The Hollow

"Take this down, and tell cook to warm it up."

He spoke curtly.

"Yes, sir." Lewis, slightly impertinent, managed to convey in the two innocuous words exactly her opinion of a mistress who sat at the dining table watching a joint of meat grow cold.

Gerda went on rather incoherently:

"I'm so sorry, dear, it's all my fault, but first, you see, I thought you were coming, and then I thought, well, if I did send it back…"

John interrupted her impatiently.

'Oh, what does it matter? It isn't important. Not worth making a song and dance about."

Then he asked:

"Is the car here?"

"I think so. Collie ordered it."

"Then we can get away as soon as lunch is over."

Across Albert Bridge, he thought, and then over Clapham Common-the short cut by the Crystal Palace-Croydon-Purley Way, then avoid the main road-take that right-hand fork up Metherly Hill-along Haverston Ridge-get suddenly right out of the suburban belt, through Cormerton, and then up Shovel Down-trees golden red-woodland below one everywhere-the soft Autumn smell, and down over the crest of the hill…

Lucy and Henry… Henrietta…

He hadn't seen Henrietta for four days.

When he had last seen her, he'd been angry.

She'd had that look in her eyes… Not abstracted, not inattentive-he couldn't quite describe it-that look of seeing something-something that wasn't there-something (and that was the crux of it) something that wasn't John Christow!

He said to himself, "I know she's a sculptor.

I know her work's good. But, damn it all, can't she put it aside sometimes? Can't she sometimes think of me-and nothing else?"

He was unfair. He knew he was unfair.

Henrietta seldom talked of her work-was indeed less obsessed by it than most artists he knew. It was only on very rare occasions that her absorption with some inner vision spoiled the completeness of her interest in him. But it always roused his furious anger.

Once he had said, his voice sharp and hard, "Would you give all this up if I asked you to?"

"All-what?" Her warm voice held surprise.

"All-this." He waved a comprehensive hand round the studio.

And immediately he thought to himself, Fool! Why did you ask her that? And again, Let her say "Of course." Let her lie to me!

If she'll only say, "Of course I will." It doesn't matter if she means it or not! But let her say it. I must have peace.

Instead, she had said nothing for some time. Her eyes had gone dreamy and abstracted.

She had frowned a little.

Then she had said slowly:

"I suppose so. If it was necessary…"

"Necessary? What do you mean by necessary?"

"I don't really know what I mean by it, John. Necessary, as an amputation might be necessary…"

"Nothing short of a surgical operation, in fact!"

"You are angry. What did you want me to say?"

"You know well enough. One word would have done. Yes. Why couldn't you say it?

You say enough things to other people to please them, without caring whether they're true or not. Why not to me? For God's sake, why not to me?"

And still, very slowly, she had answered:

"I don't know… really, I don't know, John. I can't-that's all. I can't."

He had walked up and down for a minute or two. Then he had said:

"You will drive me mad, Henrietta. I never feel that I have any influence over you at all."

"Why should you want to have?"

"I don't know, but I do."

He threw himself down on a chair.

"I want to come first."

"You do, John."

"No. If I were dead, the first thing you'd do, with the tears streaming down your face, would be to start modelling some damned mourning woman or some figure of grief…" «I wonder. I believe-yes, perhaps I would. It's rather horrible…"

She had sat there looking at him with dismayed eyes-The pudding was burnt. Christow raised his eyebrows over it and Gerda hurried into apologies.

"I'm so sorry, dear. I can't think why that should happen! It's my fault. Give me the top and you take the underneath."

The pudding was burnt because he, John Christow, had stayed sitting in his consulting room for a quarter of an hour after he needed to, thinking about Henrietta and Mrs. Crabtree and letting ridiculous nostalgic feelings about San Miguel sweep over him. The fault was his. It was idiotic of Gerda to try and take the blame, maddening of her to try and eat the burnt part herself. Why did she always have to make a martyr of herself? Why I " I r _ _ did Terence stare at him in that slow, interested way? Why, oh, why, did Zena have to sniff so continually? Why were they all so damned irritating?

His wrath fell on Zena.

"Why on earth don't you blow your nose?"

"She's got a little cold, I think, dear."

"No, she hasn't. You're always thinking they have colds! She's all right."

Gerda sighed. She had never been able to understand why a doctor, who spent his time treating the ailments of others, could be so indifferent to the health of his own family.

He always ridiculed any suggestion of illness.

"I sneezed eight times before lunch," said Zena importantly.

"Heat sneeze!" said John.

"It's not hot," said Terence. "The thermometer in the hall is fifty-five."

John got up.