by Ursula Bloom
‘Yes, you look a bit like a ghost.’
‘Yes.’ But he knew by the way that she said it, that he had made the wrong remark again. Really old Lewis was quite right, she was getting nervy, and what was more she gave way to it; it wouldn’t do to encourage it.
She stood there flicking a hare’s foot against her cheek, whilst Piers fixed what he was pleased to call his ‘deeds of gallantry’ on his breast. ‘Ought to have been titivated,’ he said, ‘they’re getting a bit moth-eaten. I can’t think how I ever got the things.’
‘Try getting some more.’
‘Yes, but I’m not a very gallant officer. I get windy.’ He fixed them laughingly.
She turned finally from the dressing-table, approving the general effect.
‘I’m ready now,’ she said, and they went down the stone stairs to the car together. The night was very still. A goat jangled in the distance almost like a passing bell. She wished that she did not symbolise everything, it must have something to do with being ill, because she was acutely sensitive. Perhaps Dr. Lewis was right in some ways and nerves were at the root of it.
They went round the head of the harbour, driving slowly, with the dust blowing up behind them, and still that light wind upon the oleanders and palms, and the stars coming out one by one above. She put her hand into Piers’ and let it lie there.
She said, ‘It must have been unconscionably dull for you whilst I was so ill. Thank goodness that now I can come out and about with you again. I don’t want to fail you, you know.’
‘You won’t, my pretty. I want to introduce you to the crowd; they’ll think you are fine! Most of the men are pretty swift and all the women have faces like hams, so they’ll be jealous as sin. It’s going to be a grand evening.’
THREE
1
It was not a grand evening.
From the moment when she got inside Sliema club, there came a sense of homesickness to Dinah, so that she felt that she was an outcast. She had the curious feeling that she was not of these people and never would be. She had thought that Mrs. James was one of those trying women who, having no personality themselves, rush round like hens trying to gather personality from others. But here in the big club room, there were so many women like Mrs. James. It made Dinah feel bemused. She hesitated on the threshold.
The ghost of an old man stood here with her, just as she had said; she was an old man’s love, she saw it distinctly, and there was a barrier between her and these people because of it. She did not understand young women, she had never had much to do with them; she did not understand Piers. She would, later on, of course, because she would train herself to his school of thinking and then things would be easier, but at the moment, when she felt so weak and tired, it was very difficult.
In and out of Sliema club there flowed the tide of people. The band played. She danced with men who had strange names: Old Snorty So-and-So, Old Chirpie Brown, Toodles Thompson, Fleabite Harrison, and of course Old Jeff. She did not like to admit that she was growing desperately tired, and tried to explain that the floor was heavy, and that the night seemed over-hot. She recognised that all these were excuses, and only hoped that the others did not see through them.
She was quite glad when at last she had a free dance, and saw that Piers had not noticed her, but was at the other side of the room dancing with a girl in green. She slipped purposely on to the balcony, so that she could hide from him in case he brought somebody else up for her to dance with. Also it might be cooler out here. It was one of those stuffy nights, when even the wind seemed to be hot, and her legs had no strength left in them. She was only afraid that somebody would see that she was a wallflower and out of his own goodness of heart try to bring her a fresh partner, when she would have to force herself to go on dancing. She ached desperately. It would be terrible if she could not rest for a while.
She saw the seat far away and sheltered by palms, and knew that if she hid herself there nobody would see her, for the palms, with their hairy, almost human, trunks would conceal her. She had always felt that there was something indecent about a palm tree, but at this particular moment she had got to hide somewhere; she couldn’t go on.
She had hardly sat down before she heard footsteps and conversation, and knew that other people had found the ballroom stuffy also, and had come out here for air. They came nearer. It was a young girl, with a naval Lieutenant. Dinah was dismayed that they might be making for this seat and would find her sitting alone in the corner, but they were merely walking to and fro. They were not worn out with Mediterranean fever, their bodies were young, and tireless, and active; they were merely talking.
‘Quite pretty, but looks so awfully ill,’ the man was saying; ‘a bit hard Cheddar that she should go down with that damnable fever the moment she got here.’
‘I should say so, and on top of everything else!’
‘Everything else?’
‘Yes, she was a widow, you know.’
‘I did hear something …’ They walked to the corner and turned just as though they were pacing the quarter-deck of a ship. As they passed again, Dinah could hear their voices distinctly, and the girl was telling him the story.
‘He was old, of course, and rich! You have to be rich to get married at that age to anything young, and sweet, and rather simple.’
‘Maybe she isn’t so simple?’
‘Oh, maybe! Then she met Piers Grant, and that was that. The old gent shoots himself, and they wait a bit … propriety, you know, must be decent about such things … then she sails out here and thinks that nobody knows.’
‘What a hope! In Malta!’
‘I should say so! It made me laugh a lot.’
‘Did he really shoot himself?’
The girl stopped, laughed, and patted his arm. ‘Yes, of course, he tripped up with a gun or something. Mrs. James told me, because she had friends in a nearby village and found out all about it. Very extraordinary, they thought, though the coroner …’
‘Then there was an inquest?’
‘So they say! You know what perfect fools some country coroners are. They choose them for that, don’t they? Or is it only magistrates that are taken that way?’
They walked off again. Dinah heard the sound of their footsteps, her lightly tapping heels, flippant and matterless, and his shoes moving solidly; their voices died down in the distance like a drumming dying away with the tramp of a regiment. Dinah sat very still.
Everybody knew.
All along she supposed that she had been hoping against hope, trying to convince herself that the coroner’s verdict had been the correct one and that it had been only in her own imagination that Max had shot himself. Now she knew for certain that her convictions had been right, and it had not been an accident.
She sat intensely still. She did not realise that after the heat of the ballroom the terrace was cold. She was past feeling or concentrating on any particular thought, realising nothing, save that Max, in his attempt to help her, had done the wrong thing.
2
Much later Piers found Dinah sitting there, and came across the floor quite sharply, obviously agitated.
‘Darling, I’ve searched the whole place for you. I’ve been so worried. What on earth are you doing?’
‘I can’t help it. I came here for air.’
He sat beside her, putting his arms round her. ‘You’re icy cold! Come inside.’
‘I can’t, Piers. I can’t do anything because I feel so awful. You see, they know.’
‘What do you mean, they know?’
‘They know about Max. Two of them were here, they’d been dancing and came out for air, I suppose, and were walking up and down. They did not see me and were talking about us.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes, about our marriage. They said that Max shot himself, they knew all about it because that beastly woman, Mrs. James, knew somebody in the neighbourhood and got it all out of them.’
‘But it isn’t true! I shouldn’t worry. Th
e past is past; ignore it, let it go, and look only into the future! You’ve got me.’
She sat there with shining eyes that had become over-bright. ‘Don’t you see that is the point? The past isn’t past, it never can be. Don’t you remember what Max said about a ghost coming between us whichever way we decided?’
‘Oh rubbish! He was talking in parables. Nobody pays any attention to those. You’re being silly; come and get a drink to calm yourself down. There isn’t a ghost.’
She hid her face in his shoulder. ‘There is! What is more, there always will be. We ought never to have let him die like that, we should have done something to stop it. You know quite well that it wasn’t an accident, even if you do keep on sticking out that it was.’
‘All right,’ said he, ‘it wasn’t an accident.’
With the contradictoriness of women she had hoped that he would still deny it, and that she would be able to take fresh strength from his denial. Piers had grown sick of arguing and he was speaking the truth. He had made a shrewd guess all along that it was no accident, and had purposely deceived her. She rebelled against that deceit, and had always been convinced of it herself.
‘Anyway it was he who chose that way out,’ said Piers calmly.
‘I dare say he may have done, but virtually we killed him. We put ourselves first and all that we meant to one another. He was a dear, kind old man, and we let him die.’
Piers became grand, he became aloof and unapproachable. ‘Now don’t talk so much nonsense. You know very well that you are being exceedingly silly.’
‘I don’t see why. Everybody here knows about it. They have been talking, and the Snakery must have got hold of it. What a grand scandal it has been for them!’
Piers disengaged his arm and lit a cigarette. ‘Look here, shall we talk this out some other time, when you are feeling a bit better about it? You’re unnerved, and this isn’t the right moment.’
‘It never will be the right moment.’
‘All right then.’
He sat smoking and staring at the capless toes of his patent leather shoes. She wanted to thrash the whole matter out, but there was nothing that she could say. Max would have understood, he would not have thought her silly; but then he had had experience and knew when snapping point was reached. Piers did not understand that. She did not know how long they sat there, dully, stupidly, as though nothing mattered, then she began to shiver violently, and he saw it.
‘You’re just being a goose! You’ll catch your death of cold; come along inside and I’ll get you a brandy.’
He took her arm and walked inside with her; she knew that her legs were limp and felt as though they dragged after her, in the way she had once seen a man take a dummy in an Oxford Street shop window, arm it to the background, with its stiff legs trailing. She felt like that now. Just a dummy!
Piers took her to the bar and ordered a brandy. She had gone so cold that when it came she could not taste it, but after a while she felt the blood flowing through her veins again warmly, almost as though it pricked. She felt it dispersing about her body, and had the feeling that the past did not matter so much, but she knew that she could not trust herself to dance.
Men sat and talked to her instead of dancing. It was a damned shame that she had been so ill, they said. Old Fleabite Harrison, Chirpie Brown and Toodles Thompson! Now everything that they said was humorous, it was so funny that she laughed a lot, in a childish giggly way, and they seemed to be very well pleased with the success of their jokes.
Just when she was again feeling tired out, Piers took her arm. ‘I suppose we mustn’t forget that you have been ill. But you don’t really want to come home, do you, my pretty?’
‘It is the first fun I have had since I got here, but I am so tired.’
He looked annoyed.
‘There are kidneys and bacon last thing,’ said Old Jeff suddenly. ‘You ought to stop for them.’
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I feel so tired.’
Piers took her to the car. It was queer, but when she got into the air she felt that she was clinging to him weakly, laughing a little as though it was all rather funny. Then, as she stood by the little car, she saw a woman coming out of the club, a girl with green eyes and a magnolia on her shoulder, and she recognised her as the girl who had been talking to the Lieutenant. Dinah could not bear any more. She slipped into the seat and slumped down.
‘Take me away, Piers,’ she implored, ‘do please take me away.’
She had become tragically sober.
‘That’s just what I’m trying to do,’ he said.
3
She shivered dreadfully on the way back. Perhaps she had been a fool to sit so long on that cold terrace, not caring what happened to her, like somebody who is stunned. Malta is not the kind of climate one can afford to play tricks with, and now that the effects of the brandy had worn off she felt desperately ill. It was still the same starrily lovely night, with the scent of roses and goats and sand, which is so entirely Malta, but for all that she could hardly bear it.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Piers, please don’t be angry with me any more.’ She snuggled closer to his boat cloak.
‘I’m not angry, my pretty. You were a goose to be so worried, because Malta always will talk, and half the time it doesn’t know what it is talking about.’
She could not explain to him that it wasn’t only the fact of the gossip; all along she had been cherishing the idea that perhaps she was wrong in her suppositions, but to-night she had known for certain that Max had shot himself. In this mood of his, Piers would not understand. He hated being made conspicuous, and still nursed a resentment against her for leaving the dance before it was over.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t feel well.’
‘You’d better have a hot bath directly you get in, so that you are thoroughly warm again.’
‘I feel almost too tired.’
‘You must pull yourself together, my pretty,’ said Piers, and he wrapped his boat cloak round her. ‘We’ll get a whisky toddy, and pop you into bed. That’ll be the best thing for you. Forget what you heard. Forget everything save that you are my little darling.’
It was lovely to be driving along like this, with the still sea running up Sliema harbour, and the long line of quiet houses, whilst from far away across the other side of the island came the jangle of those eternal bells. ‘I’m happy,’ she whispered, but shivered even as she said it.
When they got back to the flat, Ginni had gone to bed. Piers went on ahead into the bathroom, to turn on the water, and found that it ran cold. It was always erratic, being some antiquated arrangement which ran with intricate pipes through the basement, and was attended by a man called Micaleff. Micaleff was middle-aged, rather dirty and definitely lazy. Recently he had set his cap at a woman, lately widowed, who had a small business in sacred emblems up the road. These sold well, and she being thrifty by nature, had put a goodly sum by. Micaleff saw the chance to dissociate himself permanently from the heating of flats, which was an arduous job, seeing that it required his attention thrice a day, twice too many for his liking. To-day there had been a festa, at which the lady had sold many of her best emblems, and Micaleff in his efforts to ingratiate himself in her good books had completely forgotten about the heating. He had gone off to eat a particularly sickly kind of cake (also emblematical of the festa), after which he was no longer concerned with the trivialities of other people’s bath water.
‘It’s only tepid, damn it,’ said Piers, now really worried.
Dinah sat there in her white frock, looking at him with eyes which had become peculiarly dilated. ‘I’ll just slip into bed, Piers, if you could get me a hot-water bottle.’
‘Rather.’ He went off again. He had not even had time to take off his boat cloak, and he felt that there was something ludicrous about a naval officer coming into the room with a hot-water bottle and a whisky toddy, and a boat cloak flying about him. ‘I must look like the fairy godmother brought up to date,’
he said, and laughed.
She laughed too, even though her teeth chattered. ‘Aunt Lydia calls these feverish babies.’ But her teeth made such a noise that she could hardly make him understand.
‘Now look here,’ said Piers, ‘you drink this even though it burns you. You’ve got to get warm.’
He held out the toddy.
‘It smells so awful.’
‘Then hold your nose. It’s the only way. Thousands would give their eyes for it, and all you say is that it smells awful! That’s the way! Down she goes!’
Dinah tasted it long after.
Piers came to bed; he held her against his own warm body; he pressed the hot-water bottle to her and kissed her cold mouth. But he soon fell asleep, for already the dimness was clearing away and the day was beginning to break over Valletta. It would be cruel to try to keep him awake, as he had to go on board so early. It was time for tea when she fell asleep, and was but faintly conscious of Piers moving about the room, of a sense of languor and lethargy, so that she did not want to stir herself. She heard him telling Ginni not to worry her, as she would ring when she wanted something; then the door closed.
There was nothing that she wanted.
She fell more deeply asleep, and the day came sharply in at the open window, and the room grew hot with it. Ginni came in to turn on the fans and to ask if there was anything that she might be wanting.
Nothing, she said. There was nothing.
4
She knew that she was going to be ill.
She told Piers when he got back at half-past four and came into the room expecting to find her up again and rested. ‘I’ve got a temperature. I know it, Piers, I can feel it. I’m going to be ill.’
‘Heavens! I’ll get on to Lewis.’
‘Not that horrid man!’
‘Darling, you mustn’t take against people like that. He really is quite efficient, else he wouldn’t be here, and Simkins is on holiday.’
‘I do hate Dr. Lewis so much. I think I’d rather have a Malt.’
‘That’s just being silly. You always did have an odd cleaving for the Maltooshes. You’ve got to have somebody seeing after you, you can’t lie here like this.’