Somewhere Beyond Reproach Page 3

As soon as I had spoken I realised that I had merely reinforced her first impression.

  She ignored my brief interjection.

  ‘I wonder if you’re going to be sensible and take an older person’s advice.’ No hint of questioning tone. I was going to take her advice. She would make sure that I had to. ‘I know Dinah pretty well. I am her mother.’ She paused for the inevitable little smile. That extra prolongment of my agony. ‘She talked to me a lot about you. She was very much in love.’ I noticed the past tense with a terrible stab of pain under my diaphragm. Mrs Lisle picked up her cup and placed it firmly on the tray as though a decisive stage had been reached. ‘If it’s any comfort to you, in my opinion, I don’t think it would ever have worked.’ My anger at this was terrible. I restrained myself. She must have noticed in spite of my efforts at repression. ‘I’m saying this because I don’t want you to feel you could have done anything had you been in London.’ She got up and walked over to the sideboard. She picked up a carefully folded Daily Telegraph. I could have got a copy myself. I didn’t have to look yet I did: experienced my worst humiliation under the scrutiny of those slate-coloured eyes.

  *

  Not merely an engagement; my eye had started there, up and down those columns. My bowels had loosened just as before a beating. ‘Marriages’ and there it was. Mark’s name, her name … at Deerhurst Church, Gloucestershire. No details of best man or bridesmaids. Only the bare announcement and Mrs Lisle’s silence. I turned towards the door. I dared not speak for fear of crying in front of her. I saw the photograph, the hint of a smile at the corner of those delicate lips. A photograph that had already receded a little further into history: Miss Dinah Lisle, five years before her marriage … the lines from the Litany came to mind: ‘from fornication … and sudden death … Good Lord deliver us’ … from sudden marriage, Good … At the door I realised that I was holding the paper. I put it down on the back of a chair. It fell to the floor. Mrs Lisle took a couple of steps after me. I hurried. In spite of the striped curtain outside the door, it had still stuck. ‘Let me do that. You have to lift it by the letter box before pulling.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured from the path. The idiocy of my remark struck me later.

  A tennis court, a stream by an abbey … ‘I need a strong arm’ … ‘no “I love you” only “I love”.’ There was a bus shelter half-way down the street. Thankfully I hid from further eyes.

  Three

  I forwarded the letters she had never got, to Tewkesbury. I crossed out the name and address. Miss Dinah née Lisle. No I didn’t do that. I left her name as it was, the letters were written to her as she was. I felt tempted to try and see her but I resisted this. I could never afford another humiliation such as the one I had received at the hands of her mother. Everything would have been on their side. They, them … the plural pronoun made me shudder. I did not at first feel any resentment against Mark. I could not blame him for marrying her. I had seen little of him during the past six years. I cannot remember very clearly why we were friends. It is difficult when looking back to decide what made one like somebody at the age of fourteen. Perhaps his proficiency with languages and mine with mathematics had been a practical bond. No, as I write I remember more … the smell of radiators, of desks made of pinewood. Mark had come to the school a year later than I, in spite of being a year older. I remember him standing uncertainly in the corridor outside the dining room several days after the beginning of term. Most of the other boys were already eating. He was late, so was I. I took his arm and we went in together: ‘Not to worry. Nobody will take any notice.’ On that one occasion they did. The master at the head of the table we were sitting at called us afterwards and gave us two hundred lines. I liked Mark’s smile as he looked at me. I looked away for a second. ‘All right … I’m sorry.’ We both laughed and after that became friends. To start with he knew nobody else. I introduced him to the few people I knew. I rather enjoyed my role of initiator.

  But more than that I find hard. I cannot say that he was excellent on the sports field. He was better than I was. That’s all. He was above average academically, but so was I. He was not more serious-minded, we both tended to be earnest. Sometimes he surprised me by the depths of his feeling. No, that’s stupid. His sister died in a car crash. His refusal to attend chapel after this greatly impressed me. I had never met his sister. He had sat in my room a week afterwards as I played Brahms’s Third Symphony. He started to hum an accompaniment to the melody of the Fourth Movement … ‘My name is Brahms and I’ve tunes in my head for I kno-o-o-ooow I am Brahms.’ It looks silly without the music. But as he sang and I watched, there were tears in his eyes. As he repeated those words, he was trying to smile.

  I do not wish to give the impression that I knew that Dinah had found somebody better than I. My brief acquaintance with Mark made it harder to condemn to begin with. That is all I mean. I had suffered bereavement too. My father had died. It is no good to claim these personal tragedies as grounds for strength of character, or as events that lend nobility to those who experience them at an early age. There is no merit in winning the football pools. Death and its timing are quite as arbitrary.

  *

  My resentment and jealousy began to form gradually. Could he not have realised from Dinah’s story of our life together, exactly how important she was to me? I had befriended him, when he had no friends. I exaggerated the extent I had helped him. I had to. I had to find an outlet for my disappointment. I could never hate Dinah. She lived on in my mind unchanged. No printed announcement would be allowed to alter this. The power of my belief in this was of almost supernatural force. I thought of the second half of Queen Victoria’s life, locked away in Osborne with her memories. I comforted myself like her. I reread letters. I looked at photographs. But I was twenty-three. The possibility that I should ‘get over it’ was never for a moment entertained. Some people live for their work, some for God, others for their children or their wives. I had nothing but Dinah. I know … I alone was to blame. But analysis of an emotional situation cannot necessarily cure it. My analysis increased my disease. When I had possessed Dinah I had lived almost at a distance from her. Now that she was apparently unobtainable my feeling for her grew still more powerful. My love was a fact. I could not ever bring myself to tell anybody. The initial comfort my memories gave me soon faded, to be replaced by an agony of despair. I looked at lovers in the streets, in cinemas and in restaurants. There was no escape. I was always thinking of Tewkesbury. They had probably moved. Where? I must not find out. I knew I should never do that. In the daytime I worked hard. I began to have day-dreams about making a million and returning to her. I should weep as she praised me. But my work was not enough. I decided to leave the country, see other places; perhaps it was my destiny to see the world, to be a man without a home. Superficially the thought excited me. But only superficially; inside I felt more isloated than ever. The self-dramatising stoicism that I felt was of little comfort; there was no audience for my bravery. Then I remembered a letter of Lawrence: ‘It’s all a form of running away from oneself and the great problems, this wild west and the strange Australia.’ But my mind was made up. I chose Africa. The business could go on without me. I owned half; my income was assured.

  Four

  My years abroad could never have succeeded. I sacrificed the few ties I had contracted in England for a life completely dependent on self. I was alone in foreign countries with my thoughts. I tried to reduce myself to a pair of recording eyes emotionally indifferent to what they saw. I succeeded all too well. I saw everything and felt nothing except my aching wound. I travelled through Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt and then, quite unprepared, began the overland journey to southern Africa. I took little money and travelled roughly. Lorry, train and crowded steamers were to be my transport. Present discomfort, while dimming my immediate sensations, led me deeper into myself. I lost the pleasure of spontaneous enjoyment. I had nobody to share my feelings with. I started to realise the inanity of my life with D
inah. The loneliness she must have felt. I cursed myself for my stupidity. I could fill this book with what I saw there. I shall not do that. My story is not only my own, but also the story of Mark and Dinah.

  *

  I came back to England six years after I left. At first my return to work was resented after so long an absence. Gradually I was to prove more than useful. I became vital. I surprised everybody with my attention to apparently trivial detail. I sold my partner some of my shares. With the money I bought some property. I started several shops. The beginning. Three years later and I was by most standards a rich man. Rich, lonely, and once again desperate. I now knew where Mark Simpson lived. The last S-Z telephone directory included his name. They were in London. My restlessness increased. I could not sleep. It is now 8 September 1967 as I write. Last November I had already sat in my Mercedes outside their block of flats. Mansions, heavy Victorian, dirty. How could I find out anything? My heart was racing, my hands were clammy. I felt as though I must do something. I drove away and then walked for miles. My heels were raw the next day. I had not noticed. At dawn I went to bed and slept.

  If I was to have those intervening months again, how would I behave? I suspect much as I did.

  Five

  At the office nobody noticed the state of agitation I was in. Their failure to notice any change in me was reassuring. I felt more stable as a result. At this stage I dared not admit, even to myself, that I had come to a vital decision. Perhaps decision is the wrong word. I knew instinctively that I would see Dinah again in spite of myself. It is hard to find words for indefinable stages of resolve; a beard in the making is a large number of bristles. When does stubble become a beard?

  My initial tentative approaches were on the telephone. I had no need to look up the number, it seemed burnt into my brain. I could close my eyes and see the exact spacing of the directory on that page. Although I knew that I should ring off as soon as I heard a voice, I still trembled as I sat staring at the dial. Many times I stopped in the middle of dialling and put down the receiver. There was so much I wanted to know. So little could be achieved by this method. I tried three times. Always in the evening so that Mark was more likely to answer. Absurd, I felt that even the beating of my heart or a catch in my breath might betray me if she answered. On the first two occasions I heard Mark’s voice. The second time I let him say ‘Hello’ half a dozen times. How could I tell anything from that? Only that he had been in for two successive evenings. My final call was made the following day at six o’clock. This time I heard a child’s voice. Although I was shocked by this, I managed to speak — there was no chance that he would recognise my voice. Even though I knew that they were perfectly likely to have had a child, the confirmation of my suspicion put from my head the carefully thought-out questions I had planned for this present conversation. Instead I asked: ‘Are your mummy and daddy in?’ I was told they were, that he would go and get one of them. I said, ‘Wait a moment.’ I could still hear him on the other end. I could still ask another question or two. ‘Will they be out later?’ No they would not, they didn’t often go out in the evening. I rang off. I had done better than I deserved in spite of my ridiculous first question. Judging by the exterior of the flats they lived in and also by the neighbourhood it seemed unlikely that the Simpsons would be able to afford somebody to stay with the child on any but a few evenings a week. This gave me a pathetic feeling of elation. Dinah would not go out often. There was a chance that she might be bored with her present life. On the other hand, as I immediately decided, the child was of course a bond between the two of them. My elation gave way to depression.

  Yet I had always been good with children. I felt if I could get to know the child, I could hardly do better. But then how on earth could I approach him in order to make his existence useful to me? There seemed at first to be no answer to this question. And yet there had to be. My thoughts led me to Mrs Lisle only as a final resort and then I thought I saw my way. The few evenings on which Mark and Dinah went out would pose a problem as to what they could do with the child. What could be more natural than for them to take the child to Mrs Lisle’s for the evening. Perhaps even for the night with ‘Granny’. There was also the possibility that ‘Granny’ would come to their flat for the evening. This would be disastrous. I could hardly go there. My memories of Mrs Lisle left me with considerable hopes that this was not the case. She would not be amenable to leaving Wimbledon for central London to sit with her grandson. I tried not to get too excited as my thoughts raced nearer to a solution. The matter of timing was vital. If the Simpsons were going out to a film or theatre and eating beforehand, they would have to see that the boy was delivered in Wimbledon with sufficient time in hand for their return journey and time to change. If they let him travel alone, he was probably eight years old, they would almost certainly prefer him to travel in the light. Five o’clock at the latest. It was early December and the light was failing by four o’clock. My concern with timing was most important. If I was to see Mrs Lisle, it would have to be at tea-time. It would not be quite unnatural for me to wish to see her. I had been abroad. I had thought about Dinah a lot. Could she tell me whether Dinah was happy? I wanted to know, not because I still entertained hopes. I felt no desire to see her. I was engaged myself, so it would hardly do any harm if I did see her. Ten years is such a long time. Silly not to bury old animosity. At the time it had been quite a different matter. But now time had almost healed. Yet once I had been hurt. Therefore was it too preposterous of me to ask how Dinah was getting on? Just to set my mind at rest. All these approaches were perfectly plausible and possible, even though there was only one answer she could give. ‘Dinah has never regretted anything.’ I had to convince myself that Mrs Lisle would be unable to find any ulterior motive for my visit. My visit would at once be innocent in her eyes and easily explicable. This had to be the case, for I had no intention of allowing it to come to a discussion of my reasons for coming. Dinah’s child would also be there. I should immediately get on with him, charm Mrs Lisle and thus pave my way for a further visit and an opportunity to take him out alone. My hopes were high. But I was determined; I could only go forwards. My only remaining task was to find a day when the boy would be there. Preserving a ceaseless vigil outside the flats or else waiting in the bus shelter in Mrs Lisle’s road were both hopeless and impossible. I could never have gone to a detective agency. They, besides being squalid, dealt in what had happened and not what was going to. In view of the necessity for being on the spot at the right time, I had to predict. The position seemed hopeless.

  While I was trying to find a solution in the rational manner I have been describing, I was also experiencing far from rational desires to see Dinah. I wanted to feel her physical presence, even if it meant standing on a crowded pavement and watching her entering a shop.

  I would watch her walking lightly along streets, see her image reflected in shop windows, a butcher’s, a grocer’s, a cleaner’s; momentarily obscured by passing cars and other people, I would catch glimpses of her. Nearly ten years and yet I knew that she would look the same. I would sit and visualise her. In my mind she wore a cotton dress, white, with flowers blue and red. The skirt was full, it covered her knees and rustled as she walked. We would be crossing a smooth and well-cut lawn in the sunshine. In the distance was a lake. She starts to run towards it and I follow. I saw her in the clothes of the last decade but this conveyed no hint of danger to me.

  One day I did go to their flats to see her as she walked to the shops. I sat in my car and waited at a safe distance. Earlier the sun had been shining; as I sat the sky became overcast and rain started to fall. Her sudden appearance did not make quite the impression I had been expecting. To begin with I could not see her face. I saw a woman step out of the doorway, her face obscured by a pale blue umbrella. She wore a shiny black oilskin macintosh. I saw glimpses of long black hair. Her legs would be splashed by rain and dirt. In the snug interior of my car I felt a great surging of protective tendernes
s. With me she would no longer need to go to shops, no longer need to walk in the rain. My actual distance from her might only be fifty yards, but in practical terms it might as well have been fifty thousand. I watched her carefully as she picked her way among other pedestrians. Suddenly she started to run. She had seen a bus. In a few seconds she was on it, and the people inside would go on crumpling their tickets and thinking about lunch without noticing any difference. I decided to get out and look more carefully at the neighbourhood. I did not know what I was looking for. I looked at the shops. For most domestic purposes Dinah need never leave that area. It was raining harder now. Noisily the drains received the water. Puddles were forming, their surfaces endlessly troubled by the falling drops. When I first passed the travel agency I did not stop. On my way back I paused and smiled wanly as I saw a poster for Morocco. Then I noticed something else. The agency also sold theatre tickets. Suddenly I was alert, my breathing was faster, the adrenalin pumped in my blood. I went up to the girl behind the desk.

  ‘My name’s Lomax. I wonder, could you tell me if Mrs Simpson has left me a ticket for the concert tomorrow?’

  I watched the girl’s face carefully. I had a moment of agonised fear.

  ‘Mrs Simpson,’ the girl echoed me. ‘No, she hasn’t been in for a week. But she took some tickets then. Wait a moment.’

  My excitement was enormous. What inconceivable good fortune. Dinah did order tickets here.

  ‘No, she didn’t take three tickets. Only two, and they were for next Tuesday … Othello at the National Theatre.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ I stammered. She must have thought me mad. I wanted to kiss her.

  In the street I noticed no rain, and if I had it would have pleased me more than any sun. On Tuesday from three o’clock onwards I should be in Wimbledon waiting for a boy, whom I had never seen. For the next five days I slept badly and I hoped. I prayed.