Storyboard, page 21
“So all that work was wasted?”
“If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else.”
Keith broke open a croissant, and spread it with butter and jam. Sylvia sipped her coffee in the thick white cup. Outside there was the river, and they could see the Pont Solferino to the left and the Pont Royal to the right. It would be a fine sunny day again, crisp enough so that one would enjoy walking, which was just as well since they did so much of it. Keith would probably buy an English newspaper at the little stall outside the Flor, and then go on to find a barber somewhere in the Boulevard St. Germain. What was planned for this evening?—the Opera?—a play?—some new, and naturally French, film? Keith would know; he had arranged to fill the evenings as well as the days. Perhaps they might, before they left Paris, buy a picture at one of the little galleries they passed every day. It would be something to change the look of the house.
Since the day of the accident, Sylvia had not wept. Of course it was winter. No wonder she felt so cold.
*
When you have been used to sharing the week-end, then a week-end on your own has an unfamiliar loneliness. There weren’t enough things to buy when you went shopping by yourself; you made a list out of habit, but to do so was a waste of time, not that wasting time mattered when you had so much more of it. Well, je ne suis pas vierge, Sophia told herself; she’d finished with an affair before, and got over it.
It wasn’t just because all that with Ralph was over that worried her. It wasn’t the fact, but the circumstances. Was it just cant, then, this talk of hers of giving up advertising? If it were just a lie she told herself, she shouldn’t have passed it off as truth to Ralph. One liked to keep some sort of lifebelt. She had always told herself she could teach if advertising ever became too much for her, and so she could. She had never tried teaching—she hadn’t had to—but she had a good degree, and there would be no difficulty in finding a post. Devon Educational Authority was particularly short of teachers, as all rural areas were. If she were to make the break with this hollow life she was leading, why not break completely, and go back to her roots in Devon? Not that roots had ever seemed to her particularly attractive things.
She had never told Ralph she liked working in advertising, and she didn’t; she loathed it, very often. Naturally there were moments; one did get a satisfaction out of doing things well and being praised for it, but that, she supposed, would apply in any job. How annoying that her thoughts kept coming back to this; she would do better to read a book. She poached herself an egg for lunch, and tried to settle to reading. No good. Perhaps she should have made more to Ralph about the fascination of it; he probably hadn’t understood that. She didn’t want to become a career woman like Nancy Harvey, though. Nancy took things too seriously, regarded any criticism, even of the most constructive kind, as a personal attack, and became all edgey and bitter in Plans Boards. Sophia would rather like to become a Group Head, though, and supposed that, if she were to stay at the Agency long enough, she would, or could now maybe, if she chose to leave the Agency for another. And she’d had offers. But she didn’t want to make a real thing out of advertising like Nancy and a few other women she could think of; she didn’t want to join the I.P.A., and get elected to the Creative Circle or that sort of thing; that would be much too committing.
She decided that she would simply stop thinking about Ralph, except that stopping herself was all part of thinking about him, and one couldn’t forget just by wanting to. He wasn’t the sort of person she had thought he was, and he wasn’t the sort of person he thought he was either. But was anybody? Was Sophia? Didn’t she deceive herself too? She hadn’t really meant that about giving up advertising to be a teacher. One played up to people, and didn’t know one was doing it. Ralph had played up to her for a while, perhaps, enjoying being the sort of person she saw, but that gets irksome, and he probably hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped. One couldn’t hold people to the way in which one first saw them.
He was pompous. He took himself too seriously; that was his trouble. And she had taken him too seriously; that was hers.
She didn’t want to grow into a Nancy Harvey. Could one help but be what one became? Perhaps a little, but it would be difficult, and the effort would never be over. Was it worth it? Being something other than what one really was, that was just a pretence, just fake. But if there were bits of what one was that one didn’t like, then one just had to pretend, and hope the pretence would stick. One had to keep on pretending, or else give in. Ralph hadn’t pretended for long, but should she blame him for preferring to live up to his own pretence of himself instead of the pretence she had invented for him?
No, it was cant to talk of giving up advertising for teaching, but she would give up advertising for a family any time, because she wanted one. Not for a husband; she could be a good wife, and a Group Head too. But she would give it up for a family. And if she were never to marry (and it was very possible that she might not, when she considered the obstacles she herself placed in the way of it), still she would not become like Nancy, but would try to be more like Hugh. Advertising or any other job couldn’t be instead of a family; that was where Nancy made her mistake. Sophia didn’t yet know what could be instead of a family. She hoped she would never need to find out.
Meanwhile she could only do what she could do. She would go on being as good a copywriter as she could, and as good a person. She would ask to leave Hugh’s group; they both knew it was time for that. She would try not to be too—what was it?—ego-involved, not to be too upset when things went wrong in the Hoppness way or any other way; she would tell herself it wasn’t really important, and that advertising was like that. Trying wouldn’t make much difference. She would often be upset, and ego-involved too (ridiculous association of an old brown hen, sitting on a piece of copy paper, and cackling), but both would pass more easily for her trying. And she would never be a teacher. She’d be bloody awful at teaching, as a matter of fact.
As for Ralph, she wouldn’t phone him, and she wouldn’t make a point of not phoning him. One didn’t forget people, and she would not forget him. It had been very different this time from the experience with Paul, and not wanting to meet on the stairs. She knew Ralph better, and herself better, so, whatever happened, she was the better for it. She didn’t care if she did meet Ralph on the stairs. In fact, she hoped they would meet somewhere casually, unimportantly, at a pub or at a party, and if she, Sophia, had the sense to do no more than grin at him, why then they might both begin to laugh together, and it would be all right between them, much lighter than before. She thought that, if this were going to happen, it had better happen fairly soon. Ralph was the sort of person for whom matters very quickly became habitual.
And she would never, ever, go into teaching.
*
She would never go back to teaching.
Keith had thought it was time to talk seriously, and with much clumsiness, much clearing of the throat, had said, “What will you do, Sylvia? Do you want to go back to teaching for a bit?” and she, sitting at the dressing-table of a bedroom of a hotel in the Rue de Lille and creaming her face, had said, “No,” just like that, without thinking. And she supposed, since it had come out so pat, that she must mean it.
It was so simple. You couldn’t go back. You might want to do so, but that was only a daydream, screening yourself from things as they were and making an excuse for your not accepting them or changing them. It was not the responsibility and the occupation offered by Richmond High School that she had wanted, but a shift in the balance of power; she had wanted to be out at work while Keith stayed at home, and both were young again. But they were not young now, and she was not, if she considered deeply, the sort of woman who is devoted only to failures.
If she and Keith had lived, in every important way, more and more apart, it had been because she had never bothered to try to keep closer together, since marriage and the child would always hold them at least conventionally close. Now Stephen was dead. Keith had his own life at the Agency—or at least the Agency had Keith’s life, which might not be the same thing—and Sylvia did not belong to the Agency. She could break up the marriage if she wished, ask for an arranged divorce, but she didn’t want that; she had been married too long to be good at being unmarried. Keith was somebody, not nobody. Perhaps there was nothing strong to keep them together, but nor was there anything to pull them apart.
Such a curt “No!” Keith thought that Sylvia did not want to talk seriously, and searched around for something else to say. The accident had kept them much in each other’s company, but he was no longer used to it, and treated his wife like a casual acquaintance come to call, trying to fill the silences with conversation. “Terrible about those poor people on the gratings,” he said. Yes, it had been strange to see those poor people sleeping, in this December weather, on the gratings to which (Sylvia supposed) warm air came up from the Metro below. There were many such people in worse condition than she, and one did well to remind oneself of this.
Keith arranged his shirt on the clothes-hanger in the wardrobe, and put on the top of his pyjamas. A double bed. They were used to it at home, and in Paris it was to be expected. “Hope those dustmen don’t keep us awake tonight,” he said. “Silly idea emptying dustbins at four in the morning.” She wiped the cream from her face with a tissue. What me spend me life rearing children. To feed bloody lions? Not me! It was a cold-blooded thought, but such thoughts might come to anyone. She was only thirty-five, after all.
Usually, at home in Purley, she gone up to bed first because she was always so tired, and often she had been asleep by the time Keith had followed her. Simply in the nature of their closeness, and sleeping sometimes on his back, there had been times … but it had always been easy to discourage Keith, especially since he himself knew that his mouth was unpleasant in the mornings; Keith was always considerate. And on Sundays, Stephen would come in early.
Encouragement might not come as easily after the habit of discouragement. She played with the idea. Cold-blooded? But she was cold now. Keith said suddenly, “Do you want me to give up my job?” and Sylvia almost replied, “No. I just don’t want you to give in to it,” but checked herself, and said instead, “Do you want to?” Not really cold-blooded; one had to be sensible.
“I don’t know.”
“What would you do instead?”
“Another agency?”
“I don’t see the point of that.”
“I could look for something on the client side.”
“Isn’t that the same thing, worse paid?”
“In a way.” Trousers hung on the back of a chair. He had already washed, and cleaned his teeth. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t go on as we are. I thought that perhaps if you wanted to go back to teaching…. I know we haven’t been talking about it, but I thought——”
“No, I don’t want to go back to teaching.” It wasn’t as if Keith were like the French husbands who, it was said, wore themselves out chasing other women. And she herself … Things were different; no, they couldn’t go on as they were. Keith would worry, and fret, and get up enough courage to “talk things out”, and then give up if he thought he were distressing her. Keith would think about things more, but she must take the decisions, and when she had done so, he would be grateful. He had a great capacity for love, she thought, as well as work, and there must be some way to make sure the second didn’t swallow up the first. She said, “You take things so seriously, darling. We have to go on.”
“Yes.”
“Together or apart, if you changed your job or if you didn’t, we’d have to go on somehow, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes.” Keith got into bed, and said with some unsteadiness, “Might as well be together then?”
The springs of the bed creaked. Human beings, however they might try to be dignified and romantic and all that, spent so much of their time behaving like the characters of a dirty joke. It couldn’t be helped, and it kept things going. Sylvia dabbed cologne on her neck and between the cleft of her breasts, and joined her husband in bed. One could do things in a cold way, but perhaps one got warm doing them.
*
In Kensington Gardens, men sat on straight chairs just outside the little shelter by the Round Pond. One wondered why they sat so straight with their hands in their laps, and then one noticed that each pair of hands grasped a reel of thin twine, and one could make out the diagonal line of twine dark against the sky, and follow it for a while until it disappeared into the colour, of the sky. From that point one projected, following the direction of the line, allowing for curve, and there, high up and motionless were the tiny kites, some shaped like boxes and some like birds. The men sat without moving or talking. They had brought sandwiches and their wives.
It would be dark soon, the early darkness of a December evening. In the east the sky was green, and in the west purple, and against it the trees, spreading their black leafless twigs, stood up like brooms. Such a cold day, but fine with it. Hugh had wondered whether to try the dogs with their coats, but it was no good; they wouldn’t enjoy the Gardens if they had to wear their coats, but would be forever sitting down, and trying to pull them off. They had walked in a great circular sweep almost to the Serpentine, and then up to Queens-way, and back again. They had harried a chihuahua and fled from an Alsatian, and it was time to go home.
They were yapping at a small boy, who had tried to pet Jane, but now ran for protection to his mother on a park bench. The dogs followed. “Jane! Jilly! Sue!” Hugh cried. “Gome here! I’m terribly sorry. They won’t hurt him. They’d run away if he turned and winked at them.”
“Do your dogs like children?” the small boy said, and his mother added proudly, “He’s always been taught to ask that, because some dogs don’t, I know.”
“They’re a bit small for children really,” Hugh said to the small boy. “They’re always afraid they’ll get pulled about, so they bark a lot.” He picked Jill up, and presented her to the small boy, whereupon the other two bitches sat up and begged to be picked up as well. The small boy put his hand on Jill’s head, and looked inquiringly at Hugh. “Yes, you can stroke her if you like. She enjoys it.” Transports of jealousy from Jane and Sue, jumping up at Hugh’s legs. The small boy stroked, and went on stroking. Jill licked his nose. “That’s enough, dear,” said his mother. “You can’t keep the gentleman here all day.” Hugh put Jill down again, and at once the three began a game, showing themselves off, bouncing and whirling, coming in to attack like destroyers, snarling in mimic rage, then off again, taking time to laugh and to look round for admiration, before returning to the chase in a flurry of ears and tails.
“I wish I had a dog like that,” the small boy said.
About the Author
John Bowen was born in India, sent ‘home’ to England at the age of four and a half, and was reared by aunts. He served in the Indian Army from 1943–47, then went to Oxford to read Modern History. After graduating he spent a year in the USA as a Fulbright Scholar, much of it hitch-hiking. He worked for a while in glossy journalism, then in advertising, before turning freelance when the BBC commissioned a six-part adventure-serial for children’s television. Between 1956 and 1965 he published six novels to excellent reviews and modest sales, then forsook the novel for nineteen years to concentrate on writing television drama (Heil Caesar, Robin Redbreast) and plays for the stage (After the Rain, Little Boxes, The Disorderly Women). He returned to writing novels in 1984 with The McGuffin; there were four more thereafter. Reviewers have likened his prose to that of Proust and P. G. Wodehouse, of E. M. Forster and the young John Buchan: it may be fair to say that he resists compartmentalisation. He has worked as a television producer for both the BBC and ITV, directed plays at Hampstead and Pitlochry and taught at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. He lives in a house on a hill among fields between Banbury and Stratford-on-Avon.
Copyright
Faber Finds edition first published in 2008
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© John Bowen, 1960
The right of John Bowen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–30515–5
John Bowen, Storyboard
