by Martin Boyd
“Is it less treacherous to carry on with that woman behind my back?”
“I do not wish to leave you,” said Wolfie. “I have loved you all.”
“You don’t consider us.”
The argument, as Diana knew it would, went right away from the point. She crumpled the paper with her notes into a ball and threw it into the wastepaper basket. Wolfie told her she was like a governess. He became reckless and boasted about Mrs Montaubyn.
“That is why I seek her,” he said. “She is warm, generous, a true woman.”
“You need a governess to keep you clean,” said Diana bitterly. “You couldn’t catch a train without one. But I’m not going to bother any more to keep you clean to go off to disreputable women.”
Then, as they continued to bicker, they fell into the idiom of their private conversation, Diana using inadvertently though ironically certain witticisms which were family jokes, and something began to happen. Their entangled fibres, those long-established tendrils of feeling began to assert themselves, and they made irrelevant whatever words they flung at each other. Diana was afraid to stay with him, lest the whole discussion should dissolve in emotion. She knew that this was the only opportunity she would ever have to escape from her long exploitation into the kind of life which until now had seemed an impossible dream, and she must not risk losing it. She made a gesture of exasperation and went to her room.
The next afternoon she met Russell at the Gallery. There were not many people about and they met in one of the side galleries where they were not likely to be interrupted. Russell looked at her with affectionate concern and asked: “Any developments?” She compared his attitude with Wolfie’s, whose demonstrations of affection were almost entirely a form of self-expression.
“Only in my own mind,” said Diana.
“What are they?”
“I told Wolfie I wanted a divorce. He just let out a stream of emotion, pleadings and reproaches. I knew he would. I even made notes beforehand on a piece of paper, so that I could keep him to the point, as if I were going to address a public meeting. But it was useless. He won’t hear of a divorce. I don’t know the legal situation. Can I divorce him on the strength of that woman?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so,” said Russell. “I think he’d have to desert you as well.”
“He has about as much intention of deserting me as a limpet.”
“Then what are the developments in your own mind?”
“I’ll tell you, but I don’t know what you’ll think of them. You asked me to go away with you, but you didn’t say when or how. We didn’t think of any details.”
“No, but that’s what we’re to do now, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Well I thought the obvious thing was for me to divorce Wolfie. But apart from the legal side I don’t see how it’s possible. How can you divorce someone who insists on living with you in your house? But even that isn’t the real difficulty. Supposing that I could obtain the divorce, it would take a year, wouldn’t it, before I was free?”
“I imagine something like that.”
“What could I do for that time? I can’t go on living at the Brighton house with Wolfie, and he won’t leave it. I would have to take a flat somewhere. It would all be confused and ludicrous. And then if, during that year we met frequently, that might affect the divorce proceedings, mightn’t it?”
“I suppose it might.” Russell looked a little pale. “Do you mean you want to call it off?” he asked diffidently.
“No. Oh, no!” exclaimed Diana. “I wasn’t leading up to that at all. It’s only that I want to tell you everything. Please don’t misunderstand anything I say. I don’t think you will, that’s one of your attractions.” She smiled. “You can’t think what a great relief it is to speak to a rational mind. This is what I want to say—the thing I hope you won’t misunderstand. But you must know it if we are to be together. It is not easy for me to make this break. It is in a way chopping off a limb. I mean because of the children and all my friends and associations here; but I am ready to do it because I want to be with you. All the rest of me will be more alive, and it will be worth the limb, but I want it chopped off sharply, not slowly torn away, with each separate ligament yielding its full capacity of pain.”
“Then?” asked Russell.
“You said would I go away with you. I don’t know if its unwomanly of me to ask you—Wolfie said I was unwomanly—but did you mean now?”
“I mean as soon as you possibly could.”
“I hoped you meant that; that is what I want to do. But I thought that you might want things arranged so that we remained—well—respectable.”
“You don’t think I would give up a year of life with you for respectability?” He meant this, but also he was enjoying the prospect of giving society a slap in the face. He had made too many sacrifices to it and he felt that this would restore his manhood. He was tired of hearing old ladies say that he was such a nice man.
“But you have so much to lose—in that way, I mean.”
“My dear, I have nothing,” exclaimed Russell. “You will be sacrificing real things for me. I shall only be giving up rubbish for you. I wish I could give up something real. I only gain it.”
She felt a wave of gratitude to him for his apparent understanding of what it would mean to her to break with her home and family, and his complete absence of resentment at her mentioning it.
“You don’t mind my being logical, or trying to be?”
“Mind it! I love your understanding and your clear-sightedness. If you only knew the relief I have in talking to you,” said Russell.
“But I have the same relief with you.”
“Our minds were turned out of the same mould.”
“I’m sorry that there are so many complications attached to me.”
“You mustn’t think that. Anyhow, Andromeda wouldn’t have been such a prize if she hadn’t been chained to the rock.” They laughed. “You are exactly what I came out to Australia to find,” he added.
“Did you come to Australia to find someone?” asked Diana.
“I didn’t realize it, but I believe that is what I did.”
“Why did you have to come out here?”
“I’ve told you. I wanted someone of my own kind. I’m not really English, you see.”
“We’re getting back to spiritual homes. Where will ours be?”
“Where we are together,” he said. She made a gesture of assent.
Opposite where they were sitting was a painting called “Winter Sunlight” by Walter Withers. It was of a little white wooden farmhouse on a grassy hill.
“That is the Australia I love,” he said.
“So do I, but why?”
“I think because it’s pure Australia. It’s not anything else. It’s innocent. If there is to be an Australian civilization it must begin with that—not with importations.”
“Is that our place in history?”
He laughed and said: “It might be.”
“Shall we find a little house like that? In Western Australia perhaps?”
“We couldn’t live there, because when we found that we were peasants we’d try to show that we were intellectually superior to the other peasants. We’re both European. For us this tie has never been cut. There are Australians whose life has begun here. They’re the true Australians. They’ve never known anything else. Our sort are just carrying on the kind of life they brought with them. It’s better to go back to the source.
“But you wanted a chef in the Fitzroy Gardens?”
“That was before I knew you properly.”
“Am I a substitute for the chef?”
“You will be sometimes, I suppose,” he said, chaffing her.
They talked about food for a little while, what she could cook, then Russell said:
“Listen. We must make our plans. If we’re not careful we’ll never get anywhere, because whenever we meet, we just talk.”
“I know,” said Diana. “It�
�s because I’ve been gagged for years. And I love talking to you.”
“I love it too, it’s wonderful. We have years ahead; now we must arrange to secure them.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I began about the chef.”
She continued to explain to him her situation. She really supported her family, as Wolfie’s earnings were small and he spent them exclusively on himself. Harry was now practically earning his own living on the station in Queensland where he was a jackeroo, but she might have to give him some capital later. Daisy was married to one of the Bynghams, a painter. They were dreadfully poor and she had to give her an allowance. Then Josie had to have an allowance and she could not leave Wolfie entirely dependent on his own resources. As she said this, she gave Russell an anxious glance. Would he object to all this, she asked him. She could keep about a third of her income, which would be enough she hoped to prevent her being an expense to him. He looked at her with gentle surprise.
“Why shouldn’t you be an expense to me?” he asked. “I want you to be. I want to give you beautiful things. I shall be so proud of you. And we are to be married.”
“Yes, but until then I thought … I don’t know. Perhaps I’m a little puritanical after all.”
“Your attitude is absolutely unpuritanical,” he said. “It has no trace of the righteous meanness of the puritan.”
“You take all my problems as if they were your own.”
“They are my own.”
“The cut-off limb is not yours. You should be free.”
“I don’t want the amputation to hurt you.”
“When I’m with you I shan’t feel it. I don’t feel it now, except for Josie,” she added.
Josie, she thought, was her most difficult problem. The two girls loved Wolfie, as he had shown them playful affection since childhood. Daisy now had her husband, but it would be a dreadful blow to Josie if her parents were divorced, and in those days divorce was also a social cataclysm. Harry would be shocked but not hurt in the same way. All the respectability that should have been spread evenly over the family seemed to be concentrated in him, and he despised his father because he was not commonplace. She tried to think that in the long run it might be better for Josie to live with her and Russell in an orderly and civilized household in Europe, than with Wolfie sinking into more careless bohemianism. She did not like using money in this way, but she thought that she might make it a condition of the settlements that Josie was to live with her. She asked Russell if he would mind, if say in a year’s time, Josie joined them in Europe.
“No, I would like that,” he said. He had been very taken with Josie on the few occasions he had seen her, at the Radcliffes’, at Arthur’s and at the ball, and thought it would be nice to have an attractive girl about whatever house they might have.
“Well, I think we’ve cleared a lot of ground,” said Diana with relief.
“Yes. Now we have to decide when we’ll go.”
“I’ll have to see how long it will take me to fix things. Two or three weeks, I suppose. Would that be too soon?”
“I could go tomorrow. I’m very lightly settled here.”
Diana felt that even if all her affairs were in order she could not leave so suddenly. In one way she wanted to be off as soon as possible, as she felt treacherous staying in the house and knowing her intention. But she needed a little time to accustom herself to the idea—to brace herself.
They arranged to meet again on the following Monday. Then Josie would have gone to Warrandyte and would be away a fortnight. Wolfie had shown no change of attitude. His manner was wounded and aloof, and yet she felt that all the time he had an eye on her, ready to melt in reconciliation. She told Russell that she found living under these conditions a strain and that she was going up for a week to Westhill. While there she would ask Steven to drive her over to Warrandyte to spend a day with Josie. He and Laura would want to go to see Brian’s new studio. From there she would return to Brighton, say on Wednesday week. Would Saturday be a good day for them to go? She often gave the servants that night off, as Wolfie was always in Melbourne then. Josie would be away until the Monday.
They discussed the details of their departure, and finally decided that he should call for her in his car at about seven o’clock on the Saturday. She would spend the night alone at the George, a respectable hotel in St Kilda, in those days a sort of equivalent of Brown’s Hotel in London, and they would set out in the morning by car for Adelaide where they would take a ship for Naples. He would book the passages.
“I wish this fortnight was over,” said Diana. “It will be dreadful saying good-bye to Josie, without telling her that it’s for so long.”
“A year soon passes,” said Russell.
“Yes. And it will be a wonderful year.”
CHAPTER NINE
On the Saturday ten days after the ball, there was a dinner party at Government House in honour of the prince. Sometimes, on the invitation cards sent to Cousin Sophie were the words “and the Misses Langton” but on other occasions, as for this dinner party, only one Miss Langton was invited. When this happened the twins took it in turn. For this dinner it was Cynthia’s turn, but in spite of its being such an exceptionally desirable invitation, she gave her option to Anthea because of Freddie Thorpe. Although the twins put on such a tremendous façade of assurance to the world, in the virginal privacy of their rooms they made these little adjustments and subterfuges. Before a party of cultivated people where they were anxious to sparkle, they mugged up their Rochefoucauld in a book of quotations beforehand.
Anthea was not very satisfied with her place at the dinner. Sir Roland’s gold plate was magnificent but it could not be stretched to serve everyone at such a large party, and she was at the end of the table where people had to eat off mere china, though this was blue and gold Worcester. There had been some competition to sit next to her, but if she had known the reasons for it she would not have been very gratified.
Freddie went to Lord Francis and asked to take her in. Lord Francis said that he would see what he could do. Then John came and asked for the same privilege and as Lord Francis liked John better than Freddie, and as he thought Anthea too good to be married to Freddie for her money, although for a moment’s idle amusement he had given him his rather misleading information about that, he put her beside John, who had only asked for the place so that he could find out more about Josie. He began by asking about myself, who he knew was Josie’s first-cousin. This astonished Anthea, especially when he said that he would like to meet me again.
“That’s easy enough,” she said. “If you come to supper tomorrow he’ll be there. He’s one of our tame dogs, and always comes on Sunday night.”
Beside having to eat off china, and having John instead of Freddie next to her, Anthea had another disappointment during the evening. Lord Saltash was at last introduced to her. He looked at her in terror and at the first opportunity escaped. This was because when he had been introduced to Cynthia, she, anxious to show the high standard of Australian culture, had asked him: “Do you think that if Fénelon’s pupil, the duc de Bourgogne, had come to the throne, the course of French history would have been different?” Anthea did not know this, and behind her façade her pride bled a little, but she had spirit, and she made jokes about the elusiveness of peers.
The chief attraction at the twins’ on Sunday night, apart from the pink apples of their cheeks, were the charades which we acted after supper. If Mr Hemstock was present, these were very cultured and portrayed incidents of Greek mythology. At other times they were ribald lampoons of our relatives. Cousin Sophie and any visitors good naturedly allowed themselves to be dragged from her sitting-room to guess the word, probably something like “Archimedes” or “palinode”.
On the night after the Government House dinner, when John Wyckham was present, Anthea had thought out a rather indelicate theme which she called “putting salt on the tail of Lord Potash”
. It described the efforts of Cousin Edward to lure a young peer into the bower of his beautiful daughters. I was forced by the twins, much against my will, to act the part of their father. Unfortunately, as when I danced with Mrs Montaubyn, I did it very well. When the charade was over, Cousin Sophie said severely:
“Am I to understand, Guy, that you were impersonating your host?”
I do not know whether Cousin Sophie had any Teutonic blood, but this was another example of inexact justice. She thought it in very bad taste for the twins in the presence of an A.D.C. to do a charade illustrating their wish to acquire aristocratic English husbands, but she did not want to emphasize it by reproving them, so she turned on me. As it happened John was much too modest to compare himself with a member of the House of Lords, and he thought the charade very funny, which it was.
The twins did not own up that they had forced me into the part, not from cowardice, but because they thought the injustice of Cousin Sophie’s rebuke amusing. I stood revealed as a horrible little cad, and imagining it would be unforgivable to put the blame on others, my chivalry again led me into disgrace.
John, who knew what had happened, came over to me and said with great friendliness:
“When are you coming to show me the way to Warrandyte?”
My face was suffused with gratitude, and I exclaimed:
“Oh, I can go any day. At least any Saturday.”
The twins laughed at my humiliation at having to admit that I went to the city every day, though Cousin Edward had to do the same, whereas neither my father nor any of my uncles had ever been into an office in their lives, unless it was to ask a lawyer to arrange a mortgage. But the twins never bothered about their own plate-glass windows when they heaved their bricks.
“We can show you the way,” said Anthea. “You needn’t wait till Saturday.”
“Saturday would be the most convenient day for me,” said John. This did not prevent the twins from attaching themselves to the excursion, which they imagined, as I did, was simply to satisfy John’s curiosity about “the sad saplings” mentioned by Lady Pringle. He gave this impression. He did not appear very pleased at having to include the twins.