The Black Book

The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell Page B

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Authors: Lawrence Durrell
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voice: “I love ’im, Gregory. Ooo I love ’im.” If her eyes had been less alarmingly blind I might have laughed. Closing Gibbon demurely I switched off the wireless and asked for details, with the familiar sensation of freezing along my abdomen. It was no joke playing a part in Clare’s idiotic masque, I realized. So fair and foul a day I have not seen. She told the tale sadly enough. It was when she said, “He says I must go to ’im tonight or it’s finish to us,” that I became alarmed. Here was my cue. I could see what was expected of me. Either rage—I could kick her out—or calm husbandly understand. “If you think you love this man, Emily, I shall not stand in your way, but pray to God that this passing infatuation will pass and you be restored to me whole …”
    Actually I said casually, “Do you want to go?” She didn’t really. She only wanted to imagine herself going. Ah! How good to break the tedium of domesticity with a few rows, scares, alarms. Yet my pride demanded an immediate vote of confidence. Silly, but perhaps pardonable. As for Grace, as you know, she was just Plasticine. I could have convinced her in half a minute of the false position she was in. She was simply waiting to see which was the stronger force, ready to be carried away by it. Numb as usual, and a little pleased that for once the elements had decided to break over her head. It was, she felt, in some curious, inexplicable way, tragic.…
    Everything would have been perfect if it had not been for my pride. That half-second’s pause after I asked whether she really wanted to go was enough to outrage the professional husband in me. I knew of course that she hesitated simply because she did not know whether she wanted to go or not. She would never know. But to hang fire on a point like that … Obtusely I said, “Well you must go, of course, if that is the state of affairs.” This, you see, begins my perverse business of torturing myself. “Go on. Change your clothes and run along.” (Why did she not protest?) She sat there with her toes turned in and said nothing. I fiddled in a ladylike way with the fire to restore my nerve. Repeated, “Go on, Grace.” It was a delicious sensation, like standing on the edge of a cliff. Would she, after all, go? By God, she would pay for it if she did! “Get on with it,” I shouted angrily. “Hurry up and change.”
    She got up slowly and sniffed her way into the bedroom, a little surprised, I imagine, that things were not turning out as she planned. She must have had a queer sensation of losing control over events. Here was Gregory, after all, acting right out of character. He was neither the jealous husband nor the understanding domestic pal. What was he?
    She changed into my kimono with the parrots on it and returned to find me sitting in front of the fire, deep in Gibbon. I had taken the opportunity of putting on my skullcap. That, at any rate, gave me a superior monastic mien which always worried her a little; and whenever nervousness over a domestic or foreign crisis seized me, I immediately donned, as they say, my little skullcap. It gave me a sort of fancy-dress confidence in myself.
    â€œWell,” I says to her I says with hearty monastic exuberance, “you’re ready, then?”
    â€œGregory,” she said suddenly, “it wouldn’t be fair of me. It wouldn’t be playing the gaime.”
    I pooh-poohed this vigorously. “Fair, my dear Grace, what are you talking about?” Getting up I took her arm in order to call her bluff once and for all. I felt a little sick. We walked slowly to the front door of the flat together. She was puzzled by now—and a little afraid. Her arms were cold under the garish sleeves of my kimono. She hung back slightly, hoping I would prevent her from going at the last moment. Really, she began to realize that she didn’t want

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