Читать книгу The Killer and the Slain - Hugh Walpole - Страница 8

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That marriage is a strange business I suppose every married man and woman will in their hearts admit. Even the happiest must realize that incomprehensible mixture of intimacy and non-intimacy so that at one moment your partner seems a piece of yourself and at another it is as though you had never seen him or her before.

So, at least, it was with us, or with myself, I had better more truthfully say. My passionate desire for her remained because she never fully responded to it. This side of our married relationship she treated with a motherly irony, permitting my indulgence, as a mother gives a railway train to her little son. 'If you really feel like this,' she seemed to say, 'the least I can do is to grant you some pleasure. It doesn't hurt me and you like it--so why not?'

I realized, I suppose, from the beginning that I was not, as she had frankly told me, her type. And that was neither her fault nor mine. But I was kept for ever on the edge of unsatisfied desire--so near and yet so far! And I would lie beside her at night, while she slept so calmly, longing, praying, that one day she would of her own accord turn to me and show me that she loved me!

In all other aspects our marriage was for a long time most happy.

My mother and Eve fortunately liked one another from the start, and achieved an underground understanding: it was almost an alliance against myself--a sort of intimation that they were both fond of me, but that I was a poor fish really.

I did not resent this. I was of the type of man who worships one or two women to idolatry. Eve might do anything to me, say anything to me, think anything of me that she pleased. I did not mind how much she ill-treated me (which she never did). There was something masochistic in me with regard to her. And so my old mother very quickly took something of Eve's tone to me. I had always been a devoted son, but now, when she saw that I was on my knees to my wife, she thought that it would be amusing if I were on my knees to her too. She had lost now the use of her legs, and she would sit in her chair, a lace cap that with old-fashioned fancy she wore, on her head, a faint moustache that was often slightly moist, and her dark restless eyes regarding me with love and tyranny. Her hands were still lovely and delicate, her little body taut and straight, and when I saw the two women, the old lady in her chair, and Eve, with always that suggestion of the Quaker in her dress, her beautifully proportioned body that had been so often in my arms but that never truly yielded to me, then I would tremble, and fire would run in my veins, and I would be happy and miserable both at the same time.

To speak of more practical matters, it was at once clear that Eve had a genius for business. She was better than my father had ever been. She had a real love, too, for the things that she handled and, although when she first met me she knew nothing about antiques, by reading books and studying the things that came our way, she soon was far ahead of me in knowledge.

She quickly became a well-known figure at local sales. She specialized in Victorian furniture, china--so many things that we had all for so long thought hideous. And she had an especial liking for Pre-Raphaelite drawings and paintings. She found water-colours by J. M. Strudwick and Arthur Hughes, and Frederick Sandys and Matthew Lawless, for almost nothing at all.

She said that there would be one day a great revival in these artists, and I can see that already her prophecy is beginning to come true. She would say, laughingly, that she was herself a Pre-Raphaelite, and that the old part of Seaborne was Pre-Raphaelite. Sometimes on a day when the sea gleamed in purple and green, and the old decrepit buildings were coloured by the light in sharp, bright detail, I could see what she meant.

But it was on the business side that she was wonderful. She was marvellous with customers, studying their characters, charming to one, sharp with another, leading them on from one thing higher and higher, until they purchased far beyond their original intention, and all so quietly and with so much grace and friendliness, that they would return to our shop again and again, simply for the pleasure of seeing her.

This all meant that I left the shop more and more to her and devoted myself, with an obsession, to my writing. The novel upon which I was working during the first year of our marriage, The Gridiron, became an obsession to me. The theme, very briefly, was this: A wife is tortured with love for her husband, who does not care for her, and is persistently unfaithful to her. She knows in the depths of her far-seeing soul that he will one day hate her so deeply that he will murder her. She is fascinated by the thought that he will murder her, and is like a rabbit before a snake. She does not attempt to leave him. Ultimately he does murder her, and is then tortured on the gridiron--not of his conscience, for he suffers from no regrets or self-reproaches--of his new wife's hatred of himself. He adores her, she hates him. He commits suicide.

This grim story seemed neither grim nor true to Eve, with whom I discussed it. She thought it simply silly. She had a brave and practical mind, was afraid of no one and nothing.

'Women don't just wait to be murdered, however idiotic they are,' she said.

'You talk,' I answered, 'as though I had been writing about you. I've chosen someone exactly opposite--weak, yielding, gentle, loving.'

I hoped that this last word would provoke her into protesting that she did love me, but she paid no attention to it, only went on:

'Besides, John, you're the last man in the world to write about the feelings of a murderer; you who wouldn't hurt a fly.'

'Oh, I don't know,' I remember protesting. 'If I get an idea into my head, I can be very obstinate.'

'What's obstinacy got to do with murder?' she asked.

'A great deal. Don't you remember the other day, when Mr. Fortescue, of Four Trees, had the Burne-Jones drawing for "The Forge of Cupid" that you wanted? How, for several days, before he gave in, you could think of nothing else, could scarcely sleep?'

'Ah, that was different! What has a Burne-Jones drawing got to do with murder?'

I remember looking at her and thinking that, in some ways, she was a very stupid woman. It was imagination that she lacked, and in that there was a deep division between us.

'Both are lusts,' I answered. 'Lust of hate. Lust of possession.'

And I remember that she looked at me a little contemptuously, saying, 'Lust! What an odd word for you to use, John. You know nothing about lust--and you couldn't hate anybody for ten minutes together.'

Oh, couldn't I? I thought of telling her about Tunstall. But I did not. How strangely little, even after daily and nightly intimacies, two human beings know one another!

I was obsessed by The Gridiron. Poor Gridiron that nobody knows, nobody cares for. But how real both that man and that woman were to me! How thoroughly I understood their hates and their fears! It seemed to me that they were both part of me, both murderer and murderee!

I had been long fascinated by the life, personality and works of George Gissing; Morley Roberts's life-novel about him, writings on him by H. G. Wells, who had been very generously his friend; novels like New Grub Street, The Odd Women, A Life's Morning (in spite of its false ending), and then his momentary escape into his longed-for world of rest and light--By the Ionian Sea, Henry Ryecroft--all this touched me deeply. He seemed like a brother of mine. I felt that if I had known him I could have comforted him, brought him perhaps to Seaborne and cared for him. The grey dreariness of his novels was akin to me: his obsession with women I understood. I loved the man and greatly admired his art, which seemed to me a unique thing. I tried to persuade Eve to read Demos and The Odd Women, but she could not endure these books.

She enjoyed romantic novels. She wanted a happy ending. She repeated the formula as though no one had ever uttered it before.

'There's enough in life that's depressing and difficult, without books being depressing too.'

Then came the month of March 1929--a month that I am never likely to forget, however long I live.

Eve was about to give birth to our first child. She was as sensible about this as she was about everything else. She did not especially wish for a child--she had not, I think, very much of the maternal in her--but if there must be one she would do her best by it.

I was meanwhile tortured. I had never loved her so passionately. The mother of my child! The mother of my child! Our child! I imagined, of course, every kind of disaster! She looked as virginal, as slender of body as she had done on the day of our first meeting. It seemed to me an awful ordeal through which she must pass. I tried to conceal my terror, for both she and my mother would despise me for it.

The day approached. On March 10th the pains began. About three in the afternoon I walked down to the Lower Town and strode up and down the old landing-stage. Looking up from the grey-cotton waters of the sea I saw, standing close beside me, James Oliphant Tunstall.

Yes, it was Tunstall.

It wasn't true that I had ever forgotten him, but now, when I saw him, it was as though he had never left me. And with that sense of his accompanying me came a sudden fear that was almost a sickness.

I stood 'rooted to the spot' as cheap novelists say. Yes, but it's a good phrase all the same. I was rooted, staring, terrified. Of what? Of whom?

You must remember that I was in a state of nervous tension on that afternoon, expecting the birth of my child at any moment, thinking of my adored, my beloved, and her approaching torture.

Tunstall stood grinning. Then he held out his hand.

'Well, if it isn't Jacko!'

I shook his hand, which was soft and plump. I saw that he wore on the little finger of his right hand a green scarab set in gold.

He was looking very prosperous, wearing dark red-brown tweeds and a dark-red tie, his face ruddy brown, thick-set, inclined to be stout and, although he was exactly my own height, looking shorter than I because of my slimness. His thick eyebrows stood out from his ruddy face, and there, just as they had always been, were his cheeky laughing eyes and lascivious lips. He seemed to swallow me up, in the old horrible way, as I looked at him.

'Well, if it isn't Jacko!'

'Hallo, Tunstall! What are you doing here?'

'Tunstall be damned! It's your old friend Jimmie come back to you again!' Exactly as in the old way he was close to me, his thigh pressed against mine, his hand on my arm. How I hated that contact! But I couldn't move. I waited until he released me and leant back against the railing that they had put up on the old pier to prevent people from falling into the water.

He leaned back, his hands pressed down on the green metal, grinning at me.

'How are you, Tunstall? Come on a visit?'

'Now Tunstall be blowed. I'm Jimmie to you and always will be.'

'Jimmie, then.'

'That's better. A visit, Jacko? No, my dear boy. I'm here for keeps.'

My heart contracted. I could feel the palms of my hands go damp.

'Yes,' he went on. 'We shall see plenty of one another. I always said you couldn't ever escape me and you shan't. Now confess--haven't you thought of me sometimes?'

'No. I can't say that I have.' (How vivid, how horribly, horribly vivid is this conversation to me now!)

'O, come now. That isn't true. You've thought of me often. You know you have. And I've thought of you. You were the boy I was fondest of at school, you know.'

'Well, I wasn't fond of you,' I said, making at last a movement. 'And now I must be getting on--'

'Wait, wait,' he cried, his eyes watching me mockingly. 'We've been apart so long and you want to leave me? What have you been doing with yourself all this time? As a matter of fact I know. I've been down here three days and you were the first person I asked about. Your father's dead and you run the shop. Or rather your wife does. A very nice practical woman I'm told. I'm keen to meet her. And you've published a novel. You see, I know all about you. As a matter of fact I bought the book. It wasn't my sort of novel--too highbrow altogether--but there was a lot of me in it.'

'There wasn't any of you in it,' I answered indignantly.

'Oh yes, there was! Don't you think you can write a book without my being in it.'

All this time he had never taken his eyes off my face and he seemed to get a great deal of pleasure and amusement out of staring at me.

Then he said:

'Don't you want to know what's been happening to me all this time?'

'I don't particularly care.'

'That is a rude thing to say. All the same I'll tell you. I'm quite a successful painter. Hadn't you heard? Especially with portraits. I paint people as they'd like to be. That's the thing. That's what you ought to do. What's the use of writing these books that nobody wants to read? Simply wasting your time. I've made quite a bit of money, and, like a wise man, I married a woman with money.

'So I've come down here and taken a house--Sandy View--at the end of Chessington Street. There I'm going to be--half the year anyway. And the sooner you and your wife come to see us the better I'll be pleased.'

I noticed then for the first time that he had probably been drinking too much. Not that he was drunk. Certainly not. He was completely in command of his faculties, but there was a slight exalted shining in his eyes, a faint breath emanating from him, a suggested, rather than positive, uncertainty about his body.

Now I have always had, foolishly I am sure, a terror of drunkenness. I am myself a teetotaller, not from any virtuous or health reasons but simply because I loathe spirits and don't really care very much for wine. I am, I must repeat, really terrified of anyone whom drink has deprived of his senses. I have been on occasions in company with men so drunk that they knew neither what they were doing nor saying, and these flushed incoherent creatures reeling and tumbling, clutching at one's body, slobbering in one's face--how I have loathed them, run a mile to avoid them! Tunstall was not, of course, drunk, but there was the spirit of drunken recklessness about him. I felt it and trembled.

Meanwhile I must get away. Even now my child might be born. But I had one thing to say.

'Look here, Tunstall.'

'Jimmie!'

'Well, Jimmie then. I think we had better be quite clear from the start. If you are going to live here part of the year as you say, I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. I should much prefer not to visit at your house and that you should not visit at mine. I didn't like you when we were boys. I used to tell you but you wouldn't believe me. Too conceited, I suppose. We had nothing in common then. We have nothing in common now.' (I am repeating the words as I write them down. 'We have nothing in common . . .' Oh God! to whom, to what am I saying them?) 'Apart from the way I feel about you,' I went on, 'we are in different spheres. My wife and I keep a little shop. You are a successful painter with a fine house. You have money. We haven't. We couldn't possibly keep up with your scale of living. So good-bye. Keep to your world. We'll keep to ours.'

I held out my hand. He took, held it, and drew me a little towards him. I tried to draw my hand away. I could not. My whole body trembled. Now that I was close to him I smelt his breath, hot and whisky-tainted, quite distinctly.

'No, Jacko,' he said, laughing. 'It isn't as easy as that--not nearly as easy. I have you in my hand just as I had when we were at school. You say that you don't like me and never did. That may be. I'm the other side of yourself, Jacko, the side you're not very proud of. Stevenson wrote a story about that once. But this isn't Jekyll and Hyde. That was just a story. This is real, Jacko--a real alliance. We're like the Siamese twins and always were.'

He was suddenly serious, patted me on the back, lounged lazily away from me.

'Forget my nonsense, Jacko. I was never able to help teasing you, you know. But to pretend that we won't see one another! What a hope! Why, as I've told you, you were the first person I asked about when I came back. And you'll like my wife. She's good, like you, and she's fond of me just as you are. I've a sort of idea your wife will like me--even if you don't. And you must see my pictures. I'll paint your portrait. There's an idea! I'll take weeks over it and make a good one. So-long, Jacko--see you soon!'

He turned his back on me and walked out to the edge of the landing-stage.

I found my wife in labour. Doctor Wellard, an untidy giant of a man, but a good doctor, said she would do all right. I behaved in the traditional stage-and-novel father manner, pacing the little sitting-room, listening, going to the door, digging my fingers into the palms of my hands, sweating at the brow.

At seven-thirty exactly Wellard opened the door and told me that I was the father of a son and that mother and child were doing grandly. My son! Ah! How I had prayed for a son! Perhaps for the first time in my life I was really proud of myself. Later I went up to visit Eve. There she was lying, exhausted, looking more virginal than ever, and as comfortably unagitated as though nothing had happened. How I adored, how I worshipped her! Now not only my beloved wife but also the mother of my son.

Her voice was weak but yet contained that tinge of irony that was always there when she spoke to me.

'Poor John! Have you been anxious? It wasn't bad--I had chloroform. Aren't you proud of yourself?'

'I'm proud of you,' I said.

'I don't know. Is it anything to be proud of--to bring a son into a world like this? Now go away. I'm sleepy.'

Before I went to my bed I saw my son. He was hideous, of course, but my heart went out to him. I had now three persons in the world to love: my mother, my wife, my son. It was enough. If they were happy and cared for me I asked for nothing more.

But that night, in my dreams, Tunstall was standing beside me. He stretched out his hand and held my arm.