Love, Again

herself- was lodged. He was not eating. A cup of black coffee stood in front of him. His face was as pale as a face can be that is surfaced with a tan. He stared long and deliberately at Sarah, with enough irony to shrivel her. If he was hating her, with all the fury of a despised lover, then she watched in herself that primitive reaction (had she felt it since she was pubescent?), the outraged amour propre expressed by How dare he? How old is the girl who feels this mixture of indignation and contempt because of the impertinence of an old man (probably thirty years old) who dares to think himself good enough for her? Thirteen? She poured herself coffee, her back turned, trying to recover some sense of the appropriate, let alone some humour, and heard a door slam. When she turned he had gone. She looked deliberately at Mary and Roy to see if they wanted to comment, but neither looked at her.

Then Mary said, 'I think I'll go and see if I can get some pictures. The light is good now.' And Roy said, 'Sarah, I'm going to have to take some leave. I'm due two weeks. This divorce thing is doing me in.' With this, he left.

Sarah told herself that what this good friend of hers was going through was every bit as bad as anything she was feeling, but it was no good.

Henry arrived. He looked quite awful, which Sarah felt served him right. He scattered a dozen cornflakes into a bowl and sat opposite her. They sat looking at each other. There is a stage in love when the two stare in incredulity: how is it that this quite ordinary person is causing me so much suffering?

'All right,' said Henry, in reply to a thousand silent accusations from the rhetorics of love (which there is no need to list since no one has not used them), the first of which is always the incredulous: But if you love me, how can you be [LOST!!! I clapped

on those headphones you despise and put the music on so loud I couldn't think, and when I woke this morning it was blasting into my ears. Well, all right' — for she was laughing at him — 'I did get through the night.'

'Are you expecting me to congratulate you?'

'You might as well.'

He even seemed to be waiting for her to do this, but she had to shut her eyes, for the lower half of her body had dissolved into a warm pond. He was asking, 'Are you coming to Stratford today? Did you know we are all going to Stratford?'

'No, I'm not coming with you to Stratford.'

'Sarah,' came the low reproach, for he was unable to prevent it, and then, already in parody, 'You aren't, you aren't coming with me to Stratford?'

'No; nor, it seems, anywhere else,' she said, while tears made the room and Henry's face swim in a watery kaleidoscope.

'Sarah!' He leaped up, as if to go to the sideboard, and actually did whirl around towards it, but turned back and stood behind his chair in a posture of wild accusation, but whether of her or himself she could not have said. Then he visibly took command of himself, actually got to the sideboard, poured coffee, which he drank there and then, a consoling or a narcotic draught, came back, sat down. All she could see was two wounded, accusing eyes. She blinked, and the shining white cloth, the silver, and Henry's face dissolved and reassembled.

'It's messy,' said Henry suddenly.

This was so absolutely in line with the culture clash that she began to laugh. It seemed to her so funny that she was thinking, Oh, God, if only I could share it with someone — who? Stephen? She said, 'You mean, I'm in one room dreaming of you — if I can put it like that — and you're in another room dreaming of me. But that's not messy?'

He laughed, but he didn't want to.

'Well,' she said, her voice back under control, 'if anyone had told me when I was young that when I was — I'm not going to say old — that I would be reasoning with a young man in love with me… I suppose I may say you're in love with me without straining the truth?'

'I suppose you could, at that. And I'm not so young, Sarah. I'll be middle-aged soon. I notice that the young girls these days, they don't see me. It happened quite recently. I tell you, that was a bad day for me, when I first realized.'

'Reasoning with him into sleeping with me, I think I would have slit my throat. But to put it another way — it's amazing how often this one comes in useful — 'We know what we are but we know not what we may be.' And thank God we don't.'

'Shakespeare, I have no doubt.'

Susan appeared from the garden. 'The coach is here for Stratford,' she said, obviously disappointed about something, which could only be that Stephen wasn't there.

Henry got up, saying, 'This deprived American has never actually seen Romeo and Juliet.'

'A pity it isn't A Midsummer Night's Dream,' said Sarah.

'A quip that's wasted on me. I haven't seen that either.'

Susan was shocked by the anger in this exchange: she looked from one to the other with the timid smile of a peacemaker who doesn't much hope. 'Aren't you coming, Sarah?'

'No.'

'No, she isn't,' said Henry, and accused her with his eyes. 'Enjoy yourself,' he said bitterly.

Sarah borrowed Mary's car and drove to the Cotswolds to see her mother. This was an impulse. It had occurred to her that she sat for hours brooding about the puppet strings and their manipulators, but after all, there was nothing to stop her asking her mother. Why had she not done this before? This is what she was asking herself as she drove, for the idea had seized her with all the force and persuasiveness of novelty. It was absurd she had not thought to ask. Now she would say to her, Why am I like this? and her mother would say, Oh, I was wondering when you'd ask. But as she contemplated the forthcoming scene, doubt had to set in. Her relations with her mother were good. Cool, but good. Affectionate? Well, yes. Sarah visited her three or four times a year and telephoned her sometimes to find out how she did. She did very well, being alert, active and independent. She had lived in the little village for as long as Sarah had in her flat. Briony and Nell liked her, and might drive up to visit her. The one person she wanted to see — Hal — did not visit her. It occurred to Sarah that she could not ask, 'Why is my brother, your son, such a deplorable human being?' Her mother still adored him. She boasted often about the famous Dr Millgreen, but made polite enquiries about Sarah's work.

When Sarah arrived, her mother was working in her garden. She was pleased enough to see her. Just as Sarah, in her mid-sixties looked fifty on a good day, so did Kate Millgreen, over ninety, seem a lively seventy. They sat drinking tea in a room where every object spoke to Sarah about her childhood, but she could not attach memories to any of them, so thoroughly had she blocked it all off. Her mother believed Sarah had come to find out how she was holding out. Old people are afraid of their children, who will decide their fate for them, and so she was a little defensive, as she offered information about her neighbours and her garden, and said that luckily she suffered from nothing worse than mild rheumatism.

Now that Sarah was sitting there with this very old woman, who reminded her of the old woman on the bench that early morning in Belles Rivieres, in her neat sprigged cotton dress and with her white hair in a bun, she was thinking, 'I want her to remember things that happened over sixty years ago.'

She did attempt, 'Tell me, I was wondering what kind of a child I was,' but her mother was disconcerted. She sat there, holding her teacup and frowning and trying to remember. 'You were a good little girl,' she said at last. 'Yes, I'm sure of that.'

'And Hal?' And as she asked, she thought, Why do I never think of my father? After all, I did have one.

'He was ill a lot,' said the old woman at last.

'What was wrong with him?'

'Oh — everything. He got everything when he was a child. Well, it's such a long… I don't remember now. He was threatened with TB at one point. A patch on the lung. He was in bed for… I think it was a year. That's how they treated it then.'

'And my father?'

Again her mother was surprised. She did not like the question. Her eyes, which were blue and direct, not used to evading anything, reproached Sarah. But she did try, with 'Well, he did everything that was needed, you