“I hope they’ll complain to Mr. Courteney, I do really,” said Mrs. Wolverton-Gush. “With two children in the car too!”
“You can hardly call that oaf, young Romayne, a child,” Hilary remarked disagreeably.
Denis decided that his chance of asserting himself and of diverting Chrissie’s attention from the intolerable Moon had come.
“Patrick Romayne interests me very much,” he began, in a mincing, instructive voice. “I know a little about psychology, as it happens, particularly where boys are concerned. I’ve studied Patrick rather carefully. He’s an extraordinary mixture of sophistication and immaturity.”
No one responded immediately. Then Chrissie said: “Yes, he’s an interesting boy. I always feel sorry for him, somehow.”
Denis looked across at her, smiling confidently, thinking only of displaying his superior knowledge.
“You need not. He’s quite a normal, cheerful person, I assure you. Patrick and I are very good friends and he’s talked to me quite freely. I have a method of my own with boys of that age, and I may say that it’s usually quite extraordinarily successful. As a matter of fact I’ve often thought that I ought to try for a job like Buckland’s.”
Mrs. Wolverton-Gush uttered an unexpected laugh. Denis, startled, looked at her.
He had forgotten all about her previous acquaintance with Buckland and the Romaynes. He now perceived that his small, oblique boastings had offended her very much, and the realisation frightened him, for he had a horror of offending people.
“A job like Mr. Buckland’s requires several qualifications, including athletic ones,” said Mrs. Wolverton-Gush crushingly. “And as far as I know, my friend Mrs. Romayne is perfectly satisfied with her present arrangement.”
“Quite so. Naturally. You misunderstand me entirely,” Denis stammered in an agony, “if you think I was suggesting anything else, for a single moment. Naturally, I — —”
“Denis,” Chrissie’s voice clearly and deliberately interrupted him, “are you going to do some gambling this afternoon? Because I am.”
Denis felt perfectly certain that she intended to snub him. He was so deeply hurt that he felt himself crimsoning, whilst actual tears pricked at the back of his eyelids.
Through the rest of the drive he spoke not another word.
Outside the Casino at Monte Carlo they found Captain Morgan with Olwen and Patrick. The third car drove up, and Courteney sprang out of it.
He was anxious to forward everybody’s plans.
Angie, looking very cross, came and joined them. She had been watching the people pass in and out of the Casino.
“I want a drink,” she announced instantly. “This place is as hot as hell.”
The air of the town was, in fact, stifling. It was the middle of the day, and hot sunshine poured down upon them.
“Let’s lunch first and go in afterwards,” Coral Romayne exclaimed, indicating the Casino by a gesture of the head. “Are we all keeping together, or what?”
“I have a table reserved at one of the hotels quite near,” said Courteney.
Denis went up to Chrissie.
“Will you come and have lunch with me, somewhere where we can talk?” he asked in a low voice.
She nodded.
“I’d meant to suggest that.”
He felt reassured. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to speak contemptuously to him, after all. He wondered, at the same time hating himself for doing so, whether she — who could so well afford it — would pay for lunch for them both.
The group from the Hôtel d’Azur was dispersing.
Captain Morgan had gone off with Olwen and Patrick and Dulcie Courteney. No wonder, thought Denis, that he wouldn’t leave his fourteen-year-old daughter longer than he could help in the company of Mrs. Romayne and Buckland. They were standing together now, talking noisily, with Buck’s arm thrust through hers.
Angie Moon, still looking sulky, was with Courteney. He was taking her and Hilary with him to the Hotel.
Mrs. Wolverton-Gush approached Chrissie.
“What are your plans, dear?” she enquired brightly.
“I don’t want lunch at the Hotel, wherever it is. You go, Gushie. Denis will look after me.”
“Just as you like, dear.”
They saw her join up with Coral Romayne and Buckland. The three of them followed Courteney and the Moons.
“Thank Heaven we’re rid of them,” said Chrissie frankly. “Now then, where are we going?”
She sounded terribly brisk; not at all as she had sounded in their previous conversations.
The heart of Denis sank again.
“Anywhere you like,” he said feebly. “I don’t mind at all. I don’t know this place.”
“Let’s find an open-air café somewhere.”
It was not difficult.
In less than ten minutes they were sitting together beneath a striped awning, and Chrissie had ordered cocktails, iced consommé, and lobster mousse. Her frank appreciation of, and interest in, good food amazed Denis, who always sought furtively to conceal his own greed, whilst at the same time indulging it as far as possible, although never at his own expense.
He now felt certain that Chrissie intended to pay for the lunch herself, and the conviction served to raise his spirits. When the cocktails arrived he raised his glass to her, smiling naturally for the first time that day.
Spontaneously and sincerely, he paid her a compliment.
“What a pretty frock that is! You ought always to wear bright colours.”
It was true.
Her small, childish form and straight-cut dark hair were admirably suited by the frock she was wearing: a short, full-skirted one, very simply cut, with rounded neck and little puffed sleeves that barely covered her shoulders, made of bright-blue cretonne with a tiny pattern of pink and blue roses.
Chrissie smiled at him in return.
“I’m terribly glad you like it. I do myself.”
“Chrissie, how is your book getting on?” he asked rather timidly, hoping to please her.
“Quite all right. I’m only correcting proofs. Don’t let’s talk shop. Tell me what you’ve been thinking about since I saw you last.”
“About you, mostly. When I saw you again, this morning, I was afraid perhaps I’d annoyed you in some way.”
Chrissie frowned a little. She spoke, however, quite gently.
“You’re always being afraid about something or other, aren’t you?”
“Does that mean you think I’m a coward?”
“I know you’re a coward,” said Chrissie calmly. She finished her cocktail, and put down the empty glass. “Denis, dear, I’ve told you all along that the only thing that matters is for us to be honest with one another. I don’t care in the least whether you’re a coward or not — I’m a most fearful one myself, in some ways — but I do care about your being sincere with me, and I’m quite sure that you’re not being anything of the kind. Are you?”
Denis stared at her in abject terror. For the moment, he saw her as the only person who had ever seemed to understand him, or to give him the affection that he so needed. Whatever he said or did now, he felt that he was bound to lose her.
“Then you don’t really care about me?” he said at last.
“Yes I do. I want to help you, if you’ll let me. I thought I could. Oh, Denis! I do understand that, all your life probably, you’ve been obliged to lie, and pretend, and posture — but won’t you understand that you needn’t do it with me? That if there’s anything real between us at all, you’ve got to drop all that and be yourself?”
There was a piteous note in her voice, almost as though she were pleading with him. Denis, instinctively avoiding the real point at issue, caught at an evasion.
“You say ‘if there’s anything real between us.’ Don’t you believe, any more, that there is?”
“Yes I do,” she said quickly. “I want to.”
She paused and then added reflectively:
“Or is it only
that I don’t want to think I made a mistake? You see, I did feel so sure at first, Denis, and so did you, didn’t you?” — he nodded emphatically— “but now it all seems to be going wrong somehow. And I think it’s because you can’t bring yourself to be sincere with me. You don’t trust me. How much have you ever told me about yourself?”
“I never tell anyone about myself. I’m a very reserved person, by nature.”
“Only because you’re afraid of committing yourself — of being found out,” she said ruthlessly. “Am I being horrible? I know you’ve a right to your own privacy, if you want it — we all talk about ourselves far too much, really — but, Denis, I do so hate it, when you hedge — and tell half-truths — and contradict yourself.”
He felt that it would be useless to deny the charges, and took refuge in his old formula.
“If I’ve not said as much to you as — as I might have done otherwise — it’s because I owe a certain loyalty to — to other people. There are things in my life that I can’t possibly mention to you or to anybody, for the sake of others, who trust me.” The words did not sound as noble as he had meant them to sound.
Chrissie received them in silence.
For a few moments he wondered wildly whether to tell her about Phyllis. It would at least relieve him of the continual dread of being found out. He sought in his mind for a form of words that should convey the actual fact so as to make it sound creditable to himself, and failed to find one.
How could he say that he had secretly married a girl whom he could not afford to keep, and that he had for years passed himself off as being single, whilst his wife earned her own living in London?
He remembered, against his will, having told Chrissie again and again that he had always been lonely, that no one had ever shown him any real affection, that he was quite alone in the world.
He knew very well that she, also, would remember, and he felt that she might resent far more deeply the false claims he had made on her compassion than his silence about his marriage. It was characteristic of Denis that his immediate reaction to such a train of thought should be one of acute self-pity.
“I think I always knew,” he said, with a little, twisted, miserable smile, “that our — friendship — was much too wonderful to last. I’ve never been a very fortunate person, somehow, and I don’t think I ever shall be.”
He wondered whether to add that it was for this reason that he was so often able to help other people in their troubles. But he was beginning to be afraid of Chrissie’s tongue, and still more of her incisive, analytical mind. The little implications to his own credit, and small, semi-sincere platitudes that had always been accepted at their face value not only by the young women to whom he had so often spoken them, but also by himself, seemed now so many snares lying in wait for him.
“I think you’re a natural defeatist,” said Chrissie, looking at him critically. “Never mind. I suppose you can’t help it.”
“Then you’re going to give me up as a bad job?”
Chrissie sighed and made no answer.
“Here’s our lobster mousse. Doesn’t it look heavenly? What are we going to drink?”
“What would you like?” faltered Denis.
She looked at the wine-list, and suggested a white wine.
Denis agreed at once.
Surely, he thought, she must be going to pay for them both. She must know that he couldn’t afford wine.
The wine, when it came, was very good, and so was the lobster. Denis felt cheered and almost exhilarated as the drink, taken in the hottest hour of a broiling day, went to his head. He was scarcely startled at all when Chrissie, leaning across the table and fixing her enormous dark eyes on him, enquired abruptly:
“Denis, are you in love with me?”
“I’m very fond of you, dear.”
“That isn’t an answer. Or — is it?”
“So much depends,” began Denis sententiously, “on what you mean by being in love. I’m afraid I don’t, in some ways, look on these things in exactly the same way that the average man does.”
He hesitated, crumbling his roll, feeling that his reply had sounded utterly unreal and wondering hazily why they were finding it so impossible to recapture the atmosphere of their first meeting in the moonlit garden at the Villa Mimosa.
“I think,” said Chrissie in cold, level tones, “that we may take it that you’re not. Well — that’s all right.” She signalled to a waiter.
“I’m going to have an ice. Are you?”
“Yes — no — yes, I mean, I will please. But Chrissie — —”
“What kind? They’ve got raspberry, or mixed, or chocolate.”
“Any kind. I’ll have whatever you have.”
“Deux glaces au chocolat, s’il vous plaît.”
“Bien, madame.”
Denis lifted the bottle of wine from its bucket of ice and held it over Chrissie’s glass.
“No, thanks. You finish it. I don’t want any more.”
He refilled his own glass, and drank quickly.
“You know, Chrissie dear, however much I care for you — and I do care, perhaps more than you realise — I’m simply not in a position to ask you to marry me. I’m absolutely dependent on what I earn — and most unfortunately I wasn’t brought up to suppose I should ever have to work for my living — and you — well, you’re what you are, with a name, and a position, and money, and — and everything.”
“Good Heavens, I wasn’t thinking of marriage. I don’t ever mean to marry, unless I absolutely can’t help it. I should hate married life.”
“But if you loved anyone sufficiently, surely you’d want to be with that person all the time and for always,” said Denis solemnly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“All the time and for always! It’s a pretty tall order, isn’t it? I might have thought so at eighteen — but I do know something about my own limitations by this time. I’m terribly fickle, you know. People who do my sort of work — creative — nearly always are, I think.”
Denis, his head now swimming slightly, stared at her across the table. He was conscious of a difficulty in finding his words, whilst at the same time he felt released from his usual inhibitions.
“You seem quite different to-day. You’re not a bit like I thought you were, the first time I met you. Either you are a most wonderful actress, or else you’ve changed completely in your feelings towards me. I shan’t be in the least surprised if you have; you needn’t be afraid to tell me.”
It seemed to Denis that he was saying something very courageous and striking and honourable, in making this speech. He hardly noticed whether Chrissie made any reply to it or not.
He sat and finished the bottle of white wine, suffused in a gentle glow of self-approbation.
Without any demur he allowed Chrissie to pay their bill, and then followed her out into the crowded, brilliantly sunny street.
“We’ll go and play roulette, shall we?” said Chrissie, in a voice that sounded rather far away and indistinct.
“Yes,” said Denis boldly.
He felt that he would almost certainly win money.
(2)
They walked along the street in silence, gazing into the shops. Every other window seemed to display silky clothes in bright colours and thin materials, or else elaborate cakes and confectionery.
Chrissie looked at them all without seeing them. She knew that her nerves were on edge, and could without difficulty guess the reason why.
Her brief infatuation for Denis Waller had begun to wane from the moment she had detected that he was lying to her, on the day the motor-boat had gone down — and no one knew better than Chrissie with what undignified, what unescapable rapidity, such waning, once begun, could accomplish itself.
She told herself that she had given Denis his chance, in their tête-à-tête luncheon, and that he had wholly failed to profit by it. Neither her habitual honesty of outlook, nor her passion for self-analysis, allowed her to delude hersel
f. The glamour through which she had so inexplicably viewed Denis had vanished, leaving very little behind it except impatience, humiliation, and a slight feeling of remorse.
She asked herself uneasily whether Denis really cared for her enough to suffer from her defection — and decided that his vanity was more deeply involved than were his affections. All the same, she knew that she was going to hurt him, and felt angry with herself, and still angrier with Denis.
He walked beside her with his exaggerated stride, and a rather foolish, fatuous expression on his deeply flushed face. Every now and then he whistled softly just below his breath, a little out of tune.
“Here we are,” said Chrissie. “Good luck.”
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“No. I’ve changed my mind. Good-bye.”
She turned away abruptly and left him, disconcerted, on the steps of the Casino.
Just beyond the car-park she saw Mervyn Morgan, with Patrick Romayne and the two girls.
Chrissie, anxious not to be left alone with her own thoughts, crossed the street and joined them.
(3)
Coral Romayne was in a mood of rather strident good humour. She had enjoyed an excellent lunch, and had a great deal to drink, and Buckland had taken the seat next to hers and kept his foot pressed against hers underneath the table all the time. He had scarcely looked at Angie Moon, and Angie had laughed and shouted noisily with Courteney.
After lunch they went to the Casino.
Mrs. Wolverton-Gush was the only person who did not intend to play.
“I can’t afford to risk the little I have,” she said firmly. “But I shall certainly come and look on. I’m sure one can learn a great deal about human nature in a place like this.”
“God knows I can’t afford it, but I’m going to take a chance,” declared Buckland. “I’ve got a feeling that to-day’s my lucky day.”
He looked significantly at Coral, and she laughed. Her small gold bag was stuffed with notes, for she had cashed a large cheque that morning.
“Come on then, Buck.”
He followed her into the Casino. They obtained their passes.
In the roulette room they exchanged money for counters.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 401