Free The Sea Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard

edges of his mind. Not to touch or test it – not to move any of his
formidable machinery near it – but simply to let it lie there printing itself was like the motionless effort of a time exposure, and at the end of it he was matchwood and water. He got out of
the taxi shaking, and so cold that it took him minutes to find the change.
    Even if they rented houses, he thought, they never managed to live in them. The sitting room had the watchful, uninhabited air that made him feel rootless and apologetic about it. Upstairs, he
heard the petulant sound of drawers being opened and closed – felt steam creep out of the bathroom as he passed its open door – smelled face powder and scent on the wing. Lillian would
have dressed for the party, and he was probably late.
    She had been to the hairdresser: her head was shining – stern and casual – an expensive business. She was wearing a dress which in a dishonest and conciliating moment he had once
said that he liked. It was a floral silk – predominantly blue – with a skirt tightly swathed over her hips, and a low square neck that showed all her delicately prominent bones. It
emphasized all her angles without giving an impression of her shape as a whole, and he did not like it. She was adding a pair of diamond clips, diamond and pearl earrings, and a pearl collar with a
diamond clasp. He was late and she did not like it; she was dressed and he did not like it: she would want to know exactly how he had spent the day and he did not want to tell her; she would want
to tell him exactly how she had spent hers, and he did not want to know. This is where we start from, he thought; do I want to make anything of it? He said: ‘Sol Black said how beautiful you
looked on Tuesday and sent his love. He was really struck: I think you’ll get flowers.’
    Her face assumed the expression of indulgent scorn that a compliment she wanted from a man she despised always engendered. ‘He’s so effulgent!’ She sighed, and started to fill
her Fabergé box with herbal cigarettes.
    ‘Did you rest?’
    She shook her head. ‘I don’t like being alone here now. Did you work?’
    ‘A bit.’ The pattern shimmered in his mind like a heat haze; resolutely he kept it out of focus.
    ‘Em – you’re developing a nervous tic. You keep screwing up your eyes. Don’t you think you ought to see an oculist? Although I can’t see why writing should
strain your eyes.’
    ‘Nor can I.’
    ‘It worries me,’ she said, and looked up at him for approbation.
    ‘Don’t worry. You’ll upset your head, and it looks very pretty. I’ve only got to change my shirt: won’t be a minute.’
    But she followed him into the dressing room where first Gloria and then he had lain on the bed.
    ‘Where have you got to?’
    ‘Got to?’
    ‘In your new play. How far have you got?’
    ‘Not very far . . .’ His temper loomed and changed into an ugly shape before he could stop it.
    ‘Darling, it’s not an unreasonable question. People keep asking me, and I feel such a fool not knowing the first thing about it.’
    ‘Well, you can tell them not very far.’ He ripped out his cuff links savagely, and started hunting for a clean shirt.
    She said something – he knew what the sense of it would be and didn’t listen to the words – by now he had split into three worthless pieces: with an appearance of anger, he was
dressing; with an appearance of patience, he was flowing into her gaps of silence; with (was it an appearance of?) despair, he was running over his pattern of deceit with her; his barren periods
– of months – when he pretended that he was working; his moments of being part of some truth which he kept inviolate from her; his weeks of writing – hanging on by the skin of his
skill to the memory of those moments – endured privately without her knowledge or consent; and the payment for all this. When the work was whole and out of him, he let her read it before
anyone else – let her