Slowly he dragged his mind back, from that sorry afternoon in court to this date and place. “For one thing,” he said, “I feel I would have nothing to offer you. I would probably lose my job, you see. I would have to offer my resignation to the Trust’s committee. They would be obliged to accept it.”
“Hypocrites then, aren’t they?” she said.
“People aren’t enlightened, you know, you think they move with the times but they don’t. I suppose it’s that they’re always looking for a stick to beat you with … there’s the press, if it got into the papers … you see it’s all complicated by the fact that Sandra is my son’s girlfriend and they would twist the whole story around—believe me, I know about the newspapers—into something that resembled incest.”
“Sandra is your son’s mistress,” she said. “Let’s get it right.”
“Yes, I know that. I can’t afford to damage the Trust, because if there is a scandal it affects our fund-raising, and then if we have less money it means we must disappoint people and turn them away.”
“Are you married to Anna, or the Trust?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Amy.”
He did know what she meant, of course, but he was buying time, thinking time; surely, he thought, no one could accuse me of being one of those who love mankind in general but not persons in particular? Perhaps I incline in that direction, no doubt I do, but I try to correct my fault: I love Amy, who is easy to love, and I love my children and Sandra Glasse, and I love Anna, who is another proposition and a tougher one. What person could be harder to love than Melanie, and even there I try; I have made a study of love, a science. He thought, I cannot let them admit the child to a mental hospital, because Melanie is clearly, reluctantly, spitefully sane; stupid perhaps, self- destructive, but in possession of her faculties when she is not under the influence of some dubious tablets bought on the street, or cleaning fluid, or lighter fuel. If she is diagnosed as schizophrenic, or labeled as psychopathic, that will be the end of her, in effect, they may as well bury her now. But I can’t take her out of hospital, I can’t take her back to the Red House now Anna isn’t there, and if I offer to take her back to London and dump her on Richard and the staff she’ll run away again in hours, we can’t keep her under lock and key, we have no authority to do it.
He looked up. There was a smell of baking from the kitchen; the need of income was constant, and no crisis would make Amy alter her schedule. She said, “I think that if you leave me, Ralph, you must give me a proper reason.” Her voice shook. She put her hands to the back of her neck, raked her fingers upwards through her long hair, then let it fall. “You came this spring, and I was lonely. I’ve been on my own for many years now. Since Andrew Glasse walked out of this house when Sandra was two years old, I’ve never let a man over this threshold, if I could help it. You came here; and you were kind, you were very kind to me, Ralph.”
He nodded. “I see I had no right to be. Not in that way.”
“So you must give me a reason now. Don’t give me some stupid reason about how it will be in the
“Anna says she will never forgive me. She wants me to move out of the house.”
“That’s natural for her to say.”
“But she says that as soon as it can be arranged she is moving out herself. I can go back then, she says. The children—I don’t know.”
I will lose them anyway, he thought. It’s not a matter of who lives where, or what custody is sought and granted; I will lose them. I have taught them to discriminate, to know what is right and wrong and choose what is right. They will value the lesson now, and not the teacher. Because what I have done is so patently, so manifestly, so obviously, wrong. And not just wrong, but stupid. “You ask me do I love Anna,” he said. “It’s not the right question. It goes beyond that. You see, when we met, we were children. We made an alliance against the world. Then what held us together—”
“Yes. You don’t have to tell that story, ever again.” Her face was composed, he thought; pale, alight with pity. “One telling is enough for a lifetime. Don’t imagine I’ll forget it.” She stood behind his chair. “Ralph, listen to me. Look at any life—from the inside, I mean, from the point of view of the person who’s living it. What is it but defeats? It’s just knock-backs, one after the other, isn’t it? Everybody remembers the things they did wrong. But what about the thousands and thousands and thousands of things they did right? You lost a child. And every day you think about it. But think of the children you didn’t lose.”
“Nobody has ever said that to me before.”
She moved away and stood before the fireplace, putting her hands flat on the mantelpiece, at either side of the stupid ticking clock. “Just tell me. When you said you loved me, was that a lie?” The careful blankness of her profile seemed to show that she was prepared for any answer.
“No,” he said. “No, it wasn’t.”
She let out her breath. “It’s a brute of a world, Ralph. A brute, isn’t it?” She moved toward him. Her eyes had never been so pale and clear. “Take your coat, my dear. It’s time you left.”
“Sandra and Julian—where are they, do you know?”
She smiled. “Last time I saw them they were sitting in a hedge like ragamuffins, eating blackberries.”
“They must come home. To you, or to us.”
“Sandra’s got the key of a flat in Wells. It’s one of the places she cleans. The landlord will let them have it cheap, till next season.”
“I don’t see how they can afford it. Even cheap.”
“I suppose the Lord will provide.” She smiled tightly. For a moment she reminded him of Anna. “But of course, he won’t. I’ll see they get through the winter.”
She turned away, presenting her shoulder to him. Before she turned, he read the coming winter in her face. As he was leaving she called, “Ralph! Are you sure you don’t want that old clock?”
“Nowhere to put it,” he said. I am houseless, he thought; I should have carried my house on my back. “Be seeing you, Amy.”
Another night of rain; and then, fine windy weather. On the roads there were great standing pools, shattered by sunlight. The sun struck every spark of color from the landscape, revivifying the trees with green, dazing the driver of the early bus; even dead wood, even fence poles, quivered with their own green life.
