Love, Again. Doris Lessing

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m going to keep a good bit of it. The dialogue is good.’ This was not tact. His dialogue in parts was better than hers. Now she knew why. ‘Do you realize you have made Rémy the focus of everything? The real love? What about Paul? After all, she did run away to France with him.’

      ‘Rémy was the love of her life. She said so herself. It’s in her journals.’

      ‘But she didn’t get into her stride with the journals until after Paul ditched her. Suppose we had a day-by-day record of her feelings for Paul, as we have for Rémy?’ He definitely did not like this. ‘You identify with Rémy – and it is your own background. Minor aristocracy?’

      ‘Well, perhaps.’

      ‘And you’ve hardly mentioned the son of her worthy printer. Julie and Robert took one look at each other and, quote, If you have a talent for the impossible, then at least recognize it. After that, she killed herself. It seems to me the printer’s son could easily have been as important as Rémy.’

      ‘It seems to me you want to make her a kind of tart, falling in love with one man after another.’

      She couldn’t believe her ears. ‘How many women have you been in love with?’

      Obviously he couldn’t believe his. ‘I don’t really see the point of discussing the double standard.’

      They were looking at each other with dislike. There was nothing for it but to laugh.

      Then he insisted, ‘I have been in love, seriously, with one woman.’

      She waited for him to say ‘my wife’ – he was married – or someone else, but he meant Julie. She said, ‘It’s my turn to say that you have decided to forget. But that isn’t the point. At the risk of being boring, art is one thing and life another. You don’t seem to see the problem. In your version, her main occupation was being in love.’

      ‘Wasn’t being in love her main occupation?’

      ‘She was in love a lot of her time. It wasn’t her main occupation. But these days we cannot have a play about a woman ditched by two lovers who then commits suicide. We can’t have a romantic heroine.’

      Clearly she could not avoid this conversation: she reflected it was probably the tenth time in a month.

      ‘I don’t see why not. Girls are going through this kind of thing all the time. They always have.’

      ‘Look. Couldn’t we leave it to people who write theses? It’s an aesthetic question. I am simply telling you what I know. Out of theatre experience. After all, even the Victorians made a comic song out of “She Was Poor but She Was Honest”. But I think I know how to solve it.’ Her duplicity with him would be limited to not telling him she had solved it already. ‘We can leave the story exactly as you have it. But what will put the edge on it…there is something; I hope you are going to ask what.’

      ‘Very well,’ he said, and she could see that this was the moment when he finally gave up his play. With good grace. As one would expect from someone like him.

      ‘We will use what she thought about it all…’

      ‘Her journals!’

      ‘Partly. Her journals. But even more, her music. There are her songs, and a lot of her music lends itself – we can use words from the journals and fit them to the music. Her story will have a commentary – her own.’

      He thought about this an uncomfortably long time. ‘It is astonishing – it is really extraordinary – the way Julie is always being taken away from me.’ Here he looked embarrassed and said, ‘All right, I know that sounds mad.’

      She said, ‘Oh well, we are all mad,’ but, hearing her comfortable maternal voice, knew at once she was not going to be allowed to get away with it. Again she was finding his acute look hard to bear. ‘I do wonder what it is you are mad about,’ he remarked, with more than a flick of malice.

      ‘Ah, but I’ve reached those heights of common sense. You know, the evenly lit unproblematical uplands where there are no surprises.’

      ‘I don’t believe you.’

      You could say their smiles at each other, companionable but satiric, marked a stage.

      The restaurant was emptying. They had come to the end of what they had to say to each other, at least for now. Both were making the small movements that indicate a need to separate.

      ‘You don’t want to hear any more of my ideas for the play?’

      ‘No, I shall leave it to you.’

      ‘But your name will be on it, with mine, as co-authors.’

      ‘That would be more than generous.’

      They left the restaurant, slowly. At this very last moment, it seemed they did not want to part. They said goodbye and walked away from each other. Only then did they remember they had been together for nearly three hours, talking like intimates, had told each other things seldom said even to intimates. This idea stopped them both, and turned them around at the same moment on the pavement of St Martin’s Lane. They stood examining each other’s faces with curiosity, just as if they had not been sitting a few feet apart, for so long, talking. Their smiles confessed surprise, pleasure, and a certain disbelief, which latter emotion – or refusal of it – was confirmed when he shrugged and she made a spreading gesture with her hands which said, Well, it’s all too much for me! At which they actually laughed, at the way they echoed, or mirrored, each other. Then they turned and walked energetically away, he to his life, she to hers.

      

      In the office, Sarah found Mary Ford making a collage of photographs for publicity, while Sonia stood over her, hands on her hips, in fact learning, but making it look as if she was casually interested.

      Sarah told Mary that Stephen Ellington-Smith was a country gentleman, old style. That he was too magnanimous to be petty about his play. That he was, in fact, a poppet. Mary said, ‘Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Sonia took in this exchange with her little air of detachment.

      Sarah sat with her back to the two young women, pretending to work, listening…no, one young woman and a middle-aged one: she had to accept that about Mary, even if it did hurt. They had all become so used to each other…Sonia was there in that office – not strictly her territory – not only to learn but to stake a claim. She wanted to be made responsible for the next production, Hedda Gabler. ‘You people will be busy with your Julie,’ she said. There was no need for the two senior officials to confer: they knew what each other thought. And why not? They were not likely to find anyone sharper, cleverer – and more ambitious – than Sonia. ‘Why not?’ said Mary, and without turning around, Sarah said, ‘Why not?’ In this way confirming Sonia’s position, and a much larger salary. Sonia left. ‘Why not?’ said Mary again, quietly, and Sarah turned herself about and smiled confirmation of Mary’s real message, which was that there really was no doubt of it – an epoch was indeed over.

      Sarah did not need a week to use Stephen’s dialogue where it fitted, but decided to pretend she had needed that time, so he would not feel his contribution was inconsiderable. But when she was actually seated there, in her room, the mess of papers she was already calling the script spread about, a week did not seem too much. For one thing, she СКАЧАТЬ