The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt Page B

mean.”
    She took his hand, however. Both were trembling. The euphoria of the early evening returned.
    “A good day?” she enquired, dry and nervous.
    “A wonderful day. Jenny, listen, Jenny …” He told her about the play.
    She listened in silence. He heard his own voice fade. “Jenny?”
    “I’m very glad. Well, of course I’m glad.”
    She was trying to edge her hand away. Alexander was entranced by this small resistance. The trouble was, or the delight was, that he was entirely entranced by her. If she was irritated, which she frequently was, her stopped-off movements of wrath filled him with intense pleasure. If she looked furiously away he stared with intense pleasure at her ear and the muscle of her neck. His feelings were insanely simple and persistent. Once, when he had tried to explain them, she had got very angry indeed.
    Now, he saw he must do something. He tugged at her wrist: her hand was back in her pocket.
    “You aren’t pleased. I’m sorry I was late.”
    “That’s immaterial. I expected you to be late. I expect I’m selfish. If the play’s a success – which it will be – I shall see less and less of you. If it’s enough of a success you’ll go away altogether. I would, if I were you, I …”
    “Don’t be silly. I might make a bit of money. If I had a bit of money, I’d get a car.”
    “You always talk as though a car would transfigure everything.”
    “It would make a difference.”
    “Not much.”
    “We could get away –”
    “Where to? For how long? There’s no point in any of all this.”
    “Jenny – you could have a part in the, in my play.” They had had the car conversation so many times. “Then we should see each other every day. It would be what it was in the beginning.”
    “Would it?” she said, stopping, however, and leaning against him, so that he felt dizzy. “We live in a perpetual beginning anyway. We might just as well stop.”
    “We love each other. We agreed, we must take what little we can …”
    That was where it always came to.
    It was her husband, Geoffrey Parry, the German master, who had asked shyly if Alexander could find her a part in
The Lady’s Not for Burning
. He had hoped, he said, it might prove therapeutic for post-natal depression. Alexander had taken in Mrs Parry only vaguely, plodding across the school lawns gracelessly bulbous as tiny women, in his experience, tended to be. He had courteously heard her read, in his rooms, over a glass of sherry, a whirlwind Cleopatra, a chanting and lyrical Jennet, almost overpowering in so small a space. He had cast her as Jennet, naturally. Talent was sparse at Blesford Ride. Geoffrey had thanked him.
    In rehearsal he had come to dislike her. She knew her own part, the rehearsal schedule, and everybody else’s part, after the first two days. She suggested cuts, changes in moves, possibly useful curtain music. She prompted without being asked, and offered suggestions to other actors on how to speak their lines. She made Alexander nervous and the rest of the cast uncoordinated and insecure. One day, practising with Alexander in the music-holes, airless poky places under the stage, she corrected his grammar, queried his casting, and corrected his quotations in the same sentence. He told her, mildly, not to treat everything as a matter of life and death.
    She stood back, swayed, sprung at him, and aimed a wild blow at his face. He stepped backwards, fell over the gilt music-stand, hit his head on the piano and crashed to the floor. Blood trickled where the piano had wounded the base of his skull and where Jenny’s nails had ripped his cheek. She, so furiously launched, came down on top of him, babbling that it was a matter of life and death, to her it was, her life anddeath, the baby smelled and was boring and the boys smelled worse and were more boring and everyone in the boring place was obsessed by the appalling boys. She struggled to her knees between Alexander’s outspread legs in the