A Severed Head Read Free

anyone, ’ said Georgie. ‘ There you go looking at your watch again. All right, go if you must. What about one for the road? Shall I open that bottle of Nuits de Young? ’
    ‘ How many times must I tell you never to drink claret unless it has been open at least three hours? ’
    ‘ Don ’ t be so holy about it, ’ said Georgie. ‘ As far as I ’ m concerned the stuff is just booze. ’
    ‘ Little barbarian! ’ I said affectionately. ‘ You can give me some gin and French. Then I really must go. ’
    Georgie brought me the glass and we sat enlaced like a beautiful netsuke in front of the warm murmuring fire. Her room seemed a subterranean place, remote, enclosed, hidden. It was for me a moment of great peace. I did not know then that it was the last, the very last moment of peace, the end of the old innocent world, the final moment before I was plunged into the nightmare of which these ensuing pages tell the story.
    I pushed up the sleeve of her jersey and stroked her arm. ‘ Wonderful stuff, flesh. ’
    ‘ When ’ ll I see you? ’ said Georgie.
    ‘ Not till after Christmas, ’ I said. ‘ I ’ ll come if I can about the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth. But I ’ ll ring up anyway before that. ’
    ‘ I wonder if we ’ ll ever be able to be more open about this? ’ said Georgie. ‘ I do rather hate the lies. Well, I suppose not. ’
    ‘ Not, ’ I said. I didn ’ t like the hard words she used, but I had to give it her back as sharply. ‘ We ’ re stuck with the lies, I ’ m afraid. Yet, you know, this may sound perverse, but part of the nature, almost of the charm, of this relation is its being so utterly private. ’
    ‘ You mean its being clandestine is of its essence, ’ said Georgie, ‘ and if it were exposed to the daylight it would crumble to pieces? I don ’ t think I like that idea. ’
    ‘ I didn ’ t quite say that, ’ I said. ‘ But knowledge, other people ’ s knowledge, does inevitably modify what it touches. Remember the legend of Psyche, whose child, if she told about her pregnancy, would be mortal, whereas if she kept silent it would be a god. ’
    It was an unfortunate speech on which to part from Georgie, for it brought our minds back to something which I at least preferred never now to think about. Last spring my beloved had become pregnant. There was nothing to be done but to get rid of the child. Georgie had gone through with the hideous business in the manner that I would have expected of her, calm, laconic, matter-of-fact, even cheering me along with her surly wit. We had found it exceedingly difficult to discuss the matter even at the time, and we had not spoken of it since. What vast wound that catastrophe had perhaps made in Georgie ’ s proud and upright spirit I did not know. For myself, I got off with an extraordinary ease. Because of Georgie ’ s character, her toughness and the stoical nature of her devotion to me, I had not had to pay. It had all been quite uncannily painless. I was left with a sense of not having suffered enough. Only sometimes in dreams did I experience certain horrors, glimpses of a punishment which would perhaps yet find its hour.

 
     

    Two
     

    In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way. In my own marriage I early established myself as the one who took rather than gave. Like Dr Johnson, I started promptly upon the way in which I intended to go on. I was the more zealous in doing so in that I was counted by the world, and counted myself, very lucky to have got Antonia.
    I had, of course, misled Georgie about the success of my marriage. What married man who keeps a mistress does not so mislead her? My marriage with Antonia, apart from the fad. which was a continuing grief to me, that it was childless, was perfectly happy and successful. It was just that I wanted Georgie as well and did