by John Bingham
Now I had power over the happiness and well-being of another suddenly thrust upon me. Unthinkingly, I had built up a responsibility for another’s joy or sorrow; somebody, moreover, who could not hit back or defend herself; Kate was not the type to make a late marriage, and even if she were, the circumstances of her life were such as to make it unlikely that she would meet many men. So there she was, to make or break.
These thoughts did not occur to me clearly at that moment. They have been clarified and simplified with the passage of time. But in a confused and unformed state they were agitating within me as I sat beside her. I felt no pleasure, but I sensed a sudden renewed uprush of compassion for her on account of her loneliness, her defencelessness, her miserable, circumscribed ambitions, the little with which she had to be content, and the narrowness of the knife-edge on which even that little was balanced.
I made up my mind as to what I would do, but I had to be careful, for I did not wish her pleasure to be in any way lessened by the thought that I was solely actuated by the sight of her tears. I offered her another cigarette and asked casually if her father was very strict about what she did. She looked surprised at the question.
“No; I don’t think he is anything out of the ordinary.”
“That’s good.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Some parents are still pretty strait-laced, even in these days. I was just wondering, Kate.”
“He doesn’t see much of me, so he can’t be very concerned,” she said with just a touch of bitterness.
“Is he expecting you to spend some of your holidays with him?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it, Mike.”
“What I had in mind,” I said after a short pause, “was the third week of my holiday. I was wondering if we could wangle it so we spent it together somewhere. Perhaps you could even come on the two weeks’ cruise with me. I could contribute towards your fare. I’d like to do so. I’d like you to come with me, Kate. Would you like that, Katie?”
There are certain supreme moments in a lifetime which you look back upon with joy, whatever the subsequent events. I recall now with thankfulness the happiness I gave Kate during those few moments that evening. I can still see her eyes, half-filled with tears, but with tears of joy now, blazing back at me with such a light as I had never seen in a woman’s eyes before. Her lips were half-parted and the blood had rushed into her rather colourless cheeks. A less ingenuous girl might have made some attempt to be casual. I looked at her and smiled. On a sudden impulse I bent down and kissed her.
“Well, what about it? You haven’t given me your answer.”
“Do you really mean it?”
“Of course I mean it, Katie.” I put my arm round her waist and squeezed her affectionately. She said nothing, made no movement, but continued to stare into the gas fire. At length she turned and looked at me and said, “I cannot think of a more heavenly idea. But why did you suggest it, Mike, dear? Tell me the truth.”
It was another of those questions which have to be answered smoothly and at once, without the slightest hesitation. I saw her looking at me seriously, anxiously. Somehow the thought of causing her any diminution of her joy was intolerable, and in a flash, the reflex logical reaction to make her happier still overcame me. It was madness and it could have had the most cruel consequences, but I hardly hesitated.
“Why do you think, Katie, dearest?” I said, and kissed her full on the lips.
She clung to me for a long time, returning my kisses with a passion, an abandon even, of which I had not thought her capable.
Kate was slimmer and smaller than Cynthia. I could hold her more easily. Her mouth was larger, her lips softer; her skin amazingly smooth. Cynthia kissed fiercely, with primitive enthusiasm, with her body as well as her mouth, with her basic instincts. Kate was quieter, more feline, more sinuous. Both had fire. But Kate fed the fire with her spiritual emotions.
It is true that when love has turned to pity it has lost its meaning, but it is false to declare, as some do, that love cannot grow out of pity in the first instance. A man may very easily find himself being friendlily disposed to a woman because he is sorry for her, and through his association with her discover qualities and attractions which at first he had not noticed. In the end he may fall in love with her.
I took Kate out at first because her forlornness and her loneliness made me pity her. In a sudden mood of quixotic sentiment, because her tears moved me as they might not have moved a man more experienced with women, and doubtless because I was not really in love with Cynthia, I suggested that Kate and I spend part of our holidays together.
I realized all that that implied concerning Cynthia. I knew I was acting shabbily towards her. It was clear that it would have been kinder to have told Cynthia before leaving Palesby that she should not regard marriage as certain, since either of us might fall in love with somebody else while we were separated. That would have been quite reasonable, too. But I did not have the moral courage to do so. I had acted with her as I had so far acted with Prosset: I had been vacillating and weak.
It was only when I found Kate’s feelings were involved, and that either she or Cynthia was going to get hurt, that I was prodded into action. Of the two, I knew that Cynthia could take care of herself in the long run, and Kate could not. I had little by little become for Kate the refuge, the harbour, the warmth in the whole world, representing in some measure that for which Ackersley had shot himself and Geoffries had been hanged.
Had there been other men in Kate’s little world, even acquaintances, I might have thought that I was conceited. But there was nobody. I was not much, but I was all she had.
It was strange how she changed, almost from the evening when I first really kissed her, for I do not count the earlier diffident kisses of our extreme youth. It was as though something within her had been unfrozen, so that she suddenly blossomed out into a warm, responsive girl; her movements quickened, she laughed easily, and from a rather serious-minded lover of books about the eighteenth century she became gay and increasingly able to hold her own in badinage. Her looks improved and she spent some of the money she had saved on new clothes, visits to the hairdresser and to the manicurist. She began to buy cut flowers for her room, instead of being content with a dull-looking fern in a pot, and even took to using a cigarette holder because, I suspect, she thought it looked more attractive.
I fell deeply in love with Kate.
We resolved to get married in the following August. You could get little flats easily in London at that time, and we decided that about June we would start looking around for one.
But there was still Cynthia.
I spent the best part of an evening writing to Cynthia, drafting and redrafting the letter. I might just as well have saved myself the trouble and written a short, simple note. However you wrap these things up, they amount to the same in the end, and what they amount to is that you have changed your mind and fallen in love with somebody else. No amount of camouflage can disguise the fact that it is the most terrible slap in the face which a man can give a woman.
For some days I received no reply.
I envisaged the possibility that she was consulting her solicitor with a view to a breach of promise action, for which she certainly had ample evidence.
But I underestimated that practical, common-sense character of hers. I have no doubt that after calm, cool reflection she decided that, as she was still young and good-looking, the amount of damages she would get would hardly compensate her for the humiliation which a court case would bring her. In due course I received an envelope from her. Inside was a thin gold bracelet I had once given her. There was nothing else. No letter, not even a signature.
But in her bitterness Cynthia remained essentially herself: she had registered the letter. It would have been against her nature to risk a valuable thing like a good gold bracelet getting lost in the post.
One early evening, after visiting my Aunt Edith, this time with Kate, I
turned the car right at the main road to drive towards Kensington, with some idea of seeing whether there was a good film showing at the Odeon. I heard a car horn sounding two or three times and pulled over further to the left to let the driver pass. I was aware that an old Alvis went by. The driver accelerated until he was a couple of hundred yards ahead of me and pulled in to the kerb. He opened his door and signalled me to stop.
I had seen Prosset three or four times since the evening I had spent with him at the pub in Chelsea, but never with Kate.
There was nothing for it but to stop and have a word with him. I did not wish to do so. I knew that before we parted he would somehow manage to show me in an unfavourable light in front of Kate. It might not even be done deliberately. It might be only a question of competition, a challenge to show himself a better man than me in front of a third person, a woman, and Prosset could never resist a challenge of that kind or any other kind.
I pulled up behind the Alvis, and he walked up and leant over the side of the car.
“Hello, Mike, me boyo!” He shook hands perfunctorily, his eyes on Kate at my side.
“Kate,” I said, “let me introduce you to an old school friend of mine, John Prosset. John, this is Kate Marsden, my fiancée. We’re getting married in a few weeks’ time.”
“Married! My God, why didn’t you tell me about this? I never gave you permission to go and get married, Mike! Well, well, well! Congratulations, and all that. This calls for a drink.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, Kate and I are just going to see what’s on at the Odeon.”
“I can tell you. A bloody awful film called Something-or-other Melody. I’ve seen it. I advise against it. Don’t let him take you there, Kate.”
I looked uncertainly at Kate. As usual when Prosset was around I was beginning to lose a grip of the situation.
“There’s no need to appeal to her, old man. Look, madame, I put it to you frankly: I spend my best school years looking after this chap and keeping him out of trouble, and he wants to go to some lousy film instead of buying me a drink to celebrate his engagement. Is that civilized conduct? Dammit, I will lend you the money if necessary. Remind me to tell you some time, Kate, of the epic occasion when old Mike ordered a round of drinks and hadn’t got any money to pay for them, and stood at the bar blushing to the roots of his hair! That is one of my most prized memories.”
“Don’t drag me into this,” said Kate lightly. “I don’t mind what we do.” She turned to me. “But if Mr. Prosset feels strongly about it—”
“John,” said Prosset, “we might as well start right away with Christian names. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the future. All I can say is, if you won’t have a drink with me to celebrate your engagement, I shall certainly consider you no friends of mine in future, and that’s flat.”
The mind toys in retrospect with what might have been.
How delicious it would have been, what a triumph, what a recompense for the past, just to slip the gear lever into first gear and say, “That suits me to perfection,” and drive off leaving him agape in the roadway! But all I said was, “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, lead on. Where shall we go?”
That was the beginning of it as far as Kate and Prosset and I were concerned. After three or four rounds of drinks we ended up by having dinner together in some restaurant in Dean Street, and when we parted for the night it had somehow been arranged that Kate and I should come down the following weekend to his cottage in Ockleton.
I didn’t want to go, of course. But it just happened that way. Prosset had a way of making things happen as he wished. Sometimes I have wondered whether all the time he may not have been instinctively aware of what I really felt about him; whether he knew that I struggled to free myself from his influence, and that I really hated him, and that I hated him because from boyhood he had made me feel a miserable second-rater; and whether perhaps he delighted in keeping me forever on the end of a string.
I did not know for certain.
It presupposes a cat and mouse relationship and a strong streak of sadism in Prosset which it may be unjust to ascribe to him. Yet I do not know. And now I never shall know. To my mind, the barrier between this world and the next is invisible, intangible, and yet as thick and soundproof as the stoutest steel door. You may tear at the grass which grows on the grave. You may upset the headstone and beat on the coffin, but it will avail you nothing.
With bitterness and an aching heart, I could see that Kate liked Prosset just as I had liked him when first I met him with David Trevelyan. I did not blame her. I could not, for he was a type with which she had not come into contact before. There had been nobody at her office with his good looks, his high spirits, his challenging optimism; or if there had been, they had taken no notice of her. Nor did I feel able at that time to explain things to her. It was only later, under the tremendous pressure of events, that I felt myself constrained to do so.
For the moment, I could only watch, despising my own inaction, yet not knowing what course I could follow with any prospect of success. I felt numbed and helpless.
When he first invited us down to Ockleton he approached the subject by a casual question to Kate.
“Do you and Mike do much at the weekends?”
“Not much. Sometimes we go for a run in the car,” Kate had answered.
“Where are you going this weekend?”
“Nowhere, as far as I know, are we, Mike?”
“Well—” I began, but Prosset interrupted.
“Why not bring old Mike down and stay at my cottage by the sea? I’ve bought a sailing dinghy, and it may be warm enough to bathe.”
I tried to stamp on the idea at once.
“It’s always difficult for me to make a firm date,” I said slowly. “I never quite know whether the office will want me for anything. It’s one of the disadvantages of being in the newspaper racket.”
“You can give me a ring at the last moment if you can’t come,” said Prosset. “It won’t put me out at all.”
“It’s very unlikely you’ll be busy,” said Kate innocently. “You haven’t had a weekend job for months.”
“That doesn’t mean I won’t get one this weekend. In fact, by the law of averages—”
“Don’t come if you don’t want to, old man,” said Prosset, his cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips. “It’s only an idea. I thought a breath of sea air might do you good. You’re looking a bit pale and towny. Anyway, you don’t need to bathe, if you don’t want to. Kate and I can go and have a swim, if the weather’s fine, and you can cook our lunch, eh, Kate? Mike never was a great one for cold water, were you, Mike?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied uneasily. “I quite like a swim.”
“Then you must have changed. You were never one for it at school, were you?”
“Well, sometimes.”
Prosset laughed good-humouredly. “Rot, old man! Can you tell me of one instance when you suggested to David and me that we should all go for a swim?”
“Of course I can’t give you an instance, after all this time.”
“It’s not a question of how long afterwards. There never was an occasion. If there had been, I’d have remembered it! So would you, I expect, if only with regret.”
I saw Kate smiling and obviously enjoying what she considered to be his cheerful badinage.
“Well, it’s no good arguing about it,” I said.
“I wasn’t arguing,” returned Prosset, smiling broadly at Kate. “You were doing the arguing, old man. I merely made a statement, and you contradicted it, didn’t you?”
“Because it was not correct.”
“But you contradicted it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Therefore you were doing the arguing. You started it, didn’t you? Go on, admit it and apologize. He ought to apologize oughtn’t he, Kate?”
It was the school dining room all over again. Prosset showing off, thrusting and parrying,
scoring off his opponent, master of the situation and of himself, enjoying every minute of it.
“Well, how about it, old man? How about it, Kate?”
“I should love to go,” said Kate.
Prosset took a pull at his beer. “That’s fine, then! OK, Mike?”
“So long as the office isn’t tiresome at the last moment.”
Prosset dismissed the office with a wave of his hand.
“They won’t want you. Anyway, I’m on the phone there. I’ll pick you up at Kate’s place at about 2:30 on Saturday. We can all go down in my car.”
“I think we’d better drive down separately. I may have to get back to town in a hurry.”
“Oh, I’ll drive you back if they want you. What’s the point of having two cars? Anyway, Kate’ll be much more comfortable in my car.”
“Don’t you run down Mike’s car,” protested Kate.
“I wasn’t running it down. I just said you would be more comfortable in mine, and you would, wouldn’t you?”
“Perhaps I would and perhaps I wouldn’t.”
“Anyway, it’s a much faster car than Mike’s. You’ll have to buy yourself a proper car one of these days, Mike.”
“What’s happened to you?” I asked. “Things must be looking up. A different car, and a cottage by the sea.”
“Things are looking up. Don’t forget I gave you a chance to invest some cash in the firm once, Mike! You’ll be sorry you didn’t, one day. £250 would have bought you a partnership once. It will cost you more now, and if you wait much longer it’ll cost you more still.”
I shook my head. “I’m a newspaperman, not a businessman.”
Prosset smiled at Kate. His looked seemed to say: “See what I mean? No initiative. A dull, plodding type who will never do anything much because he will never take a risk. A bit different from me, eh?”