by Ursula Bloom
He had become alarmed and took no nay. He went out into the sitting-room and finding Ginni sent her at once for the doctor. Now he was feeling badly. He had not been too tolerant last night, but he got sick of her constant references to Max. Any man would. He knew perfectly well that it had been no accident, and secretly felt guilty about it, though of course if the old chap wanted to do away with himself and make the way clear, there was nobody who could stop him, and why should they try?
He had always tried to forget the whole thing by burying it deep down where conscience could not scratch it up again. He was, as he would have expressed it, sick as mud that Malta should have scratched it up (that damned Snakery, he’d be bound), and angrier that it should have made Dinah so squeamish. In his annoyance he had possibly vented it upon her and was ashamed of himself.
He went back to her, and, sitting down on the bed, cradled her head. There was nothing that he could do. She seemed drowsy and inert, whilst he sat there watching the clock ticking away the minutes. Then he heard Ginni climbing the stairs, laboriously turning the key, and coming into the flat again. He went to meet her.
‘Well?’
‘The doctor is at a party. He won’t be back very quick; the lady said he would be late.’
‘Good heavens!’
She turned, saw that he was anxious, and instantly made a suggestion. ‘There is Professor Mizzi. He is very cleverness.’
‘I dare say, but …’
She caught at his coat. ‘The mistress is not well, we must have the doctor. Professor Mizzi is so good …’
He said ‘All right,’ just because he was so frightened that he did not know what to do next, and he saw Ginni disappear out of the door again, clutching her faldetta about her.
He went back to the bedroom and waited; all the while Dinah’s head nodded, although it was not in actual sleep, and he knew that she was not acutely aware of what was going on around her. He heard the doctor arrive and saw that he was short and middle-aged, with a little square beard and furtive dark eyes.
Professor Mizzi ignored Piers entirely, but went over to the bed, and stood there looking down at Dinah, who did not seem to notice him. He stripped off his coat and bending over her touched her head, put a stethoscope to her chest and listened to her breathing. He worked patiently; then he demanded hot water, a light, attention, as though he were ordering some probationer about a hospital. Piers waited on him mechanically, and all the time knew that his blood boiled and he resented being ordered about peremptorily by a Maltoosh.
Finally Professor Mizzi turned to him from the bed. ‘This is pneumonia,’ he said.
‘Pneumonia?’
‘Yes, she needs great attention. I have a nurse I can send in immediately. She will need constant care because she is considerably weakened by fever. You must do exactly as I say.’
‘Of course,’ said Piers, blinking hard. He did not like the sound of the complaint; it frightened him a good deal.
‘I will fetch the nurse and give my instructions to her,’ said the professor, and off he went entirely master of the situation. He was back quickly, and with him was a pleasant-faced English woman, with fair hair drawn back and tender eyes. Piers was impressed by her. She glanced at Dinah, who had not moved, and who now looked such a small shrunken body in the big bed. Calmly she hung up cloak and bonnet and put on her cap, and all the time the professor was telling her his instructions for treatment.
Piers felt that he had no business to be here, rather like a schoolboy, and he resented it, yet his anxiety for Dinah made him stay.
The professor took his arm and hustled him out into the sitting-room beyond. ‘She is very bad,’ he said, ‘she will need the utmost care.’
‘I know. You must do everything that you can.’
‘It will be done. I shall have to be here with her a great deal; she needs much attention.’
‘Everything must be done,’ repeated Piers, and there was a catch in his throat. He did not know what else to say. In one sense he was glad that he had Professor Mizzi here, because that would please Dinah when she was well enough to understand; in another he felt disturbed that she was not in the hands of an Englishman. He swore by St. Thomas’ and Guy’s, and it was wrong that anybody who had qualified elsewhere should be treating her.
There was a hurried rapping at the door; both men turned, then Ginni came in on tip-toe. It struck Piers as being silly of Ginni when the noise made on that infernal dolphin door knocker must already have disturbed Dinah. Ginni ushered in Dr. Lewis.
‘Well, here I am, better late than never, as I always say,’ he said, and stopped short, staring perplexedly at Professor Mizzi. ‘Hello, hello, what’s all this?’
Piers said, ‘I’m afraid Dinah is rather bad.’
‘What’s the trouble now? More nerves?’
Professor Mizzi glanced at him over his glasses. He said, ‘I have diagnosed pneumonia.’
‘Damned awkward.’ The little doctor stood still. ‘I understood that you had sent for me, and gave up my party to come along. Never thought that you would have sent for somebody else too. Medical etiquette, and all that! All that, you know.’
He stood there fingering his waistcoat buttons with irritating regularity, and looking first at Piers, and then at Professor Mizzi with perturbed eyes.
Piers did not know what to do. He wanted Dinah to have an Englishman looking after her, because obviously this was best for her. He did not want to annoy her, and undeniably Professor Mizzi had taken a lot of trouble; but the fact remained that Dr. Lewis was their doctor, and there was no getting away from that. It didn’t do in this exceedingly small island to chuck medical etiquette by the board. He had gone quiet, and now he realised that these two men were looking to him for a decision. He glanced helplessly at Dr. Lewis, who avoided his glance adeptly; the professor did not avoid it, he glared.
‘Of course, Dr. Lewis really is our doctor,’ began Piers.
‘Good,’ said the professor, ‘very good!’
He began gathering up his things, and went back into the bedroom again, calling to the nurse, and bringing her out with him. ‘Do you wish me to leave my nurse?’
‘She will want a nurse,’ said Dr. Lewis, ‘if it is pneumonia. You never know.’
‘It is pneumonia,’ said the professor, ‘and I do not leave my nurse.’
Even at that last moment Piers had a desperate longing to call him back again, but he felt that he couldn’t kowtow to a Maltese, and so became helpless. He had better do the right thing and stick by their medical adviser; it was no good jittering about just because his wife had whims, and anyway Dr. Lewis had gone through Guy’s and must know something. They did not turn out ignoramuses; after all the chap had passed his exams!
For a moment he saw Professor Mizzi, who was plainly very angry, glancing back at him indignantly from the doorway. It was obvious that he thought Piers was a vacillating young fool.
Then the door shut.
Dr. Lewis rubbed his hands. ‘Well, as I always say, it doesn’t do to let the Malts get out of hand. They ought to know their places. Now let’s see what the real trouble is. Pneumonia, my foot! Nerves again, I’ll bet.’
5
It was pneumonia.
Dinah hovered between darkness and light, swinging helplessly. There were moments when she knew Piers, when she saw the doctor whom she detested walking in and out of the room with his boring wit which now tired her to death, and the nurse, well-meaning, but a great friend of Dr. Lewis and another of the kind who pride themselves on their volatile cheerfulness.
There was the tinkle of oxygen through a glass cylinder; the alien music of that noise was something which brought Dinah sharply back to life again, because the strangeness worried her. Nobody explained what was happening. Piers kept saying, ‘Do what the doctors tell you, my pretty, and you’ll be better soon. You’ve had a sharp attack.’
Once she had the feeling that she was afloat in the sea; she was washed away from the wrecked sh
ip and the ship was her marriage. It was delirium of course. The waves of that sea were dark and green, and she rose and fell with them, at times submerged, with that choking feeling in her throat, at others rising so that she saw the sky above her and the faint yellow dust of stars; for a short while hope and the determination to live would come back to her.
Then she would see Dr. Lewis coming in at the door, with his ‘Well, well, well, and how are we to-day?’, his stale jokes, and the faint essence of alcohol which lingered so unpleasantly about him. She thought desperately that Piers could not love her to subject her to all this. Then she had memories of somebody else, who had been here dimly, somebody efficient, who had known how she was feeling, and who had had a fresh-faced quiet woman with him, who had touched her kindly. Perhaps that was fancy too. She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember.
If only she could go back to that time so long ago when three of them had sat in the cottage in Buckinghamshire! She was quite sure that there had been three of them, yet she could not recall the third.
She saw somebody sitting beside her, and knew now that he had been there all the time, only she had been too ill to see him.
He sat quietly, because he was old, and had learnt the great lesson of sitting still; he smiled at her encouragingly, and put his hand on hers, compelling yet comforting. She held it, happy in the knowledge that he with his experience would guide her. There was no need to become perturbed when Max was by her side.
‘You killed yourself?’ she said to him.
‘Silly little kid,’ he said, ‘that is all over. There is no such thing as killing.’
She could be quite happy lying here with him holding her hand. When the green troughs of waves pulled her down again it did not matter, because he held her. She liked the feeling of that hand which was so constant; even if everything else faded away, the hand stayed.
She rose again, and saw the stars, and the vista beyond the window. The nurse was sewing, oblivious of the fact that Max had come back and held her hand so consolingly.
‘I always loved you the most, Max, but did not know it until now,’ she said.
‘I know, my dear, I know.’
‘You won’t leave me?’
‘Never again. We shall always be together. We shall be so happy.’
She saw Piers, but he seemed to be a long way off, and was talking to the nurse. ‘She is delirious so often. Always talking to somebody else.’
Then the nurse’s voice replying, ‘Yes, I know; but after the crisis she’ll be better. We can’t expect a change before that.’
Piers looked so unhappy, and she wished that she could help him, but although she tried to smile to him he did not understand. Max understood everything.
‘How much longer?’ she asked him.
‘Not long,’ he said.
She had the idiotic feeling that there was a door behind him; she knew this was wrong, because there was only one door, the one which led through into the other room.
‘There isn’t a door really?’ she said.
‘Yes, my dear, there is.’
It was all confusing and she was too tired to argue about it. The real door opened and shut a great deal because Piers was wandering in and out, and Ginni, with her eyes swollen. Dinah wanted to say kindly things to Ginni, but she couldn’t because the words would not come.
Then the door into the sitting-room seemed to lock; she heard it. ‘They’ve locked the door,’ she said, ‘why?’
It was queer, because Dr. Lewis was still in the room and the nurse with him, and Piers hovering dimly behind them, his eyes desperately worried.
‘It’s all right,’ said Max.
He was opening the other door for her, and she could see beyond it, into some place that was not Malta. It was a garden green as England, with the roses of June and the scent of mignonette, and thyme, and nicotiana. It looked very much like the Buckinghamshire cottage, only much better.
‘Come,’ said Max, ‘come quickly, little kid, don’t look back.’
She got up lightly, her body did not ache any more, but rose like a child’s unconscious of actual movement. She disobeyed Max, for she looked back for a second and in that second saw Dr. Lewis, with his jaw dropping, standing at the end of the bed staring at her as though this were something that he could not believe. She saw Piers; his face had gone chalky; his eyes goggled. He was calling to her, but his voice sounded so far away and she knew that she couldn’t go back to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she tried to say, ‘but Max …’
‘Quickly, little kid, quickly …’ urged Max.
They went through the door together. It shut out the world.
THE SECOND WAY
ONE
1
The truth of the matter was that it did not do to flout convention.
Dinah told Max so that night in her room, after the talk downstairs was done, and Piers had gone back to the Stephens’, and the place was quiet. Her affair with Piers was ended. It gave her a pain to think that it was all over, but there was no other way out. The suggestion of suicide was crazy, and could only bring its own recriminations on their heads.
She and Max sat in her room to talk it over; as if downstairs had not been enough, as if they had not talked already until she was worn out; yet this had to go on and on. It must be thrashed out.
‘I should feel that I was holding you by a chain if you stayed with me,’ said Max quietly. ‘I don’t want that. Your happiness is the only thing in the world that I care about.’
‘I’ll be happy if you’ll give me the chance to get over this. I want to stay with you. I want to begin again.’
‘But I shall get older. It sounds silly, but at my age one year counts as three in a younger man. I’ll grow crotchety.’
‘You won’t. You’re much too nice for that.’
‘Haven’t you ever seen nice old men growing crotchety?’ he asked.
‘Not people as nice as you are.’
He was sitting on the corner of the bed, with the forget-me-nots splashed all over its petunia cover, and the quilting which she had admired so much when she had first chosen it. ‘Dear little kid, you don’t seem to realise that you are deliberately cutting yourself off from something that you have a right to have. I cannot give you love as Piers could give it to you, alive, and young, and strong; I cannot do for you what he can do, and I want you to realise that.’
‘I know,’ she said, and put her arms round his neck.
He drew her closer, so that she sat hunched on the bed beside him, his arms round her pale pink pyjamas. ‘You’re so plucky, you little kid,’ he whispered, ‘and I do admire you so much for it.’
‘I know that there are two ways of loving. I love you quite definitely in one way. I’ve got to forget Piers. Please, dear, let me choose how to do it myself.’
It was going to be difficult when all the time she cared for Piers in a way which was unforgettable, and although she talked so courageously of putting him out of her life, she was terrified of the future without him.
‘I’m afraid it is a decision that nobody can make for you,’ he said.
They sat there talking and she had the strange feeling that she was physically quite worn out. Her body felt like a bundle of rags, slumping, helpless. She tried to think coherently but it was impossible, even though she had Max’s hand in hers and knew that she could have been so happy with him if only she had not met Piers. If he had never come here to stay in the village, she would have gone her own way tranquilly, believing that she was in love with this old man, believing that nothing could flout her peace of mind. Now all that was changed. She could never be quite the same again.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she told Max; but in her heart she was very uncertain.
2
The parting with Piers was difficult.
He left the Stephens’ on Monday morning early, because he had to get down to Plymouth, and he came into the cottage to say good-bye to Dinah the night before. If only he h
adn’t come! She felt that if he had marched out of the place the night they had talked after dinner, it would have been so much simpler. But seeing him again hurt dreadfully. It was hateful to sit chattering of unimportances when all the time there was the tremendous importance of their two selves. O God, don’t let Piers go to Malta, she found herself praying, find me some other way out. Yet she knew that there was no other way out, and that she had deliberately chosen this fairest path for all three of them.
Then Max got up and went away, so that they might be alone. He did it purposely of course, and she hated the fact that it was so obvious, because now, left alone with Piers, she became tongue-tied, and gauche. There ought to be so much to say to one another in these last few minutes together; there wasn’t anything. Words failed her entirely. She was like a river in a drought which has become dried up; its noise is stilled, its course lies barren.
‘It was best like this,’ said Piers, but she knew that his voice was no longer that of a real person.
‘Of course it was best.’ All the time she knew that whatever anybody said about it being right or wrong, it was still the cruellest way.
‘We’ll meet again after the three years?’
Why didn’t he express the thought which must have occurred to both of them? Max could not live for ever. Three years is not so very long and it must come to an end. Ahead there was reunion, if only she dared to think of it, because Piers must come back to England and then everything would be different. Surely it would be different? she asked herself.
She said, ‘Piers, please go quickly. I don’t think that I can bear it if we drag it out, it hurts me too much.’
‘My pretty, I know.’ For a moment she felt his hands, and saw his eyes close to her own. She would remember this always, she thought. ‘I do know.’
It was over.
Piers had gone out of her life for a handful of years, and she thought morbidly how much older she would be when they met again; she might have crows’ feet, she might have her first grey hair. She might have lost her youth, in his eyes. The thought distressed her.