Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  “He’s a very strong swimmer.”

  “Why didn’t Courteney go — or that worm Hilary?”

  “Courteney did offer, but he’s a much older man than Buckland. As for Moon, he behaved like the cad he is. He didn’t even trouble to look after his own wife when we were all in the water together. I kept beside her — not him.”

  “Angie swims pretty well, doesn’t she?”

  “Oh yes,” said Denis uneasily. “Not like poor little Dulcie, who simply had to be towed along. She was terrified, poor kid.”

  “According to Buckland, nobody was ever in any real danger at all.”

  “Chrissie, what did he say about me? Please tell me.”

  “He didn’t say anything, till I asked if you were all right, and then he said Yes.”

  “That’s not all.”

  “He said you’d not been able to manage the swim to the rock.”

  There was a silence.

  Chrissie had guessed instantly, from Denis’s own manner rather than from that of Buckland, that something had happened of which Denis was deeply ashamed. She could even hazard a fairly accurate conjecture as to what it was. The protective element, more predominant than she realised, in her feeling for Denis, rose strongly within her. She wanted him to tell her the facts, so that she might console him, and prove to them both that her love for him was a secure, unfaltering thing, able to withstand the revelation of any weakness.

  “What really happened was this,” said Denis, very carefully. “Buckland had been rather on my nerves all the afternoon. I can’t stand the fellow. He’s not a gentleman, and he doesn’t know how to behave. I wasn’t feeling particularly fit, either, though naturally I didn’t say anything about that. One doesn’t. Of course when the boat struck a rock — or whatever it was — I realised that it might be frightfully serious. I don’t think any of the others did. After all, none of them know anything about motor-boats. I think I kept my head all right — I don’t usually get rattled in an emergency. I told Moon to slow down his engine, then I let myself over the side, and examined the boat very carefully, and found a hole in her. I knew then it was simply a question of time — as I’d guessed at once that it would be — before she sank.

  “I didn’t want to frighten the others, and I let them try baling out the water, and so on, and said as little as I could. As a matter of fact, I was working out in my own mind what our chances were. I don’t mind telling you that it was a relief to me when I caught sight of that rock, and I knew that if the worst came to the worst we could swim for it.”

  Denis paused, and passed his tongue over his lips. Chrissie, sitting motionless, could feel the tension to which he had strung himself.

  “I’d changed my place, to see if I couldn’t spot a nearer rock or something, when the boat went over. I think I was the first person to strike the water, and to come up again. Naturally, it was rather horrible for a moment, but one’s first thought was to see whether the two girls were safe. Angie was quite close to me, and I told her it was all right, and she was quite sensible. Not frightened, I mean. Dulcie was scared — very naturally. She can’t swim much. However, her father looked after her, and I kept with Angie. Chrissie, it was a pretty long swim. Courteney fancied it was only about a quarter of a mile, but I’m fairly sure he was wrong there, and it was a good deal more. And I suppose the strain on my nerves from the whole thing had been greater than I realised. I’m a rather highly strung person, I’m afraid. Anyway, I began to realise that I couldn’t possibly do it. I’ve been told, you know, by my doctor, that my heart isn’t any too strong. I knew I couldn’t hold out.”

  A note of real sincerity suddenly crept into his voice.

  “It was horrible — having to go on, and feeling that I simply couldn’t do another stroke. I’d have given anything in the world if only I could have stopped and rested for a minute. But I couldn’t even turn over and float. I hadn’t the strength left. You see, apart from anything else, I was quite out of training. It’s ages since I’ve done anything like a long swim.”

  “What happened?” said Chrissie in a low voice.

  “I told Angie to go on. I didn’t want to let her see there was anything wrong. Then Buckland came back — to see if she wanted help, I suppose. He — —”

  Denis stopped suddenly, and she could hear him swallowing, as if his throat were dry.

  “Let me see, what did happen next? It’s all a bit of a blur, somehow. Angie went on ahead, and I asked Buckland to stand by, as I was a bit doubtful whether my heart would stand the strain. I fancy I was pretty far gone by that time, although I still kept on going, until — well, I suppose I must have lost consciousness, really, because I can just remember my head going under, and then coming up again, and calling to Buckland.”

  There was another silence.

  “What did Buckland do?”

  “He lost his head,” said Denis, in a loud, firm voice. “I suppose he was afraid I might hang on to him in the water, or pull him down or something. Of course, it’s possible that I may have made a clutch in his direction. I don’t think I did. But it’s just possible. Anyhow, he got the wind up, and let out with his fist, and simply knocked me silly. It was an idiotic thing to do, of course, but it simplified matters in a way, because after that he simply floated me in the water. There wasn’t very much farther to go.”

  “He seems to have saved you, Denis, anyway.”

  “I don’t know that I was ever in any very great danger, dear. That’s to say — it all depended on my heart. It might have held out, I suppose — or it might not. Perhaps it wouldn’t really very much have mattered, either way.”

  At the utter artificiality of Denis’s final remark, delivered in a pseudo-whimsical style that she had never heard from him before, Chrissie experienced a violent revulsion of feeling.

  Her grave patience, and tolerant, analytical interest, deserted her abruptly and she turned on him suddenly.

  “Don’t, Denis. I simply can’t bear it.”

  She heard him catch his breath. Like a child that has been frightened, she thought involuntarily.

  “Stop dramatising yourself,” she said, speaking much more gently. “What do I care whether you can swim or can’t swim, or whether you were frightened or not frightened? Can’t you see that the only thing that matters is that you and I should be honest with one another?”

  “Chrissie — I have — —”

  His voice broke.

  Chrissie felt herself torn between acute shame and equally acute compassion.

  In another moment Denis’s hysteria might communicate itself to her. Putting the strongest force upon herself of which she was capable, she spoke quietly and steadily:

  “Don’t let’s talk about it any more. Not till to-morrow, I mean, when you’re rested. I do understand, Denis — I do really.”

  “You don’t believe that I’ve told you the truth.”

  “Don’t let’s talk about it any more.”

  She stood up, feeling all of a sudden extraordinarily tired.

  “Where’s Gushie?”

  “Shall I go and look for her?” Denis asked submissively.

  She said “Yes, please,” only longing for him to go, that she might be freed from the emotional strain that the conflict between them had induced.

  She watched him pass from the deep shadow cast by the ilex trees into the moonlight that flooded the terrace.

  “I suppose I’m in love with Denis,” thought Chrissie, instinctively analytical, and invariably articulate. “Otherwise, I don’t see how I could help despising him.”

  CHAPTER IX

  (1)

  Madame, her mouth compressed into a thin line, little beads of sweat shining on her forehead and upper lip, drew her pointed steel pen across the double page of the open ledger.

  “C’est ça,” she hissed between her teeth.

  She pressed the cheap violet blotting-paper on to the wet ink with vicious firmness.

  “Sales Anglais ...”

&nb
sp; She would have applied the epithet almost automatically to any of the English visitors, but the special emphasis in her voice was for the Moons.

  Naturally cunning, and profoundly experienced as well, Madame was nearly certain that the Moons were insolvent. She was determined not to allow them even twenty-four hours’ grace before demanding the settlement of her account.

  “Ce qu’ils ont bu, hier soir!”

  The treble sheet of flimsy paper that set forth in detail the account of the young Moons’ expenditure lay on the desk. Madame folded it up, placed it in an equally flimsy envelope, and wrote on the outside the number of their room.

  “Voilà!”

  (2)

  Next day, Hilary found the envelope lying, a pale mauve oblong, on the pillow.

  He picked it up with disgust, fingered it, and reluctantly tore it open.

  “Hell, it’s worse than I expected.”

  “It always is,” said Angie languidly. “How much?”

  Hilary made no reply. He was puzzled by the French figures, and the extraordinary resemblance between Madame’s threes and her fives. The only thing of which he was certain was that the total ran into four figures.

  Angie trailed across the room and looked over his shoulder.

  “What’s that in English money? It looks like millions.”

  “So it might be, for all the difference it makes. We can’t pay it anyway,” said Hilary grimly.

  “I suppose they’ll wait?”

  “What for? There’s nothing coming.”

  They looked at one another. Their plight was a thoroughly familiar one.

  “Tell her,” said Angie, “that we’re expecting money from England any day.”

  “That won’t wash for long. You bet they’ve heard that sort of thing before.”

  “Why did you go and throw away money on that damned motor-boat?” demanded Angie. “I suppose you had to pay for that on the nail.”

  “Of course. And if I’d had even ordinary luck, I could have sold her again for twice what I gave, and we’d have been all right. Well — there’s the car.”

  Hilary had become possessed of a car, but had offered no explanation of the transaction.

  “Can you raise money on that?”

  “I don’t want to, if I can help it,” said Hilary in a peculiar tone.

  “That means you haven’t paid for it. What a damned fool you are, aren’t you?”

  They wrangled furiously.

  At last Hilary said:

  “Carry on exactly as usual. They won’t ask for the money for a day or two, I don’t suppose. If they do, I shall say we’ll settle up the whole thing all at once when we leave.”

  Angie cursed and grumbled.

  She was in a state of acute nervous tension, caused by the difficulty of pursuing her affair with Buckland to its logical conclusion in the face of Mrs. Romayne’s strenuous determination to keep them apart.

  This old, recurrent difficulty over money seemed an unbearable exasperation.

  “Can’t we borrow from someone?”

  “Who?” demanded Hilary sceptically. “If you’d had the sense to make friends with Muller, or the Challoner girl, they might have helped us out — but all you’ve done is to make a fool of yourself with that cad Buckland.”

  Angie, almost impervious to insult where her husband was concerned, scarcely heard what he was saying.

  She was wondering whether, if she went downstairs, she would find Buckland on the terrace. Breakfast was long since over, and Mrs. Romayne had gone indoors again. Angie had seen her from the window. Patrick and the tutor had disappeared in the direction of the garage.

  Angie pulled on her large straw hat, looked at herself in the glass, and said: “I’m going down.”

  Hilary laughed shortly.

  On the steps of the Hotel was Courteney. He was explaining a plan for a day at Monte Carlo, that he wanted to arrange for the Hotel visitors.

  Angie saw Buckland at once. His dark, bold glance leapt to meet her, and a thrill ran through her veins.

  He came up to her.

  “You’ll come, won’t you?” he said confidently. His eyes added a great deal more.

  “When?”

  “To-morrow. Quite a lot of people are going.”

  “I don’t mind,” Angie said in a tone of indifference.

  She moved away, aware that Buckland would follow her.

  “I say, are you going down to bathe now?”

  “Yeah. It’s no use waiting for Hilary. I shall walk.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  They descended the steps, acutely conscious of one another’s proximity.

  As soon as they had turned the sharp corner of the drive, and were out of sight of the terrace, Buckland stopped.

  “Look here,” he said thickly, “it’s too hot for you to walk. If you’ll wait there, I’ll get the Buick out, and run you down.”

  Angie’s eyes glittered.

  “You’d better not do that, had you?”

  They stood and looked at one another. Angie’s breast rose and fell rapidly beneath her thin silk bathing-suit.

  Buckland, staring at her, put out his hand and laid it on her waist, as if he scarcely knew what he was doing.

  The next moment she was in his arms and he was kissing her with violence.

  “God, you’re marvellous!”

  “So are you,” she muttered, her mouth against his.

  He crushed her closer and closer to himself, her supple body as eloquent in response as her spoken words were lackadaisical.

  When he at last released her, Angie’s face was flushed to a deep, dusky rose-colour, her eyes were liquid beneath half-closed lids, her mouth wet, soft, and relaxed. She put both hands against his shoulders and drew them slowly down his thick, muscular arms in a prolonged caress.

  For the first time since she had come to the Côte d’Azur, Angie felt fully alive.

  It was for this that she had been made.

  “I’ve been aching to kiss you ever since I first saw you,” said Buckland, his eyes devouring her.

  She smiled at him without speaking.

  A car tore past them down the hill.

  “Damn, we can’t stand about here. Let’s get down to the rocks. And you’re coming to Monte Carlo to-morrow.”

  “Am I?”

  “There’s a whole crowd going — Coral Romayne and the Courteneys and the Duvals, and that ass Waller, and some of the Morgans.”

  “And my husband,” said Angie softly.

  “You don’t mind about him, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s not fit to black your boots. You’re going to let me look after you to-morrow.”

  “Am I?” she said again.

  The arrogance in Buckland’s tone and manner pleased her profoundly. She thought of him as “masterful.”

  Buck grinned down at her, showing the superb strength and whiteness of his admirable teeth.

  “I shouldn’t be frightfully surprised,” he said slowly, “if we missed the last ‘bus home. Should you?”

  Angie continued to look up at him, her eyes shining and liquid, her red lips apart.

  She said nothing.

  (3)

  Hilary, coming downstairs half an hour later, walked past Madame’s desk without looking round. He was perfectly well aware that she was sitting there, her eyes bent upon her ledger, and yet seeing everyone and everything. It made him sickeningly angry to know that he was afraid lest she should suddenly speak to him, and ask for the money owing to her.

  The eternal lack of money, the fear of creditors, had loomed large in Hilary’s life ever since he could remember. He was the only child of shiftless and drink-sodden parents and his earliest recollection was one of a man and woman — his father and mother — screaming at one another, half undressed, in a stifling little bedroom at the top of a suburban boarding-house.

  His father had been conscripted, and killed early in 1918. Hilary’s mother had avidl
y seized upon her widow’s pension, whilst grumbling bitterly at its inadequacy.

  For a little while after the war they had lived in a flat in Streatham, which Hilary had reason to suppose was paid for by a brother officer of his father’s, whom he was told to call Uncle Mike.

  But Uncle Mike was several years younger than Hilary’s mother and presently he ceased his visits, and the rent of the flat remained unpaid.

  There were scenes, as usual, with tradespeople, and Mrs. Moon arranged a stealthy departure in the middle of the night.

  After that they had wandered from one English watering-place to another. Sometimes there seemed to be money, sometimes none, but whenever there was money it went on drink, and irregular meals, and clothes. There was never enough for them to keep out of debt, or to pay the bills at the different cheap schools to which Hilary was intermittently sent.

  At last, when he was nearly twenty, a piece of luck happened to him. He fell in with the only son of a rich man who had made money out of munitions. The son had been forced into a society where he was ill-at-ease and unhappy, and to which he felt himself inferior. He was a gentle, sensitive youth, not many degrees removed from arrested mental development — a predestined victim for brutal ragging at the hands of his contemporaries. At the military college to which he had mistakenly been sent, his life became a nightmare of terror and agony. One evening a party of half-intoxicated young men dragged him out to Blackheath Common and compelled him to spend the night in the fork of a tree, denuded of everything but his vest and pants.

  By pure chance Hilary Moon, after a night spent in the company of a girl off the streets, was walking home across the common because he hadn’t a penny left. He found the boy, who was nearly dead with cold and exhaustion, and rescued him from the bonds that he had been unable to release for himself.

  Guessing at a possible advantage to be derived from the opportunity, Hilary took young Atkinson home, and met the boy’s babbling, gibbering gratitude with a great show of kindliness and of indignation against his tormentors.