At thirty-four she had just begun to wonder if they were ever destined to be roused at all.
Perhaps if she had ever been in love.…Or had she ever been in love?
It was ridiculous to ask oneself such a question. No other woman in the world, Laura felt intimately convinced, could have experienced such a doubt. It was a problem peculiar to her own unique psychology.
Certainly she had thought herself in love with Alfred. But it had been an academic affair, rather than a passionate one. She had never lost her head, nor Alfred his.
They had been attracted by one another; they had found themselves to possess certain tastes in common. Alfred had admired Laura’s looks, and Laura had admired Alfred’s distinction.
Laura now admitted to herself — what she had not admitted to herself at the time — that she had been rather anxious to be married, just when she first met Alfred.
The war was over, and there had been a question of her returning home, which she did not want to do, and so many other people seemed to be getting married.…She wanted the experience of marriage, and she was just beginning to be rather afraid of missing it altogether, because so many of the men belonging to her own generation had gone.
It had been easy to fall in love with Alfred — in love, that is to say, as most people understand the words. If Laura had a lurking feeling, in those days, that a less deliberate process might better have suited her temperament, it had been stifled in the excitements of her engagement and marriage.
Alfred did not put his fondness into words — it was not his way. Laura, who was given to analysis, put it into words for him often enough — but only to herself, never to her husband. And although it reassured her to know that she did love her Alfred, and that he loved her, it failed to convince her that she had not missed romance altogether.
Laura, forlornly dissecting herself at thirty-four, was startled by the poignancy of her own regrets.
She studied a little psychology, obtained the loan of a volume of Havelock Ellis, and felt so little exhilarated by the life-stories there set out that she had a brief reaction in favour of Thomas à Kempis. But his consolations were too cloying, his wisdom too trite, and his explanations explained nothing.
Laura was rather relieved, for she would not have liked to think of herself as a religious woman, although her careful agnosticism in reality belonged to her date just as surely as the habit of orthodox belief did to that of an earlier generation.
She sometimes thought — in her less candid moments— “A woman can live for her children.”
Perhaps, indeed, some women could, but Laura, in reality, knew that she was not one of them. She could not possibly have lived for dear little Edward, with whom, in fact, she would probably have nothing whatever in common once his childhood’s dependence was over — and Johnnie, of an individuality quite as strong as her own, would certainly neither expect nor wish her to subordinate her existence to his.
She wanted a life — an emotional life — of her own.
Laura, for the sake of her self-esteem, strenuously ignored the fact that in all probability she was sharing this desire with a large number of middle-class, middle-aged Englishwomen all over the country.
“Mum-mie-e-e!”
That was Johnnie.
“Was that one of the children?” said Laura, disingenuously.
“Won’t nurse go?”
“She’s down at supper.”
“Mum-mie-e-e-e!”
“I’ll just see,” said Laura, halfway to the door.
“You’d much better leave him to nurse.”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, tell him that if he’s simply playing the fool, I shall—”
She went out of the room, closing the door with an effect of gentle deliberation, and then flying up the shallow staircase two steps at a time, and along the passage.…
“Coming, darling. Don’t scream—”
She opened the door of the night-nursery and slipped inside very quietly.
“Never let the child see that he has been the centre of unusual excitement,” said the little book read by Laura during her children’s infancy.
“What is it, Johnnie?”
“I heard you rush upstairs, and all along the passage,” said Johnnie in tones of interest. He was sitting up in bed, in his blue striped pyjamas, with his curls all on end.
Those curls, to which Johnnie owed so much more in the way of leniency, and treats, and petting, and notice, than he would probably ever know!
Good little Edward’s hair was quite straight, and cut rather short.
“Johnnie, what did you call me for?”
“Please can I have a drink?”
“Couldn’t you have thought of that earlier?” said Laura indulgently, pouring water into the glass on the wash-stand as she spoke.
“Yes,” said Johnnie candidly. “But I just thought I’d like to see you. I feel rather lonely.”
Edward was in the other little bed, but Edward was asleep. He always went to sleep early. Johnnie never did.
“Well, but don’t call me for nothing, like that. It vexes daddy.”
Laura bent to kiss him, and, as usual, Johnnie’s curls and his smile, and the way in which his arms went round her neck, charmed her utterly.
“Darling!”
She kissed him half a dozen times, rejoicing in the warm, fragrant touch of his little soft face against hers.
“Now go to sleep, and let there be no more of you to-night.”
“Yes, some more of me to-night,” Johnnie answered, in the formula of his babyhood that had always made her laugh. She left him.
Outside the night-nursery door, she remembered remorsefully that she had forgotten to look at Edward, just as she always did forget to look at Edward when Johnnie was there.
The little lamp on the bracket against the passage wall was flaring, and Laura turned it down, noticing for perhaps the thousandth time that there was a black patch of grime on the ceiling above the bracket.
The house needed painting, and cleaning, and repapering. Some day they’d have to afford it.
Laura returned to the drawing-room, and to her armchair, and the half of The Times that Alfred had finished reading before dinner.
“Well?” said Alfred.
“Oh, it wasn’t anything serious.”
“I never imagined it was. He simply wanted to see if you’d come, I suppose?”
“He wanted a drink.”
“Couldn’t he fetch that for himself?”
“Of course not. For one thing, they’re not allowed to get out of bed like that.”
“Johnnie, of course, never does anything he’s not allowed to do.”
They both laughed.
“All the same, Laura, you’re spoiling that child. Why not let nurse go to him, if he wants anybody?”
“She couldn’t hear, from the kitchen.”
“You could ring and tell her to go to the night-nursery, I suppose?”
“No, Alfred, I couldn’t!” said Laura, speaking no less than the literal truth.
“I must have a go at the car to-morrow.”
“Oh—”
Alfred interpreted the sound of her ejaculation correctly, as he could hardly, indeed, have failed to do.
“You didn’t want to go anywhere, did you?”
“I did rather want to go into Quinnerton, but of course I can manage—”
“Wouldn’t Wednesday do?”
“It’s early closing. And Thursday is nurse’s day out, and Friday the Stevensons are coming to tea.”
“Well, all this taxi-work is playing the dickens with the car,” said Alfred mildly.
“I don’t see the sense of having a car if it isn’t to be used,” said Laura, also mildly.
“I wonder how many times in a month I drive to Quinnerton and back, or to the station, or half across the country,” Alfred enquired into space.
“Mum-mie-ee-e!”
Laura tried to think that she had on
ly imagined this familiar, distant sound.
It recurred, with increased volume.
“That naughty little boy,” said Laura in an unconvincing way.
“Don’t go. He doesn’t really want anything.”
Laura knew that this was true.
She hesitated.
The summons became an imperative shriek.
“Tell him that I shall come up and spank him if he isn’t quiet.”
Laura took advantage of the implied sanction and sped upstairs.
“Johnnie, be quiet. Daddy isn’t at all pleased with you—”
“I want a hanky, please.”
“Aren’t you at all sleepy to-night, darling?”
“No,” said Johnnie pathetically.
She found him a handkerchief, tucked in the bedclothes, kissed him, told him to be a good little boy and go to sleep, and went out, forgetting to look at the placidly-sleeping Edward.
Outside the door of the night-nursery she remembered about Edward.
She turned down the little lamp on the bracket, that was flaring, and noticed the patch on the ceiling above it.
Then she went downstairs, and into the drawing-room again.
“Nothing, of course?” remarked, rather than enquired, her husband.
“Nurse will be up there directly,” was Laura’s evasive reply.
She looked at the clock.
It was nearly half-past nine.
No use pretending that it wasn’t worth while to take up her sewing. There was plenty of time before one could think of going to bed. Laura, who disliked needlework, took up her nightgown and began to mend the sleeve. She could not make things, and nurse did all the knitting and darning for the children, but there was nobody except Laura to keep Laura’s clothes in order.
While she dealt inexpertly with the nightgown, Laura tried to think of a theme for a short story.
She had written short stories ever since her seventeenth birthday and could nearly always sell them to the more literary type of magazine.
Unfortunately, the higher the tone of the periodical, the lower was its rate of payment. But the guineas helped to augment the inadequate income of the Temples, and there had been times, in certain congenial surroundings, when Laura had been proud of her writings.
On the other hand, there had also been times when she had been ashamed of them. Times when elderly country neighbours had chaffed her about “writing stories with one hand, and pouring out your husband’s tea with the other,” or when mothers of young children had said that they supposed she didn’t have much time for writing now, with two little boys to look after.
Laura, on these occasions, had felt that her behaviour was unlike that of other people, and, curiously enough, although she was perfectly ready to suppose herself utterly different to every other woman on earth in disposition, outlook, and mentality, she intensely disliked the thought of diverging from the normal in her conduct of life.
Conflict, in the language of psycho-analysis, was the almost incessant companion of Laura’s psychological existence.
The hour between half-past nine and half-past ten passed exactly as usual.
“There’s rather an amusing case in the paper,” Alfred observed.
“What?”
“A husband who went off with his children’s governess, and he’s sixty-three, and she’s twenty. The judge was rather funny about it.”
“Let me see it when you’ve done,” said Laura, not so much forgetting, as entirely eliminating from her consciousness, the fact that at a recent committee meeting she had emphatically seconded a resolution to the effect that the reporting of unseemly details in the Press should be protested against on an early and public occasion.…
“You can have it at once.”
Laura put down her needlework, and for five minutes was pleasantly absorbed.
She exchanged a slightly ribald comment or two with Alfred, looked through the remaining Law Courts reports, and wished thoughtfully that there would be another case like the Crumbles murder.
“Is the water hot to-night?”
“As far as I know. It was hot just before dinner-time.”
“Yes, but it’s Nellie’s evening out, and Gladys is hopeless about the boiler fire.”
“I’d better go and see, then,” said Alfred, unenthusiastically.
“No, don’t! She’ll only think that we think she isn’t doing it properly.”
Alfred leant back in his chair again.
Presently he said:
“I had to order some more oil to-day.”
“Oh dear! The last lot isn’t paid for yet.”
There was a long silence.
The grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten.
“Oh dear,” said Laura, five minutes later. She got up, opened the drawing-room door, stood for a moment listening, and then went back to the fire, leaving the door open.
“There’s a most infernal draught coming in,” Alfred presently observed, in an uncomplaining voice.
“I’m very sorry, darling, but I just want to hear if Nellie’s come in. It’s struck ten.”
“Ring the bell and ask.”
Neither Laura, nor, to do him justice, Alfred himself, treated this suggestion as being worthy of serious attention.
“I’ll just go to the passage door—”
The passage door divided the hall from the pitch-dark, stone-flagged passage that led to the kitchens and pantry.
Laura returned from her expedition worried.
“Not a sound. The lamp is still burning, though. Gladys may be sitting up to let her in, or she may have gone upstairs, and left the door undone.”
“Nurse went up some time ago. I heard her.”
“I know.”
“You’d better speak to that girl before her next evening out. She’s always late, isn’t she?”
“Always. And next Sunday is her Sunday off.”
“Well, tell her it’s got to stop.”
“If Nellie gave notice, I’m pretty sure Gladys would go too. They’ve always been friends.”
“She won’t give notice. She knows very well that she’s supposed to be in by now.”
“Hush!” cried Laura, darting to the passage door once more, and again returning disconsolate.
“I thought I heard her, but it was only Fauntleroy.”
“It’s time Fauntleroy was put out.”
Laura opened the front door, and the Aberdeen terrier obediently disappeared into the night.
“Alfred, what had I better do?”
“Go upstairs before the water gets cold. I’ll go round and see if the back door’s fastened presently, and if it isn’t I shall lock up, and Miss Nellie can ring the frontdoor bell.”
“It’s a quarter past. Even if her watch were slow it wouldn’t be as wrong as all that without her knowing it.”
“You’d much better go to bed.”
Laura waited, drifted reluctantly upstairs, undressed with her bedroom door wide open, and in the bathroom gazed earnestly out of the window at the dark shrubs and bushes that surrounded the double doors of the yard through which Nellie should have returned on the stroke of ten o’clock.
On the way back to her own room, after a tepid and unpleasant bath, she heard a footstep on the back stairs, and then the opening and shutting of a door.
“She’s back,” thought Laura.
It was a relief, but almost immediately she began to rehearse to herself the rebuke that it would be necessary to address to Nellie next day.
“Nellie, I really can’t have this sort of thing going on”
“Have you any explanation, Nellie, of why you came in three-quarters of an hour late last night?”
“Nellie, what time was it when you got in last night?”
The variations of which this theme was capable seemed to be without number, as did the unsatisfactory replies with which Laura’s imagination, quite against her will, continued to credit her house-parlourmaid.
She was still p
ursuing the distressing dialogue when Alfred came to bed, and it was the first thing that leapt to her mind when she woke.
CHAPTER II
Laura woke at a quarter to seven, as she almost always did, and lay in bed and listened. If there was a distant sound of fire-irons it was all right. Gladys, at any rate, was downstairs. If there was the faint rattling of a chain, and the clank of drawn-back bolts, then Nellie was downstairs, opening up the house.
If voices, and the clatter of crockery, came from the direction of the nursery, then nurse was dressing Edward and Johnnie, and getting their breakfast ready. It was not necessary that these last sounds should be audible before half-past seven.
If, however, as was too often the case, perfect silence reigned, Laura knew that the maids had — probably with entire deliberation — overslept themselves. And her heart sank.
She ought to get up and go to the back stairs. She ought to knock on the door of the night-nursery.
She ought, at the very least, to Speak to Them, after breakfast.
Alfred lay sleeping on the far side of the double bed. They ought to have had modern twin beds, of course — much more hygienic, and, Laura could not help thinking, much more comfortable as well. They often talked about it. Or, rather, Laura often talked about it. Alfred, like so many husbands, was of a silent disposition.
Laura rehearsed the probabilities of the day that lay ahead of her.
Tuesday.
There wasn’t enough of the beef left for anything except cottage pie. Her mind shuddered at being invaded so early by details from which she was at all times averse. She determined not to try and think of a pudding, although she could feel the thought pushing at the back of her mind.
Alfred was going to do something to the car. So she’d walk to the village for the Institute Committee Meeting at three o’clock. (What about pancakes — or were there no lemons? Rhubarb? The boys were sick of rhubarb.…)
The short story that had seemed rather good last night seemed idiotic this morning. Not worth working out.
Perhaps the post would bring an interesting letter.
(Jam-tarts — Johnnie would be pleased, but Alfred wouldn’t eat jam-tarts — there might be a rice pudding for him. Laura made up her mind not to try and think of a pudding.)
Apples were over. There were such a lot of things to be made with apples — dumplings, fritters, apple-tart, apple-meringues, apple-charlotte, stewed apples and custard.…
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 280