The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [474]
‘Patience’ he said. ‘There is never enough of it.’
‘I’m seriously thinking of absenting myself for a while.’
‘That might be a good idea. But not for too long.’
‘I shall see.’
Sometimes in my clumsy way I would try by some teasing remark to probe to the sources of this disruptive anxiety. ‘Clea, why are you always looking over your shoulder — for what?’ But this was a fatal error of tactics. Her response was always one of ill-temper or pique, as if in every reference to her distemper, however oblique, I was in some way mocking her. It was intimi-dating to see how rapidly her face darkened, her lips compressed themselves. It was as if I had tried to put my hand on a secret treasure which she was guarding with her life.
At times she was particularly nervous. Once as we were coming out of a cinema I felt her stiffen on my arm. I turned my eyes in the direction of her gaze. She was staring with horror at an old man with a badly gashed face. He was a Greek cobbler who had been caught in a bombardment and mutilated. We all knew him quite well by sight, indeed Amaril had repaired the damage as well as he was able. I shook her arm softly, reassuringly and she suddenly seemed to come awake. She straightened up abruptly
and said ‘Come. Let us go.’ She gave a little shudder and hurried me away.
At other such times when I had unguardedly made some allusion to her inner preoccupations — this maddening air of always listening for something — the storms and accusations which followed seriously suggested the truth of my own hypo-thesis — namely that she was trying to drive me away: ‘I am no good for you, Darley. Since we have been together you haven’t written a single line. You have no plans. You hardly read any more.’ So stern those splendid eyes had become, and so troubled!
I was forced to laugh, however. In truth I now knew, or thought I did, that I would never become a writer. The whole impulse to confide in the world in this way had foundered, had guttered out. The thought of the nagging little world of print and paper had become unbearably tedious to contemplate. Yet I was not un-happy to feel that the urge had abandoned me. On the contrary I was full of relief — a relief from the bondage of these forms which seemed so inadequate an instrument to convey the truth of feelings. ‘Clea, my dear’ I said, still smiling ineffectually, and yet desiring in a way to confront this accusation and placate her.
‘I have been actually meditating a book of criticism.’
‘Criticism!’ she echoed sharply, as if the word were an insult. And she smacked me full across the mouth — a stinging blow which brought tears to my eyes and cut the inside of my lip against my teeth. I retired to the bathroom to mop my mouth for I could feel the salty taste of the blood. It was interesting to see my teeth outlined in blood. I looked like an ogre who had just taken a mouthful of bleeding flesh from his victims. I washed my mouth, furiously enraged. She came in and sat down on the bidet, full of remorse. ‘Please forgive me’ she said. ‘I don’t know what sort of impulse came over me. Darley, please forgive’ she said.
‘One more performance like this’ I said grimly, ‘and I’ll give you a blow between those beautiful eyes which you’ll remember.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She put her arms round my shoulders from behind and kissed my neck. The blood had stopped. ‘What the devil is wrong?’ I said to her reflection in the mirror. ‘What has come over you these days? We’re drifting apart, Clea.’
‘I know.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ But her face had once more become hard and obstinate. She sat down on the bidet and stroked her chin thoughtfully, suddenly sunk in reflection once more. Then she lit a cigarette and walked back into her living-room. When I returned she was sitting silently before a painting gazing at it with an inattentive malevolent fixity.
‘I think we should separate for a while’ I said.
‘If you wish’ she rapped out mechanically.
‘Do you wish it?’
Suddenly she started