Read Online After Julius by Elizabeth Jane Howard - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
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which was almost never, and then only obliquely, mentioned – smothered their marriage into something composed of second thoughts, short-term arrangements, and shallow, crisis acceptances. She
had married at eighteen, in a trance of shock: her father had only just died, and there was no one else to prevent her. She had married at all costs to get away from a place with which all her
associations had become unbearable; where all those nearest her had suddenly, without any warning, stepped out of their familiar roles and revealed themselves as horribly unrecognizable –
stark in their treachery.
She had been seventeen – dreamy, untried, her mind narrowly contented, her preoccupations simple, the older parts of her taste and experience concentrated upon music. There were no finer
shades of feeling then: there was good, some bad, and then mystery; there was love and there was nothing of the kind; people meant what they said and said all that they meant; one moved along
one’s enormous lifeline to some splendid but unknown destination, but the direction was none the less laid, like railway track. To be a pianist, to have parents who were the landscape of
one’s society, a sister so much younger that she accentuated the delightful privileges of being grown up, and then – to discover the incalculable joys and agonies of being
secretly in love . . .
Afterwards, she used the abrasive comfort of at least not having made a fool of herself. Nowadays, another part of her wondered whether she had not compensated for this by making a fool of
herself ever since.
Emma’s question about whether, if he was free, she would marry Dick, had produced her stock reply (the question was one to which she had for many years now accustomed herself), but later,
inside, it woke her out of a stupor into some confusion. This morning, knowing that with Dick she was on an extreme edge, that the layers of scenes and reconciliations were almost worn through
(although he would, of course, return from Rome, and to her), she tried to see where any change in what had become a painfully familiar situation might be made. But he would return; defensive,
truculently overtired, patronizing, breezy: ‘Well? How have you been amusing yourself?’ and would be met by a coldness which inadequately concealed the violence within her. The breezy
lies would be rejected, the angry justifications denied, she would be stripped of her assumed indifference and stand exposed in her resentment, like a horrible fancy dress. And what lay beneath the
resentment (mutual by now, as it was frighteningly contagious: he would have held out his hand for hers, she would have touched it with icy, unforgiving fingers)? What for years she had called love
– with variations admittedly – but she had always ennobled these situations with that word: now she was beginning to recognize them merely as various translations of a longing to appear
before one person, at least, as she wished both to be seen and to be. It was from this position that she had always imagined herself loving: to be pronounced rich before giving; to be given
all the benefits of her own doubts; to be always within the understanding sight and earshot of another person – this would engender love, and meanwhile, surely the imitation of any virtue was
not so much a dishonesty as an encouragement? But the whole thing broke down because neither she nor Dick (nor Edmund, Joe, René, Gilbert, Tom, Sebastian, Nils, Graham nor Harry) had ever
managed to preserve their illusions about one another (had always failed at different points to sustain the beloved image they had been practising to become, and were ad interim trying to
present). Only love, she felt, was worth seeking and then keeping: but she seemed to have been hampered by not being quite sure what it was, and had therefore attributed it to everything to be on
the safe, dangerous side. If she had remained married, would none of this have happened?
had married at eighteen, in a trance of shock: her father had only just died, and there was no one else to prevent her. She had married at all costs to get away from a place with which all her
associations had become unbearable; where all those nearest her had suddenly, without any warning, stepped out of their familiar roles and revealed themselves as horribly unrecognizable –
stark in their treachery.
She had been seventeen – dreamy, untried, her mind narrowly contented, her preoccupations simple, the older parts of her taste and experience concentrated upon music. There were no finer
shades of feeling then: there was good, some bad, and then mystery; there was love and there was nothing of the kind; people meant what they said and said all that they meant; one moved along
one’s enormous lifeline to some splendid but unknown destination, but the direction was none the less laid, like railway track. To be a pianist, to have parents who were the landscape of
one’s society, a sister so much younger that she accentuated the delightful privileges of being grown up, and then – to discover the incalculable joys and agonies of being
secretly in love . . .
Afterwards, she used the abrasive comfort of at least not having made a fool of herself. Nowadays, another part of her wondered whether she had not compensated for this by making a fool of
herself ever since.
Emma’s question about whether, if he was free, she would marry Dick, had produced her stock reply (the question was one to which she had for many years now accustomed herself), but later,
inside, it woke her out of a stupor into some confusion. This morning, knowing that with Dick she was on an extreme edge, that the layers of scenes and reconciliations were almost worn through
(although he would, of course, return from Rome, and to her), she tried to see where any change in what had become a painfully familiar situation might be made. But he would return; defensive,
truculently overtired, patronizing, breezy: ‘Well? How have you been amusing yourself?’ and would be met by a coldness which inadequately concealed the violence within her. The breezy
lies would be rejected, the angry justifications denied, she would be stripped of her assumed indifference and stand exposed in her resentment, like a horrible fancy dress. And what lay beneath the
resentment (mutual by now, as it was frighteningly contagious: he would have held out his hand for hers, she would have touched it with icy, unforgiving fingers)? What for years she had called love
– with variations admittedly – but she had always ennobled these situations with that word: now she was beginning to recognize them merely as various translations of a longing to appear
before one person, at least, as she wished both to be seen and to be. It was from this position that she had always imagined herself loving: to be pronounced rich before giving; to be given
all the benefits of her own doubts; to be always within the understanding sight and earshot of another person – this would engender love, and meanwhile, surely the imitation of any virtue was
not so much a dishonesty as an encouragement? But the whole thing broke down because neither she nor Dick (nor Edmund, Joe, René, Gilbert, Tom, Sebastian, Nils, Graham nor Harry) had ever
managed to preserve their illusions about one another (had always failed at different points to sustain the beloved image they had been practising to become, and were ad interim trying to
present). Only love, she felt, was worth seeking and then keeping: but she seemed to have been hampered by not being quite sure what it was, and had therefore attributed it to everything to be on
the safe, dangerous side. If she had remained married, would none of this have happened?
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