Love, Again

weekend, another for — but she had not opened the door into perversity, she was glad to say — and yet another for a steamy eroticism. Butconviction? Henry had conviction. (Would have had conviction?) Why did he? All one could know so early in the 'relationship' (which would never be one) was that there were no checks or knots, as there had been with Bill, reversals of feeling like cold water in her face or a bad taste in her mouth. The invisible weavers threw their shuttles, knitting memories and wants, match on match, strand on strand, colour to colour. A month or so ago, she had been 'in love' with Bill (she could not bring herself to leave off the quote marks, dishonest though that was). To the point of- well, yes, the whirlpool. But now she found that improbable and embarrassing, even if she was determined not to hate the poor young man and herself, as was prescribed. She would not find it shameful to have loved Henry when it was all over. A smiling memory? Hardly, with so much anguish in it, but then, the anguish, the grief, had nothing to do with Henry.

The real, the serious, the mature love. Rather, one of the inhabitants of this body, somewhat arbitrarily labelled Sarah Durham, was ready for kind love. She was in that state, had been for weeks, a girl is in when ready for marriage and falling in love with one man after another. But afterwards she first tones down and then forgets the men she has, as it were, sniffed at before the match was made.

Sarah imagined a couple, let's say in their thirties, early forties. They sit at a dinner table in… India — well, why not? — and it is the penultimate days of the Raj. Sarah was back, then, at least seventy years. Sarah had a photograph of her grandmother in a lacy formal dress, with ropes of crystals sloping over a full bosom. She set that woman as hostess at one end of a dinner table; at the other was a gentleman in uniform. Behind both stood uniformed Indian servants. One of the dinner guests, a woman, has just said, 'Oh, Mabs, you used to know Reggie, didn't you? I met him in Bognor Regis last week.'

The eyes of husband and wife meet in a hard look.

'Yes, I knew Reggie quite well,' says the wife. 'We played tennis together a lot in… let me see… '

'Nineteen twelve,' says her husband promptly. His tone is such that the guests exchange glances.

In the bedroom afterwards, the wife steps out of her trailing dove grey skirt and stands in her underclothes, knowing her husband is watching her. She turns to him with a smile. Sees his face. Stops smiling. Ten years before — no, it must be more than that, time does fly so — she imagined she was in love with Reggie, but something or other wasn't right, she could hardly remember what now, though it didn't matter, because she hadn't really loved Reggie, it wasn't the real thing, for that was proved by her being here with Jack.

For a long minute the eyes of husband and wife, neither conceding an inch, exchange memories of that summer when he proved himself more potent and persuasive — convincing — than the vanished Reggie. He is still fully dressed, she in her triple ninon pink camiknickers, her dark hair loosening over her half-naked breasts. Reggie actually lives there in that hot bedroom in Delhi, and then — pouf- he is gone. The husband takes her in his arms, and his embraces that night have a most satisfactory conviction. She forgets she was ever in that condition so ably described by Proust when he did not know which of the garland of seaside girls he was going to fall in love with. It might easily have been Andree, but she turned out to be his friend and confidante, while a sequence of chance psychological events made it Albertine he was fated to suffer over so atrociously.

As for Sarah, that diabolical music had tumbled her into love with the dangerous boy, but her needs, her nature (the hidden agenda), had moved her on to Henry. And so it would be Henry she would remember as the 'real' one. And he was.

For her, Sarah, Henry was likely to be the last love. She did most sincerely hope so. Henry would remember an inexplicable passion for a woman in her sixties. That is, if he did not make a decision not to remember — which would be understandable. And Andrew? She did not believe the invisible weavers were up to anything much. There was something hard and what? — willed — about his — what? — certainly not a passion. (Here she allowed herself to ignore the look on his face as she was carried away from him by the bus.) The truth was, she could not keep her mind on Andrew.

She sat smiling at the thought of Henry. It was that smile put on a woman's face by delightful thoughts of past lovers. Let it stay for a while, she was praying — to her own inner psychological obscurities, presumably? — for when Henry was gone, a black pit was waiting for her; she could feel it there, waiting for the very moment that smile left her face.

And then there would be Stephen. That would remain. That was for life. But while she sat smiling, in his house at that very moment it was likely that an unhappy man sat at a window, thinking, I cannot endure this life, I cannot endure this desert. It was ten o'clock. Dinner would be over. Probably Elizabeth and Norah would have gone off somewhere, as they usually did.

She telephoned and got Elizabeth.

'Oh, it's you. I'm so glad you rang. I was just going to ring you. I do hope you approve of the arrangements. Of course, we can't put up the whole cast in the house. But the hotel is pretty comfortable. We thought that you and Henry and the new girl — Stephen says she's very good — and we have room for a couple more. Perhaps that young woman who can't keep her hands off her camera? How does it sound to you?'

'We are very lucky to be staying in your lovely house.'

'I don't know if we shall always be able to put people up.

I mean, when we do real operas. But it is fun having you people around. And it will cheer up Stephen.' And now a pause, while Sarah waited for the real communication. 'Poor Stephen does seem most awfully glum.'

'Yes, I think he seems to be worried about something.'

'Yes.' Since Sarah did not seem inclined to offer anything more, Elizabeth said, 'It's probably his liver. Well, that's what I tell him.' And she gave her jolly laugh, which was like a notice saying Keep Out. Then, having behaved exactly according to expectation, typecast as a no-nonsense sensible ex-schoolgirl, she rang off with 'See you tomorrow, Sarah. How nice. I do look forward to it all so much. And the garden is pretty good too, seeing that it's August.'

A woman of a certain age stands in front of her looking- glass naked, examining this or that part of her body. She has not done this for… twenty years? Thirty? Her left shoulder, which she pushes forward, to see it better — not bad at all. She always did have good shoulders. And a very good back, compared — long ago, of course — to the Rokeby Venus. (There are probably few young women of the educated classes whose backs have not been compared, by lovers blinded by love, with the Rokeby Venus.) Hard to see her back, though: it was not a big mirror. Her breasts? A good many young women would be pleased to have them. But wait… what had happened to them? A woman can have had breasts like Aphrodite's (after all, at least one woman must have done), and the last thing anyone thought of, looking at them, was nourishment, but they have become comfortable paps, and their owners wonder, What for? To cradle the heads of grandchildren? Surely the right time for these paps was when she was a mother. (What is Nature up to?) Legs. Well, they weren't too bad now, never mind what they were. In fact her body had been a pretty good one, and it held its shape (more or less) till she moved, when a subtle disintegration set in, and areas shapely enough were surfaced with the fine velvety wrinkles of an elderly peach. But all this was irrelevant. What she could not face (had to keep bringing herself face to face with) was that any girl at all, no matter how ill-favoured, had one thing she had not. And would never have again. It was the irrevocableness of it. There was nothing to be done. She had lived her way into this, and to say, 'Well, and so does everyone,' did not help. She had lived her way into it, full of philosophy, as one is supposed to do, and then the depth charge, and she was like one of those landscapes where subterranean upheavals had tumbled to the surface a dozen strata, each created in vastly different epochs and kept separate until now, revealing mountains made up of rocks red, olive green, turquoise, lemon, pink, and dark blue, all in a single range. She could sincerely say that one of the strata, or several, did not care about this ageing carcass, but there was another as vulnerable as the flesh of roses.

'I tore my body that its wine could cover Whatever could recall the lip of lover… ' well, what else?

Yet Henry was in love with her. And Andrew. Bill had been, in his way. What were they in love with? And here she could not suppress the thought: In a group of chimps, the senior female is sexually very popular. Better look at it like that.

In the — fortunately — dimmish light into which she moved this or that part of her anatomy, her body looked tender, comfortable, her arms of the kind that go easily round those in need of arms. Joyce, for instance. That poor little grub, before she had grown into a young woman, was ready at the hint of an invitation to curl up inside arms that were nearly always Sarah's. Where she at once put her thumb in her mouth. Even now, anyone with eyes had to see that invisible thumb forever in her mouth. The world is full of people, invisible to anyone but their own kind (it