That summer, Liz was discovering for herself what had been written about, a generation or two before – that all resolutions are taken in a mood which will not last. People thought she had a strong will, but to herself it seemed to operate only in intermittences and often left her limp and unavailing. After her father’s magisterial deployment of the intricate defensive, she heard no more from him through the weeks of August, and wasn’t confident enough to ask again. As for telling Julian that he had to marry her – she couldn’t do it now, whatever resolution she had made, any more than in the past.
She needed support from somewhere, and it was in that state, more or less carelessly, she telephoned James Ryle. She might have said that he seemed warmer and more forthcoming than most of her father’s friends. She didn’t give it any more consideration than that, and asked, could she come and see him, she wanted some advice.
Ryle, taken by surprise, pleasurable surprise, fixed an appointment for that same night, and sitting in his drawing-room in Whitehall Court became irked, or perhaps apprehensive, when half past five arrived, the minutes ticked by, and the woman hadn’t come.
A quarter of an hour late she rang the bell, began apologising in her firm and unapologetic fashion: ‘I’m so sorry, Lord Ryle, there wasn’t a cab for miles–’ But then the meeting disintegrated. Though her assurance wasn’t dented, she had entered fast, as though to make amends, and within fractions of a second glissaded on a mat which slipped on the parquet floor. She cannoned off Ryle, who had been greeting her a foot or so away, and then, elegance all gone, singularly clumsy like a child finishing one of its first walks, she stopped herself with both palms pushing against a looking-glass hanging on the wall. From there she gazed back over her shoulder at Ryle with a smile meaningless, abashed, even fatuous, as of someone who had run to catch an underground train and seen the doors closing in her face.
Ryle gave his loud unrepressed laugh. She said: ‘Oh dear,’ and for once he saw her face not intent, not so good-looking either. Shortly afterwards Ryle’s son Francis called in to take a book, and saw the two of them, Ryle in one armchair, Liz in another, Ryle smiling, Liz concentrating, remarkably like teacher and pupil. Francis, who had never met her, thought she was a decorative woman, and wondered what was happening, particularly when his father appeared both elated and impatient for them to be left alone.
Actually what was happening was, on the face of it, simple, just an elderly man listening to a young woman’s confidence. She had imagined that she was going to ask him businesslike questions about her father’s money. She started with one or two, dropped them as though that wasn’t anywhere near the point, and fluidly, spontaneously burst into talking of her conflict over Julian. Often she set out to say the same things as she had told her father – and yet it sounded different in kind. She might have been crying or laughing: her eyes snapped, there was a crackle of devilment about her. Ryle got the impression that she didn’t have close women friends. She talked as though this was the first time she had let her splintered temper, her pining, all break loose.
‘How do I get out of it?’ and then, almost as her next words: ‘Can you give me one sane reason why he shouldn’t marry me?’ As to the first question, Ryle said he could tell her all the old recipes, don’t see him, don’t hear about him, don’t write, but he had never known anyone act on them. But that was the only piece of sarcasm he felt like making.
He didn’t want to intrude, he was listening to her story, picking up fragments, hints which tantalised, explicable only if one had installed a microphone for their bedroom talk. Ryle had made his own observations of Julian during the court hearing. Unwillingly he had smiled at his gibes, unable to recall in all his existence having met a man so cool, so uninfluenceable. He had gathered more about him than Hillmorton had, and liked him less. When Hillmorton in the Lords’ Bar had expressed mild concern and Ryle had echoed it – which the other had noticed – his was more than mild. This man was self-absorbed, not affected by others, but constantly aware of his effect on them and good at using it. He was solipsistic, if you like, no feeling except for himself, but nerves responding to the women round him, sensitive to sensations. That was a powerful combination. It was obvious enough that he basked, cool and sultan-like, in domination.
But Liz was telling Ryle, or not so much telling him as conveying, something different. Her actual words about Julian were very much those she had used to her father. She was honest and direct, not the person to alter what she thought to be true because she was talking to another man. Nevertheless, without realising she changed her tone. With her father, detached, amused by other people’s sexual tastes, she had spoken as though she scarcely liked her man but was simply in the clutch of an obsessive passion. She didn’t know much about Ryle, but somehow she talked to him as though he were a man of feeling who cared what a man and woman felt for each other, as she felt for this one.
It was part of her honesty and directness that she often misled herself. She was proud of seeing with clear eyes. Not only with her father, but in her own mind, she found words for a cold view of Julian, not only cold but disparaging. Of course he wasn’t to be trusted. Of course he was mercenary beyond any limit. (And yet, saying exactly the same to Ryle, she added that he was also strictly honest with money, never borrowed from anyone and hadn’t taken a penny from her, except perhaps by letting her pay for a taxi or a meal – and though she had produced the clinical statement, by now she was speaking with urgency, begging Ryle to believe.) Of course Julian never did anything he didn’t want to. Of course he wasn’t any good.
Those were the clinical statements. That was what she thought she felt. It didn’t take a man as alert as James Ryle to learn that she felt something nearer the complete opposite. What she most deeply felt for Julian – against most of her own utterances, and, it is true, against most of the objective evidence – was close to passionate respect.
As they talked, excitement in the air, talking about emotion inducing its own emotion, Ryle was learning something else about her. She wasn’t much as she appeared. No, that was being too soft-minded. For nearly all her workaday life, she was as she appeared, positive, decisive as her hard clear profile, not diffident about her own authority. She would have made – possibly was, for all Ryle knew – a good business executive. She was a shade sharper and more domineering with him than most women of her age would be with a man of his. Nevertheless there was a fissure. Underneath, in her longings, there was something not so much tender as abject. She was born to be a pushover for a man like Julian, and no doubt that was why he had selected her at sight.
There had been another love affair on the same pattern, she more loving than loved, surrendering from the beginning, the self-chosen victim. Repetitive patterns tell their own story, Ryle had accepted long ago. What you want is what happens to you. Would he have seen this defenceless quality in Liz if he hadn’t also seen that custard pie scene when she slipped on the mat, and then the smile of absurd humiliation, disproportionate to any such occasion, as humiliated as Adam Sedgwick when in disability he butted against a door? Any indication helped, any indication however silly, Ryle thought later, but in time he couldn’t have missed the rift within her. Only a fool trusted his guesses too far, but of that he was moderately sure.
Talking about emotion induced emotion. There was a charm for Liz in speaking of the man she loved, analysing her love to another man. Her love in its present state might not be bringing her happiness, but talking of it that evening was very near a happiness, as though telling someone what she wanted made it seem that it was about to happen – or in some timeless universe had already happened.
It was Ryle, not she, who broke the charm. Abruptly, almost brusquely, he said: ‘You came to find out something definite, didn’t you? Didn’t you mention something about your father’s money?’
She was surprised, disappointed, thwarted at being cut off short. With a frown, she stared across at the seamed expressionless face.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Well, go on.’
She collected herself. ‘I should like some idea of how rich my father is. Do you know?’
Roughness put aside, Ryle had once more taken on his easy, comfortable, avuncular manner.
‘He’s never told me. He’s not the most confiding of men.’
‘Haven’t you any idea?’
‘I can only guess.’
‘Then please guess.’
That was her peremptory tone. Ryle said that he expected a good deal of the estate was in land. Land had appreciated wildly, but this was Barmecide money. Presumably Hillmorton wouldn’t sell it. Still, if one assumed that his grandfather was well-to-do at the turn of the century, which was almost certain, it was difficult to imagine him being worth less than a couple of hundred thousand in 1900, probably twice as much – then it would have taken consummate mis-management not to be many times richer by now.
‘You can work it out for yourself,’ said Ryle.
That was near enough to Liz’s own estimate.
‘Mind you,’ said Ryle, ‘he might possess in theory several million pounds, but he wouldn’t have much of that as disposable cash.’
‘But he could afford to detach a slice of it in my direction. He needn’t wait till it’s too late.’
Liz put in another sharp question. Had Ryle any notion of how her father was leaving his money? None at all.
‘You really haven’t heard anything?’
‘I said before,’ Ryle replied, ‘he’s not the most confiding of men, now is he?’
Liz, picking up her gloves, said: ‘I’ve been taking too much of your time, Lord Ryle. Thank you for putting up with me.’
She hadn’t recovered from being cut off short. She had the ratty air of one who felt she had outstayed her welcome. She gave him a firm, commanding smile. It might have belonged to a different face from the abject one which had moved him an hour and a half before.
After the hall door had closed behind her Ryle walked across the room, gazed with blank eyes to the lights across the river, and then slumped down on the sofa. It was a let-down, now that she had gone. It had been an impulse – unpremeditated, leaping out of caution – to break it up. They were running into danger. Not for her, she was in enough danger of her own. But for him. It was an idiot’s trick, letting your imagination crystallise over a woman totally involved with another man.
Yes, attending the court hadn’t been just an elderly acquaintance giving her support. He had thought of her, not trying to interdict himself, in her absence, and that was an idiot’s trick too. Yet for a while, before the thoughts seeped up too often, it had been a pleasure, getting on towards a joy, to recognise the springs of feeling. They could still transform the day. Hillmorton, who was not uninterested, had noticed that something was happening: that was the meaning of his glance during the late night sitting.
In the let-down Ryle was taking a kind of comfort. This was a classical trap, a touch of comedy for anyone watching from outside. Let the feeling go on crystallising, and there came a point of no return. One didn’t learn much from one’s experience, but one learned a little. He was warned in time, he was managing to stop it. Otherwise he would be in a state of hopeless love, so ridiculous that he couldn’t even admit it, more ridiculous than being hopelessly in love when young.
He might be congratulating himself too early. When a man has told himself that he has escaped the danger, the danger might already have gripped him too tight to escape at all. That thought didn’t cross Ryle’s mind, or was kept out. He had some faith in his own resources. He was practical, he had an active temperament. He would search round among women who used to be fond of him. That might not satisfy his soul, but it could take away one part of the tension. He ought to have done it before, then he wouldn’t have been so vulnerable.
It would have been no different if Liz hadn’t been totally wrapped up elsewhere. She would have been much too young, no future for her, not much for him. Had he, without accepting it, been already thinking of her, when he was brooding on women too young for him in this room the autumn before? She wasn’t even really in his taste. Too sharp, too narrow, not free enough. He hadn’t been meeting many women, it was a chance and a pity that she had come along. She wouldn’t have suited him, nor would he have been much good to her.
In all that he was probably right. There was another reflection which wouldn’t have consoled him. The chances of possible partners whom one met produced a sense of fatality: so ought the chances of possible partners whom one didn’t meet. The division bell had rung just as Ryle was about to be introduced to Jenny Rastall. As it happened, and it was pure chance, they didn’t speak to each other that night, and were not to meet again until it was too late, though they would see each other across a room.
It was possible that they were, as Ryle’s old mother would have said, made for each other. No one could predict that for certain, there was no one alive who knew them both well, and there was only one test, which they alone could have proved. From their habits, affections, tastes and natures, though, it seems more likely than not that they could have fitted one another: certainly more completely than with anyone they actually found. Which, in his mood that evening Ryle, not a specially sardonic man, would have considered not a specially good joke.