Scylla
She arrived in London at the time when all reasonable citizens are trying to leave it, and the place seems fuller than ever. Full of townspeople shown up by the magnificence of summer, with children who appear brutalised from want of contact with things growing; where, in spite of every grit-weathered leaf, there is a pretence made that all is for the best inside the vast, roaring, fortuitous wilderness: that Epping Forest is the true green wood, and Southend virgin sea. If Paris is a lovely salon displayed for conversation, London is a lumber-room to be foraged for junk, rubbish, white elephants, treasure. Midsummer is not the time to do it.
Scylla walked through the green park, fresh from no substitute hills and the sea, and not in the least grateful for them. Yet with only contempt for the posters and pretence that represented the Londoners’ poor escape to the land. Her yellow lawn frock blew up over her knees, under her powdered arms and throat there was a faint gold patina of freckles. Her little neck-scarf flying out behind her, she walked like a nymph in a temper, blessing nothing she passed.
Something had been taken away from her. Not Picus or Felix, but what they had made her think about. Apples of Iduna the goddess, given her to feed the Aesir, without which she pined without dying. What happened to Iduna and her apples after? Loki, Saturday, had stolen them and shut her up in a giant’s castle, and she had been waited on by elf-women, very pleasant in front, but round the back made out of hollow boards. Beastly hot day and no adventures. Business at grey offices in Lincoln’s Inn. The only woman she really liked married to a boy she did not. She was going to dinner there.
She remembered that the woman, her friend Lydia, had wanted once to marry Clarence. Might have married him until, one day, Clarence had made a scene: said that he could not leave Picus: that Picus needed him: had told Lydia that she did not love him: that it was a trick to get a husband: and had broken down badly after. Lydia had said nothing. And “had never been quite the same since.” That said it exactly. Had probably married her slick young outsider to annoy Clarence. A real chorus-boy beauty with a spirit to match. She would dine there, in their pretentious flat, all shams. It pleased Lydia if her friends flattered her husband. Scylla knew that it might please her that evening if she showed contempt.
So no sweet temper adorned her as she swung into the new sitting-room with its faked cabinets and painful majolicas, and saw Lydia in a too-short frock and a too-tight hair wave, and a too-pink makeup, reading the Romaunt de la Rose. A woman bred out of great stone castles for a life of power and danger, she looked a fool, stripped of what should have been on her, the formal setting that should have extended north, south, east, and west of her. Not necessarily castles. A bare table and a window stuffed with sacking might have suited her purpose, when the purpose was her own, not a stunt to please her husband, like a lion riding a bicycle at a fair.
Vexed deliberation marked the ivory forehead, her chief beauty. Her stockings were not drawn tight, and did not match. An intelligence made for children and learning and administration was adapting itself to marriage, with a gigolo, in a shaky business, in London, without capital, after the war. Would do it badly unless she broke him. Could not break him, he would twist and slip off.
A cathedral had better not turn mousetrap, or a chalice a cocktail shaker. A ten-inch gun should not be trained on a mark that is not there.
And Scylla found that all she could do was laugh to see her friend so much in love.
And Lydia knew this. Also that Scylla had kept her freedom, was up to all their old amusements out in Europe, down in the South. Scylla saw Clarence continually and made fun of him. Might flirt with him, more curious things can happen, when her proper business was to marry too, and establish herself.
And both the young women knew that this meeting if inevitable was unfortunate, the end of a friendship from university to marriage. Lydia had made a dangerous one. God only knew where adventure would lead the other.
The husband came in. Knocked over his wife’s book with a movie paper, and began to talk about himself. A row at the garage and how he had scored. Lydia frowned.
“Phil, Scylla is here.” He kissed Scylla several times, while she stared up to see what the prettier woman could do with her eyes; while she was loathing him because he had taken her friend away from her. To use Lydia’s practical brain and her unpractised love for his own little ends, to betray her, mishandle her, exploit her. And be dreadfully punished when Lydia recovered from her passion because he had laid familiar paws on her pride. Her heaven-born pride which might as easily move to hell. In a timeless instant she saw the woman Lydia would be, when she would punish her fancy-boy for being the slick little animal he was. And, during the transition, break both hearts.
I may become like that, too. A thought passing, passionate then dispassionate.
At lunch, on Philip’s insistence, she praised the table-setting, who had adored Lydia for being the world’s worst housekeeper. It was easier when Philip dropped the garage and making eyes, and showed frank jealousy. He was really afraid of his wife’s old friends, knew that he must detach her from them quickly. And Lydia revelled in his authority, her mind storing it up for later, for part of the interminable, intolerable score they would have to recite to one another. … In a house where there would be no children, nor any garden for forgiveness full of the other’s favourite flowers.
Now Scylla minded this. Minded also that Philip had not even thought to approach her as his wife’s friend. What was left her now but observation? She had had enough of grief. There was only her amusement left, the contrast between Lydia’s naive eroticism and her formidable wits: Philip’s technique with her no more than the length of rope on which he had to hang himself. His method was to cut conversation, to interrupt whatever was said; and when he spoke, interrupt himself, so that there should never be any continuity. Perfectly sound. The quickest way to exasperate Scylla. He was reckoning that he could, not quite such a fool as these grand ladies thought him. Could show them that not being a gentleman was worth something: give Lydia’s lady friend something else to call him than a misplaced insect.
And Scylla no longer believed that her reserve of charity was an arsenal. She did not want Lydia if she could not tell her the story of the cup, draw on her learning, and on her instinct for tradition, which might have been created to meet the situation. Without that story her summer in the South was no story, and how often had Lydia been down with them in the wood? Philip once, had followed her there, uninvited, and found her singing them troubador songs. Had bawled jazz and almost dragged her away. Impulses cold, cruel, and insolent grew in Scylla, along with understanding perfecting itself.
A new aspect of the worst had arrived. They were already too accustomed to it. Had seen too many designs broken, whose assembly had been mysteries of harmony. Until they had forgotten unity, harvest ahead of vintage; forgotten that there could be any condition but emulation, advantage, and personal success. She despised herself because she had not the clean surgery to cut out memory and hope. As the story of the house could not be told without the wood, the house-party could not be described without the cup. As well talk politics to Picus as speak of the cup with Philip in the room.
“What happened down South?” said Lydia. “London makes me ache for it. I hear the waves turning over—don’t interrupt, Phil—and the branches turning round in the wood.” Scylla thought: Concentrate on Carston. Make him funny—with the fun left out. Nothing that she said held together, who had Picus and under Gault to tell to the proper person to hear it, sœur douce amie. Lydia must know that because of Philip she could not tell. Lydia had refused to dine alone with her. Scylla did not know the stupid scene he had made when Lydia had tried to go, until he had made love to her, and snatched a promise she did not dare break.
Lydia knew and was not consoled. There might be news of Clarence. She was a jealous woman. Scylla had had Clarence to herself: had looked up at Philip, smiling. Already she knew what she had married, what they would become. Soon she would not be with Scylla’s people, or even in their world. And Scylla stayed in and walked out of it so airily. Soft, bitter, little laps of farseeing. The quickest thing to do was hate, before it was taken out of her in sorrow. Hadn’t Scylla come to triumph? Her husband’s delicious voice and vulgar accent enchanted and fretted her. His words and the beauty of his wrist as he lit Scylla’s cigarette. How could she keep him? And keep him Phil? Be sure of him and improve him? Possible or impossible, it was not her job. Who should have been advising Scylla, correcting and fortifying her.
Exasperated, the lion’s paw fell, claws astretch.
What follows can be as well represented operatically—it began:
Philip
Recitative. “Lydia and I are often thinking of you, Scylla—and I’m sure you won’t take us up wrong.”
Lydia
“We were both thinking if it is quite the thing for you to be there alone with all those men!”
Scylla
Song. “Felix is my chaperone, chaperone,” etc.
Philip and Lydia
Duet. “In the end it does not do, does not do,
People know you for that kind of woman.”
Scylla
“What sort of a woman?”
Philip and Lydia
Recit. “We feel it since we married. It does not do, it does not do, to go against society.”
Philip
“I’ve seen a good deal of the world, you know—perhaps not quite the same society as yours, but—”
Philip, Lydia and Scylla
Trio. “People say—”
“What do they say?”
“You know the things they say.”
“What have they said?”
“We’d rather not tell you and go into details.”
“Go into details!”
“You’re doing it for my good.”
Philip and Lydia
Duet. “Of course we are, of course we are.
We wouldn’t hurt your feelings,
But—”
Philip
“I’m so fond of you, Scylla.”
Lydia
“We’re so fond of you, Scylla.
But—
We’ve found it out, we’ve found it out.
The world has reason on its side.”
Scylla
Solo. “What is the world?
Lydia’s world was my world,
And I don’t know Philip’s world.
What reason has the world got, anyhow?”
Philip and Lydia
Anthem.
“It does not do.
It does not do.”
Philip and Scylla
Duet. “What good do these men do to you?”
“What good do I do them?”
Philip and Lydia
Quick recitative. “But can’t you consider that everyone thinks that you sleep with each other in turn?”
Philip, Lydia and Scylla
Trio. “Including my brother?”
“Now, Scylla, be decent!”
“I am learning behaviour from you.”
“You’re so young,
So attractive—”
“I am several years older than you.”
Lydia
“You were always a baby.”
Philip
“And always the lady.”
Philip really said that, and when Scylla giggled, the string that tied them burned through and snapped. She remembered Picus at home: under Gault. A cup in a well: in a house. Out of India: in a book out of no man’s land.
A shore like that, my dear,
Lies where no man will steer,
No maiden-land.
Most men steer there, and away before they have properly landed. “Land me where my friend and her fancy-man are waiting to bite.” She noticed how they hunted a single line as a double technique—Lydia wanting to find out, Philip to defame. It infuriated her that she should be hurt.
Lydia was saying:
“I am awfully fond of those boys, Scylla, but they’re mal vus.”
“What is that?” (Don’t defend.)
“Well, you know—”
“No, I don’t. Try again.”
Lydia did:
“Why did you break up so soon? You said Felix had gone to Paris and you don’t seem to know about the others. Where’s Clarence?”
If she knew even that, she would have something to keep the old heartbreak company.
Philip was saying:
“Scylla, why don’t you marry Clarence: People say he’s a beauty, and it’s time you picked up a husband—”
“She wouldn’t,” said Lydia—“despises Clarence. But she can’t go on like this.”
“Go on like what?” Philip answered her.
“You know what people say about a set with no real men in it.”
“What is a real man?”
“They don’t amount to anything, and you know it. I’ve seen the world in my little way, and that sort don’t count. I think I’ve got Lydia out of that kind of thing. We mean to make a good business of things as we find them. Can’t finnick about with white hands, old standards, and fancy words these days. Don’t mean to, do we? And we shan’t get into quite the messes we might find if you asked us down South. Perhaps that’s why you don’t. And, honestly, I don’t know if I’d let Lydia go—”
“If you mean that you’d find Ross having an affair with Nanna, you can go and look.”
Philip went on:
“You know we don’t mean that. If you’ll excuse me, but Lydia said the other day that you’re getting to think of nothing but sex—”
Insolent little cub. She had a last look at Lydia, twisting her wedding-ring.
“Of course, I am,” she said. “I know something about it. Very naturally, now. I’ve been trying to tell you. We have all separated now because (not my brother, of course) we can’t decide which one of them shall marry me, and we’ve run away to think; I can’t make up my mind. Not Ross, or Picus. But I’ve decided not to look outside our set.”
She saw the blood rising in Lydia’s face. Not a blush, a tide to the brain.
Now I’ve done it. I’ve lied. I’ve hurt her. Considering my present relations with Clarence—
Lydia was saying:
“I don’t know. There is something fatal about your life, Scylla.” She noticed that it excited Philip to think of her desired.
A gulf had opened between them, on whose widening edge they shouted brutal farewells. They were telling her that her brother had given dishonoured cheques: that Picus had syphilis: Carston blackmailed: Ross was a satyr and a stunt painter. And Philip that Clarence had shown cowardice at the front. Then his wife turned on him a look of insanity, and Scylla saw a tiny thread of blood run out of her nostril. A posy stood in Felix’s wedding-present, a bowl of flint glass. Philip dashed the water of it on her forehead, and held the sweet scented names to her nose. Lydia struggled up and the bowl was knocked out of his hands and splintered. Scylla had to force herself to laugh, and not to say: “It’s a camp story I told you: invented it, spite for spite.” “I’m going,” she said.
Lydia cried: “Is that all that happened?”
Again she almost meant to say “No, it’s a long business. I came here to ask what you thought.” Then was damned if she would.
She said: “What’s the good of my staying here? We shall all be back there soon. I’ll ask about the syphilis and the satyriasis. Does one put a notice in the papers about Felix’s cheques? Shall I tell Clarence to let you know how he escaped court-martial in spite of his seven wounds?”