I advised Tom to emigrate to America as soon as possible. International events gave me a strong explicit foundation for my advice. From time to time we met for tea in the café and counted the growing roll of disasters.
‘A fortnight since Hitler took Memel, and the British Government has done nothing!’ said Tom.
‘Nothing,’ I echoed.
Alternately we received gloomy letters from Robert, which we read to each other. ‘If there isn’t a war by September we shall be refugees by November.’ I noticed the date had slipped on a month, but did not point it out to Tom. I thought there was every reason why he should move without delay.
As the afternoons lengthened, we were leaving the window before the lights came on in the market-place. Easter was approaching: blue fumes of coffee mingled with the spring dust that circulated in the wind. The twilight glimmered on hosts of flowers, on waxen Dutch tulips in exquisite shades. Some of the shoppers had discarded their top coats. The weeks were passing: we could feel it, with nostalgia for the summer and apprehension for our fate.
Tom had a newspaper spread before him.
‘Chamberlain Pledges Defence of Poland,’ he read aloud. ‘Balderdash! Poppycock!’ Excepting the glare of his greenish eyes, his head began to look red all over. ‘We shall give Poland away just like the rest. We shall see Chamberlain fly to Berlin in a golden aeroplane, accompanied by Peace in the shape of a dove.’
I smiled faintly and Tom blinked.
‘Why is it always a dove?’ he asked me. ‘The horse of peace would be better. Doves are stupid, back-biting creatures, but horses are noble and intelligent.’ He thumped his fist on the table. ‘I can’t stomach doves!’
The atmosphere lightened momentarily. Tom had the power of being able to hearten me. There was a good robust sense of life in him that made one’s troubles seem smaller – one’s own troubles, that is: it made his seem larger, absurdly larger.
We began to talk about writing. Tom was not working on a new novel, because of the prospect of his being uprooted. He declared that he was too busy, making preparations, to write: I agreed from observation that he was too busy – he was too busy pursuing Steve. I, on the other hand, had been brought to a standstill by Miss X.Y. She had still not written to me.
‘I think you ought to write to her,’ said Tom, always counselling action.
I shook my head. I already had some experience of reading unpublished manuscripts, and knew how maddening it was to be prodded by an impatient potential novelist.
Tom shrugged his shoulders, and then began to console me.
‘She’s bound to like it,’ he said. ‘She liked your first, and this is so very much better.’ He spoke with great authority. His tone reminded me of Robert, whom we both copied when we spoke with authority. ‘You’re one of the most gifted writers of our generation.’
I did not reply. I was making a feeble effort to discount some of Tom’s exaggeration – about five per cent of it.
‘She may have sent it to her own publisher,’ Tom said. ‘I would, in her place.’
I believed him. When he was not in the grip of one of his passions, Tom could be most sympathetic. He was capable of unconsidered acts of kindness. He could be momentarily free from envy and jealousy. It was for this that I valued his friendship. It is characteristic of our own egoism, that we value others for their selflessness.
‘It’s a remarkable novel.’
I did not speak. I found myself contrasting Tom’s attitude with Myrtle’s. Whenever we met, Tom asked me first of all if I had heard from Miss X.Y. Whenever I met Myrtle she failed to speak of it unless I raised the subject myself. I had given her the manuscript to read, and I strongly suspected that she had not read it all – my fourth novel, a class better than the other three, forty thousand words longer and nowhere near as funny. For Myrtle not to have read it all seemed to me next door to perfidy.
‘How,’ I asked myself, ‘can Myrtle love me and not want to read my books? How can a woman separate the artist from the man?’
The answer came pat. Women not only can: they do. And they have a simple old-fashioned way of selecting the bit they prefer. At the same time I have to admit that if Myrtle had made the other choice I should have accused her of not loving me for myself. Men want it both ways and I am surprised that women do not make a little more pretence of giving it – especially when they want to marry the men in question.
‘What are you thinking about?’ said Tom.
‘Meditating on incompatibility. On the utter incompatibility of two people who want different things and can’t accept compromise.’
Tom’s mouth curved knowingly. ‘Have you made up your mind if you want Myrtle to go with you to America or not?’
I stared at him. I had not, of course. And I did not like the question.
Tom began to smile. He made a smooth gesture with his hands. He said: ‘My dear Joe, there’s no need …’
‘If she likes to go under her own steam,’ I said, ‘I see no reason why she shouldn’t.’ I paused. ‘She can support herself.’
I made the latter remark with emphasis. Tom had been getting at me: this was my way of getting at him. I meant that our party should not include Steve.
Tom said equably: ‘It sounds perfectly sensible.’
‘I’m a sensible man,’ said I.
‘Have you told her definitely that you’re going?’
‘Not in so many words.’ I liked this question even less than the earlier one.
Tom shrugged his shoulders. He began to read the newspaper.
I began to think what I was going to do about Myrtle, which brings me to the point where I must complete my description of her.
Myrtle was very feminine, and I have described up to date those of her traits which everyone recognizes as essentially feminine. She was modest, she was submissive, she was sly; she was earthy in its most beautiful sense.
In addition to all this, Myrtle was shrewd, she was persistent, and she was determined. At the time I thought she was too young to know what she wanted. Looking back on it I can only reel at the thought of my own absence of insight and capacity for self-deception. She knew what she wanted all right: it is just possible that she was too young to know exactly how to get it.
Myrtle was a commercial artist, employed by a prosperous advertising agency in the town. In my opinion, based on her salary, she was doing well. This much at least I could see. At a hint of the intellectual Myrtle’s eyes opened in wonderment, at a hint of the salacious she blushed; and at a hint of business she was thoroughly on the alert.
Myrtle had been trained at the local School of Art. She had talent of a modest order – that is, it was greater than she pretended. Her drawings were quick, lively, observant without being reflective, pretty and quite perceptibly original. I, with her talent, would have been trying to paint like Dufy or somebody: not so, Myrtle. There was no masculine aspiring about her. Trying to paint like Dufy with her talent I should have been a masculine failure. Myrtle with feminine modesty and innocence took to commercial art.
Myrtle’s talent was not of the primary creative order that sometimes alarms the public: it was the secondary talent for giving a piquant twist to what is already accepted. She was made for the world of advertising. And she accepted her station in life as an artist as readily as she accepted her salary. My efforts to encourage her to rise above this station, which would have brought her little but misery, fortunately made no impression upon her whatsoever.
In her business dealings Myrtle showed the same flair. It was one of her gifts to accept quite readily men’s weaknesses. She was tolerant and down-to-earth about them: she fought against them much less than many a man does.
Myrtle’s employer was a middle-aged man who had introduced his mistress into a comparatively important position in the firm – to the envy and disapprobation of everyone but Myrtle. Myrtle accepted that such things were likely to happen, made the best of it, and showed good-natured interest in the other girl. In due course Myrtle found, to her genuine surprise, that the boss began to show much greater appreciation of her work.
So you see that Myrtle was by no means a poor, helpless girl who had fallen into the clutches of an unscrupulous, lust-ridden man. I may say that I saw it, plainly, while I sat in the café with Tom reading his doom-struck newspaper. I was behaving like a cad – admitted. But anyone who thinks behaving like a cad was easy is wrong.
As a result of Tom’s pressing me I made a definite plan. It was to include Myrtle in our party of refugees without marrying her.
I was convinced that Myrtle could earn a living in America. If only I could convince her! If only I could persuade her to act on the conviction! Then there was no reason why our relationship should not go on just as it was.
That was how I came to my plan. It was only too easy for Tom to say afterwards that I never intended to carry it out, that if Myrtle had agreed I should have been something between alarmed and appalled. I at least half-believed it. As a love affair declines one can still go on making plans for a future that does not exist. And that is what I was doing. For, alas! make no mistake, our relationship really was declining.
There is a kind of inevitability about the course of growing love: so there is about its decay. It comes from time flowing along. You can shut your eyes and pretend that you are staying still – and all the while you are just being carried along with your eyes shut. You can make plans – but if they do not fit in with the flow of time, you might just as well save yourself the trouble. So with Myrtle and me. Wanting something different and being unable in our hearts to compromise we were being carried along towards final separation. We appeared to be doing things of our own volition: we had our breaks and our reconciliations. Round and round we went, spinning together like planets round the sun. May I remind you that even the solar system is running down?
To begin with I thought I had had a stroke of luck. Myrtle rang me up to tell me that she had been promoted to a better job in the firm. In the evening she came round to my lodgings for us to drink a bottle of beer to her success. ‘Now,’ I said to myself, ‘now is the time!’
My landlady was clearing away the remains of my supper, when Myrtle sauntered into the room with an alluring whiff of cosmetics. The landlady retired promptly. Myrtle stared at me with a meek smirk of triumph. I kissed her. I wanted to know exactly what difference promotion made to her salary.
When questioned on matters of money, Myrtle always became quite unusually vague and elusive. I asked my questions, and somehow found myself listening to an elaborate account of intrigues in the firm, and adventures of Myrtle’s employer and his mistress.
When the turn ended I quietly returned to my aim. Myrtle’s face was still lit up with the pleasure of entertaining me. Instead of asking my questions all over again crudely, I led up to them by another spell of enthusiastic congratulation.
Something happened. Myrtle looked at me suddenly with a different expression.
Insensitively I forged ahead.
‘It really is wonderful!’ I said.
After remaining silent, Myrtle spoke in a hollow voice. Into her words she put sadness and reproach.
‘It isn’t really.’
‘But it is!’ I insisted. ‘It proves you’ll be able to get a job anywhere.’
Myrtle said nothing. She stood up and walked slowly across to the window. She stared out.
I was disturbed, but determination had got the better of me. I followed her, and stood beside her. I lived in the back room of a small semi-detached house. We were looking through a french window at a narrow strip of garden that sloped down to the garden of another semi-detached house in the next road. It was dusk.
I patted her. ‘The more money you earn, my girl, the better.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re an artist,’ I said encouragingly. ‘And Art must pay.’ I kissed her cheek. ‘We’re two artists,’ I said.
Myrtle did not speak. Being two artists is one thing; being husband and wife another, quite different. Then suddenly she turned on me and said with force:
‘You know that I don’t care.’
I looked down. Sad words, they were, falling upon my ear. When a woman tells a man she does not care about her career he ought to make for the door. It means one thing – the end of liberty for him.
I did not make for the door. I was overwhelmed by tenderness and I embraced her. It was no use making for the door because I still had to broach the subject of her taking a job in America.
I broached it. And it was a failure.
I suppose I was being singularly insensitive and obtuse, but I do not know what else I was to do. I thought: ‘How strange – she doesn’t realize that if she sticks to her career she can follow me to America.’ And I will not swear that I did not think: ‘And in America she might even succeed in marrying me.’
Alas! the flow of time asserted itself. I made matters worse.
‘The world’s going to be in a chaotic state,’ I said. ‘We shall all do best if we can fend for ourselves.’
Myrtle showed no sign of following me. The last thing she wanted to do was to think of fending for herself in a chaotic world. She was powerless to stand outside her personal affairs of the moment.
‘I’m sure you could get a job in America.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘If we all decide to go.’
‘Oh, that!’ Myrtle moved away from me, as if the idea were tedious and repugnant and unreal.
I realized that I had not the courage to tell her that we were definitely going to America. I thought: ‘I must tell her. I must!’ And I said:
‘I’m sure you’d be a great success in America.’
Myrtle tilted her head back to look at me. Her eyes were round and golden and unbearably appealing. I took her into my arms. You can see that I am both obtuse and a failure as a man.
The conversation went on a little further. I could hardly have been more inept, so I will not record it. I was direct, and for anyone as evasive and suggestible as Myrtle, directness was positively painful. My efforts to discover whether Myrtle’s firm had American customers led us nowhere. She replied to my questions in an abstracted tone. I was tormenting her, and that was literally all. We were both completely trapped in our own worlds, quite separate, quite cut off.
At last the conversation dwindled into nothing. I thought Myrtle suffered from a low vitality of interest. I suggested that we should go to the cinema.
Immediately Myrtle perked up. Low vitality of interest, laziness, instinctive self-preservation – which was it? I do not know. We went to the cinema.
That was what became of part one in my plan. I moved to part two. Robert was coming to visit his friends in the town. I asked him to lunch at the cottage on Sunday and invited Myrtle. Tom was out of the way: he was supposed to be taking Steve up to London to see The Seagull. I hoped that when Robert saw Myrtle without any distraction, he would deem her worthy to join our party of refugees.
I was anxious. Up to the present Robert had deemed Myrtle distinctly unworthy. On having her presented to him he had commented that his remarks appeared to bounce off her forehead. I was willing to admit that Myrtle had an uncogitating, unreflective air; but Robert’s comment seemed to me both unkind and untrue. Being Robert’s comment, it had to be accepted all the same. I was hurt. Myrtle and I may have been quite separate, quite cut off, and all the rest of it: but when Robert said his remarks bounced off her forehead, she was my mistress, my love, my choice and part of me.
I had difficulty in persuading Myrtle to come to the cottage at all while Robert was there.
‘You won’t want me,’ she said. I think she would rather I assumed she was jealous of my friendship for Robert than that she was frightened of him.
Myrtle was abashed by the idea of Robert’s being an Oxford don, which she associated, wrongly, not with intellectual but with social superiority. In the society of people she considered her social superiors, Myrtle was thoroughly ill at ease: she was only really completely free with her social inferiors. Robert saw her at her worst.
‘Of course I want you, darling,’ I said. And encouragingly: ‘Robert will want to see you.’
Myrtle stared at me in disbelief. And I thought fate had been hard on me in sending a woman who could not meet my friends.
Nevertheless Myrtle arrived at the cottage bright and smiling on Sunday morning.
‘I passed Robert. He’s walking.’ She glanced at me slyly. ‘I told him I couldn’t stop because you were waiting for me.’
I felt more cheerful. Robert came. We walked over to the Dog and Duck and had a most enjoyable lunch. Robert and I talked about literature. Myrtle was impressed. She drank an unduly large quantity of beer. Robert was impressed.
We walked home in good spirits, to find Tom in the cottage. He had driven back from London that morning. Robert greeted him affectionately, and so did Myrtle. I did not.
‘I have a letter I wanted you and Joe to see.’ Tom pulled the document out of his pocket and passed it round.
The letter was from one of the American professional associations of chartered accountants. Tom had been writing about jobs. I did not look at Myrtle. I had warned Robert not to tell Myrtle that our plans were already far advanced, but I had never dreamed that Tom would appear. He and Robert sat down and began openly to discuss our project.
If it had been possible for Myrtle to doubt our intention in the beginning, the possibility must have entirely disappeared in five minutes. I was too alarmed to say anything.
Tom had completed his five years of professional practice as an associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and attached importance to being elected to fellowship. There had been a hitch because he had seen fit to quarrel with the senior partner of his firm; but he computed that the formalities would be complete by June. He proposed to leave England immediately afterwards.
The plan for me was to follow as soon as the summer school term ended. Robert had ordered himself to come last. Tom argued with Robert about cutting it fine. I watched Myrtle. I was more than surprised that Tom and Robert did not see the effect they were having on her. She was taking no part in the conversation, and it was plain that she was too wretched even to follow it properly.
They went on to argue about how Robert and I should earn our living, by writing or by teaching. Neither of us wanted to teach. Tom was slightly huffed and pointed out a paragraph in the Sunday Times, which we had already seen, about a slump in the book trade. ‘One bookseller this week reports no sales whatever.’
Robert suggested that he and I might have to live on Tom to begin with: the whole talk had been high-spirited instead of grave, and now Robert induced an air of mischief and nonchalance. Myrtle looked as if she was going to burst into tears. She got up and went into the scullery.
I followed her, expecting to find her weeping. She was taking down cups and saucers.
‘I thought I should like some tea,’ she said, in a flat voice.
I stroked her hair. Suddenly she looked at me and I was accused of heartlessness and treachery. I turned away without speaking and went back to the others.
After tea Tom drove Robert away. Myrtle and I were left alone. I did not know how to look her in the face. There was nothing I could say. The damage was done. We cycled back into town without discussing it.
This was our last meeting before the Easter holidays. I arranged to ring up Myrtle as soon as I returned to the town. I told myself she might have got over the damage in the meantime. I was apprehensive.