by Angus Wilson
Gerald saw the one man wink at the other. Such things happened too often with Inge as she got older for him to feel much about it. He tried to remind himself of what she was.
When they returned into the drawing-room, Gerald laid his hand on his wife's arm. 'Give me a moment, please, Inge,' he said. 'I was shutting the windows because you were trying to avoid unpleasant things. It's no good, my dear, you don't see what you're involving yourself with. I repeat what are the children going to say when they're asked to love their father's mistress?'
'Gerald, really! What sort of minds do you think these little ones have? Robin is ten. Do you think he is interested in mistresses?' Inge flung out her arm as though in appeal to a greater audience than her husband - perhaps, to humanity.
'You know very well I don't mean now,' said Gerald. 'But in six or seven years' time, what then?'
'Then they will have good, wholesome minds. They will not think that the acts of the body are bad. What sort of children do you think I am bringing up? Listen, Gerald, shall I tell you what I shall say to them? I shall say, "When din lille mor married your papa, they made you. Now that was a beautiful thing was it not, children, to make little seeds into three fine, strong bodies? Well that was because your papa and I loved each other so much, that we did not want to be two bodies, but just one body. But this kind of physical love does not last," I shall say. "Some people, especially women, I think, do not need this love of the body after they are no longer young. But men do. You must always remember that, little Kay," I shall say. "And so it was with your papa. And I, what do I think, children?" I shall say. "I think it is natural, as natural as it is that one day you will find somebody whose body you will wish to look at and to touch. For you will grow and marry and leave me. Great big Robin and little Kay, and yes, even, perhaps, little Johnnie. Your papa's love for Aunt Dollie is as natural as that will be. And if it is natural it must be beautiful." '
'Or ugly.' Gerald turned on her savagely. 'Why don't you say what you mean?'
Inge's large blue eyes grew round with fright. 'But I don't think it ugly, Gerald,' she cried.
In face of her panic Gerald always capitulated. If anyone was responsible for her view of sex it was surely her husband. He turned away. 'You'd better not keep your unemployed friends waiting,' he said.
'Oh, the poor men, I must get them beer. They will like beer,' and Inge hurried from the room. She called upstairs to the nursery, 'We shall see Papa and Auntie Dollie at Kew; won't that be nice?' and then, putting her head round the drawing-room door, 'And no nonsense, please, Gerald, about coming back here tonight. I shall tell the children you have gone to stay with Aunt Dollie. Little Johnnie will be quite envious.'
Gerald took up the telephone and dialled the Fitzroy Square number. 'Look, darling,' he said, 'Inge insists that we keep to our plan of going to Kew. No, really, she means it. Oh and will you bring some stale buns? - no, no, she said buns, for John to give to the geese. No, I shall be coming back to the flat. I don't know. As long as you like. There's no reason to keep me here.'
The unemployed were giving Inge a tune for herself. 'Make my bed and light the light, I'll be coming home tonight. Bye-bye, blackbird.'
So much, thought Gerald, for 1928. And so it had gone on for four years. Freudians would probably have imputed some exceedingly unpleasant suppressed motives to Inge's behaviour. For himself, he found it easier to believe that her actions were those of a spoilt girl who had turned into a woman who was slightly cracked. It was better, of course, to remind oneself that if she had been a smaller woman, if her English had been less comic, all this whimsy and theatricality would not have appeared so ludicrous. She would simply have been thought an impulsive, lively little foreigner, at the worst, a good-hearted eccentric. But for a giraffe or an elephant to behave in that way would just do in a Walt Disney cartoon; in daily life it meant a complete separation from reality. She was, in fact, unbalanced. Mentally and emotionally unbalanced he had decided in those years to consider his wife, which was probably the same as what the Freudians would have said. In either case, what could one do about it? In fact, he had done nothing except to get used to it, forget it and live entirely in his life with Dollie. But Dollie's outburst in Provence had taught him that she, at any rate, could not get used to it. On their return, he had done everything he could to keep Inge and the children out of his life with Dollie. It had not been easy, but, at least, with Mrs Salad's aid, he had prevented Inge's little visits of friendship to the Fitzroy Square flat.
Inge seemed far more jealous of Mrs Salad than she did of Dollie. 'She is so dirty and sly, Gerald,' she would say. 'But nobody else I suppose would understand poor Dollie's crazy housekeeping.'
Mrs Salad, in return, resented Inge's existence in the sentimental idyll she had built around her sinning love-birds. 'I know you won't mind my saying so, dear,' she had said one day after a visit from Inge, 'but that's not just 'cos she's foreign that Mrs Middleton has that very coarse 'air.'
'But my wife's hair's admired by everyone, Mrs Salad. It's such a wonderful colour.'
'Bright in colour, perhaps,' she said, 'but very coarse to the touch, I should think. What sort of people would 'ers have been now?'
'Her father was a Labour member of the Danish Parliament, Mrs Salad.'
'Ah!', she said, 'I thought it wasn't just foreign. That's very common 'air, if you'll excuse my saying so.' Mrs Salad was a great snob.
Dollie, too, with her increasing tippling, showed her possessiveness of him more openly. She was only just polite to Inge. In the end, however, it was neither Mrs Salad nor Dollie nor he who made the complete break, it was Inge herself. For the children's sake. And at the Café Royal. ...
The children were now happily settled on the long red velvet sofa. 'And so Robin is a big man now and he chooses smoked salmon,' said Ingeborg. 'Do you think you will like that? It is only red fish, you know, with lemon.' But when Robin solemnly reasserted his choice, she said to the waiter with mock seriousness, 'The gentleman wants a good portion of smoked salmon.'
'What about you, Kay?' asked Gerald.
Kay, in her disfiguring chamber-pot velour school hat, wriggled nervously. 'I don't know, Daddy,' she said.
'Little Kay will have hors d'œuvre,' said Inge; 'it is the same as our favourite smaahrod, you know. But not so good, perhaps,' she laughed. 'You will have your dear smaahrod, won't you, Johnnie?'
John looked primly down the menu. 'I don't see the sense of having it if it's not so good,' he said. 'I will have plover's eggs.'
'Oh you won't eat the little bird's eggs!' cried Inge.
'He'd better eat them while he can,' said Gerald; 'they're being prohibited after this year.'
'And I should like sole mornay to follow,' added John.
'I shan't have fish,' Robin said, with the importance of the eldest child, 'I will have a steak.'
'And what will you have, Kay? It's your birthday. You choose what you like.' Gerald looked at his leggy daughter with affection. But Kay looked at her mother.
'What shall I have, Mummy?' she asked.
'Oh! you must not ask me. Ask Papa, who is giving this lovely birthday to a lucky little girl.'
Kay looked at her father obediently. It annoyed Gerald that she apparently had no views of her own, after all she was thirteen, but he guessed the agony this spotlight was causing her and thought it better to order for her. 'Lobster Thermidor,' he said to the waiter. 'There you are, madam,' he said, hating himself for the facetiousness which he could not avoid with his children, 'the lobster is being boiled at your command.' Kay became very red in the face.
'Oh! Gerald, my dear, what have you said?' cried Inge. 'She will never eat it now. Poor little Kay! You don't want the lobster to be cooked for you, do you, dear?' Then she whispered fussily to the waiter. 'I've ordered her some fried sole,' she told Gerald.
'Kay's turned red instead of the lobster,' Robin declared with glee.
'Shut up,' said Gerald.
'Poor Robin!' cr
ied Inge, 'you were only teasing, weren't you? You mustn't tease your sister on her birthday, you know. But even so, Kay, you mustn't cry just because your brother makes a joke,' she added to her daughter, who was now in tears.
John was waving across the room and smiling with all the charm he already put over at twelve years old. 'There's Auntie Dollie,' he cried. 'Why doesn't she come over?'
Gerald's heart sank; any other interruption but this would have been heaven-sent. 'I expect she is dining with someone else,' he said, without looking round.
'She isn't dining,' John replied. 'She's sitting at one of those long marble-topped tables, drinking. All by herself,' he added precisely. 'She's talking to herself,' he said. 'She oughtn't to do that, ought she, Thingy? People will think she's potty.'
'The French mistress in the form I was in last term talks to herself,' Kay announced. 'We all laugh at her.' Gerald shot her a look of gratitude for the child's tact in changing the conversation; but it was clear that it was a childish rather than a tactful remark, for she added, 'Let's all laugh at Auntie Dollie.'
'Good idea!' cried John. They both laughed loudly, 'Ha! Ha! Ha!'
'Now that is very unkind to laugh at people,' said Inge. 'Auntie Dollie will come over when we have finished our dinner.'
'It's very bad manners to laugh out loud in restaurants,' Robin announced. 'I suppose this is rather a good restaurant,' he said conversationally to his father.
Once again Gerald heralded the tact that goes with fifteen years. 'Yes,' he said. 'It used to be very famous when your grandfather was young. All sorts of writers and actors and people came here. But it's still pretty good.'
'I thought so,' said Robin. 'Harkness said his people wouldn't come here because it wasn't good enough. Not that that shows anything. I don't think they're as rich as we are, and anyway; his father has to work for their money.' His curiosity satisfied, he sat back.
'And what do you think your father does?' asked Inge in shocked tones.
'He lectures in medieval history,' Robin answered by rote, 'but we don't get much of our money from that. We live on unearned income,' he announced proudly.
'That is no reason to be proud.' Inge was deeply shocked now. 'We hope Robin that you will go into the business with grandfather and then all the money we have will be earned.'
'You wouldn't be earning it just because Robin was working,' said John loudly.
Inge ruffled his hair. 'Be careful the trolls don't take that quick little tongue of yours.'
Gerald hoped for a moment that John was going to put his tongue out at his mother, but he only put his hand in hers. 'Is my tongue very quick?' he asked.
'As lightning,' said Inge. 'We shall all have to have little lightning-conductors on our hats.'
Kay laughed at her mother's joke until she choked. Robin now had started to stare at Dollie and soon the other two joined him.
'Gerald,' cried Inge in cooing tones, 'go and ask Dollie to have a liqueur with us. Somebody has said some silly thing and now she is shy to speak to me. She looks very unhappy,' she whispered as though Gerald's failure to make Dollie happy was directly answerable to her.
'I don't think that's necessary,' he said. 'She'll come over if she wants to.' But it was too late, for Kay, anxious to please her mother, asked, 'Shall I go and ask her, Mummy? After all it's my birthday party.'
In the end, Gerald accompanied his daughter across the great dining-room.
'Good evening, Kay,' said Dollie, trying to bring her fuddled senses to cope with the situation. Her mind reeled round until the centre of everything seemed to be in her mouth. This she contorted into what she hoped was a suitable smile.
'It's my birthday dinner,' said Kay. 'I came to invite you to join us.' She could see that Auntie Dollie was 'not very well' and she put all the sweetness into her little speech that the English mistress had taught her in last term's production of Mary Rose.
The stilted little elocutionary voice only made Dollie giggle. She was acutely aware that she could not trust herself to walk happily across the room. 'Thank you,' she said, 'I can't come.' Then she stopped dead, for she could think of no reason to give. Gerald desperately announced, 'Auntie Dollie's waiting for someone.'
Dollie smiled at him gratefully, then she sought for something to say to Kay, something funny. 'You shouldn't wear a hat like a jerry on your birthday,' she said.
Every sense in Kay was outraged - to talk of vulgar things like that in public, to make fun of her clothes, to make fun of the school hat. 'It's our school hat,' she said. Then, red in the face, she walked back to their table.
'Oh, my God!' said Gerald. 'Whatever made you say that?'
'She's a silly little tike,' said Dollie, 'she needs a good what-for on her behind. I say, I'm most awfully sorry, Gerrie.' She looked at him earnestly.
'Yes, my dear, I'm sure you are. Shall I get you a taxi?' he asked.
The scene he dreaded, however, was not to be avoided. Tears began to roll down Dollie's cheeks. 'You're not to leave me, Gerrie,' she said. 'You must take me home.'
'I can't, Dollie, really I can't. You had no right to come here. You knew I was giving Kay her birthday dinner.'
'I tried not to,' said Dollie. She had got to that stage in their relationship when she felt that she must force her prior claim upon Gerald's love and she knew that by doing so she risked losing it altogether. Either seemed better than accepting terms from him. Yet as soon as she took any action, she regretted it. 'I meant to have an evening at home with a book.' And she pictured with longing a series of evenings spent at home with books, anything would be wonderful that excluded all this, that excluded, in fact, Gerald. But as soon as her mind reached this point, her emotions revolted. 'You had no right to leave me this evening,' she said, 'you know I was in a state. You ought to have stayed with me.'
'You promised me that you would go out with Pamela, if you felt like this,' said Gerald. 'It was all fixed.'
'I'm not one of your bloody children to be sent out and told to behave,' Dollie raised her voice.
Gerald sat down on the bench beside her. He took her hand. 'Look,' he said, 'you've got to understand. Some things you've got to put up with. And this is one of them. Kay gets little enough in life. You're entirely selfish.' One of his growing frequent fits of revulsion from her possessed him. 'It's bad enough that I should have lost all real contact with the children. I refuse to be entirely cut off from them because of your lack of self-control. The lesser things have to be sacrificed to the greater.' He spoke with deliberate cruelty. He only did so when, as now, Dollie was too far gone to respond to cold-water shock, however.
She looked at him with a face that was trembling. 'It's no good, she said, 'your talking. Because you're going to take me home.'
'Very well,' said Gerald, 'but I'm not staying at the flat. You realize that.'
Dollie knew, as well as he, that she had won, for she said, 'Of course, this isn't really a scene, you know.' They had got to the stage where 'scenes' were to be computed against her in a list. 'It's only because I'm drunk.'
But they had reckoned without Ingeborg. Before he could make his way to the family table to explain his departure, she had borne down upon them. 'You must go back to the children, Gerald. I will take Dollie back to her flat.'
'Gerries taking me home,' said Dollie in petulant assertion, but she was no longer shouting.
'No!' said Inge in her soothing voice, 'Gerald is giving Kay her birthday dinner. I will take you home, Dollie,' and she began to slip Dollie's coat on her.
Gerald, seeing Dollie's sudden acquiescence, held back his objections. 'What on earth are the children ...'
Inge answered his unfinished question. 'I have told them that Dollie's drunk,' she said.
'Was that necessary?' Gerald asked angrily.
'Yes, Gerald, it was. They must be told the truth. Besides,' she added, 'they must know the reason why they will not see her any more.' She turned to Dollie. 'You see, Dollie, what comes of behaving like a little
child. You frightened my little Kay and I cannot have that. So you will not come to see them and they will not visit you.'
So this, thought Gerald, is where Inge wriggles out of the position her muddled ethics have got her into; but, looking at his wife, he saw that her big blue eyes were sincerely full of tragic compassion for Dollie's deprivation. More surprising to him still, however, was Dollie's reaction. She took Inge's arm and, with a tearful voice, 'Please take me home, Inge,' she said. As they left the restaurant, a huge and a tiny figure, each in the fashionable black cloth coats with fur at shoulders and cuffs, they did not seem the two women with whom he was most intimate, but rather two repellent black shapes from a nightmare. ...
Gerald emerged from his reverie with a feeling of perplexity. It had been doubt of Inge's much-advertised claim to consistent treatment of the children that had led him to recall all this - so much he remembered - and yet what relation was there? If Inge had been inconsistent it was in her treatment of him, he thought indignantly, but no more than Dollie had been. They had constantly humiliated him at that time. It was he rather than the children who had suffered. He, in fact, who was the pitiable child Gerald drew back with disgust from his introspection. It seemed as though some part of his mind was intent on manufacturing causes for self-distaste. The very ease with which that word 'child' had slipped into his thoughts spoke of second childhood. He turned his attention determinedly to the family conversation.
An interlude of purring had succeeded the growls and scratches. Donald's adherence to the firm of Middleton was now the topic, and, since it had been Inge's idea that Robin should give Donald a job, even John was unwilling to criticize. In any case he looked forward with malicious glee to the results of the venture; A satisfied look of favours bestowed had appeared on the faces of all the interested parties. Robin had put that touch of twinkle in the eye into his mask of patronage which made clear that he knew he was acting a little quixotically, was taking one of those calculated risks that show that the industrialist is not always bounded by practical, day-to-day horizons. Donald, too, felt he was conferring a favour, but his mask of intellectual superiority was tempered by a smile that suggested the temerity of his role - how few academicals would have seized this opportunity to season their theory with a pinch of practice. Kay smiled with indulgence as she thought how little her family realized what a brilliant bargain they had bought in Donald. Marie Hélène just smiled as the cultured wife of a brilliant business man. But the most contented smile was Ingeborg's - once again the architect of her family's happiness. She felt that it was her place to say a few words in launching the ship.