Dinah's Husband: A heartfelt story of love and marriage in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  Uncertainty closed round her. She saw other people crowding to him, but something inside her warned her that it would not be any good. She saw Dr. Wellby pushing the others away, kneeling down by Max, and all the time her legs seemed to have gone inert so that she could do nothing. Dr. Wellby got up again. He was motioning people away, clearing the room, and even Muriel had gone in her hideous toad’s stomach dress. It was so odd that Dinah should notice that particularly.

  Aunt Lydia turned to her. ‘Come, Dinah, we’ll go into another room.’

  It was their way of telling her that he was dead. Yet she had known before they did. She said, ‘Mayn’t I see him?’

  But Aunt Lydia hurried her away. ‘Later, dear, not now,’ she said.

  This dreadful kindness was one of the grimmest things that she had ever met. She knew that Aunt Lydia had put her into the car and was driving back with her. Automatically she went into the cottage and sank down in a chair by the fire, and all the time she knew that she had gone down a long road, a very long road, and that nothing was going to be the same again.

  She said slowly, ‘If he had to die, I suppose that was the kindest way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aunt Lydia, ‘of course. Sudden death is heaven for the person who dies, and hell for those around. All the same, I’m glad I was there.’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad.’

  ‘I had the feeling you’d want me. Psychic. It’s no good laughing at those things. You can’t prove them, yet you can’t disprove them. That’s all there is to it.’

  They sat holding hands. It was just as though a door had been shut in her face and she was dazed by the slam that it had made. She seemed to have withdrawn from the world, to be seeing it like a play which was acted about her, but with herself as having no part in that play.

  She did not know what to do next.

  6

  Max’s funeral trailed out of the cottage, and Dinah drove back alone with Aunt Lydia and sat here again. Still the dazed feeling went on; she could not recover from it. All she could remember was the unseeing look of that poor old man, and the sound of a door slamming hard, a door no living person could open.

  ‘It’s shock,’ said Aunt Lydia prosaically; ‘it’ll pass.’

  ‘I don’t seem to be here any longer.’

  ‘You’ll find it goes. Do nothing about it. It won’t last.’

  ‘You’ll see to things, Aunt Lydia?’

  ‘You bet I will!’

  Somehow it did not seem to matter if Uncle Kenneth was staying at the Four Feathers and horrifying Mrs. Wilkes by his behaviour. Nothing mattered save herself.

  The telegram was dispatched to Piers. Aunt Lydia sent it.

  Max died yesterday.

  Now Dinah knew that all the delay in the mail and the infrequency of the letters had probably been because Piers felt that he was running after another man’s wife, and had also been bitterly disappointed that she would not come away with him. The uncertainty of their future had deterred him; it had not been because he did not love her, but because Max stood between them. She wondered if Piers knew that his ghost had flitted in and out of this cottage all through these two years, the brave laughing ghost of unconquerable youth.

  The future would be different.

  Aunt Lydia said, ‘I shall stay on with you for a few days, Dinah, unless you’d like to come away with me. Change of scene would be good for you.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here, I think.’

  ‘If only your home were different it might have been a good idea for you to go back to Dukeleys for a bit.’

  ‘I know.’ Dinah remembered her father at the funeral. She had never wanted him to come, but he had accepted it as a duty and had behaved like it. He had suggested that she should go back with him and had stated quite baldly that her mother was dottier than ever, so that she had shrunk from him. She wanted to stay here, not to run away somewhere else; she wanted to be cared for, not to be called upon to care for somebody else, as she would have to care for her mother if she went home.

  ‘I do understand,’ said Aunt Lydia; ‘why not come to Kenneth and me for a bit? The house is falling about our ears and we have not a farthing to put into it. It’s fairly lousy, but so far the roof still holds on to the place, thank God.’

  ‘Might I have a few days in which to make up my mind?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She was thinking of Piers, because he would be sure to cable, and from that cable she would have some idea what the next move was to be. Perhaps Malta.

  They made their arrangements, the night after the funeral, sitting on either side of the ingle, with Aunt Lydia’s skirts tucked back, and the dreadful scorch marks showing on her legs. It was strange that trivialities like that should impress Dinah so much, but they did at this particular time.

  Next morning when she came downstairs there was no Times on her plate. She asked Lisa about it.

  ‘My paper, Lisa?’

  ‘It was your aunt, gnä Frau. The paper she has taken.’

  Aunt Lydia had got it upstairs with her. Quickly Dinah realised that there must be something about Max’s death in it, and very thoughtfully she had not wanted her niece to see it. It was senseless, Dinah told herself, because she had got to get over squeamish feelings; life goes on! When death comes, people have to accept the fact that the door has closed. She accosted Aunt Lydia the moment that she came downstairs.

  ‘The Times, Aunt Lydia?’

  ‘I took it upstairs, because I always do the crossword puzzle. The man who makes them up cheats outrageously, but the stupid part is that I still go on trying.’

  ‘May I see it, please?’

  ‘In a moment.’

  Dinah realised that something was particularly wrong. The atmosphere of the room seemed to electrify, and she was surprised to hear a voice say very coolly:

  ‘You may as well tell me what it is, because I know that something is wrong. I shall have to know about it sooner or later, so it may as well be sooner.’

  ‘Good God! You do jump at conclusions! I never said that anything was wrong.’

  ‘No, but I’m sure of it. Please give me The Times.’

  ‘Oh hell!’ said Aunt Lydia.

  She went upstairs again very slowly, obviously trying to think out some plan. When she came down again she had The Times in her hand, and Dinah saw that it had never been opened. The story of the crossword puzzle was a lie. Dinah took it, and all the time she knew that her aunt was watching her closely. Laboriously she put a finger to the page and went down the deaths column, reading them carefully. There was no name that she knew. A notice in the marriages attracted her, she recognised a word or two and caught her breath.

  So he had grown tired of waiting.

  On the 6th instant, at St. Paul’s Church, Malta. Lieutenant Piers George Grant, R.N., only son of the late Captain George Grant, R.N., and Mrs. Grant, of Inverham, Yorks, to Esmee, only daughter of Admiral and Mrs. Clemenson, of Pieta, Malta.

  THE THIRD WAY

  ONE

  1

  It seemed years to Dinah since she had come out to this small hotel situated in one of the back stradas of Malta. In reality it was barely six months. Piers had explained that it would not do for her to stay at one of the well-known hotels, where everybody stayed, because then she would be in the public eye. Nothing was easier than to start gossip in the island, and once that began it meant that his captain would be on his tracks. His captain was narrow-minded; he had been known before this to dismiss erring lieutenants home like naughty boys who have stolen the cakes, and that would not do at all.

  The hotel was small, with a thin hall, uncomfortable wicker chairs, and aspidistras in uninspired pots on the fly-blown tables. The fans did not work, and had failed in their activities during the hottest weather; so had the one waiter-cum-chamberman, who wandered indolently around the fetid dining-room, waving a soiled napkin in a pitiful attempt to discourage the undismayed flies; or who marched without interest in and out of the bedroom
s with scarred carafes of iced water, or, after many demands, clean bed linen. Giuseppe did everything and did nothing, was an amiable slattern in a dirty white drill coat which hid the worst discrepancies of indescribable trousers.

  The hotel looked out on to a strada which led by innumerable steps down to the market itself; goats haunted it, and under the shadow of the tall wall opposite the Maltese clustered together on their haunches, discussing the higher politics of the island. This was not life, it was stagnation. Country life in England could stagnate, but it was always a clean, austere, tranquil stagnation. This was infected with sand-flies and mosquitoes, with Giuseppe’s frowsty palm brush which whisked everything nowhere, with strange strong smells from the street, and disturbed by the jangle of raucous bells.

  Not that Dinah regretted what she had done. It was far better, she and Piers had decided, to admit the truth than to try to live on in the lie. Max had been very kind, and he had not discouraged them by a single word. She felt that it was rather terrible that he could have been so kind, and have made it possible for her to slip away in Piers’ car that September afternoon bound for London.

  ‘It couldn’t have been any other way,’ Piers said, and that was true. Once they had fallen in love they could not have gone back on it. She had not actually said good-bye to Max, but had kept it secret; though she realised that he knew. He had purposely gone down the lane to see old Miss Tite, and that was when they left. A note on the mantelpiece like cheap melodrama. How Dinah had hated it!

  ‘It hurts, you know, Piers.’

  ‘I know, but when two people are so dreadfully in love the hurt can’t last,’ he told her.

  There had been the drive to London, side by side in the little car, with the fever growing. Amersham, Gerrard’s Cross, Uxbridge, and the long clear sweep of Western Avenue with the dull flat country on either side, and London in the distance, a speckle of light like stars, and the night riding up behind them in a mist. They were moving to the stars, Piers said, and the night was behind her. She would never forget that he had put it into those words. She had not believed that she could ever feel like this, and for a moment doubts flitted across her mind, and she remembered what her father would say, shuddering that he might excuse himself in view of her greater misdemeanour; that would be horrible. Aunt Lydia would speak plainly. ‘I always knew you’d leave him. I don’t blame you, for youth calls to youth, but why on earth did you ever marry him?’

  She put all these things beyond her mind. After all, life cannot be lived by what other people say.

  They drove up to the London hotel, and walked in through shining swing doors. Unreal. A dream. She watched Piers going on ahead, and followed him timidly, because suddenly she had turned shy. She felt like a heroine in some cheap novel, with Piers signing the register as a married couple, and herself ashamed, yet the other side of her intensely proud. She wished that she could understand which side of her dominated.

  She would never forget her futile efforts to be normal when all the time she was feeling so strangely abnormal.

  The lift stopped at the fourth floor, and the page boy ushered them out and into the bedroom which Piers had booked.

  On the threshold she felt afraid and stopped. ‘Supposing we have made a mistake? Another mistake?’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ he replied.

  2

  Next morning they went down to Devonport. It seemed that it was a new world and at last she was alive. It had been a miracle waking in the morning to find Piers there; to travel down to the sea together; his going on board the Lion, and coming back to tell her that he had heard from Max. She was sitting in the hotel bedroom wondering whether it was worthwhile unpacking for so short a time, and digging into the corners of her suitcase for this and that. She wondered why country hotels always had pictures of patriotic events in British history, and why she felt so elated and unreal in these horribly real surroundings. She felt like a girl who walks on the hills and the strong air makes her dizzy.

  ‘Show me the letter, Piers.’

  ‘Why spoil what is so lovely?’

  ‘I’m worried about him. Is he horribly shaken?’

  ‘He’s damned brave. I think that he knew this was inevitable really; remember when he said he had always expected it, and had been quick to recognise it when it came? He says that he will set the wheels of the divorce going and only hopes it won’t be too long, in case that makes us uncomfortable. It takes a fairish time, you know.’

  ‘Six months, isn’t it?’

  ‘More than that. You’ve got to get the thing heard before the six months starts like some beastly winter. I think the old judges try to make it as difficult as they can on purpose to put people off. Silly old mutts! Don’t let’s talk about it. Here we can be together; we shall have to be a bit more careful in Malta.’

  ‘But when we marry we can have a flat there and it will be such fun,’ she said.

  He put his arm round her and drew her closer. ‘You’ll have to stop at some insignificant little pub just at first in case people spy you out. My captain is a snorter for this kind of thing. They have no emotions in the Navy, no sympathies; we’re treated like so many small boys and buzzed off in disgrace. They don’t have any truck with romance.’

  ‘Ought I to come out to you then?’

  ‘Dearest, how could I live without you?’

  Nothing mattered save this moment. This was the most vitally important time in all her life, and she knew it.

  ‘I do love you so much,’ she said, rather brokenly, because she had repeated the words so often and they sounded meaningless when really they epitomised everything that she had always wanted to say.

  She liked Devonport. Its little streets, and its stiff rows of slated houses where the sailors lived. She would think of the men walking in the streets, and of the dockyard, with the ships, and the cobbles, and the cranes, like enormously big question marks against the sky. Hawkins had walked here. Drake. Raleigh. The spirit of the place was the spirit of a nation.

  ‘If only you might sleep ashore, Piers!’

  ‘I know. I tell you the Navy was born unromantic. Funny, when we’ve got Nelson as a figure-head. Damned queer, if you ask me, most illogical.’

  He stayed as late as he dared, and then they said good-bye in the prim hotel bedroom, which had become sacred because it was the shrine of an emotion. She had promised that she would not watch him go, nor would she get up to see the Lion sail; but she lay awake from very early in the morning, telling herself that it was the unusual noises in the hotel, when really it was that her hand reached out for his, and her body searched for his in the bed.

  She got up, and went to pull the blind, so that she might read; then she saw the dockyard, with the cranes and the maze of masts and rigging, and a grey ship painted light for the Mediterranean, moving slowly down through the centre waterway, out to the harbour mouth. She knew that it was the Lion going quietly, without any fuss, like a nun in a grey habit, intent only on her personal business.

  She felt immensely thrilled, yet depressed, and could not balance the two emotions. It was strange how her emotions went both ways, up to the heights, and down to the depths, yet meeting and mingling.

  She travelled to Dover two days later, and told herself that this was adventure. All her life had been so deadly dull; now came the vigorous contrast.

  Marrying Max had not been the success she had once thought it would be. Venice. Now she could laugh at the idea if she did not realise how tragically unlike a real honeymoon it had been. The city of eternal beauty, with the blue gloom of stagnant water, and the white façades of palaces splashed with red geraniums, the magnolia scent and the music of the Serenata, were all the accompaniment to a passionate emotion, not the feelings that she had had for Max. That had not been romance really, but a St. Martin’s summer for Max and an unawakened spring for herself. That first taste of spring, which comes one February day when the snowdrops are in flower and there is a sickly yellow sun peering o
ut upon the grey branches of the elms with their pink flowers and promising something that will be lovely with the bluebells, with warmth and life to come.

  Nothing more than that.

  She crossed the Channel in a flat calm. Piers had taken her big luggage with him and she had only her little case with nothing to add to the confusion. The customs at Calais eyed her dubiously. She got into her corner seat in the train and curled up there. She could manage, of course, and the time would soon pass. Piers had thought she might find the journey dreadful, but she did not think that it could be so, and anyway the arrival in Malta would make up for everything.

  There was the first night in the sleeper, with the French train racketing along, noisy and very dirty. She awoke in the morning with a horrible taste of soot in her mouth, the consciousness of smuts flying about the place, and the knowledge that she had at no time been really absolutely unconscious. The day seemed to be abnormally long, because she had read all the papers that she had bought in Dover, and the news offered at the stations she stopped at was no fresher. She had eaten her chocolates, and now it seemed to be too hot to knit. It was rapidly getting warmer.

  In the dining-car she met a young American who was going to Italy, and they talked together, so that she managed to dispose of the next few hours. He told her the complete history of his life, which seemed to have been unconscionably dull, even though he was a film producer, and had had two Reno divorces, and was hoping to get a third.