I suppose it was about that time that I started sending Steve photos of the twins. I still thought there was no possibility of a reconciliation and I never consciously believed I wanted him back, but if I’m to be completely honest I must admit I wanted to establish contact with him again—although I told myself that I did it for the twins’ sake, and for the purest possible motives. It’s really remarkable how human beings can deceive themselves when they put their minds to it.
He wrote surprisingly literate letters in a big bold handwriting on the bank’s very grand headed notepaper. We had two safe subjects, economics and the twins, and we stuck to them through thick and thin. He was dotingly sentimental about the twins, tough and shrewd about the economic disasters which were hitting both America and Europe. We did not talk about the past.
When he arrived in Paris in 1933 the letters continued, but eventually he gave way to the temptation no American can resist and picked up the phone. We spoke about once a week after that, just casual conversations. Sometimes he carefully mentioned Emily and their two daughters and I expressed polite interest. Occasionally we made a joke and spent much time laughing about it. Eventually in August he used that fatal phrase “Do you remember …,” and I knew that like me he had been thinking daily of the past.
“Mummy, I don’t want to go to my swimming lesson,” said Alan’s voice, recalling me abruptly to the present.
“Darling, we went through all this last night.” I saw his mouth quiver, and all my old guilt surged through me. I did so desperately want him to be happy. “Well, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” I said in a rush. “Now, darling, don’t cry, because I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you. Someone very special’s going to join us at Mallingham this weekend, someone you’ve always wanted to see again. It’s—well, it’s Steve, Alan! He’s going to be working in London for a few months. Isn’t that exciting?”
There was a stony silence.
“Alan?” I said in dread as his mouth ceased to quiver and turned down ominously at the corners.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with him,” he announced firmly and marched off to his swimming lesson without a backward glance.
I was so depressed I could hardly drag myself up to Mallingham, but eventually I left London with Alan, my maid Celeste and Miss Parsons, the governess who looked after Alan so that Nanny could devote herself exclusively to the twins. When we arrived at Mallingham Nanny informed me with suitable melancholy that the latest nursemaid had given notice. It was a fitting climax to a grisly day.
After lying awake all night I drank three cups of coffee, chain-smoked four cigarettes and drove off to Norwich looking like a fishwife. I wore an old skirt and jumper, my faded country mackintosh, a felt hat to hide the fact that my hair needed rewaving, and the wrong kind of lipstick. Since I felt as much a mess as I looked, I was convinced the renaissance of my affair with Steve was doomed to immediate collapse, but then he came bounding out of the station and exclaimed with all his old exuberance, “You look wonderful—so natural!” and I began to feel better. I did mean to warn him about Alan, but he was too busy talking about his own children; he had left his two boys temporarily with Emily but had promised them he would send for them as soon as he had established a home in London.
“Were they very upset?” I asked worried, trying to picture the little boys I had known seven years ago.
“Yes, but I told them I’d make everything come right,” he said untroubled, and it occurred to me that although he was devoted to his sons he might not have the faintest idea what was passing through their minds. One of the paradoxes of his character was that although he was a clever able man he could be extraordinarily naïve about emotional relationships.
I was just wondering in despair how he could cope with Alan when he began to talk about his daughters. “I feel really bad about them,” he said. “I’ll just have to make it up to them later. I know Emily will be generous about custody.”
“Steve, forgive me if I sound rude, but why did you and Emily ever have a second child if your marriage was going from bad to worse?”
“I thought it might put everything right,” he said with typical naïveté. “Emily was happy as long as she was having babies and I figured that even if I couldn’t be the kind of husband she wanted I could at least give her children. Jesus, Dinah, if you only knew the guilt I’ve been carrying around with me!” he exclaimed in despair, and it was there, halfway along the road from Wroxham to Potter Heigham, that he finally disclosed some details of his marriage.
Emily was without doubt a saint. She was chaste, beautiful, cultured, charming and utterly faultless as a wife and mother. When poor Steve had become bored with her chastity, tired of her beauty, exasperated by her culture, sick of her charm and exhausted by her tireless perfection he had hated himself so much that he headed straight for the nearest bottle.
“That made me feel guilty, too,” he added, “because Emily hated me to drink more than one highball a night. Anyway, the more guilty I felt the more I drank, and the more I drank the more guilty I became. When I got through a bottle of scotch before lunch one day I saw the light and realized I was killing myself—I was going the same way my father went. That’s when I knew I had to leave. I hated to go when she was so perfect, but I honestly felt I had no choice. It was a question of survival.”
“God, some marriages do sound awful!” I said appalled. “Poor you—and poor Emily! I expect that after she’s recovered from the shock she’ll be glad it’s finished. She couldn’t have been happy either, once she realized that the man she married was quite different from the man she thought she was marrying.”
“She’ll be all right once she gets home to Cornelius. I’ll say this for the little bastard: he’s a devoted brother to that girl.”
“Yes—so devoted that he married her off to his worst enemy! What’s his wife like?”
“Alicia? Not my type. Cold fishy eyes, a marble face and a voice like stewed prunes, but the little bastard’s devoted to her too, so obviously she’s got something I’ve missed. Jesus, there’s the sign to Mallingham! Wonderful! Dinah, if you only knew how often I’ve wanted to come back!” He scrabbled in his wallet, and as I glanced sideways I saw he had produced a picture of the twins. “Cute little things!” he said with that baroque sentimentality in which so many Americans excel. Many English people think such sloppiness is inexcusable, but I’ve always thought how pleasant it must be to give way to such gaudy emotion without a trace of embarrassment. “They look just like my brothers did when they were little.”
Oh, Lord, I thought, remembering my fortunately brief meeting with Luke and Matt years before at Steve’s party, but I knew that Steve meant to be complimentary.
I had called the twins Edred and Elfrida, after the hero and heroine of one of my favorite children’s books, The House of Arden, by E. Nesbit. Having discovered the secret of traveling backwards in time, the fictitious Edred and Elfrida had journeyed into the past to meet their dead father and bring him back alive to the present. It had taken me several months to connect my revival of interest in this story with my intense longing to return to the past to be with Paul.
The car passed through the ruined gateway of my house and roared up the drive to the front door. “Prepare for the onslaught,” I managed to say to Steve before the front door flew open and the twins hurtled out.
“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!” They had shrill voices and strong lungs. Edred grabbed my arm and swung from it while Elfrida flung her arms around my knees in an attempt to stop the circulation in my legs.
“What a welcome!” laughed Steve as I staggered backwards against the car.
They slewed around to look at him. I saw three curly-haired heads and three pairs of electric blue eyes and felt weaker than ever, but fortunately Steve wasn’t in the least disconcerted. He hugged them with uninhibited pleasure and mentioned the magic word “presents.” Bedlam followed as the twins howled with anticipation, and I was still leanin
g weakly against the car when I saw Alan standing in the doorway.
“Steve,” I began in an agony of anxiety, but Steve had seen him too.
“All right, kids!” he said cheerfully, swinging Elfrida down from his shoulder and pulling his suitcase from the car. “Open this up and find your packages.”
The twins at once turned the suitcase upside down so that all the contents spilled on the ground, but Steve never looked back. In six long strides he was standing in the doorway. I could no longer see Alan’s face, but I heard the gentleness in Steve’s voice, and suddenly I saw that Steve’s emotional simplicity was exactly what Alan needed after my tortuous, guilt-ridden demonstrations of affection.
As the twins shrieked with glee over their presents Alan flung his arms around Steve while Steve patted his shoulder and held him close.
That was when I knew I would marry Steve. As the tough talk and tougher poses fell magically away I saw only the strength of his generous compassionate nature, and I moved towards him as compulsively as a salmon swimming upstream from the sea.
Two
I
THAT NIGHT WHEN THE children were in bed we went for a walk but it rained, forcing us to turn back. As we returned to the house I suggested we retire to my upstairs sitting room, in the hope that the intimate atmosphere there would help us, but on our arrival he took a chair after I had sat down on the sofa. The specter of our sexual estrangement haunted us. The only difference between us was that I had foreseen the difficulty while he had not, and I suspected he was baffled that he was unable to give me more than a series of fraternal hugs.
“We’ve got to face this, Steve,” I said as he lit my cigarette.
“What?” he said, but he knew. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Us. It. Bed.” I helped myself to some whisky and scraped up all my courage. “I know I compared you unfavorably with Paul. That was a stupid thing to do, pointless and unfair, but I did it because I was angry not with you but with myself. I was frustrated because … oh, God, how hard it is to talk about these things! I wish I had Caroline’s talent for discussing sex as if it were the weather!”
“That didn’t do Caroline much good. I don’t think she liked sex too well.” He clasped his glass tightly. “She just pretended she did when she wanted to be nice to me.”
“Yes, well, I … I can’t do that, Steve. At least not for any length of time. Maybe I could if I’d never had a good sexual relationship, but as it is I can’t help feeling I don’t want to settle for less. Yet the truth is that no man except Paul has ever been able to—well, call it what you like. I’m too embarrassed to call it anything. I must be more Victorian than I realize.” I guzzled my whisky. “I’ve got to care,” I gasped in a rush. “I know theoretically one should be able to enjoy sex for sex’s sake, but I’m not made that way. Unless I care it’s useless, and that’s why our affair was such a baffling disappointment to me. I did care, but nothing happened. Of course, now I know the fault was mine because I was too busy acting a part to trust you, but when we had our terrible quarrel I hadn’t grasped that unpleasant home truth and it was so much easier to put all the blame on you by saying you weren’t as good as Paul. If we can be honest with each other now—if I can trust you—I know it would be very different. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Sure. I’m not dumb. You’re trying to convince me it was your fault I was lousy in bed. You don’t have to do that, Dinah.” He stood up and prowled aimlessly to the window. Outside it was dark, and I could hear the rain tapping against the pane.
“I’m not saying it’s your fault, and I’m beyond debasing myself to wrap your self-esteem in cotton wool. I’m trying to be truthful, Steve, because I don’t believe there’s any hope for a joint future unless we exorcise all those specters which ruined our old affair. I do care about you very much and I want desperately to make this work, but—”
“Will you marry me?”
I understood at once. I had so often craved reassurance myself that I had no trouble recognizing that same craving in someone else. Having already made up my mind that I could make no commitment until our sexual problems had been resolved, I now saw that no resolution was possible until the commitment had been made. Only my unconditional promise to marry him would restore the self-confidence I had destroyed when I compared him unfavorably with Paul.
I thought in panic, I can’t do this! But then back came the inevitable reply which had carried me through every past crisis: Oh yes I can.
Moving swiftly to him, I slipped my arms around his neck. “Yes,” I said. “I love you, Steve, and I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.”
That was all I needed to say. He kissed me on the mouth, and without another word we withdrew to my bedroom, undressed with speed and slid silently between the sheets into each other’s arms.
II
Neither of us was mad enough to believe we would immediately be transported into rapturous bliss, but we achieved our reunion without difficulty and were happy. The ice had been successfully broken. Now all we had to do was heat the water, and heaving sighs of relief, we fell asleep with his body still half entwined with mine.
When we returned to London we began to look for a house where we could live after we were married. I was loath to leave my house in Chesterfield Street, but it was hardly big enough to accommodate Steve, his valet, his secretary and his two boys in addition to me and my ménage. It was already hardly big enough to accommodate the twins now that their fourth birthday was approaching. During the summer they often spent the week at Mallingham so that they could have more scope to run wild, but their winters were always spent with me in London.
Steve raised no objection to my wish to remain in Mayfair, and eventually we decided to buy a large house just around the corner in Charles Street. We signed the contract during the week before Christmas.
It was 1933. Ramsay MacDonald led the National Government, but neither the Labour nor the Conservative party seemed to have any message for me. On the extreme right Churchill breathed fire like an archaic dragon, and on the extreme left Lansbury burbled unrealistic idealism. The middle was a big yawn, characterized by Baldwin loafing around doing nothing. Intellectually I was attracted to the concept of pacifism, but I thought the successful motion of the Oxford Union, “This House will in no circumstances fight for its king and country,” smacked of adolescent instability. I was too old to support the adolescents, too cynical to rally around Lansbury and too much of a successful capitalist to align myself with leftist thought no matter how much it attracted me as an intellectual doctrine. I vaguely liked the idea of the League of Nations and thought its decisions could probably be upheld by resolute international collaboration. Churchill’s theory of the importance of military power to back the League struck me as typical of a man who had spent his childhood playing with toy soldiers.
In England Westminister dozed.
In America Roosevelt had little fireside chats.
In Germany Hitler was practicing his goose step, but he was so unsavory I couldn’t believe he’d last long. Japan had invaded China, but nobody cared about that, because it was so far away. The War was long ago now, the economy showed signs of picking up, the masses were better catered to than ever before, and more of those masses were buying cosmetics. The year 1933 might not have been Utopia for the poor miners in the depressed areas of South Wales, but my sales in suburbia were booming, pacifism was a cozy comforting doctrine to flirt with, and I was rich, still moderately young and quite definitely in love. The only cloud which floated across my idyllic horizon was Scott and Tony Sullivan’s announcement that they planned to return to the States with Emily.
Steve was so upset that his first impulse was to rush across the Channel to talk to them, but when his guilt made it impossible for him to confront Emily he turned instead to the telephone. There were long tortuous conversations which I refused to listen to. A lot of whisky disappeared. Finally the boys flew to Croy
don Aerodrome to spend a long weekend with us, but although I tried hard to give them a friendly welcome I soon saw I was wasting my time. I was competing against Emily, and Emily was obviously God’s gift to motherless children.
“Emily says … Emily does this. … Emily does that. … Emily, Emily, Emily. Their sharp hostile voices lingered lovingly over her name; their eyes regarded me with implacable enmity. At the close of the weekend they cornered their father, locked the door of the room to keep me out and begged him to return with them to Paris.
Steve talked to them for three hours and emerged haggard. More whisky disappeared. We took the boys to Croydon, kissed them goodbye and said we hoped they would change their minds when we had our new big house.
“I doubt it,” said Scott coldly. “Anyway, by that time we’ll be back in America with Emily.”
Scott was dark like Caroline, tall for thirteen years old, and pugnaciously self-confident. Tony was equally tough but not so sure of himself. I liked him the better of the two.
“Maybe we could come for a visit next summer,” he began, willing to be generous, but he quailed when Scott glared at him.
“What can I do?” Steve said afterwards in despair. “Of course any court would insist they return to me—Emily’s not even their legal guardian. But if I force them to live with me they’ll end up hating my guts and making us all miserable. My only hope is to give them time to calm down, and when they finally accept that I’m never going to live with Emily again they’ll become more reasonable.”
“I suppose Emily doesn’t mind looking after them?” I said curiously, trying to imagine how I would feel if I were saddled with my stepchildren by a defecting husband.
“Dinah, looking after children is Emily’s mission in life. All her charity work back home is tied up with children’s welfare.”
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