Love, Again

When Bill arrived he had with him Molly, Mary Ford, and Sandy Grears, the lighting man. Sarah thought, while hot knives sliced her back, Of course, Bill and Molly are in the same hotel. And Sandy? He was a strong young man, capable, with the good looks of health, a recent addition because of the demands of Julie Vairon, and she had not had time to notice him much. It seemed he had invited the actors to his flat for lunch, and they had all accepted, and some had afterwards gone to Bill’s room, and then Sarah had so kindly rung Bill to ask him over. Sarah looked quietly (she hoped) at Bill while he came out with this, but he was only smiling, not looking at her. The four young people were smiling as they came in. In this context Mary Ford was one of them. They were a group she was excluded from as absolutely as if she were dreaming them, and they would vanish when she woke. Meanwhile, in a moment that was short for them but frozen for her in the intensity of observation, she saw them in a frame: Bill standing there in her living room, laughing, his hand on his hip, and the two young women’s bodies turned towards him and passive with desire. Their faces were all a hopeful waiting. (Mary Ford too? Interesting.) Sandy broke it, by flinging himself into a chair, saying as he saw Julie’s picture pinned there, ‘A home from home.’

And now they were all in the camaraderie of the theatre. But only in appearance, for Sarah was on that other shore, excluded, watching. She saw how Bill was dispensing himself in looks and smiles, and how the women suffered. They could not take their eyes off him, any more than she could. He was like a young glossy animal, a deer perhaps? She thought of the biblical scene where all the women, entranced by Joseph, cut their hands with their fruit knives, not knowing what they did, a scene reinterpreted by Thomas Mann – bound to be reset, always, in a thousand contexts, by life. The scene had the same slowed-down underwater quality as an erotic fantasy or an erotic dream.

A lot of chat went on, badinage. Messages were being sent out in that other language that so often accompanies the ostensible exchange. Bill was telling a long humorous tale of how in New York there had been a goodish interval between one engagement and another. ‘I was weeks out of work. The telephone didn’t ring for me once. Then, suddenly, it didn’t stop. I was offered four parts in a week. I didn’t know myself.’ He was looking not at the women but at Sandy as he spoke. Switching into cockney: ‘Reely I di’n’t, oo’d’v thort it, me, Bill Collins.’ And then in BBC standard, ‘The cynosure of all eyes.’ Mary Ford murmured, ‘Oh dear, I do wonder why.’ At once he despatched her a genuinely wounded glance, went red, laughed with pleasure, and at once recovered himself with ‘Four! All at once! Too much!’ And who was the fourth, Sonia? He tilted back his head and laughed, exposing his strong and perhaps too full throat, and from that position – arrogant, touch-me-not – defended himself with a diagnostic inspection of them all. ‘I chose this one, of course. I chose Julie. I couldn’t resist her. Besides, I’ve never been in France, let alone worked there. From dearth to plenty,’ he drawled, an American, malicious, and very far from the dear little boy. Molly listened to the real message here, and smiled. It was a small, tight smile. Mary Ford even nodded as she smiled. Sarah could feel that same smile on her own face. Then Bill smiled at Sandy and understanding sliced into Sarah and at the same time – surely? – into the other two women. Of course. This excessively beautiful young man…the theatre…New York. And yes, he had a girlfriend, he had said so. All young men have girlfriends and even wives, if feeling sufficiently threatened. These thoughts careered through Sarah’s head while she shouted silently at herself, For God’s sake, stop it!

The telephone rang. It was Stephen. He had been crying. He probably still was, for his voice was unsteady. ‘I want you to talk to me. Don’t say anything sensible, just talk. I’m going mad, Sarah.’

This was not an occasion when one might say, I’ll call you back. She told the young people (nearly middle-aged Mary still included with them?) that it was a call from New York about Abélard and Héloïse. She knew that Mary Ford knew this was untrue. Mary at once got up, and the others followed suit – Bill, she saw, and felt a quite excessive pleasure, with obvious reluctance. ‘We’ll leave you,’ said Mary. ‘I hope it’s not bad news. Not our American sponsor?’

‘No, it’s not our American sponsor.’

Mary Ford went off down the stairs, that solid young woman like a milkmaid in jeans – her joke. Sandy asked to use the bathroom. Molly went to the door, with Bill just behind her. Sarah, returning from showing Sandy to the bathroom, saw that Bill, unable to resist the waves of longing from Molly, had bestowed himself in an embrace. Molly was dissolved in it, eyes closed. Over Molly’s head Bill saw Sarah. He put Molly away from him; she went blindly off. Bill came to Sarah, slid his hand down her back, and kissed her. On the mouth. Nothing at all brotherly about this kiss. He breathed in her ear, ‘See you, Sarah,’ and slid a hot cheek against hers. Sandy could be heard coming from the bathroom, and before he appeared, Bill had quickly stepped back from the embrace and was going out. Sarah watched the two young men depart down the stairs.

She returned to her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed and listened to Stephen. He was talking in broken sentences. ‘What is this all about, Sarah? What is it? I don’t understand. If only I could understand it…’ He was on the other end of that line for perhaps half an hour. Silences. She could hear him breathe, long, sighing, almost sobbing breaths. Once she thought he had put down the telephone, but when she said, ‘Stephen?’ he said, ‘Don’t go, Sarah.’

Later he said, ‘I suppose I must go and help Elizabeth. I said I would. She does need me, you know. Sometimes I think I’m just an irrelevance, but then I see she relies on me. That’s something, I suppose.’ Then, ‘Sarah?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘And I rely on you. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking. I feel as if something has come up from the depths and grabbed me by the ankle.’

‘I understand, absolutely.’

‘You do?’ He was disquieted: solid and equable Sarah, that was her role.

Act Two ended with Julie’s miscarriage of Rémy’s baby, theatrically so much easier than the death of a small child, which, they knew, would have take the play over, have had the audience awash with tears. Besides, a child was always a nuisance at rehearsals, and if they took her to France she would need minders and nannies. Interesting, how much discussion went on about this. Some found the decision cynical. Henry particularly did. He said, ‘It’s much easier to believe that this child didn’t mean all that much to her, oh no, it was just one of those things, she was pregnant and then she had a miscarriage, too bad.’ Henry had a small son, carried photographs of his family, American-style, showed them to everybody and rang his wife every night. Andrew Stead certainly didn’t like it. He protested that his child had been callously disposed of. In life, he pointed out, Rémy had gone to the house in the forest to play with the child, had begged the family to see that the child was a reason for marriage. Then Bill reminded them that Julie had had a real miscarriage, of his child. Everyone forgot that, he complained. He was sure Paul minded about that miscarriage. Julie had said he did. The journals were consulted. Everyone was reading them. Sarah took her stand on what would ‘work’. The point was the effect on the townspeople. They said that Julie had killed her child. But in the play they say Julie induced a miscarriage by swimming in the forest pool’s icy water. The essential thing was that she must be blamed for the loss of the child. ‘And we can’t have two miscarriages – two deaths.’ Attempting an echo, from Oscar Wilde, she said, ‘To lose one child is sad, to lose two simply careless.’ She noted that the Americans did not laugh but the English did. The English in this context included Bill Collins. Sandy and Bill broke, on a single inspiration, into a recital of ‘Ruthless Rhymes’, an exuberant performance.

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