Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

At night, twice a week, they made love. Ursula had read in books of newly married people or new lovers—which was the same thing, wasn’t it?—making love every night. Of course, she didn’t believe everything she read in books, especially not now that she was married to a writer, but then Syria Arthur actually told her this was what she and Jonathan did. She mentioned it in passing almost, as if it was quite normal.

Perhaps all marriages were like that. Or perhaps they were like her own. How could she tell? One evening, an evening in on their own, when they had been married about eighteen months, Gerald asked her if she thought it was time she consulted a doctor about her failure to become pregnant.

That made her laugh. “I haven’t failed, darling.” She often called him darling then. It was what her parents called each other. “I’ve been taking care not to, haven’t I?”

He hadn’t known. Again, perhaps it was strange never to have discussed the subject. But she had no precedents. She didn’t know she was supposed to ask him. A month before the wedding, she had gone to the doctor, been proud of herself for her courage and sophistication in doing this. The doctor had sent her to a clinic where she had been fitted up with a diaphragm. The sex books she read said it was unwise to leave this sort of thing to the man, so she hadn’t. She hadn’t mentioned it to him, either. She supposed he must know, that he must have guessed.

He was angry on a level she had never seen before. Really, she had never seen him angry. The way he reacted to her proposal to join the Homosexual Law Reform Society was nothing compared to this. His face went a dark red and the veins stood out on his forehead. Anger made him look older than he was and as if given over to excesses, which he was not.

“You deceived me,” he said. He shouted it.

“I didn’t mean to, Gerald. I thought you knew.”

“How could I know? What do I know about these things?”

“I thought you would,” she said, almost stammering. “I thought men knew.”

“Don’t you want children? You’re not like Syria’s mad sister, are you, not wanting them in case they get blown up?”

“Of course I want children. One day. I’m only twenty-four. I want to wait a bit, a year or two.”

“You have had your year or two,” he said.

It was uttered in such a menacing tone that she was frightened. For the first time, she was really afraid of him. Not apprehensive, not wary, but frightened. She wasn’t a small woman, but quite robust, above average height, and strongly built. But suddenly, he seemed enormous to her, a big, heavy, threatening man with a leonine head and angry black eyes.

She said quietly, almost timidly, “I’m sorry.” She half saw that she had been wrong. It could look like deceit, what she had done. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything underhand.”

“You aren’t what I expected you’d be.”

He had said that before, on their honeymoon. But then it had been a compliment. Now it sounded like a threat.

“Gerald, please,” she said, and as he rose to his feet, she came up close to him, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Please forgive me. Please don’t be angry with me.”

That night in bed, he turned his back on her, but the following night—if she hadn’t wanted him so much, it would have been rape. He made a violent onslaught that brought her a shuddering pleasure. She thought it a proof of his love and forgiveness.

Sarah was born the following December, nine months later.

* * *

At her age, to dress up for a man would be degrading. Ursula had seen plenty of that up at the hotel, old painted faces and teased, tinted hair, above-the-knee skirts on women whose daughters were past the age to wear them. She put on black velvet trousers, a black sweater, and a sand-colored jacket. Makeup had never been good on her; it either made no real difference or looked artificial and doll-like, so she had given up wearing it twenty years ago. Her face, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror, was like Sarah’s would be in an out-of-focus photograph.

She expected to find her own way to the Dunes bar, but he was waiting for her in reception. She liked that; it showed thoughtfulness. But she disliked, insofar as she could think about it at all, the lurch inside her body and the racing of her heart when first she saw him. It was unexpected. It was a sensation that she thought past and gone.

He took her into the lounge, to a quiet corner that was almost an alcove. The large picture window at her elbow afforded a panorama of the sea and sky; that was its purpose, what it had been built for, low to the floor, a clear unbarred sheet of plate glass. The sun had gone down, but the sky was still red, redder than before sunset, with long black bars of cloud ranged in parallel lines above the dark, gleaming sea. She gazed at it to calm herself. He asked her what she would like to drink, gave their order, and began, perhaps not unexpectedly, to talk about Gerald the writer, Gerald and his books.

He had read many of them, knew them well, but she didn’t pay much attention to what he said. People had been talking to her about Gerald’s books for more than thirty years; no doubt they thought it was what she wanted to hear. She would very much have liked to tell the truth to someone, someone she liked and felt close to, tell that person she would gladly never think about Gerald’s books again, that they interested her now only in that they were her source of income, and the better they sold, the better pleased she would be. She cut Sam Fleming short with a very modified version of that and noted his startled look.

“Yes, his sales have gone up. I hope they won’t fall. Now he’s dead, I mean.”

He was very taken aback. “Is that likely?”

“There’s no knowing. Sometimes when an author dies, his sales fall, and sometimes they rise.”

“Was there,” he began, “is there—is there a new book?”

“It’s called Less Is More. He was reading the proofs when he died.” She took a sip of her drink, then changed the subject abruptly. “What do you do? For a living, I mean.”

“Thank you for not assuming I must be retired,” he said.

“It never crossed my mind.”

“You don’t really want to know what I do, do you? It’s just politeness.”

She looked at him in a way she had tried to avoid doing. Into his face, his eyes. It was a mistake; it brought her close to trembling. She tried a light laugh. “Come on, what do you do?”

“All right. I’m a bookseller in Bloomsbury. Not antiquarian, and secondhand is an ugly way of putting it. Modern first editions.”

Her face must have shown everything she felt. No, please, not quite everything, not that longing for him to touch her, to feel just the touch of his hand, which had been growing all the time they were talking. Not that, but the shock of learning what he did, which was like a shower of cold water hitting her. Then the blood came up into her face, burning after the cold shock.

She thought, I will say, “I see,” and he will try to explain, and I will say it’s all right and to forget it, and it will be impossible to have any sort of conversation after that. So she turned the subject yet again and talked innocuously about the children, his grandchildren, and, by extension, her daughters—never an easy topic for her—and that, of course, led to his son. His dead son.

But she heard very little of what he said, though she had encouraged him to talk, and she put on a show of interest. Her right hand lay on the table, beside her glass. She didn’t think about it; it just rested there. But because of her shame and her growing indignation with him, she feigned an almost-effusive sympathy for him, uttering meaninglessly to herself, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”