“I believe he does not mind the terrible isolation he must be experiencing.”
“He’s a brave man.”
Westermark had been home a week now. Janet saw that each day they were more removed from each other, as he spoke less and stood frequently as still as a statue, gazing at the ground raptly. She thought of something she had once been afraid to utter aloud to her mother-in-law; but with Clem Stackpole she was safer.
“You know why we manage to exist in comparative har-mony,” she said. He was slowing the car, half-looking at her.
“We only manage to exist by banishing all events from our lives, all children, all seasons. Otherwise we’d be faced at every moment with the knowledge of how much at odds we really are.”
Catching the note in her voice, Stackpole said soothingly, “You are every bit as brave as he is, Janet.”
“Damn being brave. What I can’t bear isnothing!” .
Seeing the sign by the side of the road, Stackpole glanced into his driving mirror and changed gear. The road was deserted in front as well as behind. He whistled through his teeth again, and Janet felt compelled to go on talking.
“We’ve already interfered with time too muchall of us, I mean. Time is a European invention. Goodness knows how mixed up in it we are going to get ifwell, if this goes on.”
She was irritated by the lack of her usual coherence.
As Stackpole spoke next, he was pulling the car into a lay-by, stopping it by overhanging bushes. He turned to her smiling tolerantly. “Time was God’s invention, if you believe in God, as I prefer to do. We observe it, tame it, exploit it where possible.”
“Exploit it!”
“You mustn’t think of the future as if we were all wading knee deep in treacle or something.” He laughed briefly, resting his hands on the steering wheel. “What lovely weather it is! I was wonderingon Sunday I’m playing cricket over in the village. Would you like to come and watch the match?
And perhaps we could have tea somewhere afterwards.”
All events, all children, all seasons She had a letter next morning from Jane, her five-year-old daughter, and it made her think. All the letter said was: “Dear Mummy, Thank you for the dollies. With love from Jane,”
but Janet knew the labour that had gone into the inch-high letters. How long could she bear to leave the children away from their home and her care?
As soon as the thought emerged, she recalled that during the previous evening she had told herself nebulously that if there was going to be ‘anything’ with Stackpole, it was as well the children would be out of the waypurely, she now realised, for her convenience and for Stackpole’s. She had not thought then about the children; she had thought about Stackpole who, despite the unexpected delicacy he had shown, was not a man she cared for.
‘And another intolerably immoral thought,’ she muttered unhappily to the empty room, ‘what alternative have I to Stackpole?’
She knew Westermark was in his study. It was a cold day, too cold and damp for him to make his daily parade round the garden. She knew he was sinking deeper into isolation, she longed to help, she feared to sacrifice herself to that isolation, longed to stay outside it, in life. Dropping the letter, she held her head in her hands, closing her eyes as in the curved bone of her skull she heard all her possible courses of action jar together, future lifelines that annihilated each other.
As Janet stood transfixed, Westermark’s mother came into the room.
“I was looking for you,” she said. “You’re so unhappy, my dear, aren’t you?”
“Mother, people always try and hide from others how they suffer. Does everyone do it?”
“You don’t have to hide it from mechiefly, I suppose, because you can’t.”
“But I don’t know how much you suffer, and it ought to work both ways. Why do we do this awful covering up? What-are we afraid ofpity or derision?”
“Help, perhaps.”
“Help! Perhaps you’re right…. That’s a disconcerting thought.”
They stood there staring at each other, until the older woman said, awkwardly, “We don’t often talk like this, Janet.”