I stopped inviting Judith to
meet people when a Canadian woman remarked, with the satisfied fervour
of one who has at last pinned a label on a rare specimen: "She is, of course,
one of your typical English spinsters."
This was a few weeks after
an American sociologist, having elicited from Judith the facts that she
was fortyish, unmarried and living alone, had enquired of me: "I suppose
she has given up?" "Given up what?" I asked: and the subsequent discussion
was unrewarding.
Judith did not easily come
to parties. She would come after pressure, not so much—on felt—to do one
a favour, but in order to correct what she believed to be a defect in her
character. "I really ought to enjoy meeting new people more than I do,"
she said once. We reverted to an earlier pattern of our friendship: odd
evenings together, an occasional visit to the cinema, or she would telephone
to say: "I'm on my way past you to the British Museum . Would you care
for a cup of coffee with me? I have twenty minutes to spare."
It is characteristic of Judith
that the word spinster, used of her, provoked fascinated speculation about
other people. There are my aunts for instance: aged seventy-odd, both unmarried,
one an ex-missionary from China, one a retired matron of a famous London
hospital. These two ladies live together under the shadow of the cathedral
in a country town. They devote much time to the Church to good causes,
to letter writing with friends all over the world, to the grandchildren
and the great-grandchildren of relatives. It would be a mistake, however,
on entering a house in which nothing has been moved for fifty years, to
diagnose a condition of fossilized late-Victorian integrity. They read
every book reviewed in the Observer or the Times, so that I recently got
a letter from Aunt Rose enquiring whether I did not think that he author
of On the Road was not—perhaps?—exaggerating his difficulties. They
know a good deal about music, and write letters of encouragement to young
composers they feel are being neglected!-- "You must understand that anything
new and original takes time to be understood." Well-informed and critical
Tories, they are as likely to dispatch telegrams of protest to the Home
Secretary as letters of support. These ladies, my aunts Emily and Rose,
are surely what is meant by the phrase English spinster. And yet, once
the connection has been pointed out, there is no doubt that Judith and
they are spiritual cousins, if not sisters. Therefore it follows that one's
pitying admiration for women who have supported manless and uncomforted
lives needs a certain modification?
One will, of course, never
know; and I feel now that it is entirely my fault that I shall never know.
I had been Judith's friend for upwards of five years before the incident
occurred which I involuntarily thought of—stupid enough—as "the first time
Judith's mask slipped."
A mutual friend, Betty, had
been given a cast-off Dior dress. She was too short for it. Also she said:
"It's not a dress for a married woman with three children and a talent
for cooking. I don't know why not, but it isn't." Judith was the right
build. Therefore one evening the three of us met by appointment in Judith's
bedroom, with the dress Neither Betty nor I were surprised at the renewed
discovery that Judith was beautiful. We had both too often caught each
other, and ourselves, in moments of envy when Judith's calm and sever face,
her undemonstratively perfect body, succeeded in making everyone else in
a room or a street look cheap.
Judith is tall, small-breasted,
slender. Her light brown hair is parted in the centre and cut straight
around her neck. A high straight forehead, straight nose, a full grave
mouth are setting her eyes, which are green, large and prominent. Her lids
are very white, fringed with gold, and moulded close over the eyeball,
so that in profile she has the look of a staring gilded mask. The dress
was of dark green glistening stuff, cut straight, with a sort of loose
tunic. It opened simply at the throat, In it Judith could of course evoke
nothing but classical images. Diana, perhaps, back from the hunt, in a
relaxed moment? A rather intellectual wood nymph who had opted for an afternoon
in the British Museum reading room? Something like that. Neither Betty
nor I said a word, since Judith was examining herself in a long mirror,
and must know she looked magnificent.
Slowly she drew off the dress
and laid it aside. Slowly she put on the old cord skirt and woollen blouse
she had taken off. She must have surprised a resigned glance between us,
for she then remarked, with the smallest of mocking smiles: "One surely
ought to stay in character, wouldn't you say so?" She added, reading the
words our of some invisible book, written not by her since it was a very
vulgar book, but perhaps by one of us: "It does everything for me, I must
admit."
"After seeing you in it,"
Betty cried out, defying her, "I can't bear for anyone else to have it.
I shall simply put it away." Judith shrugged, rather irritated. In the
shapeless skirt and blouse, and without makeup, she stood smiling at us,
a woman at whom forty-nine or fifty people would not look twice.
A second revelatory incident
occurred soon after, Betty telephoned me to say that Judith had a kitten.
Did I know that Judith adored cats?
"No but of course she would,"
I said.
Betty lived in the same street
as Judith and saw more of her than I did. I was kept posted about the growth
and habits of the cat and its effect on Judith's life. She remarked for
instance that felt it was good for her to have a tie and some responsibility.
But no soon was the cat out of kittenhood than all the neighbours complained.
It was a tomcat, ungelded, and making every night hideous Finally the landlord
said that either the cat or Judith must go, unless she was prepared to
have the cat "fixed." Judith wore herself out trying to find some person,
anywhere in Britain, who would be prepared to take the cast. This person
would however, have to sign a written statement not to have the cat "fixed."
When Judith took the cat to the vet to be killed, Betty told me she cried
for twenty-four hours.
"She didn't think of compromising?
After all, perhaps the cat might have preferred to live, if given the choice?"
"Is it likely Id have the
nerve to say anything so sloppy to Judith? It's the nature of a male cat
to rampage lustfully about, and therefore it would be morally wrong for
Judith to have the cat fixed, simply to suit her own convenience."
"She said that?"
"She wouldn't have to say
it, surely?"
A third incident was when
she allowed a visiting young American, living in Paris, the friend of a
friend and scarcely know to her, to use her flat while she visited her
parents over Christmas. The young man and his friends lived it up for ten
days of alcohol and sex and marijuana, and when Judith came back it took
a week to get the place clean again and the furniture mended. She telephoned
twice to Paris, the first time to say that he was a disgusting young thing
and if he knew what was good for him he would keep out of her way in the
future; the second time to apologize for losing he temper. "I had a choice
either to let someone use my flat, or to leave it empty. But having chosen
that you should have it, it was clearly an unwarrantable infringement of
your liberty to make any conditions at all. I do most sincerely ask your
pardon." The moral aspects of the matter having been made clear, she was
irritated rather than not to receive letters of apology from him—fulsome,
embarrassed, but above all, baffled.
It was the note of curiosity
in the letters—he even suggested coming over to get to know her better—that
irritated her most. "What do you suppose he means?" se said to me. "He
lived in my flat for ten days. On would have thought that should be enough,
wouldn't you?"
The facts about Judith, then,
are all in the open, unconcealed, and plain to anyone who cares to study
them; or, as it became plain she feels, to anyone with the intelligence
to interpret them.
She lived for the last twenty
years in a small two-roomed flat high over a busy West London street. The
flat is shabby and badly heated. The furniture is old, was never anything
but ugly, is now frankly rickety and fraying. She has an income of 200
a year from a dead uncle. She lives on this and what she earns from her
poetry, and from lecturing on poetry to night classes and extramural university
classes.
She does not smoke or drink,
and eats very little, from preference, not self-discipline.
She studied poetry and biology
at Oxford, with distinction.
She is a Castlewell. That
is, she is a member of one of the academic upper-middle-class families,
which has been producing for centuries a steady supply of brilliant but
sound men and woman who are the backbone of the arts and sciences in Britain.
She is on cool terms with her family who respect her and leave her alone.
She goes on long walking tours,
herself, in such places as Exmoor or West Scotland.
Every three or four years
she publishes a volume of poems.
The walls of her flat are
completely lined with books. They are scientific, classical and historical;
there is a great deal of poetry and some drama. There is not one novel.
When Judith says: "Of course I don't read novels," this does not mean that
novels have no place, or a small place, in literature; or that people should
not read novels; but that it must be obvious she can't be expected to read
novels.
I had been visiting her flat
for years before I notice tow long shelves of books, under a window, each
shelf filled with the works of a single writer. The two writers are not,
to put it at the mildest, the kind one would associate with Judith. They
are mild, reminiscent, vague and whimsical. Typical English belles-lettres,
in fact, and by definition abhorrent to her. Not one of the books in the
two shelves has been read; some of the pages are still uncut. Yet each
book is inscribed or dedicated to her: gratefully, admiringly, sentimentally
and, more than once, amorously. In short, it is open to anyone who cares
to examine these two shelves, and to work out dates, to conclude that Judith
from the age of fifteen to twenty-five had been the beloved young companion
of one elderly literary gentleman, and from twenty-five to thirty-five
the inspiration of another.
During all that time
she had produced her own poetry, and the sort of poetry, it is quite safe
to deduce, not all likely to be admired by her two admirers . Her poems
are always cool and intellectual; that is their form, which is contradicted
or supported by a gravely sensuous texture. They are poems to read often;
one has to, to understand them.
I did not ask Judith a direct
questions about these two eminent but rather fusty lovers. Not because
she would not have answered, or because she would have found the questions
impertinent, but because such questions are clearly unnecessary. Having
those two shelves of books they are, and books she could not conceivably
care for, for their own sake, is publicly credit where credit is due. I
can imagine her thinking the thing over, and deciding it was only fair,
or perhaps honest, to place the books there; and this despite the fact
that she would not care at all for the same attention to be paid to her.
There is something almost contemptuous in it. For she certainly despises
people who feel they need attention
For instance, more than once
a new emerging wave of "modern" young poets have discovered her as the
only "modern" poet among their despised and well-credited elders. This
is because, since she began writing at fifteen, her poems have been full
of scientific, mechanical and chemical imagery. This is how she thinks,
or feels.
More than once has a young
poet hastened to her flat, to claim her as an ally, only to find he totally
and by instinct unmoved by words like modern, new, contemporary. He has
been outraged and wounded by her principle, so deeply rooted as to be unconscious,
and to need no expression but a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, that
publicity seeking or to want critical attention is despicable. It goes
without saying that there is perhaps one critic in the world she has any
time fore. He has sulked off, leaving her on her shelf, which she takes
it for granted is her proper place, to be read by an appreciative minority.
Meanwhile she gives her lectures,
walks alone through London, writes her poems, and is seen sometimes at
a concert or a play with a middle-aged professor of Greek who has a wife
and two children.
Betty and I had speculated
about this professor, with such remarks as: Surely she must sometimes be
lonely? Hasn't she ever wanted to marry? What about that awful moment when
one come in from somewhere at night to an empty flat?
It happened recently that
Betty's husband was on a business trip, her children visiting and she was
unable to stand the empty house. She asked Judith for a refuge until her
own home filled again.
Afterwards Betty rang up to
report:
"Four of the five nights Professor
Adams came in about ten or so."
"Was Judith embarrassed?"
"Would you expect her to be?"
"Well, if not embarrassed,
at least conscious there was a situation?"
"No, not at all. But I must
say I don't think he's good enough for her. He can't possibly understand
her. He calls her Judy."
"Good God."
"Yes, But I was wondering.
Suppose the other two called her Judy—‘little Judy’—imagine it! Isn't it
awful? But it does rather throw light on Judith."
"It's rather touching."
"I suppose it's touching.
But I was embarrassed—oh, not because of the situation. Because of how
she was, with him. ‘Judy, is there another cup of tea in that pot?’ And
she, rather daughterly and demure pouring him one."
"Well yes, I can see how you
felt."
"Three of the nights he went
to her bedroom with her—very casual about, because she was being. But he
was not there in the mornings. So I asked her. You know how it is when
you ask her a question. As if you've been having long conversations on
that very subject for years and years, and she is merely continuing where
you left off last. So when she says something surprising, one feels such
a fool to be surprised?"
"Yes. And then?"
"I asked her if she was sorry
not to have children. She said yes, but one couldn't have everything."
"One can't have everything,
she said?"
"Quite clearly feeling she
has nearly everything. She said she thought it was a pity, because she
would have brought up children very well."
"When you come to think of
it, she would, too."
"I asked about marriage, but
she said on the whole the role of a mistress suited her better."
"She used the word mistress?"
"You must admit it's the accurate
word."
"I suppose so."
"And then she said that while
she liked intimacy and sex and everything, she enjoyed waking up in the
morning alone and her own person."
"Yes, of course."
"Of course. But now she's
bothered because the professor would like to marry her. Or he feels he
ought. At least, he's getting all guilty and obsessive about. She says
she doesn't see the point of divorce, and anyway, surely t would be very
hard on his poor old wife after all these years, particularly after bringing
up two children so satisfactorily. She talks abut his wife as if she's
a kind of nice old charwoman, and it wouldn't be fair to sack her, you
know. Anyway. What with one thing and another, Judith's going off to Italy
soon in order to collect herself."
"But how's she going to pay
for it?"
"Luckily the Third Programme’s
commissioning her to do some arty programmes. They offered her a choice
of The Cid—El Thid, you know—and the Borgias. Well, the Borghese, then.
And Judith settled for the Borgias."
"The Borgias," I said "Judith?"
"Yes, quite. I said that too,
in that tone of voice. She saw my point. She says the epic is right up
her street, whereas the Renaissance has never been on her wave length.
Obviously it couldn't be, all the magnificence and cruelty and dirt. But
of course chivalry and a high moral code and all those idiotically noble
goings-on are right on her wave length."
"Is the money the same?"
"Yes. But is likely Judith
would let money decide?" No, she said that one should always choose something
new, that isn't up one's street. Well, the Renaissance. She didn't say
that , of course."
"Of course not."
Judith went to Florence; and
for some months postcards informed us tersely of her doings. Then Betty
decided she must go by herself for a holiday. She had been appalled by
the discovery that if her husband was away for a night she couldn't sleep
and when he went to Australia for three weeks, she stopped living until
he came back. She had discussed this with him, and he had agreed that,
if she really felt the situation to be serious, he would dispatch her by
air, to Italy; in order to recover her self-respect. As she put it.
I got this letter from her:
"It's no use, I'm coming home. I might have known. Better face it, once
you're really married you're not fit for man nor beast. And if you remember
what I used to be like! Well! I moped around Milan. I sunbathed in
Venice, then I thought my tan was surely worth something, so I was on the
point of starting an affair with another lonely soul, but I lost heart,
and went to Florence to see Judith. She wasn't there. She'd gone to the
Italian Riviera. I had nothing better to do, so I followed her. When I
saw the place I wanted to laugh, it's so much not Judith, you know, all
those palms and umbrellas and gaiety at all cost and ever such an ornamental
blue sea, with grape vines all over the place. You should see her, she's
got beautiful. It seems for the last fifteen years she's been going to
Soho every Saturday morning to buy food at an Italian shop. I must have
looked surprised, because she explained she liked Soho. I suppose because
all that dreary vice and nudes and prostitutes and everything prove how
right she is to be as she is? She told the people in the shop she was going
to Italy, and he signora said, what a coincidence, she as going back to
Italy too, and she did hope an old friend like Miss Castlewell would visit
her there. Judith said to me: ‘I felt lacking, when she used he word friend.
Our relations have always been formal. Can you understand it?’ she said
to me. ‘For fifteen years,’ I said to her She said: ‘I think I must feel
it's a kind of imposition, don't you know, expecting people to feel friendship
for one. Well. I said: ‘You ought to understand it, because you're like
that yourself.’ ‘Am I?’ she said. ‘Well, think about it,’ I said. But I
could see she didn't want to think about it. Anyway, she's here, and I've
spent a week with her. The widow Maria Rineiri inherited her mothers house,
so she came home, from Soho. On the ground floor is a catty little rosticceria
patronized by the neighbours. They are all working people. This isn't tourist
country, up on the hill. The widow lives above the shop with her little
boy, a nasty little brat of about ten. Say what you like, the English
are the only people who know how o bring up children. I don't care if that's
insular. Judith's room is at the back, with a balcony. Underneath her room
is the barber's shop, and the barber is Luigi Rineiri, the widow's younger
brother. Yes, I was keeping him until the last. He is about forty, tall
dark handsome, a great bull, but rather a sweet fatherly bull. He has cut
Judith's hair and made it lighter. Now it looks like a sort of gold helmet.
Judith is all brown. The widow Rineiri has made her a white dress and a
green dress. They fit, for a change. When Judith walks down the street
to the lower town, all the Italian males take one look at the golden girl
and melt in their own oil like ice cream. Judith takes all this in her
stride. She sort of acknowledges the homage. Then she strolls into the
sea and vanishes into the foam. She swim five miles every day. Naturally.
I haven't asked Judith whether she has collected herself, because you can
see she hasn't. the widow Rineiri is matchmaking. When I noticed this I
wanted to laugh, but luckily I didn't because Judith asked me, really wanting
to know: ‘Can you see me married to an Italian barber?’ (Not being snobbish,
but stating the position, so to speak.) ‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘you're the
only woman I know who I can see married to an Italian barber.’ Because
it wouldn't matter who she married, she'd always be her own person. ‘At
any rate, for a time,’ I said. At which she said asperously; ‘You
can use phrases like for a time in England but not in Italy.’ Did you ever
see England, a least London, as the home of licence, liberty and free love?
No, neither did I, but of course she's right. Married to Luigi it would
be the family, the neighbours, the church and the bambini. All the same
she's thinking about it, believe it or not. Here she's quite different,
all relaxed and free. She's melting in the attention she gets. The widow
mothers her and makes her coffee all the time, and listens to a lot of
good advice about how to bring up that nasty brat of hers. Unluckily she
doesn't take it. Luigi is crazy for her. At mealtimes she goes to the trattoria
in the upper square and all workmen treat her like a goddess. Well, a film
star then. I said to her, you're mad to come home. For one thing her rent
is ten bob a week, and you eat pasta and drink red wine till you bust for
about one and sixpence. No, she said, it would be nothing but self-indulgence
to stay. Why? I said. She said, she's got nothing to stay for. (Ho ho.)
And besides, she want to know. And so she's only staying because of the
cat. I forgot to mention the cat. This is a town of cats. The Italians
here love their cats. I wanted to feed a stray cat at the table, but the
waiter said no, and after lunch, all the waiters came with trays crammed
with leftover food and stray casts from everywhere to eat. And at dark
when the tourist go in to fed and the beach is empty—you know how empty
and forlorn a beach is at dusk—well, cats appear from everywhere. The beach
seems to move, then you see it's cats. They go stalking along the think
inch of grey water at the edge of the sea, shaking their paws crossly at
each step, snatching at the dead little fish, and throwing them with their
mouths up on the dry sand. Then they scamper after them. You've never see
such a snarling and fighting. At dawn when the fishing boats come in to
the empty beach, the cats are there in dozens. The fishermen throw them
bits of fish. The cats snarl and fight over it. Judith gets up early and
goes down to watch. Sometimes Luigi goes too, being tolerant. Because what
he really likes to join the evening promenade with Judith on his arm around
the square of the upper town. Showing her off. Can you see Judith? But
she does it. Being tolerant. But she smiles and enjoys the attention she
gets, there's no doubt of it.
"She has a cat in her room.
It's a kitten really, but it's pregnant. Judith says she can't leave until
the kittens are born. The cat is too young to have kittens. Imagine Judith.
She sits on hr bed in that great stone room, with her bare feet on the
stone floor and watches the cast, and tries to work out why a healthy uninhibited
Italian cat always fed on the best from the roticceria should be neurotic.
Because it is. When it see Judith watching it gets nervous and start licking
at the roots of its tail. But Judith goes on watching, and says about Italy
that the reason why the English love the Italians is because Italians make
the English feel superior. They have no discipline. And that's despicable
reason for on nation to love another Then she talks about Luigi and says
he has no sense of guilt, but a sense of sin; whereas she has no sense
of sin but she has guilt. I haven't asked her if this has been an insuperable
barrier, because judging from how she look, it hasn't been. She says she
would rather have a sense of sin, because sin can be atoned for, and if
she understood sin, perhaps she would be more at home with the Renaissance.
Luigi is very healthy, she says, and not neurotic. He is a Catholic of
course. he doesn't mind that she's an atheist. His mother has explained
to him that the English are all pagans, but good people at heart. I suppose
he thinks a few smart sessions with the local priest would set Judith one
the right path for good and all. Meanwhile the cat walks nervously around
the room, stopping to lick, and when it can't stand Judith watching it
another second, it rolls over on the floor, with its paws tucked up, and
rolls up its eyes, and Judith scratches its lumpy pregnant stomach and
tells it to relax. It make me nervous to see her, its not like her. I don't
know why. Then Luigi shouts up from the barber's shop, then he comes up
and stands at the door laughing, and Judith laughs, and the widow says:
Children, enjoy yourselves. And off they go, walking down to the town eating
ice cream. The cat follows them. It won't let Judith out of sight, like
a dog. When she swims miles out to see, the cat hides under a beach hut
until she comes back. Then she carries it back up the hill, because that
nasty little boy chases it. Well. I'm coming home tomorrow thank God, to
my dear old Bill, I was mad ever to leave him. There is something about
Judith and Italy that has upset me, I don't know what. The point is, what
on earth can Judith and Luigi talk about? Nothing. How can they? And of
course it doesn't matter. So I turn out to be a prude as well. See you
next week."
It was my turn for a dose
of the sun, so I didn't see Betty. On my way back from Rome I stopped off
in Judith's resort and walked up through narrow streets to the upper town,
where, in the square with the vine-covered trattoria at the corner, was
a house with ROSTICCRIA written in black paint on a cracked wooden board
over a low door. There was a door curtain of red beads, and flies settled
on the beads. I opened the beads with my hands and looked in to a small
dark room with a stone counter. Loops of salami hung from metal hooks.
A glass bell covered some plates of cooked meats. There were flies on the
salami and on the glass bell. A few tins on the wooden shelves, a couple
of pale loaves, some wine casks and an open case of sticky pale green grapes
covered with fruit flies seemed to be the only stock. A single wooden table
with two chairs stood in a corner, and two workmen sat there, eating lumps
of sausage and bread. Through another bead curtain at the back came a short,
smoothly fat, slender-limbered woman with greying hair. I asked for Miss
Castlewell, and her face changed. She said in an offended, offhand way:
"Miss Castlewell left last week." She took a white cloth from under the
counter, and flicked at the flies on the glass bell. "I'm a friend of hers,"
I said, and she said: "Si," and put her hands palm down on the counter
and looked at me, expressionless. The workmen got up, gulped down the last
of their wine, nodded and went. She ciao’d them; and looked back at me.
Then, since I didn't go, she called: "Luigi!" A shout came from the back
room, there was a rattle of beads, and in came first a wiry sharp-faced
boy, and then Luigi. He was tall, heavy-shouldered, and his black rough
hair was like a cap, pulled low over his brows. He looked good-natured,
but at the moment uneasy. His sister said something, and he stood beside
her, an ally, and confirmed: "Miss Castlewell went away." I was on the
point of giving up, when through the bead curtain that screened off a dazzling
light eased a thin tabby cat. It was ugly and it walked uncomfortably,
with its back quarters bunched up. The child suddenly let out a "Ssssss"
through his teeth, and the cat froze. Luigi said something sharp to the
child, and something encouraging to the cat, which sat down, looked straight
in front of it, then began frantically licking at its flanks. "Miss Castlewell
was offended with us," said Mrs. Rineri suddenly, and with dignity. "She
left early one morning. We did not except her to go." I said, "Perhaps
she had to go home and finish some work."
Mrs. Rineiri shrugged, then
sighed. Then she exchanged a hard look with her brother. Clearly the subject
had been discussed, and closed forever.
"I've known Judith a long
time," I said, trying to find the right note. "She's a remarkable women.
She's a poet." But there was no response to this at all. Meanwhile the
child, with a fixed bared-teeth grin, was starting at the cat, narrowing
his eyes. Suddenly he let out another "Ssssssss" and added a short high
yelp. The cat shot backwards, hit the wall, tried desperately to claw its
way up the wall, came to its senses and again sat down and began its urgent,
undirected licking at its fur. This time Luigi cuffed the child, who yelped
in earnest, and then ran out into the street past the cat. Now that the
way was clear the cat shot across the floor, up onto the counter, and bounded
past Luigi’s shoulder and straight through the bead curtain into the barber's
shop, where it landed with a thud.
"Judith as sorry when she
left us," said Mrs. Rineiri uncertainly. "She was crying."
"I'm sure she was."
"And so," said Mrs. Rineiri,
with finality, laying her hands down again, and looking past me at the
bead curtain. That was the end. Luigi nodded brusquely at me, and went
into the back. I said goodbye to Mrs. Rineiri and walked back to the lower
town. In the square I saw the child, sitting on the running board of a
lorry parked outside the trattoria, drawing in the dust with his bare toes,
and directing in front of him a blank, unhappy stare.
I had to go through Florence,
so I went to the address Judith had been at. No, Miss Castlewell had not
been back. Her papers and books were still there. Would I take them back
with me to England? I made a great parcel and brought them back to England.
I telephoned Judith and she
had already written for the papers to be sent, but it was kind of me to
bring them. There had seemed to be no point, she said, in returning to
Florence.
"Shall I bring them over?"
"I would be very grateful,
of course."
Judith's flat was chilly,
and she wore a bunchy sage-green woollen dress. Her hair was still a soft
gold helmet, but she looked pale and rather pinched. She stood with her
back to a single bar of electric fire—lit because I demanded it—with her
legs apart and her arms folded. She contemplated me.
"I went to the Rineiris’ house."
"Oh, Did you?"
"They seemed to miss you."
She said nothing
"I saw the cat too."
"Oh. Oh I suppose you and
Betty discussed it?" This was with a small unfriendly smile.
"Well, Judith, you must see
we were likely to?"
She gave this her consideration
and said: "I don't understand why people discuss other people. Oh—I’m not
criticising you. But I don't see why you are so interested. I don't understand
human behaviour and I'm not particularly interested."
"I think o should write to
the Rineiris."
"I wrote and thanked them,
of course."
"I don't mean that."
"You and Betty have worked
it out?"
"Yes, we talked about it.
We thought we should talk to you so you should write to the Rineiris."
"Why?"
"For one thing, they are both
fond of you."
"Fond," she said smiling.
"Judith, I've never in my
life felt such an atmosphere of being let down."
Judith considered this. "When
something happens that shows one there is really a complete gulf in understanding,
what is there to say?"
"It could scarcely have been
a complete gulf in understanding. I suppose you are going to say we are
being interfering?"
Judith showed distaste. "That
is a very stupid word. And it's a stupid idea. No one can interfere with
me if I don't let them. No, it's that I don't understand people. I don't
understand why you or Betty should care. Or why the Rineiris should,
for that matter," she added with the small tight smile.
"Judith!"
"If you've behaved stupidly,
there's no point in going on. You put an end to it."
"What happened?" Was it the
cat?"
"Yes, I suppose so. But it's
not important." She looked at me, saw my ironical face and said: "The cat
was too young to have kittens. That is all there was to it."
"Have it your way. But that
is obviously not all there is to it."
"What upsets me is that I
don't understand at all why I as so upset then."
"What happened? Or don't you
want to talk about it?"
"I don't give a damn whether
I talk about it or not. You really do say the most extraordinary things,
you and Betty. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. What does it matter?"
"I would like to know of course."
"Of course!" said she. "In
your place I wouldn't care. Well, I think the essence of the thing was
that must have had the wrong attitude to tat cat. Cats are supposed
to be independent. They are supposed to go off by themselves to have their
kittens. This one didn't. It was climbing up onto my bed all one night
and crying for attention. I don't like cats on my bed. In the morning I
saw she was in pain. I stayed with her all that day. Then Luigi—he’s the
brother, you know."
"Yes."
"Did Betty mention him? Luigi
came up to say it as time I went for a swim. He said the cat should look
after itself. I blame myself very much. That's what happens when you submerge
yourself in somebody else."
Her look at me was now defiant;
and her body showed both defensiveness and aggression. "Yes. It's true.
I've always been afraid of it. And in the last few weeks. I've behaved
badly. It's because I let it happen."
"Well, go on."
"I left the cat and swam.
It was late, so it was only for a few minutes. When I came out of the sea
the cat had followed me and had had a kitten on the beach. The little beast
Michele—the son, you know?—well, he always teased the poor thing, and now
he had frightened her off the kitten It was dead, though. He held it up
by the tail and waved it at me as I came out of the sea. I told him to
bury it. He scooped two inches of sand away and pushed the kitten in—on
the beach, where people are all day. S I buried it properly. He had run
off. He was chasing the poor cat. She was terrified and running up the
town. I ran too. I caught Michele and I was so angry I hit him. I don't
believe in hitting children. I've been feeling beastly about it ever since."
"You were angry."
"It's no excuse . I would
never had believed myself capable of hitting a child. I hit him very hard.
H went off, crying. The poor cat had got under a big lorry parked in the
square. Then screamed. And then a most remarkable thing happened. She screamed
just once, and all at once cats just materialised. One minute there was
just one cat, lying under a lorry, all quite still, and watching my poor
cat."
"Rather moving," I said.
"Why?"
"There is no evidence one
way or the other." I said in inverted commas, "that the cats were there
out of concern for a friend in trouble."
"No," she said energetically.
"There isn't. It might have been curiosity. Or anything. How do we know?
However, I crawled under her lorry. There were two paws sticking out of
the cat's back end. The kitten was the wrong way round. It was stuck. I
held the cat down with one hand and I pulled he kitten out with the other."
She held out her long white hands. They were still covered with fading
scars and scratches. "She bit and yelled, but the kitten was alive. She
left the kitten and crawled across the square into the house. Then all
the cats got up and walked away. It was the most extraordinary thing I've
ever seen. They vanished again. One minute they were all there, and then
they had vanished again. One minute they were all there, and then they
had vanished again. One minute they were all there, and then they had vanished.
I went after the cat, with the kitten. Poor little thing, it as covered
with dust—being wet, don't you know. The cat was on my bed. There was another
kitten coming, but it got stuck too. So when she screamed and screamed
I just pulled it out. The kittens began to suck. One kitten was very big.
It was a nice fat black kitten. It must have hurt her. But she suddenly
bit out—snapped, don't you know, like a reflex action, at the back of the
kitten's head. It died, just like that. Extraordinary, isn't it?" she said,
blinking hard, her lips quivering. "She was its mother, but she killed
it. The she ran off the bed and went downstairs into the shop under the
counter. I called to Luigi. You know, he's Mrs. Rineiri’s brother."
"Yes, I know."
"He said she was too young,
and she was badly frightened and very hurt. He took the alive kitten to
her but she got up and walked away. She didn't want it. Then Luigi told
me not to look. But I followed him. He held the kitten by the tail and
he banged it against the wall twice. Then he dropped it into the rubbish
heap. He moved aside some rubbish with his toe, and put the kitten there
and pushed rubbish over it. Then Luigi said the cat should be destroyed.
He said she as badly hurt and it would always hurt her to have kittens."
"He hasn't destroyed her.
She's still alive. But it looks to me as if he were right."
"Yes, I expect he was."
"What upset—that he killed
the kitten?"
"Oh, no, I expect the cat
would if he hadn't. But that isn't the point, is it?"
"What is the point?"
"I don't think I really know."
She had been speaking breathlessly, and fast. Now she said slowly: "It's
not a question of right or wrong, is it? Why should it be? It's a question
of what one is. That night Luigi wanted to go promenading with me. But
I felt ill. He was very nice to me. He's a very good person," she said,
defiantly.
"Yes, he looks it."
"That night I couldn't sleep.
I was blaming myself. I should never having left the cat to go swimming.
Well, and then I decided to leave the next day. And I did. And that's all.
The whole thing was a mistake, from start to finish."
"Going to Italy at all?"
"Oh, to go for a holiday would
have been all right."
"You've done all that work
for nothing? You mean you aren't going to make use of all that research?"
"No, It was a mistake."
"Why don't you leave it a
few weeks and see how things are then?"
"Why?"
"You might feel differently
about it."
"What an extraordinary thing
to say. Why should I? Oh, you mean, time passing, healing wounds—that
sort of thing? What an extraordinary idea. It's always seemed to me an
extraordinary idea. No, right from the beginning I've felt ill at ease
with the whole business, not myself at all."
"Rather irrationally, I should
have said."
Judith considered this, very
seriously. She frowned while she thought it over. Then she said: "But if
one cannot rely on what one feels, what can one rely on?"
"On what one thinks, I should
have expected you to say."
"Should you? Why? Really,
you people are all very strange. I don't understand you." She turned off
the electric fire, and her face closed up. She smiled, friendly and distant,
and said: "I don't really see any point at all in discussing it."