“Oh.” She was taken aback. “Did you-mind?”
“Oh yes, I minded. Anyone would have. But that’s all over now.”
She frowned at her empty glass. As she turned her head, the boy who had been waiting replaced the empty glass with a full one.
She took a couple of sips, then she said:
“Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you think happiness is very important?”
He considered.
“That’s a very difficult question to answer. If I were to say that happiness is vitally important, and that at the same time it doesn’t matter at all, you’d think I was crazy.”
“Can’t you be a little clearer?”
“Well, it’s rather like sex. Sex is vitally important, and yet doesn’t matter. You’re married?”
He had noticed the slim gold ring on her finger.
“I’ve been married twice.”
“Did you love your husband?”
He left it in the singular, and she answered without quibbling.
“I loved him more than anything in the world.”
“When you look back on your life with him, what are the things that come first to your mind, the moments that you will always remember? Are they of the first time you slept together-or are they of something else?”
Laughter came to her suddenly, and a quick enchanting gaiety.
“His hat,” she said.
“Hat?”
“Yes. On our honeymoon. It blew away and he bought a native one, a ridiculous straw thing, and I said it would be more suitable for me. So I put it on, and then he put on mine-one of those silly bits of nonsense women wear, and we looked at each other and laughed. All trippers change hats, he said, and then he said: ‘Good Lord, I do love you….’ ” Her voice caught. “I’ll never forget.”
“You see?” said Llewellyn. “Those are the magical moments-the moments of belonging-of everlasting sweetness-not sex. And yet if sex goes wrong, a marriage is completely ruined. So, in the same way, food is important-without it you cannot live, and yet, so long as you are fed, it occupies very little of your thoughts. Happiness is one of the foods of life, it encourages growth, it is a great teacher, but it is not the purpose of life, and is, in itself, not ultimately satisfying.”
He added gently:
“Is it happiness that you want?”
“I don’t know. I ought to be happy. I have everything to make me happy.”
“But you want something more?”
“Less,” she said quickly, “I want less out of life. It’s too much-it’s all too much.”
She added, rather unexpectedly:
“It’s all so heavy.”
They sat for some time in silence.
“If I knew,” she said at last, “if I knew in the least what I really wanted, instead of just being so negative and idiotic.”
“But you do know what you want; you want to escape. Why don’t you, then?”
“Escape?”
“Yes. What’s stopping you? Money?”
“No, it’s not money. I have money-not a great deal, but sufficient.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s so many things. You wouldn’t understand.” Her lips twisted in a sudden, ruefully humorous smile. “It’s like Tchekov’s three sisters, always moaning about going to Moscow; they never go, and never will, although I suppose they could just have gone to the station and taken a train to Moscow any day of their lives! Just as I could buy a ticket and sail on that ship out there, that sails tonight.”
“Why don’t you?”
He was watching her.
“You think you know the answer,” she said.
He shook his head.
“No, I don’t know the answer. I’m trying to help you find it.”
“Perhaps I’m like Tchekov’s three sisters. Perhaps I don’t really want to go.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps escape is just an idea that I play with.”
“Possibly. We all have fantasies that help us to bear the lives we live.”
“And escape is my fantasy?”
“I don’t know. You know.”
“I don’t know anything-anything at all. I had every chance, I did the wrong thing. And then, when one has done the wrong thing, one has to stick to it, hasn’t one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Must you go on saying that over and over?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re asking me to come to a conclusion on something I know nothing about.”