The Only Problem

Edward went into the little sitting room that Harvey had put together, the minimum of stuff to keep him going while he did the job he had set himself. Indeed, the shabby, green plush chairs with the stuffing coming out of them and the quite small work-table with the papers and writing materials piled on it (he wrote by hand) seemed out of all proportion to the project. Harvey was only studying a subject, preparing an essay, a thesis. Why all this spectacular neglect of material things? God knows, thought Edward, from where he has collected his furniture. There was a kitchen visible beyond the room, with a loaf of bread and a coffee mug on the table. It looked like a nineteenth century narrative painting. Edward supposed there were habitable rooms upstairs. He sat down when Harvey told him to. From where he sat he could see through a window a washing-line with baby clothes on it. There was no sign of a baby in the house, so Edward presumed this washing had nothing to do with Harvey; maybe it belonged to a daily help who brought along her child’s clothes to wash.

Harvey said, ‘I’m awfully busy.’

‘I’ve come about Effie,’ Edward said.

Harvey took a long time to respond. This, thought Edward, is a habit of his when he wants an effect of weightiness.

Then, ‘Oh, Effie,’ said Harvey, looking suddenly relieved; he actually began to smile as if to say he had feared to be confronted with some problem that really counted.

Harvey had written Effie off that time on the Italian autostrada about a year ago, when they were driving from Bologna to Florence — Ruth, Edward, Effie, Harvey and Nathan, a young student-friend of Ruth’s. They stopped for a refill of petrol; Effie and Ruth went off to the Ladies’, then they came back to the car where it was still waiting in line. It was a cool, late afternoon in April, rather cloudy, not one of those hot Italian days where you feel you must have a cold drink or an ice every time you stop. It was sheer consumerism that made Harvey — or maybe it was Nathan — suggest that they should go and get something from the snack-bar; this was a big catering monopoly with huge windows in which were arranged straw baskets and pottery from Hong Kong and fantastically shaped bottles of Italian liqueurs. It was, ‘What shall we have from the bar?’ — ‘A sandwich, a coffee?’ —’No, I don’t want any more of those lousy sandwiches.’ Effie went off to see what there was to buy, and came back with some chocolate. —

‘Yes, that’s what I’d like.’ — She had two large bars. The tank was now full. Edward paid the man at the pump. Effie got in the front with him. They were all in the car and Edward drove off. Effie started dividing the chocolate and handing it round. Nathan, Ruth and Harvey at the back, all took a piece. Edward took a piece and Effie started eating her piece.

With her mouth full of chocolate she turned and said to Harvey at the back, ‘It’s good, isn’t it? I stole it. Have another piece.’

‘You what?’ said Harvey. Ruth said something, too, to the same effect. Edward said he didn’t believe it.

Effie said, ‘Why shouldn’t we help ourselves? These multinationals and monopolies are capitalising on us, and two-thirds of the world is suffering.’

She tore open the second slab, crammed more chocolate angrily into her mouth, and, with her mouth gluttonously full of stolen chocolate, went on raving about how two-thirds of the world was starving.

‘You make it worse for them and worse for all of us if you steal,’ Edward said.

‘That’s right,’ said Ruth, ‘it really does make it worse for everyone. Besides, it’s dishonest.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Nathan said.

But Harvey didn’t wait to hear more. ‘Pull in at the side,’ he said. They were going at a hundred kilometres an hour, but he had his hand on the back door on the dangerous side of the road. Edward pulled in. He forgot, now, how it was that they reasoned Harvey out of leaving the car there on the autostrada; however, he sat in silence while Effie ate her chocolate inveighing, meanwhile, against the capitalist system. None of the others would accept any more of the chocolate. Just before the next exit Harvey said, ‘Pull in here, I want to pee. They waited for him while he went to the men’s lavatory. Edward was suspicious all along that he wouldn’t come back and when the minutes went by he got out of the car to have a look, and was just in time to see Harvey get up into a truck beside the driver; away he went.

They lost the truck at some point along the road, after they reached Florence. Harvey’s disappearance ruined Effie’s holiday. She was furious, and went on against him so much that Ruth made that always infuriating point: ‘If he’s so bad, why are you angry with him for leaving you?’ The rest of them were upset and uneasy for a day or two but after that they let it go. After all, they were on holiday. Edward refused to discuss the subject for the next two weeks; they were travelling along the Tuscan coast stopping here and there. It would have been a glorious trip but for Effie’s fury and unhappiness.

Up to the time Edward went to see Harvey in France on her behalf, she still hadn’t seen any more of him. They had no children and he had simply left her life, with all his possessions and the electricity bills and other clutter of married living on her hands. All over a bit of chocolate. And yet, no.

Ruth thought, and Edward agreed with her, that a lot must have led up to that final parting of Harvey from Effie.

Edward deeply envied Harvey, he didn’t know exactly what for. Or rather, perhaps he had better not probe deeply enough into the possibility that if Ruth wasn’t Ruth, and if they weren’t always so much in agreement, he would have liked to walk off, just like that. When Harvey talked of his marriage it was always as if he were thinking of something else, and he never talked about it unless someone else did first. And then, it was as if the other person had mentioned something quite irrelevant to his life, provoking from him a puzzled look, then a frown, an effort of concentration, it seemed, then an impatient dismissal of the apparently alien subject. It seemed, it seemed, Edward thought; because one can only judge by appearances. How could Edward know Harvey wasn’t putting on an act, as he so often implied that Edward did? To some extent we all put on acts.

Harvey began to be more sociable, for he had somehow dismissed the subject of Effie. He must have known Edward would bring up Effie later, that in fact all he had come for was to talk about her. Well, perhaps not all. Edward was an old friend. Harvey poured him a drink, and, for the moment Edward gave up trying to get on to the subject of Effie.

‘Tell me,’ said Harvey, ‘about the new film. What’s it called? What sort of part are you playing?’

‘It’s called The Love-Hate Relationship. That’s only provisional as a title. I don’t think it’ll sell as a film on that title. But it’s based on a novel called The Love-Hate Relationship. And that’s what the film is about. There’s a married couple and another man, a brother, in the middle. I’m playing the other man, the brother.’ (Was Harvey listening? He was looking round into the other room.)

‘If there’s anything I can’t stand it’s a love-hate relationship,’ Harvey said, turning back to Edward at last. ‘The element of love in such a relation simply isn’t worthy of the name. It boils down to. hatred pure and simple in the end. Love comprises among other things a desire for the well-being and spiritual freedom of the one who is loved.