Charles Snow - Time of Hope

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not in love with you,’ she said. ‘You know that, and I’ve told you.’ She was still not looking at me. ‘I’m not in love with you,’ she repeated. ‘Sometimes I ask myself why I’m not. I ask myself what’s the matter with me — or what’s missing in me, if you like.’

A few times in my life, there came moments I could not escape. This was one. I could not escape the moment in which I heard her voice, high, violent, edged with regret and yet with no pity for herself or me.

In time, I asked: ‘Must it always be so?’

‘How do I know?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You can answer that — maybe better than I can.’

‘Tell me what you feel.’

‘If you must hear,’ she said, ‘I think I shall never love you.’ She added: ‘You may as well hear the rest. I’ve been hoping I should love you — for a long time now. I’d rather love you than any of the others. I don’t know why. You’re not as nice as people think.’

At that, having heard the bitterest news of my young manhood, I burst out laughing, and pulled her down on to my knee to kiss her. That final piece of ruthless observation took away my recognition of what I had just heard; and suddenly she was glad to be caressed and to caress. For now she was radiant. Anyone watching us then, without having heard the conversation, would have guessed that she had just received a proposal she was avid to accept — or, more likely, that she was out to win someone of whom she was almost but not quite sure. She was attentive, sleek, and shining. She was anxious to stroke my face when I looked downcast. She wanted to rub away the lines until I appeared as radiant as she did. She was reproachful if, for a moment, I fell into silence. She made me lie on the bed, sat by me, and then went out to buy supper. About that we had what to all appearance was a mild, enjoyable lovers’ quarrel. She proposed to fetch fish and chips: I told her that, despite her lack of snobbery, she was enough a child of the upper middle class to feel that the pastimes and diet of the poor were really glamorous. The romance of slumming, I said. You’re all prostrating yourselves before the millions, I said. And I had a reasonable argument: I had to live in that room; her sense of smell was weak, but mine acute. She pouted, and I said that classical faces were not designed for pouting. We ended in an embrace, and I got my way.

She left late in the evening, so late that I wondered how she would get home. Wondering about her, suddenly I felt the lack of her physical presence in the room. Then — it came like a grip on the throat — I realized what had happened to me. The last few hours had been make-believe. She had spoken the truth. That was all.

It was no use going to bed. I sat unseeing, just where I sat while she answered my proposal. She had spoken with her own integrity. She was as much alone as I was — more, for she had none of the compensations that my surface nature gave me as I moved about the world. She had spoken out of loneliness, and out of her craving for joy. If my heart broke, it broke. If I could make her love me, well and good. It was sauve qui peut . In her ruthlessness, she had no space for the sentimentalities of compassion, or the comforting life. She could take the truth herself, and so must I.

Had I a chance? Would she ever love me? I heard her final voice — ‘if you must hear’ — and then I thought, why had she been so happy afterwards? Was it simply that she was triumphant at hearing a proposal? There was a trace of that. It brought back my mocking affection for her, which was strongest when I could see her as much chained to the earth as I was myself. She could behave, in fact, like an ordinary young woman of considerable attractions, and sit back to count her conquests. There was something predatory about her, and something vulgar. Yes, she had relished being proposed to. Yet, I believed, with a residue of hope, that did not explain the richness of her delight. She was happy because I had proposed to her. There was a bond between us, though on her side it was not the bond of love.

But that — I heard her final voice — was the only bond she craved.

I did not know how to endure it. Sitting on my bed, staring blindly at where she had stood, I thought what marriage with her would be like. It would only be liveable if she were subjugated by love. Otherwise she would tear my heart to pieces. Yet, my senses and my memories tore also at my heart, even my memories of that night, and I did not know how to endure losing her.

I did not know on what terms we could go on. I had played my last card, I had tried to cut my suspense, and I had only increased it. Would she sustain the loving make-believe of the last few hours? If she did not, I could not stand jealousy again. I was not strong enough to endure the same torments, with no light at the end. Now it rested in her hands.

I had not long to wait. The first time we met after my proposal, she was gay and airy, and I could not match her spirits. The second time, she told me, quite casually, that she had visited the town the day before.

‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ The cry forced itself out.

She frowned, and said: ‘I thought we’d cleared the air.’

‘Not in that way.’

She said: ‘I thought now we knew where we stood.’

I had no intention then. But, unknown to me, one was forming.

Three days later, we met again, in the usual alcove in the usual café. She had come from her hairdresser’s, and looked immaculately beautiful. I thought, with resentment, with passion, that I had seen her dishevelled in my arms. Through tea we kept up a busy conversation. She made some sarcastic jokes, to which I replied in kind. She said that she was going to a dance. I did not say a word, but went back to the previous conversations. We were talking about books, as though we were high-spirited, literary-minded students, who had met by accident.

She went on trying to reach me — but she knew that I was not there. Her face had taken on an expression of puzzled, almost humorous distress. Her eyes were quizzically narrowed.

She asked the time, and I told her five o’clock.

‘I’ve got lots of time. I needn’t go home for hours,’ she said.

I did not speak.

‘What shall we do?’ she persisted.

‘Anything you like,’ I said, indifferently.

‘That’s useless.’ She looked angry now.

Automatically I said, as I used to: ‘Come to my room.’

‘Yes,’ said Sheila, and began powdering her face.

Then my intention, which up to then I had not known, broke out.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear it.’

‘What?’ She looked up from her mirror.

‘Sheila,’ I said, ‘I am going to send you away.’

‘Why?’ she cried.

‘You ought to know.’

She was gazing at me, steadily, frankly, unrelentingly. She said: ‘If you send me away now, I shall go.’

‘That’s what I want.’

‘Once I shouldn’t have. I should have come back and apologized. I shan’t do that now, if you get rid of me.’

‘I don’t expect you to,’ I said.

‘If I do go, I shall keep away. I shall take it that you don’t want to see me. This time I shan’t move a single step.’

‘That’s all I ask,’ I replied.

‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sure.’

Without another word, Sheila pulled on her coat. We walked through the smoky café. I noticed our reflections in a steam-filmed mirror. We were both white.

At the door we said the bare word, goodbye. It was raining hard, and she ran for a taxi. I saw her go.

One day, between my proposal to Sheila and our parting, I met Marion. I was refreshed to see her. I found time to speculate whether Jack had, in fact, slipped in a word. She was much more certain of herself than she used to be. Of us all, owing to her acting, she had become most of a figure in the town. She threw her head back and laughed, confidently and with a rich lilt. I had no doubt that she had found admirers, and perhaps a lover. Her old earnestness had vanished, though she would always stay the least cynical of women.