Ankle Deep

by Angela Thirkell

  So Mr. Howard goes up to bed and out of the story. He will miss Aurea more than anyone guesses, mutely, his heart knows how. All he has to ask is that she may come back again before it is too late. If fate is kind he may see her again and find her gentler and more loving than she has been in these few difficult weeks. He would not ask even this reward for all his deep and tender affection, for he is a man who gives much and expects little, finding his joy in the giving. But if he sees his daughter again, there will be nothing wanting to his content.

  “Come and see me before you go to bed, darling,” said Mrs. Howard to Aurea. “Good night, Mr. Ensor. And,” she added, all her mother’s anxiety in her eyes and voice, “don’t be too long in saying goodbye.”

  “I’ll be good,” said Valentine, and she left them alone.

  How should one conduct a parting scene? Aurea, one of whose weaknesses was to rehearse events that never happened, had been arranging what she was to say for days and days. It was to be a fine piece of heroics in which she was to establish an eternal claim upon Valentine; renounce him forever; receive his vows of perpetual celibacy for her sake; bless his union with that odious Mounsey girl and offer to be godmother to their first child (this master-stroke gave her much pleasure and had been repeatedly elaborated in her mind); give and receive a dying kiss; and say goodbye with averted head, and no hand-clasp. In fact, a fine range of possibilities.

  “May I smoke?” asked Valentine.

  “Of course. But I can’t see the cigarettes anywhere.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ve got some.”

  “Sit down, then, and be comfortable for a few minutes.”

  “I mustn’t stay long, Aurea.”

  This was not a promising beginning. What was the proper riposte? Should she encourage him to go, saying she could not love him, dear, so much, loved she not honor more? which would be very noble. Or should she combine a nobility with a moment’s pleasure, and saying in a broken voice, “You are right. Goodbye, my dear,” print a burning but chaste kiss on his neatly brushed hair, and fly from the room? Then of course, there would be the bother of having to wait about upstairs till one heard him leaving, and then come down and turn the lights out in the drawing-room and hall, otherwise mother and papa would be annoyed. Besides the front door was difficult to shut without slamming, and it would be so undignified to hear Valentine banging away at it when one could easily run down and shut it for him, and so begin the business of parting all over again. Or had one the courage to throw everything to the winds, fling oneself into his arms, and burrow one’s face against his shoulder? That would be worth any amount of subsequent pricks of conscience, only — if one gave way even so little, mightn’t he feel justified in taking what to him would seem so very little more? To burrow one’s head was safe and comfortable, but gentlemen didn’t seem to know where to stop, and if someone a great deal stronger than you were suddenly felt like not standing any more nonsense, and kissed you full on the lips, fiercely, possessively, what would happen? Would there be any response in you, or would blind terror, uncontrollable, strike one to dumb madness? Man-shy had been Arthur’s word for her, and a true word. What kind of love is it, she had tormented herself by asking again and again, that consumes one’s whole being and yet fears a touch? And she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that it was a poor selfish kind of love, not at all good enough for Valentine. Love, like most experiences in life, goes by the first lessons. Aurea had been badly taught, and that was the beginning and the end. It was her misfortune more than her fault, and now nothing could alter it. Bewildered and exhausted she said the first thing that came into her mind, and of course the wrong thing. In a voice that presaged storm, she answered him, “You have never stayed very long, have you?”

  “As long as I could.”

  “Yes. As long as you could. As long as you wanted to.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Valentine, as his voice also fell insensibly into the intonations of a quarrel.

  “You have just fitted me in when it suited you — every time.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “No, it isn’t. You know it’s always been like that. When I ask you to come here you are always engaged, or you come on from something else, or you go on to something else. I have to take when you want to come — always on your terms, not on mine — always restlessness — always an eye on the clock — no peace — never any time to talk.”

  “Aurea, what is the matter?”

  “Only the unfairness of it all,” said she, feeling herself sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of misunderstanding, and too tired and confused to pull herself out.

  “But, dear darling,” expostulated her lover, “you know it isn’t that I don’t want to see you all the time — you must know that. Only one doesn’t happen always to be free, and one can’t break engagements — one owes something to one’s friends. One must be fair to them.”

  “Oh, fair,” said Aurea contemptuously. “You have been fair to everyone but me. You knew I had only a few weeks in England and would soon be out of your way. You knew you were safe with me — that I am too proud to make demands on you — and you’ve taken every advantage of it. Any friend who could offer you an amusing party with drinks; anyone who wanted you to dine and dance; anyone who was more approachable than I am, I suppose; you can be fair to them. But when it is someone who only has the misfortune to love you, with nothing to give, then you are cruelly unfair. You are just spoilt, Valentine, utterly spoilt.”

  Most of this, allowing for an angry woman’s exaggeration, was too true to be comfortable. Therefore Valentine began to find it difficult to keep his temper steady. “If I took you seriously, Aurea, I’d be hurt,” he said, taking himself seriously enough. But this didn’t impress Aurea.

  “It would do you good if you were hurt,” said she, giving rein to her exasperated nerves. “You are far too afraid of being hurt. You are always thinking of protecting yourself and keeping yourself safe. You have some ridiculous idea that someone is somehow trying to attack your liberty, your freedom. Though what your freedom is except that you think you ought to be free to do what you like, and everyone else wait on your pleasure, I don’t know.”

  True enough. When Valentine had, with pains, smoothed his dancing floor and laid dead hopes and faith beneath it, something good in him had been buried there as well. Where he would once have walked recklessly on the high hills, welcoming whatever he met, he now picked his road along the plain, choosing the more trodden ways, avoiding the stream that might wet his feet, the hedge that might have thorns to tear and hold, the paths that led to windblown slopes where one might need to put out one’s strength. It was all very pleasant, and so long as one remembered to forget, all was well. Then this entrancing creature had crossed his path, herself bound for who knows what rocky heights, what lonely upland pools; certainly to no calm or happy journey’s end. Like an untried youth he had left the dancing floor to follow her, careless if her steps, hastening as his pursued, might lead her to harm. But not for long. Her paths were too steep for him; the upland wind blew too keenly from the land of lost desires. Better to forget again, to forsake the hills and tread the level floor to which his feet were accustomed. If she could not understand, it was not his fault, it was hers — entirely hers.

  “I won’t stand much more,” he said. “You are utterly unreasonable and wrong.”

  “I’m not, I’m not. I never asked you to love me. I was unhappy enough before, but it was dull, quiet unhappiness. And then you were there, and I suppose you were just spoiling for a fresh affair, and I happened to be handy, and I was enough of a romantic fool to think your love was a rare heavenly thing and not the nine days’ wonder that it is…” As Valentine, furious, tried to expostulate, she scornfully amended her words to “…oh, well, the four weeks’ wonder, we’ll say, if you are feeling very accurate. I suppose I have only myself to blame. If a person who is respectably married so far forgets herself as to fall hopelessly in love, she deserve
s all she gets. And I have got all I deserve — and from you. That’s rather funny, isn’t it?”

  In the slums one has clouted a woman over the head, or strangled her, before she gets as far as this. In a drawing-room things are much less simple. Probably the best thing one could do would be to take up one’s hat, like Mr. Frog, and wish them good night, but then it isn’t so easy to leave a lady without a word, and anyway one’s hat and coat and scarf and umbrella are in the hall, and one can’t leave without them. Mr. Frog had only to pick up his opera hat and leap through the window, upsetting the flower pots; but to go downstairs, collect one’s belongings, return to the drawing-room, and jump out of a first floor window with area railings below, would be foolish, and probably get one into trouble with the police. Also, how could one leave her, whatever she said? She was too dear.

  “Aurea, you’ll say something in a moment that you are sorry for, or you’ll make me say something I’m sorry for.”

  “I’d like to say something I’m sorry for,” responded his idol with equal ferocity. “I’ve done nothing but control myself and behave like a lady ever since I met you, and I’m sick of it.”

  Valentine’s anger melted. If self-control was torment to Aurea, that at least he could understand.

  “Don’t, child, don’t. Oh, don’t you think I have to control myself too? Don’t you believe that I’d have made far more opportunities for seeing you, only it’s all I can bear to be in the same room with you and not even touch your hand, while you are so lovely, and always so cool and far-off.”

  “Cool and far-off? Valentine, are you deaf and blind? Idiot!”

  Unbelievable that Valentine could think of her as cool and remote. How could she ever explain to him how utterly mistaken he was? If one held him for an instant, warm in one’s arms, could he ever be mistaken again? But her thoughts shuddered away from the dear delusion. Nothing in the world will ever explain one human being to another, and the more you explain, the worse the misunderstanding. Better to allow oneself to be misunderstood passively than to make matters worse by speech or action. Valentine could not guess how slight the barrier was that she had placed between them, nor of what childish materials it was made. Part of it was her almost morbid feeling of right and wrong, an idea, inherited from her father, that happiness was dangerous and wrong, and should not be enjoyed in the present, lest some dark destiny held unhappiness in store. The rest was her anxiety for what her father and mother might think, and a grim determination not to make them unhappy; or at least not any unhappier than she knew she had made them already. If she had strength enough to hide her wounds from them till she had gone, they would grieve the less. Probably Valentine would laugh at her if he knew, and perhaps it was funny, if one came to consider it, to think of one’s parents’ feelings more than one’s husband’s, in this particular case. But when people were far away you could put them at the back of your mind, unless you loved them very much. Ned also would laugh at the whole thing, Aurea thought, and call her a little silly, which, indeed, she regretfully admitted she was. And if he and Valentine met, she had an uneasy feeling that they might find grown-up things to talk about and get on quite well, and she would be left out of it. But there was no chance of their meeting. Sometimes she almost wished there were. It would be very embarrassing, no doubt, but would also clear up the situation. A woman like Fanny, who had a resident husband, was provided with a safe background, and could do pretty well anything she liked. If she went too far, Arthur would assert himself, or she would suddenly lose courage and run back to him, shrieking for the support that she could rely on. Fanny was rather like a rude child who yells and throws stones at passers-by, and if they attempt to remonstrate, dashes back into its front garden and screams for its mother, who will take its part; and the more odious the child, the more she will support it and attack its helpless victims. But Aurea had no front garden to run to. If Ned had been in England with her, she might conceivably have let herself go much further with Valentine, thrusting the responsibility of her waywardness upon her husband’s shoulders. As he was many hundreds of miles away, she had to shoulder the responsibility herself, and she didn’t think she had made a very good job of it. The sensible thing to do, she supposed, would be to have one’s fling while one’s husband wasn’t there, and then say nothing about it. Then conscience came cranking in, and said one ought to behave much better when Ned wasn’t there than when he was, because of loyalty. Oh, what a word that was. What a man’s word. Something to break one’s heart over quite unnecessarily. What actually did it mean? Was it loyalty to Ned that made her keep Valentine at arms’ length, or only cowardice? If people were Great Lovers, like Selleeney, thought Aurea, they certainly wouldn’t worry about loyalty; nor would they gibber at the mere thought of a lover’s kiss. And at the thought of Selleeney she couldn’t help giggling, so that Valentine, whom she had just called an idiot, was considerably surprised, and asked her what she was laughing at.

  “Cellini,” said Aurea weakly. “I was thinking that if he was a typical World’s Great Lover, you and I don’t seem to come up to the standard.”

  “I don’t go about banging people’s cups into art goblets, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I know you don’t, darling. Nor do you ride a thousand miles on a white bus horse to see me, with all the Popes at your heels. You only ask me not to telephone, and go about featuring self-control till I could burst. It had been bad enough having to behave like a lady all this time, and I sometimes think it has been a great mistake for you to behave like a gentleman.”

  “But, dear darling, I have only tried to do as you asked,” said the Great Lover, rather bewildered. “You said we were to be a lady and gentleman going to a party, and if that made you happy I was willing to let it be like that; and I hoped it was all right.”

  Aurea glared at him. “I’ve often wanted to shake you, Valentine Ensor, and now I’d like to hit you. In fact, I would hit you now if it weren’t so unladylike.”

  “Do, if you like,” said Valentine affectionately.

  “I can’t. I daren’t touch you.”

  “I wouldn’t hit back.”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” she said scornfully. “Idiot! Great half-wit!”

  Bewildered at every turn by his idol’s changing moods, Valentine could only say “Aurea!” in the voice of a nurse admonishing a child for bad behavior at meals.

  “Yes, great half-wit!” continued the adored one, working herself up to a frenzy. “Senseless mole.”

  So demented was her appearance, and so far had the conversation wandered from the orthodox paths of leave-taking in polite society, that Valentine offered to be a mole or anything else she liked, if only she would calm down and explain. “What do you mean, Aurea? What is it?”

  Aurea’s rage suddenly fell from her like a cloak. She looked into the fire, always her refuge when in distress. Valentine saw her face grow clouded and remote. She said quietly, “Only Love.”

  Her somber voice fell heavily on the air. As if she had dropped the word of Love into a still dark water, waves of silence rippled outwards and filled the room. Valentine felt that he had spent his whole life in this hushed stillness, and dared not speak. No sound but the little noises of the fire, till Aurea spoke again, never raising her eyes from the heart of the fire, never raising or changing the tone of her lifeless voice.

  “You say it is hard for you to be in the same room with me and not touch me. May I point out to you, Mr. Ensor, that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander — at least the other way around if you take my meaning. May I draw your attention to the fact that I can’t be near you without shaking from head to foot and becoming a gibbering idiot. Oh, I hide it quite nicely, but there it is. Do you know why I never danced with you? Not because I was too tired, as I always said, but because I daren’t, I daren’t. I couldn’t be so near to you and keep my senses, and you may thank me for sparing you; how very little you would have enjoyed having a lady faint all over you at the Vamp
ire. If you took my hand in a taxi — which I must say with your charming sex seems to be more a matter of routine than anything else — what do you think it cost me to take it away, or let it be unresponsive in yours? Do you think it hasn’t torn me to be so cool — never to respond, never once to lift my face to yours? Valentine, it’s not that I want to live in sin with you, because the very idea makes me perfectly sick — and I must say it would be a forward thing to do, considering that you’ve never asked me, and what’s more no one would be more embarrassed than yourself if such a thing were suggested — it’s not that. I don’t know what it is. But it has nearly killed me.”

  Women, in Valentine’s experience, were very fond of being sorry for themselves. They appeared to think that they could endear themselves by complaining of husbands, parents, friends, life. But it was precisely at that moment that one began to stand aloof, ready to retreat quickly at any further menace from their possessive minds. No woman could be content to know that she was loved. She expected so much besides. What she needed was not so much a lover, as a mirror in which she might see a flattering reflection of all her emotions. One was expected to guarantee a permanence of affection impossible to give; to sympathize with small or imaginary troubles; to be a receptacle for every kind of outpouring by word or letter. And then, invariably, there came the moment when they enjoyed the artistry of their own emotions so much that they began to cry, and instead of the charmer one had so happily pursued, one found a damp, pulpy, complaining female, who expected an arm around her waist, or a shoulder to cry on. Not that one had any objection to lending an arm or a shoulder; it was a not unpleasant occupation for one’s idler moments; but they appeared to find implications in these moments beyond what one could consider. Then a promising friendship, flirtation, whatever one liked to call it, was spoilt. Luckily there was always another to compensate, and no one was badly hurt, so one took things as they came.