“That was simply glorious,” Innes proclaimed. “I’ve never enjoyed a swim more. Sylvie, you’re a wonder in the water. You learnt here as a baby, I suppose?”
He and the girl talked swimming all through lunch, and Lorna’s attempt to get up a discussion about a recent new play met with no support, excepting from Keith Russell with whom she finally drifted into an under-current of talk.
Through it all she was aware of an astonishingly new Oliver, entirely unlike the courteous, gentle, rather academic friend whose devotion had been the main factor in her life for so many years. Not that she could, or would, believe that that devotion was impaired because of a temporary infatuation for a pretty, empty-headed child. But it hurt her a little to feel that there was a side of his nature — a joyous, simple, schoolboy side — of which she had known nothing. She had sometimes, in the past, forced herself to consider what she should do if Oliver Innes were to fall in love and marry, but he was so emphatically not what is known as “a marrying man” that the danger had appeared remote indeed. That he had once or twice been attracted, she knew, but always by married women, belonging to their own world, and usually he had gently laughed at himself with her.
Sylvie Russell had arranged a picnic for the afternoon, and had invited half a dozen people.
They did not seem very interesting to Lorna, and the conversation was again disjointed, trivial, and filled with the chaffing personal allusions of Sylvie and her contemporaries. Some of these stayed on, hospitably pressed by Anita to come back to the house for supper.
Keith Russell, his shrewd, observant eyes on Lorna Bannister, asked her to drive home with him, and when they arrived, took her into his writing-room saying that he wanted so much to continue their discussion of the morning.
They talked there, for more than an hour, on the literary and artistic topics most congenial to her and Lorna felt her fatigue, bodily as well as nervous, diminishing as she regained poise and security.
Bridge was suggested for the evening. Mrs.
Bannister played well and enjoyed it. Oliver Innes was at another table, and all the younger members of the party went off to the smoking-room, turned on the wireless, and danced.
By the time the evening finally broke up, Lorna felt that she could almost afford to smile at her own exaggerated depression throughout the day. She had held magnificent cards — and when Oliver Innes said good-night to her he asked if she would go for a walk with him next morning.
3
Lorna Bannister and Oliver Innes had walked together in the country many times, and as they started out together on the radiant Sunday morning vouchsafed them it did not occur to her that this walk would be entirely unlike any other that they had ever taken. That knowledge came upon her by degrees, as they dawdled along the narrow green track that was to lead them up the hill. Oliver wanted to talk about Sylvie.
He did not want to talk about anything else. He was not thinking about anything else. With an obtuseness that Lorna told herself bitterly was truly masculine, it did not seem to occur to him that he might be hurting her, even although their own long alliance had, for years now, been an affair of loyal and affectionate comradeship rather than of passion and romance. But it was the man who had set the key for their relationship, and Lorna knew it, if he did not.
Listening to him as he talked about the eighteen-year-old Sylvie she told herself, in despair, that Oliver sounded absolutely fatuous, like a ridiculous boy.
In a thin, unconvincing voice she heard herself repeating:
“Yes, very pretty — colouring like a Greuze, I quite agree — yes, it’s a most uncommon type.”
But that didn’t satisfy him. He wanted to make her admit that Sylvie was intelligent — that she had character and personality.
“You see, she’s talked to me pretty freely. I think she’s the kind of girl who makes friends with people much older than herself, rather than with her contemporaries. Did you know that she wants to find a job?”
“No. Why should she want to find a job, when her father and mother are well off and she’s their only child? She’s only left school about six months.”
“I think she’s perfectly right,” Oliver returned gravely. “She’s clever and she naturally wants a life of her own. From what she said to me, I fancy living at home hasn’t been all jam for her.”
“Why, Keith and Anita simply worship her!” cried Lorna indignantly.
“Yes, yes, she knows that and she’s devoted to them — absolutely. But naturally — well, her father is a clever man with a big reputation and a very strong personality, and the child is completely overshadowed. It’s nobody’s fault, and I don’t suppose her parents realize it at all....”
He went on and on.
Lorna Bannister felt sick with dismay. She had for so long been in the habit of sympathizing with all that Oliver told her, that she found herself almost mechanically doing so now, although in violent inward revolt against so unexpected a folly as this sudden infatuation.
She could hardly believe him to be in earnest, and at last put it to the test by demanding abruptly:
“But Oliver — are you in love with her?”
Such direct crudities were not in their habitual traditions, and she felt in herself the slight shock that made him pause before replying.
“My dear Lorna—” he laughed a little, self-consciously, “I suppose I’m very much attracted — who could help it? — and flattered because she’s honoured me with her confidence and — and perhaps a little liking, as well. But of course, I realize that anything else would be absurd, at my age. And besides, my dear—”
Lorna returned his smile and tried to feel comforted by the implication that she knew it was meant to convey.
But long before their walk was over she had ceased to feel comforted and was merely bored and exasperated.
He could not leave the subject of Sylvie Russell and she had not the heart, nor perhaps the courage, to silence him outright.
By the time they were back at the house again Lorna felt tired out. Still worse, her mirror informed her that she looked it. Never had her thirty-nine years shown more plainly in her face.
She rubbed colour into her cheeks and lips, feeling slightly sick as she remembered Sylvie’s bright, transparent bloom, so obviously natural.
She supposed, miserably, that they would swim again in the afternoon.
They did.
It was not quite so warm as on the previous day, but Anita had brought a Thermos flask, lettuce sandwiches, and cake in a basket, and had arranged tea under one of the big rocks, whilst the others were swimming.
“I’m not going into the water at all to-day,” Anita had announced calmly. “I didn’t really enjoy it yesterday, except for about three minutes. It’s all very well for Sylvie....”
It was indeed all very well for Sylvie, who dived more competently than ever, and was enthusiastically applauded by Oliver.
When she came to tea after dressing behind a rock, she was warm and glowing.
“Oh, Mrs. Bannister, you look cold!” she exclaimed in tactless concern. “I believe you’re like mummie — you don’t enjoy bathing a bit.”
Oliver threw Lorna a glance of surprised concern, for which she felt that she could gladly have slain Sylvie Russell. “Oh yes, I enjoy it,” she said with an abruptness that sounded ungracious even to herself.
“You’re tired, I can see,” Anita Russell declared. “You must rest before dinner.”
It seemed to Lorna Bannister that they were all in a conspiracy to take from her the last vestige of youth. And youth, she felt, was the only thing that mattered at all.
She felt as though the week-end would never be over and she and Oliver once more in the car on their way back to London. Although even then, she thought bitterly, it was scarcely likely that they would at once resume the happy, companionable understanding of the past so unexpectedly shattered by Oliver’s infatuation for a child of eighteen. Probably he would talk about nothing but this g
irl. Would it be better to tell him frankly that he was making himself ridiculous — or would he then suspect her, Lorna, who had never failed him before, of an undignified and unworthy jealousy?
She felt too tired to debate the age-old problem of woman and went to follow Anita’s advice and rest before dinner — having first seen Sylvie and Oliver Innes wander into the garden together, deep in conversation.
4
“To-morrow, this will be over. I shall have gone,” reflected Lorna Bannister on Monday night, but her relief was tainted by the searing recollection that Oliver Innes had hinted to her that, if asked, he would gladly stay on.
Let him, thought Lorna, but the Russells could scarcely invite him to do so without including her — and he could scarcely accept if she refused.
She went down to dinner in a mood of defiant misery, conscious that her looks, always dependent on her vitality and animation, were doing no sort of justice to her Paris frock of soft silver lace.
Sylvie was in white crepe-de-chine, of a deceptive simplicity, and her golden hair had been newly washed, and stood out like a halo round her head.
A young-middle-aged couple from the neighbourhood, with a visiting friend (much less pretty than Sylvie) came to dinner.
Buoyed by the consciousness that her ordeal was nearly at an end, Lorna became more like herself, and was able to talk and laugh gaily. The conversation was full of animation.
“Bridge?” said Anita after dinner. “Or dancing?”
“Oh, Mummie, dancing! Anyway, to begin with,” Sylvie pleaded.
The guests politely seconded the request.
“I’ll do the gramophone,” Anita said. “I’m afraid you won’t be even numbers, though.”
Sylvie was already in Oliver’s arms, Keith Russell took the stranger, and the remaining man invited Lorna.
They danced in the big sitting-room, and in and out of the hall.
Lorna could not take her eyes off Sylvie’s white frock and was aware of the exact moment when she and Oliver disappeared into the garden.
One record followed another, and they did not come back.
Presently Oliver Innes returned to the sitting-room by himself. Lorna glanced quickly at him, but his face was imperturbable as he bent to light a cigarette for Mrs. Russell.
“Where’s Sylvie?” said her mother.
“Just coming. There was a mishap to a stocking — a ladder, I think, is the technical expression — and it seems that everything depends on prompt action in these cases,” he returned easily. “Now, do let me take a spell at the gramophone.”
“Shall we go on?” Anita Russell enquired, gazing round at her guests.
At the same moment Sylvie slipped in through the open door.
Lorna Bannister, watching, saw her, and saw also in an instant that something had discomposed her and that she was making a brave effort to hide it, with no idea of the self-betrayal on her young, expressive face.
“Do let’s have one more foxtrot!” cried the girl who had come to dinner. “Don’t you want another?” she added, turning to Sylvie.
“Yes, if — if—”
Sylvie’s voice broke suddenly, under the effort of trying to speak naturally.
She burst into tears.
“Darling, what is it?” cried her mother, running towards her.
“Oh!” wailed Sylvie, “I don’t want to dance any more. I think men are—”
There was a deafening crash, as Lorna Bannister’s elbow swept a pile of gramophone records down to the parquet floor.
The men in the room sprang forward, and in the momentary confusion that followed Mrs.
Russell drew her sobbing child out of the room and closed the door behind them both.
The situation, precipitated by indiscreet youth, was saved....
As the blue Daimler moved smoothly through the lanes early on Tuesday morning, Lorna Bannister enquired gently:
“What was that reckless child going to blurt out last night, Oliver?”
Innes, who had been extremely silent since bidding good-bye to the Russells, laughed in a rather shamefaced manner.
“I imagine you’ve guessed already. I blush to say that I lost my head, rather — and kissed her. I ought to have been kicked, I know; but honestly, Lorna, I thought these modern girls didn’t mind — expected it, in fact.”
“Most of them do. But I believe this one really is as babyish as she looks. Her father practically told me so. One can tell how completely unsophisticated she is by her making a scene like that — little goose!”
“Thanks to you, she just didn’t make a scene. Another second, and it would have been all up.
Good Heavens, if I’d had the least idea — !”
He broke off, shuddering.
“Honestly, Lorna, to hear her talk you’d have thought that child was a complete woman of the world. And then she goes to pieces, over nothing at all. Of course, directly I’d done it I knew I’d made a mistake, but she didn’t give me a chance of saying I was sorry. Simply fled. I never for one minute thought of her being seriously upset, or — still less — publishing the fact.”
“The young,” said Lorna gently, “are like that. They have no sense of proportion.”
They drove on in silence for a little way. Then he turned to her, smiling, and laid his hand for a moment on hers.
“I don’t ask you to forgive me, my dear, because we understand one another too well. But I want you to know that I’ve bought my experience. Youth is for youth — not for middle-age.”
Lorna was too experienced in his moods to reply in words. She only smiled, and presently said:
“Remind me to send Anita Russell — let me see, how many was it — ten, eleven, new gramophone records.”
Oliver Innes, too, was smiling as he answered her:
“We’ll send them from us both, my dear.”
BLUFF
IT wasn’t the first time I’d made the voyage, by a very long way. My job being Eastern Telegraph Company, I was familiar with it all, from the first confusion of going on board amid much clanging of bells and falling over luggage, through the increasing heat, the disentangling of personalities, the mushroom growth of shipboard scandals, and jokes, love-affairs, feuds, and friendships, to the final arrival in Singapore Docks, with the tender drawing away from the ship’s side to the customary accompaniment of cheering and waving.
On almost every sea voyage, three or four personalities always stand out from amongst the rest. This time, Miss Christie had been the most talked-about person on board — and with good reason, for she was exceptional in one or two ways.
To begin with, she was quite extraordinarily pretty. Her brilliant English fairness, her light-blue eyes and curly blonde hair would have been noticeable, even at home. As it was, of course, she was trebly conspicuous amongst the other women, most of them already past early middle life, bleached and saddened by continuous years in the tropics and eternally torn in two between a husband abroad and children at home.
It so happened that there were only two other unmarried girls amongst the first-class passengers, besides Clare Christie. One of them, Mary Lewis, was travelling with a shrewish mother, who dominated the girl body and soul, and the other one — a globe-trotting little American from New York City — was bright and amusing, a good dancer, but definitely plain.
Clare Christie was beautiful, she had charm, intelligence, and whatever she did, she did well — singing, bridge, dancing, deck-games, conversation, the usual degree of boardship flirtation.
Actually, she was — so she said — going out to marry the man she was engaged to, resident in one of the Malay States. He was to come and meet her at Singapore where the wedding would take place.
Once or twice I heard the other women wondering, amongst themselves, why she hadn’t brought a friend, or an older relation, out with her. She wasn’t an orphan, she’d talked quite a lot about her parents and their “place” near Birmingham. One had deduced, somehow, that she was an only child a
nd that the father and mother were rich.
She was twenty-five years old.
Almost everybody liked her, even the two other girls, for she had a very gentle, appealing manner, and did small, kind, unselfish things very readily.
By the time the ship had reached Port Said we all felt as if we’d known one another for years.
Even the passengers who had joined at Marseilles, and at whom we’d all looked resentfully, viewing them as upstarts and interlopers, had found their places, and asserted themselves as being part of the little world in which we were to live for the next three weeks.
There were the usual number of planters, most of them with wives and children, and one or two Government officials, a well-known novelist who was travelling in search of local colour, the accustomed complement of nonentities — and Teddy Reed, going to take up a job in Colombo.
Reed was the person — there’s usually one on every voyage — whom we’d all decided that we disliked. Even the fact that Clare Christie acknowledged him as an old acquaintance, and was kind to him, couldn’t save him.
Everyone merely said how angelic it was of her to put up with the little bounder.
For he was, although not in any blatant way, a little bounder. A spiritual bounder, so to speak. His clothes, and his table-manners, and his vocabulary had nothing the matter with them — none of those singularities that we associate with the word “bounder” — but his outlook, and his personality, and his ill-concealed eagerness to be thought well of by everybody, struck one disagreeably from the start.
He was a small man, slim and insignificant-looking, with fair hair that always lay with abnormal smoothness against his narrow head, and long thin fingers of which he was vain, and to which he continually drew attention by casually introducing the subject of hands. He played the piano, most inaccurately, by ear.
I am no performer myself, and to be able to play the piano — even inaccurately — is a social asset on a sea-voyage — but even Clare Christie, who played as well as she did everything else, admitted that Reed’s dreadful little boastings, veiled in self-deprecation, of his dreadful little accomplishment, got badly on her nerves.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 571