Love, Again

announced, and jumped to her feet, and stood wiping tears off her cheeks with the backs of her hands. He slowly handed her a handkerchief, a real one, large, white, and well laundered — slowly because of his shock. 'It's all right,' she said, 'but I do find Julie a bit of a strain. Not to anything like the extent you do, thank God.' But she could hardly get these words out, and he slowly stood up and was examining her. She found it hard to sustain that look, the one that means a man has stepped back to examine a woman in the light of remembered other women, other situations. For the first time there was embarrassment between them, and it was deepening.

And now he said, in a voice she had never heard, 'Don't tell me you are in love with… '

She said, attempting lightness, 'You mean the young jay? The pretty hero?' On the verge of confessing, of saying, Yes, I am afraid so, his face stopped her. He was so disappointed in her — as well as being shocked, and he was certainly that. She could not bear it and decided to lie, even while she was crying out to herself, But you've never lied to him, this is awful, it'll never be the same again, this friendship of ours. 'No, no,' she said, laughing and she hoped with conviction. 'Come on, it's not as bad as that.'

'After all my confessions to you, the least you can do… ' But this was a far from friendly invitation.

'Ah,' she said, 'but I'm not going to tell you.' Lightly, almost flirtatiously, and as she spoke she could have burst out weeping again instead. Never had she used this false flirtatious voice to him. He hated it, she could see.

At the same moment, they set off along the path to the house and the theatre space, now empty and waiting for the day's rehearsals. Down they went, through the trees. He was covertly examining her, and she was miserable because of what she saw on his face. She began to make conversation, saying it was interesting that while Julie was doing her drawings and paintings here, not thirty miles away Cezanne was painting. Her work would have surprised no one in the last four hundred years, but Cezanne's was so revolutionary that many of the critics of the time could see nothing in it.

She hoped he would join in, save them both from this quite terrible embarrassment, and he did, but his voice was harsh when he said, 'I hope you aren't suggesting it is a criticism of Julie's work that Durer wouldn't have been surprised at it.'

This conversation, like so many, was only apparently about what its surface suggested.

'Unless he would have been surprised at a woman doing it.'

He gave a snort — and it was contemptuous. 'Now you're changing ground.'

'I suppose so' — and her voice was a plea. 'But I wasn't thinking of it as a criticism, actually.' He did not speak. 'But if Julie had seen Cezanne's work, do you think she'd have liked it?'

A much too long pause. He said grudgingly, 'How do we know she didn't? They were always out and about, both of them.'

'Thirty miles is nothing now. Then it was enough to make sure they'd never meet.'

They walked, much too fast for that warm morning, down the dusty track, the cicadas already at full shrill. She could not remember ever wanting a time of being with Stephen to end, but now she did. She was thinking, critically of herself, It's all right when I watch Stephen, to see how he is feeling, but I don't like it when he watches me as he is doing now.

'Do you suppose Cezanne would have liked her music?' she asked quickly.

'He would have loathed it,' he said, and his voice was like a judge delivering a sentence.

'Does that mean you loathe it, in your heart of hearts?'

'Sometimes I do.'

‘I can't endure this non-life. I can't endure this desert,' she quoted, clumsy, for she had not meant to say anything of the sort.

And now there was a pretty long silence. Stephen was asking himself if he could forgive her. He did so, with 'Now I think I've never not lived in a desert.'

She was unable to prevent herself from blurting out, spoiling everything again, 'Recently I've been thinking I was living in a desert for years.'

And, again, he was uncomfortable, and did not want to have to be with this emotional and (so he felt it) demanding Sarah. 'So you aren't in a desert now,' he enquired, wanting a real answer.

Sarah walked faster. She knew that the conversation had slipped finally into the wrong gear, but tried to sound humorous. 'I think a lot of people live in a desert. At least, what they call in the atlases 'Other Desert'. You know, there is sand desert, the real desert, the real thing, like the Empty Quarter, and 'Other Desert'. One is an absolute. But 'other desert' — there are degrees of that.'

And now he did not say anything. They were walking as fast as they could, but there was a good twenty minutes of this discomfort before they reached the town square. There Stephen left her, without more than a nod and a strained smile, and he almost ran towards the hotel, where he disappeared, with a look of relief and, too, an almost furtive little movement of his buttocks, which suddenly announced to Sarah: Oh no, he thinks I am in love with him. For there is no woman in the world who has not seen, at some moment or other, a man escaping with precisely that secret little look of relief. This struck her as a complete calamity, the worst. What could she do? She was thinking, This friendship is a thousand times more precious to me than being in love, or the pretty hero. I can't bear it. And now it's all spoiled. Until this morning everything between us had been open, simple, honest. And now…

In the midst of this distress a thought that made it worse attacked her: A few weeks ago — but it seemed months, even years ago — she could have said anything to Stephen, and did. In those truly halcyon days before her first visit to his house, she might have remarked, laughing, 'I've fallen in love with a pretty boy — now, what do you have to say about that!' 'Oh, come off it, Stephen, I'm not in love with you, don't be silly.' But now… they had both of them made a long step down and away from their best.

The pavement outside the cafe was crowded. Sarah did not want to talk to anyone. But Bill was sitting with a sleek, brown, plump man, obviously American, and he was smiling and waving. She was about to smile and walk past, but he called to her in a casually proprietary way, as he would have done to his mother, 'Sarah, where did you get to?' And he said to his companion, 'She's one of my greatest friends. She's a really fun person.'

Sarah kept a smile on her face and allowed herself to rest on the very edge of a chair. She directed this smile at a man whose every surface glistened with satisfaction. He was Jack, who, Bill said, had directed the last play Bill had been in. Bill offered the morsel to Sarah as he might have done a box of chocolates. But he was uneasy too, for he knew he had struck a wrong note. Because of this, Sarah felt sorry for him: an extraordinary mix of emotions, extravagant, ridiculous emotions; and she was passionately disliking this Jack. As if it mattered whether she liked him or not.

'I'm on a trip around the south of France. I saw Bill last night in Marseilles. He talked me into it, and — voila!' said Jack, taking possession of France with a word.

Then it must have been very late — as the thought invaded her like a tidal wave, jealousy carved her spine. Bill was still here last night after midnight, so if he drove to Marseilles — he and who? — that must mean… now, stop it, Sarah.

Bill knew she was jealous: his eyes told her so, and, too, that he was relieved because, having lost her because of his over-familiarity, he was taking possession of her again. He was back on balance but she was not. She was thinking: Stephen, what am I to do? I cannot lose Stephen.

She got off the edge of her chair and said, 'I'm sorry, I have to meet someone.' And with a smile at Jack she hoped was adequate, and ignoring Bill (at which she saw his face fall), she walked briskly into the hotel. She was having to peer through tears. What she saw was Henry, on his way out. Luckily the light was behind her.

'You'll be there after lunch?' A question, yes, but it was more of a command.

'This is a very strange role, mine,' said Sarah.

'True. Not in the contract, I know. But essential. Please?'

Determined not to sleep but to think of some way of putting things right with Stephen, she was walking around her room, or rather barging and banging around it, not seeing what she was doing. She was thinking, I couldn't have told him, 'Yes, I am in love with the pretty hero.' It's unforgivable. And yet old women by the thousand — probably by the million — are in love and keep quiet about it. They have to. Good Lord, just imagine it: for instance, an old people's home full of senior citizens, or, as they charmingly put it, wrinklies, and half of them are secretly crazy for the young jay who drives the ambulance or the pretty girl cook. A secret hell, populated with the ghosts of lost loves, former personalities… meanwhile the other half are making sniffy jokes and exchanging snide looks. Unless they succumb too.