to take me naked.' Then he said, 'Come outside. I'll always think of you in your forest.' She tied that red ribbon off a chocolate box around her neck. The chocolate had been a present from a pupil or… could it have been the master printer? Boxes of chocolate were much more in his line than Rémy's, or Paul's. He probably sold them from his shop. What had she said, tying on that ribbon? Or Rémy had said, 'Wait, tie that ribbon around your neck. It makes you look… ' No, that was not in Rémy's character. Or the person who had tinted the picture of the seductress (the studio which developed the photograph could not have been in Belles Rivieres, more likely Marseilles or Avignon, for if anyone in Belles Rivieres had caught sight of it then…) — had that person painted in the ribbon? Now, when you examined the thing carefully, and even with a magnifying glass (Sarah did this, switching on a strong light), you could not see if the ribbon had been painted in afterwards, the photograph was so dulled, the tinting had been so clumsy. Had Julie painted in the ribbon after being given the photograph? It was easier to imagine it had been done afterwards, because it was hard to connect the young woman dissolved in love sitting half dressed on the rock with the red ribbon that was a statement of such a different kind. Or was she identifying with the doll she had buried in the forest in Martinique, which had a red ribbon around its neck, as a memento of the guillotine? If so, the only word for that was sick.