“Oh, confound it, yes — you told me. I’d forgotten. Well, I’ll see you at three o’clock, anyway. And, Pamela — are you really going back to the country on Friday?”
“Yes, really, I must.”
“I’m coming to see you off. Paddington, eleven o’clock, isn’t it?”
“How did you know?”
“Of course I know. I wish to Heaven I didn’t. I’m going to try and persuade you not to let it be the absolute end, Pamela.”
“Are you?”
Her voice sounded startled.
“Yes.”
It was better to let her have time to think about it, so that she shouldn’t be too much upset. “You’re not angry, are you?” he asked her.
“No. I’m not angry. Good-night, Desmond.”
“Good-night — my dear.”
Could it be that she, too, had felt the impossibility of a complete severance between them, and that she was prepared to meet halfway his suggestion of clandestine appointments? An odious word, and one that he could not associate with her transparent candour and dignity. And yet, what else was there, for them? He knew, from Pamela’s very reticence, that Carew was not the man to let a woman seek even wholly innocent distractions outside her own home. It was easy to surmise that Carew had been told very little indeed about Adaire’s existence.
When he called for her at the Nursing Home in Shepherd’s Hill next day, it was after a disturbed and uneasy night and morning, in which the thought of her had seldom left him.
“Will you come to my rooms, Pamela? It’s the only place where we can possibly talk quietly, and it’s the last time.”
“Very well.”
Her hand, soft and clinging, lay in his.
Never had she seemed to him more adorable. It had been part of her charm, in his eyes, that she could be so perfect a comrade, with none of that perpetual insistence upon sex that had so quickly satiated him in the case of other women.
To-day it was he, once more, who sounded the note of passion.
“Darling, it’s no use. I can’t let you go. I want to cast everything to the winds — honour, and decency, and the fact that you’re another man’s wife. I can’t not see you again.”
He drew her into his arms as he spoke.
Leaning back a little, her eyes raised to his, Pamela Carew answered him.
“I wanted you to say it! I’m a wicked woman, I dare say, but I’ve never known love before — and I never shall again. I wanted you to say it, Desmond.”
“What, sweetheart?”
For an instant he was puzzled.
“What you asked me last night on the telephone and what you’ve just said. That you want me to come away with you. It’s utterly, utterly impossible, Desmond — but I shall always know now, that you cared enough to want me to do it.”
“You incredibly innocent little child!”
He had almost, in his utter astonishment, cried it aloud.
She thought that he wanted her to go away with him —— —
His brain so reeled with the realization of her astounding naivete that it was a full instant before he could take in the sense of what she was saying.
“... and now, at least, I shall have known what love is. I can’t be sorry, or remorseful, though I may perhaps be later. No — I shan’t! I shan’t! It’ll be the most glorious thing in my life, always; although we mustn’t ever see each other again.”
“Why?” he murmured, dazed.
“It’s not for any reason of morality,” she said earnestly. “I don’t think I’m a very moral woman. It’s not even because of Fred. I don’t owe him much, really, and he’s had ten years... But it’s the children. I know you forgot about them. Naturally — you’re a man and you’ve never even seen them. What can they possibly mean to you?
But because of the children, I can’t — I can’t go away with you, Desmond.”
Her face for the first time since he had known her was wet with tears. Through them shone the exultation of her great renunciation.
And Adaire, humbled, amazed, amused, and hating himself for being amused, more in love than ever with his little lady from the provinces, could not for an instant find it in his heart to rob her of her sacrifice.
He bade her good-bye in the sombre clamour of Paddington Station next day, with an ache in his soul which was none the less real for his consciousness that the necessity for an eternal farewell between them existed only in her imagination.
At least, she should take romance back with her to her straitened existence.
For himself, Adaire turned away as the train bore her slowly out of the darkness, aware already of the multiplicity of distractions that crowded upon his senses.
COMPENSATION
PERIODICALLY Mrs. Awdry had a Quiet Day. It might have been supposed that all her days were quiet days — but the official Quiet Day was a very different thing to any of them.
Some of the ladies with whom she shared the quiet day gave themselves this period of retirement with the utmost regularity, but this Mrs. Awdry could not do. She was only able to snatch at a quiet day from time to time, when it seemed to her that she could best be spared by her husband and children.
It was not a retreat. Mrs. Awdry, as she herself firmly said, was a Catholic, but not a Roman Catholic. The Sisterhood, outside London, where the quiet day was spent, was an Anglican Sisterhood, and the ladies who came to it were all Anglicans too.
Not that Mrs. Awdry knew any of them, except by sight, for one of the most salient features of the quiet day was its absence of ordinary social intercourse. One talked, if at all, to one of the Sisters, but most of the time one listened, or at least tried to listen, although Mrs. Awdry suffered from a form of mental fatigue that usually made it nearly impossible for her to fix her mind for more than three consecutive minutes upon any subject in the world excepting her husband, her children, her servants, their meals, the household accounts, and a kind of moral jigsaw that she called “fitting-in plans.”
The great aim of this exercise was to ensure that May, and Arthur, and Dick, should do what they wanted to do, go where they wanted to go, and have what they wanted to have, and that Father should not be vexed about it. And, as though even so improbable an achievement as this was not sufficient test of her ingenuity, it was additionally laid down by Mrs. Awdry’s inner monitor that Father must not be actually deceived, nor must it ever be openly stated either by herself or by the children that he was anything but kind, good-tempered, and eager to fall in with their wishes.
This delicate problem had been faced, day in and day out, by Mrs. Awdry ever since the birth of her eldest child, nearly twenty-two years ago. It will therefore be perceived that it was no idle whim that prompted her predilection for the occasional quiet day.
In order to achieve it there was a good deal to be done. Quiet days, from the point of view of the organizing Sister, naturally synchronized with the calendar rather than with the other engagements of those wishing to attend them. They belonged to the first Friday in every month.
To Mrs. Awdry’s family, each Friday was merely the eighth or the fifteenth, as the case might be, and it was very often necessary for her to be at home, so that Father might not be left alone, or so that she might be there to pack for Arthur’s week-end visit, or go with May to the dentist, or the dressmaker, or even out to a tea-party. May, although she was twenty-one years old, was pathetically shy, and quite unlike the modern girl that Mrs. Awdry read about in the Sunday papers. She liked her mother to go with her everywhere, and three years at college had apparently never taught her to make any friends of her own age.
This was at once Mrs. Awdry’s greatest joy and her deepest humiliation.
It was wonderful that May should be so dependent upon her mother, but it was frightful that she should not be sought after by men.
For although May was reasonably pretty, not unreasonably clever, and thoroughly good, she remained unattractive. Mrs. Awdry knew it, although she did not own it. Her feel
ings about May’s future, in fact, were of such strength, and at the same time so terribly involved, that she seldom allowed herself to dwell upon the subject at all.
Dick and Arthur were several years younger than their sister. Mrs. Awdry’s principal preoccupation in their regard was to wonder who would tell them, and when, how babies come, and to supply them with food that they liked, and extra pocket-money, and more and better treats and presents than their father thought necessary for them.
During the holidays, when they were all at home, a quiet day was an almost impossible achievement. In term time it could sometimes be managed, especially if — as did not often happen — the household had its full working complement of cook, house-parlourmaid and between-maid.
Mrs. Awdry was then able to get up very early in the morning, taking the greatest care not to wake Father, still sleeping in the other three-quarters of the double bed, and creep downstairs.
A thermos, containing coffee, waited where she had herself placed it on the preceding night, and a little jug of yesterday’s milk — cold, and rather blue. She distastefully drank the mixture.
The Underground station was only a few minutes’ walk from the house, and a train that appeared to be entirely filled by workmen, and a warm, thick atmosphere of tobacco and clothes, conveyed her by short, jerky stages to a suburban station about an hour’s journey out of London.
From thence she walked to the large villa, standing at the corner of the broad, clean, suburban street, and surrounded by laurels and acacias and laburnums and almond trees.
It was by then nine o’clock, when the quiet day really began, but Mrs. Awdry always felt that she had already lived through one day, even if not a particularly quiet one, since waking up that morning.
First, there was a service in the chapel, and then an hour was spent in the garden, or in a large, austere, and very clean room called the parlour. Holy, though sometimes quite interesting, books were available, but Mrs. Awdry always found in herself a preference for sitting quietly, with her knitting, enjoying the silence. The only thing that disturbed her at all was her own tendency to look forward, with quite unduly eager anticipation, to the large cup of hot cocoa, and the excellent biscuits, that were brought to each lady just before eleven o’clock.
After the cocoa and the biscuits she always felt better able to collect her thoughts, which was really the principal object of the quiet day to those who sought in it a refuge from everyday cares.
One day, after the cocoa, and before the short devotional exercise that preceded dinner, the Sister Superior came and spoke to Mrs. Awdry.
She was a kind-looking Sister, and her community always spoke of her with loyalty and affection, but Mrs. Awdry had a great and natural awe of anyone in a position of authority, and she stood up as the Sister Superior approached, and dropped her book, and became very much entangled with her knitting.
Sister Superior ignored these misfortunes.
“I wondered if you’d care for a little turn in the garden,” she said graciously. “It’s such a very lovely day.”
Mrs. Awdry, with innocent surprise and elation, accepted the invitation. She had, on other occasions, seen Sister Superior escorting one or another lady round and round the garden at the back of the house, both conversing earnestly, but it had never occurred to her that she herself could be accounted sufficiently interesting to be offered a similar privilege.
And yet, here she presently was, pacing the path that surrounded the two pieces of lawn, the three flower-beds, and the pile of stony odds and ends that was the rockery, and being talked to about herself — a conversational adventure that she had not met with for the past twenty years.
At first, Mrs. Awdry was very shy.
Gradually, the interested ejaculations, no less than the tactful but leading questions of Sister Superior, encouraged her.
She began to talk about her children. She admitted that she was sometimes anxious about the future. There was so very little money, and they were all entirely dependent upon what her husband — a solicitor — could earn. Neither May nor the boys seemed to have any very special talents or predilections. Although, said Mrs. Awdry, her father would not in any case have allowed May to take up a job. He thought that a girl’s place was at home.
“And I must say that I agree with him,” she added. “I suppose I’m very old-fashioned, but I’m glad that my daughter doesn’t want to rush away and earn her own living somewhere. It’s the greatest joy to me, to have May at home.”
“I’m sure it must be. And it’s the very best training she could have, isn’t it,” Sister Superior said gently, “for the most important job of all — the work that women were really meant for, I mean — marriage and motherhood?”
“I know,” said Mrs. Awdry, nodding solemnly. Her love for her only daughter was so great, and her anxiety about her future so poignant, that she could scarcely speak.
“The worst of it is,” she said at last, “that we can’t afford to do any entertaining, and May doesn’t get all the fun I should like her to have — not nearly. Besides—”
“Besides” really meant the peculiarities of Mr. Awdry, but they were left at that. It was not until some months later that Mrs. Awdry spoke of them rather more openly to her friend.
For Sister Superior had become her friend. Mrs. Awdry, for the first time since her school-days, had found someone to whom she could talk freely.
Not that she ever said a great deal, for her reticence was inborn, as well as being intensified by long habit. But it was a continual source of comfort and surprise to her, that Sister Superior should be interested, and always ready with encouragement and sympathy.
From time to time, when the prospect of a quiet day seemed more remote than usual, Mrs. Awdry even wrote to her, and received an answer.
Sunday — the day that Father spent at home — was always the least successful day of the week. The Easter week-end — practically amounting to four Sundays in succession — taxed all Mrs. Awdry’s spiritual resources to the utmost. She planned out in advance every meal, every hour, every moment of the time. She said brightly on the evening of Thursday:
“Isn’t it nice to think of being all together — no office for Father — no early breakfast—” but somehow, nothing ever went really right.
Breakfast seemed to set the key for the day.
Mrs. Awdry, wishing passionately that the sun would shine, hurried into the dining-room just before the breakfast-gong rang, on the morning of Easter Saturday.
The room was a very ordinary and dingy one, and she felt that the breakfast-table looked ordinary and dingy too. The toast was slightly burnt, the porridge was lumpy, and the fried fish — in a chipped fire-proof dish with a lid that did not fit — looked even lumpier than the porridge. There were some pallid breakfast scones, and Mrs. Awdry hastily put them down beside the gas-fire, faintly hoping that this would make them hot. Then she made the tea.
The Awdrys, for reasons never defined, always had tea, and not coffee, for breakfast.
After the maid had rung the gong, Mr. Awdry came in.
His wife always looked up and smiled when this happened, but she neither expected nor received anything in return. If Mr. Awdry had ever been questioned on the subject he would have replied in perfect sincerity that he had already said goodmorning to his wife upstairs — but as a matter of fact, the word never passed between them.
He was a short, stout man, without dignity, and with an untidy moustache, and thin straggly hair. He walked straight to the window and sharply pulled the blind up to the very top.
On mornings when the blind was already pulled up to the very top, he pulled it sharply halfway down.
Frowning, he went to the sideboard, altered the position of the bread platter, the bread-knife, and the fire-proof dish, and frowningly helped himself to porridge.
“Isn’t there any brown sugar?”
“Oh yes, surely!” cried Mrs. Awdry. She looked frenziedly round and perceived the blue basin that
held the brown sugar. “Here you are, dear.”
“Thanks. I thought we’d given up white bread.”
“So we have, dear.”
Mr. Awdry raised his eyebrows, and began to eat his porridge, leaving his wife to interpret his utterance as best she might.
She realized at once that it was meant to imply a deficiency of something that should have been there for the occasion.
“The wholemeal scones are near the fire, Howard.”
Mr. Awdry made a curt sound.
It is not easy to make any reply to a mere sound, and the sound made by Mr. Awdry, moreover, was plainly intended to discourage conversation.
This Mrs. Awdry understood, and in no way resented, so long as she and her husband were alone in the room. But it was different when the children came in.
They looked so cheerful and young, and May had on a new frock — saxe-blue-and-white foulard. Mrs. Awdry would have liked to exclaim, saying how pretty it was, but she felt that it was safer to convey her congratulations by looks and smiles only.
May smiled back at her, and then silently dropped a perfunctory kiss on the top of her father’s head.
“Good-morning, Father.”
“Good-morning. Shut the door, Dick.”
“Arthur’s just coming.”
“I said shut the door.”
Dick hastily slammed the door and an instant later Arthur burst it open.
“Whole holiday! — Hooray!” he unsuitably shouted.
Mrs. Awdry said, “Hush, dear!” automatically, although in reality she could not help being glad because he was pleased.
Arthur was the youngest and the least perceptive of the family. He began to talk quite gaily and noisily, and presently he made a joke. It was a very bad joke, and a very old one, but it made Dick and May giggle, and Mrs. Awdry began to smile too.
“This fish is stale,” said the head of the family angrily, and he pushed his plate away. “It’s perfectly uneatable.”
Mrs. Awdry realized, obscurely, that this was really a form of protest against the chatter and merriment of the children.
“I am so sorry, Howard. Will you have an egg? Do let me ring for an egg.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 549