Realization came to me slowly—there was less confusion, less pain … but no thoughts as yet of people or of places. The animal in pain knows only pain or the surcease of pain, it can concentrate on nothing else. Drugs, mercifully dulling physical suffering, confuse the mind; heightening the impression of chaos.
But lucid intervals began to come—there was the moment when they told me definitely that I had had an accident.
Knowledge came at last—knowledge of my helplessness—of my wrecked broken body … There was no more life for me as a man amongst men.
People came to see me—my brother, awkward, tongue-tied, with no idea of what to say. We had never been very close. I could not speak to him of Jennifer.
But it was of Jennifer I was thinking. As I improved, they brought me my letters. Letters from Jennifer …
Only my immediate family had been admitted to see me. Jennifer had had no claim, no right. She had been technically only a friend.
They won’t let me come, Hugh darling, she wrote. I shall come as soon as they do. All my love. Concentrate on getting better, Jennifer.
And another:
Don’t worry, Hugh. Nothing matters so long as you are not dead. That’s all that matters. We shall be together soon—for always. Yours Jennifer.
I wrote to her, a feeble pencil scrawl, that she mustn’t come. What had I to offer Jennifer now?
It was not until I was out of the hospital and in my brother’s house that I saw Jennifer again. Her letters had all sounded the same note. We loved each other! Even if I never recovered we must be together. She would look after me. There would still be happiness—not the happiness of which we had once dreamed, but still happiness.
And though my first reaction had been to cut the knot ruthlessly, to say to Jennifer, ‘Go away, and never come near me,’ I wavered. Because I believed, as she did, that the tie between us was not of the flesh only. All the delights of mental companionship would still be ours. Certainly it would be best for her to go and forget me—but if she would not go?
It was a long time before I gave in and let her come. We wrote to each other frequently and those letters of ours were true love letters. They were inspiring—heroic in tone—
And so, at last, I let her come …
Well, she came.
She wasn’t allowed to stay very long. We knew then, I suppose—but we wouldn’t admit it. She came again. She came a third time. After that, I simply couldn’t stand it any longer. Her third visit lasted ten minutes, and it seemed like an hour and a half! I could hardly believe it when I looked at my watch afterwards. It had seemed, I have no doubt, just as long to her …
For you see we had nothing to say to each other …
Yes, just that …
There wasn’t, after all, anything there.
Is there any bitterness like the bitterness of a fool’s paradise? All that communion of mind with mind, our thoughts that leapt to complete each other’s, our friendship, our companionship: illusion—nothing but illusion. The illusion that mutual attraction between man and woman breeds. Nature’s lure, Nature’s last and most cunning piece of deceit. Between me and Jennifer there had been the attraction of the flesh only—from that had sprung the whole monstrous fabric of self-deception. It had been passion and passion only, and the discovery shamed me, turned me sour, brought me almost to the point of hating her as well as myself. We stared at each other desolately—wondering each in our own way what had happened to the miracle in which we had been so confident.
She was a good-looking young woman, I saw that. But when she talked she bored me. And I bored her. We couldn’t talk about anything or discuss anything with any pleasure.
She kept reproaching herself for the whole thing, and I wished she wouldn’t. It seemed unnecessary and just a trifle hysterical. I thought to myself, Why on earth has she got to fuss so?
As she left the third time she said, in her persevering bright way, ‘I’ll come again very soon, Hugh darling.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t come.’
‘But of course I shall.’ Her voice was hollow, insincere.
I said savagely, ‘For God’s sake don’t pretend, Jennifer. It’s finished—it’s all finished.’
She said it wasn’t finished, that she didn’t know what I meant. She was going to spend her life looking after me, she said, and we would be very happy. She was determined on self-immolation, and it made me see red. I felt apprehensive, too, that she would do as she said. Perhaps she would always be there, chattering, trying to be kind, uttering foolish bright remarks … I got in a panic—a panic born of weakness and illness.
I yelled at her to go away—go away. She went, looking frightened. But I saw relief in her eyes.
When my sister-in-law came in later to draw the curtains, I spoke. I said, ‘It’s over, Teresa. She’s gone … she’s gone … She won’t come back, will she?’
Teresa said in her quiet voice, No, she wouldn’t come back.
‘Do you think, Teresa,’ I asked, ‘that it’s my illness that makes me see things—wrong?’
Teresa knew what I meant. She said that, in her opinion, an illness like mine tended to make you see things as they really were.
‘You mean that I’m seeing Jennifer now as she really is?’
Teresa said she didn’t mean quite that. I wasn’t probably any better able to know what Jennifer was really like now than before. But I knew now exactly what effect Jennifer produced on me, apart from my being in love with her.
I asked her what she herself thought of Jennifer.
She said that she had always thought Jennifer was attractive, nice, and not at all interesting.
‘Do you think she’s very unhappy, Teresa?’ I asked morbidly.
‘Yes, Hugh, I do.’
‘Because of me?’
‘No, because of herself.’
I said, ‘She goes on blaming herself for my accident. She keeps saying that if I hadn’t been coming to meet her, it would never have happened—it’s all so stupid!’
‘It is, rather.’
‘I don’t want her to work herself up about it. I don’t want her to be unhappy, Teresa.’
‘Really, Hugh,’ said Teresa. ‘Do leave the girl something!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She likes being unhappy. Haven’t you realized that?’
There is a cold clarity about my sister-in-law’s thought processes that I find very disconcerting.
I told her that that was a beastly thing to say.
Teresa said thoughtfully that perhaps it was, but that she hadn’t really thought it mattered saying so now.
‘You haven’t got to tell yourself fairy stories any longer. Jennifer has always loved sitting down and thinking how everything has gone wrong. She broods over it and works herself up—but if she likes living that way, why shouldn’t she?’ Teresa added, ‘You know, Hugh, you can’t feel pity for a person unless there’s self-pity there. A person has to be sorry for themselves before you can be sorry for them. Pity has always been your weakness. Because of it you don’t see things clearly.’
I found momentary satisfaction in telling Teresa that she was an odious woman. She said she thought she probably was.