all. ’
‘ I ’ ll write. Every day. ’
‘ Yes. ’
‘ It ’ s a sort of test, really. We ’ ll see how much we miss each other. ’
‘ I know what it ’ s like when people go away. It ’ s agony for a week, then painful for a week, then you begin to forget, and then it seems as if it never happened, it happened to someone else, and you start shrugging. You say, dingo, it ’ s life, that ’ s the way things are. Stupid things like that. As if you haven ’ t really lost something for ever. ’
‘I shan ’ t forget. I shan ’ t ever forget. ’
‘ You will. And I will. ’
‘ We ’ ve got to go on living. However sad it is. ’
After a long time she said, ‘ I don ’ t think you know what sadness is. ’
We overslept in the morning. I had deliberately set the alarm late, to make a rush, not to leave time for tears. Alison ate her breakfast standing up. We talked about absurd things; cutting the milk order, where a library ticket I had lost might be. And then she put down her c off ee-cup and we were standing at the door. I saw her face, as if it was still not too late, all a bad dream, her grey eyes searching mine, her small puffy cheeks. There were tears forming in her eyes, and she opened her mouth to say something. But then she leant forward, desperately, clumsily, kissed me so swiftly that I hardly felt her mouth; and was gone. Her camel-hair coat disappeared down the stairs. She didn ’ t look back. I went to the window, and saw her walking fast across the street, the pale coat, the straw-coloured hair almost the same colour as the coat, a movement of her hand to her handbag, her blowing her nose; not once did she look back. She broke into a run. I opened the window and leant out and watched until she disappeared round the corner at the end of the street into Marylebone Road. And not even then, at the very end, did she look back.
I turned to the room, washed up the breakfast things, made the bed; then I sat at the table and wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds, and a little note.
Alison darling, please believe that if it was to be anyone, it would have been you; that I ’ ve really been far sadder than I could show, if we were not both to go mad. Please wear the earrings. Please take this money and buy a scooter and go where we used to go – or do what you want with it. Please look after yourself. Oh God, if only I was worth waiting for … NICHOLAS
It was supposed to sound spontaneous, but I had been composing it on and off for days. I put the cheque and the note in an envelope, and set it on the mantelpiece with the little box containing the pair of jet earrings we had seen in a closed antique-shop one day. Then I shaved and went out to get a taxi.
The thing I felt most clearly, when the first corner was turned, was that I had escaped; and hardly less clearly, but much more odiously, that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won. So on top of the excitement of the voyage into the unknown, the taking wing again, I had an agreeable feeling of emotional triumph. A dry feeling; but I liked things dry. I went towards Victoria as a hungry man goes towards a good dinner after a couple of glasses of Mananzilla. I began to hum, and it was not a brave attempt to hide my grief, but a revoltingly unclouded desire to celebrate my release.
7
Four days later I was standing on Hymettus, looking down over the great complex of Athens-Piraeus, cities and suburbs, houses split like a million dice over the Attic plain. South stretched the pure blue late-summer sea, pale pumice-coloured islands, and beyond them the serene mountains of the Peloponnesus stood away over the horizon
in a magnificent arrested flow of land and water. Serene, superb, majestic: I tried for adjectives less used, but anything else seemed underweight. I could see for eighty miles, and all pure, all noble, luminous, immense, all as it always had been.
It was like a
‘ I ’ ll write. Every day. ’
‘ Yes. ’
‘ It ’ s a sort of test, really. We ’ ll see how much we miss each other. ’
‘ I know what it ’ s like when people go away. It ’ s agony for a week, then painful for a week, then you begin to forget, and then it seems as if it never happened, it happened to someone else, and you start shrugging. You say, dingo, it ’ s life, that ’ s the way things are. Stupid things like that. As if you haven ’ t really lost something for ever. ’
‘I shan ’ t forget. I shan ’ t ever forget. ’
‘ You will. And I will. ’
‘ We ’ ve got to go on living. However sad it is. ’
After a long time she said, ‘ I don ’ t think you know what sadness is. ’
We overslept in the morning. I had deliberately set the alarm late, to make a rush, not to leave time for tears. Alison ate her breakfast standing up. We talked about absurd things; cutting the milk order, where a library ticket I had lost might be. And then she put down her c off ee-cup and we were standing at the door. I saw her face, as if it was still not too late, all a bad dream, her grey eyes searching mine, her small puffy cheeks. There were tears forming in her eyes, and she opened her mouth to say something. But then she leant forward, desperately, clumsily, kissed me so swiftly that I hardly felt her mouth; and was gone. Her camel-hair coat disappeared down the stairs. She didn ’ t look back. I went to the window, and saw her walking fast across the street, the pale coat, the straw-coloured hair almost the same colour as the coat, a movement of her hand to her handbag, her blowing her nose; not once did she look back. She broke into a run. I opened the window and leant out and watched until she disappeared round the corner at the end of the street into Marylebone Road. And not even then, at the very end, did she look back.
I turned to the room, washed up the breakfast things, made the bed; then I sat at the table and wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds, and a little note.
Alison darling, please believe that if it was to be anyone, it would have been you; that I ’ ve really been far sadder than I could show, if we were not both to go mad. Please wear the earrings. Please take this money and buy a scooter and go where we used to go – or do what you want with it. Please look after yourself. Oh God, if only I was worth waiting for … NICHOLAS
It was supposed to sound spontaneous, but I had been composing it on and off for days. I put the cheque and the note in an envelope, and set it on the mantelpiece with the little box containing the pair of jet earrings we had seen in a closed antique-shop one day. Then I shaved and went out to get a taxi.
The thing I felt most clearly, when the first corner was turned, was that I had escaped; and hardly less clearly, but much more odiously, that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won. So on top of the excitement of the voyage into the unknown, the taking wing again, I had an agreeable feeling of emotional triumph. A dry feeling; but I liked things dry. I went towards Victoria as a hungry man goes towards a good dinner after a couple of glasses of Mananzilla. I began to hum, and it was not a brave attempt to hide my grief, but a revoltingly unclouded desire to celebrate my release.
7
Four days later I was standing on Hymettus, looking down over the great complex of Athens-Piraeus, cities and suburbs, houses split like a million dice over the Attic plain. South stretched the pure blue late-summer sea, pale pumice-coloured islands, and beyond them the serene mountains of the Peloponnesus stood away over the horizon
in a magnificent arrested flow of land and water. Serene, superb, majestic: I tried for adjectives less used, but anything else seemed underweight. I could see for eighty miles, and all pure, all noble, luminous, immense, all as it always had been.
It was like a
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