A Severed Head

I sat down again. There was a desperate fierceness in her ma

'Martin!' said Antonia in a shocked tone. Then she said, and her voice became monotonous again, 'I've already been to bed with him.'

My cheeks became hot with a sudden rush of blood as if I had been struck. My knee was against Antonia's. I captured Antonia's two hands which were still clawing at my sleeve, in a strong grip in my left hand. 'Since when? And how many times?'

She looked back at me, frightened but still firm. Antonia had her own soft frantic evasive way of getting what she wanted. I could feel her will upon me like a leech. She said, 'That doesn't matter. If you really want the details, I'll tell you later. Now I just want to tell you the main truth, to tell you that you've got to set me free. This thing has overwhelmed me, Martin. I've simply had to give in to it. Honestly, it's all or nothing.'

I crushed her wrists in my left hand. It may seem strange, but I was conscious of wondering and of deciding now how I ought to react, I was very conscious of her fear of a blow. I let go of her hands and said, 'Well, let me recommend nothing.'

Antonia relaxed and we drew a little apart. She gave a deep sigh and said, 'Oh, darling, darling —'

I said, 'If I broke your neck now I'd probably get off with three years.' I got up and leaned against the mantelpiece looking down at her. 'What have I done to deserve this?' I said.

Antonia smiled nervously. She patted her hair, her long fingers straying over the bun, pushing in hair-pins. She adjusted the neck of her blouse. She had a little the air of feeling that the worst was over. She said, 'I hate this, Martin. And I've been in torment. You've been so perfect. But I'm beyond thoughts about justification. I'm just desperate.'

'Yes, I have been perfect, haven't I?' I said. 'But still I don't accept what you say. We've been happy. I want to go on being happy.'

'Happy, yes,' said Antonia. 'But happiness is not the point. We aren't getting anywhere. You know that as well as I do.'

'One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.'

'You must face the fact,' said Antonia, 'that you're a disappointed man.'

'I'm damned if I'm a disappointed man,' I said, 'and if I were it certainly wouldn't be your fault. What you mean is that you're a disappointed woman.'

'A marriage is an adventure in development,' said Antonia, «and ours is simply at a standstill. I was conscious of that even before I fell in love with Anderson. It's partly my being so much older and being a sort of mother to you. I've kept you from growing up. All this has got to be faced sooner or later.' She sipped her drink. She had stopped looking frightened.

'Spare me the clinical stuff, for Christ's sake,' I said, 'it makes me feel sick. Leave me because you want someone else, let's have honest lust, not pseudo-science. But in any case you aren't going. You can't make changes like this at your age. You're my wife and I love you and I want to go on being married to you, so you'd better resign yourself to having a husband and a lover.'

'No,' said Antonia. 'I've got to go, Martin, I've got to. C'est plus fort que moi.' She got up and stood there opposite to me, her stomach thrust out, tall, twisted into a pillar of determination. She added, 'I'm extremely grateful to you for being so rational about it.'

I stared at her beautiful haggard face, concentrated now in a look of boldness mixed with a sort of cringing pity. Her big mobile mouth was working as if she were masticating inwardly the tender things she might have said. I had a sense of miserable confusion and of things having utterly escaped my control. «I'm not being rational,' I said. 'I can hear what you say, Antonia. But your words make no more sense to me than if you were a mad woman. I think I'd better go and talk to Palmer. And if he says we must behave like civilized men I shall kick his teeth in.'

'He expects you, darling,' said Antonia.

'Antonia,' I said, 'let me out of this bad dream. Pull yourself together. This is what is real, our marriage.'

She simply went on shaking her head.

'Anyway, my darling, my Antonia, what would I ever do without you?'

The painful concentration of her face increased and then dissolved as she gave a cry and began suddenly to weep. She looked infinitely pathetic when she was in tears. I went to her and she bowed her head slowly on to my shoulder, not raising her hands to her face. The tears fell between us.

'I knew you'd be good about it,' she said in a moment. 'I'm so relieved to have told you. I've hated lying about it. And you know, you need never do without me.' And she repeated, 'Thank you, thank you,' as if I had already set her free.

I said, 'Well, I haven't broken your neck, have I?'

She said, 'My child, my dear child.'

Four

'So you don't hate me, do you, Martin?' said Palmer.

I was lying down on the divan in Palmer's study where his patients usually reclined. Indeed I was to all intents and purposes his patient. I was being coaxed along to accept an unpleasant truth in a civilized and rational way.

'No, I don't hate you,' I said.

'We are civilized people,' said Palmer. 'We must try to be very lucid and very honest. We are civilized and intelligent people.'

'Yes,' I said. I lay still and sipped the large cut-glass tumbler of whisky and water which Palmer had just replenished for me. He himself was not drinking. As he talked, he paced to and fro, tall and lean, with his hands behind his back, the purple dressing-gown which he wore loosely over his shirt and trousers making a gentle silky swish. He paced to and fro in front of the line of Japanese prints which decorated the far wall, and bandit faces leered from behind him. His small cropped head moved against the blurred soft blues and charcoal blacks of the prints. The air was warm and dry, agitated by a mysterious breeze from some invisible fan. I was sweating.

'Antonia and I have been very happy,' I said. 'I hope she has not misled you here. I still ca

'Antonia could not mislead me if she tried,' said Palmer. 'Happiness, my dear Martin, is neither here nor there. Some people, and Antonia is one, conceive of their lives as a progress. Hers has been standing still for too long. She is due to move on.' He glanced at me occasionally as he paced, his slightly American voice soft and slow.