The Sea Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard | eBook

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The Sea Change

By Elizabeth Jane Howard

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

CHAPTER 1

Jimmy

It might have happened anywhere, at any time, and it could certainly have been a good deal worse. Paris, for instance, or even New York, before an opening; with Lillian's heart giving us all a bad time, Emmanuel on his first-night strike, and I bouncing from one emotional situation to another, picking up the pieces and giving them back to the wrong people. In fact, it happened in London, two weeks after the play opened, at approximately twenty past twelve last night in the bathroom of the furnished house in Bedford Gardens. It might have been an hotel – it might have been a block of flats – in fact it might have been far worse. Far worse: she might actually have been dead. Sticking to facts, however, Emmanuel had put off sacking her for days: I think he'd even let her think she was coming to New York with us. We always do travel with a secretary, so it would have been quite reasonable if she'd thought that. Yesterday morning, when I tackled him about her, he tried to get me to do it – he even produced the gag about his being paid to be responsible for other people's emotional problems, so why should he face his own? But I knew then that he would do it. She cried a lot; poor Gloria, she's given to tears. He was very gentle to her all day; Lillian was persuaded to keep out of her way, which was the kindest thing she could do, and I did my best. She brought Emmanuel his letters just before we went to drink with Cromer before going to see a girl in a play whom Emmanuel thought he wanted for the New York production. Emmanuel offered her a glass of sherry, and we all had a sticky drink together: she seemed all right then – a bit quiet, and puffy round the eyes, poor thing – but on the whole I thought she was being very controlled. In the taxi Emmanuel suddenly said: 'What a pity that girls don't look beautiful, like country, after rain!', so I knew he was feeling bad about her. Then Lillian said: 'I look marvellous after I've been crying – easily my best,' which was clever of her, because she made him laugh and it's true.

The girl in the play looked right, but she wasn't – Emmanuel said her voice depressed him, and of course Lillian thought she'd be perfect, so what with the argument and dinner we weren't back until after twelve. We had a drink and Lillian started again about the girl: it's funny how people who love arguing are nearly always bad at it. To change the subject Emmanuel wondered why all the lights were on. They were: in the sitting room when we got back, and all the way up the stairs. Most people can get depressed or agitated out of their observation, but Emmanuel doesn't: he never stops noticing things, but he only mentions them when he's bored. Lillian said 'How extraordinary!' and dashed upstairs saying something about burglars. We sat on the arms of the armchairs, and Emmanuel looked at me over his lime juice, raised his eyebrows, dropped them with a twitch and said: 'Jimmy. Here we sit on other people's chairs, drinking out of their glasses. I'd like to be at least one of the three bears: I prefer an hotel to borrowing everything.'

'In three weeks you'll be snug at the New Weston,' I said.

He raised his glass. 'I can hardly wait.'

He'd gone blue under the eyes; whenever I most want to comfort him I seem to underline his despair – well, perhaps it isn't despair, but it is so quiet and continuous and often makes him look so sad that I can't think of another word for it. And then, whenever I feel like that about him he always makes me laugh. Now, his eyes snapping with the kind of amusement that people who don't know him think is malicious, he said: 'If we have burglars upstairs, Lillian is getting on with them rather too ...'

And then from upstairs she screamed – if you can call it that – the most dreadful sound: I can't describe it – a scream, a howl, a wail of terror with a train of shock in its wake – a thud, and silence. Emmanuel's face had closed on the instant to such a breathless frozen acceptance of disaster that I thought he wouldn't be able to move, but he was ahead of me up the stairs.

Lillian was out on the bathroom floor: the door was open, the lights were on, and we could see her as we rushed up the stairs. Emmanuel was on his knees by her: 'She's fainted: look in the bath.' But he didn't need to tell me. In the bath was Gloria Williams. Her shoes were arranged neatly beside it as though she'd gone to bed, but she was still wearing her horrible mauve jersey and her tight black skirt, and she looked exactly like the jacket of a crime story. For a moment I thought she was dead.

'She's not dead, is she?' said Emmanuel. He was hardly asking and he didn't look up. Then I realized that the heavy, groaning breaths were not Lillian's but Gloria's. 'No.'

I felt for her heart in an amateurish sort of way: there was a reluctant, irregular bumping. There was no water in the bath.

'Help me to get Lillian on to her bed, and call a doctor.'

We did that. Emmanuel put a handkerchief soaked with something out of a bottle from the dressing table on to Lillian's forehead while I was talking to the doctor's wife. By the time I'd finished the air reeked of eau de Cologne, and Emmanuel had gone.

In the bathroom he was kneeling by the bath, slopping cold water on Gloria's face and slapping her hands, and he didn't seem to be doing much good.

'Phenobarbitone,' he said; 'and God knows how much sherry. Sherry!' he repeated with a kind of wondering disgust. 'Doctor coming?'

'About five minutes. I told his wife about the breathing while he was dressing. Lucky we know a good doctor.'

'We always know a good doctor,' he said.

'How much stuff has she had?'

'The bottle's empty, but I don't know how much was left in it. Let's get her on to the dressing-room bed.' She was much smaller than Lillian, but unexpectedly heavy, and her breathing was beginning to frighten me.

'I'm sure we ought to prop her up.' We did this: her head rolled to one side and I heard a little click in her neck.

'Black coffee?' I said tentatively. 'I mean – isn't the thing to wake her up?'

'The thing is to get the dope out of her, and I defy you to do that. How do you make somebody sick if they're unconscious?'

'She's not absolutely unconscious – look.'

Gloria had half opened her eyes, but only the whites showed which made her look worse. They flickered heavily and shut. Emmanuel said: 'Lillian!' as though even the idea of her was his fault, and vanished.

I tried to prop Gloria's head up more steadily, but it resolutely drooped: ashamed and inefficient, I pushed her dry wispy hair off her forehead, and wondered why the hell she'd had to go to these lengths. Love for Emmanuel? Despair? Spite? Sheer bloody-mindedness? Or six vital months spent with one of our leading dramatists? I was just thinking how awful it was that I couldn't feel sorrier for her when the bell rang, and I heard Emmanuel go down. The doctor was coming – and immediately I started to feel sorry for her. Poor Gloria; she was an awful colour: her face looked as though it had been made up over nothing ...

The doctor looked tired and reliable; Emmanuel followed him into the room and then said: 'Keep an eye on Lillian for me, would you, Jimmy? She's rather confused.'

Lillian was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. She had then, and always has what would once have been described as 'a striking pallor'. Emmanuel had put her mink over her which somehow made her look even more weighted down and fragile – because although she is tall, she is extremely thin. She has ash blonde hair like shot silk, and is not at all like poor Gloria. Asleep, she looked gentle and delicate: she wasn't asleep – her eyes opened smoothly like a piece of exquisite machinery and she nearly smiled at me.

'Shock,' she said. 'Light me one of my cigarettes, Jimmy, like a lamb.'

Her bag was on the stool in front of her dressing table, and in the triple glass I could see her watching me. She has one of those faces that are all eyes and mouth and white complexion – very attractive at a distance.

'The doctor's here,' I said. I gave her a cigarette and struck a match. The huge black pupils of her eyes contracted from the flame: eau de Cologne and the herbal cigarette were horrible together. Her face clouded.

'Why hasn't he come in then?'

'He's seeing to Gloria. She's not very well,' I added carefully.

Her long thin fingers clutched my sleeve, and painfully, a bit of my arm. 'Gloria! Oh! Is she —? Has she —? Oh, what on earth has Em done now?'

'He's helping the doctor, I think.' I was determined not to understand her, and she knew it, because she wouldn't let go of my sleeve. 'If you're all right, I think I'd better go and see if I can do anything.'

'Jimmy – I got such a dreadful shock – I can hardly remember a thing. You know my heart stuff in the bathroom? If you're going to leave me, I think you'd better get it. Don't worry anybody – just fetch the stuff.'

I got it. In the bathroom I saw the decanter with 'Sherry' on a silver vine leaf slung round its neck. It was almost empty. Somewhere in the house a clock struck one. I met Emmanuel on the stairs looking brisk and very sick.

'He's telephoned for an ambulance. How's Lillian?'

Then he saw the bottle in my hand, and the much-worn mechanism of concern marked his face.

'She's OK. She's smoking. Is Gloria going to hospital?'

He nodded. 'But the doctor says she's all right. She'll live to regret it.'

'Is he going with her?'

'He wants to talk to us first.' He looked suddenly bitter, and good tempered. 'You'll have to do the talking, Jimmy.'

I gave Lillian her stuff, and she said that if someone brought her some brandy, she thought that she could get up.

'You're much better off in bed,' I said truthfully. 'And you'd better lay off the brandy until the doctor's seen you.' I escaped downstairs on that. At that moment, the last thing I could bear was Lillian: the same old Lillian, only this time it would probably be worse, because although several of Emmanuel's secretaries have fallen in love with him, none of them has ever done anything like this. 'I happen to love my husband so much,' it began, 'that I would do anything for him. Naturally he needs outside interests, and who am I, constantly ill (etc. etc.) to stand in his way? I know they are not serious: his only serious interest now is writing plays – but all artists need a sense of freedom and every kind of opportunity ...' and so on: whitewashing anything is a messy business. 'He knows if ever there is any trouble, I am always there ...' was the end of it. He did, indeed. Hell, even if I did think she was a bitch, I was being worse about her than that. She's had her share of disaster – the trouble was that none of us ever forgot it – and her active ambivalence about Emmanuel's work nearly drove him crazy at times ...

The doors of the ambulance slammed outside, and I opened up to the men before they'd managed to ring the bell. They tramped carefully up the stairs with a stretcher, and carefully down again with Gloria, extraordinarily diminished, upon it. Emmanuel and the doctor followed. The doctor went out with the stretcher, and Emmanuel, looking guilty, said where was the brandy, Lillian had got to have some before she would face the doctor. I poured out a small glass, and to my dismay, he drank it – as quick as a flash – and held out the glass again.

'Lillian, this time,' I said. I couldn't bear his mournful brown eyes asking for trouble.

'Lillian this time.' He took the glass and went.

The doctor shut the front door, pulled the curtain across it and walked towards me (the door opens straight into the sitting room which has always seemed to me to be carrying the English system of draughts about as far as it can go).

'Would you like a drink?' I was nervous: I knew he was going to ask questions, and I felt that some of them might be rather awkward to answer. He said he'd like a small whisky, and I set about it. I was just about to ask him if Gloria was all right, or something silly like that, when he said: 'You are another secretary of Mr Joyce's?'

'Well, in a way. I manage things for him: business, and travelling, and if he directs his plays I act as a kind of assistant.'

'Miss Williams is his secretary?'

'She was.' I handed him his drink, and he nodded sharply at me.

'What do you mean, "was"?'

'She has been for the last six months. We're leaving for New York in a week or two, and he wasn't taking her there.' I felt a kind of nervous patience in my voice; this was like the police, and, if I wasn't very careful, the newspapers. Before he could say it, I said: 'Look – I fully realize that this is a serious matter – we're all most upset by it. Apart from anything else, it was a frightful shock. I'm afraid I don't know what happens about these things, but if you'll tell me how I can help – anything you want to know –' I heard myself make an unconvincing noise – 'naturally I'll do my best.'

He sat turning his glass round and round in his hands, looking at me tiredly and not saying anything. I ploughed on. 'Mr Joyce told her this morning that she couldn't come to New York. She was terribly disappointed and so on. I suppose that is why she took the phenobarbitone.'

'How do you know that she took it?'

I think that gave me the worst shock of the evening. 'She must have! She was all alone ...' The icy trickle reached the middle of my spine – 'I don't, I suppose.'

He smiled then, in a finished sort of way which made him look incongruously pathetic. 'Oh, I think she did take it. I wondered why you thought so.'

'She is going to be all right, isn't she?'

'She should be all right. They'll be pumping it all out of her now, and then I shall go and have another look at her. The point is, Mr ...'

'Sullivan.'

'Sullivan, that people don't do that sort of thing without what seems to them, at least, good reason. And, as you know, whatever the reason, it is an offence to do that sort of thing. Is there any chance that she can have taken it by mistake?'

'I don't know. She could have, I suppose –' I left that straw in the air where it belonged.

'Was she attached to Mr Joyce?'

'Well – I think she admired him. You know, he always seems a glamorous employer – the theatre, and so on, and all the publicity ...' I took the plunge – 'and while we're on that subject, it may seem callous to you, but it's part of my job to stop anything like this getting a press. Not that anything like this has ever happened before, of course.'

'Of course,' he agreed. He almost seemed faintly, not unkindly, amused. 'Who found her, and when?'

'Mrs Joyce. It must have been about five minutes before we called you.'

'About twenty past twelve. Where did Mrs Joyce find her?'

'Upstairs. She went up to her bedroom because the lights were on, and that's when she found her.'

'On the bed?'

For some idiotic reason, I just nodded.

'What about her relatives? Have you got their names and addresses? The hospital will want them, tonight, if possible.'

'She lives with a sister. I can find the address.'

I had just done this, when Emmanuel came into the room. He walked straight over to the drinks table, poured and drank another brandy. Then he turned and faced us: his eyes were bright, and he looked unnaturally fresh.

'Give Doctor Gordon another drink, Jimmy.' He looked amiably at us, but there was a kind of defiance about him which I knew and distrusted. 'Well, now, where have we got to? Have you got Gloria out of the bath yet?'

He noted the doctor and me – he positively revelled in our reactions before, in an intentionally flat voice, he said: 'I'm sure that Jimmy hasn't made the situation clear to you, doctor. He is under the impression that he has to protect me – annihilate at least one dimension of mine. We found this young woman in the bath having taken all the available sherry and phenobarbitone, because she fancied herself – and very possibly she was – madly in love with me, and having had an affair with her as short as it was unsatisfactory, I was abandoning her. I was not, you see, at any time in love with her. These discrepancies occur – particularly if one is irresponsible and unscrupulous; they are probably inevitable, but one doesn't anticipate them. If anticipation is the thief of experience, every now and then one needs an experience – even if one is just ticking over because of the repetition.'

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Sea Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Copyright © 1959 Elizabeth Jane Howard. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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The Sea Change

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