Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [112]
She drew his head on to her breast, she ran her fingers through his hair. ‘Darling Walter,’ she whispered,’darling Walter.’ There was a long silence, a warm still happiness. And then suddenly, just because this silent happiness was so deep and perfect and therefore, in her eyes, intrinsically rather absurd and even rather dangerous in its flawless impersonality, rather menacing to her conscious will, ‘Have you gone to sleep, Walter?’ she asked and tweaked his ear.
In the days that followed Walter desperately did his best to credit her with the emotions he himself experienced. But Lucy did not make it easy for him. She did not want to feel that deep tenderness which is a surrender of the will, a breaking down of personal separateness. She wanted to be herself, Lucy Tantamount, in full command of the situation, enjoying herself consciously to the last limit, ruthlessly having her fun; free, not only financially and legally, but emotionally too—emotionally free to have him or not to have him. To drop him as she had taken him, at any moment, whenever she liked. She had no wish to surrender herself. And that tenderness of his—why, it was touching, no doubt, and flattering and rather charming in itself, but a little absurd and, in its anxious demand for a response from her side, really rather tiresome. She would let herself go a little way towards surrender, would suffer herself to be charged by his caresses with some of his tenderness; only to suddenly draw herself back from him into a teasing, provocative detachment. And Walter would be woken from his dream of love into a reality of what Lucy called ‘fun,’ into the cold daylight of sharply conscious, laughingly deliberate sensuality. She left him unjustified, his guiltiness unpalliated.
‘Do you love me? ‘ he asked her one night. He knew she didn’t. But perversely he wanted to have his knowledge confirmed, made explicit.
‘I think you’re a darling,’ said Lucy. She smiled up at him. But Walter’s eyes remained unansweringly sombre and despairing.
‘But do you love me?’ he insisted. Propped on his elbow, he hung over her almost menacingly. Lucy was lying on her back, her hands clasped under her head, her flat breasts lifted by the pull of the stretched muscles. He looked down at her; under his fingers was the curved elastic warmth of the body he had so completely and utterly possessed. But the owner of the body smiled up at him through half-closed eyelids, remote and unattained. ‘Do you love me?’
‘You’re enchanting.’ Something like mockery shone between the dark lashes.
‘But that isn’t an answer to my question. Do you love me?’
Lucy shrugged up her shoulders and made a little grimace
‘Love?’ she repeated. ‘It’s rather a big word, isn’t it?’ Disengaging one of her hands from under her head she raised it to give a little tug to the lock of brown hair that had fallen across Walter’s forehead. ‘Your hair’s too long,’ she said.
‘Then why did you have me?’ Walter insisted.
‘If you knew how absurd you looked with your solemn face and your hair in your eyes!’ She laughed. ‘Like a constipated sheep dog.’
Walter brushed back the drooping lock. ‘I want to be answered,’ he went on obstinately. ‘Why did you have me?’
‘Why? Because it amused me. Because I wanted to. Isn’t that fairly obvious?’
‘Without loving?’
‘Why must you always bring in love?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘But how can you leave it out?’
‘But if I can have what I want without it, why should I put it in? And besides, one doesn’t put it in. It happens to one. How rarely! Or perhaps it never happens; I don’t know. Anyhow, what’s one to do in the intervals?’ She took him again by the forelock and pulled his face down towards her own. ‘In the intervals, Walter darling, there’s you.’
His mouth was within an inch or two of hers. He stiffened his neck and would not let himself be pulled down any further. ‘Not to mention all the others,’ he said.
Lucy tugged harder at his hair. ‘Idiot!’ she said, frowning. ‘Instead of being grateful for what you’ve got.