them youâll still have more than you can handle. Youâre not sly enough. You let these people make mincemeat of you. Theyâve only got to stick a pin in and you jump a mile. And they always get what they came for, whether itâs the posh papers or the gutter press. At your age you should know better.â
He spread butter over black rye-bread. âAt thirty Iâd have been as cunning as hell, and was, but whatâs the point any more? Iâm getting old enough not to bother about disguising my feelings.â
âToo famous, you mean. Itâs gone to your head.â
The house was stonily quiet, children at school, others either asleep or set on various pastimes. A cow moaned from the neighbouring field. âWhose side are you on?â
Whenever they argued it was as if a third and impartial person were present, taking down all that they said to each other â as if they would be ultimately judged on this. She stood up to change his plate. âSee what I mean? Yours, but youâre too locked in your fame to know it.â
âFame!â He spat. âI donât have any.â
âYou do.â
âI ignore it.â
âYou donât. You canât. I wish you did, but theyâve got you.â
âSo what? Is my work any the worse for it?â He hated the word âworkâ and knew that she knew it, and had made him use it, by angering him on this touchy subject. Art was not work, since it was something you were not forced to do in order to earn a living.
âNot yet it isnât,â she said.
âIt wonât be. When Iâm working Iâm completely myself.â
âAnd when youâre not working,â she went on, eyes gleaming because a real quarrel was coming up, âweâve all got to live with you.â
âYou mean you have. Why donât we keep personal relationships out of this?â
âYou canât live without them, thatâs why.â
He ate his bread and Stilton, cut up an apple. âStalemate. Letâs pack it in. Divide the spoils and go our different ways.â
She sat down and looked straight at him, a bad sign, portent of saying something unforgivable and bitter. âIf you want to give in, you can. But I wonât surrender to all this muck youâve dropped into. If you want to go, go. Kill yourself. If you left me youâd never paint another stroke, and if you donât believe me, try it. Weâve suffered too much to fly apart just when the going gets difficult. It might have been possible before, but not now, not any more.â
âI donât want to leave you, but what gives you the idea that youâre my strength and mainstay?â
âBecause I am, though not any more than you are mine, I admit. Youâve got me, but youâve also got your freedom. I donât ask questions when you go to London for weeks at a time, so if you canât manage in those limits you wouldnât exist in any others.â
She boiled his coffee, poured it out. âWeâve got such a bond, Albert. It would be a pity if you smashed it. Weâve burned in this love and torment since we were almost kids, grown up while our own kids were growing up. If I were sentimental I might call a lot of it suffering, but there was too much love for that. Itâs made me hard as well, but in a way that makes me sure of myself, and the more sure I am of myself the more I know that being together is the only thing that matters. Weâve never killed each other in a rotten married way. Weâve been very big about it, right above the rest of the world, and it canât be shown to anyone else, or passed on, but we own it far more than this piece of property weâve bought. Itâs valuable and unique. It used to be the suffering that ennobles, but now itâs the sort that degrades. So ruin it if you like with your black heart. You can destroy your part of it, but
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