by Ursula Bloom
‘That’s a grand place. I used to shoot there before I had my bad attack. Lately, I’ve had to give up that sort of thing.’
‘You won’t think me unsociable then?’ asked Daisy. ‘It is a shame to stay in on a lovely day like this; I know it seems impolite of me wanting to skip off, but you’ll understand. I’ll get my things.’ And she went off.
Donald stood there looking after her. ‘She is like champagne, isn’t she?’ he said.
‘She was always like that. We were at school together and she was always the gay, volatile person. Without her I should never have gone to the dance last night.’
‘Why not do it again?’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Why not?’
Max interrupted. ‘She thinks of me all the time. Dinah is the most wonderful companion that a man ever had, but all the same I hate to stand in her way.’
‘You don’t stand in my way. It is just that I have got out of the way of going to dances, and they tire me. I found that out this morning when it was such an effort to get up. I don’t want to go to another dance for ages.’
She turned to the side table where she had laid the tulips and narcissi, and began arranging them in a bowl which was standing there empty. She heard Max and Donald going on talking, but at this moment she did not want to be drawn into their conversation. She knew that Daisy had come running down the stairs, and saw her peep in to bid them good-bye.
‘I’m rather glad to see them go,’ thought Dinah.
‘Now,’ she said to Max, ‘let’s go down to poor Mr. Tite’s together and see if there is anything that we can do to help him.’ She put her arm in his. ‘It’s nice to be alone, Max, just lovely to be together.’
4
There had been no letter from Piers for a couple of months now. She felt that she could not go on writing to him, because her pride would not let her; there are some things which, however much one loves a man, one cannot do. She kept making foolish excuses for the silence; the summer cruise; having so much to do as a flag lieutenant; his warning that he always was a bad correspondent, but that did not mean that he loved her any the less.
The summer was slipping away and with it the second year of their parting. Soon they would be standing on the threshold of the last year, which would bring him back in a ship flying its paying-off pennant. Soon they would meet again. She knew that.
Meanwhile she was considerably troubled over Max.
He had been shocked by Miss Tite’s death, and although he had glossed over it as they went down to see Mr. Tite she knew quite well that it had worried him a great deal. Mr. Tite, deeply affected, found comfort in talking to Max, which meant that he would keep on coming round and going into gruesome details, which made matters very much worse.
Daisy had not stayed long. She could not stand the tranquillity of the country, the fact that there was no male-voice chorus to admire her, and the lack of entertainment. She chafed rather obviously, then she started making excuses. Dinah did not attempt to stop her, because she wanted to get the house to herself again, realising that the visit had not been a success. Eventually a telegram arrived which Dinah felt convinced that Daisy had sent to herself. Somebody was ill at home. Daisy expressed grave concern, packed her things, and disappeared in her pert little hat. But the atmosphere that she had created stayed behind her, and was something that Dinah could not escape.
The cottage had grown more senile.
The summer came and went in a galaxy of lazy inert days, stagnant as winter ones. The first yellow leaves of autumn dripped into the lane, and the feeling of decay came again. Still Mr. Tite wandered in to discuss the loss of his sister, and still Max looked weaker and his face grew more grey.
‘Your gentleman don’t look what he did,’ said Mrs. Dodds with amiable sympathy over the little counter where she sold cheap sweets.
‘He isn’t looking very well, I must say. His heart is none too good.’
‘Tricky,’ said Mrs. Dodd, ‘very tricky. Hearts don’t stand no tampering, do they?’
One afternoon Dinah sank down in the window seat for a moment’s respite from the domestic round. Donald was coming in at the gate. She saw him pass the thatched well, up the path towards the cottage. It had been raining, there was the faint scent of wet autumn leaves, of verdure dying down into the sleep of winter, and a sky painted with flying clouds, and lights and darknesses in vigorous contrasts. She had thought that she was tired out, but her body reacted to the sight of the man coming up the path so that she knew she was only tired of the life which wrapped her in its cocoon like a shroud, whilst she was alive within. She opened the window.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was wondering if you’d care to come over to my cottage for some tea? I’ve got pikelets, the real kind, and lots of butter. Also I’d show you my paintings.’
‘I’ve got a sick husband.’
‘Too bad!’ He came closer, almost audaciously, leaning across the little bed where the autumn crocuses were standing tall and strong in mauve and white armies. He put his hands on the greened sill, and looked into her eyes. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘is the gilded cage rusting?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You ought to get out of it. This is a cage, you know, and you are a song bird. An afternoon with me will do you good. I’m a bad lad, but you want something bad after too much virtue.’
Even though she knew that psychologically he was right, she had the gumption to close the window. ‘I can’t come,’ she said.
He could make her, of course, because she was so sick of being dull that she would do almost anything for a change. She only hoped that he would not try to force her. He went round to the front door, and rang the ship’s bell, and she heard Lisa going to open to him. With a smile she remembered that she had told Lisa she was not at home this afternoon. There was an argument; she felt that she could not bear it.
She turned, opening the French windows at the back of the sitting-room, on to the terrace that the gardener had bricked with the old mellow bricks from a fallen barn. She ran across the grass to the walled-in garden at the end, and over the field beyond, into the lane which led to the river. The water was brown and muddy, tumbling in a flurry because there had been a great deal of rain. There on the plank bridge she stopped abruptly. She was not running away from an unwanted guest, nor from the cottage and its environment; she was trying to run away from herself, and that was something that she could not do.
That evening she sent a cable to Piers, because she knew that she could not stand the silence any longer. Mrs. Stephens had come in after tea and had sat with her talking earnestly, and when Mrs. Stephens was earnest she was extremely trying. Dinah went over to the post office, with the sweet bottles, and the babies’ comforters, and the boot laces. She asked for a cable form, which upset Mrs. Dodds. Mrs. Dodds was already flustered because she had been persuaded by an itinerant traveller to buy two dozen over-yellow haddocks to sell; although he had assured her that there would be a queue to buy them, nobody wanted them. Mrs. Dodds considered that it was confusing for people to come in wanting silly things like cable forms, when all she wanted was to be rid of her yellow haddocks.
‘I don’t often get asked for one of these here things,’ she said, sorting through a pile of forms, and proffering one for the West Indies.
‘Not that kind,’ said Dinah firmly.
She herself had to look up the charges for Mrs. Dodds, who had broken her specs, and could not see without them. She always bought them at Woolworth’s, she explained, and the last pair had been ‘real good ones’ but until she could get into Aylesbury she would have to trust to the honesty of her customers to see her through. Dinah worked it out, dispatched the cable:
Please write. Most anxious about you,
and then discovered that she had overpaid Mrs. Dodds, but could hardly ask for it back again.
5
Piers did not reply, and although she worried about it for a week, s
uddenly she was consoled because she saw in The Times that the Lion was at sea. She had suddenly been sent to Alexandria. The cable would follow him, of course, and must eventually reach him, but it might take several days.
Max was brighter, and Donald did not appear again. Mr. Tite pottered in and out, and Mr. Stephens was very kind. His calls cheered Max, and he was one of those little parsons who feel it their duty to visit.
‘Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t,’ said Max.
‘But why? He cheers you up tremendously; besides, it’s his job.’
‘Yes, I know. He has been most frightfully decent to us. He comes round here whenever I get the jim-jams, or you are worried, but he makes me feel indebted. Now we shall have to go to the next beastly musical party his daughter gives.’
‘I don’t think you’d stand for that,’ said Dinah, ‘even robust people turn a bit pale at Muriel’s parties. I can’t see you putting up with them.’
‘I feel I shall have to after her father has been so good.’
Dinah hoped that Dr. Wellby would squash any such effort, but instead he took it as rather a joke.
‘Muriel’s music isn’t everybody’s beer,’ he said, ‘but if you think you’d like it, well, there you are. I prefer something with a tune. “Stop your tickling, Jock”; something along those lines.’
Dinah said, ‘I am sure it would be quite wrong of Max to go. He’d never sit through it.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose he will go when it comes to it.’
Muriel came down almost immediately after that, and Mr. Stephens wandered in on one of his duty visits, and smiling urbanely mentioned the party.
‘Just a few people, a very few people,’ he said, ‘and of course if you could come,’ he looked at Max, ‘I know my daughter would be very flattered indeed. Highly flattered, I might say.’
‘I’ll come,’ said Max.
‘It’s wrong of you,’ said Dinah afterwards, ‘quite wrong.’
‘If I can’t put up with a couple of hours of misery for all those hours he has put up with me, I must be a pretty poor sort of a fish,’ said Max.
‘Yes, but you know how you hate bad music.’
‘I know I’m very grateful to him.’
He was a very obstinate old man when he got set upon a particular purpose; he felt that he owed this to the Stephens, and Dinah knew that now nothing would stop him.
It was a bright and lovely Sunday, one of those days when the summer makes a last effort to shine, and when there is a vivid glow about the leaves, and a new brightness in the gardens. About midday a car stopped outside the cottage, and looking up from her sewing (she had an idea that it might be Donald again) Dinah saw that it was her Aunt Lydia. She could hardly believe it. Aunt Lydia came marching up the path and in at the front door, looking extremely well pleased with herself.
‘Whatever are you doing here?’ gasped Dinah.
‘I don’t know. I had the sudden desire to see you, so just took the car out and came. Psychic, I think. That’s the idea. I had to do it, and here I am.’
Dinah’s one thought was that this mercy would completely stop any idea of their going to Muriel’s party after all. Secretly she was thankful.
‘How very good it is to see you, Aunt Lydia! Max is much better, and I’m sure he will be awfully pleased that you have come.’
‘You’ve had a bad time with him; still, if you will do these things you must expect a little gout and rheumatism and the penalties of old age. Ah, here you are, Max, you see the bad penny has turned up again.’
Max had come into the room, slowly because these days he had to take care. ‘Very nice to see you, and what a surprise too!’ He went over to the sideboard and poured her out a drink. ‘Come for the day?’
‘The night too, if you wish. Kenneth had to go to see his cousin home from Kenya. One of the most dreadfully dull men I’ve ever met. They have a foray once in a while, and this happens to be the night. What a night they’ll make of it too, and how ill they’ll both be to-morrow! Serve them right!’ She lifted her glass.
‘I think I’d better send the Stephens a note to say that we can’t go,’ suggested Dinah.
‘Why? We were going out this afternoon, you see, Aunt Lydia. Stephens’ daughter is studying music, and she comes down for occasional week-ends and gives the most ghastly recitals. He has been very decent whilst I was ill, pottering in and out, most helpful and very kind. I felt the least we could do was to go.’
‘It sounds loathsome,’ said Aunt Lydia with disarming candour.
‘It’s that awfully good music which is always so unpleasant,’ Max agreed.
‘I dare say. I always feel that it is a moot question as to what is good music. I like music bad myself. I can’t bear Bach. Wagner gives me the willies. If anybody plays Beethoven I get the most appalling stomach ache. I don’t know why, but Pathetique or the Moonlight mean the gripes for me. It’s so odd.’ She lifted her glass again.
‘We can’t possibly go this afternoon.’
‘Why not? I don’t want to come here and spoil all your arrangements, and I’ll behave like an angel provided she doesn’t play Beethoven.’
‘I did want to go, just to show the rector that I appreciated all he has done for us,’ said Max. ‘I may be old-fashioned, but I feel that I owe him that much.’
Aunt Lydia smiled. ‘It’s almost like returning calls. We lived in one God-forsaken place and had to go to church because the parson’s wife had called on us. I call it iniquitous, but I lived that sort of life until I married. Not after that, you bet! If she plays Beethoven I won’t be answerable for myself, that’s all.’
They had a cheerful lunch together, and Dinah did not know when she had enjoyed a meal more. Afterwards Aunt Lydia talked to her over the sitting-room fire whilst Max slept. He was like a child who is carried off to bed immediately after lunch and tucked away for an hour. Usually he emerged a trifle irritable, but to-day he came down looking very well pleased with himself. Aunt Lydia’s visit was making him happy. Also he had the confidence of the Boy Scout who knows that he is doing the day’s good deed and is therefore well pleased with life.
‘I’ll take you along in my car,’ said Aunt Lydia.
‘I don’t intend staying too long. It is just putting in an appearance that is the main point. We owe the little man that much,’ announced Max.
He sat in the back, holding Dinah’s hand in his, tenderly, romantically, and at this particular junction she wished that she could feel for him all that he obviously felt for her. But she couldn’t. When Piers had come into her life the love, which had never really been love, had faded into the inexpressible. She found it difficult to show what she felt for Max save in the doing of little deeds, the small attentions to his creature comforts.
The Stephens’ drawing-room was got up as though for a treat. Mr. Tite had been inveigled in. He did not usually come, but had arrived to-day and was sitting there, chin on the handle of his tall ebony stick stood before him. There were two old maids there from an adjacent village, and three members of a music-loving family in Aylesbury, who were occasionally cajoled to attend. Muriel herself was wearing one of those arty dresses of no particular colour, but much like a toad’s stomach in hue, and in this she trailed round the room, her mother worshipping, whilst her father beamed proudly. He was extremely conscious that he himself had no ear for music, and once, when under a misapprehension, had applauded God Save the King. He only hoped that these parties really were all right, and that other people appreciated Muriel’s music.
They ate home-made cake and drank strong stewed tea, of the kind that Max hated most. Dinah glanced at him nervously, but he was talking to Mr. Tite apparently quite happily. She turned to Aunt Lydia.
‘How are things at home these days? Living here I see less and less of Dukeleys, and Mother never writes.’
‘Oh, they’re the same as ever. Your father still carrying on with some awful woman or other, and your mother going about trying to pretend one moment
that she doesn’t know, and abusing the woman the next.’
‘I wish they had been different, we seem to have drifted so far apart; if only it hadn’t been like that.’
‘I know. Well, I shouldn’t worry about them, you’ve got your own troubles.’ Aunt Lydia glanced across at Max sitting on the uncomfortable Victorian settee on which Dr. Wellby had deposited him. It was one of those round seats, two mushrooms, with a ridiculous little banister in between them, so that whichever way you talked to your neighbour, you were bound to get a crick in the neck.
Tea disappeared, and Muriel made a move towards the piano. She stared at them impressively for a moment as though she had to fix the mood; she struck a few idle chords for tuning up, and settled herself more deeply on to the stool, about to take the plunge.
‘She’s bad. I know she’s going to be bad. Only the worst kind of amateurs do that kind of thing,’ murmured Aunt Lydia beside Dinah.
Muriel started. She began a dim melody like an echo out of the distance, which coming gradually nearer grew proportionately wilder. She assumed a terrific expression, and her personality was no longer nauseatingly colourless but was new and awe-inspiring. Wearily Dinah listened. Aunt Lydia was making slight snorting noises beside her. Apprehensive that she might already have fallen asleep (though how she could have done in this din, Dinah had no idea), she turned, to find that it was merely scorn.
‘Awful,’ said Aunt Lydia, ‘why the hell must she do it?’
All round the room were people sitting with varied expressions of anxiety, of boredom and of annoyance. Dinah wondered whether they all came here for the same reason that she and Max had come, in the hopes of paying a debt. She looked at him. Muriel was at the eleventh page now, and somebody had whispered that there were six more to go. It struck Dinah that Max was looking very grey, heavier, much older. His jaw was flaccid, his face seemed to fall in folds. She knew that he was not enjoying himself and admired the spirit which had prompted him to come at all; she caught his eye. She smiled, hoping to encourage him, but he ignored it. The stare was so vacant that she felt herself brought up with a jerk, for Max was looking at her without seeing. His hand fluttered like a fallen bird’s wing, without any purpose, and she knew that something was wrong by the very way that he sat. She felt herself turning cold, and gripped her chair to rise, only to find that she was helpless. It was at that moment that Max pitched forward and fell.