by Ursula Bloom
‘As he grows older, he’ll fail more.’
She said tremblingly, ‘And that is all the less reason for my failing him. Don’t you see that?’
‘But he may live for a very long time, and then you’ll be failing me? We can’t wait for a dead man’s shoes.’
She was appalled that they should have sunk to this. ‘Oh, go away, and try to find some way out. When I go back to Hampstead it may be easier. Life will show us a way, I am quite sure that life will show us some way.’
‘It won’t. This is reality, and we have got to think for ourselves. I love you so much. I tell you I have never felt for anyone like this before, my pretty, and if I don’t take you out there with me, I’ll go crackers. You can’t love me, else you would not want me to go alone.’
‘I don’t want you to go alone. Piers, can’t you see, can’t you understand a little?’
He had hold of her hands, and she was scared that Mrs. Wilkes would come along, or that inquisitive Mrs. Dodd out of the post office, and then there would be a scandal going the round of the village. He held her hands so that the pressure hurt, yet she liked it. He said, ‘Look here, we’ve got to tell Max.’
‘Yes, I know.’
13
To-night perhaps?
Dinah got up restlessly and went over to the coffee tray, counting the cups to make her concentrate on something outside her own thoughts. Surely Piers was not telling Max now? He had promised her that he would do nothing without telling her first, but they seemed to have been such an unconscionably long time. Or was it that her nerves were on edge and she could not bear the strain?
As she lifted the coffee pot she heard the dining-room door open. She grasped at a straw. Surely they had not been long enough for Piers to have told Max? She felt suddenly enormously relieved, yet disappointed. Just now it seemed that everything within her was in one of the two moods; chords in a minor key.
Max came into the drawing-room, walking rather heavily. Until recently she had never noticed his heavy tread, and was ashamed that she compared it with Piers’, who walked so easily. He was loose-limbed, like some young animal which loves its freedom. Max sat down on the Windsor chair by the empty fireplace, with the great bowl of crimson dahlias and yellow-bronze chrysanthemums that Dinah had arranged there only this morning.
‘Here we are,’ he said, ‘we didn’t waste long over the port; now what about some coffee? Sit down, Piers. It’s been a wonderful day, hasn’t it?’
Piers was not at ease, yet it was not because he had said anything, she knew that. ‘We’ve had a pretty dry spell,’ he was saying, ‘though the farmers are howling out for rain.’
‘Oh yes, but then they are never satisfied. Funny people, farmers, you can’t pay any attention to them.’ Max took his coffee and pushed the sugar aside. ‘Dinah forgets that I don’t take it. Funny little kid, one of the things she can never remember.’
‘I suppose it’s because it seems strange to take coffee with neither sugar nor milk,’ said Piers.
Max laughed. ‘I liked sweet things well enough when I was younger, but that seems to be a very long time ago. Sixty-four years. Well, I’m nearing the good old allotted span, three score years and ten.’
Nobody spoke, then Piers looked across at him. Piers whose body was so erect and whose face had no lines. ‘All that I can say is that I hope I look like you do when I’m your age,’ he remarked coolly.
Piers would never be Max’s age, Dinah told herself passionately, as she sat staring at them. Piers would never have that wrinkled throat and those waving lines which portrayed the map of his life at the eyes and lip corners. She could not bear to think of Piers becoming like that.
‘I suppose I’ve worn well,’ said Max, ‘my doctor said so when I was up in town about my asthma. A beastly complaint, asthma, lays wait for you and catches you unawares like an unseen enemy. I didn’t want to wear well. I don’t think that longevity is admirable, do you? It doesn’t do to live too long. What about a brandy?’
Piers nodded. A small nerve twitched in his throat like a morse code flashing to Dinah, but she could not read its message. She knew that he was acutely uncomfortable, and thought that if Max went on like this, one of them would spring up and do something foolish. Piers would probably say, ‘I love her, and want to run away with her.’ Something had to be done to prevent the situation from getting out of hand.
‘I’d like a brandy,’ she said.
‘You?’ Max turned from the tray. ‘That is a new departure, isn’t it? I’ve never known you fancying brandy before.’
‘I merely thought I’d like one to-night. I don’t know why.’
He poured it out, into big globes of glasses, with a tracery of vine leaves and stiff bunches of grapes cut into them. ‘They tell me this is quite good stuff. It’s very old. Here’s to the future, to all our futures!’
She did not know why it should sound ominous, but everything sounded alarming to-night.
Max had sat down again; he was holding the brandy glass tenderly between his hands, moving it round and round, like a seer looking into a crystal. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly, ‘it would be better if I were quite frank. I’m in a difficult position about you two, and I don’t want to say anything that you will misunderstand.’ His voice sounded old and strained. Dinah had never noticed it sounding like that before.
‘What is it, dear?’ she asked. She knew now that her forebodings of the evening had not been imagination. All three of them were on a dangerous threshold, and the open door beyond might lead to catastrophe. She saw it as an oubliette.
‘You see,’ he said, very gravely indeed, ‘I know about the … the present position …’
She heard herself talking quickly, making a futile effort to stave off the situation, even though her heart knew that it was already too late. ‘Present position? What do you mean?’
‘I know that you are in love with Piers, and that he is in love with you.’
She gripped the arms of her chair. At this particular moment every detail of the room was impressed clearly upon her mind. She saw the long wall with the spinet beside it, and the picture of a curiously calm old lady with flowers in her hair, that they had bought in Camden Town. Behind her the flowers still blossomed in the garden, and the last of the late red roses still flowered along the white face of the house, but in these few seconds she and Piers and Max had crossed a chasm in their lives which left her breathless. It was something that she could not go back upon.
‘Please,’ Max was saying, ‘don’t run away with the idea that I’m angry. I’m not trying to be unpleasant about this, I happen to know how you feel and all I want is to decide what is the best thing to do for the three of us.’
Then she heard Piers’ voice. ‘How long have you known? How long?’ He sounded constrained as though this were not his real self, but somebody else speaking through him.
‘I suppose I suspected it from the first. When a man of my age marries a girl in the early twenties he must be prepared for this possibility, unless he is a complete fool. I was prepared for it, and I recognised the symptoms when they came. Before we were married Dinah and I talked about this. It isn’t jealousy, it isn’t that I am being unkind, I only want to do the best for us.’
Dinah had found her voice again. ‘I hoped you would never know; we wanted to be fair, we never thought that you had guessed, and went on hoping that life would show us the way out.’
‘We did, sir, really we did,’ from Piers.
Max shook his head, ‘Life is never very obliging in showing us ways out. I care deeply for you, my dear, and when a man cares for a woman like I do for you, it is not easy for her to keep secrets from him. Perhaps that explains how I found out.’
From the house up the road they could hear the radio playing pleasantly in the distance. It was playing a tune that she had last heard from the Serenata in Venice. O Sole Mio. They had been on their honeymoon then, and she wondered if Max remembered the sound; he showed no sign of it.
‘It is a very embarrassing position, sir,’ said Piers awkwardly.
‘It needn’t be, that is why I spoke. I didn’t mean to say anything at first, but when time shortened and it was almost the date for Piers to join his ship, I could see that you two had not found a way out and wanted help. It sounds absurd, but I did want to help you.’
If only he were not such a kind old man, so eager to be helpful!
‘I did not want you to know,’ she said slowly, ‘it is quite dreadful that you should have thought we were keeping something from you.’
‘We meant to play the game,’ said Piers.
The old man lit a cigarette from the box that she had given him only last Christmas; it was a crystal box, and she had chosen it with infinite care when she believed that she was happy and was confident that nothing like this could ever happen.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘and I appreciate it. I want you to realise that there is no blame attached to anybody in this. It is one of the things that happen in life which nobody can help; but we have got to arrive at some conclusion as to what is the fair thing to do. Can’t we talk it over in a friendly fashion? We’re all three in this, there must be some way out.’
‘God knows the way out,’ said Piers. ‘I have lain awake at night turning the whole situation over and yet cannot find the way. It’s a blind alley, and I’m damned if I can see what is the right thing to do.’
Max had let his cigarette out, Dinah noticed that, and the whiteness of his face, greeny chalk-white, not his usual florid colour at all. ‘It seems to me that whichever way you choose you are pursued by a ghost,’ he was saying.
‘A ghost?’
‘In every triangle there is a ghost.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘I don’t know why,’ he admitted.
Dinah said helplessly, ‘I do think you ought to have told me that it wasn’t a secret any more.’
‘But I did not want to bias you, nor to force you to any conclusion.’
‘It’s dreadful,’ she said.
He put out a hand as though he were going to comfort her, then he remembered, for he drew it back again. ‘You mustn’t think of me as being old, my dear, that must not be used as a ground for compassion; it only means that more of my time is over.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’
‘I didn’t mean it horribly. Don’t use my years to balance the scale. This is your love story. If you stay you lose the first joy of being in love.’ For a moment his voice grew sentimental and his eyes dimmed. ‘It is a glorious thing to be in love when you are young.’
The wireless died down from the house farther up the road, and Dinah, realising that the accompaniment was over, sank back into her chair.
‘I wanted action,’ Piers said, ‘we had obviously got to do something about it, but Dinah wanted to wait. Next week I go to Malta for three years. I don’t know what to do and I think this consultation is only making it worse.’
Dinah spoke again, she was seeing things clearer. ‘Any action that we take is unfair to one of us three. I love Max, and I am in love with Piers. I can’t be fair to both of you.’
‘We shan’t always be young,’ Piers put in. ‘This sounds selfish, and Heaven knows I want to be decent about it, but if we waste these years they won’t come back again. We’ll be older. We shan’t be the same.’
Max had gone to the sideboard and had poured himself out another brandy, bringing it back to the table and circling it with both hands, quite tenderly. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it won’t be the same. You’ll be older. That is why I felt that I ought to speak. Try to be completely detached about this, because I have a proposition to make. Let us consider it and the three ways out. There are solutions, you know. Let’s talk them over. If we weigh up the pros and cons, that may get us somewhere.’
‘I’ve weighed them up,’ said Piers slowly.
‘Have you?’ Max’s voice had grown very grave, it had lost that sentimentality which had entered it when he talked of young love. ‘Supposing for instance there was an unfortunate accident and I died?’
‘That would be dreadful!’ Dinah spoke then because she was shocked. ‘You couldn’t do that. It would be a most terrible thing to do.’
‘If it happened satisfactorily and nobody suspected anything, I can’t see why it should be so terrible? We’ve got to look ahead and see exactly where it would lead us. That is certainly one way out.’
‘Supposing that we did the right thing, and I went on to Malta alone, and she stayed here with you?’ suggested Piers.
There was silence. Dinah was watching the queer erratic pricking of that little pulse in his throat, like a clock, ticking away precious minutes.
‘The only other way,’ said Max, ‘is if she went to Malta with you and left me here. Those then are the three points of the triangle. In each of them, as far as I can see, a ghost lurks. It is your ghost, or my ghost, but it stays there and nothing that you can do will stir it. Now let us, without any personal feeling, consider those three ways out and see what happens. Then perhaps we can clear things up.’
They sat back.
THE FIRST WAY
ONE
1
They talked long into the night, and when Dinah got up to go to bed, she was miserable enough. Much later she heard Max’s tap on her door, and he peeped in just as though there had been none of this conversation at all.
‘I just wanted to say good night, dear kid.’
‘Come in.’
She thought that he came in rather shakily, and sat down on the corner of her bed where he always perched himself. He wrapped a towelling dressing-gown closer and looked at her. ‘You aren’t angry with me for talking about this? I hoped to be of some use. I thought perhaps we could arrive at some sensible way out, and I hate to think that I have failed. All I want is your happiness, you know that, dearest.’
‘Of course. There isn’t a solution, not one that is any good.’
‘Don’t say that, you poor little kid! There is always a way out.’
She leaned forward in the bed, clasping her knees with her arms and resting her face against the pale blue eiderdown quilt. He saw then that she looked older; the pathetically wistful look had gone, and now she was bewildered by what life had to offer her. ‘Don’t you see, Max dear, I can’t and won’t leave you. You have given me so much that I should be a traitor to turn back on you now. I’ll stay.’
‘But in the normal course of events I may not live very long.’
‘I don’t care. I love you, you see. Not in the way that I love Piers, because that is something apart, but Max dear, I do love you.’
He kissed her on the forehead where her hair parted in the middle and was combed back from her face like the wings of some small bird. Lately it had learnt to lie flatter; it too had lost the first downy exuberance of youth. ‘Thank you, darling, I love you too, and don’t think that I could live without you.’
‘It’s such a pity that life plays such horrible tricks,’ she whispered, and caught his hand and held it to her cheek. Little brown flecks like the inside of a cowslip lay across it; she could see the veins as a map, and the knuckles grown hard. He kissed her again, patting her hair, and after he had gone she lay there sure that she would never be able to sleep.
It was all so difficult, with interminable years ahead, receiving the kisses of a father for his daughter, when she wanted so much more. Married to this old, rather pathetic man, and in love with a young and charming one! If she could sail with Piers for Malta next week! she thought yearningly. Surely it would be wiser to admit the truth, even though that truth went against all the canons of the church and upbringing, and dismiss the lie? To live on with Max would be dreadful, to leave him would be cruel. Being his wife had constituted happiness, only because she had known nothing better; it had been a luxury before she had tasted the joys of something richer. Now, having met Piers, how could she forget him?
The night seemed to be dawnless
, as she lay there listening to the wind in the trees at the corner of the road, and the first sound of the cocks crowing in Mrs. Wilkes’ garden. Mrs. Wilkes’ hens all seemed to be cocks, and although she sold eggs at the Four Feathers, Max said he was sure she sneaked out at dawn to steal theirs, and when they bought from Mrs. Wilkes they were only buying back their own.
She heard Mrs. Wilkes’ cocks and then the lark tremulously lovely, and one by one the other birds waiting in the trees and hedgerows. The room was lit with that fine white light, which is like spun silk flung across the world before the actual sun rises. She had never seen so fair a morning.
She got up early. Her head ached with sleeplessness and her back had that strained, tired feeling. She had not had this same feeling since the time when she had lived in Germany, and had been called specially early to go for a trip up the Rhine in one of those happy little steamers with the Fräuleins.
She sat there trying to read, but she could not concentrate, for everything came round to the one point. It would be better if Piers went, she thought, yet cruel, because the idea of parting from him would hurt her so terribly. She could not imagine a world without him, when only a few months ago she had not known one with him. The change in her was almost too much, and she could not understand it.
When she ultimately got downstairs, Piers had already come in, and for a moment it struck her that he and Max had been making plans behind her back, which horrified her. They appeared to be in an ordinary mood; Max had almost finished his breakfast and was discussing the day. She sat down and Lisa brought her some coffee. ‘Nothing to eat,’ she said.
‘We decided to go out shooting.’ Max sounded quite cheerful, as though there had never been any such thing as last night. ‘It is an age since I got a rabbit, and Piers says he has not had any shooting since last year.’
‘Oh! Is he going too?’ She was surprised, because she had wanted to get him alone and to discuss plans. She had meant to tell him that he must go back to Plymouth at once, because the feeling that he was near was almost more than she could bear.