by Ursula Bloom
‘I prefer to be very quiet,’ said Dinah with truth.
‘Oh, where you are is impossible, and you can’t stay there. Piers, you must teach her differently. I am quite sure that your mother would not like it.’
‘Well, she’s her own mistress,’ said Piers challengingly, and there was an odd tone in his voice and a twinkle in his eye. Dinah recognised both, and so of course did Mrs. James.
‘There’s something queer about those two,’ she told her husband when they started back in their carrozzi. ‘You mark my words. We haven’t heard the end of that. He is up to no good, and neither is she, I’ll be bound.’
‘You never think the best of people. Be neighbourly, my dear, do try to be neighbourly,’ said Mr. James.
Not for the world would he have told his wife that he was perfectly convinced that she was correct.
6
Dinah asked about Piers’ mother. There was so much to discuss, so much that she wanted to know, and now seemed to be the time. It seemed that his father was a rich merchant in the North of England.
‘He was very strict,’ said Piers as they drove home in leisurely fashion. ‘He was devoted to Cedric, my eldest brother. I always felt that I did it on them, as I ought to have been a girl. Still, he liked me being in the Navy, thought that was classy, I suppose. Mother is a bit prudish. They are in the North.’
‘What are they going to say to all this?’
‘They aren’t going to know, my lamb, not until it is all over, and then they’ll have to make the best of it. You bet I’m keeping it nice and dark.’
‘But we can’t go on doing that for always.’
‘We can for a bit. The thing to do is to keep the old man’s nose from the trail; I’m talking about the skipper. It’s a pity that woman James turned up, because she’s a talker; still, I suppose that it had to happen sooner or later.’
‘She can talk for all I care; nothing can alter the fact that we love one another,’ said Dinah tremulously, ‘and that we are going to be married and shall be tremendously happy.’
‘That we are tremendously happy, my pretty,’ he corrected her, and lifting her hands kissed them. ‘What’s more, I don’t care a damn who sees,’ he said.
TWO
1
As an island, Dinah would have loved Malta, but there was this unpleasant feeling that she was always under a cloud. She did not dare see too much of Piers, in case their names became linked together, and the hours away from him lagged terribly. The climate was difficult. She had that unsettled feeling which made it difficult to concentrate. She tried to read through Chritien’s lending library, but somehow she had lost interest in books. She found that she could not sew.
‘You’ll get over it,’ said Piers pleasantly; ‘after all, six months is a long time, and you’ll find your bearings before long.’
She did not like to admit that it was not easy to find one’s bearings in this languorous island. Mornings with breakfast in bed, dawdling down and sitting about the rather evil little lounge, whilst Giuseppe put lime and lemon at her elbow and talked of his religious rites, and secret family matters. Afternoons when it was too hot to go out, and she dozed. Evenings which were incredibly lonely, or wonderful because Piers had come ashore.
In Brackley’s she met Mrs. James again, choosing sticky sweet cakes, and being pernickety because she was having an ‘afternoon’ and the Maltese maid had no idea about cakes.
‘Supposing that we had a cup of coffee together?’ she suggested.
‘I’d like it,’ said Dinah.
They went up a small un-café-like stairway into a plain square room above, formally arranged with tables at stated intervals. Mrs. James had made up her mind to find out something more definite about Dinah. Nothing abashed her in the attempt. She had labelled Piers’ new friend as ‘fishing fleet’ and could not think what she was doing in the island at this time of year when the waters should have been well and truly fished, the defeated going back to London, the others staying on duly married at the English church.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ said Mrs. James brightly over the coffee and the pink cakes.
‘I don’t think there is anything to tell.’
‘Come, come,’ said Mrs. James, who hated women who had nothing to tell, ‘I am sure there is. Where do you live, and what is your husband?’
‘Max has never “been” anything,’ said Dinah slowly.
‘Dear me, how extraordinary!’ Quickly Mrs. James assessed the pearl necklet and the diamond clasps and watch. Rich, she thought, quite obviously well off, and with income tax at what it is too! ‘And where do you live?’
‘We’ve got a cottage in Buckinghamshire.’
This was indiscreet of Dinah, for Mrs. James had been born and bred in Leighton Buzzard, which ‘wasn’t far from Buckinghamshire when you came to think about it’. Her people lived in the neighbourhood, and it was quite obvious that she would think it her duty to write to her mamma at Leighton Buzzard and make enquiries. Leighton Buzzard being what it is, extraordinarily dull, and her mamma being like her daughter with a nose for news that would have won her bays in Fleet Street but won her oaths in her immediate vicinity instead, it was now plain that enquiries would be set afoot. Mamma would tattle back the whole scandal.
‘Of course we don’t stay much in Buckinghamshire, we are in Hampstead most of the time,’ said Dinah, showing strategy, because she appreciated the fact that Hampstead, being more crowded, takes closer raking through for news than does Buckinghamshire. It would be more difficult to locate anybody there.
‘Oh!’ said Mrs. James with disappointment.
They talked. Dinah knew that it was a most difficult and unpleasant morning because she had to be so careful all the time. Mrs. James was defeated on every point, but when she got back to Sliema she did write to her mamma, and stressed emphatically that there was something peculiar afoot and she simply must know what it was.
The evening was difficult too, for Piers came ashore, and they sat in the Hastings Gardens together, watching the sun sink over the ramparts. There was a dance taking place shortly on board the Lion, and Piers was on the committee, so that he was finding it difficult to come ashore.
She said, ‘You’ll let me come?’ tentatively, because she was sure that he would ask her, never for a moment supposing that he could refuse.
‘I would, of course, it’ll be foul for me at the dance without you, but the trouble is I’m scared stiff of the skipper twigging something. He has a nose for gossip like an anteater for ants!’
‘But what could be wrong in my coming?’
‘Nothing, save that I’d have to introduce you round. He has not a ghost of an idea that we are doing this, and I must keep him off it, because he’d send me home for a dead cert if he got wind of it, and then what would you do?’
‘But the dance …?’ She heard her voice falter, and had the feeling that he was thinking of her as a pariah. It was a clumsy but enfolding inferiority complex that bewildered her.
‘Now don’t make a fuss, there’s a pretty! It isn’t easy for me having to be so darned careful when all the time you know it will be a deadly dull affair for me without you.’
‘I can’t see why I can’t come.’
‘Can’t you? If you wait a bit until all this blows over, you shall come to every dance there is. Does that satisfy you?’
‘Not particularly, when I want to come to this one.’
‘Now don’t let’s quarrel.’
‘Of course not.’
‘You women are always so aggravating; you have to pick a fellow up, and set him down again.’
‘Please Piers, that isn’t it,’ she said; but she knew that the evening was already spoilt.
She did go to the dance. Mr. James met her in Strada Reale one day when she had inadvertently hesitated for but the fraction of a second to glance at some coffee sets displayed in an Indian window. The Indian, who had been picking his teeth with a porcupine quill behind a Spanish shaw
l, sprang out with the idea of luring her in. He always hid like a spider in his web, and managed to effect a great deal of custom this way. Mr. James saw this happen, and as he particularly disliked the pestering methods of insistent Indians, he crossed Reale to help her. ‘I shall see you at the dance, of course?’ he said, when the Indian had retired back to his porcupine quill.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘But why not? Surely you are coming as Grant’s guest? If not, I’ll take you myself! Why not come with our party? It’s small, but select, and consequently rather dull, I’m afraid. I’d see after you. Come whether you dance, or don’t dance; I won’t take nay for an answer.’
Dinah had wanted to go so much that she found she had accepted the invitation before she knew where she was. She had the feeling that, if she went with the Jameses, it would not put the Captain on the scent, as it would merely suggest that she knew other people beside Piers, and was not solely his friend.
Piers heard about it that evening. He came in to see her at the little hotel because he had had a letter from Max. Max had also written a letter to her without a word of remonstrance, giving details of the divorce proceedings which were temporarily suspended. The cause had been filed too late for the Michaelmas term, which meant that they must wait until the Hilary term when there would be a chance of getting it into the list about March. He apologised for this, as though it were something that he had done wrong; he pointed out that the wheels of God ground slowly, but nothing like so slowly as the wheels of the law. He would do everything that he could to hurry matters, and if the case was heard in March, the decree would be made absolute about September. It put marriage somewhere about ten months ahead. This had been a shock to both of them, who had thought that the case might be heard before Christmas, and marriage would then have been possible in June.
‘Here’s a rotten go!’ said Piers.
‘We’ll stick it out somehow,’ she urged. She felt that in some measure this was her fault, and was so sorry for the agitation that she must inflict on him, that she knew she ought to try to help him as best she could. ‘It’ll be all right.’
‘I’m damned if it is all right! What silly laws they are, and who the devil invented them? Why should I hang about for a year waiting to make an honest woman of you? By that time every Malt in the island will know about us.’
‘I don’t see why. It will be all right! Surely if the divorce is going through, and we intend to be married in the long run, people will understand?’
‘They won’t! It makes it so deucedly awkward just now. I suppose you shouldn’t have come out here really, but we were so impetuous, and so much in love, we didn’t think. Why should people in love stop to think, damn it?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘they shouldn’t.’ She put an arm round him. ‘Now for my news! I’m coming to the dance with the Jameses party!’
He set his head on one side, his eyes twinkling at the joke. ‘Well, upon my Sam! Who’d have thought it of those poor fish, encouraging the scarlet woman! I think that it may be a good thing, for the public may then think that you must be all right because the Jameses have taken you up. Perhaps it’s a wise move!’
She wished he had not put it that way, but she could not afford to quibble. She ought to be delighted that he did not criticise more closely, for she had found already that Piers was far more critical of details than Max had ever been; Max had learnt patience in the hard school of life and experience, and youth always takes matters more impulsively.
She ordered a new dress from London, an expensive dress, because she wanted to do Piers credit; it was to be of gold lamé, soft and supple, with freesias on the shoulders, and she knew that she would look young and girlish in it, and quite different from the usual Naval wife who, having been in Malta a couple of years, has grown tired of a life so beset by sand-flies and goat’s milk and fever. She wanted to look her best.
2
Dinah put off in a picket boat for the dance. There was something mysterious about it, as though she were entering a new world with the sound of the water, and the ship built for war now so titivated for peace. There were flowers and flags; an absurd little lighthouse one side with a beam of light circling round; a diver’s suit, bulbous and stiff; a pond with ferns about it, and three most melancholy-looking ducks, paddling feverishly in an attempt to find their way back to the Hamrun pond from which they had been hired. She could hardly believe that it was a ship at all, it looked so changed.
As she walked across the quarter-deck she felt exhilarated. The last few weeks in Malta had been so dull because of the hanging cloud, and the sense of inferiority it had induced in her. Although Mrs. James had asked her to tea, and to the club, she had not been able to accept because Piers advised her strongly against it. ‘The less you know of the lovely ladies, my pretty,’ said Piers, ‘the better for our peace of mind. They can’t help talking, and when they talk the feathers fly. They’re made that way. Wait till we are really married, then we’ll have our time.’ But it had been terribly dull. Accompanying it there had been the sense of youth being expended so wastefully on emptiness, of aching for the atmosphere which was her right. This was the atmosphere she ought to have had all along.
She began to dance. The marine band was grouped tastefully in a corner with a good many flags, and a bandmaster in a disconcertingly tight tunic, standing acutely to attention, and waving a baton which was completely disregarded by the band.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ she asked the young man she was dancing with, who was a self-confessed poodle-faker.
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a marine band called lovely. I have heard them called a lot of other things; once upon a time in the Royal Oak ‒ but perhaps you’ve heard about that.’
‘To a woman a ship is most romantic.’
‘Yes, and that’s how most of us get here. Our mothers fancy us in sailor suits ‒ “He looks such a little man” ‒ and once into the damned things, we’re in them for keeps.’
‘But surely you wanted to join the Navy? It was your own idea?’
He said, ‘Almost. My uncle gave me a tin steamer for Christmas, and I thought I could play with battleships the same way. It just shows you where a single mistake can lead you.’ And he touched her hair with his hand, apparently by accident.
Now Max and Buckinghamshire seemed to be a million miles away, a whole world had risen in between, and she refused to think of them. They went to the taffrail and stood there staring down into the water, which enfolded the ship darkly like a jewel, very still.
‘Why haven’t we met before?’ asked the young man whose career had been diverted into Naval channels by the gift of a tin steamer. ‘Where are you staying?’
She told him.
‘Good heavens! What a place to pick! Why on earth are you hiding your light under a bushel there? Do you know many people?’
‘No, I’m staying here quietly. I left my husband in England and just came for a trip.’
‘Then you’re married? That’s a pity; still, he’s a long way off,’ and the young man’s arm went round Dinah.
‘Please, I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘I’d rather I did.’
She said, ‘I have some friends here, friends who are on board, and I wouldn’t like them to see …’
He laughed at that. ‘If you are thinking of old Ma James and the Padre, you needn’t worry yourself. She always pulls everybody’s character to shreds, and she’ll write to your husband anyhow, whatever you do. The Padre is sporting. He knows what chaps are like and winks the other eye. Nice here, isn’t it?’
Now he had come very close indeed to her, and his arm was round her. Dinah felt bewildered. She had had no experience of this sort of thing; her only other experience had been with Keith, and that affair seemed to be a hundred years ago. She did not know what to do. It was the absurd result of having lived in a backwater and suddenly having this situation thrust upon her.
She did not see Piers, had no idea of
his approach until she heard him speak. ‘Hell!’ said Piers. She saw him standing there, his face gone darker, his eyes without any twinkles, looking rather like a summer sky glowering before a thunderstorm.
The young man moved but little. ‘Oh, hello!’ said he. He was happily oblivious of the fact that Piers was Dinah’s lover, and thought of him merely as the odious butter-in on a flirtation. He was moderately vexed, but naturally thought that Piers would see what had happened and would make off. Piers did nothing of the sort. He came closer, took hold of the other man’s arm, which had been draped about Dinah’s waist, and pushed it aside.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said, and linking his arm in Dinah’s led her away. She did not have to look back to realise that the other was staring after her as though he could not believe what had happened.
Piers took her to a sitting-out place, where an imitation arbour had been set, trailed over with clematis and small, yellow, sweet-smelling roses, with a rustic seat under them. She turned to Piers, and now she could see that the colour had gone from his face; he no longer looked dark, but greenly pale, as though he were really ill.
‘Why did you encourage that little toad?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t encourage him.’
‘He is the fastest man in the ship, but, all the same, men don’t behave like that unless they have had sufficient encouragement for them to realise that the ground is safe. You stood there letting him put his arm round your waist.’
‘Piers!’ She had not expected him to behave like a sulky schoolboy, and somehow now the explanation seemed to sound foolish. ‘You are talking nonsense! I did not do anything, it was merely that I couldn’t stop him. He was asking about Max.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I just said that Max was in England. You don’t seem to realise that mine is a very difficult position. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Mine is a much more difficult position than yours. Max is going to divorce you anyway; that doesn’t matter so much. What will matter is if I get linked up with this and the skipper gets ratty. That’s the snag.’