The Long Prospect (25 page)

‘About people—it's still true, Emmy. Don't spend your nights being afraid of murderers and your days being shy, but at the same time, remember—'

He hardly knew how to voice a warning without frightening her, her reaction to his least word was apt to be disproportionate. He said, ‘Learn from people, but don't be dispersed by them. And remember that the bad times have compensations. Unhappiness is not all loss. Not by any means. And as for us—you and me—we've both learned a great deal. A great deal,' he repeated heavily, letting his hands fall.

Words were lame symbols. Speech now, with time passing, was almost a dangerous indulgence. It was too late to meander and qualify. But then he saw by Emily's face that she had hardly heard him.

After a pause he got up and began to move about the room.

As Emily turned on her knees to watch him searching through his books, the urgency of her longing, her necessity to keep him, broke over her.

What use memories of eyes and voice? What use books, ideas, theories—anything—when he was gone? She had almost expected—so fevered was her brain, so virulent her fear—that a miracle might occur. Indeed, for a short time she dreamed that it already had. She had so felt the impossibility of their parting, had so sent the concentrated passion of her need for him to her eyes, had so searched his eyes and
wanted
to keep him, as to have consumed him—not in memory or thought, but in fact. An easy change had been to be consumed by him, to disappear as a person in her own right, for ever, and safely with him, safely
Max,
to go away with him and never return.

But as she blankly rose to her feet, the descent from desirable illusion began. Incredulously she said, ‘You're really going.'

Several seconds later Max said, ‘I'm leaving these for you.' He indicated a pile of books which he had stacked on the chair. ‘Some of them you probably won't look at for years, but I think you'll get round to them all eventually.'

She said nothing but they automatically went to the chair and stood handling the covers of the books.

‘You'll need them,' Emily objected, staring blindly at the cold weighty oblong she had lifted.

‘No, I'll replace them.'

Slowly they moved away from the chair and stood facing each other in the middle of the floor.

‘And now...' Max said, and they heard Dotty letting herself in at the back door. ‘I'll be going at half past nine, Em. Harris is sending a taxi round. I'll be at the Promenade till I leave Ballowra in about three weeks' time. Perhaps sooner. I may have the date pushed forward.'

At her uncomprehending look he turned away and went to the window. She followed him in a trance.

‘I see now that I may have been wrong in all this...I never meant to do you any harm. I think you know that.' He spoke stiffly. They stood at the open space oblivious of the sun, the morning wind.

Emily waited patiently, arms hanging limply by her sides, a kind of trusting, short-sighted earnestness and confidence about her face, as if, even yet, she would not believe.

‘I'll miss you very much. I know you'll miss me, too. We've had a lot of fun—a very good time, together, haven't we?'

The weight of her expectations made him speak lamely, inadequately, even—as he saw it—insultingly.

She had lifted an almost impatient hand as he spoke. Now she said, after the slightest pause, ‘I
love
you.' There was a note of incredulity in her voice.

Max took her by the shoulders. ‘I know you do. I'm very honoured. In a way, a very good way, I love you, too. And so I should.' He gave her the gentlest shake, tried to make her look up. ‘You've done more for me than you know. It's been far from one-sided. It's been a real friendship, hasn't it? And I don't believe we won't meet again. One day, quite soon, I'll see you, and you'll be grown-up and able—'

She had been standing in his arms, lifeless as a puppet, but now she pulled away and stared at him, hostile.

‘You don't
care
.'

The smile faded from his face. He looked at her so gravely, so kindly, that her heart threatened to break. Her eyebrows rose in a kind of puzzled entreaty.

And then she imperfectly received the idea that she was young, that Max's past, the life he had lived before she was born, had really happened, was not simply a story told for the exclusive pleasure of her emotions. He had really
lived
longer, and this had happened to him, perhaps, before.

But she did not believe it, any more than she believed that the utter familiarity, the current of warmth, the common language, of their single friendship could so simply remove itself from her.

‘You know that's not true, Em.'

She looked at him sullenly, accusing him of evasion. She felt she hated him.

‘For my sake—no, don't look so sceptical. You can do better than this. Listen, Em. I must go today—very soon. Nothing can change that. You can make it better for both of us by accepting it, by trying to. It's not easy, I know. Remember that I don't like it either...And Emmy, don't fight your family off because of this. Don't blame them...I'll be seeing you again this morning before I go, but now we must say goodbye. Friends. If we don't we'll be unhappy to remember it. You've been so good and sensible. Don't spoil it now.'

She stepped back.

‘I won't. I won't say goodbye. Max, don't make me say goodbye.' Her voice came in a whisper. She moved farther away from him, cringed against the wall.

Max stood quite still. He gave a profound sigh. Seconds passed, and he stretched out a hand. She was in his arms.

There was a knock on the door. It was the signal that breakfast would soon be ready.

Very gently Max kissed and then released her.

In a nightmare, she wandered to the door, drifted out into the hall, found herself in the kitchen watching Dotty who, seeing her, exclaimed, ‘Not dressed yet?'

She was turning the toast on the griller, turning an egg in the pan.

‘He's going away, Dot.'

She switched off the gas under the milk, reached for the pot holder. ‘I know. They told me the other day.'

‘Why?' A spoilt, querulous note.

A gas jet was turned off. ‘They thought he was too fond of you, they said.'

‘Mm? What did you say, Dot?' Her eyelids fell.

‘He was too fond of you, they thought.'

And Emily, going away to wash and dress, passed Max on his way to the kitchen, and was ashamed.

CHAPTER NINE

PATTY CAME up eating an ice-cream. She shuffled to a stop at the gate. ‘'S hot,' she complained. She licked her ice-cream and looked up and down the road. The earth was powdery, the hedge covered with dust.

Two women passed on the other side of the street. Patty stared and licked, stared and licked, turned a complete circle to watch them out of sight. ‘Mrs Baker and that Mrs Redfern,' she said. ‘Gee, she's fat!

‘Mum says I ought to get my hair cut,' she told Emily. ‘She says it's using all my strength. Makes me hot, too.' She lifted a languid arm and piled the blonde curls on top of her head for a moment. ‘But the boys like it,' she suddenly confided, laughing, showing all her pretty teeth. ‘Nutty things call me Goldilocks and Curlytop, but I don't care.'

Cars could be heard coming up the hill. Emily turned a look of such concentration on the corner where they must come into sight that Patty glanced from her to the corner and back again, licking in double quick time.

Four cars and a van streamed in a line past them and up the hill. The projection of despairing hopefulness that had gone out retreated disabled, sank back into the girl. She placed her forehead carefully on the top of the gate.

‘Waiting for someone?'

‘No.' The brown head stayed on the gate.

‘I'm going,' Patty threatened, munching quickly through the ice-cream cone. She looked round for a diversion. She licked her sticky fingers and waved them through the hot air to dry. ‘Well, I'm going,' she gave final warning, challenging Emily to try to make her stay. Glancing up at the veranda she said, ‘Here comes someone for you, anyhow. See you later.'

‘Emily!' called Paula, looking out over the roofs of the shops. ‘Emily!' she called. ‘Come in and have a glass of milk.'

Unresisting, the girl trailed up the red stone steps. They were all in the sitting-room when she went in, having morning tea, eating square biscuits, looking at newspapers and talking.

Paula, unlike the others, who lolled back among the velvet cushions of the sofa and armchairs and scattered crumbs on the carpet, sat at the table. She was apparently occupied with her handkerchief, giving it rhythmic tugs, pulling it through her fingers, sometimes rolling it into a ball as if the game had ended, only to devise, in the next instant, some new trick for it to perform.

‘Well, I always say that Murphy is one of the best little riders we've got. What do you think, Harry?'

‘Horses?' He licked a cigarette paper expertly. ‘Don't know much about them, Lilian.' His eyes flashed to the doorway where Emily stood watching them.

They all sat up a little: Paula turned in her chair. An air, at once propitiating and self-congratulatory, came over them. They looked at her consciously, positively seeing her in a way usually reserved for her birthday, or Christmas morning.

‘Here she is!' cried Lilian, and she and Paula rose together to give her the glass of milk.

At this the two men looked away, looked down at their knees, slightly disgusted and jealous, but when Lilian and Paula turned their brightly smiling faces on them for encouragement and support, they, too, smiled broadly, and Harry cleared his throat to ask, ‘And what's on the programme for this afternoon, Emily? Are you going to the pictures with your friend?'

She looked at them. False expectancy emphasized their indifference, made them incredibly alien. She thought: I hate them, and there was hatred in her. But she felt only a profound desire not to see or be near them.

‘No. Nothing.' She put the glass on the table and left the room.

Harry said, ‘My God!' and clamped his mouth shut with rage.

Rosen gave a laugh that might have been scornful, might have been deprecating, and picked up the newspaper again. He smoothed down the few hairs on his head with the palm of his hand, every slow studied movement, the deliberate sliding of his eyes across the printed page, expressing too clearly his contemptuous amusement at the scene just past, and his extreme personal satisfaction that justice had earlier in the day been done.

For
he
had gone—gone quietly without words or fuss. Officially he had not been seen to go: in fact they had all watched his departure—Paula from the bedroom, Lilian from the dining-room; Harry, in the sitting-room, had seen the taxi when it turned the corner. Rosen had been in the garage. Emily carried a coat for him and a brief-case. She stood at the gate, waving.

As his name had not been mentioned to her since the arrival of her mother and father, it had not seemed possible—even Lilian would have been embarrassed—to forbid her to say goodbye. So Emily and Max alone had freely used the house that morning, while
they
had been constrained to dart from room to room, eyelids lowered, after listening behind closed doors in the hope of avoiding him.

A certain surreptitious enjoyment of the absurdity of their behaviour made them feel a little coy, a little distrait, and, too, rather flat, when they met immediately after his departure—popping out into the passage as if an assembly whistle had blown.

There had been a jittery moment—on the part of the men—of relieved nose-blowing and trouser-hitching, an air of coming to the surface after a deep dive. Lilian tugged purposefully at loose straps of clothing, pushed at her hair and said, ‘I think we'll have some tea!' At that they laughed, and rather noisily making free with the spaces of the house, they had adjourned to the sitting-room.

Lilian began to wonder about her bets for the afternoon races. Over the tea the men decided to go down to the shopping centre to have their hair cut and Lilian gave them a list of messages to execute. Only Paula had not laughed. Silent, she fiddled with her handkerchief and paid no attention to what was said. Suddenly she had gone to call Emily, but now, again, Emily stood at the gate.

His face had been grey—grey as that paling fence, grey as that twist of smoke. And he had gone. Finally. Irrevocably.

Almost carefully she led herself back, away from that thought, and as if she was pretending something, drew a shallow sigh from her lungs and tonelessly said, ‘Oh, dear!' And she saw the black and yellow taxi drive away. Again she said, ‘Don't go!' Again it went away.

Yes, but was it over? Was it? Anything could happen yet. It was only—what time was it?—twenty to eleven. Well, just think, only twenty to eleven. Quite early.

It had all been some kind of terrific joke. You just had to think how they loved to tease people to see it. They'd all got together—though why?...Oh, why was beyond anyone. But that was it. Any minute now the taxi would come back, out would come all the cases—and Max. It was really a stupid thing to have done, but when they all stood round laughing and smiling and saying, ‘We had you fooled! You believed it!' she'd play up to them, give them their money's worth, and then she would want to laugh, too.

Max would say—for obviously he must have been in the plot—‘We were wondering how long we could keep going without giving it away. You took it so seriously.'

She felt herself straining to smile at this—for coming from Max it did hurt a bit; it wasn't really what you expected from him. But still! What did it matter? Even Max you couldn't expect to be perfect. He'd said things before today, accidentally, that had...

But anyway, there they stood: Max and her mother and father and Lilian and Rosen, all smiling and smiling, and deprecating her youthful gullibility.