Forrest Leo - The Gentleman

‘Because I loved you!’

‘But you knew I was only after your money.’

‘I DIDN’T KNOW THAT.’

‘Well, you should have,’ I say.

I can hear the rapid beating of my own heart. She says nothing more. ‘Why did you marry me?’ I ask at length. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking that your favourite book is The Idylls of the King, and that maybe there was a reason for that. I was thinking that you love your little sister so much that I genuinely fear for the safety of her future husband, whomever he may be. I was thinking of the way your hand twitches when it’s not holding a pen. And I was thinking of how if you stopped worrying so much about keeping the metre, which has never been your strong suit, you could be a truly great poet.’

‘There will never be a great poet without structure.’

‘Structure and blank verse aren’t synonyms,’ she says stubbornly.

‘So I should use hexameter?’ I demand. ‘Spenserian stanzas? Alexandrine couplets?’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I don’t know what you’re saying!’ I say.

‘Structure has nothing to do with metre.’

‘It has everything to do with metre!’

‘NO,’ says my tempestuous wife. ‘Structure is about the layout of ideas. Metre is just the arrangement of words in a line.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘It is! You’re being thick on purpose!’

‘Poetry out of metre can be written by a child,’ I protest.

‘So can blank verse,’ she counters.

‘Not good blank verse.’

With the ghost of a smile she says, ‘Unless it is an extraordinarily intelligent child.’

‘Unless it is an extraordinarily intelligent child,’ I concede.

‘But it’s the same with free verse!’ she bursts out. ‘Of course a child can write it, but unless the child is Mozart it won’t be any good!’

‘Mozart wrote poetry?’ I ask. I hadn’t been aware, but I ought to find some of it.*

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Vivien. I do not understand. ‘You could be good!’ she cries.

‘I am good,’ I reply with wounded dignity.

‘You could be great,’ she says.*

‘HOW?’

‘By not being a STUPID, arrogant—’ She regains her composure. ‘By listening to me. By letting me help you. I want to help you.’

I do not say anything for a very long time. I am waging a war with my vanity. I at last conquer it, and say, ‘Fine.’

‘Fine what?’

In answer, I pull all the wretched scraps of poetry I’ve been labouring over off my desk and throw them into the fireplace. I drop my sword with a clatter on the hearthstones. ‘I surrender,’ I say. ‘You win.’

Her jaw clenches and she raises her sword. ‘Then you don’t love me,’ says the impossible creature.

‘You,’ I say, as my poems blaze, ‘are infuriating.’

‘You married me,’ she points out.

‘I married you,’ I repeat. Saying the words aloud clarifies something in my mind. I pick up my sword. Very deliberately, I advance on her. I raise the blade to my lips in salute (it is something I have read), kneel before her, and lay it at her feet.

‘Vivien,’ I say. ‘I am through fighting you. I am yours, body and soul. If ever I give you cause to doubt that again, bid me pick up this sword and I shall defend the assertion with my life. In the meantime, let it be my pledge. If you will have me, I am yours.’*

I look into her shining eyes. I see myself reflected in them. She is silent a very long while.

‘Simmons,’ she says at last. ‘Please hang these swords upon the wall. There they shall be kept until they are wanted.’

‘Very good, ma’am,’ says Simmons. ‘I shall do so directly. Will there be anything else?’

Vivien glances at me. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I need my things moved out of Lizzie’s room. My husband and I have a poetical argument to finish, which I suspect will take several nights at least. It would be inconvenient to have to walk between bedrooms.’*

I may be dreaming it, but I am nearly sure that Simmons is smiling. ‘Of course, ma’am,’ he says, and leaves the room with his customary good grace.

Well,’ says the Gentleman. ‘That was very informative. Well fought, my friend!’

I feel such an overpowering sense of goodwill that I do not even remember that I am angry with him. I bow to the couch, which applauds politely.

‘Now will someone please ,’ I say, ‘tell me what this “plan” was?’

‘Oh,’ says Vivien, ‘it was nothing really — just a rather misguided attempt to make you fall in love with me.’

I smile and say, ‘It worked, darling.’

‘You forget yourself,’ she says coldly, and my heart stops. ‘You did not pass the trial, you circumvented it. We are still a long way from “darling.”’

Lancaster laughs heartily and cries, ‘Capital, by Christ!’ Vivien cracks a smile, and my heart resumes its march. I have still to learn this peculiar woman.

‘It really is a pity,’ says Vivien. ‘It was a splendid plan, and you quite ruined it. I had been building an imaginary lover almost since our marriage.’

‘A what ?’ I say.

‘An imaginary lover. To make you jealous. I began as soon as I realised the pit we had fallen into. I left signs everywhere.’

‘Signs?’

‘Yes — men’s gloves, canes, hats, things like that. Love notes — I drafted them and had Simmons copy them out in a male hand. I had flowers and chocolates and sundry gifts sent to me from anonymous admirers. Surely you noticed the escalation in the last month? It was all driving toward a carefully orchestrated abscondtion which was to leave you in paroxysms of jealousy during which you would be struck with a thunderbolt — you loved me, and couldn’t bear to see me in the arms of another man!’

I am thunderstruck. To suppose that this entire time, my wife has been a step ahead of me. There is only one peculiar thing—‘I never noticed,’ I say.*

‘You never noticed what?’

‘Anything. The gloves, the gifts, the notes. I was aware of them, but it never occurred to me that you could be unfaithful. I assumed the notes were from Simmons to Mrs Davis—’ (Vivien shudders) ‘—and the gloves forgotten at parties.’

‘But did the parties not tip you off?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You weren’t suspicious that I should want to conceal my identity and dance with strange men on a weekly basis?’

‘You— Do you mean— Are you telling me that you don’t like society parties?’

She stares at me for a long moment. ‘Who,’ she says, ‘do you think I am?’

‘You don’t! You don’t actually like parties!’

‘Of course I don’t like parties.’*

‘But, then, where were you these past days?’

‘Hubert’s, of course. I certainly wasn’t going to take Mother into my confidence, or she’d never have forgiven you.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ says Hubert to me, concerned I suppose that I might hold ill will against him for his part in this plot.* But I am preoccupied with Vivien, and pay him no mind.

I sink down shakily into my desk chair. ‘It was all an act,’ I say, only beginning to comprehend the ramifications of what she is telling me.

‘What was?’

‘All of it! The parties, the frivolity, the flirting. That wasn’t you at all?’

‘Certainly not!’ She sounds offended that I could ever have considered it. ‘If I were a man I should accompany Ashley everywhere; but I am not, and so I cannot. I loathe society. It is a game which must be played, that is all.’

I forget that we have an audience until Lizzie says, ‘Nellie, you are in grave danger of being supplanted in my affections by your wife.’