Consequences by Penelope Lively
He leads her back to the table, refills their glasses, and begins to talk about his family—his father who died when he was twenty, his mother who lives in Brighton, and is querulous. Presently, they dance again. And again.
He drives her back to the flat. He walks up the flight of steps to the front door with her. She had wondered if he was going to ask to come in, or indeed if she should suggest it, but the matter does not arise. He simply takes her in his arms and kisses her—a full kiss, his tongue in her mouth, searching. Then he draws back, cups her face in his hands and says, “What a wonderful evening. Thank you, darling Molly.” And he goes.
She climbs the three flights of stairs to the flat, knowing that when the point comes, and he asks her to sleep with him, she will not say no.
She has wondered how it will be, when they meet again on Monday morning, when he comes into her office with a fistful of papers, says, “Good morning, Molly.” Things are different now, are they not? How will this difference be? How will he deal with it? How will she?
And in the event, when he comes, he does not say the usual good morning, but stands in the doorway, smiling—a different sort of smile. “Hello,” he says.
They sort out Molly’s tasks for the day. He stands by her chair and touches her neck. “I have meetings at the office this morning,” he says. “And then I’m elsewhere this afternoon. I should be back about six. Could you stay on a bit, so that we can have a drink together?”
Many hours later, she is lying in his bed. He has gone into the bathroom next door; she hears the shower running. He comes out drying himself, and she thinks that when you see someone you know without their clothes, they are transformed—intimate, startling. He sits down on the bed, pulls back the sheet, looks at her. Perhaps he is thinking the same. He runs his hand down her body.
“All right?”
She says, “Is it always like this?”
“Actually, no. In fact, quite rarely.”
There were now two levels to life in James’s house. There was the daily routine in Molly’s office on the top floor, which continued much as it ever had: she typed and made phone calls and went out to do errands, and in spare moments she attended to the library. And now there was the other, extracurricular life, in which she and James dined out, and went to the cinema and to the theater, drove into the country at weekends. And spent many hours in James’s bedroom.
When they were out and about, they sometimes ran into people that James knew. He would introduce her, and she read their faces.
“Your friends are wondering,” she told him.
“Then they will have to do so.”
He now wanted her to join those evening drinks parties in the big room on the first floor. She did so with reluctance, but he would steer her toward someone reasonably congenial, and after a few occasions she found a certain confidence with the suits and the silken women, though without acquiring any taste for this company. Some ill-adjusted writer was usually the best bet. Poets stood in corners, holding out a glass for replenishment and filching cigarettes. Hoary travel writers complained to Molly about their meager advances. Occasionally, such people were curious about her own status.
“I’m the amanuensis,” she would say. Sometimes, she met a look of skepticism, or even amusement.
“Am I your mistress?” says Molly.
“Hmn. What exactly is a mistress?”
“You tell me. I don’t know about these things.”
“I will tell you one thing,” says James. “I am becoming unhappy with this situation.”
“Me?”
“I’m concerned about your reputation.”
“I think I’m too young to have one.”
They are in the Greek restaurant near to the house, a favorite haunt. Indeed, the proprietor ushers them now to their special table. Later, they will go back to the house, and up to James’s bedroom.
“Maria and Carlo probably know,” says Molly. “But they are hardly going to spread the news, are they?”
He frowns. “We should have somewhere else to go. Not the house. In fact, I have a proposition. I should like to get a flat—take out a lease for you. A nice flat. Near here. A bolt-hole.”
She considers this, over the moussaka, through the carafe of retsina. And the more she considers, the more a still, quiet voice tells her that it will not do. Oh yes, one’s own front door would be nice, privacy would be nice. But. But, but, but. Once again, she finds herself skirting the word independence.
“It’s very kind…” she begins.
“No, it’s not,” he says. “It is entirely self-interested. The idea becomes more appealing by the minute. Somewhere to which I could vanish—incommunicado. With you there. If it smacks of kept woman, I’ll deduct five shillings a week from your salary as rent, to keep you happy.”
She laughs.
“Well, then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because…because…”
“Because you’re a nice old-fashioned girl? But you’re not, are you?”
“Because I’d be…”
“Yes?”
She is silent.
He scowls. “Because you’re just contrary, some would say. Can’t see a good thing when it’s staring you in the face.”
“Now you’re cross.”
He sighs. Reaches out and puts his hand on hers. “No, I haven’t managed to get cross with you yet. Though that may come. Oh Molly, whatever blew you my way?”
“Someone in the tube,” she says, remembering. “Who left their paper on the seat.”
The restaurant owner removes their plates, notes the enfolded hands, beams benignly.
“He very pleased since you here,” purrs Maria. She has brought up a mid-morning cup of coffee for Molly, and lingers to chat.
Molly inclines her head. Any comment would be precarious. Both of them are well aware of Maria’s subtext, but Molly is not going to acknowledge that.
Maria’s dark eyes glitter. “Is busy man, have many friend, but is good have special friend.”
This is a step too far. Molly says crisply, “Thank you, Maria.” She slaps a sheet of paper into the Smith Corona, and starts to type.
Maria, at the door, does a kind of obeisance. Her expression marries complicity with deference, quite an achievement.
Carlo is avuncular. He treats Molly as a favored niece who is doing exceptionally well in some challenging occupation. “Va bene, Miss Molly,” he says, on the stairs, exuding admiration. “Bellissima today, Miss Molly!”
“Paris?” says Glenda. “Well, it’s all right for some!” She eyes Molly. “Love the little skirt. Green suits you.”
She knows of course. She has observed the car, dropping Molly off at night. She has taken phone calls from him: “Molly…It’s—um—your friend.” She has put two and two together, and two and two have added up to James Portland. It is apparent that she is both impressed and a touch disapproving. This sort of thing is a far cry from a two-year engagement and the deposit on a semi in Bromley. Molly can hear her thinking: where does this go?
When Molly thought about the future, she saw a sort of murky calendar—the century unfolding ahead, with her written into it but in mysterious circumstances. Certain aspects were easy to anticipate, of course—one would get older, and cease to look as one did now, but what other meta-morphoses might there be, what else was entered in the calendar? Whatever—there was nothing to be done about it except, surely, to be alert to all that arose, whether in order to avoid disaster or to make the most of an opportunity.
In that case, what exactly was she doing at the moment?
They went to Paris for a weekend, where James needed to look at a Dufy he thought of buying. In the summer, Molly accompanied him to Rome and Milan for a week; sometimes, he had business meetings, and she would wander off on her own, in a state of astonishment. Foreign travel, hitherto, had been a school geography trip to Holland when she was seventeen and a student cycling tour of Brittany.
Molly was nettled. “That sounds…patronizing. I can’t help being the age I am—and as untraveled as I am.”
“Dear girl—if you haven’t realized by now that that’s what I like about you.” He paused, looked thoughtfully at her over the café table. “And do I seem unspeakably old?”
She searched for an answer. “Not old. Different. Like a book with more pages. Ones that I haven’t read—and can’t read.”
“Ah. Neatly put.”
“And anyway you’re not old. Older than me, that’s all.”
“True. A mere matter of relativity.”
“The thing is,” she said, high on sunshine and Campari, “that surely as you get older you shed skins, rather like a snake, and each time you end up slightly different. You leave your other selves behind. So you are also various people I have never known.”
“You are making me feel unstable. Drink that up—I thought we were heading for the Sistine Chapel?”
Back in London, she began to feel as though she had lived for many years this fractured life, in which sometimes she played one role, and at others a different, private one. Her days would depend upon James’s diary: if he had no essential engagements he wanted her to be available in the evening. When, on occasion, she made some arrangement with a friend, he would be piqued. She would be made aware of displeasure. He would stand at the door of the room, his face suddenly dark: “As you wish…” She became aware of a volatility in him that could be unnerving—a moodiness that would suddenly engulf him, the pitch into cold unexpected irritation. She liked to be with him, but she knew that she must also be without him. How do people manage to be with one another all the time? she wondered.
Did she love him? I don’t know, she thought, because I am not sure how to recognize love. I like going to bed with him—love it, indeed. But is that love?
They drive out of town, one Sunday, and walk in Epping Forest. It is autumn; the place is a glowing tapestry, the leaves a brilliant quilt underfoot. Molly is exuberant, but James is somber. He has been silent in the car, driving rather too fast. Now, he stops suddenly and leans on a gate, staring out over fields.
“I need to talk to you.”
She feels a lurch of dismay. It occurs to her that he is going to end things—the idea dropping into her mind from nowhere. Hence the silence, the sobriety. And almost at once that thought is chased by another: I don’t want to, I’ll be wretched at first, but nothing is forever, and one will recover. Job-hunting again—oh, dear. She joins him at the gate, and contemplates the field, the impervious herd of grazing cows.
He does not look at her, but says, “Molly, I am in love with you.”
“Oh…”
Now he turns to her. “It wasn’t meant to be like this.”
“How was it meant to be?” she says, after a moment.
“Like most such things. And it turns out that this is not. For me, at any rate.” He waits, watching her.
She has to reply, somehow. She says, “I haven’t your experience. I haven’t had many—such things. Indeed, any.” After a moment, she adds, “Is it my fault?”
“No. It’s mine. I should have known better. This is retribution—for seducing a minor.”
“I’m not a minor,” exclaims Molly indignantly.
“In my terms you are. I should have stuck with my shop-soiled contemporaries.”
“Is it because of—bed?”
“No. At least, that comes into it, of course. Unfortunately it’s something entirely uncontrollable, even for someone as controlled as myself.”
There is silence. Cows chomp. She knows what she is supposed to be saying, and knows also that she cannot say it, because now she understands, she sees that this thing she has yet to recognize, has not arrived, not now, not with him.
He takes her arm. “We’d better be getting back.” He shepherds her through the trees, the late rich October afternoon, talking about a play they saw last night.
He says nothing more for a week. He is calm, considerate, all is as it ever was. When he does speak, it is at the house, in his study.
“Not now,” he says, “I am not asking you to marry me now, immediately, tomorrow. Obviously not—I already am married. But there is going to be a divorce. Eleanor wants it, so do I. It was high time. I am asking you now, for then, so that it can be the light on the horizon. At least, that is what I very much hope.”
She has known that this might come, she has sensed it, and she has dreaded it. All through the week, she has felt herself drawing apart from him; for her, all has not been as it ever was, a fault line has sprung, she has been edgy, resistant. And now, craven, she is silent. They look at one another, in the quiet, book-filled, clock-ticking room.
Eventually, he speaks again. “Don’t say anything now, if you’d rather not. You look like a rabbit in the headlights. I’m sorry—is this such a shock?”
“I can’t marry you,” she says. “I can’t marry anyone. I’m not ready. And…and I can’t live like you do. It has nothing to do with you being older. Just—I couldn’t live here, like this.” She spreads her hands—summoning up Carlo and Maria, the waiting chauffeur, the parties, the suits, and the smart women. “I’d be no good at it. In time, you’d get fed up with me.”
“If I thought there was any chance of that I wouldn’t be asking you. I have already made one marriage mistake.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, hopelessly, staring at the floor. She feels sick. She has felt sick all day, and the day before. It is because of being in such a state about this, she thinks. It must be. She looks at him. “I’ll leave. Right away is best, I expect.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” James gets up, puts his hands on her shoulders. “Molly, I don’t understand you—but possibly I never have. All right—forget marriage. For the moment, anyway. Carry on as a scarlet woman, if that’s the way you want it.”
A week late. Ten days. She comes out of the bathroom, ashen-faced, and there is Glenda, silently proffering a cup of tea. They sit side-by-side at the kitchen table.
Glenda says, “I’ve got a phone number, if you want. A friend of mine was in some trouble, last year.”
The Greek restaurant is now the seventh circle of hell. She had said that she didn’t really want to go that evening, but he would have none of it. She stares at the plate of moussaka, takes a mouthful, puts down her knife and fork. Tries again, and cannot. Nausea surges.
James says, “Is something wrong? You like moussaka.”
She pushes back her chair, flees for the toilet.
When she returns, her plate has been removed. James is concerned. “Are you ill?”
She shakes her head. Then she nods. “Must be,” she says.
He is looking intently at her, and then, all of a sudden, he has understood. “No. It’s something else, isn’t it?” He is on his feet. “Come on, Molly, we’re going back to the house.” He pushes a note at the proprietor, seizes their coats, bundles her out of the restaurant and along the road.
He sits her down. He fetches a glass of water, and puts it into her hand.
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
She nods.
“How long?”
“A few weeks.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“Yes.”
He gets up, walks around the room, comes back, puts a hand on her shoulder, walks around again. Sits down.
“This changes everything, doesn’t it?”
She whispers, “No.”
“What?”
She shakes her head.
“What do you wa
She takes a deep breath. “I’m going to have it.”
“In that case, we are going to have it.”
“I still can’t get married,” she says. “I’m sorry, James. I’m so sorry.”
“Molly, are you crazy?”
She is silent.
“No,” he says, after a moment. “Just—unbelievably cussed. Listen—Molly, darling Molly—are you seriously proposing to go off, on your own, and have a baby? How do you think you are going to manage?”
“Somehow,” she murmurs.
He sighs. “We’ll talk again tomorrow,” he says. “And thereafter. But, for now, I’m going to drive you back to the flat. You need to go to bed, and sleep.”
Years after, she would think that you do not so much make decisions, as stumble in a certain direction because something tells you that that is the way you must go. You are impelled, by some confusion of instinct, will, and blind faith. Reason does not much come into it. If reason ruled, you would not leave home in the morning, lest you stepped under a bus; you would not try, for fear of failure; you would not love, in case it hurt.
Years later, that time has lost all chronology; it is a handful of scenes that replay from time to time.
She is with James Portland, in the big house that is still vivid to her. “I give up, Molly,” he says. “I despair. But if this is the way it’s going to be, then I am going to make the following arrangements…”