Ankle Deep

by Angela Thirkell

  His conception of what she meant by wrong set her wildly laughing again, so wildly that Arthur seized her arm to stop her wild-beast perambulation of the room.

  “Stop!” he said.

  “I can’t stop. I can’t help laughing. I didn’t mean that kind of wrong. I meant it’s such a mistake — so funny.”

  “Aurea, do stop, please,” pleaded Arthur, quite distracted by what he had evoked. “They’ll be coming back in a minute.”

  Aurea struggled with her hysteria and wiped her eyes, while Arthur patted her back. Voices were heard approaching. To Arthur’s everlasting astonishment, she put her arms around his neck, hugged him violently, and was at arms’ length again before he knew what had happened.

  “You’re a dear,” she said, “and I won’t ever forget your kindness.”

  When Mr. Howard and Valentine came in, they only found a gentleman lighting a cigarette, and a lady powdering her face in what appeared to be a curiously dark corner for the toilet.

  “Where is your mother, Aurea?” asked Mr. Howard.

  “With Fanny in her room, I think,” said Aurea. “You really must hurry, darling. It’s almost dinner time.”

  “Don’t fuss, Aurea,” said Mr. Howard. “There’s plenty of time. I have asked for dinner to be at half-past, as you are all so late. I found Ensor telephoning in the hall. It’s cold there, so I brought him up to use the drawing-room telephone. There you are, Ensor; never mind us, you won’t disturb us.”

  Valentine looked a little sheepish. “Thank you so much, sir,” he said, “but I’d finished, really. It was rather impertinent to use your telephone. I hope you didn’t mind.”

  “Not at all, not at all. Finish your talk up here, by all means.”

  “Yes, say anything you like, Valentine,” said Aurea, in a clear voice. “We shan’t listen.”

  Valentine was conscious of a strange inimical note in Aurea’s voice. “I’d finished,” he said. “Really.”

  “All I can say is,” remarked Arthur, “it’s not like you, Val. You usually have such a passion for the telephone. When you ring Fanny up, it goes on for hours and hours. And if she rings you up at the bank, it’s worse.”

  “But it wasn’t Fanny I was telephoning to,” said Valentine, puzzled and impatient, “so it’s all over now.”

  “And in any case, Arthur,” said Aurea, turning away from Valentine, “I don’t think it’s particularly interesting to know which of Valentine’s friends he was talking to.”

  “You would have a long list to choose from,” said Arthur.

  “Some people,” Aurea continued in the same impersonal voice, “don’t like to be rung up at their offices. I suppose they are afraid of their friends getting on the same line. It might be awkward.”

  “That’s what I’m always telling Fanny,” said that lady’s husband. “She’ll get into trouble over it some day.”

  “It’s all right for Fanny,” said Aurea in her natural voice, “she doesn’t —”

  “Doesn’t what, dear?” asked her father, “I do wish you young people would finish your sentences.”

  “Oh, nothing, papa.”

  “But you are quite right, Aurea,” her father continued. “Office telephones shouldn’t be used for private conversation. I never allowed it in my department.”

  “My chief doesn’t allow it either, sir, though some of it does go on,” said Valentine, who was still at a loss. “But Arthur exaggerates.”

  Aurea walked up to Valentine and looked at him, her eyes blazing with all the concentrated hatred that can be felt for a person whom you hopelessly, and past all right or wrong, worship and adore.

  “Then I suppose,” she said, “Fanny was exaggerating too.”

  “What on earth is the matter?” asked Valentine, surprised at the introduction of Fanny’s name.

  “Nothing,” said Aurea. “I’m not worth considering.” She turned away, leaving Valentine half angry, half amused. Evidently that devil Fanny had been up to some of her tricks. He must get Aurea alone and put things right.

  Mr. Howard had quite forgotten about dinner again, and was asking Arthur about the new car.

  “She’s running splendidly, sir,” said Arthur, who adored his cars. “I wish you’d let me take you out one day when Aurea has gone, and Mrs. Howard.”

  Mr. Howard said he would like it very much when the weather was warmer. Arthur explained the glories of a new electric cushion he had bought for warming people in the car. You could sit on it, or have it on your lap, or under your feet. Mr. Howard said that sounded very comforting, and made the proposed drive far more inviting.

  “Would you like me to get it, sir?” said Arthur eagerly. “I brought it into the hall because I thought it might interest you.”

  Valentine said he had noticed that Arthur had a new back tire on tonight, and he might bring that up too.

  “That was quite unnecessary, Valentine,” said Aurea coldly. “Arthur, dear, we should love to see your warming pan or whatever it is.”

  Arthur was pleased and flattered, and offered to get it at once.

  “Don’t trouble,” said Mr. Howard. “I have to go down for a moment, and you can show me the cushion in the study. It is warmer than the hall.”

  “Oh, papa,” interrupted Aurea, “you really must get dressed. You know we are going to a play, and we don’t want to be late.”

  Mr. Howard glared at his only daughter. “I told you not to fuss,” he said. “You know quite well I only take a few minutes. Come on, Arthur.”

  “Coming, Aurea?” said Arthur, who was enchanted by her kind interest.

  “Too cold, Arthur. I send it my blessing, and hope it will keep you warm when I’ve gone.”

  “What about you, Val?” said the proud owner.

  “No, thanks; I’ll stay up here.”

  “All right,” said Arthur, and followed Mr. Howard downstairs.

  Aurea was alone with Valentine, and wished she wasn’t. It was all too difficult. Proof upon proof all day of how little she was wanted, of how many other women had claims on his attention. If only she could hit him, or somehow hurt him badly. Failing that, it would be better to leave him.

  “I think I’ll go and see it too,” she said politely, and was opening the door when Valentine called, “Aurea.”

  “What?” she asked, not troubling to look at him.

  “Please don’t go down.”

  “And why not?”

  “Please shut the door and come back.”

  Aurea shrugged her shoulders very rudely, shut the door, and stood before him in the attitude of Circassian slave before Pasha.

  “Please sit down,” he said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “May I smoke?”

  “Was that all you wanted me for?”

  “No. Sit down.”

  Much to Aurea’s surprise she sat down at once.

  “Why were you angry with me about the telephone?” he asked.

  “Angry? I wasn’t angry.”

  “Then why did you pretend to be angry?”

  “Pretend? I didn’t pretend,” said Aurea illogically. “I was angry.”

  “Why?”

  “You haven’t any right to ask me all these questions. You are behaving as if I were in the wrong, and not you.”

  “That isn’t the point,” said Valentine, with maddening patience. “It isn’t fair to be angry with me because I was telephoning for five minutes in your father’s house.”

  “Oh, you can put anything so that it sounds right,” said Aurea wearily. “But you’re not right. If you want to know I was unhappy because —”

  “Because?”

  “Well, I was so sad,” said Aurea in a more gentle voice but without looking at him, “that Fanny and other people could talk to you for hours on the telephone, and I’m not allowed to.”

  Valentine felt rather guilty, but had no intention of admitting it. “But, Aurea,” he said, “isn’t it rather because I am anxious for you that I have asked you no
t to ring me up?”

  “Anxious for me?” said she, looking at him for the first time, “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s so difficult to talk plainly to you,” said Valentine slowly. “You’re so sensitive. I mean — with Fanny and other friends there isn’t any question of its being in any way — I don’t know how to say it without hurting you.”

  Aurea was only too eager for any excuse by which she could honorably emerge from her sulks, but at the mention of Fanny her face set.

  “What you mean, I suppose,” she said, deliberately picking her words to wound, “is that you are a little afraid of my being in any way compromised — and a good deal afraid of my compromising you with any other woman who might happen to overhear.”

  If a hen suddenly ran at one and tried to knock one down, one would feel rather as Valentine did at this moment. There was enough truth in what Aurea had said to make him incapable of any utterance but a very indignant “Aurea!”

  “I suppose,” she continued recklessly, “you have been laughing at me for supposing I am the only woman in your thoughts.”

  “I didn’t laugh at you. By heaven, I never have. Who has been putting melodramatic ideas into your head about other women?”

  “F —,” Aurea began, altering it hurriedly and lamely to, “Nobody. And anyway, I shan’t tell you.” But hope was beginning to spring again.

  “Then,” said Valentine, “I shall draw my own conclusions. You darling half-wit, can I possibly ever make you understand anything?”

  Aurea’s heart warmed to this expression of affection, but she only replied, “Probably not if I’m a half-wit.”

  “Well, that is what you are where any kind of worldly wisdom is concerned.”

  “It’s not my fault,” said Aurea, raising sad eyes to him.

  “I know it’s not,” said Valentine, sitting down near her, “and I wouldn’t for the world have you different in any other way. But I’m not sure that it’s not your misfortune. Do you honestly think I could ever love anyone in the way I love you?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t blame you, because it’s all I deserve for the way I’m behaving, but it sadly seems to me that it is so.”

  Her acceptance of the fact, without any rancor, smote Valentine.

  “Dear half-wit,” he said, taking her hand, “you are right in a manner of speaking —”

  “I knew it,” said Aurea hopelessly, but leaving the unresponsive hand where it lay.

  “— but,” he continued, “hopelessly wrong. I do love people rather easily, and my kind of life makes it easy to love. One is unattached, one is useful for dances, dinners, all kinds of fun. There are many more women than men in this bit of civilization and one is rather flattered by charmers who pursue one, and if charmers throw themselves at one’s head, it’s a little difficult not to respond — and I’m very human, my dear, I’m afraid.”

  Aurea possessed to the full the very feminine characteristic of total inability to talk generally. Whatever was said she had to wrench around to some personal application.

  “I never threw myself at your head,” she said.

  “Good God, do you think I meant that?” said Valentine, really horrified that she should have so misunderstood him. “I know you didn’t.”

  “I only couldn’t help loving you,” she said, always following her single thought.

  “You poor child.”

  “I like you to call me that.”

  “It’s the way I think of you. And, Aurea, I would be as ashamed of hurting you deliberately as if you were really a child, but I can’t suddenly alter my whole life because of you.”

  “I suppose not,” said Aurea, on whom all the unkindness in the world seemed to be falling in heavy waves. “But I don’t understand.”

  “And I don’t think you ever will — but it’s of no great importance. Whatever you may think of me, you can’t help loving me — you said so yourself. And as for me, however much I love you — and it’s a man’s love, Aurea, and goes a good deal deeper than you may think — I care for other women, and shall care for yet others.”

  Aurea withdrew her hand quickly. “You might as well hit me in the face as talk to me like that,” she said.

  “Hush, hush. Listen for a moment,” said Valentine, taking her hand again, straightening and bending her fingers one by one as he spoke, as if the mechanical action helped him to formulate his thoughts. “Whatever other women I care for — and if I know myself as I think I do, it is inevitable that this should happen — I shall always come back to the thought of you. A cold kind of comfort, you’ll say, but it means this, that you, whatever you are, the essence of you, whatever it may be, your dearness, your loveliness, your trust, your ridiculous inexperience which I adore — all have made such a place for themselves in my heart that something of you will be with me forever. Do you remember what the doctors said about Henry King, whose chief defect was chewing little bits of string?”

  “‘There is no cure for this disease.’”

  “Good girl. I’m glad you know your classics so well. Yes, for me there will never be any cure for loving you. And, believe it or not, my dear, as you may choose, the thought of these few weeks, in spite of all the pain and misery of them, will always be very safe in a most sacred corner of my heart which no one else will ever see. I know that to love you is hopeless, so I won’t let it spoil my life, any more than you are going to let it spoil yours, but it may be some comfort to know that something of each of us belongs to the other forever.”

  Such gentle peace descended on Aurea’s tired heart and mind that she wanted never to move or speak again. Only to breathe her lover’s name, “Valentine,” on the lightest of sighs. He, finding no answer to this, and always explaining to himself that to take her in his arms and squash her flat was the one thing he must not do, sought safety in saying “Aurea,” in gentle mockery of her tones. And there they might have sat, mutely enchained, till dinner was ready, had not Aurea, unable to escape her own self-tormenting spirit, suddenly asked: “But what about your wife?”

  “My wife?”

  “I mean, the wife you are going to have.”

  “You know more about her than I do. This is some of Fanny’s devilry, I suppose.”

  “I don’t know,” said Aurea doubtfully. “It was a Mr. Graham who mentioned her.”

  “Graham? Not Ronnie Graham. What the devil did he have to say about it?”

  “Only that you were going to marry a person called Mounsey with pots of money,” said Aurea in a cheerful voice, adding with a good deal of vehemence for so detached an onlooker, “and I hate her.”

  “Darling half-wit,” began her lover, but Aurea continued with some acerbity, “You are bound to marry again, of course, and that will be a certain cure. Oh, how I hope that Mounsey creature is a wayward strong-willed hussy who will lead you such a life, and bully you, and break your spirit, and make you fetch and carry, and laugh at you, and bring you up properly.”

  “Isn’t this rather fierce?” said Valentine. “Besides, there has never been any question of my marrying anybody; truth and honor.”

  But Aurea was in full cry after her idea and paid no attention. “And I hope,” she went on, working herself up, “that she won’t let you use the telephone ever, and that she’ll pull the skin off over your head if you don’t pay her perfect attention. And then you’ll wish you had been nicer to me.”

  Valentine resented this criticism. He wondered exactly what meaning she attached to the word nice. If by not being nice she meant that one had tried to hold oneself in check in every way, not seeing her as often as one might because one knew that any failure of self-control would frighten and repel her; then, and not otherwise, she was justified. “I couldn’t have been much nicer, Aurea,” he said. “It has been difficult enough, more difficult than you know. And you aren’t an easy person to deal with.”

  “You don’t deal with me much,” said Aurea, getting up. “You walk over me like a steam-roller. Fanny was right.”


  This maddening iteration of Fanny. What immeasurable mischief she must have done in his poor Aurea’s mind.

  “Right about what?” he asked with rising irritation.

  “About the telephone.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Valentine, getting up in his turn and walking up and down the room angrily. “You aren’t still thinking about that telephone? I’d like to wring Fanny’s neck.”

  These words were a little comforting, but Aurea was so sick at heart with love and fatigue and the inevitable march of time towards the end of everything, that she perversely replied:

  “Never mind. I’ll be gone soon and you’ll be free.”

  Two furious people stopped in their meaningless pacing, and met face to face.

  “Aurea,” almost shouted Valentine indignantly, “this unfairness —”

  Nothing was left for them but a blow or an embrace, but they were spared the necessity of a choice by the opening of the door, and the appearance of Mr. Howard.

  “Are Fanny and your mother down?” said he mildly, not appearing to notice the strained atmosphere.

  “No, papa,” said Aurea. “Oh, goodness, papa, you aren’t dressed yet.”

  “Never mind,” said Mr. Howard quite sharply and disappeared.

  The lovers then went on where they had left off, as if Mr. Howard had never existed. Love and hatred, violent, indistinguishable, were hurtling about the room. A blow or a caress would have been the same, but one’s training made both impossible. Intense longing, thwarted for so many days and nights, was almost repulsion. One touch would have dispelled all these heavy dreams, but, rigid, neither dared to move a step. Only bitter words could pass between them, flashing harmfully from pole to pole, gathering evil power.

  “Be reasonable, Aurea,” said Valentine harshly.

  “Reasonable?” cried Aurea in a high peacock screech. “Why should I be? Why,” said she again, coming a step nearer with arms rigid by her sides and clenched fists, “why should I be? Why are you to do just as you like, and I do all the suffering?”

  “Stop it,” said Valentine quite brutally. “Stop it at once, I tell you.”

  Aurea hated and defied him. “I won’t,” she said. “How dare you order me about? I’ve stood it long enough. I’ll say what I like, where I like, when I like, and you can kill me if you like.” She then considerably weakened her effect by adding, “And I’m a married woman, so there.”