“No,” he said curtly. “If the—”
“The postman!” cried Arthur.
“Shut up and don’t interrupt like that.”
Arthur shut up. Indeed, they all did. The letters were brought in and distributed in the midst of a heavy silence.
But after a minute or two, the irrepressible Arthur exclaimed: “Oh! I say, Mum, is anything on for this afternoon?”
Mrs. Awdry shook her head, with a subconscious feeling that this was safer than speech.
“Because the Montagues want to fix up a picnic. If we could get out to them by twelve o’clock —— —”
The Montagues lived in the country, in Hertfordshire.
“Any chance of the car?” Dick mouthed the words, rather than spoke them.
They all, as though involuntarily, glanced towards the head of the table and quickly looked away again as Mr. Awdry raised his head.
“I’m going to get a game of golf this morning,” he said. “I’m meeting old Curtis at the links, and we shall have lunch at the Club House.”
“That’ll be very nice indeed,” said Mrs. Awdry faintly.
An imploring look from Arthur stimulated her. “If May could drive you, perhaps you’d let her run back in time to get out to the Montagues with the boys—” she began timidly.
“Then how am I to get home?”
“Wouldn’t General Curtis give you a lift?”
“He may not have room. How do I know how many people he may have with him?”
“You could telephone to him directly after breakfast and find out if it would be all right,” burst out Arthur.
“Perhaps I could come back early from the picnic and fetch you, Father, and then go back for the boys. Or the Montagues might be able—”
“This tearing up and down the country!” shouted Mr. Awdry; “out in the car, all day and every day. It’s the one idea of all of you. Doesn’t give the car a chance! Besides, the roads will be crowded to-day.”
“I’ll be very careful,” May said.
“That’s all very well, but you don’t think of other people. It’s a holiday, and the roads ought to be for holiday makers. Surely you can let other people have a chance of enjoying themselves, for once?”
“Well,” said Dick, “look here, I’ve got another idea. We might get part of the way by ‘bus—”
It made Mrs. Awdry’s heart ache to hear them. They were so eager for their expedition, and it was being made so difficult for them, and yet she knew, and they all knew, that it could have been accomplished so very easily. But it was always the same. They had to plan and manoeuvre, and take endless trouble before they could enjoy themselves, and she knew that for May, at least, who was sensitive, this took most of the fun out of any outing.
Mrs. Awdry never blamed her husband. It would not have occurred to her to do so. She only thought, very often, what a pity it was that she couldn’t have a car of her own, because if she had, the children could do whatever they wanted to do, without any fuss at all.
To Mrs. Awdry, a car, or money, or a fine day, were simply so many Heaven-sent opportunities for the pleasure and enjoyment of human beings. But she knew, without thinking about it very deeply, that hardly anybody else, over the age of twenty-five, held this view — least of all her husband.
Arthur was getting vehement, and Dick argumentative. She gave to each the look that meant: “Be quiet! I’ll see what I can do afterwards.” She saw that May — understanding — had winked at each of her brothers.
The talk died away into a short, grumbling monologue by their father.
It would probably be possible to wrest a compromise of some kind out of him, when she got him alone. She could generally manage him, though it was neither a short nor an easy process. And it would not do to ask if May might have a new frock for the dance on Monday week. That would have to wait until a very good opportunity. He would be sure to make a fuss about the dance, because he always said that it disturbed the whole house, to have May walking in at three o’clock in the morning. May argued with perfect truth that she made no noise whatever, and that nobody ever heard her — but Mrs. Awdry knew that argument was not the way to convince her husband. By the workings of some singular law, the sounder the arguments, the less they ever convinced him.
“I must see what I can do.”
The voice of Arthur, her youngest and most irrepressible, recalled her.
“Mum, you know that telephone I’m making?
Well, I’m almost sure—”
He had begun in a low voice, speaking under cover of the things that his father was saying to May, but in the excitement of the subject, it got louder and louder. She looked at him, nodding and smiling, not in the least understanding anything that he was saying, in her anxiety lest he should draw a snub upon himself.
“You’re not listening, Mum!”
“Let’s have something else, please, Arthur, besides your own concerns,” growled the voice from the head of the table. “It’s I this and I that, all day long. Can’t you take an interest in anything else?”
It appeared that Arthur couldn’t.
Breakfast was finished almost in silence.
The children exchanged looks, and occasional giggles. They were not really depressed by the weightiness of the atmosphere, but it made them unnatural instead of free. Alone with their mother, or with their own friends, they were quite different.
Mrs. Awdry hoped that she would be able to arrange the day as they wished. Once that was done, she could feel quite happy until they all met for supper — when, of course, they would have to be careful again.
A miracle had happened. Mrs. Awdry was almost certain of it.
A man called George King was seriously attracted by May, and seemed likely to ask her to marry him.
He could afford to marry. He was thirty-four years old, and in a very good position in the City, and he was, besides, the acknowledged heir of a reasonably old and wealthy great-aunt. He met May at a dance, and after that he came often to the house, and took her out frequently.
Such a thing had never happened before. Mrs. Awdry felt that she could afford to own it, now — to own, even, that there had been times when she had feared that it never would happen. She had lain awake at night, sometimes, miserable from the thought that her good, unselfish, dependable May might have to be an old maid.
This, Mrs. Awdry now saw — or rather, it might be said now hoped — to have been sheer lack of faith.
She said as much, on a quiet day, to Sister Superior.
“It is sometimes darkest before dawn,” said Sister Superior. She made observations like that, with an air of quiet wisdom that was most reassuring.
“It isn’t, I hope, that May is my favourite,” Mrs. Awdry explained. “But the only girl, and the eldest — there is rather a special link between us, though the boys are darlings. But I somehow feel that if only I could see May happily settled” — she drew a long breath—” I wouldn’t mind anything.”
“A mother’s love,” said Sister Superior.
“The love of a good man,” said Mrs. Awdry, for there was something catching about Sister Superior’s phraseology. “And he seems very nice indeed, though, of course, I don’t know him well. Sensible and dependable. And somehow it isn’t everyone, I don’t know why, but it certainly isn’t everyone, who really appreciates May. Perhaps she’s old-fashioned — their father is very strict, in some ways — but I don’t mind saying now, that I’ve sometimes been most dreadfully afraid that she might never marry at all.”
Then a sudden panic seized her.
“Though nothing has happened, really — nothing definite, that is. I ought not really to have said anything—”
“I understand,” Sister Superior said soothingly.
On the very day that followed the quiet day, something did happen.
George King asked May to marry him, and May came and talked it over with her mother.
“I’m to give him an answer to-morrow,” she said, looking at
once pleased and puzzled, and proud and harassed.
“Oh, my darling! But you’ll say ‘Yes,’ won’t you?”
“I suppose so,” May replied, rather doubtfully.
“Don’t you like him?”
“Oh yes, very much.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Awdry, trying not to look and sound too terribly disappointed, “I shouldn’t dream of urging you in any way. Especially if you weren’t certain that you liked him. But, oh, May! There are so few men to go round, and perhaps — perhaps you mightn’t get so very many more chances.”
“I know. Heaps of girls who are much prettier and cleverer than I am would give their eyes—”
“That’s just it. And we could have such a lovely wedding. I could manage Father, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Awdry, in her own mind, was already obtaining from her husband unprecedented concessions — cheques for a trousseau, and permission to have a large wedding breakfast, and promises of the most improbable kind.
“You see, May, if you don’t marry, what will you do instead? Father would never hear of your taking a job, as long as he’s here to give you a nice home.”
“I don’t really want a job,” May confessed.
“That’s what I feel, darling. You’d be such a perfect wife and mother.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” May said, but she looked pleased and as though she agreed. Indeed, how could she help doing so? Mrs. Awdry asked herself fondly.
“Everyone doesn’t get a chance,” Mrs. Awdry pointed out. “Look at your aunts.”
Her own three sisters were all unmarried. One of them overworked steadily as a hospital nurse, another looked after a very ancient cousin in a dull suburb, and the third one spent a great deal of her time in being ill and undergoing operations.
Oh! I know,” cried May, and she shuddered.
“A life of your own,” Mrs. Awdry wistfully pointed out to her. “And whatever anyone may say there is something in the position of a married woman. Besides,” she added, “George is very nice.”
“Yes, isn’t he?”
“You’ll begin quite comfortably too. I suppose his plan is a tiny house in London?”
“Yes, or a flat.”
“Just like Father and I did. And then later on — when we needed space for the babies — we moved. It would seem like history repeating itself,” Mrs. Awdry exclaimed joyfully. “Oh, May, I don’t want to urge you, but really, there’s nothing like a home of one’s very own — and it’s always been the dream of my life to see you married, darling.”
“Of course,” May said, with her slight, old-fashioned little blush, “I’m not exactly in love with George, though I like him very much. It would be more for the sake of being settled, than anything else, if I did it. And, in any way, getting away from home. You know I don’t mean you, mother, darling, but Father is rather trying.”
“He doesn’t mean it, darling,” Mrs. Awdry loyally replied, as she had replied for years to any criticism of her children’s father. “Men are like that, you know.”
“I suppose all of them?” May observed rather thoughtfully.
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Awdry returned with simplicity.
Yet she continued to dream joyfully of an engagement ring for May, a wedding, a honeymoon and — looking far into the future — a family sitting at a breakfast table, with May at one end of it, and George King at the other.
A week later, when May and George were safely engaged, and May’s father had been cajoled, and argued, and manoeuvred, into giving his consent to about half the things that Mrs. Awdry wished — and indeed intended — to accomplish, concerning her daughter’s marriage, she was able to sit down and write to Sister Superior.
“It all seems too good to be true. Dear May is really and truly engaged to such a nice man, and they are to be married in about six months’ time. I can hardly believe it — the great wish of my heart has been granted me. I hope, dear Sister Superior, that you will not think me worldly and heartless, for no one realizes better than I do what wonderful work is done by women like yourself. But for the ordinary average English girl, I do feel that there is nothing like a home, and husband, and children.”
THE MISTAKE
I
JULIUS PALLISER had reached the limits of his endurance.
It was not the first time that he had reached them, but it always happened that each cumulative period of stress and vexation and disharmony blotted out the memory of any temporary release that might have preceded it.
Release, for Julius Palliser, lay in unreserve — in the putting into unsparing and often bitter words, of his troubles.
For months he would bear everything in a corroding silence — and then, at a word of understanding, a look of sympathy, the barriers of conventional loyalty would fall.
Almost always it was a woman who caused them to fall.
It was easier to talk of his wife to a woman than to another man.
His fourth, and most significant, meeting with Thelma Fontaine synchronized with one of those periods when his home life seemed most unendurable.
He went to Miss Fontaine’s flat — a tiny two-roomed affair at the top of a tall building in one of the old Bloomsbury squares.
She had asked him to come, any Sunday after-noon, and he had been afraid that meant that she would have other visitors.
But nobody else was there.
Thelma Fontaine opened the door to him. Her large, beautiful brown eyes opened a little wider at the sight of him — she smiled enchantingly.
Palliser realized that she was younger-looking, and even prettier, than he remembered her.
Oddly enough, she reminded him a little bit of his wife, as he had first known her, eleven years ago. Cecil, too, was tall and very slight, and eleven years earlier she had had a wild-rose complexion, and soft, straight, light-brown hair. Thelma Fontaine’s smile, most strangely, recalled Cecil’s, that he had neither seen nor remembered for years. It flashed through his mind, in the very instant of greeting Miss Fontaine, that his wife never smiled, nowadays.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Miss Fontaine, softly and earnestly.
How sincere — how unconventional!
He felt, suddenly, that she knew he had reached breaking-point.
There would be no need to pretend.
In the immeasurable relief that seemed to flood his whole being at the mere realization of this, Palliser pressed her hand strongly, letting his features relax from the lines of set determination that masked his misery from the outside world.
“Come in,” she said, looking at him. Her smile of greeting, too, had faded, and in place of it was an expression of grave, understanding pity.
He followed her into the little room.
It was wonderfully quiet, for London.
The electric-fire glowed, orange-and-black shades subdued the lights, and there was a red lacquer mirror on the wall. It was all warm, and silent, and diffused an atmosphere of intimacy. Thelma Fontaine’s writing-table was covered with papers, and typescripts, and envelopes torn open.
The chair in front of it had evidently just been pushed back.
“You’re busy — you were writing,” he said.
“I’m always writing. Every spare moment, I mean. But only in spare moments. The real things come first.”
“What are the real things?” said Palliser, dallying with the exquisite moment.
“People, of course. My friends,” said Thelma Fontaine, with so much simplicity that he was able to meet her large, grave eyes, fixed upon his own, without embarrassment.
“Sit down. Won’t you smoke?”
She handed him a little cigarette-case of plaited straw, dyed orange.
“Thank you. Would a pipe be allowed in here?”
“Of course.”
He leant back in the armchair. He could feel the relaxation of the tension under which he had lived for weeks past.
“You don’t know how wonderful you are—” burst from him, strangely. “Th
is room, your atmosphere — it’s like heaven, after what I’ve come from—”
He broke off abruptly, unwillingly remembering that they had only met three times before. He was not even sure whether she knew of his circumstances or not.
He stole a quick, doubtful look at her.
She was not looking at him, but at the fire — and smoking quietly, reflectively.
That, somehow, made it easier.
“Tell me,” said Thelma Fontaine.
Palliser drew hard at his pipe.
On the very brink of the relief that he craved for — that of unreserved speech — he hesitated. Would she understand, or would she think him disloyal?
His need was too great. He must risk it and speak.
“I think I’ve reached breaking-point,” he said quickly. “I don’t know how much you know of my life. But I want — I want most desperately — to tell you everything. I think I shall go mad if I don’t speak to someone.”
She nodded, still looking into the fire.
“Repression. That’s what does send people mad. You ought to allow yourself an outlet.”
“You’re right, of course. But I’m not the sort of man — I can’t — It’s terribly difficult for me to speak,” said Palliser.
“Try and think of me as someone who’s interested in people. Any writer must be, you know. A — an impersonal sort of psycho-analyst, if you like. Just let yourself go — for once. If you like, I’ll forget it afterwards. And I think you know I’m safe — not someone who talks, afterwards.”
“I know — I know.”
Inwardly, he was thrilling to the echo of the phrase that she had used: “Let yourself go....” That was what he needed. To let himself go. To say out everything that was in his mind, to give vent to that embittered sense of frustration that assailed him at every turn.
And it would be easier to talk to a woman who was in no way connected with his home life, and who had never even seen Cecil.
“By Jove, you’re wonderful,” said Julius Palliser, through his teeth.
She sat motionless, never turning her head towards him, and he began to talk.
“I don’t know how much you’ve heard about me — about my circumstances—”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 550