Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor

swayed, as women always sway when they hold babies. ‘Do they know unconsciously that they have to keep up the rocking movement of the womb?’ he wondered, pausing for a moment beside the gate-post and the broken gryphon. She slapped the baby’s hand down from her hair. Above her hung a bird-cage covered with a cloth. All the time, only faintly annoying, like gnats, a wireless bleated. She moved the baby higher upon her shoulder and he could see its bare mauve behind, dinted like an unripe plum.
    He walked on up the mossy drive and round the back of thehouse. There was a light at Marion’s window, too, but no picture, for the curtains were drawn. He knew he would have to go up and see Marion, because he could not go to bed with his emotions unresolved, and only Marion could help him; Marion, and being in that room which once had been Violet’s and where he could never go and sit alone now without trespassing.
    Marion was reading. Marion was polite and never interfered. He asked Tom to have a drink, just as if he didn’t know that he had already had too much, and then, a last suggestion, pointed to the pot of black coffee on the hearth.
    ‘Wondrous tactful, you are, Marion.’
    He was so tactful that now he did not make the mistake of dissembling. He smiled. Tom poured himself some coffee and drank slowly, his two hands round the cup.
    ‘Why do I do this?’ he said aloud. It was a way of beginning a conversation about himself, which is important to those who are drunk.
    Marion held up his book and read out: ‘All round it pipeth chill amidst the orchard boughs; the leaves are quivering and the foliage falls.’
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Tom crossly, baulked.
    ‘Sappho.’
    Tom always called Greek a dead language. ‘Never thought of it being Autumn there,’ he said, ‘or leaves falling. Or orchards.’
    Presently, Marion read: ‘O Hesperus that bringest back all things which the shining dawn dispersed, thou bringest the sheep, thou bringest the goat, thou bringest the boy back to his mother.’
    ‘And the drunkard home from the pub. I told you many times it’s a dead language.’
    He put an elbow on the mantelpiece and Marion glanced up a bit anxiously at his thousand-flower dishes. When he bent hishead again to read, Tom looked down at the streaky gold hair, the black velvet jacket he despised, the long fingers in a fan over the back of the book, and felt the knot of his emotions draw up tight.
    ‘Marion, you remember the time you told me to come down off the stables’ roof and I wouldn’t?’
    He looked up and smiled.
    ‘You broke your arm,’ he said. ‘I expect I said “I told you so”.’
    ‘No. You were very quiet and gentle. As they were lifting me, I kept fainting and coming back and each time as I fell into darkness, I knew you were there, being steady, and waiting to help me.’
    Marion fingered his book, a little embarrassed. He knew Tom was going to say: ‘It is the same now.’ He did so. Marion waited, looking at the printed page as if for assistance. He realised that Tom was drunk, but he did realise, too – which is rare in people who drink for pleasure, not obliteration – that Tom wanted to use his drunkenness as a screen behind which he could strip himself of thoughts, emotions, which burdened him.
    ‘I am drinking myself to death,’ said Tom. It was melodramatic; but, like all melodrama, had the seeds of great tragedy in it. ‘I am wasted. No use. I am done for.’
    Marion closed his book. ‘In a different way, I am done for, too,’ he said.
    The clock ticked, the fire shuddered and a little brittle noise came from the hot side of the coffee-pot, for the coffee was beginning to boil and Marion moved it back, away from the heat. Tom stared at him, leaning there against the mantelpiece, his elbow among the china bowls.
    ‘I am
reading
myself to death, that is all the difference is,’ Marion went on, rapping a knuckle against the cover of the book.
    ‘Why?’
    Marion said