by Alec Waugh
“Would you like to leave your cloak in there?” He pointed to his bedroom.
As he closed the door behind her, leaving her alone for the first time that evening, for the first time since she had walked into the Ritz, she realized her position. She had never been alone in a man’s flat before. She smiled as she remembered the numerous films and novelettes which portrayed trapped girlhood. As though anything could happen to her that she was not ready to let happen.
She looked round the room. It was a masculine kind of room: a thick fawn pile carpet, a low, wide bedstead, a table at its side; a shaded reading-lamp, two novels, a water jug and tumbler. Thick damask curtains falling in heavy gold-shot folds. A walnut wardrobe, a walnut dressing-table set with bottles, a silver-backed pair of hair brushes. A full length mirror spanned the gap of wall between the dressing-table and the wardrobe. In a corner were two pairs of riding-boots. Along the mantelpiece was set out a row of invitation cards. Above it was a large, brightly coloured hunting print. A man’s room. And yet it had an atmosphere of warmth and of comfort. There was nothing bare or bleak about it. Thought Ruth, “This room could tell some stories.”
A bathroom opened out of it. It was a very modern bathroom with pale blue tiles. The bath was long, low, rectangular. There were glass shelves, set with bottles; a frameless mirror; a thick carpet-looking squared linoleum; a spongey indiarubber mat. A shower was fixed above the bath. It had a number of brightly polished taps. It suggested health, comfort, cleanliness. Through its open door was the warm opulence of the damask curtains. Whatever stories the room might have to tell they would not be squalid ones.
How often women must be held back from that taking of the final plunge by the fear of a squalid setting. Before her eyes, when the hot mounting blood had counselled her to courage there had risen the picture of a cold, cheerless flat, a draughty passage, a gas fire that popped; or some tawdry, suspect suite in a hotel. She had shuddered, and kept her head. How different from that was this. Whatever happened here, an atmosphere of Victor’s choosing would be in keeping with his own fastidious taste. A thing of grace and beauty.
When she came back into the sitting-room he was standing by a small supper table. He was drawing a cork, slowly, from a bottle. It came out so gently that there was scarcely a sound as it left the bottle’s mouth. There was a gurgle and the chink of ice as the bottle sank back into the steaming pail. He turned; pulled back a chair for her; patted it.
“I hope you’ll like what I’ve ordered for us.”
The use of the word “us” rather than “you” gave her again that happy sense of partnership.
Alone with Tavenham again after the thronged noise of the theatre that same aesthetic pleasure of watching him returned, of listening to him, of seeing a thing done perfectly; though in a more marked degree than during dinner, for then her attention had been distracted by the movement of the restaurant, the people round her, the talk. Here, there was nothing to distract her. All her faculties were concentrated upon him.
In the centre of the supper table was a large bowl of lobster salad. It was the kind of dish that she would herself have chosen had she been handed a long menu. The cool wine was sweet, but it was not sugary. It was rich, full-blooded. She did not know what it was. She knew nothing about wine. She was grateful that he had not offered her the obvious champagne.
His talk was easy, gay, as it had been at dinner. There was no sense of embarrassment or constraint. You’re nice, she thought. Nicer than I ever thought you’d be. I didn’t think it would be like this; that you’d be so friendly; that there’d be this feeling of our having a happy time together. I thought it would be a sparring all the time; a game of attack and of defence. I was excited to know how you’d behave; what you’d do and say; what happens when a man like you tries to seduce somebody like me. But the very word “seduce” seems to convey something that’s underhand, sly, tricky. No, it isn’t in the least like that. You’re not like that.
But at the same time she knew very well that he would not have asked her out, would not have brought her here, unless he intended to make love to her. And with a part of her mind she was still detachedly, inquisitively wondering what would happen next. Yet with only a small part of her mind thinking that; only in small part was she detached. More and more she found herself relaxing to the emotional atmosphere of the moment. This was an evening she well knew that she would remember all her life; which would form a standard by which other evenings would be judged. It would make a second-best of a great deal.
It might be that within a very little while she would meet the man with whom she was destined to share her life; at whose side she would go to marriage as inexperienced as her mother. It was possible but it was unlikely. She was not the girl to marry merely for the sake of being married. She was not going to marry till she was certain that she had found the man to whom she could be the kind of wife she wanted to become. It was very likely that she would have to wait many months. She knew herself; and she knew how more than probable it was that during that time of waiting some hot-blooded moment would break down her reserve. That moment, when it came, would be ruined for her by the memory of this night. “Yes, yes, this is well enough. But it ought to have been then.” Never again would the moment and mood, the place and the person fuse so exquisitely. If ever it has to be, and in all human probability it has to be, it should be now. So, as she talked and laughed and listened, the various arguments of the issue chased themselves through her brain; chased themselves until they wearied her; until the power of self-dissection left her. “I’ll leave it to you. Whichever you make it the easier to say,’ Yes’ or ‘No,’ it shall be.”
The last drop of the cool golden wine had been poured into the long-necked glasses. Tavenham rose to his feet.
“Let’s go and sit over there. It’s more comfortable.”
He held out his hand to help her to her feet. He lifted her and they stood close. Her head was on a level with his chin. She leant back her head, looking up at him. He was smiling down at her. “You’re a lovely thing,” he said. He put his arms round her very gently, then his hold tightened. She closed her eyes. It’s like that first time in the woods, only it’s lovelier now, because he’s finer, because I’m older, because it means more to me. I’ve more to compare him with. Now, as then, she had a feeling of the wine of life being offered to her to drink.
Yet all the time there was that detached part, watching her, outside, criticizing, taking stock, thinking, “Yes, but what’s he going to do next? What’s he going to say? What’s the next step? Is it to be ‘Yes’ or ‘No?’” In the moments when her imagination had brooded on such a scene she had pictured the moment of transition from undeclared to manifest intention in terms of embarrassment, awkwardness, clumsiness. I couldn’t stand that. If he were to be shy and awkward, it would spoil everything. I couldn’t stand it. I’d just go.
Her imagination had never succeeded in picturing the scene as she would have it happen. She had never suspected that the tension at such a moment would be broken by a laugh, so that everything would be made easy, friendly, the sharing of a joke.
He lifted her into his arms; right off her feet. Cradling her with one arm below her bent knees he carried her across the room; lowered her gently on the bed.
“In novels, with a touch of the hand a heroine’s clothes fall to the ground in a pool as if by magic. But in real life they don’t. It’s a very intricate and awkward business.”
He handed her a Chinese dressing-gown.
“In exactly seven minutes I’ll be back,” he said. There was no discussion, no question of saying “Yes” or “No.” It was very, very simple to relax, to do things the way he chose.
Seven hours later her maid was rousing her with her morning tea. She sat up in bed, abruptly; rubbed her eyes, blinked them, stared quickly round the familiar room. “Well, is it a dream?” she asked herself; shook herself, poured out a cup of tea, gulped at it and decided that she really was awake. She thought
hard; then nodded. No, it wasn’t a dream. It had happened right enough. She jumped out of bed, ran over to her mirror, stared at her reflection. “Well, and you don’t look any different.” She smiled; the reflection smiled back at her. She began to laugh. “So that’s how you feel about it; proud as Punch. No end of a devil. Who’s fooled all these stodgy matrons with their ‘All in good time, my dear.’ Think yourself the cleverest person that ever was. Well, I’m not sure I don’t agree with you.”
As she brushed out her hair, she began to hum one of the tunes from last night’s revue.
“He had to get under, get out and get under to patch up his little machine.”
The humming broke into words, her feet beat time under her chair. She wanted to dance, she was so happy. I’ll never regret it, never. He’s just a darling. I’ll be grateful to him till the day I die. He made everything seem so right, it might have been made so horrid. By knowing what it had been with him, she could realize what it might have been with someone else. What a mistake I might have made. What he’s saved me from. I’ll never see him again, most likely. He’ll lose interest. He’s so busy. There must be so many other girls. But I’ll never forget him, never. I’ll be grateful till the day I die.
Never had she felt so happy, so alive, so self-confident. At breakfast she could hardly restrain her exuberance. To the rest of the family it was an ordinary morning, just as yesterday had been an ordinary day. Hugh was consulting the columns of The Sportsman, wondering whether it would be worth while going to the Oval that afternoon. Sussex were playing there. He didn’t think they had a chance of making a match of it. But it would be interesting to see Knight bat.
A letter had arrived from Lucy. She was going to have another baby in the autumn. That meant she wouldn’t be able to come back to England till the following summer. Her father was perturbed as far as he was capable of perturbation, by the Irish situation. In his opinion, Civil War would have started in a month. Her mother had asked whether he considered there was any likelihood of trouble over all these ultimatums that Austria and Serbia were sending one another.
“Far too far away to affect us, anyhow,” said Balliol.
Francis in the intervals of this disconnected stream of comment and conjecture was trying to obtain permission to join some friends who had taken a villa for the summer in Wimereux. He had never been abroad. He was desperately anxious to accept.
“But you can’t cross to France by yourself,” his mother was objecting.
“The moment I arrive at Boulogne I’ll be met. I’ve done train journeys before.”
“This is different.”
“How is it different? I changed trains at Frome going to Wells. It’s only a question of one change from the train to the boat at Dover. A boat’s the same thing as a train.”
“It isn’t the same thing. We’ll consider it if you can find someone to go across with you and bring you back.”
“How am I to find that?” he grumbled.
Ruth scarcely listened. Cricket matches at the Oval; first trips to France; a niece in Penang; trouble in Ireland; ultimatums to the Serbs. What did they matter on a day like this? She felt hungry, yet she was too excited to eat. She wanted to talk, but there was nothing she wanted to say. She sat on her chair, crumbling a piece of toast, looking round the room with quick bright glances. Helen, recently promoted to a downstairs meal, stared at her with a puzzled curiosity.
“How strange Ruth looks this morning.”
“Finish up your porridge,” her mother told her.
“Her eyes are so bright,” said Helen.
Said Francis: “At Helen’s age I wasn’t allowed down to breakfast.”
Said her father: “Keep moving. We’ve got to be starting in five minutes.”
Hugh handed her across the paper. She glanced at the headlines. Divorces, murders, boxing matches. Political actions, international situations, the King at Windsor. Social tittle-tattle. To think that all those other things had happened yesterday.
She had nothing to do that morning. She had left the day free on purpose. After two late nights she had fancied that she would want to sleep late into the morning. She had never felt less sleepy. As often, when she had nothing in particular to do, she went in by ‘bus to London, riding on the top deck, not because she had anything to do in London, anyone to see, anything to buy; it was just that she wanted to watch London’s streets, to look down on London from a ‘bus; to draw a sense of life from London’s rich vitality. Never had she been more conscious of her youth, her power, her capacity to enjoy than on this sunlit July morning. She wanted to shout her secret boastfully from the housetops. She surveyed with a sense of proud superiority the girls who loitered before shop windows; at the side of elderly chaperons. What they dreamed about, thought about, whispered over, she knew.
On her return to Ilex she was surprised by the maid’s announcement that a box from Gerard’s had just arrived for her. No one was in the habit of sending her flowers. It was a short carton. She tore it open. It was a spray of purple orchids mingled with lilies of the valley. There was a note enclosed. It was pencilled on the back of a calling card. “Please ring me up at once to tell me that you’ll wear these when you dine with me to-night.” There was no need to turn the card to read the sender’s name. She looked at the flowers, then at the card, colour flooding her cheeks to crimson.
But she could not dine with him that night. Her parents had people dining, and for the night after she had a promise to make up a four at which she would fulfil the rôle of gooseberry from which she could not honourably extricate herself. But the day after tomorrow was far too long to wait. “It’ll have to be lunch tomorrow,” he decided. “Let’s make it Claridge’s at one-fifteen?”
Pensively, she laid down the receiver. Could Helen have seen her then, she would have noticed that the strange brightness of her eyes was misted.
It was nervously, however, that she waited for Tavenham in the lounge at Claridge’s. She had had half a mind that morning to send a telegram, to say that she could not come. It might be better if she were never to see him again. She could not bear to have the memory of that one night spoilt. It might be spoilt so easily. Good things ought not to be repeated. Love what you won’t see twice. Victor might not be so charming as he had been; he might be casual, arrogant, possessive. She had always heard that men “were different afterwards.” She had a good mind not to go. Only if I don’t, I’ll regret it always. There’ll be something I may have missed. I’ve got to know. But it was nervously that she sat there waiting, her toes curling backwards towards her soles. And it was with a relief greater than she cared to measure that she realized in the first instant of Victor’s greeting that he was not any different; that he was just the same. He was not treating her any differently because she had draped herself in a Chinese dressing-gown. On the contrary, the memory of that moment brought them closer to one another, in a friendlier intimacy, so that she could drop her defences in a way that she had been unable to before, so that she could be herself, knowing that he would understand.
The talk flowed easily and lightly. They were laughing half the time, every minute or so their eyes would meet across the table; their glances would hold each other, would become a slow look. Their laughter a smile that said, “It’s fun, isn’t it, that we should be amused by the same things this way?”
It was not till the very end of lunch that he made any reference to the Chinese dressing-gown, then indirectly.
“It’s a pity about that latch-key of yours. And all its Cinderella business.”
She smiled. “I know. It’s a nuisance. It’s the kind of agreement one drifts into and then finds it hard to break.”
“That makes me think you ought to introduce me to your parents.”
“Oh, but why.…”
“Then you wouldn’t have to worry about getting back, or when or how often.”
“Yes, but.…” She hesitated, a puzzled frown on her face. It would be easier, admittedly. But at t
he same time.… She shook her head.
“No, I know it’s a nuisance, and it might be easier, but I don’t know. It would be a bore for you and.… Oh, I don’t know.… I think we’re better as we are.”
She had no means of guessing how much that moment of puzzled deliberation and her ultimate decision counted with him; of knowing how it forced on his memory a comparison between her and all those girls who had tried to turn his interest in them to their own advantage; who had wanted to show him off to their friends and relatives; who had angled for invitations to week-end parties at his father’s house; whose interest in him was measured by the glamour they derived from it. Ruth was the very first who had been unaffected by such considerations; who was happy to be with him irrespective of what it brought to her. The quick eager light came back into his blue eyes. He had been right about her, then. She was different, fundamentally. He had thought that the difference would make her difficult; in an obvious way. It hadn’t. But in a subtler way it had. There was more to her, more to encompass; sides that were not easily revealed; that were slow to show themselves. To be with her was to be launched on a voyage of discovery; the excitement of new landscape. I’m not letting her out of my life at once.
“Then if you won’t do that, don’t you think it would be possible for us to be in the same place for a time, when no one knows we are there, and there aren’t chaperons?”
“How do you mean?”
“Couldn’t you say you were going away to stay with friends, and then not go to them?”