by Ursula Bloom
Yet he still wanted to many Ethel.
It was not too comfortable at Mrs. Isleworth’s. There was a certain haphazard carelessness about the meals that jarred. They were regulated and limited by a rigorous landlady’s economy. None of the chairs were comfortable. The sofa was of shiny imitation leather and did not make you really welcome. The one upholstered easy chair had a broken spring which assailed your person painfully however you sat or shifted. There was a small collapsible chair which he had only tried once. As it had then collapsed he had never dared venture into it again. The bed was bumpy, and the organ, which had at first interested him, had too many broken stops.
There was no doubt about it, he missed comfort. He was tired of lodgings.
III
Ethel decided that it was much better that they should be married at once. They must get a special licence. It was an expense, but she looked upon it as a form of investment. To Ethel it was an investment, the best that she was ever likely to make. She took the money out of the Post Office savings bank and she gave it to Twit.
‘You must get it,’ she said.
‘All right.’
‘We’ll go up to London with it and be married. We will keep it secret for the moment. I’ll come home and you’ll go to Mrs. Isleworth’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘No one will guess. Then suddenly we’ll tell Father. I don’t see how he can possibly refuse the partnership then.’
‘No.’ His brain, working feverishly, saw the force of her arguments. All chances of escape seemed to be narrowing down. With a gulp he brought out pencil and paper and set them on the table before him. It was the Stillmer dining-table, chastely veiled in good chenille. ‘You give me the details,’ he said, and there was something strange about his throat. It pricked and quivered. It was not working properly.
‘My names. They’re Ethel Mary.’
‘Yes.’ He wrote it down carefully. ‘Born October the twenty-second. What year?’
Well, anyway he’d get it now. He thought of the eighteen fifty-one Exhibition as he poised his pencil.
Ethel compressed her lips tightly. ‘That doesn’t signify. You just put “full age.” ’
‘Full age?’
He was not to be admitted into the precious secret after all. It was not that he resented her being old or stupid, but he felt that he had a right to know. Surely a husband is privileged to realise his wife’s age? He jotted down the brief outline, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
‘I’ll write for it at once.’ It seemed that the china lion winked at him audaciously.
‘We’ll go up to Town for the day?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just like that other nice time when the horrid fat man upset the tea into my new hat. I wonder what I’ll wear. Something old, and something new …’ She blushed and felt hot and confused. For, after all, marriage is the great moment in every woman’s life, be she fourteen or forty. It is the consummation of all her impulses and desires. It is the pinnacle for which she has long striven.
Twit looked at her uncomfortably. All that he remembered was the post-war song that the hurdy-gurdy in the next street churned out so dismally. It went thumping through his brain:
‘Dressed up in muslin,
What a bride you’ll be!’
And that wasn’t how he ought to be feeling. He ought to see nothing incongruous and old in Ethel. He ought not to realise that her virgin springtime had withered to a sere autumn. Yet oddly enough, as he pondered on the matter in Mrs. Isleworth’s cluttered sitting-room, he found that he liked Ethel. He liked her far more than the partnership which had been the first aureole with which he had surrounded her. He liked her for her faith in him, her adulation. All men are vain, and he had supposed that he was the exception to a prevalent rule, but he was nothing of the sort.
He pondered before the notepaper and the envelope in the Isleworth sitting-room. The penny bottle of ink and the crude pen seemed to glare at him, and on the wall was the photograph of Mr. Isleworth in his prime and the little snapshot of Mr. Isleworth in his peace.
Well, perhaps that was the best thing in life. Kensal Green and the struggle over. He drew the pen towards him and began to write. This, then, was the decisive action, this was the end ‒ or the beginning. He was uncertain which.
In that mood he wrote for the licence.
IV
In the office Arthur Simpson whistled the refrain. Arthur prided himself on his modern taste in music. He liked something ‘goey’ with a good tune in it. ‘Valencia’ had held him enthralled. ‘Some Sunday morning’ was a departure from his usual taste. It was unexpected and irritating, especially to Twit, whose wedding to Ethel was coming close.
Arthur Simpson hummed as he leant over the plan on which he was working. He hummed happily.
‘The village joker, I suppose,
Will hand us both some baby clothes
Some Sunday morning
When the church bells ring.’
It was a good thing, thought Twit, that Arthur did not know what was afoot. A veritable village joker he would have proved himself to be. Twit’s wedding to Ethel would have lent itself to all manner of doltish wit. This ill-assorted marriage would have appealed to Arthur’s strange sense of the funny, and he would have revelled in it. But Arthur did not know.
Nobody did.
The form of application for the licence had been filled up in Mrs. Isleworth’s sitting-room. Ethel had been described as a spinster of full age. She was entirely that. A correspondence had been entered into between Twit in the grim sitting-room with Ethel’s thirty pounds entrusted to his care, and the glory of Lambeth Palace. It was an entirely satisfactory correspondence from Ethel’s point of view. Meanwhile she bought her trousseau. Ethel experienced a maidenly pride in her new lingerie and her good coat frocks. A nice cambric with the best Swiss embroidery comprised her underclothes. She did not believe in crêpe-de-chine and ecru lace, yet she compromised by allowing herself blue ribbons slotted through insertions after the manner of Edwardian belles. Ethel in her heart longed to be passionate, to wear soft sheen of silk and filmy webs of lace. But her other self forbade such frippery. She did not suppose that Twit would like it either. He had never expressed himself passionately towards her. He had never been anything but a very good companion with an occasional kiss thrown in.
But to Ethel those kisses were manna in her desert. Her lips were parched for them, her soul thirsted. She dreamt of them, absorbed them, magnified them into the burning sensuous caresses which they were not. Ethel believed in Twit. She believed that in their marriage they would be radiantly happy, but she longed to get the ceremony through. She believed that something might happen to interrupt the course of their true love, and nothing must happen. Nothing at all. So Ethel urged the hour forward with all possible speed.
One mysterious Saturday morning Twit caught the nine-forty for Waterloo and waited there in the general waiting-room for Ethel. This was as she had directed him. The waiting-room was gloomy. On the highly-varnished table a thoughtful delegate from some missionary society had scattered religious pamphlets. There was no choice between the advertising matter on the walls displaying an artist’s imagination run very much riot in portraying pictures of the English seaside, and the drab religious matter scattered on the table. Twit read to the salvation of his soul. He did not feel like a bridegroom, and yet when you come to analyse it, how do bridegrooms feel?
He stood on the threshold about to step into one of his dream-castles. Yet was it a dream-castle any longer? It had grown material. It held no hint of Harlequin, of love and delight, but rather the promise of security, of achievement and a certain future. He told himself that where fools fling chance aside for a pair of bonny blue eyes, the sage acquires chance by such a means as Ethel. Yet he knew that he had missed something beautiful in the bridal emotions. Wistfully he contemplated them, as it were from afar.
When he saw Ethel coming from the train to the waiting-room, he though
t that she looked less bridal than he had expected. She had favoured blue for luck, and she could not wear blue. She looked old in the blue foulard patterned with swastikas, and the long coat with tiredly drooping snowdrops pinned in the buttonhole. Ethel had thought that the snowdrops looked virginal. When she had placed them there she had never supposed that they would die so inconveniently. She hoped that no one would notice them. Twit told himself grimly ‘flowers fade on a flirt,’ but he did not think the saying could be justified. He made a desperate effort to be natural and hailed her with:
‘Hello, Ethel!’
‘Well, Tristram, am I late? I was so afraid that there would be a fog and we should be delayed.’
‘No. We’re in good time.’
There they stood, looking at one another with a new gaucherie. She feeling that maidenly modesty was indicative of shyness, he because he felt strangely helpless.
‘What about a taxi?’ she suggested at last.
‘Yes.’
They walked across the station with its bleak lines of seats and people huddled on them, newsboys and chocolate vendors on either side. He hailed the taxi in melancholy fashion and was ashamed that his morbid fancy suddenly recalled to him the tumbrils that took the aristocrats of France to the guillotine. A nasty fit of depression had got him in its grip and he could not save himself from it even if he would.
As he got into the cab beside Ethel, he knew that if he had seen Jill approaching he would have rushed to her for protection. He would have sacrificed the partnership, liberty, all, if only she would take him back again.
But Jill was not approaching.
He realised his morbid fancy was part of his wretched makeup. He knew that he was bitterly ashamed of himself, and that he was whipping his soul forward to this marriage. It was the right thing to do. Ethel sat primly beside him, smoothing down her skirts. She was smiling faintly as though she knew that they were setting forth on the one thrilling journey of her life. Waterloo Station blurred before his eyes, the crowds merged, a wan vista of pale sky and grey London streets presented itself to him.
They drove off.
V
They were married at a small church of which Ethel had known. To Twit it was a matter of no interest where they were married or who performed the ceremony. The vicar happened to have known a friend of Ethel and he had been duly instructed. He was a mild little man with fat hands and a benign face. He did not know that he was enthralled with marriages by special licence. Usually there was something queer about them. Generally the couple were unpunctual, being unbound by canonical laws and hours, or the licence was not in order. He did hope that it would be all right to-day because he wanted to go out to lunch. He was lunching with his brother-in-law, who always gave him an exceptionally good meal, and he did not want to be late.
When the taxi drew up before the church door he went forward to meet them, and he reddened as he found himself taking a hurried glance at Ethel’s figure. Usually the queerness could be accounted for there. He was ashamed that he should think so basely; he blushed and hoped that they did not notice his discomfiture. He hurried through the ceremony. He was surprised at the difference in their ages, and later in the vestry he took a look at the licence to see how old Ethel really was. He felt a little piqued that the licence left him unenlightened, and piqued with himself that he had stooped to such undue curiosity. He was a charitable little man at heart. In the grey vestry he gave Ethel her marriage-lines. She was particular about these. She was the sort of woman who feels that marriage-lines are the passport to conventional living. She would, she felt, produce them in triumph at any moment and wave them as the victorious flag declaring that she had triumphed over spinsterhood. She placed them in the Oriental leather bag that she carried, and she glowed with pride every time that she heard them crackle to her touch.
She and Twit went out to lunch. They had no idea where to go and he had little interest. He did not know why, but he had never felt less hungry; on the other hand, Ethel was conscious of a hearty appetite gnawing within her.
The licence had been a great expense, and just because they were married seemed to be a poor excuse for spending a great deal more which Twit did not possess. It was a hot and tiring day, one of the early February days when the pavements suddenly catch a warmth from the sun, and the birds sing on the leafless trees and hop about the plumeless fountains of Leicester Square.
It seemed that the green lady of Spring had danced across the world in a single night, and though she had left no actual footprint behind her the world was conscious of her passing in a hundred little ways. The new yellowness of sunlight lying in filaments along the grey streets, the gay flickering light of the old squares, the preening of pigeons as they strutted on statues, the light twittering of sparrows. There was a heady smell about the baskets of violets that frowsty old women were selling at the street corners, the clinging sweetness of jonquils and mimosa and the faint lovely essence of anemones prune and claret. Twit saw all this, smelt all this, and it was acid rubbed into a raw wound. He bled with it. At the moment he hated beauty because it hurt so much. It cut into the artistry of his soul and made him ashamed.
They went to the Corner House. They went inside because it looked big and impressive and glittering. They passed inside the door and instantly within beauty once more assailed Twit. It was the fragrance of tall pink tulips and forced roses banked on the flower stall. There were mingled with it the warm luscious smell of fruit, soft Cape peaches, reddy South African plums, the scent of sharp apples and clinging orange in one exquisite harmony of perfume.
They climbed to the first floor and merged with the crowd. Ethel liked the band and the bustle. It gave her a glamorous feeling as though she were standing on the fringe of gaiety. She believed this to be social life. It was showy. It gave her the feeling of pomp and grand doings. The music, too, there was a strutting clash about it that flurried her along. She felt that she was snatching a gay streamer flung to her by Fate and whirling herself into the unusual glitter. She was much impressed by it all.
They had chicken croquettes and chip potatoes, followed by raspberry sundaes and a bottle of chianti between them. The chianti went to Ethel’s head. She glanced coyly round the restaurant and dreamt every little clerk an aristocrat, and every little typist a great lady. It was Ciro’s, the Embassy, it savoured of cocktails and caviare. It sparkled and dazzled her and the chianti showed her her wedding-day as an exquisite and beautiful present, opening the pathway to an exquisite and beautiful future.
Twit drank his coffee and looked round him wretchedly, for him the world did not scintillate. This wasn’t love! Some strange and whimsical fancy of his forced him to think of Rosie and Stebonia and Mercedes. But no longer as oases in his desert. They wore weeds for him now. They were widows framed in dark veils. Little gay Harlequin was dead. He was a pincushion doll, with a doltish, expressionless face. Corpse of Harlequin, ghost of Harlequin, rattling chains, just dust and grey ashes.
But all these had held him once, and Ethel had never held him.
He did not believe that he was passionate. Psychoanalysing himself he knew that sex had never appealed to him in that way. He wanted nothing of the kind from Ethel, God forbid! Something must have happened to him early in life, something that obliterated all the passion-ruled emotions that he might have possessed. It might have been ignorance, Whoreham, the sheer joss of Fate. You could blame no one. These things happened.
He wondered if Jill were the same. But no, there had been Clive. And, for one rapturous night in his own life, Mercedes.
Ethel was pulling the blue coat about her with the snowdrops dead and dropping out of the buttonhole.
‘What are we going to do next?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes, next,’ he said limply.
VI
They went to the cinema.
They had not thought to get tickets for a theatre and it was already half-past two and the matinees had all started. The cinema was pretentious, and enorm
ously expensive, but inside it was dark and enveloping and kind. It could not cut him with the cruel sword of exquisite beauty. He wanted the darkness because only in obscurity could he drown his wretched thoughts. He made a heroic effort to fling aside his gloom. He galvanised his being in the attempt. He could feel the new wedding-ring on her finger and it burnt into his flesh every time he inadvertently touched it. He tried to talk to her, and all the while he was dreadfully conscious of the way the conversation lagged.
The pictures did not matter too much really. They had tea there this time without misadventure. Later they caught the six o’clock train home to Dornington.
Reviewing it that night in his own lodgings, he felt that it had been something like a cinema itself. This marriage with Ethel. It had not been the torch by which he might light his future pathway, as he had once anticipated. Yet he was in the mood which is grateful for any step that is taken, and any decision made. Well, it was done with, anyway. It could not be undone.
He felt guilty about Jill, but if he had told her she would only have tried to stop him. And, what was more, she would have stopped him. She had not attempted to rupture his engagement, because he had run away from her before that could happen. She had believed that there was still the opportunity to prevent his marriage. But the sands of Time run out. They are slow but mercilessly sure. Jill could not thrust herself between him and Ethel now, though if he had met her that very morning he would have urged her to help him. He had not been back to see her because he had not dared. He could not trust himself with her. She was strong, she forced him into decisions, she ordered his life. With her he was nothing but pulp. She was scornful of his attempt, cold, like steel, in her cynicisms, although he had to admit that she would have done anything for him. But in her way, only in her way, never in his.
No, he had done the right thing, and it had been difficult, but he was glad that he had accomplished it. He felt relieved that it was ended. His life had shaped itself. He was free of Jill but fettered by Ethel. He would have the partnership, and later ‘The Fernery’ and everything pertaining to it. He would be soaked in Stillmer, he would be Stillmer, unless he could wean her from those attitudes that formed part of her life’s training.